Leeds also showed how quickly they would have likely worn out. They did an experiment with a full harness and the protective layers. Apparently properly fitted armor is somewhat restrictive on the breathing and the way it hangs on the body wears you out more quickly as it takes more energy to move the whole body. Still given how utterly nasty medieval combat was I would take the armor.

A blacksmith has offered a swordsman a knuckle add-on to the sword hilt. There are two installation options: the fingers going through the holes are either above or side of the hilt. Which is better?

If you mean like brass knuckles, an emergency backup metal covering for a punch, then neither, it should go across the bottom of the hilt (the same side as the primary edge of the sword). You'd probably also want to just have one hand-sized hole instead of 4 finger-sized ones for ease of drawing the sword. Look up "knucklebow" for examples of this sort of thing.

Matt: Swords never fell out of prominence either. Again the only people who could afford the best armors were the appreciably wealthy and everyone else wore what they could get. The bulk of the armors on the field were munitions grade armor which is either iron or unhardened cheap quality steel. Sword remain useful through the end and beyond of the medieval era.

edited 27th Sep '17 6:35:39 PM by TuefelHundenIV

This was esp. true on horseback, because the earliest guns were very heavy and cumbersome. After your lance was broken, a sword really was the best back-up weapon.

The thing about cavalry is that if the enemy has pikes, you're pretty much buggered.

Also, swords did fall out of prominence somewhat, because they got replaced by warhammers and maces, and other things used to break armour that swords couldn't. Also, swords weren't of great use against mail backed by gambeson. Seriously, mail wasn't like you see it in the movies, it was strong, primarily because they used rivetted mail, not as is common nowadays, butted mail. Seriously, look at the relevant youtube videos of people like Lindybeige, Shadiversity, Metatron, Thegn Thrand, scholagladitoria, etc. These guys know what they're talking about.

edited 28th Sep '17 1:41:28 AM by MattII

Matt: None of those youtube channels are actual valid studies by any stretch. Every single one uses modern metal which is quite notably different from the metallurgy of the era because of how resources were processed. None of them weather armor like something worn by someone who has to wear it for weeks or even months overall or the compounding defects of small damage and uncounted small adhoc repairs from battle and every day dents and dings. Even a smith can't fully repair damaged armor to its original strength. Even light damage could easily compromise even the best plate. Finally none of them are professional soldiery with equipment that was likely higher quality backed by constant training to ensure they could defeat a wide variety of enemies.

There are several academic and other sources conducted under academic conditions which account for lot like materials and widely varying efficacy. Even the best armors had numerous flaws in the material and odd flaws in construction because of how they were made and the limitations of the technology of the era. No single piece was the same quality, hardness, carbon content for steel, or even hammer work. Even a single piece of processed iron or steel could have notable variations in any given spot from another. Armor was often made by multiple people introducing variations in each piece and an assortment of possible flaws you couldn't detect with Mk 1 human senses. Large portions of armor were also tempered separately.

Swords never fell out of common use as a primary arm of knights at any point in the medieval era and even beyond. The variety of other weapons were always considered a secondary weapon especially to a knights swords just like the lance was a secondary and the sword a permanent constant. Gambesons and maile did not stop a man with a sword killing someone quite the contrary and it is backed up by numerous historical accounts of knights in combat. Footman were starting to wield a wider variety of weapons fairly early one and being used more smartly and effectively against even cavalry. It is why you see you see the transitional armors like splint armor, Brigadine, and coat of plates taking over for maile. Maile at most became the gussets and then not even that only covering parts of the joints. Even that fell increasingly out of style as they just started covering everything with as much plate as they could even some of the German armors started doing it.

The padded jack was called the poor mans plate because it was cheap and provided some form of minimal protection but it seldom stopped sword thrusts, spears, axes, or really any weapon that landed a solid h it. Maile was far from a guarantee of protection either as it was common for one part of a shirt to have different quality metal in the varying parts and variable hardness. That isn't accounting for if it was forge welded or riveted or the dimensions of the individual links and quality of the overall construction of the item. Cost again is another driving factor. The best mail was links as small as they could manage, riveted, and with the best metal they could lay hands on. Maile was also very labour intensive and time consuming to make even for a master smith.

