Game of Thrones Season 6 [Discussion of most-recently aired episodes]

[LaCroix]

My point about possible tactics using the dothraki as efficiently as possible has already been clarified by various people, so I don't think I need to adress that.

The next problem is, we have seen that Dany already had joined with the Dorish fleet (dornish ships visible in the final shot and Varys on board), and is continuing her voyage. If she is clever, she will make Landfall in either the Reach or right on top of Casterly rock - which makes perfect sense with Tyrion and Varys as her advisors. Tyrion knows the Lannister defences, where to best make landfall, and knows that the good part of their forces are deployed in Kings Landing and other places when he left. Varys certainly has asked questions about this during his 'coalition conference' and can give further intel. Also, the Tyrell host is close at hand and can be marched north, quickly, as soon as they drop the Queen of Thorns off at Highgarden. Makes the most sense to meet up there. Making landfall at Kings Landing is possible, but stupid - Tyrion most likely has told her so.

Approaching together after taking out the Lannister suppply chain would be the most logical step.

They will pull the proverbial rug right out under the Lannister's feet, and then march towards King's Landing, continously pursuing the remains of the retreating Lannister home army. The rest of the Lannisters will stand alone against them. The north won't help them, the Vale will keep out of that, Dorne and the Reach is enemy territory. Stormlands are pretty much worthless after Stannis plucked them for his host, only levies left. Which means that the only supplies and bodies left to them are what is in that city and maybe the Riverlands/Freys... Good luck counting on them, infighting for the vacant lordship. Not that they were terribly competent on the field, anyway.

Doing this they pretty much force the remaining Lannister host to either face them head-on against a vastly superior force to try retake their holdings and secure their supplies, or to hole up in the city and prepare for a siege. Both works well for Danearis.

They cannot go against the Tyrells without running into that massive host, and heading south to punish Dorne is also fine for the coalition - history tells us that fights in Dorne never go well for Westerosi forces, and leading a big host south opens up Kings Landing to be stormed. Dorne most likely has sent a good portion of their army north to anticipate that move. They certainly have a host big enough to split their forces that way, and they only need to deal with what is currently stationed in King's landing. Even if the Lannisters manage to successfully start sieging cities down there without taking huge losses along the way, Kings Landing will fall first, and then they stand completely alone with the sea at their backs.

[Thanas]

And this is a hypothesis you're prepared to reject?

Yes, because the characters in charge are not idiots (well, Cersei may be, but Tywinn, Kevan and Jaimie were not).

And to you these things do not suggest that Lannister forces are likely to have declined in quality? Truly? If I were a competent mercenary in Westeros I would seriously consider leaving Lannister service right now- even though, as such a mercenary, I would have stuck firmly by their side through the War of the Five Kings and its aftermath. Because their ability to pay me is now in question, their willingness to pay me is in question, and they have made strong enemies of someone else whose ability to pay rivals that of the Lannisters- but whose reputation is much better.

And yet their forces are still shown as the same disciplined troops. When the show wants to convey them as unddisciplined rabble, they can do so. But they don't.

All we know is that the Lannisters still have soldiers. We don't have accurate counts of their forces at any one time, let alone a graph of their total force over a period. We know that they aren't suffering mass desertions yet, but this may well be happening in the near future. To me it would be an entirely predictable consequence of Cersei's actions if she finds a large fraction of her own army leaving her service.

And yet the Tyrell armies are still not superior to them, something that is at odds with the lannisters not having managed to replenish their forces.

This does appear to be true- although I'm honestly amazed if the threat of Ironborn raids hasn't forced the Lannisters to divert most of their warships to the west coast, leaving them poorly equipped to respond to Daenerys's fleet in the east.

Ironborn do not seem to be that active anymore. Their attempts were focusedd on the norht anyway - and they lost heavily there.

What is your reasoning for saying that the Dothraki do not know how to cope with winter climates, or that their horses cannot survive such? We've mostly seen Dothraki fighting and operating when it is warm, but that doesn't mean they don't know how to handle cold. We could equally well argue that because the armies of the War of the Five Kings were fighting at a time when there was no snow or ice, that none of them are prepared to cope with winters.

Because they are fighting in a much hotter climate and nowhere do they make preparations for the cold. They also do not carry heavy tents with them or any other sort that would allow horses to survive a harsh winter.

Meanwhile, in the long run on the political front, Daenerys has almost every imaginable advantage, while the Lannisters have almost every imaginable disadvantage. About the only real problem Daenerys has is the risk of her Dothraki turning the populace against her- a problem which is mitigated in exact proportion to the number of Dothraki who fall in battle.

Well, I definitely think the show will have her win in the end. I fully predict season 6 to end with the death of cersei and the fall of the wall with season 7 ending in the huge battle vs the others.

To be fair, in an arid region Daenerys could not reasonably bring all of her tens of thousands of cavalry to bear on an enemy at once- but then, it's not like the enemy can operate freely in huge numbers in such regions either.

But the enemy actually has a functioning supply train. Tyrell can supply 100k soldiers in the field. Can they support 200k? 300k? What about 300k horses at once?

And it is not just an arid region.

