Actually we do not really know who would win a battle by just looking at the crossbow versus pikes debate... there is just a few things that I would like to point out... that are the similarity of the Qin army to the Marcelon Army,
1) Both of them have very strong and tight military formation (yes, Qin army too, if you study the teracotta army).
2) Both utilise combine arm tactics.
3) Both armies are highly developed and experienced (in the history channel, I watched, the Qin Army prior to attacking and conquering the rest of china, actually had 200 years of constant war against northern tribes. And so they actually developed very powerful military and fighting skills throughout the generations)
4) Commanders of Qin Army and Marcelon Army were people that could adapt to their surrounding very fast and quick. The Qin rulers often trust and use tactics and advises from foreign talents such as Bai Qi, while King Phillip II actually spent time as prisoner to the Greeks and learned their tactics from there on.
5) Both Armies utilise and realise the need for cavalries.
An explanation to Qin's missile troop:
As oppose to many people's conception that Qin Army are focus only on crossbow for their ranged attack, well... they are wrong, a look into the Teracotta army formation, Qin Army utilise huge number of archer too - both Bow and Crossbow had different usage though. Bow normally used for indirect military support, firing over the sky and not aiming directly at singular opponent. Crossbows were used for direct support, firing more or less in straight line. True, crossbows had slower rate of fire that is why special tactics had been developed to improve its firing rate. And it is quite successful.
There are good points for crossbows... one of them was it was more accurate then composite bow of that era. The Qin's crossbow even came with very modern targeting system such as targeting scope.
Crossbows are easy to use and so the Qin could easily amass huge number of conscripts to fire their crossbows... little training is needed and it is effective.
And we understand that firing rate is low for crossbows... however if much more people are utilise to fire the crossbow, we might get the same number of arrows being fired in the battlefield.
However what Zaver said was also correct, Marcelon's palanx was a bane to most armies in the world... So when meeting headon, we must look into many aspects to determine whether Marcelon army would win over Qin Army.
We have to look into many aspect, which I am pretty sure was mentioned in this thread before. The only thing I could act is the industrial power of Qin... due to standardisation process and mass production of metal parts, would allow the Qin to build weapons in a much faster rate and quality to be controlled as compared to the Marcelon Army.
