Carthaginian Formation

[skuzzy]

I'm looking more along the lines of historically accurate, not loading up on Elite African Infranty and Sacred Warband Cavalry to fill a stack :p

[Zastrow]

Historically accurate? Would simply be a core group of medium infantry and cavalry from Africa augmented by local levies and auxiliaries from across the Carthaginian mercentile empire. Then again the structure of Hannibal's Army was far different from the 1st Punic War armies to my knowledge and I know really not alot about 1st Punic War Carthaginian Army composition.

[abou]

The Carthaginians relied heavily on mercenaries, which later got them in trouble at the end of the 1st Punic War when the Carthaginian senate refused to pay them. Anyway, not much seems to have been written on formations used by Carthage - save Hannibal Barca who frequently changed formation for each situation.

Generally, they do seem to have used Hellenistic tactics and even hired a Greek mercenary general (Xanthippos) for a time in the 1st war. If anything is regular it is elephants in the front and cavalry on the wings.

[Zaknafien]

Not quite. Elephants were more often on the flanks, flanked furthermore by Punic and Numidian horse in most cases--look at Trebia for a clear example of this. Elephants are not shock cavalry, they are used as a cavalry screen, rather. While it is conventional to describe Punic armies as "relying heavily on mercenaries", this is a gross oversimplification, since their forces included soldiers raised in many different ways with a great variety of different motivations. Some were hired, some were levied, some were provided by vassals, some as part of treaty obligations. Numidian contingents for instance were quite often led by their own royalty.

[abou]

Though it would be safe to say that Carthaginian citizens rarely fought on the state's behalf, right?

edit: except maybe in the navy. I'll have to read up on that again.

[skuzzy]

Yeah, most of this information I found on wikipedia but I guess I'll just stick with what I was doing of mix and matching aux, cavalry, and infantry trying not to create unbelievably strong armies since if you have the money you can hire some pretty nice elite units. Thanks though.