Realistic medieval and fantasy medieval combat

[Narf the Mouse]

This thread has been created because there is a lot of misinformation out there, and because it is easier to introduce plausible fantastic elements if you know what plausible realistic elements are.

 

Of course, this thread is not for every campaign, or every GM. If your current campaign ignores plausibility ("Drive me closer, I want to hit their tank with my sword!"), or you have no intention of paying any attention to plausibility ("You know, I never studied law."), this thread is of little to no use.

 

However, most campaigns and GMs want their stories to have at least a semblance of "this could reasonably happen in a world with elves, dragons, and wizards", so for those GMs, this thread will attempt to address "realistic" medieval combat, and medieval arms and armour. The medieval time period was chosen as being the most common and popular, thus the largest area to address. Insofar as "realism" may apply to a world with elves, dragons, and wizards.

 

So, without further ado:

[Narf the Mouse]

Melee Weapon Masses

 

The average medieval melee weapon massed around 1 to 2 kg. Heavier examples existed, around 7 kg or more, but were strictly parade weapons. Very large greatswords could reach about 3.5 kg, but most did not exeed 2.7 kg. Medieval soldiers were not supermen. Arguably the heaviest medieval weapon, a medieval pike, could reach 6 kg, but was strictly a two-handed weapon, and was almost never used in actual melee combat; rather, to fend off cavalry. In the rare case of pike facing pike, one side or the other would break and run first. In re-enactment testing, two blocks of pikes will kill each other about as fast as they make contact - A situation acceptable to no soldiers in history.

 

Armour Mass

 

Historical analysis and testing of armour used in actual battle (as opposed to parade) reveals that the mass of a soldier's armour has remained steady throughout history: Around 16 kg, and rarely reaching 23 kg. Even most modern armour falls within this range. Quite simply, heavier armour weighs the soldier down too much to be practical. If armour heavier than 16 kg is to be worn, it is typically on a pack animal, and donned just before battle. The heavy armour worn for jousting is strictly sports armour, and intended to be worn for, and specialized for, no more than the time it took you to knock your opponent off his horse (or vice-versa). Jousting was simply a medieval sport, and specialized equipment was used by professional players, much like any professional sport.

 

Sources: The Association for Rennaisance Martial Arts. Wikipedia. Scholagladatoria (Historical European Martial Arts instructor) on Youtube. Skallagrim (Historical European Martial Arts practitioner) on Youtube. LindyBeige (Retired Archeologist and re-enactor) on Youtube. Various webpages, too numerous to mention or remember.

[tkdguy]

Very nice! Looking forward to more entries.

[Steve]

I have a premonition we'll be hearing from Markdoc in this thread.

[smoelf]

Great idea. This recent documentary might also be of relevance:

[Markdoc]

I have a premonition we'll be hearing from Markdoc in this thread.

You'd be right

[Markdoc]

 Arguably the heaviest medieval weapon, a medieval pike, could reach 6 kg, but was strictly a two-handed weapon, and was almost never used in actual melee combat; rather, to fend off cavalry. In the rare case of pike facing pike, one side or the other would break and run first. In re-enactment testing, two blocks of pikes will kill each other about as fast as they make contact - A situation acceptable to no soldiers in history.

 

Well personally, I'd call fending off cavalry "melee combat" since it's not like they were throwing them

 

But be that as it may, the rest of this is just wrong.

 

Pikes were very much melee weapons, and prolonged combats certainly occurred. The only other interpretation is that the modern reenactors are correct and that every single contemporary witness is a liar. Not just the writers, either. Hans Holbein, who went to some lengths to ensure accuracy in his depictions, has a famous sketch showing pikemen getting stuck into each other, and other contemporaries, even those used to war, commented on the slaughter attendant on pikemen fighting each other.

