Is it possible to have a WW1-style scenario and style of warfare,

>>49755277
Sure, there were plenty of cavalry charges in WW1.

>>49755277
Yes. Just have mages with LoS spells, firebreathing beasts, or reapeating balistas if you want to have not!machineguns.

But trenches and siege warfare have been a part of war since the antiquity.

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>>49755277
Replace trenches with walls or castles and you have a similar thing. Assaulting a castle at the time could be borderline suicidal. Have two sets of walls from opposing sides that are placed relatively close to each other and it would be similar to trench warfare. Maybe add a moat or river in between for added difficulty.

>>49755864
>No Man's Castle - a huge fortification originally intended to be impossible to take due to its sheer scale has become merely a battleground, with various battlements being turned into lines of encampment, with small stretches of rampart going back and forth between both sides.

>>49755277
Sure, use Valkyria Chronicles as your launching point.

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>>49756324
That actually sounds really interesting. Only thing to think about would be how one side dosnt just go around the castle to where the enemy breached it and cut them off from supplies.

>>49756516
The fortress was built in a mountainous bottleneck, to hold it and defend it. It was in fact so good at it each side now controls about 30% of the castle. They get fresh supplies and food from their own side.

Hard mode: now there's also WW1 style underground and airborne warfare.

>>49756516
Because they'd do the same thing to you

>>49755277
If you mean stuff such as modern squad tactics, it is possible. If you mean western front 1915-1917, no without industrialized farming, logistics and state organization.

>>49757403
maybe its massive empires doing the warring

>>49757442
Still would need a small frontline that makes coventional manuver warfare impossible because of troop concentration.

Look up the Siege of Alesia.

Also, if one or both sides were making use of undead soldiers, that could drastically increase the scale and timespan of battles.

>>49757442
No.

You don't understand.

You can't have a massive army without a LOT of food, also a massive army requires a lot of people, people who usually farm.

Even the US suffered food related logistics issues.

If modern nations couldn't handle the issue well a medieval empire certainly couldn't.

Also WW1 was born out of new machines matched with old tactics so you really can't have the same thing without the sudden discovery of something equal to the guns, tanks, planes, and other stuff. AND the tech has to be available to every troop. You won't develop trench tactics if only 1/50 of your troops can shoot bullets.

Instead of one continuous front, it may work better to invent a war in which multiple large-scale sieges are going on. Each siege would be a small pocket of no-man's-land, with the countryside in between subject to irregular raiding and foraging.

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>>49756324
>>49756581
this is a great idea. and in a fantasy setting, it can be a multi-necked bottle neck. With one part being next to a large water body, cause then damn it we can have sea battles and amphibious assaults.

What's to keep it from getting leveled by high level magic? Maybe it's a bit cursed or has automotons/automatic systems that keep the walls and bridges building/rebuilding?

Perhaps those rebuild systems are corrupted in areas creating some crazy castle-scapes that can shift the battle lines as they themselves shift.

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>>49756324
I think this is the best way to simulate modern urban combat with only fantasy weaponry.

Imagine, a single archer with access to the high levels going Full Metal Jacket on a squad of militiamen.

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>>49757517
a combination of the emergence of magic users, or a more powerful school of magic, the weaponization of monstrous creatures, And small scale magi-tech weapons for the soldiers. like crossbows that are magically low-maintenance also Zombies and shit for the food logistics.

>>49757634
Why not just use wizards?

These things always fall apart because wizards become the ultimate problem solver, if they're willing to make weapons and fight why aren't they just "nuking" the other state?

>>49755277
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Trench

>>49757517
the creation of golems and magitech autonoma to work the fields in the absence of troops?

>>49757719
Protective shields, if a wizard can suddenly nuke a mountain there will be people willing to pay absurd amounts of gold to be able to protect themselves against such magic, yes wizards ate the ultimate problem solver the same way tanks are.

>>49757810
The wizards who are capable of nuking shit are better used running the magical infrastructure and institutions that allow the empire to train low level mages en mass and keep them supplied

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>>49755277
I am assuming you mean WW1 west front style scenario and style of warfare.

The answer is yes, you just need to recreate the conditions that made that style the reality.

First you, of course, need two relatively equal opposing sides.

Then there is a need for an important narrow front. In WW1 west front was important because two major players capital AND heartland was really near the frontline.

