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Question

Bird people are humanoid creatures with a wingspan of 4 meters, they are as tall as humans and the fittest of them weight 72 kilograms or slightly less, so they are quite lighter than the average human. enter image description here

Bird people have an incredible advantage in any conflict, they don't need to fight and risk their lives, they can just fly over the enemies and drop arrows,flechette, rocks and flaming pots of oil or simply throw spears from above. They can fly 3,800 metres above ground when flying long distances in order to cross continents. Carrying weapons into battles makes flying height lower but still over the kilometer, they only walk when home or when resting.

So, how can bird people be stopped from taking over the world ?

The other humanoid creatures present in this world are:

Half human, half lion centaurs, they are huge and powerful and can climb

Alcohol Elves as in my older questions

Driders or giant ~~nope~~ spiders as described by Rennan

Lizardfolk or reptile people

Merfolk

Nagas

No firearms or such things are invented and everything is like the early 1000's of our world, where the majority of people lived in tribes and small villages but there were a few empires and big cities.

Also, "the best defense is a good offense". How will the angels be able to defend their seats of power when the others decide to exterminate them? — 21 hours ago
Are you sure you want to call these beings "angels"? Any religion or mythology which contains them, depicts them as vastly more powerful than just mere humans with the ability to fly. At the very least, they can make you mad just by looking at them, demolishing entire cities with just a thought, etc, etc.. — 18 hours ago
@Eries : in pretty much every religion which features angels or similar beings, they are immortal or almost immortal, highly powerful divine beings. Their true form is incomprehensible to humans and might drive them mad, they only shape-shift into a humanoid form to communicate with humans. They are not just some random dudes with wings you want to mess with. — 16 hours ago
The name "angel" is from the Greek and means a messenger. They can come in many shapes and forms. They function as messengers from God in the Christian religious sense. Your creatures are ornanthropes or bird people. Please give them their own name. Calling them "angels" will only cause confusion. — 12 hours ago

AmbientCyan 32114 · Answer 1 · 2018-11-05 16:05:49Z

Since your angels are light, flying entites, they probably can't carry much. The more they carry, the more slowly and laboriously they fly, and as a result, the better a target they present themselves.

This would, naturally, lead to light armor and armaments, think leather armor and your earlier mentioned projectiles - stones, spears, etc. But in order to be effective, a projectile has to weigh a certain amount to do damage, otherwise it will just bounce off of any lander's armor. So the weight of the ammunition itself limits the amount of time they can stay in combat.

Imagine that the most common spear weighs (for math's sake) 1kg, but the max an angel can carry while staying airborne is 10kg. That means once they loose their 10 spears, they are out of the fight and must go resupply! Or they can go fight on the ground, but then they are at a clear disadvantage. And their resupply base must be on the ground somewhere, so a smart enemy might find it...

Consider adding logistics to complete your last point. How far can they fly? Effective range is half that.That's where their supplies and food would be. In tribal situations, it's seldom that two armies meet on an open plain to battle it out. Their enemies will rather raid their base camps. — 21 hours ago
@nzaman Exactly, good point - any angel attack would have to be a hit and run, or have an extensive resupply system. Locating and wiping out any resupply base would effectively force them into either fighting on the ground or simply retreating. — 21 hours ago
Just a little nitpick to your otherwise great answer: leather armour, of the strength that actually works as armour, isn't really that light. Rawhide is very heavy, leather lamellar is quite heavy and soft leather isn't very protective. A decent option in terms of leather would be cuir bouilli, which is plastic-like in consistency and indeed lighter than metal armour, however it's also very stiff and may hinder flight. Still, it's stylistically pretty good for angels. I'd still say you might consider cloth armour as well, since you'd mostly be worrying about projectiles. — 6 hours ago
I know the answer is about attack supply storages of the angels, but the angels should be able to carry more than 10 kg. — 2 hours ago

Malandy 2,00111039 · Answer 2 · 2018-11-05 18:31:45Z

up vote
20
down vote

A 72 Kg meatbag, flying four clicks above a target, with only medieval weaponry, would have a very hard time hitting a target accurately.

Sure, they can fly lower and use bows, but there are only so many arrows you can carry.

At some point they have to land. They can't sleep, cook, make love nor nest in the air. And once they are on the ground, they are game.

