Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

acoup.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 172 posts

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#111

Post by michaelscott »

dragontamer wrote: post #95
jacobwilliamroy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Hannibal's a special exception. I'm not sure which hannibal you are talking about, but they weren't they all engaged in a generations-long blood feud that lasted 300 years? I mean, this was not some simple faction conflict. It was a war between two rival states to decide the fate of the entire known world.

> weren't they all engaged in a generations-long blood feud that lasted 300 years? I'm not sure how "exceptional" a multi-generational war was in medieval or ancient times. There were Five Crusades between ~1100 and ~1300 for example. The Chinese Warring States period was 475 BCE to 221 BCE. Japanese Sengoku period (A similar "Warring states" era) was 1467 - 1600. The Hundred Years' War was 1337 to 1453. There were t…

As a state vs state thing, Carthage and Rome definitely weren't unique in ancient times. Hell, Carthage wasn't even the last state that Rome engaged with in multi-generational war, they just came the closest to actually winning.

What is interesting about that particular war though is that it did span the literal generations of the Barca family, of which Hannibal was a member, and for whom at least two full generations that I know of all became leading generals in the Carthaginian army.

Rome is also somewhat unique in that they were basically in a state of perpetual war after a certain point in their history. War begat war, especially as the territory grew and the results of victory were wealth and prestige for the families involved.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#112

Post by db48x »

wjmao88 wrote: post #81
dragontamer wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The scale/scope of most of the RTS games is that of a battle, not that of a war. Hmm, but even "Civilization" magically aways logistics for the most part. Units require "upkeep gold", but there's no real supply-chain that has to be built for units. -------- The "Rigs" in Advance Wars delivered oil to the frontlines. But its still simplified logistics, because "Rigs" had infinite oil in them. Still, it was a legitim…

The supply system for Europa Universalis (which is part of what I referred to as "other Paradox titles") is actually very barebone, consisting almost entirely of "you can only keep a certain number of troops in a province without attrition", where the number of troops depends on terrain, friendly/enemy territory, etc. Hearts of Iron has actual supply chain management. As for Civilization, I've always treated it as a…

That's actually pretty accurate for the era EU simulates though. Nobody could supply an army of any size by any method other than foraging, aka buying all the food and forage in the area around the army.

As you know, the maximum throughput of any connection is the buffer size divided by the round-trip time. If you're using horse-drawn carts to move food and forage, the buffer size will be quite small; carts don't hold very much and there aren't a lot of them. Horse-drawn carts are slow, so the round-trip time will also be quite long. A number of generals had the idea of supplying the army this way, but nobody could do it further than a few dozen miles because the round-trip times get so high. Before WW1 everyone figured that trains had solved the problem; you would just load your supplies up on big fast trains and send them right to the front. Unfortunately, armies really love blowing up the enemy's trains and railways, so the railheads were never as close to the front as anyone liked and they were always having to be rebuilt. There weren't enough motorized vehicles in the world to deliver all that tonnage more than 100 miles, so the fronts in WW1 were very stagnant. In WW2 there were tens of millions of trucks of all sizes, and the Germans estimated they could deliver sufficient supplies to the army as far as 400 miles from the railheads. Unfortunately, it's over a thousand miles from eastern Poland to Moscow, so that didn't go so well. Also, it's over a thousand miles from Tripoli to the Suez canal, so they didn't have much luck in that theater either.

If you want to read more on the subject, I recommend "Supplying War: Logistics From Wallenstein To Patton", by Martin Van Creveld. Great book.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#113

Post by z3phyr »

dragontamer wrote: post #55
Waterluvian wrote: post #26

"Let’s be clear on this point: ancient and medieval warfare was mostly about sieges." I also learned years ago that when medieval battles actually happened, the goal was to rout the enemy, not actually fight them and kill each other. I find these points illuminating because it reminds me that people back in the day were not primitive idiots. There was a very sensible logic to how they waged war. Ultimately, everyone…

Mass killings of troops certainly happened: Hannibal's famous "Battle of Cannae" actually destroyed an entire Roman Legion (70,000 killed, 10,000 captured out of ~80,000 troops). They were just very rare. Another point: After losing so many troops in a singular battle, the Romans changed their tactics. Instead of grouping their entire army as a massive 80,000-man strong Phalanx, they split up their armies into smalle…

> Hannibal's trick to encircle and kill many roman troops in a single battle was never going to be repeated

I would argue that the Romans allowed themselves to be surrounded in the Battle of Carrhae by forming into a block. They got pinned and were badly defeated.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#114

Post by NickNameNick »

hef19898 wrote: post #45

just finished the first post. All I can say is well written and to the point! Logistics is totally underrepresented in history (infrastructure and the like) and especially military history. When it comes to the annoying "relaibility" discussions around WW2 tanks on Youtube I just wished some would explain the basic principle of RAMST, Reliability-Availability-maintainability-Supportability-Testability. Yet, nobody se…

Have you watched many of Nicholas Moran (The_Chiftain)'s videos?

