View Full Version : Balance - Give me a break!!!!
So I was playing around with all the new units (new to the factions since MTW1). Just doing simple 1 on 1 on grassy plain battles, checking various strengths and weakness'.
So just for a goof I try some Aztec units. Turns out the "Jaguar Warriors" are the best infantry unit in the vanilla game. They even stomp the JHI.
Someone wake me up
pevergreen
01-22-2007, 05:52
Aztecs have incredible morale.
Aztecs own in melee. To beat them you need gunpowder. That how it happened in real life.
(I have not gotten to the point of having the new world open up, so dont take that as a stratagey, ive heard it, thats all.)
The Aztecs are fanatic. You need something to reach out and touch them with, while keeping them at arm's length. Gunpowder and pikes are useful, in that regard.
People don't always realize how touch Aztecs actually were. If taking over the New World had been a strictly military affair then Cortez wouldn't have stood a chance. Before Tenochtitlan was taken and destroyed the Spanish lost as many battles as they won. Aztec equipment was pretty good too, their armor was surprisingly resistant to blades and there was documentation of macanas - obsidian-lined clubs - decapitating a horse in one blow:
"Pedro de Moron, was a very good horseman, and as he charged with three other horsemen into the ranks of the enemy the Indians seized hold of his lance and he was not able to drag it away, and others gave him cuts with their broadswords, and wounded him badly, and then they slashed at the mare, and cut her head off at the neck so that it hung by the skin, and she fell dead."
From the memoirs of Bernal Diaz del Castillo, a soldier under Cortez. So yes, don't underestimate the Aztecs :P
Saying that it was like that in real life is a bit much... I mean, they didn't even have steel! they would fight practicaly naked, with clubs of flint! That would mean that they could own in melee a bunch if lightly armored spaniards, but armored knights? no way... they could hack at them for a year, but no stone club or spear could punch through layers of plate, mail and padded armor...
pevergreen
01-22-2007, 06:09
Obsidian club.
Harder than some steel.
They were uber.
Anything different is just WIFOM.
Blademun
01-22-2007, 06:33
just a quick FYI, Properly chipped obsidian produces one of the sharpest edges known to man. However, it does not keep that edge for more then a couple blows against anything harder then flesh.
Without smallpox Cortez would have been massacred. The one pitched battle he actually fought he lost and badly.
pike master
01-22-2007, 06:50
give it up guys they were cannon fodder ive used pikes on em and if you get them to work right they do a good job but i also used forlorn hope, two handers and some swiss guard i created to see how they worked. they all did all right but the fun i really had was that the whole army was bunched up in a little ball in a city street so im looking at it and my soldiers are just a short distance away and they aint attacking me so i wheeled a grand bombard up set it on solid shot and ripped loose on em several times at point blank.lol
i also had some created elephants and sent them in from another direction and man i really think that they started from scratch on these elephants as far as mechanics. in rome they had to tusk you up in the air to kill you but now all they have to do is step on you lol.
IrishArmenian
01-22-2007, 07:33
But I do have a problem with their obsidian weapons. How are they better than steel?
Empirate
01-22-2007, 09:09
Their weapons are not better than steel. But for a few blows, they're also not much worse than steel. Jaguar Guards are not "practically naked", but wearing very sophisticated armor that protects well against all edged and blunt weapons. JHI are a specialist unit in that they're not as heavily armored as some others. Both units have superior training, but Jaguars fight as if on psychoactive substances... which they may well have been. They weren't expected to reach old age, after all. Also, pitting JHI against Jaguars is one ahistorical battle to start with, so don't worry about this too much, OK?
MilesGregarius
01-22-2007, 11:43
But I do have a problem with their obsidian weapons. How are they better than steel?
As Empirate said, not better, but not altogether worse. Obsidian holds one off the sharpest edges imaginable (think broken glass) and is therefore devestating against bare flesh. Even though the obsidian edges would shatter against any hardened armor, the underlying wood club would remain an effective concussive weapon. With heavy armor, it's concussion, not cutting that is your best chance to inflict damage. Even Europeans used mauls and maces to crack heavy plate, not bladed weapons - steel, stone, or otherwise.
Orda Khan
01-22-2007, 12:10
I suspect the test was done unit v unit and not unit v heavily outnumbered unit. In a situation like that any Aztec unit should suffer badly
.......Orda
Aztecs I think were deliberately made quite tough to increase the challenge for the player and also to emphasize that people who can carve out an empire of 20 million people through conquest are usually pretty good fighters.
Jaguar warriors can take on and defeat 'fixed' pikemen if they kill enough in the initial charge. They will destroy the first rank or two of any unit they charge instantly. JHI don't even stand a chance against them.
There are various explanations as to why the Spaniards could beat them even when outnumbered (of course, the Spaniards had lots of native allies themselves). Steel armor, swords, pikes, horses, guns, discipline, better commanders, better military tradition. One other possibility is that 'civilized' Europeans are actually pretty formidable warriors themselves, especially mercenaries and professionals like Cortez and his drinking buddies.
As someone already mentioned before, current engine just cannot handle tens or even hundreds of thousands warriors Aztec empire could deploy at the time. So even if they are overpowered it should be ok, that's just to simulate their numbers.
BTW, Aztec were keen to capture their foes alive (clubs are a good choice for that) so they could be sacrificed later. Nice moral boost for them.