Take Hungary. Lots of plains. And yet the Mongols, Huns and others had to wait whole years to get their ponies fattened up enough for campaigning and still lost tens of thousands of horses.

Castles? Ballistas? Westerosi thought these things would help them before the last Targaryen invasion. They were wrong.

Meh. That was against the greatest dragon that ever lived. Dany's dragons are inexperienced and tiny compared to him.

[NecronLord]

But the enemy actually has a functioning supply train. Tyrell can supply 100k soldiers in the field. Can they support 200k? 300k? What about 300k horses at once?

This applies to Dany too; she can drop a dragon on the wagon train of any army that opposes her. One dragon is very much worth ser twentygoodmen (tm) if used wisely. Of course her army lacks any notable field commanders apart from Grey Worm at this point, so... perhaps such things won't occur to her.

Meh. That was against the greatest dragon that ever lived. Dany's dragons are inexperienced and tiny compared to him.

True, but again, no in-universe fortification has ever defended against a dragon and the books give grounds to think that ballistas will 'tickle' them.

[Thanas]

But the enemy actually has a functioning supply train. Tyrell can supply 100k soldiers in the field. Can they support 200k? 300k? What about 300k horses at once?

This applies to Dany too; she can drop a dragon on the wagon train of any army that opposes her. One dragon is very much worth ser twentygoodmen (tm) if used wisely. Of course her army lacks any notable field commanders apart from Grey Worm at this point, so... perhaps such things won't occur to her.

Can she actually do that? I mean, she does not have dragon riders and I doubt she can risk herself falling prey to a random arrow. So who is going to independently command the dragon to go off, find an enemy army and then burn the wagons?

True, but again, no in-universe fortification has ever defended against a dragon and the books give grounds to think that ballistas will 'tickle' them.

Fair point, but in the dance of dragons the (smaller) dragons and even the mightiest rumored to be almost as strong as Baelerion did not go around burning castles either. So their usage of fortifications might be somewhat limited.

[NecronLord]

Can she actually do that? I mean, she does not have dragon riders and I doubt she can risk herself falling prey to a random arrow. So who is going to independently command the dragon to go off, find an enemy army and then burn the wagons?

Certainly Targarayan women have fought from dragon back before; she certainly could but if so she should invest in some more armour; that said, it's not actually possible to see or hit her on Drogon's back if he's attacking.



These guys literally can't hurt her even with ballistas. They are simply fucked.

There are other castles razed by Aegon in the invasion too. Visenya burnt Castle Stokeworth for instance, but yes, these may be dinkier than the dragons in that invasion, it's hard to know at this point.

Killing Dany by assassination or ruse is frankly the best way to deal with the invasion.

[Thanas]

Can she actually do that? I mean, she does not have dragon riders and I doubt she can risk herself falling prey to a random arrow. So who is going to independently command the dragon to go off, find an enemy army and then burn the wagons?

Certainly Targarayan women have fought from dragon back before; she certainly could but if so she should invest in some more armour; that said, it's not actually possible to see or hit her on Drogon's back if he's attacking.

If she is flying past it is possible to hit her though.

There are other castles razed by Aegon in the invasion too. Visenya burnt Castle Stokeworth for instance, but yes, these may be dinkier than the dragons in that invasion, it's hard to know at this point.

I am not talking about Aegon. I am talking about the dance of dragons.

[NecronLord]

In the books Aegon's guys are generally described as attacking 'down' - presumably the flight ceiling of dragons far exceeds that of weapons; they can fly up to the Eyrie after all.

As for the dance of dragons, Vhagar, the dragon that razed Stokeworth, was still alive at that point; she certainly could have burned castles in that conflict; there was a BIG tendency in the Dance of Dragons for people to surrender or to flee castles before the Dragons arrived - Harrenhal among other castles was found empty by the dragon riders in that war, for instance. Almost like the Westerosi had learned that being in a castle when a dragon comes is a death-trap.

[ArmorPierce]

Prediction:

Little Finger betrays Jon, Sansa will have a part in it, perhaps accidentally. He will do this because he is attempting to secure the position promised to him by Cersei as Warden of the North. Alliance with Daenerys will save the day, perhaps including Theon's influence.

[MKSheppard]

I'm sad that nobody noticed my point about three to four years of medieval warfare wearing out Westeros.

Disease would have killed or crippled a significant portion of everyone's fighting strength, as well as depleted the population of areas that huge hosts passed through.

In many places, nine years worth of summer food and fuel stockpiles have been depleted/destroyed.

WINTER HAS ARRIVED

So...Danerys shows up and...starves to death

[NecronLord]

Women who have dragons do not go hungry.

They make other people hungry.

[Simon_Jester]

Shep's point is actually valid in that the consequences of the war are going to be disastrous for many people, probably including her own army or parts of it. She personally won't be starving, the aristocracy never does, but he's not wrong.

On the other hand, the parts of Westeros least affected by the supernatural seasonal cycle are Dorne and the Reach, where it seldom if ever snows even in winter. And these are the very areas that are acting as Daenerys's supply base

But the enemy actually has a functioning supply train. Tyrell can supply 100k soldiers in the field. Can they support 200k? 300k? What about 300k horses at once?

