Ok...So I have a Gripe About WoK/WoR and I need to let it out

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

I was just reminded of this today, and it is something that has irritated me for years about how the battles on the Shattered Plains played out in WoK and in WoR.

So, Dalinar has these slow, lumbering siege bridges for crossing the chasms, and Sadeas has the bridge crews. Multiple times, Dalinar is chided by Sadeas and Elhokar to give into the fact that Sadeas' bridge crews are "better" because they are so much faster. Dalinar lists off all the reasons and codes as to why he would never use such a method (Never ask a soldier to do something you wouldn't do yourself...It's such a waste of life..etc).

In all of that talk, Sadeas even admits that he used to give the bridge crews armor and shields but that it worked better for him to use the bridge crews as bait.

All of that is to say this...why did one of the most brilliant military tacticians/generals on Roshar, Dalinar Kholin, not see that he could make his own bridge crews with armored troops, and duplicate Sadeas' speed without his callous disregard for life by using the bridge crews as bait? Sadeas had already demonstrated, and admitted, that the enemy would ignore them in they were armored? So why not!?!

Ok, end of rant that's been simmering for years. 

[alder24]

5 minutes ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

I was just reminded of this today, and it is something that has irritated me for years about how the battles on the Shattered Plains played out in WoK and in WoR.

So, Dalinar has these slow, lumbering siege bridges for crossing the chasms, and Sadeas has the bridge crews. Multiple times, Dalinar is chided by Sadeas and Elhokar to give into the fact that Sadeas' bridge crews are "better" because they are so much faster. Dalinar lists off all the reasons and codes as to why he would never use such a method (Never ask a soldier to do something you wouldn't do yourself...It's such a waste of life..etc).

In all of that talk, Sadeas even admits that he used to give the bridge crews armor and shields but that it worked better for him to use the bridge crews as bait.

All of that is to say this...why did one of the most brilliant military tacticians/generals on Roshar, Dalinar Kholin, not see that he could make his own bridge crews with armored troops, and duplicate Sadeas' speed without his callous disregard for life by using the bridge crews as bait? Sadeas had already demonstrated, and admitted, that the enemy would ignore them in they were armored? So why not!?!

Ok, end of rant that's been simmering for years. 

What armor? I hardly see armor in SA! (my personal rant)  

Because armor can be penetrated by arrows and have weak points, and bridgemen can't hold shields well while carrying a bridge. And it takes a few deaths in a single bridgecrew for all of them to collapse and be a target for every single arrow of Parshendi. Also as of WoK Dalinar fully stopped involving Kholin's forces in plateau runs - he didn't need that.

Yes, giving them armor and shields is a good bridge between those 2 ideas, yet they are still very exposed - too exposed for Dalinar's liking.

And again, what kind of armor exists on Roshar? Plate armor is a rare thing, breastplates too. Leather armor was mentioned. And that's it? I don't remember anything else. The most common armor soldiers use is "uniform"...

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

2 minutes ago, alder24 said:

What armor? I hardly see armor in SA! (my personal rant)  

Because armor can be penetrated by arrows and have weak points, and bridgemen can't hold shields well while carrying a bridge. And it takes a few deaths in a single bridgecrew for all of them to collapse and be a target for every single arrow of Parshendi. Also as of WoK Dalinar fully stopped involving Kholin's forces in plateau runs - he didn't need that.

Yes, giving them armor and shields is a good bridge between those 2 ideas, yet they are still very exposed - too exposed for Dalinar's liking.

And again, what kind of armor exists on Roshar? Plate armor is a rare thing, breastplates too. Leather armor was mentioned. And that's it? I don't remember anything else. The most common armor soldiers use is "uniform"...

I always assumed that there was light armor, because of how detailed (and strangely, but for obvious reasons, French) the names of the various pieces of Shardplate armor are named. I could be wrong, but I could have sworn that Sadeas said that the Listeners completely ignored the bridge crews when they had shields (or maybe some people with shields ran out in front of them?) or something to that affect? I'll have to look when I get home from work, but I could have sworn that was the case.