 

Contemporary battle reports bear them out. At the battle of Torrington, during the English civil war, the pikemen of the two forces battled it out for 2 hours, according to witnesses, with the Cornish pikes being slowly driven back before eventually breaking. But we have a rich feast of battles with contemporary accounts of pike vs. pike from the earlier Italian wars. One of the larger battles (Marignano) pitted more than 30,000 pikemen against each other in a series of actions that in total lasted a day and a half. Some of those actions were prolonged. The initial Swiss attack against the landskneckts of the Black Legion started near sundown and continued into full darkness and after moonrise, according to those who left us reports - long enough for the French cavalry to drive off the flanking scouts and then encircle the Swiss and launch multiple attacks from their flanks. Long enough for the artillery that had been attacked to be harnessed to their horses, driven to a new location get positioned and start firing again. We're not talking a few minutes here, or even a half hour, but probably 2 or more hours of bitter combat. On the subsequent day the fighting between the landskneckts and the Swiss pikes started at daybreak and lasted until midmorning, and the casualties in total are said to have been 15-20,000. At Pavia, a decade later, the pikes again clashed in grand style, with tens of thousands of Swiss and landknecht pikes (there were landskneckts on both sides) going at each other from 7 am until nearly 9 am - again, a bloody, close struggle resulting in thousands of dead. The Black Legion stood their ground and were wiped out almost to the last man - ironically, not by the swiss, their traditional foes, but by other landskneckts.

 

There are plenty of other examples, but you get the idea. Push of pike definitely developed into bloody melee combat on many occasions. What this means in practice, again, based on contemporary accounts, is that the pikes met in a bloody clash, but after that additional clash, the front lines degenerated into close combat, while the rear ranks stabbed past them at whatever target they could reach. The front lines might pull apart when the casualties became too much, only to dress their line and press forward again, but in other cases, combat seemed to have been a slow meatgrinder of continual pressure.

 

As a general rule I'd treat what is written by ARMA, Skallagrim and similar websites with a solid deal of skepticism. My own experience with them is that they blend a little bit of solid scholarship, with masses of enthusiastic amateur speculation, and a bit of wierd fanboism. When in doubt, look to original source material, and never take any one single person's point of view (including mine ) as gospel: everybody has their biases.

 

cheers, Mark

[Markdoc]

I thought I'd add an extra post here on a topic that is kind of related. It's about projecting our own biases onto how people thought and acted in the past. Sometimes when you see artifacts from the past - graffitti, writings, domestic articles, I am struck by how much they were like us. Other times, reading what they wrote and accounts of what they did, I am struck by how much they weren't like us.

 

And one of the striking ways in which they were different was the very low value placed on life.

 

So there's a tendency to see things in the past through modern eyes without thinking that people in medieval societies saw things differently. Narf's comment on the carnage associated with push of pike being unacceptable to any soldiers is really just saying that it was unacceptable to the amateur reenactors trying it out. I mentioned the pikemen of the Black Legion in the post above deliberately, because they are a unit we know a bit about. Through the Italian wars, they were frequently in combat, repeatedly suffering losses that could be 25 or 30% of their total strength ... and filling the ranks with new recruits and going back into combat. What might be unacceptable to a reenactor seeing things through modern eyes clearly was acceptable to the soldiers back then. To put it in perspective, this single unit - in one successful action - lost as many men killed in a day as all the US forces in Iraq put together lost in the course of 7 years. And yet, far from being broken, they were in action again a few months later.

 

Edit: I don't know if it is available in English, but if you really want to know what fighting in a push of pike was like, and can read French, "Mémoires du maréchal de Florange, dit le Jeune Adventureaux" is available online for free (it's been out of copyright for more than 400 years ). These are memoirs of the Italian wars written by a commander of pike who was really there. At Novarre, he led his landskneckts against the Swiss in yet another protracted melee, being severely wounded in the fight (which he describes laconically as "very long"). He also notes that of the 400 men in the front ranks of his pike block, only 6 (including himself) survived and comments that the Swiss losses were even greater.

 

And really, I'll take the word of someone who was actually there, writing for contemporaries, some of whom were also there, over the assumptions of some enthusiastic modern amateurs.

 

Don't get me wrong - reenactment is a valuable tool, but it's fatal to assume that because something is difficult or dangerous that it wasn't done. Here's two examples.

