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 Post subject: Looking for information on Western military tactics
PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:01 pm 
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I was curious as to whether or not anyone here can recommend some books or websites for Western military tactics. Something similar to Three Kingdoms would be ideal, as would something similar to The Art of War.

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 1:57 pm 
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 2:04 pm 
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Need information on orange tictacs any help would be greatly appreciated.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 2:06 pm 
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Need information on orange tictacs any help would be greatly appreciated.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 2:19 pm 
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:26 pm 
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:06 pm 
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Clausewitz, Frontinus, JFC Fuller, Guderian, hay throw in Machiavelli too for a laugh. There's fucktons of others, it just depends on what you're after. Most older tactical theory has decreased in relevance with advances in weapons and assorted other crap.


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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:11 pm 
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Vass wrote:
Clausewitz, Frontinus, JFC Fuller, Guderian, hay throw in Machiavelli too for a laugh. There's fucktons of others, it just depends on what you're after. Most older tactical theory has decreased in relevance with advances in weapons and assorted other crap.


Oi, sorry. I forgot to say that anything Roman - just before guns became the norm. Yeah, I'm looking for ancient history stuff. Sorry, but I prefer learning about that stuff. I'd just like to see, mostly, how well Western strategists would do against Chinese.

Thanks for the names. I'll look those up more as soon as I can.

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 Post subject: WHAT IS YOUR NAME? WHAT IS YOUR QUEST? WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COLOR?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:13 pm 
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PsionicsNOTMagic wrote:
I'd just like to see, mostly, how well Western strategists would do against Chinese.

Oh you're totally qualified to make that judgment.

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 11:25 pm 
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The only known records of Roman (or pre-Roman) era military tactics and strategy are from the accounts of historians, writers and/or philosophers. The oldest surviving book on European military tactics only dates back to circa 1200 AD, if I remember correctly. Try looking up Julius Caesar's Commentaries (a list of his own recollections of his military campaigns), that's about as in-depth as you're going to get. There's also the Iliad. You could also try the the book of Maccabees (from either the Catholic Bible or the Jewish Torah, I forget which), which I understand goes into a little detail about Alexander.

Edit: Here's a wiki article on the Roman military. Livy, Polybius and Tacitus are listed as primary references, so you'll want to look them up too. There's also Vegetius.

Edit 2: Found this article on the Roman military's strategies, too.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:20 am 
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Exactly, noone really collated anything into military tactical theory during the Greek and Roman periods. The best you'll get is assorted commentaries and histories on military campaigns with the associated biases that they're prone to exhibiting.

Caesar's Commentaries are okay but are a fuckton of propaganda as to why the senate shouldn't execute him for treason. Tacitus and Livy exhibit similar biases in that they are both pushing their own agenda via what they write.

You could also try Arrian, Xenophon and Thucydides for commentaries on the Greeks. Perhaps hunt down some of the commentaries on the battle of kadesh for some early early stuff between the egyptians and hittites.

There's a similar lack of theoretical works from the fall of the western empire through to the rennaisance, in which machaivelli seems to have been amongst the first to do any serious (and extant) writing on the topic. So for the early medieval stuff again, you pretty much have to look at the battles and any commentaries you're lucky to find. The Bayeaux Tapestry is kinda helpful in that respect.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 3:01 am 
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Yorik wrote:
The only known records of Roman (or pre-Roman) era military tactics and strategy are from the accounts of historians, writers and/or philosophers. The oldest surviving book on European military tactics only dates back to circa 1200 AD, if I remember correctly. Try looking up Julius Caesar's Commentaries (a list of his own recollections of his military campaigns), that's about as in-depth as you're going to get. There's also the Iliad. You could also try the the book of Maccabees (from either the Catholic Bible or the Jewish Torah, I forget which), which I understand goes into a little detail about Alexander.

The book of Maccabees is not an official part of the Jewish Bible. Why? Couse it was written a few hundret years later. I don't have the book at hand so I can't reaaly say how relevant it is to your interests.
Another thing that could interest you is Bar Kochva's rebellion against the Romans. I can't be arsed to explain it fully, but it was the reason the Romans changed the region's name from Jehuda to Palestine.

Yes, I'm a Jew who knows his history.
Speaking of Jews, what happened to DotE?