[Quantus he/him]

4 hours ago, alder24 said:

What armor? I hardly see armor in SA! (my personal rant)  

Because armor can be penetrated by arrows and have weak points, and bridgemen can't hold shields well while carrying a bridge. And it takes a few deaths in a single bridgecrew for all of them to collapse and be a target for every single arrow of Parshendi. Also as of WoK Dalinar fully stopped involving Kholin's forces in plateau runs - he didn't need that.

Yes, giving them armor and shields is a good bridge between those 2 ideas, yet they are still very exposed - too exposed for Dalinar's liking.

And again, what kind of armor exists on Roshar? Plate armor is a rare thing, breastplates too. Leather armor was mentioned. And that's it? I don't remember anything else. The most common armor soldiers use is "uniform"...

Fwiw, I did find a lot of references to shields and armor both in the flashbacks to Amaram's army, and I think in Dalinar's flashbacks too. But all those are Human-on-Human battles,  I wonder if some of it might have simply been worked out of the equation as the activity shifted from a War of Retribution to a very bloody sport of Gemheart Racing.  Also, I could be wrong but I always imagined the Plains to be a hotter, more desert-like place than Alethkar (storms allowing, anyway) and thought it might be that the Alethi armor traditions didnt fit the climate (like all the heavy metal-wearing crusaders in the desert that time).

4 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

I always assumed that there was light armor, because of how detailed (and strangely, but for obvious reasons, French) the names of the various pieces of Shardplate armor are named. I could be wrong, but I could have sworn that Sadeas said that the Listeners completely ignored the bridge crews when they had shields (or maybe some people with shields ran out in front of them?) or something to that affect? I'll have to look when I get home from work, but I could have sworn that was the case.

Yup, found  it in Ch 15 (titled "the Decoy"):  Sadeas said he'd tried giving the bridgecrew's shields at first, but the singers ignored the crews and fired at the soldiers and horses instead.  Since he calculates them as significantly less valuable than trained soldiers, he took the shields away and just planned to bring twice the number of bridges that he needed for actual troop transport, and the rest were just tactical arrow-sponges disguised as troop transport. By the time they had the conversation we saw, Dalinar just wasnt really willing to compromise anything see saw as coming from The Codes, so he stuck with animal-pulled bridges with heavy fortifications instead of any form of calculated Acceptable Loss.

 

EDIT:  Reading those scenes again with his Codes obsession, he really had a lot of Skybreaker in him back then...

Edited June 8, 2023 by Quantus

[alder24]

4 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Fwiw, I did find a lot of references to shields and armor both in the flashbacks to Amaram's army, and I think in Dalinar's flashbacks too. But all those are Human-on-Human battles,  I wonder if some of it might have simply been worked out of the equation as the activity shifted from a War of Retribution to a very bloody sport of Gemheart Racing.  Also, I could be wrong but I always imagined the Plains to be a hotter, more desert-like place than Alethkar (storms allowing, anyway) and thought it might be that the Alethi armor traditions didnt fit the climate (like all the heavy metal-wearing crusaders in the desert that time).

Uniforms are described constantly while armor is just rare in comparison. Some breastplates are mentioned here and there, one that didn't protect from disembowelment. Kal got a breastplate and never used it. But I'm just really nitpicky about this. 

And you know what's better than getting to the gemheart first? Not dying.

Shattered Plains hot? Maybe, but they're right next to the Frostlands, in a huge mountain range, on the southern portion of the continet. I think it should be colder, not hotter. They use heater fabrials too.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

On 6/8/2023 at 3:38 PM, Quantus said:

Also, I could be wrong but I always imagined the Plains to be a hotter, more desert-like place than Alethkar (storms allowing, anyway) and thought it might be that the Alethi armor traditions didnt fit the climate (like all the heavy metal-wearing crusaders in the desert that time).

I too often think of the SP as a hot place, but I agree with @alder24 that it is usually colder than it is hot, being so close to the frost lands. The heating fabrials being mentioned so often (or roaring fires) tend to make me think it is often colder than warm. The bridge crews were cold a lot I guess?