To top it off sword design changed rather steadily with the armor with later sword types increasingly tapering to deal with even plate and the other varieties of armor common the field. Swords not only stayed around as the knights key weapon but their design changed with the varying efficacy of armor. It is why early swords look more like Roman Spatha and late period swords are longer, heavier, and tapering to a sharp point that are closer to Estoc or the Eastern European Koncerz.

Csn you share your sources with us Tuefel?

This article provides a nice overview.

Do any of you have a couple hundred dollars to spend on physical books? Dead serious about this. I haven't found the majority of these with legit digital copies so you have to dig around for in libraries or shell out cash for dead tree copies.

Two of the best and most recent are " The Knight and the Blast Furnace" which I got lucky and found at a copy at a used book store and a digital copy somewhere I prefer the dead tree because it is easier to navigate the illustrations and imaging used to examine the metal and the hardness charts. New or even lightly used copies are costly. I could only find a copy of it's successor book "The Sword and the Crucible" at one of my local university libraries. They both cover the history, development, and evolution of not only armor but arms with detailed metallurgical examinations of many different pieces of surviving examples from periods from pre-medieval into the early Renaissance. The first book focuses on armor specifically. The second one has additional info that the author was able to gather that fills in some holes in the first book but focuses on the manufacture of swords. These two are more recent studies with microscopic levels of examination and hardness tests that weren't really practical in broad terms partly because their author had the benefit of technological advances not as widely available to Oakeshott when he did his work. These books are hard to come by partly because they are used college courses and run between 200-300 dollars per book. I know a few universities in the US contain at least one of them so if you are inclined you can usually get access even without being a student.

Ewart Oakeshott, the man the Oakeshott Typologies for weapons are named after, has done several books on arms and armor both alone and in collaboration with various others. His "A Knight" Second Edition series 1990's reprints are generally affordable and generally still relevant. They are relatively short around 200 pages apiece. Some of his work has more recent prints that cover the Swords of the Vikings, Medieval Swords specifically, and Renaissance to Industrial Era swords and weapons respectively. They can run around 20 dollars at the low end to close to 80 dollars at the high end and are from 200-400 pages. Three of them have reprints from within the last decade. He also does a work on broad historical survey of weapons and equipment from Ancient to Chivalric eras. It isn't too long but it has detailed line drawings and other images created by Oakeshott himself. He also does one that is more focused on the general development of the sword as well as its role in a social context covering their use as both a knights weapon and as a symbol of privilege and rank.

Sadly there will be no more books form him as he died in 02.

There is the overview of strategy and tactics as well as the general proliferation of various pieces of equipment that touches on not just equipment but how they tended to use it n conjunction with tactics. "European Medieval Tactics, Vol. 1: The Fall and Rise of Cavalry 450-1260 (Elite)" and "European Medieval Tactics (2): New Infantry, New Weapons 1260–1500 (Elite)". Since they are Osprey books they are generally rather affordable in the 10-20 dollar price range. The books basically emphasize the development of combined arms tactics rather than any one piece of equipment or unit and de-emphasize the mythological superiority of cavalry in the Medieval era. Also the myriad of ways infantry could take on cavalry and how cavalry worked with other types of troops and equipment to by pass those advantages and even improve their effectiveness. An example would be the breaking of the Scottish Schiltron by archer fire and when the formation started to break in charged everyone else and it was all over but the screaming.

Then there are the arms manuals from as late as the mid 1500's, nearly all have heavy emphasis and notes as swords as a primary weapon. Yes they still include the use of other arms and fighting techniques for knights but their emphasis was on a wide variety of sword fighting including the often noted "Murder Stroke". Those manuals and styles would form the basis of various future sword schools.

For the record pikes=/=defeated cavalry. We covered this pretty thoroughly in the history thread a while back. Yes they can defeat cavalry but are hardly the only variety of infantry to achieve that. There were around ten give or take a couple notable examples of the exact opposite happening. There was even an account of cavalry taking on and winning against pike men behind field barricades by dismounting and tearing apart the barricades. Sometimes the cavalry took heavy losses in the process, sometimes they were more moderate, other times they were shockingly intact after their pass and having broken the formation outright. There were always a number of different variables involved in each specific case. There were of course they more well known and sometimes epic failures like running into a boobie trapped field backed by a ditch topped with spikes.

There are other times the cavalry succeeded against even the worst possible targets they could face but they tended to happen in context of combined arms style tactics such as infantry tying down a formation or archers, muskets, even cannon or siege weapons putting big enough gaps into the formation to allow the cavalry to charge through .

edited 28th Sep '17 7:25:25 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Maybe there are 'academic studies' done (although your case would be helped if you could be less vague, and actually tell us about some of these studies), but I would hesitate to rely on them too much, because they miss things out, like what it's like to wear the stuff while being in a simulated battle.

Also, Estocs and the like are not going to be your primary weapon against a plate-armoured knight, because they're not good at penetrating plate, only at attacking the joints. Not a war hammer OTOH, that doesn't have to penetrate the plate, just transfer enough force that you break the guy's bones. and you don't even have to get into grappling range.

Seriously, stop taking your historical information from hollywood.

Oh, and of course arms manuals tended more towards swords, swords were actually convenient to carry around, and so were the most likely weapon to have to hand when challenged to a duel. But what's good in a duel isn't necessarily the same as what works on the battlefield.

edited 29th Sep '17 2:09:20 AM by MattII

Matt: How nice of you to so readily dismiss actual work on the subject. Two of the sources listed above do multiple academic works and are known for them but hey you already dismissed those. Frankly you have no business telling anyone where to get their information or questioning actual academic works when one of your first go to sources is youtube.

Estocs were used both as primary and secondary arm given the other varieties of sword were still in common use as the knights go to weapon. Yes estoc were used to pierce various pieces of plate. The joints were not the only thin spots. They were also used like a shorter lance once they lost or broke their actual lance, a technique used by the French and survived into some the later cavalry manuals well after the era of the knight had ended. A piece of armor damaged or dented, a common event in case you missed it, weakens armor notably. Armor, just like today, relies on both integrity of material and maintaining of its shape to remain fully effective. You also have no room to talk about anyone referencing Hollywood as the impervious plate is also a Hollywood Myth.

Swords manuals were for use in the field of combat not just the dueling field. Knights fought on foot as often as they fought on horse. That knights just swung around from horse back and never used their combat arms from manuals is also Hollywood Myth.

Your assumptions on swords are simply grossly inaccurate. Not only were other weapons used for dueling, such as daggers, axes, lances, spears, pole arms, maces, war hammers, pole axes, and even war picks; the horse man version of some of those were just as portable as the sword. None of those weapons were always carried. Yet the only weapon universally associated with knights are the sword and the lance. The lance was expected to be broken or lost but the sword was always available and always carried. Dueling being limited to swords is also Hollywood Myth. Swords were not carried because of duels, the manuals were not restricted to dueling fields, and swords were still a primary arm of the knight and the weapon they most extensively trained with. You don't carry weapons onto the battlefield you don't intend to use. You don't train so extensively in weapons unless you intend to rely on them.

Again because you seem to have trouble with details. Knights fought a lot more than other knights. There were numerous varieties of enemy with a large and varied array of arms and armor.

I haven't pointed to a single Hollywood Myth you on the other have presented several all in one go.

edited 29th Sep '17 10:50:16 AM by TuefelHundenIV

The problem with Estoc is that they're poking weapons, which don't work very well head on, especially not against guys in pike squares. No, the sword you want there is the greatsword, zweihänder, etc. Those can be swung in an 'upwards infinity' motion to knock pikes aside, thus allowing the guys wielding them to push into pike blocks, then half-sword to take down the pikemen.

Also, I never said that plate was impervious, but its generally rather smooth, so find a spot that isn't a moving joint to poke an estoc in is, I suspect, rather difficult, especially on the well-made suits, you know, the ones that have guards against just that sort of attack. Come to think of it, even the not very well made ones are probably going to be pretty hard to get through, what with breastplates and that being rounded, which is a shape they picked up to help- deflect arrows and bolts, which are also pointed.

Oh, and I never said they didn't use sword manual moves on the battlefield, that's just you trying to put words into my mouth.

And you sort of scupper your point in mentioning lances, because if the estoc was really that brilliant they wouldn't have bother with the lance. therefore, for mounted knights the estoc was the backup, not the primary weapon.

And most soldiers in that period weren't knights.

edited 30th Sep '17 3:58:06 AM by MattII

I am guessing you meant to use thrusting weapon but had a brain short or are in need of caffeine. To be back on point Estocs, Tucks, and their Eastern European counter parts use as a thrusting weapon in relation to pike formations has no bearing on its use and carriage. They weren't meant for fighting the formation so much as the individuals wearing armor in general including other knights but also the rapidly increasing number of footmen in some form of armor or another.

