Search results for query: *

Forum search Google search

  1. The Future of Rome in a World Where Carthage Won the Second Punic War

    I think the collapse of the Ptolemies opens such opportunities that Carthaginian support for eastern ambitions would be well worth sacrificing interests in the west.

  2. The Future of Rome in a World Where Carthage Won the Second Punic War

    Post-war Rome would have a much harder time challenging Carthage, since the southern Italians in Hannibal's league [Taras, Capua, the Samnites, etc] and the Cisalpine Gauls would be hemming them in from south and north. Moving these peoples and their resources out of the Roman column and into...

  3. Plausibility Check: Industrial Revolution Begins in Tang Dynasty China?

    My smoothbrain understanding is that you need to understand the concept of atmospheric pressure to make a steam engine that really works; the work isn't done by the steam, it's by the vacuum created when cool water gets squirted into the steam filled cylinder, cooling the air and shrinking its...

  4. AHC: Cold War between a "good" Fascist state and an "evil" Democratic one

    One starting point would be the ends/ways of the two blocs; if the chief fascist state is essentially a satisfied, status quo power, and the democracies comparatively belligerent and revisionist, trying to compel neutrals to their side or roll back the brown bloc, it's quite possible they end up...

  5. Egypt conquers the Mediterranean

    I think the whole med. would be fairly implausible, given the transport costs involved in supporting imperial projects on the opposite end; Rome and Carthage were the most plausible candidates, lying as they do smack dab in the middle of the sea. I do think an Egyptian Empire encompassing the...

  6. Q: Does this passage reflect a reality when talking about pre-gunpowder armies?

    Frankly I'm not even sure the English cavalry would win, or at least not quickly. The strongest force of men at arms deployed for an expeditionary army was about 2500 in the Crecy campaign, iirc, so they'd be outnumbered more than 2-1 in a Cannae hypothetical. Man for man they're much...

  7. Q: Does this passage reflect a reality when talking about pre-gunpowder armies?

    At Agincourt, only about twice as many French fought the English; six-one is a whole new ballgame. Their flanks are going to be overlapped, and they'll have no reserves to speak of.

  8. Q: Does this passage reflect a reality when talking about pre-gunpowder armies?

    If the English had been at Cannae, they'd have lost because they would be outnumbered almost 6-1.

  9. Q: Does this passage reflect a reality when talking about pre-gunpowder armies?

    Well duh, of course if you remove all other differences, the side with more complete armor and stronger metallurgy will probably win. That's self evident. The point is that when comparing real armies, there are so many other differences that even the biggest 500 BC-1500 AD technological...

  10. Q: Does this passage reflect a reality when talking about pre-gunpowder armies?

    The English slaughtered them just fine with normal swords and daggers once their ranks were disrupted. If nothing else, Roman swords, daggers, and javelins can thrust through eyeslits and into groins and armpits protected by mail instead of plate. And there are likely to be far more Romans on...

  11. Q: Does this passage reflect a reality when talking about pre-gunpowder armies?

    I think he's mistaken in emphasizing the 'iron weapons' bit when he brings up bronze age armies, but I've made a similar argument elsewhere. The differences in technology between a classical army and a medieval one are going to probably be outweighed by who has superior numbers, the better...

  12. Barbed wire in Napoleonic wars

    Anyone who thinks barbed wire -if it could be produced at scale- wouldn't be quite useful in the Napoleonic Wars simply doesn't know what they're talking about. A gamechanger, no, but if Clausewitz reckoned an entrenched field position practically impregnable from the front, barbed wire is...

  13. Alexander the Great doesn't die and lives to 80s and conquers North India, Carthage, Italy

    No ancient militia was ever 'designed' for anything; the Samnite fighting style organically arose from a combination of factors. Insofar as terrain was a factor in its emergence, basically identical terrain played a similarly indeterminate role in the emergence of the Classical hoplite phalanx...

  14. Alexander the Great doesn't die and lives to 80s and conquers North India, Carthage, Italy

    Greek hoplites worked great in uneven terrain; have you looked at Greece? It's even more mountainous than Italy. Pike phalanxes struggled on uneven ground at times, but not enough to keep them from subjugating all Greece and then most of the Achaemenid empire. I do think you're right that...

  15. Russia and the 7 Years War

    I could see the Prussians doing well enough to annex Saxony if the Russians sit it out.

  16. AHC/WI: Carthage Wins the Second Punic Wars

    Well it did provoke war with Rome, the difference is taking eight months to reduce the city vs potentially four or fewer, giving him more time to advance his position before the Romans could mobilize and embark their armies.

  17. AHC/WI: Carthage Wins the Second Punic Wars

    My proposal would be reducing Saguntum more quickly, allowing him to subjugate Catalonia with the rest of the campaign season and then winter in Transalpine Gaul like Hasdrubal would later do, instead of in New Carthage.

  18. AHC/WI: Carthage Wins the Second Punic Wars

    Yeah, I imagine Rome would be reduced to Latinum, maybe etruria; if Carthage manages a peace analogous to that imposed after Zama, Cisalpine Gaul will be returned to the Celtic allies, and most of southern Italy would be Carthaginian allies.

  19. Rate George Washington as a Military Commander

    The revolution had widespread popular support, and the British just couldn't get enough warm bodies over the Atlantic; one of the most prominent scholars of the British army during the AWI, Matthew Spring, considered the war basically unwinnable.

  20. Rate George Washington as a Military Commander

    Sure was a smart move to Be On The Other Side Of A Massive Ocean from the enemy.
Top