Why didn’t Sadeas train his bridgemen?

[EMB1981]

So I was wondering something after hearing a point in a discussion about stormlight. Why didn’t Sadeas train his bridgemen like kaladin. It worked wonderfully for bridge 4

[ftl]

Because the other purpose of bridgemen was to draw the fire away from the people that actually mattered. Sadeas would rather keep losing expendable bridgemen than defend them and and have the Parshendi attack his actual soldiers.

It's why he was so angry when Kaladin's crew did the side-carry. They protected the bridge crew - but then the parshendi just turned their fire on the soldiers, who Sadeas didn't want to lose. So it's deliberate that the bridgemen are entirely unprotected and die a lot.

Edited March 2, 2020 by ftl

[EMB1981]

Why didn’t he simply train the bridge men though. They would die less and he would have to waste less men. Or does bridge fours success rate have more to do with Kaladins surgebinding ability? And by train I simply mean build up their endurance. Instead of simply using a different method.

Edited March 2, 2020 by EMB1981

[18th Shard]

To Sadeas, it's a question of option a: have thousands of arrows fired at trained soldiers with valuable gear, who have taken years to get to a level of proficiency, or b: have thousands of arrows fired at cheap slaves who nobody cares about and who are very replaceable. 

As for endurance, if you mean physical stamina, then bridgerunning itself is noted to be very toughening on each person. As for making the bridge crews more enduring, as in members of the crews die less and are replaced less, well, that's the whole point. 

If you still don't get Sadeas's logic, I'd suggest looking up the tvtropes page for cannon fodder.

[EMB1981]

So I understand the canon fodder logic now. He doesn’t care about the bridgemen because they are very replaceable.

 

second is that he didn’t actively train them because they died in droves enough to the point that actively training them would be a waste of time because many of them will die regardless as all Fire is focused on them.

 

third is a question. Does bridge fours success rate have more to do with the training they underwent, or Kaladins surge binding powers?

[RadiantCat]

It's a mix of their training, Kaladin's leadership and the surgebinding.

[+Oltux72]

2 hours ago, RadiantCat said:

It's a mix of their training, Kaladin's leadership and the surgebinding.

And the competition. Let's be honest, Kaladin got other bridge crews killed. Competent Parshendi will fire at the slower bridges because they have a better chance of actually stopping them.

[USS bridge four]

Welcome to the Shard  @EMB1981. 

Another factor is Sadeas is just bad immoral dude. He doesn’t value human life and it’s probably cheaper to buy slaves and pay them terribly than to train them than to pay the trainers and the worth of the Bridgemen. 

Edited March 2, 2020 by USS bridge four

[king of nowhere]

to be fair, there would have been some better strategies. one was to have some permanent, trained bridge crews that would carry the bridge until the last chasm. being trained for speed and endurance, they would be faster than regular bridgemen.

then at the last chasm you take that permanent crew off and you put in the expendable crew.

anyway, yes, there are some things sadeas could have done better. for example, instead of trying to get kaladin killed, he could have promoted him and his crew.

[FantasyFanatic]

5 hours ago, EMB1981 said:

Why didn’t he simply train the bridge men though. They would die less and he would have to waste less men. Or does bridge fours success rate have more to do with Kaladins surgebinding ability? And by train I simply mean build up their endurance. Instead of simply using a different method.

I think that part of the reason he didn't train them is because if the bridges were to fast, the Parshendi would just start firing at the trained soldiers.

Edited March 2, 2020 by FantasyFanitic

[Karger]

2 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

And the competition. Let's be honest, Kaladin got other bridge crews killed. Competent Parshendi will fire at the slower bridges because they have a better chance of actually stopping them.

Competent parshendi would actually exclusively target officers.

[+Oltux72]

18 minutes ago, Karger said:

Competent parshendi would actually exclusively target officers.

Small targets, further away than the bridges, well armored ...

If you can pull that off, that's the best option. If ...

[EMB1981]

So let me break this down to see if I got it. Reasons not to train the bridge men:

1) Sadeas and his men are cremholes

2) if he did train them well enough and they could outrun parshendi arrows then the soldiers would instead be fired upon, which Sadeas obviously doesn’t want.

3) even with proper training and leadership Kaladins team at bridge 4 would have died several times over if not for the fact that he Was a surgebinder, which of course doesn’t fit the general description of most people.

that seem right?

Edited March 14, 2020 by LadyLameness
Edited for curses

[Pathfinder]

On 3/3/2020 at 1:29 AM, EMB1981 said:

So let me break this down to see if I got it. Reasons not to train the bridge men:

1) Sadeas and his men are cremholes

That they are lol

Quote

2) if he did train them well enough and they could outrun parshendi arrows then the soldiers would instead be fired upon, which Sadeas obviously doesn’t want.

They can't outrun the arrows like in the beginning of way of kings. Those are standard or long bows that are fired in a arc to come down from above. That can be potentially "outrun". The bows the Parshendi use are short bows, fired straight. They fire in volleys which is why it is so lethal to bridgemen. As to why his men survived more often I will get to below

Quote

3) even with proper training and leadership Kaladins team at bridge 4 would have died several times over if not for the fact that he Was a surgebinder, which of course doesn’t fit the general description of most people.

that seem right?

This is pretty much it. The first time Kaladin ran at the front and bridge 4 lost the least men was because Kaladin was drawing the arrows to his hands unconsciously. Even then they lost men. The reason they did not lose as much, was because Kaladin also went back for three of them and did triage. Then Kaladin did the parshendi skeleton, and later the side carry. Both involved changing tactics for a specific group and ultimately would not have worked over all. First the parshendi skeleton would not have worked, because that is technically what the purpose of the bridge crews were to be originally. A sacrificial target. Secondly having small groups of men with parshendi skeleton, would result in the parshendi focusing so much, the men would die as well as the parshendi realizing the tactic (which is what happened, and why kaladin had to draw all the arrows to himself with his surgebinding, which a normal person would be unable to do). Finally the side carry already showed why it didn't work. It defeated the purpose of the bridgemen. As targets. So none of those tactics theoretically would have worked better for Sadeas's goal (which goes back to your number one point), Sadeas just wanted to win gemhearts and didn't care what it cost to other people. Bridgemen were faster and more efficient than any other option. Thereby Sadeas got the most gemhearts. He just didn't care about the lives lost. 

Edited March 14, 2020 by LadyLameness
Edited for curses

[king of nowhere]

4 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

 Finally the side carry already showed why it didn't work. It defeated the purpose of the bridgemen. As targets.

on the other hand, now that i think about it...

20 bridge crews with side carry. marchin in formation. using the bridges to cover the rest of the army.

Out with the old shield wall! in with the new bridge wall!

seriously, it could work to reduce the losses of both soldiers and bridgmen. it's basically what dalinar does with his armored siege bridges

[Pathfinder]

1 minute ago, king of nowhere said:

on the other hand, now that i think about it...

20 bridge crews with side carry. marchin in formation. using the bridges to cover the rest of the army.

Out with the old shield wall! in with the new bridge wall!

seriously, it could work to reduce the losses of both soldiers and bridgmen. it's basically what dalinar does with his armored siege bridges

Parshendi then begin to intersperse long bows within the short bows. The bridgemen either carry the bridge overhead protecting themselves from the long bows, but leave themselves vulnerable to fire from the short bows, or do side carry (which is slower and requires timing with the volleys from the parshendi), and get hit from above by the long bows. 

[DiePie]

I honestly think that nobody cares about the system. Sadeas is constantly reminded about the speed of his bridges and without any competition he has no need to make improvements to the system, and considering how loose the camp is, nobody in his camp probably cares enough to change it.

