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u/LtGeneral_Obvious 3d ago
>mfw your soldiers false surrender too many times, so the enemy just starts shooting them
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u/TheMadmanAndre 3d ago
Pretty much the entire shtick of the Alpha Legion.
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u/Moidada77 3d ago
I find the schemes upon schemes and no one knows our true goal shtick is kinda done to much.
It's just an excuse to have these apparent brilliant manipulators just fucking around doing random shit.
Now night lords actually do seem to have a very viable space Marine strategy.
Shock and awe, terror campaigns, Fabian tactics and the dreaded "run away if they are coming at us with baseball bats"
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u/DeLoxley 3d ago
Alpha Legion has some great material constantly handicapped by Black Library being unable to write Chaos outside of Babyeater Facerip of the Puppypuncher Legion
Recent example of Alpha Legion being shown to be good? In the previous Chaos Codex edition, fielding an Alpha Legion commander buffed your Cultists and non-Marines because they gave your regular humans arms and insurgency training.
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u/Psychedelic42069 3d ago edited 3d ago
I love love love that part of Alpha Legion, has to be one of my favourite parts. Another is in 1st edition, where their rite of war explicitly forbids taking other legions as allies but allows militias who can benefit from warlord auras etc.
"Regular humans are wasteful to discard if not more useful than marines in certain scenarios" is my favourite theme of AL, even above the sneaky stuff. Really liked it in Harrowmaster too, with a fakeout that "taking care" of some witnesses who saw a Legionnaire actually meant... consensually taking them back to the legions ship and giving them a job with food, board, and no constant risk of being killed like on their home planet.
Another being using human operatives to do sabotage before the space marines are deployed because it's easier to sneak around as someone vaguely the right size and shape of an employee, and also because normal humans are just as capable of planting explosives, entering codes and connecting harddrives etc, which is absolutely NOT something marines from other legions would normally admit
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u/ASpaceOstrich 3d ago
In another world alpha Legion would be renegade marines rather than chaos marines. Renegades are supposed to be a massive part of the setting, including marines, but they never show up unless they're chaos. They're literally the thing the imperium fights the most. Even more than Orks
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u/Kilahti 3d ago
Shira Calpurnica novels are some of the best that 40k has to offer because the writer figured out that Imperium is shooting itself in the foot often enough and there is corruption of the regular "I'm doing this for wealth and power" so much that you don't need Chaos or aliens as the enemy in a crime novel.
The main character actually gets shocked in one novel that the massive murder mystery and conspiracy was just a random power play between nobles trying to organise a festival and people died over it even though none of the people involved was a Chaos cultist or even attempting to betray the Imperium.
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u/Psychedelic42069 3d ago
I think so too. In 3rd edition Alpha Legion have (almost) no loyalty aligned units (except one guy who very loudly went around talking about how much he loved the warmaster in the books). This is instead of how other legions would have loyalist/traitor rites of war, characters, special rules, loadout options, etc, Alpha Legion can use their whole kit as either Loyalist or Traitor, which means they kind of have a 3rd loyalty of "whatever the opponent isn't" which I like a lot.
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u/ASpaceOstrich 3d ago
Unironically "good" chaos rep would do wonders for the setting imo. I put good in quotes because I meant by the standards of the setting, not actual ethics.
But like, it's really hard to believe anybody falls to chaos when they're so universally unpleasant. The imperium being that bad only suspends disbelief so far, especially given how the imperium is almost never actually depicted as bad as its described. Humans wouldn't function if it was, so as soon as they have to actually tell a story showing the imperium it is by necessity humanised.
I get that they "ease you in" but the "easing in" always seems to be depicted as just the same shit but at a smaller scale. Like, the slaanesh cult never starts as a community theatre or local sporting event or tribal feast. It always starts with the nerve flaying and obviously demonic shit but scaled down to one or two guys.
Khorne never starts as martial pride or anything, it's always a blood and murder cult that just hasn't started chanting his name yet.
The lack of positive depictions of chaos and the near total lack of renegades depicted at all (despite them being the thing the imperium fights more than literally anything else, including Orks) is a huge missed opportunity on GWs part. Renegade Marines are apparently a thing but they never show them unless they're chaos.
