|
Nuclear War posted:Am I crazy or did you say once that the zweihander guys were more bodyguards/flag guards kinda thing?
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 08:26
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 00:58 |
|
|
Whoever came up with the idea that you could use swords to chop through pikes has probably never hit anything with a sword. Unrelated but still kinda telling, I've been casually working on a post-apocalypse thing and some dude was telling me elsewhere that we modern people who would maybe survive nuclear war would have an advantage over our medieval counterparts, since we can learn farming from books. That guy has never done any work with his hands.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 09:22
|
|
|
Has that guy considered that a far larger % of the population in medieval times would already know farming because that's probably what they were doing before? In a post societal collapse scenario I'd rather have medieval ex-farmers than modern day ex-office workers with me. Although they would probably stab my rear end when they realized how useless I am at the most basic survival poo poo.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 09:36
|
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:Whoever came up with the idea that you could use swords to chop through pikes has probably never hit anything with a sword.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 09:44
|
|
|
I dunno, just because these people were doing farming doesn't mean they were terribly good at it. There are significant advances in agricultural science, and not all of them were due to mechanisation. Changing from two to three to four field crop rotations was a significant advance that took hundreds of years to figure out. The introduction of crops like potatoes, let alone the modern varieties, made a big difference. Ditching the furlong system might also help. I'm not sure about the assumption that your average medieval peasant will be fitter than a modern person.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 10:09
|
|
|
Kemper Boyd posted:Whoever came up with the idea that you could use swords to chop through pikes has probably never hit anything with a sword. Or never chopped wood. There's a reason axes don't look like swords and that's that swords aren't really build for this kind of thing. If you chop even thin wood with a sword, you soon have a blunt sword and a bunch of tiny nicks in your wood. Of course, this means swords as anti-pike weapons still could work if all of the following conditions are met: 1. The pike is made from really bad wood. 2. The pike is taken from the guy wielding it and fixed in either horizontal or vertical position. 3. The guy with the sword now only needs hulk-like strength and a really oversized sword to hack through the pike. Now repeat this process for every single pike in the enemy army!  Fangz posted:I dunno, just because these people were doing farming doesn't mean they were terribly good at it. There are significant advances in agricultural science, and not all of them were due to mechanisation. Changing from two to three to four field crop rotations was a significant advance that took hundreds of years to figure out. The introduction of crops like potatoes, let alone the modern varieties, made a big difference. Ditching the furlong system might also help. I have no idea how someone even could come up with this, considering simply Googling some history sources basically buries you under work explaining why and how medieval peasants suffered severe malnutrition for a variety of reasons. (Like nobles forbidding peasants to hunt in their woods, therefore deleting several possible sources of meat from their diet.) Libluini fucked around with this message at 10:21 on May 10, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 10:18
|
|
|
A lot of farming is practical knowledge you can't really learn from a book. Like how to work with a horse, or how to make a plow.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 10:24
|
|
|
While a group of modern city folks could probably learn to be better farmers than medieval peasants given enough time and books, is it something they could learn in time for it to matter? If we're talking some extreme survival scenario, you can't afford false starts and failed crops while people learn the ropes.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 10:55
|
|
|
'Everything collapses back to medieval times due to X' type scenarios have always appeared really contrived to me. It's not like even nuclear war would wave a magic wand and make all the tractors *gone*. Yeah stuff will wear down but you'll have many years to transition and train people. You can devise an extreme survival situation where everyone is hosed, but your average medieval peasant in that situation would go "wait, what's fallout? Heck, what's a potato?"
