This is not about morality, theology, justifying it, or logistics. This thread is to help you, as a writer, write war correctly. Not as combat, but on a large-scale strategic and tactical level, as discussed slightly in the Star Wars thread on the maker's lack of knowledge on military tactics.

The best source I give is the classic treatise by Sun Tzu, The Art of War. You can read it for free here: http://www.literatureproject.com/art-of-war/

An important thing to remember is that how the way wars are fought are guided by new technologies that become invented. The reason armies used to lineup in the open and shoot at each other without moving was because that was the only way for the weapons to be effective then. Then came the rifle and machine gun and the old method was too costly in men to keep it up. It was a hard learned lesson though, in both the Civil War and WW1.

Now we have smaller groups of more mobile soldiers operating together to make the best use of lighter, longer-range, and much more deadly weapons than in the past.

With fantasy it's a little different. Do you have dragon-mounted air cavalry? How does that affect the tactics and strategies of your armies? How do armies defend against them?

What about giants? Or stronger than normal soldiers? Armor almost impenetrable? How can they be best used to an army's advantage?

Then there's things that never change, like sending out scouts to observe the terrain, and watching for enemy movement, all while remaining unseen. They also protect against ambush, or at least help. Cavalry is almost useless in swampy ground. The high ground really is important, for a multitude of reasons. They make it harder to charge up and engage in melee combat. It's harder to get projectiles to their target when shooting uphill, and the attacker's heads are more exposed.

What do you use? How much research do you do on waging effective warfare in your world? What can we do to help?

I've been looking for good medieval tactical stuff but there isn't much. It's basically they line up, start shooting their arrows, they all charge and the arrows stop mostly (to avoid hitting their own men.) The knights/heavy Calvary charge and try to break the enemy lines usually in some kind of flank move.

In my fantasy novel there are several major battles but the only things involved other than humans are dwarves (Which are basically heavy infantry.) And Werewolves that I use mostly like I would Calvary.





(What helped me most on how battles work is playing the strategy games in the total war series. (Just thought I would throw that out too.)

Okay.

There are other tactics, but mostly it's just common sense.

Sure there are lots of different things that they did but I was laying out the basics.
They had nothing on the scale of Sun Tzu's or any of the Romans' tactics.

Sun Tzu was in the medieval times, they just didn't get to Europe.

Yeah, I was speaking of the west.

Okay.

The idea that medievals were stupid or unsophisticated in general is a common misconception that has led to more specific misconceptions about medieval ways of fighting. In fact, our ancestors in the Middle Ages not only had sophisticated and deadly effective martial arts systems, contrary to the common belief that they were basically cavemen hitting each other with sharpened bludgeons, but the knights of the Middle Ages were also tactically competent, well-trained, professional fighting men. Check out this article: http://www.deremilitari.org/resources/a ... cglynn.htm

Thanks, I'll be reading that.

That looks like a good article Samstarrett. I'll have to check it out.

I'm not implying at all that medieval people were stupid. I've studied the subject far to long to think that. And I'm studying German medieval sword techniques which are at least as complicated as Tae Kwon Do or Karate.

I highly highly recommend the Art of War to anyone looking to write effective warfare; I've read it three times and it's been extremely helpful to me.

Samstarret, that article looks extremely interesting, I've bookmarked it. Thanks for sharing!

One thing that I've noticed as I've researched warfare and how to write it in my novel is that battles are very confusing things. We actually didn't even have a way to communicate other than shouted commands until World War 1/2 with the creation of the radio.

Without the radio, men need to stay closer together to hear orders, and orders are oftentimes distorted. It's almost like a huge game of Telephone on a battlefield. By the time the orders get down to the men on the field things can be vastly distorted.

Also, scouting and intelligence is often wrong and is always outdated by the time the commander hears of it. This led to a lot of confusion in the Civil War, and holds true for earlier wars as well, I would guess (I haven't researched them though, so I can't say for sure.) Obviously, in a fantasy setting, having dragons or phoenix or griffin reporting from the air would help with this confusion but commanders would still be acting on outdated info.

