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SP - General Too many women on the battlefield!
- Thread starter Emax
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WNxSpectre
Recruit
Totally agree with you. There are barely any women in the game at all already, the last thing we need is to start removing what few there are.
If anything it is a noticeable shortage of female wanderers in my recent play throughs.
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![[Rei]](/data/avatars/m/465/465998.jpg?1579545094){kind=avatar}
Jeeba leeba. I don't wanna call you a dumbass but you're kinda making it hard not to :/
Jesus christ, it`s as if nobody read OP. It`s not a SJW or "patriarchy" issue. It`s a question of game balance.
..With that said, i think it perfectly exemplifies WHY women were rare on the battlefield. If they die, there are no babies.
Nevermind that women are about 20% smaller and men have 20% more muscle mass on average. Meaning a man on average has 10-15 cm longer reach, and also creates more force when swinging something because of that longer arm.
It also means any woman who fights a man has to work much harder to keep up.
Which means that if an army is 15% women, out of 10.000, its about 10-12% weaker, than an army that is exclusively men.
So lets say the Gauls are fighting Romans. On top of disadvantages in discipline, equipment and fighting doctrine, they are 10-12% weaker because of their composition. If we look at medieval times, a suit of armor is above 20 kg. Average weight of a woman today is what? 60 kg? If i had to carry a THIRD of my body weight around, i would be exhausted in MINUTES.
This is not a misogynistic position. It is simple fact. Because if both genders were equal, we would let the best female MMA-fighters and boxers, fight the best male fighters. But we won`t do that, because we dont wish brain damage and disforming injuries on female athletes.
Alternatively, just look at mixed tennis doubles-matches. Or the results of male cross-country skiers compared to women.
That takes care of simple biology. Now, if you look at different periods in history, there are different burdens and responsibilities women hold. But the one that is universal, up until the 18th century (ish), is that women hold the sole responsibility of reproduction. And the harder life is, the shorter life expectancy is, the more important that role becomes.
That does not mean that "gender roles were better before" or "women should be submissive to men". It does not even mean that women NEVER fought. Just that through history, it is very logical why women were kept away from battle. To say anything else is stupid, because it defies simple logic and biology. And if they ever participated, they were so rare that any sources are almost mythological about it.
..With that said, i think it perfectly exemplifies WHY women were rare on the battlefield. If they die, there are no babies.
Nevermind that women are about 20% smaller and men have 20% more muscle mass on average. Meaning a man on average has 10-15 cm longer reach, and also creates more force when swinging something because of that longer arm.
It also means any woman who fights a man has to work much harder to keep up.
Which means that if an army is 15% women, out of 10.000, its about 10-12% weaker, than an army that is exclusively men.
So lets say the Gauls are fighting Romans. On top of disadvantages in discipline, equipment and fighting doctrine, they are 10-12% weaker because of their composition. If we look at medieval times, a suit of armor is above 20 kg. Average weight of a woman today is what? 60 kg? If i had to carry a THIRD of my body weight around, i would be exhausted in MINUTES.
This is not a misogynistic position. It is simple fact. Because if both genders were equal, we would let the best female MMA-fighters and boxers, fight the best male fighters. But we won`t do that, because we dont wish brain damage and disforming injuries on female athletes.
Alternatively, just look at mixed tennis doubles-matches. Or the results of male cross-country skiers compared to women.
That takes care of simple biology. Now, if you look at different periods in history, there are different burdens and responsibilities women hold. But the one that is universal, up until the 18th century (ish), is that women hold the sole responsibility of reproduction. And the harder life is, the shorter life expectancy is, the more important that role becomes.
That does not mean that "gender roles were better before" or "women should be submissive to men". It does not even mean that women NEVER fought. Just that through history, it is very logical why women were kept away from battle. To say anything else is stupid, because it defies simple logic and biology. And if they ever participated, they were so rare that any sources are almost mythological about it.