Now I'd like to ask BS if armor is common or not in the Alethi armies outside of officers.

Edited June 19, 2023 by JohnnyKaizen

[Treamayne]

Also, remember the fundamental tactical difference the Kholins use in approaching a plateau - Shardbearer rush. Dalinar's bridges served as a moving wall his soldiers could hide behind, and the bridge wasn't lowered until the shard bearers hopped over and disrupted the Listener archers. So there was much more to the equation than just "move a bit faster" Dalinar would have had to change everything about how the Kholin army attacked an occupied plateau. 

On the weather front, remember that the bridge crews usually slept on their thin blanket, not under it - so it could not have been too cold most of the time. The Shattered Plains appear to be in a valley on the map, so I doubt the altitude is too high, and while it might be "next to the Frostlands" it was still far enough away to take Shallan weeks of travel to get there from the southern coast. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Treamayne
SPAG

[SomePog]

9 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

I was just reminded of this today, and it is something that has irritated me for years about how the battles on the Shattered Plains played out in WoK and in WoR.

So, Dalinar has these slow, lumbering siege bridges for crossing the chasms, and Sadeas has the bridge crews. Multiple times, Dalinar is chided by Sadeas and Elhokar to give into the fact that Sadeas' bridge crews are "better" because they are so much faster. Dalinar lists off all the reasons and codes as to why he would never use such a method (Never ask a soldier to do something you wouldn't do yourself...It's such a waste of life..etc).

In all of that talk, Sadeas even admits that he used to give the bridge crews armor and shields but that it worked better for him to use the bridge crews as bait.

All of that is to say this...why did one of the most brilliant military tacticians/generals on Roshar, Dalinar Kholin, not see that he could make his own bridge crews with armored troops, and duplicate Sadeas' speed without his callous disregard for life by using the bridge crews as bait? Sadeas had already demonstrated, and admitted, that the enemy would ignore them in they were armored? So why not!?!

Ok, end of rant that's been simmering for years. 

So my take on it is that Dalinar didnt care about making it to battles before the other Highprinces but just winning the ones he was involved with thats why he used the siege bridge strat because it was easily the safest of the three, while someone like sadeas cares more about the gemhearts so he uses bridgecrews as they are the fastest while also still providing cover for his men (Parshendi shooting at the crews instead) When he started working with Sadeas and used both it was more about uniting the Highprinces to Dalinar while to Sadeas it was yet again to get gemhearts, Dalinar doesnt ever care about the prize so he takes the option that gives him the best chance of winning with low casulties.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

This thread has definitely helped me feel better about this. Thanks all!

[Spearguy]

On 6/8/2023 at 8:20 AM, JohnnyKaizen said:

I always assumed that there was light armor, because of how detailed (and strangely, but for obvious reasons, French) the names of the various pieces of

This is because the cosmere books are canonically translations (à la lord of the rings) and the terms for those parts of armor are french based in english

Oh also the lack of common armor is probably due to the fact that for one thing mining for metal is a lot harder on roshar, which means that soulcasters have to pick up the slack. The second reason is due to the fact that metal armor is heavy and hard to march with, and with horses being about the cost of a house the soldiers have to most likely carry the armor on foot.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Spearguy
double posting

[Treamayne]

2 hours ago, Spearguy said:

This is because the cosmere books are canonically translations (à la lord of the rings) and the terms for those parts of armor are french based in english

1 hour ago, Spearguy said:

Oh also the lack of common armor is probably due to the fact that for one thing mining for metal is a lot harder on roshar, which means that soulcasters have to pick up the slack. The second reason is due to the fact that metal armor is heavy and hard to march with, and with horses being about the cost of a house the soldiers have to most likely carry the armor on foot.

Please try to avoid double posting. In case you are not aware of the tools to edit or multi-quote on this version of a forum, this may help:

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Hope that helps.

 

[alder24]

10 hours ago, Spearguy said:

Oh also the lack of common armor is probably due to the fact that for one thing mining for metal is a lot harder on roshar, which means that soulcasters have to pick up the slack.

