Royal Cataphracts have a whitish appearance because I found their vanilla appearance to be underwhelming. They were dirty and dented. It stand to reason that Royal guards would have at least polished their armour.
Kliabonophorai, or Clibinarii as the Romans called them, means "metal ovens" this is basically slang as in their metal armour they would have cooked themselves. They were not specifically colourful, infact ALL cataphracts were colourful as they decorated themselves in a similar way to medieval knights. I will post pictures at the end.
The Pahalavan Heroic Cataphracts are an Elite unit. They are probably the closest thing you will find to fantasy in the mod but they are not implausible. Pahlav means hero and is what Cataphractes were often called. Since cataphracts wore coloured armour it also makes sense that the best would be dressed most richly. There are pictures too to support this.
Nisean Cavalry is an elite melee cavalry unit. Historically Parthia would not have had such a distincition between shock and melee cavalry as Cataphracts would have served well in that role but the game does and I played into that. Nisean cavalry are essentially then melee cataphracts. Their rational is that they are mounted on Nisean horses, a now extinct breed that made the greatest mount in antiquity, bred in Nisa which is Parthia's in-game starting region. I am not entirely happy with their appearance but everything is still up for review.
Leopard Skins would have been worn by the elites in Parthian society, often by kings. Leopards were common in that area then and would have been hunted. For that reason I have two elite units who wear leopard skins, they are also general units. While on the topic I would also like to mention the royal huntsmen who appear to be fantasy. They are Spear, bow cavalry and hardly unrealistic, Parthian nobility loved hunting and it seemed to be a fitting unit for a general that was not decked completely in armour.
Mail Masks, some units have also been given masks of chain mail. This too looks like fantasy but it is realistic, it is also present in the vanilla game.
Infantry, I went to great lengths to get the infantry right in the mod. Many Parthian mods make the mistake of adding too many infantry units to parthia, thus making them into another bland all round faction. I did not. The infantry is light or medium and are purposefully weak. They are also overpriced and are a tier higher in recruitment than their counterparts in other factions. I did feel that I had to add them though, for the sake of variety and player choice. Parthians did also use infantry in their armies thought they were not as glorified as their horse archers or cataphracts. Takabara Infantry were the bulk of the units used by the persian empire and a soear-bow infantry man would have been used by pontus too. Native Hellenic Hoplites would have been sons of greek settlers, macedonian settlers and possibly some 'copy-cat' Parthians who had a fasication with greek culture.
Steppe units, parthia had close links to the steppes having come from there themselves. For this reason I have given them steppe units as early game units.
Categorisation: This was difficult to do in my mod. In my mod i have melee cavalry, shock cavalry, melee light cavalry, horse archers, foot archers, cataphract horse archers, melee infantry. Real Parthian armies would have had units that were amalgamations of all of these. Horse archers were also light melee cavalry. Cataphracts were also melee cavalry AND horse archers. ALL Parthian infantry would likely have had a bow. for obvious reasons I did not feature this in the mod. Rome 2 forces us to catagorise units into very very narrow specialties and I had to go with the game.
Pictures:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
A lot of these are Sassanid era but they are essentially the same, especially the infantry who were unchanged.
This large mod significantly beefs up the Parthian roster by adding 18 new units, and 3 reskins. The vanilla roster is small, without much diversity in unit appearances or functions and without elite units.
The aim of this mod is to increase player choice when playing as Parthia while still keeping the faction historically accurate. Parthia is still a unique, cavalry and missile dominated faction that requires you use unconventional tactics to win. Infantry units are light support troops and cavalry have been diversified and buffed. This mod is comprehensive and adds lower, mid and upper tier units.
This is the largest, most accurate Parthian roster on the workshop, new units include:
May I ask how you got the chainmail veil to work with other helmets??
You get the cataphract helmet with the mask, then you photoshop it's diffuse and erase the helmet part. You can then apply it to the variant mesh WITH another helmet. It basically means your unit is wearing 2 helmets, it's just that most of one is invisible.
You get the cataphract helmet with the mask, then you photoshop it's diffuse and erase the helmet part. You can then apply it to the variant mesh WITH another helmet. It basically means your unit is wearing 2 helmets, it's just that most of one is invisible.
Thanks to this great modder we have one of the best unit packs made for this particular faction. It's also great because he didn't go for all infantry and focused on what it truly was and that was a cavarly faction.. This is just an amazing mod. I am so looking forward to playing this with the pax romana mod...
[Release] Sebidee's Parthian Roster Expansion
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Originally Posted by Lemonater47
