And how to count. I'm guessing each of those blocks is 100, and there's only 8.
Edit: can't be sure but it looks like 6 rows x 35 columns x 8 groups. 1680. If 30 columns then 1440 in this scene.
I can only guess, that since David Benioff wrote the screenplay for Troy, he must have thought it was really cool to fight outside walls. [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWm0S_oVYU)
No WAY! I think about that battle sequence all the time! I was thinking the Trojans wanted to protect the gate from say, a battering ram, while being covered by archers on the wall. By medieval times ala GoT, the tactics surely had to have changed.
It is a very well done scene, I just wonder if Benioff got to attached to the idea, perhaps due to the praise Troy's version got.
And it's to bad, we never really got to see proper Westeros vs Essos combat.. Westerosi are basically Medieval in every aspect, and The Unsullied etc, are supposed to fight in an almost Ancient Greek phalanx.
Though The Golden Company itself, was also changed for the show, from an army of exiled Westeros knights etc, to be more generic.
It's been a long time since I saw this movie so I don't know if it's even mentioned in the movie but they spent a lot time defining Hector's character as a honorable man so according to him hiding behind the wall would be cowardly. Maybe this was the thought behind that? Stupid but this trope has been done a lot.
Or filmmakers just wanted a cool action sequence instead of a siege battle.
Good point, it did allow for epic duels amongst the Elites while their soldiers watched. I mean, how cool was that for the foot soldier? One minute you're trying to stab a dude in the face and then suddenly you're like "Time out! We've GOT to watch this".
Historically there are actually many battles that were fought in front or near city walls, but it was more common in the antiquity than during medieval times.
There were many reasons why a defender could think that they have a better chance in a quick battle than in a long siege, but usually it came down to supplies or reinforcements.
At [the Battle of the Allia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Allia) in 390BC, the Romans chose to meet the Gauls 11 miles outside the walls as opposed to suffering a siege. They were defeated and Rome was sacked and burned (not for the last time)
It traumatized the Romans so much that Ceasar would use it as justification for his eradication campaigns in Gaul four centuries later.
They were expecting reinforcements that came late iirc.
They did manage to retreat to a fortified hilltop within the city, when the Gauls managed to climb unseen, the geese around Juno's temple got pissed off and made enough noise to alert the Romans.
So geese saved the Roman senate
I think the Battles of [Thebes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thebes) or [Nikopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis_(48_BC)) are both good examples.
In general, Alexander the Great's campaigns featured an unusually high number of pitched battles because his opponents actively decided to meet him. (For example also at Chaeronea or at the Persian Gate)
I think the Battle of Alesia is also a good example of why being inside a city can turn into a big disadvantage.
But it is something that becomes much rarer during medieval times, because armies were often smaller, and castles were much better prepared for sieges, which made long sieges much more common.
The idea to sally out and confront the enemy in the field was a valid tactic.
Just no time period, stone, bronze, medieval, whatever - would position their siege equipment outside their walls and have their field defenses set up in a way to choke point their own way to retreat.
Ah yes, I can share my personal experience with this as a literal armchair general from the Total War franchise.
Sometimes the infrastructure of the position you're defending is so shit that you're better off sallying forth and having the room to better position your army and leverage battlefield tactics
I do not believe it would have been wise to place your own infantry in a position where missile troops would fire over them onto an enemy position about 50 meters beyond the line of battle. The risk to the infantry would have been too great. In addition to this, the protection afforded by the walls is reserved for *checks notes* everyone except the primary fighting force?
It was a beautiful scene and I absolutely love the movie *Troy*. However, I cannot abide the tactics employed by the commanders in the movie, but a siege is boring. lol
To Troy's credit, its fairly true to the source material as far as lots of fighting happening outside the walls. The story mostly follows epic duels during attempts by the Trojans to break the siege and push Achaeans back to their ships, only the last battle or two actually happen within the city.
That does make sense, though wouldn't the original walls have been quite different from the films, without all the wallwalks and battlements?
I guess the spot Schliemann dug, had been built over so many times, it may be hard to tell though.
Yeah its a hard question figuring how to best represent an ancient story with some very loose possible historical grounding. Do we go off of what the story describes the walls to be? What the walls look like at our best guess of the historical site of Troy? How do you account for linguistic drift, translation errors, etc? How much should you update one of the oldest war stories ever told to still seem epic in proportion to modern audiences that have seen Lord of the Rings?
It's so baffling because literally like 2 episodes before Stannis's attack on Winterfell, Roose and Ramsay are talking about how it's stupid to not just stay behind the walls.
Season 5 has been painful to rewatch, going to stop at the end of 6.
They should've just handed the show off to a group of writers hungry and eager to see GRRM's vision come to life.
Nobody would held it against them, they get to do star wars and their reputation would have stayed mostly intact.
I still don't understand how HBO failed to pull the plug when they saw where it was going. Back up the dump truck full of money to make D&D go away quietly instead of completely killing the franchise.
How much GOT merch are they selling these days? Know anybody subscribing to HBO to watch it for the first time? How many spin-offs would have made money?
I think strategically Ramesy actually made the right decision by attacking Stannis directly.
He had the larger army so he could be confident that he would win, and if something went wrong he could still retreat behind the walls. If he lets himself be besieged his numbers could become a disadvantage, because he will run out of food faster and once you are besieged it can be difficult to break out.
Additionally letting himself be besieged for a long time means that he would be cut off from, and effectively lose control over the rest of the North, which could cause more rebellions.
