Admiral Yi Sun-sin

Thinking back at some of my favourite games throughout the years I thought it would be nice to look at a famous historical figure behind one of my favourite factions of a RTS war game that I used to spend many hours playing.
That game is Empires: Dawn of the Modern world.

This game was made by the now defunct Stainless Steel Studios inc. This game was released during the era of Age of Empires which was taking the RTS world by storm.

Playing the game I found that my favourite factions to play were the Koreans for the insane amount of gold through research then evolving into the Russians for the World War era. This was to provide me with T-34 tanks which were very powerful and conscripted infantry to back them up.

When using the Koreans you find that they have some really powerful ship in the later stages with the Turtle ships.

These ships you find are very interesting in design and were some of the most powerful ships at that stage of the game before the World War era.

When you look into the Turtle ship you tend to find out about the famous Admiral that was famous for using them. The more you look into him the more you admire the feats at which he achieved.

This is a man who decided to live a life in the armed forces at a time when it was not fashionable to do so. He was shunned and demoted several times due to politics and from several high ranking officials purely because his success was making them look bad.

Although he was hindered continuously he was eventually promoted to the rank of Admiral several times due to invasion. The Japanese forces were massive in scale and were hardened from a large period of war called the Sengoku Jidai which lasted over a century.
When Admiral Yi engaged the forces he was able to inflict maximum damage while losing the least amount possible. Even now he is regarded as THE greatest Admiral that has ever lived, participating in 23 confirmed battles and winning every single one without losing a ship. This is unheard of.

The battle I wanted to use as an example to illustrate how great he was are the battles at Hansan Island and Myeongnyang.

At the battle at Hansan Island, Admiral Yi and his fleet of around 55 warships caught sight of a Japanese scout vessel to which he gave chase. Upon seeing a Japanese fleet he broke of the pursuit in order to set a trap. He sent fourth a small unit of ships to lure the enemy fleet into open waters. In their arrogance they followed without hesitation.
When the enemy fleet was far enough in the open Admiral Yi's forces fell upon them like a lightning bolt and flanked their forces with a U formation which he dubbed the "Crane formation".
While he encircled the larger force he sent into their midst his Turtle ships. These armoured ships had cannons on all sides and wreaked havoc amidst the enemy.

The battle raged for the best part of the day until the Japanese fled the battle and Admiral Yi called off the pursuit.
After hearing of this a nearby Japanese fleet heard of the battle and amassed near the shore in the hopes of drawing the Admirals forces into shallow waters.

Admiral Yi found the fleet and did not play to their advantages, he used some of his smaller ships with a very long range of weapon and had them cycle shots at the enemy and rotated to allow others to loose salvos onto the enemy. This assault lasted hours and Japanese knowing that the battle would be lost abandoned their ships and escaped later in the day at Admiral Yi's discretion.

The good Admiral lost a reported 19 men and over 100 wounded. However he had sunk over 100 ships and stopped the naval attacks on the south.

The Battle of Myeongnyang was one of the last stands of Korea, should this fail then the whole of Korea would fall. After Admiral Yi was demoted into the abyss he was brought back to lead them at the brink.

The Korean fleet was all but destroyed leaving little to nothing, yet Admiral Yi put all his trust in the Turtle ship and the small fleet that he had.

With this small fleet Admiral Yi had to make the best use of the terrain in order to assist in the coming battle. He chose to make his stand in the Myeongnyang strait, this was a strait which had a temperamental current which was familiar to Yi, however not to the Japanese.
Admiral Yi waited for the Japanese fleet of over 300 warships to enter the strait and then for the current to give his forces the advantage. He then engaged, his fleet was afraid to join in the fight based on the overwhelming size of the enemy, however after witnessing the admiral they eventually followed suit.

Admiral Yi's forces scattered the Japanese fleet back into the sea, sinking over 30 ships and another 30 crashed and useless. Admiral Yi, once again did not lose a single ship.

This changed the face of history and would later lead to the Japanese defeat and liberation of Korea.

