What would be a correct portrait of medieval tactics if you want to portray them correctly in a fantasy setting...

What would be a correct portrait of medieval tactics if you want to portray them correctly in a fantasy setting? What are the differences between Early, Mid, and Late tactics? How different were they compared to the pike formations that followed them in the renaissance and early modern era?

Your question is too vague and has too many answers to really be effectively answered here with any real accuracy, as you are talking about a time period that lasted from the 5th Century to the 15th Century, so it’s kind of a HUGE time area where lots of things changed all the time. And that’s if you’re JUST talking about Europe.

You should rather tell us about what system you’re using here because that might actually be more useful in giving specific advice.

Rowdy disorganized mob fights rowdy, disorganized mob

Shields may or may not be involved

Right, Europe theatre. Probably it would be easier to focus on late middle ages as most games seem to be set around that time. Nonetheless I'm interested to hear about the evolution of warfare in the middle ages.

>You should rather tell us about what system you’re using here because that might actually be more useful in giving specific advice.

Generally we use warhammer fantasy miniatures for simulating battles but I guess there are better alternatives.

What said, but to sum up in the crappiest, least efficient way that tells you basically nothing useful.
>Early
Maille is by far the most advanced armor, and it’s crazy expensive. Swords are mostly very broad and one-handed, Roman is Viking-style. Most soldiers carry shields, with many wearing padded gambesons as their primary form of armor and relying more on shields for defense. War is something for rich people; professional soldiers need to pay for their own arms and armor so they tend to be upper middle class. Lots of shield walls for infantry. Most advanced civilizations at the time (notably France) have crossbows, but nobody else does.
>High Middle Ages
Armor’s getting more sophisticated, including early plate and stuff like brigantine vests. Crossbows are more common, and they kind of make a mess of lighter armor. Swords are getting thinner as metallurgy increases in sophistication. Cavalry rules the day. Warfare is still a rich man’s game and it’s getting rather ritualized, with the ransom market for noble or knightly captives really taking off; you can entice people to join your war based just on how much they can make off of capturing enemies. Chivalry is more commonly due to this practice; dead guys don’t give you
ransoms.
>Late
Armor is basically what you see in D&D. Crossbows are now so heavy and powerful that they can fuck up even the toughest armors with a straight shot. Early guns and cannon are appearing, though they are pretty crude and hefty. More infantry is found as pike formations start to show up against cavalry and win. Mercenaries are more common to fill out the increasingly large armies of the time, generally found infantry work or ranged combat work. Heavy infantry with polearms are big everywhere due to a need to counter heavier armor, frequently led by or composed of knights on foot. Warfare has gotten so large-scale that pitched battles are rather rare and are more and more frequently becoming bloodier.

Basically by the late Middle Ages shields were much less common as defensive weapons among decently armed professional soldiers due to armor getting good enough that you didn’t need them as much, as well as due to needing heavier or specialized weapons to defeat heavier armors.
Interestingly the archetypical “full plate” would be near-useless to a D&D party due to just how difficult it was to get into and out of, requiring help to even full fasten you into the damn thing. The benefits of course were making you practically invulnerable to anything short of specialized weaponry; basically you became a human battle tank.

If you want a good visual example, the shit you see in the Witcher games is not that far off at all from medieval equipment, with Geralt’s own armor choices are fairly believable for the sorts of action he gets up to and his heaviest sets of gear only really being well-made mail suits rather then heavy plate.

How would armies deploy? What would scouts look like? Is there a vanguard and combat scouts ahead of the main body and what is their size? What is the main body made of and how many men? What about the flanks and rear guard?

