Ok seriously can we finally decide what the consensus is?

ok seriously can we finally decide what the consensus is?

I feel like China is the most patrician answer and Rome is reddit

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youtube.com/watch?v=0-2KLuAH4GY
ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=641535&remap=gb
youtube.com/watch?v=T4eX6oZdG6w
youtube.com/watch?v=gxdWl0d2fP8
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Han China fell before the Roman Empire did. At each of their heights you'd have some mistily-written emperor who commanded a small amount of land compared to the Roman Empire at its height. As for generals their talent was always in short supply and campaigns would have constant blow-backs and counter invasions. So i'd say that Rome would win.

Shit thread, SAGE

Why is china the answer over rome?

Disciplined roman legions would break 1 line and the Chinese peasants would begin routing. It's that easy.

first battles china wins

anything after than and rome stomps them

China is actually the reddit answer because reddit has an obsessive anti-European bias

>Romans
>European

roman legionaries would slaugher those lightly-armored conscripts

Then the crossbow bolts start hitting

hitting what, their dense shield formation? Their heavy armor? I doubt those weak chinese crossbows would be much of a threat to a legionary formation, meanwhile the roman missile weapons are going to hit home.

>he thinks shield will block anything
I'm on Roman side but still

>legionary formation
What did he mean by this?

are you implying a crossbow bolt is going to go through a roman's shield and then through his armor?

>I am a contrarian

brilliant for you

A crossbow doesnt actually offer much in the ways of penetration familiae mea
You use longbows for that

At close range the bolts may go through the shields and start wounding the legionaries but at that range the pilums would be smashing into the Han ranks. The pilums will not have much trouble decimating the Chinese and knowing they are all undisciplined peasants it is likely they will all rout.

Its the other way around. Psued redditos love being hipster anti-western so they love saying china would win.

Rome would win easy

>MUH CHINKBOW
was litearlly just a bow on a stick, has zero relation to tortion crank crossbows that could penn plate armor. Your average parthian recurve was far, far deadlier

China has the salt and iron tax, what does Rome have?

I'm just culturally a bow person. Crossbows never faired well with me. But memeing random crap won't prove anything.

>your average Parthian recurve was far, far deadlier

I hope you have evidance for that user.

Here are some shitty info graphs from "muh ancient" Chinese:

>Slip 14.026: 一今力五石廿九斤射百八十步辟木郭
Translation: Present strength 5 stone 29 jin (341 lbs) and will penetrate a wooden wall at 180 paces (252 meters).
Slip 515.46: 三石具弩射百廿步
Translation: 3 stone (193.5 lbs) crossbow, fully assembled, shoots 120 paces (168 meters)
Slip 36.10: 官第一六石具弩一今力四石【四十】二斤射白八十五步完(The words in 【】 is used to display what the word on the slip means, but the actual word cannot be typed by computer as the word is no longer in use)
Translation: Number one 6 stone crossbow, fully assembled, present strength is 4 stone 42 chin (285 lbs), and it will shoot to the end of 185 paces (259 meters).
Slip 510.026: 五石具弩射百廿步
Translation: Five stone crossbow fully assembled, shoots 120 paces (168 meters)
Slip 341.3: 具弩一今力四石射二百…(too smeared to make out)…
Translation: Fully assembled crossbow, present strength 4 stone (258 lbs), shoots two hundred and …[text too smeared to make out] (280-418.6 meters).
Slip 14.62A: 一今力三石廿九斤射百八十步辟木郭
Translation: Present strength 3 stone 29 jin (212.2 lbs) and penetrates wooden wall at 252 meters.

>Heaviest standard 8 stone Han crossbow power = 516 lbs draw weight * ~19 inches powerstroke/2 = 4902 inch lbs
Heaviest Medieval crossbow found from Gallway = 1200 lbs draw weight * 7 inches powerstroke/2 = 4200 inch lbs
Typical 6 stone strength Han crossbow's power = 387 lbs draw weight * ~19 inches powerstroke/2 = 3676.5 inch pounds
Heavy Song dynasty bow made to pierce armor = 160 lbs draw weight * ~20 inches powerstroke/2 = 1600 inch pounds

From Historum.