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:14 am 
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PsionicsNOTMagic wrote:
Vass wrote:
Clausewitz, Frontinus, JFC Fuller, Guderian, hay throw in Machiavelli too for a laugh. There's fucktons of others, it just depends on what you're after. Most older tactical theory has decreased in relevance with advances in weapons and assorted other crap.


Oi, sorry. I forgot to say that anything Roman - just before guns became the norm. Yeah, I'm looking for ancient history stuff. Sorry, but I prefer learning about that stuff. I'd just like to see, mostly, how well Western strategists would do against Chinese.

Thanks for the names. I'll look those up more as soon as I can.


This is a bit outside my area of research, but I spent a bit of time discussing this with my supervisor some years back, and he is one the the premiere academics for the history/prehistory of east and southeast asia.

To whit:
During the warring states period, any of the armies from any single one of the warring states, would whip the everloving shit out of the entire Roman Empire. The army of Qin Shi Huang Di (I think that's how it's spelled) would have probably been able to conquer the entirety of Europe, if he'd been so inclined.

Fun fact: The tomb of Qin Shi Huang Di is the largest in existence, and is very, very slowly being uncovered. It's most famous for the terracotta army, but personally I think the map room is far more interesting, it has a massive map of China carved into the floor, with cities represented by perfect scale models, rivers and seas made of flowing mercury, and a map of the sky with pearls for each star.

However, I don't really have any references to back this up.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:09 am 
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themadthinker wrote:
PsionicsNOTMagic wrote:
Vass wrote:
Clausewitz, Frontinus, JFC Fuller, Guderian, hay throw in Machiavelli too for a laugh. There's fucktons of others, it just depends on what you're after. Most older tactical theory has decreased in relevance with advances in weapons and assorted other crap.


Oi, sorry. I forgot to say that anything Roman - just before guns became the norm. Yeah, I'm looking for ancient history stuff. Sorry, but I prefer learning about that stuff. I'd just like to see, mostly, how well Western strategists would do against Chinese.

Thanks for the names. I'll look those up more as soon as I can.

To whit:
During the warring states period, any of the armies from any single one of the warring states, would whip the everloving shit out of the entire Roman Empire. The army of Qin Shi Huang Di (I think that's how it's spelled) would have probably been able to conquer the entirety of Europe, if he'd been so inclined.

Mostly cos at that stage (ie. 230s BC), the Roman Republic was still fielding a citizen army, had yet to be reformed by Marius (didn't happen until around 100 BC) into something that could actually maintain an empire and had significant issues in standing up to Hannibal's army wandering around in the Italian hinterland. Hannibal might've been able to do some neat things tho.

Meanwhile, by 230 BC, Alexander's empire had long since fragmented under the Diadochi into antigonid greece and macedon, ptolemaic egypt and the selucid everything else and by that stage were well on the decline.

If you start jumping military forces through time to match zenith power militaries against eachother, however, I think I may have to disagree with you.


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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:05 pm 
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I'm betting Psionics wants to know the answer to the age-old (to Otaku) question "Knight vs. Samurai, who'd win?", in which case it's a question of individual skill, the quality of their weapons and armor, and pure fucking luck.

Vass wrote:
Mostly cos at that stage (ie. 230s BC), the Roman Republic was still fielding a citizen army, had yet to be reformed by Marius (didn't happen until around 100 BC)


107 BC to be exact. I likes my RTW.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:45 pm 
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Vass wrote:
The best you'll get is assorted commentaries and histories on military campaigns with the associated biases that they're prone to exhibiting.


Actually, this is what I'd prefer.

And no, the knights vs. samurai thing is the least of my thoughts. Although I did read an interesting topic on another forum that asked how well a katana would stand up to a set of metal armor (IE would it break/shatter?). Unfortunately, the topic was left without an agreement reached.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 2:23 pm 
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I actually only live a few blocks from this guy.

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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 3:18 pm 
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PsionicsNOTMagic wrote:
And no, the knights vs. samurai thing is the least of my thoughts.


+1 Respect

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 5:00 pm 
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Cpt. Supermarket wrote:
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I actually only live a few blocks from this guy.
did he find him frog

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PostPosted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 6:40 am 
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arwing wrote:
Cpt. Supermarket wrote:
onion wrote:
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I actually only live a few blocks from this guy.
did he find him frog

I can get him a couple. Those things roam in my base, even at 45 derees Celsius.

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