 Most of you watching probably found me through my world-building analysis series where I examine shitty fictional worlds and explain why they're so shitty But after spending so long complaining about bad settings I decided that I should probably help writers create better ones So I'm doing this new series for anyone out there who wants to create a fictional world but gets stuck at certain points Or isn't sure how to make one that's logically consistent So whether you're a sci-fi fantasy writer a dungeon master or one of those weirdos who just makes worlds for fun This series should help you out all of these videos should be viewed more as guidelines than hard and fast rules Depending on how you set up your world There may be aspects to it that can change the way that society armies or even physics work and at the end of the day rule Of cool will usually win out over everything else With all of that out of the way, let's talk about how to make a fantasy army. This is the introduction song It's not very good, but it's not too long just about every epic fantasy story ever written includes some sort of Epic fantasy battle and to have an epic fantasy battle. You need a fantasy army, but James You might be saying I have an epic battle between the forces of good and evil all planned out in my story And I have a detailed world for it to take place in I'm just not sure how to create the armies that participate How should they be organized? How should they fight? What role would magic or mythical creatures play? Well hypothetical viewers, that's where I come in this video is a guide for world building a realistic or at least Logical fantasy army. It isn't about specific battle tactics or how to win a war not directly anyways Rather, it's about how an army might be armed and organized before the invention of gunpowder And of course how magic can complete the alter warfare in your fictional setting These are mostly just guidelines However, if something in your setting would cause things to be run differently feel free to change it up Variety is the spice of fantasy worlds after all. Here's a segue into the next point The most basic thing about any army is the way it's organized and what sort of society it comes from and that can be broadly Split into three categories One an army from a stateless or tribal society To a citizen militia called up during times of need three a professional army made up of career soldiers All of these categories have a lot of variation within them and there is some overlap as well But generally speaking these are the three types Let's start with a tribal army a tribal society is a bit difficult to give a rigid definition to But it's usually a society that doesn't have a formal governmental structure or legal system Any leaders within that society will probably just be charismatic chief tains that are able to convince others to follow them Rather than someone given power through any formal laws or constitution For example, the Comanches were a Native American tribe that lived in the Southwestern United States They were nomadic hunters that traveled across the Great Plains in bands The bands were led by chiefs But they didn't have much power beyond deciding which direction the band would wander if anyone wanted to leave the band They were free to do so of course There's a lot of variation in this but that's more or less how a tribal society is set up There may be laws and customs that they follow, but there's no nation-state that controls them So if your fantasy battle involves some sort of barbarians attacking then they'll probably fall into this category These sorts of armies will generally not have a formal chain of command nor will they be Particularly well-trained. In real history these sorts of groups were led by war chiefs or chieftains Who were able to convince others that following them was a good idea The war chief may have been able to command his men to an extent during battle But if they wanted to leave there is usually nothing keeping them there Exceptions could be made in cultures where they swore some sort of oath that kept them there however If your world has tribal armies that are more than a couple hundred men in size Then they're probably going to be a confederation or alliance of multiple tribes or chieftains If this is the case then there will probably be one or two chieftains that control the entire army Then right below him will be a bunch of lesser war chiefs with small bands of followers And then below them will all be regular warriors Of course It's possible that some of the lesser war chiefs will have some of their own war chiefs that have sworn loyalty to them as well This can wind up making the hierarchy more complex and layered But the general idea that everyone is there voluntarily should still hold true. These sorts of armies will also generally be Disorganized in battle too. They likely won't fight in any sort of formations or have standardized equipment and their battle tactics shouldn't be too complex either Nothing more complex than an ambush or one group performing a flanking maneuver For the most part these sorts of armies were more like armed mobs Of course, they had a lot of combat experience due to raids So they were armed mobs made up of a bunch of badasses These were the sorts of guys who if they didn't have enough food to get their village through the winter Would just attack another village and take all their stuff Even if they weren't soldiers 100% of the time they knew how to fight a battle with a disorganized army is the only time When soldiers should be having one-on-one duels with their enemies a more organized force should be more like a machine with each person Being an individual component and on that note Let's move on to