[king of nowhere]

4 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

Parshendi then begin to intersperse long bows within the short bows. The bridgemen either carry the bridge overhead protecting themselves from the long bows, but leave themselves vulnerable to fire from the short bows, or do side carry (which is slower and requires timing with the volleys from the parshendi), and get hit from above by the long bows. 

first of all, i doubt the parshendi have the military knowledge for it.

secondly, and most important, you can't do parabolic fire at point blank, not unless the arrows are so slow that they are a threat to no one. given the speed of the arrow, the distance to your target determines the angle of the trajectory. if nothing else, longbows propels the arrow with more force, so the arrow should fly even straighter.

thirdly, it was actually done, and it worked well enough, with real shields. a bridge is bigger, higher, thicker than a shield, and it has less gaps. there must be a way to make it work with a bridge too. a bridge has others drawbacks over a shield (you certainly cannot fight while carrying a bridge) but as long as you only have to cover a short distance with it you should be fine.

DiePie summed it up well: the system worked, they had no reason to try too hard to improve it

[DiePie]

5 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

Parshendi then begin to intersperse long bows within the short bows. The bridgemen either carry the bridge overhead protecting themselves from the long bows, but leave themselves vulnerable to fire from the short bows, or do side carry (which is slower and requires timing with the volleys from the parshendi), and get hit from above by the long bows.

Also, another thing I forgot, longbows are ridiculously hard to train someone with. The draw-weight of one sends an arrow fast enough to sometimes pierce platemail, and they are rather unwieldy and hard to aim for those not properly trained. If they had longbows, they would using them to fire point-blank (since there is no reason not to). very few historical examples of longbow exist, the main one being the English during the 100 years war. England won just about every battle they fought for decades because of how OP they were, a group of trained longbowmen could decimate a larger group of, well, just about anything before a shortbowman could even be in range of them. If the Parashendi had longbows they would have used them.

Which brings us back to the other point: why the Parashendi don't have longbows. Like I said, training longbowmen is hard. So how did only the English do it? Because they didn't. Around that time it was a point of English pride that every man could use a longbow fantastically, they were basically trained in archery since they could hold a bow. The development of longbowmen came out of very specific conditions in England and Wales that would not be recreatable in Roshar. There is no way that the Parashendi would ever obtain longbowmen, since they didn't have the same environmental or social pressures that lead to their creation. So the Parashendi didn't have longbows.

For those of you who read WoT, then the Two Rivers Longbows are a good representation of how effective they were in combat. For those of you who didn't, here is a good article I found on it.

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

secondly, and most important, you can't do parabolic fire at point blank, not unless the arrows are so slow that they are a threat to no one. given the speed of the arrow, the distance to your target determines the angle of the trajectory. if nothing else, longbows propels the arrow with more force, so the arrow should fly even straighter.

Couldn't you just shoot almost straight up? Like an 80 or 70 degree angle from the ground? I would think that if you can predict the location of the bridgemen (which is probably beyond the Parashendi and their limited knowledge of warfare and tactics) you could shoot at a specific angle and hit them where they will be. I may know tactics but I do not have much experience with shooting a bow.

[Karger]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

first of all, i doubt the parshendi have the military knowledge for it.

Hm.  They are changing tactics.  We should carry different weapons that we have that can let us kill some of them does not seem like a difficult deduction.  The reason the bridges work so well is the parshendi cultural blindspot.  The find the idea of lessor people really odd.

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

thirdly, it was actually done, and it worked well enough, with real shields. a bridge is bigger, higher, thicker than a shield, and it has less gaps. there must be a way to make it work with a bridge too. a bridge has others drawbacks over a shield (you certainly cannot fight while carrying a bridge) but as long as you only have to cover a short distance with it you should be fine.

With shield walls the second rank usually put their shields overhead.  Also everyone wore armor.  Finally the tactic was usually used in melee not against archers. 