Every source I've read says that the Gauls were way taller and more muscular on average than the Romans they fought against. The Mongols, Romans and Japanese were midgets even for their time, but they carved out massive empires while mostly outnumbered.
What's more people are rarely if ever selected for military service by strength or height. The vast majority of people in almost every society are never expected to join an army, let alone fight in battle. It's usually only specific social classes and other arbitrary groupings, meaning the majority of soldiers were of suboptimal peak strength, not that it matters that much in warfare anyway.
The main thing preventing women from joining armies was society. There are very few matriarchal or egalitarian societies left for a number of complex reasons that nobody has a clear answer for, but wherever you get matriarchies you tend to get women in the army.
So what? Yes, there are equalizers to size and strength. But size and strength is always important. The Romans trained with bronze weaponry so their battlefield equipment would feel lighter. Strength and fitness is all that matters.
Your examples had very niche advantages (extremely effective tactics and drill, completely mounted army), and the last one is in modern times. A firearm is the greatest of equalizers. Besides, i stated that after the 18th century(ish) the need for women to ONLY reproduce has diminished rapidly. Furthermore, as their neighbors learned from their defeats, the romans lost. Because their opponents were physically more imposing. Most famous viking warriors were huge men, known to cleave men in two or dwarf horses. The same goes for alot of famous samurai. Size and strength matters. The more "basic" the fight is, the more important size and strength becomes. Are you kidding me with this bs? And this only holds true up until the 15th/16th century, when firearms take over for melee weapons. But at this point, societies were so ingrained in their misogyny and misconceptions anyway.
Alternatively, do you think that Jessie Eisenberg could beat Schwarzenegger with a sword, if both had experience using it? Or Angelina Jolie? Eisenberg can wield it probably only 30% of the time Arnold has before he gets tired.
I agree that there were societal structures that dictated wether or not you would have to do some soldiering. But assuming they were suboptimal in health or strength, is wrong. For most of history, the infantry have been from the masses, required to pay for their own equipment. Which assumes some MODEST personal funds. And this means they were able to feed themselves and do a full days work on that diet. Also, our perception of food back then is plain wrong. Medieval peasants ate alot of fish and root veggies, dairy milk or sheeps milk and cheese products. They would have been surprisingly healthy, assuming no plague or other pandemic were ravaging the country. Quality in diet was actually far worse after urbanization because that required alot more transport of perishables, diluting for storage and larger crops. Which means the crops became more homogenous. I.e Bread. This is when deficieny diseases start becoming a societal problem.
Second of all, im not saying that women can`t fight. I am saying that there are logical disadvantages to allowing women on to the battlefield in the past. And without disparaging matriarchies, why did they not survive and prosper, build vast empires or civilizations? Most are anecdotal tribes or offshoots of religious groupings.
Lastly, if the worlds best female MMA fighter or boxer met the best male boxer or MMA fighter, even at the same weight, the man would win 99 out of a 100 matches. Swords, spears, and such melee weaponry are amplifiers of physical strength. Not equalizers. Which means, ANY man will beat a woman if equal training and practice is given.
If you amplify this to a army-wide situation, just holding the battle line with alot of women becomes not impossible, but much harder. Requires more planning, better preparations, other greater advantages and equalizers. Besides, if women were capable, there would be more evidence of women participating as warriors. There are examples of matriarchal societies, and many sources claim women fought among the celts. But there are not dominating matriarchal or egalitarian societes. However, many societies hold womens rights equal to men, but their responsibility is to produce children. And nowhere in the ancient era, migration period, early medieval or medieval period in general, were women a significant minority of a fighting army.
It is not pretty. Thank god it is not this way today. But when survival of your culture,language and people demands children and 30%-40% die before they reach 5 years, it becomes necessary to produce many. It is crude, but simple.
Exactly, and that is what made them effective, not the individual strength of the soldiers. No historian will ever study the diets or exercise regimes when trying to ascertain why one state annexed another, because when you're talking about gigantic systems like states the things that matter are on a much larger scale. If the Romans could organise their society to supply twice as many soldiers as anyone else, it doesn't really matter how strong they are individually.