Fangz fucked around with this message at 10:58 on May 10, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 10:56
|
|
|
Fangz posted:I dunno, just because these people were doing farming doesn't mean they were terribly good at it. There are significant advances in agricultural science, and not all of them were due to mechanisation. Changing from two to three to four field crop rotations was a significant advance that took hundreds of years to figure out. The introduction of crops like potatoes, let alone the modern varieties, made a big difference. Ditching the furlong system might also help. This was a real problem in late Republican Roman times, where soldiers would be paid in land at the end of their service but often ended up not being very good at farming, going bankrupt and having to sell to the giant senatorial estates that were growing across the countryside.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 11:31
|
|
|
KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:It probably has to be China or the Med because I think you need very long duration of continuous recorded human habitation. Just as an aside, the longest continuously inhabited place on the planet is I believe the old city in Irbil (Erbil), Kurdistan. Separately, on the uselessness of zweihanders as pike cutters, would there have been any conceivable benefit to trying the same thing with actual giant (or small) axes?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 11:36
|
|
|
Beefeater1980 posted:Just as an aside, the longest continuously inhabited place on the planet is I believe the old city in Irbil (Erbil), Kurdistan.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 11:39
|
|
|
I understand that if you are coming up against polearms and you want to use an axe or sword or whatever, rather than having a really big one you are best off having a shield in the other hand. (Unless your axe is itself a polearm...) EDIT: VVV right but I wager there's more modern people around who know about growing potatoes and potato disease and stuff like that than well, medieval europeans, because the latter number is literally zero, and even when potatoes got introduced, it took time to figure out. quote:Across most of Northern Europe, where open fields prevailed, potatoes were strictly confined to small garden plots because field agriculture was strictly governed by custom that prescribed seasonal rhythms for plowing, sowing, harvesting and grazing animals on fallow and stubble. This meant that potatoes were barred from large-scale cultivation because the rules allowed only grain to be planted in the open fields.[14] People feared that it was poisonous like other plants the potato was often grown with in herb gardens, and distrusted a plant, nicknamed "the devil's apples", that grew underground.[11] EDIT2: I mean sure people who know farming are proportionately much smaller these days but they are also relatively unlikely to be wiped out by nukes hitting cities. Systems of disseminating expertise are also way better these days, even post-nuke. Fangz fucked around with this message at 12:04 on May 10, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 11:46
|
|
|
Fangz posted:The introduction of crops like potatoes, let alone the modern varieties This one in particular helps mediaeval peasants in the post apocalypse just as much as modern people, though. If they could have grown them back then, they would have, but since every potato was a thousand miles to their west, they couldn't.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 11:49
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:no but if your axe or polearm has a hook on it you can pull the shaft to one side or trap it, which is a sick fighting move LARP nerds get real mad if you do this to them fyi
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 12:05
|
|
|
MikeCrotch posted:LARP nerds get real mad if you do this to them fyi
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 12:07
|
|
|
Larp nerds fight with pikes? So, Zwwihanders and other two handed weapons, when was the heyday of their use? It seems like they become a good option during that brief window between when plate is good enough to protect you sans shield and the time where guns become good enough to make armored infantry obsolete. Also, so you're a dude on a horse and you just charged a formation, lancing some dudes dead and crushing their friends with your horse. What now?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 12:31
|
|
|
JcDent posted:Also, so you're a dude on a horse and you just charged a formation, lancing some dudes dead and crushing their friends with your horse. What now? Toss the lance, pull out your sword/mace/hammer/axe and go to town? Alternatively disengage and form up for another charge.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 12:37
|
|
|
bloom posted:Toss the lance, pull out your sword/mace/hammer/axe and go to town? Alternatively disengage and form up for another charge. The evolution of this was to organize a cavalry force into different "Treffen" (sorry, don't know the English term for this): You would send in the first Treffen to charge and when their charge has lost momentum and the sword/mace/whatever phase begins, you send in the next Treffen for another shock. If used right, this repeatedly disrupting and hammering of the enemy was devastating. Johann Sobieski III. used this to great effect when his charge broke the Turks when he relieved the second siege of Vienna. He and the cavalry under his command send four Treffen into the Ottoman army, which ended with them breaking after a Polish force overran the flag of the prophet. Which Kara Mustafa, the Turkish leader, had only brought out in the first place to rally his troops against the cavalry hammering them.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 12:46
|
|
|
JcDent posted:Also, so you're a dude on a horse and you just charged a formation, lancing some dudes dead and crushing their friends with your horse. What now? Break through and loot the baggage train! / 
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 12:48
