re: How were old world armies so easily out smarted?

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All 3 of which were battles where Hannibal tricked or out smarted the Romans

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The greatness of the Roman military wasn't in single battles. It was their willingness to drag things on for years if need be. When they laid siege to a city, they were prepared to stay there for decades if need be.

Hannibal got to the peninsula and won several victories. Great. Now what? He could never actually conquer Rome. He didn't know shite about siege warfare, so the cities never fell. He should have gone home, but instead, he stubbornly hung around allowing his army to be chipped away at, and for Scipio to breed horses in Sicily.

It was his arrogance that got him killed in the end. He was safe in exile but couldn't help but fight a proxy war with Rome under the banner of some small king. The king betrayed him to Rome and he killed himself.

So much of the original premise is flawed; it arises from an 'all other things being equal' mindset--- in truth, 'all other things' were virtually never equal.

Armies were large mobs, poorly trained, with varying levels of motivation, sanitation, and organization. Logistics were hit and miss, recon was hit and miss, and often armies quite nearly stumbled into each other to start engagements.


On the ancient battlefield itself, the more organized and systematically armed you were, generally, the better you fared; the Greeks might not have Persian numbers, but when the Persians fought as mobs with wicker shields, they fared poorly- the more elite troops, with better equipment and training did much better against the Greeks.

The same holds true across the history of the world; chariots, horses, roads, standardized equipment-- all of these things helped achieve military supremacy. If you had a decisive edge in one of the major areas, you could ride it mercilessly to distinct advantage in conflict after conflict, until enemies either adopted the same strategies to negate your advantage, or found some other means to mitigate it.