>it took the Greeks 200 years to figure out "longer spears

>>33929439
>>>/his/

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>>33929586
It's a weapon

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It took the rest of Europe 1800 years.

People are incredibly fucking stupid. You know how you can keep multiple trains of thought going at once? You can consider that some things can affect factors negatively and positively at the same time? You can come to near instant conclusions about things you know absolutely nothing about through context clues? You know insatiable desire to learn more about something when it intrigues you, even if you know it wont be applicable to your life, or might even just be speculation?

Not everyone has those, not even half of people in first world society even today.

>>33929439
>it took 200 years to develop the population, infrastructure, and basic trial-and-error to establish tactics and logistics for fighting heavily armed contemporaries for months or years as opposed to light skirmishes with bandits and pirates

ftfy

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*blocks your path

>>33930433
why did they need those big shields when they had all that armor?

Saying that longer spears work better is one thing, being able to make longer spears that are sturdy enough for combat in sufficient numbers is quite another.

>>33930460
Shields are both an offensive and a defensive tool, plus their arms were generally uparmored.

>>33930460
armor ends at the waistline. shield covers the rest and is legitimately a useful tool in combat.

>>33930460
It hurts more when somebody hits you in your armored kidneys as opposed to your shielded arm

>>33930433
Why didn't they copy the romans to beat the pikes during the renaissance?

Back then they didn't have the same weapon designers as us.
They didnt have Mr. Rockblock working hours on end and pay him in his berry salary for new weapon innovation. It worked more like some random soldier did something strange to his weapon and it turnes out it was better than everyone else and they showed off the new invention until it had the say so to become standard.

>>33930499
I think a horse would be a better tool in combat

>>33930531
Because guns and two-handed swords were a thing.

>>33930620
two-handed swords weren't that common were they? I am sure a sword and a shield could beat one of those anyway. Sword and shield could cut down both pikemen and musketeers

>>33930620
Less of a thing than effective heavy cavalry.

The Spainish tried with their Rodeleros, and against a disorganized pike block, they worked quite well. Problem is that just like the legions, you can't charge an organized pike square and before that opportunity, swordsmen are extremely vulnerable to cavalry.

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>>33930638
The romans went up agains large blades mounted on two-handed pikes when invading Dacia, pic related. The legions in the area had to be fitted with a ton of extra armor over the arm and shoulder because the blades would cleave through the shields and mangle limbs.

>>33930433
You create a wall of shields against your enemy and use the shortsword to stab, you defend both yourself and the guy next to you. Fighting in antiquity was to a large degree about mass and momentum, the armies would literally push against eachother. A deeper phalanx would in general beat a shallower one by force of push alone.

>>33930595
Horses are expensive, only the rich could afford them.

>>33930747
>>33930433
meant to quote >>33930460

>>33930410
>bandits and pirates
What? Most hoplite warfare was done by militia.

>>33930676
this
field canons become pretty effective and could decimate tight pike block in a single volley
cavalry with pistols could also concentrate fire on small area of the pile formation and eventually use it as weakspot to break through

>>33930806
It took time for population, infrastructure, metalworking and so on to develop to allow for largescale and cohesive warfare.
The greek citystates had town militia/conscripts to fight in their phalanxes, but even though similar in pose it is a completely different thing from the macedonian phalanx with sarissa spear which is what OP posted. The greeks were completely wrecked by the superior macedonian equipment and tactics, just like everyone else till the romans showed up.
Not to mention that the macedonians didn't primarily fight other greek cities, they were bordered by thracians and other 'barbarians' to the north, whose warbands were more similar to bandits and pillagers than organized armies.

Phillip introduced the sarissa, which resulted in them quickly defeating their northern neighbours, moved to Greece next, then he died and Alexander took power and you know the rest.

>>33930747
Mongols were poor as fuck but managed to amass a large, mostly cavalry army with one Mongol owning multiple horses.

>>33930317
Those aren't Swiss pikes...

>>33930460
For most of melee warfare the shield could be your only real defense if you were poor as shit. Good leather and cloth wasn't that cheap for dirt farmers.