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:yeah, that was rodrigo diaz and me discussing it--some idiot in the 19th century said they were anti pike weapons but rodrigo found from somewhere that they were probably a ceremonial guard for flags They're not ceremonial, what gave you that idea? They were chosen as guards because they can defend against multiple weapons at once. They were also used as personal bodyguards in cities for the same reason. There's stories of men with two-handed swords defending bridges and similar as well. They're good weapons. As the push of pike transitioned into bad war I imagined they'd see a lot more use as straight up people choppers. We know what their primary purpose was (defending the banner) but we don't know what else they did. However, Holbein's bad war drawing shows them being used away from the banner as well, so their role is not exclusively one thing. JcDent posted:So, Zwwihanders and other two handed weapons, when was the heyday of their use? It seems like they become a good option during that brief window between when plate is good enough to protect you sans shield and the time where guns become good enough to make armored infantry obsolete. By expanding it to include other two handed weapons, you've basically included pikes all the way back to who loving knows when. Even if you just mean swung weapons, the two handed axe's popularity in the early & high middle ages undermines your thesis. However, I certainly think that two handed *swords* had their heyday essentially in the period you describe, and for similar reasons. quote:Also, so you're a dude on a horse and you just charged a formation, lancing some dudes dead and crushing their friends with your horse. What now? If the enemy isn't routing, get your rear end back out of the formation, killing people with your sword as you go.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 12:49
|
|
|
Beefeater1980 posted:Just as an aside, the longest continuously inhabited place on the planet is I believe the old city in Irbil (Erbil), Kurdistan. Tie a hungry beaver to a pole, bam, done
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 13:39
|
|
|
JcDent posted:Also, so you're a dude on a horse and you just charged a formation, lancing some dudes dead and crushing their friends with your horse. What now? Good Cav: Charge -> if peasants scatter, high five your bros (if you're actually good, they should be close enough at hand) -> find more peasants to charge -> charge -> more high fives -> if peasants don't scatter, chop them with sabre -> go back to starting point -> charge -> by now high fives should be in order Bad Cav Island: lol
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 13:39
|
|
|
Tevery Best posted:Bad Cav Island: Actually, usually, 'run off and loot the defenceless enemy baggage train half a mile away while the enemy infantry destroy your dudes and you lose the battle'.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 13:51
|
|
|
feedmegin posted:Actually, usually, 'run off and loot the defenceless enemy baggage train half a mile away while the enemy infantry destroy your dudes and you lose the battle'. Somehow I don't think this was limited to Bad Cav Island
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 14:26
|
|
|
Lets talk about plunder and prize agents a moment now. So it turns out, while it was awesome to be a sailor or Royal Navy officer in this scenario is sort of sucked if you were a foot soldier of British or Indian origin when it came to land based prize systems. Basically, It takes a long drat time (half a decade or more in some cases!) to get a share of that prize money from the baggage train/army pay chest/small princedom your army "liberated!" during the campaign. Why? well think of an inverted guided pyramid. The highest ranking men of the army get of course the biggest obscene share (double bonus if they are nobility or directly connected to the powers that be) and it is really what a small fortune. And the amount of money of course slowly shrinks as we grow down to the point of the pyramid to the humble soldier. Now the pay isn't misery, It's enough to keep the man and his relations going for a few years but the problem is time. The aftermath of a sack is pretty much chaos no matter where it is and what the army and when the only thing stopping you is a prize agent and a handful of miserable dragoons or mounted militia have been pressed into service to try guard and track all the shinies of course not all of the stuff is going to be smartly turned in and passed onto the prize agent now. But sod that. Lets get greedy. The obscene amount of wealth lying around in palaces and having whole small cities to plunder combined with the adrenaline addled combat stress just throws all patience and morality out the window. Add in alcohol and it is more of the case you hope your men don't abuse the honour system too much. At least in India a majority of the soldiers didn't drink during these situations. Soldiers and even officers would barter what they had on the spot or discreetly tuck it away or hide it. Understandably if you a subaltern in debt or old soldier who just hasn't the time to wait half a decade for decent pay after putting up with hard campaigning. Apparently the reward certainly out weighed the risk of being caught. Eventually by the late 19th century the powers that be finally got a handle on this and managed to get a system up and running and enforce enough policing to end this. Though hilariously a lot of men and officers weren't happy when they were told to be civilized chaps while their French allies sacked and burnt the Summer Palace during the final stages of the 2nd Opium War. So yeah, if you somehow involved in such a thing make sure you are on a boat and not on land. Or sew some extra pockets in your coat and update your on the spot bartering knowledge. Unless of course a storm happens and washes away half the combined fleet you seized. All else fails, turn mercenary get involved in some revolutions.
|
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 14:38
|
|
|
TFW you loot the enormous silver stork from the summer palace but it turns out it's just silver plated
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 14:44
|
|
|
Entire regiment ends up with lewd French silver plated cigarette cases. Also, nobody at all know what that strange buttplug round is from still? That is actually driving me crazy.
|
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 14:50
|
|
|
They should just let each man take what he can carry, up to 20% of everything.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:04
|
|
|
SeanBeansShako posted:But sod that. Lets get greedy. The obscene amount of wealth lying around in palaces and having whole small cities to plunder combined with the adrenaline addled combat stress just throws all patience and morality out the window. Add in alcohol and it is more of the case you hope your men don't abuse the honour system too much. At least in India a majority of the soldiers didn't drink during these situations. And somehow within about 50 years they went from this to (SOME, NOT ALL) subalterns in France in 1915 being shocked and morally offended when jewellery and valuables were confiscated for safekeeping by soldiers who had captured prisoners...
