May have been a few. But I'm pretty sure most of the guys in the front row were there because their own side would shoot them for disobeying orders and fighting smarter.
Simplified: Imagine 50,000 guys marching towards your capital city. They are marching as a giant blob of death and when they get there they'll burn down all the houses, rape the women and then kill everyone (TM) as had been done since forever. Are you going to lay low, raid their supply lines and engage in skirmish tactics while they will continue their advance without being slowed down and ravage the city? The mere notion of this would cause massive desertion within your ranks since you are using people who have families there. If you try to stop them and actually use your slow moving cannons and avoid your own supply routes being cut and your own force being surrounded you'll likely pick a nice spot where you have great positions for your artillery and nice defensive positions for your infantry to create overlapping zones of fire. You *could* order your men to lie down and often men did take cover - but it wasn't effective. The rifles were relatively slow to reload so it was a better tactic to have the unit divided to two or more pieces with forward piece consisting of 1-4 rows firing and then walking up to the rear while the next piece or element would be ready to fire their weapons and then again roll back to the rear to reload. The armies that first learned to use such tactics could gain up to 6x the rate of fire than their enemies had, causing massive casualties to enemy infantry and obliterating archers. The troops didn't just neatly line up to oppose each other. If you knew what you were doing you would try to outmaneuver the enemy. Ideally you could catch his formation from an angle as they were unable to rotate to meet your superior maneuvering in which case you could have three units engaging one of their units and causing their entire front to collapse entirely with minimal casualties. Around these times it was also found out that since archers had been abandoned (as they had no place on a modern battlefield) everyone had lots of rifles and rifles had a long range and could penetrate most armor from short range. Since the armor that was decent against archers was now mostly serving to slow you down it was almost completely abandoned. What mattered now was speed and firepower. Without armor you could better outmaneuver your enemy while sacrificing almost no protection - the best protection at the time was to get into a superior position before your enemy and to get to shoot at your enemy with tactical superiority. Minor increased resistance to bullets doesn't mean you can just stand there while the enemy maneuvers to unleash their firepower at you. All of this doesn't mean there weren't raiding parties and scout formations and rear and flank guards. There were and they skirmished with each other on the constant, tried to raid each others supply lines and so on. But we tend to remember the big battles, not how Charles led a band of 50 dragoons and ambushed 3 wagons of fish accompanied by a bard and five fifty year old halberdiers and a caravan master. Or that daring raid when John sneaked up into enemy camp and set some tents on fire, killing 15 men of the enemy's army consisting of 30,000 troops. That he managed to ride off with some cavalry horses he stole with his platoon was largely inconsequential. Classic example: It starts showing actual battle maps since 3:00 In those times was formed the European notion of "you must be willing to die for your nation". Because, if you weren't - your formation would have low morale and would be routed by those that were more willing to sacrifice for victory. Whether center or flank would fall often came down to how great the morale was among the troops. Look at battles like Lützen. Swedish King dies, is the army routed? No, they become furious, they take heavy casualties until their superior tactics start to cause so severe losses to Imperials that the Imperial lines collapse. It was literally a war of strategy, tactics all ending up with individual soldiers on the ground playing "I dare you". The stakes were high. Look at Europe during Thirty Years' War. Millions died, entire villages were empty, countless farms growing into wildlands as there were no people alive to take care of them. It often boiled down to simply something like are you ready to occupy your position in your formation, do your duty and if need be sacrifice your own life so the enemy doesn't march into your homeland and slaughter everyone.
The game does look fun. It's a shame the "knights" don't have dual swords, I'd have loved to see something like an arming sword and a parrying sword as second weapon. Also the samurai "long sword" is ridiculously long. But that's just cosmetics. The game does look fun and that's what counts, not whether some historical color scheme is correct.
More seriously though, I'd like to see an authentic 16th century no-dachi of that length in practical use given the poor quality of Japanese steel. Talk about "glass cannon". SNAP!
any samurai who could afford a blade that large isn't likely to use any but the best steels and smiths, since steel was so scarce on the islands anyway.
