Mages and Muskets

[TooManySecrets]

Gunpowder weapons had very little to do with ending the feudal era. It was a new weapon in the hands of nobles, and would have greatly altered the political landscape, but only the landed classes had the resources to acquire them, thus very little would have changed. Nor did they end the era of heavy cavalry, as many nations continued to use heavily armoured horseman until fairly recent times, the Conquistadors of Spain being perhaps the best-known example.

I never said gunpowder weaponry ended cavalry. I said knights. That's a significant difference, in the same way that there's a difference between a castle and a bomb-proof bunker. There's superficial similarities, but conceptual and tactical differences.

What ended the feudal era was the introduction of the standing army, meaning that a leader no longer had to rely on imperfectly-loyal subordinates whenever he needed to conduct operations. This moved most of the powers of the nobles directly into the hands of the sovereign.

See previous post vis a vis simplification and no one single cause.

I would imagine that if you wanted to discuss the existence of mages in a historical or sociological perspective, the first question that comes to mind would be... why weren't the mages/sorcerers the knights?

This whole thing about golem armor seems like a way to make an unmagical heavy cavalryman viable in a battlefield with mages, but it makes more sense to me that the heavy cavalry role wouldn't exist in the first place. Instead, the early aristocracies would've been filled with families that produced a large number of sorcerors (if we're going with the notion that magic is something in your blood) or families with the wealth and power to educate sons in wizardry (if we're going with the notion that magic can/must be learned by study).

Oh yes, I agree. If you had mages from the beginning of human history, you wouldn't have a society that's anywhere close to medieval Europe.

In the alternate history community it's called "butterflies" (as in butterfly effect) and dealing with it is an issue that authors deal with in different ways. Some authors want to throw in Richard Nixon as a used car-salesman, even if it doesn't make completely realistic sense. Likewise, I want to have medieval feudal culture with fighting golems and basically wanted to explain as "Okay, we're starting at normal fantasy. Here's how we're getting over to golem armor."

If we're going with "mages since the beginning", the basic formation would probably be closer to "mage plus bodyguards" - combined arms out of necessity since there's a limited number of mages and they're very lightly armored. I still think there would be a need for some sort of shock unit, even if heavy cavalry was never developed. A few 2 ton golems would probably serve well, though golems might be regulated to a support role (similar to tanks in WWI).