This applies to Dany too; she can drop a dragon on the wagon train of any army that opposes her. One dragon is very much worth ser twentygoodmen (tm) if used wisely. Of course her army lacks any notable field commanders apart from Grey Worm at this point, so... perhaps such things won't occur to her.

Tyrion isn't a field commander in the usual sense of the term, but he is a very intelligent strategist. At least when he isn't chained to the service of someone else's battle plan that is actively trying to get him killed. And there's some foreshadowing suggesting that he himself may be riding one of those dragons, if anyone is.

Olenna isn't much of a general either, I imagine, but again, is likely to be a good strategist. I am quite sure there are other figures from the Dothraki, Dorne, the Reach, and Asha's renegade Iron Islands fleet who are capable of leading armies in the field, too.

And this is a hypothesis you're prepared to reject?

Yes, because the characters in charge are not idiots (well, Cersei may be, but Tywinn, Kevan and Jaimie were not).

And yet, we see a distinct shortage of Lannister pikemen.

Either "we don't see them on screen" is evidence that they're not there, or it isn't evidence.

If not seeing Lannister pikes means there are few or no Lannister pikemen, then by your own argument, the Lannisters are idiots- on par with all the other idiots who neglect things like pikes.

If not seeing Lannister pikemen means that, even though we don't see them, there must logically be such pikemen because the Lannisters aren't fools... Then by similar logic, the Dothraki and the Unsullied are probably at least basically competent at warfare, the Tyrells presumably aren't any stupider than the Lannisters, and so on.

And to you these things do not suggest that Lannister forces are likely to have declined in quality? Truly? If I were a competent mercenary in Westeros I would seriously consider leaving Lannister service right now- even though, as such a mercenary, I would have stuck firmly by their side through the War of the Five Kings and its aftermath. Because their ability to pay me is now in question, their willingness to pay me is in question, and they have made strong enemies of someone else whose ability to pay rivals that of the Lannisters- but whose reputation is much better.

And yet their forces are still shown as the same disciplined troops. When the show wants to convey them as unddisciplined rabble, they can do so. But they don't.

You're not reading my argument correctly. My point is not "all Lannister forces are undisciplined rabble."

My point is "the Lannisters' ability to field a large body of well trained men is diminished." This does not mean they have no well trained or well equipped men left. It means precisely what it says- that whatever forces they have are likely smaller than during the War of the Five Kings. And that they will likely have difficulty maintaining the same standard of quality as they used to, if they try to raise additional armies to meet a new, unexpected threat. Such as tens of thousands of random soldiers from Essos appearing at the head of a princess they've heard only rumors of, with fire-breathing dragons everyone thought were extinct. On top of an uprising by, presumably, everyone opposed to Cersei, which at this point is pretty much everyone in the Seven Kingdoms except her brother, their most loyal vassals, and whatever mercenaries they can keep paying.

All we know is that the Lannisters still have soldiers. We don't have accurate counts of their forces at any one time, let alone a graph of their total force over a period. We know that they aren't suffering mass desertions yet, but this may well be happening in the near future. To me it would be an entirely predictable consequence of Cersei's actions if she finds a large fraction of her own army leaving her service.

And yet the Tyrell armies are still not superior to them, something that is at odds with the lannisters not having managed to replenish their forces.

The Lannisters were richer and more powerful at the start of the series- they had the gold mines, they had great reserves of cash, they had good credit, they had Tywin's influence and reputation to call on.

It is entirely possible that all which has happened over the course of the past six seasons/years is that the Lannisters have been steadily whittled down. They've lost strength to war, to Tyrion's defection (and parricide), to Joffrey's madness and Cersei's misrule. And the consequence of all this may well be that the Tyrells, once inferior to the Lannisters in strength (but still powerful enough to be a threat), are now much closer to equal status.

Because they are fighting in a much hotter climate and nowhere do they make preparations for the cold. They also do not carry heavy tents with them or any other sort that would allow horses to survive a harsh winter.

This is not direct disagreement with you, but I would like to pose a thought-experiment.

In Essos as in Westeros, the 'warm' seasons (spring/summer/autumn) can last for years or even a decade. What would it look like, if a nomadic human culture like the Dothraki were well adapted to such a climate? Would they carry their cold-winter gear around with them on their persons, year after year in the height of summer, during which time it is useless? Would they store that gear in baggage trains, or even in secure caches in permanent locations like Vaes Dothrak?

I freely admit that we do not see the Dothraki carrying cold-weather gear about when Daenerys rides with them in high summer. But unless Essos is somehow blessed with perpetual summer and winter never comes there at all, the Dothraki would have to possess some means of coping with cold weather, or go extinct.

You were arguing that it isn't credible that the Lannisters have neglected an 'obvious' measure like carrying pikes. Even if we don't see the Lannister pikemen in the show very often (or at all), such pikemen presumably exist. Even if the producers of the TV series neglect to show them.

By the same token, I was arguing that it isn't credible that the Dothraki, who live in a part of the world that should experience harsh winters as well as war summers, have no clue of how to survive in cold weather. Even if we don't see the furs and heavy tents the Dothraki would need to do so, such items presumably exist. Even if the producers in the TV series neglect to show them.

