[very out of date] Preview 2: The Mauryan Empire

[Boom S]

Iirc from Chakravarti`s book(the art of war in ancient india) maces were indeed used, but I never saw a picture of one. Could you provide an illustration or image of the actual thing?

mace was an important part of early days in ancient Indian warfare but was slowly going out of use by the time of Mauryas with development of advanced metallurgy. by the time of the Imperial Guptas, maces or gadas were all but absent as a battlefield weapon.
it is still used however as an exercise and body-building tool. there are two general types, a solid wooden one with handle (size can vary from 2 feet to about 4 feet) and the lollipop one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUgQ0q9sLmE&
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP_ow_7gbB8
what CC and Prometheus has depicted is the exercise version in the 2nd vid.

the version on the far left from a TV version of Mahabharat is an accurate depiction of the Gada(war-mace) and matches with the description given in the Mahabharat. (be warned though, the rest of the weapons, costume, hairstyle etc are complete nonsense )


another view of the same Gada on the left, the one on the right is completely wrong though.

[Boom S]

Unit Roster with suggested names

Melee
1.Line Infantry Pikemen (Padatik Sainya)
2.Line Swordsmen (Asi Yoddha)
3.Elite Swordsmen (Antarvamsik Sainya)
4.AoR Elite Pikemen (Gandhara Hoplite) (if that's what you said ?)
Archer
5.AoR Light Archer (Atavi Dhanur Sainya)
6.Elite Heavy Archer (Dhanurvid Sainya)
Skirmisher (if you want to have one, else ignore)
7.Chakram throwing Skirmisher (Chakradhar Sainya)
Cavalry
8.AoR Elite Light Cavalry (Kamboja Asvarohi or Kamboja Light Cavalry, your choice)
9.Elite Medium/Heavy Cavalry (Rajanya Asvarohi)
Chariot
10.Light Chariot (Yuddha Ratha)
11.Elite Heavy Chariot (Maharathi Sainya)
Elephant
12.Light() War Elephant (Rana-Hasti)
13.Armoured War Elephant (Airavat)

Did I miss anything ?

I'll put up a little historical background behind these names later and also images for a set of weapons these units might carry, you can use that if you want.
cheers.

p.s. You haven't written anything about whether you can change the beards or the pointy hats. I do hope you can, otherwise the credibility of the mod will suffer.

[Caligula Caesar]

Prometheus is or was active in a Dune mod I think, you can find it in his last few posts. check the last page of Prometheus skin evolution thread or something. he last logged in here last month, so if you can PM him he might still be able to help you with his older units.

I doubt he'll be able to remember, I'm afraid. He left behind RG a long time ago, and indeed the units are 4 years old

btw, Gandhara had a greek population even before bactrian rule, which happened after the fall of Mauryan empire in the first place. I'm not talking of that. anyway, so you decided to create Gandhara hoplites ? AOR I guess ? good decision !

I'm sure I'll be able to find a good unit somewhere (or maybe I can make one), but yes, there will be Greek AoRs in the north.

btw, do you know who made this mod ? http://www.ancient-battles.com/catw/slaves.htm
the line swordsman unit is quite close to what I'm describing, again, note the shield !
his medium cavalry unit(atmarakshaka turanga) is quite close to realism but some of the other units are, what may I say, not too good.

You mean the Asiheti Sainika for the sword unit? I like his sword and the clothes are decent, but tbh the model is not. Look how fat his legs are!

So the medium cavalry should be spear-armed?

That mod is to be found in the released mods forum iirc. I have downloaded it, but it looked too Beta-ish for me to play much of it (and I am used to better maps).

what I find is that all the mods have some good units but are completely let down by some downright silly units.
you have a genuine chance to create the best Maurya faction ever ! best of luck !