While the general idea with the Zweihänder was heavier with longer blades for more striking power, that they were somehow used specifically to fight pike men is at best contested. Yes they fought pike men and appeared to be good at it but they also fought other formations just as often and were equally good at breaching their formations. That they fought wide variety of opponents not just pike has to do with what they did for their position. A big part of that is that being Doppelsöldner meant they were the forefront of any formation. That the big two hand swords were effective isn't a question though given someone swinging around 5-7lbs of sharpened steel down on someone else is going to do some damage armored or otherwise. The blades were also rather effective as thrusting weapons and could be used like spears.

The Doppelsöldner, in which you find troops wielding that two handed weapon were not exclusively wielding Zweihänder either but the swords easily capture the imagination. Such troops were in a notable minority similarly to Doppelsöldner wielding guns and bow type weapons before they more widely adopted increasing numbers of fire arms. The bulk of the Doppelsöldner wielded shorter swords like the Großes Messer, halberds, and partisans. All Doppelsöldner were in the fore front of any formation and their collective job was to be lead elements to hopefully breach the enemies formations or blunt an attacking enemies charge.

Weapons like the Estoc and the Tuck were not exactly short weapons averaging around 4 feet in length with the Koncerz commonly used by Polish Hussars with an average 5 feet or longer.

The ideal weapon against pikes wasn't any of the melee weapons it was ranged weapons. Cannon, siege weapons, gun fire often from knights with pistols and the increasing number of harquebus or musket formations, and the various forms of archery weapons. Not only did they inflict casualties without the pike men able to retaliate it helped break up the integrity of the formation. Any enemy that can exploit a breach in a formation will quite likely break the formation and scatter it inflicting a high number of casualties on its members. You find a similar issue with the pike squares cousins the infantry square and the Scottish schiltron. It was part of the reason they started mixing ranged units with pike formations as the two helped cover the others vulnerabilities far better together than they did separately and it worked fairly well. The collective formations worked against other pike and infantry formations as well as against cavalry formations.

Plate has plenty of odd shapes, angles, and irregularities in many of the armor designs even cuirass frequently had any number of odd and differing designs. Even early plate had a wide variety of design. By the end of the medieval era there would be an even greater number of variations in design in individual armors. There is no such thing as a uniform armor design at any point during the medieval era even within mass produced orders of armor because multiple armory shops produced the larger orders resulting in a number of variations in each batch. Higher quality individual armors had a significant degree of variation and decoration depending on how much was being paid for the piece. No two pieces of armor were ever the same in design, fit, hardness, decoration or any other factor. The closest you get are broad and general trends that developed a significant degree of individual differences and variations in their executions.

The rounded breast plate was not picked to deflect arrows, it was picked because it was easier to fit around the around the body and the shape fitted the majority of individuals and provided the best coverage of the torso overall. Basically the one size fits all approach. It was also easier to mass produce. The munitions armor were notably less effective in every regard and would have a been a lot easier to pierce, puncture, rupture, or even shear through. Not only were they made of comparably inferior materials most common being iron and eventually low grade unhardened steel. They were also given significantly less time and attention in their manufacture outside of simpler shapes that even an apprentice could possibly bang out on short notice. These armors were also far more prone to manufacturing errors. Munitions armors were a step up from the leather and cloth armors and far more affordable than chain but they don't even come close to being as protective as the individually manufactured armors.

Individual armors crafted for those who could afford them were the munitions armor polar opposite in nearly every regard. They were not only more expensive but took more time and effort to produce and were by no means just a smooth plate. They also used higher quality materials and were more likely to have been hardened to varying degrees, and had far fewer manufacturing errors. In terms of personal armors the trend was sharply and quickly away from strictly rounded plates to numerous variations on surfaces, shapes, and even composition. That is partly thanks to the fact individual armors were fitted to the person purchasing them. There are also more than a few places on the full suit of plate that are not neatly rounded where a thrusting weapon could find purchase that are not the joints. Again the joints are not the only thin spots on armor and not the only points a weapon could penetrate. They may have been the easiest overall but they were far from the only thin or weak spots on armor. Also again armor tended to get damaged in battle and it only had to be damaged once to notably reduce its efficacy across a given area. Even when repaired in general that tended to leave a weak point on the armor.

No one put words in your mouth, you chose to make an overt statement that happens to be wrong.