Protip. Longbows are weaker than Han dynasty crossbows by a lot.

Parthian recurve bow whom the Xiongnu faced against and whom the Chinese faced.

The Chinese record show that crossbows have much better range/accuracy and penetrating power. Essentially obsoleting the entire horse archer meme during Han dynastys time.

Don't know anything about the second paragraph but the range is pretty impressive for a first century weapon.

And it's not like romans commonly wore plate armour anyway, crossbows might actually prove adverse to Lorica Hamata.

Not weaker, just unsuited to the type of designation crossbows are used in.

>youtube.com/watch?v=0-2KLuAH4GY
>Heaviest longbow ever found, within Mary Rose = 180 lbs draw weight * ~20 inches powerstroke/2 = 1800 inch pounds

Its just weaker.

>lightly-armored conscripts
>Chinese peasants

During the early Han, peasant levies were put through a year of training. During the Eastern Han armies were professional and payed for by taxes.

>muh peasants
is a shitty answer

What's your definition of weak? A bow might not be suited to the specific role a x bow might fit into, but it's a weapon that prevailed far longer than the crossbows. Even the Chinese discarded the x bows as secondary sidearms when guns rolled about.
It's a matter of convenience.

Weak as in according to physics, its inability to push more power.
Weak as in inability to roll mass production units.
Weak as in it requires years of training to fully utilize a long bow.
Weak as in the French countered the English Longbow with a crossbow.

As a matter of convenience, the crossbows would have been lot easier to use and train. The crossbows were so common every household had a variant or two of it.

Not only that, the Chinks had quite a variety of crossbows at their disposals. Ranging from the typical infantry 6 stone crossbows to heavy artillery crossbows that can be used for ship/ship battles to repeating crossbows whom the peasants can use at ease.

It was the weapon of Choice in China for roughly 2000 years.

>primary sources
>from historium
not him but i've seen this posted a billion times but still no academic references or modern recreations.

The strength of rome wasn't the individual soldier or his equipment. The strength of Rome was the state and its organization. Its ability to supply its men on campaign. To send aid and reinforce positions. To quickly peel men from any formation and with these create a new formation knowing concretely how well your men are fed and rested and that their supplies are fortified and well defended.

The care with which the Romans managed their logistics was their strength and it is this more than anything else that gave them so many victories and made their defeats inconsequential.

If the Han are superior at this they will win. If they are inferior at this they lose.

Didnt do too well against german conscripts

The pilum was powerful enough to penetrate a shield, a masse of crossbow bolts fired in repetitive volleys will definitely do some damage. However the benefit of the Romans is that they had standardised weaponry which meant they could attack and still hold formation. I do not know about the Chinese weapons but I doubt their levys would be using weapons of a standard length.

the strength of Rome was also its meritocracy which filled its military with aggressive and creative generals

#
>Weak as in according to physics, its inability to push more power.

Sure, that I agree with.

>Weak as in inability to roll mass production units.

Mass production units? That's why you dedicate your culture to practice Archery at leasure. It might take generations at the start, but a quality soldiers were valued like gold, not to mention crossbows cost quiet a lot.

>Weak as in it requires years of training to fully utilize a long bow.

I'm not just talking about the longbow, but bows as a whole. You said yourself that crossbows were stronger because they had a higher draw weight. That applies to basically every bow in existence. And yet bows lasted a whole lot longer then crossbows, even after guns were introduced.

As above, if your culture has a strong tradition in Archery it's not that hard to find a proficient archer.

>Weak as in the French countered the English Longbow with a crossbow.

The french also countered the English with french archers. I'm actually kinda butthurt.
>As a matter of convenience, the crossbows would have been lot easier to use and train. The crossbows were so common every household had a variant or two of it.