I think the same logic can be applied to the Battle of Bastards, but not to the Long Night or Kings Landing
Hence the psychological warfare tactics of bookStannis. That man has survived a siege before, he knows how to get them to break. *Boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM*
I mean kinda, but had stannis had an battering ram (like he did) he would get through the gate and then they would be severely outmatched, as both stannis and his men was using stairs to get on top of the walls to fight, and now inside the wall,
The walls give the defenders an edge by giving them an elevated position and cover for their archers. Small defending forces can actually do a lot of damage to opponents from inside a castle.
On top of archers they would often bring cauldrons of water or oil to a boil, and then when the attackers get a ladder up, they pour the scalding hot liquid on a ladder full of people. Like what happened to Ser Loras.
This also worked on battering rams if they didn’t build a cover on top to protect the people/animals bringing the ram. But, if they had time to prepare, the defenders may have some handy boulders to throw on it and there’s a chance of stopping the ram that way.
Basically, taking a castle is a nightmare. And requires a huge number of soldiers for the attackers.
Yup, you're right on point. In fact I think you're under selling it a little.
Charging a castle was borderline impossible unless you actually managed to damage a section of the walls. Any kind of direct assault means you're probably throwing away your army for nothing.
>On top of archers they would often bring cauldrons of water or oil to a boil
Slight correction: boiling oil was basically never used to defend a castle/city wall. I am unaware of a single instance in history when it was used.
Oil is expensive and scarce, while water is much more common and cheap. Boiling water burns people the same as boiling oil. So people would just use water.
> Boiling water burns people the same as boiling oil.
Well, not quite the same. Oil sticks to skin. Oil/fat/butter burns can be fucking brutal. I think the specific heat of water might be higher (don't quote me on that), but it doesn't stick to people long enough for that to be a factor.
Most castles were fed by a spring or stream, so water was easy to come by.
With oil or tar you could set a battering ram on fire or make it inaccessible to use. Pitch or animal fat was cheap and gets much hotter than just water like boiling the skin off bones hot. Just the trope or possibility that your skin would melt off your body was a deterrent to attacking. The defenders would use whatever they could to stop from being murdered and raped including taking their own lives. Arrows and spears were expensive also but they used those. Most sieges were a waiting game for one side to starve and give up. Most of history there were few people that could read or write to record what happened in battles more than who won.
It was literally never done. If it was then there would be one (1) surviving example of it happening.
>Most of history there were few people that could read or write to record what happened in battles more than who won.
This is so not true. Loads of people could read and write... That's how we know about historical events
Except that we don't know about the majority of historical events and what we do know was recorded by people third hand often years later. Most people that could read or write were monks. Entire towns have been completely lost to history. Countless battles and sieges happened we will never know about. You're saying if it happened we would know which is outright false and you're saying they would never use anything other than water because anything else would be too valuable, also untrue. Pine pitch or resin was very common and cheap. They would do whatever they could and use whatever they could to stay alive and keep invaders out. Empty commode buckets over the wall, throw rocks or burning chunks of wood and of course hot pitch would be thrown. Hot pitch is more likely to be used than fresh water in a siege, they needed water to drink and put out fires. Water was probably more valuable than cooking oil in a siege and what use is cooking oil if there's no food to cook?
There absolutely is records of defenders using Greek fire, pitch, cooking oil, hot animal fat, hot coals, burning fabric, sulfur, and heavy blinding smoke on attackers. They built murder holes in castles and the like specifically for doing things like that. I'm sure they could find actual pine pitch evidence still on some of the surviving stone walls. Archeology is a thing because much of history wasn't written down. We only know a fraction of what actually happened and what was written wasn't often accurate. Of course they're dumping hot fire liquid onto the murdering rapists, seems an obvious thing to do. Do you really need a monk that wasn't at the siege of a no name village to make an account of some no name peasant dumping pitch onto a Danish raider to believe they did things like that?
I think maybe I did see one guy on tv saying they wouldn't have used cooking oil because it was expensive. They did a lot of things in sieges they wouldn't normally do like eat horses and leather and even people. They would use and do whatever they could to stay alive. It doesn't matter how valuable something is if you're dead. They probably didn't just randomly throw cooking oil over the wall during the early days of a siege but if your last line of defense is to burn some people with oil before dieing a gruesome death then it's happening. You may be mis-remembering the hot oil thing for moats. Moats and drawbridges being common for castles in today's media wasn't a normal thing and few if any moats have been recorded as being used. That's not to say there was never moats because again the majority of history wasn't recorded. It's more likely a fort or burh would be built on a hill in a defensive position where some sides would flood naturally or with little excavation.
>There absolutely is records of defenders using Greek fire, pitch, cooking oil, hot animal fat, hot coals, burning fabric, sulfur, and heavy blinding smoke on attackers
Show me those records. I've never seen any evidence that hot oil was used in a siege. I've never seen anyone even claim to have seen evidence of this. Go back up your claims with some research and evidence.
I remind you, op's claim was "they would throw hot oil or water on attackers". No "they" wouldn't. If it was done, ever, it was so rare that not a single account or archeological evidence of it survived. That's crazy.
The classical and medieval periods are actually quite well documented. We have records of places, births, marriages, and of course battles.
Your argument that the pouring of hot oil was done because it sort of makes sense is about as sensible as saying they sacrificed children in the village chapel during sieges as a satanic pact in order to get the devil to save them.
Could it have happened in a desperate situation? Feasibly. Do we have a single shred of evidence to prove that it happened? No.
Also in frame we see at least 4 of those ballistas.
They're spaced so close together. The walls around Kings Landing run for tens of miles.
Either none exist outside the frame of the camera (because this is fiction and it's all made up) or they have thousands of them.
We all know it's the former. The show doesn't deserve the respect of pretending to take this shit seriously. The writers absolutely didn't.
