Are sheer numbers enough to beat a foe with more advanced technology?

Question

In an all out battle between two forces with one side having such advanced technology and weapons that they appear as magic (from now on called wizards) and the other side have nothing but spears and maybe basic bows(from now on called cavemen), could the cavemen still win if they outnumber the wizards?

Some more info on the wizards:

1. They can throw fire/plasma
2. They have firearms and bombs
3. They have advanced knowledge of different sciences such as math and physics
4. They are somewhat small in population, maybe with only 3,000 people or so.
5. Their homes are in what appear to be modern (for our standards) houses and buildings.
6. They have an extreme phobia of air travel so they have not invented planes or rockets at this time.

Some more info on the cavemen:

1. Their most advanced technology comes in the form of sharpened sticks and simple bows. Some of the smarter cavemen have even started putting sharpened rocks on the ends of the spears and arrows.
2. While they may seem incredibly stupid to the wizards, the cavemen have the potential to become quite smart, they just haven't reached that point in their civilization yet.
3. They are pretty large in population, a low estimation puts them in the 300,000 range.
4. They live in caves and mud hovels

Is there a way for the cavemen in this scenario to win an all out war with the wizards? The main war goals of both sides is to completely destroy the other. Peace is not an option.

Is the population of the cavemen large enough to eventually take over the wizards? Do I need more? Can I get by with less?

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After trying to genetically engineer themselves to make them stronger/smarter/etc they accidentally unleashed a virus that affected the entire wizard population that makes it incredibly hard to conceive. They blame it on their desires to mess with biology and now most forms of biology are strictly taboo.

The wizards used to keep to them selves and were a peaceful people, the cavemen were jealous and afraid of the "magics" that they witnessed and decided it was an affront to their God so the cavemen decide to wipeout the wizards. The wizards, in self defense decide the only way to stay secluded and alone is to wipe out the cavemen.

The territory of the wizards is quite small, about the size of a small urban town in Utah: 16 square miles. The wizards are stationary and don't want to leave their home. The cavemen are nomads moving from place to place and that's how they happen upon the wizards.

Answer 1

Possibly, some examples from history to think about:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Zulu_War

British empire with rockets/rifles/cannons were initially defeated by the Zulus with spears using their superior numbers to exploit the British supply lines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Little_Bighorn

Custer lost mainly by hugely underestimating the number of the enemy he was fighting.

Big picture a larger force can win against superior technology, but usually only due to errors or overconfidence on the part of the superior technological group. Having technology and knowledge does not automatically make them great strategists or tacticians, if anything it's likely to make them overconfident.

Second point to think on, technology can be captured and used by the savages. The Native Americans fighting Custer rode horses and wielded rifles.

Knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing. Your cavemen would lack knowledge not intelligence, when presented with the technological weapons attacking them they would quickly learn how they function, even if they don't understand how (i.e. when they raise the black rod it shoots burning fire to some distance). If they get into close combat or smaller skirmishes over time they could easily capture equipment and potentially learn to use it.

On the wizards side, use of chemical or radiation methods of extermination (gases/poisons) would be quite effective, because the cavemen wouldn't see anything they would just die, which you might want to rule them out for other reasons similar to the biological limitations.

Answer 2

It depends on what the victory conditions are for each side.

If the "wizards" want to exterminate the cavemen Dalek mode, it is one thing. If they want to enslave the cavemen, or to establish themselves as the cavemen's overlords, then they will not want to kill all the cavemen, who will eventually find ways to circumvent the wizards' technological advantage, or to turn such advantage against their oppressors.

So, what exactly are they fighting about? Total control, genocide, enslavement, border security, trade rights, the control of sacred or economically important territory?

And are we talking about a war or about a battle? (I don't think, for instance, that Native Americans could have repealed British colonisation and kept their territory free from European invaders. But we do know that eventually Native Americans have defeated non-Native Americans in battle fields, as General Custer bears witness to).

