Thalatta

Surely his quiver has internal subdivisions (at least three) allowing him to subgroup arrows. Then, at 1:25 you can see that his arrows have two-feather fletching, which determines the orientation of the nock, since the feathers must sit horizontally when the arrows are nocked. When grabbing multiple arrows in one hand, the feathers just sit in parallel layers on top of each other, correctly orienting their nocks. That’s why he can nock four at the same time so fast a few seconds earlier. He has a bit of a harder time with five, but I think it could be achieved with practice, and maybe a few extra adjustments in equipment. In addition to all that I mentioned before, the lethality of an arrow “has very little to do with the KE it possesses“, but that it “comes from broadhead design and durability, arrow design and durability, and the penetrating power (momentum) it carries” (https://cervicide.com/arrow-speed-vs-weight-which-matters). And of course, composite warbows would shoot arrows much harder than on these videos. Still, I’m not convinced that this was indeed what the Sasanians were doing, instead of just holding five arrows to shoot them in fast sequence, but at least it would seem more plausible than one initially would think. Certainly “physically possible”, hard to say if "physically makes sense".

I missed this, but here you have some dude on YouTube doing it, imagine what a Sasanian archer could do And now I think it makes more sense than I was previously assuming (still not sure if enough): shooting 5 arrows can be thought of as shooting an arrow 5 times heavier (not really, it’s more uncomfortable, but let’s say so for the sake of simplified physics). Then, assuming (more on this later) that the bow transfers the same energy to the arrows in both cases, we have E=K=mv^2/2=5mu^2/2, where v is the speed of the single arrow, and u the speed of each of the 5 arrows. This means that u=v/sqrt(5)=v/2.24, which tells us that, while the kinetic energy is divided by 5, the speed u and, in consequence, the momentum mu (also important when evaluating delivered damage) get just a bit more than halved. On top of this, regarding the assumption that "the bow transfers the same energy to the arrows in both cases", this is actually even better, because bows transfer energy to heavier arrows more efficiently (for many reasons, one being that more mass accelerates slower, thus the energy transfer time is increased). In conclusion, if a Sasanian archer can do it comfortably (even more than in the video), the shots might be good enough, particularly 1) from close range against 2) a mass of 3) not heavily armoured people. Furthermore, 1) there’s a horse archer tactic that consists in closing in the distance quite a lot to increase the time (thus number) of effective volleys that can be performed, 2) the source I mentioned states that they were fighting against an army of 100 thousand, and 3) that they were the Abyssinians (and some allies), for which Stuart Munro-Hay in Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity states that "no personal armour has yet been found, nor are there any surviving representations of soldiers, except from one most unusual source", in which "Persians are shown mounted or on foot, fully clothed with tunic and trousers, and armed with bows. Their adversaries wear only a small kilt, and what seems to be a sword-belt diagonally across one shoulder" (I'm not saying that they had no armour, but I’d guess most of the 100 thousand didn’t have heavy armor). I don’t know, I just gathered what I know, saw, thought, calculated, and found, and it does seem that shooting 5 arrows at the same time in certain situations might not be as ridiculous as it sounds (after all, a footnote in C. E. Bosworth's translation of History of the Prophets and Kings by Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari states that "it is presumably related to the banjakiyyah of al-Jawaliqi, al-Mu'arrab: a volley of five arrows, mentioned in a context which speaks of the Khurisanians").

I guess the question is, when this happens, can you still play? I imagine it would be nice to keep doing so while listening to some dialogue.

It is physically possible to do it with both a bow and (some kind of) crossbow, the only question is if it physically makes sense, because indeed the energy would be distributed, so it wouldn’t work against somewhat armoured troops. I doubt a crossbow able to do that was invented at the time, and for a bow, it’s a shooting technique, although holding 5 arrows in one hand could also work (but it’s just a variation of what they were already doing of holding at least a couple of arrows on that hand). I guess the case for barbed arrowheads, put forward by A. Siddiqi, comes from the whole quote: "When I give you the order to shoot, let fly at them swiftly with a five-arrow volley (bi-al-banjakan). The people of Yemen had never seen war arrows before this occasion", which seems to me puts the focus on the arrow themselves, although if taken too literally.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone, nice list. The first person that comes to my mind as an important character at that time is Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, which would become a major religion for a few centuries (would make an important Hero priest). There are a couple problems with this: 1) he was born in 216 under the Parthian Empire, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire when he was still a child (I wonder what’s the exact criteria in these cases, but to me it makes more sense to have him with the Sasanians), and 2) the religion would eventually be repressed by the Sasanians, although at the beginning they were receptive to it since it had many similarities with Zoroastrianism, but that started to change around 270, with more intense persecution after 290. I’m not sure how much you are into mutually exclusive techs and alternative history, but all this is a gold mine with that. Other immediate Sasanian concepts that could be used as techs: -Just looking a bit back I see that the “Panjagān was either a projectile weapon or an archery technique”, some have said it could have even been a type of arrowhead. I consider the last one, although the least fanciful, the most probable, but most experts disagree with this, probably the archery technique is the most preferred, and to me is a close second. From the sources, and the lack of evidence, being some kind of weapon seems the least probable. -Seven Great Houses of Iran: the Parthian aristocratic clans of the Sasanian court. More of a civ. bonus since it comes from before. Maybe some champion bonus, but Hero penalty, if no member of those houses would be a Hero, like Rostam Farrokhzad (otherwise I think at some point Hero categories would be nice to have, to deal better with certain bonuses and penalties, as I’ve had this problem before with something else). -Dehqans: came later, minor landowners. -Khosrau I Reforms: fixed harvest tax (which dehqans collected). Both of these could be consecutive Field techs, the first one a normal bonus, the second one to trickle metal. -I don’t know if buildings can be upgraded, but for Fire Temples (for civs that have Zoroastrianism as the/a main religion), there are 3 levels (Atash Dadgah, Atash Adaran, and Atash Behram), depending on the grade of the fire they hold (which depends on how it was originally produced, for which they identify 16 different forms, when all are combined and consecrated, that’s the highest fire degree, which is quite complicated to do, nowadays there are only nine Atash Behram, eight in India and one in Iran). -Maybe the Ayvān-e Kesrā could be the Wonder.

