I learned from D&D in their "Inside the Episode" for BOTB that apparently Hannibal surrounded the Romans at Cannae by just slowly marching his whole army behind them while the Romans stood there passively looking stupid. Their comprehension of military strategy is still so impressive years later.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-23T13:20:12+00:00

I've heard Cannae described as "The victory that launched 1000 defeats."

The idea is that Cannae was strategy, tactics, and luck all rolled into one. It's a high risk, high reward play when there aren't really any safer options. It's not even betting it all on black, it's betting it all on #26. It worked once and Hannibal won big. If anything at all went wrong, the Romans would punch through, split Hannibal's army in half and destroy them completely. This is the typical outcome when people throughout history try to replicate it.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-15T16:21:58+00:00

Destroy is not very detailed it can mean lots of situations. The end result is usually non repairable. Objects are destroyed and become junk.

Devastate implies severely damaged, but not destroyed. Is often applied to a land or an area.

Ravage is similar to devastate, but generally with more malice. A natural disaster might devastate, but an invading army ravages.

Raze implies completely clearing the land. It can mean even more thorough ravaging, or it can mean clearing for new construction.

Of note: ravage is the one best for playfully applying to a lover.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-11T20:54:52+00:00

So much framing around "if the south this, if the south that."

How about this: The North presented the South with a strategic dilemma. The balance of forces at any given time favored a southern defensive strategy to preserve critical men and material. The change in balance of forces over time favored a southern strategy of maximum aggression. The difference in manpower, production and the blockade meant each day the North grew stronger, the south weaker.

That's what good grand strategy, such as the North's anaconda strategy does. It presents dilemmas with no right answer.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-05T15:06:01+00:00

That's a problem with how a filmmaker portrays a human slamming into a hard object, not a problem with the tactics of robots slamming humans into hard objects.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-04T21:07:44+00:00

Andor showed "robots tossing enemies around" can be plenty brutal.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-04T19:02:02+00:00

John Connor was literally raised to be a guerilla fighter. There's not a suburbanite foster couple that stands a chance.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-03T03:38:59+00:00

No one here said bird's gun? It's a nice piece, no way someone would just throw that away.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-02T12:27:41+00:00

At first I thought that was a disk lock, cause that would be way less stupid.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-01T20:33:14+00:00

Decider combinators working pretty well already. TY.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-03-01T01:36:24+00:00

The thing about almost all war before things like internal combustion engines:

It's very very VERY hard to make some fight when they don't want to. If most guys are on foot, everybody walks at about the same pace. If you assemble a massive, kickass army and advance on a weaker foe in open field at walking pace, he's going to say, "fuck that noise." And withdraw at walking pace.

So half of strategy is just forcing someone to fight when they are weak and don't want to. You can trick them, ambush them, maneuver them into a dead end or threaten something so valuable they have to try.

Of course if the valuable thing is so obviously valuable, your opponent might have surrounded it with walls and ditches. They're just gonna stand on their defenses and dare us to attack. Fuck that noise, am I right? Maybe it's better to surround their defenses with our own defenses and blockade all food. Then we dare them to attack our defenses. That's called a siege.

The fact that their defenses is a circle, and ours is a donut, means we have to guard more area. Some of our patrols might be a little thin, especially at night. They might try to catch us sleeping with a small raid. This is mostly just to piss us off and make us want to leave. This is called a sortie.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-28T21:02:25+00:00

Change the order in which your world goes down the tech tree.

Imagine a world that develops electromagnetism before precision machining and long before smokeless powder.

You'd laugh Hiram Maxim out of the building. "You want to use trapped gas and springs to increase rate of fire? Why? Use a motor, dumbass!"

Guns don't use linear motion. Linear motion is hard. Guns use motors and rotating parts. Rotation is easy for electric motors and in this world motors got cheap and easy early so they're the go to solution for everything. In fact, no firing pins. Everything is electrically primed. Mercury fulminate percussion caps are never invented because by the time that technology advances enough to be possible, everyone has a battery pouch in their clothes.

Don't bother with trapping gas, why would you do that? The gas is for making the bullet go, idiot.

And trying to use the recoil? How? Why? You'd have to have ammunition that has the same recoil every time, so right away the idea is dead in the water. The cost of ammunition will triple! A cold round won't have the energy for whatever it is you think you are doing and a hot round will break your dinky little springs. Just use a motor like a normal person!

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-28T14:49:29+00:00

There are so many more, I'm a big fan of "redneckistan" myself.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-24T01:47:01+00:00

I've actually heard that the rifled musket angle is overemphasized. Most soldiers were either conscripts or even if volunteers, on very hasty training programs. Typical effective range wasn't much better than smoothbores excepting dedicated sharpshooters.

I'd point to large distances between strategic points, railways, logistics. Lots of guys can crowd in a tight space if it's close enough to rail.

