FACTION PREVIEW: The Kingdom of Jerusalem!

[Tadzreuli]

Great preview ! BRAVO, Mirage ! +rep

[AdmiringtheEnemyeh?]

Yea what happened to all the other jerusalem units? Those these look MUCH better and realistic, it a shame the other units have to go to waste.

[Miraj]

Brilliant preview lads!

-There are several units which were not mentioned in the preview, such as the Hospitaller Knights and Latin Longbows. Was they ditched? Are they mercenary units? Or did you simply not have time for them?

-Why use European architecture for the Jerusalem faction? Doesn’t it kill the atmosphere a bit? Well I personally think so.



Cheers..

Hospitaller are still in I believe, though since there were no changes to them there was no reason to feature them.

Latin Longbows have been ditched indeed. The Kingdom of Jerusalem has access to local levy mediterannean and middle eastern archers and thus giving them a longbow edge would be too much I think.

The Kingdom of Jerusalem is of the "north european" culture type, meaning its default architecture is.. north european. This I believe is accurate as the historical fortresses of Acre, Kerak or Krak de Chevaliers were all designed and built in a european style, albeit with some local influences. Some start settlements of the KoJ are actually middle-eastern, like Jerusalem and Tyre, this is to reflect the still eastern/muslim nature of those cities at 1175. I think keeping the KoJ north_european in architecture is historically correct because with increased frankish migrations to the kingdom many cities had already become basically european cities in the levant (acre, jaffa, tripoli) and a north european building set reflects this process.

Yea what happened to all the other jerusalem units? Those these look MUCH better and realistic, it a shame the other units have to go to waste.

I dont see reason to keep the old units, since these units look so much better and realistic. We'll see what we can do with the older one and perhaps put them to use for other purposes.

[Azraelthefallen]

I was wondering, then what are you going to do with the third crusade, u know with all of Richards longbows, and such...

[finneys13]

Did you use the very French looking namelist in the end?

[Cymry]

it ist possible to change the coulor of the fortresses? because i don't think they used dark stones for their fortresses in the holy land - there wasn't dark stone north european architecture is right - but the coulor ...

[iudas]

I think they can change the campaign map models, but not the battle map building ones, so in-battle I doubt they could re-colour the walls and such.

[Miraj]

I was wondering, then what are you going to do with the third crusade, u know with all of Richards longbows, and such...

Good idea. We could easily give Richard's crusader army spawn a few of the longbows.


I'm don't think we're going to edit campaign map models.

[Ahiga]

Does someone have a source for how many longbowmen Richard brought along? I've never really actually heard of them being used in Outremer, merely the assumption that as Richard went along, he would have brought some longbowmen. The only archers I've tended to hear being used in Outremer were native ones. Their lack will provide for an interesting weakness to the KoJ, remedied in the fact that their crossbowmen are the best in the mod, and their knightly charge is one of the (if not -the-) best charges in the game.

They'll be a challenge in the face of so much Turkish Horse archery, but it will be a good challenge. One that makes you all the prouder to succeed, or all the determined after a defeat.

"In the high period of the longbow, there was only one group of people who were able to consistently defeat the English longbowmen. Using highly flexed composite bows, and shooting from horseback, the Saracens encountered during the Crusades were able to trounce the English archer army. The Saracen archers were far to quick and mobile for the English archer army." - http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval...e-longbow.html

"But most of Richard's archers were Italian -- not English or Welsh -- mercenaries who used crossbows. He apparently had very few English archers equipped with longbows which, as Riain has noted, tended to dry out in the desert heat of Palestine. But it also must be remembered that the longbow was not an important factor in most English armies until the reign of Edward I when as a matter of policy he developed archery and the use of the longbow as a means to strengthen his armies. Those developments came primarily after the fall of Acre."
- http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com...mID=21&ID=7461

[Recon]

-Castles and cities has probably been a mix between Middle Eastern and European architecture, but the materials used in the construction has most likely been Middle Eastern or Greek/Italian. So if not editing campaign map models, maybe use the Southern European architecture instead?

-To be honest I have never heard about the usage of Longbows in the holy land either, so no big let down for me, I was just wondering.

Cheers..

[Miraj]

Hmm, pardon my ignorance as I haven't played an actual M2TW campaign for a while, but is the Eastern European building set actually different from the North European one?

[Recon]

Hmm, pardon my ignorance as I haven't played an actual M2TW campaign for a while, but is the Eastern European building set actually different from the North European one?

pardon me, all that talk about the east; by Eastern European, I meant Southern European.

[Miraj]

Ahh, i see. Well the thing is the southern european/greek building set is used by the Byzantium, Armenians and Georgians. And for the sake of diversity I think its best to keep the KoJ north european. Really, the north europeans cities and castles with palms and sands outside them are actually pretty cool looking in that new climate, so it wont be un-refreshing at all. Especially consider a lot of the cities you will conquer are well developed muslims ones (as in the case of egypt) and thus you will see plenty of diverse scenery as the KoJ.


