The KOREAN Civilization: Things Every Civ Player Should Know

[King of Rasslin]

Do you have any fear of the number of people living in China? Korea is like a minor province of China, just like Canada is like a minor province of the US. They could conquer all of Asia if they felt like it, with numbers alone. There are 1.2 billion people in China.

And muskets were traded to the Asians through the Spanish and the Portuguese. They did make primitive muskets, but they killed their user as often as the enemy.

And it takes years of training to make an expert at a musket. Elite soldiers like the French musketeers or the British redcoats took years to train, but it only takes a few days to learn how to use a sword. How much skill could it take to knock someone over the head with a piece of metal?

And I do know that armor will stop an arrow. Knights easily defeated longbowmen until castles were more widespread and they took advantage of the walls. The knights had more mobility and very good armor. Knights were defeated by longbowmen by shooting through the small cracks in the armor, like where the elbow is.

Armor is very rare in Asian armies. You will almost never find a knight style armor, even for wealthy samurai. They just don't have protective armor like we did. And, if bows and muskets are so good, why did they continue training with swords for such a long time? A force of musketmen could beat a force of swordsmen 5x as large.

And it was'nt just WWII that the Chinese used the number attack swarm. They tried it in the Korean War, and the Vietnamese tried it in the Vietnam war. We abandoned Vietnam because there is no perfect defence against someone with nothing to lose. Imagine hundreds of the Vietcong attacking a dozen marines, and you have a good idea of what 'Nam was like.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

I am confused and dizzy

First off, I think King of Rasslin is an elite member of Osama Bin Laden's network and is purposely making posts to undermine the credibility of Americans and make EVERYONE in the world hate us. Not that it would take much, mind you.

Originally posted by King of Rasslin And muskets were traded to the Asians through the Spanish and the Portuguese. They did make primitive muskets, but they killed their user as often as the enemy.

Hmm. I wonder where Europeans got the idea of gunpowder?

Originally posted by King of Rasslin And it takes years of training to make an expert at a musket. Elite soldiers like the French musketeers or the British redcoats took years to train, but it only takes a few days to learn how to use a sword. muskets were traded to the Asians through the Spanish and the Portuguese. They did make primitive muskets, but they killed their user as often as the enemy.

I don't think anyone was an expert with a musket. They weren't very reliable which is why armies lined up in regiments in order to send volleys of bullets at the enemy. The Redcoats weren't known as expert shots, their training was disipline and organization not marksmanship.

Originally posted by King of Rasslin And I do know that armor will stop an arrow. Knights easily defeated longbowmen until castles were more widespread and they took advantage of the walls.

Since history does not appear to be your strongpoint, watch the movie Henry V by Kenneth Branaugh(his version will be easier to follow than more Shakespearean ones). A 5,700 man English Army defeated a 30,000+ French Army, English longbows killed 8,000- 10,000 French, whilst the French Knights in their all impressive arrow-proof armor slaughtered 100-200 of the English before being killed by the Englishman's secret uranium tipped armor piercing arrows.

No castles, No walls, just outnumbered longbows.

Originally posted by King of Rasslin Armor is very rare in Asian armies. You will almost never find a knight style armor, even for wealthy samurai.

Samurai wore armor. Look at the terra cotta statues buried with the first Chinese emperor, they wore armor.

[King of Rasslin]

"First off, I think King of Rasslin is an elite member of Osama Bin Laden's network and is purposely making posts to undermine the credibility of Americans and make EVERYONE in the world hate us. Not that it would take much, mind you."

How did you figure that out? You guys must be CIA or something...

Fine, they made gunpowder and rockets, and we made guns. Gunpowder has peacetime uses but guns don't, so they win in that arguement. In combat, however, both contributions are equal. Although guns are still used today, their gunpowder based weapons are obsolete now. It's a close call, but I think the gun is really a simple concept, and gunpowder is a greater accomplishment. Strange that they never thought of making guns before the Europeans did...

