Tactics of the Ages

Before I open with this, I would like to thank the reader for reading this. It is meant to enhance your experience with TES Roleplay and Fanfiction, as well as give you an insight on military tactics of the time. Read it for fun, or read it for knowledge, or just read it to read it. This does include some modern day tactics, and some time-old tactics. I hope you enjoy.

GeraldDuval's Army Tactic Page:http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=810277
If you can't find anything useful here, then look no other then right there.


[Table of Contents will be under construction, as I am sort-of winging which to do first]
1. Common-Sense Principles -- Page 1
2. Setting up your Army -- Page 1

Common-Sense Principles

The name kind of gives it away on this one. These are just some OBVIOUS things that you should avoid or abide by, at any time, at any place.

1. Never fight uphill.
There are many examples to this quite obvious tactic. The one I allude to is the battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon attacked to the Duke of Wellington from lower ground. Even though Napoleon’s best soldiers were fighting the English Line at the end, the Duke was able to hide the majority of his forces behind the hill and therfor confuse and scare the enemy when they leaped up. They sent a troop that never knew retreat, into full retreat. Napoleon was then defeated.

2. Always know your enemy.
When you know your enemy, you will know his nature. If he is a brute, he will likely attack from the front, especially if he has a large army. If he is a guerilla, don’t expect to fight with him for very long, he will retreat. Using this knowledge, you must find a flaw in his pattern. A trap to lure an angry army in, a flank to cut off the retreat. If your enemy is a schemer, then watch your supply lines closely, and look out for traps and ambushes. If you do not know your enemy, then defeat is assured.

3. Keep your morale high.
All armies have to do this, if they do not, your men will break in the heart of battle, and retreat under unauthorized command. The Romans prevented this by many things. They did many sacrifices to their gods, and showed signs of good omens. These are good if your military is religious. If it is not, then you must find other ways, like pep-talks or discriminating the enemy. You can also tell them of other battles, for example, The Battle of Thermopylae. Sam Houston also used sympathy and rage, “Remember the Alamo!”. This was used before the battle of San Jacinto, in the final battle of the Texas Revolution.

4.Deception, deception, deception!
All warfare is based on deception, well most. You must always seek a way to find a way to make it seem like you are not where you are, you are not what you are. Sun Tzu tries to promote this as much as possible. “If you are close, you must make it seem like you are far away, if you are far, then you must make it seem like you are close.” If you can attack where you are not expected, or if you can be somewhere that you are not expected, then it is a unfair game on their part. (Which is good for you)

5. Supplies
Supplies are costly, even more so for a greater army. They cost you for the product itself, and for it being transported to your position. Plus, it takes away resources from your city, country, etc. If you want to counter this, then I highly advise you take from your enemy. Mean, I know, but it costs you nothing, and it costs them greatly. Think of it as them taking your army out to dinner, and they are paying. However, this is not an easy thing to do. They aren’t going to let you have it, you are going to have to take it. You will have to use different methods of raiding, pillaging, or capturing and routing the enemy to get to those supplies. However you do it, it is completely necessary to get your enemies supplies.

6. Capturing your Enemy!
What is better, a dead group of enemy soldiers, or a group of alive (captured), that you could possibly bargain for some money, or better yet persuade them to join you? The second one. Routing an enemy really does no good to you in the long run. Capturing something whole is much better then capturing something broken. The more armies you route rather then capture, the more the state will break. If you are looking for conquest, then a broken state will be no good. Therefor, capturing an army, and keeping the state intact is far better then having it broken. If it is, then the economy of the captured state will be absolutely horrific, and riots and revolts will provide a one-way street to Anarchy. So, a captured state (army) is much better then a broken state (army). Also, if you have a captured enemy, he won't always be a pleasure to watch over. Plus you have to take into account that he takes extra supplies, but killing him will solve all these matters. (Thanks to Manu)

7. The Dead, and the Undead
DarthRavenger brings up a good point when it comes to TES. Necromancy can be used against you, and the troops you thought were dead can once again rise. Now, you can never be quite sure when the dead are truly dead, even someone with his spine severed and the brain disconnected can still walk around. As DarthRavenger brings up, the only TRUE way to put down the dead for good is an incendiary attack. A fire to burn the bodies, cremation, etc. It will be hard to piece together a humanoid body from ashes, and it will flaw the necromancer. It also hinders the probability that they can come back as ghosts, but just to keep sure, mages must be present.

8. Mages and the Battlefield
Mages are probably the strongest part of an army. While they can deal devastating blows to a single person, they can also cast area-affecting spells to target a group of people. Normally, mages lack the physical prowess that knights and other warriors possess. Mages should be mixed in with other groups of warriors, and not kept in a single unit alone. Although they can reduce the amount of Magika it requires to cast a spell by casting it together, they are extremely vulnerable to things like arrow volleys and direct confrontation with other soldiers. Therefore, for the protection and full potential of mages, they should be mixed in with other solder troops.

