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> [Operations] is a level of analysis between tactics (how do I fight the battle when I get there?) and strategy (why am I fighting overall?). Does anyone her

> [Operations] is a level of analysis between tactics (how do I fight the battle when I get there?) and strategy (why am I fighting overall?). Does anyone here know a book dedicated to these topics? I always wanted to pick a "military textbook" (assuming such a thing exists), apply its lessons to Age of Empires, and see how far that gets me.

moffkalast 5y ago
Wololo
Yoric 5y ago
Maybe Clausewitz, _Of War_? If my memory serves, this is largely lessons from Napoleonic strategies/tactics/....
wjnc 5y ago
You should browse acoup because he often mentions sources for different avenues of thought. He even has a tag for [operations] [1] Now that I am searching - he does use the operations level mainly to make fun of books, series and movies where his historical examples have more sources. [1] https://acoup.blog/tag/operations/ https://acoup.blog/tag/operations/
- mcphage 5y ago
  I would love if the author compiled his many blog essays into a book!
hutzlibu 5y ago
Clausewitz and Sun Tzu are classics, but for epic battles closer to realism, I rather recommend the Total War series than Age of Empire. Mainly, because in real war, troop morale is a main factor - and the best war tactics are those, that crush the enemies spirit and not their bones. This is a main quote from Sun Tzu(from the back of my head): if you manage to route the enemy forces in panic, you gain more, than slaughtering them all. Because they will spread the fear of your troops themself. (but this part is not captured well in total war, as there you gain indeed benefits from high body count and enemy troops remain the same fighting spirit, even if they ran away in terror all the battles before)
- raducu 5y ago
  My favorit parts was about the honorable leader being exposed to being shamed, that's a good introduction to Machiavelli and real politics. Also where he says that great victories seem obvious and seamless because of great preparations of the leader -- like lifting a hare doesn't seem a great feat of strenght. But the stuff about tactics is also very good, though on second thought when to attack and when not to, strength ratio and forces positioning probably is more about strategy than tactics. Also about the political ends and not just the military, even though he says when the decision to go to war the political lord should not interfere with the decision of his general is usually turned on its head a lot and people often forget that war should not be an end in itself and the military should not get more power than the political and ultimate strategy is not about the military. War was the worst outcome in the day of Sun Tzu as much as today and overall people were much worse after a war(except for a very small minority)-- like the people who think US should have kept the Vietnam war going, or that WW1 Germany military was betrayed, or USSR should have hept on fighting the Cold War and so on.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > but this part is not captured well in total war If you can rout the enemy force in TW, it then becomes massively easier to destroy them completely. Soldiers that are running away can't do much damage to their pursuers. As soon as you turn your back on your enemy, your chances of being killed increase dramatically. If you rout your enemy in TW, you are offered the choice to accept a victory, or to continue fighting. Unless I'm bored, I always run them down; I don't want them retrained and reinforced, to come back later with added experience points. In Napoleon TW, the best units for running down routed enemy troops are light cavalry. I suspect that's what lancers were really for.
  - Someone 5y ago
    If people learned from what happened to others that running a way isn’t a good idea, wouldn’t they get more motivated not to do that? Is that not modeled in that game, or is the effect so small that it doesn’t make a large enough difference?
sornaensis 5y ago
I would suggest looking into proper wargames if you are interested in applying realworld military strategy or tactics: Gary Grigsby series, Combat Mission series, The Operational Art of War, Graviteam Tactics, and Campaign Series are all pretty solid simulation-oriented computer wargames. Total War is kinda ok too but in general most rts are going to be won by player APM and doing optimal builds (which work due to arbitrary game mechanics) and real world strategy wont really work out due to simplified mechanics and pace. For instance, most 'strategy' games don't model morale or spotting at all. To say nothing of operational concerns like equipment availability or condition.
silverPoodle 5y ago
I did the same, when I couldn't improve my SCII rank beyond Master 3. A classic textbook about strategy is "The Art of War" by Sun Zhu. It's public domain and pretty short. Another great books are "The 48 Laws of Power" and "The 33 Strategies of War". For anything more complex, I recommend you to look into game theory.
- Jarwain 5y ago
  Did the books help raise your rank?
  - silverPoodle 5y ago
    I am only a half rank higher then before reading the books and the improvement could be also because of more playtime, but it really influenced my decision making. Actually I came to the decision to play aggressive openings only, build more traps, do hit and run attacks whenever I can and get more distractions before and while my attacks (sending some lings before spawning two nydus tunnels at two different locations really helps).
- eru 5y ago
  Game theory is fun, if you are into math. If you want a pop sci introduction, Tom Schelling's Strategy of Conflict is great. It won't help you do any better in strategy games, though. A big part of the reason for that is that two player games we play for fun like Star Craft are inherently set up as zero sum games. From a game theory point of view, you just minimax and are done. (You might need some randomisation to be optimal.) The really interesting parts of game theory are non-zero sum games. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-schelling-s-strategy-of-conflict https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-s... for a review.
tomjen3 5y ago
The US marine Corps have a bunch of manuals on various tropics, which are better known as text books outside of the group. These are freely available. If you prefer them with commentary, Jocko podcast has talked about some of them.
mountainb 5y ago
They exist. There are military history generalist textbooks on archive.org along with more recent ones. For a more recent one I would recommend the Cambridge History of Warfare. https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-History-Warfare-Geoffrey-Parker/dp/0521618959?asin=0521618959&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1 https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-History-Warfare-Geoffrey-Pa... If you have specific questions about how military units are organized in the modern era, I would really suggest downloading US army manuals on various topics from the era that you want more information about. For example, if you want to learn how US officers were trained to attack a city, download the manual about it, and it talks about what infrastructure to blow up first, how to handle communications, what formations to use, and so on and so forth. It's a lot more direct than reading a conventional history of a war. You can get answers to questions like "how did soldiers learn to move with stealth during the Vietnam war" by reading the manual more efficiently than you can from general histories. I really recommend reading military material and not trying to glean things from games or fiction. The latter lean heavily on rule of cool versus rule of not dying and killing the other guy more effectively.
- tehjoker 5y ago
  Something that always confused me. How come current tactical manuals are not classified? If tactics change, why let an opposing force read all about it? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it but it does strike me as weird.
  - KineticLensman 5y ago
    (In the UK the equivalent manuals are classified, albeit at a low-level). It's a bit like knowing the general rules of chess vs. having a specific gambit for use in a particular game. Some of the information in the manuals is common military knowledge, e.g. how convoys work, how to position forces making use of cover, etc. In effect the military laws-of-physics. What usually remains classified are the detailed Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) associated with given weapon systems or specialist force elements. Also, plans for specific operations are usually 'born secret' and tend to remain classified as that would give away thinking.
  - 5y ago
ineedasername 5y ago
Von Clausewitz's On War isn't a bad place to start. It goes from theory to strategy down to some place in between strategy and tactics. I think he planned to go further but died before completion. Of course it might have been mostly irrelevant 150 years later where there have been advancements in both military doctrine and technology that significantly shape modern tactics. But, absent a modern military thinker on his level, he's a good source. (Though he had his critics too, and I simply don't know enough about the landscape of modern military geniuses < 50 years past to recommend someone better) Here's an Amazon listing to give you a quick overview but it's old enough to get free copies. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QDT681F/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QDT681F/
mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago
I haven't read it yet, but B.A. Friedman's new book "On Operations" looks exactly like what you're asking for: https://www.amazon.com/Operations-Operational-Art-Military-Disciplines-ebook/dp/B092ZXQ3BM/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/Operations-Operational-Art-Military-D...

