New video about Muscowy.
[video=youtube;z917BLwObzQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z917BLwObzQ[/video]
[video=youtube;z917BLwObzQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z917BLwObzQ[/video]
Europa Universalis IV Nations - Native Americans: Aztecs (with Quil18!)
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I think you're posting in the wrong place. This is the Jomini, GuilliameHD, Dafool and StupidGenius' History and Historical Warfare Argument Thread. Nothing to do with Quil18.
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That's a gigantic simplification of an extremely complex problem. One that renders your whole point invalid
First of all - it does matter what holds the blade. Heck - as some recent discoveries shown: it does matter what paint is on the walls when you measure damage inflicted by explosions, so I can't imagine in what scenario it wouldn't matter how you "glue" (lol) the blade of a weapon.
Secondly pure chemistry is meaningless. If it'd be all about pure chemistry than we've got solution ready: Obsidian got hardness of 6 Mohs, Knifes got 5.5, modern steel got hardness of ~7. So most likely steel swords could break obsidian blades.
But it's not even nearly that simple. When it comes to the weapon there are many, many factors you have to account for: Quality of materials (Renaissance steel is not the same as a modern one), processing (talk with Japanese swordmasters - they'll show you how enormous difference it might make), weight, resilience, distribution of forces, training of a soldiers (can't laugh enough on these TV presenters fighting with a swords as a demonstration of what sword can/cannot do), engagement (obviously ppl won't attack nearly as hard whey they are calm comparing to the life-threatening situation with adrenaline bursting your strength), etc. etc.
So don't dismiss historical records in advantage of modern-day tests, because all of these are next to being worthless.
I just finished reading the Alexiad where mail clad knights could literally cha\
According to Anna Comenus "a fully armored knight on his horse has such invincibility he could break through the walls of Babylon"
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Walls_of_Babylon_1_RB.JPG
Wonder if that is true.....Also wonder if we could find a volunteer to put on the best mail mount a warhorse and charge stupidly into a brick wall to see. Modern tests are useful to confirm what sources say; Donald Kagan describes what "can not believe" as something that just isn't possible and advises that is where you should be critical of a source. Glass being equal to steel qualifies.
The entirety into researching how effective Aztec weapons were involving every test has all had the same conclusion; Aztecs had to avoid the steel. The Discovery channel isn't the only one who did the tests; and the discovery channel's conclusion is completely uncontroversial that Cortez cleverly made and used native Alliances while the superiority his men had was a great force multiplier. That the Obsidian Sword was abandoned seems to confirm it wasn't an effective weapon against Spaniards; if it was why abandon it?
The Spanish won thanks to vastly superior technology, a legion of native allies, and later on the help of disease. You could argue luck but it was men not nature that created the Mesoamerican political landscape. Could you find any professor or academic anywhere who doubts that Spanish technology wasn't a force multiplier as Jomini already put it? The Native American tribes that survived most of this time period paid (for lack of a better term) top dollar for European technology; not something you do if it isn't worlds ahead of yours.
Definitely not; but it does show the sword being used properly, parry repost is the standard Spanish and European move for swordsmanship, and like other things made it into the sport of fencing. A sword that can't be used to parry or can't get parried will always be at a disadvantage. At least a spear with an obsidian end is something that could be used in a group formation; the sword needs space so you don't by accident hurt someone on your side. Native Americans were wise to abandon obsolete technology when they could. Also Spanish bans on weapons sales aren't effective today; could you imagine how much more (less) effective they would have been in the colonial time period?
Aztecs avoided parrying because they knew the limits of their weapons; Spanish didn't because their weapons were at the end of a very long period of sword development that started thousands of years earlier.
Now if an Aztec is more skilled then the Spaniard yes he could avoid the sword and metal and cut off an arm; but that requires a skill gap; all other things equal the Spaniard will win a fight.
Technology unlike society does have absolutes of which is better or worst.
Also Jomini thanks for posting you tend to be very informative and thanks for sharing your own experience with your weapon; testing them out myself is just too expensive for me but I always like hearing about the old weapons from people who have actual experience with them.
Standard move in European swordmanship is not the same as standard move in Aztec "sword"manship. You can't pick a sword an apply the any kind of sword techniques to it. You don't use a scimitar the same way you use a Germanic longsword and you certainly don't hold a katana the same way you hold a rapier. I don't think you can consier applying European swordmanship to a macuahitl as "using it properly".
