Is this accurate?

>Epic tier
>Genghis Khan
>Alexander
>Napoleon
Sounds legit. Personally I'd put Napoleon at the top, Alexander the middle and Genghis at the bottom but I'm pretty sure others can make convincing arguments for why it should be the other way around.
>Alexander Suvorov
>Not Caesar
OH SHIT NIGGER WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Sure, Suvorov technically never lost a battle, but neither did Augustus. Just the technicality of "has never lost a battle" does not make a great general on its own.

>Paragon tier
I've already explained why Suvorov belongs here and Caesar belongs in Epic tier
>Khaled ibn al-Walid
As much as I detest kebabs, he belongs here.
>Richard I
Why is he even here, other than being the French king the English love to wank off all the time? What great victories has he achieved? How did he revolutionize warfare?
>Rommel
I wouldn't put him that high.

>Heroic
>Sherman
How do I know this list is made by an American?

Before we can make a new list, let's define our terms. This is what I propose.
>Epic Tier
Legends of warfare, those who have become immortalized through their conquests and even to this very day inspire military strategy.

>Paragon Tier
While not having a legacy as immortal as Epic tier, these are the men who still left a very lasting impact on how military warfare has developed.

>Heroic Tier
While they may not have had an impact on warfare in general, they've shown strokes of genius that greatly influenced warfare in their times.

With those terms, I propose the following and radically altered list. Keep in mind those listed are in no particular order.
>Epic Tier
Napoleon
Alexander the Great
Julius Caesar
Hannibal
Genghis Khan

>Paragon Tier
Gustav Adolphus
Khalid ibn al-Walid
Prince Mauritz of the Netherlands
Gaius Marius/Sulla
Scipio Africanus

>Heroic Tier
King Pyrrhus
Erwin Rommel
Ferdinand Foch
Everyone else who's kind of legit but not good enough to be in the higher tiers (note: not guys who are just popular)

Ahh shit, I forgot to put Alte Fritz in Paragon tier. The guy even had the respect of Napoleon, who claimed he couldn't have steamrolled Prussia in 19 days if Frederick the Great was still around.

>manleteon
>epic

>cuckard lionheart
>paragon

they're both shit

Not only that, but the weapons and warfare technique the Mongols used was just bound to rape everyone, it was just luck, not thanks to Gengis. He just profited from it.
Alexander, on the other hand, developped techniques that made him successful.

Saladin was decent and fairly clever, but he didn't accomplish anything epic.
Same for Petain actually; I think they're good when it comes to damage control during times of trouble rather than people who accomplished anything of value.

Not that invading countries and extending an empire is in any way valuable.

>manleteon
Huh, I wonder who could have written this post.

Pretty good list, user. Pretty good.

>Not only that, but the weapons and warfare technique the Mongols used was just bound to rape everyone, it was just luck, not thanks to Gengis.
You do realize that Genghis actually appropriated a fuckton of the technology for use in his conquest from the nations he defeated?

>Paragon
If Rommel isn't Paragon-worthy, then what about Guderian?
Rommel, I think, mostly was lionized as a "worthy opponent" because of his opposition to Hitler and treatment of PoWs, and while his successes are noteworthy, Guderian was thought of being a fantastic commander in Poland, France and the Eastern Front.
Of course, I am also not certain whether Guderian wasn't banging his own drums too much about authorizing the blitzkrieg and being a genius, and I'd rather not propagate bad history, but I am curious what you think.

I'll be entirely fair to you and say that I do not know too much about the details of German strategy during WW2, so I can't really reply to that.

>manleteon
Huh, I wonder who could have written this post.

A seriously forgotten general who'd fit a heroic or paragon warlord would be John Monash. A civil engineer who had tactics a few decades ahead of most of WWI, doing WWII style combined arms assaults.

>... the true role of infantry was not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, nor to tear itself to pieces in hostile entanglements—(I am thinking of Pozières and Stormy Trench and Bullecourt, and other bloody fields)—but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward; to march, resolutely, regardless of the din and tumult of battle, to the appointed goal; and there to hold and defend the territory gained; and to gather in the form of prisoners, guns and stores, the fruits of victory.

