If one of the spatial directions wrapped around, how would combat be different?

Question

This is a test drive of the alien-geometry. I hope it will be a fun tag.

Okay, for the purposes of this question, the world is flat (like, you still have plants and hills and stuff, just no long term curvature.) We don't care how far it goes, or why it like that.

So we have a world much like ours. We have sunlight during the day and moonlight at night. Plants and animals and such. The only difference is if you move 5 feet to East or West, you end up in the same place.

To visualize this, every object is visually repeated infinitely to the East and West every 5 feet. Of course, these are all the same object (they won't diverge or anything). You only viewing it from different angles. You can imagine sort of that the entire world is like a cylinder with a circumference of 5 feet (except that it isn't curved and the ground is still really deep.)

If we want to be precise, an infinity by infinity by 5 feet space, and topologically glue the two faces of this space together.

I hope to ask a lot of questions about this world, but to start off, let's look at combat.

• If I have something in my right hand, and I can put it into my left hand.
• I can arrange myself so the enemy is both directly to my right and left.
• I can fire projectiles far to the left or right (wrapping around the East-West dimension a couple times) to hit my opponent in the side.

How will combat be different? Both 1 on 1, and smallish battles (not thinking about big battles or wars yet.)

Answer 1

Its similar to fighting in a 5ft wide corridor of infinite length.

A defensive fighter would want to face opponent on a north south axis along the corridor. A large shield or two men standing abreast you block the entire world from getting past. Two attackers could charge forward with spears knowing their foes could never side step around them.

In a skirmish the vast majority of troops would be archers lobbing attacks over the handful of melee troops

It would seem that only a few dozen troops could participate in a war. The narrow confines also remove the traditional attackers advantage of choosing the site of battle, you don't need to defend a whole castle only 5ft of wall. Defense becomes much more effective.

Answer 2

1 on 1, you are in a world of complexity. Martial artists have an infinite edge over non-martial artists as they can appear to kick on the right side and hit the opponent on the left! Also there are very high chances a short range projectile weapon (like a slingshot) would be used by every combatant. The most shocking battles would ensue when the opponents face each other in east-west direction. Now you they not only have to defend themselves from the front, but the back too, as both parties can strike behind their backs and it will hit the opponent in their backs.

Generally in this world weapons like the Meteor Hammer and the Rope Dart would have far higher effectiveness against fixed-shape weapons like the sword, spear, mace etc. Battles where two masters fight, one with a fix-shape weapon (sword) and the other with a rope-dart would be immensely complex, both to write and to comprehend.

In battles involving projectiles, every trooper would be trained rigorously about how to hit the opponent on both sides while standing right in front of him at much distance.

Detailed analysis of weapons and combat tactics depends on what level of technology the residents of this universe have, as compared to ours.

Answer 3

Would a being evolved in such a space really even perceive the duplicate images, or would their wetware evolve to eliminate the cognitive overload of the redundancy? Perhaps they would only perceive a single instance of each object, albeit viewed simultaneously from many angles. Perhaps their perceptions would convert the flat space around them into a perceived cylinder, to give them awareness of the wraparound effects?