Thanks

Thanks for your list of units as well Though there are a few units missing. The clubman should be a tribal clubman unit (not Brahman ) (that club you show is scary ) and how could I say that a unit comes from a region (for the Gandharan Cavalry - is that the Kamboja Asvarohi? - the Ujjaini Swordsmen and the Uttarapatha Swordsmen. I do want to keep these units)

So what I need to do is add a light archer unit (and fix the other one), sort the skirmisher (either remove him or give him those Chakrams), and add a light swordsman unit? I'll see to it. Is there anything glaring wrong with any other units? If so, I may - may - be able to sort it.

Edit: I can probably changed the beards, but probably not the hats (do you not mean the helmets?)

[Boom S]

one question, may I ask which part(s) of the two swordsmen unit you wish to retain, just the unit or the unit along with its current name ?

the names, as they stand now would need modification but you can of course retain those two units. but then you will have a total of 5 infantry units if I understood correctly,
line spearmen, line swordsmen, two heavier infantry swordsmen and the hoplites. just asking because you said there were limits to how many units a faction could have.

Edit: I can probably changed the beards, but probably not the hats (do you not mean the helmets?)

hats or helmets, they look very persian. the Indian helmet probably had a rounded peaked appearance like this. (minus the ornamental halo at the back)


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[Caligula Caesar]

Well... I'll have to see how things pan out, tbh. I may have to cut back in future, but for now that lineup seems fine. I'll sort out the Mauryans once I have finished the current set of work for VII and sorted the Romans, who are about half-done.

[Boom S]

which threads are those(rome) previewed in ? can you give a link ? will love to have a look.

I saw that you had a thread on the map which I found very beautiful. I can probably help with the locations and names of the cities and ports. btw, is you India map western India only ?

[Caligula Caesar]

Yeah, I go further than a lot of mods in having Ujjain on the map, but unfortunately there can only be 21 factions, amongst other annoying limits, so I was not able to have the rest of India on the map I will try my best to get RTR to do so when it comes to making a Grand Campaign

Rome isn't previewed yet, but the units are coming from FoE and VII (though I can't use all the Italian units there due to the limits I mentioned ), except for one unit which I may ask for from Roma Surrectum II once they release

I'll lay out my plans in another thread.

[Boom S]

just trying to figure out how this works, how is mapsize related to number of factions ? btw, if you guys do have a grand campaign, try to get China and central Asia in it too.

[Caligula Caesar]

That's unlikely for several reasons, I'm afraid:

1. I'm afraid the RTR Team prefers small scales and lots of detail. A port to M2 allows 10 more factions, but since we like things detailed, we probably won't go too much further east than the maximum extent of the Roman Empire (or perhaps the Seleukid Empire). I like to go as far east as possible, so I'll see how far I can push it

2. The map has a maximum width. My map is at that limit, and I doubt the Team will want to make a smaller map.

3. There are already doubts about having India, with the argument that the Indians and Iberians are too far away...

I tried to have a consistant amount of regions for each geographical location and represent all the major cities on the map.

[florin80]

Plus the limit of regions on the map is 200, one of which has to be the sea. In view of this, stretching the map to China(and downgrading its scale to fit the limit) would pretty much make this look like a Risk map.

[Caligula Caesar]

That too... I could remove one or two from places to shift them, but not that many.

[Boom S]

CC, here's a detailed look at the cavalry units. I'm giving a little historical background to explain the names of the units and its possible attributes(which if you want you can use while assigning final attributes for a balanced game)
The rest is devoted to the units weapons and attire. you can skip the history part if you want.

Cavalry
History
Horses and horse-riders have played a very important role from the dawn of Indian civilization as attested by the Rig-Veda, which is India's oldest book and some also consider it to be the world's oldest book. It describes the horse as one of the pre-eminent factors describing a tribe's strength.
Unfortunately, due to the prevalent climatic conditions, proper India was never ideal country for raising strong battle-worthy horses, horses were in fact completely absent in the south of the country. Only in the north-west of the country, were there proper climatic conditions for rearing horses suitable for warfare. While the other surrounding provinces too had their own cavalry, it was the province of kamboja***** that was universally considered as the place of the finest cavalrymen on swift and nimble horses, one of their names was Asvaka which means "..of the horse" i.e "related to the horse".
Up until around 1000AD, Kamboja cavalarymen were sought after all over India for their fine horses and horsemanship. More than one sources attest to the high spirits of both horse and rider, they were never known to flee from battle or get fazed by the pressures of war and served in the forces of every significant Indian monarch. Kamboja cavalry is also known to have served in the forces of Darius III against Alexander in gaugamela. The wiki page also says

