European/West vs. Japanese/East (Samurai)

Really? I was under the impression that the Battle of the Tuteburg Forest was a crushing defeat for the Romans precisely because the legions were forced to fight in small groups rather than large formations.

The Romans were slaughtered in Teutoburg Forest because they were stretched out in a long march formation, disorganised and ambushed while in the confines of the forest. The Germanic tribes were armed with light swords, lances and spears. Lots of metal. Because the Romans couldn't fight in formation they were decimated.

The survivors were ambushed yet again in a cunningly planned bottleneck. Again the Romans were decimated because they couldn't fight in formation due to the restricted terrain and the Germans could attack from cover.

Arminius himself was an ex-roman legionnaire and knew precisely how to defeat the Romans, which was to not allow them to fight in formation. That said the Germans had superior numbers so we can't conclude that one on one they were better combatants than the Roman Legionnaires.
 
Really? I was under the impression that the Battle of the Tuteburg Forest was a crushing defeat for the Romans precisely because the legions were forced to fight in small groups rather than large formations

The Romans were strung out in a long ragged line. the Germans surrounded the army and pounded it with missiles. They used their knowledge of the terrain to cut up and swarm roman units with greatly superior numbers, not in one on one fights. The Romans began to panic and run, and that's when the real slaughter began. Its not because of some genetic superiority. The Germans explicitly avoided the kind of one on one fighting you are thinking of and mobbed every little chunk of the roman army with as much numerical superiority as they could find.

The last attempt to completely conquer Scotland by the Romans cost them 4,000 dead. The majority of those were killed when ambushed by Picts and forced to fight one on one. If the you are correct and the Pictish warrior elite was relatively small, then many of these Romans would have been killed by "skinny, poorly fed peasants who might not even have a metal weapon."

Ambushes are about hitting and running and suddenly swarming your enemy with superior numbers. It can be a boy hurling sling stones at you from an inaccessible hill top, or a few hundred farmers throwing javelins at you and running off, or a great mob of warriors ambushing a small unit that got lost or was lagging. Its not about fighting, one on one with hardened soldiers who are probably better equipped than you.

One final point regarding metal weapons: they don't always guarantee victory. The Norse landed in Vineland(America)about 500 years before Columbus got lost on the way to China. But they left because they did'nt want to spend time, money and lives fighting the Native American tribes who were armed, in those days, with stone axes etc.

I don't claim that they do. But a man with an iron weapon,a mail tunic, a big shield and an iron helmet has an immense advantage over a man with equipped with just a cloth jack (if he's lucky), a shield, and a spear or a club. Wealthier Gallic nobles and thier retinues would be well equipped indeed with fine mail and iron caps, but the typical gallic levy was a farmer who would have brought whatever he could scrounge up.
 
The Romans were strung out in a long ragged line. the Germans surrounded the army and pounded it with missiles. They used their knowledge of the terrain to cut up and swarm roman units with greatly superior numbers, not in one on one fights. The Romans began to panic and run, and that's when the real slaughter began. Its not because of some genetic superiority. The Germans explicitly avoided the kind of one on one fighting you are thinking of and mobbed every little chunk of the roman army with as much numerical superiority as they could find.



Ambushes are about hitting and running and suddenly swarming your enemy with superior numbers. It can be a boy hurling sling stones at you from an inaccessible hill top, or a few hundred farmers throwing javelins at you and running off, or a great mob of warriors ambushing a small unit that got lost or was lagging. Its not about fighting, one on one with hardened soldiers who are probably better equipped than you.



I don't claim that they do. But a man with an iron weapon,a mail tunic, a big shield and an iron helmet has an immense advantage over a man with equipped with just a cloth jack (if he's lucky), a shield, and a spear or a club. Wealthier Gallic nobles and thier retinues would be well equipped indeed with fine mail and iron caps, but the typical gallic levy was a farmer who would have brought whatever he could scrounge up.

Well, lets run the numbers. The last attempted Roman invasion of Scotland(yes, I know it was'nt called by that name back then)involved 40,000 Roman soldiers under the personal command of the Emperor, himself a battle-hardend professional soldier.

4 Years later, he withdrew from Scotland having lost 4,000 soldiers KIA. Do the maths: that is one tenth of the invasion force. One thousand soldiers killed every year. Not one of these casualties happend in open battle; the Picts were far too smart to fight the Romans in pitched battles. They knew that played right into the Legion's hands. It was all guerilla warfare, attacks on small units or isolated forts.

