Morgoth, on 21 October 2014 - 07:07 AM, said:
D, on 20 October 2014 - 08:47 PM, said:
Another example of a real world massive age of sail expedition which, whilst not anywhere near the size of Kublai Khan's second fleet ('only' 27,000 soldiers), was a Chinese exploratory fleet that launched successful military incursions in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and even reached East Africa:
http://en.wikipedia....reasure_voyages
Maybe what Jordan had in mind when thinking about the scale of the Seanchan expedition (and the Seanchan ships are clearly junks too).
We can all list naval invasions I would think. There have been plenty up through history. I referred to two in my original post on this subject. There have been thousands of naval invasions.
However, tranport over the open seas was fraught with danger even as late as the 19th century, and cargo space was limited. In the 15th century a Venetian merchantman would often need six months to travel from Venezia to Crete. It took the entire Ottoman economy several years to prepare for the invasion of Malta in the 16th century, and that was considered a logistical nightmare pushing against the very limits of what was then the best organized and probably most modern state in the world. Spain failed at several invasions of Algeria/Morocco in the 15th and 16th century because of many factors, but a major one was their inability to provide a proper suply chain over such long distances.
My point being that logistics is hard. Special ships designed to carry supplies only is nothing new. They were used then too. Look, a grown man needs roughly 3,5 l of water a day. That's 3.5 million litres a day for an army of a million men (ships rations are salty, so you'd probably need more). Now, the sailors would obviously need more, and there'd be a lot of sailors. Not to mention the animals. Horses, oxen and so forth. They need a lot of water too. We can assume for the sake of argument that they'd be able to find water when arriving.
Then there's food. None of it will go bad because of magic. Roman soldiers received about 3 500 calories a day when still, and between 6 and 7 000 when they were marching and fighting. That's a lot of food pr person for a million men, and then you'd include food for the sailors and animals. In addition you'd also need enough supplies to feed the army once it arrives. After all, unlike water, food can be burnt and you cannot forage effectively to feed a million men.
Also, it's been ages since I read WoT, but surely the Seanchan aren't at renaissance levels of technology? Carracks were not very efficient and didn't really become capable of traversing open sea until the very end of the 15th century, and Galleons arrived fairly late, around the end of the 16th Century I think.
Macros, on 21 October 2014 - 07:45 AM, said:
D, on 21 October 2014 - 08:29 AM, said:
Morgoth, on 21 October 2014 - 07:07 AM, said:
Also, it's been ages since I read WoT, but surely the Seanchan aren't at renaissance levels of technology?
Seanchan technology doesn't seem to be inferior to Westlander technology with a couple of minor exceptions (don't appear to have developed gunpowder and no evidence of mechanical clocks). Regarding navigation, the Chinese had magnetic compasses since the 2nd century but first used them for navigation as opposed to divination in the 11th century Song era. If we continue with the Seanchan/China analogy, we can assume the Seanchan have compasses.
http://en.wikipedia....entions#Compass
Tapper, on 21 October 2014 - 11:35 AM, said:
Ok. So suppose you make the crossing with all men and ships intact, some provisions left to secure a beachhead, conquer the nearest town and its peninsula and establish yourself.... Only to find that the local economy cannot provide the food, metal, draught animals and servants for your standing army, because that's such a huge surplus that it completely messes up the local system, damane magic or no damane magic.
If you come to conquer and stay, then the logistics of getting there probably pale in comparison to those of staying there.
Again a series of excellent points. Morgoth, thanks for the calorie stats, that puts the food supply problem in perspective. So firstly carrying food in that large amounts would be quite problematic, also how about resupply? A troop transport carries a limited amount of food. When thats running low, you need to replenish from the food carrier. Now multiply this transfer by 5-10000 for the entire fleet, and thats one transfer done. Same for the water. Then once you get wherever you are going, you have to go on eating. Remember Tanchico already had a supply crisis and most of the Rand land was going through a drought and thus short on crops. So how long are you going to go on feeding your army from ships stocks? Those are limited. So you have to drive inland, capture more territory. This inevitably means extending your supply lines. The enemy will soon strike back. Now consider what Rand did in the Path of Daggers. He rolled back all of those Seanchan regiments to Ebou Dhar. Most of those forces were in camps and they had to abandon everything. So more food lost. In fact an idea about the logistical problems of even a small army can be understood by reading the parts about Egwenes army. Its 30000 strong, and they are running out of nails. Without nails, no reshoeing of horses, no temporary structures, no repairs to the wagons. The Seanchan vanguard is 90000 minimum more like 150000. So the magnitude escalates. Also the Seanchan are hardly a Roman legion on the march. The senior generals and those of the blood must have delicate artwork, collectibles, fancy clothes, slaves, dancers etc.More cargo, cumbersome yet delicate cargo, more problems.
Frankly they were extremely lucky they were making an unopposed landing against an enemy without a professional navy. Something like the Blue Moranth or the Marese navy would have cut them to shreds. For that matter if the Seanchan army went up against say a Malazan army with mage cadre and Moranth munition toting marines, they wouldnt last long.
And Macros, yeah, Magic!
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