Would you mind enlightening me on how these two arguments are not parallel arguments of roughly equal merit?

But the enemy actually has a functioning supply train. Tyrell can supply 100k soldiers in the field. Can they support 200k? 300k? What about 300k horses at once?

Three hundred thousand horses and men? Can the Tyrells support an army that size? Probably not? Can the Lannisters? Certainly not; if they could do that they'd have done it in the Riverlands. Why even raise the notion of an army of three hundred thousand? What makes you think that is a realistic force for anyone in Westeros to deploy in a single location?

And the enemy, in this case the Lannisters acting alone, "has a functioning supply train." Can the Lannisters manage that while their ox-drawn supply lines are vulnerable to air attack? To be sure, a regiment of massed archers might have some chance of killing a dragon, with difficulty- but a convoy of wagons with a reasonable force of guards? Not a chance. If Daenerys fights with even the slightest bit of creativity, resourcefulness, or good generalship, then no, Jaime and Cersei won't be maintaining healthy supply lines to isolated fortresses or armies in the field. And we know she has advisors smart enough to think of these things- Tyrion for one.

It is a common fallacy in military planning to pay attention to one side's troubles, while ignoring anything that might go wrong for the other side, and therefore declare that such-and-such a military result is "impossible." This tends to result in declarations like "the war will be over by Christmas" or "the Ardennes is impenetrable" or "we will bleed the French white at Verdun." It is not a smart way to talk about warfare.

And it is not just an arid region.

Take Hungary. Lots of plains. And yet the Mongols, Huns and others had to wait whole years to get their ponies fattened up enough for campaigning and still lost tens of thousands of horses.

This is very possible- I would not at all be surprised if the Dothraki take heavy losses- worse among the horses than the men. Arguably it would be to Daenerys's advantage if they do, because the sheer numbers of intact Dothraki forces are capable of working against her interests even if their old leadership is destroyed.

Castles? Ballistas? Westerosi thought these things would help them before the last Targaryen invasion. They were wrong.

Meh. That was against the greatest dragon that ever lived. Dany's dragons are inexperienced and tiny compared to him.

And Harrenhal was the greatest castle ever built, with fortifications to match anything that now exists. There aren't a lot of locations in Westeros that are more defensible against Drogon than Harrenhal would have been against Balerion.

Moreover, even if these strategies are a credible threat to dragon-riders, which is far from certain, they will not work except to defend the strongest places and perhaps a few spots in the field with pre-positioned weaponry. Any attempt to go anywhere but those points is vulnerable to dragon attack. And staying fortified up in those places, while a well supplied army that is likely to enjoy a degree of popular support is free to maneuver against them... that is not a recipe for victory.

Can she actually do that? I mean, she does not have dragon riders and I doubt she can risk herself falling prey to a random arrow. So who is going to independently command the dragon to go off, find an enemy army and then burn the wagons?

Certainly Targarayan women have fought from dragon back before; she certainly could but if so she should invest in some more armour; that said, it's not actually possible to see or hit her on Drogon's back if he's attacking.

If she is flying past it is possible to hit her though.

Would it be physically possible? Yes. She would be taking risk. It is, however, a risk her ancestors took too, and she personally has taken greater risks herself, when she thought it was necessary. Let us not pretend that the small chance of being hit by a stray arrow while flying at high speed above a formation of archers is the worst thing a bold medieval monarch faces in a military campaign.

There are other castles razed by Aegon in the invasion too. Visenya burnt Castle Stokeworth for instance, but yes, these may be dinkier than the dragons in that invasion, it's hard to know at this point.

I am not talking about Aegon. I am talking about the dance of dragons.

The Dance of Dragons was the high point of Westeros's collective knowledge about dragons, with both sides led by people who were themselves dragonriders and knew dragons' weaknesses (if any), after a century or more of close contact between the people of Westeros and the Targaryen dragons. The odds of defense against dragons being as effective in the present day as it was then are very, very low. Dragons and their riders are not invulnerable by any means, but under these specific circumstances they are in relatively little danger.

[SCRawl]

{snip} I would like to pose a thought-experiment.

In Essos as in Westeros, the 'warm' seasons (spring/summer/autumn) can last for years or even a decade. What would it look like, if a nomadic human culture like the Dothraki were well adapted to such a climate? Would they carry their cold-winter gear around with them on their persons, year after year in the height of summer, during which time it is useless? Would they store that gear in baggage trains, or even in secure caches in permanent locations like Vaes Dothrak?

I freely admit that we do not see the Dothraki carrying cold-weather gear about when Daenerys rides with them in high summer. But unless Essos is somehow blessed with perpetual summer and winter never comes there at all, the Dothraki would have to possess some means of coping with cold weather, or go extinct.

You were arguing that it isn't credible that the Lannisters have neglected an 'obvious' measure like carrying pikes. Even if we don't see the Lannister pikemen in the show very often (or at all), such pikemen presumably exist. Even if the producers of the TV series neglect to show them.