The Persian and Indian cavalry units stationed in the center with Darius broke through. Instead of taking the phalanx or Parmenion in the rear, however, they continued on towards the camp to loot. They also tried to rescue Queen Mother Sisygambis but she refused to go with them. On their way back, the Indians slew over 60 of the Companion cavalry.

but I'm unaware of the source of this information.
Like most light cavalry units, these would have fought with a medium sized spear, a small shield may or may not have been used and a couple of javelins.
To sum up, these are what we know about the Kamboja Cavalry, they were lightly armed and fast, highly skilled with a strong reputation of high morale. It is for these reasons that I advised that this unit should be classified as Elite Light Cavalry. Since they were available in only one region, I thought it might be an AOR unit. You might consider reflecting these attributes in the game, the cost and upkeep should be at par with regular light infantry, perhaps a shade higher.

Other than the Kamboja Cavalry, the Emperor would have maintained his own horsemen in his standing army. Since by this time the prestige of horse-riders came after elephants and at par with charioteers, these horsemen would be composed of minor royalty, sub-ordinate kings, relatives of ministers, bureaucrats etc and the land owning class. Standard practice was to equip the units of the standing army at a significantly higher level so that they could hold their own in case any of the mobilised units revolted. The riders themselves were from well to do families and hence could afford to don the best protection available, the full nine yards of helmet, breastplates/mail, neckguards, armguards and thigh-guards. The riders would have carried a shield and a sword(not a spear, spears were considered inferior weapons than swords) of the slashing kind. I might add that India never produced a specialised sword meant for stabbing or thrusting.
The horses also had a crude rope stirrup, some light protective cover in the frontal parts, possibly made of leather and some kind of saddle. The horses would have been bought from either Kambojas or from the steppes of central Asia further north. They must have fetched a premium at the Mauryan court. This tradition of buying strong horses from central asia and later west asia continued well into the medieval period. I don't think these horses would have been breeds able to be used as cataphracts (the lamellar armour technology was available and used on elephants) but would have been otherwise armoured.
It's up to you to classify them as Heavy or Medium cavalry.

Coming to attributes, these riders would have been quite skilled since they would have been educated in ashrams where military training was a part of curriculum from childhood. In one sense, the ones who ended up as cavalry would have been fighting all their adult life and training towards it for much of their adolescence period. Loyalty and morale both should be pretty good since they would have been drilled on the code of the warrior since childhood which puts high emphasis on these aspects. On the downside, the numbers of such cavalry would have constituted a smallish part of the total Mauryan Cavalry, not more than 10 to 15 % IMO. they would also have had large retinues of servants and aides, both these points could be reflected by keeping both the cost and upkeep high.
just my 2 bits.

Now on to units info :

Elite Light Cavalry
http://i358.photobucket.com/albums/o...er1141/Cav.jpg

Name : Kamboja Asvarohi or Kamboja Light Cavalry
Primary Weapon : A spear
Secondary Weapon : Javelins
Shields : Something like this can be used(minus the elaborate etchings) but you can decide against using one just as well.
Attire : In your unit is fine except the beards and the hat/helmet.

Medium/Heavy Cavalry
Name : Rajanya Asvarohi (Rajanya means "related to king(s)" or "of royal family". I would advice against the original name Gandhara Cavalry since the cavalry tradition there wasn't anything out of the ordinary about gandhara in this aspect)
Primary Weapon : Slashing Cavalry Broadsword Bhindipala. I've created an image, use it if you want.