So give them low(er) stats and multiple hitpoints.
This makes them even worse as they can break up your formation more that way, that kills far more than crazy stats/animations ever will.
Ah, ok nevermind then (I've never tested it myself)
It's not easy portraying their advantage of numbers. Armies are capped at 20 units, the logistics of supplying an army across the Atlantic is not a factor, plus players more or less know what to expect and will drop several full stacks of elite troops in the New World, so you get Old Worlders taking on Aztecs in roughly equal numbers rather than tiny mercenary expeditions vastly outnumbered by native warriors. My first Spanish expedition to the New World actually outnumbered the Aztec armies it faced, not including the 20 or so units of native warriors I hired on arrival and the constant stream of mounted and foot Conquistadores pouring out of the captured settlements. Besides which, having too many Aztecs on screen will hurt framerates.
Ah, ok nevermind then (I've never tested it myself)
I've never tested it to the degree you suggested but I have noticed 2HP units do better against pikes as those that make it through the first 2 rows of pikes survive longer.
Without smallpox Cortez would have been massacred. The one pitched battle he actually fought he lost and badly.
While true, it might have less to do with comparable quality of arms rather than number of troops.
I think in the largest field battle Cortez fought, at Otumba, he mainly won through the power of his cavalry. The Aztecs had never seen a good ol' fashioned cavalry charge at full tilt before and when Cortez went gunning for the Aztec leaders the entire native army began to rout - all ten thousands of them. I believe Pizarro pulled something similar in the same battle where he captured the Sapa Inca.
Aztecs have incredible morale.
Aztecs own in melee. To beat them you need gunpowder. That how it happened in real life.
What happened in real life was an extremely complicated affair, and we can be 100% positive that it is not in anyway accurately modelled in MTW. Therefore, I see no real reason in complaining about the unit balance.
You are not going to see a field battle in MTW where 300 spaniards route tens of thousands of Aztecs who run away mostly unscathed into the jungle.
One other possibility is that 'civilized' Europeans are actually pretty formidable warriors themselves, especially mercenaries and professionals like Cortez and his drinking buddies.
Europeans are probably the most murderously effective and utterly brutal warriors history has seen. There is almost no other comparison to how tiny bands of European mercenaries and professional soldiers would just go out into Africa, South America, the middle east, etc, and just annhilate entire cultures, all while being horrendously outnumbered. The breathtaking arrogance of such enterprises is only matched by how often they succeeded. It's really truly amazing, and makes for far more interesting reading than most Fantasy Series :)
What happened in real life was an extremely complicated affair, and we can be 100% positive that it is not in anyway accurately modelled in MTW. Therefore, I see no real reason in complaining about the unit balance.
I agree with that.
The new world is basically a fantasy scenario in the game -- and perhaps more importantly one that is almost guaranteed to never make much of a difference in terms of the outcome of a campaign.
The concept that the Aztec had enormous morale seems a bit inconsistent with the fact they lost some of their largest cities to remarkably few men.
The Aztecs Empire was based on fear, spread partially through human sacrifice, and attrition through constant low-intensity warfare. In that sort of situation you find many people willing to switch sides for the promise of protection from the authorities.
As for remarkably few men - the Spanish usually had plenty of men, but the vast majority were native auxiliaries. They often could field as many soldiers as the Aztecs could while only having several hundred actual conquistadores.
The Aztecs Empire was based on fear, spread partially through human sacrifice, and attrition through constant low-intensity warfare. In that sort of situation you find many people willing to switch sides for the promise of protection from the authorities.
As for remarkably few men - the Spanish usually had plenty of men, but the vast majority were native auxiliaries. They often could field as many soldiers as the Aztecs could while only having several hundred actual conquistadores.
Well, yes and no.
Cortez landed with about 500 men. The Tlaxcala fought him at first, but eventually allied with him.
Cortez plus 3000 Tlaxcala massacred the second largest Aztec city (Cholula).
As things went on, Cortez gained a bigger and bigger native army, but in some of the early campaigns he had a very small force. And, as someone mentioned at the battle of Otumba he routed hundreds of thousands of Aztecs with a single cavalry charge of less than 100 men.
And we talk about cav being over-powered!
Snoil The Mighty
01-23-2007, 02:39
I'm about as sure as I could be that the Aztecs are buffed to make the "side-mission" of the new world at least a bit of a challenge. As has been said before, this is a game with with historical basis and flavor. It is not a trip in Professor Peabody's Wayback Machine. If it was, all you'd have to do is land, watch as smallpox ravages the New World settlements until they are around 10-20% of their initial strength and take the area over due to the ensuing power vaccuum. So the idea of Aztecs being fairly heavily buffed instead of historically spot on is not too worrisome to me. It makes stealing their chocolate more rewarding :2thumbsup:
I know very little about Aztec armies in military history but I think they are usually considered to be similar to feudal armies in terms of troop quality; ie only a small fraction of the 10,000 men or so in a typical army are serious warriors, usually equal to or maybe slightly outnumbering the Spaniards they faced. The rest may carry spears and look intimidating, but they won't stand against the likes of European soldiers, so you get entire armies distintegrating almost instantly when their leaders are attacked, just like Alexander against Darius, with only a few die-hard elites sticking around for the stabbing part. It was like that wherever the European conquerors went; they defeated enormous native armies that were a lot less formidable than they appeared to be. European armies were by this time homogenous, disciplined and hardened to the most bitter styles of face-to-face fighting in history. Their weapons and armor, if a little crude and erm, blunt, were extremely effective and technologically advanced. They usually went through the enemy like a hot knife through butter, until they engaged the enemy elite head-on in roughly equal numbers. Once those elites were beaten, the huge amounts of lesser warriors were reduced to so much chaff in the wind. Small, disciplined elite forces trump larger, unwieldly and mediocore forces throughout history. The Aztecs had warriors that could match the Spaniards in bravery and combat prowess, but these were in small enough numbers that the Spanish were not as badly outnumbered as may first appear. The rest that comprised the bulk of the Aztecs forces were basically useless against disciplined, effective troops like the Conquistadores.
