Slitherine

Lets not forget we have sometimes a vision blured by the "romantic" thoughts of our recent past.
We might have wrong ideas seeing the savage barbaric german tribes charging head on the drilled proud "evolved" romans.

As Badahbum say history is written by the victors.....

Jilu
"who won Waterloo? Wellington or the Prussians? Or maybe did Napoleon "the Oger" lose because he concealed the Prussian advance to his generals/troops hmmmmmm can we be objective?"
"why did Hanibal not march on Rome? was it because he, feared doing it? or just because he wanted to regain sicily to Cartago? and make the allied cities to rome go in revolt to lessen the political power of rome? and so stop the war

And equally I think we can let trendy revisionism blur thoughts of our past.

Roman historians were not a propaganda arm of the State. In any case most of the ones that have come down to us were writing several decades after the events they described. Some of them were undeniably patriots. That would not lead them to commit direct falsehoods. Others, like today's historians, would have been of an intellectual, independent and thoughtful frame of mind and many of them would have had a modern historian's instinct to seek the truth.

They gave full credit to enemies of Rome they considered brave/cunning.

They did not attempt to cover up embarassing facts eg, that the Romans outnumbered Hannibal at Cannae (or embarassing non-military facts like the lunacy of some of the Emperors).

The view they preserved of Rome's enemies would have been broadly accurate (if tainted by prejudice around the edges) and the view presented of "barbarians" is pretty uniform across all ancient authors, including Caesar who was on the scene and who took care to go into some detail on Gallic demography and culture. Unless you think there was some massive Roman conspiracy, across several generations of historians, to present an utterly false view of the barbarians to posterity?

Different pictures were presented of, say, the Numidians, the Jews, Pontus, the Seleucids, the Parthians. Its nonsense to suggest that Roman historians just lumped all their enemies together under the heading "hairy barbarians".

And of course the fact the Romans were around for 700+ years to write all this "victors' history" speaks volumes in itself.

This is not to say the Romans were more "evolved". Just that their legions happened to be the Premier troops of the ancient world. Personally I would have loved to see Vercingetorix give Caesar a damn good hiding and send him back legionless across the Rubicon to face treason charges. But alas it didn't happen and wargamers have to work with that.

Similarly, there's no way around it, the Persians performed embarassingly badly every time they came up against Greeks either classical or Macedonian. An uncomfortable thought but there we are. At both Marathon and Plataea, in situations that should have been unlosable for the Persians, the Greeks solved the problem by the simple expedient of charging headlong into them

Aha, you say, Greek propaganda! Then why did Herodotus praise the Persians' extreme bravery? To make the Greeks look better? Then why did he say the initial Persian response was so pathetic?

Eques wrote:Similarly, there's no way around it, the Persians performed embarassingly badly every time they came up against Greeks either classical or Macedonian. An uncomfortable thought but there we are. At both Marathon and Plataea, in situations that should have been unlosable for the Persians, the Greeks solved the problem by the simple expedient of charging headlong into them

This is incorrect. Persians beat the Greeks in several battles. In the time of Cyrus, all the Ionian Greek cities were defeated. Later, in the Ionian revolt, the Greeks were defeated at the battles of Ephesus, Marsyas, Labruanda, Malene. In at least some of these battles, it seems the Persians were able to properly use their cavalry, which the Greeks couldn't really deal with. The Ionian cities were every bit as Greek and every bit as powerful as Athens and Sparta.

The Greeks of the West were certainly well aware of the danger of the Persian cavalry. The Athenians at Marathon kept on the defensive with secured flanks until the Persian cavalry were embarked. They were then able to close with and defeat the Persian infantry. The cavalry were such a factor that for decades after in Athens the phrase "the cavalry are away" was used to mean "the advantage has swung in our favour". Thermopylae is usually painted up as a heroic greek defence, as indeed it was. But the Persians won the battle, and pacified much of Greece in the months that followed.

Certainly if the Greek Phalanx could get into the Persian foot in decent numbers they beat it after a sturggle, and so Hoplites do in FOG. The main tactical situation was presumably whether you could do so without the persian cavalry outflanking you.

grahambriggs wrote:Thermopylae is usually painted up as a heroic greek defence, as indeed it was. But the Persians won the battle

Yeah, BUT there were ONLY 300 greeks there. Not one more.

Propaganda - isn't it a wonderful thing?

Fair enough, good points.

grahambriggs wrote:
Certainly if the Greek Phalanx could get into the Persian foot in decent numbers they beat it after a sturggle, and so Hoplites do in FOG.

Is that still the case in V2, do you know? after the changes to support shooting and Armour?

Yeah, BUT there were ONLY 300 greeks there. Not one more

They were more than 300 greeks . There were 300 spartans who stayed behind with +/- 1400 other greeks ...so that makes a rearguard of 1700 greeks . . he original force is estimated at 7000 hoplites a bit more than a mere 300 .

