Are Spartans Gods?

[Nelson]

Spartans are commonly thought of as the best trained soldiers of the ancient world. I think that's why they're elite.

Bingo. Many buyers expect the Spartans to be special and CA didn’t want to disappoint them. This is the same reason the Egyptians don’t look Greek. It’s all about meeting customer expectations.

Regardless of how the Spartans in their heyday stacked up against other armies, they had certainly shot their bolt before the Rome: Total War timeframe.

[Joshwa]

Okay, Greek history isn't my specialty, I do Roman history on my degree course, but from what i've read, Spartan training was exceptional, as was their discipline, but, as others have shown, they weren't that good. What set them apart was their mindset. The Spartans, like the Vikings, were just hard. End of story.

[Slug For A Butt]

The Spartans, like the Vikings, were just hard. End of story.

Spoken like a true Yorkshireman. Good man.

[edyzmedieval]

Spartans are like Jomsvikings or Viking Huscarles. Trained from infancy to kill. Full stop.

[Avicenna]

Perhaps Samurai as well?

[Wishazu]

I cant beleive it took this long for someone in this thread to mention the Samurai, especially as the first total war game was all about them.

The spartans may not be the ultimate warriors in all of history, but in their time no one could match them. Someone mentioned the battle between the spartans and Argos, the 300 vs 300. It could be argued that this was not a defeat for the Spartans, although only 1 Spartan survived compared to 2 Argives, the Spartan held the field after the two argives retired so it could be argued that the Spartans won :)

The spartans were masters of phalanx warfare aswell as masters of terror.

Throughout history there have been many great warrior societies, the Romans, Samurai, Spartans etc. Many of them were unique to their own time but not necassarily better than the other.

Besides, the spartans stats in rtw arnt that good, 17 attack for 17 defence and 2 hitpoints. They just are very hard to break.

[Avicenna]

2 hp, 17 defence, phalanx formation and high morale already make them quite formidable, as they will last so long. In the time they fight before you can break them, they'll do some damage with that 17 attack of theirs.

The Samurai weren't unique in Japan though, they were all over the place. Japan was pretty much isolated for a long time.

[Severous]

I will have some more Spartan screenshots later this week. For the second time since Ive had RTW ive expanded to Greece and now face Sparta. Spies tell me theres one Spartan unit and 5 Armoured hoplites. I plan to shoot them to death.

[Watchman]

I notice people are here too confusing the old hoplite shieldwall phalanx with the later Hellenic pike phalanx. Two different things. The former is spearmen fighting in close-order formation, a very ancient technique also evident in the Stele of Vultures and Standard of Ur dating to Sumeria, 2500 BC, and used the world over in one form or another. The latter is pikemen, whose primary weapons become practically useless out of formation which is not the case with "standard" heavy-infantry spearmen. This developement was much rarer; the only instances I know of are the Hellenics, the Medieval and later Europeans, and the Japanese around the Sengoku Jidai period (and at least early on theirs were probably closer to spearmen with longer two-handed spears rather than "true" pikemen, although the difference is obviously fuzzy).

At Thermopylae the Spartan threehundred was accompanied by whatwasit, a few thousand other hoplites. The Spartans were just the only ones who stuck around once the situation became untenable following the Persian flanking maneuver - either to buy time, because the warrior ethos they'd been conditioned with bluntly did not consider retreat an option (this caused some issues every now and then), or both.

Anyway, the Spartans were full-time professionals in a land of part-time citizen-soldiers. Of course they were tougher and braver than most opposition; I've read their fierce reputation and unflinching advance alone were often able to break the will of the opposing hoplite line long before melee contact. Once Greek warfare started becoming more professional, "combined arms" as well as more casualty-heavy they also seem to have started losing a fair bit of their edge although internal social and economic shifts also did their part.

And let's remember one thing about warrior elites "trained from birth" - in the vast majority of cases proper combat training was only seriously begun around the early teens or thereabouts. Before that the future "supersoldiers" were primarily indoctrinated with the appropriate warrior ethos and culture, as well as learning associated peripherals considered to form part of the education of a "complete warrior". I'm guessing there's perfectly sensible physiological reasons for that actually. Too young children are simply going to have serious trouble with some of the physical aspects of real combat training, and I understand too harsh conditions will mess up their physical growth too.
No point in raising a generation of cripples, is there ?

[Avicenna]

Oh, they had harsh conditions. They weren't given enough food, and were encouraged to steal extra to make up for the low amount of food given. They also did have some exercise at least when toddlers, as the Spartan boys were sent to the Agoge at the age of seven. It is most likely that apart from the basic reading and writing skills taught, Spartan values reinforced, they also had some form of exercise. I've read that the Spartan elders even encouraged dissent among the children, to allow them to fight, and to find out which were capable of being good leaders.

Throwing a child into wine right after being born sounds quite darned harsh to me.

[Watchman]

Well, they did kind of start running out of homoioi eventually didn't they...?

[littlebktruck]

I believe I heard that after the Peloponnesian War they had about 1500 left.

[Lorenzo_H]

Lets face it everybody, Spartans are pretty cool guys; you can't disagree with that.

[Callahan9119]

sparta had the best land armies in the greek world...while the athenians had the navy

i dont have a problem with spartans being good in rtw

i read they were paired up with another, to be with during the training and such and often became lovers...increasing devotion and the ability to fight well together

[gmjapan]

At the time the Spartans were the uber-soldiers of the known world, there were no walls around Sparta (no need as the saying goes). In the time-frame of R:TW this era has passed and there are already walls around Sparta.

So why are they still so good in R:TW? Mythology I suspect. In the real end they ran out of real Spartans. The Spartans were too Spartan for their own good (was trying to avoid using that blinding irony!).

It wasnt just a life-time of training, these guys were also Olympic Champions. Where can the enemy go if it routed? Outrun a Spartan! All that polished bronze and the stories about them could win battles before they begin.

But this is all before the time of R:TW. Even the Romans used to fight in phalanx but adapted when it proved inflexible for hilly terrain etc. Thats a key difference in the history of these Empires.