This observation is not to demean European soldiers or their achievements, but it seems to be part of the explanation for their stunning victories.
Edit: There were some other civilizations that relied on large numbers of disciplined professional or semi-professional soldiers. The Ottomans, I think (but not the Mamluks), the Chinese (who invented the concept in the first place), and some of the better African nations spring to mind here.
I was playing a LAN battle the other day against a mate - I went the mongols and he the aztecs. I saw his masses of infantry swarming across at me and charged them from several sides with my mongol heavy cav......[edit] DOWNHILL
I took some numbers but my cav evaporated in amongst the throng - BS :thumbsdown:
those lightly armored men shouldve been mush under the cavalrys hooves - no formation - no sheild or spear wall - GAH! :furious3:
Aztecs didn't fight naked. You're applying your ignorant stereotypes of native people to a situation you don't have any information about.
They had very effective armor, as has been pointed out more than once on this thread.
Snoil The Mighty
01-23-2007, 03:28
I was playing a LAN battle the other day against a mate - I went the mongols and he the aztecs. I saw his masses of infantry swarming across at me and charged them from several sides with my mongol heavy cav......[edit] DOWNHILL
I took some numbers but my cav evaporated in amongst the throng - BS :thumbsdown:
those lightly armored men shouldve been mush under the cavalrys hooves - no formation - no sheild or spear wall - GAH! :furious3:
All well and good but this IS the Citadel-a singleplayer forum.
Obsidian club.
Harder than some steel.
They were uber.
Anything different is just WIFOM.
MAN! I want some of what you are smoking!
OK here's the deal. You get [unpronouncable name here] armor which is basically padded leather and a big wooden club with those oh so impresive obsidian chips. I get medievil chain and plate armor... Ah hell, I'll take just plain ole scale male and a big cross hilted broadswoard.
When do you want to go? :2thumbsup:
Obsidian is glass. Yes, it is hard. However, I suggest you try punching through a halfway decent piece of sheet metal with a shard of glass then get back to us with the results.
Hardness doesn't matter if there isn't enough resilience to accomplish the task in an impact. Unless the guy in armor was going to sit there and let the aztec saw on him with the obidian, it wasn't doing much good on armor.
Except that the troops who went to the americas were only lightly armored. They weren't wearing advanced plate. They had lots of exposed areas, and those obsidian swords of the Aztecs are devastating against exposed flesh.
Except that the troops who went to the americas were only lightly armored. They weren't wearing advanced plate. They had lots of exposed areas, and those obsidian swords of the Aztecs are devastating against exposed flesh.
Well that's historical. But the question is one of, if instead of sending what was the current trend in continental warfare, they had sent plate or mailed troops instead? My only reservation would be sending heavier troops like that through the hot, humid jungle. A lot of the conquistadors were wearing breastplates designed to at least deflect musket fire. Obviously that was overkill for what the Aztecs had to fight with. Using lighter pieces more spread out would have certainly worked better against them.
Zenicetus
01-23-2007, 05:30
MAN! I want some of what you are smoking!
OK here's the deal. You get [unpronouncable name here] armor which is basically padded leather and a big wooden club with those oh so impresive obsidian chips. I get medievil chain and plate armor... Ah hell, I'll take just plain ole scale male and a big cross hilted broadswoard.
When do you want to go? :2thumbsup:
Okay, and you're also a thousand miles from home and family, you're malnourished, sick with dysentery, and the mosquitoes won't stop bothering you when you try to sleep at night. I know the local terrain... you don't. My faction is a warrior culture at the core, not something where being a soldier is optional. And my religion isn't based on trying to save your soul, but to cut out your heart for a glorious sacrifice. Yeah, let's go. :)
C'mon people... at the risk of repeating something that gets said too often here; it's a game, not a simulation. The game can't represent the imbalance in numbers with a 20 unit limit, so the natives are buffed. In terms of playability, that beats being forced to run through consecutive battles (that you can't exit from) to represent an advantage in numbers. Also, this is an end-game scenario, where you're assumed to be flush with cash and pumping out your most elite units. It's not supposed to be a cakewalk.
I'd like to see you justify how a nice strong breastplate protects heads, arms, groins, legs, necks..... ya know, just the few essential places given how people have arteries going just about everywhere.
pike master
01-23-2007, 05:42
almost certianly some of them are using fast attack animations like christian peasants. i myself personally was a bit surprised to see my zweihanders actually get worn down pretty good in a city assault and so i did cheat by making swiss halberdiers units and swiss pikemen and elephants for fun. but in the limited time frame of the game yu hardly have time to conquer it without hiring native mercenaries.