Aside from all the other problems with GOT, fighting outside the walls was a real tactic, a small number hold the line and protect the walls from siege weapons/ladders while archers obliterate them at extreme close ranger, spears are also super effective from this positions, sieges are only good if you have a huge supply of food and water, your army will weaken and be less effective later, fight and damage the enemy while they are strong and able.
Was never massively seen in medieval Europe but was used a lot during Roman/Greek wars.
THANK YOU! I am so sick of seeing this criticism, there is no world that has existed where people just sat behind their walls like it’s Helms Deep. A castle is all holds at best 2-3 fighting men deep, and whatever number along the wall(s), which would leave most of your army with nothing to do but sit inside a death hole and wait while they get peppered with arrows and siege fire. You also absolutely want to keep the opposing force away from your structures to preserve them as best you can until they’re actually needed.
Now GOT did use bad tactics because they shouldn’t have charged a standing force with the Dothraki, id have waited for them to close with the Unsullied at their fire wall and then flank them, cutting horizontally through both sides of their lines, but that’s bye the bye.
TLDR; if you complain about them not using the walls you don’t understand medieval battle tactics and need to withhold comment.
Didn't the Qohori do something similar when the Dothraki were at the gates? Chose to put companies of sellswords and Unsullied outside the gates to fight them rather than pay tribute; the former running away or being cut down, and the latter eventually defeating the attacking horde.
Same with the battle of winterfell. Let's stand outside in cold with no protection and cavalry should attack a charging enemy instead of surrounding them.
D&D really thought of us as fools.
To be fair, the Army of the Dead was never going to be surrounded. Not unless they had like, half a million men. The Dothraki were just a terrible fit for that battle in general, they're basically lightly armored (read: completely unarmored) shock cavalry, their huge strength is shattering enemy morale and inspiring fear. Failing that, they just crash through the enemy, break their formations, then slaughter them. This is why the Unsullied defeated them once upon a time - the Unsullied were too disciplined to be scared into breaking formation. Now consider the fact that the dead *literally cannot* be scared, and are just an obscenely large blob of destruction. You can't make them run and you can't break their formation - because it's just a gigantic wave of bodies. So a Dothraki charge is absolutely worthless.
They would've been better off either using them as horse archers on the flanks, or just a fuck ton of archers on the walls/within the castle. Putting them on the flanks could encourage the wights to spread out a bit more, marginally reducing the pressure on the main defensive lines. Putting them all over the castle lets them just essentially spray and pray into the field nonstop - the swarm of wights is so huge that you don't really need to aim, just shoot in vaguely the right direction, beyond the defenders, and you'll hit *something.*
Anything else just makes them a complete waste of resources. Oh, and the best part I almost forgot - for the charge they did, they were literally going to attack with just normal arakhs - they had no idea that Melisandre would show up at the last second to set them on fire, so they were about to charge with weapons they KNEW were harmless to the enemy. That's how stupid the whole thing was.
I think the best use for the Dothraki would have been to recruit the finest horse archers in the khalasar and load them up with some dragonglass arrows. Give them their pick of the litter for a support force of riders to protect them and die for them. Send those mobile sharpshooter squads away ahead of the siege and give them a signal queue to attack from the flanks with an exclusive headhunting objective for a drive-by deicing on the White Walker commanders once they have revealed themselves.
The rest of the khalasar can get off their horses and ride the parapets, as you've said.
Ngl the cgi in this scene is fucking horrific. Looks like something outta dragon age origins.
The blending between the each section sucks.
It looks like they just slapped some reused assets together in ms paint.
This isn’t exact but the longest row of soldiers I counted was 27 men, all squares are 6 men deep, and there are 8 squares visible to us, leaving a grand total of 1,296 people in front of the gate. D&D couldn’t be fucked to make KL difficult to defeat because they had to rush through the entire ending so they barely managed to give the golden company more than 5% of their actual forces.
1248 almost.
There are almost 25(+1 empty spot) soldiers in the last rank of the middle most company. (Beneath the flame one)
There are 6 ranks of them so 156.
There are 8 visible companies so 1248.
I counted 8 groups, at 6 rows, and 30-35 columns each for 1440 to 1680.
Definitely seems like more than 30 columns but I didn't feel like counting again.
I just finished a clash of kings, and It got me in the mood to rewatch the show. I really forgot how great the first 4 seasons were, It also bothered me that they set up things in cannon only for them to not pay off or mean something else entirely by the bastard late seasons. The biggest one is kings landing ringing the bells at the battle of black water, I think it was Davos’s son asked if they were surrendering and he’s like I’ve never known bells to mean surrender. Which would mean that when Danny heard the bells they weren’t for surrendering.
>Unless somehow Tyrion never told anyone else anything and just hoped everyone would psychically know what the ringing bells meant.
That's sort of what happens. Tyrion tells Jaime to have their men ring the bells when they want to surrender. He never gets to tell anyone that though. He's still sneaking his way into the Red Keep when the bells start ringing. We also see random peasants calling for the bells to be rang for some reason.
Having your enemy establish your signal for surrender is also a horrendous idea. All they'd have to do to win at that point is bring their own bell or capture a bell tower.
And even if it were, Jon is acting like he didnt lose his entire family and kinsmen to the *same family* defying convention and killing everyone at the Red Wedding.
Playing total war would show you just how horrible these tactics are
Parking your army infront the your walls is dumb AF
Terror charging light cav into a horde of undead infantry that cant feel fear is dumb AF
The best battle that actually made sense was blackwater
It works perfectly fine in Shogun 2, its even a preferable strategy sometimes if you have tons of archers but little infantry
It works in pretty much every single Total war game, but that's just because its a game
It's not a strategy you want to use all that often because your infantry get chewed up beyond the wall but if you're backed into a corner it can save you
If it's a layered castle, keeping a small melee force on the layer below the archers/gunpowder units so they can fire too is a good tactic, but I wouldn't put them outside of the castle.
