maniple questions

[spqr_arcani]

I tried hard looking for good descriptions on the questions me below.
Sadly, I've been playing EB for like 3 months now, but verbal skills
is not my forte.

1. Describing a maniple.

I thought about the units I've been playing as Romani.
I can see the Roman infantry formation where men are spaced a little more
apart than in a phalanx. However, the triarii soldiers seem to be spaced closer together
than the hastati and principes, so spacing might not be the defining aspect of a maniple.

And I can see from the game that most Romani units carry pila, with the exception of
the triarii. It seems like carrying pila is not a defining aspect of a maniple either, since
you can have a maniple of triarii.

I played to the point where I'm invading Iberia. Iberian Milites throw javelins too, but that
doesn't make them a maniple.


2. How is a maniple more flexible than phalaxes?

Let's say a unit of 160 men in a maniple fought against 160 men in a phalangite formation
(say, Makedonian phalanx). Also assume they have same skill level.

I heard people say that maniples might be better because they are
more "flexible". But flexible how? I'm looking for specifics here.

If I were in the maniple side, I can throw at most
two pila to wear down the enemy a bit by killing some and hopefully at least making their shields
cumbersome. But I think I'd still be at a huge disadvantage with a forest of sarissas pointed at me,
and I'd have a hard time using my legionnaire shield to block them.

And especially if I'm in a unit that only uses the gladius, I'd have a hard time getting even
close to the Makedonian phalangite to thrust my gladius because of said forest of sarissas.'

I can see that phalaxes are harder to turn, and outflanking is probably the only if not best
strategy maniples have against them. Then again, this would probably require other maniples
to do the job, as you'd need one maniple to engage and "pin" the phalanx down.

I'd be ok if the answer is that the maniple doesn't really offer an advantage over phalaxes, and
that Romans used to win because of superior numbers, better macro-level military strategy, etc.

But here, I'm wondering whether "the same number of men in a maniple is better than the same
number of men in a phalanx with the same skill level".



----


I appreciate your patience.

Oh yes, and if you are knowledgeable and have time, please take a look at the entry
in wikipedia. I still don't have a concise way of describing a maniple after reading
the article.

[QuintusSertorius]

It's a limitation of the RTW engine that we can't actually have units in their correctly-sized tactical blocks. In which case you'd find phalanx units would be a lot bigger. Especially later Successor phalanxes, which tended to be much deeper.

Point is that a phalanx has a lot of men not doing very much, it's psychologically impressive (and stops the men in it from running away easily), but tactically inefficient. By contrast more of the men in a maniple can actually be put into contact with the enemy.

Furthermore, the phalanx is strong at the front, but weak at the sides and rear. Some of the later phalangites had no training in their backup weapon, and some didn't have a backup at all.

[/Bean\]

I always thought that maniples were flexible in relation to armies. A line on phalanx's are continuous and basically 'hold the line', where as maniples can break apart, moving around the enemie or obsticles to envelop them.

[QuintusSertorius]

I always thought that maniples were flexible in relation to armies. A line on phalanx's are continuous and basically 'hold the line', where as maniples can break apart, moving around the enemie or obsticles to envelop them.

They are; what's more they have assigned officers empowered to make local decisions on the displacement of their men. The officers in a phalanx aren't given the initiative to change what's going on, because cohesion is what a phalanx depends on.

[abou]

Some of the later phalangites had no training in their backup weapon, and some didn't have a backup at all.Huh?

[Ibrahim]

Huh?

just as lost.

[Vorian]

Huh?

Late Macedonian kingdom was nearly bankrupt by the time thr Romans arrived. Not much money for training soldiers. This is also the reason they didn't field heavy cavalry as the original doctrine instructs (hammer and anvil) resulting in ultra-phalanxes that got too inflexible and owned by the Romans.

IMO, if they had faced an original Macedonian army with the first phalanxes and the Hetairoi in full power they would have lost badly.

[QuintusSertorius]

Huh?

Macedonian phalangites at Pydna weren't trained in their swords, when they had swords at all.

[abou]

Macedonian phalangites at Pydna weren't trained in their swords, when they had swords at all.
Where did you read that?

[QuintusSertorius]

Where did you read that?

Probably Goldsworthy, and now I'm going to have to dig it up...