I'd like to see you justify how a nice strong breastplate protects heads, arms, groins, legs, necks..... ya know, just the few essential places given how people have arteries going just about everywhere.
I didn't. Read it again. I said it would have worked better if they had armor less tough in any one spot but more spread out... like previous generations had. Because it DIDN'T protect those areas when it was just a breastplate.
Snoil The Mighty
01-23-2007, 05:46
Except that the troops who went to the americas were only lightly armored. They weren't wearing advanced plate. They had lots of exposed areas, and those obsidian swords of the Aztecs are devastating against exposed flesh.
Good thing about that armor too (for the conquistadores that is)-I'd happily take homefield advantage in the form of a sweltering jungle with 98% humidity against clanking guys in 60 lbs of hot metal (or whatever the weights were by that time). Homefield advantage+religious warrior fervor would, to me anyway, echo a great line from Fight Club; "Skinny guys fight til they're hamburger". But, to echo my previous post on this thread:
I'm not at all upset the Aztecs are pretty buffed, history or not. This is a game with a historical basis and setting - not a direct replay of history. We have the history channel for that-THC for short. :2thumbsup: If it was supposed to be completely accurate, the Turks would have to be massively nerfed everytime they got to Vienna for instance. Historically it just turned out to be their Achille's Heel. But in-game, I can march Jannisaries down the Rhine-yay! Or more to the point of this thread, the Spaniards get to the New World and 15 turns later (30 years), you get all the NW settlements because smallpox worked it's bio-warfare magic, instead of pitched battles with fanatic jaguar warriors. It's a game first, and the New World is a bit of a "side mission" anyway. You can win the game for all factions, long and short, without ever producing an ocean-going vessel. There's enough historical flavor in the game that I enjoy and feel immersed in the setting when playing (and I don't speak for eveyone but it works for me), yet I get the fun of also dictating a new history with my own actions. And the Aztecs being tough makes it much more fun to take their chocolate and sell it at outrageous mark-up back in Europe :beam:
I didn't. Read it again. I said it would have worked better if they had armor less tough in any one spot but more spread out... like previous generations had. Because it DIDN'T protect those areas when it was just a breastplate.
Ah, posting while only paying half attention and damn near asleep is a bad thing. Forgive me.
Still, my point does stand (just not pointed at you)
Lord_hazard
01-23-2007, 07:48
Except that the troops who went to the americas were only lightly armored. They weren't wearing advanced plate. They had lots of exposed areas, and those obsidian swords of the Aztecs are devastating against exposed flesh.
Your right. Personally i wouldnt walk into a hot moist jungle wearing full plate:)
But i think the reason they made the "primitive" warriors so good is something as simple as to balance them to the late units they will face.
If you're so obsessed with the efficacy of Spanish plate armor, consider that the Aztecs had a weapon called the atlatl - mostly just a stick that simulated an extra length of arm and so could add leverage to a thrown spear. Supposedly they were so powerful that they could send a dart not only through armor, but all the way through a man. Consider that it wasn't a terribly complicated weapon to use, thus you could arm thousands of commoners with it - much like a crossbow. That would give any conquistador pause ;)
That's in the game as "Arrow Warriors". Massive arrows, javelin stats and AP.
Eh, the Spanish had a similar weapon though, they called it a musket. Also pretty straightforward to use, so much so that they had to restrict its manufacture to the crown in order to keep revolution at bay.
All well and good but this IS the Citadel-a singleplayer forum.
OH REALLY IS IT
GET A LIFE - Snoil the Weak
Bob the Insane
01-23-2007, 15:00
I don't know for sure but is it not rather toasty in what is now mexico? Would it be feasible to run around and fight in full plate armour without expiring from heat exhaustion?
I don't really think it's too much more toasty than say the parts of the middle east that feature prominently in the crusades.
That's not to say it isn't unwise though.
Here is an account of Cortez defeating the Tlaxcala. Cortez had about 500 men versus about 40,000. The natives army seems to have relied on pelting the Spaniards with stones from slings and arrows that the armor seems to have had little problem stopping. It was estimated that 2 Spaniards were killed.
The troops advanced more than a league on their laborious march, without descrying the enemy. The weather was sultry, but few of them were embarrassed by the heavy mail worn by the European cavaliers at that period. Their cotton jackets, thickly quilted, afforded a tolerable protection against the arrows of the Indian, and allowed room for the freedom and activity of movement essential to a life of rambling adventure in the wilderness.
At length they came in sight of the broad plains of Ceutla, and beheld the dusky lines of the enemy stretching, as far as the eye could reach, along the edge of the horizon. The Indians had shown some sagacity in the choice of their position; and, as the weary Spaniards came slowly on, floundering through the morass, the Tabascans set up their hideous battle-cries, and discharged volleys of arrows, stones, and other missiles, which rattled like hail on the shields and helmets of the assailants. Many were severely wounded before they could gain the firm ground, where they soon cleared a space for themselves, and opened a heavy fire of artillery and musketry on the dense columns of the enemy, which presented a fatal mark for the balls. Numbers were swept down at every discharge; but the bold barbarians, far from being dismayed, threw up dust and leaves to hide their losses, and, sounding their war instruments, shot off fresh flights of arrows in return.