Mobility of armies was linked to how fast can a soldier walk and since cavalry pursuit was made ineffective most armies were able to extradite themselves from a battle with no additional losses.It is important to note that war winning moments up to that point in time where usually not a battle itself but the rout after the battle where one side would be annihilated. Lack of mobility also meant flanking and pincer movements are almost impossible to achieve.

Furthermore both sides have to have highly developed socio-economical societies that can take the strain of an attrition warfare for some years plus the ability to produce and transport large quantity of supplies.

And finally you need a weapon that would actually force armies to use trenches actively.

>>49755277
Tactical scale or strategic scale?
On tactical why not?
On strategic absolutely not. To wage war on that level you need two strong centralized states, not feudal kingdoms, that are heavily industrialized have advanced agriculture and have massive populations.

When two 2 million men kingdoms are fighting with their 10k men armies you can't dream about creating a front, while each of armies could man at most a couple of miles worth of trenches.

>>49755277
What do you mean by WW1 scenario and what style of warfare? Because WW1 had many different conflicts and style of conflicts within it from small numbers of professional and colonial tribal troops hunting each other through miles of sub-saharan africa to paddle steamers supporting armoured cars driving up the coast of a desert.

>>49757517
This. Assuming you want something on the scale of the Western Front. The logistical nightmare that was WW1 is mind blowing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxuOxdbK-BI&index=18&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxNUxpltTT98mcQlIqyVzfjG

Unless you magic away the technical limitations. In which case go for broke. Of course why not just use magic all the time for everything.

>>49758021
>On strategic absolutely not. To wage war on that level you need two strong centralized states, not feudal kingdoms, that are heavily industrialized have advanced agriculture and have massive populations.

Exhibit A:
China anywhere from 400 BC to 1800 AD.
They just didn't had an opponent to equal their power

>>49757926
That would actually be pretty cool, your Gandalfs and Dumbledores wouldn't be out with the armies were a lucky arrow or an incredibly skilled assassin can gib them, but at the local magical school training the next generation of wizard grunts, and kinda protecting the capital/kingdom of enemy incursions while the armies are away.

>>49758049
Didn't Rome have a pretty good state administration and bureaucracy

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>>49755277

Like you mean EVERY fucking prolonged siege?
How new are you?

>>49758077
Yes they did, and in fact they basically won the Second Punic war because they could send one army after another against Carthage

I came up with an idea for where two armies could get into a fight let's go with it behind a fortress city in a valley thats in a strategic chockhold and important trade route

>>49758049
You still needs the sufficient logistics, communications, equipment and terrain to end up with a trench warfare of the western front.

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>>49758087

this be comfy

>>49758049
>China anywhere from 400 BC to 1800 AD
I was thinking about standard not!Europe fantasy but a fair point.

I'd still stay by my point as I doubt any not industrialized state could arrange supply trains for army massive enough to form a frontline*. Having million men in army spread across whole empire is one thing, concentrating them in relative small place is another, and having them station and fight in that place for extended period of time only adds difficulty.

Grand army of Napoleon could be an example what could happen to great army when logistic is lacking.

*Barring situations where we have one narrow pass between nations then yep it could be possible.

>>49758122
Palintier like communication devices for communications
Big empires will have large cities and considerable resources that those cities workers can turn into equipment using their massive workforce and possible proto industrial technology or magitech
For terrain see>>49758116

>>49758122
First in a fantasy setting where magic is present all best are off.

Second 1914 frontline communication was done by runners, everything other medieval China had minus an opponent of equal size

>>49755277
If you want my two cents on the matter, if you want Western Front style trench warfare in the Middle Ages, you somehow need to have something that makes defensive warfare so effective that offensive maneuvres only become viable in exceptional circumstances, meaning that thousands of men can die before a single trench is taken (and even then that trench might be retaken in a matter of hours). Except you need to have this in an open field rather than a castle or other fortification.

What kind of medieval weapons or tools could ensure such effective defensive warfare? You need something like stationary machineguns (highly effective in defending a trench, not so much in taking one due to the need to set them up first). I guess you can rule magic in such a way that it can only be effectively cast if the caster can see the target, meaning that warfare (assuming wizards are the (highly effective) minority in any given army) will revolve around not being seen. Trenches and tunnels will be the way to go, and enemy wizards will be considered high priority targets. Of course wizards will still throw around a few blind spells, much like how in WW1 a lot of artillery fire was focused on areas where the enemy was suspected to be. And of course sending your wizards to join your footmen in a charge is highly risky, because everyone will focus fire on that wizard because his spellslinging power is feared and respected. Even if you manage to take the trench, the loss of one or multiple wizards will hamper your efforts in the battle to such an extent that taking this trench can be considered a Phyrric victory.

tl;dr: Trench warfare on the Western Front arose as a solution for a problem. Start thinking from the problem, not from the solution.

