From the perspective of the new era, he describes the general situation of the conquest of the Shang Dynasty

According to the records on the oracle bones excavated from the Yin Ruins, the armies of the Shang Dynasty can be divided into three types. The first and most important one was the guard army of the Shang Dynasty royal family. According to Mr. Dong Zuobin's "Understanding of Ancient Chinese Culture" and Mr. Shi Zhangru's "Contribution of the Excavation of Yin Ruins to Ancient Chinese Culture", it can be roughly analyzed that the guard army of the Shang Dynasty royal family is likely to be recombined by the army of the former Dongyi clan established by the Shang Dynasty or the elite of various princes, and it mainly served as the guard of the Shang royal family, the royal capital and the casualties. This can also be seen from the archaeological discovery of a large number of martyred samurai remains.

The second is the army owned by the various clans of the Shang Dynasty, if a large-scale war occurs, the Shang king can recruit and dispatch them, such as the oracle bone "Ling Yi Clan Kou Zhou", "Ling Wu Clan Cut Qiang" and so on. However, not all wars require the collection of all princes, and sometimes according to the size of the war, the nearest small range of collection, such as "the king takes people to conquer Shu", "the king takes people to conquer Shu", "the king takes five thousand people to cut the earth" and so on. The former seems to be based on clan units, commanded by clan chiefs. The latter seemed to be a mixture of clans, and in order to coordinate contradictions and more efficient operations, the Shang king would often send his generals to carry out unified command.

The third is the army of the various subordinates of the Shang Dynasty, and sometimes it is also transferred by the Shang King to the expeditionary army, such as the "Wang Mingque (Western Princely State of the Shang Dynasty) Cutting Step", which is proof of this.

During the Shang Dynasty, in addition to infantry, chariot soldiers and cavalry (also known as horse soldiers at that time) also appeared. The chariot was driven by four horses, each carrying three samurai, with a left hand and a bow on the right, with the emperor in the center, which was quite similar to the way the chariots of the later Zhou Dynasty were used. As we all know, chariot warfare is greatly limited by terrain, so many wars that broke out in the heartland of the Central Plains in the late Shang Dynasty were almost invisible in the Shang Dynasty army, and they were mostly used to conquer many foreign races in the frontier areas.

Due to the invention of the Shang Dynasty chariot, the advent of cavalry, and the increasing complexity of combat weapons, it took a lot of time to train and strengthen the fighting skills of warriors, so full-time samurai also appeared in this period.

According to the records of the Shang Dynasty' Bu Ci, we can find that the troops used in the wars of the Shang Dynasty were mostly 3,000 to 5,000 people, and there were few wars of more than 10,000 people. The Shang army captured and killed the enemy at most 2,656 people, and the duration of the war also reached three or four years, and the marching time at the time of the expedition also reached thirty or forty days. Although the description of this article is too brief due to its age and the fact that there are not many documents available for consultation, it can also be analyzed from the only literature that the scale of the shang dynasty wars far exceeded that of any previous period.