By but the sword was used properly I was talking about the Spanish Sword. The Aztec wouldn't use parry at all; but the Spaniard would. Also the rules I initially gave seem to be completely confirmed by Dafool stating that the macuahuitl wouldn't be used to parry.
To repeat the rules I stated that seem to have become so controversial in this thread
Avoiding an enemies weapon with your weapon (a very difficult thing to do) seems to confirm the no parry rule. As for hitting against steel armor you not only need to avoid an ineffective strike (because you do one he kills you while you are recovering) you need to avoid striking the steel hard because you don't want to shatter your obsidian. On the other hand the Spaniard could hit you anywhere.
No matter how it is described the Spanish Conquistador had an advantage against a macuahuitl wielder that could only be overcome by either a large skill gap, or by swarming the Spaniard; and the swarming isn't an option if the Spaniard has dozens of natives fighting by his side who are also trying to kill you (which they did).
Oh, I see, sorry. My mistake. I thought you were claiming the macuahuitl was being used properly because its wilder used European techniques for that, which would be an absurd. I don't think there is anyone today who could use a macuahuitl properly, and I doubt there are many who wanted to.
Latest one, the Scandinavians;
[video=youtube;H4NLYns8oog]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NLYns8oog[/video]
One thing I wonder about(don't seem to have seen it in the dev diaries) when you form a new country like Scandinavia, Spain, etc. does the new nation have a unique set of ideas or carry over the ones from whoever formed it?
[video=youtube;H4NLYns8oog]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4NLYns8oog[/video]
One thing I wonder about(don't seem to have seen it in the dev diaries) when you form a new country like Scandinavia, Spain, etc. does the new nation have a unique set of ideas or carry over the ones from whoever formed it?
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This have been already mentioned by devs here and there. From what it seems, it vary from union to union. We know the country who form Great Britain carry over their own ideas, for example. So an English formed GTB is different from a Scottish formed GB. However, we also know that no matter who form Italy, the ideas change to the union's own set of idea, abandoning the original country's.
Yes so today we cannot design effective weapons against Russian tanks as we don't know the composition of their armor. We can't figure out how effective our APFSDS round will be. May as well give up and call it a day.
In reality, we can establish bounds based on known limitations (e.g. you see a tank cross a bridge and you have a quick upper bound in weight, measure ground compression in tread marks and you can get ground pressure and suddenly we start getting to densities and possible compositions). We know how glass edges work, we can establish lower and upper bounds. We know the quality of the steel in use (btw the processing of the Japanese sword smiths changed the quality of the steel), weight is easily inferred from dimensions and known densities (to within a fairly tight bound), resiliency is a trivial measurement for materials science, and distribution of forces is strike geometry. In short all the non-human factors you list can easily allow us to specify bounds (upper and lower). Training is a bit hard, but mostly it just informs strike geometry, engagement likewise just means that our values fall somewhere along a known curve of possible human acceleration profiles.
In short all of this is just details.
Again, you cannot just take the recollections of battle observers and say "weapon X made of material Y can do Z because this witness said so". For instance, we have a wide variety of WWII accounts of a samurai sword being used in a bonzai charge to slice through a ma deuce barrel. This is complete nonsense. The M2 has a very thick, very hard barrel and there just isn't a way for the strike geometry to work. We can quite rightly conclude that such accounts are the fallibility of human memory showing through.
Humans have very well known memory biases - for instance all people suffer from misattribution of memory. Say a grunt at Tenochtitlan hears one of his drinking companions tell a story about the battle. Overtime the grunt will have a tendency to confuse his own memories of the battle with those of the stories told by his drinking buddies. Likewise, if you retell a battle story, certain elements become emphasized and we end up drawing unwarranted conclusions because countervailing details are forgotten. For instance, a soldier might be hit by 30 darts in a battle. 1 dart might luckily hit a weak spot in the chain mail (where earlier a direct spear blow was taken) and the dart penetrate. When retelling the story of the resulting wound & scar, the other 29 darts are less likely to be talked about and what is a fluke hit becomes taken as average behavior. Peak-end effect is almost certainly present in all eyewitness accounts.