Soulcasters trainees create a cheap scrap metal that is sold for nothing. It's rubbish. Use that if you don't have enough metal. Iron deposits are on Roshar, mining is happening. At no time in SA I thought that metal is rare, it's everywhere. A slave trader has several carts with thick metal bars and a soldier can't get simple armor instead of a uniform?

10 hours ago, Spearguy said:

The second reason is due to the fact that metal armor is heavy and hard to march with

Heavy? A simple chainmail weighs around 8 kg. That's not heavy. A brigandine is even lighter. A gambeson, a non metal armor, is around 3 kg. Even a full plate armor weighing around 25 kg doesn't feel that heavy because the weight is spread across your whole body and doesn't restrict your movement. Roman Legionaries were carrying around 30 kg of equipment and could march over 30 km a day. A modern soldier can carry even more weight in equipment. Just wear any armor instead of uniform. No discomfort of wearing armor is greater than death.

[cometaryorbit]

I don't think the Shattered Plains temperatures are particularly extreme in either direction - that seems to be true for much of Roshar. It doesn't really have seasons, variations are pretty muted outside the highstorms themselves.

[Duxredux he/him]

It might have something to do with the Alethi view on the Tranquiline Halls, Callings, and dahns and nahns. The Alethi have serious issues when they require upper caste men to perform lower caste labor and have divisions on who can use a sword or a spear. There may be a cultural taboo that extends to asking a soldier living their Calling (not a slave) to run a bridge and not being able to carry a weapon into battle. Dying while carrying a bridge compared to spear or sword may have been raised concerns for their prospects in the Tranquiline Halls. A bit of a stretch, but not an unfounded one, I think.

Tactics only work to the point that your followers will obey orders.

[ftl]

On 6/8/2023 at 7:27 PM, SomePog said:

So my take on it is that Dalinar didnt care about making it to battles before the other Highprinces

I think this is a big one. Dalinar is thinking about winning battles with the Parshendi, and the siege bridges are best for that.

The main improvement of the bridge crews is that it's better for racing other highprinces. Even the compromise of using shielded bridgecrews is along that tradeoff - it's worse for actually fighting the Parshendi, better for racing highprinces.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

21 hours ago, ftl said:

The main improvement of the bridge crews is that it's better for racing other highprinces. Even the compromise of using shielded bridgecrews is along that tradeoff - it's worse for actually fighting the Parshendi, better for racing highprinces.

Yeah...I agree that is 100% true of Dalinar's character. 

[alder24]

22 hours ago, ftl said:

I think this is a big one. Dalinar is thinking about winning battles with the Parshendi, and the siege bridges are best for that.

The main improvement of the bridge crews is that it's better for racing other highprinces. Even the compromise of using shielded bridgecrews is along that tradeoff - it's worse for actually fighting the Parshendi, better for racing highprinces.

It's a decent way to explain this, I mostly agree, but I think you're missing an important part of this war. For the last 5 years before WoR Alethi were fighting a war of attrition with Parshendi. Gemhearts were important for both sides and were used to grow food, which is something Alethi assumed about Parshendi correctly. They need to get to a chrysalis first, before Parshendi arrive, or at least get there at the same time. If they are too slow, Parshendi will extract gemheart and leave the plateau without any fight. But if Alethi are fast, they can secure a plateau without any fight, which in consequence would cut their losses to minimum or sometimes to nothing. By this logic, being as fast as possible is the best tactic, as any battle that can be avoided is saving lives. 

But this doesn’t work if a battle is very likely to happen - if a chrysalis is spotted far away from camps. In that case Parshendi will always arrive first, and exposed (or even armored) bridge crews and soldiers would suffer heavy casualties when assulting the plateau, as seen from Kaladin’s PoV. In this situation Dalinar’s slow moving bridges are better, because they shield troops from volleys of arrows. However Dalinar risks being too slow, allowing Parshendi to escape with gemheart without any fight. While Dalinar stopped caring about Highprices’ competition for gemhearts, this slows down their war of attrition. Any gemheart which Parshendi take, prolongs the war. To win this war of attrition it’s far better to use faster bridge crews and fight for every gemheart. Parshendi are already low on numbers, they suffered extreme casualties and are left with only around 30k people. They need to grow food using gemhearts otherwise their crops would be too small to feed them. But this is something Alethi didn’t know. If they knew how close they were to win the war, they might double down on Sadeas’ tactic. 

