Quote Originally Posted by Conan View Post
Does make you wonder why the Persians never really adopted some form of heavy infantry wholesale... Especially after their experience with Greek hoplites during the Greek-Persian wars. Although I suppose they simply employed them as mercenaries, which may have been quicker and/or cheaper than training there own men/units.

Mind you the way the Persian army was composed it had conquered a large chunk of the known world by this point and had kept the Ionian Greeks at bay for centuries. Their army as it was had not only conquered, but maintain the status quo and I imagine was not seen as needing re-forming until well Alexander came along and by that point it was too late!

I guess you also have to bear in mind that it wasn't a walk in the park for the Macidonian army either and that they very nearly could have lost their engagments with the Persian army. I imagine luck would have played a big part in the outcome also...

Suppose I'm answering my own questions as I carry on with this!
They had some heavy infantry didn't they? Their Immortals would have had good armour and carry swords/spears as well as bows but they were just inferior to the Greek and Macedonian phalanx so it doesn't show.

I'm gonna take a wild guess here and speculate that they realised the advantage of heavy infantry but they probably knew that they could never hope to match the Greeks so they improved other parts of their army to level the field (e.g. Their cavalry) and hired Greek Mercs to supplement their army.

Also in the east I'm guessing heavy infantry isn't as effective as large amounts of cavalry or archers?

Actually for most of ancient history, the east seems to have been dominated by cavalry and missiles. Think of the bactrians, Parthians, Sassanids,