Would such a unit not be more or less able to take on anything?

[Cheezy the Wiz]

A bull I can just about see, even a swan in a pinch. But an ant?

Well he could have been an uncle, but that would just make things weird.

 

[Flying Pig]

Swiss Pikemen were for a good while the best units money could by.

Contrary to what we have seen in film etc they were in fact units of men, some armed with pikes, some with Xbws, some with Halbreds. The first of course to negate mounted units from charging, the last two to give them the ability to strike from a distance and to give them the upper hand in the push of pike.


Which got me thinking, couldn't they be equipped to do all three?

Each man carries a pike, Composite Bow with 15 arrows or so (Because a Composite bow is superior imo to a Xbow) and a small round shield with a one handed axe that has a axe blade and a pickaxe pick on the back for use against heavily armored foes.

A flexible unit like this would be a force to be reckoned with before the advent of serious artillery and muskets/Tercio units wouldn't it?


Now that I have lost enough weight to be down to my "final weight"

I am going to start working on my Ren. fair get up. I am going to try and carry all these weapons *strokes chin*

In terms of lugging, training and physically juggling them all (a rifle and an LAW are hard enough) in battle, that's crazy. To be useful, they'd need to be able to shoot as well as a professional shooter, pike as well as a pikeman and - well, you get the idea. They'd be torn to peices in whatever role because their opponents would have three times the training in that position. Equivalent would be making a rugby team whose players could fill any position - there'd be nobody strong enough to play prop or fast enough to play wing because they don't have the time to develop the specialist skills.

Also, seeing as how marching around was a bit of a pain for armored soldiers, I don't think they'd appreciate all the luggage.

Indeed; that would be INCREDIBLY heavy. Not to mention - when you're shooting, how do you keep the rest of the kit handy for when the enemy close up?

Combined arms tactics always relied on making good use of different specialized units. It wasn't impossible for a soldier who usually had one role to perform another, of course: knights converted to infantry, or the heavy cavalry equipped with bows which the Byzantines used with success to counter the turkish light cavalry - for some time. This last example is a good one to show why it didn't work: such soldiers were expensive and irreplaceable (quickly) when they were lost.

Swapping from one role to another (equivalent: asking an infantryman to help out on the artillery line) is different to holding down two roles (equivalent: asking an engineer to help out on the gun line while simultaneously being equipped to fix any vehicles that come his way). The former is do-able, the latter is very difficult as you're being asked to do the work of two specialists while you're at best a specialist in one.

 

[Elta]

Good point on the Rugby comparison.

Really good, like make Elta look stupid good

 

[Masada]

It was a fair question and one the answer isn't immediately apparent to. I wouldn't fret.

 

[Flying Pig]

Really good, like make Elta look stupid good

I wasn't trying to make anyone look stupid, sorry about that.

 

[Elta]

It was a fair question and one the answer isn't immediately apparent to. I wouldn't fret.

Well to be honest, I was thinking more of versatility, but that wasn't really because of my historical knowledge. I've been playing a lot of Total War games lately and I get caught with the right units, in the wrong mixture sometimes. Which makes me think of how my units could be more flexible.

The Rugby analogy is a good one and generals are bound to be less inept than I am in Total War, They were probably more readily able to bring the right units to the fight in the right combos.


Either way, if I were a Archer, I would keep a big Naval axe as my back up weapon - or perhaps a smaller one to wield with one hand and a small shield for my off hand.

I know that some pikemen broke off and used different weapons in push of Pike, but I don't think it is as common as in total war.

I wasn't trying to make anyone look stupid, sorry about that.

I am not mad, I am amused

 

[Flying Pig]

The king of Persia in the days of Alexander did have his own personal bodyguard who carried bows and spears, however this worked because the vast majority of soldiers at the time were irregular and had next to no training - even 'noble' units were nothing compared with the knights of the middle ages - and so they could rely on being one of very few professional regiments on the field and so had more training in shooting than enemy archers and more training in combat than enemy infantry. In the middle ages however, where professionals were common if not quite the rule then such a unit would not command that advantage.

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm told that the spearman/archer combination was actually quite common in the pre-Hellenistic Middle Eastern, but it had more to do with the archery-heavy form of warfare they practised there than the effectiveness of the combination. Most were pretty poor infantry when faced with a properly trained and equipped foe, as Alexander's phalanxes soon found out. They were archers first and foremost; I'm given to understand that the spears seem to have been used, tactically speaking, as a something equivalent to a Napoleonic bayonet. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The "Dies the Fire" series is the flip side of his "Change" series in which a modern Nantucket is moved to 1200 BC by the same event. I just finished the Nantucket books and enjoyed them for the most part.

 

[Flying Pig]

Sure you got the right thread?

 

[Elta]

He is has the right thread

We talk about the books in the first page.

 

[innonimatu]

I'm told that the spearman/archer combination was actually quite common in the pre-Hellenistic Middle Eastern, but it had more to do with the archery-heavy form of warfare they practised there than the effectiveness of the combination. Most were pretty poor infantry when faced with a properly trained and equipped foe, as Alexander's phalanxes soon found out. They were archers first and foremost; I'm given to understand that the spears seem to have been used, tactically speaking, as a something equivalent to a Napoleonic bayonet. Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.

I guess that the abundance of archers among the troops which the persians could levy from the satrapies of the empire might have had something to to with what were usual occupations on those territories - the structure of the empire was somewhat feudal. They didn't had much of a professional persian army. Which only makes it more surprising that the empire lasted for so long - apparently the emperor did managed to control the tax revenue to always hire enough mercenaries to crush any rebellions. Perhaps the scarcity of trained heavy infantry was deliberate: the persians didn't want to take up that role, and were not taking the risk of some other inhabitants of the empire doing it and becoming a dangerous for in a rebellion?

In any case, the heavy infantry used by the persian empire at the time of the macedonian invasion, and before, were... greek mercenaries! If Darius had been as good a general in commanding his troops as he was a strategist at choosing when and where to engage, Alexander's campaign might have ended at Issus.