War among Ancient Greeks
I think that this is a good time to address how war worked among the Ancient Greeks,
really worked, and the difficulties of fighting as a polis. It will better inform both the decision to go to war or not here, and military options in the future, as a
polis. It can also serve as an educational primer on
why things are the way they are, and why reforms or innovation are difficult. What I do not want to do is constantly be telling people no in a way that is not satisfactory. I would want my answers as to why something is not possible to be as comprehensible as why something is possible.
The first principle of Hellene Warfare in the classical period is that war is the province of male society. Male society is centered around the achievement of glory, wealth, and recognition, and all three are delivered in spades by war. Since war is the province of male society, in order to change how warfare is conducted, the society must be changed. The levies which Eretria Eskhata draws on are not from professional cavalry or professional infantry, but from smallholding farmers and large estate-owners. In a time where providing equipment to citizen-soldiers is very expensive when you already have to supply them and pay them campaign salaries (with campaign salaries being a recent innovation), the citizen-soldier provides their
own equipment, their
own horses. This also means that training for wartime is reflected through festivals; the Spartans were renowned as dancers in Hellas, but that is not just because they like dancing. The coordination required for dancing to a tune is also the coordination required for marching to a tune. Once again, the society and the military are
one, and so the society provides the basis of battlefield training. This is why steppe nomads are horse archers; the skills they use for horse archery are used every single day.
The second principle of Hellene Warfare is that cities are small. Many poleis have a few hundred citizens or less. There are only a few dozen poleis which have enough people to gain real power in the Mediterranean, and maintaining this manpower is
essential for their success. If warfare is the province of male society, then
loss in warfare is a loss to the entire society. In 494 BCE Sparta defeated Argos. Why was this defeat permanent, ending Argos' ability to contest Sparta for the Peloponnese? It was permanent because Argos lost 6,000 men. 6,000 members of its citizenry, 6,000 fathers, 6,000 sons and husbands and workers and tax-payers. The depth of this catastrophe preventing Argos from challenging Sparta again until 421 BCE, when it built a coalition with Athenai and other Peloponnesian states to overthrow Spartiate hegemony. What this means is that cities cannot absorb losses for very long. Wars either drag out without much happening for long periods of time, or are ended in massive battles that destroy the lives of an entire generation on one side or the other. From this we are better able to understand Rome's success; here too was a citizen militia, but a citizen militia that by the time of the punic wars could call on an effective manpower of 750,000 Romans and Allies. This was so far beyond the scope of any other Mediterranean power that Rome's success can become obvious in hindsight, but even this massive reserve has limits, and the Second Punic War wreaked havoc on Roman society by killing so many men.
The third principle of Hellene Warfare is that it is bloody. We have been told by some historians that battles had casualty rates of anywhere between 5-10% for the victor and 10-20% for the loser. That does not seem like much to us at first. But once we begin to think about what that adds up to over time, we begin to realize the real weight of battle. Those are 5-10% of your men you will
never get back. Those men could have been merchants, fathers, statesmen, heroes, speakers, but they are
dead. And if you are the loser, casualty rates can go even higher, especially if you do not have a cavalry or infantry screen to protect you. Contrary to some arguments, the Hellenes took great pleasure in slaughtering the enemy when they began to flee. Xenophon called it one of the greatest pleasures of battle. The Polis is therefore perilously fragile; a single battle, if it is spectacularly unlucky, can undo decades of work. War is a high-stakes battle where states put their entire society on the line. Do not expect to leave even victorious battles unscathed.
All of this amounts to the final principle of Hellene Warfare, which is to protect your own citizens and slaughter those of the enemy. This is not the same thing as winning a battle; the main goal of the main portion of the battle, the push and pull of the phalanx, is to achieve that decisive
break. Once the enemy is broken, the slaughter begins, and this is where there is a massive free-for-all in which men have their throats cut begging for mercy or are led into traps and cut down until the ground is sticky with blood. The goal of warfare is not just to achieve some strategic goal, or to win territory, but to make it so that the enemy cannot threaten you or your people ever again. If that means ensuring that you have created a desert called peace, so be it. It also means that innovation in warfare is discouraged in good reason; a bad innovation, or a foolish trick, can cost you
everything.
