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[Louella Dougans]

I had a thought.

It has been mentioned, that the Scriptures contain a great many works, covering all subjects.

So, would they include works such as the equivalents of Sun Tzu's Art of War and Von Clausewitz's On War ?

Such that priests who had some understanding of the Scriptures and application of them, would then be the people developing strategy and tactics for the Navy ?

e.g. it would be a priest who is looking at a situation, consults the Scriptures, and applies the relevant parable to the situation ?


The Imperial Academy is apparently "rooted in tradition and generally considered sub-par to the more modern military institutes found in the other empires", but what if that is because the Academy teaches from ancient texts, where the principles are taught, but the practical application of the principles is not necessarily taught by the Academy ?

E.g. teaching about ancient naval battles at sea might seem rather old fashioned, but only if it is about the tactics used, not the principles. "Crossing the T" for steel turret warships is a tactic, outdated by missiles and so on. however, the principle is to bring as much of your firepower to bear as possible while minimising teh amount the enemy can bring to bear, is not as outdated.

If that makes sense ?

It also means parables from Scripture may be useful in communicating, when there is the possibility of being overheard.

"Garum, Zakara and the Beast" could be an order for an element to make a holding action to allow another element to manoeuvre into a better position.

Which would end up getting rather like that Star Trek episode, but there you go


So, foreign military observers might see the Amarr Navy have a map of dispositions of units, and then some priests come in, and talk parables for a while, the parables may relate to ancient and seemingly non-relevant forms of combat (Garum, Zakara and the Beast were fought with swords), then the Navy officers give orders to the units.

This would seem rather peculiar, would it not ? And would cause some to underestimate things, if they don't grasp things.
"Crossing the T? They are going to use wet navy tactics? how... backward" and so on.


And a priest-captain is not merely a senior person responsible for the well being of their people, but also a strategic and tactical advisor.

[Laerise [PIE]]

First off, you do not have to be a priest to know the scriptures, or to understand specific bits and bobs of it.
It'd be nice if everyone could keep in mind that this is EVE and not Warhammer 40.000 (as much as I like the both of them).

The idea that a culture who has been spacefaring for centuries, even millenia, would still rely on wet-naval tactics is, in my eyes, very far fetched.
It has been stated, again and again, that the imperial navy is the largest in size but lacking in the technology departement. The later can be easily explained by the simply massive ammount of ships to maintain and upgrade with whatever fancy gadgets Carthum et al have churned out in the last years.
We can, however, deduce from the description of the Zealot that the navy has quite a sizeable ammount of extremely efficient and modern ships (especially considering that the zealot is arguably the best fleet HAC in existance).

I'm sure the navy is competent enough to have their own 'dialect', pretty much like every other military organisation in the history of humanity. How this is exactly realised is up for grabs at the moment - but I don't think anyone would really bother to spell out something along the lines of "[...]initiate Garum and Zakhara and the Beast, lines one to eleven, doctrine, blessed be God[...]", because by the time that that's spelled out everyone would already be dead... 

[Lyn Farel]

The Scriptures probably include such works, yes. Hell I am pretty sure you could even find old texts speaking in details of handcrafted traditionnal shoemaking.

Traditionnalist as they are, Amarrians probably still rely on very old texts and doctrines, especially as it is in the Scriptures after all. But like Laerise said, they are no prehistorical fools and have always been craving for knowledge and technology, like any other empire. Their doctrines and strategies are probably adaptations of the old texts, not litteral duplicates.

[Louella Dougans]

First off, you do not have to be a priest to know the scriptures, or to understand specific bits and bobs of it.

The idea that a culture who has been spacefaring for centuries, even millenia, would still rely on wet-naval tactics is, in my eyes, very far fetched.

I'm sure the navy is competent enough to have their own 'dialect', pretty much like every other military organisation in the history of humanity.

maybe "priest" isn't quite the right word then. I'll come back to this later.

The point is, that they don't rely on wet-navy tactics.
However, there may be much literature that discusses battles and campaigns (possibly during the Reclaiming on Athra), that is still referred to in modern Amarr military theory, which to a particular point of view, would seem outdated.

Commands would be in a similar fashion as mentioned in another thing. People don't say "Commence targeting procedure on blasphemous rebel Evanda Char, and fire when ready", they say "Evanda is primary".
So, they'd say something on the lines of "Garum & Zakara. Alpha squad is Garum."


So, consider this scenario:

An Amarr-Caldari group is on a joint exercise. A Caldari is observing on the Amarr command centre. The Amarr admiral is talking to some other officers.

Caldari: "Who is that officer the admiral is talking to? what is that symbol on their uniform?"
Translator: "She is an advisor, one that is well versed in the Scriptures."
Caldari: "The Scriptures? those holy books of yours?"
Translator: "Quite."
Caldari: *thinks* "A priestess of some sort, hmm." *listens in* "What are they saying?"

Admiral: "the opposition forces are located here, here, and a smaller group here"
Advisor: "the parable of the lobster and the coral would apply there"
Admiral: "And what of these?"
Advisor: "It is written that at the battle of Udor, the Amarr were victorious."
Admiral: "Then it is so."

Translator: "The Admiral is asking the advisors opinion, and she relates passages from Scripture that are relevant to the situation, including the battle of Udor."
Caldari: "Udor? that is on Amarr Prime, isn't it?"
Translator: "Quite. The Udorian fleet misjudged the wind, and the Amarr crossed their T, which led to their defeat. It was a great victory."

Caldari: *writes in report to command* "they have priests to quote scripture, and think surface fleet battles are relevant."

[Horatius Caul]

The oldest Amarr texts would date back to Gheinok and could include accounts of events from the Milky Way and the arrival in New Eden. It's possible, though unlikely, that those oldest texts could actually include texts about space warfare.

Regarding Scriptural texts used in modern Amarrian warfare, I'd probably think it would be like how the Art of War is referred to these days. Rather abstract and high-level points to consider, like how to manage spies, how to split up the enemy, how to maintain army cohesion... The Caldari and Gallente probably have equivalent texts, but the Amarr probably have many many more, that go in deeper detail. There could be slight scholarly splits in Amarrian military education where different instructors favour the approaches of different legendary commanders.

I'd say it might be possible that the pre-unification and pre-reform Empire could have had commanders who used direct Scriptural references in military decisions, but the early empire didn't have many real military conflicts to test that approach in. The modern Empire is a bit more secular in my mind, and more realist in recognizing smart things. If the Gallente or Minmatar figure out a brilliant tactic, the Amarr won't simply ignore it - they will adapt, learn it, and then go to figure out a counter. In their adaptivity, the Amarr have both an advantage and a disadvantage in their traditionalist structure. They have a massive amount of past data to pull from - where they may actually find a ready counter to the new tactic, and simultaneously their command structure is probably so obsessively dedicated to their perceived superiority that it can be difficult to introduce new approaches.

[Graelyn]

Horatius has the right idea.

If Amarr had scriptural advisors, it would be on the Grand Strategic level, not the Tactical level.

This can be seen today, as The Art of War is a textbook for officers at West Point.

In the planning rooms and theater-level command centers, such advisors would bring their knowledge to bear. A battlefield Admiral, on the other hand, would not.

[Louella Dougans]

\o/ thanks. Trying to think about what Amarr society and so on is like, it strikes me as being very, very different to anything you can point at in teh real world &/or history.

And that the other cultures in New Eden are similarly baffled and find things very hard to understand, because they don't have the cultural background that allows them to get a good grip on things.