Cavalry can't catch Light Foot?

[verybizzyb]

When the Hellenes were not only right across, but had got about a mile from the ravine, Mithridates also crossed with his forces. An order had been passed down the lines, what light infantry and what heavy infantry were to take part in the pursuit; and the cavalry were instructed to follow up the pursuit with confidence, as a considerable 3 support was in their rear. So, when Mithridates had come up with them, and they were well within arrow and sling shot, the bugle sounded the signal to the Hellenes; and immediately the detachment under orders rushed to close quarters, and the cavalry charged. There the enemy preferred not to wait, but fled towards the ravine. In this pursuit the Asiatics lost several of their infantry killed, and of their cavalry as many as eighteen were taken prisoners in the ravine. As to those who were slain the Hellenes, acting upon impulse, mutilated their bodies, by way of impressing their enemy with as frightful an image as possible. "

Interesting. Now we need to sort out what this means for FoG. From the sound of things, the Hellenes--even the cavalry--were unable to catch the enemy light foot. Of the several hundred engaged "the Asiatics lost several of their infantry killed." Apparently they escaped successfully back across the ravine. In fact, it appears that the Asiatic cavalry suffered more than the light foot.

Marc

I think this illustrates one of the main problems with many ancient sources, ie they weren't written in order to answer specific questions from wargamers a couple of thousand years later.
You might interpret this source as stating that cavalry were the most effective counter to enemy skirmishers - the evidence being that the Greeks went to such lengths to raise a troop of cavalry in the first place. They were experienced warriors so would probably not have gone to such trouble for no good reason.
Alternatively, due to the apparently low number of enemy foot killed, you may say it's evidence that cavalry weren't effective.
The problem is that the description of events is (as so often in ancient accounts) generalised. There is mention of a ravine, which most rules would treat as difficult going so no surprises if the cavalry failed to perform well there. On the other hand we don't have any details of the terrain around the ravine so making a judgement of the cavalry's performance is immediately conjectural.
Another problem occurs with the aspect of numbers. This appears to be an account of a skirmish action rather than a set battle and we have no idea of the number of enemy foot. If 50 cavalry faced 50 foot (in the open) and killed only a few then that would be evidence supporting one camp's argument. If 50 cavalry faced 500 foot and succeeded in driving them off and killing some then that may support the opposite view.

I think it very difficult to arrive at absolute conclusions when using most historical sources. As I see it the authors of FoG have chosen a particular game concept that they believe works. Others have different views. Who's correct? For me the jury is still out...

[lawrenceg]

Another problem occurs with the aspect of numbers. This appears to be an account of a skirmish action rather than a set battle and we have no idea of the number of enemy foot. If 50 cavalry faced 50 foot (in the open) and killed only a few then that would be evidence supporting one camp's argument. If 50 cavalry faced 500 foot and succeeded in driving them off and killing some then that may support the opposite view.

I think it very difficult to arrive at absolute conclusions when using most historical sources. As I see it the authors of FoG have chosen a particular game concept that they believe works. Others have different views. Who's correct? For me the jury is still out...

I would interpret this the other way round:

If there were only a few foot and a few were killed then a large proportion were killed, so the cavalry ran them down.

If there were many foot, then they evaded successfully all the way to the safety of the ravine, a distance of a mile, only a few stragglers getting caught.


Of course, we also have the issue of whether these mounted troops would be classed as "cavalry" or "light horse" in FOG.

[Kineas1]

Xenophon--Hellenico, 5.4.42

Note again that casualties are light. I think FoG does this fine...