At the very least, burn their tents to the ground, and they will have to fly back home for more supplies.

edited 19 hours ago

Malandy

2,00111039

answered 21 hours ago

Renan

38.3k1187193

3

They can't sleep, cook, make love nor nest in the air. Swifts do. They do nest to lay eggs and hatch their young, otherwise they don't typically land at all. - okay, cooking may be hard, maybe they hunt and eat birds or some other flying creature raw instead? or maybe they grab handfuls of fruit from trees that hold them upwards (symbiotic evolution so the seeds are spread by angels)?
â€“Â Baldrickk
21 hours ago

6

@Baldrickk do you picture them as mining iron for the arrow tips without landing as well?
â€“Â Renan
21 hours ago

1

my point was more that angels might not be just like humans in their needs - this can constrain or expand on options. e.g. if they sleep on the wing, and don't make camp, you can't attack their camp, but maybe, you could set traps in those trees to snare them instead?
â€“Â Baldrickk
21 hours ago

1

There's also a reason bombers drop bombs that explode with a radius, drops thousands of them, and flies in groups. If they can make it accurate they'll just use a single Molotov cocktail.
â€“Â Nelson
12 hours ago

2

seagulls can drop poo with extreme accuracy, why couldn't angels do similar?
â€“Â RozzA
6 hours ago

Â |Â
show 2 more comments

Nick 1,843725 · Answer 3 · 2018-11-05 17:58:20Z

It seems to me that your angels wouldnÃ¢Â€Â™t be invincible, impossible to defeat warriors with the parameters youÃ¢Â€Â™ve set. Like other answers have said, since they have to land eventually they will be vulnerable to the other, larger races in your world. While they would be excellent raiders and quite powerful warriors (a wine skin filled with flammable oil and flint would be a terrifying weapon when wielded by these creatures), they would find it hard to hold ground in tight, crowded spaces such as canyons and forests, and it would be nearly impossible for them to fight underground. They would naturally have an advantage in and around things like tall mountains where they could fly and maneuver freely, attack without any obstruction, and fly back to resupply. While no one will be able to out raid the angles, they will have a hard time defending anything that isnÃ¢Â€Â™t sheer cliffs because of their need to strike and retreat to avoid being grounded.

As for how to defend from an attack, look no further than the phalanx. Most of your other creatures seem to be larger and stronger than the angels, so have some of them carry large, powerful shields with angled metal plates. That way fire canÃ¢Â€Â™t burn the shields and impact will be deflected off. Since the angels have to get closer to the ground to be accurate, they will then be open to archers firing on them, especially considering that some of these races sound like they could handle firing really large, powerful bows.

Also, one last consideration. Things like storms, high winds, or even smoke from wildfires would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for your angles to fly. Without any sort of magic, your others races can set fires and use the smoke to limit where the angles can fly, and thus make them at least slightly more predictable.

Plus 1 for the smoke. Covering your defensive area with smoke would heavily affect aerial bombardment, but have limited effect on ground archers firing up into the sky. — 18 hours ago
They probably also have hollow bones, or at least, very thin or light bones. So if you can catch one, they probably can't stand their ground. — 18 hours ago

ArtificialSoul 6,1251842 · Answer 4 · 2018-11-06 09:48:26Z

Choose your terrain. You can't fight in plains or fields, that'll be a lost battle for the rest of your creatures. Fight only on dense forests with high coverage. With 4 meters of wings, they won t be able to maneuver bellow the leafs and from the sky it will be harder to shoot their arrows accurately as they would need to beat the resistance from the top of the trees.

Also have your spider people lay webs all over the region they want to defend. If any angel tries to fly between the trees they will be trapped and an easy target.

Have the elves hide on top of the trees and shoot down any low flying angel.

Attack their nests with lizard people, because they probably have a high and almost impossiblen to reach location. They can climb better and stealthly disrupt their rankings.

The merfolk are safe, as long as they don t leave the water.

score 9 · Answer 5 · 2018-11-06 11:56:10Z

The most likely weapon these angels would carry would be something like Javelins, or since throwing is likely impeded during flight they would resort to dropping tiny darts (https://www.google.nl/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2662730/amp/WWI-darts-dropped-biplanes-German-trenches-disgusted-British-aviators-ungentlemanly.html)*

Still you are heavily impeded by accuracy. For proper accuracy you need to aim for formations or fly low and risk retaliatory fire. This means angelics wont auto-win battles.