Then again, being forced to go through Gallipoli is likely enough to get anyone going 'I think this war is being waged fucking wrong'.

Add Zhukov and Zizka to Paragon tier.

Rommel's achievements weren't only WW2-exclusive. Check out "Infantry Attacks", his book on his operations on the Alpine front in WW1.

>Rommel's tank tactics basically invented modern tank fighting
>Not worthy of Paragon Tier
Also
>Leaving out Georgy Zhukov
He's easily Heroic tier, you fucking wehraboo

Whoa, this nigga thought of this shit in WW1?
What did his colleagues and peers think? Heresy?

He got the shit promoted out of him. He was a civil engineer so he's one of those military leaders who did better the higher rank he was (As opposed to various famous small tactics guys who ended up promoted outside their area of expertise). Which was sort of the issue with him to start, he was much more a 'Big picture' guy, so once he got promoted high enough to actually be dealing with supply lines and platoons he was a terror.

He was the tactician behind the Battle of the Hindenburg Line, which shattered Germany in WWI because his expertise was that sort of coordination so he was able to get the Americans, Brits and Australians all working as a single army rather than just allies.

>epic tier
>none of these people got into fights with gods or demon lords
It's like you don't even play 4e. All of these guys were Heroic. Maybe a couple of them that got into personal combat with elite enemy forces got up to Paragon, but I doubt it.

Generals aren't Paragon-tier, Special Forces soldiers are.

This is why we don't invite you places man

>Rommel

yikes. I didn't know we were talking about the best squad commanders.

>Rommel's tank tactics basically invented modern tank fighting
But that's wrong.

Where the fuck is my nigga Carolus Rex?!

Probably Heroic since he got some solid wins, but ultimately did not innovate. He was good at commanding his troops, but the greatest genius was in the army that was built by his father, and the tactics he'd devised for it. Actually, I'd argue that Carolus Rex was a disastrous king for Sweden, having been one who didn't know when to stop and led the exceptional carolean army to its annihilation. Karl XI deserves more credits on that front, desu.

>Rommel's tank tactics basically invented modern tank fighting

I didn't know that outrunning your supply lines and losing without accomplishing much was the basis of modern tank fighting.

...

He more or less falls into what was mentioned . People who succeed and get promoted out of where they were best suited.

The dude did lead his nation out of a pretty tight situation, only to be sniped on the trenches. Shame.

He led them out of one tight situation and into another.

>tfw actually frog

Not everyone here loves this failed retard. He fucked France over and those who studied History hate him for that.

Ah, you're one of those self-halting baguettes
Though marching into Russia really was dumb

>"frog"
You sound more like a left thing immigrant sympathizer to me. Either that or a royalist, and French royalists are a special brand of pathetic.

Von Clausewitz disagrees and calls his logistics for the Russian campaign impeccable. The only problem here was that the Russians acted "irrationally", burning down everything between themselves and the French with no regard for whatever happened to those in their way (read: the Czar's subjects, those the Czar had pledged to at least nominally look after).

>The only problem here was that the Russians acted "irrationally", burning down everything between themselves and the French with no regard for whatever happened to those in their way
Yes. That's how Russians act. You can't go there without taking it into account

That's why I always say Napoleon's biggest blunder was assuming the Russians are human.

Indeed, Gengis had nothing to do with the success of the Mongol Empire, which is why it was created by him and fell apart after his death.

>no wellington
>no nelson
>no BASED COCHRANE

shit list

This also

>Rommel on the list at all

>Georgy "I must unite the Russian people under one graveyard" Zhukov
>Georgy "I get a medal for every 10 thousand Russians I kill" Zhukov
>Georgy "One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a campaign lead by me" Zhukov
>Georgy "My high score is higher than the holodomor" Zhukov
>Georgy "Clog the enemy tracks with Russian guts" Zhukov

Did you know he sold American territory that belonged to France to fund his shitty campaigns ?
France would have raped the British if we kept it, hell there's a chance Americans would speak French today. Fucking overcompensating manlet cunt.

>self-hating
Why ? I'm not as dumb as he was. Also not a Corsican.