[43] Meanwhile Phoebidas pressed upon them boldly, having with him his peltasts and giving orders to the hoplites to follow in battle order. Indeed, he conceived the hope of putting the Thebans to rout; for while he himself was leading on stoutly, he was exhorting the others to attack the enemy and ordering the hoplites of the Thespians to follow. [44] But when the horsemen of the Thebans as they retired came to an impassable ravine, they first gathered together and then turned to face him, not knowing where they could cross. Now the peltasts were few23 in number; the foremost of them were therefore seized with fear of the horsemen and took to flight; but when the horsemen, in their turn, saw this, they applied the lesson they had learned from the fugitives and attacked them. [45] So then Phoebidas and two or three with him fell fighting, and when this happened the mercenaries all took to flight. And when as they fled they came to the hoplites of the Thespians, these also, though previously they had been quite proudly confident that they would not give way before the Thebans, took to flight without so much as being pursued at all. For by this time it was too late in the day for a pursuit. Now not many of the Thespians were killed, but nevertheless they did not stop until they got within their wall.

[MarkSieber]

So, when Mithridates had come up with them, and they were well within arrow and sling shot, the bugle sounded the signal to the Hellenes; and immediately the detachment under orders rushed to close quarters

The cavalry was apparently charging from close range, where FoG Cavalry is effective.

Both forces were mixed horse and foot; the capture of the Asiatic cavalry may indicate that the Hellenic cavalry was busy with that mission. I'm not certain this passage sheds much light on the current conundrum, but it gives a sense of a localized part of the action.

The Greek historians focus on individual incident, generally without reference to the relationship between tactical philosophy and expected outcome. The Greeks attributed individual victory to Fate. Lendon, "Soldiers and Ghosts", notes that despite all the emphasis given to the preparation for war, to tactics, and to the virtues of individual warriors, they believed it was the intervention of the gods that directed the weapons. This makes it difficult to glean patterns of tactics and results--the writers did not expect to see a pattern, and we need to be careful when looking for one.

[Kineas1]

Hmmm.

Not sure I buy that.

[MarkSieber]

When I was studying Classical Greek, I was surprised to find that Euclid's Geometric theorems are written in the language of philosophy, not mathematics. One of my professors pointed out that they were observations of natural 'law', not mathematical principles as we now understand them. He taught that the Greeks were fundamentally fatalistic--their watch phrase was 'count no man lucky until he is dead', meaning that the gods might--and likely would--intervene capriciously at any moment, and that the ancient Greeks did not think in analytical terms as we do: they laid the groundwork for rational science and observation, but did not practice it themselves.

He chose the Anabasis of Xenophon for one of our first readings, because it is one of the more journalistic of the Greek histories-- "we marched thus and so many parasangs this day and arrived at x" etc, but as we read other works (the Crito, parts of the Illiad, and various plays) the professor continued to point out real differences between the ancient and modern world views.

I'm not a classicist, and I expect there's many a dissertation arguing about what made them tick but I have consistently found in my reading that these observations seem to hold merit.

There is a lot to learn from reading original texts, but I bear in mind that they are essentially anecdotal and the relative importance of incidents is determined by values other than those we hold as modern historians and simulators.

I do recommend Lendon's book http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2006/2006-02-14.html I may be partial to it because it reinforces and expands on my previous understanding, but it should be fun for anyone interested in this broader classical period of warfare. Another work about the mindset of the ancients--and more controversial--is Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.

[Kineas1]

I respect anyone who ready classical languages--I read Greek myself.

I understand that there are many ways of interpreting the past. I guess that as a classicist who is also a former professional soldier, I don't agree with Lendon. On the one hand (Men, so to speak) there is an element of Tyche to any conflict--but on the other, had Greeks not been able to link tactical philosophy with expected outcome, they wouldn't have created a dynamic tactical system that demonstrated itslef capable of adapting to hundreds of years of sharply dfdifferent challenges.
There's a notion out there among classicists--a Victorian notion that needs to be squashed--that the Classical world was slow to change and somehow irrational (be fair, that's what Ledon is arguing). yt this culture goes from Euripedes to Aristophanes to Meleager in 200 years--from Hesiod to Socrates to Plato to Epictetus. It's very flexible and very rational culture. Why on earth would they not practice these intellectual disciplines with war, somethign they all did and all had in common? And considering that the Hoplite culture beat most of its opponents and endured as long as there were educated graduates of the system to fill the ranks (and kept winning)--why would we choose to believe that their historians--or their soldiers--failed to understand?

