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A nice discussion, I'm also doing a major SS submod that involve in these issue, here's my general thoughts.

So let's consider the main infantry unit of the Western European theatre from 1100-1200: the Levy Spearman.


This is an example of a lesser spearman wearing the common armor of the 12th Century: Gambeson. It's a kind of padded armor, not very effective and consisting of stuffed rags covered with linen, or in poor weather in wool to repel water. It's base is thin leather. This alone should give pause to the defensive strength of the levy spearman.

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First off, gamberson was not worn by most "levy spearmen" the armant you seen in that picture (aka a decent gamberson and a metal helmet) in the early middle ages (at least pre 14th c) only appeared with any sort of common rate amongest common levies / militias in Italy / Low Counties / some Imperial Free cities in the HRE and maybe occasionlly in Catholic Iberia. it was nearly non existent in the truely "feudalized" areas. (aka England / France and the non city portion of the HRE)

There was however, generally a class of sergeants in the feudalized world, nominally they were the followers of knights, though realistically some of them were the son of knights who didn't inherite wealth or those that had become too poor to remain in the knightly class. in summary, they were certainly men who knew their way around weapons and had at least some basic equipment , and in many cases some would be armed by their masters in fashion at lesat relatively comparable to knights. Though as a whole they were not numerous enough to form a large infantry body, especially since many of them were also mounted or were used as crossbowmens etc...

They real levies... aka those that were litterally dragged away from the field with extremely limited training or arms provided by their lords, would have worn no armour for the most part, maybe some had a spare leather armour, though the majority would not, many would not really even be armed with shields. for the most part improvised farm tools would be the norm, and they were often surprisingly effective in the right situation... which was why those improvised tools eventually became more standarized and evolved into things like billhooks and Voulge and a bunch of other similar weapons by the high middle ages.

Also, the examples you cite are generally too one way, and a few of the example you noted were wrong.

1. The battle of Falkrik was not a good example of cavalry beating infantry, in fact it's probably the opposite, in the opening moves, the English vanguard led by the Earls of Norfolk, Hereford, Lincoln and the Bishop of Durham attempted to charge the Scottish Lines right away, and they were totally ineffective and routed from the field by the spearmens.

The English won because Edward managed to rally this routing knights, and then approached the Scots again with a combined arms approch, even though the English won the day, the total casaulties were roughly even on the two sides. it was at best a Pyrrhic victory for the English, who lost many men and was forced to retreat due to dwindling supplies and the end of campaign season anyway.


2. Several other examples could be cited of early medieval battles where the infantries prevailed over the heavy cavalries... at least for part of the battle.

a. In the Battle of Hastings, although Williams eventually won a decisive victory, the story during the battle however showed one that was actually very close and the Normans having some strokes of luck in their final outcome, for one thing, the Norman's cavalry charge had little effected on the well organized Saxon Shield wall. Williams won because the Saxsons thought they won the day and broke formation to pursue the numerous routing Norman forces, but William managed to rally for one last charge and took advantaged of the now disorganized and out of position Saxson forces.

b.In the battle of Legnano, the Italian militias, which was almost entirely on foot and their cavalry force was large routed in the opening phase of the battle, held out and broke the Imperial knights under Fredrick Barbarossa, The degree of the HRE defeat was so total that Babarossa was thrown off his horse and presumed to be dead, it was a mini miracle that he woke up and somehow managed to find his way back to his forces without being captured.


My general opinion is that, the ineffectiveness of early medieval infantry against knights was largely a organizational issue more than a tactical / technological one. most forces at that time were not able to put together significant numbers of actually drilled infantry with some semblance of equipment on the field with an sort of consistency. The Urban centers in the west at the time were small, and the politcal power was outside of them and generally did not like to arm them anyway.

The exception to the rules exist in many places of course, though in various shape. for example you have Scotland, a land that was still largely tribal instead of feudal. there the common clansmen would typically have more experience of war, and were generally more effective than a farmer pulled out of his fields. Other tribal areas included places like the Baltics, and of course most of the Islamic world were also still largely in that situation. The benifits of a tribal society was that a much larger portion of the population could fight as semi-competent soldiers.

Other exceptions were the Northern Italian communes, which were large enough in population and organized enough based around it's urban center to produce a reasonablly large quantity of infantries.

A 3rd exception was the Norse people in Denmark / Norway / Sweden, a legacy of the Viking era was a well organized society where most free men were expected to fight.




In game context, I think the biggest point should be the morale aspect, for my part, what i'm doing is ...(based on SS's stats mostly)


a. make the frighten foot trait a lot more common , basically most heavy cav have it now,

b. generally lower the moral of units more,levy units would have 2 moral base.

c. trained and highly trained adds considerable morale. so does impetuous and disiciplined, where as low mental stats = -1 moral.

