New unit: Conquistadores

[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.

[anders]

i actually thought the swedes were the first western army to drop the caracole, and instead use "polish-lithuanian"-style cavalry charges with long lances.

using the caracole against pike.armed infantry is probably all fine and dandy, but using it against musket-bearers just seems incredibly stupid, riding up to them, getting well inside their firing range, almost stopping, turning half-sideways, firing, turning again and firing pistol number two, seems a great way to get shot by the infantry wielding bigger, longer range guns from a more stable standing position...

[maestro]

The crusaders did the same things with the Jews "How many Jewish babies can you fit on your sword?"