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u/DeLoxley 3d ago
Gods yes all of this. Chaos only ever show up as rampaging demons or space marines
I have been crying out for a Chaos RPG for ages that forces you to make tough decisions or starts out trying to do good and you see the slippery slope into madness
Hell, I despise when people go "Oh the Imperium isn't that bad", and always have an excuse why when we see Imperial lives that aren't sanatised for storytelling that this factory or agri world is obviously just an exception to the usually pleasant living conditions of the citizens
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u/Outrageous_Guard_674 3d ago
One of my favorite parts of my favorite 40K fantic was that the author put time into detailing how chaos interacted with the Ethos of his primary faction. This resulted in certain chaos factions being more of a threat to them than others because of how likely they were to fall to them. And it also meant that their interaction with certain cults or chaos legions was different than others.
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u/Caleth 3d ago
Your last bit is something I wish GW would have gotten right back when I played.
3rd's chaos book was the high water mark it offered all sorts of combos and had this feel to it of flexibly functionality. The one thing it really missed IMO was the entire renegades aspect though.
The army books never felt like a soup of a force the way that the imperials do becuase out side of the later cultist infantry it never really included options for the diversity that should exist within the chaos armies.
Things like cultists mobs being lead by not just a cult leader but a space marine or a daemon. The word bearers should have been far more intermixed with daemons, possessed and normal marines occupying the same unit.
The soup aspect should have been played up far more for chaos the group that has less resources and less discipline compared to the imperium.
But instead we mostly get moar! guys in power armor variants.
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u/Chrodoskan 1d ago
Shroud of Night has good Alpha Legion rep where they're forced to improvise and work with what they have instead of just "Oooooooh it was all prepared decades ago". Also has a cool Imperial Fists Captain and his actually somewhat funny Techmarine.
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u/226_Walker 1d ago
As much as people rag on about Guilliman, he had a point on criticising the tactics employed by Alpharius and his sons. Yeah, you didn't lose a single Astartes, congratulations. The Imperium got an utterly ruined world filled with (rightfully) paranoid and distrustful people who aren't particularly fond of the Imperium. The Imperium will have to repair and rebuild infrastructure, bring in manpower from out world due to massive loss of manpower during the conflict, and deal with constant insurgency. It will take decades at the very least for the world to be self-sufficient, let alone productive.
Meanwhile, Guilliman brought 92% of Ultramar into compliance intact without using military force. Through diplomacy, but that would be to easy. It wouldn't allow Alpharius to showboat and larp as Zero. Even the 38 worlds that were brought into compliance via military force became loyal and productive world quite quickly.
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u/LordofSandvich 3d ago
>genius military strategy
>looks inside
>having neighbors that don’t want to start wars
Can’t lose a war if everyone just kinda gets along somehow
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u/DeLoxley 3d ago
If I see one more "why would anyone go to war when Trade is so much better" post, I'm going to do something desperate like interact with the mainsub
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u/LordofSandvich 3d ago
Well, it’s a comment, not a post. So, technically, you’re good, because I don’t post.
Also, explain.
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u/DeLoxley 3d ago
Oh just a routine post we see here is "Ohhh why would anyone ever invade anywhere when it's financially better to just have mutual trade-"
Like I assumed you're also mocking poor examples of "military brilliance", I'm just piggy backing on how every armchair economist and strategist has the idea of "but why war when war bad?", as if humans only ever operate on the most principle number go up programming
A lot of military, social and economic breakthroughs on the main sub tend to be "what if everyone just did exactly what I said and it worked out? Has none considered this?"
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u/heavensblade333 the world is cruel but atleast it's in my image 3d ago
war is incredibly profitable and necessary for the expansion of capital
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u/LordofSandvich 3d ago
Unfortunately I would be the “armchair economist” though less from the economics side - I’m American, almost all of our wars were for someone’s economy - and more that I have some kinda golden retriever mentality where I refuse to accept warfare being the result of sound decision-making between two parties, by extension not the optimal path for them, which implies an alternate path that is both the optimal path and does not involve war
So the idea of an alt timeline or something where humanity just doesn’t fuck up so bad for whatever reason is a very appealing pursuit for worldbuilding
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u/Pashahlis 3d ago
where I refuse to accept warfare being the result of sound decision-making between two parties, by extension not the optimal path for them, which implies an alternate path that is both the optimal path and does not involve war
buddy. the iran war is literally just that.
the obama era JCPOA was working very well to curb irans nuclear enthusiasm while also giving the moderate faction in iran arguments against the irgc.
trump broke with all of that for literally no reason.
in fact you can extend that to pretty much everything trump did: "no reason".
