Build your perfect medieval army!

solarz said:

Lezt:

2- Your tactics all seem to involve the samurai charging in first. I think that your samurai would take pretty heavy casualties, and as siegecrossbow said, they're rather hard to replace. Personally, if the role of the samurai is just to charge and draw enemy fire, I think the European knights would be much better suited for the role.

3- While siege engines are certainly essential for siege warfare, how useful would they be for field battles, especially if your forces are ambushed? Would they have time to set up the machines while under enemy attack?

Click to expand...

If the samurai move in on horseback it would work a lot better.

And I always used siege engines in the field in Rome/Medieval Total War

Solarz:

The samurai for me is a medium skirmish force, the killing blow is meant to be the rain of arrows from both the mongols and the english. This is because, for both the swiss and the Bowmen, they need time to setup while the samurai historically have proven to be disciplined and quick to react to threats. they are vicious skirmishers able to attack and retreat on command which makes them ideal for engaging a sudden enemy whom just appeared to buy time for other troops to setup.

I am willing to trade samurais for Rajput warriors.

On the issues of knights, knights are not particularly good troops in my books, being limited to fields where their assault charge is the most telling. where in the desert heat, broken land, forest, barren cold, swamp. their combat effectiveness drop off considerably. so for my force, their purpose is really to counter charge weak spots in my infantry line.

siege equipment, is a hard one when ambushed, simple traction catapults only require only moments to setup, - the baggage train, can quickly be locked together to form a fort. - don't take Hollywood for historic ambushes, there is only several instance where an entire army is ambushed and destroyed in moments - such as Hannibal at lake Trasimene.

depending on how relaxed are the rules for siege equipment, if large chinese repeating cross bow with poison tips:

or Chinese/Korean MRL (13th century)

or mounted flamethrower:


will be quite a deadly array facing ambushers.

Lezt said:

depending on how relaxed are the rules for siege equipment, if large chinese repeating cross bow with poison tips:
[qimg]http://www.grandhistorian.com/chinesesiegewarfare/images/navalzhugenu.jpg[/qimg]
or Chinese/Korean MRL (13th century)
[qimg]http://images.stanzapub.com/readers/trifter/2008/02/24/117661_7.jpg[/qimg]
or mounted flamethrower:
[qimg]http://library.thinkquest.org/23062/fire.jpg[/qimg]
[qimg]http://library.thinkquest.org/23062/fire2.jpg[/qimg]
will be quite a deadly array facing ambushers.

Click to expand...

Samurais being skirmishers sounds just about right but as Finn and Solarz pointed out it would probably be fool hardly to use them to soak up arrowfire/a cavalry charge. Let the grunts do that. The samurai will do a good job bashing through enemy infantry once the flanks are secure and both armies are engaged in melee combat. A samurai's superior training will very quickly demolish/demoralize enemy infantry, which is important since the infantry is the largest unit in most armies.

As for the MRL it would've been a great intimidation/anti-cavalry weapon had Solarz not banned the use of gunpowder. The doublepiston flamethrower was the weapon of choice in naval warfare/countersieges but might not be as useful in field battles due to its shortrange and relatively poor maneuverability. As for the scaled-up repeating crossbow... I always thought that the significance of infantry chukonu in China has been overemphasized due to Age of Empires II. Although it has a high rate of fire and does not employ complex mechanisms the drawstrength of this weapon is limited by the arm-strength of the operator. Most hand-held repeating crossbows only had a drawstrength of around 30 pounds, which is why poison is often used to increase their lethality. A large scale repeating crossbow, like the ones in the Imjin-War illustration, probably can't match a Greek polybolo or a Chinese multi-shot crossbow in drawstrength. I'd suggest the polybolo and multi-shot crossbow as replacements if you want a field artillery with a high rate of fire.

I think one question we need to ask is, what is this army supposed to face?

10 k men is not alot,

Ottamen armies are typically 30k men, 80K-200K were used to take Constantinople
The mongol army which invaded the Jin is 90K men,
The Song can easily field armies of 300K men
At agincourt, the french army had 36K men
At Lake Po Yang, the ming and rebel army field 650k and 200k respectively
At the seige of pyongyang, 18K japanese faced 40K chinese/koreans

so for a small army of 10 K men to be able to challenge larger conscript armies, you need to field more elite troops.

I have doubts about using most Asian melee units in most scenarios.

For example Samurais are generally ideal for 1 on 1 combat, their armor is light to enable movement, their weapon though sharp are very brittle(Hence why Samurais usually carry multiple swords), there is a high chance of breaking against heavily armored opponents.

I would pick up some 3000 Swiss pikes, arm them with the Chinese Chukonu in addition to their standard equipments.

Here I feel the need to make a distinction, because there is a lot of misunderstanding about the Chukonu.
The Chinese repeating crossbow existed long before the time of the Three Kingdoms era, OTOH Chukonu is a multishot crossbow that had reduced range, it was used as a opening weapon by infantries against charging enemy cavalry and infantry.
The advantage is that soldiers can easily fill the air with projectiles to weaken the enemy and still have plenty of time to ready their polearms for melee combat.

2000 English Long-bow man, along with 2000 Mongol/Manchu mounted archers.
To complement the ranged group I would need 1000 engineers to provide long range artillery support with ballistae and Trebuchets.

All missile infantry will carry high quality Ming dynasty swords and rattan shields for self defense.


2000 heavy cavalry for the opportunistic charges and dealing with enemy cavalry.

Time to go for the cavalry units. I think my army will need 1500 Jurchen (Jin Dynasty troops fought by Yue Fei) heavy cavalry and 2500 Mongolian light cavalry.
I am going to import Arabian horses for the Jurchens and arm them with traditional Chinese "shuo" (pike) but the 200 elite troops will also carry sabers forged from Damascus steel as a secondary weapon. The rest will be equipped with "guduo" (Chinese maces) and possibly European flails and morningstars since they are great against armor yet inexpensive to make. The horsemen will wear (zhouzi jia), a type of scale armor renowned for protection against arrows, over European/Arabic chainmail that will defend against slashes. Leather horse armor will be provided for the precious Arabian horses.

The Mongol light cavalry will wear very little armor (chainmail or brigandine) and ride the short but rugged Mongolian horses. They will be armed with the Mongolian composite bow with draw strengths of between 80 and 150 pounds and the average bowman should be able to unleash at least between 8 arrows a minute accurately on horseback. Each soldier will also need a spear and a saber for melee combat once the arrows are depleted.

4000 more soldiers to go and my army will be complete!

4500 Mongol horse archers (short/medium range strafing of enemy)
2000 English longbowmen (long range strafing of enemy)
1000 Flemish halberdiers (first line of protection for longbowmen)
1000 French knights (roll over strafed enemy)
1500 Mameluk cavalry (handle defence in case of halberdier line breakdown or to take care of what the knights didn't clean up)