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Secondary Weapon : None
Shield : Your present shield is pretty good, may be you can change the symbol to the Lion Capital ? It was usual practice to emboss any available flat surface with the Emperors symbol.
Armour : Lots of armour ! they used both plate armour and lamellar armour. (I suspect what Kautilya means by lohajalika (literally iron net) is lamellar armour rather than mail.) I've already given the details earlier in the post, check it and decide if you can incorporate any of it. the helmet would be similar to the one earlier in the page.
Attire : In addition to the above, no beards.

Any questions ?

*****There are conflicting opinions about the location of Kamboja, for reasons that would be too lengthy to reproduce here, I go by the opinion that ancient Kamboja is the same place as present day Sindh province (in Pakistan), the south-western parts of Rajasthan and north-western parts of Gujarat, the last two in present day India.

[Caligula Caesar]

You say that there is not such a great cavalry tradition in Gandhara... but isn't that he same area as the Kamboja? So Sagala and Taxila on my map (btw, should one of those regions be called "Kamboja"?). So that would make it the same as the Kamboja Asvarohi (btw, I swear EB uses that name for it). That would make my light cavalry one the medium cavalry... which doesn't quite fit. Ironically, the skin from my Gandharan fits to your factional one lol.

Ok, the one question I do have is how many medium cavalrymen should there be in a Mauryan Army? Since they are '"related to king(s)" or "of royal family"' should they only be recruited from the highest levels of Mauryan society? And who then fills the light cavalryslot (or did they all come from Kamboja?)?

[Boom S]

I'm sorry to make too many posts and slow progress , blame it on my slow typing speed and the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day.

Mace Berserker unit info, as requested.

Thanks for your list of units as well Though there are a few units missing. The clubman should be a tribal clubman unit (not Brahman ) (that club you show is scary ) and how could I say that a unit comes from a region (for the Gandharan Cavalry - is that the Kamboja Asvarohi? - the Ujjaini Swordsmen and the Uttarapatha Swordsmen. I do want to keep these units)

but mace (gada) berserker unit is not same as clubman ! nor will it be a tribal unit. clubs and maces are not same either. clubs were usually a feet and a half long one handed affairs made of hardwood and little else. the people using them had little knowledge of metallurgy or organised warfare and they won't have been part of the regular Mauryan army.
Gada wielders OTOH were very accomplished warriors, Gadas themselves were originally considered pedigreed weapons, since in both the epics there is at least one hero who is portrayed as a Gada wielder. moreover, it took real skill, not to mention sheer physical strength to become an effective Gada armed berserker, keeping in mind that the gada was a two handed weapon preventing the soldier from carrying a shield and the soldier couldn't have worn any considerable amount of armour either. all he had to defend himself was his skill.
the ancient treatises on warcraft too speak in some detail about the 'art' of fighting with the mace, indicating its importance. it's likely that the largest bodied soldiers were picked to be trained as mace berserkers. if possible you can make these units a little larger in size than the rest of the soldiers.
they would have been bare chested for the most part.

p.s. I don't know how difficult or easy it is to change unit colour, the main colours in use were yellow, ochre or saffron, bright red and indigo. the symbol of the Muryan dynasty itself was the peacock (Maur or Mayur means peacock) and chances are high that the core of the standing army, i.e the king's own guards(elite swordsmen) and the Rajanya Asvarohi would have worn clothes dyed in indigo. if nothing else it will look cool !

[Caligula Caesar]

Its pretty simple to recolour units, if the units aren't too complicated. I think it should be accomplishable. Thanks for the clearup about the clubmen - how much of the military did they make up and are they elite troops then?

[Boom S]

You say that there is not such a great cavalry tradition in Gandhara... but isn't that he same area as the Kamboja? So Sagala and Taxila on my map (btw, should one of those regions be called "Kamboja"?). So that would make it the same as the Kamboja Asvarohi (btw, I swear EB uses that name for it). That would make my light cavalry one the medium cavalry... which doesn't quite fit. Ironically, the skin from my Gandharan fits to your factional one lol.

