Um ... Did anyone do a body count?

[Pathfinder]

No. You would lose a couple of soldiers once in a while, but the reason bridgemen die so often is because they are unshielded, untrained and unarmored arrow bait. The losses among trained soldiers would be extremely small compared to the losses the bridgemen face, and even if the crews only get the cheapest slaves of the bunch slaves still shouldn't be so cheap as to justify killing twenty of them for every soldier that is saved from the arrows but may still die to the parshendi blades.

When the bridge is put down, typically the heavy cavalry charges over to make a beach head for the soldiers and then retreats. In terms of medieval warfare, do you have any idea how much a single cavalry officer with horse costs to train and maintain? A single officer, no exaggeration is practically worth an entire bridge crew on his own. So a "small" loss is still extravagant when compared to the bridgemen. That is clearly stated in the book, and is standard medieval warfare. Check any history book and it will tell you the same

[king of nowhere]

No. You would lose a couple of soldiers once in a while, but the reason bridgemen die so often is because they are unshielded, untrained and unarmored arrow bait. The losses among trained soldiers would be extremely small compared to the losses the bridgemen face, and even if the crews only get the cheapest slaves of the bunch slaves still shouldn't be so cheap as to justify killing twenty of them for every soldier that is saved from the arrows but may still die to the parshendi blades.

training is the most expensive part in a medieval society. you get this guy and you have to pay him and feed him for one year or two without getting anything out of him, just to turn him into a soldier.

So, let's assume that since the bridgemen are unarmored and the soldiers are, the parshendi arrows would kill one soldier instead of ten bridgemen. Then, as long as the cost of replacing ten bridgemen is lower than the cost of replacing one trained soldier, Sadeas' tactics make sense. And the book explicitly states that it is so. The assumption is not totallly unreasonable; it may require a bit of a stretch, but it can be true, so I see no reason to mistrust the book on it.

It is possible that in the long run it would have caused a shortage of slaves, with consequent rise of prices, and it won't have been a feasible strategy anymore; but that didn't happen in the five years of the war. Apparently, slave merchants went from all over  the world to bring their "wares" there. While the isolation of the shattered plains may have driven up transportation cost, the demand was so large that the highprinces could afford to buy in bulk, saving money.

[Pathfinder]

Just remembered a specific real world example to help illustrate. During WW2, there was a trading air battle near/over Britain. Both sides lost planes but this ended up costing Hitler far more and made it a losing scenario for him. Why? Because the British RAF could jettison out of a damaged plane that was going to crash, and parachute to the ground or the water. Both locations that the British forces patrolled and could reclaim the pilot. The plane could easily be rebuilt. The pilot on the other hand was months of training and investment. They could take that pilot that survived, and pop him in a new plane and send him right back up. The German Luftwaffe on the other hand, if they jettisoned, they would be captured by the British forces and locked up. The Germans would then be down a pilot, and have a plane no one can fly for months till they were trained enough to pilot it. I think the training for a pilot actually takes longer than months, but its been some time since I researched this. So now take into account cavalry. You now have an individual trained to fight via horseback, and a horse that is trained to remain steady during combat, be able to trample the enemy infantry, and not bolt at loud noises. Losing either of those is massively costly. Especially given how rare horses are on Roshar when compared to earth. 

[aeromancer he/him]

@Pathfinder: That's actually not a good example. German military practice had their aces flying not stop, but British pilots were allowed to retire after x number of missions. Germans were stupid about maintaining pilots in general.

 

Heavy cavalry? There is no heavy cavalry. I forgot who, but only one highprince actually uses horses in serious combat. Sadeas uses shock troops to charge across bridges.

 

Missing. The. Point. I don't think anyone will disagree that Sadeas was being more cost effective by using bridgemen, I'm merely pointing out that the sustained losses are impractical on everyone's side, including the Parshendi.

 

On a side note, horses on Roshar make zero sense. There's no way to breed warhorses in the first place if horses are that rare, and the population size isn't high enough. That discussion goes into husbandry and genetics, so do not argue with that point here, go make a topic saying I'm stupid, and I'll respond there.

