Numidian Army

Any Numidian experts please bare with me.

I'm just wondering to what military level did the Numidians expand during Massinissa times and what sort of army was it by the time of Juba.

I heard that Massinissa tried to follow a hellenistic model during his reign, so does that mean the Numidians used 'phalanxes' of some sort? And in A. Goldworthy's "Caesar: Life of a Colossus", he claims that Numidian Juba provided the Optimates with Numidian soldiers "trained in Roman ways".

At the moment Numidian units in EB don't even have any heavier armour(Although probably in EB2 this can be implemented without adding new units).

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Originally Posted by SaberHRE

Any Numidian experts please bare with me.

I'm just wondering to what military level did the Numidians expand during Massinissa times and what sort of army was it by the time of Juba.

I heard that Massinissa tried to follow a hellenistic model during his reign, so does that mean the Numidians used 'phalanxes' of some sort? And in A. Goldworthy's "Caesar: Life of a Colossus", he claims that Numidian Juba provided the Optimates with Numidian soldiers "trained in Roman ways".

At the moment Numidian units in EB don't even have any heavier armour(Although probably in EB2 this can be implemented without adding new units).

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I'm not a Numidian expert, but I do remember some passing stuff about the western Numidians...

I know that Livy made the statement that during the second Punic War a Roman centurion (Statorious?) gathered the forces of Syphax with the Numidians and trained them in the style of the Romans. Livy goes so far as to say something along the lines that Syphax ended up trusting his infantry as much as his cavalry which is a far cry from the rabble squads that supposedly made up the prior infantry contigencies.

That's about all I can really help with though.

"Let me tell you that in a couple of days the king will be here with ten legions, 30,000 horsemen, 100,000 skirmishers, plus 300 elephants."

This is part of Caesar speech to his troops before the Battle of Thapsus. He exaggerates the army numbers in purpose, but it shows you some interesting things.

The horsemen are surely the famous Numidian cavalry. The Nobles like Jugurtha used sometimes, Iberian and Gallic horsemen as bodyguards.

It makes a difference between Numidian infantry and simple skirmishers by saying that King Juba will arrive with ten legions. By this time some Numidian picked troops fought in Roman equipment, but we dont have this unit for EB1 since Numidia is not a faction in the game.

The skirmishers could be javalinmen, slingers, and archers. We know that Caesar used Numidian archers during the Gallic Wars.

Elephants could be towered or without towers. There is some art depicting Numdian African Elephants with towers.