By the same token, I was arguing that it isn't credible that the Dothraki, who live in a part of the world that should experience harsh winters as well as war summers, have no clue of how to survive in cold weather. Even if we don't see the furs and heavy tents the Dothraki would need to do so, such items presumably exist. Even if the producers in the TV series neglect to show them.

Would you mind enlightening me on how these two arguments are not parallel arguments of roughly equal merit?

I'm taking this passage out of context, but it seems to me that the context is fairly clear. If not, just scroll up.

It seems to me that the seasons in Essos ought to more or less mirror what happens in Westeros. In other words, if we see winter arrive in Westeros, and we see what's happening on the same day in Essos, we ought to be able to conclude that that climate is what it would be at the beginning of winter as well. In other words, in the season finale, winter has come to Essos just as much as it has to Westeros. And it seems pretty temperate to me, at least in Mereen (which is unsurprising, since it's about as far south as Dorne) and Braavos (which is about as far north as the Neck, though well south of Winterfell).

Since none of the canon takes place during a winter, though, we really don't know all that much about how far south its effects are strongly felt. But I look forward to finding out.

[General Zod]

Can she actually do that? I mean, she does not have dragon riders and I doubt she can risk herself falling prey to a random arrow. So who is going to independently command the dragon to go off, find an enemy army and then burn the wagons?

At some point, I'm assuming that Bran Stark is going to rejoin his family in Winterfell. Once he meets Daenerys I'd bet a dollar that he's asked to warg into them during battle.

[Elheru Aran]

{snip}
I freely admit that we do not see the Dothraki carrying cold-weather gear about when Daenerys rides with them in high summer. But unless Essos is somehow blessed with perpetual summer and winter never comes there at all, the Dothraki would have to possess some means of coping with cold weather, or go extinct.

I'm taking this passage out of context, but it seems to me that the context is fairly clear. If not, just scroll up.

It seems to me that the seasons in Essos ought to more or less mirror what happens in Westeros. In other words, if we see winter arrive in Westeros, and we see what's happening on the same day in Essos, we ought to be able to conclude that that climate is what it would be at the beginning of winter as well. In other words, in the season finale, winter has come to Essos just as much as it has to Westeros. And it seems pretty temperate to me, at least in Mereen (which is unsurprising, since it's about as far south as Dorne) and Braavos (which is about as far north as the Neck, though well south of Winterfell).

Since none of the canon takes place during a winter, though, we really don't know all that much about how far south its effects are strongly felt. But I look forward to finding out.

I find the most likely answer to be twofold-- geography may favor a slightly warmer climate for Essos (though I don't see quite how) and the Dothraki probably just hole up and use permanent locations like Vaes Dothrak as winter camps. Probably for about a year or two before the winters start, the main focus of their raiding is for stockpiling supplies among the individual khalasars.

[Simon_Jester]

That's a fair point- given that they do have permanent locations they may well have permanent shelters there too, and may use them as winter quarters as you say.

Also, they are nomadic; if there's enough land around Meereen and other such southerly places, they may just move there for the winter.

SCRawl, you're not misrepresenting me at all, but it occurs to me that Braavos is a coastal city and may well be warmer than equivalent locations further inland at the same latitude. Something like the Gulf Stream and its warming effect could be in play.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Not sure the canon status of this, but "The World of Ice and Fire" sourcebook seems to imply that the Long Night impacted Essos to essentially the same degree as it did Westeros (they just have a different cultural memory of it). Of course, that was 8,000 years ago and doesn't necessarily say anything about the regular winter climate cycle in Essos, but it would seem to imply that they do, at least, experience winter to some extent.

[MKSheppard]

Women who have dragons do not go hungry.

They make other people hungry.

She has:

8,000~ Unsullied (figure a few thousand lost due to disease and murder during the occupation of Mereen).
85,000~ Dothraki (I don't think everyone actually swore for her, and again, disease).
75,000~ Horse (a smaller amount compared to Dothrakai, because you need people to hold them during various actions).
3 Dragons

Caloric intake for various lifeforms are:

Humans: 1928.5 cal/day (average of 1700s UK and French daily intake)
Horses: 15,000 to 30,000 cal/day (from maintenance to heavy work)
Dragons: 380,000 to 2.3 million cal/day (estimates here LINK)

Note: Dragon estimates are for Smaug-sized dragons, not the size Dany has. But you have to figure that firebreathing (if you don't magic it too much) requires calories to create the chemicals for firebreathing, so it's all a wash.

This comes out to:

Humans: 179,350,500 cal/day (or 134,512,875 from grains and 44,837,625 from meat assuming 25% of daily intake is meat)
Horses: 1,687,500,000 cal/day
Dragons: 4,020,000 cal/day
-----------------------------------
Total: 1,870,870,500 cal/day

Basic Food calories from staple foods:
Short Ton of Wheat: 3,075,924 cals (for Humans)
Short Ton of Meat: 1,302,077 cals (for Dragons+Humans)
Short Ton of Oats: 3,529,880 cals (for Horses)

This comes out to a daily requirement of:

Human Grain 43.73 short tons/day
Human Meats: 34.44 short tons/day
Dragon Meats: 3.09 short tons/day
Horse Oats: 548.62 short tons/day

Checking English Agricultural Output 1550-1750 LINK

gives us for about 1380:

Wheat Production of 6.83 bushels/acre (31% of all sown land)
Oat Production of 6.2 bushels/acre (32% of all sown land)
0.56 units of livestock per acre, broken down as 7.1% Cows, 88.3% Sheep, 4.6% Pigs

The Wiki on UK Agriculture in the middle ages Link

Gives us 35% of all land in the UK being arable; and English Agricultural Output 1550-1750 says that about 40% of all arable land was actually in use at any one time.

