Germanic faction(s)

[greycat]

Ancient Germanic Warrior (Suebi or Cherusci?):

They are noted as Suebi.

"Cherusci" Ethnically, Pliny the Elder groups them with their neighbours the Suebi and Chatti, as well as the Hermunduri, as Hermiones, one of the Germanic groupings said to descend from an ancestor named Mannus.

wikipedia-

Ceasar lumps them all into one "German" tribe which is not really true.

Edited October 12, 2013 by greycat

[Lion.Kanzen]

Priest stuff. The symbol is the most important here. I'm thinking in this as faction symbol/emblem.

[Lion.Kanzen]

[Lion.Kanzen]

These Germanic warriors should appear far less wild then their northern kinsman. However that does not make them less formidable in combat, the southern Germanic tribes were large and wealthy compared to those in the north. The Romans knew this and so instead of open warfare often engaged in lucrative trade agreements with the southern tribes, providing them with a more "romanized" appearance were their arms and armor were often similar to Roman ones. The Romans also used these trbes as a way to provide a well equipped buffer to the more war-like men of the north.

Western Germanic Tribes: Chatti, Suebi, and Marsi.

Like their southern brothers the western Germanic tribes would have had arms and armor that was very similar to Roman equipment. But not nearly to the degree of the southern tribes, as it was against Roman law to sell weapons and armor to any tribes to the north-west of the Rhine. These warriors are the ones often depicted raiding the Roman frontier, they are however not nearly as brutal as their northern brothers.

Source.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?555251-How-I-want-the-Germanic-tribes-to-look

Edited October 12, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[greycat]

Celt fighting German c.100 BC source [source: Concord book]

Edited October 13, 2013 by greycat

[Lion.Kanzen]

Odin with Sleipnir. Valknuts are drawn beneath the horse on the Tängelgarda stone.

The valknut (Old Norse valr, "slain warriors" + knut, "knot") is a symbol consisting of three interlocked triangles, and appears on various Germanic objects. A number of theories have been proposed for its significance.

[Lion.Kanzen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stora_Hammars_stones

Depicted on the Stora Hammars I stone are six panels with mythological, religious and martial background, including panels depicting a woman between two men, a sacrifice scene with a Valknut over an altar, a woman standing between a longship manned with armed warriors and another group of armed men, and a battle scene.[2] Because of the position of the woman in two of the panels, it has been interpreted as illustrating the legend of Hildr and its never-ending battle.[2] The stone includes an image of a warrior about to be hung from a tree with a Valknut nearby, considered to be Odin's cult symbol, giving validity to reports regarding human sacrifice in Norse paganism.[3] Near the alter is a shaped stone, which one scholar has been suggested may be a cult stone similar to the Elgesem runestone.[4]

[Lion.Kanzen]

[Lion.Kanzen]

The Roman historian Tacitus, who lived in Osterby Man's era, describes the hairstyle as typical of the Suebi tribes of Germania. It was the "Suebian knot", which "distinguishes the freeman from the slave."

Classical authors noted that the Suebic tribes were very mobile, and not reliant upon agriculture.[4] Various Suebic groups moved from the direction of the Baltic sea and river Elbe, becoming a periodic threat to the Roman empire on their Rhine and Danube frontiers. Toward the end of the empire, the Alamanni, also referred to as Suebi, first settled in the Agri Decumates and then crossed the Rhine and occupied Alsace. A pocket remained in the region now still called Swabia, an area in southwest Germany whose modern name derives from the Suebi. Others moved as far as Gallaecia (modern Galicia, in Spain, and Northern Portugal) and established a Suebic Kingdom of Galicia there which lasted for 170 years until its integration into the Visigothic Kingdom.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Ancient germany is seen as the last great peoples in Europe that were never conquered by the roman empire. These where the most typical "barbarian" tribes in Europe, strong and savage, well protected in the Darkness of the large forests... The Suebi were the most famous of these tribes, as known as the Sweboz in germanic laguage. In general terms, Romans considered the Germans as "neighbours" or "allies" of the gallic tribes, hence a possible origin for the name "german". This was a vast movement of indo-european peoples, settled around the baltic coast and reach the Scandinavia.

