Quality vs Quantity

well with vehicles you almost always want weaker faster units, that's how WW2 played out with tanks, you just go fucking around the German mobile fortresses and cut off their supply line. With soldiers I think you would always want a mix, people to inspire and teach, people to be inspired and learn.

i hadn't really thought of this, but in every remotely strategic game i play i opt for the largest, most zerg armies possible

I tend towards bigger numbers but i'm used to play some èlite armies or more balanced armies, for instance lately in FoW i'm playing the 4th Canadian Armored and i field more than 20 between shermans, fireflies, crabs and AVRE

In ancient warfare did anybody ever try just zerg rushing with quickly made javelins and atlatles? I think it was pretty much an american native weapon and I don't know what all they really did warfare wise, but you can make a fuckload of simple javelins in a very short time and huck them very decently far with nearly no training. Seems Ideal for serfrushing.

Qualilty all the way for me. I play CSM amd field Terminators (which is bad idea 9 times out of 10), I played Warriors of Chaos with a Greater Demon leader when I played WFB (which got me outnumbered like 5 to 1 almost every time), I played Protoss.

Roman legions probably did most of their damage with the pilum, which is basically a fancy javelin. It worked well against lightly equipped barbarian troops, but was much less effective against disciplined soldiers with good armor.

History tells us that truly elite troops are superior in every way to massed poorly train fodder.

didn't they just hand throw pilum? I would think an atlatl could put the height, distance, and force behind a metal tipped and heavy javelin to make it a very serious threat to armor

And yet those elite troops still get their shit rocked by peasants at least half of the time.

Y'know, except they don't. Contrary to popular belief, a bunch of shitty troops being spammed to no end actually doesn't have quality of its own, and they almost always lose. If they do win, it's pretty much Pyrrhic.

Preach, kamerad! Our Iron discipline and superior technology will stop the soviet horde!

Imagine a group of Medieval lancers going up against hundreds of peasants armed with pitchforks. The lancers could target one peasant at once, but if they all line up, the horses will have almost no way of getting through. Even if the horse was capable of plowing through a wall three-people-thick, they could always brace themselves and stab at the horse. Alternatively, think of a good hundred longbowmen against five pikemen. The point is, there are times when both succeed, and both of them fail.

And it's clear you have fuck all knowledge regarding what you're talking about!

>Imagine a group of Medieval lancers going up against hundreds of peasants armed with pitchforks. The lancers could target one peasant at once, but if they all line up, the horses will have almost no way of getting through.
Except this is completely false, and this happened several times in history with a couple hundred well organized knights with good morale utterly dominating unwashed hordes of peasants. Such as during the invasion of Sicily by the Normans when less than 300 Norman Knights at very least took on several thousand peasant levies and killed them all, only losing a couple (literally) men in the process. Although they claimed the number was in tens of thousands, but regardless we know there was at least a couple thousand and just a bit over 260 knights swept them the fuck out. There is also the Battle of Muret where 1,600 well drilled Crusader Knights and Sergeants killed over 15,000 Aragonese knights and soldiers.

>Alternatively, think of a good hundred longbowmen against five pikemen. The point is, there are times when both succeed, and both of them fail.
If you think longbowmen aren't quality troops, there's no helping you.

Depends really, but generally I'd prefer elite troops and gear. In more modern eras, better gear and vehicles are game-changers, and in earlier times, elite troops used properly will wreck levies entirely disproportionate to their numbers.

not the one you replied to

what if, hypothetically speaking, the hordes were well-trained and well-motivated, but lacked superior equipment

what do you believe would be the result in this situation

Equipment doesn't really matter unless it's ungodly awful or nonexistent. So long as it's usable a well drilled formation will certainly stand up to and kill a cavalry charge. The most important things above all else in battle, especially in pre-modern warfare, is unit cohesion and morale. If your block of spearmen or pikes break rank and run for it after the first two or three ranks are swept away, that's it, you're done for. The unit is fucked and will be mopped up before they can rally up. This is why the Swiss, Flemish, and German mercenaries were so god damn effective and so valuable, because they had peerless cohesion and morale. They would all fight to the last man as they were trained enough that they knew that that kind of determination was better than any armor or shield.

