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Why are the Essosi so militarily incompetent?


FylkirKarl

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17 hours ago, Universal Sword Donor said:

Yes and I am saying the sunset sea would pretty much be out of play because of logistical and numerical reasons. Braavos is a seapower but unless they continuously build ships and send fleets to the sunset sea -- which is like 5000 miles as the ship sails and somehow escape getting broken up by storms which has been done by pretty much no one we've seen -- they are not going to outnumber the IB + the Reach navies, let alone be able to dominate and blockade over 3000 miles of land. On top of that, it's fairly easy to build a protected naval yard where an amphibious assault would need to be combined with a land assault to make any headway. Manderly does it in under a year. That kind of force projection works on occasion but there is a reason why the Italian city-states didn't dominate the Caspian Sea or the Arabian Gulf, and those are 2.5x closer than the sunset sea from Braavos.

Bravos production facilites are wayy ahead of weateros though they could dominate the high seas if they knew what they had

Theres safe large harbours all along the essos coast and merchant ships we know travel to lannisport and the iron islands etc regularly from essos past dorne

Volantis we know can harbour 500+  warships with ease  it wouldnt be long before essos combined fleest have taken dragonstone and torched any enemy ports on westeros eastern coast.

Then all thats left is the  ib and redwyne fleets ..once beaten down with sheer numbers  its only a mmatter of time before fleets from volantis burn lannisport, take the iron islands one by one,the arbor  and bear island etc 

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2 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

I doubt it. Take an equal number of heavy cavalry like knights and pit them against light cavalry like nomads in an open battle, and the heavy cavalry usually wins. The knights have more armor, larger horses, and thus, more momentum.

yeah but thats if the Light Infantry is stupid enough to take their charge.  Heavy Infantry really only has that first real charge....and thats it.  But there are real life battles that show just how badly that can turn out.  Many barbarians hordes and Persian armies would let mounted armor crash into them and get deep into their ranks.....only so they could surround them and slaughter them  

The only time heavy calvalry is 100% effective is when you have an Hammer and Anvil situation going on.  An immovable wall to slame your enemy INTO so you don't get flanked.  Dothraki are essentially the best horse riders in the world except for possibly the Jogos Nhai

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2 minutes ago, hodorisfaclessman said:

Then all thats left is the  ib

That reminds me:

Whose side are the Ibbish and the Summer Islanders on?

More importantly, if this war is really Essos vs. Westeros, why is everyone only mentioning west and central Essos? I'll bet Yi Ti has insane numbers of troops to contribute, by western standards (especially if they're like the early Ming cannon-fodder army).

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2 hours ago, DominusNovus said:

I doubt it. Take an equal number of heavy cavalry like knights and pit them against light cavalry like nomads in an open battle, and the heavy cavalry usually wins. The knights have more armor, larger horses, and thus, more momentum.

In the real world the Dothraki doesn't really make sense. They would if they were expert mounted archers who used hit and run tactics but not the way GRRM potrays them.

However as said in a previous post, this is not the real world. If it was then swords would have given way to armour piercing weapons such as maces and warhammers. 

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32 minutes ago, falcotron said:

That reminds me:

Whose side are the Ibbish and the Summer Islanders on?

More importantly, if this war is really Essos vs. Westeros, why is everyone only mentioning west and central Essos? I'll bet Yi Ti has insane numbers of troops to contribute, by western standards (especially if they're like the early Ming cannon-fodder army).

according to the World Book, the Summer Islanders are basically a elf contained people.  They worry more about adventuring and learning new lands that warring with the intrigues of Westeros and Essos.  As far as IB goes....I don't think they really care about anything except their lands.

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3 minutes ago, OberynBlackfyre said:

according to the World Book, the Summer Islanders are basically a elf contained people.  They worry more about adventuring and learning new lands that warring with the intrigues of Westeros and Essos.

We're already talking about a silly fantasy where all of Essos unites to fight all of Westeros. I'm pretty sure the Lhazareen are even less interested in warring with the Westerosi than the Summer Islanders, and I doubt the slave powers and Braavos are going to team up with the Dothraki any time soon. 

3 minutes ago, OberynBlackfyre said:

As far as IB goes....I don't think they really care about anything except their lands.

They conquered "a huge swath" of north central Essos, built colonies from the Axe to the Thousand Islands, fought with the Sarnor, Lorathi, and others. They only finally lost most of their land in a long war with the Dothraki, and even after being pushed off the continent, they built New Ibbish behind a massive wall in the Forest of Ifeqevron. That doesn't sound like a people who aren't interested in expansion or warfare.

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3 hours ago, hodorisfaclessman said:

Bravos production facilites are wayy ahead of weateros though they could dominate the high seas if they knew what they had

Theres safe large harbours all along the essos coast and merchant ships we know travel to lannisport and the iron islands etc regularly from essos past dorne

Volantis we know can harbour 500+  warships with ease  it wouldnt be long before essos combined fleest have taken dragonstone and torched any enemy ports on westeros eastern coast.

Then all thats left is the  ib and redwyne fleets ..once beaten down with sheer numbers  its only a mmatter of time before fleets from volantis burn lannisport, take the iron islands one by one,the arbor  and bear island etc 

I know Braavos is well ahead of anywhere in Westeros. They are still 5000 miles away, have to ship the wood in from central Essos, and don't have an unlimited supply of money and men. A few ships might travel together but coordinating huge fleets is damn near impossible. Both the IB and Volantis fleets get completely scattered by one storm, and they both end up at half strength with piecemeal strength elsewhere. If Braavos could dominate the seas thousands of miles from home, they'd have done it already. And you're still ignoring how many ships just straight up disappear when sailing around the continents. I don't know how to put it any more bluntly, but the logistics are damn near impossible to achieve AND the south part of Dorne lets the Westerosi defend straits and narrow portions of the sea. Raiding the eastern part of Westeros, yes the Braavosi and FCs could easily do a lot of damage. I don't see them easily burning the White Harbor, KL, or others. Too easy for the military forces of Westeros to hold high walls and supply the cities from inland while denying it to the Essosi military forces.

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3 hours ago, OberynBlackfyre said:

yeah but thats if the Light Infantry is stupid enough to take their charge.  Heavy Infantry really only has that first real charge....and thats it.  But there are real life battles that show just how badly that can turn out.  Many barbarians hordes and Persian armies would let mounted armor crash into them and get deep into their ranks.....only so they could surround them and slaughter them  

The only time heavy calvalry is 100% effective is when you have an Hammer and Anvil situation going on.  An immovable wall to slame your enemy INTO so you don't get flanked.  Dothraki are essentially the best horse riders in the world except for possibly the Jogos Nhai

I assume your initial sentence meant to refer to cavalry, not infantry.  Regardless, you say that heavy cavalry only wins when light cavalry makes mistakes, and then use examples of light cavalry winning when the heavy cavalry makes mistakes.

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3 hours ago, falcotron said:

We're already talking about a silly fantasy where all of Essos unites to fight all of Westeros. I'm pretty sure the Lhazareen are even less interested in warring with the Westerosi than the Summer Islanders, and I doubt the slave powers and Braavos are going to team up with the Dothraki any time soon. 

They conquered "a huge swath" of north central Essos, built colonies from the Axe to the Thousand Islands, fought with the Sarnor, Lorathi, and others. They only finally lost most of their land in a long war with the Dothraki, and even after being pushed off the continent, they built New Ibbish behind a massive wall in the Forest of Ifeqevron. That doesn't sound like a people who aren't interested in expansion or warfare.

ahh you know what I forgot about IB controlling that much.  Who knows then.  They definitely don't seem to be part of any intrigue in the Disputed Lands.  They seem to be of little consequence, mostly because I think they dont want to piss off Braavos haha

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1 hour ago, DominusNovus said:

I assume your initial sentence meant to refer to cavalry, not infantry.  Regardless, you say that heavy cavalry only wins when light cavalry makes mistakes, and then use examples of light cavalry winning when the heavy cavalry makes mistakes.

I believe I misread what your first statement was.  What I am stating is that Mounted Knights only work if the infantry OR light cavarly are incapable of taking the full hit, and still stand still to take the hit.  

If we are talking about Dothraki vs Armored Knights, there is no amount of armored Knights that could really make a stand against Dothraki alone.  Dothraki and light cavalry and mounted archers combined, plus they are superior riders. A number of people in the books even say any person would be an utter fool to meet Dothraki in an open field. 

