New unit: Conquistadores

[TB666]

http://www.totalwar.com/en/medieval2...its/index.html

Another great looking unit.
Only recruitable in America, very interesting
Makes me wonder what more kinda units are we can recruit over there.

[Bob the Insane]

Well BI introduced (reintroduced) regionally recruitable troops in to the game (yes I am aware a lot of mods did this prior to BI, I mean from a CA perspective) so I guess they will be making more use of this which is cool...

But does the Conquistadore one not come across as a bit of a paradox? I mean if you can only build Conquistadores in the new world then who captures the settlements?

[Furious Mental]

Weird. Technically I think conquistadores should be recruitable in Cuba.

[lars573]

Well BI introduced (reintroduced) regionally recruitable troops in to the game (yes I am aware a lot of mods did this prior to BI, I mean from a CA perspective) so I guess they will be making more use of this which is cool...

But does the Conquistadore one not come across as a bit of a paradox? I mean if you can only build Conquistadores in the new world then who captures the settlements?

What the hell are you on about? RTW had regional troops. Just that very few troop types used it. Elephants, Camels, Spartans, and legionary first cohorts were region specific in RTW. In BI besides Elephants/Camels only Sughdian warriors were region specific.

[Bob the Insane]

Well my apologies for being wrong, sorry for offending you so greatly...

[lanky316]

What exactly were conquistadores anyway? Forgive my ignorance but I'd always read that it was just a generic term for the latino invaders to southern America who were conquering but the trend in these games involving speicalist units with the role has sort of thrown me regarding that now

[lars573]

It litterally means conqueror. They were the leaders of the epeditions that took the new world for Spain. They were a quasilegal group. With men being given the right to conquer in the name of the king and govern what they took. They also split the loot between themselfs, their men, and the king. Although "their men" usually mean't their brothes/cousins and buddies they took with them to lead the expeditions. Also most of them were from minor Castillean nobility (or in Pizarro's case the illegitimate son of one) looking to make their fortunes in the new world.

[Furious Mental]

By the looks of it they are just lancers wearing a half-armour. I don't really see why the same sort of cavalry wouldn't be found in Europe.

[econ21]

Makes me wonder what more kinda units are we can recruit over there.

A screenshot of the Portugese custom battle roster shows a dismounted conquistador, so it would make sense for that also to be recruitable.

Beyond that, there may be some allied native American units.

[Maizel]

A screenshot of the Portugese custom battle roster shows a dismounted conquistador, so it would make sense for that also to be recruitable.

Beyond that, there may be some allied native American units.

I tought the cav was dismountable?

[Lord ZORO Savage]

I tought the cav was dismountable?

The cav is dismountable.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I think the cavalry should be only recruited in the Caribbean at the very least. I mean the last thinh we want to see is hordes of cavalry swarming around in Mexico. When you look into the history of the battles with the Aztecs, Incas and other indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Spanish had only limited numbers of cavalry availiable. I don't mind dismounted units being trained but not loads of horsemen, the Indians peoples will get destroyed in a few turns of the European armies landing which isn't great for gameplay

[Bob the Insane]

I think the cavalry should be only recruited in the Caribbean at the very least. I mean the last thinh we want to see is hordes of cavalry swarming around in Mexico. When you look into the history of the battles with the Aztecs, Incas and other indigenous peoples of the Americas, the Spanish had only limited numbers of cavalry availiable. I don't mind dismounted units being trained but not loads of horsemen, the Indians peoples will get destroyed in a few turns of the European armies landing which isn't great for gameplay

And that would make your cavalry all the more valuable over there if they could not be built or retrained...

Well get game first, play vanilla and have fun, then look to the mods...

[buujin]

There were region-specific troops in MTW1

[Sun of Chersonesos]

besides the fact that conquistadores should have muskets, what if you recruited conquistadore and then brought it back to south western europe :) awwwwwwwwwwwww

[Callatian]

besides the fact that conquistadores should have muskets, what if you recruited conquistadore and then brought it back to south western europe :) awwwwwwwwwwwww

They die quite fast ... those dead are under missile fire :)

[Watchman]

Europeans were experimenting with "mounted shot" already fairly early on, although AFAIK not yet during the conquest of the Americas. Not that such skirmish tactics would have been terribly effective there given the large sizes of the native armies, the vanishingly small numbers of Conquistador cavalry and the abysmally slow reloading times of the firearms in question anyway.

