Why was Greek and Roman warfare based mainly around spear-and-shield

>>2046998
Because it worked incredibly well until it didn't

>>2046998

horses expensive as fuck, take up land especially for small city states and with non-professional armies, well protected phalanx good against horses.

dunno about archers. feel like they would have been limited contribution to a battle without good bow technology and they need protection and shit, just might as well use hoplites, especialyl if you got limited troops small city population.

>>2046998

Because they beat the guys with cavalry and archers a hell of a lot more often than they lost to them.

>>2046998
Calvary is expensive as fuck, and archers were supplemented by pila in the Roman legions.

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>>2047064

>calvary is expensive as fuck

True say dat.

>>2046998
>cavalry
Greece is a collection of islands and mountains, so the conditions to break new ground in horse tactics wasn't exactly favorable.

>>2047080
It always extended up to Thrace and Thessaly, they never dominated Athens or Sparta despite that

>>2047075
Lol

>Implying greeks did not utilize cavalry
>Implying romans did not utilize cavalry

>>2046998
>Roman warfare based mainly around spear-and-shield infantry
It's particularly funny when you consider that around the time when Rome did use spears over swords, they actually had kickass native cavalry (as opposed to the auxiliaries and mercs of later periods), so it's all around wrong.

>>2046998
The same reason that Han china and many other dynasties were for the most part heavily infantry based, war horses require the right geography.

>>2047310
>Han china were for the most part heavily infantry based
>war horses require the right geography
Which was found in its most perfect form in the northern china plains, which is why it was considered THE region to hold to control China (see: kingdom of Wei). The bulk of the Han's professional army was cavalry anon, they even trained many of the conscripts as cavalry. You really can't call it "heavily infantry based".