[Pathfinder]

@Pathfinder: That's actually not a good example. German military practice had their aces flying not stop, but British pilots were allowed to retire after x number of missions. Germans were stupid about maintaining pilots in general.

 

Heavy cavalry? There is no heavy cavalry. I forgot who, but only one highprince actually uses horses in serious combat. Sadeas uses shock troops to charge across bridges.

 

Missing. The. Point. I don't think anyone will disagree that Sadeas was being more cost effective by using bridgemen, I'm merely pointing out that the sustained losses are impractical on everyone's side, including the Parshendi.

 

On a side note, horses on Roshar make zero sense. There's no way to breed warhorses in the first place if horses are that rare, and the population size isn't high enough. That discussion goes into husbandry and genetics, so do not argue with that point here, go make a topic saying I'm stupid, and I'll respond there.

So bunch of comments.

 

First, just because they mishandled other aspects, does not take away from the point that the value of a trained soldier, be it pilot, horseman, or otherwise, is higher than one untrained.

 

Second, that is incorrect. One highprince may use heavy cavalry more than the others, but they are still employed. Please refer to: 

 

Way of Kings page 103 kindle edition "Kaladin glanced over his shoulder. The army was two thousand men in forest green and pure white. Twelve hundred darkeyed spearmen, several hundred cavalry atop rare, precious horses. Behind them, a large group of heavy foot, lighteyed men in thick armor and carrying large maces and square shields. 

 

and

 

Way of Kings page 103 kindle edition "when the bridge thumped into place on the other side of the chasm, the bridgge crew drew back to let the cavalry trot across."

 

That example was Sadeas. So he does use cavalry and they do cross first.

 

The sustained losses were impractical on the Parshendi side most definitely due to the fact that their people were almost wiped out, but the highprinces have a whole nation built on the premise that fighting is the highest calling to draw upon for troops. Ultimately yes it will deplete, but not for a long long time. The gem hearts is what got them to remain there and made it far more sustainable than it could be otherwise.

 

Ok what is with being called stupid? I disagree with you. I am entitled to voice my opinion, and site references to back it up. Where did it ever come into play me accusing you of being stupid? 

Edited February 16, 2016 by Pathfinder

[aeromancer he/him]

(Sadeas is an idiot for using cavalry then. )

I stand corrected on the cavalry point, then.

 

 

Ok what is with being called stupid? I disagree with you. I am entitled to voice my opinion, and site references to back it up. Where did it ever come into play me accusing you of being stupid? 

 

 I did not mean you. I am sorry for implying that you were insulting me. I merely meant someone who wishes to disagree with the factually correct information that the Rosharian ecosystem cannot support warhorses.

[DreamEternal]

@Pathfinder: while I still believe slaves should be more expensive than the books portray them as being, I had forgotten about the use of cavalry in the War of Reckoning. Taking into account the fact that a knight and horse are much more expensive to replace than infantrymen, I can now understand better the logic behind Sadeas' tatics.

Edited February 16, 2016 by DreamEternal

[king of nowhere]

(Sadeas is an idiot for using cavalry then. )

I stand corrected on the cavalry point, then.

 

 

 I did not mean you. I am sorry for implying that you were insulting me. I merely meant someone who wishes to disagree with the factually correct information that the Rosharian ecosystem cannot support warhorses.

Can it not? as far as we know, horses, chicken, grass, and everything that resembles our world comes from Shinovar. I just assume that horses live normally in shinovar, and are exported at a premium. That's why they are so expensive, they have to be imported from the other side of the world. Or they have to be bred locally, but that requires massive resources to protect them from storms and to feed them - a horse can't get enough food by waiting for the rockbuds to come out, then taking a few bites, then waiting again; you have to feed them grain. Which does qualify for "the rosharan ecosystem cannot support warhorses" (I think that's even a quote from brandon or peter) in that without men to provide for them, they could not survive.

 

Speaking of ecosystem, the original post was dealing with the carrying capacity of the environment regarding to substituting all the dead bridgemen. The argument focused on how many losses the bridge crews did actually take, but there is one other factor to take into account: roshar's population density.

