Civ: Seleucids

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The Seleucid Empire

 

Heroes

          

 

Infantry

     

          

          

 

Cavalry

          

          

     

Edited March 23, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Carltonus]

A few suggestions:

• The Reform pair upgrades should be removed, like in @borg-'s mod, so the Romanized Thorakites can only available to Antiochus IV. Any thoughts for mercenary/champion swordsmen if you choose the other two? Visualization for the Parade of Daphne (if you want to add/make a change for some units):

• If you want, there can be a second elephant unit, an un-barded tower one, which costs food, wood, and coins, and extremely vulnerable to javelineers. Then the armored war elephant can add metal to the cost.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Carltonus said:

The Reform pair upgrades should be removed, like in @borg-'s mod

Already removed these many weeks in the Github version.

 

2 hours ago, Carltonus said:

so the Romanized Thorakites can only available to Antiochus IV

I could do that, yeah. Make that one of his bonuses.

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Carltonus said:

• If you want, there can be a second elephant unit, an un-barded tower one, which costs food, wood, and coins, and extremely vulnerable to javelineers. Then the armored war elephant can add metal to the cost.

I was thinking of having both the Mauryan and Seleucid elephants start out as unbarded, and then you can upgrade them to armor in the Blacksmith or Elephant stables with the "Elephant Armor" tech that's already there.

Edited August 7, 2020 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Ultimate Aurelian]

2 hours ago, Carltonus said:

A few suggestions:

• Any thoughts for mercenary/champion swordsmen if you choose the other two?

They already have Romphaia mercenary.

They could also have Galatian Swordsman and/or the non-Romanized Thorakites (Already used by macedonians).

[Phalanx]

I know that this idea has been poo-poo-ed for the main game, but maybe here it would work. I still think it is a good idea to rename the Romanized Thorakite to Silver Shield Thorakite. I know, I know, we don't know if they were going to retain the "Silver Shield" moniker after reformation, and we don't know if the pikes would be completely reformed to Thorakites, but we CAN infer that those 5000 men were originally from the Silver Shield corps.  Its been stated that the SSC generally was made up of 10k men, and at Daphne, there were only 5k phalangites. So it is plausible (and even likely) that the 5k Thorakites were members of the SSC. From a gameplay standpoint, it was be a great idea to rename them to at the very least inform players that these aren't the Generic Thorakites, they are special champoin Thorakites.  The current name is underwhelmingly misleading imo.

Edited August 27, 2020 by Phalanx

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 8/7/2020 at 3:26 PM, Carltonus said:

Romanized Thorakites can only available to Antiochus IV.

Was there any attestation of war chariots after Antiochus III? I can make the Chariots and Romanized Swordsmen swap out depending on hero.

[Carltonus]

On 27/08/2020 at 4:26 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Was there any attestation of war chariots after Antiochus III? I can make the Chariots and Romanized Swordsmen swap out depending on hero.

I think @Genava55's like means "yes", so it's a maybe. For the benefit of doubt, no need for a swap, just a cosmetic appearance and/or with slightly increased stats for the champion swordsman.

For the citizen cavalry skirmisher, as to rid the anachronistic Achaemenid barding and armor, why not Median cavalry? That is, until a Pontic faction is made:

Persian skirmishers (also from Pontus faction), for basic rank:

Can't wait to see the new icons with the updated thureos shields.

[Genava55]

Pontus used it several times (1st century BC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zela

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_River_Amnias

 

For the Diadochi I don't know.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

8 hours ago, Carltonus said:

Definitely need more Persian helmets and headgear models. 

[Carltonus]

14 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Definitely need more Persian helmets and headgear models. 

You're in luck, here's the Kinsmen Cavalry from the Atropatene (Median) faction, good to know that the faction's starting region in Rome 2 Diviide et Impera mod neighbors the Seleucids. Great replacement for the elites, but they seem to me like champions:

And more medium cavalry, don't think this could be of much help:

The above link also has some more images that might somehow be useful in your research, they're in the Eastern Factions section.

For the actual Seleucid faction, this is the only one I found:

[Genava55]

Be aware that Divide et Impera mod is not really accurate on several aspects so stay critical.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited January 18, 2021 by Genava55

[Carltonus]

In Seleucus' and Ptolemy's time, thureoi were not yet introduced to Hellenistic warfare; that would be the around the time of Pyrrhus's Italian wars.

So if you choose Seleucus, the thureos spearmen should be replaced with hypaspists and skirmishers with akontistai. Maybe the former can have a fourth rank (like the centurion) which wield silver shields. These make sense since you already put Macedonian pikemen if you chose Ptolemy.