I would need proof for the last paragraph. It doesn't seem likely for some poor fuck farmer had a specialised weapon.

No it wasn't. Talented generals and commanders filled many an army and specifically every army that defeated them.

Yet upon military defeat other states withered to nothing but Rome faced defeat with fresh men, the grain to feed them, the ox to pull the grain, the roads to transport them all, the meticulously built forts to store everything and everyone and the gold to pay for the lot of it.

Talent is great. But it is not what gave Rome its empire, any state can find talent.

>I would need proof for the last paragraph. It doesn't seem likely for some poor fuck farmer had a specialized weapon.
Its more like it comes with the result of universal-conscript system.

Where each capable man(~20+) was required to do 2 years of service time and a month of service each year till his retirement age ~56. Weapon ownership would be a required thing last I read. Don't have the exact source on me as I can't remember. Its been a while.

>the strength of Rome was also its meritocracy
>the systen that gave Rome dozens if not hundreds of political generals that led untold thousands to their deaths through sheer incompetence was a diehard meritocracy
...yeah, no not really.

>the strength of Rome was also its meritocracy
Nope. That was Han China's strength. They literally invented the meritocratic system in Qin dynasty with Legalism approach. Han dynasty further made sure the meritocratic system was improved/anonymized/etc. Every other dynasty following that utilized meritocratic system for governance/promotions.

One could argue that China after the Qin unification the first Westphalian State. Chink beurocratcy and administration is pure autism. I dont know much about Roman administration, books and info on their administration is small, meanwhile you got shitton on info on Chinese administration.
>Rome
>Meritocracy
Meritocracy was introduced from China through the British in India...

The Juyan slips is the primary source,unearthed around 1927-1934 by Sven Hedin amongst many others. There was no room for exaggeration as they were purely accounting slips and inaccessible to the meddling of court historians.
ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=641535&remap=gb

Not quite the same thing but there is a reconstructed Song crossbow with a draw weight of 164lbs(equivalent to a Han 2-3 stone crossbow)
youtube.com/watch?v=T4eX6oZdG6w

>Han dynasty further made sure the meritocratic system was improved/anonymized/etc.
In terms of military based meritocracy and war driven society I don't think any following dynasty topped the way Qin after Shang Yang's reforms. The socio-economic status of Qin citizens was linked to 20 different ranks based solely on battlefield prowess.

Now that's based as fuck
>get into argument
>BTFO opponent by asking "how many people have you killed, you unfilial Christian dog?"

Teutoberg was an ambush, Romans generally kicked the shit out of the Germanic tribes until the Late period when their economy fell into the toilet and they couldn't afford to sustain their armies against their constant migrations.

ITT: Romefags

ITT: Chinafags

Only Eurocentric /pol/cucks would say Rome.

Everyone here is arguing the wrong points, after 3-5 battles both sides would adapt and incorporate the other sides advantages, as both these militaries were highly adaptable, the real question is which empire, Han or Rome, would have the men, resources, gold, and willpower to overcome the other.
I don’t know enough about Han history to say how durable they were.

Strategic disposition affects military doctrine

The old guy almost smashed his own face aiming with the crossbow. Shiieet.

I'm going to post it everytime until you like it :^)

>CIDF
More like Roman Internet Defense Force

t. obsessed singaporean

Han-era soldiers used steel scale/splint armor ya dingus.

youtube.com/watch?v=gxdWl0d2fP8

wtf, which one is correct?

These two.

Trick question, but the answer is neither.

First, the wiki lists estimate is based only around state controlled iron ore production facility. The roman iron ore productions estimates are done with estimates all around its empire. Also the estimates are done by two different people with different criteria.

Second, trolls changed the Roman/Chinese

Simply because the Chinese had to fend off steppe cavalry, the most formidable warriors in the world at the time, I would give the victory to them. The Chinese also had stirrups and very powerful crossbows.
Keep saying "chink" again and again, though. It really makes your answer sound unbiased and credible.

