Medieval warfare on the grid

Anyone who reads this regularly will know that, along with the computer related stuff, there's a  long standing fascination for late Roman and Byzantine history, plus the very early medieval post Roman world.

A part of me has always wanted to find a way to integrate the two, but never has. Such is life. However a former colleague has managed to get himself on to the management board for a really interesting project trying to simulate the logistics for the Battle of Manzikert, and using grid based computing to run scenarios as to how you get people, horses and the rest to a particular location.

And this is a very interesting problem. In the early Roman empire period the army walked carrying their own gear and there was a system of granaries to stockpile grains and pulses. (There's a reconstruction at Lunt Roman Fort for the interested).

These stockpiles were sometimes used to help feed the populace during times of famine.

In the later Roman empire things were different. Large parts of the army rode, and horses need feed, and there were large baggage trains. It's been argued that one of the reasons the empire in the west came apart is that after the loss of North Africa, the tax base was too small to support the costs of acquiring grain to keep the army in the field.

And so Manzikert. Big heavy horse based army with great need for logistic support meets horde of scruffy turkic nomads who in the main lived off the land. Big heavy horse army loses. The result is the turks get the Anatolian plateau which can support their horses - grassland, and Byzantium loses an area which can go grain to feed the city and the army.

I'm envious ...