Constantine: Rise of Christianity - Future Plans, Previews and Historical Discussions

[AnthoniusII]

I like the 1st unit that uses exactly the same shield patern but with diferent details.
Rims, bosses etc can make a diference on a shield!
No matter what they all look wonderfull...
Will thye have their pilla or something similar or they will be R2 vanilla type "legioners"?

[Nelduin]

Wah, such beautiful units. Well done.

[Ahiga]

They look great and having the same shield designs give uniformity, especially when the units can have different helmet designs and clothing As for the officers, I would suggest no shield as a possible solution.

Good to hear that idea because I didn't want it to be weird or anything.

And yeah, you guys at IB are definitely authoritative experts on this period.

[Brivime]

Excellent work, the chainmail over-tunics are a very good addition.

[Ahiga]

I like the 1st unit that uses exactly the same shield patern but with diferent details.
Rims, bosses etc can make a diference on a shield!
No matter what they all look wonderfull...
Will thye have their pilla or something similar or they will be R2 vanilla type "legioners"?

Appreciate it. When I was assigning shields after you guys convinced me for some measure of uniformality I tried to achieve, in order of priority:

1) If a regiment was cited as often being brigaded (which could mean 'they served as separate units together', but in this case I just take to mean 'they did that and could serve in the same formation') together - so the Ioviani and Herculiani, Brachiati and Cornuti as one of Constantine's units. So Daia's Comitatenses Legiones there are using the Quinta Macedonia emblem and the Tertia Diocletiania Thebaeroum emblem, since I read it was suggested one was the product of the other.

2) If a regiment had a seniores and juniores. Technically I should have made it Cornuti Senior/Junior as one unit, Brachiati junior/senior as another, but I wanted to mitigate how much work I had to do considering the plethora of shields already done (also how difficult a shield was for me to design - most I could emulate, but some were too complex). So I think Daia's equites promoti are the shield decor of Equites sagittarii Parthi seniores & juniores. Yes, I know the promoti aren't sagitarii, but I went with it.

3) Failing those two, if the regiment either had shades dominant colors or were located in close proximity or worst case I just liked how they looked together.

I am not about to redo all the shields, but I did come across some interesting artist conceptions of Romans from the 3rd century onward that gave me an idea of what you meant, julianus heraclius, by shields using 'early imperial' designs. Not necessarily the lightning bolt and wreathe stuff of the 1st century AD (honestly I find them rather ugly), but being red predominant and like the Dura Europos scutum (http://s3.amazonaws.com/presspublish...raeuropos6.jpg).





Artist is apparently a "Jozef Hudi"

So in the future I might return and try to de-notita-dignitatumize some of the shields.

Thanks brivime and Nelduin.


With regards to weapons: I know there was a transition going on from the Pila, but complicatingly the Pila still being around. We'll probably give them Pilas for now. I am going to 'shop around' and see if any M&BW OSP or the like has something suitable for the barbed angon and the like.

I'll check my resources again but if someone wants to give me a definitive answer of "yes the Pila was still used" or "No the Pila was replaced by X (And ideally adding what it looked like)", I'd welcome it.


Also I'm avoiding the temptation to mission creep but I am going to see about getting the Germanic Foederati set up for this release so the Romans don't have any lingering projects (but not to say they won't get attention, just the priority will shift) after this release.

[Brivime]

This is a god from Kindah and may hint at what a faction Icon should look like.

تمثال عثر عليه في قرية الفاو عاصمة مملكة كندةوالقرص على الرأس هي إشارة للشمس والوعل الصغير تعد إشارة رمزية للإله عثتر

The best translation I can give you would be:

This statue was found in the village of al-Faw, the capital of the Kindah. The icon on its head is symbolic of the sun and the small ibex is symbolic of the pagan god "Athtar".