Now I've sat through more training that I care to remember about how memory biases will result in soldiers getting obvious facts wrong in their AAR. Yet even knowing I have these biases, I have made such errors myself. We know that they will happen so we have to weigh the implications against what is reasonable.
How this works with professional historians is we start with the accounts and archeological evidence. If an account sounds like it doesn't fit with known materials science or with other accounts we test the validity of the observation. Does the account ask more of the tools than they could reasonably be expected to perform? Does the level of training described seem attainable for the average soldier or only elite units? Which observation is most consistent with the strategic choices made by individuals in the era? So a witness describes fire hardened wood as penetrating plate. Is this reasonable? Certainly not prima facie. The whole point of plate armor - why you pay all that extra money over chain or leather - was that it resisted penetration like nobody's business. How hard is fire hardened wood? Well go do some streak tests or some steel sphere intrusion tests. Hmm that doesn't work. Maybe the darts had some insanely sharp point, okay well what process did they use to get that edge? Given their edging implements we can rule out some magical bodkin type tipping. Maybe there were just hitting the joints ... but they were super accurate and could reliably do that on most throws. Okay, then why weren't they making huge numbers of reliable throws against the heads of unarmored opponents forcing a change in tactics?
If you can't find a reasonable synthesis of the disagreeing information, then you need to question the account. Sometimes there are simple problems with transmission, for instance many scholars think that cotton armor was not salted, but rather that the Spaniards misread the Mayan word taab (twisted cord) or tabb (tied)as tab (salt) and the legend of salted cotton armor was born. Other times it seems more reasonable to assume that memory leads people to remember the peak of an experience (the one atlatl that pierced the chain) rather than the average (the 40 attempts that missed and the 9 that failed to pierce).
And the end of the day, historical accounts and physical testing are complementary. The latter allows us to weight which of the former are reasonable and which might be suffering from some form of bias (even if just unconscious memory biases).
Once more, your guesses based on "material science" go against the historical sources. Maybe there was a massive conspiracy to make the macuahuitl look better crafted than it was and the conquistadors, clearly understanding the importance of these fabrications, carried them on. Or it could be that we have a very limited understanding of the craftsmanship that went into this weapon, primarily because we have none to study and they were last manufactured about half a millennia ago.
The point I am making with that fact is that the Spanish constituted an extreme minority, with Native forces, the ones to which Aztec weapons were suited, were by far the bulk. Even within the Spanish forces, only a minority was well armed and many adopted Native armor. The point is that you can't ascribe decisiveness to something that was nearly non-existent.
First off, I'm curious as to what your source is for the macuahuitl "dying out". While I think it's well established that Native warfare changed drastically, I don't ever recall reading that specific claim. If you're just theorizing that based on the lack of preserved examples, I'm less inclined to treat it seriously. In any case, I think I can give you a partial explanation:
First, since you don't seem to have a particularly good grasp on Aztec traditions, you need to understand the macuahuitl's role. It was a relatively prestigious weapon. A conscripted peasant wouldn't have had one. Anyone wielding one would have been a professional soldier and was likely decorated. Macuahuitli were generally produced in an armory ran by the state, the king, or a noble. While obsidian was readily available in the markets, weapons weren't generally sold to the public. These official armories were tasked with the regular production of high quality weapons such as the macuauitl. These weapons would then be given to the patron to distribute to newly recognized soldiers and those who showed merit in combat.
Second, we have to consider what we know about melee combat between the Spanish and the Aztecs. One nearly universal observation is that Native forces, no matter how skilled and well armed, had trouble dealing with Spanish swordsmanship. The quick piercing strikes the Spanish could deliver proved quite lethal in many cases. A skilled soldier with a macuahuitl could still be quite dangerous for a Spaniard. We have accounts of Aztec soldiers using them to seriously wounds Spaniards, to quickly kill horses, and even to severely damage steel armor through sheer force. However, this still put the Aztec soldier in severe danger, especially since the Spanish tended to maintain tight formations. From the Aztec point of view, the most elite warriors were being exposed to severe danger.
