How do you see the "Dead" on the battlefield?

[Conan]

Hi guys,

Restarted play EB a few weeks back and really enjoying my self, play Roma. Just conquered all of Italy and currently besieging Carthage.

Anyway to the topic at hand! I'm just interested how peeps perceive the "dead" on the battlefield map.

The way I see them as a mix of men wounded to the point they can no longer fight and indeed actual dead.

My reasoning behind this is the fact that at the end of the battle report you get a number of men who are "healed" indicating they weren't actually dead in the first place! Since that would then be termed resurrected!

Seeing the “dead” this way also makes units like Gaesatae with more than one hitpoint make sense. An arrow in the thigh or arm would be enough to stop almost any man fighting in the battle I would have thought. However a Gaesatae who can feel no pain and is probably in a semi-psychotic state indeed could continue to do so.

So does anyone else share this view at all?

[Titus Marcellus Scato]

I agree, 'dead' totals include 'wounded'. Most of them will be wounded rather than dead, in actual fact.

The winner in a battle occupies the battlefield, so some of their wounded can be saved (although generally only the lightly-wounded, in ancient times a severe wound was almost always eventually fatal due to infection (gangrene) and lack of good medical care). For the defeated side, all the wounded men will be run down after the battle by the enemy cavalry and light troops, and killed before they can escape (because they are weak from loss of blood and can't run as fast).

Here's a brief article on the healing of wounds through the ages:
http://www.ijps.org/article.asp?issn...t=Bhattacharya

As for the Gaesatae, they have 2 hitpoints in EB where most soldiers have one, so a single wound will not be enough to stop them fighting. You have to give them two serious wounds to put them down.

[Frtigern]

I see the dead as someone's son, brother, uncle, father. Where yesterday they believed that tomorrow wouldn't be their day, a spear thrust into stomach a mortal wound and they would not see another sun rise. I try to see them not as just units in a formula, but as men called to fight because they're life is less value to them as the state's life. I try to perceive them from a soldiers perspective. Like a modern soldier in a fire fight, all there is chaos. Instead of the dramatized movie experiences of ancient war, with all the pomp and ceremony, I try to see it as a documentary, where there are no "best" decisions, only bad decisions slighty better than the other bad decision. Where in the midst of battle you can feel the bond between brothers. Men who you depend on and who depend on you. As a general, it is his duty to not simply throw them away. That man from that unit you foolishly threw in because you didn't take the time to consider that perhaps that other unit was better, will end up costing you the battle or future battles to come. That one can dictate the outcome of an entire war! For only death in battle will honorable warriors be taken to heaven!

[Shmoof]

I see them as not "dead" but casualties as all fallen soldiers injured, however fatal, or dead. Not all of them are dead from the get- go. Casualties are how we measure war losses. At Iwo Jima, the US took more casualties than the Japanese but the US obviously had less dead. They're casualties