How did the strategists and tacticians of the past train to become strategists and tacticians? In the past...

And how did they learn before the invention of wargames? As posted, it seems that the most similar to our time's are from the XIX century, so what happened before?

Are there records of these old wargames?

Also, Napoleon became a great general by studying lots of things about strategy and actual military warfare?

Combat and natural talent.

>muh fog of war

pls

Pen, paper and figurines

Clausewitz still tops the reading lists of military academies.

This. They used a lot of maps planned choke points using said maps.

>DnD could have been invented in the Middle Ages

History has may examples such as Napoleon and Hitler who were great tacticians and lousy strategists (in the military uses of the term, they refer to a shorter and longer timeframe respectively).

They read many of the similar sorts of literature to those still referred to today - Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Vegetius, Bacon, Thucydides, various other classical authors.

In the pre-Napoleonic era their plans had to involve little more than moving and feeding their army. The political leanings of the populaces were hardly a consideration. They had maps, and generally lived in intimacy with their army. They had a much simpler time of it.

If Napoleon were around today, he would be derided in much the same way that Trump is outside the US.

>History has may examples such as Napoleon and Hitler who were great tacticians and lousy strategists
Bullshit. Napoleon weren't just a good tactician but a great strategist too. Just look at the ulm campaign

A campaign period is not a strategic period. His strategy failed because he left himself in the classic mid-European position of being caught between allied groups.

There's a reason those Brits and Russians are still a pain in the ass. They are stubborn motherfuckers.

Actually Clausewitz said that war is closer to a game of cards than chess.

As i dive deeper into my study of poker I'm beginning to understand why he said this.

So basically: They had schools, books, maps, early wargames and card games.

Do you think a current would-to-be tactician would play Warhammer or Magic: The Gathering, or better resort to Poker and Chess?

>In the past, there were no Strategy Videogames, or simulation of any sort, so they had to rely on books about military warfare and maybe some basic boardgames?
you seriously believe that today's generals started their career by playing red alert 2 24/7?

that is strategy

that's fucking amazing. I want to play that.

>Napoleon and Hitler in the same sentence

could you please expand on this?

this.
the only thing they had in common was genocide and it should end up in there - any comparison past that point is just retarded

also, they went through a lot of training in office academies, but ultimately it was all about being able to adapt to situation, think on your feet, guess your opponent's moves and outsmart them. and this is what made napoleon so much better than hitler in all fields - he had an intelligence hitler would never have even if he was born a hundred times.

>genocide
Napoleon never committed genocide.

>for Prussian officers to train
Fascinating that it originated in Prussia

The Germans of today have some of the most autismically complex boardgames on Earth, so it really does make sense.

wars are genocide user, don't forget.

Another user.
My guess is that deception isn't involved in chess. There's not enough psychological warfare in chess.

I mean, as a veteran chess player, but a novice poker player, I see the point, but its not completely true
Chess is all about letting the enemy see your pieces and their position, but ultimately winning him
You cant win the match without a good ammount of deceiving, because the enemy knows what you are doing at any moment, unlike cards.
Cards would teach you more about holding and controlling valious information. Something important to warfare, but not as crucial as outsmarting your enemy

Tell that to the thousands of prisoners he killed in the middle east and the slavery he reintroduced.

And before any /pol/tard comes along and cries.

High level chess is definitely psychological warfare
I would say it's more about perfect information. In chess you always know both players circumstances with 100% accuracy

Being a great leader is mostly about not making mistakes.

>Do you think a current would-to-be tactician would play Warhammer or Magic: The Gathering, or better resort to Poker and Chess?
He would play regular war games. Games in the tradition of the Prussian war game seen in still exist. They were mostly modelled after the second edition of the war game by Reiswitz which didn't come with the expensive modular table but was played on regular maps. This also made the game much more affordable to the general public. Various other games based on the Prussian war game came up, e.g. a Naval war game by Fred Jane in 1906 which was very popular with British officers, so the Royal Navy published an expanded rule set for their officers to use in 1921.

The picture shows Prussian officers at a military academy playing a war game; one can see them playing on a regular map. One can also see the large rule books and they're likely arguing about how to interpret them which anyone who has ever played a game like this or something similar (e.g. Warhammer) will know happens quite often.

...

Tabletops, you idiot.