I think you overestimate how much actual fighting soldiers do, and how much they rely on physical strength. It's tempting to fetishize weapon skill and imagine that an army of HEMA enthusiasts could fight the entire HRE alone, but every source about medieval battles is unanimous in how unintuitive and unpredictable they were, and how easy it was to make an entire army rout. In a chaotic environment like this where 30,000 men might just decide to go home before the battle even starts, or where most casualties are from soldiers being killed while running away, how does a 10-20% difference in physical strength play any perceivable role?
If you could answer this question and have it peer reviewed and accepted you would probably be a millionaire. The answer isn't as simple as "they were weaker" or "they were inherently less effective" because they pop in and out of history in a myriad of different forms at specific points like the invention of the wheel in Eastern Europe or the expansion of Chinese culture in antiquity. In the age of colonialism and gunpowder entire regiments of women start appearing, especially in Africa and Asia.
It`s not that i overestimate it. But any longstanding, effective army have had drills, meticulous training regimens and fitness standards for their soldiers. You are correct that individual soldiers` strength is a negligible factor of a battle. However that was never my point. If the entire army is trained and drilled toward a standard that gives you cohesion, accurate expectations of performance and from that grows individual strength. I mean, if individual strength is not important, how can you know how far you can march and expect efficient performance in battle? Or how much pressure the soldiers/units/formations will handle before exhaustion or mental stress breaks them? These are directly linked to individual fitness and strength.
Besides, if you have an opposing unit or piece of a battle line composed of on average 20% weaker enemies, 20% smaller, with 10-15 kg less weight per body, that is where your Spartans, Romans or Franks would engage their elites, to push through the "weakspot" in the line. This was always my argument. From that break, a victory might be forged. Such things can be negated, but it is a inherent disadvantage to have in your army or battle line.
How much fighting an individual soldier does, wholly depends on the situation. The hussites for example, were often outnumbered heavily which lead to almost each individual having to participate. There are also accounts that describe situations so dire that even the general had to rally or go into the fray for a short period. Alexander the great through most of his campaigns, was heavily outnumbered. So there, every individual will at some point have been involved. This varies alot. But again, there is not doubt that cohesive bodies of men, with training and individual fitness and strength as a result of that training, perform better. "A disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials is a house"
And while a battle is not a series of duels between two and two opponents, if one side has an advantage in simple strength or height, this can be easily utilized to press a melee advantage. Just because the Romans negated it against larger gauls (debatable anyway), does not make it false.
Now you are looping around on your own argument. It was you who dragged diet into this. And now you are claiming diet or rations for armies are not relevant. As a matter of fact, we know alot of what different armies ate while on the move. So i think this is pretty much an incorrect statement. Also we know alot of how the Romans trained (the bronze equipment) and the Spartan "agoge". So historians have ABSOLUTELY studied the diets or exercise regimes of states. "The things that matter" in THIS context, is especially food. The Romans did not conquer the known world on ****ty rations. Alexander did not march to India on lentils and dirty water. And armies who forgot to feed or water their soldiers, perished. Often brutally. When Rome sacked Carthage it was not a great feat of civic administration. When vikings plundered and settled in England, it was not a complex matter. They killed the opposing armies and took what they wanted. The scale WAS huge, but the complicated bit was the battle. Nothing else.
Also, Rome did not supply twice as many soldiers as anyone else, we just agreed earlier that they were outnumbered!
I feel like taleworlds taking the SJW approach and just including women commanders ruins the immersion of actually playing a female. In warband if you played a female you were at a disadvantage yea, but you also had the unique ability to marry any lord and gain power that way. You would usually be the only female leading a war party which would be accurate. It was like a nice little perk of playing a female. In Bannerlord playing a female has no perks and just ruins the game for people who like realism in their games.