Assuming equivalent training? Well, it'd depend on tech level.

In a medieval or low-tech setting, the sheer superior numbers would get them eventually, if they weren't complete shit as far as the soldiers' training and morale like a serf-conscript army.

Modern or future-tech warfare takes on a very fundamentally different angle, and the smaller force reasonably stands a chance if they've got far better equipment, but that revolves around a combination of terrain, commander skill, long-range supply lines and support (which most armies have for the sake of supplies) and the extent of their range advantage, as well as the exact composition of their army (tanks, APCs, strategic bombers, joint-strike fighters, helicopter gunships, airborne infantry, howitzers, rocket artillery, mechanized infantry? What're we working with here?).

Just for example, also look at the British Army during the Colonial period. The reason why they were so feared and so effective isn't because they had the best guns (they sorta did) or the best commanders. They were feared, respected, and effective because unlike everybody else the Redcoats were trained to march through musketfire and not give a damn about getting shot. They'd go well into the range of enemy guns, and -then- open fire at a range that they were guaranteed to score lots of hits on the enemy line formation despite any inaccuracies muskets may suffer for.

After this they might then fire a couple times more, then they would mount a bayonet charge and shatter enemy lines. In the long run this actually reduced losses taken by the unit by their initial sacrifice of guys getting popped while they marched into the face of enemy fire. That takes balls of steel, and it fucking works if you have the ability to train troops to act like that.

I would like a tiny army of total incompetents.

It would be funnier that way.

this thread just made my autism curious how well a humanoid ant-race would fare in battle

assuming that they didn't hivemind superior production for the queen or whatever, they would, in my mind, be limitless in their morale and cohesion

elite, well-drilled troops are superior tactically, but wars are a pure numbers game.

and places where it was terrible
>muh golden spurs

post more cute military girls

Like Mongols?
Nothing about their equipment was better than anything anyone else had they just spammed light cavalry/ horse archers

They'd steamroll anything unless a bio-agent could be made to kill them. Greek Ant Men didn't fuck around.

as i wrote that post i started to realize that their industry would be off the charts

like communism, but without the whole 'is a shit' thing

You've only listed two of the four axis of combat potential:
- Numbers
- Strength
- Morale
- Strategy

An army with low morale and no decent strategy will have trouble securing victory, no matter their numbers or strength. Conversely, you can have a well trained force with a decent plan but be unable to make a dent in a larger more well equipped force.

>a tiny army of total incompetents
So, an adventuring party? Maximum Power, with fuck all numbers, morale, or strategy?

Rather would have elites than conscripts, but would rather have a group of cheap ships than a single elite ship, as ships benefit from the square/cube law where two ships are four times as effective as one, but on the converse, two conscripts are worth jack shit compared to an elite that knows how to do their job and consume twice as many resources.

So, you want high-quality personnel, but mass-produced equipment.

Indeed.

Also checked

All the lancers have to do is wait for the peasant horde to exhaust their resources because they consume 10 times as much resources, and being peasants, are SUPPOSED to be producing said resources in the first place. If the peasant horde tries to chase them, hit and run wears them down.

But your scenario is less quantity/quality and more you grossly misusing a logistic arm into a makeshift combat arm. The peasants should be fueling their own group of lancers, not taking it to the field.

>all these scrubs don't know you can find more hero units by just throwing countless lives away

Simo and York were sort of dragged into their wars, but that's like collecting a ton of sand and basing its value on the fact there might be gold in it.

The fuck would I need cheap conscripts post 20th century for?

Only when said peasants were led by fucking elites.

