Better dead or wounded?

Combat system
#1

Hi,

I’m creating this post to open a discussion about the impact of wounded soldiers on their party moral, finance and effectiveness.

So I’m coming with the following idea : In the case of an open field encounter (with no idea to annihilate the enemy’s army, or to capture a stronghold), I believe that a severely wounded enemy is better than a dead one, for several reasons (my humble “not well aware of medieval fighting” opinion).

Of course, in case or capturing a place, dead enemies are IMO far better :smiley:

Short term effects :

  • The severely wounded enemy is not a menace any more (as good as a dead one)

  • You didn’t had to make sure he is dead, It’s less risky that risking your life by kneeing near him in a general melee and use your misericorde (or any finishing move)

  • He needs immediate medical attention thus using enemy resources and/or attention (maybe not in the heart of the action, but shortly after)

  • If is wound is graphical, or if he is crying and shouting and spurting blood, it may have immediate effect on enemy’s moral

Mid term effects :

  • Enemy party moral is going down : seeing or being aware of heavily wounded companions and all their suffering may be more moral lowering than dead ones (IMO)

  • Enemy party can not move as fast as without wounded ones

  • Wounded ones consumes medical supplies and doctors, so cost money to keep alive. So eventually it can lower the wealth of the enemy side (can’t hire mercenaries, can’t recruit new troops)

Long term effects :

  • Enemy’s countryside will be more populated with crippled ones less able to produce wealth or food, so it may have a long term impact on global enemy economy

  • As long as the wounded one get older, he is a living ambassador of your power

Any thoughts about this subject ?

Would it be possible to defeat an enemy without killing him ? Maybe encounter him later ?

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#2

its actually a tacitic used by the vietcong in fighting off the americans .
a wounded soldier can take between 2 to 4 men out of the fighting + the wounded soldier , to treat and carry him to safety .

where as if he is dead then no more can be done so you’re only taking one man out of the battle .
they also adopted the tactic of boobie traps designed not to kill but to injury in such a terrible way that it would traumatise the other troops and plummet moral .

to implement such a system into a game however could be very long winded but yes im sure it was considered in medievil times . As was the killing of POW’s as they also used up alot of resources .

#3

One thing though, how do you plan on achieving this? Do you have an exact idea of how much force needs to be applied to your sword to cut his face in two but no kill him entirely? I reckon that with limbs it’s easier but it’s still kinda hard to just go for severely wounded and not kill someone in the thick of the fight.

I suppose this is still a discussion point among historians. There certainly were doctors traveling with an army but exactly who they treated and how soon is still a mystery, and at a certain level of wounding they’d just consider a person lost and give him a coup de grace.

However what kind of a scale of combat are you talking about? Like an entire medieval army or a Lord of the Rings fellowship size group of people?

#4

Hey, no I don’t. :smile:

I guess that in the fury of a melee fight, you don’t try to just hit hard enough to severely injure the opponent but not kill him.

But, let’s say you’ve hit him good and your opponent is bleeding out and looks unable to keep fighting. Maybe at this point you can focus on your surroundings and not risk your life to make sure he is dead for good. I think you get the idea.

Well I think any engagement which doesn’t involve entire annihilation of the other side. Guerilla style engagement maybe.

Because obviously, if the engagement is, let’s say the taking of a castle, it might be probable that the attacked ones, if defeated, can’t make it out with their injured ones.

#5

I wouldn’t risk it really.

I think people rarely did. As far as I am aware medieval armies didn’t have dedicated combat medics running around with stretchers, at best (for normal infantry) one of your fellow soldiers or non combat personal close to the fighting dragged you back. If your side won and kept the field of battle than doctors could start doing whatever they did, if your side lost than running away/routing was the safest bet and without smooth roads and ambulances your best bet would be a wooden cart. That is if you found someone willing to drive the cart while folks are trying to kill him.

As for long term effect as you list them.

How will four cripples effect the economy of another country? How would 10.000 disabled soldiers impact the economy of a country with 2 million inhabitants? If they were mercenaries or professional soldiers their employer just saved a lot of cash and if they were farmers they will have sons to take over their farm and care for them.

If you really want to reduce the wealth of an enemy state than burning down every villages and town you see it a more viable strategy.

#6

Honestly I’d be happy just to see a wounded state of behavior in the game, but your suggestion sounds awesome

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#7

Those are things that came up with firearm warfare, era we are speaking losing side were usually full retreat or dead in the field and no position to get their wounded from field. And if you were wounded on losing side you usually were finished after a fight or if you were some kind a lord healed and ransomed.

#8

I agree with what you said: wounded soldiers are preferable to dead soldiers and agree with TheDivineInfidel. I would like to add that whilst nations were studying and developing biological weapons, in most cases it was not to develop and ultimate killer weapon but one that would wound and require continuous treatment.

A dead soldier can be left behind on the spot because he is dead. A wounded soldier has to be retrieved and taken care of (so soldiers that would normally be fighting are now taking care of wounded soldier to bring him to safety). In a medieval context however I am not so sure if an officer would risk more lives or care for a militia peasant bleeding on the field. This courtesy would likely only be offered to those of high status such as nobles. When the battle is fully over the butcher might have a try with any low status survivors that he doesn’t declare a dead man already.

It is entirely unpractical and outright insane to aim to only wound an opponent that is engaging you in a battle context (perhaps differently in a duel). As a soldier on the front line that is being engaged by melee troops your absolute priority is to remove the threat to your life: that soldier engaging you.
You would do whatever is in your power to finish him before he finishes you or another enemy spear finds your belly. Besides, a wounded soldier who finds himself in a life threatening scenario (not shot 200m away from enemies but stabbed in the front line of an ongoing battle) will be doing whatever is left in his power to defend himself and keep enemies away (slashing at legs from the floor to avoid being stamped to death). In other words, the wounded enemy is still a threat so the soldier would end the threat whilst he can afford to do so as other threats lurk about.