This way. Levies are much more likely to rout in the face of a charge regardless of it's actual effect. horses... where as trained militia stand a better chance. and disicplined soldiers or fierce and impetuous tribesmen have a better chance of not routing in the face of a charge.


To counter balance this somewhat the command trait is also a bit more common .


This is imho the most reasonable interpetation, the biggest single issue of commoners (especially those on foot) against knights was the FEAR factor. especially amongest unorganzied levies this would be huge. but in the circumstances where they managed to drag mounted knights into a messy brawl and actually decide to stay around and fight, they could do pretty considerable damage to them as well.

One of my change involved in this is changing the Peasant unit, especially the Western European one, to a early pole arm, it dishes considerable damage (for a peasant) and has bonus against horses as well, basically the predecessor of Billhooks and other similar polearms.




There were of course, other means of dealing with heavy cavalry charge as well, though most of them involve terrain of some sort, the Iberian way is a good example of this, where the common approach is that the infantries simply apparoch in a loose formation and give way when the cavalry charge, most would be armed with javelins / bows or slings and simply keep peppering them all the way, until the charge's momentum give out or they speard out to chase all the infantries running around , at this point the opposing side (usually the Moorish people, though the Catholic Iberians also adopted this approach quite a bit). would either counter charge with their own cavalry or bring in the solid block infantries to confront the cavalries.

Of course, this sort of tactic clearly involve brave and cordinated men, other wise a fake rout simply turns into a real one. and it usually requires at least some help from uneven terrains.

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[QUOTE=RubiconDecision;8978437
Hastings. Those Vikings were not regular spearmen at all. They really were infantry. If only they hadn't broken the shieldwall, and tried to chase down the fake retreat of cavalry, they might very well have won the day. There may be further tales of the Viking infantry, clearly they are set apart. There may also be tales from Eastern Europe of brave infantry. I have not read any accounts though.

Back to levies. Name a battle my friend where they withstood a charge. I have not found one.

I mentioned the heroic spearmen of Jaffa 1192 lead by Richard during the 3rd Crusade. I have not found another battle like them, and I've read eight major medieval history texts. If you can find a quote from a medieval military historian that praises the infantry during 1100-1300 fighting against cavalry, then insert it to support your thesis. I'd be glad to be proved wrong. So far I've quoted Devries, Verbruggen, Montross, and Nicholas Hooper.

Too tired, will write a more lucid comment tomorrow.

Coming up next the Humble Hobilar, a precursor to mailed knights as depicted in MTW2, or an niche adaptation to post-heavy cavaly. What does history say?[/QUOTE]

Yup, the Saxon shield walls at Hastings was certainly far superior than the common levies of the time, first off the Viking Influenced spheres had well organized militias, the Fyrd in English were called Leidang in Norway (Leioangar in Old Norse). they would have at least a real shield and some training / organization, though probably limited armour as well. But from examples of battles they almost certainly could follow orders properly, which is already a giant leap from the normal levies of the period. Not to meantion they would be backed up by elite Huscarl units.


As for examples, I already noted a few in my first reply, in Falkirk the English charge clearly FAILED, they won through other means.

In the Battle of Legnano 1176, it does appear that the HRE Knights attempted to charge againts the Lombard Leagues' militia infantries, but the later was probably some of the best armed and organized militamen of the period, and managed to withstood the assault and ended in a crushing defeat of the Empire.

The Russian's Voi militias were also widely used and relied upon. though the nature of warfare on the Russian plains is obviously quite different.

But if you specifically mean Levies with no training withstanding a proper charge, and not superiorly organized Militias or fierce tribesmen, then the examples are obviously few, the main point of course, is that no military men with his head screwed on strait would even attempt such a venture unless it was to bait the enemies.

As for being too weak etc... I think this is primarly a issue with how the roster is constructed. for my part I'm doing this because I change the way recruitment works almost entirely, ditching all the castle recruiting buildings and simply going with a "feudalism" building which all the units would basically be avalible at the same time anyway. from a historical prospective, while levies were common in the early middle ages, an army with just levies and almost no knights / sergeants would be insanely unrealistic. the Levies could only appear BECAUSE there were knights who were their masters dragging them into war. for the most part they would be non-combatants anyway, helping with logistics / siege instead and being a support role in battles at best (like helping to grab loot or chase routers ) those 10 unit of spear militia army are about as ridiculas as it gets for a medieval army.

The most common situation where these type of men fight hard would actually be in peasant rebellions, but in such situation very VERY rarely would there be enough knights involved on the opposing end to form a serious charge. and if it's just a couple knights vs an angry mob with farm tools, it's not too surprising if the end result is a few dead knight.