Answer 3

A lot of it would come down to the tactics used on either side. As mentioned above, if the wizards perfected the defense of the land they were guarding (i.e. castles or large walls, and using geographical features to their advantage), it would be tough for the cavemen to stand a chance. These obstacles would pose a serious challenge to the cavemen as they lack all of the required siege technology. There are, however, ways in which the battle could be more even.

If the cavemen were able to lure out the wizards by doing something like lighting fires around their camp, or attacking weaker parts of their society (like farms or small villages), the battle would be much more evenly matched. On an open battle field, early stages would look much like the beginning of a world war 1 battle: the cavemen, charging into the defensive weapons of the wizards, would get slaughtered. Much like WW1, however, as soon as the two sides get close enough to engage in hand to hand combat the tide would turn against the wizards. In a typical WW1 battle, with one side armed with machine guns and artillery, the attacking side could lose as many as 100,000 people in a day. As long as the cavemen don't get discouraged, they could potentially make it to the wizards front lines, where guns, bombs, and plasma have less of an impact.

Another interesting approach would be guerrilla warfare, a technique used throughout history by technologically outmatched forces. The Mongols frequently used a tactic where they would have a small force engage the enemy and then retreat, prompting their enemy to follow after them. Once the enemy was spread out, other Mongol forces would swoop in and attack them while they were exposed. In the forests the cavemen could use hunting techniques to find, follow, and kill or even capture wizards in small numbers, making the high-tech weapons less effective. They could potentially even taking prisoners, giving them valuable knowledge. If the cavemen were able to get the wizards out of their defenses into a forest or valley, the battle would be as good as over.

Overall there would be ways to get through defenses such as laying siege to the city, burning the crops around it, or launching a frontal attack, but most of these would fail. On an open battlefield or rough terrain the cavemen would stand a far better chance.

Answer 4

I think it depends of the initial defense of the wizards. If they posses the Chinese wall which is secured from the beginning, or know they will be attacked, they will probably win.

If not and the caveman will lunch an surprise attack, 3,000 people is to few to survive. If the caveman raided the village at night when everybody sleeps, there would be almost no resistance. Most would be killed in sleep or while waking up. The next big part of people die while in panic. The rest dies fighting or fleeing unarmed before they get any weapons. Only a few would be able to arm themselves and effective fight back. To few.

In the last scenario I assume the wizards have an open town design and almost no military facilities. Also normal people don't posses firearms. That what I would assume from an peaceful society. Additional from those 3000 people not all are able to defend themselves. They could be to young or to old. And if they have the correct age, they still cold be in a fitness state where they would be no match for an enemy.

The caveman on the other side have 100 people per wizard in addition they will most likely die younger and all young and adult men and woman would be stronger and tougher.

So for every wizard that can defend there town would be 120 or more attackers.

I could image 20 to 50 people to fend of the initial attack, get some firearms and regroup. Even if they use there superior firepower to kill enough caveman so they will retreat, the wizards would be as good as dead. Most likely all children and older people are dead, without some luck all women also. That would be the end.

The survivors would soon run out of essential stuff like weapons, food, fuel, medicine or something else. Higher advanced civilizations have an higher specialization of individual. It is not likely that the survivors will have the knowledge in all fields they need to keep on fighting the caveman.

Eventually they will get hunt down by the caveman.

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There is an Anime where an fantasy army invades Japan and more or less gets anhilated by modern weaponry. It's called Gate maybe you can get some ideas from there.

Answer 5

Yes, the cavemen can win.

As mentioned by others if the wizards create a secure perimeter, and they have the technological superiority to create one the cavemen are helpless against, they will win by default unless they do something stupid. Sleep safe inside your secure area, go out hunt some primitives with high powered rifles, grenade launchers and set up explosive or poisoned traps, and then go back to safe and comfortable home. Eventually the cavemen would become scarce enough that you'd have to do longer hunting expeditions that set up or return to secure camp each night. Roman legions would have been able to do it, so your wizards should have no issue. Just keep it to hunting, not war, as wars are risky and unpredictable.