>>49758041
>The Great War
Fuck, I haven't watched that channel in ages. I realy need to catch up.

>>49758143
Well, low tech high production medieval industrialized state could technically exist in a fantasy setting especially if you have magic

>>49757517
Actually you need the capacity for defensive warfare to outpace the capacity of offensive warfare. We were already seeing early examples of trench warfare during the Crimean War and the American Civil War.

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>>49758143
>Grand army of Napoleon could be an example what could happen to great army when logistic is lacking.
>Napoleon
>Logistics
>Lacking
Von Clausewitz would like a word with you. Even in Russia, Clausewitz noticed that Napoleon had very carefully and even flawlessly planned everything out down to the last bottle of wine. The problem was, as Clausewitz described it, the "irrational" mode of warfare the Russians used. After Borodino they simply went as far East as possible, burning everything in their path and hamstringing themselves to spite Napoleon. This while Napoleon expected the same thing he'd been doing for years: win a decisive battle or two, occupy a city or two, negotiate a favorable peace.

There was nothing wrong with Napoleon's logistics per se only his assumption that Russians are human beings

>>49758276
He was also quite stubborn. He could have easily left after Moscow and not lost 60% of his army to starvation and hypothermia.

>>49758205
>Second 1914 frontline communication was done by runners
But not strategic or operation coordenation, the most fundamental part of large scale industrial warfare, plus by the point that you have to put magitech and utterly ignore the most fundamentals aspects of medieval Europe ie highly descentralized government and agriculture as the main aspect of the economy, you just create a setting that have nothing to do with the actual medieval times.

>>49758316
The premise of this thread is NOT to have WW1 warfare in medieval times but to have WW1 warfare WITH medieval weapons!!!

>>49755277
Make evocation/blasting magic more powerful and easy to learn while making other forms of magic, especially utility and healing, much weaker and more difficult to learn.

You now have battlefields that consist primarily of people squatting in ditches for hours on end, while occasionally someone gets bold and stupid enough to try and cross No Man's Land and gets exploded 11 different ways.

>>49758316
Perhaps we should drop the medevil part and just go with bow magic and sword with empires that have state buerracracies and administrations

>>49758384
you mean Malazan Book of the Fallen style

>>49755277
Maybe a Warmachine like setting with automatic crossbows instead of black powder weapons?

>>49758002

Solid post, just going to add on a fewother things that really slowed down the offensives on the western front were transportation, communication on the front, and how tactics had not incorporated the new technology.

Shipping men and materiel inside of a single nation (except the problem child that was Austria-Hungary) was easy because there was a single railroad gauge meaning a train could go from end to end without any stops. This assisted a nation in defending its own land, and made offensives against another nation harder to supply quickly.

For a more tactical instead of strategic view communication on the front line between an army and their general (who was stationed in the rear after the generals who were at the front died in artillery barrages) was either done with fixed land lines or runners (and pigeons etc.), and after an offensive was launched and new land was captured it was solely runners. This created a significant time lag between updating their commanders on the situation the troops faced and then receiving their new orders, which is part of the explanation on lack of mobility and overall tactical manuevers. Now the German Imperial Army would begin to fix this problem their own way by delegating decision making to lower ranking officers commanding the men at the front.

This final point, how the tactics have not yet fully grown to match the technology applies to the entirety of early-WWI. Commanders didn't know how to use armor to support an infantry advance, or how to cover an infantry advance with a wall of artillery fire simply because it had never been done before. It took experience for commanders to not learn how but to THINK UP how to use all of the new technology effectively, losing countless lives in the terrible process.

>>49758408
Never heard of it

>>49758248
>Well, low tech high production medieval industrialized state could technically exist in a fantasy setting especially if you have magic
Wouldn't this be outside of specified genre mentioned by OP?
Isn't Eberron something like this?

>>49758276
>logistics
I had read about his logistic before posting, Napoleon did care about logistics but in the end was logistics that doomed him by not being able to move enough supplies for army to sustain itself.
His logistics may have been great but by the end of the day they were inadequate for the task before them.