Gandhara is further north of Kamboja(don't go by wiki ), comprising of modern NWFP(Pakistan), northern parts of Baluchistan and the whole SE belt of Afghanistan adjoining those areas, including kandahar(the name kandahar is supposed to have originated from gandhara). In fact region-wise ancient Gandhara is almost identical with the region of Pashtunistan (minus the western part )for which there is some kind of political movement nowadays. (in pink)


Kamboja would be the SE wing of Pakistan plus adjoining areas of India. You can have a port roundabout karachi and call that province Kamboja. as for the rest of your map questions, could you just post a map of the right extent and I can point out the areas on it ? it will be easier for both you and me than map pointing through the internet ! Taxila for example was a city and was possibly part of the Gandhara province. Now I'm not sure if it also served as the capital of an administrative section of the same name at that time. will have to look into it.

Ok, the one question I do have is how many medium cavalrymen should there be in a Mauryan Army? Since they are '"related to king(s)" or "of royal family"' should they only be recruited from the highest levels of Mauryan society?

Pliny says Chandragupta had 30,000 cavalry. ignoring exaggeration, I would guess about 15% or 4500 of that number was from the standing army. having that number from the minor royals won't have been a problem at all ! the Emperor himself would have had half a dozen major Queens and scores of minor ones. anyone related to any of these queens automatically becomes a royal. any of the brothers and cousins of the king who had any positions of power won't have been any less, they too would have had many queens, the exact number depending on their power and prestige. the ones acting as governors enjoyed a level of prestige almost at par with the Emperor. next came the the ministers and bureaucrats, while unlike royals they were not allowed to have multiple wives except on special conditions(if the first wife was childless), the massive size of Mauryan civilian bureaucracy and military officer corps more than made up for it. Then there were the landowning class, comprising of families of retired ministers/bureaucrats/military officers and sub-ordinate kings who would have sent their sons and male relatives to the Mauryan court to enrol in the royal cavalry and rise up in life. given all this and the comparatively large population of India, it won't have been that difficult to raise a force of 5000 odd cavalrymen. I would imagine that they even rejected quite a few applicants !

And who then fills the light cavalryslot (or did they all come from Kamboja?)?

the bulk of it, yes but also smaller amount from a host of from other areas. in general I think we are covering upwards of 75% of total Mauryan cavalry with these two units. I think that's good enough.

Thanks for the clearup about the clubmen - how much of the military did they make up and are they elite troops then?

you are welcome. I would call them elite-ish units, not fully elite since they didn't have the ability to turn a battle on its own, in spite of whatever skills they may have had. they would also have been very vulnerable to projectile weapons.
I would imagine that they were deployed as terror units or the reserve element for larger infantry formations (Indian forces were divided into forces of ten, that would be the smallest unit commanded by an officer equivalent to NCO in modern armies. subsequent formations would increase by multiples of ten with their own commander ranks) like a battalion (1000 troops). each battalion would have a group of a few (no more than 100, probably less) mace wielders. if you create a mace unit the number of soldiers in it should be low enough to reflect this ratio. if your average infantry unit has 40 soldiers then the mace unit should have no more 5 soldiers. the price and upkeep per mace-soldier would be twice or thrice the average infantry soldier.

[Caligula Caesar]

Ok, that's good then. Still, that Kamboja area isn't too far different from my Gandhara Except that it includes the Paropamisadai. I'll amend the Mauryan rooster at some point, rest assured Though it might not be right now, because I have to finish off those Romans, and VII needs quite a lot of units.

[Boom S]

cool CC. I will hold back further posts till you have a little time on your hands. could you give me a ping on this thread or by PM when you are ready ?

[Caligula Caesar]

Ok, will do so. The Romans are over half done, btw.

[Boom S]

Ok, will do so. The Romans are over half done, btw.

started a review thread yet ?

btw, could you possibly give me a couple of the unit models you are using, to play around with ? say, one of the line infantryman and the swordsman ? I was trying my hand at a little skinning, so.......