10 star general +tinodalae

[moonburn]

i can imagine an haploi turning to his militia buddy and saying "we´re the poorest of the poor in our society but it does seem that those kelts have even poorer dudes look at those poor suckers they can´t even afford some slips and sandals, i bet they´ll run before we make contact"

[seleucid empire]

i can imagine an haploi turning to his militia buddy and saying "we´re the poorest of the poor in our society but it does seem that those kelts have even poorer dudes look at those poor suckers they can´t even afford some slips and sandals, i bet they´ll run before we make contact"

i thought all hoplites were landowners and were rich enough to provide their own equipment? Did they start using levies and state supplied weapons during the EB era when the city states had declined?

[moonburn]

there´s a reason why they are haploi they are the poorest of citizens (just a reminder citizens where roughly only 20/25% of the population of the polis and even then a rich polis would only have 10% citizens being that 50% of the population would be some sort of slaves ) so they aren´t necessarly landowners they could be crafstmen or they could be landowners of land who´s useless for anything except grazzing or just rowers or some other menial task just being lucky enough to be the sons of 2 good families wich qualifies him as a citizen

also these kind of men where the one´s that alexandros and later the diadochi used to populate their lands as colonists citizens who had very litle in their hometowns

i somehow suspect that a few cities did had social armouries to provide a few of it´s less wealthy citizens with some armour suport but the very defenition of haploi is that they only carried their dorus and their hoplon into batle and even then the hoplon/aspis could be of extremly bad quality or very old like belonged to it´s grandfather or something

[vollorix]

The best way to kill a cavalry BGs is to lure them away from the main battle lines using light/medium cavalry as a bait. While light ones will get slaughtered on a contact with BGs, the medium cavalry ( especially the ones with AP attribute for their weapons, and esp. if that weapon is a heavy spear ( read: underhand carried = quite a high lethality value of 0.3-0.4 compared to 0.11-0.13 of a sword/overhand spear ), can fight them for a while to give you time to bring your heavy cavalry in position - behind, and/or one the flanks of the enemy BGs. Then you charge in and surround them, and if the enemy general is a hell of a man with way too many hitopoints, your best chance to kill him is to repeat charging as often as it takes to bring him down. The best unit to do the latter is a unit of Prodromoi, while the Lonchophoroi cavalry ( good armour/shield ) can handle them in melee.
It is also very effective to use your own KH Spartan BGs to counter enemy heavy cavalry BGs: pin them down and watch the slaughter, then bring your Prodromoi cavalrymen to finish the job by charging ( preferably from the rear; and also make sure the are lowering their spears, and not just riding into a melee, means: still standing cavalry in an appropriate distance for a charge ).

On Tindanotae: any unit will rout provided you are able to kill quite a few of the men in that unit in shortest ammount of time ( whatch their morale crumbling while beeing charged by heavy cavalry from behind ). But, as it was said, the 10 stars of an enemy general are adding +10 morale to already present 20 ( or so ) of the Tindanotae, so breaking 30+ morale value is not easy.
There are also several factors determining how fast a unit might rout: 1. a heavily depleted unit ( more then a half ), 2. uncovered flanks, 3. beeing surrounded, 4. loose/rout of a general, 5. fear factors ( elephants, fear causing units, "worrieng" about fighting cavalry, depleted stamina = exauasted etc. ).
And last, but not least: the fresher the unit, the higher the lethality value, and the opposite, consequently. So, trying to kill a 2 HP unit ( which Tindanotae are, along with Gaesatae ) with tired troops wont help your cause, except for the charging value of the cavalry, since the stamina doesn´t seem to affect the lethality of a initial charge.

Good luck.

[Ludens]

i thought all hoplites were landowners and were rich enough to provide their own equipment? Did they start using levies and state supplied weapons during the EB era when the city states had declined?

Not quite: obligatory hoplite service was tied to wealth, not landownership. But, according to Van Wees, even citizens that did not have to go as hoplites would sometimes do so if they could afford the equipment, or had a wealthy friend/relative that could buy it for them. Van Wees cites Socrates as an example of this: the philosopher was a poor stonemason, but he fought as a hoplite in several battles.

As for state-supplied equipment, it probably varied from city to city. I know Athens starting doing so near the end of the Peloponnesian war, and wouldn't be surprised if this went on to become a common practice in EB's time-frame.