Army Design: A Christmas Treat!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

A for fun project!

Assume you are designing field armies (general purpose land combat) to combat opponents in more-or-less conventional warfare.

Each army may have a total combat troop strength of 100,000 persons.

You may combine troops of any nation or sub-era within the larger frameworks listed, but may not equip them with equipment better/substantially different then their own sub-era.

The eras in question:

Muscle-powered: 3500 BCE through 1350 CE

Gunpowder Era:1350 through 1850 CE

Early Modern: 1851 though 1960 CE

Later Modern: 1961 CE through Present


Delineate your forces and the reason for that composition.

[Julian the apostate]

wait so were fighting an equal size army and can have the entire thing modern?
why wouldn't we lets say emplace tens of thousands of men with top of the line M82A2 snipers and F-22s

[The Stranger]

yeah... when i choose muscle power my enemies chooses nukes... wata...

but for the project i'll choose medieval warfare from between 800 till 1100

ill edit the composition in later

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I meant one "ideal" field army (land/tactical forces, so integral helo units etc. yes, but stealth bombers no) for and within EACH of those eras. Or whichever ones for which you wish to do so. So if you want Welsh Longbowmen working with your Legios go ahead. Combining Sharpe's Rifles with Kampfgruppe Peiper is, however, not allowed -- different tech base.

Besides, lining up a company of M1A2 Abrams against all the forces at Cannae is the sort of thing that appeals only to 9 year olds and hemomaniacs.

[Conqueror]

I don't think there's such a thing as an ideal field army. The performance of any combination of troops depends too much on the environment where the combat will take place. One could try and come up with optimized setups for each environment type though.

[Rodion Romanovich]

Maybe the periods are a bit long? With such long eras, I'd mostly take units from the end of each of the periods... Anyway:

Muscle-powered: 3500 BCE through 1350 CE:
* Missiles:
- foot archers could be either: Welsh/English longbowmen, Indian longbows, or archer footmen from some steppe culture
- horse archers: horse archers of any steppe culture. Armed with bows with extreme range as their main weapon, and curved sword as secondary weapon
* Artillery:
- Mongol/Khazar mobile field artillery
- French slightly heavier field artillery
* Infantry:
- give all infantry plenty of backup weapons. All soldiers who aren't in a forward rank and participating in melee should be able to constantly rain down morale breaking and damaging missiles over their enemies ahead. Pilums, darts, heavy throwing spears, slings, small bows, crossbows/arbalests and if allowed also some of the early primitive pistols could be used.
- FIRST LINE: massed formations of Swiss pikemen and halberdiers forming a stable battle line. Give them a backup light sword and a round shield strapped on the back. The pikemen should carry heavy armor and with large hats to protect them from missiles. This formation should be the largest part of the force. Spartan hoplites would do in case there would be a shortage of Swiss troops
- SECOND LINE: marian legionaries with their square shields and pilums should constitute the second largest part of the infantry force, and be used to cover the rear and flanks
- RESERVE: light Scottish pikemen/spearmen as a flexible light infantry with schiltrom formation, kept in reserve. Macedonian light phalanx troops could also fit into this pool.
- RESERVE: English billmen, also kept in reserve
- RESERVE: a few of the different semi-legendary fanatics/elite troops that existed during the era, armed with "cruel and unusual weapons" to break formations and morale, also kept in reserve
* CAVALRY:
- the heavy cavalry of most steppe cultures
- parthian/sassanid clibanarii and cataphracts
- crusader knights


Gunpowder Era:1350 through 1850 CE:
* INFANTRY:
- any would do. Take any riflemen with good rifles (compromise of range, accuracy and reload speed) and good discipline from the Napoleonic era to form the bulk of the army. Armed with these rifles for normal combat, crossbows for silent and longer range engagement, a sword for melee and two small pistols that they can fire quickly and throw away without reloading. Then take any infantry well armed for melee and with great morale to use for charging and pinning enemies
* GRENADIERS:
- any would do
* CAVALRY:
- not sure cavalry was of much use towards the end of the era, but light lancers of any kind would do. The most important thing for them would be speed, then effectiveness of the charge
- any steppe horse archers for scouting and harassing
* ARTILLERY:
- a large contingent of French or Prussian mobile horse artillery. Naturally to be amassed and used in Napoleon-style massive barrages targetting a single enemy unit at the time
- a large contingent of as heavy as possible (that can still be moved with the troops) artillery with as long range as possible for sieges and bombarding fortified positions. This formation should include higher trajectory weapons too.


Early Modern: 1851 though 1960 CE:
Pretty pointless, because such drastic change took place in 1918 and 1945, as well as between 1945 and 1960, that only weapons from 1960 would be worth considering... A good mix of all weapon types, including sniper, light machinegunner, heavy machinegunner, AT soldier, light AT soldier, assault rifle soldiers, grenadiers, light grenadiers. Heavy tanks attack choppers and tank destroyers to support the infantry, and a strong force of fighter planes to take out enemy fighters and bombers. A few own bombers too. That's pretty much it. Improving the quality of the fighters give air supremacy, which given enough time gives armor superiority, which gives general superiority on the ground. An excellent and unbeatable army in regular war, but quite useless against guerilla/resistance/freedom fighters.

[The Stranger]

oke.

The legionares of Ceasar, swiss pikemen, Samurai 50,000 men

Welsh longbowmen, Genuese Crossbowmen 15,000 men

Byzantine Cats, Turkish Sipahi of Porte, Mongol Horse Archers 30,000 men

French Artillery (as in mangonels and such) 5,000 men

15,000 Swiss Pikemen on both flanks, 25,000 legionaries in the middle. 10,000 samurai to fill in the gaps or counter attack. this is /----\ the army setup.

