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Thanas wrote:There is a difference between mounted and dismounted. The French fielded ~12000 of dismounted men-at-arms of various quality. However, only 1000-1500 mounted knights at Agincourt, for example. This is why 20k mounted, plate-armored knights in addition to 33k heavily armed infantrymen and 27k ranged warriors, all professional, is utter insanity.

Ah. Yes.

Sorry, I was fixating on the knights and not really looking at Zor's whole army concept, which he obviously came up with at random using RTS-game-style logic: "Take command of this Age of Empires II scenario!"

One might quibble about total forces versus what can be deployed to a single place given medieval logistics, but there's really no reason to bother.

Hey, guys, the Roman Legions during Augustus' reign were damn near unstoppable; could 50,000 of them take on the Soviet Armed Forces circa 1965? :v

Alternative plan: use slave labor corvee labor from all the citizens to build a giant canal across my western border and then connect it with the ocean, creating a large river that the Mongols would have to cross. After planting 3 kilometers of shitty terrain in front of the ocean river. But the ocean river is in front of the cannons.

^The above plan lacks a GIANT WALL that will consume more stone than was ever mined in Human history. Think Mordorgate-like.

Thanas wrote:^The above plan lacks a GIANT WALL that will consume more stone than was ever mined in Human history. Think Mordorgate-like.

There's mountains to my south! I shall move them to my west! Behind the cannons, obviously.

So, had European armies gotten that good at countering horse archers by 1500? I know that the superiority margin had dropped off, and the Muscovite/Russians were getting pretty good at defying the Mongol-descended steppe dynasties.

Thanas wrote:^The above plan lacks a GIANT WALL that will consume more stone than was ever mined in Human history. Think Mordorgate-like.

Implementing Dürer's fortress designs would be more appropriate and the date is correct. But an even better plan would be to pour the wall as a single massive honeycomb of bronze cannon barrels, at least several hundred million of them, each not less then the size and caliber of of the Tsar cannon, and able to fire all the stone mined in human history. We may need an iron core for the wall as it might end up so large it would squish under its own weight if purely made from bronze. Also the river will be patrolled by war galleys rowed by trained gorillas using large trees as oars. At least seven banks of oars.

As for Rome vs the Soviets in 1965, how drunk are the Soviets? Will they be able to find the button to press it?

Simon_Jester wrote:So, had European armies gotten that good at countering horse archers by 1500? I know that the superiority margin had dropped off, and the Muscovite/Russians were getting pretty good at defying the Mongol-descended steppe dynasties.

There are reasons nobody used horse archers in the hundred year's war in major battles. Armies of that period built battlefield fortifications, plus the rise of the Longbow and the crossbow (later on the arquebus) pretty much made an attack on such positions a very bad idea. A horse archer will never be as accurate as somebody in a calm stance who can even use visual aids (like painted trees or flags to show the distance) to estimate range. Besides, the armies of the periods fielded mounted archers (and mounted crossbowmen) themselves.

And as the battles with the mamluks showed, if the mongols got into close-range fighting they were in trouble.

A further change in the east was fortress building. recall that Muscovy was allegedly defended by a single palisade when the mongols arrived. Some people even have claimed that until they encountered the georgians and hungarians, the Mongols didn't encounter any decent fortresses at all. (I do not share that view, but it shows the difference between states centered on fortresses and states that are not).

You have a population of 18,000,000 people?

How many Crossbows and Crossbow bolts can I turn out before the Mongols arrive? Yes to use, easy to aim, easy to fire.
(Considering the Romans had those, it's not new tech)
How many decent wooden shields/tables can be built in the meantime.

Turn my Eastern border into a big ass roman style wall/trench combo (Big up the trench, pile the dirt on the west side of it, effectively making a moat). Say, 10 feet deep, 10 feet high. The result is a BIG wall.

