How campaigns were fought

[Brainsnaffler]

This isn't a question about the rules - I just can't get my head around it and wondered if someone could help me out :-

In modern warfare, armies have many Divisions, so can fight many battles and potentially loose some with little consequence to the war. I can't understand how this works in the ancient era however, because most armies were one big army for the state with the exception of a force to defend their homes (am I correct?). If this is the case, they could only fight one battle and if it was lost, they lost the war.

So, my question is, how did armies fight campaigns without ending the war in one battle? The reason why I'm asking is because I'm looking at developing a FOG campaign and it would be helpful to know!

Cheers

[spike]

You are going to have to read a lot of stuff to get the whole picture of the logistics of ancient warfare.
In tha cases of large empires-
Look to the campaigns of Alexander, he left Antipater to look after Macedon when he went on campaign against the Persians.
Rome, in the republican era did not have one army but many, each under the command of a consul, who undertook their orders from the senate in theory.
Smaller nations would have the situation you noted where extensive losses would lead to utter defeat- see the Trojian War where all the effort was in defense. The key would be aliances where small nations can collect forces together enough without having to over commit the majority of their army- see the Greek-Persian war where Greek city states allied to send contingents to fight without over weakening their defence.

As always there are exceptions where winner takes all happen's....... to time to go to the library I think.

Spike

This isn't a question about the rules - I just can't get my head around it and wondered if someone could help me out :-

In modern warfare, armies have many Divisions, so can fight many battles and potentially loose some with little consequence to the war. I can't understand how this works in the ancient era however, because most armies were one big army for the state with the exception of a force to defend their homes (am I correct?). If this is the case, they could only fight one battle and if it was lost, they lost the war.

So, my question is, how did armies fight campaigns without ending the war in one battle? The reason why I'm asking is because I'm looking at developing a FOG campaign and it would be helpful to know!

Cheers

[philqw78]

The later Roman Empire had many different large field armies and more smaller garrisons of forces

[davem]

There's a saying that goes something like:
"Battles are won with tactics, Wars (Campaigns) are won with logistics." (I'd add strategy to the last)

Basically as an earlier poster wrote, get some books and read about campaigns rather than just the main battle for the period.
Osprey have many titles that deal with the wider picture surrounding famous battles and are a good introduction.

Regards

Dave M

[ars_belli]

Ancient sources that describe extensive military campaigns in some would detail include:

Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.html
Xenophon, Anabasis http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1170
Arrian, Campaigns of Alexander http://websfor.org/alexander/arrian/intro.asp
Caesar, Commentaries on the Gallic War http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/gallic.html
Caesar, Commentaries on the Civil War http://classics.mit.edu/Caesar/civil.html
Josephus, The Wars of the Jews http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2850

Recent modern texts addressing aspects of ancient and medieval military campaigns include:

Kaveh Farrokh, Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War, Osprey Publishing, 2007
Richard A. Gabriel & Donald Boose, The Great Battles of Antiquity: A Strategic and Tactical Guide to Great Battles that Shaped the Development of War, Greenwood Press, 1994
Adrian Goldsworthy, The Punic Wars, Cassell (UK) 2000/Sterling (US), 2001
David Graff, Medieval Chinese Warfare, 300-900, Routledge, 2002
Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C., University of California Press, 1992
Philip Haigh, The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses, Combined Books (US)/Sutton (UK), 1997
Chaim Herzog & Mordechai Gichon, Battles of the Bible, Greenhill Books (UK)/Stackpole (US), 2002
Ramon Jimenez, Caesar Against the Celts, Sarpedon, 1996
John Prevas, Xenophon's March: Into the Lair of the Persian Lion, Da Capo Press, 2002
Ruth Sheppard, ed., Alexander the Great at War, Osprey Publishing (upcoming: May 2008)
Robert Strassler, ed., The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War, Free Press, 1998
Stephen Turnbull, Samurai Warfare, Arms and Armour Press (UK)/Sterling (US), 1997

The above lists are by no means exhaustive, but they should be enough to get you started.

Cheers,
Scott

[SirGarnet]

Armies were often a small percentage of actual manpower for populous states, although at the other extreme it might be almost everyone save the youngest, oldest and infirm males as a muster for battle, hard to sustain for a campaign.