I don't like retards, and Napoleon was one. I hate the left for the same reason I hate Napoleon. Imperialism and immigration are two faces of the same cancer. Imperialism is actually why we have immigrants here in France to begin with.

>man picks up stone
>lifts it high in the air
>after goes, stone falls
>nobody remembers him

>some genius finds a way to make sure said stone stays high, say with a wall or a pillar or something
>centuries later people still praise him

Gengis was retarded, though he was a good warrior and leader. But that's it.

This is fair
People want to really like Rommel because he was gallant and the whole war got poisoned by the Nazis doing Nazi things, so German officers you can respect from it are rare

>Imperialism and immigration are two faces of the same cancer
Oho?

>Did you know he sold American territory that belonged to France to fund his shitty campaigns ?
Territory with a total of 4000 or so people living in it that the Americans, British, Spaniards/Mexicans or whatever would've taken with force anyway because it's difficult to project power when literally everyone around you is at war with you.

>hell there's a chance Americans would speak French today
Not really no. Saying the US outnumbered the inhabitants of Louisiana 1000:1 would be a conservative estimate.

>Gengis was retarded
He and Napoleon both? Go ahead, name a leader who wasn't retarded then. I guess Alexander and Caesar were also retarded for not having a clear succession? I guess Hannibal was also retarded because he didn't manage to besiege Rome due to reasons that had everything to do with himself and nothing to do with Carthage not getting its shit together on every front that didn't involve Hannibal. Go on, give me a brilliant leader by your own delusional standards.

>if you dislike Napoleon for making France wage war on most of Europe for better or worse you're either a left-wing immigrant sympathiser or a royalist.
What a horrendous post, user. Don't do that.

Caesar technically did have clear succession, unless you mean Augustus. Anthony got as far as he did by establishing his own powerbase outside of Rome

The Mongol Empire actually expanded under his two immediate successors.

>for making France wage war on most of Europe
List all the wars Napoleon started. List all the wars that others declared on Napoleon.

>if you dislike Napoleon for making France wage war on most of Europe

Didn't he inherit that state? The National Assembly declared war on Europe by trying to "liberate" Belgium

>no el cid
el cid's dead body on a horse led a successful cavalry charge against the moors

that's an epic-level maneuver even if they lost that siege

He sure did and had a bunch of impressive victories to show for it. But he pushed too hard, and sometimes in the wrong direction. When diplomacy would've been the way to go, he instead pushed forward and ground the swedish army into dust against the continent, effectively ending their time as a great power of Europe.

>Didn't he inherit that state?
Not only did he inherit it, he stabiilzed it with the Treaty of Amiens, granting France a year of peace until the British and Russians violated it.

For ze lady

It was a year of "peace" in which all sides were heavily militarizing.

>no admiral Yi level 30 Marshall

>Bonaparte that high
Waterloo was such a colossal fuckup the known world looked at it as the apex of military failure and the most significant historical milestone for the next hundred years (until the outbreak of the Great War). He fielded nearly 75 THOUSAND troops and lost over half

The entire reason the British entered the war and persuaded everyone else to enter the war was to check Frances power because "fuck the french" is England's national slogan and the French pushing their border to the Rhine was bad news for the English.

Sadly, peace was never an option

He had the diaherria user pls

I’m pretty dang sure diarrhea doesn’t give a -30 to tactics checks.

Have you ever tried to command with dysentary?

Waterloo was a close one though.
Btw even if he won Waterloo it would not have changed the issue of the war, it would have last maybe a month more or two : basically all of Europe was sending armies to fight Napoleon.

>Waterloo was such a colossal fuckup the known world looked at it as the apex of military failure
I'd like to see a single citation for that. The general concensus is that Waterloo was a defeat mostly because Grouchy failed to hold back Blücher. If Grouchy succeeded, it's entirely possible that we'd end up with a "reverse Waterloo" where the Anglo-Dutch alliance found itself sandwiched between Napoleon and Grouchy. In fact, the entire Waterloo campaign in general is seen as brilliant and the reason why "100 days" is now a magic number in politics, because Napoleon in a relatively short time turned a hopeless situation into an almost winnable one.