>How would armies deploy?
This would depend entirely on the size of your armies and resources available. The usual formation often involved infantry in the center (heaviest infantry closest to center), archers in rear (crossbowmen and arbalesters behind pavises for defense), with cavalry on the flanks.
>What would scouts look like?
Like any group of modestly-armed soldiers, usually on horseback for mobility’s sake. Stealth was not as important as getting the fuck out of there before they could react to you.
>Is there a vanguard and combat scouts ahead of the main body
Sometimes, but not always.
As combat still relies heavily on formations, vanguards ahead of everyone else just means isolated groups away from everyone else. Rather, instead you’d have smaller groups of soldiers roaming around keeping an eye on areas you are in control of or advancing into. These guys actually probably saw combat more often then anyone else because they’d run into the other side’s scouts a lot. These were sort of your “eyes”, fanning out ahead so see wtf was going on.
>what is their size?
Again, dependent upon individual army resources. A lot of stuff indicates it wasn’t really that organized, lots of “you, you, you, and him, go and patrol up front”
>What is the main body made of and how many men?
Again, depends on army size. There was no “standard” because there were no actual standards. That’s a professional army thing, not a medieval army thing.
>What about the flanks and rear guard?
Rear guard wasn’t a thing; generally armies sent scouting nets big enough that they’d hear about enemies miles and miles and miles before they reached the main force. Imagine a huge blob of soldiers with small groups of scouts “fanning” out in multiple directions ahead and behind and to the sides to relay info.

Also it’s important to note that outside knights and other such men-at-arms, war at least at first was basically for rich people because you had to pay for your own shit. Most “veteran” soldiers were really closer to US National Guardsmen; yeah they had training and gear, but this was only something they did when they were called upon, they had other lives to lead when not at war. They weren’t useless in combat at all though.
As the Middle Ages wore on you saw more and more mercenaries as infantry, men who basically made their entire lives fighting wars for reward. A lot of these guys were real nasty; read about how bad the 30 Years War got and recognize that a lot of it happened due to mercenaries.

Other stuff; armies actually had a lot of noncombatants following them, camp followers who washed clothes, patched clothing, fixed injuries (if you were lucky), whored themselves, cooked, and basically provided for all the non-combat needs of the military force. Sometimes families of the soldiers were there, which is not too uncommon considering they might be away for months or years at a time.
Remember, since most of these armies weren’t actual professionals then a lot of these basic logistics kind of weren’t taken care of ahead of time like in modern combat, thus camp followers filled those gaps in logistics.

>arbalesters
Not OP, but I’m not familiar with this term.

An Arbalest is the heaviest kind of crossbow, the kind with metal arms and that is so hard to draw back that you need a windlass or crank to provide the necessary force to reload it.
They were slow to reload, relatively expensive, and fucked up most armor like nobody’s business. Even the kinds of plate that DID completely stop bolts from penetrating when fired from an arbalest would NOT find the experience a fun one due to most of them having a draw force of well over 900lbs or more, with some examples being 1250lbs of draw.

How would you deploy the men? Square of spear/pikes/poles with crossbow/bowmen on the sides or front? Is it one line, a dragon-toothed formation (staggered, with the leading edge of one unit level with the trailing edge of the preceding unit), columns, something else?

Does artillery play a role in this era or is field artillery only used against castles? At what point do people begin to use field artillery against troops in battle?

>How would you deploy the men?
Depends on the commander’s choices.
>Square of spear/pikes/poles with crossbow/bowmen on the sides or front?
Again, depends on the commander. The archers would often have the front and then the infantry would move up between them once things got close-up. The sides would mostly be cavalry.
>Is it one line, a dragon-toothed formation (staggered, with the leading edge of one unit level with the trailing edge of the preceding unit), columns, something else?
Line, always. Line combat would persist literally throughout history until modern maneuver warfare was created. Columns were how you traveled with the army though.
There’s records of other formations sometimes, but the fact of it is that since more armies were made of irregular troops with irregular training and communications literally were done by shouts and flags and such (both of which were not reliable in the middle of pitched battles), then anything other then lines was often too complex to really manage in battle in most cases.