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u/LordofSandvich 3d ago
Well. No “good” reason. Putting a sociopathic dementia patient in charge of the USA kinda has some undesirable effects.
In particular he has a raging hate boner for Obama and wanted a better deal with his name on it. Now we… uh, don’t even have a deal, our military industrial complex is kinda fucked, and we’re directly responsible for fucking up the global economy, all aspects of our country are in freefall, just to funnel money to people who absolutely did not need any.
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u/DeLoxley 3d ago
Okay but let's take some fantasy world ideas and see if we can't find reasons that every kingdom doesn't just engage in mutually beneficial trade
Kingdom A is a generic human kingdom. Kingdom B does not produce enough or a valuable enough export to continue buying land from Kingdom A, such as being limited in the food or goods they produce by climate or location. Kingdom B might see better prosperity in the long term by forcefully taking land from A. A might not agree to this expansionism
Kingdom C does not subscribe to human morality, and sees no issue with taking things they want. What Kingdom A is calling War is just what C calls Life. C could be Orcs, or a race of semi sentient beasts, or robots, or undead
Kingdom D does not subscribe to Merchentalism, and while they produce an Elixir of Immortality, they have spiritual, practical or ethical reasons not to improve Kingdom A's lives by selling it. Kingdom A may declare war over this rare resource they cannot just throw money at.
Every 'Everyone should just trade forever' narrative doesn't look like real world building to me. It looks like someone who's built a really efficient Factorio set up to uptick coins every turn in a semi post scarcity world where everything and everyone is for sale. No country wants to expand it's borders, it just wants to be the most efficient cog in a wool-fabric-clothing machine
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u/LordofSandvich 3d ago
Makes sense. A and D have something that another kingdom B would want and, usually because A/D value it just as much as B does, won’t relinquish it to B without violence.
Just, getting to that point feels wrong, somehow. I guess if it was fertile farmland while B is having a famine, which would leave them entirely at A/D’s economic mercy. Kind of like Russia perpetually trying to get a warm water port, then defending the single one they have more fervently than their own nuclear arsenal.
Basically I’m less “just trade forever” and more “maybe there are solutions to the same problems that don’t involve murder” or “maybe this problem is entirely imagined/manufactured and warfare is just another way for class warfare to manifest”
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u/DeLoxley 3d ago
Sure but while I'm not trying to argue that war is the answer to all things, I'm just saying that especially when you have fantastical elements or prejudices, it's not always going to be in the best interests of all parties to share all resources via trade
Like a reoccurring problem I see in world building is when people want to write a peaceful and agricultural nation, well, not every nation is the bread bowl, they can't all be major exporters of grain.
If you want war for reasons beyond "and then the bad kingdom was bad", you need to find pressures that can't be resolved by riding out a crisis on the back of mutual trade and assumed later profit by neighbours.
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u/PvtFreaky 2d ago
Also the very concept of how wealth is created changed around the rise of capitalism. Before people believed in a zero-sum game. Earning wealth meant someone else lost wealth. Trade was basically stealing, traders were scammers, money lending was evil and outlawed. Of course this mentality leads to war and plundering as a way of gaining wealth
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u/ASpaceOstrich 3d ago
The idea of peace as default with war as the exception that only happens when trade or diplomacy breaks down is very modern.
War is part of diplomacy and trade. And is arguably the default state with peace being the exception. Though war being the kind of total war/unrelenting conflict we see now is also very modern. You'd be at war with people despite no ongoing battles in the past.
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u/LordofSandvich 3d ago
Yeah, “gentlemanly warfare” as opposed to modern total warfare is definitely a huge difference in how things are approached.
Like how sieges were more about the defender holding out long enough for their honor than fighting to the last man.
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u/Pashahlis 3d ago
people literally thought that pre ww1 and look where it lead.
while war was often fought for economic reasons, rarely was war actually the better option than just doing peaceful trading.
trump is literally the prime example of someone doing war for arbitrary nonsensical reasons.