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On a different note here are a couple of un-used banners we made for the KoJ previews frontpage link. The one that we actually used is not shown here and you can see it when gigagaia posts up the preview link on the front page. You can shrink and customize these into sigs if you'd like. All the pics feature the Templar Knights.

[Manuel Komnenos]

This is simply beautiful. Ahiga you must write scenario for some hollywood film, or game. Of course Mirage and AD also do great job. I repeat, simply beatiful!

[Randarkmaan]

Concerning Richard and longbowmen: I've never actually seen any real historical sources for the use of longbowmen by Richard I, save for the Crusades trilogy by Jan Guillou (a very good book series, but some of the history may be doubtful). Richard was famed for his widespread and effective use of crossbowmen, mostly Italian and Gascon mercenaries, not longbowmen, and as far as I know I don't think Richard brought many English troops at all to the Holy Land, heck he wasn't even English, he was from Anjou. Though you could include them as a curiosity, but don't make them look like some 15th century archers, at this point in history, they would not have been professional soldiers, but peasants who have a bow and some experience, mostly from hunting.

By the way, in the book (the one I mentioned) Richard uses his archers to fire a massed barrage at the charging saracen cavalry, the thick rain of arrows rains down on them and brings down man and horse, then when they have got closer, and before the horsemen have truly realized what has happened, they are within the secure range of the crossbowmen who mercilessly cut down what is left of them.

[Ahiga]

This is simply beautiful. Ahiga you must write scenario for some hollywood film, or game. Of course Mirage and AD also do great job. I repeat, simply beatiful!

Thank you Manuel! There was much to be inspired by in AD's & Strelac's (His are the turcopoles, AD's are those shown) skins.

By the way, in the book (the one I mentioned) Richard uses his archers to fire a massed barrage at the charging saracen cavalry, the thick rain of arrows rains down on them and brings down man and horse, then when they have got closer, and before the horsemen have truly realized what has happened, they are within the secure range of the crossbowmen who mercilessly cut down what is left of them.

Kind of my hope for how Volley-Fire will work (Which the Turcopoles may use) - Low attack, no skirmishing ability, with exceedingly high attack speed, so that their attack is meaningless against those with armor, but with those that are not well armored (I.E. - Turkish Horse archers), it strikes them like a shotgun round.

I think unless we decide to be creative, then, that Longbowmen won't be featured. You'll be able to turn to Turcopole foot archers and mercenary indigenous archers, but rely on them more to stave off the enemy than to bring you victory.

[Manco]

Godverdoeme, KoJ looks bloody amazing, I can't wait to slaughter the infidels.
I especially love those templar axemen (are they historic?) and the knights of Jerusalem.
Some questions though: Do the KoJ and the eastern Christians start with alliances?
And will the range of crossbowmen be larger than that of horse archers? Otherwise it's gonna be a massacre trying to counter horsearchers (at least with my vanilla play-style)

[Ahiga]

Godverdoeme, KoJ looks bloody amazing, I can't wait to slaughter the infidels.
I especially love those templar axemen (are they historic?) and the knights of Jerusalem.
Some questions though: Do the KoJ and the eastern Christians start with alliances?
And will the range of crossbowmen be larger than that of horse archers? Otherwise it's gonna be a massacre trying to counter horsearchers (at least with my vanilla play-style)

1. It's accurate in that 'bearded' or Danish axes were used by the Crusaders. We didn't see anything in fine historical detail saying that dismounted templars used axes, but rather than just have another dismounted knight with melee weapon and shield, we felt the 2h axe would be better, and as AD put it, more symbolic of the aggressive 'Lead the charge' nature of the Templars.
2. They don't start with alliances, but it's probably going to be pretty easy to make one with Armenia, probably a little easy with Georgia, and likely a bit difficult with Byzantium (Whom I believe hatred was growing for at this time.)
3. Crossbows have a much shorter range than Skirmishing Horse Archers, but those HA (called 'regular bows') are far from the damaging presence they were in vanilla. These distance-shooting units have much lower damage and are meant to harass and skirmish.
   
   Crossbows have a farther range than Close bow Horse Archers, which are the armor-piercing Horse Archers who must enter a very close distance to get off their shots, and must get into the range of Crossbowmen to do so. Crossbows of course can also armor pierce.
   
   What you'll need to do is rely on mercenary archers or your own dismounted turcopoles to deal with far-ranged HA, and your crossbows to deal with close range HA.

[Miraj]

From what AlphaDelta has told me, historically crossbows were actually quite long range, accurate and very powerful. The only real weaknesses of the crossbow was that it was not as simple to make as a bow (thus I assume more expensive?) and most importantly they have a very long re-loading time exposing crossbow men to be caught off-guard and exposed during reloading.

Nevertheless, if you have a strong position with back up to protect your crossbows then they will be your ultimate anti-HA weapon.

[Ahiga]

I remember reading that they began to use composite materials in the crossbow, almost like the composite bows of the Saracens. Perhaps that can be a difference between the Hybrid Crossbowmen and the tier 1 one - distance, accuracy, ect.