moffkalast 5y ago

Wololo

Yoric 5y ago

Maybe Clausewitz, _Of War_? If my memory serves, this is largely lessons from Napoleonic strategies/tactics/....

wjnc 5y ago

You should browse acoup because he often mentions sources for different avenues of thought. He even has a tag for [operations] [1] Now that I am searching - he does use the operations level mainly to make fun of books, series and movies where his historical examples have more sources. [1] https://acoup.blog/tag/operations/ https://acoup.blog/tag/operations/

mcphage 5y ago
I would love if the author compiled his many blog essays into a book!

hutzlibu 5y ago

Clausewitz and Sun Tzu are classics, but for epic battles closer to realism, I rather recommend the Total War series than Age of Empire. Mainly, because in real war, troop morale is a main factor - and the best war tactics are those, that crush the enemies spirit and not their bones. This is a main quote from Sun Tzu(from the back of my head): if you manage to route the enemy forces in panic, you gain more, than slaughtering them all. Because they will spread the fear of your troops themself. (but this part is not captured well in total war, as there you gain indeed benefits from high body count and enemy troops remain the same fighting spirit, even if they ran away in terror all the battles before)

raducu 5y ago
My favorit parts was about the honorable leader being exposed to being shamed, that's a good introduction to Machiavelli and real politics. Also where he says that great victories seem obvious and seamless because of great preparations of the leader -- like lifting a hare doesn't seem a great feat of strenght. But the stuff about tactics is also very good, though on second thought when to attack and when not to, strength ratio and forces positioning probably is more about strategy than tactics. Also about the political ends and not just the military, even though he says when the decision to go to war the political lord should not interfere with the decision of his general is usually turned on its head a lot and people often forget that war should not be an end in itself and the military should not get more power than the political and ultimate strategy is not about the military. War was the worst outcome in the day of Sun Tzu as much as today and overall people were much worse after a war(except for a very small minority)-- like the people who think US should have kept the Vietnam war going, or that WW1 Germany military was betrayed, or USSR should have hept on fighting the Cold War and so on.
denton-scratch 5y ago
> but this part is not captured well in total war If you can rout the enemy force in TW, it then becomes massively easier to destroy them completely. Soldiers that are running away can't do much damage to their pursuers. As soon as you turn your back on your enemy, your chances of being killed increase dramatically. If you rout your enemy in TW, you are offered the choice to accept a victory, or to continue fighting. Unless I'm bored, I always run them down; I don't want them retrained and reinforced, to come back later with added experience points. In Napoleon TW, the best units for running down routed enemy troops are light cavalry. I suspect that's what lancers were really for.
- Someone 5y ago
  If people learned from what happened to others that running a way isn’t a good idea, wouldn’t they get more motivated not to do that? Is that not modeled in that game, or is the effect so small that it doesn’t make a large enough difference?