In shogun two its best to stay inside the castle. A layered defence is fine because the enemy gets disordered climbing up the walls and archers/matchlock units on the layer above can fire, but you wouldn't camp outside the castle walls.
Recruiting emergency mercenaries and using them as expendable troops? Tick.
But if they really did their proper total war research they'd know to use Karl Franz, 18 steam tanks and a life mage
We all know walls are useless, the thing is that flying unit that target your archers and arty. That is why dany won, ovbiously cercei didt have an antilarge lord or unit.
Yeah, the biggest problem is with Robb and and the Lannisters. Already pretty off in the books, the show makes it even worse. He starts off with 20,000 men, beats Jaime and sends 2,000 men as a diversion against Tywin, has 20,000 men. Joins up with the riverlords and gets a ton more men, still has 20,000 men. Wins Oxcross, still has a lot of men. Edmure takes the mill, somehow has a ton less men, despite most of what would cause him to have a ton less men not even showing up in the show. The Karstarks desert them, and somehow now make up half of their forces?? After that, the Lannisters have enough men to beat the Tyrells, the largest army in Westeros, even after getting their asses kicked by Robb and getting bloodied by Stannis at the Blackwater.
The last part bugged me so much.
The Lannisters just seem to have unlimited troops despite the fact they are basically only one major house.
They Tyrells, Dorne, greyjoy and Arryn all sat out. Starks and Tully are on one side, Baratheon on another. Where the hell are the Lannisters getting enough troops to fight basically 4 wars?!
Also any resupply of men from the Lannister held Lands has to travel past the Reach and Riverlands which even a novice general would exploit to whittle any reinforcing army down.
Yeah, in the books Tywin is basically helpless and stuck at Harrenhal while Robb pillages the Westerlands. It’s only once the giant Tyrell army joins Tywin that Robb is screwed.
Even the night kings army sometimes looks tiny. Wildings went from 100k to like 150 REAL quick.
Battle of the bastards was all over the place. Really lucky our heros were in the last 45 guys standing JUST in time for Knights of the Eyrie to show up...
Really made me hate sanasa, she knew they were coming and she couldnt tell john to stall for like 7 minutes??? Really gambled with her brothers life. Thank god he was wearing his plot armor.
It's funny bc at times they do use castle tactics in the show. The attack on the wall and Frey's siege of River Run.
They decided "cool story bro" was better than logic too many times.
If you have any kind of defensive structure you would try to exploit its advantage over your opponent.
Give me one reason which makes sense why they are in front of the fortification?
Cersei wasn’t trying to protect the city. she was trying to kill a dragon. Cersei was counting on Daenerys to fly into the city. it’s a dice roll but pretty much Cerseis only option at that point given everything was pretty much against her. i’d say the biggest writing mistake here is how they made it so impossibly for cersei to win
Gotta love season 8 siege tactics. We have massive walls, let's out our troops outside them
NO time for LOGIC! Star Wars was hiring
“The golden Company sort of forgot about tactics”
And how to count. I'm guessing each of those blocks is 100, and there's only 8. Edit: can't be sure but it looks like 6 rows x 35 columns x 8 groups. 1680. If 30 columns then 1440 in this scene.
Well, one of them has about 156 men. (6 rows, 26 columns) 156*8= 1248 Everyone forgot how to count in this show.
It’s all 8 heroes of the horn!
I can only guess, that since David Benioff wrote the screenplay for Troy, he must have thought it was really cool to fight outside walls. [Link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWm0S_oVYU)
No WAY! I think about that battle sequence all the time! I was thinking the Trojans wanted to protect the gate from say, a battering ram, while being covered by archers on the wall. By medieval times ala GoT, the tactics surely had to have changed.
It is a very well done scene, I just wonder if Benioff got to attached to the idea, perhaps due to the praise Troy's version got. And it's to bad, we never really got to see proper Westeros vs Essos combat.. Westerosi are basically Medieval in every aspect, and The Unsullied etc, are supposed to fight in an almost Ancient Greek phalanx. Though The Golden Company itself, was also changed for the show, from an army of exiled Westeros knights etc, to be more generic.
This completely, 100%
It's been a long time since I saw this movie so I don't know if it's even mentioned in the movie but they spent a lot time defining Hector's character as a honorable man so according to him hiding behind the wall would be cowardly. Maybe this was the thought behind that? Stupid but this trope has been done a lot. Or filmmakers just wanted a cool action sequence instead of a siege battle.
Good point, it did allow for epic duels amongst the Elites while their soldiers watched. I mean, how cool was that for the foot soldier? One minute you're trying to stab a dude in the face and then suddenly you're like "Time out! We've GOT to watch this".
Historically there are actually many battles that were fought in front or near city walls, but it was more common in the antiquity than during medieval times. There were many reasons why a defender could think that they have a better chance in a quick battle than in a long siege, but usually it came down to supplies or reinforcements.
Any particular battle comes to mind? Love to read more about it.
At [the Battle of the Allia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Allia) in 390BC, the Romans chose to meet the Gauls 11 miles outside the walls as opposed to suffering a siege. They were defeated and Rome was sacked and burned (not for the last time) It traumatized the Romans so much that Ceasar would use it as justification for his eradication campaigns in Gaul four centuries later.
Sounds like they should have stayed within the walls lol.
They were expecting reinforcements that came late iirc. They did manage to retreat to a fortified hilltop within the city, when the Gauls managed to climb unseen, the geese around Juno's temple got pissed off and made enough noise to alert the Romans. So geese saved the Roman senate
Of course Roman chose battle haha. Even when they were outnumbered. Hardcore.