That makes it seem as if Britain organized the entire thing behind the scenes and it wasn't a concerted effort by the Ancien Regime. I know that 'muh pefidy' is a popular meme 'round these parts but really, EVERYONE wanted Revolutionary France down. The very existence of such a regime, regardless of its borders, was intolerable. If it was tolerable, it's entirely possible Napoleon would never have risen to power in the first place.

>Rommel

Agreed. The pre-emptive strike that halted the coming invasion had great impact, but pressing on and on until defeated does not a military genius make. Plus props to Karl XI for fighting off the Danes, which is the only thing that really matters, though I think the Danes should get Skåne back.

Genghis organized the mongols to be the war machine they were. Memes aside, civilized peoples had been raping and destroying steppe horse archers on a daily basis. Only in times of political and social strife the steppe barbarians were able to take on them.

Rommel and Sherman have no business being on that list.

No Cyrus the Great?

How so? He was outnumbered and would be fucked anyway once Austrian and Russian troops arrived.

He outmaneuvered many other steppe warlords on the way there, all of whom had access to similar troops.
Genghis reorganized the Mongol way of warfare into the success story they became. Before him, the steppe nomads were nothing compared to other Asian armies.

You got them: Hannibal, Caesar and Alexander were great leaders. They were intelligent and didn't take stupid decisions like Napoleon did, they didn't suffer delusions of grandeur. Nobody is perfect and they couldn't predict everything and they didn't have power over everything.
But hey, if you want to keep sucking Napo's dick go ahead, I won't spoil your pleasure.

Regarding Skåne; it's interesting how zealous Karl X was in his quest to destroy Denmark. He didn't just seek to humiliate the danish king and conquer Skåne. His intention was to not only conquer Denmark, but to completely do away with the danish state and replace it with a number of administrative areas. His success would've been pretty likely had it not been for the dutch and their fear of a swedish tariff on the entrance to the Baltic Sea; they sent their navy to assist the danes and prevent a swedish crossing.

Though to be fair, even if he had won and ended Denmark as it was back then, it's not too likely that he'd done it without considerable opposition from the germans, dutch and perhaps even the english. Complete swedish control of who comes and goes in the baltic sea would've been bad news for anyone wishing to trade.

>and didn't take stupid decisions like Napoleon did
Such as? You could even argue that through his legal and political reforms Napoleon had a greater legacy than debatably Alexander and undebatably Hannibal. But please list those retarded decisions.
>Inb4 he declared war on everybody
He didn't.

>had it not been for the dutch
I now hate the Dutch

i didn't know that, thanks for the info

>Alexander
>didn't make stupid decisions
>not having delusions of grandeur
How about "let's go to India because I'm such a fucking hero and probably a demigod and not because of any actually strategic reason"? "I know, let's have our armies prance around all over the known world and expect them to remain loyal to my house instead of to the commanders they've served for years of unending warfare." Decades of gruesome civil wars were the legacy of Alexander's egomaniacal conquests.

He got a plethora of Nomadic Raiders who, until that point, were too busy raiding each other to make a real mark on the world to unite and conquer. More than that, he made a shitload of good decisions. One ofhis greatest Noyans (Generals) Jebe was an enemy who shot him in the neck in battle. When the fighting was done, and Temujin came on top, he demanded to know who had wounded him. Jebe revealed himself and the Khan recruited him to his army.

He also took a page from the Persians book and allowed the conquered people, for the most part, to govern themselves and keep their cultural practices/religion. He managed the Empire well and it lasted longer than Alexander's, which basically fell apart after he died.

He also did those Persian deals that Cyrus was known for (Surrender and join us, or refuse and perish). That said he really did keep his word on the "Refuse or Perish" front and is basically the reason that the Middle East went from one of the most advanced societies in the world to basically the stone age.

>Hannibal above Scipio
Are you aware of what happened during the second Punic War?