At no point did you acknowledge the fact the manuals were also training and instruction for use in the field. In fact in your own words you dismiss the manuals as not their focus on swords was because, in your own words, the swords were easy to carry and popular for dueling because they were commonly on hand. You even seal the deal with that last sentence. Given your persistence in trying to inaccurately dismiss swords like have been, you don't exactly leave a lot of room for alternative interpretation. Just like you fail to acknowledge that swords featured largely in them because they were heavily used and relied on by knights and others in field combat on a very regular basis. The statement is actually rather ironic given what you referenced about the mercenary forces.

The key bit of irony is this. The same people who wrote some of those manuals where the use of swords are extensively featured; were also largely responsible for using said manuals and teachings to train Doppelsöldner and other famed mercenary groups especially, those wielding the famous two handed swords. That there were fencing schools scattered around Europe and in pretty much every major European power of the time for the express purpose of training both the nobility that made up the knights but also other professional soldiery and trained.

That training is partly why Doppelsöldner were paid double the going rate aside from being front line fighters. They were not only better trained, they tended to be better armored because they generally could afford to purchase said armor, and took the most risk in the mercenary formations. The same people who trained those mercenaries helped train the nobility in the use of arms and had been doing so for quite some time.

My point stands just fine. Lances were considered at best a one off weapon. They were also not a personal weapon but a generic one and expected to break or be discarded after the charge unless they had room and time to line up a second pass. They were also mass produced weapons unlike swords. Swords like the Estoc were personal weapons, crafted for the individual in question, and expected to last a long time and be used in battle on a regular basis. Knights didn't train in various forms of swordsman ship for fun and sport they trained in it as a profession because it was constantly used by them and the sword above all else had the greatest amount of focus and effort focused on their use in a wide variety of situations.

Not everyone on the field being a knight does not hurt my point at all. There were sill significant numbers of armored knights clear to the end of the Medieval era on numerous battlefields. That they overwhelmingly fought people who were not knights means the sword itself remained a very viable weapon in nearly all circumstances given everyone else wasn't a knight clad in the better quality armors. Then there is the fact that numerous battles had hundreds to thousands of knights on a given battlefield even in the 1400's. No not everyone was a knight but they weren't rare either.

edited 30th Sep '17 10:34:01 AM by TuefelHundenIV

Okay, fine, I concede, armour was useless because they only used crap metal, and swords were so blinking marvellous that anyone who used anything else was stupid, right? That good enough for you.

If you want to put words into my mouth or read implications I never made, that's up to you, not me.

No one said armor is useless but it isn't exactly turning every blow either.

Your overtly dismissive stance in regards to the use and carriage of swords is pretty clear given you have kept it up for more than just one post. A bit late to back pedal.

Oh but it is pretty useless according to you, at least against estocs.

But you know what, f*** it, this conversation isn't going anywhere, and you're not open to real debate, you just spew a load of words at people and make false accusations, so good bye.

Never said it was useless against Estocs either but pointed out a simple fact like that it can be used to defeat armor and you were so bloody minded about armor having no real way to by pass it other then a few joint points. Acknowledging that a purpose made family of weapons might actually do what they were meant to do and that you were wrong in that regard doesn't make armor useless either. But you wanted to keep insisting otherwise.

If you want to pitch a tantrum and flounce I won't stop you.

edited 1st Oct '17 5:01:19 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Swords were the pistols of their day. Maybe not the primary weapon on a battlefield, but certainly not useless. Pistols have killed a lot of people since their introduction, including on battlefields, and Im sure the same was true of swords. Maybe submachine gun is a more accurate analogy, because swords often were used as a primary weapon on horseback, because they could be used one handed. A knight going into battle with nothing but a sword might be putting himself at a disadvantage vis a vis the enemy's lancers, but a footsoldier doing the same thing would be nearly useless to his unit (with certain specialized exceptions).

The pike didnt render fighting from horseback useless, but it did give greater advantage to lighter cavelry carrying out flanking manuvers, as opposed to heavily armored knights charging head on. But all of these things were long term trends, nothing changed overnight, and the transition from one era to another was never simple or linear. If you cherry pick from history, you can find examples of anything, because people have always been creative and clever, not to mention lucky- someone, somewhere has tried everything, and made it work for them too. Any combination of weapons and tactics can suceed at least once.