9. Archers -- Gold Eaters
Archers are undoubtedly the most COSTLIEST unit in the TES World. Why? Because of arrow consumption. Staffs, pikes, swords and armor take a while to wear out, where as 5 arrows can be lost in 5 seconds. An archer usually holds one or two dozen arrows (Thanks to ImmortalBlood). At 5 gold each, and 100 archers, that is 6000 gold. This may not seem like much, but this is for one battle, and for 100 archers. If you don't want your gold-reserves running low, then there are two ways to stop it. One, the easier way, is to recover yours and enemy arrows after each battle, this will not always replenish stocks fully because of broken arrows, arrows wedged in bodies, lost arrows, and so on, but it will replenish a pretty good amount. Second, is to have fletchers on the sight. They can make arrows out of the resources, but they might not have feathers or wood, and they cannot defend themselves very well. Therefore, to save your gold on arrows, you must recover arrows from after battles, or have fletchers on sight.

10. Retreat
You must always know when you are defeated, and that is the time when you retreat. Retreat is not how it is now-a-days, and can be very dangerous if not done properly. When you retreat, you must give the illusion that you are not. If you are retreating, and they find out, then they chase you down, and you die. A way to make that illusion is to retreat little clumps of people at a time. You will still have people at your base, and you can cover somebody’s retreat. During the Battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans had to retreat hundreds of Greek Hopolites. They did this by sending a couple away each hour, as to not grab attention.

To be continued.

(If you have any questions, comments, or would like to add anything, just go ahead and post it)
(Also, no flaming. I am not a professional at this, so don't yell at me for the tiniest things)

Special Thanks To:
Manu
DarthRavenger
ImmortalBlood
-For their help and suggestions to help make this book better-

I saw this on the history channel yesterday.

Indeed, thank you for bringing the Art of War to the Elder Scrolls

Maybe you can title the chapters the same as Sun Tzu, and even throw in proverbs. Really though, I look forward to your thoughts on things beyond what is already listed. Which happens to be, as you said, obvious common sense.

Thanks, I guess. Keep it up

Also, it would probably help to mention Elder Scrolls battles instead of Earth ones. Although we have much less information, I would applaud you greatly if you made something up, so long as it is realistic.

On capture : a captured ennemy is also an ennemy you will have to watch over, keep fed and so on. And often willing to resume making trouble as soon as he gets out. If you have no reasonable hope of winning him for your side (or at least to stay out of the fight), making him dead usually means he won't bother you again. If you have some fast-moving troops, a large part of a routed army will be killed in the pursuit.

Of course, in a fantasy setting, the ennemy might disagree with staying dead, especially if you used treachery, butchered them after they surrendered or killed them in an especially nasty way (As demonstrated by king Lysandus of Daggerfall).

Which is why all corpses should be cremated, and mages be kept present. (cremation does limit undead manifestations to ghosts, after all)

Darth: I plan on implementing disposal of the dead, thanks for the suggestion.
Manu: I'll add that bit to Capturing.
Dark: I can't tell if you are being mean or not. D: Ah well, I tried to stray as much as possible from that book, although it is the skelliton of what I am working on.

nvm

Setting up your Army

Now we get to the fighting parts. Here are some suggestions on how to set up your infantry, archers, and cavalry, and how to counter each one. There will also be made-up simulation battles using the tactics here.

1. Calvary Flankers
Probably the most common kind of army set up. You have your infantry front and center, in various kinds of patterns, (British Line, Greek Block, etc.) with your archers behind your infantry, and cavalry on either side. The Infantry would put up most of the fighting while the archers helped them from the back. The cavalry would go around the enemy’s position and hit from the sides and the back. This is very common and predictable, but also pretty effective.
Counter: Set Pikemen circumcising the infantry/front-linesman. This would counter the cavalry and set you up for a move.

2. Arrowhead Formation
Another common army set-up, you would put your infantry in a V, with the point facing the enemy. This would counter any flanking, except from behind. Arrows between the two prongs of the V, completely protected, and cavalry if you want, to leak out of the formation and do some damage. You can also put your cavalry aside, and have them charge from somewhere else in the battlefield.
Counter: A thick line of men, the arrowhead does not have many fighters up on the front line at a time, and so you overwhelm the front forces and break through the V, flanking the infantry, and sweeping the archers.

3. Archer-Infantry Ambush
This is somewhat a army set-up for the risk taker, as if he does not move quickly, his archers will be slaughtered. The archers are set up in the front of the formation, blocking the mass of infantry behind him from view. Looking unprotected, the enemy will rush the archers. The infantry would then rush in front of the archers and take them unaware. The archers could then move backward and provide support. Like the last one, the cavalry could be mixed in with the infantry, or off to the side.
Counter: Guerilla tactics. Move Heavy Infantry in front of the archers, beckoning the enemies infantry. (Scouts will be necessary to find out their plan). When the infantry come out, cavalry can flank them from either side or the back, causing mass confusion and casualties.

