Bronze Swordsmen

All brave in arms, well trained to wield The heavy halberd, brand, and shield

&mdash; Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake (Canto III)

Overall strategy
The very first level of sword infantry available to most factions, Bronze Swordsmen are armed with shortswords and leather shields. While they are not meant for use against cavalry, especially chariotry, they however are sufficently strong and cheap to pose problems in sufficient numbers. Add a crude shield, and they are fairly powerful against most units except cavalry.

The best use for Bronze Swordsmen is clearing enemy settlements as well as defending against other enemy infantry, especially archers and skirmishers, but they will forever be easily routed by dedicated assaults using cavalry, especially cataphracts and chariots. Further, the prohibitive cost of Bronze Swordsmen means that while fairly useful, they should not be used in massed formations until you can upgrade to the cheaper Iron Swordsmen.

For this reason, a body of Bronze Swordsmen should not be allowed to operate alone, but instead be used to hold settlements or attack in tandem with other units in the field. Either use Bronze Swordsmen to soak up archer fire while arraying your chariots and archers to strike back, or use them in rush tactics to lay it as thick as you can into your foe. A combination of Battering Rams and Bronze Swordsmen are also useful in taking down cities, since Bronze Swordsmen are somewhat resistant to the archery-based attacks of buildings.

Unit summary

 * Sitting Ducks &mdash; Although halberdiers have a ferocious attack that makes them dangerous infantry counters, their weak armour and slower walking speed make them fair game for better-equipped cavalry archers and Knights.
 * De-Centralisation &mdash; Halberdiers do not require Centralisation to be created, and thus can be relied upon by Serbia, which lacks Chivalric Order Knights and Pikemen alike.

History
Pre-20th century Chinese armies predominantly used four classes of melee weapons, which were the Dao (sabre), Qiang (spear), Jian (sword) and Ji.

Although the Qiang and Ji had precedents in the post-Stone Age era of development in China, it took far longer for true swords to emerge in ancient China. The first swords were shortswords, each one produced from a single piece of bronze. Because you needed several metals — particularly tin and copper — in order to produce a single bronze blade, these swords however were fairly expensive, but were still handy failsafes in a society still learning how to smith iron objects. One such weapon allegedly belonging to the king Goujian of Yue state was excavated by Chinese archaeologists in 1965, and was discovered to be in usable condition despite having sat in a waterlogged tomb for more than two millenia.

Eventually, advances in metallurgy during the Warring States Era meant that cheaper swords with the same quality as the best bronze weapons became more available, resulting in a move away from chariot warfare to massed infantry charges.