You say the redcoats weren't elite? Then how did the British make such a huge empire? With Man-o-wars? The redcoats were definitely masters of their trade, and muskets made all other weapons obsolete. They did take a lot of training, since discipline is everything when you are 10 feet from the enemy and you have to see who can load their gun faster.

Secret uranium tipped armor piercing arrows? Some people take Turok: Dinosaur Hunter WAAY too seriously! You are too much. Longbowmen won most of their battles when the knights were going through rough terrain and couldn't charge. They just advanced slowly and got butchered as they crawled forward. In a flat plain, the knights would have the advantage. Longbowmen did win a lot of battles, but knights did too.

Samurai did wear armor, but not the heavy type the Europeans wore. Knights were a lot more common than the samurai were. In fact, the knights had to travel on horse because the armor was so heavy (protective.) The samurai armor wasn't thick enough to stop arrows, so that is why armor is actually very rare in Asian civs. Look at the knight in Civ 3 and compare it to the rider.

They didn't rely on armor because they had so many soldiers, what's just a few more losses?

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
Fine, they made gunpowder and rockets, and we made guns. Gunpowder has peacetime uses but guns don't, so they win in that arguement. In combat, however, both contributions are equal. Although guns are still used today, their gunpowder based weapons are obsolete now. It's a close call, but I think the gun is really a simple concept, and gunpowder is a greater accomplishment. Strange that they never thought of making guns before the Europeans did...

Actually the Mongols used 'guns', what do you think they made gunpowder for, spices?

Originally posted by King of Rasslin You say the redcoats weren't elite? Then how did the British make such a huge empire? With Man-o-wars? The redcoats were definitely masters of their trade, and muskets made all other weapons obsolete. They did take a lot of training, since discipline is everything when you are 10 feet from the enemy and you have to see who can load their gun faster.

Nobody said the Redcoats weren't elite. They were the best military of their time. Had nothing to do with marksmanship though. The ragtag farmers of the American Revolution matched them in marksmanship with only a few months of training. Months.

[SIZE=1] Longbowmen won most of their battles when the knights were going through rough terrain and couldn't charge. They just advanced slowly and got butchered as they crawled forward. In a flat plain, the knights would have the advantage. Longbowmen did win a lot of battles, but knights did too.

This is where you need to brush up on history. The Longbow made Knights obsolete. Read a history of warfare book, turn on the History channel, or The Learning Channel.

[King of Rasslin]

The Mongols didn't use guns! They were uncivilized (well, a quasi-civilization) and barbaric. When you think of the Mongols, you think of Conan on a horse.

The only guns they might have used were ones they won from battles, but these savages didn't know how to make gunpowder or guns. The Chinese could, but definitely not the Mongols.

[History Guy]

The Samurai most definitely wore armor, but the armor wasn't quite like the armor that the terracotta statues found in Qin Shihuangdi's tomb at all. Indeed, it was very little like it. The Samurai did have very effective armor, all the same.

The Mongols only used gunpowder after they figured out how to use it when conquering the Sung. It was the Mongols who were being blasted by Chinese gunpowder for the most part...and man did it smart.

[Ribannah]

The first to make handheld firearms (as opposed to cannons) were the Arabs. These earliest guns were made of wood and fired (by gunpowder) arrows rather than bullets. IIRC this was in the 12th century.

KoR, shortly after the end of the US-Vietnam war, China sent an army of 1,000,0000 soldiers into North Vietnam to punish them
for border incidents. They searched for several months, but never found the 'enemy'. Finally, after suffering massive casualties due to disease, lack of supplies and (only a few) guerilla attacks, they had no choice but to withdraw. Had they persisted, not a single survivor would have been able to tell the story ....

[Lord Merciless]

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
The Mongols didn't use guns! They were uncivilized (well, a quasi-civilization) and barbaric. When you think of the Mongols, you think of Conan on a horse.

