In many movies, you see kings or generals moving pieces on a board, the pieces signifying groups of troops, the board usually a flat map of something, essentially like a big chessboard. Im interested in some info about older 3d maps/boards, like links to Greek or ancient Roman stuff would be ideal. My Google abilities are failing me atm, the most popular results for military maps just bring up 2d maps with fronts etc..

A concrete example from a movie, in Braveheart after the hot French princess comes back from her first meeting with Wallace, Longshanks is moving **** around and talking about bowmen and Irish conscripts; the 'I dispatched them before I sent your wife' scene. So is there a formal word for that map and where can I read up on the history of these things? Thanks.

It's called a sandtable or sandbox.

Sorry, can't help with pointing you to any ancient versions but the US military is developing a computerised version called ARES.
The Augmented REality Sandtable.



https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282816904_The_Augmented_REality_Sandtable_ARES

Awesome thank you