In Dalinar’s case, who wants to cut his losses to minimum, it might be better to use bridge crews for close chrysalis, as he has better chances at arriving first and avoiding battle. However this is a gamble, Parshendi still can arrive first and a battle will happen,  then Dalinar will have much greater casualties, or even, if enough bridgemen are killed, complete collapse of his assault with even higher casualties. This risk is something that Dalinar is not willing to take. He doesn't put lifes on the line for a shiny stone. Dalinar’s bridges are unstoppable, they will always be deployed and can cross a wider gap (which gives him a bit greater mobility, as normal bridge crews have to find a narrow gap, Dalinar’s army can move at a straighter line than others) and they provide full protection to soldiers standing behind them. If battle is unavoidable, Dalinar’s bridges are better.

To summarize, Sadeas’ bridge crews are the best way to win the war of attrition, while Dalinar’s are the best way to minimize casualties in the event of a battle. Sadeas will engage in battle more often than Dalinar, and more often than Dalinar will Sadeas arrive at the plateau first.

But there is more to this dilemma. Sadeas is using cavalry and light infantry, while Dalinar is using heavy infantry. Sadeas is improving his mobility, which likely makes his bridge crews the slowest part of his army. But his lightly armored troops are weaker in combat, and are described to have low discipline and worse training, which puts Sadeas at disadvantage in a battle. Because of that, using faster bridge crews is ideal for Sadeas, as sometimes he can arrive before Parhsendi can, claim the gemheart and much needed victory, improving morale of his troops. Dalinar’s slow moving bridges allow him to ignore the marching speed of his troops. Moreover his troops are the best in the entire Alethi army - they have more discipline, morale and are better trained than any other soldier of any other Highprince. Sadeas compensates for his inferior troops with fast bridge crews, Dalinar doesn’t need that.

[Duxredux he/him]

By the time WoK comes around Dalinar had stopped running plateau assaults, and pretty much only went on them to encourage teamwork among the Highprinces. The point wasn't to become the best functioning army among the Highprinces, but to specifically have them all start working together as a cohesive army. He had started worrying more about the state of Alethkar and would have happily packed up and went home if it wasn't for his oath to support the Vengeance Pact, and got in trouble for suggesting as much to Elhokar. His goals had developed from his first years on the Shattered Plains and instead were about uniting the Highprinces, bolstering Elhokar's position as king (with mixed results), and eventually returning to support Alethkar. The plateau runs for Dalinar became the means to accomplishing these goals, joint runs to force the Highprinces to work together, winning the war being a prerequisite to going home to Alethkar. Hence once he was seriously committed to ending the war, he marched as many of the Highprinces out as would follow in an extended assault and slaughtered the Parshendi while they summoned the Everstorm.

There were other factors, but I agree with @ftl, the bridge crews wouldn't have helped his primary goals. Racing other Highprinces, even Sadeas, would have been putting support into the competition, rather than unification. @alder24's points are spot on for the conditions for the start of the war, and follows tactics that Dalinar proposed when they first came to the Shattered Plains, but it misses that Dalinar felt that a war of attrition was no longer acceptible and that they needed a faster end so they could go back home.

[The Stormfather He/Him]

Dalinar would never hold up a bridge and charge at lines upon lines of archers, so why should he ask his soldier to?

Armor, other than shardplate, is flawed. Arrows hit and kill with more difficulty but still would tear through their lines. They are standing up with absolutely no cover whatsoever.

One Idea I had for them is that they get Dalinar and Adolin to push the bridges to speed up the chulls, while in shardplate.

Arrows barely scratch shardplate, so before the main battle starts, they could move bridges and speed up the run. 

Another Thing they could do is have Dalinar have soldiers carry the bridges most of the way, but when arriving at the chrysalis use the better defended bridges.