Side note; if, as in strategy warfare games, a commander could instantly see a bird’s-eye view of the battlefield and then equally instantly relay orders to his troops, he would effectively have a nearly unparalleled combat advantage due to the normal method of figuring out wtf was going on being the old Mark I Eyeball, which is not exactly a precision instrument.

How did people use early firearms like handgonnes? What about the arquebus?

>Does artillery play a role in this era or is field artillery only used against castles?
It does get used against infantry, but mostly against castles. The stuff was not very mobile, and not very accurate so a lot of artillery is not useful for hitting anything other then large, stationary objects, hence the term “siege weaponry”.
>At what point do people begin to use field artillery against troops in battle?
Basically around the VERY late Middle Ages you start seeing canons in use. They sucked, they weren’t accurate, and they were heavy, but they worked. After that warfare quickly begins transitioning to pike-and-shot warfare rather then anything resembling medieval warfare.

>How did people use early firearms like handgonnes? What about the arquebus?
Actually tactics for weapons like this mostly never changed much over history. Shoot, reload, step back, next guy shoots, reload, step-back, etc. You see it in 14th Century Chinese war manuals and in Japan too. The less drilled troops were likely to use those tactics less but you still saw it.
What changed was range, stopping power, reloading speed, weapon weight, and the overall efficiency of the gun.

>War is something for rich people; professional soldiers need to pay for their own arms and armor so they tend to be upper middle class

>war at least at first was basically for rich people

The most common infantry throughout the early medieval period were peasants and commoners who were obliged to fight for the local lord, due to their place in the feudal system. They were always unarmoured or lightly armoured and fought either with simple agricultural or hunting tools such as axes and long knives, or with a spear and shield.

Why did the English cavalry fight dismounted rather than on horse in the late middle ages? What's the advantage and reason for doing so?

Professional warriors, I meant.
A lot of fantasy has a lot of the “poor men dying in wars made by rich men” when it comes to soldiers in late medieval settings when cheap peasantry equipment basically became totally insufficient for a real military force to make any difference, but that’s mostly leakage from modern attitudes towards warfare and that period comparatively speaking did not last too long as weapons and armor developed to the point where crappy peasant gear didn’t really cut it anymore.

Instead you see a lot of stuff like English levy systems (everyone has a moderate amount of training and provides their own gear if varying quality) or mercenary troops filling in those infantry gaps.

In tercio and other combined arms formations (pike and shot)

You’re talking about “mounted infantry”, not proper cavalry, and it wasn’t just the English who did that; you saw the Genoese crossbowmen do similar stuff.
Basically the advantage is having a heavy infantry unit that can get into position REALLY fast compared to other ones, allowing you to suddenly place a bunch of heavily armored infantry on a flank or part of the battlefield where it could chew up a lighter infantry unit while the opposing force’s heavy infantry was still stuck slogging it back where you left them.

Later in early modern warfare you called units like these “dragoons”.

Is this really true? I'd very much like to see a reliable source for it.
I thought that the relatively small numbers in european medieval warfare was partially due to it being primarily a class-specific activity because of the feudal system.
Wasn't there massive peasant uprisings all across europe that were 'easily' crushed in the era just after the Black Death?

Oh sure, I meant that for the early medieval period. Later on, the pattern began to change under the pressure of constant warfare. The growth of urban centres opened up new sources of infantry recruits, including men with actual skills with arms. By the 11th century, much of the infantry fighting was conducted by high-ranking nobles, middle-class freemen and peasants, who were expected to have a certain standard of equipment, often including helmet, spear, shield and secondary weapons in form of an axe, long knife or sword. Peasants were also used for the role of archers and skirmishers, providing missile cover for the heavy infantry and cavalry. The later Medieval period also saw the expansion of mercenary forces, unbound to any medieval lord.