They even pressed closer on the Spaniards, and, when driven off by a vigorous charge, soon turned again, and, rolling back like the waves of the ocean, seemed ready to overwhelm the little band by weight of numbers. Thus cramped, the latter had scarcely room to perform their necessary evolutions, or even to work their guns with effect.
The engagement had now lasted more than an hour, and the Spaniards, sorely pressed, looked with great anxiety for the arrival of the horse,-which some unaccountable impediments must have detained,-to relieve them from their perilous position. At this crisis, the furthest columns of the Indian army were seen to be agitated and thrown into a disorder that rapidly spread through the whole mass. It was not long before the ears of the Christians were saluted with the cheering war-cry of "San Jago and San Pedro," and they beheld the bright helmets and swords of the Castilian chivalry flashing back the rays of the morning sun, as they dashed through the ranks of the enemy, striking to the right and left, and scattering dismay around them. The eye of faith, indeed, could discern the patron Saint of Spain himself, mounted on his grey war-horse, heading the rescue and trampling over the bodies of the fallen infidels!
The approach of Cortes had been greatly retarded by the broken nature of the ground. When he came up, the Indians were so hotly engaged, that he was upon them before they observed his approach. He ordered his men to direct their lances at the faces of their opponents, who, terrified at the monstrous apparition,-for they supposed the rider and the horse, which they had never before seen, to be one and the same,-were seized with a panic. Ordaz availed himself of it to command a general charge along the line, and the Indians, many of them throwing away their arms, fled without attempting further resistance.
Cortes was too content with the victory, to care to follow it up by dipping his sword in the blood of the fugitives. He drew off his men to a copse of palms which skirted the place, and, under their broad canopy, the soldiers offered up thanksgivings to the Almighty for the victory vouchsafed them. The field of battle was made the site of a town, called in honour of the day on which the action took place, Santa Maria de la Vitoria, long afterwards the capital of the province. The number of those who fought or fell in the engagement is altogether doubtful. Nothing, indeed, is more uncertain than numerical estimates of barbarians. And they gain nothing in probability, when they come, as in the present instance, from the reports of their enemies. Most accounts, however, agree that the Indian force consisted of five squadrons of eight thousand men each. There is more discrepancy as to the number of slain, varying from one to thirty thousand! In this monstrous discordance, the common disposition to exaggerate may lead us to look for truth in the neighbourhood of the smallest number. The loss of the Christians was inconsiderable; not exceeding-if we receive their own reports, probably, from the same causes, much diminishing the truth-two killed, and less than a hundred wounded! We may readily comprehend the feelings of the Conquerors, when they declared, that "Heaven must have fought on their side, since their own strength could never have prevailed against such a multitude of enemies!"
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=PreConq.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=10&division=div2
There are several historical accounts of prominent crusaders expiring in the heat.
The humidity and fungus would be a killer though.
Edit: Looks like the Aztecs fought the Spaniards from range instead of trying their luck in melee, and it doesn't look like they fought particularly well either. The total number of Aztecs is probably exaggerated, but I wouldn't doubt the casualties (if you take the lower estimate of 1,000 Aztecs killed or injured and subsequently killed in the retreat).
Was that because of armor or idiocy involving water though?
Didn't crusaders have a tendancy to forget how little water is available in the mid east?
Oh, I was referring to battles that they won, rather than disasters like Hattin or something. Some battle accounts go into detail about which notables died and how. Notables would of course be knights and thus armored. Some of them seemed to have perished from heat exhaustion, during otherwise unremarkable battles.
Huh, interesting.
Well, I'll have to admit I've got quite a bit more back ground on the naval history than the landlubber.
Oleander Ardens
01-23-2007, 17:11
If you're so obsessed with the efficacy of Spanish plate armor, consider that the Aztecs had a weapon called the atlatl - mostly just a stick that simulated an extra length of arm and so could add leverage to a thrown spear. Supposedly they were so powerful that they could send a dart not only through armor, but all the way through a man. Consider that it wasn't a terribly complicated weapon to use, thus you could arm thousands of commoners with it - much like a crossbow. That would give any conquistador pause ;)
The Atlatl was used in Europe by the hunter-gatherers, but was replaced slowly by the Bow which emerged around at latest around 10.000BC
:juggle2:
MilesGregarius
01-23-2007, 17:22
Here is an account of Cortez defeating the Tlaxcala. Cortez had about 500 men versus about 40,000.
Numbers are impossible to take at face value. Enemy numbers are almost always grossly exaggerated, either honestly do to excitement in the moment or in order to claim a greater share of the glory. In pre-industrial armies, any claim of above 10,000 has to be taken with a serious grain of salt due to simple logistical limitations,
Friendly numbers are often underestimated do to the exclusion of all those without "name", i.e. only knights and nobles count. Spanish armies also included numbers of slaves, often Moors and other Africans, that fought, but not being property, not free men, would not have been counted.
The natives army seems to have relied on pelting the Spaniards with stones from slings and arrows that the armor seems to have had little problem stopping. It was estimated that 2 Spaniards were killed.
Even (especially) if the higher number of 40,000 is accepted, the VAST majority would have been peasant levy whose primary role, against Spaniard and native alike, would have been to provide missle support for a small number of melee fighters. It's unlikely they would have been trained, inclined, or even equipped to engage their own melee warriors in close combat, let alone Spaniards on horseback.
