Hi
@Soren Johnson and all you lucky beta testers out there. I am pretty excited for Old World. Pre-ordered already, hoping to get into the early access gameplay soon. How soon? That is the question.
Someone mentioned late game crossbows and pikes as being medieval weapons, I think the Roman era cheiroballista and phalanx long spears (sarissa) would count?
(Cheiroballista or manuballista: The name of the weapon is composed of the Greek words for 'hand' and 'shooter' implying that portable versions might also have existed, similar to crossbows. -wikipedia, references: Warfare in the Classical World, by Warry, J.)
See also: Gastraphetes.
The
gastraphetes or 'belly bow' (because you had to brace it against your feet and pull up with the big stomach muscles to cock it) or crossbow was invented about 400 BCE in Syracuse, along with the larger
katapeltes ('shield piercer') or catapult. Intriguingly, this is very close to the first mention of crossbows in China, so apparently "when it's time to crossbow, people will crossbow".
The problem is, there is no indication of the Romans or anybody else in the west using crossbows in any numbers in field battles - they appear to have been strictly fortress defense weapons. All the archeological evidence of
cheiroballista, for instance, have been found in the remains of Roman border forts. The crossbow may have also been a hunting weapon, since the Picts apparently used it only or primarily as such (no Pict petroglyph shows a crossbow being used in battle, only by individuals hunting) and it is now assumed that the Picts got the crossbow from the Romans. Tellingly, the Picts also had regular bows firing poisoned arrows that they used in Battle, and numerous Roman auxiliary units listed in the
Notitia Dignatorum are labeled
Saggitarii - archers.
And, correct, Phillip and Alexander's
Pezhetairoi ("Foot Companions") were pikemen armed with the long
sarissa and the front ranks, at least, of the Successor phalanx were in metal armor, so they would have been indistinguishable from late Medieval pikemen except in the quality of the metal.
But, the Phalanx of pikemen as used by Alexander and his Successors was decisively defeated by the more-flexible Roman Legions and disappeared for the next 1500 years in the west. The Imperial Roman
lanciarii that were added to the Legion to deal with Sarmatian heavy cavalry in the 1st - 2nd centuries CE appear to have been spears rather than pikes - there is no illustration or description that I know of that indicates that they were held in both hands, only wielded with shield in one hand like a spear. The fact that the early Byzantine and late Imperial Roman infantry were spearmen with a long sword and heavy shield I think reinforces this - the resulting Thematic Byzantine and "Romano-British" post-Roman infantry could deal with either enemy foot or mounted troops pretty handily.
Pikes and crossbows in general are two examples of weapons that 'came and went'. The Vulture Stele shows what appears to be a pike phalanx in Sumer in 2600 BCE (long spears held in both hands with a second man holding a head-to-foot shield covering both men), and the crossbow appears to have been used extensively in China throughout the Classical Era but only rarely in the west (possibly due to the more efficient Chinese 'trigger mechanism' but I suspect also because Oriental warfare in general placed more emphasis on missile fire than Greek or Roman or later European warfare did) before the late Middle Ages. Another 'peculiarity' is that the equipment for a fully-armored pikeman or crossbowman was over 3 times more expensive to produce than an early matchlock musket (figures from 1472 CE in Spain: cost of a helmet, breastplate and pike was 3.25 ducats, cost of an arquebus was 1 ducat), so that the adoption of the more 'advanced' weapon actually saved money initially!
)