 

A few years ago I was in Rhodes, looking at the English section of the fortifications. It's an impregnable series of walls, with two defensive walls and a huge wall/counterscarp ranked sequentially, plus a very deep dry moat cut into the rock. My reaction on considering an assault was "You have got to be ****ing kidding me". And yet, the Turks did assault this position, and nearly took it, scaling the first wall, according to contemporaries, on a mound of their own dead. Even if that's an exaggeration, chroniclers on both sides agree that the slaughter was terrible. Unacceptable losses? Thousands of men died in an area the size of a largish city street, in the space of one night and one day. 10 metre high mound of dead or not, the final assaults must have taken place over a deep layer of bodies. What does it take to charge into combat on top of the bodies of your friends? It seems entirely unreasonable (actually to be honest, it appears to be screaming bat**** insane) ... but it happened.

 

Another, less martial example involves a friend of mine, who worked for the national history museum in Copenhagen. They were testing viking clothes, based on burial finds and she had a costume that included a decorative swath of cloth that they thought was attached by two brooches at shoulder height. After a week, this woman was convinced that they must have it wrong: It simply could not have been worn that way: the cloth was just a giant pain the ***. She said that it was just impossible (and dangerous) to try and cook food on a fire, carry a baby, all kinds of  tasks, with this cloth hanging down and getting in the way. The catch is that that traditional women's dress of some groups in Eastern Anatolia and Armenia - still worn into the 20th century - has an almost identical hanging cloth and women did do all their daily tasks wearing it. So it is possible. It's easy to underestimate what a decade of all-day, daily practice will allow you to do.

 

So when thinking about what things might be like in a medieval or pseudomedieval society, one of the most important things to know is not so much the weight of a sword (though I admit the D&D encumbrance lists always make me roll my eyes) but the fact that people in that environment were not entirely like us. Among other things, they accepted discomfort, risk and danger with a stoicism that's very rare today. 

 

cheers, Mark

[TheDarkness]

I put this in another topic, but I think it's always good to keep in mind that experts in the sword, in the past, also had often trained stick, some form of dagger, and pole arm. Though, I'm terrified that Markdoc will tell me I'm wrong...

 

...okay, not terrified, but it's the internet, and we know being wrong on the internet is deadly. Like, two legions of pikes fighting over the last lamb kebab deadly.

[bluesguy]

My groups (and myself) are not that big on realism.  We are into cinematic realism (LoTR, Hobbit, Lady Hawke, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Princess Bride, Akira Kurosawa samurai movies, Cyrano de Bergerac) vs. over the top wire work (i.e. Matrix) vs. realistic (lots of death, limbs hacked off, etc). 

 

I expect I will learn a lot from this thread.  It is always interesting to read the back and forth between Narf & Markdoc.  Steel sharpens steel... At least that is the old saying...

[Narf the Mouse]

Edit: This entire post is rambling train-of-thought. Apologies if not comprehensible; I can try to explain anything that isn't.

 

@Markdoc: This paragraph, I think, may be a key factor:

 

 

 

There are plenty of other examples, but you get the idea. Push of pike definitely developed into bloody melee combat on many occasions. What this means in practice, again, based on contemporary accounts, is that the pikes met in a bloody clash, but after that additional clash, the front lines degenerated into close combat, while the rear ranks stabbed past them at whatever target they could reach. The front lines might pull apart when the casualties became too much, only to dress their line and press forward again, but in other cases, combat seemed to have been a slow meatgrinder of continual pressure.

Close combat with a pike does not seem practical. It seems like altogether too long of a weapon to use in close combat. OTOH, I'd likely have a sword, axe, or mace, which would do better in close combat. Meanwhile, the soldiers in the second rank would not generally be in danger from pikes, as aiming at the enemy's front ranks would be easier than aiming at the second rank.

 

You're right in that ancient battles could have, by modern sensibilities, horrendous casualties. Where I think you may not be accurate is the willingness to win a battle through horrendous casaulties, when other options existed. Underlining for emphasis. And when it comes down to marching straight at an enemy carrying only a sharp, pointy stick for defence, when the enemy is pointing a sharp, pointy stick at me, well, if I were a medieval person, I might view that as a splendid thing to do.