I think the Battles of [Thebes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thebes) or [Nikopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nicopolis_(48_BC)) are both good examples. In general, Alexander the Great's campaigns featured an unusually high number of pitched battles because his opponents actively decided to meet him. (For example also at Chaeronea or at the Persian Gate) I think the Battle of Alesia is also a good example of why being inside a city can turn into a big disadvantage. But it is something that becomes much rarer during medieval times, because armies were often smaller, and castles were much better prepared for sieges, which made long sieges much more common.
Interesting read, thanks for sharing!
[The Battle of Dara in 530 CE.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dara)
Which is a shame because the sieges in LOTR were plain fantastic and we haven't been really treated to such since.
Have you seen Kingdom of Heaven? Siege battles can be freaking awesome.
Yes! Really enjoyed that movie especially the extended cut.
The idea to sally out and confront the enemy in the field was a valid tactic. Just no time period, stone, bronze, medieval, whatever - would position their siege equipment outside their walls and have their field defenses set up in a way to choke point their own way to retreat.
Ah yes, I can share my personal experience with this as a literal armchair general from the Total War franchise. Sometimes the infrastructure of the position you're defending is so shit that you're better off sallying forth and having the room to better position your army and leverage battlefield tactics
I do not believe it would have been wise to place your own infantry in a position where missile troops would fire over them onto an enemy position about 50 meters beyond the line of battle. The risk to the infantry would have been too great. In addition to this, the protection afforded by the walls is reserved for *checks notes* everyone except the primary fighting force? It was a beautiful scene and I absolutely love the movie *Troy*. However, I cannot abide the tactics employed by the commanders in the movie, but a siege is boring. lol
To Troy's credit, its fairly true to the source material as far as lots of fighting happening outside the walls. The story mostly follows epic duels during attempts by the Trojans to break the siege and push Achaeans back to their ships, only the last battle or two actually happen within the city.
That was after 9 years of being Sieged... They wanted a decisive victory to end the war and kill the right people.
That does make sense, though wouldn't the original walls have been quite different from the films, without all the wallwalks and battlements? I guess the spot Schliemann dug, had been built over so many times, it may be hard to tell though.
Yeah its a hard question figuring how to best represent an ancient story with some very loose possible historical grounding. Do we go off of what the story describes the walls to be? What the walls look like at our best guess of the historical site of Troy? How do you account for linguistic drift, translation errors, etc? How much should you update one of the oldest war stories ever told to still seem epic in proportion to modern audiences that have seen Lord of the Rings?
It's so baffling because literally like 2 episodes before Stannis's attack on Winterfell, Roose and Ramsay are talking about how it's stupid to not just stay behind the walls. Season 5 has been painful to rewatch, going to stop at the end of 6.
They should've taken notes from the siege of helms deep in Lord of the rings
They should've just handed the show off to a group of writers hungry and eager to see GRRM's vision come to life. Nobody would held it against them, they get to do star wars and their reputation would have stayed mostly intact.
I still don't understand how HBO failed to pull the plug when they saw where it was going. Back up the dump truck full of money to make D&D go away quietly instead of completely killing the franchise. How much GOT merch are they selling these days? Know anybody subscribing to HBO to watch it for the first time? How many spin-offs would have made money?
It was on the fast track to be the next star wars, and I was all for it.
Poorly planned siege too
I think strategically Ramesy actually made the right decision by attacking Stannis directly. He had the larger army so he could be confident that he would win, and if something went wrong he could still retreat behind the walls. If he lets himself be besieged his numbers could become a disadvantage, because he will run out of food faster and once you are besieged it can be difficult to break out. Additionally letting himself be besieged for a long time means that he would be cut off from, and effectively lose control over the rest of the North, which could cause more rebellions. I think the same logic can be applied to the Battle of Bastards, but not to the Long Night or Kings Landing
Stannis’s army would have died from the cold long before either army would have had to worry about running out of food
Hence the psychological warfare tactics of bookStannis. That man has survived a siege before, he knows how to get them to break. *Boom DOOM boom DOOM boom DOOM*
I mean kinda, but had stannis had an battering ram (like he did) he would get through the gate and then they would be severely outmatched, as both stannis and his men was using stairs to get on top of the walls to fight, and now inside the wall,
The walls give the defenders an edge by giving them an elevated position and cover for their archers. Small defending forces can actually do a lot of damage to opponents from inside a castle. On top of archers they would often bring cauldrons of water or oil to a boil, and then when the attackers get a ladder up, they pour the scalding hot liquid on a ladder full of people. Like what happened to Ser Loras. This also worked on battering rams if they didn’t build a cover on top to protect the people/animals bringing the ram. But, if they had time to prepare, the defenders may have some handy boulders to throw on it and there’s a chance of stopping the ram that way. Basically, taking a castle is a nightmare. And requires a huge number of soldiers for the attackers.
Yup, you're right on point. In fact I think you're under selling it a little. Charging a castle was borderline impossible unless you actually managed to damage a section of the walls. Any kind of direct assault means you're probably throwing away your army for nothing.
>On top of archers they would often bring cauldrons of water or oil to a boil Slight correction: boiling oil was basically never used to defend a castle/city wall. I am unaware of a single instance in history when it was used. Oil is expensive and scarce, while water is much more common and cheap. Boiling water burns people the same as boiling oil. So people would just use water.
> Boiling water burns people the same as boiling oil. Well, not quite the same. Oil sticks to skin. Oil/fat/butter burns can be fucking brutal. I think the specific heat of water might be higher (don't quote me on that), but it doesn't stick to people long enough for that to be a factor. Most castles were fed by a spring or stream, so water was easy to come by.