This statement might be somewhat true if you compare the top X male and female atheths in a single sport but when it comes to avarage citizens, it´s far less. A standing, elite well- drilled band on 500 individuals(In bannerlord: T3 or even T4+) in peace-time might have been hard to qualify for a well-trained woman but in militia, caravanguard, bandit and low-tier regular bands, women with good fitness would certainly fight alongside both weaker and stronger males.
five bucks
Knight at Arms
You are correct but missing the point. Just because you don't have to have "peak strength" doesn't mean you can be well below average.
Nonsense. People absolutely are excluded from military service if they can't pass the minimum fitness and strength tests. Because the military doesn't want someone in a combat situation who can't keep up with everyone else while wearing full combat rig and can't drag wounded comrades to safety. It's a liability.
Only if one is willfully ignorant of human biology.
Here's the results from the Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces Report, 1992.
"The average female Army recruit is 4.8 inches shorter, 31.7 pounds lighter, has 37.4 fewer pounds of muscle, and 5.7 more pounds of fat than the average male recruit. She has only 55 per cent of the upper-body strength and 72 per cent of the lower body strength (...) an Army study of 124 men and 186 women found that women are more than twice as likely to suffer leg injuries and nearly five times as likely to suffer fractures as men."
"The average 20-30 year old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man."
"Lt Col. William Gregor of the US Army found that in a survey he conducted at an Army Advanced ROTC Summer Camp on 623 women and 3540 men: the upper quintile of women at West Point achieved scores on the fitness test equivalent to the bottom quintile of men."
"On the push-up test, only 7% of women can achieve a score of 60, compared to 78% of men, who exceed it."
Unless you count mythological societies there's almost no evidence for this.
Throughout history, in all societies, including the ones some people describe as matriarchal, male troops have vastly outnumbered female troops.
To put this discussion back on track to the game: There is no basis for a 50% ratio of female commanders in the real-life setting that Bannerlord is based on. If you want to argue for a high prevalence of female generals, the "Bannerlord is a fantasy game" argument is much more convincing.
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They make a history adjacent game. They are trying to recreate a feudal system, with realistic weapons and armor. And have authentic weapons and make things feel as realistic as possible. HOWEVER. The setting and the factions, cultures (while being clearly copied off of real world counterparts), are fictional and historically, tribal celts are not even early medieval-consistent. So the female leaders are not out of place.
They are out of place if you expect a wholly realistic medieval sim. But then why are you not complaining about the completely inaccurate combat system? If you watch any HEMA video on melee combat with sword and shield, M&B are WAY off. Not to mention inaccurate castles that are as historically inaccurate its borderline comical. These are just some of the inconsistencies.
Its their own fictional sandbox. It has no inconsistencies, because it is fictional. And complaining about female leaders as "historically inconsistent" is cherry picking from all the inconsistencies.
Btw, the feminist response to my comment here, is to claim that it is whataboutism. But it still holds true.
No, its a statistic on ALL men and women. It comes from the EU, so it might not be representable for Asia or the US. But there will still be a difference in how men and women are built. This is just simple biology! Just look at sheep. There`s not HUGE differences in rams or ewes (female sheep). But the rams have more prominent skulls and nasal ridge, for ramming and fighting. They are also predominantly bigger, by about 15%.And yes, a ram will kill a ewe if they decide to butt heads. About three impacts and she will die. Because he is built bigger.
Now, not all men are larger than women, or stronger than women. But the average man, will be around 20% larger and stronger. Which means out of a hundred men and a hundred women, 99 of the men will be able to defeat 100 of the women. And perhaps 20 of the women are able to defeat one man. With equal training and weapons practice. I dont know about you, but in a mass fight, i would put my money on the all men`s team.
Again, women participating is not dooming the army. But it gives your side a clear disadvantage, as i calculated in my earlier example. Out of a 10K force, 15% women equates a 12% disadvantage in strength and height/weight. Lets say 10% since its a simplified calculation done hastily.