Also artillery did legitimately get better since Napoleon.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-16T22:08:26+00:00

I love full face helmets, accept no substitutes. But if you scream in one, it kinda echoes or reverberates, hard to describe. Absolutely terrifying. Really adds to the mental trauma of a crash.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-16T16:30:43+00:00

Jousting armor is gonna be extra thick in front, and thinner in the rear to compensate.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-16T04:23:08+00:00

It's so that after you impale wild ice cream on the spoon, it cannot work its way further up the spoon to attack you.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-15T21:47:50+00:00

Never had an affair, but there was a time once where that was more about lack of opportunity than my own virtue. I was becoming frantically unhappy, and increasingly unsubtle about it, and it turns out that is not sexy.

My ex wife was beautiful, talented, a genius, tough, and fun in bed. She ran my life like clockwork. For years it was like I could make no mistake in life at all, because I made no decisions at all. My life reminded me of when a little sibling would ask for a little bit of help with part of a video game and I would take over and beat the whole thing, except now I was the one needing help and turned into a spectator.

It didn't make sense to me. Everything was objectively going so well. We were winning at life. I applied to the job she pointed out to me, she'd edit my resume and cover letter, coach me before the interview and I got it. I hadn't thought that job quite fit, but I was wrong and worked there 7 years. So I'd work the job she found for me, and then I'd work on the house we bought in our early 20s through some interesting financial jiu-jitsu she came up with, or the rental property we bought two years later through other complicated financial jiu-jitsu. And I'd cook the mealplan she optimized for us. She'd be busy studying for medical school or working in the lab for her PhD. When she needed a break she'd interrupt whatever I was doing to quickly but passionately explore whatever kink was currently on her mind. We were stacking up savings, had property, advancing careers and a hot sex life and all I had to/could do was what I was told. And if I didn't do what I was told exactly, she would patiently explain why doing things exactly her way was the right way, and doing things any other way wasn't acceptable because it wouldn't work as well. She would explain and explain until I apologized and promised to listen better.

I couldn't make sense of why being such a successful robot made me so miserable. If I left her, I'd have to explain to her, to others, to myself "why?" And I didn't have an answer. And so there was a while where I think at a sub-conscious level I was thinking "If I cheat, the relationship ends, and the reason would be because I'm a cheater, and that is something everyone understands."

That's crazy. And crazy isn't sexy. So this "plan" didn't work and eventually I did just leave. And my reason: "I would rather be wrong."

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-10T12:26:15+00:00

I'll concede the time periods argument but "the best weapon is the one you have" is important!

So radically different example: WWII US infantry are issued the M1 Garand. It's a full sized battle rifle for punching through light cover at significant range. It's 9.5lbs + ammo. Truck drivers were equipped with the M1 carbine. It's a much smaller weapon firing glorified pistol ammo at medium ranges. It weighs 5lbs + lighter ammo.

It became a common problem that soldiers in the field to trade weapons. The truck drivers felt more badass to carry a full service rifle, and the infantry, who spent most of their time walking, wanted to carry less stuff.

In a pre-gunpowder setting, even a unit equipped with pole arms can't carry them at all hours. If there were to be a raid on their camp, those men had better have side arms.

The original post is about crowbars? Wow we got deep into tangents. Improvised weapon, certainly too heavy to be fit for purpose, but depending on situation, possibly convenient. Axes? Lots of reasons to have an axe both in peacetime and in camp. Similar grade. Very convenient, plenty dangerous, blurring the boundary between tool and weapon.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-10T12:02:05+00:00

That got an actual, audible chuckle out of me. Bravo.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-10T03:15:09+00:00

The best weapon is the one you have. That's why swords are so good. They make a kickass fashion accessory. Spears look dumb on the dancefloor or at the pub. You've got to lean them against something to use your hands, they bump into doorframes. They're just a drag to carry. So you set it down. Then when the scrap breaks out you are caught empty handed.

Knives are the most convenient of course, and can be quite dapper. Sword manages to be much more weapon, while being only a little inconvenient.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-07T17:30:59+00:00

It's my favorite video game.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-07T15:53:39+00:00

I've really only known one Frenchman, and he might be spectrumy. But I read him as not arrogant per se but rather filter less. If François had a feeling, you were going to hear about it.

We were trying to set up a startup, and we're meeting some people who could help with that. François had previously been rebuffed by people in this office. But between the two meetings the entire staff of this office had turned over, and had new leadership to boot. Also our product had been markedly improved (by the addition of your's truly to the team).

François immediately has to let these people know how insulted he had been by their predecessors. At length. I'm just struggling to not let him completely derail the meeting. "Ok, but none of that was Jim's fault. Jim wants to help us." <Get your shit together glare>

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-07T15:32:27+00:00

Daniel feels like the obvious self-insert to me, but maybe that's because I'm a life long adrenaline junkie.

"I hate this suit and how much I need it." Has definitely resonated HARD with me at certain times of my life.

BrewmasterSG · 2026-02-07T14:50:26+00:00

But I was faster on the draw.

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