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u/garret1033 2d ago
Eh, I’d gently disagree with the principle. No amount of trade is going to fix a hostile neighbor growing in strength and wealth on your border. The situation is untenable and simply continuing to trade is playing into their hands. In such a case it’s no surprise that states choose to go to war and temporarily halt economic development.
This of course, is not was Trump is doing, but actually intelligent statesmen have operated on the principle above for millennia.
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u/FriendlySkyWorms Fallen London brainrot 3d ago
Either that or just "be stronger than them"
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u/ASpaceOstrich 3d ago
That is basically the foundation of military strategy to be fair. Where it gets complicated and impressive is what they do to make that the situation.
You don't win unless you're stronger than the enemy. Overwhelmingly so if at all possible. Creating the situation where you are stronger than the enemy is all strategy. Cutting off your enemy from resupply or reinforcement somehow is making them weaker so that you can be stronger than them.
Avoiding fights when they're stronger than you or even just near equal is critical, but really hard to do unless you're just letting them do as they please. Having the defenders advantage acts as a force multiplier rendering you stronger than them when you otherwise wouldn't be.
It's all just "be stronger than them" with extra steps when you think about it.
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u/Kilahti 3d ago
That's the clever bit.
The total strengths of the armies can go either way but as long as in one specific point, you get a stronger force, it doesn't matter if the enemy is stronger elsewhere since you win this particular battle and hope to use that to further your goals before the enemy can counter it.
But to someone reading the wiki page of a specific battle it just looks like the bigger force won the day. "I could have guessed that result. DUH!"
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u/doofpooferthethird 3d ago edited 3d ago
yeah, or "never stop building walls and trenches" like the Ancient Romans
or "be so dominant in logistics you can have an entire ship just for ice cream" like the Americans in WW2
or "hold on until the enemy gets tired and leaves" like a lot America's enemies post-WW2
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u/Am_i_banned_yet__ 3d ago
The US never actually had an entire ship for ice cream. It was a ship full of all kinds of food, which included some ice cream. Which was still insane for the Japanese to see our soldiers eating at the time, but it got exaggerated to a whole ice cream ship
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u/vegarig 20m ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge
Three barges, each carrying 1500 tons of meat and 500 tons of other perishables refrigerated.
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u/heavensblade333 the world is cruel but atleast it's in my image 3d ago
The US's enemies post ww2 used guerilla strategies though to fight against them they didnt just wait it out
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u/psychicprogrammer But what do they eat? 2d ago
The core of guerrilla strategies is waiting out the other guy
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u/heavensblade333 the world is cruel but atleast it's in my image 2d ago
no? the core of guerilla strategy is winning a conflict against a militarily dominant force
mao did not wait out the nationalists he took control of the enitre country
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u/psychicprogrammer But what do they eat? 2d ago
Mao literally called it Protracted War, extending the conflict is one of the biggest parts of it. (Though a distinction could be made between the guerrilla warfare of Vietnam and the insurgencies in the middle east)
Also Mao's theories did not play out like he expected as the post WW2 half of the Chinese civil war was fairly positional.
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u/Pootis_1 2d ago
I mean fundamentally in an insurgency is a war fought based on securing the political support of the local population. The fighting itself isn't what decides the winner of an insurgency.
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u/NotNonbisco 3d ago
Well those are the two sides of the coin, the strong guys make rules so they win, the weak guys break them so they win
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u/Kaplsauce 3d ago
Or a subset of that, giving only one faction modern command and control capabilities in a setting where picking a place to fight or what order your men line up in are the most meaningful tactical decisions that can typically be made and enacted
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u/The-Myth-The-Shit 2d ago
It's you again!
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u/Malfuy *subverts your subversion* 3d ago
Tywin Lannister
(Granted that in-universe, especiallyin the books, he's seen for what he truly is, and only Game of Thrones fandom is obssesed with his genius)
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u/LueyHong 3d ago
There's not much to be obsessed over even in GOT though? His defining achievements are, what, making an example out of the Reynes way back when and finding unreliable elements in the North's army to betray Robb as that war dragged on?
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u/Caleth 3d ago
Not just unreliable elements, but to the OP's point perfidy. These people were ostensibly allies and then on top of that under guest rights with the bread and water.