Third, the Spanish report quite often that the Natives retreated back to utilize their ranged weaponry. There are a few reasons for this. The first reason, as we just covered, is that the Spanish swords were simply superior in close quarters melee combat. In ranged combat they were far more evenly matched, especially once the Aztecs became more accustomed to gunpowder. The second reason, despite your refusal to accept it, is that Native projectiles could pierce ichcahuipilli and chain mail, as is attested by the Spanish across much of the New World. This meant that their chance of harming the Spanish was not greatly affected. The third reason is that maintaining a distance usually countered the Spanish tactics. Their tight formations were not optimal against ranged attacks and if a Spanish soldier broke off, he was much easier to kill in melee combat.
Now if we tie these three observations together, we get a clearer picture. The macuahuitl was a high quality weapon with ties to the elite soldiers and nobility. While highly successful in Mesoamerican warfare, it was poorly suited for fighting the Spanish. With decreasing political stability and a decline in practical utility, these weapons simply weren't sustainable in terms of production or usage. While I doubt that they immediately died out in a matter of years, it's should not be surprising that they faded out over several decades or a century.
In the field of history we do something called cross referencing and utilize what's called historiography. These tools allow us to compare sources and discuss how they should be read and understood. While rarely unanimous, in many fields of history we can establish basic facts from these sources if we understand them. Looking at the New World, we have numerous accounts to study and compare. While it's clear that different people had different motivations, we have a fairly good understanding how things played out.
I never said that their projectiles would penetrate without fail. What I did say was that their projectiles were reported to have penetrated both Native and Spanish armor. These reports crop up in different places and in different circumstances, which adds to their credibility. Because the Spanish and Portuguese both resorted to using Native cotton armor, sometimes citing projectiles as their reasoning, this shows that the level protection offered by chain mail was negligible when compared with ichcahuipilli.
While a cultural judgement may not be born of practicality, it can tell us something about the practicality of the thing being judged. Most Natives who had access to Spanish arms and armor used those items to display both their allegiance and their rank. Whether it be that they were a gift from the Spaniards or a trophy captured during war, those items were valued for their prestige. While we imagine that their practical value would be apparent, we simply don't have many clear examples of that. The Aztecs, despite having clear knowledge of how the Spaniards wielded their swords, chose to fasten them to poles to create scythes and spears. The Sapa Inca, despite having gathered a stockpile of Spanish weapons, utilized only a small fraction of them within his forces. If the practical value of this technology was inherently apparent, we should expect that they would need to adapt it to resist or compete with the Spaniards. Instead we see the Natives altering their own technology and tactics first and only adopting Spanish technology in a practical manner over a longer period of time.
Actually, you can. That's why it's a bribe. You don't seem to grasp the relative rarity of Spanish equipment and horses during their first few decades in the New World. By banning the trade or sale of these items, you create a state monopoly. Using this monopoly, the Spanish were able manipulate Natives through promises of allowing exceptions. Conversely, if those Natives ever acted against the Spanish, they could revoke that exception and seize the equipment or horses, which might then be used to bribe another set of Natives. We see them employ this tactic a couple of times, mostly in Mexico. It's hardly unbelievable or inconsistent with Spanish colonial law.
First off, you can't just forget the intricacies of these events. Cortes only learned of the wealth in Mexico because he happened upon a stranded Spaniard in the Yucatan who happened to speak Yucatec. He then went toward the Yucatan again, where he managed to defeat the locals and then negotiate peace through trickery. They later managed to find a local woman who could translate from Yucatec into Nahuatl. Using these translators he was able to speak with the local nobles (hardly "nobodies") and learned of Mexico. It was only through these two events, neither preconceived, that they even knew what direction to go, as previously their efforts had been focused on the Yucatan, where little of value had been attained. If they hadn't been so lucky with breaking the language barrier, Cortes might have continued attacking the Maya in search of wealth that wasn't there. If his expedition ended up anything like the previous wars against the Maya, he would probably retreat back to Cuba after finding too many hostile natives and too little gold. That could easily postpone things by years or even a decade. Simply put, the Spaniards got a very lucky break, one that gave them both direction and communication in a completely foreign land.
