Best weapon of ancient war

[Darth Wong]

Any model where soldiers must be trained from birth is going to be very poorly suited to crises, in which you must quickly raise a larger army and can hardly afford to wait 20 years. Suppose you suffer some kind of devastating loss at the hands of your enemy, and you need tens of thousands of soldiers right now? Tell your enemy to hang on until your babies get older?

It is better to recruit people into the army as young men rather than infants. The "warrior creed" you speak of need not be an all-encompassing dogma that makes them useless for everything else in life; what you need is simply a culture that generally values and glorifies warfare, much as the early Imperial Romans did. That makes the general population amenable to large-scale recruiting.

[tharkûn]

What if I changed the caste such that it would steal babies or youth from the people it conquered and indoctrinate them from birth to learn only arts of war.

That was more or less done by the Ottoman Turks at a later date, it still did not yeild an immense advantage. Further you do run into the little problem of people being loyal to their blood kin. It isn't going to take a genius to recognize that if he is kidnapping children from their parents, the same would have happened to him.

I figure their training and mentality would be a much, much bigger factor than what any breeding could offer.

Training you soldiers, and giving the a good diet during childhood and puberty, is of course much more important. However that was pretty much standard for many ancient societies with career soldiers. The big question then becomes how many soldiers can you feed, equip, and otherwise let be a drain on society in peace time.

I could even institute a wierd sort of tax where a certain number of young ones were taken from their families every year, or something, and trained to be warriors.

Devshirmah. The Janissaries were taken in such a tax (moslty from Albania and Bulgaria) and trained as elite warriors. That worked well for the early Ottoman empire, but broke down heavily in the 17th century when they transformed themselves into virtual aristocrats.

Or would this still be too selective to deal with the continual loss of soldiers?

You are still going to be facing an uphill battle for numbers. Janissaries take years to churn out and because you are creating dedicated soldiers with no other social function you are quite limited as to how many you can support. If you don't have some other edge, then yes something which better uses the masses - like the Roman or even Athenian models, will be superior.

It is better to recruit people into the army as young men rather than infants. The "warrior creed" you speak of need not be an all-encompassing dogma that makes them useless for everything else in life; what you need is simply a culture that generally values and glorifies warfare, much as the early Imperial Romans did. That makes the general population amenable to large-scale recruiting.

That depends. If you have a limited supply of food you want your soldiers to be well fed even if the rest of the populace gets malnurished. 1000 soldiers who can't march with the full hoplon weren't worth 100 who could. The extra muscle mass becomes vitally important when you are fighting with ridiciously heavy bronze armor and weaponry.

Warrior castes arose for two primary reasons: most people couldn't afford the weaponry and many people lacked the muscle to fight even if they were given it. If everyone is well nourished and can actually manage the weight as young men then a warrior caste is normally a bad idea, particularly long term. However if you don't have the Roman luxury of abundant wealth (and hence food), then you might be further ahead to recruit young so you can ensure proper diet and good musculature.

[wolveraptor]

Any model where soldiers must be trained from birth is going to be very poorly suited to crises, in which you must quickly raise a larger army and can hardly afford to wait 20 years. Suppose you suffer some kind of devastating loss at the hands of your enemy, and you need tens of thousands of soldiers right now? Tell your enemy to hang on until your babies get older?

I figured that the warrior's own reproduction as well as the continual "baby tax" would ensure that a new generation of warriors wasn't 20 years away, but just around the corner. While some warriors would be already out fighting, many would be in the final stages of their training. During real crisises, there could always be drafts.

It is better to recruit people into the army as young men rather than infants. The "warrior creed" you speak of need not be an all-encompassing dogma that makes them useless for everything else in life; what you need is simply a culture that generally values and glorifies warfare, much as the early Imperial Romans did. That makes the general population amenable to large-scale recruiting.

The advantage of having an extremely war-obssesed special elite would be that they would not need pay in land or anything. I also noticed that Roman warriors seemed to be willing to work for whoever paid them, which is why the Republic was eventually destroyed. I want soldiers to be loyal with bonds deeper than money or land, so that the government is safe from them.

