Quote Originally Posted by fenir
A "speical forces solider" is one that has under gone an extensive, and extended training in a structured form for a certain task.
The Zulu's had no evidence of such.
The entire Zulu army was made of soldiers that had under gone an extensive, and extended training in a structured form .
They recieved at least as much training and regular drill as did the British army of that period and some of their training was notably superior {such as their field marching ability -they could out march any army of Europe quite easily- and general field craft as appilies to foraging in particular} .

Primative does not mean stupid !



Also , your definition of special forces is wrong , whomever it may be that told you .
Special forces are carefully picked troops meant for decisive action .

Pedites Extraordinarii and their cavalry counterparts were special forces just as much as are U.S. Army Rangers , but so too were the Gaesatae bodyguards of Hannibal Barca and their "certain task" consisted of killing Romans better than the other troops did .

Training special forces doesn't require computer simulators or exotic facilities and especially does not require a "civilised" society . Real life special forces such as the S.A.S. are shown historical examples of special forces troops which include small units of picked Hebrew warriors lead by King David in the Bible . The Hebrews were at about the same level of social "development" as the Zulus of the timeperiod the game will be set in and were actually technologically inferior {the Zulus were early Iron Age technologically , the Hebrews of King Davids' time were merely Bronze Age !} .




What could possibly give you to think the Zulus were not capable of handpicking the best troops for a particular battlefield task and grouping them together ?
They already had a sophisticated military structure {well defined units that that meshed together effectivly and were well understood and adhered to by all in the Army} , well established officer corp {or something that did the same job but was called annother name} , ongoing and regimented {and very demanding} training regiem ... they were as modern as their British enemies in every way that mattered except equiptment .
What makes you think they did not maintain one or more such special units of carefully chosen "badarses" .

Again , primative does not mean stupid . Creating a special forces unit is simply a matter of appilied intelligence and nothing more .
The Zulus might not have maintained such units constantly {but don't be supprised if they did ! Infact , it is very likely !} , but they could certainly have gathered one for that particular battle .