Map of Westeros compared to Earth

Gives us about the size of Ireland for the Crownlands near King's Reach (or about 20,860,883 acres) -- the immediate area of foraging for any force that lands near King's Landing.

Doing some rough computations gives us:

7.3 million acres of arable land, of which 2.9 million are in actual use; giving us:

934,000~ acres of Oats (139,000 short tons/year)
905,000~ acres of Wheat (185,000 short tons/year)
1.6 million livestock (110k cows, 1.4m sheep, 70k pigs)

Apparently you get about 50% of live weight back from most food animals when you butcher them.

Cows in the middle ages were about 75% smaller than modern meat cows; so...say 1,000 lb live weight for cows in Westeros.

Cows: 1,000 lb, of which 500 lb is meat.
Sheep: 250 lb of which 125 lb is meat.
Pigs: 150 lb of which 75 lb is meat.

So about 117,625 short tons/year maximum possible meat products if you butchered everything.

The city of King's Landing has 500,000 population, and if we go by English Middle Ages urban population percentages of 10%; then that means the Crownlands has a rough population of 5 million to support the city.

5.5 million people need 10,587,500,000 calories a day, and using the same 25% figure of calories from meat; the population would need to consume:

2,000 tons of meat/day
2,500 tons of wheat/day

or about

730,000 tons of meat/year
912,500 tons of wheat/year

That's...a lot more than the Crownlands can produce using English middle ages methods.

I know this is a simple guesstimate and ignores the effects of:

1.) Fishing (which would be high reward for low effort expended (relatively speaking) -- perhaps this is how most of Kings' Landing feeds itself, as well as the immediate area around king's landing?

2.) Significantly longer growing season of GOT's weird years' long summer.

but the food requirements of the Crownlands are pretty huge; which indicates that there's a good possibility they've been relying on the surrounding areas (Reach, Stormlands, Riverlands) to supply them with food; and where have most of the battles been fought?

In those same lands.

Dany might achieve some immediate successes, but what happens when the Riverlands/Reach/Stormlands cut off food exports once she deposes the Lannisters?

Winter is coming, and the maesters are forecasting that it's gonna be the longest winter in a thousand years; plus you gotta make up for the tremendous losses in stored grains that have occured over the last five years of campaigning as both sides pillaged to supply their armies and deny resources to their enemies.

So yeah. It's gonna be a bigger mess than Mereen.

[ArmorPierce]

Another prediction for the end of the series posted for the sake of posterity:

Jon Snow will take the ice throne... because there must always be a Lich King... err, I mean Night King.

[NecronLord]

In those same lands.

Dany might achieve some immediate successes, but what happens when the Riverlands/Reach/Stormlands cut off food exports once she deposes the Lannisters?

Winter is coming, and the maesters are forecasting that it's gonna be the longest winter in a thousand years; plus you gotta make up for the tremendous losses in stored grains that have occured over the last five years of campaigning as both sides pillaged to supply their armies and deny resources to their enemies.

So yeah. It's gonna be a bigger mess than Mereen.

She kills them and pillages their stuff. You're approaching this as if there's not going to be a massive famine. That's pretty much a given, and while she'll make it worse, there would doubtless be famine even if a storm sank her fleet and her dragons fucked off back to Esssos after she drowns (I'm half expecting this by the by).

She's not even aiming for a bloodless conquest. She's aiming for, to quote the mastermind of the whole affair, "Fire and Blood."

At this point, as far as she and her horde are concerned, so long as they make it through and enough peasants survive to serve, they're golden.

[Gaidin]

I find the most likely answer to be twofold-- geography may favor a slightly warmer climate for Essos (though I don't see quite how) and the Dothraki probably just hole up and use permanent locations like Vaes Dothrak as winter camps. Probably for about a year or two before the winters start, the main focus of their raiding is for stockpiling supplies among the individual khalasars.

It should also be noted, the more northern parts of Westeros were all for holing up in permanent locations for Winter and riding it out if not for Jon Snow's warnings on what was coming. And I'm willing to bet it's not just the North proper. The Far South are probably the only regions that aren't so harshly hit as I might call them tropical and/or desert. I'm willing to bet that anybody that gets a multiyear winter is willing to put off a war and lick their wounds and it's probably something that has them think long and hard between battles on why they were fighting in the first place. Whether they get as much snow as the North may be one thing, but I'm willing to bet it gets damn cold and moving armies in that kind of weather becomes A Thing(TM).

[Terralthra]

Also, as Jon pointed out in the season finale, the enemy brings the storm. The long winters are linked to the white walkers. Defeat them and winter might not fall as it has been predicted.