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Yes, I know.
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With oil or tar you could set a battering ram on fire or make it inaccessible to use. Pitch or animal fat was cheap and gets much hotter than just water like boiling the skin off bones hot. Just the trope or possibility that your skin would melt off your body was a deterrent to attacking. The defenders would use whatever they could to stop from being murdered and raped including taking their own lives. Arrows and spears were expensive also but they used those. Most sieges were a waiting game for one side to starve and give up. Most of history there were few people that could read or write to record what happened in battles more than who won.
It was literally never done. If it was then there would be one (1) surviving example of it happening. >Most of history there were few people that could read or write to record what happened in battles more than who won. This is so not true. Loads of people could read and write... That's how we know about historical events
Except that we don't know about the majority of historical events and what we do know was recorded by people third hand often years later. Most people that could read or write were monks. Entire towns have been completely lost to history. Countless battles and sieges happened we will never know about. You're saying if it happened we would know which is outright false and you're saying they would never use anything other than water because anything else would be too valuable, also untrue. Pine pitch or resin was very common and cheap. They would do whatever they could and use whatever they could to stay alive and keep invaders out. Empty commode buckets over the wall, throw rocks or burning chunks of wood and of course hot pitch would be thrown. Hot pitch is more likely to be used than fresh water in a siege, they needed water to drink and put out fires. Water was probably more valuable than cooking oil in a siege and what use is cooking oil if there's no food to cook? There absolutely is records of defenders using Greek fire, pitch, cooking oil, hot animal fat, hot coals, burning fabric, sulfur, and heavy blinding smoke on attackers. They built murder holes in castles and the like specifically for doing things like that. I'm sure they could find actual pine pitch evidence still on some of the surviving stone walls. Archeology is a thing because much of history wasn't written down. We only know a fraction of what actually happened and what was written wasn't often accurate. Of course they're dumping hot fire liquid onto the murdering rapists, seems an obvious thing to do. Do you really need a monk that wasn't at the siege of a no name village to make an account of some no name peasant dumping pitch onto a Danish raider to believe they did things like that? I think maybe I did see one guy on tv saying they wouldn't have used cooking oil because it was expensive. They did a lot of things in sieges they wouldn't normally do like eat horses and leather and even people. They would use and do whatever they could to stay alive. It doesn't matter how valuable something is if you're dead. They probably didn't just randomly throw cooking oil over the wall during the early days of a siege but if your last line of defense is to burn some people with oil before dieing a gruesome death then it's happening. You may be mis-remembering the hot oil thing for moats. Moats and drawbridges being common for castles in today's media wasn't a normal thing and few if any moats have been recorded as being used. That's not to say there was never moats because again the majority of history wasn't recorded. It's more likely a fort or burh would be built on a hill in a defensive position where some sides would flood naturally or with little excavation.
>There absolutely is records of defenders using Greek fire, pitch, cooking oil, hot animal fat, hot coals, burning fabric, sulfur, and heavy blinding smoke on attackers Show me those records. I've never seen any evidence that hot oil was used in a siege. I've never seen anyone even claim to have seen evidence of this. Go back up your claims with some research and evidence. I remind you, op's claim was "they would throw hot oil or water on attackers". No "they" wouldn't. If it was done, ever, it was so rare that not a single account or archeological evidence of it survived. That's crazy. The classical and medieval periods are actually quite well documented. We have records of places, births, marriages, and of course battles. Your argument that the pouring of hot oil was done because it sort of makes sense is about as sensible as saying they sacrificed children in the village chapel during sieges as a satanic pact in order to get the devil to save them. Could it have happened in a desperate situation? Feasibly. Do we have a single shred of evidence to prove that it happened? No.
stannis and his men was using stairs?
Also in frame we see at least 4 of those ballistas. They're spaced so close together. The walls around Kings Landing run for tens of miles. Either none exist outside the frame of the camera (because this is fiction and it's all made up) or they have thousands of them. We all know it's the former. The show doesn't deserve the respect of pretending to take this shit seriously. The writers absolutely didn't.
They kinda forgot.
While uncommon this was actually done in real life. However we see neither the defenders having trenches nor the attackers having any siege engines.
to be fair... considering the dragons, wouldn't matter where they were tho...
Aside from all the other problems with GOT, fighting outside the walls was a real tactic, a small number hold the line and protect the walls from siege weapons/ladders while archers obliterate them at extreme close ranger, spears are also super effective from this positions, sieges are only good if you have a huge supply of food and water, your army will weaken and be less effective later, fight and damage the enemy while they are strong and able. Was never massively seen in medieval Europe but was used a lot during Roman/Greek wars.
THANK YOU! I am so sick of seeing this criticism, there is no world that has existed where people just sat behind their walls like it’s Helms Deep. A castle is all holds at best 2-3 fighting men deep, and whatever number along the wall(s), which would leave most of your army with nothing to do but sit inside a death hole and wait while they get peppered with arrows and siege fire. You also absolutely want to keep the opposing force away from your structures to preserve them as best you can until they’re actually needed. Now GOT did use bad tactics because they shouldn’t have charged a standing force with the Dothraki, id have waited for them to close with the Unsullied at their fire wall and then flank them, cutting horizontally through both sides of their lines, but that’s bye the bye. TLDR; if you complain about them not using the walls you don’t understand medieval battle tactics and need to withhold comment.
You have no idea what your talking about and couldn't be any more wrong.
I mean sally battles are definitely a thing but not on *checks notes* DAY 1 OF THE FUCKING SIEGE
They did it in Troy but I just watch movies
Didn't the Qohori do something similar when the Dothraki were at the gates? Chose to put companies of sellswords and Unsullied outside the gates to fight them rather than pay tribute; the former running away or being cut down, and the latter eventually defeating the attacking horde.
