If flanking was an issue for them why didnt they just make a circle?

If flanking was an issue for them why didnt they just make a circle?

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Well-drilled ones like the swiss made squares.

1. How much maneuverability are you going to have in a circle

2. Good luck finding and training soldiers to such an advanced degree pre-Napoleonic era

Alright, you tell your infantry pike dudes to make a circular formation. Now tell them to move.

Why didnt the individual soldiers just turn around instead of the whole thing having to be rotated?

Literally just sidestep or move backwards or whatever to the guy next to you

>What are arrows and slings

>2. Good luck finding and training soldiers to such an advanced degree pre-Napoleonic era
But thats exactly what they did. Pike formations were very well trained and could do a lot.

>what is love

Because creating a formation of independent blocks facing different directions that all covered each other is better.

Because what the fuck are you going to do when the opposing side comes marching towards you and only a fraction of your spears are pointed towards them

At Magnesia, the Seleukid phalanx formed a square and started to march of the battlefield. The Romans and allied Pergamese troops simply fired upon the elephants kept in the middle that then went berserk, ruining the square.

Phalanx relied on massive eight foot long spears pointing forward and another row held at a 45 degree angle to block volleys from projectiles.

Flanks were always protected by regular infantry or mercs.
The problem was that said infantry or mercenaries were too easily routed and would often leave flanks open to attack.

That did not stop the Macedonians from marching from Macedon to india, though.
As a matter of fact, no other battle formation has been so effective since.

Don't put an giant, death-tusks equipped behemoth that may go berserk into the middle of your formation then.

this

>hurr we must protect the elephants at all costs
fucking moronic

they are giant fucking meat shields for fuck's sake

Is this the first Veeky Forums meme?

Why didn't the Romans just use the eagles?

yeah, btw why there are no /his memes?

are you lot retarded
there are plenty

I must unite germanic people under one banner and its variations were the first Veeky Forums memes as far as I can remember.
And then came >H>R>E and Voltaire

Arranging long pikes into a circle means that instead of each being parallel to each other, they're as far away from each other as possible at the tips. If I'm some non-phalanx using barbarian, probably with a shorter weapon, I'm going to use those gaps to my advantage.

If enemies concentrated in one side they could break through and ruin the whole formation pretty quickly

I don't think you understand how hard breaking pikes head on is.

Maybe if you fired into one side nonstop and used pike breaking weapons sure but I mean...just fire into them with muskets.

Getting large formations to move is a difficult feat in the best of weather/terrain conditions and even with professional trained soldiers. Once you set up and a battle begins, infantry will be very difficult to move around as per orders (this isnt Total War)

Also if the enemy has pikes, they will deploy in a solid line and envelop you in a semi circle. Your own circle will be pushed in and crushed to death by your own men. Your own rear that attempts to swing out will do so in a less than optimal line.

If your enemy was rome or hoplite based, they just envelop you and slowly push you in to be suffocated. In a smaller formation, you have less men who can contribute. Even if you do push out itll be in a disorganized formation and pikes by nature NEED a strong formation to succeed.

If your enemy was horse archer and light infantry based, they move around you and shoot into the center of the formation which is where youll most likely be. any attempt to move out will create critical gaps for cavalry charges.

In any of these scenarios, you also leave your own cavalry on its own. The pikes are just a holding action for cavalry to win the battle on the flanks but they are at risk without some infantry on hand to support them.

Few of the successor states ever got that and tried to throw large pike blocks with meme troops like elephants.

Weren't tercios basically that with some musketeers in the centre?

>Circle
Triangles are much better though

Yes but tercios /Terços/ Thirds were also flanked by lines of musket. I believen it was 300 on the left and right 180 in the front and an extra 300 in the rear used to fill in gaps.

If taking phalanxes head on was so bad why didnt they just blockade them?

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_square

Medieval Schiltrons in Scotland = Big circle of spearmen

Very effective against cavalry, useless against massed ranks of archers as seen at the Battle of Falkirk. Later, Robert the Bruce made them mobile and the results were seen at the Battle of Bannockburn.

>Baby don't hurt me
>Don't hurt me
>No more

>ctrl + f
>"supply"
>No matches.
Supply lines often aren't modeled by your video games.

Their cavalry would move past you to raid your camp while their hoplites and peltasts surround you.

If you attack, your circle formation will expand and the formation will break up giving their hoplites an advantage. If the entire circle moves in the same direction in an elaborate maneuver, the enemy will attack your sides and rear where your troops are holding their pikes vertically or awkwardly by backstepping and sidestepping troops. If you stand their peltasts will pepper you and eventually you will run out of water. It would generally be a huge mess.

Elephants were incredibly expensive so most likely they just protected their investment. Still fucked them up which is annoying. I'd blame Hannibal personally. He advised Antiochus III to make his army more flexible so he put elephants in gaps of his phalanx. Generally you put the elephants on the flanks to combat cavalry.

IIRC "I must unite the Germanic peoples" was a /gsg/ meme originally, but I could be thinking of something else.

The Spanish tercio comes to mind.

but that's why they put the hypaspists on the flanks you fuck, hypaspists were equipped like traditional hoplites and could manouver and turn more easily, pic related

>I've never heard of the Finno-Korean Hyperwar

and the hetaeroi (companion cavalry personally led by Alexander) would smash the enemies weakest flank and then charge straight at the rear of the center, sandwiching them between the impenetrable spearwall of the hoplites and Alexanders handpicked elite cavalry. That's how he used combined arms before that was even a thing.