Now, I have no way of knowing how many Picts were actually doing the fighting. But I find it hard to believe that all those 4,000 Roman KIA's were achieved by vastly numerically superior forces. Especially since the Roman Legions proved throughout history that they could defeat enemies many times their own size.

There has to be other factors involved; I contend that it would be the superior close-quarter fighting abilities of the Picts.

Interestingly, a Season 2 episode of Deadliest Warrior matched a Roman Legionaire against one of India's Warrior Caste. The Indian's were trained to fight as individuals and emphasized personal combat skills. In single combat, the Indian Warrior killed the Legionair, even though the Roman was far more heavily armoured.
 
I don't claim that they do. But a man with an iron weapon,a mail tunic, a big shield and an iron helmet has an immense advantage over a man with equipped with just a cloth jack (if he's lucky), a shield, and a spear or a club. Wealthier Gallic nobles and thier retinues would be well equipped indeed with fine mail and iron caps, but the typical gallic levy was a farmer who would have brought whatever he could scrounge up.

In the case of Teutoburg forest the Germans had an advantage because the Romans wooden shields became virtually unusable because they were waterlogged by torrential rain. It was very muddy too which suited the more lightly armoured Germans.
 
Now, I have no way of knowing how many Picts were actually doing the fighting. But I find it hard to believe that all those 4,000 Roman KIA's were achieved by vastly numerically superior forces. Especially since the Roman Legions proved throughout history that they could defeat enemies many times their own size.

4000 in four years is quite small. The Romans lost 50,000 in a single afternoon at Cannae.

There has to be other factors involved; I contend that it would be the superior close-quarter fighting abilities of the Picts.
The factors are mobility and superior knowledge of the terrain. The Picts could move across country, avoid the main forces and use thier mobility to concentrate men where they were needed to swarm over small detachments and outposts. They would skirmish with slingers and javelin throwers then run off. They would hit and run and never give the Romans a chance to close into a decisive fight. It has nothing to do with 'superior close quarter fighting skills' any more than the Communist victory in Vietnam had to do with superior tactical skills. The picts made occupying thier lands more trouble than it was worth, so the Romans left.

Interestingly, a Season 2 episode of Deadliest Warrior matched a Roman Legionaire against one of India's Warrior Caste. The Indian's were trained to fight as individuals and emphasized personal combat skills. In single combat, the Indian Warrior killed the Legionair, even though the Roman was far more heavily armoured.

Deadliest warrior is fun to watch, but it is entertainment only..it is hardly a definative source of information on much of anything.
 
Then it's just as well I never mentioned the DW episode where a Roman Gladiator got pwned by an Apache who used "Stone Age" weapons...:redface::icon_chee

Deadliest Warrior does exactly what we're dong right now; speculate about the fighting abilities, strengths and weaknesses of various warriors. I believe the Picts would have been better close quarter fighters than the Romans. You strongly disagree. But in the end, neither of us can prove our case one way or another. We are discussing battles and wars that took place long before the birth of Christ.

The Picts themselves left no written record apart from a few carvings on standing stones that noone has been able to translate yet. Our only knowledge of them comes from the Romans, who were hardly going to be objective.
 
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The Romans were strung out in a long ragged line. the Germans surrounded the army and pounded it with missiles. They used their knowledge of the terrain to cut up and swarm roman units with greatly superior numbers, not in one on one fights. The Romans began to panic and run, and that's when the real slaughter began. Its not because of some genetic superiority. The Germans explicitly avoided the kind of one on one fighting you are thinking of and mobbed every little chunk of the roman army with as much numerical superiority as they could find.



Ambushes are about hitting and running and suddenly swarming your enemy with superior numbers. It can be a boy hurling sling stones at you from an inaccessible hill top, or a few hundred farmers throwing javelins at you and running off, or a great mob of warriors ambushing a small unit that got lost or was lagging. Its not about fighting, one on one with hardened soldiers who are probably better equipped than you.



I don't claim that they do. But a man with an iron weapon,a mail tunic, a big shield and an iron helmet has an immense advantage over a man with equipped with just a cloth jack (if he's lucky), a shield, and a spear or a club. Wealthier Gallic nobles and thier retinues would be well equipped indeed with fine mail and iron caps, but the typical gallic levy was a farmer who would have brought whatever he could scrounge up.