Edited March 14, 2021 by Carltonus

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

A great basis for the Seleucid cult statue?

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/apollo-belvedere-fe5c0cffdc2a4f3985872212c692af0c

 

CC0 model^. Would need an AO and Normal map baked from the high def model, and then the model streamlined to less than 2000 tris, if an artist wanted to tackle it.

[nifa]

On 11/12/2023 at 6:25 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

A great basis for the Seleucid cult statue?

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/apollo-belvedere-fe5c0cffdc2a4f3985872212c692af0c

 

CC0 model^. Would need an AO and Normal map baked from the high def model, and then the model streamlined to less than 2000 tris, if an artist wanted to tackle it.

Could someone with a more powerful computer use the remesh modifier on this model? I added the blend file so that registration is not required.

 

apollo_belvedere.blend

[Stan`]

Why do you need to remesh it and not just decimate it ? Although Ideally it should be done by retopology.

[nifa]

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

Why do you need to remesh it and not just decimate it ? Although Ideally it should be done by retopology.

I already have done a retopology, especially the curly hair and the garment are quite a mess though. I'll leave out the tree stump, as it was probably added for the marble copy, while the original was made of bronze. I'll add a bow in the left hand and finish some missing parts at the head. I'm already at 3.3 k tris in blender unfortunately.

Anyway, it feels kinda messy and I wanted to compare it with how the modifiers are doing it. I tried it with decimate, but remesh modifier might give better results, but my blender crashes when I use it.

So far my baked normal maps aren't perfect either, I might come back for that. What would be your suggestions in terms of smooth shading? Auto smooth or edge split modifier? I'd like to make edges sharp individually, but don't want to add more geometry

[Stan`]

Remesh will give you millions of polygons   So probably not the right approach unless i misunderstood your goal. Usually you remesh then decimate

3000 tris isn't that bad considering it won't be displayed often, but given the above screenshots I'm feeling like there might be some places where you don't need the details.

I suppose the clothing wrinkles could be part of the normal map, and using an aomap the details could be put in the diffuse (for the people playing with material quality 1.0)

Another solution for the body is to steal the one from the units this way you keep the same level of details.

35 minutes ago, nifa said:

So far my baked normal maps aren't perfect either, I might come back for that. What would be your suggestions in terms of smooth shading? Auto smooth or edge split modifier? I'd like to make edges sharp individually, but don't want to add more geometry

Marking edge sharp should only add more vertices, not more triangles. I would say use whatever gives you the control you need without having to spend an eternity marking things sharp  

[Gurken Khan]

At this detail level the wiener is not a concern for our modest community?

[Stan`]

16 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

At this detail level the wiener is not a concern for our modest community?

It's the delenda est subforum, so nudity is their concern

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:

At this detail level the wiener is not a concern for our modest community?

 

4 hours ago, Stan` said:

It's the delenda est subforum, so nudity is their concern

I suggest a prop_penis empty and then we can use a fig leaf prop actor for the "Empires Ascendant" version.  

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

Another solution for the body is to steal the one from the units this way you keep the same level of details.

I wouldn't do this, since the statue is to be something like 10 times the screen space as a unit.

 

5 hours ago, nifa said:

I'll add a bow in the left hand and finish some missing parts at the head. I'm already at 3.3 k tris in blender unfortunately.

 

5 hours ago, Stan` said:

3000 tris isn't that bad considering it won't be displayed often, but given the above screenshots I'm feeling like there might be some places where you don't need the details.

 

@Stan` is correct here. Just 1 fully-propped animated cavalry unit can be 3000 tris. So, a stationary, non-boned mesh like this, which will take up the same screen space of 7 or 8 such cavalry units, doesn't need to be super low-poly. It's nice to reduce as many tris as possible, but it's a smaller concern than with an animated object such as a unit. 

I can see that the cloth hanging from his left arm can be reduced in complexity, much of the folding can be created with the normal map and subtle baked shadows in the diffuse map. I like that you removed the tree stump. I agree, it was probably added for the marble copy to support his right arm. This statue in-game will be "original" which is bronze. 

 

For the base it stands on, we can use the one here:

[Gurken Khan]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I thought about a fig leave, too, but it would probably be easier and less polys to "Ken-ify" him.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I thought about a fig leave, too, but it would probably be easier and less polys to "Ken-ify" him.

DE's version doesn't need to Ken-ify him (Hell, the Naked Fanatics are truly naked). But also, the penis doesn't need to be super high poly either (lol).

 

*This is also an opportunity to talk about how sculptures are altered over time, sometimes even destroyed, based on the mores of the time.