Civ: Sasanians

[Genava55]

On 20/04/2026 at 6:51 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Sasanian special tech: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Panjagan
- Panjagān was either a projectile weapon or an archery technique used by the aswaran heavy cavalry of the late military of Sasanian Persia, by which a volley of five arrows was shot. No examples of the device have survived, but it is alluded to by later Islamic authors, in particular in their description of the Persian conquest of Yemen, wherein the application of the unknown panjagan was supposedly the deciding factor in Persian victory.

 

 

If we can get a "multiple projectile" patch committed ( @real_tabasco_sauce ?), then this could increase the number of projectile their cavalry archers loose per volley. Otherwise, it could be a attack rate tech (fire faster).

I don't think it's physically possible to fire five projectiles at the same time with the same bow or crossbow. The energy is spread across five projectiles, and it’s difficult to properly align the trajectory with the movement of the string. The Chinese developed crossbows that fired two bolts at the same time, but they weren’t very popular, so they shifted their focus to repeating crossbows.

So, for the Persians, I imagine it might have been a repeating crossbow with a magazine holding five bolts. But otherwise, the most likely explanation is an archery technique that allowed a warrior to hold five arrows and fire them quickly; that’s what best fits the nomadic traditions of mounted archery. 

[Genava55]

On 18/05/2026 at 7:38 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Thoughts on these being the 5 heroes?

I agree with your choices. There are other interesting characters like Shahrbaraz and Bahram V but I think the 5 you chose are the best options. 

Ardashir I should have a bonus related to civic centers and temples.

Shapur I should have a military bonus, maybe something for the cavalry.

Shapur II "the Great" should have a bonus related to fortresses and towers.

Khosrow I "the Just" should have a bonus in training speed from barracks and stables. 

Khosrow II should have a capture bonus or a territory bonus. 

[Outis]

3 hours ago, Genava55 said:

I don't think it's physically possible to fire five projectiles at the same time with the same bow or crossbow.

https://youtube.com/shorts/EgSxyI49LIo?is=cqU1X0wC-WCWE_cW

I agree the fifth would be a stretch

[Thalatta]

9 hours ago, Genava55 said:

I don't think it's physically possible to fire five projectiles at the same time with the same bow or crossbow. The energy is spread across five projectiles, and it’s difficult to properly align the trajectory with the movement of the string.

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.

[Thalatta]

On 19/05/2026 at 4:47 PM, Outis said:

https://youtube.com/shorts/EgSxyI49LIo?is=cqU1X0wC-WCWE_cW

I agree the fifth would be a stretch

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").

[Genava55]

16 hours ago, Thalatta said:

I missed this, but here you have some dude on YouTube doing it, imagine what a Sasanian archer could do

How does he manage to pull three arrows from his quiver in a single motion, and how does he manage to nock three arrows onto the string at once in a single motion?

I'm genuinely curious because it seems to me that it's not that easy for other archers:

 

Edited 1 hour ago by Genava55

[Thalatta]

1 hour ago, Genava55 said:

How does he manage to pull three arrows from his quiver in a single motion, and how does he manage to nock three arrows onto the string at once in a single motion?

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".

Edited 45 minutes ago by Thalatta