Today this is not as true, because personal strength does not apply directly to wielding a weapon. But the further back in history you go, the more prominent this statistic is.
Also, if you kill 10% of the women of a culture/tribe/city, in war, it becomes MUCH harder for them to regain those lost numbers. Because like in sheep, deer or cattle, one man/bull/ox can impregnate many cows/women/does. This is the inherent biology of it all.
I feel this is the problem with modern society. We want to ignore simple facts and inherent biology. And i even feel like a "bad guy" for arguing this. But it does not make it less true.
It's already known that this game doesn't have historical melee combat or else the game would be boring and slow paced. They are messing with the game's lore, there's no female commanders in warband but 200 years ago society progressed far enough where women are constant commanders? Dudes love defending crap like this because they think it gets them laid.
GrandiousBrain
Regular
finaly someone with reason yes to this.
I rather want some ORGANIC way that put or forced circumstances that made women being at the healm and leading armies and actualy have a story and some organic way of taking the helm than just randomly for the sake of it having like women leaders all over the place right from the get go.
I would actualy love even some quests and some backstories that you can uncover of how certain female rose to power and have variations some just naturaly du to their birthright,some became leaders due to law changes,some were more tomboyish an dlike given up the right to rule and instead chose the battlefield to fight alongside her family members/armie and liek some due to circumstances being forced upon them to take action and become leaders and try to save the family and kingdom to not crumble or be taken over by other families and enemies.
Exactly, hard locks are a big no-no to me, i would rather have organic and interesting ways of those things happening like, why is women x the head of her house or leading this army? (insert interesting backstory here that develops more the lore)
One big example of this from RL that comes to mind is Jeanne de Clisson the Lioness of Brittany, her husband was betrayed by his own king and cowardly executed without proof accused of treason which shocked the nobility, she sold their lands to raise founds and fled vowing vengeance on the French king then spent 13 years terrorizing the French coasts and being their scourge in the English channel with her black fleet and her flagship named "My Revenge".
We don't know if she fought personally in any battles or raids but we do know that she led her sworn men personally, worked as a merc for the English and routinely targeted French ships, killed the entire crew leaving only one survivor to carry the news to the French king, that was a kickass story and the game should try to emulate those more.
Thats about how long your line of thought went, huh? I disagree, so i`m white knighting.
I mean, at least the others in here, have genuinely good arguments and manage to be respectful. Even more respectful than me!
You have a good one. I`m not entertaining angry little boys like you, when you can`t separate person from topic.
WNxSpectre
Recruit
The conversation in here is becoming heavy cringe factor.
How can people get this bent out of shape over a few female lords leading armies. There are barely any women at all in this game. It really does come across rather misogynistic.
Any issues with clan survivability can be solved without having to take women out of leadership roles, by tweaking the death chance until it becomes sustainable.
If you are oriented strongly towards a desire to see nothing but male digital models, then I suggest downloading one of the various mods that enable you to do so.
How can people get this bent out of shape over a few female lords leading armies. There are barely any women at all in this game. It really does come across rather misogynistic.
Any issues with clan survivability can be solved without having to take women out of leadership roles, by tweaking the death chance until it becomes sustainable.
If you are oriented strongly towards a desire to see nothing but male digital models, then I suggest downloading one of the various mods that enable you to do so.
WNxSpectre
Recruit
Skill and intelligence often mean quite a bit on the battlefield. The smarter force with better tactics, discipline, coordination, positioning and technology frequently is the winner over brute force.
Agincourt is an example. Greatly outnumbered and even armored by the French forces the English had better tactics, better trust from their men, better morale, better positioning, better cooperative synergy amoungst their units, better intel about enemy plans, and better strategy on the field. And via better discipline, strict control of their forces, keeping them on a short leash and strictly punishing transgressions, were even able to win support from local French villagers who were tired of being robbed, brutalized, and raped by their own out of control forces.
And this is why they defeated a much larger, stronger, but chaotic, disjointed, and overeager force.
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ez win for me