citizens militias these armies come from states with formalized governments They might be as small as a single city or they might be gigantic Empires but the important part is that they have a more well-defined government with a king or other leaders that are given power through specific laws a Lot of pre-modern countries couldn't afford to have large standing armies So during times of need they would just arm some of its citizens and have them fight So while the militiamen may have received some basic training they weren't soldiers by trade They were farmers or merchants or carpenters These sorts of armies were found in a lot of Greek city-states and the early Roman Republic and in most cases They were better organized and more disciplined than a tribal army They had an official leader and officers that the common soldiers were obligated to follow and they couldn't just pick up and leave whenever they Wanted not without risking execution for deserting these types of armies are the first kind where the soldiers in it might be conscripted If you're including this sort of army in your world Then it should also be better trained than a tribal one these sorts of armies should go into battle in organized lines and formations If their opponents charge at them They should raise up their shields to protect themselves and get their spears ready for stabbing when the enemy line collides with them They don't need to be master swordsmen and they don't need to be able to twirl a spear like a Shaolin monk They just have to stay in formation and stab at whoever attacks them It doesn't require much skill like I said earlier every soldier is just a small part of a bigger machine Obviously there were plenty of different formations used before gunpowder weapons became widespread, but the general idea will always be the same Individual combat prowess doesn't matter much. This is also the first type of army that should be split up into different units There should be some soldiers that are archers some that are infantry some that are cavalry, etc And depending on what sorts of weaponry it has access to as well as how organized it is it can further divide itself up into more Specialized units such as pikemen for protecting from cavalry charges or mounted archers for harassing enemy formations The upside to this sort of system is that it's cheap and that soldiers will generally be pretty loyal to their homes The downside is that when your army all goes home after the fighting stops all the knowledge that they picked up is lost When another war starts up a few years later The officers and soldiers will be more out of shape and they will have forgotten some of what they learned last time Sometimes to compensate for this They would have a small class of career soldiers to supplement the citizen force think of knights from Europe or Samurai in Japan Men who spend their lives training to fight in wars and are usually part of an aristocratic class Then when the fighting starts they can leave the citizen soldiers and sometimes even form the core of the army and finally There's the professional standing army This is a permanent force made up of soldiers that are divided up into specialized units given equipment That is at least somewhat standardized and organized into a disciplined hierarchy Just about all modern militaries would fit into this category These sorts of armies are expensive to maintain and so they're usually under the control of a relatively well-off state Though if you're creating a mercenary army most of this will apply to them, too These are basically just a more advanced form of a citizen militia with troops and leaders that are more experienced and disciplined and Since they spend considerably more time training than their militia counterparts, they can specialize a lot more So these guys should definitely be organized into different divisions like cavalry and archers If you have some sort of big expansionist empire in your setting then a professional standing army is Basically mandatory. I want to stress again that there's an awful lot of variation within these sorts of armies But generally speaking those are the three types and that's how they're set up The biggest thing that's going to be the same throughout all types of armies is their need for food Unless you create a race of walking plant people that get sustenance from the sun all your armies are going to depend on food To survive the saying an army moves on its stomach is usually attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte And in a nutshell it means that an army can't go and fight somewhere if they don't have enough food Before modern technology allowed for things like preservation and rapid transport It was difficult to get enough food from the places it was produced to armies out in the field Because of this just about every army that you make should be at least somewhat dependent on foraging from the local region This can take different forms hunting for wild animals paying local farms for food Or just straight up taking all their shit and killing everyone who resists If the army you're creating is going more than a couple of miles from home Then it'll probably have to take some food from the local terrain This will also depend on what sort of diet the army has If you make an army of vegetarian elves, then they'll probably have an easy time feeding themselves on nuts and berries They find in the forest But carnivorous orcs would likely kill all the animals they come across pretty fast and have to move on or starve much More quickly and both of them would have trouble surviving in a desert or arctic environment If the army is tribal then it should almost exclusively subsist on foraging since there's no real state apparatus backing it up