Fulcum formation

[Sertorio]

Very nice painting unfortunately i believe it cries for more than a modeller, i believe formations like the testudo or phalanx are hardcoded.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

The trick is basically to change the animation, really nothing else is needed that I can think of. I think Testudo and Phalanx are both in BI (don't remember precisely) and it shouldn't be too difficult to change the animation of one of them.

I looked into this like 2 years ago but nothing ever came of it.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

It's a great picture and very dynamic. I thought Diocle would like it.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

I like the other one I put up on that facebook group, it really shows the chaos of that battle better.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

I particularly like the fulcum arrangement and how the artist shows it as a dynamic structure under stress and in danger of collapsing.

[Diocle]

The novel was wonderfully sad and cries out for a Late Roman hommage - thank you for pointing it out to me and enriching my repertoire of European writers, Diocle! As a thank you, allow me to post a pic for you:

I'm very happy, the book of Buzzati was one of the capital texts of my youth and it's really pretty sad, as sad it is the time (the real main character of the book) going by, carrying with him our lives and our dreams, I was afraid of your judgment because suggesting a text is never an easy matter ... so now I'm absolutely happy!

Thanks for the magnificent pic, it gives new matter form my dreams about the Fulcum!

But let me say here, that actually I am the one who MUST say thank you very much for you friendship and for so many hours of wonderful reading!

Yes because actually SBH is one of the rare persons on this damn planet who gives without asking back, and he gives one of the most precious treasures we can hope to discover: Food for mind in form of great literature!

Thank you very much Nobilissimus!

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

It was a powerful and melancholy read and the comparison with the limitanei garrisons of the Later Roman empire struck me quite powerfully. I have a feeling that a future novel may well be an hommage to his work!

There is no need to apologise, Diocle! I fully understand R/L issues and how they impact on our desires. I am almost finished Book 2, The Fortress of Oblivion, and will be publishing it either this month or the next at the latest.

I also found this pic and thought of your love for the Langobards:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...9702729&type=1

[Diocle]

Thanks a lot! I didn't know the pic but I did know the Group: They are the guys of 'Fortebraccio Veronese' from the North East of the Peninsula, and they are simply great!

One of them is on Deviant and he liked my Langobard drawings, we agree that (for an incredible amount of different reasons) the Langobards are the forgotten part (or better: The dark side) of our national history and this is sad ...

So thanks again for the pic! .... have you seen the amount of good lamellar suites? We are better than the Samurai!

[Diocle]

A small homage to SBH from Langobardia. (OK, sorry, it's a double-post and it's also blatantly off topic, but you know, I'm not an evil person, the point is that probably I'm off-topic from when I was born ....)


Nobilissimus SBH, I know you love walking on mountains and woods, so here a small video from the group 'La fara' in occasion of the event 'AD 568', it's a video made of pics taken during a tour on the ancient track connecting many of the Langobard Castra of the Dukedom of Cividale quoted by Paul the Deacon in his Historia Langobardorum, Paul quotes the castra of Cormones (Cormons), Nemas (Nimis), Osopa (Osoppo), Artenia (Artegna), Reunia, Glemona (Gemona) and Ibligine; the guys, being reenactors, are dressed as Langobards of the VII century and the lands they are crossing belong to Italian North-Eastern landscapes often forgotten also here and certainly very far from the normal tourist destinations, the music is sweet and the pics are nice, so I hope you (but also others) may spend few minutes in the relaxing Langobard atmosphere of the ancient North East:
(Advise: wearing your 'Late Roman' helmet it's not strictly required! ).



EDIT:
To redirect this post more on-topic, here a nice pic of a Langobard version of the Fulcum, it's from the Facebook page of Fortebraccio Veregrense (nice name!)

[Diocle]

Just found this pic on FaceBook, IMO it's a perfect defensive (not moving and made for defense) Fulcum:



... and no Lusted, it's not the Testudo,
in fact actually the Testudo was another formation,
it was different, another thing, not the same,
two different formations, two worlds ...
damn my poor English! Maybe this could work:



FULCUM =/= TESTUDO

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Great pic!

[Diocle]

Now, sorry guys, I'm not doc Frankenstein and I don't want to revive corpses but, .. but,.. but, now that I've spent an incredible, really unbelievable, amount of time playing Rome 2 & Attila, I've found and used with some profit the Fulcum Formation, so I've decided to post few screens also to make amends for the harsh and brutal judgements I've expressed here about Rome 2 and Attila.

I'm using a small wonderful Mod which adds a lot of useful formation to the Roman, Late Rooman and Byzantine armies, the fulcum formation in the mod works mainly as a defensive anti-cavalry static formation (very useful with Huns and Sassies), it would be nice implementing also a dinamic version of the Formation but .. all in all I understand that we can't ask too much to the modding community, expecially in times of Orks, Bretonnian Knights and Vampire Counts.