Not everyone died in a battle, and equipment is scavengable.

Get alllies and help from them (Roman Republic relied heavily on them but they get little press).

Hire mercenaries or bribe some of the enemy.

Those elements and some "natural replenishment" between campaign seasons should provide enough for a campaign.

For simple campaign purposes, if you set manpower pools (by bases and types, for example), I suggest that even a mass levy can raise no more than 50% or 60% of the current available pool in a campaign season, so the pool runs pretty dry if you lose battles and keep coming back to the well for more troops rather than releasing them harvest-time and raising them again later. Standing armies were expensive. Manpower and gold plus troop types by region are enough resources, and a simple scaling cost model as armies take the field and travel far from home puts some limits without getting too burdensome.

Or you can be simpler and not track troop types, just forces as points totals you use to set up games, but then you can't have the fun of seeing named units improve and gain battle honors etc.

[IainMcNeil]

If you're making it realistic it is very different to modern warfare. Most states did not have standing armies, especially the tribal cultures. It was like getting the lads together for a night at the pub "You fancy raiding Italy again?" - "Sure, lets go, and tell Bob and his mates to come!".

These nations tended to raise an army for a specific reason and when the food & money ran out or they just got bored they would trickle home in groups. They also did not tend to train as an army, they just sparred with each other went on raids.

Games tend to abstract this though and give armies purchase costs, maintenance costs etc. The ywa to do this might be to say your tribal nations have low purchase costs but high maintenance. This stops them having a large standing army and going on extended campaign. Your civilized nations with a standing army such as Romans might cost a lot more to recruit but you could make maintenance lower. This way its more serious for a Roman army to get destroyed than a tribal one, as the tribal nation will just recruit another. You would probably also want to link man power in there somewhere. The reason Rome was so resilient was it had vast amounts of money and huge man power reserves.

[Jason_Langlois]

One of the key aspects to the campaigns is that, given that both sides know that one battle will mostly decide things, they have a tendency to avoid battle. You end up with a lot of marching around, shadowing armies, days where you march out in battle order and wait. It was very difficult to force a battle if the opponent didn't want to come out to play, so a key element of campaigning is to maximize the advantages in your favor while luring your opponent into thinking things are in his favor.

[spike]

........... Read Sun Zi (well a translation, as I guess like me you dont read ancient Chinese!), and then read it again as you will probably have failed to understand it completly the 1st time.

[philqw78]

Ahh, Sun Zi, Tsu, whatever. The art of stating the bleeding obvious.

[ars_belli]

Ahh, Sun Zi, Tsu, whatever. The art of stating the bleeding obvious.

Well, granted it seems so 2500 years after The Art of War was written, with numerous translations, adaptations and commentaries added in the interim. It is just possible that the ideas were not quite so obvious at the time.

Cheers,
Scott

[philqw78]

Yes very flippant of me. A few years since I read it but probably more useful in the way people thought of warfare than how to fight it with the countless written battle accounts we can now study.

[ars_belli]

Possibly, although Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Norman Schwartzkopf and other successful modern military leaders have apparently found it rather useful.

Cheers,
Scott

[spike]

Possibly, although Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Norman Schwartzkopf and other successful modern military leaders have apparently found it rather useful.

Cheers,
Scott

As the thread was about how you plan a campaign, there is information on raising an army (levy etc), morale of the nation and how commanders should use spies- this book is a insight in to the mind of an "ancient" strategist.
There are indicators of how "he" thought, thats why I read this more than once, I got the concepts the 1st time, but there is more there than strategy.

Spike

[Strategos69]

Scott has provided very good books, but I will advise you to start with someting more basic

http://www.amazon.com/History-Warfare-J ... 0679730826

It is History of Warfare, from John Keegan. It comes from the very beginning of times to the Iraqi war. In general I don't like books like that (they are so vast that finally they do not add anything) but I have to admit that the author has some interesting ideas. For example, he is concerned by why Greeks fought as they actually did (just a big clash, a battle) instead of continuous razzias more common for other people. He ties his conclussions to the social, cultural and economic composition of the different people.

Also I will ask you to choose a certain period of time, as campaigns were very different if we were talking about Biblical times or the Classical period. If you decide to represent the last one, do not think that Ancient Empires were as weak as it seems . For example, the biggest naval battle until the XXth century (and there are doubts if this was the biggest of all times) was fought between Rome and Carthage, involving hundreds of ships and many thousands soldiers.

Also it was not the same thing to lose an army at the gates of your city than in other continent (far away). When your opponent could come to take advantage of his victory it was very likely that you have had time to recover and get a new army. Most of people even in the XXth have never been more than 30 away from the place were they were born. As it has been pointed out before, There is something that campaign designers forget very often, hence they allow armies to travel from one place to another just taking into account speed factors and forgetting that mainly troops have to eat. I agree with the quotaion: war (and strategy) is about logistic.

[pezhetairoi]

I'd be wary of trying to make ancient wars resemble modern ones. They could be over very quickly.
I think quite a few wars ended in one or two big battles.
There might have been raiding, skirmishing, sieging going on in between.

Cyrus the Younger's attempted conquest of Persia -- failed in one day at Cunaxa.
The Persian invasion of Greece -- stopped at first contact at Marathon.
The Athenians at Syracuse -- one failed siege.
Alexander's conquest of Persia -- 3 battles against 3 different Persian armies, each was ruined and had to be raised again.
Pyrrhos' campaigns in Italy, 2 victories, but 1 failure ruined it.
There are many other examples I'm sure.

Ancient war waging was very risky business.

[Strategos69]

I'd be wary of trying to make ancient wars resemble modern ones. They could be over very quickly.

I would also be wary with adapting modern concepts into Ancient campaigns. It is very common that, in those campaigns, Carthage conquers Rome in 7 years or viceversa. If you want something of realistic, I will strongly advise you to put lots of efforts in representing logistics.

I think quite a few wars ended in one or two big battles. There might have been raiding, skirmishing, sieging going on in between.

In that case I would say the opposite: most of wars (mainly fought between two small armies of nieghbouring small tribes or Republics) were ended in very short campaigns, with just a battle and some skirmishing. War was a very common way to solve little farm disputes at least among Italian people, Greeks, Spaniards and Gauls. (and that's another reason why Pax Romana increased commerce in such that way). Those people didn't conquered the enemy city and just took some advantage of it (the cost of controlling an enemy population being untenable and Rome being the exception in effective control). It is not easy to build an empire, when you cannot control it easily.

However, I agree with pezhetairoi that clashs among Great Empires lasted many years and they were not resolved in one battle. Risky business, really.

[SirGarnet]

The defeat of the vast Persian Empire by Alexander is interesting in this regard.

Battle 1: Our regional army will take care of this impudent fellow.

Battle 2: I will personally crush him with the Imperial army.

Battle 3: OK, no more fooling around - we've raised a fresh army from the remaining peoples of the Empire, prepared an ideal battlefield for our tactics, this ends now!

and it did.

Suitable template for a branching-scenario campagn.

[Brainsnaffler]

Wow! Lots of comments! I am familiar with 'The Art of War' but its one of those books I have never got around to reading. Perhaps now I will (tisk, and I call myself a wargamer eh?).

All of these comments and links are very useful and so thanks for them. I think I need to be more clear though, I'm not actually drawing modern warfare tactics and employing them with ancient armies, I am merely drawing a comparison as modern armies as these are composed of divisions and are in many ways committed to battle seperately. Ancient armies are clearly committed as a whole and not Battle Group by Battle Group to use FOG expressions.

I was just wanting to get clarity on how these wars were fought. It seems that they happen by simply raising another army providing the commander survives, and they have enough time and / or money to do so.

I will be sure to look heavily into logistics. Basically, I will use cities that provide an amount of equipment, food and money to whomever controls them. Each troop type will have different upkeep costs for this. If they run out of supplies, then bad things happen. I also have a system for trying to send messages which can be waylaid or other things happen to them.

Does anyone think this is a good idea or can you think of reasons why this would be bad?

[SirGarnet]

Food, yes, and some requirement of fresh water in dry areas.

Money is good, equipment was usually durable, recyclable or replaceable so that might apply only to certain units requiring an armory, for example. Manpower by city, region etc., is going to be important.

Mike