Send scouts out eat. When they spot the mongols....
Conscript every town near the border, march them all, armed with crossbows to the trench line. Bring the shields.
Get up to the top of the wall, and when the Mongols get within range, turn them into pin-cushions. When the Mongols try to return fire, hide under the tables and shields. Keep up this process until I run out of border citizens or the MOngols run out of mongols.

If at all possible, if I can identify the Kahn, have my military-life trained archers target his group, and turn him into a pincushion as well.

^The above strategy is pretty dumb considering the mongols will not come within ranges of crossbows and building such earth walls is just begging for them to be taken by a mongol infantry assault.

If people want to be serious about fortifications when you've already got superior numbers and technology, I'm not seeing the need, you don't need a wall. The Mongoles are on horses. Cut down trees to make an abatis. Its vastly cheaper and very effective at stopping massed horsemen. Massive abatis lines are how Russians drove back the Tartar horsemen in the 16th and 17th centuries. People can chop gaps in an abatis, but they can't move an army through those gaps without spending a long time doing it, and they could just as well tear down an earthen and sod wall. Behind the main abatis line you can make shorter chunks to deflect rushes aimed at local towns and fortresses to further slow any attack. You'll only need walls and ditches to span open areas between forests.

I will assemble an airforce using Leonardo's flying machine plans, crewed by midgets.

If weight remains an issue they will be legless midgets, or perhaps half-starved urchins.

Production will not be an issue, as mass production is merely a paradigm shift in logistics, not technology.

Thanas wrote:^The above strategy is pretty dumb considering the mongols will not come within ranges of crossbows and building such earth walls is just begging for them to be taken by a mongol infantry assault.

Mongol tactics had the Horse Archers dealing long-range damage before the Infantry assault.

Block the long range bombardment with some kind of shield, and the Mongol infantry must now jump over a 10 foot wide ditch, into a 10 foot deep hole, to climb a wall that stops 20 - 25 feet above where they landed.

While having guys firing crossbows at them.

Solauren wrote:

Thanas wrote:^The above strategy is pretty dumb considering the mongols will not come within ranges of crossbows and building such earth walls is just begging for them to be taken by a mongol infantry assault.

Mongol tactics had the Horse Archers dealing long-range damage before the Infantry assault.

Block the long range bombardment with some kind of shield, and the Mongol infantry must now jump over a 10 foot wide ditch, into a 10 foot deep hole, to climb a wall that stops 20 - 25 feet above where they landed.

While having guys firing crossbows at them.

Defences like this just beg to be taken by siegeworks. You don't really comprehend how much siegecraft evolved by then. You'd need a stone wall at least to cover this.

Could effective guns get made at this point?

in the 1500s? Yes, in fact guns were one of the things the french used to counter the longbow at this point.

Solauren wrote:You have a population of 18,000,000 people?

No, the population is 12m, which is 2/3s of France's in the 1400s. So, somehow, since the population can support five times as many knights as France could, you're average citizen can perform about 7.5 times the productive work of a real-world peasant in the same time period.

So, my strategy of digging a giant moat connected to the ocean and simply converting the mountains in the south into walls in the west becomes relatively plausible. After all, the population is roughly equivalent to 90 million people in actual terms, which can do a lot more work than 12 million.

Thanas wrote:

Solauren wrote:

Thanas wrote:^The above strategy is pretty dumb considering the mongols will not come within ranges of crossbows and building such earth walls is just begging for them to be taken by a mongol infantry assault.

Mongol tactics had the Horse Archers dealing long-range damage before the Infantry assault.

Block the long range bombardment with some kind of shield, and the Mongol infantry must now jump over a 10 foot wide ditch, into a 10 foot deep hole, to climb a wall that stops 20 - 25 feet above where they landed.

While having guys firing crossbows at them.

Defences like this just beg to be taken by siegeworks. You don't really comprehend how much siegecraft evolved by then. You'd need a stone wall at least to cover this.

Did the Mongels even use Seige Works?

Yes. They even imported siege engineers from the levante to improve their siege works. They always had trouble with fortresses but then again simple earthworks should be no strong challenge unless there is a real army behind them.