>>33930970

that's because the Mongol horse was a different breed from the European one, bigger, stronger and more resilient, and they had a culture of horsemanship because it's impossible to get anywhere in the vast nothingness of the steppe without a horse.

>>33931027

that's a spanish tercio.

>>33931042
Yeah, but I specifically asked about the romans wearing all that armor in addition to the big shield

>>33930376
What a shame

>>33931064
Oh my bad then.

>>33930970
Gee bert, I wonder if it might be because the geography is completely different?
Italy is scattered by hills and mountains and shrubs, they had some decent horses coming from the region of campania but that was about it.

Mongols on the other hand lived in enormous grass plains that stretched from china to ukraine, superb grazing areas, and had both a culture of horsemanship and at the time unparallelled composite bows.

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>>33931064
Shield for formation warfare, armor to protect exposed or vital areas like shoulders and chest, pretty much like ceramic plates today.

Also the pic you originally replied to features the lorica segmentata, this was not a mainstay issued to all legionaries and they were only in use for about 200 years, during a period well after the mediterranean had already been conquered.
Mail, leather and other stiffened materials were much more common, and in use for a much longer period of time. Here's an actually relevant picture.

>>33930747
romans rotated the men in the front of their formations. so that a fresh-er man was holding the shield wall in place. the exhausted men went to the back and recovered.

when the momentum of the battle shifted to the romans. they would change their formation from a simple straight wall to a saw tooth.

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>>33931196
Blame popular culture and hollywood for corrupting the image people have of romans, though I agree the lorica segmentata looks a lot more impressive.

>>33931224
Depends on the time period, but I should have specified that phalanxes in particular were focused on pushing the enemy back. A phalanx backpedaling can't keep formation and breaks apart.

Romans pre-marian reform were also completely different from the later more standardised legions. The fresh, poor troops fought at the front, then the more seasoned ones with decent equipment formed the second line, while the veterans were kept back as reserves till the enemy was tired out.

>>33930460
You do not know how awesome shields are, my man.

>>33930970
I'm unclear about it, but you kinda were almost given a horse at a young age. Or because you reaaaaally need a horse to get across thousands of miles of steppe.

>>33930531
>>33930620
>>33930638
>>33930676
On an open, clear battlefield, with no disruption in the lines and no disorder, a formation of pikes or sarissae will defeat any other kind of force, including swordsmen with heavy shields. This was proven both in antiquity and in the late middle ages.
If, however, the pike formation becomes disrupted, disordered, fails to defend it's flanks etc. it becomes vulnerable.
Examples:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Pydna
Macedonian infantry attacks and almost breaks the romans. Attacking over uneven, hilly ground, they lose cohesion and are counterattacked and defeated by the romans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Flodden
Scottish pikemen defeated by english billmen, attributed by contemporaries to the uneven ground
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Seminara
Spanish rodeleros are easily defeated by swiss pikemen and are afterwards dropped as a troop type

One thing to consider is that the development of firearms and artillery as effective ranged element means that the pike formation can act more defensively, protecting these elements that actually do the damage rather than having to attack and thus become vulnerable itself. Thus why the attacking melee elements (halberdiers, twohanders, rodeleros/swordsmen) were gradually dropped. This went so far that by the 30 years war, pikemen were mocked for "never killing anyone that did not run into their pikes". A few decades later, they were abandoned altogether and modern line infantry was born.

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>>33931069
He was a good man. What a rotten way to die.

>>33930595
When you manage to conqueror the entire Mediterranean and most of Europe than I'll take your strategic advice into account.

>>33930460
To FORM TESTUDO

>>33931286
>Romans pre-marian reform were also completely different from the later more standardised legions. The fresh, poor troops fought at the front, then the more seasoned ones with decent equipment formed the second line, while the veterans were kept back as reserves till the enemy was tired out.

the legion fought in a checkerboard pattern that followed the same principle: the fresh, young and more humble Hastati maniples had gaps among them, they would fight until they were overran, then they retreated through these gaps until the Principes would relieve them, and the principles would do the same if they were unable to push back the enemy, or they would push past the Hastati if they had succeeded in dominating the enemy.

