4 – Gunpowder Made Armor Obsolete
Many games promote the idea that the introduction of gunpowder weapons immediately rendered armor useless, causing plate and mail to vanish overnight, and suddenly wearing an armor piece is just a fashion statement, but history tells a slower, more nuanced story. For centuries after firearms appeared on European battlefields, armor evolved alongside gunpowder, becoming thicker, more specialized, and even proofed against early bullets. Cost, mobility, training, and changing tactics were the factors that ultimately drove armor’s decline, with cavalry and elite troops continuing to wear protective gear well into the early modern period, with some examples of it being used in World War I and World War II. In fact, what are Kevlar vests if not modern forms of armor?
3 – Battle Lines Were Small
Play any real-time strategy game, and you’d be excused for thinking that commanders could see everything and control everything too, because the battle lines only extend for a couple of hundred meters at most, and sometimes not even that. Games often depict historical battles as tightly packed clashes between relatively small forces, creating the impression that battle lines were short and visible to anyone with a modicum of distance and high ground. In reality, many historical engagements, especially from the early modern period onward, featured vast, sprawling front lines stretching for kilometers, shaped by terrain, supply routes, and the need to protect flanks. These only got longer as warfare advanced. Armies frequently operated in dispersed formations with significant gaps, reserves held far from the front, and units that never directly engaged the enemy. This myth persists in games because large-scale frontage is difficult to visualize and manage mechanically, but it significantly understates the sheer scale, coordination challenges, and spatial complexity of real historical warfare. If you want to experience a game that does an amazing job at giving you the scale and spectacle of true battlelines, you need to play Scourge of War – Remastered.
2 – Nobody Was Afraid of Bayonets, Apparently
I’m no Napoleonic era soldier, but if I saw an angry redcoat running at me with a massive spike attached to his musket, I would think twice before deciding to make a grand final stand. Strategy games really love their charge mechanics, but what’s unrealistic is what happens the moment a melee is initiated, and a unit will spend a solid amount of time with their soldiers just casually crossing bayonets, and sometimes killing a couple of guys here and there. In reality, charges were mostly used to break lines and bayonets. Historically, bayonets were psychological weapons as much as physical ones, and while actual bayonet wounds were relatively rare, the threat of a charge often caused units to break, retreat, or surrender before close combat occurred.
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