"weapons & tactics" Topic

Is it a fair assumption that when warriors/soldiers adopt new weapons or armour, that means tactics have changed?

For example the early Romans going from a hoplite shield to a scutum indicates some form of proto-manipular tactics being introduced.

It's a bit 'chicken & egg' & I'm trying to get my head around it.

Did they change shield to implement new tactics or did the tactics change with the new shield?

My suspicion is that it is tactics that change kit, rather than the other way around. Not least when considering the refit costs of even quite small forces.

SO in your example, either the hoplon was no longer working as well, or to handle hoplon units needed something different.

I think tactics and kit tend to change in response to challenges from outside. If the new tactics require new kit then kit changes.

Its both, weapons develop to solve problems, but weapons and concepts are also imported , especially when some new neighbour arrives and proves troublesome. Often when the Romans conquered someone they would absorb units of them into the army bringing with them their specialist techniques.

I think it's the case of new enemies requiring you to adapt your tactics to defeat them, but Rome also had to adapt to new troops becoming part of their army…

But new troops, New weapons, New tactics or new troops, New tactics, New weapons….. I'm still a little undecided on.

Like Oh said, if the tactics required new kit then the kit would change.

An example of new kit not facilitating new tactics:
Hannibal re-equipped his men with Roman gear. However, it does not appear they also adopted Roman tactics. Not a single mention in Polybius' Histories of Carthaginian troops performing Roman Manipular tactics.

Go with gives you the advantage for as long as it does, change to recapture the advantage. Start with the hoplon or aspis equipped troops, everyone copies that until the peltast makes it too slow or the pike overpowers it, change to either peltast or pikeman. Rome was a hoplite type army then came up against the latins etc who fought in loose order, the Romans can't come to grips with them and loose, Roman copies the best of their opponents gear and change tactics, larger shield, throwing weapons and flexibility. The Tarentine hoplites did it a bit differently they took to carrying javelins to throw back at their elusive foes. So I think it is a case of new weapons and new tactics to employ them.
Keith

Another aspect, but one that is not easily captured in the available records (archaeological and historical), is that military technologies and fighting techniques are also influenced (I would argue strongly influenced) by social organization and associated cultural values.

For example, it is hard to understand the greek shift from chariot-bourne nobles and relatively open order combat toward near complete reliance on close-order spearmen – unless you take into account the social shift toward from aristocracies toward city-states where the land-owning citizens made up the armies.

Also, taking account of differences in social organization helps explain why some societies failed to adopt obviously effective technologies even after long exposure to them.

For example, even though between 480 BCE and Alexander's invasion the Achemenid Persians recognized the value of more heavily armoured infantry and tried to develop home-grown close order infantry (kardakes) rather than massed archers, they weren't able to pull it off. Turns out you can give a serf an aspis and heavy spear, but that doesn't make him fight like a greek freeman…

There's a similar failure on the part of the Gauls. They traded with the Romans and had been exposed to Roman military methods for centuries. Heck the Romans adopted some of the Celtic technologies (such as chain mail, some hemet patterns, and I expect the list is much longer). The Gauls also received the sharp end of the Roman manipular, and later cohort, military systems on multiple occasions, yet they never adopted any sort of similar tactics. Again, I believe their social structure (largely autonomous agricultural chieftaincies) and their cultural emphasis on individual heroics was not readily adaptable to the tight discipline required in the other military system. Even the most visionary Gallic leader would have had a very hard time trying to convince an entire society of individualistic warriors to adopt highly ordered drill. He would probably also have faced repeated challenges from more traditionally-minded rivals, and been lucky to keep his head attached…

Sci-fi campaign systems (I'm specifically thinking of the old Starfire campaign system) sometimes try to include that sort of social-cultural lag in technological development. It would be cool to see a similar thing in ancients. Hard to know exactly what evidence to base it on, though! Maybe something like the DBA "aggression" rating, based on the game designer's judgement call about the cultural norms, and the society has to pass an 'advancement test' before they get to change military technologies. Botch the roll too badly and face a potentially fatal leadership test… It wouldn't outright determine which society reached the top of the 'tech tree' first, but it would certainly load the odds toward some rather than others.

Regarding Maniples…

"Not a single mention in Polybius' Histories of Carthaginian troops performing Roman Manipular tactics."

I don`t think that the Carthaginians needed to do this because the larger fighting formations were essentially linear; maniples were only of use to deploy or perform a passage of lines… there was no sense in attacking a steady and deployed enemy in very small columns.

Changing the Hoplite to the Scutum seems reasonable if you consider the front line rotation the Romans used. The Hoplite is much more unwieldy than the scutum so when the front line is withdrawn to be replaced by the next line, it would leave a lot of unshielded targets, many with their backs turned.

The cross bar over the top of some roman helmets was thought to be caused by the Dacians and their Falx which had little problem with the existing helmet.

The same would probably apply to most equipment. The modern tank problem of weapon vs armour is apparently centuries old.