The inclusion of sacred or elite units somewhat changes this calculus, but also creates new risks. The
hieros ekdromoi and
Kleos Exoria are capable of manuevers, formations, and feats that other units are not, but they are also priceless. You cannot continually replace the best of your men; eventually you will run out of best men, and the city's elite units will become a shadow of their former selves. In a crisis or a total rout, furthermore, the enemy may particularly target your elite units, with the intention of breaking the spirit of your entire city. At the battle of Chaeronea Alexander attacked the Sacred Band of Thebai, the heroic and famed elite unit of the Thebans, and slaughtered them down to a man. If the city were to replace the
Kleos Exoria and
hieros ekdromoi with new men, the institutions might remain, but it will take years to get them back to the same level of ability as they once had.
What this Means for Game Mechanics
All of this is to say that in the past, Eretria has faced relatively easy odds. Even when it has not triumphed, there has been little mechanical impact beyond political chaos or humiliation. Now, things are far different. You can expect that a single victory in battle against the enemy could secure you hegemony. You can also expect, however, that losses will hit hard. Eretria has one of the largest reserves of freemen in the Greek World, but even it is not limitless in its capacity, and throwing away the lives of both your own citizens and those of your allies will eventually empty your city and leave it recovering for a generation. When confronting enemies of near-equal strength, or greater strength, it must always be approached with a sense of caution and awareness that there will be few second chances. Every war, every battle, has the potential for catastrophe. It is
strategy that prevents you from getting into a situation where you face a rout, and
tactics that can rescue you from a bad numerical or geographical position.
With that in mind, warfare will work like so. First, players will select from a number of
strategoi. All of these men have been serving with the city's council of generals for years, and can be trusted to be experienced in theory, though the years of peace means there are few among them who are true veterans. The
strategoi will have their character statistics displayed, as well as their general plans to the assembly on how they seek to win a war. The assembly will elect that
strategos that they feel has the best plan and the ability to enact it. The lead
strategos will then be in charge of composing armies, leading them, and appointing from the other
strategoi naval fleets or secondary armies. They will have overall command of the strategic vision of the city until such time that they are victorious, killed in battle, or recalled by the city due to some failure.
Battle will be composed of four phases, whose success is defined by rolls and modifiers. Modifiers will be
extremely powerful, representing that although there is an element of chance in all battles, there are also fundamental realities of numbers or ability that moderate the randomness of fortune. There is the
strategic phase. In this phase, armies will attempt to find a position advantageous to them and disadvantageous to the enemy. Light infantry, including both
psilloi and
allied skirmishers, as well as cavalry, are essential for this phase. Having superior cavalry and skirmishers in both numbers and skill will
significantly improve the chance that you do well in this phase, placing you in a better position at the battle's start. Generals with some experience with skirmishing or the cavalry will help. Having a good position will give you permanent modifiers for the rest of the battle. There is one roll here with dependent modifiers.
Next is the
skirmishing phase. In this phase, both armies' skirmishers and cavalry will attempt to drive the others from the field. Once again, this is where cavalry and skirmishers are king. Herodion the One-Eye was always best-known as a cavalry commander than as a leader of infantry, and his ability to win success in this phase was always unparalleled. The advantage of winning in this phase are three-fold. First, cavalry and skirmishers that are successful in this phase could flank the enemy, devastating their morale and cohesion. Second, if you win the battle, your cavalry and skirmishers have stripped away theirs and are able to slaughter their infantry with impunity, leading to massive casualties for the enemy forces that they might not recover from. Finally, if you lose the battle, your cavalry and skirmishers can screen and protect your infantry and reduce the number of casualties you take, allowing you to live to fight another day. There is one roll here with dependent modifiers.