Theres also resource management and population. If only 5% of the living sentients is angelics then they wont be that influential in the grand scheme. And imagine if your angelics attack a nearby Village and say "do our bidding or we'll kill again", upon which the villagers send a few people trecking across the ground and burn the angelic's food supplies and hunt whatever the angelics eat till they starve. Flying means they need to eat a lot more so they need a much more nutrient rich diet and run into famine faster if you target their food. This means that angelics are better off banding together than enforcing a kind of slavery.

*Edit: for reference these darts were thrown in batches of 500 which would be hard to pull off by an angel. In a test scenario on a luckless cow 3 out of 500 hit and went straight through the cow and into the ground, so in one hand accuracy is definitely a problem but even with inferior darts the killingpower wont be.

Those tiny darts would be super effective. But could but people in the early 1000s make enough metal to make those darts? Or would they end up with spears, thus limiting each Angel to 1 or 2 spears each, seriously limiting their potential? — 18 hours ago
@TrevorD darts could be made from wood and stone like small arrows and certain crossbow darts (even though those might not exist yet), I assume it was easier to simply pour several dozen darts at a time in a factory than build wood&stone darts by hand in WWI — 18 hours ago
I'm unsure if a wooden dart would be heavy enough, but assuming it is, a poison tip would make it very effective. All it has to do is break the skin. Either way I love the idea of essentially dumping a bucket of darts and letting the air spread them out and hit an entire encampment. — 18 hours ago
@TrevorD they wouldnt be pure wood, but have stone or metal heads. Unlike arrows they would likely be build like kinetic penetrators, less sharp edge and more reverse teardrop head like in the picture of the article. Carried in a light wicker or straw basket and dropped... — 17 hours ago
How many cows were in the experiment? If there was only 1 cow hit by 3 darts that's quite high accuracy in therms of kill power, because fewer targets makes it harder to hit... but one single target got hit by 3 darts.... what happens when you have 200 targets close together in a formation? — 1 hour ago

Thorne 13.4k42038 · Answer 6 · 2018-11-06 00:05:37Z

It comes down to the terrain where the other species live

Half human, half lion centaurs - Open plains? If the reside in caves
then aerial bombardment is pointless

Elves - Forest? Kinda hard to
spot people in the trees and likely to get shot if you get closer.
Burning the whole forest is the only way to win.

Driders or giant spiders - Underground or dark places is no place for an angel

Lizardfolk or reptile people - Swamps? Just like a forest only wetter and impossible to burn.

Merfolk - Underwater is completely untouchable

Nagas - Swamps again?

Aerial advantage only goes so far and if forced to go hand to hand, suddenly they are at a disadvantage.

The only real advantages are spying and burning out crops and other food supplies.

Sebastian Morfin 1065 · Answer 7 · 2018-11-05 17:46:20Z

Since most other answers discuss drawbacks to being an angel in combat i'll talk about anti angel tactics. since this is early 1000s, you most likely don't have crossbows, but you would want a way to damage the flying creatures fragile wings some how.

You could have a battalion of sling users, they could lob stones and early lead bullets at angel in a synchronized volley. This could be vary hard to counter, shields would really weigh down the angel and you cant cover everything.

Since Merfolk exist you could easily adapt fishing nets to be launched at the angelic folk when they get low or on the ground.

Chromane 2,727322 · Answer 8 · 2018-11-06 01:30:00Z

The weaknesses and disadvantages of angels in combat have already been covered - I'd just like to add a couple of points regarding anti-angel tactics.

Fortifications - If people are fighting angels regularly, they can adapt their fortifications and defences to compensate for an airborne enemy. Covered battlements with fireproof sloped roofs would shelter defenders from attacks from above. Arrow slits or hatches they can pop out of would allow them to return fire whilst minimising exposure.