The only guns they might have used were ones they won from battles, but these savages didn't know how to make gunpowder or guns. The Chinese could, but definitely not the Mongols.

More ignorance on your part. Mongols may not have been very civilized, but they were quick learners. Even if they decided to massacre a city, they would spare craftsmen and engineers. These people would be integrated into the horde and become part of the Mongol military.

Mongols, without much prejudice, were actually much better at employing these people than the traditional Chinese Confucian bureaucracy.

In the end, it was Mongols who used siege engines and cannons on a wide basis. The famous(in China) Chinese fortress city Xiang Yang capitulated to only a demonstration of the newly designed and constructed Mongol siege artillery. The city had held out for 5 years previously.

[Q Classic]

KoR is obviously a history buff. unfortunately, he doesn't read, learn, or even bother to do any research about it. meaning, he's a history buff who doesn't know the first thing about history.

Do you have any fear of the number of people living in China? Korea is like a minor province of China, just like Canada is like a minor province of the US. They could conquer all of Asia if they felt like it, with numbers alone. There are 1.2 billion people in China.

except, see, unlike the difference between canada and the us, korea and china don't share the same culture, language, or ancestry. korea also has a fully independent economy, unlike canada.
again, your ignorance is to be expected...

And it takes years of training to make an expert at a musket. Elite soldiers like the French musketeers or the British redcoats took years to train, but it only takes a few days to learn how to use a sword. How much skill could it take to knock someone over the head with a piece of metal?

do you have any idea how long it took to train a knight? a page becomes a squire after several years. a squire, if he's lucky enough and wealthy enough, can become a knight after several years. generally one could only be a page if one were of nobility--thus limiting the numbers. no, training people with guns, even muskets, takes far less time to train.

And I do know that armor will stop an arrow. Knights easily defeated longbowmen until castles were more widespread and they took advantage of the walls. The knights had more mobility and very good armor. Knights were defeated by longbowmen by shooting through the small cracks in the armor, like where the elbow is.

wrong again, my dim friend. see, the point of arrows is to pierce. arrows, when fired into armor, pierces the armor. thus, they're armor-piercing. thus, longbows were able to defeat knights not by shotting through cracks in the armor, but by piercing the armor itself and wounding them.

Armor is very rare in Asian armies. You will almost never find a knight style armor, even for wealthy samurai.

wealthy samurai had armor. just not metal armor. what's so hard to understand about that? their armor was often of hardened bamboo and leather, among other things, and was more than able to deflect certain blows.

And, if bows and muskets are so good, why did they continue training with swords for such a long time? A force of musketmen could beat a force of swordsmen 5x as large.

bows and muskets have reduced accuracy and visibility in conditions such as fog, rain, snow, and evening time. in fact, all ranged weapons do. melee weapons, like swords, staffs, spears, and pikes, have extremely high accuracy in all conditions.

And it was'nt just WWII that the Chinese used the number attack swarm.

the chinese did not attack anyone in ww2, they were often too busy trying to defend themselves.

They tried it in the Korean War, and the Vietnamese tried it in the Vietnam war.

the vietnamese did not try it in the vietnam war. the type of tactics the vietnamese used in that war was called guerrilla warfare. the point of that is not to attack with overwhelming force, but to pick off the enemy by striking hard and fast with a small force before running away. indeed, the viet cong army was dwarfed in size by the american army; not only that, the vietcong army operated in small cells, in an extremely decentralized network of platoons probably no larger than twenty or so. some human wave tactic there, right?

We abandoned Vietnam because there is no perfect defence against someone with nothing to lose. Imagine hundreds of the Vietcong attacking a dozen marines, and you have a good idea of what 'Nam was like.

except, see, you weren't there, and you don't know what 'nam was like. often, as was the case in vietnam, when you're attacked at night or when you have near-zero visibility, even a few troops can seem like many.