Next is the
collision phase. The main determinants of this phase are the quality, formation, and numbers of infantry on both sides. The majority of your citizens on the field of battle will be participating in this phase, colliding with the enemy in a phalanx pushing match that could determine the course of the battle. This phase ends when one side or the other routs, breaking; it is during a rout that most of the casualties occur, as men are stabbed in the back or as they try to strip off their armor and flee. In a hoplite battle, the best fighters are concentrated on the right flank, with the very edge of the right flank as the most honorable position due to its exposure. Maintaining cohesion on both flanks is important, and so there will be two rolls, one for the left flank and one for the right, with the right more likely to be broken and the left more likely to break through against the enemy. Then there will be a final roll, modified by the state of the two flanks, to determine whether you are successful in the collision phase.
Finally, there is the
rout phase. This is the phase in which the true consequences of a battle will be played out, because once the enemy is broken your forces will begin to chase after them, and vice versa. If you are winning, your goal here is to leverage all of your success from prior phases (a good position, victory in skirmishing, victory in collision) in order to inflict as much slaughter and damage on the enemy as possible to ensure that this battle will be their last, and force them to make a crushing peace. If you are losing, your goal is to leverage any success in prior phases in order to protect and rescue as many of your citizens as possible from the impending slaughter. Doing so successfully here can be the difference between fighting another day and a humiliating peace. There is one roll here, dependent on modifiers from previous phases.
As you can tell, modifiers will begin to stack throughout a battle; winning each phase will make success in the next phase easier, until finally in the rout phase the only determinant is just how badly you inflict damage on the enemy. In the same way, losing each phase in succession will make things worse and worse and finally lead to a loss you cannot recover from. However, unless you are fighting truly powerful or impossible enemies, the reality is likely to fall somewhere in the middle, and Eretria Eskhata starts with several advantages over its neighbors, such as its loyal barbarian allies and its elite units which few in Italy or Sicily have yet emulated. But in the end it is Fortune and Victory who decide the outcome of war, and whether the city will see a triumphant return of its men or no return at all.
Examples of Modifiers
I won't spell out every single modifier involved in a battle, because although it isn't
that complicated I don't want to show all of my cards and make people think too mechanically about battles. That being said, there are a few modifiers which are fairly obvious, and are dependent on a comparison to the enemy:
- Numerical difference between components of both armies (How many more skirmishers do you have than them? How many more infantry?)
- Difference in quality between components of both armies (Is your cavalry better than theirs? Are you facing Spartan Hoplites who are generally known to be of a better quality due to their lifestyle?)
- Skill of the General in specific aspects of battle (Is this a courageous general who is willing to rally his men? Is he a cavalryman? How knowledgeable is he about terrain? Has he tried some crazy tactic?)
- Morale of the armies (Is this an army of mercenaries who have been swayed by the enemy to turn sides? Is there a specific humiliation or patriotic sentiment propelling one side to fight more desperately than the other? Is there significant civil strife which makes citizens less willing to shed blood for their city?)
- Phase modifiers (Did one army achieve a better position than the other? Did they win the skirmishing phase? Have one of their two flanks broken?)
Odds and Ends
Naval battles have similar rules but only three phases: Strategic phase, collision, and rout, with the strategic phase and collision being the most important. It is much easier for enemy fleets to withdraw from battle, so most casualties are concentrated during collision and the subsequent washing up of sailors on shore, and the strategic phase is far more important. Skill and quality of your fleets, as well as positioning, also matters far more than numbers in a naval battle.
The overall goal of this system is to still have the visceral and terrifying feeling that battles often had when the game first started without involving citizens in every aspect of the battle. There is a great deal of fear involved, because you are ultimately trusting an NPC to conduct your battle for you, but at the same time this is also where all the advantages, good (and bad) choices, and efforts of the players finally come to fruition through the modifiers. It makes for a terrifying ride, but it can also be a more satisfying one than the choice I had made after I realized battles were too much effort to do with maps and voted-upon-phases, when battles were merely described with some off-screen rolls. Here, players will be able to see the step-by-step of the battle unfolding (though doing visuals would be too crazy) and follow the army as it fights towards victory or defeat.
There will usually be only a single battle in a year, merely because that is what most
poleis can endure at this stage, and sometimes a single land or naval battle can win the entire war.
In the end, all of this may be summed up as:
Have fun and try not to die!