[Simon_Jester]

Women who have dragons do not go hungry.

They make other people hungry.

She has:

8,000~ Unsullied
85,000~ Dothraki
75,000~ Horse (a smaller amount compared to Dothrakai, because you need people to hold them during various actions).
3 Dragons

Many Dothraki have multiple horses, or so I am given to understand. However, since she is taking them on ships I wouldn't be surprised if she enacted a "one horse per capita" maximum or something. For that matter, she may not have taken all hundred thousand Dothraki unless I missed something, but there's no way to estimate that, so lay on, MacDuff!

Caloric intake for various lifeforms are:

Humans: 1928.5 cal/day (average of 1700s UK and French daily intake)
Horses: 15,000 to 30,000 cal/day (from maintenance to heavy work)
Dragons: 380,000 to 2.3 million cal/day (estimates here LINK)

Note: Dragon estimates are for Smaug-sized dragons, not the size Dany has. But you have to figure that firebreathing (if you don't magic it too much) requires calories to create the chemicals for firebreathing, so it's all a wash.

Fair enough, since feeding the dragons turns out to be pocket change anyway.

Humans: [180 Mcal/day, meat or grain]
Horses: [1688 Mcal/day, grain]
Dragons: [4 Mcal/day, meat]

Rounding these figures, but there it is.

Basic Food calories from staple foods:
Short Ton of Wheat: 3,075,924 cals (for Humans)
Short Ton of Meat: 1,302,077 cals (for Dragons+Humans)
Short Ton of Oats: 3,529,880 cals (for Horses)

Humans can eat food made from oats, though not from hay and other low-quality fodder

This comes out to a daily requirement of:

Human Grain 43.73 short tons/day
Human Meats: 34.44 short tons/day
Dragon Meats: 3.09 short tons/day
Horse Oats: 548.62 short tons/day

This is particularly noticeable, and suggests two things. One is, if the horses can graze, find them some grazing land as far south as possible, so they're not competing with humans for food. Winter pasture, in other words- a concept the Dothraki should be very familiar with.

The other is, shoot the horses. People in this era routinely culled livestock herds during the winter, because caring for and feeding all the livestock over the winter was impossible, for basically the reasons your calculations show. You can't graze them with snow on the ground, and they eat ten times more high-quality grain than a human, so every large mammal you keep fed during the winter represents ten people who have nothing to eat.

So you might as well derive some benefit right now from turning your animals into optionally patriotic hot dogs and delicious bacons in October, rather than waiting until February when they've lost. Or, in this case, horseburgers, which no doubt taste terrible but are far preferable to a big bellyful of empty.

Now, the Dothraki will stage screaming fits over this measure, but they must understand winter culling because they're a herding people. You can't be a herding people in a world where winter can last for years without at least the concept of killing animals that you won't be able to feed through the winter.

Checking English Agricultural Output 1550-1750 LINK

gives us for about 1380:

Wheat Production of 6.83 bushels/acre (31% of all sown land)
Oat Production of 6.2 bushels/acre (32% of all sown land)
0.56 units of livestock per acre, broken down as 7.1% Cows, 88.3% Sheep, 4.6% Pigs

Okay, interesting, gotcha. Note that oats are, again, a thing humans can eat, and that your math proves that every horse you don't feed with oats represents ten or twelve people you do feed.

Gives us about the size of Ireland for the Crownlands near King's Reach (or about 20,860,883 acres) -- the immediate area of foraging for any force that lands near King's Landing.

Doing some rough computations gives us:

7.3 million acres of arable land, of which 2.9 million are in actual use; giving us:

934,000~ acres of Oats (139,000 short tons/year)
905,000~ acres of Wheat (185,000 short tons/year)
1.6 million livestock (110k cows, 1.4m sheep, 70k pigs)

Apparently you get about 50% of live weight back from most food animals when you butcher them...So about 117,625 short tons maximum possible meat products if you butchered everything. [snip per-year, because it would take more than one year to rebuild that livestock, especially if you butcher everything]

So far so good- that is a good measure of the productivity of that land in one growing season. "Stacking" the produce of multiple growing seasons will give you a multiple of that amount of grain. The amount of meat available (e.g. well-preserved sausages) will be some multiple of that because you'd wait for the cows and pigs and sheep to mature, then slaughter them when they're "ready." So the question would be how long it takes those animals to reach maturity under near-ideal growing conditions (i.e. permanent summer).

The city of King's Landing has 500,000 population, and if we go by English Middle Ages urban population percentages of 10%; then that means the Crownlands has a rough population of 5 million to support the city.

Thing is, that five million people WAS enough to feed the cities of medieval England. The big reason your model indicates that the Crownlands are unable to feed themselves is because you're not taking into account that King's Landing is a massive imperial capital.

So you're assuming that King's Landing is the size of basically every city in medieval England put together (roughly, population of England varied a lot)... So far, so good, because that's supported by the books and movies.

But you're assuming this, AND that King's Landing is being supported by a population of peasant farmers equal to the size of the population of England... BUT that all these farmers are crowded into a land area the approximate size of Ireland, which is smaller.