Siege Weapons - Most medieval siege weaponry fires one large projectile and is optimised for dealing damage to fortifications and building. With the right motivation, anti-air siege weapons could be designed and built that fire dozens or hundreds of lighter projectiles that would prove deadly to a lightly armoured airborne combatant. For reference, think of something like the Hwacha, which uses small fireworks to launches dozens of arrows simultaneously. If gunpowder is unavailable, catapults and trebuchets could be modified to fire shotgun-like blasts of small rocks and sling bullets.

this reminds me of the mangonel. If that could fire more precise and higher you could snipe Angels, but yourself too — 4 hours ago
Something like an onager could work as well. Basically there are any number of ways a motivated force could design a medieval equivalent of an AA gun. — 1 hour ago

Agent_L 2,324713 · Answer 9 · 2018-11-06 10:35:35Z

So, how can Angels be stopped from taking over the world and create an Angel dominated empire where every other humanoid creature just gets enslaved?

Weapons and warriors can only win you a battle. Wars are won with logistics.

Look at most powerful modern machines of war, the aircraft carries. Do they pack any weapons? No. All they do is provide logistics for planes. That's all that it takes.

No matter how good your angelic warriors are - fighting is exhausting, flying is exhausting and doing both is probably exhausting squared. They need to land, rest, eat and rearm. And from your description they sound to be absolutely defenseless then. If they don't have ground infrastructure: beasts of burden and heavy wagons, they can't take any supplies with them. They can't perform what empires hinge on: "projection of power". They're pretty much limited to defending the nearest vicinity of their settlements, range that a warrior can reach in a single flight, be able to fight and return home. Sounds like no more than few hundred km. Altitude can be used to avoid a fight, but not in combat. If an angel flies low enough to hit someone on the ground, the soldier on the ground can fire back. Ground troops can carry heavier, longer ranged weapons like crossbows and ballistas. Flight can give advantage of speed and surprise, but not a 1:1 advantage. Also, unlike ground-based armies, they can neither take prisoners nor care about their own wounded. Most wounds would mean either death falling or forced landing - which means death on hostile ground as well. Angels would probably have much different social values because of that: either being very pacifist to avoid loses or on the contrary, praising death in combat as a method to cope with high loses. You mention cross-continental flight, but you don't say anything about it's consequences. Birds do fly 10000km in one take, but they take months to prepare for the migration and weeks to recover from it. That's not something one can use offensively.

I don't think your problem is "how they didn't took over the world". If an enemy attacks, can survive the first defensive strike and continue marching to reach the settlement - angels are toasted. I'd worry more about "how they've even stayed alive". That's stereotypically solved with having them perched on high mountains, inaccessible by foot. Note that it limits their development, so their weapons would remain crude and ineffective. It's probably a vicious circle: angels can't leave their high perches because they lack technology to be competitive on the ground and they can't develop the technology because they can't leave their perches.

PS: I think you're severely overestimating physical power of a creature that consists mostly of flight muscles. They take most of your 72kg, the rest being vital infrastructure like gastrointestinal tract, leaving almost no mass budget for arms, legs and weapons, leaving armor out of the question entirely.

Well ... you have to defend their attack first, and don't think they wouldn't defend their supplies. It would be very hard to attack the supply storages — 2 hours ago
@Jannis No attack is undefendable. Even Romans already had infantry formation against attack from above - the turtle. — 41 secs ago

Jannis 75712 · Answer 10 · 2018-11-06 09:45:51Z

I'm having another idea:
What about flying nets?

Inspired by a game where an archer could shoot a net with 4 arrows, which stunned the enemy for a short time. When applying this principle to this question, it would mean shooting nets at angels to block the wings and let them fall into the death.

The nets need:

to weight very less and be so strong to get not destroyed by the power of the wings

a diameter of at least 9 meters, better 12m

skilled archers/slingers or a catapult to hit properly

The advantages are:

nets cost not much

nets are easy recycleable

-> what means special nets (with barbs or else), which costs more are also available

very effective (if performed right)

The disadvantages are:

It's hard to perform right, you probably need a catapult for shooting

somebody has got to collect the nets

I hope this helps :)

oliver-clare 46135 · Answer 11 · 2018-11-06 13:01:09Z

Most of the answers are missing the point.

Bird people can be fearsome warriors in battle, yes, especially in numbers.

But they live much higher than most land-based races, in inaccessible crags and the occasional beautiful high city, the glories of which are rarely seen by land-based races.

