SnowlyWhite
Emperor
the romans always had horse archers, even armoured ones, for some reason ppl. consider cataphracts to be shock cavalry despite only being armoured cavalry(and enough of the being horse archers), the horse archer isn't all that sexy in the forested and rought europe and it's certainly not suitable for some parts of europe(and romans standardized everything - so tons of horse archers wouldn't make much sense even if they could afford, while the legion could operate more or less at optimal parameters almost everywhere). Plus the horse archer is darn expensive in non nomadic environment; you get those pasture lands out of your not so stellar agriculture ones.
the phalanx was a very good formation despite it's limits(as seen in the many emulations it gave birth to) and the successors really had decent combined armies if we take in account the limits of their economies/populations. It was solid; would've picked it too
and really, was there anything like an "officer corps" in a world where noone was advanced enough economically to afford standing armies(or afforded very small standing armies)? there wasn't much to train. And the ones who could afford(the romans) had reasonable training late empire when the army was more or less "professional".
the ancients seem pretty decent at tactics given the economic limits, and, most importantly, the way they elected their commanders who seldom had that much in common with military skils.
the phalanx was a very good formation despite it's limits(as seen in the many emulations it gave birth to) and the successors really had decent combined armies if we take in account the limits of their economies/populations. It was solid; would've picked it too
and really, was there anything like an "officer corps" in a world where noone was advanced enough economically to afford standing armies(or afforded very small standing armies)? there wasn't much to train. And the ones who could afford(the romans) had reasonable training late empire when the army was more or less "professional".
the ancients seem pretty decent at tactics given the economic limits, and, most importantly, the way they elected their commanders who seldom had that much in common with military skils.