Your accounting thus creates a 'surplus population' of a few million farmers who cannot be supported by the land they occupy

If King's Landing and the surrounding area is not agriculturally self-sufficient, then even if there are half a million townsmen in King's Landing... Surely there are not five million peasants trying to grow crops in the Crownlands. Not when said Crownlands can only grow enough crops for, say, two million. The surplus population would move elsewhere looking for better prospects, or die in place.

Another way of looking at it is that you have correctly estimated that (even with fishing) King's Landing probably requires the labors of three or four million peasants to keep them alive. Roughly two million of those peasants can live in the Crownlands area immediately around the city... and the other million or two live in the Reach.

5.5 million people need 10,587,500,000 calories a day, and using the same 25% figure of calories from meat; the population would need to consume:

2,000 tons of meat/day
2,500 tons of wheat/day

or about

730,000 tons of meat/year
912,500 tons of wheat/year

That's...a lot more than the Crownlands can produce using English middle ages methods.

As you say, it is likely that King's Landing does a great deal of fishing. Fishing will likely remain possible into the winter, though if the winter reaches truly horrific proportions (think "ice age") I suppose sea ice might become a threat as far south as King's Landing. However, there is little evidence for that happening in Westeros winters so far as I know.

Note that you've accidentally inflated the food demands of the Crownlands as a whole. However, you have proven it likely that the Crownlands cannot support King's Landing agriculturally, because that would require the labors of five million medieval peasants, and there isn't room to feed the five million peasants in the Crownlands, let alone for them to make enough surplus to support a major city.

2.) Significantly longer growing season of GOT's weird years' long summer.

The main effect of this is that during the summer, you can raise two or three crops a year of most foods, at least in principle. The main problem with that would be soil exhaustion. On the other hand, this can be mitigated by planting the right things in the fallow fields (e.g. nitrogen-fixing beans a la the three field system). I'm not sure if summer lands in Westeros would need to do something more than maintain the usual circulation in the three field system in order to keep the soil from becoming depleted over time.

but the food requirements of the Crownlands are pretty huge; which indicates that there's a good possibility they've been relying on the surrounding areas (Reach, Stormlands, Riverlands) to supply them with food; and where have most of the battles been fought?

In those same lands.

Most of the battles have been fought in the Riverlands. The Riverlands are explicitly depicted as a war-torn region and are unlikely to be feeding anyone soon.

The Stormlands and the Reach have been on the receiving end of one campaign each at most. The Reach in particular is physically huge, and is famous for being the breadbasket of Westeros. The Stormlands are apparently in a state of anarchy since the entire ruling family has been exterminated along with a number of their greatest supporters.

Dany might achieve some immediate successes, but what happens when the Riverlands/Reach/Stormlands cut off food exports once she deposes the Lannisters?

It is unlikely that the Reach will cut Dany off entirely, in my opinion.

Winter is coming, and the maesters are forecasting that it's gonna be the longest winter in a thousand years; plus you gotta make up for the tremendous losses in stored grains that have occured over the last five years of campaigning as both sides pillaged to supply their armies and deny resources to their enemies.

So yeah. It's gonna be a bigger mess than Mereen.

Certainly bigger, though not certainly worse.

[Gaidin]

Most of the battles have been fought in the Riverlands. The Riverlands are explicitly depicted as a war-torn region and are unlikely to be feeding anyone soon.

The Stormlands and the Reach have been on the receiving end of one campaign each at most. The Reach in particular is physically huge, and is famous for being the breadbasket of Westeros. The Stormlands are apparently in a state of anarchy since the entire ruling family has been exterminated along with a number of their greatest supporters.

Dany might achieve some immediate successes, but what happens when the Riverlands/Reach/Stormlands cut off food exports once she deposes the Lannisters?

It is unlikely that the Reach will cut Dany off entirely, in my opinion.

Mostly because hasn't House Tyrell explicitly allied themselves with Dany in a bid for revenge against the Lannisters? House Tyrell literally isn't going to survive much longer at least in their current ruling branch, some other arm will soon be taking over so the old lady is literally going "Fuck it, down with the Lannisters" and is supporting Dany. Dany, last I checked literally has two major regions to safely land her troops, one of them a huge breadbasket of Westeros.

[Alferd Packer]

Aside from lances in jousts, I don't think any particularly long weapons appear in the series. Can anyone find a picture of these long westerosi spears that are going to wreck the Unsullied?

I'd eyeball them at around 16 feet or so, but perhaps they're even longer. It stands to reason that they'd be longer than the standard lance that a knight would use, as that was the whole point of pike formations. Unfortunately, I don't think we've ever seen proper heavy cavalry outside of jousting tourneys(the knights of the Vale seemed to be using normal spears, rather than lances, in their charge).

[Ralin]

Really I regard the unsullied not having pikes as basically a blooper, or a limitation of the budget of the TV production, in the books (and even in the show!) we're told that they have three lengths of spear, one of which almost certainly has to be some manner of pike, and one of which is a throwing spear as I recall

As I recall we're told that the Unsullied are all trained in "the three spears," but it was ambiguous whether that was referring to three different types of spear or three formations/tactics.