16 replies to this topic

[ih8eurocentrix]

every formation has a strenght and weakness.
the dense will defeat the loose but the dense is vulnerbale to archery.
as warhead metioned a phalanxe style wouldnt work in warring states china..
some armys are not aware of this and cocnentrate mainly on unorthodox forces like medieval knights.and thus they can be beaten by an army like mongols easily.
but the terracotta army seems to be "aware" of these things as there is many diff troop types covering the weakneesss of other units .
so why a phalnxe style formation could be vulnerable to archery in ancient china but would be very effecttive agasint loose formations of infantry....
so why would they not use a phalnxe or legion style formation..
as sun bin said the tao of warfare is using dense to beat the loose.so it seems they were concious of formations weakneess.
do u agree

[RollingWave]

Formations are certainly far more complicated than loose/tight.

Formations often embody ur battle planing from the start. do you want to surrond overwhelm them? do you want to push them through the center? do you want to lure? do you want to defend from them?

Remember that a true battle is often 10 thousand + men clashing, so obviously not everyone would be clashing.

The more standard chinese formation (and really Roman formation is often the same) in a battle, would start out in a loose formation. when the men engage they will close up into tight formations. of course there are a ton of other uses, such as the front line can fake collaspe and lure u into a surrond. (Hannible used this) or the other men go around the sides etc....

[Grigori]

The Romans for example destroyed the Greeks using their cohorts a smaller version of the phalanx, however like you said it's not effective against arrows and other long range weaponary which the chinese armies saw as a vital desisive victory. also a loose formation allows you to encirlce the enemy easily.

The Romans only defeated the Greek phalanx because the Greek cavalry was nonexistant at the time of conflict. The reason Alexander's armies worked so well was he flanked his phalanx with first rate horsemen. Send the best the Romans had against Alexander's army and I'm not convinced the Romans could win.

[CARDINAL009]

Success in situational conflict (warfare) is based on one major thing and many things-
The Commander, the terrain, quality & # of solders, condition of solders, weather, etc..

It is rarely based on just the formation of the troops.

[ih8eurocentrix]

tight formations push foward together like phalanx or legion so the whole formation acts as one unit.is there any formation like this in china.

[Mei Houwang]

I'm not very knowledgeble on formations, but I'm sure they can all act together as one unit What are they there for?

[Mei Houwang]

Oh, I remember that formation as well, but remember that the Three Kingdoms TV show is highly inaccurate, especially on THAT formation. If that kind of formation existed, with the soldiers continually running in circles and all, all you have to do is wait for the soldiers to tire themselves out .

The Romans does have a variety of formations, but compared to the Chinese, the Romans usually prefer to rely on several formations that's available instead of many.

[ih8eurocentrix]

wat i dont understand is why if china has a better recorded history more books etc. that we know so much about roman formations but not really any about chinese infantry formations etc. why would u not write that stuff down.

[RollingWave]

Arragh.

The Romans only defeated the Greek phalanx because the Greek cavalry was nonexistant at the time of conflict. The reason Alexander's armies worked so well was he flanked his phalanx with first rate horsemen. Send the best the Romans had against Alexander's army and I'm not convinced the Romans could win.

No, As menationed if the Greeks had bad calvary than the Romans had far worse, not to meantion the main "Greek" opposition of the Romans were not the GREEKS, but the Macedonian successor states which were using the same or even better calvary than Alexander. the Greek cities by this time were militarily irrelevant. the Successor lost due to horrible commanders in the Macedonian's cases and in the Selucid's case it was more do the problem that they could not recover do to the instability of their kingdom.

tight formations push foward together like phalanx or legion so the whole formation acts as one unit.is there any formation like this in china.

yes they simply didn't attach fancy names to them, pretty much any civilization with a military worth meantioning fought in tight formations close up, The greek phalanx was probably quiet simliary to a standard Chinese infantry close formation, while the Chinese probably didn't use such long spears as the Macedonians, those proved quiet usless except against other phalanx with shorter spears.

The legion was also NOT a tight formation, it was both, it could close up into close formations in fights while it could also spread out and work individually, this was basically how the Chinese infantry worked too, limiting urself to only tight or loose is simply not militarily bright. the Romans for example would close up into tight formations when the Gallic/Germanic barbarians charge them while they would spread out against a phalanx and seek weak points.

remember seeing a formation in the Three kingdoms which involved soldiers running in 18 or 8 rings which stops a charging army. However i would expect a simple barrage of arrows would solve the problem.

you will never be taken seriously in any such dissucsion if you quote anything from the Romance of the 3 kingdom.

wat i dont understand is why if china has a better recorded history more books etc. that we know so much about roman formations but not really any about chinese infantry formations etc. why would u not write that stuff down.

Because of a few things, the Chinese history recording way followed the example of Shima Qian, which means it was usually a collection of personal biographys, which means that they would rarely go into detail about things like military. the Military works on everyday details etc were usually classified, and Since the generals were not polititions that needed to appeal to the masses they did not need to write up books on he's own exploits. (such as Ceaser)

Chinese historians was also a professional job which means that they were not mlitary men, obviously they would also have a hard time writting down good military details, espically since the final composition of the various history books usually came hundreds of years after the actural events have past, military style often changed already and which means the miltary details recorded were often either deemed unimportant or the composers have a hard time understanding them.

On the other hand the Roman's political system means that they willl more often share such detail in popular works where as it may be wiser to keep it a classified secert, Romans were also more keen to writting down every little details and spreading it around.

And we face the final problem that archiology in Chinese history is still relatively young compare to those on Greek/Roman, while the field is also too large and too overlapping that so far few have made attempt to really write in an organized comparative matter on the various finding in different fields

[Grigori]

Arragh.

You can't directly compare Roman cav vs Greek cav. The cavalry was not instrumental to battlefield success in the Roman way of war. OTOH the Macedonian way of war was very much a combined arms business. In The Battle of Pydna the Macedonian cavalry turned and ran, while the phalanx itself did the job it was meant to do.

Anyway an interesting topic, wish I have more time to get into it. Maybe later.

[Yang Zongbao]

Why?
For the same reason that Zhou Yu was afraid to use fire arrows himself.
The wind changed, so his arrows would burn his own ships.

Of course, the San Guo Yan Yi cannot be taken seriously as a true historical reference.