>peasants
>bothering with pitchforks instead of doing pic related, or taking flails or just getting a spear which is cheap as fuck to begin with

Conscripts are more can be replaced faster than professional soldiers for bigger wars. That said, Professional ones or mercenaries are more suited for smaller, colonial wars.

forgot the pic

The actual question here is "What is the relationship between the cost of increased army strength, and the cost of increased numbers?"

Does "highly mechanised" mean elite?

It depends on who I'm fighting. In a medieval setting, conscripts would be better, since sieges require huge numbers to succeed and casualties are high, but they'd also require more food, so I'd need to have good logistics in place and make sure I'm always the attacker in a siege.

In more modern settings I'd use a few elites for guerrilla warfare. Damage the enemy's industry, force a surrender.

A fleet would be better in less modern settings, as it would allow more troops to safely be transported, but more modern settings would allow a single warship to carry more planes and missiles, making it more dangerous.

Personally, I prefer playing as a few elites. It's harder to replace lost troops, but it's easier to feed the army and it allows me to use stealth and the like to my advantage.

Mobility and firepower. hopefully energy shields that recharge and reliable stay up for at least one hit, or some kind of heal. utility skills.
But whatever I do mobility is key. Being a slow ass unit feels INCREDIBLY sucky. Strike weapons suck, fuck torpedo bombers/torpedoes.

I prefer to play elites when I play games.

It's why I go with ALEPH in Infinity. There is something fantastic about being able to throw Achilles or an Asura at a problem.

History tells you, that elite units are more or less useless unless having decent numbers.
Sure special forces look cool and sound cool, but never influence wars in a meaningful way.
Great for killing civilians tho.

With a cadre of heavy cavalry and excellent discipline and leadership.

I want large waves of moderately equiped soldiers with small detachments of highly trained soldiers dispersed throughout.

That way the enemy can't tell where the heavy hitters are and therefore must treat every attack with the same level of force.

So 100 highly trained men hidden in every 1000 regulars.

Nah, means they are just well equipped with vehicles.

Depends what you want to acomplish.
Conquest? You need numbers.
Modern colonial wars? You need elite units to keep losses low, so no one notices you are involved, and redeployment fast.
Classical colonial wars? Numbers mostly, decently equipped.

...

> In tabletop or video games, which side you prefer the most?
I prefer combined arms approach

If I'm in a hurry, zerg rushing works in vidya

But I prefer going all tacticool and at least trying to be a strategist every once in a while.

Tabletop strategy is a mix of both worlds, have to adapt with 6th ed chaos dex, so I go full retard and basically enact the blitzkrieg doctrine. With less tanks and more infantry.

Grunts, fire support and melee hard hitters come to the field in first turn, second turn is the drop time, basically my fast attack forces consist of two squads of tacticool&nimble assault forces, while the rest is a metaphor for suddenly ramming my metal gauntlet adorned fist in my enemy's ass.

tl;dr deploy dakka&choppy to distract enemy drop dakka&choppy to engage enemy

Win skirmishes with pure choppy (Berzerkers fuck yeah)

Smaller fleets are easier to maintain and manage. Keeping millions of mouths fed is a task even at the best of times and under combat conditions the entire thing becomes a nightmare of logistics. The USSR got away with it because of how much fuel they were importing under lend and lease. Post Revolution France almost didn't survive the Battle of Marengo because their huge army was out foraging for food when the entire Austrian Army managed to catch Napoleon offguard.

WW2 was more of the USSR and USA steamrolling the Nazi army by basically throwing money at the problem.

The US in particular was producing tanks faster that Germany could produce shells.

It was actually the Germans who took down France's larger army and heavier tanks by catching them off guard and shooting them in the flanks. The Char B1s in particular had a very obvious air vent on the side.

i used to be such a fan of the "unstoppable swarm" thing that i nearly picked up tyranids in 40k

thank god i didn't do that

Pre-classical era warfare actually favored chariots. The Egyptian pharohs actually set up a primitive factory just to crank out chariots faster.