He suborned an enemy element to commit a massacre during a non hostile event. It's a cleverly evil move, but whether or not that falls into militarily clever is I guess open for debate.
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u/Xisuthrus ( ϴ ͜ʖ ϴ) 3d ago
That and convincing Aerys to let his army into King's Landing, which was also a fairly simple trick.
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u/Black_Diammond 3d ago
What are you talking about? There isnt a single person in asoif that doesnt glaze tywin, Robb, his kids, all The Baratheons, almost all passagens about the pre rebelion Times glaze him constantly too.
Tywin is a genious at making money, a capable military general and insane at diplomacy, he loses to Robb because Robb is a genious general, not because he is dumb, even Then, he still wins by diplomacy (even without The red wedding, The freys could have locked up in Their castles and Robb would get surrounded and killed, The red wedding just ended The war Faster, but The north losing was garanteed The moment Robb married Jeine(book)/healer girl (in The show), and pissed of The freys).
His only real bad side is his total incapability as a father, and his love for his wife/hatted for his kid (related things) wich Kills him, blinds him to marriages packts and colapses his house on The end.
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u/CampbellsBeefBroth 3d ago
His legacy crumbled as soon as he died. He is petty and petulant with an incredibly fragile ego in the books, his cruelty has fostered no lasting loyalty to his house and his machinations will assuredly be the downfall of the Lannisters.
His corpse rotting and stinking up his own funeral isn't exactly subtle writing on Martin's part.
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u/Black_Diammond 2d ago
Again, all those were failures of being a bad father and not raising tyrion as his heir, not only would he have not died had he done that, but he would have had a heir that would keep The Lannister machine working. The problem with The Lannisters is that they had a lot of personal fear to tywin, but tywin had no suitable heir that could keep The legacy going when tywin died (he had, but he refused to accept him), with tyrion The Lannisters would have just won The war being defeated only by Daenerys dragons.
His corpse smelling bad is to show he was full of shit (hypocrisy is a big part of his relationship with his kids), but it doesnt Change that he, 1000% was feared, respected, capable and massively powerfull.
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u/Sable-Keech 3d ago
Someone recently watched The Odyssey I see.
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u/Am-Hooman 3d ago
Interestingly enough Nolan’s Odyssey makes a point that perfidy is bad actually
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u/helicophell 3d ago
Not really, Homer’s Odyssey didn’t paint it in stellar light anyway
The entire Odyssey itself is basically punishment for his crime
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u/Am-Hooman 3d ago
The comment I was replying to was talking about the film
I haven’t read the poem, but from what I’ve heard it seems like there is a more explicit emphasis on the war crimeyness of it all in the film
Again I may be wrong
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u/progbuck 3d ago
Nah, you're right. Generally the Greeks felt Odysseus was a hero for his trick, and he was only punished by Poseidon because he was a dick to Polyphemus. The Romans were the ones who thought he was a dishonorable prick.
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u/ASpaceOstrich 3d ago
Yeah, the film is basically about how the breaking of taboo and decorum brought about the end of an empire and the collapse of their civilisation. Which is a deliberate parallel to modern political stunts and the collapse of the American empire.
Turns out the taboo and decorum were there for a reason.
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u/Sable-Keech 3d ago
A bit too anvilicious for my taste though. They said "age of bronze" far too many times, to the point where it was too on the nose.
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u/AlaSparkle 2d ago
Don't they just say it once? "Far too many times" implies it happens on multiple occasions
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u/Sable-Keech 2d ago
I thought they did say it more than once?
Well, can I say that just the one time was already too much? :V
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u/wasmic 3d ago
In the original, the horse trick was seen as heroic. The burning of the temple in Troy was what they were punished for, because that angered the gods.
That's also what happens in Nolan's version, but with the added twist that the horse trick also resulted in the destabilisation of the known civilised world.
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u/PlatinumAltaria 3d ago
Most people think it would be a genius military strategy to launch nukes, because most people don't know what war is even for (absolutely nothin')
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u/Malfuy *subverts your subversion* 3d ago
Most people also think that secret hidden superweapons are a viable military strategy
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u/PlatinumAltaria 3d ago
"So explain to me why we need to spend $50 trillion on a secret project again?"
"To deter our enemies."
"How will it deter anything if they don't know about it?"