[Brivime]

Some more Ghassanid information from an Arabic source which I've put into English:

The Flag of the Ghassanids was most likely red, their battle banner would be triangular, red with a picture of a Saint on it similar to other Orthodox kingdoms of this time. Their capital was at Jabiya and they were originally Pagan before converting to Orthodox Christianity, then later an Eastern sect that had them deemed heretical by the Byzantines. They were established in 220 AD and fell to the Muslims and fully dissolved into the Syriac communities in 638 AD.

[AnthoniusII]

Talking about pilla and expanding to javelins...
Rome 2 units follow the M2TW rule of carrying javelins pointing downgrade (spearhead aiming to the ground) while the troops are on move.
In M2TW skeleton though if a modder assigned a javelin to bone_weapon_weapon01 javelin could be carried naturaly like a spear but when the warrior was about to launch the weapon it turned to the proper side...
I wonder if something similar can be done to Rome 2 model skeletons and weapon assignments:
Here is an example how it works in M2TW.


It works the same for infantry units too.

[Ahiga]

Yeah that's easily achievable if you do the fire at will system. Which, while there are some issues, I prefer using. Or well, I mean the holding the point down. Afraid I don't know how to get them to hold it pointed up.

[Razor]

Stationed but it's questionable if they were recruited there. There's also the disconnect of the hundred years between the Notita Dignitatum and this period. To be honest I'm questioning if they even had Clibinarii at this point - they had Cataphracts, but I seem to recall nebulous accounts of Constantine I creating the Clibinarii.

I kind of circumvented this issue by having the Cataphractarii as regular Roman units and Clibanarii as AOR specialist heavy cavalry of Eastern extraction (like Parthians, who fled the Sassanid take-over of their empire) because of the assumed etymology of the name "Clibanarii" from Persian "Grivpanvar".

Just quick screenshots when I was testing the little dinky phrygian caps for Indigenae horse/foot archers.

Guys in question are mister fedora himself because he hates christians, Maximinius Daia's.


Daia Comitatenses Legions


Daia Legions


Daia Equites Indigenae

I haven't messed with specifying a unit color, so the Indigenae are a mixture of 'poor quality' tunics (grey, white, khaki/off white, brown) and the inherent three-color variety so you get some semblance of color but it's not as technicolor dream coat as in vanilla. It is there, but that's due to the faction colors - we can desaturate them.

Ignore the time-traveller with a early italic scutum. Also need to have officers and standard-bearers use small caetras or color-masked scutums. It's not ideal, but the problem is it is impossible (Unless I want to deal with making something like 10-15 times 4 specific unit entries so every unit has an officer with the scutum emblem of their unit. I can't even, unless I do that, make it so Constantinian officers have shield X and Maxentius officers have shield Y, unfortunately.

Open to suggestions. I was just going to give them the vanilla caetra that auto-colors it to their faction. I can make a oval scutum that auto-colors it to their faction, but it will still be a case of "Ioviani and Herculiani Regiment has an officer with a red scutum and no emblem".

As you can see lots of helmets from Fall of Rome are included, along with the draco and other stuff.

Looking nice! Funny to see stuff from a M2TW mod appear in R2TW and not look like it's out of place. I do recommend checking the helmet textures because they look a bit too dark, especially the bronze and gilded materials like helmets and the draco.

Good job!

[Brivime]

It is very interesting to note the drastic effects that Hellenization had on the Arab tribes in Syria starting with Alexander The Great, while they upholded their traditional linguistic traits in Arabic dialects and their culture most of the administrative and military matters were done in Greek this even influenced the poetry styles of central Arabia.

The de-facto language for the Umayyad Caliphate's administration was Greek until Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan changed it back into Arabic, the reason for this was that Syria and Egypt were very thoroughly Hellenized by Rome at this point that it was apparently more efficient to use Greek.

I will not reflect this on the unit names, they will be in their respective Arabic dialects, but rather it should be reflected in the fashion of units and their banners. This should of course only apply to the Ghassanids as they are the most relevant faction for these changes.

