"Axe" attribute for Legionnaires

[Turin]

I was thinking about all those gladius versus spartha threads and all the talk about how ineffective a gladius is against cavalry, and I thought: shouldn't short swords be counted as "axes"?

The "axe" attribute is basically the opposite of the "spear" attribute. It gives the unit a bonus against infantry and a penalty against cavalry.

This makes sense with weapons like the gladius. They were excellent as anti-infantry weapons but terrible as anti-cavalry defense. Giving this to legionnaires makes them much more vulnerable against cavalry, which would be realistic.

[Reverend Joe]

Speaking of gladii, have the EB people fixed the animation with the slashing gladius? I mean, no legionary would fight like that- they were stabbing machines.

[The Stranger]

yeah TURIN good idea, i'll try that. but actually is there a axe atribute cause i never saw one

[cunctator]

Real legionnaires could use their pila like a thrusting spear to fight cavalry. In RTW they can`t do this and have to use the gladius. Giving them a penalty only because of the limits of the game would do no good job to represent their real capabilities.

Arrian describes roman anti cavalry tactics in his Array against the Alans.
http://members.tripod.com/~S_van_Dor...s/ektaxis.html

And i don`t think that legionnaires or heavy infantry in general should be more vulnerable against cavalry. It was almost impossible to break an intact heavy iinfantry formation just with cavalry, without weakening it with other troops before.

[GoreBag]

I doubt the pilum would have been especially effective, considering its purposeful design to have a weak neck, bending or breaking upon impact.

[Randal]

Well, they did apparently use them that way, so it might have worked.

Anyway, Roman legionaries weren't that vulnerable to cavalry. There are quite some example of legionaries taking on and trouncing Cataphracts in a head-on encounter. It's when the cavalry get's around the legion's flanks they're in deep trouble. (just like every other type of infantry.) So giving Romans a penalty verus cavalry does not seem all that appropriate to me.

[Spongly]

I doubt the pilum would have been especially effective, considering its purposeful design to have a weak neck, bending or breaking upon impact.

This is true, but in use against cavalry you don't actually have to thrust with the spear - so long as you have a sufficient wall of spears presented to the enemy, no horse will charge it. The horse, after all, doesn't know that pilums are weak. Once the momentum is broken, you can close on the cavalry with your swords.

[Dromikaites]

I doubt the pilum would have been especially effective, considering its purposeful design to have a weak neck, bending or breaking upon impact.

It didn't matter it the neck was soft or not. A stick would do to scare the horse. I was surprised to read this first in a book about infantry tactics in 18th century, especially since I knew that pikes were the "cure" for heavy cavalry's charges. Then I've read something similar about the napoleonic wars. I think it was in Clausewitz's manual for the Prussian crown prince (not in his more famous work "About War"). Then I found out that knights were charging mostly...other knights. Knights were charging infantry head-on only after the cohesion of the enemy units was severely disrupted. The main purpose of such a charge was not to break the infantry ranks by means of the shock. Contrary to what we have seen in the movies or in the TW games series, the purpose of such a charge was to destroy whatever morale was left in the battered infantry, making them to break ranks and run away at the sight of the steel wave comming towards them.

The pikes were also mainly used against infantry, like the phalanx. The role of the pike against cavalry was mainly psychological: the horse has a mind of its own and won't charge against something looking so dangerous. Besides, even barded horses won't chage into a wall of pikes/spears/sticks ;-) because the normal horse is not that smart to understand the role of the armour it is wearing.

Now, back to the topic of this thread, I think it is not possible to change the parameters in export_descr_unit.text in any meaningful way in order to have 2 types of defence (not 2 types of attack - this was already done by the mount_effect): one against infantry and one against cavalry.

[cunctator]

Did you mean this photo?


I think the formation is influenced or based on the one described in "Arrian's Array against the Alans". Also they don`t have enough men to show the correct deep.

The pilum was designed to bend after impact, so they had to hit anything with sufficient power. A bent pilum that stacks in a horse or a rider is not a wasted one. Also i doubt that it bents after every stab, especially if unarmoured parts of your enemy are hit. There is much more kinetic energy stored in a thrown pilum.

[GoreBag]

The pilum was designed to bend after impact, so they had to hit anything with sufficient power. A bent pilum that stacks in a horse or a rider is not a wasted one. Also i doubt that it bents after every stab, especially if unarmoured parts of your enemy are hit. There is much more kinetic energy stored in a thrown pilum.

Not if a soldier was receiving a charge with the pilum.

I agree as far as the "spear wall" is concerned, but I don't think they would have been especially effective if the cavalry were really gutsy or stupid enough to charge them anyway.

[Furious Mental]

I think Roman infantry from the 3rd century onwards used the hasta anyway. That seems to have been when horses were getting more important, although it might have nothing to do with it.

[DemonArchangel]

Oddly enough however, the pilum will only bend if the wooden dowel attaching the shaft to the head shatters (or something of that nature, I'm not sure). If the dowel is made of metal, then the pilum becomes nearly impossible to bend.

[Simetrical]

Oddly enough however, the pilum will only bend if the wooden dowel attaching the shaft to the head shatters (or something of that nature, I'm not sure). If the dowel is made of metal, then the pilum becomes nearly impossible to bend.

There were two varieties, I believe. The earlier one just had a large portion of the shaft made of softish iron. Basically, when it hit it would bend, making it useless until someone straightened it out again (a simple task). A later version had a normal javelin head with two pins holding it into the shaft, one wooden and one metal. When that kind hit, the wooden pin would snap, causing the javelin head to fall askew and making the weapon similarly useless until it could be repaired by the simple addition of a spare wooden pin. The later variation was introduced due to the difficulty/expense of making a long piece of iron soft enough to bend correctly but hard enough to do plenty of damage.

This is all from memory, though, so I'm quite possibly wrong on parts of it.

-Simetrical

[cunctator]

I agree as far as the "spear wall" is concerned, but I don't think they would have been especially effective if the cavalry were really gutsy or stupid enough to charge them anyway.

I agree with that they should not be as effective as infantry armed with a regular spear in this situation, but they could defend themselfs far better against cavalry as troops only armed with the gladius as the initial poster suggests.

I know only two main variants of the pilum. (see link http://www.larp.com/legioxx/pilum.html)
I never heard of the second one simetrical describes. It would be very interesting for me to hear more about it. I know that the roman army used many different types of javelins like the lancea or the Iaculum. So was this still called pilum?

[DemonArchangel]

The wood pin pilum was invented by Gaius Marius.

[cunctator]

Oh, thanks. So it is just the standard tanged pilum with one of the rivets replaced with a wooden one. This version was no longer in use after the end of the republic. I had another kind of weapon in mind.

[Benny Moore]

In addition, were there not complaints that they often did not bend as they were supposed to?