The Conquistadors used both firearms and crossbows, but neither was really particularly important. Infantry crossbows by that point of time were pretty much all steel-stave arbalests made to kill anything not clad in some pretty damn good plate armour at range but awfully slow to reload, and the arquebuses were much the same save less accurate and more frightening due to the smoke, flame and noise. Given the sheer sizes of the Indian armies they faced both were only really tactically useful as "sniper" weapons used to take down officers and similar high-value individual targets - the local practice of having officers wear often very extravagant and conspicuous decorations, standards and other marks of rank and means of battlefield identification no doubt helped in this.

An additional obstacle for the employement of firearms would have been the sheer difficulty of reliably supplying gunpowder (or even slowmatch, for that matter) in the conditions the Conquistadors usually campaigned in, and what they had and could get went first and foremost to the few pieces of artillery they were able to bring along - these had great psychological impact on the battlefield and were also very useful in sieges (Cortez's boys apparently also mounted them on the prows of boats for naval fighting around Tenochitlan during the siege of the city), and duly had the priority. Native allies were easily able to supply crossbow bolts once shown a few specimen to copy though - I've read the Conquistadors actually considered the copper-tipped ones of local manufacture in some ways superior to the ones they'd brought along.

For the most part, however, the invaders had to rely on tried-and-true cold steel for dealing with the opposition.

[ajaxfetish]

If I understand correctly, the conquistadores were the many young adventurers of the Spanish lesser nobility who suddenly had nothing to do after capturing Granada in 1492, and ending the reconquista. Conveniently for them, Columbus opened up a new theater of conquest that same auspicious year. How they'd be recruitable in America rather than in Spain where the horses, manpower, and technology for the invasion existed is beyond me.

As far as German ritter's with pistols though, I can accept that if it's late enough since IIRC that was a common if less than stellar cavalry tactic in the late Renaissance up to around the 30 Years War to ride into pistol range, fire on the enemy, and wheel about to ride back and reload (though the name of the maneuver escapes me, and I'm not sure of exact dates, especially since I can't remember the name to look it up, grr).

Ajax

[Furious Mental]

Well irl the caracole was pretty worthless because cavalry could never beat musketeers in a gun fight. However there could be situations in MTW 2 where it could be useful to wear down infantry unaccompanied by missile troops.

[Watchman]

The Conquistadores came in the main from (or through) the already established colonies in the Caribbean and along the American coastline. Usually more-or-less middle-class types and lower gentry looking to improve their fortunes and so on (a while later the equivalent method in southern England and the French coast was piracy and privateering). Former soldiers were actually pretty rare, although I wouldn't be all that suprised if many of the men had had some sort of militia training and education in swordsmanship and suchlike was pretty widespread in the societies of the time.

There were also surprisingly many enterprising African slaves in their ranks - capable folks whom their owners had let off to earn the money to pay for their freedom as a sort of investement, and partly to keep such clever fellows from plotting trouble in bondage.

Opportunistic native aristocrats apparently turn up rather often in surveys of post-Conquest landowners too, although obviously these folks wouldn't have fought in the ranks as conquistadors but instead led native allies.

As far as German ritter's with pistols though, I can accept that if it's late enough since IIRC that was a common if less than stellar cavalry tactic in the late Renaissance up to around the 30 Years War to ride into pistol range, fire on the enemy, and wheel about to ride back and reload (though the name of the maneuver escapes me, and I'm not sure of exact dates, especially since I can't remember the name to look it up, grr).

Called caracole, Italian for "snail". Really more of an anti-pikeman tactic as well as the cavalry equivalent of the infantry countermarch (ie. rotating musketeer ranks), but conditionally useful against cavalry too. Already known in the Spanish-Dutch wars of the 1500s, where the German mercenary Reiters (forerunners of the heavy cuirassieurs of the Thirty Years' War period) also saw action. A parallel technique used already in the French religious civil wars of the late 1500s was known as pistolade, and consisted of discharging the pistols against the enemy at short range and following up with the sword; the Swedes reintroduced this when they entered the Thirty Years' War and it soon became the norm for cavalry warfare.

Nothing to do with the Conquistadors though. Those sorts of tactics practically required wheellock pistols (flintlocks only started turning up around the mid-1600s), which were not only very expensive but also mechanically unreliable and delicate. No way they could have survived the American campaign conditions, especially as repairs in practice required some fairly skilled craftsmen.