SuburbanFarmer wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 10:24 am
BjornP wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 7:49 am
SuburbanFarmer wrote: ↑Sat May 18, 2019 5:22 am
Re-listened to Wrath of the Khans this week. How much cooler would this have been if GRRM had made the Dothraki use compound bows?
From the sound of it, they would have been unbeatable. Imagine the battle vs White Walkers though...
Spear and shield + archers = irrelevant horse archers, compound bow or no. Of course, in GoT infantry armies fight even major battles with swords as their primary weapon, use no helmets and cavalry only use lances at tourneys.
China and Hungary put up those systems, and were decimated. There was nothing in the medieval world that could stop the Mongols, except the Mongols.
It was all about the feint and encirclement tactics.
China held out until Kublai, and they fell because China was already divided by a civil war. And no, it wasn't "all" about that.
You do realize that Mongol armies weren't just made up of horse archers with magic bows, right? That the invasions they launched into the ME and Europe, came with significant allies and auxillary forces. Also, horse archers was not some sort of new thing. If horse archers were some sort of invincible force (like when playing Age of Empires II), why didn't every ancient and medieval army use horse archers all the time?
Probably for the same reason you don't win a battle by
only sending in your artillery or
only sending in your longbowmen?
"There was nothing in the medieval world that could stop the Mongols".
How about those same Hungarians in 1286, the Bulgarians in the 1320's, the Mamluks on several occasions or that the Hungarians and Russians had already begun invading into lands held by the Mongols and their vassals less than a century after they've been either invaded or, in the Russian case, vassalized.
Fame is not flattery. Respect is not agreement.