Further you do run into the little problem of people being loyal to their blood kin. It isn't going to take a genius to recognize that if he is kidnapping children from their parents, the same would have happened to him.

I figured that the warriors, being raised in a different culture which reveres them and their battle-skills would find their lot in life preferrable to that of their peasant parents from whom they were stolen.[/quote]

[SirNitram]

Okay, this has officially become ridiculous. Warriors who isolate themselves from society, fight and train constantly, and won't ask for anything in return? Furthermore, that's pretty fucking stupid: The fact the folks settling newly conquered land were veterans who knew how to defend themselves helped stabalize new areas, and set down roots with their families.

This proposed ideal is basically begging for the 'warrior caste' to stage a violent uprising.

[Spoonist]

->wolveraptor

If you want a culture where the warriors where revered and where you could draft almost all of the male population and even some of the female, then just read up on Viking/Norse culture.
For such a very small population in contrast to the people they preyed upon they where truly successful. Their biggest advantage, their adaptability was also their greatest weakness, they tended to adapt to the cultures they conquered instead of vice versa.

[Darth Wong]

The advantage of having an extremely war-obssesed special elite would be that they would not need pay in land or anything.

You've been watching too much Star Trek.

[wolveraptor]

Okay, this has officially become ridiculous. Warriors who isolate themselves from society, fight and train constantly, and won't ask for anything in return? Furthermore, that's pretty fucking stupid: The fact the folks settling newly conquered land were veterans who knew how to defend themselves helped stabalize new areas, and set down roots with their families.

This proposed ideal is basically begging for the 'warrior caste' to stage a violent uprising.

They get free housing, free food and free weapons. They don't even feed themselves in times of peace. All they do is is eat and do whatever they want (which happens to be sports that prepare them for war, but that's beside the point). They also recieved better medical care (to the extent possible) than the average peasant. Considering their cultural values, I thought that'd be an okay deal.

They would settle down in newly conquered areas, but that they need no land for agriculture means there's still a shitload of room for commoners.

The Norsemen were in a different situation than what I was picturing for my Empire: they were not truly conquering, but rather raiding. Most of the financial backing for their expeditions came from stealing from other people. Should the economies of Europe collapse, so too would Viking attacks. Of course, there were some viking conquerers, but they were not so different from the rest of Europe in their soldier's training, but rather in their own tactics, iirc.

[Darth Wong]

There are limits to what you can indoctrinate people with, and those limits are called "human nature". Why would this "warrior caste" obey anyone's orders? For how long would they fight and die at the command of their civilian masters without expecting anything in return but basic necessities of life and the opportunity to train for more fighting and dying? How long will they tolerate everyone else around them taking the spoils of their battles?

This isn't Kamino; you can't genetically engineer your soldiers to be more compliant.

[Trekdestroyer]

There are limits to what you can indoctrinate people with, and those limits are called "human nature". Why would this "warrior caste" obey anyone's orders? For how long would they fight and die at the command of their civilian masters without expecting anything in return but basic necessities of life and the opportunity to train for more fighting and dying? How long will they tolerate everyone else around them taking the spoils of their battles?

This isn't Kamino; you can't genetically engineer your soldiers to be more compliant.

That's where the afterlife comes in. Sure living as a soldier is the shit. That's why you tell them about the 70 virgins waiting for them when they die gloriously in battle. They will do anything and everything for you if they do not care about the life they have now.

[Darth Wong]

There are limits to what you can indoctrinate people with, and those limits are called "human nature". Why would this "warrior caste" obey anyone's orders? For how long would they fight and die at the command of their civilian masters without expecting anything in return but basic necessities of life and the opportunity to train for more fighting and dying? How long will they tolerate everyone else around them taking the spoils of their battles?

This isn't Kamino; you can't genetically engineer your soldiers to be more compliant.

That's where the afterlife comes in. Sure living as a soldier is the shit. That's why you tell them about the 70 virgins waiting for them when they die gloriously in battle. They will do anything and everything for you if they do not care about the life they have now.

Works great in theory, but if you look at the history, even soldiers who believed in an afterlife managed to seize quite a bit of gold while on their holy conquests.