And from what I've read of Spanish accounts, the Spaniards actually feared slings more than any other Mesoamerican weapon because, as a concussive weapon, slingstones could still knock a man senseless even if his armor was not penetrated.
They had lots of exposed areas, and those obsidian swords of the Aztecs are devastating against exposed flesh.
There was no exposed flesh. Neither the aztec warriors nor the Conquistadors were running around fighting naked. The conquistadors had padded, leather, and metal armor and the Aztecs had their cloth armor which, while effective against obsidian weapons, did virtually nothing against crossbows, spanish swords, musket balls, etc. (Of course, hey, neither did plate armor tbh).
There is little doubt that the armor and weapons of the conquistadors was vastly superior to that of the Aztecs. There is almost no way they could have won, otherwise, and had the Aztec weaponry been superior, you can bet the Spaniards would have armed themselves with it after their first battle. The Aztec troops and weapons were nearly wholly ineffective against the conquistadors, for a variety of reasons.
CA thought this would make poor gameplay, so the changed the Aztecs in MTW to be a lot more powerful and more challenging than they were in real life. The game is not really a 'historical simulation' but the new world is one of the least historical parts about it. Just accept that it's a fun little side show with a 'new world flavor' :)
If you're so obsessed with the efficacy of Spanish plate armor, consider that the Aztecs had a weapon called the atlatl - mostly just a stick that simulated an extra length of arm and so could add leverage to a thrown spear. Supposedly they were so powerful that they could send a dart not only through armor, but all the way through a man. Consider that it wasn't a terribly complicated weapon to use, thus you could arm thousands of commoners with it - much like a crossbow. That would give any conquistador pause ;)
If the atlatl had actually been that good Cortez entire tiny band would have been annhilated in the first volley of missiles from the Aztecs. However, we read that the Aztec missile volleys (of which the vast majority of their 'soldiers' were equipped for) were surprisingly ineffective.
Regarding the numbers issue: Yes, Cortez did have a few hundred men vs many thousand, most of the time. However his men were all superbly trained armed and armored, and the vast bulk of the enemy forces were extremely lightly armed and were not the 'warrior class' of their society that ran around in the armor and obsidian clubs, etc. That number was much smaller. They didn't do terribly well vs the Spaniards either, but once *they* were defeated the lesser Aztecs pretty much decided things were unwinnable.
Okay, and you're also a thousand miles from home and family, you're malnourished, sick with dysentery, and the mosquitoes won't stop bothering you when you try to sleep at night. I know the local terrain... you don't. My faction is a warrior culture at the core, not something where being a soldier is optional. And my religion isn't based on trying to save your soul, but to cut out your heart for a glorious sacrifice. Yeah, let's go. :)
C'mon people... at the risk of repeating something that gets said too often here; it's a game, not a simulation. The game can't represent the imbalance in numbers with a 20 unit limit, so the natives are buffed. In terms of playability, that beats being forced to run through consecutive battles (that you can't exit from) to represent an advantage in numbers. Also, this is an end-game scenario, where you're assumed to be flush with cash and pumping out your most elite units. It's not supposed to be a cakewalk.
Hey I got no problem with game balance.
It's the people that are trying to justify a game balance issue as actual fact that I find so amusing :no:
Randarkmaan
01-23-2007, 22:29
Concerning the middle-east and heat, I find it funny that many people forget or do not know that many middle-easterners actually wore quite a lot of armour (chain mail hauberk, lamellar armours of leather or iron, scale hauberks and the Ottomans actually had a sort of plate armour, but not the kind of plate armour seen in Europe, more like the Roman Lorica Segmenta), the genious trick to avoid having all this burn you up was usually to wear loose fitting robes over metal armour, which would keep it from heating up.
Anyway fighting in a hot, humid jungle filled with mosquities who eat you alive and make you sick and devious foliage everywhere sounds like the ninth circle of hell to me, many seem to forget how annoying mosquities actually are!!
baron_Leo
01-23-2007, 22:31
Obsidian is strong...pretty strong. You can believe me, my dad is an archeologist and we have lots'a stuff made of obsidian. Knives, spearheads etc. It can cut through anything. Actually I dont have a plate mail at home, so I cant test it but with not a that hard hit it goes through wood easily.
Obsidian is strong...pretty strong. You can believe me, my dad is an archeologist and we have lots'a stuff made of obsidian. Knives, spearheads etc. It can cut through anything. Actually I dont have a plate mail at home, so I cant test it but with not a that hard hit it goes through wood easily.
Strong is an irrelevant term... The attribute that is most pertinent to Obsidian in terms of use for a weapon is "brittle". It shatters and chips quite easily. Which BTW is why primitives could make edged weapons from it in the first place.
There is a very good reason cultures using STEEL were termed ADVANCED (technologically) compared to cultures who used STONE. It's because it is a superior technology for weapons and tools, end of story. Ask your dad, he'll explain to you why cultures rose from Stone to Brass/Bronze and then to Iron and then to STEEL for tools and weapons.
BTW you can make extremely sharp implements from plastic too (disposable scalpels for instance), but dont for a minute think it would be better than STEEL for a weapon.