Tacticus might have disagreed with you on that point; he describes both the Celts and Germanic warriors as being, tall, red-headed and "Strong of limb". Bigger and stronger than the average Roman who, lets face it, did'nt win first prize in the DNA Lottery.

Untermenchen are always going to lose in a straight fight against Ubermenchen...:icon_twis
 
samurai and knights are kool but we all know the ultimate weapon masters are ninjas in the practice of ninjitsu.
 
Deadliest Warrior does exactly what we're dong right now; speculate about the fighting abilities, strengths and weaknesses of various warriors. I believe the Picts would have been better close quarter fighters than the Romans. You strongly disagree. But in the end, neither of us can prove our case one way or another. We are discussing battles and wars that took place long before the birth of Christ.

Deadliest warrior is very loosely based on actual fact, and mainly relies on common stereotypes. Its fun to watch, but is not, nor should it be taken seriously.

Tacticus might have disagreed with you on that point; he describes both the Celts and Germanic warriors as being, tall, red-headed and "Strong of limb".

Tacitus also said

"[The Germans
 
Ok if you get away from the katana vs braodsword circle jerk for sec. As it is a stupid argument. The broadsword was a late Mid ages weapon or even Ren, while the katana as we know it was actually from the 1700's to the mid 1800's. It's like comparing WWII planes to earl 30's planes. They existed in radically different times.

The "katana" as "we know it" originated in the 14th century, but can refer to any of a dozen different flavors of blade, from battlefield choppers to later thin and light dueling oriented swords.

This is less a matter of superseding technologies as much as the practicalities of battlefield versus personal dueling. Note that during the Renaissance era in Europe, there were battlefield swords used by soldiers versus civilian swords - same deal.

A more appropriate analogy would be if you had these cars in a line:

Series 70 Landcruiser
Regular Landcruiser
Land Rover Range Rover HSE
Porsche Cayenne
Porsche Panamera
Porsche 911

You can call all six of these vehicles "cars" and the one right next to the other is somewhat comparable to the other, but if you look at the first car and then the last car, you can't exactly compare them.

Same for the word "katana."

If you note when the Japanese were most successful, was in their invasion of Korea during the 1590's. Guess what, they were using Spanish pike/musket formations and tactics. I think that in of it's self should be the biggest indicator right there. As the Japanese tactics in battle were pretty much a giant CF otherwise, which you will note the massive CF battle of Sekigahara in 1600, when there seems to be a regression in tactics/strat.

The Japanese have this tremendous reputation as historically incredible warriors, but the truth is that the incredible stories of feats of arms always came against each other or against poorly armed and trained civilians.

The Japanese invasion of Korea.
Stated goal: Conquer Korea, the Jurchens, Imperial China, maybe even India.
Result: Initial success due to unpreparedness of the enemy, a few years of truce, then a royal ass kicking, return to the island.

Except for the truce, sound familiar to anybody?
 
The ancient writers talk about their height, but also make a great deal about how skinny their enemies were and how they seemed unable to bear heavy burdens. Caesar remarked on this in his Commentaries. The average german probably looked alot more like a modern Somali, tall and thin from poor nutrition.

Poor nutrition stunts growth. And modern Somalis, at least ones not born in the states, aren't that tall.

In any case, height is not an indication of 'genetic superiority'.

Invader Zim's Irkin bosses beg to disagree.
 
Then it's just as well I never mentioned the DW episode where a Roman Gladiator got pwned by an Apache who used "Stone Age" weapons...:redface::icon_chee

Deadliest Warrior does exactly what we're dong right now; speculate about the fighting abilities, strengths and weaknesses of various warriors. I believe the Picts would have been better close quarter fighters than the Romans. You strongly disagree. But in the end, neither of us can prove our case one way or another. We are discussing battles and wars that took place long before the birth of Christ.

The Picts themselves left no written record apart from a few carvings on standing stones that noone has been able to translate yet. Our only knowledge of them comes from the Romans, who were hardly going to be objective.


Well look a this, the picts and other various tribes fought with each other on occasion, but not all the time like the Romans were. They also didn't have gladiators, who really developed swordmanship, likda like MMA shaped fighting. So the training that the Romans got was prolly more realisitic and they didn't care about style/looking good/brave.
 
Deadliest warrior is very loosely based on actual fact, and mainly relies on common stereotypes. Its fun to watch, but is not, nor should it be taken seriously.



Tacitus also said

"[The Germans
 
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