The Swiss pikeman, the German Landsknecht, and the Italian Condottiere are three of the best known examples of this new class of fighting man. The expanded campaigns, castle-building and sieges of the era also saw greater use of household troops, often bodyguards of the elite, with a variety of useful skills. These were cheaper to recruit and maintain than knights with all their trappings.

Siege warfare in particular required large bodies of troops in the field, for extended periods of time, including numerous specialists. All this added up to make the early days of peasant levies unsustainable. As more kings and lords turned to infantry, their opponents had to keep pace, leading to additional increases in foot troops. To obtain the best fighting men, elites had to make provision for their regular payment and supply.

The rising importance of foot troops, then, brought not only the opportunity but also the need to expand armies substantially. Then as early as the late 13th century, we can observe Edward I campaigning at the head of armies incorporating tens of thousands of paid archers and spearmen. This represented a major change in approaches to recruitment, organization, and above all pay.

>I thought that the relatively small numbers in european medieval warfare was partially due to it being primarily a class-specific activity because of the feudal system.
Also population issues; even major battles would not often reach into the 1000’s of combatants on both sides until the High or Late Middle Ages.
>Wasn't there massive peasant uprisings all across europe that were 'easily' crushed in the era just after the Black Death?
Peasant uprisings were probably not that uncommon throughout history, but the fact of the matter is a bunch of poorly armed peasantry with no training will almost ALWAYS loose to force that has combat experience, training, and better equipment, so none of them got very big because most weren’t very successful.

To be honest, you can count the number of actually successful slave revolts and peasant uprisings that weren’t backed by a portion of the upper class on one hand most of the time in most places.

>and above all pay.
That stuff led to the clusterfuck of the 30 Years War.
It turns out needing the sort of infantry support and combat training that you’d find in a professional army but not having the developed economic systems to pay for one and relying on mercenaries to fill in gaps really causes long-term problems with stuff like armed bands of assholes who are just looking for loot because killing folks and taking their shit becomes their primary method of payment.

>almost ALWAYS loose
In what circumstances will they not loose, out of curiosity?

Massive numerical advantages, basically. Stuff like ten-to-one or twenty-to-one odds are pretty much a death sentence, but even that requires a situation where the professional soldiers are dumb enough to let the peasant rebellion get into a position where their full numbers can be brought to bear rather then using terrain to your advantage.

By the 15th century most armies were by and large professional. Peasant levies, which in large scale combat used to be extremely common, were largely unused by the late middle ages. Peasants are more useful doing their jobs, after all.

Also in a situation where the peasant uprising is both large and extremely invested.
You don't stop an uprising by crushing every last person - those people are all working jobs for the country, and before a centralized state with access to computer-aided organization, even a few hundred people can sting the economy because their know-how and trust is less replaceable and they're a part of the local fabric.
Usually, propaganda or bribes were used to get people back to their jobs, paying them off with a slightly better pay or other concessions in order to get them to lay down arms while the nobility or army arrested and tried ringleaders.
If you have a lot of low-class workers and peasants who're passionate enough about a cause that they'll still die for it after their first two or three clashes with the army, usually either it ends in a concession by the nobility or a bitter pill to swallow in the form of more rebellions, work shortages and famines in the next few years.

Keep in mind though that in war, like the 30-years war for example, much of the peasantry is displaced and forced into service, as mercenary or irregular for any army that happens to pass by in need of some more meat for the next battle.

It's really interesting to look at the Peasants' Revolt in 1381 England, because they were clearly organized and had really specific objectives. They had a list of demands. They specifically burned record books.

True, though that's pretty definitively not an earlier-style Levy. They definitely sought payment in some form, so even displaced they skirted the edges of being a professional force.

Where do knights and other soldiers live and what do they own? Do they live in the castle with their lord or do they have their own houses and manors?

What was the advantage of tercio? Aren't the handgunners exposed?