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>>33930376
>he thinks he's special

>>33930970
Horses were basically currency before the Mongols were able to conquer the Chinese and establish the beginnings of an empire. Genghis Khan's family was considered poor as fuck because they only had 2 to share among 3 brothers and his mother.

>>33931622
Well the Mongols did conquer an area bigger than both the Romans and Greeks.

>>33930376

>cringelord

>>33930460
Armor wasn't standardized, older infantry armies use to organize youngest and poorest guys as cannon fodder in the front line, middle class guys in the middle, then back line would be the triarii higher class guys that could afford the best equipment. Plus plates on your body doesn't protect you like a shield does. It's no where near the same type of protection. It's almost common sense.

To the Greeks, like many ancient cultures, war was a highly ritualized affair, bound by tradition. You did it the way your father did it, which was the way his father did it, which was the way his father did it, and so on. Coming up with new weapons and tactics wasn't quite heresy, but wasn't that far away from it, either. What Epaminondas did at Leuctra wasn't exactly the most innovative thing ever, but the very fact that he was doing *anything* different from the traditional playbook was enough to throw the Spartans into total confusion and hand them a rout they never really recovered from.

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>>33935212
>The most idolized warrior culture in history was broken by someone deciding to throw more men in the ranks

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Hi, I'm Iphicrates and OP is a faggot.

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>>33930638

Wouldn't it be weird if bulletproof shields were developed in the pike and shot age?

>>33930638
Pikemen beat people with swords and shields.
Greatswords at the time existed to fuck up the pikes, not fight it mano-o-mano.

Romans used the sword+shield combo effectively because they had formations, whereas their enemies did not and no one stood behind the pikeman with a pistol/gun ready to fuck them up while closing in.

>>33930460
>>33930460
to make an unpenetrable walll that enemies couldnt get through while your bros in the back stabbed them with 15 foot spears

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>>33936673
I don't think it would have been hard to do, considering that firearms then had less penetration than today. In fact, bullet-proof cuirass did exist, and the musket was invented because the arquebus was too light to penetrate armors.

On a side note, I encourage everyone who is interested in old weapons and military history to check the Graz test, in which an Austrian military museum has tested various blackpowder weapons in respects of power and accuracy and compared them to modern assault rifles and a Glock : https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17669/22312

>>33929439
I'm not sure how you're getting "and more people" before sarissas were a thing Greeks were going as far as 80 men deep in phalanxes.

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>>33929439

post more phrygian armor please

>>33936863
>Greatswords at the time existed to fuck up the pikes, not fight it mano-o-mano.

Nice meme, greatswords/zweihanders/claymores/espadones were used by guard units to swing around while screeching autistically to keep numerically superior enemies at bay, they had the reach and momentum to fuck with spearmen but they didn't fight with those in field battles.

>Romans used the sword+shield combo effectively because they had formations, whereas their enemies did not and no one stood behind the pikeman with a pistol/gun ready to fuck them up while closing in.

Romans never fought an enemy too primitive to use formations. Even the fucking inbred, retarded savage picts of Britain were sophisticated as fuck, with chariots acting as literal APCs dropping off fresh infantry after smashing against the Romans and peppering with missiles, then carrying away the tired troops to cycle them. The Gauls that fought Caesar invented both the scutum and the testudo, the galea helmet and much of the Roman arsenal. The Iberian tribes invented the pila and the gladius. The Celtic tribes in Belgium and Germany invented the mail armor AND the segmentara style of armors and were experts at quick and brutal invasions, reaching down to Turkey. The Macedonians invented the mixed units and light, flexible support infantry at the flanks. The Carthaginians mastered tactical field manouvers and kill zones for missile fire. The Parthians brought forth a combination of light archer cavalry and heavy shock cavalry and fucking amazing logistics.

