Quote Originally Posted by TWFanatic
You, sir, contribute quite a bit to luck. Forgive me for speaking plainly but you blatantly disregarded the greatness of Alexander and the superiority of his system of warfare to all others that he encountered. I suppose it would be more correct to say his father Phillip II's system of warfare, but that's beside the point (just had to appease the detail nitpickers). You simply cannot deny that the Macedonians were superior militarily to the Persians and the entire near east, and that Alexander and Phillip were (and still are) two of the greatest military leaders and reformers ever.
Unlike Mrtwisties, who merely brought a different, but not outrightly false account, you are committing a great offence to established academical sensibilities, bringing scholarship to the issue back some centuries; Indeed, Classicists of the Victorian age would have been proud to read such a claim. On what grounds was the Macedonian system superior to that of the Persians, and how does this relate to your assertion of correctly appreciating Alexander's reputation as a general? Are you by chance saying that Alexander's basis, which would constitute the backbone of his strategies and his tactics, superior to that of the Persians, facilitiating his victories? Alexander is called the Great, because he wasn't a mediocre general; To somehow ascribe his victories automatically by saying that he had better troops, is to defile what truly revolutionized warfare, effectively bringing it to the Hellenistic age. The Graeco-Macedonians did not have the vast spectra of troops available to that of the Persians; Indeed, they did not even organize themselves accordingly to a decimal system, unlike the Persians who had an almost over-complicated system of ordaining junior and senior officers. It is hard to discard many popularly established idea, but in reality it is absurd to think that once Alexander captured babylon, it was all over; Equally, it is absurd to dismiss the factors that truly contributed to the downfall of the Codomannus.

Using your line of logic, I may as well as ascribe the Parthian army superior to the Seleucid war-machine; Simply because they got defeated by an almost ridiculously simple organization with a main corpus of horse-archers and light horse, with a nucleus of super-heavy cavalry. To ascribe superiority by such a basis is not only risky, but also discouraged; Alexander did for instance meet very harsh resistance from Ariobarzanes, who probably expected to complete the pincer once Darius had arrived with his reinforcements from Ecbatana. Then by what basis do you asribe the Macedonian military machine superior? At Gaugamela, Darius expected to win. Not only did he bring more, and heavier cavalry to the battle, he also brought elephants, shock chariotry and organized his lines accordingly to facilitate flanking.