There was a divide in the Ghassanids that partly contributed to their collapse, one side was the traditional Syriac Christian/Nestorian sect and the other adopted the new Greek Orthodox Christian sect which I believe should be represented in the factions political parties.

This does not in any way mean to hint that the Arab fashion was not present in Ghassanid society, rather the opposite it was prominent over the Hellenistic one. However there was a subtle blend if you will.

A good example of this would be the units from Invasio Barbarorum:
[img]http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd271/julianus_heraclius/Revised%20Roman%20UI%20Cards/ghassanid_archer_info.jpg[/img]
[img]http://i222.photobucket.com/albums/dd271/julianus_heraclius/Revised%20Roman%20UI%20Cards/ghassanid_cavalry_info.jpg[/img]

And this illustration by Osprey:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I hope to achieve this same balance.

EDIT:

For political notes I forgot to mention this should give a Greek player less of a public order issue when conquering Arab culture settlements in Syria.

[andrew881thebest]

Just quick screenshots when I was testing the little dinky phrygian caps for Indigenae horse/foot archers.

Guys in question are mister fedora himself because he hates christians, Maximinius Daia's.


Daia Comitatenses Legions


Daia Legions


Daia Equites Indigenae

I haven't messed with specifying a unit color, so the Indigenae are a mixture of 'poor quality' tunics (grey, white, khaki/off white, brown) and the inherent three-color variety so you get some semblance of color but it's not as technicolor dream coat as in vanilla. It is there, but that's due to the faction colors - we can desaturate them.

Ignore the time-traveller with a early italic scutum. Also need to have officers and standard-bearers use small caetras or color-masked scutums. It's not ideal, but the problem is it is impossible (Unless I want to deal with making something like 10-15 times 4 specific unit entries so every unit has an officer with the scutum emblem of their unit. I can't even, unless I do that, make it so Constantinian officers have shield X and Maxentius officers have shield Y, unfortunately.

Open to suggestions. I was just going to give them the vanilla caetra that auto-colors it to their faction. I can make a oval scutum that auto-colors it to their faction, but it will still be a case of "Ioviani and Herculiani Regiment has an officer with a red scutum and no emblem".

As you can see lots of helmets from Fall of Rome are included, along with the draco and other stuff.

first of all, very good job. You made totally what I had in mind. For some pictures of good quality and a lot of info watch here
http://soldatiromanideltardoimpero.blogspot.it/?m=1

you should get rid of bronze helmet though. Anyway model of helmets look good. I would use more plain models with no plumes since they were for officers.
Then if you were able to add the Fulcum formation (first 2,3 rows forming a shield wall against arrows and with Spears coming out of gaps) which was very typical of that age, it would be very cool. Typical formation was first lines with best armor forming a shield barrier to the charging barbarians, lines behind of lanciarii throwing javelins or Plumbata. If you could make this (I would change the already existing, in Dei mod for example, Fulcum and close the horrible gap between first and second line of shields).
Finally, could you make Shields a bit bigger and round? they seem oval (only Pretorians had oval Shields as in Roman tradition of 3rd century).
Did you model some plumbatas? soldiers of first lines could carry 5,6 of them and should be able to throw at will them, at more or less the effective distance of a common bow (40/50 mts).

[AnthoniusII]

Appreciate it. When I was assigning shields after you guys convinced me for some measure of uniformality I tried to achieve, in order of priority:

In this point you must deside the main colors that will dominate in each of the main 4 Roman armies tunics , shields etc.
For example if You chose red for Constantine then blue , green and what ever your other chice would be must separate visualy the soldiers in battle.
Examples:





So lets suppose we use this guy as example:

Also lets suppose that he "belongs" to Constantine thanks to his red details on his tunic.
Even like this you need some varietion in tunics to avoid "cloning" effect.
So the details on the tunic must be varietions of red (dark red, light red etc). Also the tunic can be textured "clean" or "dirty".
The exact same model with blue details can serve on an other of the roman armies , with green details to a third one etc...
Finally here is another example of how Roman soldiers must distinquish in battles!
I believe you can understand which Romans are Constantine's!

