Plataea

[Leonidas048]

Hello ive just purchased one of the latest Osprey books of the Campaign series dealing with the epic battle of Plataea between the Greeks and Persians. But so far i cant seem to find a scenario dealing with this battle. Has anyone design a scenario dealing with this battle yet? Im just curious really as it was considered the final turning point between these great powers. Hope to hear from someone thanks.

[stockwellpete]

I can't see one in the game, Leonidas. I tried using the search facility and only hit this thread. Unless somebody has done it and it is hidden away in a thread that has a series of battles as its title somewhere. Are you going to have a go at making this scenario then?

[lascar]

There is no Plataea scenario as far as I am aware. I have looked through all the custom scenarios available. I agree it would be a worthwhile scenario to make.

[Leonidas048]

Hello thanks for looking up. Yes it seems strange no one has done a version of it yet as it was an epic and decisive battle in the ancient world like Marathon. I would like to have done one in the past but i really dont have much time now as you get older there are too many other things to do unfortunately. I only just have enough time to play these games as they are so straightforward to get into. I guess i have enough material to work from but i havent studied the scenario editor of this game yet. I personally would like to do this game on a reasonable large scale if i wanted to. I wasnt too happy with the Marathon version on this game as there wasnt many units in it to carry out the right tactics. I see what i can do later unless someone else gets in there first. Thanks for your help anyway.

[Hoplite1963]

Interestingly enough Plataea is going to be the subject for the Society Of Ancients, Battle Day 2012, so Slingshot is likely to carry a whole range of articles on it this year.

Details for a full scale scenario reconstruction are provided in Philip A. G. Sabin’s book “Lost Battles: Reconstructing the Great Clashes of the Ancient World” published by Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, while Fred Eugene Ray in his excellent book “Land Battles in 5th Century BC Greece: A History and Analysis of 173 Engagements” published by McFarland & Co Inc has details for refighting separate segments of the battle as individual scenarios.

Hope this helps

[Sabratha]

Have no fear, as it happens I am already working on a FoG scenario for this battle.

[deeter]

When you do so, you should disregard the unit strengths in the game. They are now 300 men each regardless of type. Look at an historical scenaro for what the real strengths should be. Hope that helps. I'm looking forward the a good version of the battle.

Deeter

[Sabratha]

When you do so, you should disregard the unit strengths in the game. They are now 300 men each regardless of type. Look at an historical scenaro for what the real strengths should be. Hope that helps. I'm looking forward the a good version of the battle.

Deeter

I so far plan to have a single infantry unit to be circa 1000 men strong, possibly making some 700-800 men strong unit exceptions for some elite units.

In general, I am following John Warry and Lazenby in their estimates of the numbers.

While the Hoplite numbers given by Herodotus seem to be correct, I strongly do not believe in the astronomical numbers of light troops that he mentions (in particular the 7 Helots per Spartiate). Knowing the general Greek way of war of the pre-Iphicrates era, I assume that no more than 1 psiloi per hoplite took active part in the battle - the rest were busy guarding the camp and desperately trying to re-establish the supply routes.

I also do not believe in the 350 000 strong Persian army described by Herodotus. Greek historians always seem to multiply the amount of non-greek foes at least 2 times. Personally I think the Persian army was either of equal size, or only slightly larger than the combined greek force. Both the size and position of the persian camp, as well as the events before the battle seem to point so. If the persian army was indeed as numerous as Herodotus said, then they would have attempted a flanking amnouver during the many days of pre-battle maneouvers. Indeed, the simple positioning of the pre-battle infantry makes it very obvious that the Persian infantry was not numerous enough to attemt any serious flanking action and was forced to fight the hoplite line head-on (which was one of the reasons why the Persian battle plan failed).

[Leonidas048]

Hello well done look forward to your scenario. The other battles we could look out for im not sure if any have been done. Are the battles fought by the successors of Alexander the Great when his commanders split up his empire and fought against each other. If somebody could look into that!

[Sabratha]

Hello well done look forward to your scenario. The other battles we could look out for im not sure if any have been done. Are the battles fought by the successors of Alexander the Great when his commanders split up his empire and fought against each other. If somebody could look into that!

