Adversary of Alexangder in China

pla101prc said:

lol there is no way alexander can expect to get help from any ofthe state. it might be the case that some of the state might free ride the collective defence that everyone is bound to be part of, but no one is gonna openly side with alexander. if you are familiar with history of that time you should know how Chinese think of barbarians, there were instances where all the states who were at war with each other came to the rescue of states under attack from barbarians.
and if alexander were to march east he will encounter Qin first, then prolly Chu, which was the largest and extremely powerful state. i am not sure if Jin was still around by that time, but even if it wasnt, after it had dissolved one of the state was the strongest of all states at the time and that was Wei. Wei had heavy infantry as well like alexander. and Zhao has really good calvary. Han was less powerful but would have enough soldiers to slow them down. even if they were defeated, the weakened alexander would then have to face the most powerful state Qi. Qi's capital linzi was the largest city in the world til its fall, just to give you a gauge of how powerful it was. so conclusion, doesnt matter how alexander wants to go about it, you can give him twice the original number of soldiers he had, he will fail.

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Actually in my post, I said that if we forcefully tried to take Alexandra vs Xiang Yu and/or Liu Bang (although they are from different era), there will be two outcomes for each circumstances. Although one of the outcome for each circumstances are highly unlikely (the joining of force for Alexandra and Xiang Yu or Liu Bang), and I am familiar with chinese culture (being one myself), but you must also admit that Chinese are a very flexible people. The reason why they do not think highly of the barbarians are not out of national pride, but rather, they looked down on barbarians.

The chinese had the most developed culture in the region during that period and nothing came close to their development. So they basically looked down upon all the rest of the people - even the Qin when they are in East and not yet entering the mainland.

Even the Yue from the mainland was also being looked down upon as barbarians.

However if a superior force establish themselves on the plain and managed to destroy or defeat any of the states readily, I believe many of the weaker states will align themselves with this force for many reasons (one of them being - to safeguard their own interest and to expand their interest base.)

Thus it really doesn't matter who enter China, be it the Romans, the Greeks or Qin, they have the same outcome.

But I am not saying that Alexandra will win. On the contrary, I did pointed out the disadvantage of Alexandra's troop when entering the Chinese plain. They are not just a measure of the capability of the troops, rather we must look into many other areas such as terrain, geography, supply chain, logistical support, etc.

if Alexander invades China during Xiangyu/Liu bang era, say if he enters from Sichuan, that's where Liu bang is, 99% this is what's gonna happen. Liu tries to fight off Alex, lets say that Han Xin wasnt with him and he loses, then Xiang Yu, being a nominal ally after the accord with Liu Bang, would say "well, you are in trouble why not let me help you". he'll send his force in, beat Alex and never leaves. and then the ppl of China will prolly have to suffer a couple decades of Xiang Yu's rule LMAO.

True. But there might also be a possibility that Liu Bang didn't allow Xiang Yu to help him when defending his own turf. And that might result in Liu Bang facing both Xiang Yu and Alex from both directions.

Whats more, as pointed out in my first post in this topic there are a couple of outcomes in different circumstances. And we are only looking at one at this moment.

i am not exactly sure how Alexander is gonna deal with the logistic hurdle though. is cant live off the land like he did in Persia...its a long walk to China and disease will prolly kill more of his men then Chinese soldiers

pla101prc said:

i am not exactly sure how Alexander is gonna deal with the logistic hurdle though. is cant live off the land like he did in Persia...its a long walk to China and disease will prolly kill more of his men then Chinese soldiers

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True. very true. But instead of disease, I think what is more likely is that his troop and himself couldn't get use to the weather, climate and terrain (水土不服）.

I remember the time when I first went to China (somewhere in the late 80s), I have a serious case of vomitting and diarrehea (and it was hell I tell you.) even though at that time medicine is readily available. In Alex's era... I couldn't begin to imagine how they are going to fare in that type of environment.

And in many famous battles throughout history (Napolean's Waterloo, Germans in Russia, Cao Cao's army against Zhou Yu, etc) we are seeing alot of examples of how the a greater army is defeated by climate, whether, geography and even the water of a local land that they are not familiar with.

that was the point that i wanted to raise, but seeing that the macedonians have been fighting across a vastly different terrains i am not sure if they are that susceptible to such changes

What you have said might be right. Another reason why I think Alex might not succeed is the fact that if he decided to invade China, his supply lines and his battle hardened troops will be stretched past their limits.

China is a mountaineous land, even at that time and if Alex was to enter from the Qin area, it would be worse. To move large amount of supplies through those area would not be a very easy (I think myself and pla101prc had pointed that out before). Plus at that time Qin who had been at war with the normadic tribes for centuries and that the other great states are all fighting for a long time to have very experience generals and soldiers, thus they might not have that much of an advantage one on one either.

Thus I think Alex best bet would be to come in swiftly, take over some of the states when they are still unable to react, then start making allies and using the divide and conquer tactics to slowly take over the rest of China.