Certainly possible, but you have to ask what they would accomplish. The conquistadors were almost always attacked on sight. Cortes had the good foresight to reason with them instead, something highly dependent upon breaking the language barrier. Grijalva was attacked and many of his soldiers killed when he tried to enter the same area Cortes would later return to. He didn't leave with any impression of great wealth. Even then, you can't honestly believe that the Spanish crown is going to fund an expedition into Mexico. Not only was there a lack of clear wealth to persuade them with at that point, but the Spanish simply didn't handle their colonial administration that way either. The first real Spanish soldiers to enter the New World did so in the late 1580's and they weren't sent there to find gold, they were sent to protect it from English pirates. Even when governors were warring with each other and Native forces were attacking Spain's conquests, the King of Spain did not send in official support. As I've previously stated, your claim that the Spanish crown would send thousands of real soldiers out in search of gold has no historical precedent.
Once more, you don't understand the usage of gold in Mesoamerica. First off, gold working was primarily done in southern Mexico, quite far away from Spanish eyes. More importantly, gold was valued for its aesthetic qualities and had no intrinsic worth. The Aztecs aren't going to gild everything in sight if Cortes dies. Feathers and furs were generally considered higher quality luxury items and would have been the sort of gifts the Aztecs might bestow upon their allies. Gold was primarily used for jewelry and trinkets, such as bells and figurines, which were often buried with the dead. While the Spanish claim that they "ate gold" might influence how the Aztecs handle its proliferation, it's more likely that they don't do anything. There would be no need for the the ridiculous "police directive" you're joking about. Gold simply wasn't that widely valued or circulated. There's a reason the conquistadors had to look for it.
Jive is the key word. Historical facts and what we can logically deduce have to come together in some form. You can't deny history because it's difficult to explain. More than likely macuahuitl broke with enough usage. However, just because you have a general familiarity with obsidian's properties doesn't mean you can dismiss both Spanish and Native accounts. It's unlikely that both would have a good reason to agree that these weapons were well crafted and surprisingly durable. They were the ones that saw and handled these weapons. If anyone was going to understand their capabilities, it was going to be the ones using them and the ones they were being used against, not people 500 years in the future who don't even know what they actually looked like.
I am less worried about this in EU4. In EU3 Native states could not even muster resistance. Without side stepping mechanics you couldn't even survive the initial attacks because you lack military modifiers and forts and your troops are terrible. EU4 seems to have fixed this for the most part. Now it looks as if there will be actual conflict to experience. Note that I do note think the Natives should be equal to Europe. I am simply opposed to the idea that they were incapable and helpless primitives, barely able to govern themselves.
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I think the original "How Aztecs are portrayed in EU4" topic still appears once in a while - I think Jomini was the last to mention it, when pointing out that any change made to the game should still result in the Aztecs usually being conquered by around 1600 in the vast majority of games without human intervention.
EDIT: and what do you know, both Jomini and Dafool mentioned it in their most recent post. We're still on topic!
At this point, my view is as follow:
1. Spain undeniably had technological superiority. That's a "Duh" one.
2. It would have been somewhere between very hard and impossible for the Aztec to survive without divine intervention.
3. As such, in the vast majority of games, the expected result should be the fall of the AI Aztec Empire by roughly 1600.
4. Being the Human-controlled nation, however, count as divine intervention.
5. The game should still be fun to play as the Aztecs, without denying them three-quarters of the game features.
6. Tying a monarch points penalty to technology group is a really godawful idea. Govt types, maybe, but not tech group.
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This point in particular bothers me quite a bit. I could see this as a decent way of penalizing tribal governments, but giving every non-European state an automatic penalty to their administrative powers is not only harsh, but hard to justify too.
I think the point is to force westernization; the ai needs to understand that doing it early is worth the risk for long term benefit.
No worries; and reconstructing the thing tells us how it could be effectively used; against Spaniards the rules for how to effectively use it are extremely absurd if you want to survive the battle but against other natives it would be extremely effective.
I also don't consider military or treatment of your enemies the entire story about a civilization; I know the Aztecs aren't what you would call savages; and had impressive achievements.