The suebi or sweboz, for Tacitus, included three great tribes, the Quadi, Semnones and Marcomanni, and later the minor tribe Hermunduri and later other major ones, the Alamanni and the Langobards. The Suebi gave their name to the Swabia, and later, involved in the political Gallic affairs, when Ariovistus, king of the Suebi tribes, subdued the Sequani. They were eventually defeated by Caesar. Small west tribes as the Chatti, Sicambri, and Cheruscii partly formed the Frankish people, but mostly Sicambri, in the local mythology, legendary ancient trojans.

Rome soon feel the danger of new northern invaders, once the Transalpine gaul allied or subdued by the republic. In 101 bc, two major invasions of Cimbri and Teutoni tribes were stopped by the northern legions, the most notable battle was those of Aquae Sextiae in the south-east france. Cesar, after his gallic campaign, has left some troops in roughly the borders of eastern Gaul. The Roman invasion was partly justified by the threat of this Germanic invasions. With the Constantine rule, the empire borders (limes) defined a "magna germania" from the Rhine to the Vistula, incorporing celtic tribes as well. Forts and colonies were founded belong the Rhine, and after the last great struggle, the battle of Teutoburg Forest, the germany borders were firmly established for centuries.

As most of the Northern and western peoples, the Germanic armies were almost entirely composed of infantry, a few archers, slingers or skirmishers, a very few, if not at all cavalry units (light scout units or some mounted nobles) but a versatile semi-heavy infantry, able to launch javelins and fight both with swords, axes, two and one handed, and clubs, as some more primitive weapons. As most of the celtic tribes, courage in battle was most important of all, and tactic and discipline, uniformity or modern equiments were quite unknown. A few warriors has helmets, chainmails, most of them only use some wolves and bear pelts and wood shields. The germanic warriors has a frightening reputation, coming from their primitive customs, savage and merciless way of fightning, their physical strenght, compared to the average romans, and most of all, their ferocious elite warriors, perhaps ancestors of the viking "Berserkers".

[greycat]

Archaeology finds dated 3rd century BC
138 iron and 31 bone spears. 150 shields and six swords
shields were of Celtic patters-along oval shape measuring 88cm x 30cm

3rd-2nd century BC
A few warriors were equiped with La Tène swords-they may
have been specialist swordsmen. The use of Celtic spears,
javalins and shields are still evident.

Roman period 1st century AD
about 1 in 10 Germanic warriors use swords. No evidence of
armour or helmets except in the case of a very few chieftans.
Shields are round, rectangular or sexagonal. Small round or
oval shields were used by cavalry

Roman period 2nd century AD
Roman and German equipment begins to appear together in a
number of areas. Mail garments and Roman gladius. Increase
in the use of axes, especially throwing axes.

Roman period 3rd century AD
Swordsmen probably number one in every four warriors.

Roman period 4th century AD
Shields seem to be rarely carried in this period. When found,
the bosses are of the Roman domed variety.

source:

[source: Osprey military history book]

Edited October 13, 2013 by greycat

[Lion.Kanzen]

Alemanni

The early detailed source, the Germania of Tacitus, has sometimes been interpreted in such a way as to provide yet other historical problems. In Chapter 42 we read of the Hermunduri, a tribe certainly located in the region that later became Thuringia. Tacitus stated that they traded with Rhaetia, which in Ptolemy is located across the Danube from Germania Superior. A logical conclusion to draw is that the Hermunduri extended over later Swabia and therefore the Alemanni originally derived from the Hermunduri!

However, no Hermunduri appear in Ptolemy, though after the time of Ptolemy, the Hermunduri joined with the Marcomanni in the wars of 166–180 against the empire. A careful reading of Tacitus provides one solution. He says that the source of the Elbe is among the Hermunduri, somewhat to the east of the upper Main. He places them also between the Naristi (Varisti), whose location at the very edge of the ancient Black Forest is well known, and the Marcomanni and Quadi. Moreover, the Hermunduri were broken in the Marcomannic Wars and made a separate peace with Rome. The Alemanni thus were probably not primarily the Hermunduri, although some elements of them may have been present in the mix of peoples at that time that became Alemannian.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I know is later unit but, the helmet is congruent with others.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Alemanni, also spelled Alamanni, or Alamani, a Germanic people first mentioned in connection with the Roman attack on them in ad 213. In the following decades, their pressure on the Roman provinces became severe; they occupied the Agri Decumates c. 260, and late in the 5th century they expanded into Alsace and northern Switzerland, establishing the German language in those regions. In 496 they were conquered by Clovis and incorporated into his Frankish dominions.