[Razor]

In this point you must deside the main colors that will dominate in each of the main 4 Roman armies tunics , shields etc.
For example if You chose red for Constantine then blue , green and what ever your other chice would be must separate visualy the soldiers in battle.
Examples:





So lets suppose we use this guy as example:

Also lets suppose that he "belongs" to Constantine thanks to his red details on his tunic.
Even like this you need some varietion in tunics to avoid "cloning" effect.
So the details on the tunic must be varietions of red (dark red, light red etc). Also the tunic can be textured "clean" or "dirty".
The exact same model with blue details can serve on an other of the roman armies , with green details to a third one etc...
Finally here is another example of how Roman soldiers must distinquish in battles!
I believe you can understand which Romans are Constantine's!

But why would you want to do that? Aside from official unit colors in shield patterns and standards/flags there was no color recognition. It would be the reds versus the blues versus the greens. From a gameplay perspective I can sort of understand why you want to easily recognize your own units in the field (especially for the big public), but I wouldn't. Isn't there an option to flash your own and enemy troops in red and green or blue colors anyway? (Been a while since I've touched Rome 2) And you could still select your units during battle and they would flash anyway.

[andrew881thebest]

But why would you want to do that? Aside from official unit colors in shield patterns and standards/flags there was no color recognition. It would be the reds versus the blues versus the greens. From a gameplay perspective I can sort of understand why you want to easily recognize your own units in the field (especially for the big public), but I wouldn't. Isn't there an option to flash your own and enemy troops in red and green or blue colors anyway? (Been a while since I've touched Rome 2) And you could still select your units during battle and they would flash anyway.

totally agree. I want historical accuracy first of all. There are many ways to see which are your units and which the others. So you do not need vests of different colors because they did not have them. They used same colors and same armors, they used shield patterns to recognize themselves.

[andrew881thebest]

since late Roman soldiers used both Spears and swords, is there a way to make them use both? for example use Spears in defensive formation (fulcum) while swords in all other situations. It would be cool and realistic. But I do not know if you can do that. If this is not possible we could still have some spear armed units to put in the front forming the Fulcum/shield wall formation while other units would use swords and would have ability to throw javelins from the back.
Anyway I think you should add some units with heavier armor than others, something like vanilla armored legionaries, because in battle the units of first lines had better and heavier armor.
For example these heavier units could have the type of helmet
http://minimumwagehistorian.files.wo.../10/banner.jpg
while other units could have normal "sassanid" helmet (the one with round holes in the ears). Let me know about it.

[xxxMoRaVexxx]

since late Roman soldiers used both Spears and swords, is there a way to make them use both? for example use Spears in defensive formation (fulcum) while swords in all other situations. It would be cool and realistic. But I do not know if you can do that. If this is not possible we could still have some spear armed units to put in the front forming the Fulcum/shield wall formation while other units would use swords and would have ability to throw javelins from the back.
Anyway I think you should add some units with heavier armor than others, something like vanilla armored legionaries, because in battle the units of first lines had better and heavier armor.
For example these heavier units could have the type of helmet
http://minimumwagehistorian.files.wo.../10/banner.jpg
while other units could have normal "sassanid" helmet (the one with round holes in the ears). Let me know about it.

Someone did a unit anim set for Divide et Impera that uses both spear and sword depending on the situation:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post13914893
post #165

But unfortunately, he said that the stats for sword and spear will be the same, only the aesthetics will change. But I think its good enough for me, but it would be awesome if there was some sort of workaround.

[andrew881thebest]

Someone did a unit anim set for Divide et Impera that uses both spear and sword depending on the situation:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post13914893
post #165

But unfortunately, he said that the stats for sword and spear will be the same, only the aesthetics will change. But I think its good enough for me, but it would be awesome if there was some sort of workaround.

thanks, it would be cool to see that. Maybe The modder can ask permission to use it. It would be a big step forward.