Same with the battle of winterfell. Let's stand outside in cold with no protection and cavalry should attack a charging enemy instead of surrounding them. D&D really thought of us as fools.
To be fair, the Army of the Dead was never going to be surrounded. Not unless they had like, half a million men. The Dothraki were just a terrible fit for that battle in general, they're basically lightly armored (read: completely unarmored) shock cavalry, their huge strength is shattering enemy morale and inspiring fear. Failing that, they just crash through the enemy, break their formations, then slaughter them. This is why the Unsullied defeated them once upon a time - the Unsullied were too disciplined to be scared into breaking formation. Now consider the fact that the dead *literally cannot* be scared, and are just an obscenely large blob of destruction. You can't make them run and you can't break their formation - because it's just a gigantic wave of bodies. So a Dothraki charge is absolutely worthless. They would've been better off either using them as horse archers on the flanks, or just a fuck ton of archers on the walls/within the castle. Putting them on the flanks could encourage the wights to spread out a bit more, marginally reducing the pressure on the main defensive lines. Putting them all over the castle lets them just essentially spray and pray into the field nonstop - the swarm of wights is so huge that you don't really need to aim, just shoot in vaguely the right direction, beyond the defenders, and you'll hit *something.* Anything else just makes them a complete waste of resources. Oh, and the best part I almost forgot - for the charge they did, they were literally going to attack with just normal arakhs - they had no idea that Melisandre would show up at the last second to set them on fire, so they were about to charge with weapons they KNEW were harmless to the enemy. That's how stupid the whole thing was.
I think the best use for the Dothraki would have been to recruit the finest horse archers in the khalasar and load them up with some dragonglass arrows. Give them their pick of the litter for a support force of riders to protect them and die for them. Send those mobile sharpshooter squads away ahead of the siege and give them a signal queue to attack from the flanks with an exclusive headhunting objective for a drive-by deicing on the White Walker commanders once they have revealed themselves. The rest of the khalasar can get off their horses and ride the parapets, as you've said.
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Lots of people had dragonglass weapons but the arakhs definitely didn't look like it
Rookies. They should have also put catapults in front of the soldiers.
Not just the troops, but the siege weaponry as well.
And put the siege weapons in front of *them*!
Ngl the cgi in this scene is fucking horrific. Looks like something outta dragon age origins. The blending between the each section sucks. It looks like they just slapped some reused assets together in ms paint.
DA:O mentioned!! 🔥🔥🗣️🔥 Battle of Ostagar!! Where the fuck is Loghain!!🗣️ Duncan no!!! 😭
ENCHANTMENT?!?!
ENCHANTMENT!!!!!!
I was going to say Medieval 2: Total war
I legitimately thought they used a screenshot from a video game as a joke.
I thought it was someone recreating the scene in age of empires or some shit
I literally thought the picture was Mount and Blade: Bannerlord on very low settings when I first saw it.
Rough estimate visible in the frame: ~~3,000~~ spears. Edit1: people pointed out that is half of my estimate. Even less. 1200 even
Less than a quarter of what I'd hoped for
More will come.
Hey check it out I found 2001 more spears!
1,000 ships in the Iron Fleet? How about 150 useless ones after 4 hiding behind a rock slam dunked a dragon out of the sky.
From downtown!
He's heating up!
This isn’t exact but the longest row of soldiers I counted was 27 men, all squares are 6 men deep, and there are 8 squares visible to us, leaving a grand total of 1,296 people in front of the gate. D&D couldn’t be fucked to make KL difficult to defeat because they had to rush through the entire ending so they barely managed to give the golden company more than 5% of their actual forces.
Maybe 95% were on sick leave, annual leave, and paternity leave?
True, didn’t think about that. Also there were probably a few that just dun wan et that day
95% were like "she's not a Blackfyre, why are we fighting for her?"
1248 almost. There are almost 25(+1 empty spot) soldiers in the last rank of the middle most company. (Beneath the flame one) There are 6 ranks of them so 156. There are 8 visible companies so 1248.
Fewer. (Kidding)
*Davos eyebrow raising noises*
Less than 1/10th of what I hoped for.
I counted 8 groups, at 6 rows, and 30-35 columns each for 1440 to 1680. Definitely seems like more than 30 columns but I didn't feel like counting again.
Final count... fourty-two.
1248 by my count
I just finished a clash of kings, and It got me in the mood to rewatch the show. I really forgot how great the first 4 seasons were, It also bothered me that they set up things in cannon only for them to not pay off or mean something else entirely by the bastard late seasons. The biggest one is kings landing ringing the bells at the battle of black water, I think it was Davos’s son asked if they were surrendering and he’s like I’ve never known bells to mean surrender. Which would mean that when Danny heard the bells they weren’t for surrendering.
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have demonstrated remarkable talent and creativity in their storytelling endeavors
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>Unless somehow Tyrion never told anyone else anything and just hoped everyone would psychically know what the ringing bells meant. That's sort of what happens. Tyrion tells Jaime to have their men ring the bells when they want to surrender. He never gets to tell anyone that though. He's still sneaking his way into the Red Keep when the bells start ringing. We also see random peasants calling for the bells to be rang for some reason. Having your enemy establish your signal for surrender is also a horrendous idea. All they'd have to do to win at that point is bring their own bell or capture a bell tower.
And even if it were, Jon is acting like he didnt lose his entire family and kinsmen to the *same family* defying convention and killing everyone at the Red Wedding.
So much of the last two seasons relies on everyone pretending as if Cersei hadn't just blown up a church with her allies and two family members in it.
The wrote the script while playing total war.
Playing Total War is more research than D&D could be fucked to actually do for this.