The other two should be able to depend on supply trains from home for at least a portion of their needs But the farther from the place where the food is produced they go The less they can depend on it and if they have to go through difficult terrain like mountains or areas with few roads Then that means both they and their food will move slower Supply trains can also make a tempting target for their opponents If enemy gorillas or even part of the enemy army can get behind their lines and attack the supply train It can slow down or even stop food from reaching them So the very first things you should think about when creating an army in your fantasy world is how it's organized And what sort of society it comes from once you know this you have a foundation to build everything else on Look folks. I get it. Swords are cool as fuck They're one of the most common weapons in fiction for that very reason But they were not the primary weapons of most warriors in pre-modern times They're difficult to use difficult to maintain and they aren't all that good at piercing armor Some swords may be better at piercing armor than others, but they're still not as good as a spear or halberd Which is what most infantry soldiers should be using as their primary weapon They aren't hard to use at all. Just stab at the guy attacking you. You don't even need to get that close to him In fact, there's actually a saying in Japanese martial arts that a swordsman has to be three times as skilled as a spearman to defeat Him in a duel the reach advantage is that big Swords are very portable though, which makes them great as a secondary weapon if you lose your spear But wait, you might be thinking what if I have a tribal style army with men that all bring their own equipment Couldn't a bunch of them have swords? Well, some of them certainly could but swords are pretty easy to damage When you swing them around they get chipped and lose their edge And so it takes a lot of effort to keep them in fighting shape If someone is supplying his own weapons, he would probably want something cheaper and easier to maintain Like an axe or a mace They're easier to use too The only time swords should play a major role in battle is if that's all they have or there's some sort of magic involved For example in the stormlight archive some characters have weapons called shard blades Which are giant swords that they can summon with their minds shard blades are also Unbreakable and can cut through just about anything meaning anybody wielding one is an almost unstoppable force So if you have swords with some sort of huge advantage like this then they can be viable As for armor the most important piece by far is a helmet If your army can only provide one piece of armor for its soldiers Give them a metal cap that protects their head from being split open by an axe Besides that armor is a big deal in melee combat and can often mean the difference between life and death Getting stabbed in the chest is much harder to survive than having this tip of a spear glance off your breast plate If the memes exist then as much of your army should be provided with armor as possible Full plate or chainmail armor like what was worn by medieval knights is about as expensive as constructing a bowling alley on the moon So it's unlikely that an entire army or even a large part of it would be equipped with that But even some thick leather to cover up their vulnerable areas can make all the difference The environment limits what sorts of armor can be worn though the more you wear the hotter and heavier you get So it would be hard to wear while fighting in say the desert There are some materials other than metal and leather that can be used though The incans actually used armor made of thick linen and cotton that was surprisingly good at protecting them There are even some accounts of them coming back from battle with so many arrows sticking out of their armor that they looked like porcupines And some conquistadors actually used that armor instead of their own because it was more comfortable Shields can also be great and they're really easy to use Just hold it up in front of you and it keeps you from getting stabbed There's a bunch of different types that serve different purposes But the bottom line is that a shield is a great piece of armor Even if it's just a simple plank of wood it can protect you and any army should try and give one to its soldiers as often as possible The types of weapon and armor used by your army should inform how well it fights If there's one thing we can learn from history It's that a better equipped force will usually defeat the one that has inferior weaponry Cavalry is pretty simple It's a part of an army that's mounted on some sort of animal or vehicle that rides around attacking the enemy army In real life, they almost always rode horses, but beyond that there were many different types Some were archers, some were lightly armored, some were heavily armored But the important part is that they were way faster than the soldiers on foot If you create cavalry with light armor or ranged weapons Then their job should be about attacking the edges of the enemy force to distract them or prevent them from getting into proper formation If it's heavily armed and armored like a european knight or cataphract Then its job should be to break into the enemy infantry formations and kill as many soldiers as possible along with protecting their fellows from the enemy cavalry Cavalry can also be great at scouting ahead of the main army since they're so much faster The main problem with cavalry is that horses are expensive and they require a lot more food than a human Which stretches resources even further than they already were You may have other animals in your world