>basically the reason that the Middle East went from one of the most advanced societies in the world to basically the stone age.
Can't put that entirely on the Mongols. Their invasions and destruction of treasures like the library of Baghdad coincided with an anti-hellenist, anti-scientific movement within islam. This movement originated with the cleric Al-Ghazali who argued that hellenist philosophy, mathematics included, was the wrong course for islam and that its practice would not bring one closer to god at all (which means it was useless).

So really, it's more a case of losing the actual knowledge whilst at the same time losing the will to learn more. Like a school burning down, and no one being willing to rebuild it.

Scipio adopted Hannibals strategy and used them against him, achieving a narrow victory over him which may have in part been because Hannibals elephants ended up trampling his own cavalry? This isn't an X > Y therefore X is strictly superior to Y strategy. The fact that Scipio had to adopt Hannibal's strategies to defeat Hannibal is telling enough.

That, and Hannibal suffered from being Carthaginian and having allegiance to a republic that had no idea what it was doing outside of his own specific efforts, and Scipio did benefit from being Roman and having allegiance to a republic that casually shrugged off losing 20% of its fighting age men in a single day.

>Rommel
>above trash tier

>Sherman
>no Scott

>Richard
>no Slim

Where is Frederick the Great

>no nelson
This. Dude pioneered a totally new method of ship-to-ship combat when he cut the line.
>No Wellington
This is slightly more debatable as he was more or less a student of Napoleon. By his own admission he won Waterloo simply by studying accounts of all Napoleon's previous battles and then looking for patterns in thought process and tactics.

OP you also need to address the lack of Paratroopers on your list. Rommel didn't use them enough and they were one of the biggest advancements in combat in a while. Also get the fucking American off the list OP. I know you need a token one to make yourself feel better, but the fact of the matter is there isn't one to compare to the commanders you have up there.

Heard you guys talking about all-time greats without mentioning me, John Churchill, bane of the Sun King's armies, victor of every battle I ever commanded, sworn brother of Prince Eugene of Savoy, diplomat supreme, grandfather of the British Empire.

>Waaaaaah what's an America doing on the list!
I don't even need to be on a flag board to know what your flag is, stupid bong.

>the Duke of Wellington [...] could "conceive nothing greater than [John] Marlborough at the head of an English army"

>Hernan Cortes
>Using Firearms against literal stone-tool using savages
>Warlord
>As if there could be literally any other outcome than annihilation

Yeah ok OP sure

>going up against an entire empire with around 200 men, ridiculously outnumbered and using unreliable, inaccurate muskets in unfamiliar land and winning anyway
He deserves it

>No Subutai
>Genghis Khan's military strategist, right hand man, 'dog of war', and primary commander
>Conquered more land than any other commander in history
>Took China, Russia, and Central Europe
>Defeated Poland and Hungary's armies within two days of eachother
>Was about to raid the fucking Holy Roman Empire, until his Khan died and the army had to return home to elect a new one.
>One of the most successful commander in history

Get bent.

Not really. It's not difficult when the enemy tends to break in 2-3 volleys (let me remind you that with muskets, quantity has a quality all it's own) and is afraid of horses.

dude is literally doing the "cool face"

He kidnapped the enemy king before hostilities began, and relied on native uprisings to take care of the Aztecs on a military level, after which disease weakened all the local tribes to the point where he could easily take control with reinforced troops.

It's still an entire empire worth of people versus a ragtag alliance of some tribes that the empire was kicking around and 200 dudes from Spain. Any other person could have very easily fucked up and died.

Because Genghis did far more. Then again, Genghis and Napoleon both were greater leaders more than great commanders (although they were great commanders too), in that they were both meritocrats with an awesome eye for talent, which is what really let them rise to the heights that they did.

Well, it certainly didn't help to make those rivers run black with ink.

And? Is using underhanded means and not expending your resources also part of being a successful commander?

But we just pointed out that he never actually had to fight that Empire of people. He let them die of disease and fight amongst themselves and then swept in at the end to mop up the survivors that couldn't fight back because of the infighting, disease, and the fact that the Spaniards' technology was so completely above theirs that there was never any doubt about the outcome.

Cortez doesn't deserve to be on the list. He wasn't a brilliant military strategist he simply couldn't lose given the scenario.