He likes to comment on the ergonomics of operating and maintaining tanks. But he also discusses why the USA mainly build medium tanks during ww2, and how and why they were more maintainable than their european contemporaries. (An ocean away from their factories, they had to be)

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#115

Post by rossdavidh »

dreen wrote: post #10

It seems the author also missed the fact orcs are perfectly alright with cannibalism, which further alleviates the supply problem, perhaps even to the point of not requiring the supplies at all (a few thousand orcs eaten along the way wont make much difference). I doubt this has much precedent in history.

When the Uruk-hai bragged to the Mordor orcs that they were given man-flesh to eat, the Mordor orcs replied that it was really orc-flesh, and the Uruk-hai were offended. So, while it may have happened somewhere, at least both Mordor and Uruk-hai orcs considered the suggestion offensive.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#116

Post by rossdavidh »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #2

Next up: How Gondor won despite a complete lack of air support (see: winged wraiths) and superior enemy armor (see: Mumakil).

Well not at the siege of Minas Tirith, but they did get saved by air cav at the battle after that (giant Eagles).

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#117

Post by wavefunction »

dreen wrote: post #54
fmoronzirfas wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think orcs eating orcs only happens in the movies. In the books orcs don’t do that. What he missed is orcs eating human flesh

Interesting, although the books indeed don't mention it I don't think it's entirely out of the question. from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_(Middle-earth) > Tolkien indicates that Orcs are "always hungry".[24] Orcs eat all manner of flesh, including men and horses, and there are frequent hints of cannibalism among Orcs. Grishnákh, leader of the Mordor Orcs, accuses Saruman's Uruks of eating Orc-flesh, which they…

Orcs were corrupted/mutated elves and uruk-hai were corrupted/mutated humans iirc but could be mistaken It wouldn't necessarily be cannibilism then.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#118

Post by exar0815 »

dragontamer wrote: post #55
Waterluvian wrote: post #26

"Let’s be clear on this point: ancient and medieval warfare was mostly about sieges." I also learned years ago that when medieval battles actually happened, the goal was to rout the enemy, not actually fight them and kill each other. I find these points illuminating because it reminds me that people back in the day were not primitive idiots. There was a very sensible logic to how they waged war. Ultimately, everyone…

Mass killings of troops certainly happened: Hannibal's famous "Battle of Cannae" actually destroyed an entire Roman Legion (70,000 killed, 10,000 captured out of ~80,000 troops). They were just very rare. Another point: After losing so many troops in a singular battle, the Romans changed their tactics. Instead of grouping their entire army as a massive 80,000-man strong Phalanx, they split up their armies into smalle…

Well, there was the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, where temporarily united germanic tribes managed to massacre around 20 000 roman legionnaires under the lead of a roman-trained traitor.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#119

Post by gwd »

Good quote:

> One of the real lessons the study of the past has to teach us is – to quote L. P. Hartley, “the past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” What I mean by that is that so much of how we assume all societies work and all people think is just how our society works and we think. Properly done, the study of the past can disabuse us of this silly notion and show us that smart people in different times and different places did things all sorts of different ways. But this lesson is ruined if we construct caricatures of the past wherein people living long ago were just big stupid brutes with big stupid weapons.

Re: The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

#120

Post by firethief »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #108
firethief wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the accusation is just "eating orc-flesh", the only cannibalistic taboo that would be violated by that unqualified act would be eating those who aren't members of your group. No. For example, it may be unacceptable if the groups aren't at war. > A practice of eating your own kind -- but not other people -- would be consistent with everything mentioned above, but would be incredibly bizarre for humans. We are muc…

Nothing in the Endocannibalism page suggests that any mentioned group ate their own members to the exclusion of eating members of other groups. That topic isn't discussed at all anywhere on the page. The most prominently mentioned example, though -- New Zealand -- was definitely not exclusive endocannibalism. The exocannibalism page confirms that the Wari' also practiced exocannibalism.

The article is obviously very basic; I just linked it as a starting place for your research. This is not really the kind of thing where arguments from first principles are productive.

The exocannibalism page that you found does say that the Wari are the only known example of both types of ritual cannibalism, which suggests that it's more of an exception than the rule.

Post reply on HN