There was a movie made based on the events of this battle called, The Admiral: Roaring Currents.

This is a man well worth looking into and merits great respect among any who learn about him.

Game of Thrones season 8 is a joke

I will not lie, I was on the fence before this season even came out. After the content from the books had dried up the drop in quality writing was there for all to see.

Starting with the first episode, I thought that it was a poor start. I feel like all that they did was to confirm all the things we already knew was going to happen:
Jon meeting Arya and Bran,
Daenerys meeting the Northmen and Starks,
Jaime arriving in the North,
Arya meeting Gendry and the Hound,
Jon's reaction to finding out his true heritage,
the Golden company arriving in Westeros.
My main problem is that they all felt half baked, like there was something missing. In the case of the Golden company we know what is missing....the damn ELEPHANTS.
Why are there no elephants? to save the budget again!
We had Mammoths in an earlier season plus Giants and Dragons and the budget was less for those.

Thanks to these problems I had a bad feeling going into this already shortened season.

Moving on to episode 2 it gives some more life to the scenes we were waiting to see. Like the battle plans and the meeting of Daenerys and Jaime, the man who killed her father. This was the high point for me.
We also get to see a reaction to Jon's heritage from Daenerys.
Then we got pretty much nothing else, nice going.

Then we get to the episode that every Game of Thrones fan was looking forward to, The battle between Ice and Fire. This is the fight that give the books their name sake, the battle that was built from the pilot and the penultimate battle of the whole series.....in episode 3. Well that is a warning sign. I thought this battle would be a loss for our heroes and that they would continue to march south however I was wrong.

Now on the first viewing of this I was watching it on my TV, I know what a terrible idea. Being a dark screen with a dark contrast I could not see a damn thing, I understand that from some artistic view having us be as blind as the heroes can be a good idea however the whole episode was so dark I had to stop mid way though the episode shortly after the retreat into Winterfell in order to retreat myself to the PC and watch on a lighter screen with the contrast turn up to full so that I can actually make out who is doing what.

I can tell you a night battle that didn't have this issue that was by far superior to this crap, The battle of the Blackwater.

Now some of the visuals that can be seen in the Battle of Winterfell are great and some of the ideas like a literal wave of dead hitting the ranks of the living was fantastic however the overall strategy is so bad it give me a headache.

These plans have been torn apart by many already, however, I will go over my biggest concerns as they are massive.

Firstly What the hell is this for a Battle line?

First things first why the hell are there only TWO units inside the castle?  Why are almost all the forces outside the castle? I know that Theon already mentioned that the Castle was defensible enough to repel a massive force with a minimal one yet they decide to go outside?
Even the dictionary definition of a castle is: "A large building, fortified against attack with thick walls, battlements, towers and in many cases a moat."
Why don't you use the damn thing as, I don't know, the epicentre of your defence!

secondly why make the extra fortifications behind your forces? this will hinder the inevitable retreat caused by your stupid battle line.

The cavalry are in front of the main force however they are not archers and instead charge to their deaths because why the hell not?

next in line is the catapults and trebuchet because......they were badly made? what? why are they there? in what world does that make sense? its like putting the submarines in the fish pond. Who thought this was a good idea. at least put them behind the trench they made.

At least Cersei learned to hide them from attack in the next episode.

Moving on, Why are there no Giants or Mammoths again!!!

What are you saving this massive TV show budget for if there are no Giants, Mammoths, Elephants, Army of the dead due to the crap Light and no more White walkers.

Also why are there no White walkers fighting in this battle? there are no generals in the front lines despite they are almost invulnerable. They don't know that the army of the living has got access to the Dragon glass weapons yet they stay right back away from everything. I was looking forward to seeing some of our heroes struggle vs some of the white walkers amidst the battle while bot sides readjusted and altered their strategy.

I still remember the tale told by old Nan in the first book/series and I have to ask where are the spiders! I wanted to see some massive spiders that could fight Ghost or something. Yet another missed opportunity for impressive visuals.

