Looking for some help from historians

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

9 hours ago, alre said:

ok, sorry. However, I don't think we have evidence of such military engineers in any civilization predating romans anyway. Soldiers did build houses and rams alike.

We actually do.  Diodorus writes on the Siege of Rhodes and specifically mentions specialists for the construction of the siege weapons.  Also Xerxes relied on engineers as well when he had a pontoon bridge constructed to transport his army from Asia into Greece.  

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

All of that is true, but to have yet another unit type seems overkilled. Could just have a "Siege Engineers" tech that unlocks building field artillery with soldiers. 

[Grapjas]

57 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

All of that is true, but to have yet another unit type seems overkilled. Could just have a "Siege Engineers" tech that unlocks building field artillery with soldiers. 

I fear its going to clutter the UI in a weird way if i also need to add icons for building siege units next to buildings. While a specialised unit doesnt have this issue. Also, the arsenal will remain as is, a place where siege can be build, so you dont neccesarily have to use engineers if you dont want to. But its not a bad suggestion if the icons could be somewhere else (havent done much modding in gui yet).

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

14 minutes ago, Grapjas said:

I fear its going to clutter the UI in a weird way if i also need to add icons for building siege units next to buildings. While a specialised unit doesnt have this issue. Also, the arsenal will remain as is, a place where siege can be build, so you dont neccesarily have to use engineers if you dont want to. But its not a bad suggestion if the icons could be somewhere else (havent done much modding in gui yet).

Honestly, it doesn't look too bad in DE's UI to have catapults there next to the other buildables. The only thing strange is that the operators rise up out of the ground with the catapult as it's being built. I've done a couple of tests with the actor to stop this with no success yet, but I think it should be possible to make the operators not appear until the construction is completed. 

[Grapjas]

1 minute ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The only thing strange is that the operators rise up out of the ground with the catapult as it's being built. I've done a couple of tests with the actor to stop this with no success yet, but I think it should be possible to make the operators not appear until the construction is completed. 

Doesnt sound impossible to fix, but i'd need to do some digging for that.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just now, Grapjas said:

Doesnt sound impossible to fix, but i'd need to do some digging for that.

Right, I think it may be possible with some actor work and no new code (its' already possible with existing code).

[alre]

Well that's not a problem if you only make rams and siege towers directly buildable. I think some siege engines were carried around with armies, only the rest was designed and built when necessary. Also catapults required specialised operators, and specialised knowledge for assembling, it would make sense to make such a distinction.

Also, this would avoid the necessity of a an arsenal for those civilizations that apparently never had arsenals dedicated to siege weaponry.

Edited March 24, 2021 by alre

[Grapjas]

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded@Genava55 do you have any thoughts about the spear(melee) cavalry armor/weapon kit? Would they normally have shields? Would they have a couple of javs (or other ranged)? The more civ specific the better  

 

Edited March 24, 2021 by Grapjas

[Genava55]

2 hours ago, Grapjas said:

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded@Genava55 do you have any thoughts about the spear(melee) cavalry armor/weapon kit? Would they normally have shields? Would they have a couple of javs (or other ranged)? The more civ specific the better  

 

Still about the engineers? For the Romans, since the end of the Republic, it seems the praefectus fabrum was a high officer, from equestrian rank. A Roman knight. Not very high in the hierarchy but not so low. This is a starting position for an equestrian. So I believe it should have a good quality panoply.

[Grapjas]

18 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

Still about the engineers?

No i meant spear melee cavalry in general, i was wondering what extra weapons they would have along with the spear, and if a shield was common with their kit (ingame they dont atm). I think i saw some pictures where they had a shield but im not so sure if it was reliable info.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

4 hours ago, Grapjas said:

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded@Genava55 do you have any thoughts about the spear(melee) cavalry armor/weapon kit? Would they normally have shields? Would they have a couple of javs (or other ranged)? The more civ specific the better  

 

It seems like Italian and Iberian cavalry had small to medium shields, possibly influenced by Gauls. Cavalry shields didn't become prominent with Greek or Eastern cavalry until the Hellenistic age, possibly through the introduction of Tarantine cavalry and later Gauls who settled in Asia Minor (who then became known as Galatians).

Due to the lack of a stirrup, most cavalry would skirmish with javelins and then close to melee range with their swords, rather than charge in headlong with spears or trampling. Macedonians introduced shock cavalry despite not having stirrups. They used long spears as their primary weapon, and a machaira or kopis (falcata) as a secondary weapon. It was less their armament and more about their tactics and speed that made them such effective shock cavalry force. Later a kind of "medium" cavalry was introduced in the Tarantine variety (who kind of dove tailed nicely with the new Thyreophoros "medium" infantry introduced at roughly the same time).

In all cases, I believe cavalry would use a sword as their "side arm" or secondary weapon. Purely "sword cavalry" is almost a 0 A.D. invention for gameplay purposes (at least in this time period). I'm sure there are others who would correct me here with some nicely dug up obscurata.

[Ultimate Aurelian]

Same applies to foot swordsmen in a way.

Aside from the obvious example of Roman Legions; Celtic warriors and Hellenistic Thorakites also carried javelins.

In EB2 mod most swordsman units can throw spears before melee.

Although there are a couple exceptions; like some of the Briton units and the Germanic bodyguard swordsmen.

Interestingly the mod choose to give Britons sword cavalry.

https://europabarbarorum.fandom.com/wiki/Markakoi_(British_Heavy_Cavalry)

Edited March 25, 2021 by Ultimate Aurelian

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Ultimate Aurelian said:

Interestingly the mod choose to give Britons sword cavalry.

Consular Bodyguard, Legionary Cavalry, and Praetorian Cavalry primary weapon is spear or sword? 

Edited March 25, 2021 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Genava55]

On 18/03/2021 at 7:57 PM, Grapjas said:

Currently i'm working on giving some units a secondary attack in my mod. It's making progress, but realism is of great importance for me.

How is it going ? Just wondering if you succeeded.

[azayrahmad]

11 hours ago, Genava55 said:

How is it going ? Just wondering if you succeeded.

You can check his mod in his thread:

 

[Genava55]

3 hours ago, azayrahmad said:

You can check his mod in his thread:

 

Thx a lot!

[Grapjas]

Hi @Genava55, thanks for the interest. I got it working. The new features of the next update that are finished right now can be find here: Grapjas93/grapejuice at prototype (github.com). If you're interested you can also check the project overview of what i still need to do.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Grapjas
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