 

But once the enemy is past the end of my pike, my options are to either pull the pike in, and try to fight like it's some sort of oversized quarterstaff, or pull out my side-arm, and have a weapon that suits that range better.

 

Which is, arguably, still a pike fight, as the guys behind me are still in splendid position to stab at the guys in front of me with pikes. Myself, I'm probably using something that doesn't put the point of my weapon a few feet past my immediate enemy, if I hold it towards that enemy.

 

One method is awkward, and likely to get me killed against the enemy's close-range weapon. The other involves pulling out my own close-range weapon.

 

You're right in that pikemen likely did attack each other directly. But the front rank would not be fighting as pikemen, for the same reason that you pulled out your dagger when grappling ensued.

 

Or I could be wrong.

[Markdoc]

Actually, you're not wrong .... but it's complicated. We have a pretty good idea of what the battles were like in the late medieval or early renaissance period, because we have contemporary accounts. But we know very little about individual fighting, because nothing was written about that. Florange gives detailed accounts about the politics of his war, the people involved and the battles. He also says it took 5-6 years training or experience to make a good pikeman .... and that's it. He tells us nothing about what that training was, or how the soldiers actually fought. And neither does anybody else, as far as I know.

 

But we can make some educated guesses from what *was* written. Some commanders complained about poorly trained pikemen who "fenced" with their pikes, and did not close with the enemy. From this we can guess that the best pikemen did get in close. There are also complaints about pikemen who dropped their weapons in melee, from which we can guess that they were not supposed to. They could still fight one handed with a light weapon, but there's another option ... A pike block was (ideally) a highly-trained unit. If you - as a frontliner - trusted your comrades behind you to kill the guys facing you, then you could use your pike to kill the guys in more distant ranks, breaking up the cohesion of the enemy's front ranks. Finally of course, both Swiss and landskneckts included sword and halberd men in small numbers, whose place was just behind the front ranks. We know that their job was to "cut into" the enemy formation, so that the pikes could continue to push into them ... presumably in that press of melee.

 

As for the willingness to take horrendous casualties, that's one of the things that made the swiss so feared. They were apparently always willing to do that, and their enemies often crumbled, or even ran at the Swiss charge, because they weren't.

 

Here's a Swiss classic. At the battle of St. Jakob an der Bir, a swiss force of around 1500 pikemen was sent scout out and harass the advancing French. Encountering the French army - an estimated 30,000 troops - the Swiss decided to ignore their own orders .... and immediately attacked. Even for these guys, at odds of 20-1, the outcome was inevitable. Although they actually broke the French centre in hard fighting, the heavily outnumbered Swiss were eventually surrounded and completely wiped out (some writers say 16 escaped: whatever) after an epic fight that lasted 10 hours. We also have a detailed account of that battle from an eyewitness - a mercenary commander called Picolomini ... who later became pope.

 

What was that bit about avoiding horrendous casualties if other options were available?

 

Cheers, Mark

[Narf the Mouse]

Actually, you're not wrong .... but it's complicated. We have a pretty good idea of what the battles were like in the late medieval or early renaissance period, because we have contemporary accounts. But we know very little about individual fighting, because nothing was written about that. Florange gives detailed accounts about the politics of his war, the people involved and the battles. He also says it took 5-6 years training or experience to make a good pikeman .... and that's it. He tells us nothing about what that training was, or how the soldiers actually fought. And neither does anybody else, as far as I know.

 

But we can make some educated guesses from what *was* written. Some commanders complained about poorly trained pikemen who "fenced" with their pikes, and did not close with the enemy. From this we can guess that the best pikemen did get in close. There are also complaints about pikemen who dropped their weapons in melee, from which we can guess that they were not supposed to. They could still fight one handed with a light weapon, but there's another option ... A pike block was (ideally) a highly-trained unit. If you - as a frontliner - trusted your comrades behind you to kill the guys facing you, then you could use your pike to kill the guys in more distant ranks, breaking up the cohesion of the enemy's front ranks. Finally of course, both Swiss and landskneckts included sword and halberd men in small numbers, whose place was just behind the front ranks. We know that their job was to "cut into" the enemy formation, so that the pikes could continue to push into them ... presumably in that press of melee.