Samurai did wear armor, but not the heavy type the Europeans wore. Knights were a lot more common than the samurai were. In fact, the knights had to travel on horse because the armor was so heavy (protective.) The samurai armor wasn't thick enough to stop arrows, so that is why armor is actually very rare in Asian civs. Look at the knight in Civ 3 and compare it to the rider.

because we all know how accurate civ3 is...

They didn't rely on armor because they had so many soldiers, what's just a few more losses?

i'll say this again, and very slowly, so you can understand it:
you don't know what you're talking about. be quiet.

[GhengisFarbâ„¢]

My bad, I missed a previously available sarcastic comment. But as it has not been claimed......

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
Knights were defeated by longbowmen by shooting through the small cracks in the armor, like where the elbow is.

By Jove, Sir Ector. You've been shot in the elbow! Do you have any last words in the final 30 seconds of your life before the always fatal elbow wound ceases thine lifeforce?

[teturkhan]

OMG!!!!

I couldn't stop laughing, and kept thinking this guy has to meet Higher Game, what a team they would make... heck you could market it and make millions the entertainment value would be that good!!! little did I know King of Rasslan IS HIGHER GAME!!!

hi there buddy, I was thinking about you the other day... thinking how boring the forums are getting without you infinite wisdom thrown in the mix

anyways, why don't be get you started on your own thread?

Higher Game - politically incorrect or something??

[Q Classic]

teturkhan, he is higher game, apparently.

but i don't remember ever running across him before this thread, so...

[King of Rasslin]

"KoR is obviously a history buff. unfortunately, he doesn't read, learn, or even bother to do any research about it. meaning, he's a history buff who doesn't know the first thing about history."

Somewhat true, but you can learn some stuff with common sense.

Steel armor will stop an arrow. Go to a steel mill, ask for their finest, and try to pierce it. Because knights rode on horses, they could put an incredible amount of armor on than normal. It could stop arrows very effectively. Hardened bamboo and leather can not stop an arrow! Let me just ask you the question: Would you rather wear steel/iron or bamboo/leather if you were getting shot with arrows? I would definitely use the steel, and the samurai were wiped out because of their poor choice in armor.

If you think it's hard to swing a sword, but easy to use a firearm, you need to seriously consider what you are saying. Primitive barbarians used swords, not guns. Mongols have never been portrayed as gun users. They are usually shown overwhelming the enemy with numbers, and butchering everyone in the city, and running off with all the women and loot. Watch the movie "Attila" if you want to know about the Huns/Mongols.

The Chinese did use number tactics when the Japanese fought them in WWII. However, the Japanese were "mobilized" and were more prepared for war at the time. Today, China is among the best equipped armies in the world and Japan is spending money trying to develop gundams or robots or other garbage.

If you think the Vietcong tried to use small groups of forces, you need to research the Tet offensive. Accounts of US soldiers talked about hundreds of them surrounding them and killing them 1 by 1, almost mocking them. The Vietnamese soldiers had cheap homemade rifles and we had M-16 rifles. It was an even match because their strength was their numbers. In the later years of Vietnam, they started to use more swarm tactics and less guerilla warfare.

I wasn't in Vietnam, but I do know a lot about it from TV. I heard about Agent Orange being used to kill off the jungles, but it caused birth defects so we stopped using it.

And if they did care about their soldiers, they would have been using M-16s or AK-47s. They used some cheap rifles, and were releatively poorly equipped. There were just so many of them they could beat us with inferior equipment.

[King of Rasslin]

I bet Coracle is really Zouave at Civfanatics.

[Ribannah]

Naturally, there were plenty of steel mills around in the age of the Longbowmen ....

Plate steel was not available until the 15th century.
Small amounts of smelted steel could be produced earlier (invented in India around 1000 AD) to make swords, but not plate armor.

That said, warriors of all times and regions used armor. Leather was always available and good enough to prevent major harm from glancing strikes and blows and from less-than-straight arrows; others like the Iroquois had very effective armor made of wood.