It appears most people assume roshar would be scarcely populated because of its hostile environment, or at most to be as populated as medieval europe - I myself assumed that until a few minutes ago. Then I realized, roshar is probably more populated than that, because its ecosystem is actually more favorable to human settlement.

Consider that in our world very few areas are well suited for intensive human activity. 50% of the world population lives on 1% of the world surface, or something like that. You need fertile soil and you need the right rain pattern to make large scale agricolture; with modern technology it is possible to skip both if you can sink lots of resources in providing fertilization and irrigation. Many regions are too dry, or too cold, or too nutrient-poor, to generate much food by themselves.

Then take roshar. It is smaller than earth, and it has less landmasses. But all the landmass is in the tropical or temperate region - maybe the southernmost tip has a polar climate, but it's likely still temperate cold - by the vegetation equivalent, it looks like cfc on the Koppen classification, and you still have trees in that climate. The lack of axial tilt means lack of any real winter, so you should have a long growing season. All roshar surface is warm enough to cultivate. There are highstorms, so there is no such thing as a desert on roshar. sahara, gobi, atacama? no such thing. All roshar surface has plenty fo water. And last, soil nutrients; highstorms carry crem, which is a natural fertilizer. So,  while it looks barren and inhospitable to us, to the adapted life of roshar, all of roshar surface is a very favorable environment, and virually all of the surface can sustain extensive agricolture. It is fully reasonable then for the alethi population to be much higher than estimated, maybe well above 50 millions.

 

The obvious counterargument to this is that we see a lot of wilderness. Yes, it's a good argument, but keep in mind that those we see are the very most inhospitable lands on the planet. roshar proper is warmer and more shielded by storms.

[aeromancer he/him]

An ecosystem with constant highstorms is more favorable for human settlement? Highstorms are a minimum of Class 4 hurricane, judging from the damage they do, and that Kaladin isn't expected to survive one. Constant class 4 hurricanes destroy settlements. Yes, the soil may be more conductive (plants will just get destroyed) but you'd have to expand city by city if you're trying to expand against those conditions. Not to mention mountainous regions, or the fact that you are assuming that the single landmass is the size of a super continent. I must respectfully disagree with your count of fifty million, and will assume, based on the size of the army fielded, two million total instead. 1 man in 20 seems very low in terms of battle-service, but I'm cutting slack here.

[sheep]

Human development and civilisation isn't just about the capacity to produce food, but the ability to transport to where it is needed by specialists.  All the big cities are built into laits, which are limited in area so end up as high density, high value living and working areas.  They can't farm in the lait, so the farmers must live in surrounding regions and ship the food in, and/or they must rely on Soulcasters to feed the citizenry.  Before the war of the Vengeance Pact, there weren't huge numbers of gemhearts flooding into Alethkar, and even after the Highprinces learned to camp the spawnpoints, the gemhearts and their wealth mostly stayed in the Shattered Plains.

 

Alethkar can't have anything better than dirt roads, as pavings or cobbles would be washed away after a year or two of highstorms.  Their river systems (cheapest and most efficient means of transport in medieval times) are probably narrow, fast  flowing gorges that get dangerously blocked up after storms and change courses on a regular basis.  Standard road transport would have to be slow moving chull caravans.  And then storing food has its own problems, when you need to feed a city during the Weeping and your Soulcaster gems run out of Stormlight and you can't farm or harvest in the constant rain.  The Palanaeum (Karbranth royal library) was a specially built underground pyramid, to be watertight, because moisture is a known problem.  How are they storing their harvests to last for longer than several months?  Not everyone can afford water repelling fabrials, or seamless Soulcast stone storage rooms.  There must be some sort of secure storage system since you can see rotspren in Roshar and people associate them with spoiled food. 

 

Here's an interesting quote:

 

"She wastes money while Alethkar languishes.  People in outer towns starve as they send food here, with the understanding that it will be passed on to soldiers who need it.  It rots because the queen can't be bothered."

 

"They have plenty of food on the Shattered Plains," Llan said.  "They've got gemstones coming out of their ears there.  And nobody is starving here either.  You're exaggerating.  Life is good."

Interlude 1-12, Words of Radiance.