The military history world is full of people who don't sufficiently understand the tactical developments of the period 1660 to 1820 to understand how profound the changes in the so-called "horse and musket" period were. I spent a great deal of time learning the differences, the changes in evolutions, in technology, in society that drove them. And that's for a period about which we know a great deal--we have, for instance, 70 tactical manuals for the French army alone.
I agree that ancient authors often write for different reasons, and have different reasons for presenting data. But that doesn't rob the data of value, and it doesn't mean that the writers were unable to think critically about something as central to their lives as war. It just means that WE don't understand it very well.

If the Greeks attributed all actions to fate (and do you mean Moira or Tyche/Fortuna?0 then what was Thucydides writing about?

So--I still disagree. Strongly.

Christian

[pezhetairoi]

Well back to sources ...

Many of you will be familiar with this.
Xenophon, Anabasis (The Persian Expedition)
(Rex Warner translation, Penguin Classics)

Book III, Chapter III "Slings and arrows"
" Xenophon then came to the conclusion that they should drive the enemy back, and this was done by the hoplites and peltasts who were with him in the rearguard. In the pursuit, however, they failed to catchy a single one of the enemy. This was because the Greeks had no cavalry, and their infantry could not, over a short distance, catch up with the enemy infantry, who ran away when they were still some way off ... "

much further down the page
"When we drive them back, it is not possible for us to pursue them over much of a distance from the main army, and in a short distance no infantryman, however fast he runs, can catch up with another infantryman, who has a bow-shot's start ahead of him. Therefore, if we are going to prevent them from having the power to harm us on the march, we must get a hold of slingers and cavalry as soon as we can. "

later still
"On the next day about fifity horses and cavalrymen were passed fit for service. They were provided with leather jerkins and breastplates, and Lycius ... was given command of the cavalry."

Chapter IV
"When Mithridates caught them up and the sling stones and arrows began to arrive, a trumpet sounded, and immediately those who had been ordered to do so ran forward in a body and the cavalry made their charge. The enemy did not wait for them, but fled back to the watercourse. Many of the native infantry were killed in the pursuit and about eighteen of their cavalry were taken alive in the watercourse. "


So Xenophon, an original source, seems to assume that we know cavalry can catch foot. He writes that having cavalry (as well as slingers) would help solve his problem with the lightly equipped Persian archer. These few cavalry are armoured and equipped/optimized for close combat. He seems to suggest (without saying it) that the distance of a bow-shot wasn't an issue for the cavalry.

I think that if there is any wargammer mythology here, it is the striking differences between light horse and cavalry. I would bet they were quite similar back then. One might be optimized for a certain task, or hold a certain advantage, but not so black and white.

**I've just noticed that this passage is the same as Kineas' but a different translation. I hope we draw the same
conclusions...!!**

[ars_belli]

Many thanks for the citations from Xenophon. In Book 3 of the Anabasis, it is clear that the Persian forces are comprised of line infantry, foot archers and slingers, and horse archers. Also, in Chapter 4 Xenophon points out that during the pursuit the Persians were fleeing into a ravine - in fact, that was the entire point of the tactics employed by the Greek commander. For those interested in reading further, here is a link to an online translation: http://www.scribd.com/doc/337907/Anabas ... -by-Dakyns

As Simon and others have pointed out, Cv can catch LF in FoG - just not as easily as LH, especially when the LF have a running start. It would seem to me that in FoG, Greek Cv would be perfectly capable of catching both HF and LF impeded by a ravine as described the Anabasis, without needing to change the rules to make it inevitable for Cv to 'run down' LF in open terrain.

Just my two drachmai worth.

Scott

[Kineas1]

Xenophon's Hellenica 4.5.1 and following, where Iphicrates and his peltasts manage to defeat a Spartan Moira.

