FACTION PREVIEW: The Roman Empire

[Agisilaos]

that was an excellent preview. i am shocked. amazing job and very pretty units.
congratulations!!!!

[Man of West Gondor]

Superb! Beautiful! Wonderful Work of Art!!!!! And now we party!

[General A. Skywalker]

GREAT!!

But these units are not in the game yet, are they?

[Miraj]

But these units are not in the game yet, are they?

By 'game' you mean in Broken Crescent? Yes of course they are in BC and they are all balanced, and ready to rumble.

[General A. Skywalker]

Yeah, that's what I mean, thank you.

I haven't had any particular interest in BC before, but seeing this... WOW!!

When will the mod be released?

[Boudicca]

Excellent preview.

So the Toxotai units will be the only foot archers around for the byzantines, I suppose. Should leave them quite vulnerable to any horse archer faction. Promises a good, long and devastating war. I like those in Total war games. And I also like to see a faction with weaknesses that resemble historical weaknesses.

[Miraj]

Mind you we've set Toxotais to be 150 men when a normal archer size is 120 men. This is sort of to simulate low quality but a large number of peasant or city folk levied into the unit. Some other foot archery factions have that same bonus.

Also ERE can recruit medium armenian infantry archers from across anatolia. They are an excellent and experienced hybrid archer unit that can make up for any lacking in the range department.
( http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j2...archers_01.jpg )

[Grifman]

Excellent work, but I have one question:

Should Latin knights really be available to Muslim factions? I've never read of Western knights fighting on behalf of Muslim armies, except in the late Middle Ages when Turkish vassals supplied them with troops. Western mercenaries fighting for the Muslims doesn't seem right to me, but maybe I've missed something in my reading.

[Miraj]

I believe the BC team was also quite surprised to learn that many secular Latin knights that settled in the Outremer would often hire themselves out to various local Syrian and Egyptian sultans.

But they will be a ultra-rare novelty for Muslim factions in any case.

[General A. Skywalker]

I believe the BC team was also quite surprised to learn that many secular Latin knights that settled in the Outremer would often hire themselves out to various local Syrian and Egyptian sultans.

Disgrace!!!

[Ahiga]

Excellent work, but I have one question:

Should Latin knights really be available to Muslim factions? I've never read of Western knights fighting on behalf of Muslim armies, except in the late Middle Ages when Turkish vassals supplied them with troops. Western mercenaries fighting for the Muslims doesn't seem right to me, but maybe I've missed something in my reading.

History can be a very multi-layered thing, and I'll often read one source that changes it from what I read in another.

The Crusades had some rather funny business. There is a Muslim account of newly arrived Frank mistreating him (Forcing him to worship towards Jerusalem, not mecca) until his templar friends arrive and take the man away, apologizing to the Muslim for his behavior. Yet these would be the Templars and Hospitallers marked for death after Hattin when secular knights were ransomed. As time went on the Crusaders began to respect (However grudgingly) their Muslim foe while coming to hate the Eastern Romans. There is also the battle (With more of Crusaders fighting Crusaders) in which a Crusader & Muslim army fought a Crusader & Muslim Army. There was also a Jewish account of a Seljuk Turkish invasion into Egypt which included a slew of ethnicities including: Persians, Turks, Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Anatolians, Greeks, "Germans", and Syrians.

In general though while the Crusaders arrived in zealous fanaticism (And others who came followed suit), as soon as they settled in they became yet another player in the levantine politics. Muslims for many of them became rivals instead of godforsaken enemies, and were those to do trade with and sometimes interact with socially.

In the book "God's Warriors, Crusaders, Saracens and the Battle for Jerusalem" By Dr Henry Nicholson and Dr David Nicolle [It is affiliated with Osprey], we can read that:

• Large Numbers of renegate European or Crusader warriors served Saladin and his successors after Saladin's reconquest of most of the Crusader States.

There was also a remark that they served the Turkish Sultanates in Anatolia (Which was a key reason why I suggested them as Muslim mercenaries), but I can't find that. By and large though, a regular knight would not have held the fanatical piety that a Templar or Hospitaller would have. There's no way a Templar or Hospitaller would serve a Muslim, and no real way a Muslim Ghazi would serve a Christian.

[Burnum]

Awesome, I do like the Idea of Knights fighting with Muslim armies.

[General A. Skywalker]

• Large Numbers of renegate European or Crusader warriors served Saladin and his successors after Saladin's reconquest of most of the Crusader States.

How could they??!! I am truly disappointed!

[Miraj]

I am truly disappointed!

Yes, reality has this effect.

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

And they were all of them decieved, for when the Romans least expected it, the smallest of nations caught them unawares.

Makuria will rise again!

(using Latin Knights, no less!)

(sorry )

[Keravnos]

Well, if it is for Makuria... so be it!

[The King Of Peasants]

This Will make for an interesting world the fuzz Makurian fanboys in the ERE thread thats a change

[Candelarius]

Superb. This mod is looking better and better each time I visit this forum. I'm deeply impressed with the level of scholarship that was put into this project and the intelligence expressed by the modders in their faction descriptions and unit rosters (not that other mods are not intelligent, of course!). Looking forward to this one for sure.


One piece of feedback, though....in this image:


You have a soldier with an image of Christ painted on his shield. The image looks like you obtained it from an image of a Byzantine wall fresco? It would be extremely unlikely that a soldier, even a wealthy one, would have paid someone to paint such an intricate image on his shield for him. I personally own two Osprey books on this subject (the real books, and not the stolen ones that I see people posting scanned images of around here), Byzantine Armies (volumes 886-1118 and 1118-1461), and, in neither book do any of the illustrated shields look anything like that. Indeed, the rest of the shields in your mod look spot-on. Byzantine shields wouldn't be that different from Western Christian shields, although their patterns were more geometric and abstract (sorta like Late Imperial Roman shields).

Just a small piece of feedback. Otherwise great screenshots!

[Otsman]

that was kind of a low blow

[Miraj]

No, he's trying to give a constructive and well intentioned critique. Far from a "low blow".