So, sorry Lusted & C.! Here my pics:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Late Roman & Early Imperial Roman static Fulcum:






Side note: if you use the Fulcum with spear armed units .. it's better!

For those few interested the Mod can be found here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=374901803

The version for Late Roman and Byzantine troops can be found here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=655759885

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Hmmm, I tried the Late Roman fulcum mod just now but nothing seemed to change in terms of the milites deploying. I am also using the Fall of the Eagles mod so maybe there is a conflict here? On a side note, here are 2 videos showing a similar custom battle I created using Attila Total War (with the FotE mod) and Rome Total War/IB (with SAI mod) to show the difference between the two different game engines. The idea was to illustrate the different unit collision mechanics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LBAcxQyHLo&t=148s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnxCIh9x5YI

[Diocle]

Well, in my experience, using Radious Mod for Attila (actually I'm almost sexually attracted by Dramabelli's units!) the formation doesn't work for all the units, Radious Mod has a pretty complex structure when you add all the army packs, in any case the Fulcum works for Vanilla units and few others, as you can see in the following pics (under spoiler to avoid the cops' rage), you have just to selct the symbol with the overlapping shields and .. job is done, you've your static fulcum!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In this case you can see the vanilla scutarii in Fulcum and the poor Quintani guys which have to face the incoming Alans not in Fulcum because they lack the right button and cannot be deployed in Fulcum (no fear! even for this small test, I protected them with tribuli! )

.. so, even though I see the formation very close to a protected attack column (something like a more dynamic version of the mobile testudo), I think that it's higly possible it was used as a static formation to face the growing power of cavalry.

About your videos: thank you very much, they are very nice and I think they show what I've always said about the lack of penetration on warscape engine, I add a samll interesting video I've found showing one of the features I hate more in Rome2 and Attila (I thinks it's closely realted with the matter of your videos):



In my opinion, penetration and formation depth play a key role in ancient warfare and, even though nobody of us can fully understand what passes in the mind of men having to face death in melee combat, we can state that the ancient warfare was based on formations which in terms of modern warfare can be classed as columns. The formation depth was a key feature in keeping the unit thogether and in increasing its push and breaking skills, sadly warscape engine has been created for depicting musket fire and modern warfare in which we see units maximalizing their firepower using thin and wide lines of battle, so .. so .. it's a pain!

I stop here, I've revived this thread to make amends for my unfair comments against Rome2 and Attila so .. I don't want to begin a new lamentation about penetration and depth.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Yes, that is a great video from Meridius - I have been subscribed to him for quite a while now.The issue of unit collision and depth mechanics is a hoary one and is one the warscape engine is not suited to demonstrate with an degree of fidelity. The older RTW engine was much better but it also had its flaws. I think you have hit the proverbial on the head, though, by raising the fact that no one now really understands how ancient battles were fought in detail and so any criticism of a simulated arena is necessarily flawed to some degree.

Attila falls down the moment the units clash for me (unlike RTW/IB) but it does raise the bar for the theatrical scena, as it were. By that, I mean, on a painterly level or the tableau vivant, it can present moments of beauty and terror which for me is gripping. It is more like a moving painting at times whereas as RTW/IB is a wargame. Both remain installed on my PC but for different reasons.

On a side note: I am attending the twice-yearly Marle Event this August in my guise as a Miles Barcarius. I will at last stand in a fulcum!

[Julianus Flavius]

Is that you SBH? Nice outfit if it is

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Thanks, Julianus - it indeed myself up on the moors slightly north of the strath where I live.

[Diocle]

No words! Wonderful pic SBH! Apart the spectacular landscape (I can almost see James Graham riding there in his last glorious and disperate chevauchée), you look like a tough campidoctor, hardened by years of hard campaigns and innumerable battles!

Thought of the day: in this time of snowflakes, let me state that age has its own privileges, babies!

Side question:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

We all have now undrestood that something here doesn't correspond to what you formally say: your pics are too real to be just reenacting, your novels are too real to be just novels, actually they are wonderful chronicles, ("Commentarii" he used to call them Caesar), and you seem/are a direct witness of what you write. So, let me, one of your most loyal followers, make you a humble but frim request: in the next pics may you be so kind to widen the camera's view, showing us also the time-machine you're using in your historical journeys?

I think in fact it's time now to reveal, to this small but selected public, your real identity of time-traveler in service of Her Majesty! Thanks!

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

What do we want? Time Travel! When do we want it? Then!

[nichita1998]

Although the fulcum may be not possible to implement in the game, a normal testudo mini-mod would be just fine as Romans have a hard time fighting Sassanids. Even Attila has a similar mini-mod that adds attacking (def bonus vs missiles) and defensive (bonus def against melee) testudo to Roman units. If this is really easy to do can someone tell me how to do it myself, please?