that the denizens can train to ride You might include pegasi or giant lizards or sentient rhinoceroses or something All of these can be fun to put in just make sure you understand how much they eat How fast they are how much weight they carry things like that before you decide what role they'd play in combat Fortifications are any sort of fixed defensive structure They take many forms from walls surrounding a city to a castle up on a hill to a hastily put together line of stakes in a field The benefits of these structures are pretty self-explanatory If you're hiding behind a wall then your opponent is going to have trouble reaching you They would need to bring up some ladders to climb up or maybe a siege tower Or even destroy the wall using a catapult or something And if none of that is possible, they might just have to surround you and wait until your food runs out The types of fortifications are legion But the kind used by an army should be limited by what materials they have and how long it takes to build You can't throw a castle together in an afternoon unless you have a wizard do it And if the army you've made does have a wizard that can do that they should definitely take advantage of it Of course if they can't do that there are a bunch of fortifications that they can throw together quickly They could dig a trench or make a wooden wall to prevent charges or put down some magical landmines where they know the enemy will be coming The bottom line is that if an army is shielded or partially shielded by some sort of obstacle to their enemies Then they have a major advantage And One thing I want to bring up real quick that ties into this are cow drops They're these sharp bits of bent metal that you can scatter around and they'll always land with a sharp side pointing up They're meant to prevent cavalry charges since the sharp end will punch through a horse's foot if it steps on it They also punch through human feet pretty well, too So just the suspicion of cow drops being in an area would sometimes cause commanders to avoid fighting to clear them out I almost never see cow drops used in fiction. So writers get on it. Throw some in your story. They're useful Because of the resurgence of grim dark fantasy most people imagine pre-modern war as being barbaric and chaotic filled with wanton murder and rape and Well, they aren't completely wrong history is full of innocence being slaughtered during wartime However, there have almost always been some rules about the way armies should conduct themselves What these rules were and how well they were enforced was completely different in every culture But they included things like no attacking until everyone is in formation or always give aid to wounded after the fighting ends There's too much here to give any sort of generic template that all cultures could follow So to think about what sorts of laws you should create ask yourself Some of these questions about the cultures that create slash follow them What sorts of things does this culture value? What places people animals or objects do they hold sacred? Would they be willing to attack a church or temple from their own religion? Is there any real way to enforce these laws or are they just part of a gentleman's agreement? How are women viewed in this culture? Are they seen as property equal to men or maybe something fragile to be protected? Once these questions are answered most laws of war should just fall into place Of course, this only applies to conflict within a single culture when they clash with others things can get more confusing Hell misunderstandings between cultures can cause wars in the first place And just like with any laws there will always be those willing to break them Magic is probably the thing I can say the least about here since it's completely different from setting to setting There are a couple of questions You can ask yourself about magic in your setting to figure out how a citizen might integrate it into their militaries How common is it can everybody use it or only a small part of the population? How destructive is it can it kill one person at a time or a hundred? What unusual or subtle things can it do if it can be used for spying on enemy movements or plans? That might be even more valuable than pure destructive force And if magic can create or preserve food then it would make foraging and supply trains obsolete What is the cost of magic in the Mistborn trilogy? Allomancers consume metals when they use their magic which means that their ability to use magic depends on their supply of things like pewter, iron and zinc If magic is limited then an army's options when using it are limited. How well do the people understand magic? They'd probably be less willing to use something they don't know much about But if they know it intimately and comprehend the effect then they won't be so hesitant I want to reiterate that when you create an army in a fantasy setting you have a lot of wiggle room depending on how The rest of the world is set up. These are just some very basic guidelines for how an army with pre-modern technologies should be set up So when you're creating a fantasy world and you want to add in some armies of orcs elves humans and sentient walking plant people Hopefully this video will be a good resource to help you keep things logical But remember rule of cool can make audiences look past just about everything since i'm such a fan of good world building I really wanted to make a resource for people to turn to to help improve their own If you've reached this far then i'm assuming you're also a fan of world building So why not check out my world building analysis playlist? And after that check out my discord server and my patreon page to help me make more videos like this Bye