The atlatl was not in prominent use when the Spanish first appeared on the scene - it was reinvented/readopted when its effectiveness was realized. I'd imagine by the time its use had spread again the Spanish had plenty of cannon fodder in the form of native auxiliaries to soak up the damage. And muskets weren't really a factor - the few guns the Spanish had were obsolete and of limited utility. They did make effective use of ship-borne artillery in the siege of Tenochtitlan, though.
dismal: Don't believe everything you read. Like it was pointed out before, numbers are often inflated to make a battle seem more impressive. You didn't state a source for that account, but it sounds like a propaganda piece. Cortez needed to make his expedition sound glorious - he was actually disobeying his superiors by fighting the Aztecs and his life depended on garnering support though smashing victories. If he didn't win decisively, he either made it sound like he did or painted overwhelming odds nobody could win against.
Anyway, all this talk of equipment is relative. The man behind all the armor and weaponry is vastly more important a factor, as is good generalship.
Concerning the middle-east and heat, I find it funny that many people forget or do not know that many middle-easterners actually wore quite a lot of armour (chain mail hauberk, lamellar armours of leather or iron, scale hauberks and the Ottomans actually had a sort of plate armour, but not the kind of plate armour seen in Europe, more like the Roman Lorica Segmenta), the genious trick to avoid having all this burn you up was usually to wear loose fitting robes over metal armour, which would keep it from heating up.
Anyway fighting in a hot, humid jungle filled with mosquities who eat you alive and make you sick and devious foliage everywhere sounds like the ninth circle of hell to me, many seem to forget how annoying mosquities actually are!!
I live in such a place, and I'm not sure it's that difficult to manage in a tropical rainforest (but then I'm used to it). Dry socks and underwear are a must, plus plenty of insect repellant to keep the mozzies and their nasty infections away. It will take some time for you to get used to fighting in heavy armor, but as long as you get enough water to replace the fluids you lose, it's not really all that bad. You sort of get used to the heat and humidity after a while, it's the fungus and fever that can kill you if you're not careful.
As for dying of heatstroke in drier climates, one of the two notable fatalities at Agincourt was supposed to have died of exhaustion too, and I don't think France qualifies as arid desert at all.
If you had to run away from longbows in sticky knee-deep mud while wearing a full suit of armor, you'd probably die of exhaustion too ;)
It was an English duke who died of exhaustion (the French suffered far more than just two notable fatalities), although I'm sure many of the French died that way too. They were so tightly packed by the flanking longbowmen and their own numbers that they literally had no space to fight properly and trampled each other to death in a rather messy way.
Edit: While military accounts are often exaggerated, there's little reason to doubt that the Spanish were outnumbered and still cut their way through large numbers of poorly-armed Aztec warriors. Horsemen were intimidating enough to musketeers armed with armor-piercing weapons (then again, accounts mention musket balls rattling off the thick cuirasses and helmets of the heavy cavalry at Waterloo, so maybe not THAT armor piercing), they must have been utterly terrifying even to the best Aztec troops.
Actually it was around the period in late M2 that te word "Bulletproof" entered into the english language. It had to do with the piece of armor being tested by a musket having been fired against it, leaving a noticable dent but not a hole.
According to some sources on the French army, the cuirass of the heavy cavalry was specifically 'proofed' by taking three musket balls at 'point blank' range, which I gather didn't have the same meaning as today (for example, 'point blank' for a cannon was something like 300 yards). Due to the difficulty of manufacturing such armor in bulk, this requirement seems to have been relaxed to one shot at 100 yards. We can perhaps conclude that bulletproof armor against the firearms of the time was possible, but just not very feasible outside of a few elite units that needed and could afford the protection. In any case, heavier armor would just mean a return to more powerful muskets and rifles, an 'arms race' that the armor would probably lose eventually.
@ dopp: The armor was already becoming impractically heavy when it was getting to the level of stopping musket balls. That's part of why armor was reducing down to a cuirass and helmet, it was just getting too heavy to wear more than that at that level of resistance. Full armor of the "bulletproof" level was exceptionally rare and exceptionally heavy, to the point where you could do little but stay in one spot and let people shoot at you. At that point you start consolidating armor that heavy down to just the most vital areas... like the torso and head.
As far as my reference to the jungles and more armor, I did NOT mean full plate, I meant something more from previous eras. Against the obsidian weapons, wearing full mail instead of a couple pieces of plate would have had advantages. One strange halloween I was running a coffee shop, working behind an espresso machine with a huge party. For my costume I had on my crusader gear, including shirt of black mail and gambeson. I worked behind an espresso machine in addition to cleaning floors and running around taking care of customers for 10 hours that way. (There was a party at the place.) If you are familiar with working an espresso machine in a busy shop, It's more hot and humid than can find almost anywhere in nature. But I managed fine, and I'm not someone who's spent every Sunday practicing in armor. Mail would have been less effective against blunt weapons and impacts, but not completely so, mail and a gambeson can absorb a lot of impact. Throw a hauberk over that and it can take anything the aztecs had available.
It's very much like if we found our current military fighting a horde of people armed only with knives. In that case, as good as our current body armor is against bullets, going to a lighter but larger covering mail would protect more soldiers. Arm yourself to meet anything out there, but armor yourself against the enemy's weapon. Armor against firearms has always compromised the surface protected for level of protection... it's not always the best when your opponent isn't shooting at you.