To add to this, the Romans got their asses kicked by the Parthians most of the time they fought, and the Parthians would have had similar tactics to the Xiongnu and other nomads the Han were fighting.

Ah, thanks user.

yes rome had crossbows i confirm this

>stone
>lbs
>inch
Disregarded.

Rome wins easily. Chinese could't even defeat persians and arabs.

>Romans got their asses kicked by the Parthians most of the time
Carrhae isn't "most of the time".
Romans had plenty of victories over the parthians in all the wars they had with them.
What about Cilician Gates, or Amanus Pass?

Horseshit.
Carrhae was a one time thing.
From then on the romans kicked the parthian and other steppe peoples shit multiple times. Roman logistics as well as battle tactics adapted very well to mounted people.
Heck, the parthian capital was sacked multiple times by the romans and it was not until the rise of the huns, that steppe people near the roman borders even had chance against roman armies.

Take a look at Sulla's war with Mithridates. Mithridates employed multiple saramtian peoples and they lost badly against the romans.

In a direct slugging match, rome vs china, I think neither comes on top. I would really come down to leadership and dumb luck.

i think rome beats them via logistical prowess and tactical superiority, hardest fight theyll ever face though. The chinese strategy is to bleed men like crazy until you overwhelm the enemy whereas the roman strategy is a lot more conservative and designed to fend off just that type of warfare. The chinese have the numbers but the romans are more professional soldiers with heavier equipment and a shield wall culture, europeans tend to have the best infantry in the world throughout history and this is proven time and time again, the east relies on horses and missiles and the west gets in close, i dont think chinese horses are going to make the difference when actual steppe tribes couldnt. asian armies have entered europe many times throughout history, and theyve never stayed long, they can never put down roots or effectively assault castles. The huns got all the way to italy but ultimately didnt do much for themselves, the mongols never got passed eastern europe, woulf have just kept getting harder and harder for them after that, I dont see chinese tactics making a dent in cohorts and I dont see Han logistical capacity matching the sheer talent that each and every legionary possessed. I doubt Han tactical prowess could match the utility and independent action that a legion of cohorts brings to the table. J forsee a series of crushing tactical victories by the romans followed up by superior logistics until they got deep into china and eventually overstretched, geography is a bigger enemy than the Han military.

Which Romans?

This is top tier bait
How long did you spend on it

>he thinks I'm baiting

-insert white army- is always going to have better infantry than -insert asian army-

since this is mostly an infantry fight I'm giving it to the romans.

>I don't know anything about Chinese except memes I've heard as a child therefore Romans because the memes I've heard as a child

i know a giant army of spearmen without shields is going to get absolutely bumfuck slaughtered by roman legionaries. I know chinese cav is inferior to the steppe cavalry at skirmishing and inferior to persian cavalry at charging, and since rome dealt with both of those, they can deal with anything the chinese have. Better infantry+insignificant cav advantage=roman victory. Unless the cav can make up the difference, the western infantry are always going to win because I have studied history and I know this to be the case in every battle the romans won against these peoples. In a fair fight that isnt an ambush, if the asian army cant win with their cav, they dont win.
Youre so obviously asian btw

Holy shit you're not baiting
You're a fucking legitimate brainlet
Kys

adorable, just because Im rude doesnt mean Im incorrect, I could support my thesis with plenty of examples because I along with multiple people have studied this phenomenon, I can show you books about it. West has better infantry, east has better cavalry, this is ancient rule that spans across history.

You can't invent a type of idea. Meritocracy is just like freedom, a human idea that anyone can have.

The Han just capitalized on this idea, and while it was still a little nepotistic, for it's time, it was great.

Rome's biggest mistake was not investing enough into Education

>I know
There's that word. Stop using it. The proper word usage is, "I believe". You believe this to be such. Your belief and reality don't match.

