If you have specific questions about how military units are organized in the modern era, I would really suggest downloading US army manuals on various topics from the era that you want more information about. For example, if you want to learn how US officers were trained to attack a city, download the manual about it, and it talks about what infrastructure to blow up first, how to handle communications, what formations to use, and so on and so forth. It's a lot more direct than reading a conventional history of a war. You can get answers to questions like "how did soldiers learn to move with stealth during the Vietnam war" by reading the manual more efficiently than you can from general histories.
I really recommend reading military material and not trying to glean things from games or fiction. The latter lean heavily on rule of cool versus rule of not dying and killing the other guy more effectively.
Very true, but there are still some games, that are more realistic, than others, so you can learn real tactics from them. And I enjoy them more, than the "cool" games, despite having no intentions of ever being close to a real battlefield.
- Operation Flashpoint, a shooter (later Arma) is an example, that is also actually used by some real armies as a training simulation (but in a modified version).
- Close combat series, is a tactical strategy game, where you command small units in WW2. (which can run out of ammunition, or simply run away or surrender, if they are under too much pressure)
- Total War series, for big old school battles, with Units in tight formations against each other.
And about realism and coolness and war: I actually think, all those glorifying Call of Duties etc. for example are really dangerous for the minds of the teens playing it, as they show mainly the glorious side. There are no civilians for example. You can just blow up allmost anything and the game rewards you for it. (mostly)
In those games, I never had a moment, like I had with Operation Flashpoint. In one add on, you fought as the red army against resistance. So people in civilian clothing, but some with guns that want to kill you. And this is what matters, since one bullet can kill you - so you shoot at them. At anything that moves. But after the battle you see, oh. Most of them were really harmless civilians. And you shot them, because you were scared, that they shoot you. There was no glory in that. But it left a deep impression with me and I started to understand, what collateral damage really means. And how it is impossible to avoid them in an urban war setting, like in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Now imagine you want to send military trainers to help build up a friendly nation's military. What are they allowed or not allowed to teach?
It also isn't that hard for other countries to use aerial or satellite surveillance to see what you're doing. Infantry tactics need to be practiced outside. How will you stop other countries from observing your tactics during training exercises?
It's a bit like knowing the general rules of chess vs. having a specific gambit for use in a particular game. Some of the information in the manuals is common military knowledge, e.g. how convoys work, how to position forces making use of cover, etc. In effect the military laws-of-physics.
What usually remains classified are the detailed Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) associated with given weapon systems or specialist force elements. Also, plans for specific operations are usually 'born secret' and tend to remain classified as that would give away thinking.
They’re quick to leak and near impossible to change once inevitably leaked.
I would assume the hardest part is sustaining the machine that provides the logistics anyway.
Here's an Amazon listing to give you a quick overview but it's old enough to get free copies.
Mainly, because in real war, troop morale is a main factor - and the best war tactics are those, that crush the enemies spirit and not their bones.
This is a main quote from Sun Tzu(from the back of my head): if you manage to route the enemy forces in panic, you gain more, than slaughtering them all.
Because they will spread the fear of your troops themself.
(but this part is not captured well in total war, as there you gain indeed benefits from high body count and enemy troops remain the same fighting spirit, even if they ran away in terror all the battles before)
Also where he says that great victories seem obvious and seamless because of great preparations of the leader -- like lifting a hare doesn't seem a great feat of strenght.
But the stuff about tactics is also very good, though on second thought when to attack and when not to, strength ratio and forces positioning probably is more about strategy than tactics.
Also about the political ends and not just the military, even though he says when the decision to go to war the political lord should not interfere with the decision of his general is usually turned on its head a lot and people often forget that war should not be an end in itself and the military should not get more power than the political and ultimate strategy is not about the military.
War was the worst outcome in the day of Sun Tzu as much as today and overall people were much worse after a war(except for a very small minority)-- like the people who think US should have kept the Vietnam war going, or that WW1 Germany military was betrayed, or USSR should have hept on fighting the Cold War and so on.
If you can rout the enemy force in TW, it then becomes massively easier to destroy them completely. Soldiers that are running away can't do much damage to their pursuers. As soon as you turn your back on your enemy, your chances of being killed increase dramatically.
If you rout your enemy in TW, you are offered the choice to accept a victory, or to continue fighting. Unless I'm bored, I always run them down; I don't want them retrained and reinforced, to come back later with added experience points.
In Napoleon TW, the best units for running down routed enemy troops are light cavalry. I suspect that's what lancers were really for.
But my point was, that in the next battle all those troops that ran away are fully restored, so yes the winning tactic is to have light cavalery to chase them down, (which is what they were used for in real life, too.)
So Sun Tzus advice to sometimes let the enemy run away on purpose, so their fear infects other enemy troops for easier future battles - is not captured.
Is that not modeled in that game, or is the effect so small that it doesn’t make a large enough difference?
But those are hardcoded algorithms.
The units do not really learn. (that would be awesome, but is very very hard to implement in realtime in a proper way) They just improve their stats with experience. So they get stronger in stats in either case, even when fleeing every single battle.
Now that I am searching - he does use the operations level mainly to make fun of books, series and movies where his historical examples have more sources.
https://www.amazon.com/Operations-Operational-Art-Military-D...
A classic textbook about strategy is "The Art of War" by Sun Zhu. It's public domain and pretty short.
Another great books are "The 48 Laws of Power" and "The 33 Strategies of War".
For anything more complex, I recommend you to look into game theory.
If you want a pop sci introduction, Tom Schelling's Strategy of Conflict is great.
It won't help you do any better in strategy games, though.
A big part of the reason for that is that two player games we play for fun like Star Craft are inherently set up as zero sum games. From a game theory point of view, you just minimax and are done. (You might need some randomisation to be optimal.)
The really interesting parts of game theory are non-zero sum games.
See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/tJQsxD34maYw2g5E4/thomas-c-s... for a review.
If you prefer them with commentary, Jocko podcast has talked about some of them.
Does anyone here know a book dedicated to these topics? I always wanted to pick a "military textbook" (assuming such a thing exists), apply its lessons to Age of Empires, and see how far that gets me.