Dashmir vs. Gen. Atticus
Dashmir and the Dunmer Army is getting ready to face the Imperial Army, led by General Atticus. Dashmir is using Cavalry Flankers tactic, while the Imperials are using the Archer-Infantry. Dashmir has the better archers, while Gen. Atticus has the better warriors and cavalry. Dashmir’s scouts have sighted infantry and cavalry behind the archer’s lines. Dashmir sends sends some iron-clad soldiers with their shields held up. Imperial Archers aim for the unarmored spots, and Dashmir’s troops begin to fall. Dashmir grows angry and orders an infantry charge. The archers fall back, and the infantry and cavalry step forward. Cavalry mow down the infantry, and pikemen are sent to reinforce them. The Imperial Soldiers are better melee fighters, and the Dunmer are losing infantry. Dashmir is using his own archers now, and his cavalry are moving in from behind. The Imperial Archers are flanked, and mowed down by the cavalry. The Dunmer are able to pull off an Hammer and Anvil tactic, and Gen. Atticus is smashed in between. Dashmir took heavy losses, and Gen. Atticus has surrendered.
Moral: Never let your emotions get over your reason.

To be continued...

I'd make a note of some things and this is more relevant to our timeline than anything else and a few minor objections if you do not mind.

The commonality for armor materials should not be based on an equal scale of diversity you see in TES. What that means is that even though "iron armor" is the lowest quality of the heavy armors, it does not mean that only the bottom rung soldiers will have it. In military history most armors were padded, or leather and if you were lucky some mail which is very effective and flexible. Partial plating and splint plating was also used as well as other lammelar composite materials. The image of a full steel clad shining knight represents a very small portion of 16th century warfare. Steel is super rare and full plated armor like wise.

The next thing is Mages. People think Mages are equal but different to the other 2 arch types so the think having 200 master mages is no big deal. I'd venture to say that most mages in the TES universe are mediocre at best with very few nearing any potential of what you'd imagine a great mage to be. Out of 1,000, maybe 2. The rest can probably shoot off a couple gusts of frosts before tiring themselves out and even the fully realized mages aren't going to be shooting death rays left and right.

Lastly the thing about arrows. I don't know about them being the most costly although it depends on what sort of archer you are thinking of. The Persian plain archer or an English Longbow man or Japanese Yume archer. In any case I wouldn't really see much of a big point concerning archery cost. Most archers didn't carry hundreds of arrows like some imagine. Maybe a dozen or two which could take the whole battle to fire off. Shooting a soft draw (not fully drawn bow) can be a good tactic to release off arrows quickly but you wouldn't get the penetration. The Romans fighting the Persians would note how the Persians would loose their arrows into their Kataphracts who were armored very well and didn't even flinch at the arrows, while they did a full draw, aimed carefully and put down their Persian foes.

Another good tactic is to have the archers in front of your own troops in a loose formation when the initial engagement happens and trade them off with the enemy archers or hit their infantry or better yet their cavalry (bigger targets.) Once your missile troops run out of arrows they are pretty weak and soft. So no point wasting your infantry protecting them.

I'd check out Duval's thread concerning military type stuff. Good read.

First of all, thanks for the comments. Unfortunately, I have to disagree with you.
The archers, if you want them to be affective, should carry that many arrows, maybe a little less, 40 or 45. But if they want to be useful during the whole battle, then they need to have a good supply of arrows at their fingertips. Iron arrows are cheap, but ineffective, and especially at numbers ranging at 100,000, thats 500,000 gold if they were 5 gold peices each. And as for sacrificing the archers, that lowers LOTS of morale at best (especially infantry because they are WATCHING the slaughter), and it raises up recruitment, which lowers the people's disposition for the government, as well as lowering the economy.

As for the mages and armour I completely agree, but it doesn't seem completely necessary to add that in, as it really is not tactical as much as it is just TES-World canon.

Well are you talking about how many arrows you think they should have for TES Morrowind/Oblivion or how many arrows they should have and did have realistically? A quiver can't hold fifty arrows. Nor would they ever get a chance to shoot that many times. Archers need a specific angle and range to be effective. Lobbing them over in volleys does little. In movies when they lob arrows, everyone under them gets hit in the heart and they all fall over. Realistically that doesn't happen and decent leather armor can stop a simple falling arrow. If you think about it carrying around 50 arrows is like carrying around a big tree stump. Not practical nor was this ever used. I mean if you want to do that for a fantasy role play sure but it has no credence concerning historical military use. This coming from a guy fairly learned in military tactics born from a people that withstood the Scythians, Sarmatians, Avars, Pechengs, Cumans, Magyars, Mongols and Turks by using the bow just as good if not better than they did.

Ok, you got me.
I chopped the number in half, to about 12-24 arrows a piece. Thanks for the insight.

Nice.

Have you read Gerald Duval's? I think Illusionary links it in her's. It's pretty good, too, though this could be described as a "For dummies"

Very good, all around :foodndrink:

I know of some steppe people using huge quivers that were hung from their horses that carried fifty to seventy arrows, but that's a whole other thing. Generally from what I read even the well organized Mongol Toumans of Subotai would rather use only two dozen or so arrows and then retreating to the baggage train to get more arrows and trade a horse. Anyway keep in mind however that even 12 arrows is enough to totally mess up an enemy. 12 arrows means 12 potential dead soldiers and while realistically only half of those would kill anything that's still a six to one kill/death ratio you are working with all while sitting back on a hill.