At 3,800m above sea level, the air temperature and oxygen levels required to sustain most land-based races is significantly reduced (source). Even though the majority of bird people live between 500m and 1,000m below that threshold, this is still a good 2,500m above the usual level of land-based cities and towns.

When bird people spend time nearer sea level, they can experience a kind of altitude sickness, due to the increased blood pressure and oxygen levels. This can manifest itself in the form of headaches, nausea, fatigue and shortness of breath (source).

Bird people are rarely troubled by land-based squabbles, which usually take place far below them. Equally, bird people rarely involve themselves in land grabs or the politics of land-based races. To them, the wide stretches of land between their mountains are like the ocean.

The answer to your question is simple: Though these angelic bird people might be ferocious flying foes when they are defending their own territory, they rarely encroach on the land-based cities and towns, preferring to keep themselves to themselves and instead focus on establishing robust trade agreements with mountain settlements to obtain materials they cannot obtain through ready means themselves.

[There are, of course, always exceptions and some bird people are better adjusted to the sea-level conditions and might be seen partaking in battles as mercenaries, etc.]

AmbientCyan 32114 · Answer 12 · 2018-11-05 16:05:49Z

Since your angels are light, flying entites, they probably can't carry much. The more they carry, the more slowly and laboriously they fly, and as a result, the better a target they present themselves.

This would, naturally, lead to light armor and armaments, think leather armor and your earlier mentioned projectiles - stones, spears, etc. But in order to be effective, a projectile has to weigh a certain amount to do damage, otherwise it will just bounce off of any lander's armor. So the weight of the ammunition itself limits the amount of time they can stay in combat.

Imagine that the most common spear weighs (for math's sake) 1kg, but the max an angel can carry while staying airborne is 10kg. That means once they loose their 10 spears, they are out of the fight and must go resupply! Or they can go fight on the ground, but then they are at a clear disadvantage. And their resupply base must be on the ground somewhere, so a smart enemy might find it...

Consider adding logistics to complete your last point. How far can they fly? Effective range is half that.That's where their supplies and food would be. In tribal situations, it's seldom that two armies meet on an open plain to battle it out. Their enemies will rather raid their base camps. — 21 hours ago
@nzaman Exactly, good point - any angel attack would have to be a hit and run, or have an extensive resupply system. Locating and wiping out any resupply base would effectively force them into either fighting on the ground or simply retreating. — 21 hours ago
Just a little nitpick to your otherwise great answer: leather armour, of the strength that actually works as armour, isn't really that light. Rawhide is very heavy, leather lamellar is quite heavy and soft leather isn't very protective. A decent option in terms of leather would be cuir bouilli, which is plastic-like in consistency and indeed lighter than metal armour, however it's also very stiff and may hinder flight. Still, it's stylistically pretty good for angels. I'd still say you might consider cloth armour as well, since you'd mostly be worrying about projectiles. — 6 hours ago
I know the answer is about attack supply storages of the angels, but the angels should be able to carry more than 10 kg. — 2 hours ago

Malandy 2,00111039 · Answer 13 · 2018-11-05 18:31:45Z

up vote
20
down vote

A 72 Kg meatbag, flying four clicks above a target, with only medieval weaponry, would have a very hard time hitting a target accurately.

Sure, they can fly lower and use bows, but there are only so many arrows you can carry.

At some point they have to land. They can't sleep, cook, make love nor nest in the air. And once they are on the ground, they are game.

At the very least, burn their tents to the ground, and they will have to fly back home for more supplies.

edited 19 hours ago

Malandy

2,00111039

answered 21 hours ago

Renan

38.3k1187193

3

They can't sleep, cook, make love nor nest in the air. Swifts do. They do nest to lay eggs and hatch their young, otherwise they don't typically land at all. - okay, cooking may be hard, maybe they hunt and eat birds or some other flying creature raw instead? or maybe they grab handfuls of fruit from trees that hold them upwards (symbiotic evolution so the seeds are spread by angels)?
â€“Â Baldrickk
21 hours ago

6

@Baldrickk do you picture them as mining iron for the arrow tips without landing as well?
â€“Â Renan
21 hours ago

1

my point was more that angels might not be just like humans in their needs - this can constrain or expand on options. e.g. if they sleep on the wing, and don't make camp, you can't attack their camp, but maybe, you could set traps in those trees to snare them instead?
â€“Â Baldrickk
21 hours ago