[SirNitram]

Okay, this has officially become ridiculous. Warriors who isolate themselves from society, fight and train constantly, and won't ask for anything in return? Furthermore, that's pretty fucking stupid: The fact the folks settling newly conquered land were veterans who knew how to defend themselves helped stabalize new areas, and set down roots with their families.

This proposed ideal is basically begging for the 'warrior caste' to stage a violent uprising.

They get free housing, free food and free weapons. They don't even feed themselves in times of peace. All they do is is eat and do whatever they want (which happens to be sports that prepare them for war, but that's beside the point). They also recieved better medical care (to the extent possible) than the average peasant. Considering their cultural values, I thought that'd be an okay deal.

So whenever you're not at war, you have highly trained, well equipped psychopaths with nothing to do at home?

You are suicidal!

They would settle down in newly conquered areas, but that they need no land for agriculture means there's still a shitload of room for commoners.

You don't actually understand why I explained the upswings of soldiers settling down, do you?

The Norsemen were in a different situation than what I was picturing for my Empire: they were not truly conquering, but rather raiding. Most of the financial backing for their expeditions came from stealing from other people. Should the economies of Europe collapse, so too would Viking attacks. Of course, there were some viking conquerers, but they were not so different from the rest of Europe in their soldier's training, but rather in their own tactics, iirc.

Okay, so you're just insane.

[wolveraptor]

Okay, then how do I manage to have loyal soldiers who can't be bought off to the highest paying rebellious general, but still have a reasonable situation?

The Norsemen were in a different situation than what I was picturing for my Empire: they were not truly conquering, but rather raiding. Most of the financial backing for their expeditions came from stealing from other people. Should the economies of Europe collapse, so too would Viking attacks. Of course, there were some viking conquerers, but they were not so different from the rest of Europe in their soldier's training, but rather in their own tactics, iirc.

Okay, so you're just insane.

I don't understand. Am I just wrong about Vikings? If so, why the hell did you say I was insane?

Spoonist: Saying, "It's not in our genes" and "no other culture has done it" are not valid reasons that it could not work. Name significant and specific disease-risks that would affect people who consume the musculature of other cooked humans.

[SirNitram]

Okay, then how do I manage to have loyal soldiers who can't be bought off to the highest paying rebellious general, but still have a reasonable situation?

Kill the general. Oh, and pay them a decent fucking wage to begin with.

The Norsemen were in a different situation than what I was picturing for my Empire: they were not truly conquering, but rather raiding. Most of the financial backing for their expeditions came from stealing from other people. Should the economies of Europe collapse, so too would Viking attacks. Of course, there were some viking conquerers, but they were not so different from the rest of Europe in their soldier's training, but rather in their own tactics, iirc.

Okay, so you're just insane.

I don't understand. Am I just wrong about Vikings? If so, why the hell did you say I was insane?

Well, presumably only a nutter would go into the Vikings when talking about the deep, deep inherent flaws with trying to build a 'warrior caste', unless there's some meaning to the divergence. There wasn't one, not one that's relevent to the dangers of encouraging idle soldiers to want to take things from you.

[Darth Wong]

Okay, then how do I manage to have loyal soldiers who can't be bought off to the highest paying rebellious general, but still have a reasonable situation?

Limit individual wealth. Really, it's insane to have individuals so wealthy that they can pay and supply private armies capable of challenging the state itself. Extremely large gaps between rich and poor have been the bane of many empires.

But even if you do that, you can have regional governors rebelling against the state, and taking their territorial armies with them. Ultimately, the biggest reason for rebellion is simply that the people are unhappy under your rule.

Your hypothetical empire will do fine as long as it is wealthy. When its economy falters and its people become unhappy, then its ability to maintain armies will disintegrate too, no matter what absurd ideologies you try to drill into the soldiers. Simply feeding and supplying an army is extremely expensive; ancient economies didn't have a whole lot of breathing room, and every man in uniform is a man who is consuming state resources but not contributing anything to the state economy.