But if the question is what the larger trends were, then its fair to say that as time went by, heavily armed knights weilding one handed weapons (incl the lance) solved fewer and fewer problems on the battlefield, compared to infantry and ranged weapon formations. That trend only partially reversed with the invention of the tank.

edited 1st Oct '17 3:47:13 PM by DeMarquis

Knights with swords were at a disadvantage against various troops typically ones with pole arms. Which is part of why the increasing use of mixed troops became ever more important. It is also why they started to use pistols. The Wheel Lock helped make guns for cavalry practical initially. Of course wheel locks were somewhat cumbersome because of their mechanism but they still worked well enough to be used consistently. Even then the pistol was not that great if it came to melee. You get one good shot and then you had an expensive fancy club.

They used the Carocle maneuver for a while where the formation was rotated and advanced or retreated slowly while they reloaded and advanced back into position to fire. The idea being constant fire,but everyone pretty much left off the traditional use because it left them open to counter charges by other cavalry and slowed down the formation to execute. Instead they left it off for the fire a pistol or two into a formation and charge in with swords. The fire and charge is pretty much what ended up sticking around.

It is fair to point out the changes were mixed efforts in general before becoming a trend such as effective use of pike and eventual shift of cavalry tactics as well was more or less the two encountering each other and someone shifting what they were doing. The 100 Years war induced a lot of the changes because of its duration and regular encounters. It also pushed for the formation of professional armies and a lot of use of mercenaries. It also helped drive future weapon and armor development. It was one of the biggest drivers of armor and arms industry in Europe and made places like Milan and Innsbruck both famous and rich.

Would ummm science-fantasy culture discussion go here? Or one of the other threads?

So I have some questions regarding one of my setting's cultures. For context: Mappé (WIP)◊, Flaggé.

Overview

The Kingdom of Derzime (with a voiced "eh") is an absolute monarchy ruling over a stretch of land roughly analogous to Ethiopia, Somalia and the Swahili coast, circa 16th-17th century. The government runs a vast meritocratic bureaucracy, though not in the ways you'd expect. This is a world where nations rise and fall by the spirits' favours, and Derzime is no exception.

Not every human can communicate with the spirits, so other nations seek out children who display auspicious signs (non-linear perception of time and space, autism spectrum behaviour, uncanny ability to recite ritual songs from memory) and induct them into the Liminal Orders to train them to carry out the rituals. The kingdom does that, but it also runs a series of civil service examinations similar to those carried out by Imperial China. Anyone could register for these examinations, though rural candidates often need to pay a bribe to their local official to be registered.

The Exams

The examinations are arranged in ten levels of increasing difficulty, covering mathematics, philosophy and literature. Each level qualifies the passing candidates for a higher level of civil service position, with the top scorers of the ninth level being appointed as cabinet staffers (though noble candidates usually hold the advantage). Anyone who passes the ninth level could take a tenth-level exam, which is written entirely in encrypted text. Candidates must first decrypt the text, then work on the question, which would usually involve making a quantifiable mathematical model for an abstract philosophical problem. The purpose is not to finish - rather, the Derzime believe that inside the human mind lies a hidden gateway to a higher mind-realm that prevents them from communing with the spirits. The final exam is not designed to weed out unworthy candidates, but rather to exert their minds in such a way that it smashes the gateway open.

Once the time runs out, the survivors candidates are then called up to take a whiff of the sacred spices. This will (ideally) allow the patron spirits of the kingdom to enter their minds and construct a mind-space called the Folding Kingdom, where their ability to put together complex models and equations would increase tenfold. They are then ordained into the Order of the Fold, a secretive royal organisation that basically acts as a supercomputer for the rest of the government. The magic allowed the kingdom to annex most of its smaller neighbours through carefully-designed debt traps, and the Order brings more gold to its coffers by taking contracts from other nations in the setting, from designing the encryption system for their bank scrips to mapping out neighbouring nations' landform for magic!artillery tables.

So, questions:

Questions

• Which branches of mathematics would be most suitable to build their citizens' non-linear problem-solving skills?
• If the nation's guardian spirits are obsessed with maths and numbers, what kind of rituals should ordinary (educated but non-savant) citizens do to appease them? I considered having their daily prayers generated by a random seed, which they must decipher themselves every morning, but that might be too over-the-top even for this setting.
• Should they allow foreigners to take the test and potentially gain high ranks in the government?
• Minus coups and assassinations, what kind of political intrigue would develop from this system?
• Would it be practical for the Order to outsource their simpler calculations as part of the nation's rituals of praise? I'm thinking of a network of heliographs spanning the nation that would receive fresh calculations from the Order's HQ at dawn, which devout citizens could work to solve as part of their rituals to the spirits.
• How would a monarchy with a meritocratic civil service organise its military? Should there be a professional standing army under the direct control of the royal house, or would it be better to have a network of territorial militia under the provincial governments?