The important thing is to keep priorities in order. For me those are:
1. The native gold flows into Europe making someone (most likely Spain) a bunch of money and inflation.
2. Native survival without divine intervention 80 years post contact should be impossible.
3. The conquest of the natives should be fun.
4. Playing the natives should be fun.
5. Native technology and mechanics should be in keeping with history.
Yeah it would be realistic for it just to have an event pop up saying "a conquistador wants permission to conquer X", click yes or no, roll dice, gain territory. That is boring. Ideally, there will be something of a race where you have to make sacrifices to be the one to take all that gold (and of course the inflation from the gold should be offsetting) and the actual conquest itself would be interesting. Personally, in keeping with 5, my preferred option is to just write off the North American tech scene until contact. Up until that point give the natives fun and interesting things to do with monarch points instead - colonize, core, build army tradition (or some type of religious authority), etc. Once contact happens, let the player decide to try to play nice and end up as an ever dwindling European client or try to fight it out and wait for technology diffusion (e.g. westernization) to let them contest back with the Europeans.
But at the end of the day the important thing is to get the big stuff right. Gold going to Europe is the most important as even playing as Persia should see knock-on effects from somebody getting filthy rich and upsetting the balance of power and changing Ottoman strategy. Making the new world historical is less important, but most of the time we do want all that gold to be tied to actual control - so control of the mines and the treasure fleet become important strategic objectives for the filthy rich player and any naval upstarts. Making the conquest fun is more important as more people will play as the ruthless colonial conquerors than as the ruthlessly colonial conquerees.
As much fun as the history debate has been, it touches priority 3 and isn't much of a factor above that.
1. The native gold flows into Europe making someone (most likely Spain) a bunch of money and inflation.
2. Native survival without divine intervention 80 years post contact should be impossible.
3. The conquest of the natives should be fun.
4. Playing the natives should be fun.
5. Native technology and mechanics should be in keeping with history.
Yeah it would be realistic for it just to have an event pop up saying "a conquistador wants permission to conquer X", click yes or no, roll dice, gain territory. That is boring. Ideally, there will be something of a race where you have to make sacrifices to be the one to take all that gold (and of course the inflation from the gold should be offsetting) and the actual conquest itself would be interesting. Personally, in keeping with 5, my preferred option is to just write off the North American tech scene until contact. Up until that point give the natives fun and interesting things to do with monarch points instead - colonize, core, build army tradition (or some type of religious authority), etc. Once contact happens, let the player decide to try to play nice and end up as an ever dwindling European client or try to fight it out and wait for technology diffusion (e.g. westernization) to let them contest back with the Europeans.
But at the end of the day the important thing is to get the big stuff right. Gold going to Europe is the most important as even playing as Persia should see knock-on effects from somebody getting filthy rich and upsetting the balance of power and changing Ottoman strategy. Making the new world historical is less important, but most of the time we do want all that gold to be tied to actual control - so control of the mines and the treasure fleet become important strategic objectives for the filthy rich player and any naval upstarts. Making the conquest fun is more important as more people will play as the ruthless colonial conquerors than as the ruthlessly colonial conquerees.
As much fun as the history debate has been, it touches priority 3 and isn't much of a factor above that.
I personally think that the increase in tech cost is probably a sufficient penalty, especially since it looks like the cap on monarch points is gone. While New World states are better off than in EU3, there's still a massive incentive to westernize. Arbitrarily limiting their monarch points isn't really the right way to model their technological disadvantages.
I think the first 4 points are easy for most of us to agree on. Point 5 is where things get contentious. Some of us view the Aztecs and Inca as stagnant, tribal states that simply couldn't accomplish much. Then there are those of us who view them as relatively normal states, just with a unique geographic and technological position. The former group tends to favor leaving these areas alone, usually citing that the game is about Europe and that these states are just fodder for colonization. The latter group generally wants to see a better representation of the history and uniqueness of these states because it expands the scope of the game. I personally fall into the latter group. EU4 seems to have fixed much of what EU3 got wrong. Native states are no longer completely helpless even before the Europeans arrive. Still, PDS failed to provide any accuracy in the setup or mechanics for these areas, which is disappointing. Mesoamerica doesn't even vaguely resemble real life and the Inca Empire is far too big at the game's start. These are the kinds of things that need to be fixed if the game is to be grounded in history.
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I think that it is place to stop eastern nations from building up too fast. Tech might cost more but buildings remain the same price. That's my guess at least
What buildings? You can't build anything. At all. With a 6-6-6 ruler and 3 stars advisors it still takes somewhere around 17 years to go up one level. And since you start at 0, that level doesn't get you buildings - you need it to trade. Unless you throw every single ADM point in tech for...oh, more probably for 30 years, you can't even trade. That's no reason to restrict points.