The Alemanni were originally composed of fragments of several Germanic peoples, and they remained a loosely knit confederation of tribes in the Suebi group (see Suebi). Although several tribes put their military forces under the joint command of two leaders for the duration of a campaign, the different peoples generally found it difficult to combine, and they had nothing that could be called a central government. The French and Spanish words for Germany (Allemagne; Alemania) are derived from their name.

[Lion.Kanzen]

This source are good to understand this civ. http://www.protogermanic.com

Notice the horns (*Wodanaz- "Odin/Woden/Wuotan"-was usually depicted with Horns from the Nordic Bronze-Age to the Migration-Age), spear (one of the main symbols of *Wóðinaz was his spear that was cut from the worldtree) and noose (another of his major symbols). Notice also the similarities between Germanic and Celtic art in the earlier eras.

Edited October 13, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[greycat]

1.This Alamannic warrior 3rd-4th century from the beginning of the Germanic migration
is representative of those who would have settled on the Roman
side of the upper Rhine. Showing little Roman influence.
note: also shows how to tie a Suebian knot.

2.francisca was widely used by most western German peoples
during migration especially the Franks and Alamanni. Some
acounts of it being thrown, but mostly close quarters as a
poorer warriors substitue for a sword.

3.Wooden long bow. May have been more common omong the
Alamannic. Was thought less "heroic" than other weapons.
Also employed in large numbers by the Goths and Lombards.

4.Brooches shows skill of craftsmanship.

5.Helmet Predates the migartion but shows German decorated
captured Roman equipment to suit their own tastes.

Edited October 13, 2013 by greycat

[Lion.Kanzen]

Aestii Estonians

The Estonians had been settled in the Baltic region since prehistory, and at that time their territory and that of the Livonians, also a finno-ugrit people, stretched much further south.

Other source : this repetitive I know, but are different sources.

Alamanni The Alamanni

("all men") were an Elbe-German tribal confederacy that emerged on the upper Main in the 3rd century, apparently developing from a core group of Semnones migrants from the Elbe- Havel region. They were known as the Sueben (Swabians) to their neighbors, and c. 260 they crossed the Roman limes and settled in the upper Rhine-Lake Constance area, moving after the 5th century also into what is today Switzerland and Alsace. In 496/7 they fell under the rule of the Franks, but nevertheless maintained their tribal leaders.

The current practice of differentiating between Alamanni and Swabians first appeared in 1803 and has no historical foundation other than the differing nationalist views of the inhabitants of Baden and of Baden and Württemberg.

COMPOSITE BOW or reflexed bow

From varying layers of wood, horn and sinews the Huns built an extremely elastic bow, from which even iron arrows could be shot. An accomplished Hun horseman could loose up to 20 arrows a minute at a full gallop with this 60 cm long bow. In order to draw the bowstring it had to be hooked over an iron ring worn on the thumb, and the resulting arrow flight reached 500 meters. This long distance weapon and its attendant tactics were later also brought to Europe by the Avars and Hungarians, as well as by the Mongols in the 13th century. Similar, but weaker, bows had already been used by the Parthians and other Iranian peoples long before the Huns, and the Lombards and a few other Germanic tribes also used the composite bow, though they did not manufacture them themselves. (The manufacture of a composite bow required severalyears.) In Europe, however, the composite bow gave way to the simple wood bow, which could be used by foot soldiers, while cavalry favored combat with sword and lance. In part this was due to the fact that the composite bow could only be used in dry weather, since high humidity would cause the bowstring to become slack.

http://www.ghkuhlmann.de/kureng/glossary.html

[Lion.Kanzen]

The Alemanni were first mentioned by Cassius Dio describing the campaign of Caracalla in 213. At that time they apparently dwelt in the basin of the Main, to the south of the Chatti.

Cassius Dio (78.13.4) portrays the Alemanni as victims of this treacherous emperor.[5] They had asked for his help, says Dio, but instead he colonized their country, changed their place names and executed their warriors under a pretext of coming to their aid. When he became ill, the Alemanni claimed to have put a hex on him (78.15.2). Caracalla, it was claimed, tried to counter this influence by invoking his ancestral spirits.