 

As for the willingness to take horrendous casualties, that's one of the things that made the swiss so feared. They were apparently always willing to do that, and their enemies often crumbled, or even ran at the Swiss charge, because they weren't.

 

Here's a Swiss classic. At the battle of St. Jakob an der Bir, a swiss force of around 1500 pikemen was sent scout out and harass the advancing French. Encountering the French army - an estimated 30,000 troops - the Swiss decided to ignore their own orders .... and immediately attacked. Even for these guys, at odds of 20-1, the outcome was inevitable. Although they actually broke the French centre in hard fighting, the heavily outnumbered Swiss were eventually surrounded and completely wiped out (some writers say 16 escaped: whatever) after an epic fight that lasted 10 hours. We also have a detailed account of that battle from an eyewitness - a mercenary commander called Picolomini ... who later became pope.

 

What was that bit about avoiding horrendous casualties if other options were available?

 

Cheers, Mark

You're contradicting yourself in the second and third highlighted area. Namely, in stating the ferocity of the Swiss pikemen often causing others to run, which logically means that others were less ferocous, and more likely to run

 

Further, in the first highlighted area, all your correction states is that pikemen blocks would have included people with swords and halberds (the average halberd being much shorter than the average pike), whose job was to "cut into the enemy formation". Now, it is impossible to "cut into the enemy formation" from the back ranks with a shorter weapon. So presumably, they'd be in the front ranks once close combat ensued.

[NuSoardGraphite]

My groups (and myself) are not that big on realism. We are into cinematic realism (LoTR, Hobbit, Lady Hawke, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Princess Bride, Akira Kurosawa samurai movies, Cyrano de Bergerac) vs. over the top wire work (i.e. Matrix) vs. realistic (lots of death, limbs hacked off, etc).

 

I expect I will learn a lot from this thread. It is always interesting to read the back and forth between Narf & Markdoc. Steel sharpens steel... At least that is the old saying...

I try to do a mix of all three. Generally, Cinematic realism with flashes of wuxia and as deadly as real combat. The commbo works surprisingly well.

[TheDarkness]

I try to do a mix of all three. Generally, Cinematic realism with flashes of wuxia and as deadly as real combat. The commbo works surprisingly well.

This post made me happy. Yes yes yes! Great combo, the epic, fantastical stuff means so much more when, in the back of the player's head, they're remembering that one time, the ugly fight...

[Markdoc]

You're contradicting yourself in the second and third highlighted area. Namely, in stating the ferocity of the Swiss pikemen often causing others to run, which logically means that others were less ferocous, and more likely to run

Umm. No? I'm not even sure precisely what point you are trying to make, to be honest. Yes, it's obvious that not every enemy was as ferocious as the Swiss. And .... so what? Before the Swiss rose to glory, French knights enjoyed the same reputation, while among infantry Swabian swordsmen and Flemish infantry did. Nobody really liked fighting any of these guys, and inferior troops would sometimes flee if they found themselves about to be on the receiving end. How does that contradict anything I have written?

 

Further, in the first highlighted area, all your correction states is that pikemen blocks would have included people with swords and halberds (the average halberd being much shorter than the average pike), whose job was to "cut into the enemy formation". Now, it is impossible to "cut into the enemy formation" from the back ranks with a shorter weapon. So presumably, they'd be in the front ranks once close combat ensued.

Yes. But we know from accounts of people like Florange that they were typically stationed in the 4th to 6th rank. So they get to earn their pay in the melee that results, if the enemy actually stands to recieve the pikes or countercharges .... in which case, presumably, most of the initial front-rankers will be wounded or dead. Which is, in fact, exactly the situation Florange describes, the time he almost got killed himself. At the very least, there will be gaps in the line to allow them to move up. It's worth noting that the Spanish used sword and buckler men in this role before abandoning the pike block for the Spanish "abomination" - the Tercio. and they have even less reach than halbardiers. So not a contradiction - just an understanding of the tactics apparently used. For completeness' sake, I should note that halbardiers were often also detached to cover the flanks of the pike block, and depending on the era and the army could constitute anywhere from 10% to 25% of the "pikes".

