Yes, you're right though I think they went too far with the cavalry ethos, it became tradtion and fashion rather than necessity and the Byzantines slowly lost the ability to field good infantry.
Cavalry armies are tremendously mobile and dangerous but the best armies are ones which combine foot and horse - the problem with the Empire was their recruitment areas and peoples - initially it was the Med coastal regions, the Iberian Peninsular, Anatolia, Gaul, Britain and the Danube-Rhine areas which did not produce good cavalry, or what they did produce was relatively elite and small in numbers - the main opponents then were foot barbarians and thus the legions reflect that by a small mix of cavalry with a central body of legionairres and a strong auxilia who could fight in loose order.
However, as the Empire progressed, its foes came more and more from Asia - at first they were Germanic tribes - the various Goths - but they were pushed there by the pressure of the asiatic tribes - when the Goths came, the Romans basically employed whole clans/tribes of their heavy cavalry to fill the alarming gap that had just appeared in their battle array - when the horse nomads appeared, they hired them to fill the alarming gap that they created too - - the Roman Empire can then be seen as a constant effort to keep up with the invasions of their enemies, by taking the blow, rolling with the punch and absorbing the attackers method till they could be countered.
In addition, their strategy of defence changed from a crust to core strategy - as the barbarians no longer came on foot, it was no longer enough to have a crust of legions, connected by good roads - instead the borders were held by outposts designed to slow the enemy long enough for the mobile armies to arrive - - these became more and more cavalry orientated.
In the Justinian era, things were rather different - generals had an almost feudal bodyguard which made up the core of their army.
If you take the Lunar Empire and compare, there are problems - the lunars are facing both threats at the same time - given the peculiar geography of Genertela, they are being hit by the Horse armies in the East and the foot barbarian armies in the south. Not only do each types present completely different tactical problems but they also present completely different magical problems too - another dimension in Gloranthan warfare.
I think the Lunars have their best defences set against the Orlanthi as they have an active population there who are warlike and similar to their foes but against Pent, their defences are less effective - probably based on control of river crossings and strong fortresses which horse barbarians always have trouble with and using those points as springboards for converging couter-attacks when the nomads stand still long enough (immensely tricky to execute this)
IMO years of fighting the Orlanthi has given the Lunar army a severe deficiency when coping with large scale and well coordinated nomad attack - its no surprise to me that Sheng overthrew the Empire when released - its also no surprise that Argrath had to resort to ruse of war to get the nomads to attack at a disadvantage to win - otherwise Sartarite forces would have had an impossible task bringing them to battle on their terms.
Martin Laurie
Powered by hypermail