 

If farmers are starving, then something is wrong - it means they can't be producing that much of an excess if shipping food to the city means they can't feed themselves.  If farmers are barely better than subsistence levels of agriculture, they must rely heavily on Soulcasters to avoid famine on bad years, and their population can't be that big. 

 

I'd guesstimate Alethkar's population to be around 5 million, which was Australia's population in 1900.  There are a number of parallels with extreme climate and huge distances between cities and farming regions, as well as limited technology in transport and storage.

 

And I would also say most people in the Alethi power structure would definitely prefer 10+ bridgemen to die instead of 1 cavalry unit.  Shallan is shocked to see that someone trusted Kaladin and Bridge Four with valuable horses when they meet her and Tyn with the caravan.  So cavalry riders will almost always always be lighteyes, and lighteyes are the type of people who are important enough that Sadeas will have to send people back to collect the bodies and Soulcast (again, expensive as the king owns them and highprinces have to pay to play) them into metal statues for their families.

[king of nowhere]

the highstorms are a bother, but rosharan society seems to cope well with those. they build resistant houses, stay indoor when a stom is coming, and they seem to be fine. ship transport seem fine, at least judging from karbranth being a big port. They adapted to highstorms, they know when they come and wait them in safe places. inland travel is confined to dirt roads, but that's no worse than it was in our world before railways. if they can sail in the sea, they can also sail on rivers; again, they would need to know the floods caused by the storms, and wait them in safe places. As for farmers starving, in a medieval society under a corrupt government and heavy taxation, that was commonplace. Just as subsistence farming with minimal surplus is normal for a preindustrial society. It doesn't prove anything.

 

Mind you, I'm not saying that alethkar has 50 million people. I'm saying it wouldn't be unreasonable it it did. I also agree that the actual number is lower, because otherwise they would probably field a larger army. However, I find 2 millions to be unreasonably low. this is a preindustrial society, so 90% of the population is needed to grow food. And the alethi keep fighting among them even as the war rages, so their army is bigger than the 100k assembled at the shattered plains. Unless every single person who doesn't produce food is a soldier, I guess they must be more. 10 to 20 millions seem reasonable to me. I read that at some point the roman empire had 50 million population and 500k soldiers, and I'm using the same figure of one professional soldier every one hundred people.

As for the war losses, in that case they would be between 1 and 3% of the population in 5 years, which would be catastrophic today, but it is a small amount compared to the deaths by illness in a preindustrial society. On roshar they have good healtcare, so they have more young men to send to war.

[sheep]

 As for farmers starving, in a medieval society under a corrupt government and heavy taxation, that was commonplace. Just as subsistence farming with minimal surplus is normal for a preindustrial society. It doesn't prove anything.

 

Unstable/corrupt government + low childhood mortality + subsistence farming = pretty strict "family planning".

 

If people know their babies are guaranteed to reach adulthood, they won't be pumping out 6 - 14 per woman, because if they all survive, that will be too many for the family to feed and still pay taxes/rent.  They wouldn't be able to work for 10 years after birth, and if you have girls they won't be able to heavy labour.  It's more likely that in Roshar, working families have fewer children, anywhere from 2-4, and the children stay with the family into adulthood rather than starting their own family asap.   A pre-industrial society has no mechanised industries that allow unskilled and weak children to work menial labour in factories to bring money to the family; therefore there aren't many incentives to have more children than necessary to manage and inherit the farm.

 

 

"Laral," Kaladin's mother said.  "She's wearing a bride's prayer on her sleeve."

Kaladin started, seeing the white cloth with its blue glyphpair sewn onto the sleeve of her dress.

Others in the crowd had begun speaking as they noticed the prayer.

WoK, chapter 44.

 

So Laral, at 15 or 16, is getting married and the darkeyed villagers are shocked at seeing this because it must be unusually young.  The farmer boys in town aren't married, nor is Kaladin at 15, and other than Laral there are no other village girls trying to get his attention. 

