Speculation: Military History of Eorzea

[exhominem]

Alright, folks! Let's discuss the military history of Eorzea, shall we?

 

Starting out, it seems like Eorzea is currently in a period of transition, militarily-speaking. Mostly, I'm thinking we're edging towards a renaissance, "Pike and Shot" era. It seems like the main military weapons of the day are pikes (or lances), bowmen, and chocobo cavalry, with the development of early gunpowder weapons.

 

To me, this presents an interesting problem, because historically, the "pike" didn't evolve until armor got good enough that massed groups of archers were less of a threat than cavalry charges. While there is full plate in FFXIV, i think there is a point made in-game about how Lancers mostly stick to chain or scale mail. So, one question I might ask is why Eorzeans developed the pike formation without heavy armor, or whether or not massed archery is still effective in Eorzea.

[Valence]

I am not sure you will get a lot of rational thinking and logic behind all of this. Eorzea seems to combine armour and weapons tracing back to Antiquity and the Roman era (Ul'dah and gladiator garbs especially), savage tribes, hordes or mongols (miqo'te tribes, xaelas, etc) up to low middle-age (Gridania) and high middle-age (Ishgard), or even Carribean pirates (Limsa).

 

So... I think the point is that magic, aether and all that jazz tends to screw up a lot with things and basically in Eorzea, the only rationale is that magicks always tend to trump technology.

 

Unless technology rises to such levels that it can be a match or even outmatch Magi (like Magitek, or Allagan relics). And even then, I bet that Sharlayan, or especially Mhachi, Amdapori and Nym Magi was probably a match to the wonders of Magitek or even Allag.