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On the whole subject of 'Westerosi armies are just untrained peasants' I do feel obligated to post the link to a thread disputing that notion. I'm not sure if the conclusion of the author is correct, or if GRRM just wrote several contradictions, but still, it's worth a read.

 

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10 minutes ago, WSmith84 said:

On the whole subject of 'Westerosi armies are just untrained peasants' I do feel obligated to post the link to a thread disputing that notion. I'm not sure if the conclusion of the author is correct, or if GRRM just wrote several contradictions, but still, it's worth a read.

 

I've linked to it before. Long and short of it is that they have the equipment, training, and wherewithal as good troops. The ones we see who don't are literally used as bait/sent to die.

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4 hours ago, OberynBlackfyre said:

ahh you know what I forgot about IB controlling that much.  Who knows then.  They definitely don't seem to be part of any intrigue in the Disputed Lands.  They seem to be of little consequence, mostly because I think they dont want to piss off Braavos haha

The Disputed Lands are too hot, and too far away, and require too much diplomacy with those subhuman non-hairy men.

Anyway, there's a lot of guesswork involved, but I suspect that, while their naval production capacity is probably nowhere near Braavos's, their starting navy is huge. Plus, they're the best in the world at sailing through stormy weather, and I'm sure there would be many opportunities to take advantage of that in a sustained war. The big problem is that they'd be very hard to coordinate with, for either side. And keeping either Lorath or the North occupied isn't that huge of an impact on the war. But keeping Braavos occupied, and maybe even partially impacting the flow of lumber there, that could be a big deal.

 

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On 19/09/2017 at 5:54 PM, Universal Sword Donor said:

I know Braavos is well ahead of anywhere in Westeros. They are still 5000 miles away, have to ship the wood in from central Essos, and don't have an unlimited supply of money and men. A few ships might travel together but coordinating huge fleets is damn near impossible. Both the IB and Volantis fleets get completely scattered by one storm, and they both end up at half strength with piecemeal strength elsewhere. If Braavos could dominate the seas thousands of miles from home, they'd have done it already. And you're still ignoring how many ships just straight up disappear when sailing around the continents. I don't know how to put it any more bluntly, but the logistics are damn near impossible to achieve AND the south part of Dorne lets the Westerosi defend straits and narrow portions of the sea. Raiding the eastern part of Westeros, yes the Braavosi and FCs could easily do a lot of damage. I don't see them easily burning the White Harbor, KL, or others. Too easy for the military forces of Westeros to hold high walls and supply the cities from inland while denying it to the Essosi military forces.

The distancr just takes time and they have a large city to pool and its outlaying territory for men and resources. As for money the city states are  more advanced economywise than their feudal neighbours 

Theres ports in every free city along the coast allowing a large armada to creep along the essosi  coast in batches til volantis then on past the dornish coast....its hard to manage logisticaly but far from impossible esp given the volume of merchant ships supposedly doing the same from free cities to lannisport and the iron isles etc.

 

 

Kl , white harbour and dragonstone would be burnt or at least easily have theirfleets broken then blockaded .

As for raids without a navy theres too much land to defend....the enemy can land anywhere and be gone with ships full of good/cropps and villages  burnt etc long before serious orgainised resistance can be properly mounted.

 

Overall essos may fond it hard to subdue wessteros but westeros without some serious luck or essosi  incompetence cannot overcome essos naval might to do the same

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BTW, this post isn't debating who would win between Essos and Westeros, this is just asking why as a whole, is Essos, so backwards militarily? They still use Roman and Greek tactics with the Unsullied and New Ghis soldiers, and straight up zerg rush with the Dothraki, besides that, all they have militarily are Sellswords, their navies, any professional soldiers worn to a leader, and slave soldiers, none of which are amazing in talent besides maybe the professional soldier as the Ironborn are the better sailors.

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6 minutes ago, FylkirKarl said:

… why as a whole, is Essos, so backwards militarily? … all they have militarily are Sellswords, their navies, any professional soldiers worn to a leader, and slave soldiers

Maybe you should explain what you think they should have instead, and who you're comparing them to.