Realistically I'd rather have quantity. The majority of battles throughout history were one by the army with the most men. Yes there's examples of the opposite , they're exceptions that prove the rule.

In a setting like 40k though I'd rather have quality elite soldiers but that's only because by the fluff Space Marines are demigod men , invulnerable to small arms and able to survive in vacuums and spit acid. Back in reality an elite bamd is going to get overwhelmed and killed by superior numbers unless they have support.

The problem with big armies is you have to feed them.

Zergrushing doesn't work if your zerglings starve.

In ancient times logistics were shit, and the armies had to live off the land. That put a limit on how many people you could gather in one place.

Also huge mobs of poorly trained men are prone to panic. Especially without nco's and radios with accurate information.

A few elites.

Everyone knows that massive armies of mooks will invariably lose to a handful of hot-blooded heroes.

I choose both.

But if forced, I'd choose quantity. You can simply do more with more troops and frankly the tactical difference in effectiveness is rarely that large.

A mix of the two.
I love slow moving armies that crush everything in their path.
Like necrons or protoss carrier fleets.

That would mean every soldier carry an additional peice of wood, about 4 pounds, which is a lot when marching any distance. just use slings, or as a new theory suggests, sticks with nails to hurl projectiles long distances

>All these guys talking about Peasant levies

That's it. I'm sick of all this "Masterwork Rabble" bullshit that's going on in the d20 system right now. Peasant Levies deserve much better than that. Much, much better than that.
I should know what I'm talking about. I myself commissioned a genuine Peasant Levy in France for 5 chickens (that's about $2) and have been practicing with it for almost 2 years now. I can even smash solid formations of pikemen with my Peasant Levy.

Feudal Lords spend years working on a single Peasant Levy and train it up to a million times to produce the finest military units known to mankind.

Peasant Levies are thrice as professional as Byzantine Tagmata and thrice as disciplined for that matter too. Anything a charge of knights can rout, a Peasant Levy can rout better. I'm pretty sure a Peasant Levy could easily encircle a group of knights with a simple horizontal manuever.

Ever wonder why Byzantium never bothered conquering Europe? That's right, they were too scared to fight the disciplined Feudal Lords and their Peasant Levies of destruction. Even during the Norman Invasion of the Balkans, Byzantine professional soldiers targeted the formations with the Peasant Levies first because their killing power was feared and respected.

So what am I saying? Peasant Levies are simply the best military unit that the world has ever seen, and thus, require better stats in the d20 system. Here is the stat block I propose for Peasant Levies:

(Rural, Militia)
1d12 Morale Damage
19-20 x4 Crit
+2 to morale and damage
Counts as Elite

(Urban, Militia)
2d10 Morale Damage
17-20 x4 Crit
+5 to morale and damage
Counts as Elite

Now that seems a lot more representative of the military power of Peasant Levies in real life, don't you think?

tl;dr = Peasant Levies need a buff in d20, see my new stat block.

As few and as op as possible

Sorta off-tangent from the rest of this thread, but are Tyranids as shit as they look? I just adore the fluff and aesthetic of the guys, but holy hell GW seems to be raping them crunch-wise.

Whichever is best for the situation.

>In tabletop or video games, which side you prefer the most?

Whichever looks cooler.

what if they look the same

In casual play? Sure, depending on meta there are a few viable builds.
In competitive? Not really. Their builds are all rather old, and just don't stand up to many of the newer codexes.

In both cases they fold pretty hard to Eldar, but of course everybody does.

Don't just out and buy models though, unless you want to end up with models that just won't see play.

Fewer elite soldiers for sure.

What Alexander did with less than 50,000 Macedonian Hoplites, generals of equal skill have failed to do with millions.

Fundamental thing you have to understand about pre-modern war is how FUCKING HARD it was to communicate. You could either blast horns and pray they hear it, wave flags and pray they see it, make a plan and pray they remember it, or send a runner or horse and pray he makes it. Battlefields could be several square miles with parts of armies all over the place, and if a battalion gets confused, it gets scared. And if it gets scared, it runs. And if it runs?