 

It seems overly generous to use medieval European populations to estimate Roshar's.   Alethi cities can have a higher population density than the equivalent of Earth cities in 1400-1600, because they don't have to worry about airborne or fleaborne diseases.  But given that the armies in the warcamps Soulcast the contents of their latrine pits (chapter 28, WoK, when Dalinar digs a pooptube in Shardplate) and filter the crem out of the water, Rosharans can still get sick through ingesting contaminated things.  They get their drinking water from highstorms, but where does all the sewage go?  The wealthy areas would have Soulcasters remove their wastes, but the poor people, of which Kholinar seems to have many if they have beggars and food riots, can't afford that.  And Rosharan cities, being built in laits, are physically limited from expanding outwards after reaching the valley walls.

 

As an interesting note, England's population in 1600 was ~4.5 million, and London's population was ~300 000. 

[Unhinged he/him]

After reading through this I think we might be looking at this wrong we're viewing Sadeus's expenses, not his revenue let me explain it like this 

(this is a massive oversimplification but bear with me)

 

1st lets assume that on average one gemheart is worth 1000 Broams 

 

month 1. You hire your first group of bridgemen for 200 Broams and you run them with shields they take few casualty's and you only need to spend 50 Broams to buy new slaves and replace the losses your regular camp expenses for the month are 600 Broams you manage to capture two gemhearts which leaves you with 1150 Broams at the end of the month.

 

however you loose a lot of solders because of this strategy and you need to spend a lot of time training their replacements you don't pay them anymore than the previous group but they aren't as well trained

 

month 2. You maintain your current strategy you only need to spend about 50 Broams replacing your bridgemen losses but because your only fielding half trained solders you capture only one gemheart with your regular expenses you have 350 Broams at the end of the month not as impressive.

 

month 3. You subject your solders to intense training and manage to get a bunch of well trained men from Amaram getting your army back up to where it was. you don't capture any gemhearts but you have enough from month 1 and 2 to cover the expenses.

 

month 4. You get rid of the shields your bridgemen take appalling casualties because of this but you can hire more of them fast whereas your solders take time to train it costs you 400 Broams to replace your lost bridgemen but because you aren't wasting time training new troops you can keep fighting and at the end of the month you capture 3 gemhearts even though you had incredibly high expenses thanks to replacing the dead bridgemen you can send your army out on more runs because you aren't spending that time training new recruits to replace the trained men you lost actual profit is massive. at the end of the month actual profit is 2000 Broams.

 

Like I said this is a massive oversimplification and it would probably cost more to recruit/train the new recruits than what I've listed here but I feel my point stands. Because Sadeus spends more on his bridgemen he doesn't need to retrain as many new solders while his costs might skyrocket because of this strategy so do the rewards.

[king of nowhere]

[snip]

yeah, good point. if a soldier survives, he has more experience and will fight better, so you have better soldiers. if a bridgeman survives, you don't really gain anything. so  there are good reasons, besides stric economical considerations, to use bridgemen as arrow bait to spare a few soldiers.

[Pathfinder]

An ecosystem with constant highstorms is more favorable for human settlement? Highstorms are a minimum of Class 4 hurricane, judging from the damage they do, and that Kaladin isn't expected to survive one. Constant class 4 hurricanes destroy settlements. Yes, the soil may be more conductive (plants will just get destroyed) but you'd have to expand city by city if you're trying to expand against those conditions. Not to mention mountainous regions, or the fact that you are assuming that the single landmass is the size of a super continent. I must respectfully disagree with your count of fifty million, and will assume, based on the size of the army fielded, two million total instead. 1 man in 20 seems very low in terms of battle-service, but I'm cutting slack here.

 

 

Human development and civilisation isn't just about the capacity to produce food, but the ability to transport to where it is needed by specialists.  All the big cities are built into laits, which are limited in area so end up as high density, high value living and working areas.  They can't farm in the lait, so the farmers must live in surrounding regions and ship the food in, and/or they must rely on Soulcasters to feed the citizenry.  Before the war of the Vengeance Pact, there weren't huge numbers of gemhearts flooding into Alethkar, and even after the Highprinces learned to camp the spawnpoints, the gemhearts and their wealth mostly stayed in the Shattered Plains.