Make no mistake, the Romans were never once fighting weak enemies. They went toe to toe with equally sophisticated military forces and fought pitched battles constantly, and their greatest strength was always their ability to learn, adapt and improve, as well as to organize, resist and recover from catastrophe. What Romans achieved was an unmeassurable accomplishment of strategical, industrial and cultural might.

>>33930376
Or sometimes they think about other things, develop other shit/don't mind being conquered if it's not by barbarian shitlords


>tfw these idiots completely missed the point of Anon's answer:
>>33931069
>>33931721
>>33935042
Which ironically proves his point

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>>33937612
Phrygian mode is GOAT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTM00kp1b3A

>>33937683
>What Romans achieved was an unmeassurable accomplishment of strategical, industrial and cultural might.
And they did it because they were a strongheaded Empire and not a pussy ass Republic.

>>33937878
>And they did it because they were a strongheaded Empire and not a pussy ass Republic

Except most of those enemies were defeated during the republic

Only the btutal meritocracy of the republic could breed the right kind of general to do the job, men like the Scipios, Fabius and of course, Caesar

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>>33930317
>pikemen


cute

>>33935135
not anymore in the time of pic related

>>33933993
you mean uninhabitable dessert with no living soul as far as the eye can see?

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>>33938191
>Northern, Western and a huge chunk of Southern China
>Khwarezmia with trade hubs like Samarkand
>The Rus city states like Kiev
>uninhabitable desert

And that's before the empire fragmented and the successor states conquered their respective surroundings, like the rest of China and Baghdad.

>>33933993
>>33938222
It's almost as if different climates favour different lifestyles and both favour different kinds of warfare.
As for that, both the europeans and the chinese knew about horse archers, but it's simply, by and large, an inferior troop type in these areas. Nomad incursions were either eventually defeated (mongols in europe) or more or less assimilated (magyars, turks, mongols in china), upon which they usually adopted the social, economic and military structure of the locals.

>>33931064
It's not that much armour. If they were wearing 15th century full plate armour it would be redundant.

>>33938491
Nah man I agree with you. I'm just responding to that retard saying the Mongols conquered empty land when it was in fact full of large cities and trade hubs, with international trade routes crisscrossing the whole region.

why didn't people just shoot arrows into the phalanx?

>>33938785
The Persians tried. They were extremely archery heavy. Turns out bronze shields, helmets and chest plates are pretty good against arrows.

>>33933993
This area was mostly desert

>>33939290
>>33938785

The angled pikes themselves were moderatedly protective from arrows, they deflected and slowed them reducing the penetration. Sling bullets that carried much greater kinetic energy were more effective against them.

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Why didnt Halberds become popular earlier? One would think it would have had make dealing with pikes and spears much easier.

>>33939424
>One would think it would have had make dealing with pikes and spears much easier.
Why?

>>33939424

Two handed weapons in general were unpopular due to the need for a shield. You need a shield when you cant build armor good and light enough to cover you in combat, and even more in large formation battles where you would be under enemy fire a lot.

>>33931587
So romans needed uneven hilly ground to succeed against pikes? Seems risky to build your army around sword and shield soldiers then

>>33939878

They won against pikes fighting UPHILL at Cynoscephalae, they won on a somewhat flat plain at Pydna. Manouverability and manipular level independent command were the key.

>>33939362
>China
>Russia
>Mostly desert

>>33940201
The entire central part of China is a desert, you enormous fucking mongoloid.

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>>33930531
Cannons would absolutely wreck a closed in infrantry formation like the romans used.

>>33940565
but they couldn't wreck pikes?

>>33940592
They did. But pikemen can spread out and still be effective against both infantry and calvary. Heavy infantry can't. Their shields dont stop bullets and their swords are too short to deal with cavalry.

>>33935816
Googling this name increased my knowledge, thanks tripfag.

>>33930499
>armor ends at the waistline.
which made hem really fast on the march btw.

>>33940329
>enormous fucking mongoloid
Genghis was a pretty big guy too

>>33930531
They actually tried this. It didn't work long term.