[Kon-Tiki]

For what its worth, Sadeas' strategy was also relatively new. Slavers were just copping wise to Sadeas' new strategy, and the other non-Kholin highprinces start adapting it over the course of The Way of Kings. It isn't as if Sadeas had been feeding slaves to the Parshendi meat grinder for six years, at least not at the feverish pitch that he was while Kaladin was a slave. And even then, the monetary cost didn't seem to be the issue; running out of potential slaves was. Kaladin notes that a lot of his bridgemen were made bridgemen for fairly innocuous crimes and were therefore more soldierly and less criminal than might otherwise be expected of that particular caste. The long term issues of the strategy weren't given enough time to really mature, it doesn't look like

[+Oltux72]

3 hours ago, DiePie said:

Also, another thing I forgot, longbows are ridiculously hard to train someone with. The draw-weight of one sends an arrow fast enough to sometimes pierce platemail, and they are rather unwieldy and hard to aim for those not properly trained.

They are in warform. They could draw it.
 The question is whether Roshar has the wood needed to make them without fabrials the Alethi are using.

 

[king of nowhere]

10 hours ago, DiePie said:

For those of you who read WoT, then the Two Rivers Longbows are a good representation of how effective they were in combat. For those of you who didn't, here is a good article I found on it.

 

only until armor technology developed enough. later on, armor impervious to longbows became more commonplace. at agincourt the longbows were ineffective against the heavily armored french, who were nonetheless defeated by tactical blunders and wheather.

and the two river men's feats of marksmanship are way exaggerated. it is stated somewhere than any boy could hit a target at 200 paces; i doubt in real life many can, besides high level athletes. and with much better bows

that said, yes, they were very effective.

 

Quote

Couldn't you just shoot almost straight up? Like an 80 or 70 degree angle from the ground? I would think that if you can predict the location of the bridgemen (which is probably beyond the Parashendi and their limited knowledge of warfare and tactics) you could shoot at a specific angle and hit them where they will be. I may know tactics but I do not have much experience with shooting a bow.

technically you could, but it's very impractical. if you consider how a longbow is held, you realize that firing it upwards requires bending your back awkwardly. most important, you lose a lot of accuracy.

still more likely to work that shooting at a thick bridge, though.

8 hours ago, Kon-Tiki said:

For what its worth, Sadeas' strategy was also relatively new. Slavers were just copping wise to Sadeas' new strategy, and the other non-Kholin highprinces start adapting it over the course of The Way of Kings. It isn't as if Sadeas had been feeding slaves to the Parshendi meat grinder for six years, at least not at the feverish pitch that he was while Kaladin was a slave.

that, too. i'm not sure those kind of losses would have been sustainable in the long run. there's only so many destitutes you can put under a bridge

[Pathfinder]

14 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

first of all, i doubt the parshendi have the military knowledge for it.

secondly, and most important, you can't do parabolic fire at point blank, not unless the arrows are so slow that they are a threat to no one. given the speed of the arrow, the distance to your target determines the angle of the trajectory. if nothing else, longbows propels the arrow with more force, so the arrow should fly even straighter.

thirdly, it was actually done, and it worked well enough, with real shields. a bridge is bigger, higher, thicker than a shield, and it has less gaps. there must be a way to make it work with a bridge too. a bridge has others drawbacks over a shield (you certainly cannot fight while carrying a bridge) but as long as you only have to cover a short distance with it you should be fine.

DiePie summed it up well: the system worked, they had no reason to try too hard to improve it

As mentioned later, the parshendi are intelligent, and adaptive during battle conditions. Apparently I used the incorrect terminology, but when Kaladin and his squad are running towards the enemy lines at the beginning of Way of Kings, the enemy archers shot arrows in a high arc so the arrows would come down in the most concentrated portion of the oncoming forces. For informational purposes, what type of bow did they use then?