The reason Japanese metallurgy developed to the point where they had to fold the blade a gazillion times so that each fold was a molecule thin was because the steel was shit. There's no getting around that their manufacturing techniques and the purity of their produce was absolutely horrible shit. It didn't help that they didn't figure out how to develop spring steel either. That European swords were produced with a fraction of the effort and skill does not mean European swords were inferior - they were superior. The steel was so good that European spring steel swords could be produced with far less skill and attention resulting in superior blades. Even with the absolute best swordsmiths in Japan you'd still end up with a blade that had to be 99.999% perfect alignment to the momentum or else you'd risk the blade itself being cut due to how brittle they were and how poor they were at resisting bending. Also they would practice the kind of swordsmanship that would not focus on parrying because it was a bad idea in general to parry with their shitty swords. I apologize if some katana fanboy here is insulted by all this but katana is not a great weapon and the steel used was shit making the already poor design fare that much worse in combat. The only redeeming factor was that in skilled hands even a poor weapon can be used well especially if you know how to avoid the weapon's weaknesses. Meanwhile Europeans were doing all sorts of "murder strike": Because they could You won't find a Japanese illustration like that and it's not because they would feel it "dishonorable" - it would have been a foolish proposition with their weapons. Not only did Europeans have plenty of great steel for their swords, they had so much steel that it was standard by 15th century to have steel armor on the infantry as well. I would pity any Samurai army coming across a European army. Using their brittle and poorly designed swords against full plate while wearing what amounts to leather armor / light armor by European standards. Not that either army would be using swords in any great number except as secondary weapons - primary weapon for heavy infantry and knights would have been poleaxe which was the weapon of choice for any unmounted knight whereas the lighter armored troops would prefer halberds and the like. But a sword duel between a knight and a Samurai would just not be fair. It would amount to the knight holding a dwarf in the air by it's hair while kicking it's balls. But Hollywood and public really, really love the katana and Samurai.
Muskets, not rifles. Muskets reload much faster and have fewer fouling problems, but worse downrange accuracy. The overall rate of fire also wasn't great, which left infantry somewhat vulnerable to cavalry and close range attacks from enemy infantry. Formation tactics helped in bith cases, as volley fire produced enough saturation to be effective on a unit basis even where individual accuracy was low. It also allowed infantry to defend themselves as a unit against cavalry and other close-range attacks. Spacing between troops could be adjusted based on circumstances, too, and frequently troops would open their order when receiving heavy fire, particularly from artillery. Formation tactics required a wide range of commands to reform or regroup an infantry company in different ways as necessitated by circumstance.
British used the Brown Bess which is a musket while Germans used the jäger which is a rifle. Continental army used muskets normally and of what ever variety they could get. Minute men however often used rifles instead of muskets and fought as skirmishers and irregulars to offset continental troops. Muskets with veteran training was about 3 shots a minute while rifles are about 2 shots a minute.
Thanks, I remember reading that the sensationalized "stand and take fire" depictions in film were largely bunk. I think hollywood somehow conflated the musket/rifle warfare of the time with actual duels (which really were all about honor). For one thing, didn't they use to have staggered firing lines, with one row kneeling and another standing to fire over them? It does seem surprising that they didn't seem to have much use for armor, wouldn't that have given them an edge given they're playing a massive game of chicken? As far as I've read, good steel in Japan couldn't be found for love nor money, they just didn't have the right ore or the technology... [edit] Ninja'd by Sheephugger!
German line infantry weren't using rifles. Jager units were specialized skirmishers. Most countries had some rifle units, though they were a small percentage of infantry as a whole. Really, any decently trained infantry could pump out 3-4 shots a minute with muskets, and better troops could fire at a much higher rate firing at will. The necessary issuing of commands for volley fire is what slowed the process down, and that consistent 4 shots per minute was a pretty solid achievement of both training and discipline. Pretty devastating in effect, too. The British would have a quarter of each infantry company fire at a time, each soldier would fire up to four times a minute at peak rate, producing one volley about every four seconds (but also keeping roughly half the company loaded at any time, making them less susceptible to sudden charges or other surprise attacks). Rifles didn't really become efficient on the battlefield until breachloading was perfected. Even then well disciplined formation tactics were much more effective at gaining and holding ground than dispersed troops (the Franco-Prussian war being an object lesson). It really wasn't until repeating firearms were perfected and the full horror of combined arms industrialized warfare brought to bear in the WW1 that the life expectancy of troops in the open dropped to such an unsustainable low that formation tactics began to be abandoned.
Micro transactions. LOL they going to use the hell out of that function. since all later content is supposed to be included.. yeah. right
With rifle I meant a long firearm that isn't a pistol, essentially. Great post! Indeed, imagine a bunch of guys hiding in the shrubbery with their rifles (muskets) and then 200 cavalry charge them, they're cut to pieces and they inflict next to no casualties to the cavalry which can even better utilize their speed when the formations are small - they can ride in loose formation and approach diagonally and envelop the defenders offering them zero chance for a good shot, charging while most of the men are reloading. Indeed, forcing cavalry to tighter and larger formations robs them of their agility and speed that they'd have as a smaller unit. It's funny how this is all seen as "silly" nowadays. It took a great deal of training and effort to build an effective army even then - it wasn't that they used silly tactics, the tactics they used often were the best ones available, tried and tested and evolved over countless wars. That they were unable to do this or that usually came down to it having concrete ways in which it would all "go to hell" if it was attempted because of the realities of war back then. When both sides are doing everything well and they're both well prepared even modern war will look silly with the attacking side being forced to saturate enemy defenses with actual infantry wave attacks that come with heavy casualties because if your enemy is doing what they should be doing and they've got the gear they need then there is simply no alternative but to accept that it's a big shit sandwich that your guys are going to have to eat whole. That doesn't mean that some generals weren't completely inept.