There are so many basic things wrong with your understanding, its just pathetic and sad.

Han army used shields, they used heavy cavalries, they used crossbows. Both chinese and roman armies would be considered "giant". Chinese cavalry recruited and trained with steppe people. They raised their own horses/trained/bred/etc. They were superior to the native steppe cavalry like Xiongnu as the Han wiped them out and drove them west.

>I have studied history
You didn't. Stop lying

God damn retards. REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

i dont believe, I know. All other things being equal, western infantry wins every time, chinese used shields but like the pavise, they didnt have a shield for every man they had designated "shield" guys and then a bunch of pila bait behind that. I fucking know the chinese beat the xiongnu, it doesnt prove anything, the romans also beat steppe tribes, and their cavalry wasnt better than the steppe peoples, it was passable, at the most equal, and they used numbers to overwhelm them, again JUST like I said because I already know this reddit pop history you think youre so smart for referencing. You think JUST the han cab beat them? Because they didnt, it was their cav ON TOP of their infantry army, wasnt just cav. Youre the one generalizing, youre the one with pop history blinding him, youre the one that cant see the obvious superiority of the romans because that sounds racist to you but its fucking true anyway.

>be retarded /pol/nigger
>call people pop historians when all he did was list pop history
>"it's racist but true"
Here's something you should be familiar with: You gotta go back

You're a retard.

Just stop posting user

>being this triggered.

Wouldn't the Chinese Ji halberds fuck up Roman shield wall formations?

>they didn't did it, you are x
Try again, monkey.

This is not a pavise user.

The han also employed lot's of steppe people. There were Tien-Bei in the Han army, as where Xiongnu. There were so many of them that the Tien-Bei even created their own ruling dynasty in the north-and south period after the Han.

>people ACTUALLY view Han ching chong above
Rome
Is this borne out of ignorance? Han China are not some foreign mega-god superpower. From China's lenses - that's Rome.

Also Alexander would've taken China ;)

Wouldn't Alexander rape the modern US? Greek phalanx formation and discipling + genius Alexander can nuke the US to oblivion.

>people ACTUALLY view Roman guidos above the Han
Is this borne out of ignorance? Imperial Rome are not some foreign mega-god superpower. From Rome's lenses - that's China.

Also Zhuge Liang would've taken Greece ;)

...

Han crossbows could pierce lorica segementa bruh.

ITT, romaboos literally arguing spearchucking is superior way of warfare.

If we're generous, we can consider China under the Han dynasty collapsing into the Three Kingdoms to be the equivalent of Rome under the Severan dynasty Third Century Crisis collapse and the reunited China under Sima clan's Jin dynasty to be the equivalent of the reunited Roman empire under Constantine. In this case the Jin dynasty fell and the Nanbeichao began (the division between northern barbarian dynasties and southern Chinese dynasties) just 56 years before Western Rome fell starting the division between the Eastern empire and the barbarian kingdoms in the West.

ITT romaboos literally arguing that sitting in a barracks drinking wine for five years makes you a "veteran."

Latter Han dynasty had professional volunteer standing armies, not undisciplined peasant levies. Even the Former Han trained their conscripts for at least a year.

Also China has been autistic about standardisation for millennia. Even during the Warring States period in like 300-200BC they had standardized mass production of war materiel like bronze crossbow trigger mechanisms.

Not one person in this thread knows enough about the Han army or the Roman army to actually answer this question.
It's just people angry that the modern media likes to shit on the West so they go too far in the opposite direction and are so Eurocentric that they assume the Romans would beat the Han while knowing nothing about the Han military.

I think it may also be due to culture stereotypes; the Chinese were shit at war in the 19th and early 20th centuries, therefore all Chinese armies were always poorly trained barely armed peasants forever.

seems like all most Veeky Forums anons know about the Han military is crossbows and the destruction of the Xiongnu by horse archer.