/thread

And then there's the thureophoroi who were late hellenic advancement taking hold. Medium armor, spear, short sword, celtic oval shield and javelins. Similar to how Romans operated but didn't have anything to do with them.

On the surface Elephants seem like a superb addition to pre-gunpowder warfare, massively larger than cavalry, able to trample and smash close knit formations

The problems lie with the elephants themselves: they are highly intelligent and emotionally complex animals, so stringing one along into battle is like locking a person in a kennel full of rapid dogs tearing each other to pieces. Even if you're an alpha male Veeky Forumsgod you're still fucking panicking from the sheer quantity of violence whose motive you could never possibly comprehend.

Combine that with the fact that any time an elephant gets close to the line it's going to be facing a hail of missiles and every spear tip even remotely close, further terrifying the elephant, and you've got the recipe for a force multiplier that's just as likely to work against you as it will in your favor.

The whole second Punic/Macedonian era of Roman warfare could be called "the days that people discovered that elephants are worse than useless in a battle and are at best a gimmick which can't compete against well drilled soldiers." Yes, it was insanely impressive that Hannibal dragged a bunch of elephants across the Alps (even if all but a handful died and didn't really make that much of a difference in Hannibal's Italian campaign), but he would have been better off hauling siege equipment instead of elephants

This, phalanx is most effective as a wall of spears multiple rows deep.

t. I don't know anything military strategy.

I don't know much about the army formations in the west, but in China/India, they utilized many different patterns during war.

>"the days that people discovered that elephants are worse than useless in a battle and are at best a gimmick which can't compete against well drilled soldiers."
Nah, the Classical Mediterranean threw elephants out of the picture quickly instead of experimenting further. Thereby didn't use the animal to their full potential in war.

The guys that used elephants far more effectively than anyone in history were Indians and Southeast Asians. Hell they were using it the longest, long before anyone else. And it all boiled down to this: escorting infantry. The Classicals used elephants as mere cavalry and deployed them on their fucking own. Thereby while making them good for shock, it put them in danger versus more disciplined infantry and light infantry elements.

In India/Southeast Asia, the infantry marched & charged ALONGSIDE the elephants. A very dangerous thing to do, sure, but it pays fucking off. The elephant retains its shock value and a crushing force in the battlefield. But the presence of the infantry makes sure that
>1) Elephant is protectes
>2) Enemy infantry has no choice but to not break their fucking line to allow elephants to pass through like in Zama. Because all they will be doing is let the enemy infantry through.
>3) Light elements can't go near or else they'd be skewered by escorting missile infantry.

Elephants only ever truly lessened in importance in India/SEA due to one thing: gunpowder. But even then they were present in logistics corps doing much heavy lifting and their heavily armored counterparts are present in battlefields in close order fighting, or as mobile gun platforms carrying a zamburak or a jingall gun.

Indian warfare is mainly based around archery. Elephants provided huge scope in the midst of battle field for archers.

>Indian warfare is mainly based around archery.
Nope.jpg.

Bigger nope in the case of the 1000s-1500s.

> Otto Van Bismarck autism posting
> Finno-Korean hyper-war
> Is x a "Spook"?/Steiner
> Zhukov posting (very recent)
and of course, how could you forget

> H
> R
> E

Interesting point. It seems like westerners were more apt to group them into squadrons rather than combine them into infantry formations like how people with indigenous elephants did it.

Striking parallels to machine guns in WWI: at first we wanted to group them into machine gun nests but they're far more effective when used as infantry support rather than as a distinct force multiplier

A shame the soup eating thing didn't catch on.

That was way to slow

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Falkirk

Most his memes are gsg memes

Veeky Forums is the rightful successor to the GSG Empire. Their memes form an important part of Veeky Forums's cultural heritage.

so why weren't Elephants to carry mounted heavy weapons?

Romans put small ballistas on chariots, an elephant could quickly bring about large artillery like scorpions and onagers and also drag around a decent number of rounds

Elephants don't seem very stable as a platform for heavy weapons

but is the spanish tercio not but the technological evolution of those very same tactics?

We already made Zhukov quotes this month.

Because North African elephants were small and extinct somewhere around late Roman times?

Romans used both elephants and siege weapons far earlier than that

>so why weren't Elephants to carry mounted heavy weapons?
They did?

The Indian and Southeast Asian cunts put wall guns and zamburaks on them.

My ballista and skirmish cav say hi

Why does their hat look like a floppy bronze penis?

Phrygian cap style.

You would literally just have to shoot over the heads of the guys facing you, into the ones facing away and there's nothing they can do about it

Generally the side with elephants would defeat the one without, as during the Macedonian wars where Rome could use their elephant corps to great effect. However, elephants have a role as cavalry disruptors and scaring foes but very few can afford having elephants.

Elephants in hellenistic armies had light infantry escorts that were quite large.

...at the rear, or deployed as a screen.

Not really the insane footmen following their lords within the elephant formation itself.

Besides all the greek infantry did was follow elephants to a point and let them loose on their own. Like in Ipsus.

Their job was to protect the elephants from enemies. Called elephant guard for a reason.