>Where do knights and other soldiers live and what do they own?
Knights live mostly like any other member of the aristocracy, on land that they own and others work on, they just have less of it then highly ranked nobles. They probably don’t have tons of physical coinage or anything, but their weapons and armor are quite valuable. Soldiers are mostly peasants when not being soldiers and are living the same kinds of lives that everyone else is living.
>Do they live in the castle with their lord or do they have their own houses and manors?
Men-at-arms would, acting like a garrisoned Force in the castle. Not all men-at-arms were knights, but these guys often were the best trained or best equipped troops of a noble’s retinue because they were around their lord at all times.
The vast majority of knights lived in their own manors though, as land ownership and military obligation was sort of the basis for the entire feudal system. Knighthood meant privileges, not just in terms of rank and equipment in combat, but in society and how much time you had to spend working to feed yourself.

They retreat inside the square in case of cavalry attack while they kill or soften enemy infantry. It's a combined arms approach very defensive in its design.

Knights are mostly either lesser nobles risen to the specific rank of knight or you might also count an armored nobleman as a knight on the battlefield.
Depending on said nobles or knights wealth they either live in a smaller manor (most likely a knight whose most valuable possession is his armor), large manor (again a knight or an impoverished noble) or a castle (a noble).

As for other soldiers, the men at arms mostly had a barrack in the vicinity of the castle or manor and they were pretty much the only standing troops a lord would have, acting as guard/police force.

As for regular mooks, they would most likely be peasants and other lower class people who were pressed into service prior to the conflict and these folks were mostly in charge of arming themselves, so you would see all sorts of weapons, a sword your grandfather looted from an enemy noble, some scythes bent into new shape, hunting bows and arrows, padded cloth armor and of course whatever the village blacksmith or blacksmith from another village might be able to whip out.

Also you must remember that this sort of army had to get back home so they could engage in harvest, lest the lord wouldn't get his taxes paid and the peasants and the rest of the society would go hungry.
After harvest came winter and it was mostly a no war time, due to it beingprohibitively cold outside.

Actually a pretty good short account.

t. Historian.

A tercio could be used for a lot of different things really effectively; it’s arquebusiers could fight at range, it’s pikemen could put a stop to cavalry, and if anyone closed to infantry ranges you had professional swordsmen who could really mess their day up.
It was sort of a proper medieval equivalent to a modern combined arms group; a small group that could do a great number of tasks equally well, and this was a definite rarity back then in the days of inflexible troop formations.

Speaking of privileges, in medieval times (and mainly till 1800s in general) in europe the law code was, well, first of all differing greatly betwean each nation, but for the most part they had a pretty similar system going on.
The crimes you committed varied in severity based on your social status.
So, for example, a farmer who started a fight would geta flogging while a knight who started a fight would get a stern talk and be ordered to maybe whip out some coin, while a higher noble would just be handwaved away and if king started it, then it was the other guys fault and the other guy should be punished.

Thank you. I read a lot.

In a pitched battle they would likely lose. A peasant uprising is quite an inconvenience for a lord, but the solution is simple but brutal.
Now, if a lord is of a particularly languid or tactless nature these local uprisings might spread to something worse, something that is not easily settled in one battle. The great German peasant war of 1524 one such example.

Another half related piece of history is that of Dithmarschen, a small marshland region in northern Germany, where the peasants enjoyed self rule a high level of autonomy from the surrounding medieval lords, appointing their own leaders and so on. This little "peasant republic" lasted from the 12th century up to the 16th century, and fought off mercenaries and many a lord who would try to impose feudal rule over them.

Well, to be honest more powerful or more wealthy people getting less harsh punishments for their crimes has generally been the order of the day since pretty much always.
The only real difference is how official or unofficial this is when worked into local law systems I suppose.

When they're tightened, of course.

This is supremely useful to me because i'm working on a setting with middle ages/early medieval level technology.

One faction is fairly innovative and technologically advanced, so I figured they had crossbows. They don't have much in the way of horses though. They have a very good supply of iron. I figure most of their troops would have maille.

