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Comment by mchusma | Hacker News Reader

Ex Army officer. The 3:1 ratio is helpful, because it's a simple way of knowing "you should only choose to fight where you have an unfair advantage". Russia may have had that if they had well trained forces, with a strong combined arms presence, and local Ukrainian support. Turns out, they had none of those things.

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Also this ratio is a guide for open terrain. In closed terrain and urban combat the defender has a greater advantage.

The famous 300 Spartans did a lot of damage partly because they used the terrain to limit the size of the front

This is why you should use mountains to defend if you are attacked by a greater force in EU4. Smaller combat with.

And Civ1. And Civ2. And D&D War Machine.

If you have a combat sim and it doesn't reward hills/mountains for defense, then you are playing a space sim.

I seem to recall learning that the famous 300 Spartans also had another ~3000 Greeks in with them. Is the poplular tale of "only" 300 Spartans not a popular myth perpetuated because it sounds cooler?

This is a consequence of a more general principle: the ratio refers to the effective concentration of force at the time of battle.

It doesn't matter how big your force is if you can only get a trickle going into battle. Then you will constantly be outnumbered where it matters.

Similarly, in urban combat it's very hard to actually get a 3:1 effective concentration when you are moving in on someone else.

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