In retribution Caracalla then led the Legio II Traiana Fortis against the Alemanni, who lost and were pacified for a time. The legion was as a result honored with the name Germanica. The 4th-century fictional Historia Augusta, Life of Antoninus Caracalla, relates (10.5) that Caracalla then assumed the name Alemannicus, at which Helvius Pertinax jested that he should really be called Geticus Maximus, because in the year before he had murdered his brother, Geta.[6] Not on good terms with Caracalla, Geta had been invited to a family reconciliation, at which time he was ambushed by centurions in Caracalla's army and slain in his mother Julia's arms. True or not, Caracalla, pursued by devils of his own, left Rome never to return.

Caracalla left for the frontier, where for the rest of his short reign he was known for his unpredictable and arbitrary operations launched by surprise after a pretext of peace negotiations. If he had any reasons of state for such actions they remained unknown to his contemporaries. Whether or not the Alemanni had been previously neutral, they were certainly further influenced by Caracalla to become thereafter notoriously implacable enemies of Rome.

This mutually antagonistic relationship is perhaps the reason why the Roman writers persisted in calling the Alemanni barbari, "savages". The archaeology, however, shows that they were largely Romanized, lived in Roman-style houses and used Roman artifacts, the Alemannic women having adopted the Roman fashion of the tunic even earlier than the men.

Most of the Alemanni were probably at the time in fact resident in or close to the borders of Germania Superior. Although Dio is the earliest writer to mention them, Ammianus Marcellinus used the name to refer to Germans on the Limes Germanicus in the time of Trajan's governorship of the province shortly after it was formed, c. 98/99. At that time the entire frontier was being fortified for the first time. Trees from the earliest fortifications found in Germania Inferior are dated by dendrochronology to 99/100. Shortly afterwards Trajan was chosen by Nerva to be his successor, adopted with public fanfare in absentia by the old man shortly before his death. By 100 Trajan was back in Rome as Emperor instead of merely being a Consul.

Ammianus relates (xvii.1.11) that much later the Emperor Julian undertook a punitive expedition against the Alemanni, who by then were in Alsace, and crossed the Main (Latin Menus), entering the forest, where the trails were blocked by felled trees. As winter was upon them, they reoccupied a "fortification which was founded on the soil of the Alemanni that Trajan wished to be called with his own name".[7]

In this context the use of Alemanni is possibly an anachronism but it reveals that Ammianus believed they were the same people, which is consistent with the location of the Alemanni of Caracalla's campaigns.

Invasions

In 259/60, a group of Suebi appear to have been the main element in the formation of a new tribal alliance known as the Alamanni who came to occupy the Roman frontier region known as the Agri Decumates, east of the Rhine and south of the Main. The Alamanni were sometimes simply referred to as Suebi by contemporaries, and the region came to be known as Swabia - a name which survives to this day. People in this region of Germany are still called Schwaben, a name derived from the Suebi.

These Suebi for the most part stayed on the right bank of the Rhine until December 31 406, when much of the tribe joined the Vandals and Alans in breaching the Roman frontier by crossing the Rhine, perhaps at Mainz, thus launching an invasion of northern Gaul.

Edited October 13, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[greycat]

suebian-knot

[Lion.Kanzen]

Haha interesting for Coldplay? I just kidding but impressive info. Help me to finding the Germanic names for the units.

[Mega Mania]

They are noted as Suebi.

"Cherusci" Ethnically, Pliny the Elder groups them with their neighbours the Suebi and Chatti, as well as the Hermunduri, as Hermiones, one of the Germanic groupings said to descend from an ancestor named Mannus.

wikipedia-

Ceasar lumps them all into one "German" tribe which is not really true.

The trouble is there's a dozen of the so called "Germanic" tribes, are we going to make them all? IMHO it would be fine to concentrate on some important Germanic tribes like Suebi and the Goths would do while the others should become DLC factions.

[Lion.Kanzen]

(Germans)Suebi, Saxons, Vandals, Goths.

Considerate (Franks as Frisi ) and Suebi and Alemanni the same.

[Mega Mania]

If we fit all these tribes into 0AD, there would be no space for other factions anymore. All we need to do was to identify what Germanic tribe have the most impact to Rome and how powerful a Germanic Tribe that could change the fate of the known world and also do not stray too far from 0AD time line.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Huns, Sarmatians and Parthians. And obviusly three Roman factions imperial Romans with the late Western and eastern Roman Empire.

And Sarmatians have many other. And Huns too.

[Mega Mania]

Focus on several important tribes would be better than any other minor tribes, some Nomads and Germanic Tribes like the Huns and Vandals should have lower priority in the lists.