If you asked any fan of the series about why they like it I can guarantee that "you don't know who will die and when" will come up however this has been turned into very impressive plot armour for all of our heroes as the death toll is pathetic. I would have expected one of: Brienne, Jaime and Tormund to die defending the other two.
I was expecting Grey worm to die in battle and someone like Varys to die in the crypts being torn apart by Ned or something like that as a reminder of the last time they saw each other.

All this on top of who already died.


The main excuse I get for the reduced visuals and the darkness is, Budget.
Really? Budget?
Look at something like the Lord of the Rings The Two Towers and the Return of the King. Both of these movies had a large budget of around $94 million per movie which was spread across the whole movie. These also had far superior battles in terms of what was going on and how it was shot. They were also released back in 2002/03 where those special effects would have cost a damn sight more in order to create this world.
This season of 6 episodes will cost around the same $90 million however to same a hell of a lot of money they do not have to create the locations as they are already made from the other 7 seasons, plus it also revolves around the characters and established rooms with a lot of talking. These first two episodes proved this.
Looking at some of the other battles like the: Blackwater, Castle Black and of the Bastards you can clearly see that the battles were not only better in terms of you can see the bloody thing but also the tactics and drama was far greater.

Looking back at the Battles in the Lord of the Rings you can not only see what is going on.

You can see that the fortifications were used,

This forces the enemy to attack this fortified position causing the defenders to have a force multiplier which would have been needed at times like this. I mean Why did they create that massive wall and the Nights Watch for to begin with?

They put the Trebuchet inside the fortifications.

They even had Elephants!!!

Well, Mumakil/Oliphaunt.

I hate this episode and would give it no higher than a 4/10 and that would be a nice result to be honest.

The last episode is just as bad tactically but better than that other one. First of all can someone please tell Daenerys to use her strengths to her advantage and stop killing her own people as it is so annoying.

Daenerys has the stronger ground army, would have been bigger if she wasn't so stupid in the last couple of seasons. So why does she keep going into the water? Most of her defeats to Cersei and Euron have come from the sea with the only exception being that of High Garden which was swiftly dealt with while Jaime and Bronn were on the road back to Kings Landing.

Stay on the bloody ground and out of the ocean. Also they know that Cersei has hired a massive army using money on loan from the Iron bank. Why is waiting to gather your strength a bad idea?

One side fights out of loyalty and the other for money that they don't actually have.
One side is tired from fighting a battle and will dictate the time of the next battle, the other is rested and waiting for you to make the next move as they were preparing during the last battle.

There is no reason to force the issue. just wait for your army to get back to full strength.

Every great tactician throughout history has used their strengths to their advantage.

The battle of Helms deep they used their superior positioning to aid them.

At the battle of Pharsalus, Caesar used his positioning and terrain to good use plus the desperation of his men to win the day.

At the battle of Agincourt, Henry V used his positioning and superior archers to rain death on the enemy while they were bogged down in the thick mud.

most battles in those periods are won or lost on the positioning of their armies as well as their use as normally you only have one shot at the battle line. There are very rarely, if ever, a chance to re-position your army after you engage.

Someone who used this to his advantage was Admiral Yi Son-sin of Korea who fought in many battles and never lost a ship. completing a victory record of 100% at a time where political infighting was normal which hindered him more than once when the stakes were at their highest.

Two notable battles were:
The battle of Busan, where he fought over 500 ships with his 166 destroying around 130 while losing none of his own.

The battle of Myeongnyang, where he fought 330 ships with his 13 destroying 30 and damaging another 30 which caused the enemy fleet to flee while losing none of his own.

This man used his strengths to his advantage in every battle and came away with absolute victory during a time where they could not afford any losses, as the fate of Korea was at stake.

Game of Thrones should take examples of this wide range of historical work and the wonders of the internet in order to improve the series, however you just get the feeling that they don't care and want to get it over with, which tends to lead to problems like this.

These episodes are rushed and forced and they feel that way which angers the community and the fans.

At least the books are not finished and the creator George R.R. Martin doesn't seem to like it so we might get a better ending than this crap.
Only time will tell.