Let us review your options:

1. Small hardcore group of uber-warriors, improved by eugenics to be supermen. Purely wanktastic and utterly retarded; they would be rapidly whittled down to nothing by low reproduction rates and wartime attrition, and their combat effectiveness would be nil, since any half-decent but much larger enemy force would annihilate them.
2. Much larger army of normal soldiers, given free food and equipment for life but not promised any kind of material reward for service whatsoever. Not as wanktastic, but still wildly unrealistic. While there are zealots who have been known to fight and die for a cause and ask for nothing in return, they have always constituted only a small portion of the population. Even the most powerful ideology cannot make the bulk of the people disregard millions of years of evolution which left them with instincts of self-interest. Most stories of entire races and cultures being composed of wild-eyed fanatics are either totally false or enormously exaggerated by their enemies. The military would soon demand greater compensation for its sacrifices in the name of Empire, and there would be no one to oppose them.

Neither of these options works. The fact is that there is no magic bullet which will ensure effective and loyal soldiers regardless of surrounding conditions, so stop searching for one. Empires and economies and cultures are complicated things, and you insist on looking for some kind of silver bullet to solve them.

[wolveraptor]

The vikings thing was a response to Spoonist's post. I just didn't want to waste space quoting his earlier post because it was right there.

Kill the general. Oh, and pay them a decent fucking wage to begin with

I'm supposed to kill the general when he has the army? Furthermore, I don't want my soldiers to be so motivated by money that they sell out. Knowing that I fear rebellions, wouldn't they try to extort higher pay?

I'm thinking of having the Empire set up as such: everyone is drafted into the army during times of war. On....Sundays (arbitrarily...somewhat) all activities other than training for battle. If Christian Empires' peasants could survive the loss of 1/7th of their farming time, so could mine. Peasants would be given land rights to all areas X miles from the capital, preventing nobles from selling food for cheap throug slavery and putting them out of business. That boundary would represent all land considered "recent additions". Or that could be based on the length of time it had been owned. Of course, the latter would put peasants in a difficult position during long periods of peace.

I anticipate that land in the interior would be extremely costly: this systemw would not be favored by nobles, but would work as long as there aren't too many of them.

This way, my army is already semi-professional, but won't be useless in all other aspects of life. Maybe I could heavily tax the rich so that weapons could be state accorded weapons and armor.

[SirNitram]

Having worked on the situation from a far more advanced view, some lessons still held true.

Assuming that any regional government is ultimately loyal to itself and not you, equip your regional forces to fight defending actions. Your main military, federally maintained, should use the transportation infrastructure(IE, the roads you of course built) to arrive and free them up.

To ensure no group can support a private army, legalize it, but make the process of gaining permission and maintaining it ruinous. If it's anything we've learned from Prohibition, it's that you can make life alot more difficult with legalization and restriction.

As for promoting the life of a soldier, ultimately you need to make it a society which glorifies in not man on man combat, not honour, not ritual, but in the ideal of serving the many. It's an uphill battle against greed, but a little social engineering towards making life favourable for veterans will go a long way.

[wolveraptor]

There's an idea: vetereans could be given financial benefits in after they retire from military service, like tax-breaks and the like.

[SirNitram]

Kill the general. Oh, and pay them a decent fucking wage to begin with

I'm supposed to kill the general when he has the army?

Why'd you sit with your thumb up your ass while he raised so much money, bought so many weapons, and raised the army to his banner? Kill the fucking traitor at the first sign.

Furthermore, I don't want my soldiers to be so motivated by money that they sell out. Knowing that I fear rebellions, wouldn't they try to extort higher pay?

So you're planning to overturn something so built-in even my cats play 'She who dies with the most toys wins'? How?

And when was the last time the US Army tried to extort higher pay for itself?

I'm thinking of having the Empire set up as such: everyone is drafted into the army during times of war.

Yep. Insane. Completely nucking futs. Whose gonna feed them you looney?

On....Sundays (arbitrarily...somewhat) all activities other than training for battle. If Christian Empires' peasants could survive the loss of 1/7th of their farming time, so could mine. Peasants would be given land rights to all areas X miles from the capital, preventing nobles from selling food for cheap throug slavery and putting them out of business. That boundary would represent all land considered "recent additions". Or that could be based on the length of time it had been owned. Of course, the latter would put peasants in a difficult position during long periods of peace.