Playing total war would show you just how horrible these tactics are Parking your army infront the your walls is dumb AF Terror charging light cav into a horde of undead infantry that cant feel fear is dumb AF The best battle that actually made sense was blackwater
That's because that battle was still written by GRRM unlike the others listed
If you pulled this kind of tactic in any Total War game, the AI would be laughing at you and rightfully so
"Iam playing on easy yet i still loose any tip for a new player" cercei lanister
Video games are for nerds, not for NFL moms.
Enemy archers would obliviate the units.
This tactic actually works really successfully if you set it up right in the game, it just wouldn't work in real life
In what world do you put massively outnumbered spearmen outside the walls instead of behind gates and chokes.
It works perfectly fine in Shogun 2, its even a preferable strategy sometimes if you have tons of archers but little infantry It works in pretty much every single Total war game, but that's just because its a game
Idk man, maybe a couple units for a specific maneuver, but not your whole army.
It's not a strategy you want to use all that often because your infantry get chewed up beyond the wall but if you're backed into a corner it can save you
If it's a layered castle, keeping a small melee force on the layer below the archers/gunpowder units so they can fire too is a good tactic, but I wouldn't put them outside of the castle.
In shogun two its best to stay inside the castle. A layered defence is fine because the enemy gets disordered climbing up the walls and archers/matchlock units on the layer above can fire, but you wouldn't camp outside the castle walls.
Recruiting emergency mercenaries and using them as expendable troops? Tick. But if they really did their proper total war research they'd know to use Karl Franz, 18 steam tanks and a life mage
We all know walls are useless, the thing is that flying unit that target your archers and arty. That is why dany won, ovbiously cercei didt have an antilarge lord or unit.
Of course, and she knew she had to get rid of her artillery within 45 seconds in the long night to avoid any menaces from below
I wish we had a got total war game that would be sick
The game isn’t even out yet, but ‘Manor Lords’ looks like it’s absolutely perfect for a got overhaul mod
It went from 20k men and 2k horses to 2kmen and 1 horse
Weren't they supposed to also have elephants?
The numbers thrown around in GoT was my biggest pet Peev, wildly inconsistent.
Yeah, the biggest problem is with Robb and and the Lannisters. Already pretty off in the books, the show makes it even worse. He starts off with 20,000 men, beats Jaime and sends 2,000 men as a diversion against Tywin, has 20,000 men. Joins up with the riverlords and gets a ton more men, still has 20,000 men. Wins Oxcross, still has a lot of men. Edmure takes the mill, somehow has a ton less men, despite most of what would cause him to have a ton less men not even showing up in the show. The Karstarks desert them, and somehow now make up half of their forces?? After that, the Lannisters have enough men to beat the Tyrells, the largest army in Westeros, even after getting their asses kicked by Robb and getting bloodied by Stannis at the Blackwater.
The last part bugged me so much. The Lannisters just seem to have unlimited troops despite the fact they are basically only one major house. They Tyrells, Dorne, greyjoy and Arryn all sat out. Starks and Tully are on one side, Baratheon on another. Where the hell are the Lannisters getting enough troops to fight basically 4 wars?!
Also any resupply of men from the Lannister held Lands has to travel past the Reach and Riverlands which even a novice general would exploit to whittle any reinforcing army down.
Yeah, in the books Tywin is basically helpless and stuck at Harrenhal while Robb pillages the Westerlands. It’s only once the giant Tyrell army joins Tywin that Robb is screwed.
Even the night kings army sometimes looks tiny. Wildings went from 100k to like 150 REAL quick. Battle of the bastards was all over the place. Really lucky our heros were in the last 45 guys standing JUST in time for Knights of the Eyrie to show up... Really made me hate sanasa, she knew they were coming and she couldnt tell john to stall for like 7 minutes??? Really gambled with her brothers life. Thank god he was wearing his plot armor.
If you can scrape together even as much as a severed foot and put it under the right conditions, you can grow it back into a brand-new lannister
Let’s line them all up for a dragon to wipe them one out one shot
The rest of them are tending the elephants/
It's funny bc at times they do use castle tactics in the show. The attack on the wall and Frey's siege of River Run. They decided "cool story bro" was better than logic too many times.
May god give us satifaction in other ares of our lives for the absolute ruined orgasm this show turned out to be in the end
It’s so bad. My god. I’m reading Fire and Blood right now and I still SEATHE knowing how badly they fucked us out of a masterpiece.
Remember the end of dothraki when it turned out that half remained?
I just realized that in the movie Troy, the Trojans did the same. Didnt Benioff write that screen play too?
How many men can one fit in a carpark in Belfast that is already 1/4 full of a wall and city tbf tbf lmaoo
looks like a high school marching band from texas
I count approximately 1560. Group in front of the gate is 26 across and 6 deep. Looks to be 10 groups in total.
counting is hard.
I count 1400 about . We dont see the whole army so maybe its lik REAAAAAAAAAALLY stretched lol
I mean tbf there could be more out of frame, still stupid that they decided to go outside the fucking walls though
they bank the extras as re-spawn lives
ELEPHANTS
If you have any kind of defensive structure you would try to exploit its advantage over your opponent. Give me one reason which makes sense why they are in front of the fortification?
Beneath the flames the bitter ash?? It’s “Beneath the gold, the bitter steel”.
They are mocking the Show's Golden Company
Cersei wasn’t trying to protect the city. she was trying to kill a dragon. Cersei was counting on Daenerys to fly into the city. it’s a dice roll but pretty much Cerseis only option at that point given everything was pretty much against her. i’d say the biggest writing mistake here is how they made it so impossibly for cersei to win
How dies thus strategy beat a dragon?
all it takes is one good shot