Historical battle simulation

Of course, the idea to make a simulation of something as complicated as a battle is bold in the first place - a battle is no straightforward physics process that can be put into math and be computed, and even to extract the factors which determine its outcome is a daunting task. I do not claim to have solved this problem, but I will explain my reasoning for setting up the simulation in a certain way and list my sources in a series of background material articles linked below.

Game vs. simulation

• command: Games are usually set up in a way that the player has a top-down view on his units and can command them to do certain tasks as the virtual battle ranges. In many battles in ancient times this was most emphatically not the case. Greek phalanx warfare consisted mainly of marching units forward in a battle line till they hit the other line, then stab and slash till one line gives. Properly re-organizing after a local victory and exploiting the advantage was generally a hard task. So the simulation rather takes the view that for the most part units follow prior battle plans and the need to command them individually is an exception rather than the rule.

• movement: In round-based games, initiative usually dictates who moves first, so I've frequently see fast units dance nimbly along entire frontlines and exploit gaps in formations. Of course that has no connection with reality - first, units in actual contact with the enemy as a rule can not move at all, and second in reality other units do not wait for the fastest to finish its movement, they interfere.

• winning: In battle strategy games, one often wins by destroying other units. Reading about the history of warfare, that rarely seems to have been the actual definition - rather battles are fundamentally about control. One can win by taking and securing an important river crossing, even if the own losses are much higher than the enemy ones. So the simulation aims to provide a broader framework based on controlling movement of the enemy, shattering a units morale as well as inflicting actual damage.

Download

The tarball extracts into its own subfolder, the code is inside the src/ folder, the doc/ folder contains a manual, the config/ folder a few sample configuration files. A few tutorials on how to use the software are found below. There is no Linux executable provided.

Download Historical Battle Simulation V0.3

Tutorials

Background reading

And how am I competent to do these things?

Several relevant activities I know from first-hand experiences - I do archery and riding and I have some basic competence with a blade (both foil in modern sports fencing and longsword in the Liechtenauer tradition), I own Battle of Hastings type battle equipment and know how it feels to walk in that for a day. Since I learned Latin and Classical Greek at school, my picture of the Graeco-Roman period is mainly based on original writings.

I read a lot - a (non-exhaustive) list of literature I have used to gain an understanding of the topic of historical warfare is:

• A History of Warfare by Montgomery of Alamein
• Intelligence in War by John Keegan
• The Historical Atlas of Weaponry (Quantum Publishing)
• 100 Battles that Shaped the World (Parragon Books)
• The Art of War by Sun Tsu
• Verblüffende Siege von Hans-Dieter Otto
• A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry - a blog by Bret Devereaux
• Histories - articles by Konstantinos Manolakos

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