So why did I say the cavemen can win? Because it is not really necessary to wait and hope your enemy messes up and does something incredibly stupid. (That being the level of stupid required here for reasons explained.) Instead, if you can interact with them, you can directly fool them into doing any level of stupid mistake you need. Incredibly stupid will just take more work and time.

Basically, turn traitor to your own kind, make friends with the wizards and help them kill your friends and relatives. And once a degree of trust is established, betray them, kill them all, and steal their magic toys for yourself. If you also wish to set up yourself as a wizard you can keep some of the wizards as slaves to do repairs and training, but doing it safely adds to the effort and timing required to set it up.

Since others supplied historical references, I'll give one as well. Arminius.

Answer 6

If I ruled the cavemen I would wipe out all the wizards within a year, without introducing any new technology, merely good command and control.

The plan is to create a massive fire that encircles and destroys the wizard town. Even today, using planes and thousands of firefighters, forest fires are very difficult to contain. Nothing in the wizard description suggests that they have magic anti-fire abilities.

Step 1: I would divide the cavemen into tribes of about 100 people. Each tribe would have a leader, a succession plan, and would operate independently. They would get instructions from me periodically by sending a runner to my personal HQ.

Step 2: I would send these 3000 tribes in all different directions, to chop down trees from far away and bring the logs to storage areas. These 3000 storage areas are all near the wizard's town, but hidden away. Some will be found by the wizards. What will the wizards do? First, they might not appreciate the purpose of the logs. If they burn the logs, they risk doing my job for me. They might carry them away using their trucks or whatever, but we have far more manpower and will be bringing the logs faster than they can be hauling them away. Further, if they just haul the logs down the road, one of my tribes might find them and bring them back.

Step 3: Once we have plenty of fuel, and the weather has been dry for a while, we light them up! 3000 huge bonfires, lit in a circle around the town, will immediately enflame all surrounding plants. The inferno will spread very quickly toward the center, leaving the wizard town in ashes. If I am able to time the fires to all light at the same time (e.g. at dusk on a particular day), the fire will be a solid circle around the wizards before they are able to find an escape route.

Answer 7

Depends.

Number one: caves and mud hovels (sedentary) are not nomads (mobile). Pick your poison for caveman lifestyle.

300,000 cavemen - cannot all eat from local resources (especially given their low technology level) - without a baggage train, herds of horses/cattle (to kill and consume) - they're going to be unable to bring all their manpower to bear on their enemies.

What types of defenses do wizards have, and can their magic generate and/or protect their food/water supply?

eg: If wizards grow corn or grain, it will just take a couple nice stampedes or some fire-arrows to put paid to a year's worth of crops. Unless wizards are very well prepared, they're not going to survive two years of this.

Cavemen have used fire to hunt / drive herds of animals since time immemorial. If not fire-arrows, then brands/torches.

If wizards hunt, cavemen just need to keep their cattle / horses far enough away and scare off/kill all the game in the area (wizards are going to have a tough time feeding 3k people on game from a local area - even with guns). Cavemen will have to hope that they can keep the wizards from collecting enough of their bodies to go cannibal. Nerve poison (poison frogs?) or other nasty biologicals would help.

Cavemen need to harass enough to prevent work parties of wizards from putting up walls. It would help if cavemen got better bows (longbows), and better yet if they had trebuchets.

But wizards probably don't have enough man-power to man walls for all their fields. Cavemen just need to rush walls, throw up sandbags and dig/bash thru to set fire to crops (or fire arrow over the walls).

Cavemen are going to have to learn to dig earthworks to protect themselves from direct fire (guns), and bombs/artillery. Cavemen need to learn about guns quick, and realize they need something between them and wizards.

Are magicians' artillery far more accurate than WW1/ww2 artillery? ie: on par with 21st century smart weapons?