 

Cheers, Mark

 

Note: for those not into renaissance warfare, the Tercio was Spain's (successful) answer to the pike-charge style of the Swiss and Germans, mixing pikes, swordsmen and guns in equal numbers. The pikes were in front and flanks, and were used for assault or defence, the swordsmen got stuck in once melee was joined, and the arquebusiers provided support. It was the first real combined-arms unit, and the technique replaced the pike block as the dominant unit for about a century in Europe.

[Lord Liaden]

I have little expertise in this subject beyond what I read in RPGs , so this topic is very educational for me.

 

But it might be appropriate to this thread to mention Surbrook's Stuff: The Grand Melee, a Hero 6E PDF by veteran Hero author and respected community member, Michael Surbrook. It provides a brief history, description, rules, and stats for various elements of the medieval combat tournament, for fights both mounted (jousting) and on foot.

 

[Lawnmower Boy]

Melee Weapon Masses

 

The average medieval melee weapon massed around 1 to 2 kg. Heavier examples existed, around 7 kg or more, but were strictly parade weapons. Very large greatswords could reach about 3.5 kg, but most did not exeed 2.7 kg. Medieval soldiers were not supermen. Arguably the heaviest medieval weapon, a medieval pike, could reach 6 kg, but was strictly a two-handed weapon, and was almost never used in actual melee combat; rather, to fend off cavalry. In the rare case of pike facing pike, one side or the other would break and run first. In re-enactment testing, two blocks of pikes will kill each other about as fast as they make contact - A situation acceptable to no soldiers in history.

 

Armour Mass

 

Historical analysis and testing of armour used in actual battle (as opposed to parade) reveals that the mass of a soldier's armour has remained steady throughout history: Around 16 kg, and rarely reaching 23 kg. Even most modern armour falls within this range. Quite simply, heavier armour weighs the soldier down too much to be practical. If armour heavier than 16 kg is to be worn, it is typically on a pack animal, and donned just before battle. The heavy armour worn for jousting is strictly sports armour, and intended to be worn for, and specialized for, no more than the time it took you to knock your opponent off his horse (or vice-versa). Jousting was simply a medieval sport, and specialized equipment was used by professional players, much like any professional sport.

 

Sources: The Association for Rennaisance Martial Arts. Wikipedia. Scholagladatoria (Historical European Martial Arts instructor) on Youtube. Skallagrim (Historical European Martial Arts practitioner) on Youtube. LindyBeige (Retired Archeologist and re-enactor) on Youtube. Various webpages, too numerous to mention or remember...

Pfft. Everyone knows that there was twenty English pounds of English steel in the head of Richard the Lionheart's battleaxe.*

 

Now, the fact that it was English pounds of English steel means that it was doubleplus twice as good as a  normal battleaxe (and twenty times better than a poofty French one!), but Richard had a reason for carrying so much steel around, besides the fact that he was so muscly and sinewy and that hair, OMG, I think I'm going to faint. . . .The reason, of course, is that everyone wore solid steel armour, which is why they had to ride around on giant draft horses

 

(Historical re-enactment)

 

 

The only way to even get through all of that armour is to whup it with a giant battleax, even if, on account of not being Richard the Lionheart, most knights (pronounced "kniggit") only had, like, nineteen pound heads. Now, this would have been a challenge to most warriors, but thanks to their chivalrous training and spiritual excellence (remember that 20th level medieval knights can cast 4th level clerical spells!), these knights could vault into the saddle of their horses in full armour with one hand, climb a ladder overhand, drag giant logs around behind them while jogging through the Siberian winter, and see in the dark with their radar sense.

 

Too bad that all of this badassednessness was of no avail against the English longbow, which can penetrated 3 inches of forged steel armour at 250 yards, or an Ottoman reflex compound bow, with its 600 yard range, or a sling, with its 300 yard range. Crossbows are, of course, generally inferior to all of this, having only the pathetic benefit of mechanical advantage, but since you can shoot two repeating crossbows at a time with a Two-handed fighting feat, they make up in volume what they lack in firepower. 