...Goldsworthy in In the Name of Rome (at p103, talking of Aemilius Paullus and the battle of Pydna in 168BC):


Gradually small groups of Romans infiltrated the Macedonian line. A legionary was primarily a swordsman, whou could, if required fight effectively as an individual. A Macedonian equipped with a 21 foot sarissa could only fight as part of a group. Once the Romans began to attack each knot of pikemen from the flanks the battle became very one-sided. Some Macedonians dropped their cumbersome weapons and drew their side arms, but the men were poorly trained and badly equipped for this sort of work.

I don't remember exactly where I read that in some instances this sole reliance on the phalanx in it's primary mode in the later periods extended beyond not training phalangites properly, to the extreme of not even bothering to equip them with a side arm.

[bovi]

My understanding of it would be that they were primarily trained in the phalanx-fighting with sarissa rather than being flanked. It doesn't say they were untrained. I would also understand it that their sidearms are not ideal for these flanking situations, rather than that they do not have them.

There is also the problem of the switch. You're locked in a tight formation while your mate on the side falls. You're going to have a problem breaking loose with sarissas all over restricting your movement (held underhand as well, unless I've mistaken the way to fight with these awfully long pikes, so you'd have to duck under them). I imagine there are plenty of opportunities for a swordsman to strike during that time.

[konny]

Don't forgett that the shields of the phalangites were absolutly useless in individual combat. Equipped with Scuta, the Romans didn't need to be superior swordfighters to have had the better end for them.

[QuintusSertorius]

My understanding of it would be that they were primarily trained in the phalanx-fighting with sarissa rather than being flanked. It doesn't say they were untrained. I would also understand it that their sidearms are not ideal for these flanking situations, rather than that they do not have them.

There is also the problem of the switch. You're locked in a tight formation while your mate on the side falls. You're going to have a problem breaking loose with sarissas all over restricting your movement (held underhand as well, unless I've mistaken the way to fight with these awfully long pikes, so you'd have to duck under them). I imagine there are plenty of opportunities for a swordsman to strike during that time.

Men with secondary training against men using their primary mode. Still not much of a contest given the reality that secondary training wasn't very good.

It's that whole thing with fighting that ultimately you fight what you know. How realistic is the secondary training going to be when they rarely come up against primary swordsmen like that?

It's as bad as certain martial arts teaching you how to "counter" other martial arts when it's something they don't actually teach to any kind of standard. Like striking arts that don't teach grappling claiming to know how to defeat grapplers and vice versa.

[cmacq]

I tried hard looking for good descriptions on the questions me below.
Sadly, I've been playing EB for like 3 months now, but verbal skills
is not my forte.

1. Describing a maniple.

2. How is a maniple more flexible than phalaxes?



1) The Roman maniple was a term given a unit within a method of organizing troops in the field. It was not a method of equipping, training, or tactical use of said unit or troops. The manipular armies represent the pre-Marian method of organization which was based partially upon social class and partially on age and military experience.

2) Its big advantages over other formations were flexibility, redundance, compartmentalization, integrability (as components), and maneuverability. I believe that the manipular formation was based on fifteen, eight-man teams plus a captain (head man) for a total of 121 men (maybe 122). At the low end I think the rational for this type of organization was founded on the optimum number of men that can effectively cooperate as a team, as demonstrated in agricultural work gangs. At the high end the size of maniple may be related to the optimum number of teams a single leader could effectively control. If so, in this respect these numbers and the type of organization were not unique to the Romans.

As for the diminutive size of this unit, it appears that early on, the vast majority of military engagements were very small skirmishes or raids with at most a total of several hundred combatants. When formal battles did occur it was rare to include more the 10,000 men on either side, until the Pyrrhic and Punic wars. Even during these larger conflicts the vast majority of individual tactical engagements seem to have remained very small. I think the role of the maniple was usurped, in the post-Marian period by the centuria unit. Here the manipule term may have been retained to some degree as a tactical concept when paired groupings of centuria were employed.

[Nachtmeister]

I don't have any literature backups for this but basically as I understand it any given unit in RTW/EB is in effect a "maniple" in that it is a "unit block" of soldiers acting together but independent of the rest of the army on the battlefield; in this respect the phalanx units actually resemble roman maniples more than the original phalanxes.
See also https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=2015196#post2015196