Everyone starts to run.

The sheer logistics of moving even 1000 guys 50 miles on, at best, dirt roads would drive most of us to madness and debt. Having a fuckhueg army for zerging would have been an organizational nightmare easily dealt with through strategic means.

Also hordes of javelins tended to only work against the front few lines before cavalry or longer range missile units fucked their shit up. They were a huge and important part of ancient warfare, but there were counters. By the Roman era a lot of the troops would have a couple javelins anyway since, like you said, they're cheap and easy to use.

Usually I'd say swarm but I just played tiberium wars again this morning. Saw a commando wreak a whole ay with nothing but his rifle and some c4 charges

I'm a product of the 2000s so I'll always perfer small elite units of manly men over a swarm of bugs

Like how the highly-trained germans equipped with weapons that pushed the boundaries of wartime science triumphed over the forces of "a fuckload of soviets" and "so many shermans we can flood the channel with them and drive the rest into europe" and we're all living in the reich now.

superior in every way, except numbers, if they are 20 times better but your opponent has 20+ times your number you are going to lose.

But the Germans didn't have significantly better equipment in many areas, if at all, user

>Highly trained Germans
Completely debatable. While the German Army was well drilled, its tactics were ultimately godawful and extremely defensive on the small scale, and revolved around GPMG's far too much. Soviets arguably had better doctrine, and Operation Barbossa only failed because all supplies for the Germans were completely cut off. Until logistical support failed the Germans were beating the ever-loving shit out of Ivan and nearly took Stalingrad until all support collapsed. The German Army the Russians pushed back was a ghostly remnant of that which initiated Operation Barbarossa.

>pushed the boundaries of wartime science
Horseshit. The allies were far more advanced than the Germans, as 'German Engineering' often was complete and utter shit and fell apart.

>so many shermans
Shermans are vastly superior tanks to Tigers, Panthers, and every other tank fielded by Germany. Why? Because German engineering was shit and just driving those tanks would lead to constant break downs from a variety of mechanical failures. While purely in battle a Panther or Tiger may squash a Sherman, that doesn't mean much if it breaks down on the road and the Shermans force the crew to abandon it/surrender. T-34's, Shermans, and Pershings were superior to German tanks because when you needed them on the field they'd actually show up. And not be stuck in a ditch somewhere as Franz is trying to figure out why his suspension keeps failing.

Except that's never actually the case. What happens is that the superior force ends up routing/breaking up the poorly organized rabble army and it disperses into the wind.

.

But muh Aryan ubermensch fighting dirty bolshevik hordes.

>You've only listed two of the four axis of combat potential:
>- Numbers
>- Strength
>- Morale
>- Strategy

Let just say morale and strategy are equal. This is Strength vs Number thread.

>- Numbers
>- Strength
>- Morale
>- Strategy

high numbers, low strength, infinite morale, poor strategy

vs

low numbers, high strength, moderate morale, good strategy

This varies wildly based on what kinda fight it is, whether it's a fight or campaign, where we're fighting, who we're fighting... I don't wanna hold Germany's eastern front with a small but elite cadre of men, but running guerilla campaigns against the US in Vietnam? Yes please

Have you played TW:warhammer? Does that tactic work in it?

That's one big pile of fuck you!
Do you have any more pictures of the tanks?

Nooo. No it does not.

>Weee I'm gonna use militias and make this a cakewalk! :DDDD
>Vampire Counts unleash a Terrorgheist
>Fug

That sounds like hiw the puke and shot formations during the thirty years war worked. Keep marching forward, dont stop. If you stop your dead, the only way you jane a chance to survive is by matching forward with guts.

>puke and shot
>marching forward with guts

youtube.com/watch?v=t9dTBWl9_rM

Bring in artillery and pray to god.

Quality. I like small squads intricately managed rather than huge brawls. Its one of the reasons I love battletech so much.