1

There's also a reason bombers drop bombs that explode with a radius, drops thousands of them, and flies in groups. If they can make it accurate they'll just use a single Molotov cocktail.
â€“Â Nelson
12 hours ago

2

seagulls can drop poo with extreme accuracy, why couldn't angels do similar?
â€“Â RozzA
6 hours ago

Â |Â
show 2 more comments

Nick 1,843725 · Answer 14 · 2018-11-05 17:58:20Z

It seems to me that your angels wouldnÃ¢Â€Â™t be invincible, impossible to defeat warriors with the parameters youÃ¢Â€Â™ve set. Like other answers have said, since they have to land eventually they will be vulnerable to the other, larger races in your world. While they would be excellent raiders and quite powerful warriors (a wine skin filled with flammable oil and flint would be a terrifying weapon when wielded by these creatures), they would find it hard to hold ground in tight, crowded spaces such as canyons and forests, and it would be nearly impossible for them to fight underground. They would naturally have an advantage in and around things like tall mountains where they could fly and maneuver freely, attack without any obstruction, and fly back to resupply. While no one will be able to out raid the angles, they will have a hard time defending anything that isnÃ¢Â€Â™t sheer cliffs because of their need to strike and retreat to avoid being grounded.

As for how to defend from an attack, look no further than the phalanx. Most of your other creatures seem to be larger and stronger than the angels, so have some of them carry large, powerful shields with angled metal plates. That way fire canÃ¢Â€Â™t burn the shields and impact will be deflected off. Since the angels have to get closer to the ground to be accurate, they will then be open to archers firing on them, especially considering that some of these races sound like they could handle firing really large, powerful bows.

Also, one last consideration. Things like storms, high winds, or even smoke from wildfires would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for your angles to fly. Without any sort of magic, your others races can set fires and use the smoke to limit where the angles can fly, and thus make them at least slightly more predictable.

Plus 1 for the smoke. Covering your defensive area with smoke would heavily affect aerial bombardment, but have limited effect on ground archers firing up into the sky. — 18 hours ago
They probably also have hollow bones, or at least, very thin or light bones. So if you can catch one, they probably can't stand their ground. — 18 hours ago

ArtificialSoul 6,1251842 · Answer 15 · 2018-11-06 09:48:26Z

Choose your terrain. You can't fight in plains or fields, that'll be a lost battle for the rest of your creatures. Fight only on dense forests with high coverage. With 4 meters of wings, they won t be able to maneuver bellow the leafs and from the sky it will be harder to shoot their arrows accurately as they would need to beat the resistance from the top of the trees.

Also have your spider people lay webs all over the region they want to defend. If any angel tries to fly between the trees they will be trapped and an easy target.

Have the elves hide on top of the trees and shoot down any low flying angel.

Attack their nests with lizard people, because they probably have a high and almost impossiblen to reach location. They can climb better and stealthly disrupt their rankings.

The merfolk are safe, as long as they don t leave the water.

score 9 · Answer 16 · 2018-11-06 11:56:10Z

The most likely weapon these angels would carry would be something like Javelins, or since throwing is likely impeded during flight they would resort to dropping tiny darts (https://www.google.nl/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2662730/amp/WWI-darts-dropped-biplanes-German-trenches-disgusted-British-aviators-ungentlemanly.html)*

Still you are heavily impeded by accuracy. For proper accuracy you need to aim for formations or fly low and risk retaliatory fire. This means angelics wont auto-win battles.

Theres also resource management and population. If only 5% of the living sentients is angelics then they wont be that influential in the grand scheme. And imagine if your angelics attack a nearby Village and say "do our bidding or we'll kill again", upon which the villagers send a few people trecking across the ground and burn the angelic's food supplies and hunt whatever the angelics eat till they starve. Flying means they need to eat a lot more so they need a much more nutrient rich diet and run into famine faster if you target their food. This means that angelics are better off banding together than enforcing a kind of slavery.

*Edit: for reference these darts were thrown in batches of 500 which would be hard to pull off by an angel. In a test scenario on a luckless cow 3 out of 500 hit and went straight through the cow and into the ground, so in one hand accuracy is definitely a problem but even with inferior darts the killingpower wont be.