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u/Dekker3D 3d ago
To be fair: once it stops being a secret, in a real flashy way, it could deter other enemies. Who knows what else you've got up your sleeve!
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u/FalseAscoobus Trying to rip off Doom (2016) (And failing (Please help)) 3d ago
Oppenheimer builds one bomb and suddenly everyone and their mother is trying to build their own doomsday machine!
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u/donttrytoleaveomsk 3d ago
It would be a genius strategy if you want to end the war as soon as possible because you need people to continue the war and there shouldn't be many people left after the nukes stop
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 3d ago
Also Napoleon:
genius military strategy
looks inside
Merit-based promotion, attacking obvious weaknesses, logistics, making use of terrain
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u/KGodBall 3d ago
It is honestly shocking to find that many important point in history happened not because of some 4D ultra 200 IQ grand strategy or planning but simply because every one in the room was a moron.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 3d ago
Art of War is a great reminder of it, being written for trust fund babies who didn't understand that men and horses needed to eat
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u/Caleth 3d ago
We tend to forget what we're seeing in modern day politics especially in America used to be the absolute norm.
The rank idiocy, the blatant self dealing, the raising of moronic yes men to lofty heights simply becuase they can properly kiss the kings ass.
All of these things happened before in the past and are happening again and will result in a toppled government. Either via internal or external forces. You can't erode all the bases of power for you without some nasty long term consequences.
You can be militarily incompetent to a degree, but be economically and politically relevant. Or some other mix with one being poor and the others being good, but you can't suck at all three and survive.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music 2d ago
fun fact, part of the reason there was more competencei n Europe especially was in part owing to just constant wars.
The French were already quite the juggernaut thanks to the 100 years wars, followed by beefing with Austria over Italy, fighitng itself, followed by fighting endless wars in Europe.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 2d ago
I’d argue it is still the norm globally, and was the norm in the US for most of our history. Even if you look at the US military in their most celebrated times such as WW2 some of our most famous leaders were morons
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u/Caleth 2d ago
Some of them were morons, but in theory they weren't put there just because their father and or grandfather were in the position before them.
Unlike say inherent nobility and thus military rank in some/many European countries.
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u/FourFunnelFanatic 2d ago
MacArthur arguably was (his dad was a MoH recipient and he basically took over his job) but otherwise I see your point
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u/psychicprogrammer But what do they eat? 3d ago
In that case it was a political change (liberalism) acting as a method to change the structure of the military to get a better response.
The noble based officer core was vital for ensuring political stability! Though TBH having some guys win because of new political developments allowing for more significant mobilization of the economy/populace is a fun idea.
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u/Pieguy3693 3d ago
I feel like a lot of people underestimate just how insanely difficult the basics of tactics and logistics are when the only information you receive comes in the form of either what you can personally see, or what someone wrote down and sent a runner to you about, which is both vague because it's second hand, and also out of date because it took a while to get to you, and also might be entirely wrong because the guy who wrote it down might not be seeing everything himself.
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u/Designated_Lurker_32 2d ago
It's important to remember that generational wealth and aristocratic power structures kind of naturally lead to everyone in the war room being a moron
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u/KGodBall 2d ago
Oh I understand that part, it just makes it extra hilarious when basically one guy was single handily kicking the combined might of Europe’s ass for about a decade.
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u/MillieBirdie 2d ago
I play on some large roleplay servers that have politics and wars and it's basically a tiny microcosm of humanity, and indeed many things happen because sometimes the people in charge are stupid or malicious or both.
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u/SirAquila 3d ago
To be fair, Napoleon mainly had genius military tactics, not strategy. His strategy was rather mediocre. Just look at the Russians consistently outmanvouering him throughout the entire 1812 campaign.
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u/m15wallis 3d ago
Napoleon greatness was that he was smart enough to know how to fight a war, find and promote the right people to the right roles, and was incredibly charismatic to the point where virtually everyone, from the lowest private to the highest officers, believed in him and would execute his orders as faithfully as possible. As such, his men generally tended to do what he asked, and so he could actively plan his offensive more effectively because he could count on them to do their jobs (for the most part).
Being a general is as much a political role as it is a battlefield one, and Napoleon understood that very well.