You're aware that there were many Napoleonic Wars, right?
Napoleon won many wars against several nations (including Russia) because he was a great strategist
Now, war always resumed after a while, but that's diplomacy more than strategy

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre
it was more pragmatic and less politically driven than hitler but mass murdering slaves in order to get more tame and meek servants it's still kinda shitty for them

The only genocide in Haiti was the genocide of the whites by chimps

I would guess that everyone is dealt with different hands and the one with inferior hand must make up by other factors like controlling information and be more careful playing his cards in the right order. Whereas chess has two opponents with roughly equal hands and information is more available, thus removing most of the fog of war.

You're a tactician. Napoleon lost the war. He lost. He died of a sexually transmitted disease on a rock in the South Atlantic. The immediate cause was the Wellington/Blucher victory. The strategic cause was the annihilating victory of Nelson. It may well have taken 10 years to seal the final defeat, but it was clear that having failed to break British sea power, he was doomed.

Not him, but that is not at all clear to me, given how British sea power could do little to affect Napoleon directly, and he had a pretty firm grasp on Western and Central Europe, which were giving him the resources to build a fleet that could challenge the RN again.

The strategic cause of his loss stemmed from a destruction of his core power base, which happened in Russia, long before the meme battle of Waterloo, and long after Trafalgar.

Having the resources to build warships is not the same thing as having the ability to build a fleet. Building a strong navy has always been a long-term project, because in the days of sail you had to season timbers if you wanted strong ships, and because building an officer cadre takes time. The French had superb officers, and destroyed most of them. Royal Navy architecture was massively influenced by practice originating in France, but abandoned by them under leadership pressure.

Napoleon lost because unless he beat GB and Russia at about the same time, he would never win absolute victory. He never got near to beating either.

>He never got near to beating either.

Napoleon knocked Russia out of war three times though
You don't have to conquer a country to defeat it in war

> Building a strong navy has always been a long-term project, because in the days of sail you had to season timbers if you wanted strong ships, and because building an officer cadre takes time.

A 10-15 year project, to be sure, but it was only abandoned post Russian retreat, which is a long way from Trafalgar. Building such a fleet is not outside the capabilities of Napoleonic France.

>Napoleon lost because unless he beat GB and Russia at about the same time, he would never win absolute victory. He never got near to beating either.

Why does he need to beat either of them? Why does he need an "absolute victory"? 1812 Napoleonic Europe was stable. He was easily in a position to say that he was done and go home with it, and all the English flybiting wouldn't stop him; nor did Russia have the capabilities, no matter how well financed by Britain, to take the fight to him.

nah... his problem and the cause of his downfall (besides invading russia after taking the trading between the uk and the russians as something personal) was invading spain and portugal.
not only was he unable to consolidate the iberian peninsula due to the massive uprisings in both countries but the myth of the invicible army was no longer a thing.. even if we're talking about the reserves of the grande armée led by shitty marshals (excluding junot)

How about all that shit he pulled in Spain

What shit?
More Spanish civilians were killed by Brits than French

None of you know what genocide means.

didn't mean to meme arrow you

Usually they'd use combat scenarios on base, so if you're assigned to a base you're given a war game on a table with stat cards representing base personnel (often drawn from personnel records).

It would literally be standing around a table and making decisions while another actor would act/react to your choices.

so basically they used a 19th century version of Total War?

I agree with you partially, while of course they will still play regular war games I think if Napoleon for example was a alive today he sure as hell would be playing Total War or some Grand Strategy vidya, why I say total war because looking at how Reiswitz war game is made it somehow reminds me of how Total war is played.

hell Total War might be the most accurate representation of a modernized Reiswitz war game, althought for real strategic training it would have to be a heavily customized Total war or a purely pvp with some modded shit here and there, think a Total war game just for military consumption

Would Napoleon then play Strategic tabletops, like Warhammer, Flames of War, or some crazy autistic German boardgame? And card games?

Depends on how far back you go, but generally they were expected to read or at least know snippets from the great captains of the past. Scipio, Caesar, Alexander, Pyrhus, Charlemagne, Bellisarius, Marius, Trajan, Hannibal, et al. (Napolean himself gave this as his advice.) They often came from (the aristocracy) or through (military academies, regimental traditions, rising through the officer ranks) an institution devoted, at least in part, to martial knowledge and its preservation. Another was hunting. One of the reasons for hunting by the aristocracy was to understand and thuroughly familiarise themselves with the land. While hunting they might ask questions about how you would take or defend a given hill, or where and why you would encamp, and note seasonal ground conditions that you could take advantage of in case of invasion.

Vikings played hnefatafl one player was ambushed and had to go back to his ship and the other tried to stopped him.

So that's why paradox calls their engine the clausewitz
Neat