Those tiny darts would be super effective. But could but people in the early 1000s make enough metal to make those darts? Or would they end up with spears, thus limiting each Angel to 1 or 2 spears each, seriously limiting their potential? — 18 hours ago
@TrevorD darts could be made from wood and stone like small arrows and certain crossbow darts (even though those might not exist yet), I assume it was easier to simply pour several dozen darts at a time in a factory than build wood&stone darts by hand in WWI — 18 hours ago
I'm unsure if a wooden dart would be heavy enough, but assuming it is, a poison tip would make it very effective. All it has to do is break the skin. Either way I love the idea of essentially dumping a bucket of darts and letting the air spread them out and hit an entire encampment. — 18 hours ago
@TrevorD they wouldnt be pure wood, but have stone or metal heads. Unlike arrows they would likely be build like kinetic penetrators, less sharp edge and more reverse teardrop head like in the picture of the article. Carried in a light wicker or straw basket and dropped... — 17 hours ago
How many cows were in the experiment? If there was only 1 cow hit by 3 darts that's quite high accuracy in therms of kill power, because fewer targets makes it harder to hit... but one single target got hit by 3 darts.... what happens when you have 200 targets close together in a formation? — 1 hour ago

Thorne 13.4k42038 · Answer 17 · 2018-11-06 00:05:37Z

It comes down to the terrain where the other species live

Half human, half lion centaurs - Open plains? If the reside in caves
then aerial bombardment is pointless

Elves - Forest? Kinda hard to
spot people in the trees and likely to get shot if you get closer.
Burning the whole forest is the only way to win.

Driders or giant spiders - Underground or dark places is no place for an angel

Lizardfolk or reptile people - Swamps? Just like a forest only wetter and impossible to burn.

Merfolk - Underwater is completely untouchable

Nagas - Swamps again?

Aerial advantage only goes so far and if forced to go hand to hand, suddenly they are at a disadvantage.

The only real advantages are spying and burning out crops and other food supplies.

Sebastian Morfin 1065 · Answer 18 · 2018-11-05 17:46:20Z

Since most other answers discuss drawbacks to being an angel in combat i'll talk about anti angel tactics. since this is early 1000s, you most likely don't have crossbows, but you would want a way to damage the flying creatures fragile wings some how.

You could have a battalion of sling users, they could lob stones and early lead bullets at angel in a synchronized volley. This could be vary hard to counter, shields would really weigh down the angel and you cant cover everything.

Since Merfolk exist you could easily adapt fishing nets to be launched at the angelic folk when they get low or on the ground.

Chromane 2,727322 · Answer 19 · 2018-11-06 01:30:00Z

The weaknesses and disadvantages of angels in combat have already been covered - I'd just like to add a couple of points regarding anti-angel tactics.

Fortifications - If people are fighting angels regularly, they can adapt their fortifications and defences to compensate for an airborne enemy. Covered battlements with fireproof sloped roofs would shelter defenders from attacks from above. Arrow slits or hatches they can pop out of would allow them to return fire whilst minimising exposure.

Siege Weapons - Most medieval siege weaponry fires one large projectile and is optimised for dealing damage to fortifications and building. With the right motivation, anti-air siege weapons could be designed and built that fire dozens or hundreds of lighter projectiles that would prove deadly to a lightly armoured airborne combatant. For reference, think of something like the Hwacha, which uses small fireworks to launches dozens of arrows simultaneously. If gunpowder is unavailable, catapults and trebuchets could be modified to fire shotgun-like blasts of small rocks and sling bullets.

this reminds me of the mangonel. If that could fire more precise and higher you could snipe Angels, but yourself too — 4 hours ago
Something like an onager could work as well. Basically there are any number of ways a motivated force could design a medieval equivalent of an AA gun. — 1 hour ago

Agent_L 2,324713 · Answer 20 · 2018-11-06 10:35:35Z

So, how can Angels be stopped from taking over the world and create an Angel dominated empire where every other humanoid creature just gets enslaved?

Weapons and warriors can only win you a battle. Wars are won with logistics.

Look at most powerful modern machines of war, the aircraft carries. Do they pack any weapons? No. All they do is provide logistics for planes. That's all that it takes.