(inb4 Black Panther comparisons: I started developing this setting way before the movie came out. I was aware of the comics before that, but my original inspiration was the Swahili coast artefact collection in a museum I volunteered at.)

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 16th 2018 at 8:37:00 AM

Alright, I didn't know if I should add in this forum or the other, but I'll post to both just in case since it crosses with both a setting within my world and is a separate culture in its own right.

So I had this concept of a nation in my fantasy world that is ruled by humans yet is predominately founded on technology in the form of steam/dieselpunk(If you were to visit the country, it would seem like a dieselpunk setting from the 1890s/1900s) unlike other settings in my world that are more arcane based (Other settings in their parts of the world usually range from High Medieval Ages to Early 1700s, most based on arcane/magic). The idea came from Star Wars, the planet of Coruscant, so my idea was a fantasy version instead of being a planet that is an entire city would be an island continent that is an entire city. The island continent itself is 1/3rd the size of Australia, yet only 3/5ths of its territory is entirely urban since an event in its country's history forced the nation to implement laws to spare some land for agriculture purposes. As of the present-day, it is one of the superpowers in the common world, and is one of the few nations ruled by regular, nonmagical humans.

My question is, in your opinion and adding advice, what would a small island continent that is almost entirely a city, that is predominately dieselpunk, and is ruled by regular humans in a world of arcane/magical nations be like?

...yet only 3/5ths of its territory is entirely urban since an event in its country's history forced the nation to implement laws to spare some land for agriculture purposes. As of the present-day, it is one of the superpowers in the common world, and is one of the few nations ruled by regular, nonmagical humans. My question is, in your opinion and adding advice, what would a small island continent that is almost entirely a city, that is predominately dieselpunk, and is ruled by regular humans in a world of arcane/magical nations be like?

This is gonna be a lot of vague responses since I don't know what you're going for, but Oz as the smallest stand-alone continent is about 1,960 by 2,511 miles, so a third of it would be 653 by 837 miles—which is still somewhere around HALF of the European peninsula, or a little smaller than Greenland, the ACTUAL largest island on Earth.

So the size itself works out, but 3/5ths of it being urban is a MASSIVE chunk of land—60% of this half-of-Europe island means a quarter of Europe is somehow in ONE city. Even with almost half the 2018 European population living in cities, they're not necessarily ONE city but clustered in pockets of several nearby ones.

I'd find it pretty stupid/naive for folks to try urbanizing THE WHOLE AREA—unless that's the point of the background? They expanded for a decade or two, got full of themselves and their Enlightened Urban Paradise, but then realized after a while that feeding people from imports is VASTLY more expensive than growing food themselves?

Generally it's more realistic that the "city-island" isn't necessarily split in half by one massive city and its rural/farming support network, but maybe it started from a port-city and spread along the coast until it meshed together with a second port. Or maybe it went inland along a river and met another settlement. Either way, there'd still be pockets of urbanization broken up by farming settlements and "places too impractical to build on."

Edited by Sharysa on Nov 15th 2018 at 2:43:41 AM

Yep so the idea that I have is the central island continent is the mainland for the country, and surrounding the nation is an archipelago chain of smaller islands that are ruled by notable members of society, i.e. aristocrats, military officers, celebrities, wealthy class, etc.

The way I had constructed the history of the country becoming a super megalopolis was that during the ancient times when towns and cities formed alliances that the way they would supplant their diplomatic ties would be to build upon the smaller villages and towns between the two newly allied cities until they all merged to become one. This practice continued until almost all of the western, northern, and central regions were enveloped into interconnected metropolises. If you're trying to imagine what type of city, imagine all I said in the style of a first world country during the 1890s/1900s.

There is also another large island off the east coast of the island continent, about the size of the Black Sea, that is a prized territory rich in resources used solely as a proxy for agricultural farming. It's sometimes attacked by the smaller city-states/nations from the mainland north and another superpower via proxy-states from the east.