Long Factions Post of Suggestions

[Trung Tướng Nam]

First and foremost I recently stumbled upon this mod, and I might say, as a History Major and a gamer, I'm very impressed on how this is looking, seriously you guys get yourselves hired by the Total War people and make Asia Total War. I will say that I'm sure some the suggestions I'll make are very likely to have been said already and I apologize in advance for anything already posted as I have not made time to read everything.
This is merely a list of suggestions for the factions I have just some limited knowledge on that hopefully will be useful . These are mostly unit suggestions.

I. Song Dynasty China
A. I understand that it's a preview (very well researched) and I assume not all the units are showcased, here are additional suggestions for me.
-Chu Ko Nu: Zhuge Liang's repeating crossbow has been used as late as the Qing Dynasty so it goes without saying that it was available during the Song. http://www.franzz.eu/shop/bmz_cache/...ge.750x499.jpg
-Yes the "Ge" dagger-ax fell into disuse after the the Qin-Han Dynasties but the Ji halberd replaced it and was used throughout Medieval China and would have been part of the Imperial Army force's armory. http://img.chinaa2z.com/uploadpic/ku...1229667404.jpg
-Remember back in Rome Total War where every cohort of units (80 men) had a specific flag-bearer and unit lieutenant? Well, for your mod you can do a similar thing as units of men were each led by an officer which you can make a little tougher. You can have varying types like a heavily armored Guandao wielding officer and a scholarly dressed Jian swordsman officer (if this is possible to do of course).
-Different kinds of peasants infantries could work, as farmers could use sickles and tools and at best Dao's where as city peasants could be middle class men with Jian swords.
-"Fire Arrow" Launchers, they are awesome and were available during this period.
-Chinese Imperial forces have used sword and round shield troops for nearly all of Imperial China so they would make ideal medium infantry.
-Chinese Imperial forces also utilized soldiers with large pavise shields armed with swords or shields
-True that calvary was terribly limited to the song, but the Wujing Zhongyao does suggest the existance of "fire lance calvary"
-The Wujing Zhongyao also details grenades, perhaps grenadiers?
-The Chinese had a cornucopia of other kinds of hand and siege cannons available to them.
-Warrior Shaolin monks (historically fought for the Tang Dynasty, so why not?)

II. Dai Viet
A. Considering at this point that China had been in a series of conquering and losing Vietnam to the Vietnamese rebels, one could deduct that the Vietnamese used a myriad of Chinese weapons and armored themselves similarly albeit not as well.
-War elephants were always part of the Vietnamese military, one ancient word of the Vietnamese the Chinese had loosely translates to "elephant people".
-As earlier stated, Vietnam's professional troops would be a watered down version of Chinese imperial troops, but in terms of rebels the Vietnamese had a lot. Mostly you can have a ton of different types of angry sickle farmers and elusive rebels to form the Vietnamese units with their bamboo spears and such.
-placing bamboo stakes in the ground has been a consistent thing for Vietnamese in history, it was done before but made infamous by Tran Hung Dao.

III. Japan
-Depending on the length of years you wish to pursue, you could have the development from the Bushi to the Samurai, opening a new template of units (no-dachi, naginata calvary, yari samurai etc etc).
-Using the old favorite of Shogun Total War is likely already and idea you've considered for units.
-Interestingly, you name a number of your units "shinobi <something>" when Shinobis are spies and ninjas. For non-samurai peasant infantry the term is 'Ashigaru'.
-Depending on how far you want the campaign to go you can have the intrusion of Western peoples like the Dutch and Portuguese and arm the Japanese with the Arequebus gun.

IV: Goryeo
-Goryeo military suggests many influences from Japan and Song China.
-The Goryeo have their own Fire Arrow Launcher called the Hwacha and had grenades as well.
-They are describes as using spears and arrows a lot more than using swords, though Korean swordsmanship does exist.
-The Goryeo would still be using their version of a chariot.
-The Koreans in general are significant forces in medieval naval warfare partly due to their "Turtle ship". http://www2.hawaii.edu/~sford/research/turtle/ship.jpg

V. Mongols and other Turkic peoples
-Medieval 2 Total War vanilla does a pretty good job already showing these units, but mostly they were predominantly horse archers plus several contingents of mixed conquered people's to fill the remaining rolls (like other Turkic grounds, Chinese, Koreans, and mixed minorities).

VI: Muslim Invaders and Western Invaders
-Depending on how long you intend to have the timeline extend, you can bring back several factions from vanilla Medieval 2 Total War such as Islamic factions, the Portuguese, the Italians and maybe the Dutch dressed as a mix of some of the other factions. These groups did enter Asia in a still Medieval period and could be fun "omg sudden invasion factions" (I mean what if Marco Polo brought an army instead, that's a fun what if is it not?)

Conclusion: I hope this was helpful in anyway. If you need pictures, dates, supplementary historical info I'll try my best to find them for you. I will also post this in your suggestions thread.

Additional Note: I can also do gameplay suggestions as I recently read your "Historian" notes, I have no knowledge of coding or making mods but in terms of designing a unit or building or anything in the conceptual and applicative way I can assist.

[yevon]

you should deleted this topic if you had posted it in topic AUH: Ideas.

[Augustus Lucifer]

Since this has been posted in the Ideas thread I'll close this so it isn't in two places.