Hoplite question

[Pontius Pilate]

Ok well first of all what i meant must not be understood as an offence or critich to the game or people who created it, just simple curiosity,i love EB exept for it's too frequent crashes......
And secondly what are the guarding position and phalanx mini mod?
Thirdly i have eb from rtw gold edition so should i be able to do the shield wall formation?

no need to apologize. and yeah, as stated before, it's hardcoded into the game and not much else can be done to fix the hoplite shield wall. although the phalanx minimod helps a little bit. also the shield wall animation is only in Barbarian Invasion expansion. in my opinion I don't like the shield wall from Barbarian Invasion, it makes the unit too small in length and just isn't effective. if you want to get EB on BI anyway, just go to the unofficial EB modding projects of the forum. you must also have B. invasion installed too.

[Maion Maroneios]

it makes the unit too small in length and just isn't effective.

Could you please define the first thing you said? As for their effectiveness, the shieldwall gives them bonuses in defense. Much more reliable than guard mode and more correct than the short_pike attribute, which makes units take weird angles with their spears, plus the back rows hold them in a 45 degree angle. And let us not forget the fact that the short_pike attribute makes units stick together that much, that it becomes completely unhistorical.

Maion

[Pontius Pilate]

Could you please define the first thing you said? As for their effectiveness, the shieldwall gives them bonuses in defense. Much more reliable than guard mode and more correct than the short_pike attribute, which makes units take weird angles with their spears, plus the back rows hold them in a 45 degree angle. And let us not forget the fact that the short_pike attribute makes units stick together that much, that it becomes completely unhistorical.

Maion

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but the shield wall in Barbarian Invasion just doesn't work for me. the unit's size and length reduces signifigantly and make it easier to flank, and it seems like they aren't able to fight as well in shield wall than on regular mode with guard mode on, they seem to get overwhelmed more when facing enemies. then again, maybe there is just something wrong with my tactics and the way I am using the shieldwall. and yes, I admit that short_pike attribute makes the unit take strange angles.

[Maion Maroneios]

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but the shield wall in Barbarian Invasion just doesn't work for me. the unit's size and length reduces signifigantly and make it easier to flank, and it seems like they aren't able to fight as well in shield wall than on regular mode with guard mode on, they seem to get overwhelmed more when facing enemies. then again, maybe there is just something wrong with my tactics and the way I am using the shieldwall. and yes, I admit that short_pike attribute makes the unit take strange angles.

While it is true that shieldwall makes individuals form a very tight formation, I'm afraid what you say about them being overwhelmed is incorrect. If you want, I can run test battles for you and present the results. Hoplites with guard mode are definitely much worse than with shieldwall, as with the latter you get the pushing effect plus more aggressive stabs. With guard mode on, your guys will just stand their ground and occasionally a hoplite or two will stab at the enemy. After all, it's 'guard' mode and not normal or aggressive one.

Maion

[Decimus Attius Arbiter]

I used shieldwall in a version of RTR and it made hoplites too hard to attack. If I remember they formed into a box with spears pointing outward. Not exactly shiltron but you couldn't flank them at all. It doesn't matter too much to me since the game's mechanics makes them get shredded by swords. It's best to focus on flanking with assault troops or heavy cavalry. Anyways I like the not quite perfect formation. It would seem robotic if they kept perfect form all the time. In the heat of battle soldiers fought to keep formation while trying to save their skin too.

[oudysseos]

Cyrus,

Although it is, I suppose, a common assertion that hoplite phalanxes routinely fought with the edges of their shields interlocked like a giant Roman testudo formation, in fact this issue is hotly contested in academic circles and the evidence for technical details about hoplite combat is both very sparse and very far from unequivocal.

The major source for the interlocked shields concept seems to be a passage from Thucydides (5.71.1) which has been commonly translated along the lines of

All armies are alike in this: on going into action they get forced out rather on their right wing, and one and the other overlap with this their adversary's left; because fear makes each man do his best to shelter his unarmed side with the shield of the man next him on the right, thinking that the closer the shields are locked together the better will he be protected. The man primarily responsible for this is the first upon the right wing, who is always striving to withdraw from the enemy his unarmed side; and the same apprehension makes the rest follow him.

However! Careful inspection of the greek text is very revealing. A literal translation from Garrett Fagan, Great Battles of the Ancient World, of the bold-face passage above is

Thinking that the denser their closeness is, the better protected they are.

There is no explicit mention of locked or touching shields in the greek at all- the Perseus website can provide excellent commentary on the greek text if you're interested.
Anyways, 'Close' is a pretty subjective term and depends on context- if you and I were together in an elevator, and we were four or six feet apart I would not think that you were 'close' to me. But if we were standing in the middle of a football pitch, I would find six feet to be quite close (at six feet our shields would not touch).

Furthermore, there are several passages from Xenophon in the Anabasis (1.2.17, 6.5.25) that seem to describe relatively loose formations of hoplites.

It is true that Victor Davis Hanson has long asserted the 'locked shields' concept as if it were established fact, but Hans van Wees, for example, is critical of this position. I suggest reading Greek Warfare: Myths and Realities by the latter author.

So maybe the 'lowest gread knower' does think that hoplites are supposed to fight in a shield wall all the time, but a going a few grades up in knowledge might give you a different perspective.

Dogmatic assertions of any kind are, I think, inappropriate. The truth is no-one will ever ever know the precise technical details of hoplite combat. The written sources don't describe the mechanics of combat because they assumed that the majority of their readers were themselves hoplites.

So it seems that the EB team is not so clearly guilty of such a huge error, after all. And as Foot so patiently pointed out, there are some mini-mod alternatives if you really feel strongly about this.

[Cyrus]

I seem to recall in xenophon's anabasis at the battle against the kings forces ( when the brother is still alive) that the greek wing of his army beats the enemy's thanks to thei close and tight formation, anyways thukidides is interpreted also in other ways, would u give the number of that passage please i have his book here.