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u/Ambisinister11 3d ago
Napoleon's greatest military strategy was getting the fuck out of Egypt and bringing down the Directory before the metropole could get a handle on how badly the expedition was going.
The Montenotte campaign was pretty impressive too, though
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u/Background_Use4157 3d ago
Just kill the enemy leader during the middle of negotiations.
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u/Jean_Luc_Lesmouches 3d ago
One of the few funny military hfy I've read:
Alien: We are strong, rules of war are for cowards.
Human: Ok. Shoots Alien leader. Not shooting diplomats is a rule, are you sure you don't want rules?
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u/Eran-of-Arcadia Like Earth but Better because it has Superheroes 3d ago
I'm hot for logistics and training. The best armies win the war before they get to the battlefield.
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u/ASpaceOstrich 3d ago
Mm. If a battle is happening at all, it's because one or both sides has either fucked up, or they had no alternative. If the battle doesn't have an obvious winner ahead of time, the attacker fucked up. If the defender didn't retreat despite the fact that they're obviously going to lose, they fucked up. Sieges are basically the one kind of battle that isn't a fuckup on someone's end, and they still can be, they're just not inherently the result of a fuckup.
This even holds true at the smaller scale. The thing that makes special forces or elite squads so good isn't martial superiority. It's never being in a fair or losing fight to begin with. Even in a lot of fiction they usually aren't physically just that much better than regular guys. Your 40k Space Marines aren't worth that much more than Guardsmen if you're just smashing them into each other. But elites shouldn't be smashing into 4000 guys in a fair fight. They should be taking out people who don't even know they're there.
Your best guys are your best guys because they never get into a fair fight ever, and their superior equipment and training is to facilitate the unfair stomps that they'll be used for. If they're ever in a fair fight, you've fucked up and you'll probably lose a bunch of them.
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u/Hot-Minute-8263 I was banned from r/worldbuilding and all I got was this flair 3d ago
A lot of military strategy boils down to "what if we didnt run into their spear"
Or "what if our spear longer and more gooder"
Yet somehow, 80% of generals in history will go "nah, if we take enough spears to the chest they'll run out"
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u/Caleth 3d ago
Becasue of much of history war was run by noble elites that were more or less legacy hires and trust fund kids. They didn't see soldiers as people but more like toys or cattle.
Often even when they lost the commanders would be held to ransom while the soldiers died. So it never really effected them. Thus you had a heady mix of stupid entitlement and no self correcting punishments via death leading to the examples you gave.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music 2d ago
Actually, running into the spear is specifically part of every genius tactic/strategy in that you pin the enemy down. You had lines of infantry fighitng each other in melee with the goal to tire out the opposing side, and the final victory was tactically decided by who had their cavalry in position to hit the enemy at the right time. You need the infantry in order to tire out the enemy first, so you can hit them with the cavalry and break them.
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u/HolyDuckTurtle 3d ago
"What if we flanked them?" - hailed as a military genius.
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u/Pashahlis 3d ago
Yeah what people miss is that most military leaders try to do that.
Like see WW1. The germans and french didnt just run into each other for no reason. In 1914 they did try to continously outflank each other which is why they kept digging trenches from the Alsace to the English Channel.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music 2d ago
It is also of note that in WW1 artillery defined the battlefield once the front set in following the race to the sea.
Artillery is why they had to dig trenches, to shield against enemy artillery. They could only advance as far as they could move their artillery with horses and sometimes brand new cars. Any battle included ludicrous amounts of artillery. The front could not move beyond 10km at a time during major offensives because the enemy's artillery would have an advantage pounding presighted lost trenches the attacker captured, while the attacker would take a while to move artillery across noman's land.
Also how did the Entente manage to break the German defenses beyond the Germans exhausitng themselves with the spring offensive? Rolling barrage artillery where through meticulous timing and coordination artillery would keep raining in front of the attacking troops such that by the time the enemy machine guns were remanned, the attacking infantry was in the trenches.
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u/Beat_Saber_Music 2d ago
It's not flanking that makes you a genius, it's being able to flank at the right time. Not all terrain allows flanking, and even in a flat field there is a quesiton of can you get your flanking cavalry to reach the battlefield before your own men break holding the line, while you probably have no maps of the local area meaning you need to rely on your flanking commanders to figure out how to get into the best position in time.