10,000 longbowmen behind the infantry lines, 5,000 genuese crossbowmen infront of the infantry to pepper the closing enemies and after that they retreat behind the infantry, fire all their arrows, and help the samurai with their role.

Cavalry screening the flanks of the infantry, performing counter attacks and raids on the enemy flanks. Cavalry archers to lure enemies into traps and shower them with arrows whilst staying outof range...

[Innocentius]

Personally, I'd make my army a lot smaller than 100 000 if before the Napoleonic era, as logistics for such an army would've been a nightmare.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

oke.

The legionares of Ceasar, swiss pikemen, Samurai 50,000 men

Welsh longbowmen, Genuese Crossbowmen 15,000 men

Byzantine Cats, Turkish Sipahi of Porte, Mongol Horse Archers 30,000 men

French Artillery (as in mangonels and such) 5,000 men

15,000 Swiss Pikemen on both flanks, 25,000 legionaries in the middle. 10,000 samurai to fill in the gaps or counter attack. this is /----\ the army setup.

10,000 longbowmen behind the infantry lines, 5,000 genuese crossbowmen infront of the infantry to pepper the closing enemies and after that they retreat behind the infantry, fire all their arrows, and help the samurai with their role.

Cavalry screening the flanks of the infantry, performing counter attacks and raids on the enemy flanks. Cavalry archers to lure enemies into traps and shower them with arrows whilst staying outof range...

Yikes...not being an STW player I'd forgotten about the Samurai. 10k as your spearhead/fire brigade/forlorn hope (depending on situation) would be a brutal addition. Plus most of them would have used bows over and above the blades. Pikes/Legios is about what I'd put together and good mix on the foot archer.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I don't think there's such a thing as an ideal field army. The performance of any combination of troops depends too much on the environment where the combat will take place. One could try and come up with optimized setups for each environment type though.

...oh, goodie. I'd managed to get this far without realizing that life etc. is relative. Thanks for getting me up to speed on that rather than just having a bit of fun with this.

[Julian the apostate]

okay and i agree, i was just wonderingwat the poitn woudl be if we were combining eras. that makes more sense thank u

i guess in the modern era i'd go with a purely light infantry force with obcene air support. mabye 50 thousand spec ops style lads ... small units and such... then 10 thou, heavy tank support... 15 percent logistics ... 25 heavy air

in previous eras, i guess like 1800s
largely all heavy heavy rifles with, i guess polish lancer making up mabye twenty percent of the force

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Personally, I'd make my army a lot smaller than 100 000 if before the Napoleonic era, as logistics for such an army would've been a nightmare.

Oh come now, Xerxes invaded Greece with not less than 1.3 million -- Herodotus would not fudge numbers would he....

So make your team the size you want...the 100k was a max limit.

[Pannonian]

Why not dispense with infantry and just go with 100,000 Mongol archers for the musclepower era? Supremely organised, wonderfully flexible, tactically unbeatable in the open and with a strategic range no other army can match. If they need to take cities, cut that down a bit and add the standard corps of Muslim/Chinese engineers. If they feel they can win a fight, thy'll just slaughter you where you stand. If not, they'll go away and terrorise someone else, then catch you when your back's turned.

[Conqueror]

Get the Chinese to take care of the logistics and you can use massive armies

[Pannonian]

Late modern - no precise figures, just broad outlines.

Israeli tankers in American tanks.
British infantry.
British generals.
American logistics.

The US-Israeli armour provides the ultimate in punching power, while the British main force ensures operations don't go too far beyond what's necessary, while retaining a fair bit of strike power and flexibility. American logistics is, as always, a wonder of the world. 1960s Israelis, plus the latest in other areas.

[Innocentius]

Oh come now, Xerxes invaded Greece with not less than 1.3 million -- Herodotus would not fudge numbers would he....

So make your team the size you want...the 100k was a max limit.

Well, I seriously doupt that Xerxes had 1.3 million men, considering that he lived a few centuries BC, when the Earth's population was a lot smaller and less dense than it is today. Also, figures from that time aren't very reliable in any case.
Adding to that, a battle a couple of centuries BC can't even possibly have been bigger than the Battle of Leipzig in 1813 (from which there are reliable sources) and that is considered to be the biggest battle in Europe (before the WWs).

I'd pick an army of 1000 Mongol horse archers (this in the Muscle-powered era) and a mobile luggage train of about the same amount of horses and men, carrying enough arrows to supply an army for ten times the size (which would mean almost infinite ammo. in a single battle). I'd be able to outmanouvre anyone, and if the battlefield didn't fit me, I'd just run away and pillage some. Second that!

[yesdachi]

How fun! I wish I had more time to go into detail but due to a long weekend I am forced to actually get some work done today

I am a firm believer in the old saying, the best defense is a good offence, so I would lean on the side of the more aggressive and fast army in any era. The early Roman* armies (during the expanding phase rather than their retreating phase) seem like a pretty rounded yet more offensive type of army, infused with a dash more mobile artillery and Calvary and some clever Mongolian style tactics would be a pretty good example of how I would structure any eras army just replacing the troops with their newer counterparts as each era allowed. Additionally I would get into the air asap, at first just for scouting and later for troop support and surgical strikes, he who controls the skies, controls the world!


*I guess I could replace the Romans with my personal favorite Samurai’s but I think the organized strength of the Romans army is greater than a samurai army, as the samurais seem to have more emphasis on individual combat rather than the team work the Romans had. That said, I still think an individual average samurai could waste any other individual average combatant from a similar era, but an army of them would probably get their butts handed to them when facing legionaries, knights, etc.