Finagle007
[Verified Great Old One]
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Legion beats phalanx.
(so I'm not sure if pikes would be optimal, one-handed spears combined with shields might work better vs archers).
Of course. You wouldn't expect a royal with 30 Diplomacy to have a poor fashion taste, would you?After looking at some Scarlet Crusade art, I will say that the faction's mix of red, white, and gold is pretty boss.
and mages beat concentrated troops
One handed spears should be long enough for two ranks(possibly 3) unless the anti-abomination spear modifications seriously impacted their weight distribution.I was actually considering both, at the same time even. A manipular system with shields and one handed spears that are light and easy to weild, but just long enough for the man behind you to get a dig in too, making it as if you were fighting two men instead of one (or three or four if gaps appear in their line), increasing the 'surface area' of the 'reaction' so to speak.
I thought that might be a bit too ambitious at this point in time though, given limited training times and potential administrative complexity. A wall of pikes is also good against superheavies too, so its not just a tradeoff of expedients.
Maybe that can be the development track for the crusader units instead.
We have archers that can run almost as fast as cavalry to deal with those.
Fair enough.It was 'shields and spears with manipular (ie, legionary) tactics' (hence the quotation of both), not 'spears plus pikes'.
At least until legatus Marius, when they ditched the triarii (and hastati, and principes) instead.
Subsequent modifications
The cohort legions of the late republic and early empire are often called Marian legions. Following the Battle of Vercellae in 101 BC Marius granted all Italian soldiers Roman citizenship. He justified this action to the Senate by saying in the din of battle he could not distinguish Roman from ally. This effectively eliminated the notion of allied legions; henceforth all Italian legions would be regarded as Roman Legions. Thus the three different types of heavy infantry (the Hastati, the Principes and the Triarii, which composed the pre-Marian Roman armies) were replaced by a single, standard type of legionary based on the Principes.
So they didn't really ditch the spears and (arguably) they didn't ditch the Triarii/Principes/Hastati(they ditched the distinction, with the most veteran troops just moving towards the 1st cohort instead of moving towards the Triarii).
Velites and triarii were armed with a javelin, thus making them like the core of the former maniple rather than a light screen of men or a last line of defense. Each cohort was made up of a contingent of each type of man from the former system. Thus, the cohort of 480 had the same first, second and third wave structure as the entire former legion. Due to this innovation of flexibility, the cohorts formed up for battle not as long lines but as individual cohorts, each capable of fighting entire mini-battles, with three waves of attack.