Yes, I was talking about the cuirassiers, who wore that sort of 'cut-down' armor and yet still couldn't be sure that it was completely 'bulletproof', because it was difficult to manufacture armor to that quality. A lot of 'cuirassier' regiments never even received their armor, and many of them tossed it away as being too heavy for the level of protection they received.
Nowadays of course, the return to citizen armies (at least in part) demands effective armor protection for the rank-and-file as well, or so some military historians have concluded. People are going nuts over kevlar and liquid armor and powered armor and so on.
MilesGregarius
01-24-2007, 13:16
Edit: While military accounts are often exaggerated, there's little reason to doubt that the Spanish were outnumbered
The Spaniards were no doubt heavily outnumbered, but Spanish claims still have to be taken with a good dose of skepticism.
The Spaniards were no doubt heavily outnumbered, but Spanish claims still have to be taken with a good dose of skepticism.
Well, the commentator himself (whoever he is, no reference to prove its authenticity) takes their claims with a healthy pinch of salt, but it seems quite clear that they won and the account is fairly consistent with other, more verifiable, battles of Europeans vs natives. Wellington is supposed to have defeated 200,000 Indians (of which maybe 15,000 were actual warriors) with less than 10,000 Redcoats, even though they had disciplined musketeers, twice as much artillery as him and plenty of cavalry on their side. Europeans know how to fight and do it really well.
Oleander Ardens
01-25-2007, 16:13
The atlatl was not in prominent use when the Spanish first appeared on the scene - it was reinvented/readopted when its effectiveness was realized. I'd imagine by the time its use had spread again the Spanish had plenty of cannon fodder in the form of native auxiliaries to soak up the damage. And muskets weren't really a factor - the few guns the Spanish had were obsolete and of limited utility. They did make effective use of ship-borne artillery in the siege of Tenochtitlan, though.
One sidenote: The Atlatl is a rather powerful weapon. It increases the momentum and range of a dart greatly, and was used to hunt Mammuts. However, believe me or not, killing an armored man with a missile is more diffícult than killing a large mammal.
But, thanks to the Longbow-craze armor is greatly underestimated, especially mail with paddings. A heavy arrow with a sharp and slender (1:4/5) head shot from a good traditional yew bow with a medium to heavy drawweight can come out of the far side of a cape buffalo as long as not too many heavy bones are in the way. The same asset has great difficulties to pierce the combination of a medium gambeson and good mail protecting a flexible body.
A heavy dart of a strong thrower could penetrate a coat of mail, but i hardly think that it happened to often and under battlefield conditions...
In any case I think that the Jaguar warriors are way too strong compared to the finest soldiers of the old continent, be it the JHI or the Tercio
Cheers
OA
Snoil The Mighty
01-25-2012, 13:19
OH REALLY IS IT
GET A LIFE - Snoil the Weak
Here's your complimentary crying towel 8>D
rickinator9
01-25-2012, 22:49
Nice necropost!
VersusAllOdds
01-27-2012, 00:52
Oh just don't get me started on the reasons why Aztec warriors sucked in real life...
1) They used wooden, stone, and only in best cases obsidian weapons. I would like anybody to explain to me how would glued stone to wood be able to last for longer than a few hits. Their weapons had a tough time piercing their own woven armour, let alone the one of steel. The Spaniards realized that and had their metal armour changed into the Aztec one, since that was enough. That goes to prove how much the Aztec DPS sucked.
2) The Aztecs were a terribly religious people. Too religious for their own good. They had very serious doubts that the Spaniards were actually divine, they greatly feared gunpowder, not to mention horses. They thought that a horseman is a beast that can at times split into a man and a horse. Their morale was generally low when fighting Europeans due to those facts.
3) As I already said, their armour was very considerable against their own blunt and barbaric weapons, however how any cloth, no matter how tight, would sustain a thrusting blow from a steel weapon is beyond me. Their nobles wore armour of gold, gold which can easily be bent by force of fingers... Secondly, Spaniards also used gunpowder against which no armour is existant.
4) Their military doctrine was pathetic. They had no formations, or basically any battle tactics whatsoever. Diaz mentions that sometimes they were so tightly packed that Spaniard gunpowder fire couldn't miss hitting the flesh
5) And finally, the most crucial reason why Aztecs were absolutely dreadful against Cortez: they didn't try to kill the enemy, they wanted to capture him. So, they try to grab a guy, and he cuts at least several of them in the process. Once they do, his friends jump in, and Aztecs try to capture them aswell. Then, in an all out massacre, they release their buddy and are ready to go on massacring again. Yes, Aztecs basically didn't try to kill the enemy, because they needed hearts for sacrifice.
I don't understand what's with people actually prefering the Aztecs to the Spanish. They were barbaric, they relished in slaughtering tens of thousands, and sometimes even hundreds of thousands, of people to their gods, pulling out their hearts, and yet the Spanish Inquisition and their own religious fanaticism is twice as notorious today.
All anti-Spanish skeptics should realize that Cortez had a rag-tag band of less than 1000 warriors, who were no knights or too experienced warriors, and that they basically destroyed a civilization who's people counted in the millions. That's all I can say of the Aztec warriors. They didn't exterminate civilians, they were much more merciful towards the Indians than Aztecs were, and by far. The Tlaxcalans, Spanish allies, are known to have slaughtered thousands of Aztecs in revenge for their own feuds, and have caused much more suffering than Spanish....
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