As for the Sucessor battles, I I do remember someone made Raphia. I myself was planning to make the Chandragupta vs Seleukos battle - the issues are the obvious lack of historical info on the war. Its a bit like with Kadesh - we know a whole lot about teh peace agreement between two sides taht followed teh battle, but we have little to none reliable info on the battle itself.

[Sabratha]

Well, I'm working on this now and as I suspected the Persian numbers are going to be the hardest and most controversial part.

Here are just two (likely the most serious and researched) of the sources I use for this scenario

1) According to John Warry the combined Persian and Median contingents were 14 000 infantry and 3000 cavalry.
2) According to William Shepherd, the persian contingent was 60 000 infantry, Median contingent 20 000 infantry and "several thousand cavalry".

Sooo... as you see the sources are pretty hazy and contradict one another. Herodotus mentions that the Persians had 300 000 men with some 50 000 allied greeks. Of course Herodotus's numbers are pretty crazy and I will treat them as propaganda lies that they are.

I myself will probably take a "middle road" between Warry and Shepherd - my Persians and Medes will likely have circa 30-40 thousand infantry.

OK, version 1.0 beta of the scenario is done. I'll playtest it a bit and see if it needs any changes. So far, the OOB is this:

GREEKS:
39 000 hoplites.
13 000 various psiloi.
800 Athenian archers.

So as you see, I treated the Hoplite nubers by Herodotus seriously. I did NOT however his number of 69 000 light troops due to several reasons. First of all, he seems to list an astronomical number of helots, way above the kind of numbers Spartiates were willing to give arms to. Secondly, I strongly believe that in a pre-Iphicratean Greek army, light troops played a very minor role, most of them would be employed in non-combat roles, guarding the camp and (especially in this campaign) guarding the supply lines.

TROOP NOTES: This is a fairly uniform force (Average, armored hoplites vs average unarmored psiloi). The exception here is the Spartan contingent - its helot psiloi are poor, while the Spartiate hoplites are superior.

PERSIANS:

24 000 Persian Infantry
12 000 Median Infantry
2 000 Bactrian Infantry
2 000 Indian Infantry
7 000 other minor satrapal levy infantry
15 000 "Medizing" Greek, Macedonian and Thessalian infantry

3 000 Persian Cavalry
2 000 Median Cavalry
1 000 Bactrian Cavalry
1 000 Saka Cavalry
5 000 "Medizing" Greek, Macedonian and Thessalian cavalry
3 000 other minor satrapal cavalry

Well, the persian part is mostly guesswork on my part, but based on Warry and Shepherd. The numbers of non-Persian and non-Median contingents are straight out of Warry, while the Persian&Median forces are somewhat of a compromise between Shepherd and Warry's versions.

TROOP NOTES: We have a whole lot of variety here from a few elite, but not numerous immortals to exotic indian archers, ferocious Zagros highlanders, Persian sparabara and takabara, and last but not least a variety of greek-style Theban, Macedonian and Thessalian forces.

[Sabratha]

Playtest 01:
Greek (40/53 rout points) side won with the Persians (81/80 rout points) in turn 13. Out of 52800 greeks, 17254 died, out of 80 000 persians&allies 33505 will not return to their homes.

Playtest 2: Persian won decisively 24/80 to Greek 53/53 (mostly good use of terrain).

Ok, version 1.0 is here:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/c27126c ... lataea.zip
http://depositfiles.com/files/mzxt83ibi
http://uploading.com/files/2af4cef7/Bat ... ataea.zip/
http://www.crocko.com/5CEFBAC72CEF4DE2B ... lataea.zip

EDIT: Playtesting it in a paired game against a human opponent in MP (Many great thanks for accepting my challenge). So far, it seems to prove that the game can be won by the Persian side. The Persians won 25/80 against the Greek 54/53 rout points. This scenario indeed seems pretty terrain-heavy and the side that manages to make the best use of its own terrain wins.
Believe it or not, Persians won both battles (though the latter one was pretty close). I may actually downgrade all non-immortal persian superior infantry to average to compensate for the fact.

So, stay tuned for version 1.1, its bound to show up soon enough after I finish some more playtest games vs human opponents. I aso want to give a very big thanks to Epos, Foli and a few hotseat players (you know who you are) for helping me to test this.