Read The Prince, and you'll see Machiavelli making some of the same criticisms of the princedoms of Italy—most especially the heavy reliance on mercenaries. But that was an innovative critique when he wrote it in 16th century. Are you expecting a medieval culture—one that hasn't even discovered gunpowder and other 14th century technologies—to fight renaissance wars?

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16 minutes ago, FylkirKarl said:

BTW, this post isn't debating who would win between Essos and Westeros, this is just asking why as a whole, is Essos, so backwards militarily? They still use Roman and Greek tactics with the Unsullied and New Ghis soldiers, and straight up zerg rush with the Dothraki, besides that, all they have militarily are Sellswords, their navies, any professional soldiers worn to a leader, and slave soldiers, none of which are amazing in talent besides maybe the professional soldier as the Ironborn are the better sailors.

I am at a loss at how you think you know Essos is backwards militarily compared to Westeros?

We have never seen the two in open battle against each other.

In fact we haven't seen the Unsullied in a real battle (like the upcoming battle of Meereen) at all yet. Nor have we ever been shown the Dothraki in a real big battle and thus do not know their battle tactics and effectiveness.

We have not been shown a Dothraki 'zerg rush' either. If you think you have seen one then I don't know where since it is not in the books.

And how on earth do you know that 'none of which are amazing in talent'?

We have not been shown a real big Essosi war yet. If you are speaking of the Yunkai'i and the post-sack Astapori (meaning the Astapori sans their former Unsullied) then yes, so far no competent leader has emerged there that we know of and especially the Yunkai'i slave soldiers seem to be quite sub-par. But that's hardly a meter-stick for all of Essos.

Regarding the Dothraki we don't really know yet how they will lead a real war. We do know that their equipment pretty closely resembles the Mongols (Arak seems to be used from horseback like the Mongols used their swords) AND the Dothraki seem to like horse-bows just like the Mongols did. The Mongol tactics was not the 'zerg rush' you are speaking of.

Now if you think the Mongols were backwards for their time compared to European armies then I can't help you.

It is of course still possible that GRRM make the Dothraki less effective than the Mongols were. But my point is: we do not know that yet.

 

 

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On 9/17/2017 at 9:25 PM, falcotron said:

Most likely, the reason all of the militaries of Planetos seem both crap and inconsistent is that GRRM really doesn't know or care much about military strategy, equipment, etc. Trying to draw conclusions from details you think you can guess about the different forces isn't going to tell you anything.

thats something i have picked up on as well. he spends most of his effort on the political side of things, rather than the relevant military aspects of a feudal society.

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3 hours ago, FylkirKarl said:

BTW, this post isn't debating who would win between Essos and Westeros, this is just asking why as a whole, is Essos, so backwards militarily? They still use Roman and Greek tactics with the Unsullied and New Ghis soldiers, and straight up zerg rush with the Dothraki, besides that, all they have militarily are Sellswords, their navies, any professional soldiers worn to a leader, and slave soldiers, none of which are amazing in talent besides maybe the professional soldier as the Ironborn are the better sailors.

The only zerg rush we read of dothraki doing was one infamous case ,the only other battle we heae of they enveloped their opponent in open battle.

As for ghiscari(spoiler) we learn in snippits of winds they can form anti cavalry formations

 

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23 hours ago, hodorisfaclessman said:

The distancr just takes time and they have a large city to pool and its outlaying territory for men and resources. As for money the city states are  more advanced economywise than their feudal neighbours 

Theres ports in every free city along the coast allowing a large armada to creep along the essosi  coast in batches til volantis then on past the dornish coast....its hard to manage logisticaly but far from impossible esp given the volume of merchant ships supposedly doing the same from free cities to lannisport and the iron isles etc.

Kl , white harbour and dragonstone would be burnt or at least easily have theirfleets broken then blockaded .

As for raids without a navy theres too much land to defend....the enemy can land anywhere and be gone with ships full of good/cropps and villages  burnt etc long before serious orgainised resistance can be properly mounted.

Overall essos may fond it hard to subdue wessteros but westeros without some serious luck or essosi  incompetence cannot overcome essos naval might to do the same

You keep repeating things and not actually addressing any criticism. Please address why and how before repeating again.

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