 

Alethkar can't have anything better than dirt roads, as pavings or cobbles would be washed away after a year or two of highstorms.  Their river systems (cheapest and most efficient means of transport in medieval times) are probably narrow, fast  flowing gorges that get dangerously blocked up after storms and change courses on a regular basis.  Standard road transport would have to be slow moving chull caravans.  And then storing food has its own problems, when you need to feed a city during the Weeping and your Soulcaster gems run out of Stormlight and you can't farm or harvest in the constant rain.  The Palanaeum (Karbranth royal library) was a specially built underground pyramid, to be watertight, because moisture is a known problem.  How are they storing their harvests to last for longer than several months?  Not everyone can afford water repelling fabrials, or seamless Soulcast stone storage rooms.  There must be some sort of secure storage system since you can see rotspren in Roshar and people associate them with spoiled food. 

 

Here's an interesting quote:

Interlude 1-12, Words of Radiance.

 

If farmers are starving, then something is wrong - it means they can't be producing that much of an excess if shipping food to the city means they can't feed themselves.  If farmers are barely better than subsistence levels of agriculture, they must rely heavily on Soulcasters to avoid famine on bad years, and their population can't be that big. 

 

I'd guesstimate Alethkar's population to be around 5 million, which was Australia's population in 1900.  There are a number of parallels with extreme climate and huge distances between cities and farming regions, as well as limited technology in transport and storage.

 

And I would also say most people in the Alethi power structure would definitely prefer 10+ bridgemen to die instead of 1 cavalry unit.  Shallan is shocked to see that someone trusted Kaladin and Bridge Four with valuable horses when they meet her and Tyn with the caravan.  So cavalry riders will almost always always be lighteyes, and lighteyes are the type of people who are important enough that Sadeas will have to send people back to collect the bodies and Soulcast (again, expensive as the king owns them and highprinces have to pay to play) them into metal statues for their families.

Just chiming in on this not to argue one way or the other but just to add additional information to further the conversation. I do not feel the highstorms and laits are as limiting to human population growth as is let on. This is just from my understanding from the information I have, if there is more technical sources that refute or say otherwise, I concede to better informed sources. At least in regard to the book, highstorms lose power as they travel across roshar. A person in purelake just has to chill in his or her boat vs a person in the shattered plain having to seek shelter in a stone bunker. A person in shinovar doesn't have to hide at all vs the person in purelake. So the entire population of Roshar need not be so limited in expansion due to highstorms. Now the next natural response is that we are discussing Alethkar in particular considering they are the ones running the war. That leads to my next two observations. First, any large cities built into laits that we have seen so far, has been commented on as them not being natural. Hinted that the dawnsingers created them. So although every desolation the population is significantly reduced, and the level of tech becomes non existent, it is clear however that the structures left behind last for the most part. The only exception seen for the most part so far are the ones on the shattered plains because one, it was shattered and abandoned, and two it is the closest to the origin so receives the brunt of the highstorms with crem. So going on the premise (that admittedly is loosely based in fact), that there are ancient areas whose size were for large populations and made artificially are still livable (just about all the main cities we have seen), the population can grow into them with space to spare. Imagine how many years it took the cities we see "today"(in book), to reach such population densities? With the introduction of fabrials, technology is advancing, and if it wasn't for the events in Words of Radiance, those fabrials might have facilitated an industrial revolution level advancement in their society. But I noticed in this point i got carried away because there is a second one to get to. The second is, past the shattered plains, the highstorms seem to have reduced enough that survival away from the laits are not that difficult. The prime example is caravans. Holing up in a carriage with wooden sides seems effective, though it bares a certain risk. Villages such as hearthstone is one step above this. Kaladin's village survives fine during highstorms with only a steep hillside and a break wall to protect it. Due to the build up of crem and deposits, such locations would occur naturally and frequently throughout the country side. So,at least the impression I am given, the population of Alethkar are not as lait bound as highstorms would lead us to believe. 

[aeromancer he/him]

Major population centers would still be lait bound, though. Keep in mind, the topic of this thread is merely the amount of resources wasted, not the practicality of using bridgemen. I am not pointing to anyone in particular when I say that, just keep it in mind when replying.

 

On a side note, Sadeas is very, very lucky that fabrials shatter gemstones, else the law of supply would wipe him dry.