Good catch. But, you could have a unit of left-handed slingers, as was the case of the Judean Benjamites (although the source is the Bible): "Among Benjamin’s elite troops, 700 were left-handed, and each of them could sling a rock and hit a target within a hairsbreadth without missing".

Just in case, the Manchu bow is a bit different since it has string contact, as shown in the video I sent, which I did just to explicitly show parts of the bow like the bridges, which the Sasanian doesn’t have.

@guerringuerrin, no worries, there's zero frustration from my side, just wanted to make sure I was doing what one is supposed to do. Regarding PRs, as I’ve said before, since there’s a lot of work, I didn’t want to overload, similarly as to a thread per point, I wouldn’t want to spam (I’m already posting too much lately anyway). My intention with a poll was not to force the developers to do anything, but to gauge support and increase visibility of simple things that I think could be helpful for many or polish some details (and that have nothing to do with gameplay), which otherwise just get lost in this thread.

Ok, I gave it a go with some other generators (maybe there’s a limit on what can be done for free). Gemini, after prompting “sasanid bow”, “indian horse archer with that bow”, and “don’t show other warriors, has to be Gupta, so look like indian, no helmet but turban. The bow is great”. Then I gave it your picture and the Sasanian (another spelling of Sasanid) reenactor one, and after a bit of tweaking: Then, Adobe Firefly, after just stating “Gupta horse archer, that is, the bow has to be sasanid”. It even has a shield with the Garuda:

Thanks for your answer. Separate threads for many of these details seems too much… for example, alongside 3), these seemed well received and don’t seem controversial (if so, I thought it would be good to know with a poll), besides being apparently easy to implement: 1) loading screen having a “press any key to continue”, 2) double clicking idle worker button to select all of them, 4) Continue Campaign appear only under Single Player, 5) Campaigns must have different names, 6) Restart and Load game options during a game, 7) option to hide full health bars. There are a few more like this, I was going to gather those with more chances of going somewhere after my next 20 points. I’ve seen polls regarding way more controversial things, so I’m really not sure what should be the next step to have a better grasp of everyone’s opinion, how to move from "too early" since those were posted in January

If the units are in a blob, it’s almost impossible to do that to end with a specific number of units selected, BUT instead of a selection box, clicking also works. One still has to manage to hit the unit, which can be a bit cumbersome if the blob is moving. I think CTRL+right click on portraits should remove a random (or some other criteria) unit from that selection, or at least I keep wanting to do that. But what you said is indeed useful.

The lack of this is really annoying sometimes... How do you all deal with the situation of having a mass of units but wanting to select just a specific number of them? Also, should I do a poll regarding many of those proposed points? Many on that list don’t seem that controversial (not so much on the follow up list I made).

Interesting, looks like a Scythian bow. Makes sense the AI being biased towards the most generally known types of bow. Which generator are you using?

I wonder if I make a big mistake by never researching the fruit basket tech (basically the only one I don't), given that sources near the CC will be spent fairly fast, I prefer to put my resources anywhere else, and by the time I'm ready to gather other fruit sources I'm already drowning in food from fields... Haven’t tested if the speed difference you mention makes a big difference at the beginning.

Hey, these are all great images, but one little thing: maybe it would be nice to use the same type of bow represented on the Gupta coins. A big difference is the use of large static tips or “siyahs” (the straight endings). A common example is the Manchu bows (little video testing models of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHDkUECiwU8). Given the Gupta representations, and assuming they are indeed not being drawn, it would seem they don’t present “string contact”, so the bow wouldn’t need to have string bridges. I think they would look like what https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUmZU51K0-o calls a "Reflex Straight with static tips", traditionally just called recurved, with the culture also mentioned to better specify which one, which that video understandably criticises (but they would be Hungarian, Magyar, Sasanian, Han, Tang, etc). For comparison, here another Gupta representation: A Sasanian representation: And a Sasanian reenactor: