Battle fought and won with formation the moment people broke formation that when the killing start
John_Oakman on
Smokeless powder and wireless communications really changed the game when they came out, and now we take them (or rather, their second and third order effects) for granted.
InsaneHobo1 on
Where funny
Efficient-Orchid-594 on
Seriously speaking, if anyone think that kind of fighting was stupid then that means that they have no knowledge of combat or military history.
waldleben on
In general the idea that John Redditor knows better than every military leader and thinker in any given time period combined needs to die.
RockAndGem1101 on
People forget that early firearms were much less accurate than modern ones. Standing still didn’t mean you’d immediately be shot.
Gigantopithecus1453 on
Anyone who’s played Bannerlord as the Khuzaits can attest to this. Whenever I see my enemies formation collapsing, that’s when I know I’ll win. My cavalry just tears them to shreds and there’s nothing they can do about it. But when they’re in a thick formation, they can stop the cavalry in its tracks, and kill it from all sides
SweetHeartBabe02 on
People today: ‘Why did they stand in lines?’ Also people today: ‘I can’t believe I walked into that glass door while looking at my phone.’
kazamburglar on
Apes together strong.
Wizard_Tea on
People kinda look at linear warfare with just the examples of where it failed badly due to things like woodlands, rather than the many times that it was fine
Gothamur on
People will idealize the Phalanx and will call line warfare stupid.
Senjen95 on
Formation warfare worked great for a while. The reason we look down on it now is because certain later inventions made it an *extremely* bad idea.
Specifically, cannons & artillery moved away from stick gauge sighting to tangent sights. Precision aiming and developed understanding in elevation meant artillery could consistently hit where it hurts; and when you have a big group of dudes standing in a field, that’s a bad day. It’s also why entrenching became a huge deal 19th century, and status quo by WWI.
That’s why we see cavalry-heavy wars for a short period in the mid/late 19th century; they had faster mobility, making artillery put in the work if they wanted to get their shots in. They had their calling day too when breech-loaded rifles, repeaters & early machine guns hit the front lines.
To get specific here, we saw the end of few centuries of musket formation warfare collapse in less than one lifetime. Some people saw musket formations as kids, and then tanks later on in adulthood. It’s easy to scoff at bygone tactics, but it’s important to realize there was a quantum leap in tech we take for granted.
12 Comments
Battle fought and won with formation the moment people broke formation that when the killing start
Smokeless powder and wireless communications really changed the game when they came out, and now we take them (or rather, their second and third order effects) for granted.
Where funny
Seriously speaking, if anyone think that kind of fighting was stupid then that means that they have no knowledge of combat or military history.
In general the idea that John Redditor knows better than every military leader and thinker in any given time period combined needs to die.
People forget that early firearms were much less accurate than modern ones. Standing still didn’t mean you’d immediately be shot.
Anyone who’s played Bannerlord as the Khuzaits can attest to this. Whenever I see my enemies formation collapsing, that’s when I know I’ll win. My cavalry just tears them to shreds and there’s nothing they can do about it. But when they’re in a thick formation, they can stop the cavalry in its tracks, and kill it from all sides
People today: ‘Why did they stand in lines?’ Also people today: ‘I can’t believe I walked into that glass door while looking at my phone.’
Apes together strong.
People kinda look at linear warfare with just the examples of where it failed badly due to things like woodlands, rather than the many times that it was fine
People will idealize the Phalanx and will call line warfare stupid.
Formation warfare worked great for a while. The reason we look down on it now is because certain later inventions made it an *extremely* bad idea.
Specifically, cannons & artillery moved away from stick gauge sighting to tangent sights. Precision aiming and developed understanding in elevation meant artillery could consistently hit where it hurts; and when you have a big group of dudes standing in a field, that’s a bad day. It’s also why entrenching became a huge deal 19th century, and status quo by WWI.
That’s why we see cavalry-heavy wars for a short period in the mid/late 19th century; they had faster mobility, making artillery put in the work if they wanted to get their shots in. They had their calling day too when breech-loaded rifles, repeaters & early machine guns hit the front lines.
To get specific here, we saw the end of few centuries of musket formation warfare collapse in less than one lifetime. Some people saw musket formations as kids, and then tanks later on in adulthood. It’s easy to scoff at bygone tactics, but it’s important to realize there was a quantum leap in tech we take for granted.