Has spear & shield any advantages compared to pikes?

>>54525417
Off the top of my head, the shield can help protect you against people who get too close, other people with long weapons, and people with ranged weapons.

In large groups, you don't have to worry as much about the first one because your buddies can help protect you.

>>54525417
If you're Alexander the Great, then you use pikes and shields, brah

>>54525417
Better defense against some angry Germans with zweihänders

>>54525417
>not using full pikes and hastati shields
pathetic

>>54525417
yes, one has the potential to stop arrows

>>54525417
Pikes require the phalanx. Spear phalanx is more adjustable over uneven terrain and with less well drilled troops. Also the hoplon of spear phalanx is much larger providing better protection against missiles. If the phalanx breaks apart the spear and hoplon is superior in close combat to the sarissa, although both troops have been known to carry a backup sword.

>>54525417
Transference of force in the push

Defense against projectiles and safety

The chance to sally out of the shield wall

>>54525417
looks cooler

>>54525417
Shields deflect arrows.

>>54525417
Why not just duel wield two shields instead?

>>54525417
cant stop arrows with your pike

>>54529078
samurai jack could

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>>54525417
Why not use a Cataphract instead?

>>54525417
Easier to train peasants. Pikes require some level of professionalism.

>>54525417
it fell out of favor when body armor reached the point of being nigh impervious to most weapons. at that point two handed weapons became the norm.

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>>54525417
Depends on your numbers. A single line of pikemen vs. a single line of spearmen/hoplites would lose to the spearmen. The depth and mass of pikes could present real issues to frontal attacks. That also locks the pike formation into a single formation. If they want to suddenly shift, it would involve coordinating several to hundreds of men in a matter of moments. Otherwise the pikes would all bump into one another or the men themselves. A mass of spearmen have a little more flexibility to defend and attack.

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>>54529315
Larger pikes require both hands to operate. That is great for the force of a thrust... but limits the use of a defensive shield. If I was about to hurl a stone or javelin at your face you would have to elevate your entire pike to raise the shield... or let go in order get that shield up. A hoplite or simple spearman could just lift the shield while maintaining their weapon in the other hand. Again, this is just general

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>>54529347

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>>54529378
If you do have professionals using the pikes, you can drill the to repel a great deal of enemy attacks. Even chariots: an infantry's worst nightmare in a massed charge

The pike is utterly useless out of formation. This means that in the pikes are incapable of really defending themselves in Push of Pike. They'll have to drop their pikes to use other weapons. On uneven ground, when flanked, or just when plain broken pikemen have virtually no avenue of defense against an infantry or cavalry formation from a direction other than the place presented with pikes. In later pike formation this was less of an issue as everyone maneuvered in giant squares but in antiquity this was literally what killed the phalangites.

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>>54529402
But simple spear and shield infantry massed together is as old as organized warfare itself. It is effective

>>54525417

With the spear and shield, you can protec, but also attac.

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>>54529441
After all, there can be a lot of mastery behind a warrior wielding a spear. Or it could be a dude who was handed a pointy stick and told to point it at *them*

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>>54529458
Alexander.
>he protec
>he attac
>but most importantly, he leaves no heir for his empire so it dissolves into civil war

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>>54529438
This anon speaks truth

>>54529476
I really hesitate to blame racism for the diadochi's inflexibility like your pic does. It may have played a role, but the diadochi didn't actually neglect the importance of levies on their forces. The Seleucids, for example, fielded Arabians, Persians, Agrianians, Carmanians, Daae, Cilicians and Greeks, Ptolemites used Cretans, Libyans, Native Egyptians and Thracian, and the Bactrians had a massive cavalry wing (I've seen the estimation that as much as a two thirds of the Bactrian army was composed of cavalry in some battles, but can't remember the citation for it) made up of native tribesmen. In all three of these cases, the phalanx was always formed by Macedonians who had settled in those lands and formed colonies, not by the levies. For the life of me I can only think of one example of a phalanx being made of native levies, which was the native phalanx the Egyptians used at the Battle of Raphia to support their larger Macedonian phalanx.

The true reason for the later phalanx's inflexibility comes down to two major reasons (in my opinion that is, it's worth mentioning that it's entirely possible for reasonable people to disagree on this). Firstly, almost all the successor states neglected the hetairoi, using them solely as a cavalry bodyguard as mentioned in that image. That's not entirely the fault of timidity however, often the diadochi didn't have the ability to field any significant number of hetairoi due to lacking the social infrastructure. Hetairoi are extremely comparable to later western knights due to being recruited from feudal land-owners. In many of the successor states they simply didn't have the same same social structure as Macedon, making it extremely hard to recruit and train skilled heavy cavalry. Secondly, phalanxes themselves underwent serious evolution. Because so much warfare between the diadochi was phalanx on phalanx, they began evolving to more effectively counter other phalanxes. TBC

>>54529476
>>54529726
These developments took the form of ever longer sarissas in order to hold the opposing phalanx at bay, and heavier armour to make their own phalanx harder to rout. Consequently, the later diadochi phalanxes were far sturdier than Alexander's ones had been, but also far less maneuverable. Where Alexander had managed to fight across a river at the Battle of the Hydaspes, the diadochi phalanxes shattered when trying to chase the Romans into uneven ground at Pydna. Combine these factors and you're left with no hammer and an inflexible anvil.

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>>54525417

>>54529078
Why not dual-wield greatswords?

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>>54530087
Dual wield glaives, bruh

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>>54529726
>>54529811

>>54529726
But surely, with all that diversity, they would have had some sort of offensive infantry to replace the hypaspists, and some sort of skilled light or medium cavalry, not to mention horse archers.