If not, cavemen just getting their trenches or raids close enough to the fields will result in short rounds taking out the wizards' food supply (or walls) by friendly fire.

Cavemen should target the water supply - if it's wells: throw some dead animals in there, or some poison - and they'll put a world of hurt on wizards. Especially if it's a sneak attack. If they've infiltrated the surrounding area, they'll make the wizards have to bring the fight to them, and can be entrenched.

If cavemen can restrict water (use that manpower to fill in streams / rivers), they can kill off the wizards' crops.

Answer 8

Generally, this depends on how many numbers you have and the level of technology difference, but in this case, the wizards will win with your current numbers.

Since they have advanced knowledge of different sciences such as math and physics, they'll be able to build armored cars and tanks through which they can stay inside, protected, and throw fireballs out of.

They can also build castles/bastions/bunkers/siege huts which the cavemen will never be able to break through, and throw fireballs/plasma over the walls.

Since they have bombs, they'll be able to set enough traps down to stop any advance the cavemen want to make while expending little to no effort.

They'll also be able to throw those bombs, causing widespread fear and panic amongst the weak race.

Of the points I've made above, if the wizards do even ONE of them, the cavemen will already instantly lose. In fact, you could send a squad of 5 wizards set up with an armored "vehicle" which have small grates on the sides for the wizards to spew fire out of into the enemy encampment and essentially wipe them all out.

Answer 9

No , The wizards could simply create a virus that will wipe cavemen out of the face of earth in few days

Even if there were 10^100 cavemen for every single wizard they would still have no chance to survive against a powerful biologic weapon.

To give a small chance to cavemen you have to make wizards completely ignorant in bio engineering and medicine.

Ok since they can't use biological weapons Then if cavemen have enough knowledge of their environment they can easily take down wizards , the fastest way would be to steal technologies or attack in guerrilla or with kamikaze terrorists.

If wizards have a good enough defenses to avoid being destroyed from the inside then the war would be incredibly long and exhausting but eventually wizards will win since their civilians are safe.

Between the numbers are not in favor of anyone they are balanced for both sides since only a little portion of the population will become soldiers

Answer 10

The best example might be the Fall of Rome to the Barbarians. While some may argue that the Barbarians may have had some technology that the Romans may not have had, Rome may have fallen because it was such an advanced society. They had a mode of operation where they were highly regiment oriented. One commander on the ground taking orders from someone in a glass tower who doesn't see what is happening. Bureaucracy which is created by advanced societies remove the decision making power from the front line (in all cases - not just military) which slows down operations. As a result, another less advanced military can do well when they take advantage with lightning quick reflexes.

Another couple of examples might be the U.S. Revolutionary War and the Vietnam War. There were many similarities between these two in that they both were fought by one party on home turf and another fighting from overseas who had the superior technology/organization; both cases had interfering third parties that helped the "little guy" (France in America and China in Vietnam); and both resulted in the more advanced combatant losing.

In general, you might look at a few wars across history where this situation occurred and try to find similarities between them that you might apply.

Answer 11

IMHO the "wizards" are a better hope for the future than the "cavemen" and I am more or less on their side.

The "cavemen" are described as a nomadic group that discovered the "wizards" on their travels and have a population of at least 300,000. I hate nomads.

It is more likely that "the cavemen" are not so much nomads moving around their territory but migrating in search of a new home for some reason and thus they discovered the the "wizards" in lands that they never visited before. "The cavemen" may be either nomadic or sedentary in their home territory but are searching for a new home territory.

Unless the land near the territory of "the "wizards" is incredibly fertile, "the cavemen" who are probably hunter-gatherers instead of farmers or herdsmen will probably live in thousands of small bands, each occupying a territory as large as the entire "wizard" territory.

So basically the conflict would probably start between the 3,000 "wizards" and 30 or 60 "cavemen" (including women and children) in the nearest band and spread from there. In order to gather a large group of warriors many "caveman" bands would have to stock up on food and send their warriors on long trips to reach the conflict zone.