One last thing War is often not just one huge epic battle as fantasy portrays it. You've got reinforcements moving up, the politics of feeding an entire army while on occupied ground, and all sorts of fun stuff to work out, because things usually don't end with just one battle. Granted, it is more emotionally impacting to write one huge battle where the good guys defeat the bad guys (or the bad guys defeat the good guys, if you're a tragedian), but this wasn't always the case.

That's just some things I've picked up while researching for my own battle scenes; I hope some of them were helpful in some way

Andrew

Right, and a lot of battles will be skirmishes rather than huge battles when patrols and scouts collide. When there is a huge, epic battle, units will often regroup later and the armies will reform.

In my writing, as I'm working my way from the most general level of outline down by turning each outline into a more detailed next level, I haven't gotten to the point of needing to research this much yet. (This area of research is actually far more pressing for my work on my strategy game.) But in the earlier thread(s) ("Writing Effective Warfare", and I think at least one other) I recommended some authors to read and consider imitating, primarily because they considered these issues and handled them well.

(/subscribes )

http://www.writing-world.com/sf/hordes.shtml

Here's an article on keeping the size of armies realistic.

That's very interesting. Thanks for posting.

You're welcome.

Reading G A Hentys helped me a lot in writing accurate war. He is a philosopher on how it should be done properly, but he also just states the facts of history, brilliancy and mistakes alike, which is very helpful.

Yes, I remember G.A. Henty. The key is to study the mistakes so they can be avoided, and the parts done excellently so they can be emulated.

Yes, his works give a lot of inspiration. And you know, being writers, we need to know about good mistakes for our characters to make, as well as how to avoid mistakes.

Yes, very true, especially if the characters are soldiers who are in charge of planning a battle.

* laughs, remembering some of my characters's escapades * Precisely.

I would also recommend the Art of War DVD by History: http://www.amazon.com/Art-War/dp/B002DY ... 191&sr=8-2

I want to actually read it, too, but for now the DVD has already given me a lot of inspiration and shown real-life examples of the art of war in practice (or the lack thereof, which would almost always end in disaster).

That looks really cool.

Yeah, it was, hopefully you can watch it sometime.

Yeah, I hope so.

You're welcome.

Awesome. I'm pretty certain I made this on HWSF if you'd like to join us over there.

"Yjis"? Sorry, I don't understand. Typo, or...?

Sorry. Really bad typo that is now fixed.

I meant 'this.'

Thanks everyone who posted here for the info. I especially liked this one: http://www.writing-world.com/sf/hordes.shtml

Does anyone have any more links to websites or other threads in Holy Worlds that talks about this type of stuff? (Logistics, army size, etc.)

Here's another thing to think about when setting up a war: the mentality of the culture. What I mean by that is how the world looks to your people. Up until World War 1/2, and even into Vietnam, the countries participating in the wars felt that a bigger presence was gained with a bigger army. After Vietnam, that presence changed. The need for proving whose army was bigger was forsaken in order to employ stealth, surprise and survival. Countries learned quickly that they felt torn apart and families torn apart when the size of the army mattered over the most efficient matter to fight mattered. Yes, a lot of that efficiency relied on advancements in weaponry, but the shift in mentality primarily drove the investigations into new tactics and technology for the future.

The way you develop the culture in your book will affect the masses present in battle as well as the tactic, which will create the efficiency. Your culture may not have the advance weaponry, but their mentality could be set on having the maximum number of people possible return home, seeing as their community is small. Stealth could be their primary objective. The same with a greedy king's community or desire; the larger the army, the more his power is shown. Once the mentality is established, the efficiency of war can then be established by employing certain techniques, tactics, battlegrounds, and plans that best fit that primary goal.

In the end, to each culture, his or her method of fighting actually appears completely efficient based on their primary objective. So, creating perfect war scenario is subject to the demands and development of your culture's ideals, values, and emphasis.

Yes, that definitely has an effect. Good post.

Yes, definitely. Very good thoughts.