So your plan is to completely annihilate your economy to throw a shitload of cannon-fodder peasants with almost no training into war. Yea. This did not work historically, kiddo.

I anticipate that land in the interior would be extremely costly: this systemw would not be favored by nobles, but would work as long as there aren't too many of them.

There's always nobles. It's best to engineer a societal bias towards service for them. IE, restricting their capabilities until they have served.

This way, my army is already semi-professional, but won't be useless in all other aspects of life. Maybe I could heavily tax the rich so that weapons could be state accorded weapons and armor.

You do realize that any period of war would bankrupt your state, since the entire population drops everything to fight.. Until it starves to death on the field.

[Darth Wong]

There's an idea: vetereans could be given financial benefits in after they retire from military service, like tax-breaks and the like.

That was mentioned many pages ago. Roman soldiers got citizenship and land for serving in the military.

[SirNitram]

Just an idea to throw out: If slavery exists in your society, enlistment should be a recignized way out. Granted, a full career in the military is likely more dangerous than being a house-slave, for example, but freedom is a powerful draw..

[wolveraptor]

Oy. By "everyone" I didn't really mean everyone in the entire fucking state. Children would be left at home to die. I'm not quite that stupid. It was just poor word choice. Everyone would be eligible for drafting.

Why'd you sit with your thumb up your ass while he raised so much money, bought so many weapons, and raised the army to his banner? Kill the fucking traitor at the first sign.

What if he was already the general of an army I gave him. The troops might percieve their pay to come from him and not the state (me), especially if much of it is "commission" (take what you loot). Of course, now it's irrelavent as soldiers are far too expensive to maintain through just one army, and also have a societal pressure against fighting themselves: being connected to the Empire brought a sense of glory and separation from barbarians from the outside world.

[Darth Wong]

In Republican Rome, soldiers were drawn from the land-owning class. The idea was that they would have more incentive to expand and defend the state because they owned so much of it. But of course, that suffers from the limitation of a restricted recruiting base, and so it eventually went by the wayside.

[wolveraptor]

...I thought most of the people would own land. If I had a vast and spacious Empire with regards to the given population (which I intend to): land owning could be relatively cheap.

Besides, army volunteers would have a way out of their landless position.

[Stark]

In Republican Rome, a small number of wealthy landowners ended up owning most of the arable land in Italy. Off the top of my head I recall they hired people to work it for them and used slaves, which added to the urban unemployed issue.

Lots of land does not necessarily mean lots of independent farmers. I dimly recall that the debt laws in Rome allowed creditors to eventually repossess a farmers land as they fell into debt.

[Spoonist]

It seems that you are lacking a classical education. Many of your opinions vs history seems to come from popculture.

The Norsemen were in a different situation than what I was picturing for my Empire: they were not truly conquering, but rather raiding. Most of the financial backing for their expeditions came from stealing from other people. Should the economies of Europe collapse, so too would Viking attacks. Of course, there were some viking conquerers, but they were not so different from the rest of Europe in their soldier's training, but rather in their own tactics, iirc.

They conquered scotland, england, and most of france in the west. While at the same time founding Novgorod and uniting what is now Ukraine and Russia in the east. While trading with everyone as far reaching as western africa to constantinople.
Here you have a short chronology with links:
http://viking.hgo.se/Timetable/Chrono.html
This is even more remarkable when you think of the distances involved and the starting location of the culture.
While mediterranean cultures did most of their conquest by foot, they had to traverse water then build a beachhead before starting the conquest.

Again they did what other successful cultures of the past did.

Having secured a good foodsource at home they got a population surge which went out and traded, the trade then founded armed trade, trade led to settlement. Where they found weakness they raided and then conquered, while never stopping the trade. Being adaptable they did differently depending on the situation. Trading with the strong, conquering the weak, expanding into the unsettled and uniting the tribal lands.
Just like the romans their empire was built on a good foodsource at home and then trade, more trade and conquest of even more trade.