Sweboz (Germans) slightly underpowered

[PSYCHO V]

Also Psycho should know, that the numbers Caesar mentioned are laughable.
I admire his knowledge about celts, but it is rather disturbing that he mentions numbers of whom he know are wrong. .

Then why are you so hung up on citing the example of 800 German cavalry?

Taking into the account of Caesar and his battle with Ariovistus John Warry puts the numbers as:
Caesar:21,000 legionairs plus 4,000 Gallic horse and other auxillaries
Ariovistus: (from a community of 120,000) 6,000 horsemen, 6,000 footmen, 16,000 light infantry.
I don't have a problem with these numbers. .

I believe Caesar had 6 legions, so he may have had a little more than 21k, we don’t know for sure as several legions were under strength.

But this begs the question....

By your rationale Frosty, if 6 Legions defeated 120,000 Germans but 11 Legions were defeated by 80,000 Gauls..shouldn’t we all be jumping up and down claiming that the ‘Gauls were better than the Germans most of the time’!

I use multiple authors trying to get a consensus on historical happenings to see if most agree, and to date on this time period and situations they do.

I’m afraid that is just your interpretation. You take quotes like Goldsworthy on how during the Gallic campaign the German horse appeared superior and want to extrapolate that (devoid of context) to several hundred years prior. See my post in the "Celts are overpowered" thread for more detailed cross analysis.

Since I'm not sure which battles Psyco V was talking about I'll make a guess about the 4,000 Gallic cavalry vs 6,000 cavalry as being that as Ariovistus. If thats the case then you could be right. Caesar never elaborates about the cavalry in the battle. He mentions several skirmishes they had prior but says nothing one way or the other.

Yup

As far as the 400 defeating the 4,000 that sounds like the Helvetii defeating Caesar's 4,000 cavalry. Caesar's cavalry ended up getting spread out and the 400 Helvetii charged them and chased them off. There were no Germans involved here.

No Germans..so?

The point is anyone can grab an isolated incident out of any semblance of context and start making grandiose claims. What about the alleged force of 430,000 Germans who threw down their arms and fled in panic at the sight of 8 Legions in open country ...when 330,000 Gauls attacked 11 well entrenched Legions? Should we assume all Germans were cowards and the Gauls brave and ferocious warriors?

This would get down to the realistic units again. The goal is realism …and realistic units.

Yup, which is what EB have. They don’t take Imperial Legions and use them as a bench-mark for all Romans throughout several hundred years of history prior… nor do they take Germanic feat of arms in the mid 1st BC – 1st C Ad and do the same.


my2bob