 

*Real actual quote from actual medieval historian. "Historian."

[L. Marcus]

That's it -- time for your medication.

[NuSoardGraphite]

And the winner goes to.......

[massey]

This thread has been created because there is a lot of misinformation out there, and because it is easier to introduce plausible fantastic elements if you know what plausible realistic elements are.

 

Of course, this thread is not for every campaign, or every GM. If your current campaign ignores plausibility ("Drive me closer, I want to hit their tank with my sword!"), or you have no intention of paying any attention to plausibility ("You know, I never studied law."), this thread is of little to no use.

 

However, most campaigns and GMs want their stories to have at least a semblance of "this could reasonably happen in a world with elves, dragons, and wizards", so for those GMs, this thread will attempt to address "realistic" medieval combat, and medieval arms and armour. The medieval time period was chosen as being the most common and popular, thus the largest area to address. Insofar as "realism" may apply to a world with elves, dragons, and wizards.

 

So, without further ado:

 

I have some big problems with this type of philosophy, though.  First, even if you can make a game very realistic, this doesn't mean that it's going to be fun.  I don't know that getting the exact details of mass battles accurate is going to make an adventure more exciting, or draw the players in more effectively.  I think it's focusing on the wrong aspects.  You might as well spend your time getting the economics of medieval farming correct.  "This town is going to have to send at least 6 wagons of grain to the coast every month..."  It's the sort of detail that we focus on when we theoretically like roleplaying, but haven't actually played in a game for several years.  Instead we spend a lot of time trying to get the game world "right".

 

The second problem is that, as shown here, there's a ton of disagreement over what actually happened in history, what fighting was really like.  I had an old DM, years and years ago, who did that sort of thing with his world.  Every last detail was as "realistic" as he could make it.  He had detailed systems of government for his nations, complex descriptions of how religious institutions worked, etc.  The problem was, he wasn't an expert on any of those things.  He had a level of knowledge of someone who had skimmed Wikipedia (though it was pre-Wikipedia), or half-remembered something that he read in college.  I was a poly sci major in college back then, and his ideas on governmental systems were laughable.  This sort of thing results in one of two outcomes -- either your players don't know and don't care about the specifics, or they do know and your attempt at realism just makes things seem awkward.  If the person really cares about historical combat, you're likely to end up in an argument with them about how things "really" happened, and that's not what you want.

 

Finally, my last problem with it is that if this is a fantasy world, then there's no reason to think that their mass combat will look anything like ours did.  Even if you could somehow get consensus on how things worked in the real world, when you add in magic and monsters, that changes things.  How does a unit of pikemen respond to a stone golem?  If wizards are common enough to appear on the battlefield, how does your army respond to lightning bolts, walls of fire, and fear spells?  Will massed formations even be a thing in a world with monsters that breathe cones of fire?  At that point, trying to make something stick close its historical counterparts just makes the whole thing seem ridiculous.

[Lawnmower Boy]

That's it -- time for your medication.

The way you killjoys throw your little pills around, I'm never going to be able to run through downtown traffic naked for long enough. 

[Ninja-Bear]

The way you killjoys throw your little pills around, I'm never going to be able to run through downtown traffic naked for long enough.

Can I get some brain bleach please?

[L. Marcus]

The way you killjoys throw your little pills around, I'm never going to be able to run through downtown traffic naked for long enough.

Oh, all right.

 

But after that, it's Medication Time.

[Vondy]

 You might as well spend your time getting the economics of medieval farming correct.  "This town is going to have to send at least 6 wagons of grain to the coast every month..."  I

 

I know of a game with a fan-community who approaches those details with the pietistic veneration of the devoutly religious. Its not for everyone, or even everyone who plays said game, but there are those people who do find that sort of thing fun.  That said, I agree with you that its focusing on all the wrong things for most of us and derails the narrative away from character and action. Gamers often conflate verisimilitude and realism. We want the world to be consistent and believable enough to suspend disbelief. But, overall, nitty-gritty realism and pedantic attention to detail is not what the vast majority of us want in our entertainment.