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:09
|
|
Edwardians.txt.MANime in the sheets posted:They should just let each man take what he can carry, up to 20% of everything. You know that'd hilariously backfire and the soldiers would throw away as much as their kit possible to fit stuff into their bags.
|
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:21
|
|
|
By "would" you mean "did", right?
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:31
|
|
GotLag posted:By "would" you mean "did", right? Well I was considering mentioning my favourite example of Napoleon's soldiers over packing on loot from Moscow before the start of that clusterfuck of a march. Oh it certainly did and does happen still.
|
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:33
|
|
|
The example that comes to my mind is the battle of Mogadishu, when the rangers left most of their NVGs and even some of their canteens back at base because it was supposed to be a quick mission. "Apparently" a lot of German soldiers in WW2 left their gas masks in the baggage cart and used the canister to carry whatever, no idea how prevalent that actually was but it sounds likely. Edit: actually come to think of it a friend of mine here in Australia once told me about only loading a couple of rounds into the top of each mag before going on a non-live-fire exercise GotLag fucked around with this message at 15:43 on May 10, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:35
|
|
|
JcDent posted:Larp nerds fight with pikes? Rarely with pikes because they are too long to fit in most people's cars and pretty expensive but ~7" foot polearms that you can stab with are relatively common:  HEY GUNS posted:are you loving serious, how do they expect to fight with a polearm if they don't learn what people do against you People get mad when you use to actual skill to rob them of their one thing. Same when you use a shield or buckler to parry their polearm into the ground and then wail on them with a sword or w/e There used to be a bunch of War of the Roses reenactors who fought as a bill block at my main system, they would just openly cheat in battles because they wouldn't admit that non-reenactors were sometimes better at fighting than them MikeCrotch fucked around with this message at 15:56 on May 10, 2018 |
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:47
|
|
|
MikeCrotch posted:Rarely with pikes because they are too long to fit in most people's cars and pretty expensive Also, I assume, because just one dude with a pike looks a bit silly and isn't very combat effective.  you'd want a proper block/phalanx.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:53
|
|
|
MikeCrotch posted:This was a real problem in late Republican Roman times, where soldiers would be paid in land at the end of their service but often ended up not being very good at farming, going bankrupt and having to sell to the giant senatorial estates that were growing across the countryside. For that matter, look at Cambodia, China, Zimbabwe, and South Africa to see what happens when you take a bunch of people who aren't farmers and tell them to start being farmers.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 15:53
|
|
|
I've always thought that in a post-apocalyptic world people would still end up developing weird new things, just they'd have wildly different priorities to us. They would still know about all the cool things industrialism could make, but without the economies of scale they'd have to adapt, in addition to having access to whatever weird developments were made right before the apocalypse happened.. Reverting to a feudalistic system on the other hand, is so plausible it's barely science fiction. For these reasons and more is why Nausicaa is the best post-apocalyptic setting. MikeCrotch posted:This was a real problem in late Republican Roman times, where soldiers would be paid in land at the end of their service but often ended up not being very good at farming, going bankrupt and having to sell to the giant senatorial estates that were growing across the countryside. They also tried to run farms while also serving as soldiers, and it turned out you need to be around to make a farm profitable. The wars that enriched Rome bankrupted the soldiers that fought them.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 16:12
|
|
|
HEY GUNS posted:i have no idea what the halberd dudes and the buckler infantry do. Don't they mostly exist to try to flank already engaged pikemen and also to defend and assault areas that were too confined for a mass of pike. I'm pretty sure there was one battle between the Spanish and French where French pikemen tried to raid the Spanish camp, but we're driven off by swordsmen.
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 16:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 00:58 |
|
|
I pissed off people at a larp too. I'm a small fellow and I picked out a shield that basically covered my entire body. Apparently that was 'cheating' :P
|
|
#
?
May 10, 2018 16:23
|
|