The greeks were defending a passage with a steep hill/cliff on one side and the sea on the other . So the persians could only go forward or shoot for a long time ...

Now we will never know what happened exactly . Why did the greeks really retreat, was it a retreat or a subttle plan that did go wrong . it has been suggested that the rearguard was there to attract the enney and the retreating 5000 greeks were to turn back and catch the persians from behind but obviously they did not come back ...now we can only say : they died where they were ....the persians won the battle .

bahdahbum wrote:

Yeah, BUT there were ONLY 300 greeks there. Not one more

They were more than 300 greeks . There were 300 spartans who stayed behind with +/- 1400 other greeks ...so that makes a rearguard of 1700 greeks . . he original force is estimated at 7000 hoplites a bit more than a mere 300 .

The greeks were defending a passage with a steep hill/cliff on one side and the sea on the other . So the persians could only go forward or shoot for a long time ...

Now we will never know what happened exactly . Why did the greeks really retreat, was it a retreat or a subttle plan that did go wrong . it has been suggested that the rearguard was there to attract the enney and the retreating 5000 greeks were to turn back and catch the persians from behind but obviously they did not come back ...now we can only say : they died where they were ....the persians won the battle .

Sorry, I couldn't lay the sarcasm on any thicker in my original post.

I guess I could have written a disclaimer saying that I knew there were more than only the 300 Spartans, but I thought the 'Propaganda' comment made that obvious.

Ahh well.

Persians were extreemly brave ! hurling Rhinos, giants, mamoths at a few 300 spartans...


GRINZZ

And do not forget : ROMANS are better ....long live Silvio ....

Eques wrote:Fair enough, good points.

grahambriggs wrote:
Certainly if the Greek Phalanx could get into the Persian foot in decent numbers they beat it after a sturggle, and so Hoplites do in FOG.

Is that still the case in V2, do you know? after the changes to support shooting and Armour?

Caveat: I'm only partway through rading the new rules so I may get a few bits wrong. But it seems to me, assuming armoured hoplites, protected sparabara and armoured immortals in the open:

The Greeks are more likely to be able to catch the drilled Immortals due to the manouvre restrictions. In v1 Immortals could dance around the battlefield in a highly unhistoric manner. The hoplites will also deploy an extra 2MU in, and be less easily slowed by skirmishers, which will help getting to contact.

The Persians will be a bit better at impact as the support shooting loses the -1. Not the biggest change as you only get 1 die per base width and a 5 is now a hit. So one extra hit per 6 base frontages, on average. However, since the front rank will be at equal factors the support shooting is all "gravy" for the Persians. So there's a little higher chance of the hoplites disrupting at impact, but certainly not enough for the persian foot to seek out this fight. I still don't like this mechanism - no evidence that the Greeks disrupted - but prepared to go with it on the grounds that it's a general rule set not specific to this period.

Once the melee is joined the Greeks are at a + because of their spears. So no more ++ against the protected undrilled foot.

So, let's assume a two deep 6 base unit on either side, and for simplicity that the dice all roll average. The Greeks have 3 hits, the Persians 2. So the Persians get a test on a -2 (1 hit per 2 bases, MF in the open) and 50% lose a base. If the Persians pass their tests, they can hold on for a bit. As soon as they fail, they're doomed. They are a little more likely to pass than in v1 (they often would test on a -3) so should last longer before going down the morale hill. This seems historical - Persians OK as long as the mantlet wall holds, once it fails they are slaughtered.

So, all in all, I'd say the Greek chances of getting to contact have improved, and they'll do for the persian foot in melee. They will have a scary moment at impact, but not enough for it to be a winning fight for the Persians.

So the Persians get a test on a -2

The Persians will test on -3 as there's now -1 for losing Impact.

kevinj wrote:

So the Persians get a test on a -2

The Persians will test on -3 as there's now -1 for losing Impact.

there is in the impact phase, but I was refering to the melee phase.

Oops!

I think the changes in the armoured hoplite/Persian infantry interaction give the Persians more of a chance in the same way the
Barbarians vs Romans interaction has changed.

That said, when we refought Platea recently the Persians walloped the Greeks, including the Spartans, quite decisively in V1 but it is a game after all so luck plays a part which is where my games tend to come apart.

Flipside is my Classical Indians should do better. So some "winners" and some "losers" but if your army is a loser maybe you can't see a balance.
Not having played a game yet I think V2 is going to be a better game. All I need is better luck

Vespasian28 wrote:I think the changes in the armoured hoplite/Persian infantry interaction give the Persians more of a chance in the same way the
Barbarians vs Romans interaction has changed.

It will be interesting to see. I think the hoplites may be up on the deal in fact:

- deploy 2MU further in, less delayed by skirmishers, and the Immortal dance team has been shackled so more chance of catching them.

- arrows still bounce off armoured foot. True, the imapct is a little more scary for the hoplites.

- the melee is still ghastly for the Persians, just not double ghastly.