"And Callias formed his hoplites in line of battle not far from the city, while Iphicrates with his peltasts attacked the Lacedaemonian regiment. Now when the Lacedaemonians were being attacked with javelins, and several men had been wounded and several others slain, they directed the shield-bearers to take up these wounded men and carry them back to Lechaeum; and these were the only men in the regiment who were really saved. Then the polemarch ordered the first ten year-classes to drive off their assailants. [15] But when they pursued, they caught no one, since they were hoplites pursuing peltasts at the distance of a javelin's cast; for Iphicrates had given orders to the peltasts to retire before the hoplites got near them; and further, when the Lacedaemonians were retiring from the pursuit, being scattered because each man had pursued as swiftly as he could, the troops of Iphicrates turned about, and not only did those in front again hurl javelins upon the Lacedaemonians, but also others on the flank, running along to reach their unprotected side. Indeed, at the very first pursuit the peltasts shot down nine or ten of them. And as soon as this happened, they began to press the attack much more boldly. [16] Then, as the Lacedaemonians continued to suffer losses, the polemarch again ordered the first fifteen year-classes to pursue. But when these fell back, even more of them were shot down than at the first retirement. And now that the best men had already been killed, the horsemen joined them, and with the horsemen they again undertook a pursuit. But when the peltasts turned to flight, at that moment the horsemen managed their attack badly; for they did not chase the enemy until they had killed some of them, but both in the pursuit and in the turning backward kept an even front with the hoplites. And what with striving and suffering in this way again and again, the Lacedaemonians themselves kept continually becoming fewer and fainter of heart, while their enemies were becoming bolder, and those who attacked them continually more numerous.

Xenophon explains that the failure of the cavalry to catch the Peltasts was due to bad leadership. I offer this example only to show that it could happen. italics are mine.

(quotation lifted entire from the Perseus Project)

I'll add that Xenophon, for all his failings as an historian, demonstrates by way of his inquest into the failure of the Spartans that he doesn't think it's all fate. He thinks the cavalry commander and the Polemarch made some mistakes that could have been avoided, or that's my reading.

Any idea where ancient peltasts and their equivalent got more javelins? They only seem to carry two--that wouldn't seem to last very long in a fight like the one described, where they are driven off by successive charges of the year groups and then come forward again to shoot/throw at the Spartans.

[ars_belli]

Xenophon's Hellenica 4.5.1 and following, where Iphicrates and his peltasts manage to defeat a Spartan Moira... [Cited passage deleted for brevity.]

Xenophon explains that the failure of the cavalry to catch the Peltasts was due to bad leadership. I offer this example only to show that it could happen.

Another excellent citation. I don't have a copy of immortal Fire, but wouldn't the 'upgraded' peltasts of Iphicrates be rated as MF in FoG?

Cheers,
Scott

[WhiteKnight]

This last was an interesting quote from Xenophon and one I've never read. Guess it may show that timid (or timidly-led) cavalry don't want to get out of safe distance of supporting foot, giving skirmishing foot the chance to keep a safe distance at all times and persist in their harrassing tactics. Maybe the horsemen were few in number and the enemy skirmishers far more numerous?

Modelling this in FOG, would the "peltasts" not have to be LF as MF can't skirmish or shoot with javelins? The quote certainly suggests LF tactics, although army lists make reference to "Iphicratean hoplites" who are MF...but I don't think these are the guys these spartans are fighting. In FOG, this could happen anyhow if the horse charge and roll a VMD of 1...which I guess is where it all started!

Martin

[Jhykron]

No, Iphicrates was leading regular "run of the mill" light infantry peltasts here.

His rearming of Hoplites with oval "pelte" is a different occasion entirely, and all the Iphicratean hoplites/peltasts you see in other lists are based on a hypothesis that this style caught on, and is the "missing link" between the classic Hoplite and later Thyreophoroi.

[ars_belli]

No, Iphicrates was leading regular "run of the mill" light infantry peltasts here.

