Close geographically, I meant. I don't know what's close to Chine militarily
Alexander the Great vs. China
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BIG sven
Chieftain
Did'nt the Chinese have chokunus at that time because an armie of them costantly firing would end up slautering the Greeks if they ambushed them which they would probabley do because they had a very good understanding of tactics.
So did the Greeks - and Alexander would whoop them with his cavalry. I don't think they ever evolved the battalion square.
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/military-channel/33830-weapon-masters-the-chu-ko-nu-video.htm
A cool video on how the weapon works.
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/military-channel/33830-weapon-masters-the-chu-ko-nu-video.htm
A cool video on how the weapon works.
BIG sven
Chieftain
I agree because the chinese in the first place would not really know that the greeks are coming but still the greeks would not be able to get to them that easily. if they had faced each other on a field they would both stand a good chance but the greeks would have the upper hand on flat land the chinese would have a better chance in a jungle/forest or if they had higher ground.
Thanks for pulling out that cool series of videos - that settled one argument about how powerful these things were. Their army may have had some more powerful ones, but I think Alexander knew something about tactics too The comments above this are reasonable - skirmisher troops would be important in ambush or anti-ambush situations.
Alexander had no shortage of lights, though, so he would have been pretty good at that.
aelf
Ashen One
Err... I wouldn't take that video as the gospel. TV shows are seldom accurate. And those bows are obviously not for combat use. For some reference for what real crossbows of that time were like, look at the Han Dynasty crossbow on the wall. That's probably standard issue. The Zhe Ge Nu was probably not as big as that, but the models being made don't seem to have much power at all. The show seems focused on how the thing reloads anyway.
They said that the Chinese needed to poison the tip - hardly an AP round, especially with Greek armour and shields. The Han dynasty was very long; I think the video was probably fairly good.
aelf
Ashen One
Do you take Battles B.C. for the gospel as well?
No. Those are obviously for the smaller ones, especially like those being made on the show. The proper Zhu Ge Nus didn't need to be poisoned, although they probably have limited armour-piercing capabilities.
Anyway, who cares about Zhu Ge Nus? Worry about the standard-issue crossbows. Crossbows didn't improve that radically over the Han Dynasty anyway.
BIG sven
Chieftain
Alexander was tactical and had a creativ mind to turn a fight around (From what i know) and if he had a chance he could slaughter them but still You should never underestimate your opponant ( not saying that he would) but the chinese were not to be underestimated cause they would do the same in a battleplus alexander could have lost alot of men before he got into the fight and so the chinese could have overwelmed them with troops.
Crossbows, by nature, are not as powerful as comparable standard bows. I don't think that they would have been good against infantry in the hellenic style, but cavalry and light infantry, maybe.
aelf
Ashen One
Alexander was tactical and had a creativ mind to turn a fight around (From what i know) and if he had a chance he could slaughter them but still You should never underestimate your opponant ( not saying that he would) but the chinese were not to be underestimated cause they would do the same in a battleplus alexander could have lost alot of men before he got into the fight and so the chinese could have overwelmed them with troops.
Light troops are generally psiloi, basically not much more than trained peasants who came cheap and meant to simply pelt the opposing forces with javelins before the engagement. Notice that few if any of the battles (actually, I don't know any) of Alexander featured the psiloi prominently from what I recall. Issus, Gaugamela, Hydaspes - nada.
However, the hypaspistai sometimes dressed light and might have been meant for a more skirmishing role. They are, of course, far from psiloi quality.
What rubbish
Crossbows have inefficient draw but generally better penetrating power and range than standard bows. Note that standard bows relied on the bodkin for armor-piercing, but bodkins shortened the range. The trajectory may make it lose out in terms of range to bigger bows, but that might be equalised by heavier crossbows.
There comes a limit on size, though. In direct fire, the longbow has more string-pull, and so more power (not countign a bigger arrow)
aelf
Ashen One
From what I've read, the strength of the longbow is in its relative ease and speed to shoot (assuming the archer is trained, of course) and ballistics. Something like the fact that it fires in an arc, lending the arrow some power thanks to gravity as it descends. This also means that the longbow was seldom fired directly at targets, which would have curtailed its range anyway. Longbowmen practiced something called 'cloud shooting' to cover an area with their fire instead of shooting at units like in AoE. Somewhat like artillery.
Crossbows, however, operate differently. They have quarrels instead of arrows and fire directly. They require more effort to draw, but that is mostly done by the simple machines. They make it up with great penetrating power and perhaps more accuracy through the effect of firing more in a straight line than longbows. Usually people tend to think that crossbows have shorter range than longbows. While this may be generally true, at longer range, the longbows also lose their penetrating power. IIRC, a longbowman (as in he did it for a living at Warwick Castle) told me that the effective armor-piercing distance of the longbow is only about 50 yards or so. Note that the result of Poitiers was mostly due to difficulty the French were having with the terrain than longbows per se, something like the Teutoburg Wald. Can't remember about Agincourt now, but I think it's similar. Anyway, actually some crossbows might have had ranges comparable to or longer than the longbow. No one really knows for sure, but some people have done some tests and this is what a few of the ones I read about concluded.
How big does a crossbow have to be to compare with a bow from that time? I mean, weight becomes a factor, especially in aiming, as does the wind with a small projectile at low velocity. Even today, snipers calculate 1 inch off for every 100 metres, so a Crossbow would have been almost useless at long range.
aelf
Ashen One
It's the same story for longbows, if not worse. They had to wrap cloth around the arrow shafts to reduce wind inaccuracy, but that also curtailed the range. Quarrels, by their design and trajectory, are less affected by wind, but probably still are. Wind is actually worse for a bigger projectile, by the way.
As for how a crossbow might compare with a longbow, it's in the technical design, material and size. The specifics I don't really know, since I have no expertise in the technical art of making anything whatsoever.
A light projectile, then. Less weight = less inertia = easier to divert.
aelf
Ashen One
There is a trade off between projectile weight and range. The lightest Turkish arrows have amazing range on their bows. However, they also tend to have no penetrating power, maybe not even to penetrate completely unarmoured targets properly at very long range. The lighter your projectile, the further it flies, but the less accurate it will be due to wind. This applies for both longbows and crossbows. This is probably why armour-piercing tends to happen at relatively short ranges. First, less power lost. Second, the types of projectile used. And this is in turn why I don't think more than a few volleys need to be considered here, since the crossbow would take time to reload and fire again (the first volley can be fired immediately, though, as the crossbow can be kept loaded and ready to fire). That's something to consider.
Ipsos...yeah I know that wasn't Alex
Almost couldn't see your white text
OK, crossbows are great - but volley firing wouldn't be much good in he face of Greek shock tactics - they were one of the most agressive armies in history. I don't think Alexander ever defended anything in his life.
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