sornaensis 5y ago

I would suggest looking into proper wargames if you are interested in applying realworld military strategy or tactics: Gary Grigsby series, Combat Mission series, The Operational Art of War, Graviteam Tactics, and Campaign Series are all pretty solid simulation-oriented computer wargames. Total War is kinda ok too but in general most rts are going to be won by player APM and doing optimal builds (which work due to arbitrary game mechanics) and real world strategy wont really work out due to simplified mechanics and pace. For instance, most 'strategy' games don't model morale or spotting at all. To say nothing of operational concerns like equipment availability or condition.

silverPoodle 5y ago

I did the same, when I couldn't improve my SCII rank beyond Master 3. A classic textbook about strategy is "The Art of War" by Sun Zhu. It's public domain and pretty short. Another great books are "The 48 Laws of Power" and "The 33 Strategies of War". For anything more complex, I recommend you to look into game theory.

Jarwain 5y ago
Did the books help raise your rank?
- silverPoodle 5y ago
  I am only a half rank higher then before reading the books and the improvement could be also because of more playtime, but it really influenced my decision making. Actually I came to the decision to play aggressive openings only, build more traps, do hit and run attacks whenever I can and get more distractions before and while my attacks (sending some lings before spawning two nydus tunnels at two different locations really helps).
eru 5y ago
Game theory is fun, if you are into math. If you want a pop sci introduction, Tom Schelling's Strategy of Conflict is great. It won't help you do any better in strategy games, though. A big part of the reason for that is that two player games we play for fun like Star Craft are inherently set up as zero sum games. From a game theory point of view, you just minimax and are done. (You might need some randomisation to be optimal.) The really interesting parts of game theory are non-zero sum games. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-schelling-s-strategy-of-conflict https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-s... for a review.

tomjen3 5y ago

The US marine Corps have a bunch of manuals on various tropics, which are better known as text books outside of the group. These are freely available. If you prefer them with commentary, Jocko podcast has talked about some of them.

mountainb 5y ago

They exist. There are military history generalist textbooks on archive.org along with more recent ones. For a more recent one I would recommend the Cambridge History of Warfare. https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-History-Warfare-Geoffrey-Parker/dp/0521618959?asin=0521618959&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1 https://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-History-Warfare-Geoffrey-Pa... If you have specific questions about how military units are organized in the modern era, I would really suggest downloading US army manuals on various topics from the era that you want more information about. For example, if you want to learn how US officers were trained to attack a city, download the manual about it, and it talks about what infrastructure to blow up first, how to handle communications, what formations to use, and so on and so forth. It's a lot more direct than reading a conventional history of a war. You can get answers to questions like "how did soldiers learn to move with stealth during the Vietnam war" by reading the manual more efficiently than you can from general histories. I really recommend reading military material and not trying to glean things from games or fiction. The latter lean heavily on rule of cool versus rule of not dying and killing the other guy more effectively.

tehjoker 5y ago
Something that always confused me. How come current tactical manuals are not classified? If tactics change, why let an opposing force read all about it? Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it but it does strike me as weird.
- KineticLensman 5y ago
  (In the UK the equivalent manuals are classified, albeit at a low-level). It's a bit like knowing the general rules of chess vs. having a specific gambit for use in a particular game. Some of the information in the manuals is common military knowledge, e.g. how convoys work, how to position forces making use of cover, etc. In effect the military laws-of-physics. What usually remains classified are the detailed Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) associated with given weapon systems or specialist force elements. Also, plans for specific operations are usually 'born secret' and tend to remain classified as that would give away thinking.
- 5y ago

ineedasername 5y ago

Von Clausewitz's On War isn't a bad place to start. It goes from theory to strategy down to some place in between strategy and tactics. I think he planned to go further but died before completion. Of course it might have been mostly irrelevant 150 years later where there have been advancements in both military doctrine and technology that significantly shape modern tactics. But, absent a modern military thinker on his level, he's a good source. (Though he had his critics too, and I simply don't know enough about the landscape of modern military geniuses < 50 years past to recommend someone better) Here's an Amazon listing to give you a quick overview but it's old enough to get free copies. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QDT681F/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QDT681F/

mrDmrTmrJ 5y ago

I haven't read it yet, but B.A. Friedman's new book "On Operations" looks exactly like what you're asking for: https://www.amazon.com/Operations-Operational-Art-Military-Disciplines-ebook/dp/B092ZXQ3BM/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 https://www.amazon.com/Operations-Operational-Art-Military-D...