His rearming of Hoplites with oval "pelte" is a different occasion entirely, and all the Iphicratean hoplites/peltasts you see in other lists are based on a hypothesis that this style caught on, and is the "missing link" between the classic Hoplite and later Thyreophoroi.

Ahhh... many thanks for the clarification!

So to summarize, Callias' horsemen were unable to chase away Xenophon's peltasts, because they were unwilling to move faster than their own Lacedaemonian hoplites. Once again, it sounds like FoG would be able to handle this particular scenario quite well, without requiring any rules changes.

Cheers,
Scott

[DaiSho]

Hello,

The other day I witnessed a first game between the Later Carthaginians and Late Republican Romans, using the starter armies for each respective list.

Anyway, on one flank a unit of Carthaginian cavalry was facing a unit of Roman slingers, in open terrain. Naturally they charged... the slingers evaded... same thing next turn, and next turn... the player with the slingers would always move to 4 inches away on his turn, thus staying safe (though not always able to shoot).

Unless I'm missing something... if a player is competent, and not extremely unlucky on his random move distance dice (6-1), a unit of light foot can never be caught by cavalry. That seems a bit obtuse, so I have to assume I'm missing something.

Help!

Thanks.

I'm not sure that this is not reasonable. Firstly, the distance moved by Cavalry vs Infantry has ALWAYS been exaggerated in my opinion. Particularly in campaign use, Cavalry are likely to move LESS than Infantry. Horses need more graising time than infantry need feed time. During the Zulu wars Zulu warriors frequently kept up with British Cavalry.
In a tactical sense, yes, charging Cavalry move further than charging infantry, but only of the same sort. Horse skirmishers would be able to deal with foot skirmishers a lot easier than closer order mounted.

My opinion anyway.

Ian

[mikekh]

What's the issue? Played a game last night - Light Foot got caught by cavalry, light foot died in a couple of turns.

[Strategos69]

I agree with the arguments that state that cavalry movement has been overestimated in both campaign and tactical games, but the issue here is much more simple: in a short ride, shouldn't the cavalry have more chances to catch enemy skirmishers? I think that the answer is YES . First for the historical reasons exposed. Second for game reasons: there are some armies (Mid Roman, for example that has a little proportion of Light Horse that should only be played in certain campaigns), that will not be able to catch enemy skirmishers and, what is worse, it will let to play some armies unhistorically (I have never heard about of putting foot skirmishers to distract enemy cavalry).

I agree that cavalry needs a really flat surface to be able to catch foot easily but that is why we have the distinction between uneven and open terrain. I simply think that cavalry should run 6 MU in the open and may be uneven terrain should be more common than other types. I don't know if it has been tried out (Cav 6 MU) as I haven't been a tester but I would like to know why this has been discarded. Would be the cavalry too powerful?

[mikekh]

Perhaps have a slightly different VMD for cavalry?
1->-1
2->normal
3->normal
4->+1
5->+2
6->+3

[Brainsnaffler]

Wow! Just getting into this thread and spent about an hour reading it all! For the record, I love the game. BUT, I also must protest at the skirmisher issue. To add another issue into the mix: in a game last night, Roman cavalry were chasing numidian light horse. Same principal as light foot, but the horsemen could fire backwards whilst retreating, so they could move up, fire, evade, fire turn fire, evade fire and so on.

My opponent was absolutely fed up with this as (quite rightly in my opinion) he thought "what is the point, where is the logic or the practical opportunity of turning and firing whilst the roman cavalry is charging all out after them?

I think this is something that also needs looking at with the LF issue. Can I get a hell yeah?

[babyshark]

I think this is something that also needs looking at with the LF issue. Can I get a hell yeah?

I can give you a qualified "Meh."

My personal feeling is that the rules get skirmishers just about right. They mostly harass and annoy the enemy's heavy troops, and can sometimes--either through luck or concentration of fire--break an enemy BG. Conversely, it is difficult, but not impossible, for the enemy to catch and kill them. In other words, skirmishers, both LH and LF, are useful but not overpowered. In a top-down game design that is exactly right.

Marc