Secondly, due to the weight of the bridge, there is going to be a hard limit on the speed the bridge runners can accomplish. Parshendi work in war pairs, that then work in squads. Just have two squads target each bridge (which they already do). Have one squad arc the arrows, which causes the bridgemen to lift their bridge over their head. The second squad waiting for the opening, fires a direct straight volley. I said short bows in this case, because it is specifically named in the books. Due to the weight and unwieldy nature of the bridge, (assuming no radiants are pulling it along), being able to lift and lower, lift and lower, all while trying to advance I believe would be impossible. 

It actually worked because:

1. It was new, so the parshendi did not know how to respond to it. Now having been used, they could come up with counters. For instance Kaladin mentioned worrying they would learn to stagger their fire, so after they blocked the arrows and turned to run forward again, that another volley would fire. Which leads to number 2

2. The parshendi then turned their fire on the other bridge crews that were easier to hit. That also denotes tactical intelligence. Don't waste resources where it is useless. Sadeas and co do laugh that the parshendi think they are accomplishing something by killing the bridge crews, but that is because like the alethi, they think they are reducing the enemy's numbers. They do not realize that the alethi has a line of slaves coming from the rest of the country to throw into the meat grinder.  

13 hours ago, DiePie said:

Also, another thing I forgot, longbows are ridiculously hard to train someone with. The draw-weight of one sends an arrow fast enough to sometimes pierce platemail, and they are rather unwieldy and hard to aim for those not properly trained. If they had longbows, they would using them to fire point-blank (since there is no reason not to). very few historical examples of longbow exist, the main one being the English during the 100 years war. England won just about every battle they fought for decades because of how OP they were, a group of trained longbowmen could decimate a larger group of, well, just about anything before a shortbowman could even be in range of them. If the Parashendi had longbows they would have used them.

Which brings us back to the other point: why the Parashendi don't have longbows. Like I said, training longbowmen is hard. So how did only the English do it? Because they didn't. Around that time it was a point of English pride that every man could use a longbow fantastically, they were basically trained in archery since they could hold a bow. The development of longbowmen came out of very specific conditions in England and Wales that would not be recreatable in Roshar. There is no way that the Parashendi would ever obtain longbowmen, since they didn't have the same environmental or social pressures that lead to their creation. So the Parashendi didn't have longbows.

For those of you who read WoT, then the Two Rivers Longbows are a good representation of how effective they were in combat. For those of you who didn't, here is a good article I found on it.

Couldn't you just shoot almost straight up? Like an 80 or 70 degree angle from the ground? I would think that if you can predict the location of the bridgemen (which is probably beyond the Parashendi and their limited knowledge of warfare and tactics) you could shoot at a specific angle and hit them where they will be. I may know tactics but I do not have much experience with shooting a bow.

So genuine question. What kind of bows were used in the opening scene of Way of Kings with Kaladin and his squad? I understand they were not long bows. So I would like to know what kind of bows they were. 

[+Oltux72]

15 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

2. The parshendi then turned their fire on the other bridge crews that were easier to hit. That also denotes tactical intelligence. Don't waste resources where it is useless. Sadeas and co do laugh that the parshendi think they are accomplishing something by killing the bridge crews,

They do accomplish something. They are preserving their forces. If you want to hurt the Alethi most, you shoot at the infantry. If you want to gain an advantage at that battle, you'll shoot at the bridges. Obviously, if you kill enough bridges, you will delay the attack for long enough for you to escape. Even failing that, the fewer bridges, the more choke points you will have to exploit.

Basically the Parshendi were almost destroyed and had to preserve their own forces and avoid risks.

15 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

but that is because like the alethi, they think they are reducing the enemy's numbers. They do not realize that the alethi has a line of slaves coming from the rest of the country to throw into the meat grinder.  

So genuine question. What kind of bows were used in the opening scene of Way of Kings with Kaladin and his squad? I understand they were not long bows. So I would like to know what kind of bows they were. 

Bows exist on a spectrum. The only distinct types are distinguished by material.