Ladders... historical accuratcy?

[RollingWave]

Now i know they used ladders in Roman times, however, thinking realistically, it would require some pretty super human strength to just throw a ladder up a tall wall like the game is suggesting....

At least at my own house when i try to fully extend my ladder to cut trees or something it was almost impossible for me to throw up alone, consider that stone city walls are generally several times taller than the tree in my yard, even with multiple men throwing a long sturdy ladder that can hold the weight of many men on it at the same time up like that would seem extremely difficult if not outright impossible.... particularly for the taller walls.

Looking at my own history stuff on chinese seige equipment, the ancient chinese ladders as i suspected were much like a modern day fire fighter ladder truck (except that it would be men or animal powered) with the ladders on top of a mobile and having a multi stage device that can extend according to different heights. something kinda like this




Of course these were the more advanced versioned used against taller and better defended walls, however it would seem reasonable that in Romans time they didn't simply just throw a normal ladder up a super epic wall.... ?
or is there a particular reference to how tall Roman era walls generally were? The time era reference for these two picture the Chinese walls were generally around 11 meters, relatively around 40 feet or so? but this sort of design been around at least from around 500 b.c in China though this image was from the Song dynasty which was around the 10-11th a.d

[Svean]

Have you seen LoTR Two Towers and siege in that movie?
I'm not really sure how did look sieges in acient times but i can imagine that medieval sieges ware very similar and in dedieval times they WERE using simple ladders only with hooks at the ends (or some kind of that). Whole group of men were holding such kind of ladder and while throwig up some of them were using kind of pikes (with Y on the ned) to hold it higher. And they were probably much stronger than you even if they were 20 cm shorter than nowadays people ;)

And in the medieval sieges they were even throwing ladders with a soldier on the top - just like in LoTR.

[Simetrical]

Hooked poles isn't an angle I'd thought of, but it makes sense. Then you could have tons of people pushing up the ladder, and even holding it up to stop the enemy from knocking it over—but the poles and ladder would be much easier to build than a large mechanical device. You'd just have to have any soldier chop down an appropriate tree and then split the wood up until he got the desired width, then screw a prefabricated hook onto the end. Mechanical devices would need engineers.

-Simetrical

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Plus these guys were really tough. You think our soldiers are strong, well these guys could out push, punch, bite and kick many of our soldiers. Simply because all of their work required strength. If your sole purpose in life was to be the best at cracking skulls with a mace or running in armor, ramming into someone and then stabbing his heavily armored buddies how strong would you be?

[Colovion]

Plus these guys were really tough. You think our soldiers are strong, well these guys could out push, punch, bite and kick many of our soldiers. Simply because all of their work required strength. If your sole purpose in life was to be the best at cracking skulls with a mace or running in armor, ramming into someone and then stabbing his heavily armored buddies how strong would you be?

basically NFL then

[master of the puppets]

NFL? BAH!

hannible would rip through madden so fast...

i love nfl football but war is just so more ...fulfilling

[Uesugi Kenshin]

Yeah war is a bit tougher than football....

The whole life and death thing I bet.

[hoom]

**wants to see generally much improved siege weapons in the main mods in the nearish future**
Those Chinese ladders are cool

Its my understanding that pre serious rock throwers, walls tended to have emphasis on height to make it harder to make ladders.
Then later when the missiles got better, obviously thickness became more important but also walls got shorter because stability was similarly important to defeating missiles.

Don't know the time period (nor definitiveness) of this change but it wouldn't surprise me if it concided with the rise of Roman power...
I believe Tyre when besieged by Alexander was of the tall rather than thick variety.

Carthage apparently had very thick walls.

[Colovion]

NFL? BAH!

hannible would rip through madden so fast...

i love nfl football but war is just so more ...fulfilling

do you read?

He was asking a question as to how fit and how strong the people in armies of the time would be. I compared them to the NFL giants of our day in those terms, as they were probably huge, and so are the players in the NFL.

please don't take that out of context, it's really absurd

[Khorak]

I doubt they would be musclebound monstrosities. Yes they'd be fairly strong in the same way someone who does very physical work would be, strong enough to carry all their gear and swing their weapons without problems most certainly. I don't think they be very much bigger than an average modern man. What they'd be is fit. Marching and fighting is an act of supreme endurance. And unless you're wielding a very large two handed weapon, being fast and agile is a greater concern than being strong.

To be honest, these guys wouldn't outdo you through strength unless you're a couch-bound blob, they'd batter you senseless simply by having vastly more stamina and the brute toughness and aggression that being a soldier on such fields of war would bring.

If it's strength you're worried about, don't go picking fights with the crewmen of war machines who have to pull the machine to tension.

[Watchman]

The basic way to deal with a wall is to climb over it. Ladders are about the best quick-and-dirty method for that, and odds are you'd be surprised at how big ladders a large group of fit soldiers working together could hoist. After all, the sailing ships of old could and did swap entire masts with just the horsepower of their crews too...

Mind you, storming walls via ladders is still and awfully casualty-heavy thing to do (mostly due to the soldiers being wholly exposed to incoming fire all the way, and horribly vulnerable to attacks when they go "over the top" at the end of the climb nevermid the fact the defenders did their damnedest to topple the ladders...), and if the besiegers had the time and resources they usually preferred to use other techniques.

As for the relative fitness and strenght of the soldiers of old and today, I think the modern guys would win out in most respects at least as far as pure biologics (such as size and mass) are concerned. Why ? Simple enough - better nutrition. The importance of the amount and type of food you eat during your growth period for your physical developement can hardly be overemphasized, and is probably best demonstrated by simply comparing the average heights of Westerners from about hundred to 150 years back (when acute hunger was a familiar thing to many) to those of present day and checking the correlation with improves in standards of living.

Protein, such as one gets from meat, milk, eggs etc., is apparently just about the single most important "building block" as far as size is concerned.

That aside, however, there's the fact the folks of old times as a rule of thumb worked their butts off from infancy. The soldiery of civilized nations, and the tribal warriors of their barbarian neighbors, as a rule came from the amongst the farmers. And agriculture is Hard Work with capitals. By the time a trooper enlisted in the Legions, was recognized as an adult warrior, or whatever, odds are he was already well accustomed to harsh living and back-breaking labor and had the appropriate well-toned physique to show for it. The Romans in particular were big on having their soldiers march long distances in full kit by the way of additional conditioning, and on the side cross-trained them to have at least a basic idea of everything from archery to military engineering. Modern armies do that too, of course - soldiering is notoriously 99% marching - but the fact is ancient and medieval soldiers likely have a major edge in terms of pure stamina and toughness.

As for strenght, well, these people trained to kill each other in scores at close ranges with muscle-powered weapons. And major battles could easily take the better part of the day, so the required power to use those weapons effectively had to last a long time...

The upper classes had it easier, but that's conditional - warrior aristocracies usually started training for war in their early teens if not earlier, and were expected to keep practicing pretty much until they were too old and feeble for battle. They were also the guys who tended to go around in the heaviest armour, and duly had to build up the strength and stamina for that too. And, of course, they got regularly beaten black and blue in training...