What I need more help with is the wholly fictitious fantasy elements; specifically, what can be done with ceramics in weapons and armor, from Classical Era to Middle?

>The not!Elves use magic fuck you to shape wood into weapons and armor, harden the sap into amber.

>the not!Orc/Dwarves use bronze and ceramics

The problem of course is ceramic is fragile, and they don't use magic. So I figure they use mostly bronze, and have ceramics for arrow heads and primitive bombs.

Having your arrows shatter on contact isn't particularly useful.
Bronze is also more complex than iron/steel is and they'd definitely at least trade for it if they couldn't get it normally, which is unlikely.

Also helps that you can out wait most rebellions as eventually they have to go back to work or starve.

>Having your arrows shatter on impact isn't particularly useful
That's a truth with modifications.
Especially in ancient warfare, where the know-how, raw materials and facilities for weapon production were more precious and infrastructure for facilitating large-scale coordinated industry didn't exist, you really don't want to give your opponents weapons because there's a legitimate chance that it might give them the victory.
If there's but a single squad of archers among the enemy, making arrowheads out of ceramic or even just making shafts that can only really take one impact is a reasonable decision if you can afford the cost of replacing arrows.
That's the reason the Romans invented the pilum rather than just throwing perfectly good spears. Sure, making a weapon that's designed to break is a drain on resources, but no one wants to be shot with their own arrows or run through with their own spear.
Remember, these people are peasants. They grow their own sustenance, and what caused the rebellion in the first place was likely the nobility demanding too big a share of it.
Merchants, soldiers and other professions that aren't self-sustaining can be waited out if they rebel, though both of them can do a lot of damage in a short time.
Peasants are used to building their own homes, growing their own food and making their own tools. You need some kind of essential service to deprive them of in order to wait them out, so you might very well find yourself with only a solidifying republic of peasants, to which your own people are running away because you aren't taxing them there.

I would recommend making the pointy ears more like the 1100s Slavs/Finns.
Aka low in armor tech, most weapons are either spears or bows with only nobles having any real armor or swords.
Also, cloth armor, cloth armor everywhere.

>Bronze is also more complex than iron/steel is and they'd definitely at least trade for it if they couldn't get it normally, which is unlikely.

Humans more or less have a stranglehold on Iron, which they do trade, but it's expensive and bronze is better like you said

Go to the library. Read a book

>Early
Mercenaries
>Mid
Mercenaries
>Very Late
Standing armies start to become a necessity as nation states come into being. The concentrated population and new generation of wealth allows for the creation of well armed, trained men who's sole job is to fight for X amount of time.

King's no longer lead actual troops or participate in wars to win thrones.

You just described
>Late medieval
>Renaissance
>Enlightenment era

If the cut off is the 15th century then just

>Mercenaries

sums it up.

What would be the ranks in the armies?

>Iron is expensive.
>Let's substitute it for a material which needs much more craftsmanship and necessitates huge trade networks to get a hold of the relatively rare ingredients.

>What are the differences between Early, Mid, and Late tactics?
Short answer
>Increasing importance and professionalization of infantry
>Decreasing importance of cavalry
>Invention and increasing importance of gunpowder weaponry (mostly cannons)
>Decreasing importance of nobility

Some people say the HYW ends the Middle Ages, and some people have a solid argument. Look at France's army by the end of the HYW: mounted gendarmes (wealthy commoners), commoner infantry with solid equipmetn and all of them directly loyal to the king with very little feudal intervention. Nobles act as officers but they don't own the army for shit.

Very bluntly put that's the transformation you see from early into high to late medieval times. Shit like the meme machine that's the Battle of the Golden Spurs would've been near impossible during the days of Charlemagne, when cavalry was king. Mostly because infantry at the time consisted of peasants with a pointy stick and a oval shaped wooden plate, rather than full plate sporting pro-killers.