And then you have pop "historians" like Dan Carlin who claim that East Asia at the time of the Mongol conquests was basically a different galaxy from Europe, and the Mongols coming down from glorious Song China to attack shitty backwater crusader Europe was like a baseball player coming from the major league to play in the minor league.

Carlin, at least, makes no bones about his program and openly admits he's giving a basic pop history and people should really research more into it if they want to talk about it with any authority.

>And then you have pop "historians" like Dan Carlin who claim that East Asia at the time of the Mongol conquests was basically a different galaxy from Europe
What he meant by that was that there wasn't a huge amount of direct communication between them, which there really wasn't. It was the Pax Mongolia that opened up the routes and really made it possible for individuals to travel all the way from Venice to Beijing and back, and also leaked Chinese technologies like gunpowder weapons to Europe and the Islamic world.

That doesn't really make it okay to spew out inaccuracies, though.

That's a pretty weasely statement, it doesn't enable him to give unresearched/inaccurate opinions.

>/pol/ kiddies get butthurt and insecure
>sinoboos and weebs get butthurt at the /pol/tards
>everyone starts making shit up with hypothetical nonsense
I hate this argument because the Ancient Romans and Chinese would have admired the shit out of each other.

Rome x China OTP

>200s BC
-Roman Republic defeats Carthage for control of the Mediterranean
-Qin defeats Chu for control of the warring states

>100s BC - 0AD
-Rome destroys Carthage in the Third Punic War, conquers the Gauls in the Gallic Wars, and rises to dominate the Mediterranean
-Han defeats Chu in the Chu-Han Contention, defeats the Xiongnu in the Han-Xiongnu War, and rises to dominate the empire

>0-100s AD
-Roman Imperial Golden Ages
-Han dynasty Golden Ages

>200s
-The Crisis of the Third Century in Rome. The empire is divided into the Gallic Empire, the Palmyran Empire, and the central remains of the Roman Empire.
-The Three Kingdoms Period in China. The empire is divided into Wei, Wu, and Shu.

>300s
-Reunion under the Tetrarchy and Christianity.
-Reunion under the Sima Jin Dynasty.

>400s-500s
-The Western Empire falls and the West is occupied by barbarians who found their own kingdoms. Roman identity moves to the Eastern Empire. becoming the Byzantine Empire.
-The Jin falls and the North is occupied by barbarians who found their own kingdoms, becoming the Northern Dynasties. Chinese identity moves to the South where the Eastern Jin is established, becoming the Southern Dynasties.

>600s-800s
-The Byzantine golden ages.
-Sui reunification and the Tang golden ages.

>900s
-Turkic Invasions lead to huge losses for Byzantines. Instability at home and and in the Balkans.
-Fall of the Tang, infighting and chaos create the 5 Dynasties and 10 Kingdoms.

>1000s-1100s
-The Byzantine Renaissance after the Komnenian Restoration. Culture and sciences. Problems with Latin Crusader states
-The Song Renaissance Period after the reunion under the Song. Culture and sciences. Problems with Liao and Jin conquest dynasties

>1200s-1600s
-Byzantines nearly fall to Crusaders and Muslims, rally under the Palaiologos dynasty, then falls to the Muslim Ottomans.
-Song China falls to the Mongol Yuan, Han Chinese rally under the Ming, then fall to the Manchu Qing.

They were on opposite sides of the continent from each other, the only way either of them could end up fighting the other is at the extreme ends of their supply lines where neither side can really make use of their respective logistical strengths.

>East Asia at the time of the Mongol conquests was basically a different galaxy from Europe, and the Mongols coming down from glorious Song China to attack shitty backwater crusader Europe was like a baseball player coming from the major league to play in the minor league.
This is especially odd because the Mongols themselves (at least according to their Muslim subjects who were assigned to write their histories) thought that the Europeans were formidable warriors. There's a whole chapter in Peter Jackson's "The Mongols and the West" (albeit a small one) about it.