#ARMIES IN SPACE WARFARE PLUS#That means the Mediterranean littoral, plus the Middle East and Europe many of these rules will apply elsewhere, but I am going to stick to where I know the sources. So we’re going to talk about those constraints and how they shape the job of generalship in a pre-modern army.Ī note on scope before we begin: I am going to restrict this look to the broader Mediterranean in the pre-modern period. Image is the menu splash screen from Total War: Rome RemasteredĪt the same time, as we’re going to see, these depictions – which for story reasons place strong emphasis on the control and agency the general supposedly has – for the most part fail to represent much of what a general can and cannot do in a pre-modern pitched battle, primarily by failing to take into account the physical and cultural constraints on the general’s actions. Alas, not an option for most pre-modern commanders. #ARMIES IN SPACE WARFARE MOVIE#It turns out commanding an army is easier if you can just have your body from the chest up hover like a horror movie apparition 50 feet tall in front of your army and shout orders at them. #ARMIES IN SPACE WARFARE SERIES#As you may have gathered from the title, we’re going to use the Total War series of games predominantly to represent the common cultural model of generalship against which we can compare the actual practice of generalship. Of course there are games that are entirely about strategy or tactics, but even in fantasy or pre-modern RPGs it is most common for the player’s character to be put in command of the Big Battle than to merely be a foot soldier in it (or more common yet, to be a mere foot soldier in the Battle We Lost in the opening but in command by the end when it is time for the Decisive Battle To Decide the Fate of the World). Generals are also the primary frame for pre-modern pitched battles in games, at least on any scale larger than a small skirmish. And when I teach I sometimes use these scenes to point out some of the absurdities: the commonplace of the general signalling with hands or a shout to an army obviously too large to see or hear him, for instance. While modern warfare scenes in film are often shot from the perspective of regular soldiers, pre-modern battles are almost always shown at least partially from the perspective of the commanders: Théoden, Jon Snow, Alexander, Darius, William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, Henry V and so on. Pre-modern generals – and I am going to use this word in a very broad sense to mean the overall commander of an army, even in societies where that figure is a consul or king or what have you – figure very prominently in media. This is of course a vast topic, but we are going to focus not on tactical or strategic questions but on a lot of the nuts and bolts constraints which condition those questions: where is the general, what can he know, what can he see, who can he communicate with and to what degree can they follow his commands effectively? After all, a plan which is perfect save that it cannot be communicated or executed isn’t perfect at all. This week we’re going to start a four-part look at the role of the pre-modern general or army commander, particularly in the context of a pitched battle.
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