Each band of "the cavemen" is likely to be politically independent of the other bands so it would take unlikely events like all "the cavemen" bands deciding to fight a holy war against "the wizards" to assemble a large "caveman" force of many thousands.

I can imagine that "the wizards" wipe out a "caveman" band that moves into their neighborhood. Then after a while another band moves into the area and "the wizards" wipe it out. Then after a while a third band moves into the area and "the wizards" wipe it out.

And the leaders of "the wizards" may decide that enough is enough. Instead of waiting for the fourth band of "the cavemen" to show up and wiping it out with ten warriors armed with advanced weapons, they are going to wipe out all the bands of the "cavemen", even if there are 20 or 30 such bands. So they arm and train a force of 200 "wizards" to fight using newer and deadlier and more advanced weapons than they have used before, and keep them ready to move out at a moments notice.

The plan is when a fourth "caveman" band is detected to wipe it out instantly and track them back to where they came from and slaughter the other bands in that area, even if there are 20 or 30 such bands.

Meanwhile all the "caveman" bands have decided on holy war against "the wizards". Volunteers have formed a decoy band to move into the neighborhood and attract attack by "the wizards", while tens of thousands of "caveman" warriors secretly march in and hide in ambush. When the ten "wizard" warriors seen by the survivors of previous attacks attack the decoy band the tens of thousands of "caveman" warriors will spring out of ambush and over wealm them with numbers.

So the stage is set for a battle in which each side will have shocking surprises and find the enemy much more dangerous than they dreamed in their worst nightmares. Who will win the battle, and who will win the rest of the war?

Answer 12

The Wizards can not win

1. They have no infrastructure

Because these are not really wizards, but scientifically advanced people, we must assume that the wizards came from somewhere else for this scenario to exist.

3000 people in a 16sq/mi area can never achieve more than a Renaissance level infrastructure. Those Plasma Riffles are pretty cool, but making one requires a number of rare elements that do not exist in the same places in the world, and refining processes that require very long and expensive supply chains. If you take the closest technology we have today (High Energy Lasers), you can not build such a weapon with out a multi billion dollar industry supported by millions of people and a long complex series of supply and production chains.

So, while the wizards may have 21st century tech, it is unlikely that they will have access to iron ore, sulfur, tungsten, lithium, platinum, uranium, and all the other things that go into modern technologies. More over, they don't even have the man power to maintain advanced industries even if they so happened to have all of these resources locally. So they may know how to make modern magnesium alloy blast furnace steels, but for practical reasons will likely be limited to bloomery carbon steel. They may know how to make modern gun powered, but will probably not even be able find the sulfur needed to make the basic stuff. In short, they have modern tech, but can not produce modern tech of thier own.

2. They can't kill as fast as the cavemen can replace thier losses

The cavemen are nomads. This means that they are likely moving around in groups of 10-100. So let's say the average tribe is 25 people. If the wizards were to go out and try to hunt down the cavemen, and find 1 tribe every week, they could at MOST kill ~1000 cavemen a year. Out of 300,000 cavemen, this is only about 0.3% of thier population; so, with new hunting grounds now opened up by these losses, they could easily have enough children that year to completely replace thier casualties.

So the wizards might win every single battle they fight in. If they are VERY lucky, they might never suffer a single combat loss, but eventually thier plasma guns will need to be repaired or recharged, thier bombs will run out, thier tanks and trucks will run out of fuel, and they will be forced to fight with whatever weapons a group of 3000 people can come up with. Once this happens, they will have to go from plasma guns to crossbow... and this is very bad for your wizards. While a crossbow might technically still be a more "advanced" weapon than a bow and arrow and easier to learn, a trained archer is much better than a trained crossbowman, and every caveman is a trained archer. So, once this happens, even a small handful of Neolithic tribes could come together and wipe out the wizards.