>>49758243
So battle magic that is unholy amount of rape but is relatively short range and needs magic circle that takes a day to setup properly.
Then attack would be prohibitively expensive but attacker would be exposed as they don't have magic circle in their new position.
Also each side would like to cover entire fronts with overleaping magic circles to force enemy into attacking in range of any magic circle.

Still you would need enough wizards to form a front, or not if you could use stone of power crafted by a mage and operated by non magical soldier.

>>49758455
your loss

>>49758362
>WW1 warfare WITH medieval weapons!!!
Then it still don't works, because several aspects of WW1 warfare were like they were because of the weapons used, so you also have to basically say "a wizard did it!" to make it actually possible.
>>49758438
>Commanders didn't know how to use armor to support an infantry advance
Armor is more of middle-later war thing, but yeah, lack of experience within the offices let to a lot of deaths.

>>49758438
I think in this scenario waterways would be a good analogue for railways. It's always easier to get things downriver than it is to transport them upriver. Also I think using the Italian Front rather than the Western Front would work better.

>>49758621
This

There have been a couple threads about this in the past. Here are the archive links:
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/6470755/
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/4139522/

Yes, I'm working on one as we speak, though it resembles WW1 more through its themes: rapid technological advancement, biological warfare / horror, politics and brutality.

>>49757517
Didn't the Assyrian Empire have an army of one million men at its height? If nothing else, Persia and Rome managed large military forces.

>>49759950
>Didn't the Assyrian Empire have an army of one million men at its height?
If you believe propaganda and exageration obtained from documents made centuries after the fall of the Assyrian Empire, and have a very loose definition of soldier, but the real number would much lower.
> If nothing else, Persia and Rome managed large military forces.
The Roman army, at its strongest, had about 450000 men in its legions and auxiliary units, and the persian case its similar to the assyrian one.
Really, in general, any medium or large pre-industrial empire could mobilizate about 0.5% of its population for military purpose.

>>49755277
Well, trenches were first mentioned in siege warfare during the siege of Kaifeng in 1232, when mongols dug them to approach the city, which shot bombs with trebuchets at them.

Hmmm...

A not!roman empire and a not!chinese empire could have the administration, military might, strategy, manpower and viciouness to grind each other down for a good reason.

The reason is the World Tree. It has many names and symbolisms, but all religions agree that it is the way to the Heavens, and it grants some sort of power or paradise for those that use it.

Its trunk is massive and hard as mountains, the top goes beyond one's vision, the roots are studded with gems and turn into leylines underground. Golden leaves as big as a dragon wing ocasionally fall down, crushing dozens with a valuable and powerful alchemical amplifier, used in fertilizer, healing potions, ritual enhancing mandalas and iron. This last enables mass production of cast iron as good as any other.

Some mages train to sense and influence the fall of those leaves, either towards their lands or over their enemies.

Both sides also know how to use leylines as ethereal roads through which a person might march without tiring, all the way to the Tree.

The liberal use of firebolts and other direct fire spells lead to elaborate trench system between hill ranges of giant roots, mined for saphires, diamonds, nephrite and silver.

To simply give up the material benefits of the Tree would doom one's economy, religious standing and cultural heritage. Neither side will budge, none shall give up. The world, nay, all Creation is close at hand for one willing to sacrifice.

>>49760301
yoink. stealing this.

>>49755277
No, part of the reason that WWI was the absolute hell that it was was because of all the shiny new weapons like machine guns, improved artillery, and gases that completely removed any use any advantagesprevious battle tactics(massed infantry, calvary, etc) had, as well as the devestation brought about by those weapon's use in the scale that they were used in. You can't really replicate WWI with trebuchets, crossbows, and long swords. Even if you could make up for damage with magical AoEs, you can't make up for the overwhelming amount of men and resources involved. We're talking an entire world(all the important bits anyway) involved, which means fuck-tons of resources and tens of millions of men on both sides. Fantasy just can't keep up.

>>49761806
Repeating crossbows and flamethrowers both predate the medieval period. While you can't recreate specifics, mostly static battlelines, extreme defensive superiority, and attrition warfare are easily doable. And if you want to do the Eastern Front, just take a look at the Thirty Year's War.

>>49755863
Sieges, yes. Trenches not so much. Real trench warfare didn't start until ACW or Maori Pa's in the mid 19th century