[Ahiga]

But why would you want to do that? Aside from official unit colors in shield patterns and standards/flags there was no color recognition. It would be the reds versus the blues versus the greens. From a gameplay perspective I can sort of understand why you want to easily recognize your own units in the field (especially for the big public), but I wouldn't. Isn't there an option to flash your own and enemy troops in red and green or blue colors anyway? (Been a while since I've touched Rome 2) And you could still select your units during battle and they would flash anyway.

Tend to agree with that view. You might have had an occasional instance of trying to make sure your guys had the same color tunic on, but I really am skeptical about rigid uniformity like that. Especially when you'd have the still fluid situation of taking/removing vexillationes of cavalry and infantry, defeated soldiers of one emperor being integrated into another's force. From what I've gathered the sprites, which is apparently uneditable(?), default to the faction colors. Which can be a bit jarring - from far away the Foederati become bluish.

Ultimately there are some issues of historical representation which have a degree of ambiguity and allow for a measure of interpretation. So do understand if something ingame is not to your impression of the facts that it's just either my interpretation or my compromise for gameplay reasons. So that's why I cannot cater to every historical interpretation - Andrew you mentioned the shield's shape, and it would be a herculean task to try and edit the shape of every shield I've done so far because of how creating/editing models work in Rome 2. Likewise, at least the sources I've read point to the fat oval being the overwhelmingly predominant shield type among the Romans. I actually fattened it and made it more rounded than it had been previously.

Maybe in the future when I return and try and do more 3rd century inspired fat-oval scutums I'll round them out further.

The good news is if you don't like the shield choices, it's fairly easy to edit - for the Romans they mostly/all have specific shield entries in their troop VMD, rather than a variant mesh definition of a bunch of shields. Simply put - you remove one or two, and you have only one shield.

And I am probably going to make it so the draco's windsock uses the faction color. I was thinking the poor Germans will be ed when it comes to discerning one group from another. Although in their case you do have some tunics using the R2 color mask system - so say Frankish faction color is blue/red/green, Visigoth is brown/red/black, then you'd see more colorful splotches with the Franks. Yet they also have non faction color tunics mixed in. I proscribe to the view of war being a messy, chaotic, maddening business so I'm not really bothered by a degree of anarchy. Players can always turn on the floating flags - and they have the luxury ancient generals never did with instantaneous orders!

Regarding use of spear and sword, I'm iffy about the system because I don't like them only using spears for cavalry and swords for infantry. It could be a complete, ad-hoc mixture of the two. But honestly I'll leave that for someone to make a mini mod of rather than worry about it myself. Just going to have you be able to select between Auxilia/Legion/Comitatenses Spear or Sword.

Helmet wise we're limited by what models we have on hand from model artists like Razor, Imperator of Rome, Song of Talesin's team or Counterpoint. I can do some frankenstein editing of existing vanilla helmets, but only so much.

[Razor]

Regarding use of spear and sword, I'm iffy about the system because I don't like them only using spears for cavalry and swords for infantry. It could be a complete, ad-hoc mixture of the two. But honestly I'll leave that for someone to make a mini mod of rather than worry about it myself. Just going to have you be able to select between Auxilia/Legion/Comitatenses Spear or Sword.

Actually, that's basically how they fought. Of course, spears could be used against infantry as well, but it was mainly a weapon used in formation to fend off enemy and keep them at a distance (or attack them from a distance). A shield wall with spears (fulcum) was used to fend off cavalry. When the formation broke, the sword would have been drawn to really go hand-to-hand. There were no specific spear units or sword units. All units had a variety of weapons (both ranged and melee). Auxilia and legio units all had spears and swords and javelins. The difference between the auxilia and legio units was their organization, status and sometimes role on the battlefield (with auxilia acting as both heavy infantry and sometimes light specialist infantry tasked with specific tasks like special forces).