The only ways I can think of right now of how you could wound your enemies to achieve those goals is:

  1. Maim your prisoners of war (cut off their right hand to prevent them from taking up arms in the future) and return them to their faction.

  2. Drop a diseased animal in the wells of the settlement you are about to invade to spread a plague among citizens and soldiers which will be survived only by a fraction of the treated patients. This would require a lot of supplies and man power for the faction to overcome and would interfere with defense plans. You could now just setup a siege and wait for them to surrender (as they can’t get supplies through a siege) or wait long enough for the plague to be over and attack their malnourished, low morale forces. A leader employing such tactics against another Christian would likely not be very popular though mind you.

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#9

This was done with archers to an extend but is not feasible for non-specialized troops (say: Pikeman) because there is such a large group to draw recruits from. Folks of gentle birth and rich commoners could and would often ransom themselves wholly (and not with a hand missing).

This sort of tactic would work in the long term against nations that rely on highly skilled/specialized folks such as longbow archers. Turkish archers and artillery masters/siege experts. However for this to succeed you need to first beat the enemy multiple times and take the bulk as POW. Then you’d only profit from it if you fight another battle against that nation within a span of 5-10 years.

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#10

Hey Dushin!
Thanks for the info! Yeah I completely agree with you but I thought of that point not with the intention of someday depriving the enemy of men capable of wielding arms but more along the lines of psychological impact (as strikerjg1 mentioned in his initial post). Quite certain it would affect economy to some extent too. They wouldn’t make money as a dead man anyways but a maimed man might be supported by family and others resort to thievery to survive.

This is all pure speculation as I am not quite well read in the “art of maiming”.

If you executed the POWs or simply ransomed them then that’s all old news. People die in war, everybody knows that. However if you’re up against a faction whose leader or commander is known for cutting off the right hands of their foes would have quite the impact your troops. Losing your right hand means you can no longer continue your profession when the war is over. If you are a peasant militia forget about sustaining yourself when the war is over IF you survive it. The mercenary that loses his sword hand will never be hired again. I’d imagine this to be quite a horrible notion before a battle that could well impact the morale of the unit.

Not only on the battlefield. During the war cities, towns and other settlements would have an increasing population of maimed ex-soldiers as a steady reminder of what happens to those who oppose “the other” faction, “a living ambassador of your power” as strikerjg1 put it.

Then again as the leader who orders this maiming you’d better hope the battles go your way as your own POWs would not be treated very well either and they’d probably know it beforehand. Such a leader/commander would probably not be considered the most gallant or honorable man either.

Oh, and on a final note I’d like to add to what you said about archers and the group they can draw units from. In England bow practice was mandatory by all men. All men also had to have access to arms as in own a weapon in case they are called to arms so raising militia units can be done quite easily. So in England at least it would have been mainly psychological if such an atrocity was standard practice.

#11

Good points, but like I stated earlier the economic impact would remain so small it’s hardly noticeable. Making sweeping statements about the medieval period is wrong, but I probably wouldn’t be that far off mark when stating that the average (western Europe) medieval army numbered between 7000-15000 soldiers. Even a small kingdom such as England had a sizable population (around 2 million during the 100 years war IIRC). Let’s say an English army consisting of 10000 men with 2/3 of them being archers is defeated. Now a certain percentage of those would escape and not become prisoners of war and a percentage will be killed. All in all it’s unlikely the winning side would end up with more than 3000-4000 prisoners. If all those had their hands cut off than it would not make that much of an impact on a country of 2 million. Especially if some of the archers were full-time professionals who had no peace time job.

Then there is the fact that even with one hand you could still preform a few jobs.

In terms of economic warfare simply destroying the countryside would yield far greater results. Compared to other medieval brutalities just having your hand cut off almost seems nice (actually that’s debatable but I doubt the fear of losing ones hand would might you fight less well).

I agree and this is what some other books also indicate. If the French ever did it they cut off the Archers thumbs because of anger and not out of any grand strategical idea.

Then there is also the fact that chopping off someones hand tends to lead to them expiring rather quickly. Cutting off a thumb would certainly be more survivable in the medieval world.

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#12

You make good points Dushin. I also missed the point were you mentioned a mercenary might have a savings or the farmer relying his sons which I hadn’t thought about myself which is yet another good point.

Therefore I think we can/have concluded that physical wounding will have a rather insignificant impact upon a faction’s economy. Maiming will impact so little due to reasons stated by yourself and other forms of physical injury would not cost the faction much in medical supplies due to low medical care given anyways (to low classes at least) and lethality of such injuries that would either have the injured man expire or survive within a short time span at little cost to medical supplies. Besides, there were always enough leeches! Leech collecting had to be the worst job…

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#13

If only it was…

I suppose tanners take a second place.

#14

Placing bare legs in dirty stagnant waters and pulling out the leeches into a pouch whilst bleeding with non-clotting wounds from the leeches with high chance of infecting (sometimes later resulting in death if unlucky) seems like a bad reason to wake up for every morning.

I do have to agree with you that the whole leather tanning business was a nasty one. One fit for tv show “Dirty Jobs”. Soaking leather with piss and rubbing it with shit must have been a smelly business even for those days. There was a reason tanneries were placed on the edges of settlements. Nowadays chemical treatment is used instead however some poorer countries still employ the old ways… Collecting buckets of said piss and shit from locals could not have been pleasant either…

#15

Come to think of it we could probably open a new thread for jobs to be included in the game. Watch the locals suffer their day to day routine for some good immersion into the period.

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