No matter how good your angelic warriors are - fighting is exhausting, flying is exhausting and doing both is probably exhausting squared. They need to land, rest, eat and rearm. And from your description they sound to be absolutely defenseless then. If they don't have ground infrastructure: beasts of burden and heavy wagons, they can't take any supplies with them. They can't perform what empires hinge on: "projection of power". They're pretty much limited to defending the nearest vicinity of their settlements, range that a warrior can reach in a single flight, be able to fight and return home. Sounds like no more than few hundred km. Altitude can be used to avoid a fight, but not in combat. If an angel flies low enough to hit someone on the ground, the soldier on the ground can fire back. Ground troops can carry heavier, longer ranged weapons like crossbows and ballistas. Flight can give advantage of speed and surprise, but not a 1:1 advantage. Also, unlike ground-based armies, they can neither take prisoners nor care about their own wounded. Most wounds would mean either death falling or forced landing - which means death on hostile ground as well. Angels would probably have much different social values because of that: either being very pacifist to avoid loses or on the contrary, praising death in combat as a method to cope with high loses. You mention cross-continental flight, but you don't say anything about it's consequences. Birds do fly 10000km in one take, but they take months to prepare for the migration and weeks to recover from it. That's not something one can use offensively.

I don't think your problem is "how they didn't took over the world". If an enemy attacks, can survive the first defensive strike and continue marching to reach the settlement - angels are toasted. I'd worry more about "how they've even stayed alive". That's stereotypically solved with having them perched on high mountains, inaccessible by foot. Note that it limits their development, so their weapons would remain crude and ineffective. It's probably a vicious circle: angels can't leave their high perches because they lack technology to be competitive on the ground and they can't develop the technology because they can't leave their perches.

PS: I think you're severely overestimating physical power of a creature that consists mostly of flight muscles. They take most of your 72kg, the rest being vital infrastructure like gastrointestinal tract, leaving almost no mass budget for arms, legs and weapons, leaving armor out of the question entirely.

Well ... you have to defend their attack first, and don't think they wouldn't defend their supplies. It would be very hard to attack the supply storages — 2 hours ago
@Jannis No attack is undefendable. Even Romans already had infantry formation against attack from above - the turtle. — 41 secs ago

Jannis 75712 · Answer 21 · 2018-11-06 09:45:51Z

I'm having another idea:
What about flying nets?

Inspired by a game where an archer could shoot a net with 4 arrows, which stunned the enemy for a short time. When applying this principle to this question, it would mean shooting nets at angels to block the wings and let them fall into the death.

The nets need:

to weight very less and be so strong to get not destroyed by the power of the wings

a diameter of at least 9 meters, better 12m

skilled archers/slingers or a catapult to hit properly

The advantages are:

nets cost not much

nets are easy recycleable

-> what means special nets (with barbs or else), which costs more are also available

very effective (if performed right)

The disadvantages are:

It's hard to perform right, you probably need a catapult for shooting

somebody has got to collect the nets

I hope this helps :)

oliver-clare 46135 · Answer 22 · 2018-11-06 13:01:09Z

Most of the answers are missing the point.

Bird people can be fearsome warriors in battle, yes, especially in numbers.

But they live much higher than most land-based races, in inaccessible crags and the occasional beautiful high city, the glories of which are rarely seen by land-based races.

At 3,800m above sea level, the air temperature and oxygen levels required to sustain most land-based races is significantly reduced (source). Even though the majority of bird people live between 500m and 1,000m below that threshold, this is still a good 2,500m above the usual level of land-based cities and towns.

When bird people spend time nearer sea level, they can experience a kind of altitude sickness, due to the increased blood pressure and oxygen levels. This can manifest itself in the form of headaches, nausea, fatigue and shortness of breath (source).

Bird people are rarely troubled by land-based squabbles, which usually take place far below them. Equally, bird people rarely involve themselves in land grabs or the politics of land-based races. To them, the wide stretches of land between their mountains are like the ocean.

The answer to your question is simple: Though these angelic bird people might be ferocious flying foes when they are defending their own territory, they rarely encroach on the land-based cities and towns, preferring to keep themselves to themselves and instead focus on establishing robust trade agreements with mountain settlements to obtain materials they cannot obtain through ready means themselves.

[There are, of course, always exceptions and some bird people are better adjusted to the sea-level conditions and might be seen partaking in battles as mercenaries, etc.]

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