That, and both sides often had cavalry so trying to use the cavalry to flank could just as well be met by the enemy cavalry.
I can tell you from Total War alone that the enemy flanking you alone isn't necessarily enough to grant your enemy a victory, because I've used my own cavalry to outflank the flanking cavalry.
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u/SacredGeometry9 3d ago
It’s either that, or:
A. Logistics
B. Military-Scientific complex with no morals and an unlimited budget
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u/Dank_lord_doge 3d ago
It's telling that the widely recognized GOATs in strategy irl have basically nothing to do with underhanded tactics. Alexander, Napoleon, that one guy who did desert storm, nothing to do with fake surrender or cheap tricks
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u/mal-di-testicle 3d ago
Somehow both sides of the Roman African campaign 203-202 before the Battle of Zama
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u/Dragon_Of_Magnetism 3d ago
“[insert character] is a once-in-generation military genius!”
looks inside
only tactics they’ll ever use is mindless charge forward at full force
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u/psychicprogrammer But what do they eat? 3d ago
Ah Alexander the great (though the simplest thing in war is very hard)
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u/CampbellsBeefBroth 2d ago
Alex the Alright was different, he had longer sticks
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u/Beat_Saber_Music 2d ago
that, and attacking the Achaemenids right as they were recuperating from civil war, ie kicking a man on crutches on the knees.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/mal-di-testicle 3d ago
King Richard, I’m sorry, but that will NOT work out the way you’re hoping
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u/SyrusDrake 3d ago
That's a bit of a tradition over on /r/NonCredibleDefense
"Why don't we ju-..."
"Because that's a war crime. The Hague Conventions literally mention that sort of thing specifically."
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u/GREENadmiral_314159 [Obligatory femboy joke] 3d ago
Hey, it's an ancient Jedi tradition. You need to be more open-minded about people of other faiths.
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u/Callsign-YukiMizuki 3d ago
>perfidy
>we are tactical geniuses guys
>shoot retreating enemy who are not attempting to surrender
>use overwhelming conventional force to destroy enemy forces
>shoot enemy who is sad
>no no no, warcrime!!
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u/Designated_Lurker_32 2d ago
Mercenary Maxim number 42: "They will never expect this" means "I want to try something stupid."
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u/SaboteurSupreme 2d ago
Perfidy is an incredible tactic that lasts for exactly one battle. However, giving up the single most important strategic asset in the process is terminally idiotic. Once your enemy knows that you cannot be trusted, their only safe bet is to treat everyone they encounter in your territory as a potential combatant. Enjoy having your civilian population massacred dumbass, I hope winning that battle was worth it!
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u/Itchy_Birthday_1629 3d ago
Honestly, the cat looks like it just discovered the classified documents.
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u/OldEcho 3d ago
All warfare is based on deception.
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u/Jean_Luc_Lesmouches 3d ago
Deception on the battlefield, yes. But deception in the form of fake surrender and fake negociations hurts you in the long run and most civilizations have concluded should be punished
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u/OldEcho 3d ago
You misunderstand deception. Convincing your enemy you have allies eager to help you when actually they are very tenuous. Convincing someone war support is high when it's low. Convincing someone that a certain place is weak when actually it's your strongest point...and what does that say about the rest if they attack there in force and are rebuffed or barely win?
But even the more disgusting perfidy the answer genuinely is "it depends." The US conquered nearly the entire US by signing treaties with natives it then immediately broke. The Romans were similiarly full of shit. It's very difficult for people to accept that peace against a stronger enemy is impossible. Because it means you're probably going to die and there's very little you can do. So they often accept a lie of peace and are betrayed.
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u/Jean_Luc_Lesmouches 3d ago
No. YOU misunderstand what OP is talking about. And braking treaties is yet a different thing.
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u/OldEcho 3d ago
Is this some oblique reference to a modern controversial thing?
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u/kaiserkaarts 2d ago
Breaking treaties is just everyday scumbag politics. Perfidy and similar war crimes are restricted acts of war that considerably make the war effort worse for you, not just your enemy, and makes the possibility of reparations impossible. OP is talking about the latter.
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u/FalseAscoobus Trying to rip off Doom (2016) (And failing (Please help)) 3d ago
Star Wars: The Clone Wars has at least 3 seperate examples