So what should Britain be like?

[Kraut and Tea]

I find it interesting that most complaints I have read so far and seen in reviews were about the Britons. We know that they dont have a "Celtic" unit roster and are a generic copy of other Nordic factions. Many complained about this and insisted that the Britons have to be "more Celtic". I believe that this will be done via DLC in the upcoming future but see the point.

So I would like to ask you what you think that Briton should be like? Not just the Celtic factions that would be found in Scotland and Ireland, but also the post Roman, Romano - Britons who controled the Roman province of Briton after the Romans left.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_...07.E2.80.93410



I honestly really dont know alot about this time period. Would it be correct to assume that for example the picts would look like the Celts in Rome 2?

I also watched a BBC documentary series some time ago that suggests that Ireland was a pritty wealthy place as the Roman empire collapsed. It became rich through the trade with cattle and it`s far away island position ensured that it was untouched by the chaos of post roman Europe. Of course, I should underline that there was no united Ireland back then. The documentary series I watched suggests that several cattle and land owners who became rich through trade made themselves kings and that the Ireland of the late Roman age was an island of several kingdoms.

[Etruscan]

i guess for the romano british, there would be several small states levying men to defend themselves from marauding celts and saxons.

[Doe3000]

The Romano-British from what we can tell, probably continued to use Roman gear during this period, along with Germanic style belts and weapons. The idea that they reverted back to ancient 'Celtic' style fashions can't be supported. Unfortunately though there isn't much in the way of archaeological, textual or pictorial evidence. The British poem 'Y Gododdin' perhaps written around AD 600 (which is outside Attila's era by some margin) by Aneirin does give some written descriptions of early British equipment. It include these details:

They rode rugged white stallions (this can't be taken as true for all warriors, obviously)
They carried swords.
They carried a number of short javelins.
They wore little armour (almost certainly "chain" mail).
They had mostly circular shields covered in leather.
They made little use of helmets (something they had in common with their Iron Age ancestors).
Heavily armoured warriors tended to belong the aristocracy and were therefore low in number.

British Warbands tended to be, like their Saxon counterparts, rather small in size. I think that a Dark Age British Warlord (perhaps Cunedda or Maelgwn) boasts about the ability to field around 400 warriors in the late fifth/early sixth centuries.

Here's a re-enactor portraying an early British Warrior:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

You should check out Comitatus and Letavia. They reenact Late Roman and Post-Roman Britain.

http://www.comitatus.net/

https://www.facebook.com/letavia.teulu

[Caligula's_Horse]

The lack of "celtic-ness" among the game's Scots and Irish factions is basically because the dev team only has so much time and resources to work with, and some things had to be left out. As neither the Scots nor the Irish were significant players on the world stage at the time, I'd say sidelining them is justified.

As for post Roman British locals, they're not exactly Celtic. These aren't the recently occupied British isles under Claudius we're talking about here, its the British isles after having lived under Roman rule for some 500 years. Culturally speaking, they were a lot more Roman then Celtic by that stage.
Militarily speaking, they'll have likely fought in the Roman fashion, at least to the extent their limited logistics and access to auxiliaries would have allowed, which to a small and newly formed island nation, would have been limited indeed. So, attempted to fight in the Roman fashion is perhaps more accurate.

[Malcolm]

Unfortunately the only thing we actually know about the Picts is a list of names. I read an unpublished dissertation recently about mass organised deer hunts involving hundreds of men, a Scottish tradition of hunting that this paper believed to have originated from the Picts. It was quite interesting because it would at least suggest a group of peoples that were very well organised. It was also most likely a contributing factor to how fast Scottish soldiers were on rough battlefields from the 16th century until 1745.

Apart from that it is likely that the Picts were similar to the Britons on southern Scotland and Northern England (at least with regard to language) however they are very unlikely to have been 'the same'. An example of that is the fact that this particular method of hunting was only practiced in North East Scotland and not where the other Britons were.

I would say that it is very lazy of CA to not draft up at least a couple native units. It is not surprising after the complete lack of attention given to the Northern Briton factions in Rome II.

I don't think it was justified. Many people are aware of the fact that the Romans had a lot of trouble controlling Northern Briton, resulting in the building of Hadrian's Wall as well as the Antonine Wall. It was a good opportunity to show some difference as to why these Northern people were able to withstand Roman rule. It was also an opportunity to allow players to recreate and change history, conquering a new challenge in Scotland.

[Anna_Gein]

If unintentional I think there is an evident lack of priorities in CA. They made a ton of redundant Germanic units but somehow they could not manage to do some Celtic ? Anyway I doubt they included none because of time limitation as they created Thracian units for the Ostrogoths out of nowhere.

[TheGoodOld BritishChap]

It would be great if there were a mod that simply focused on Britain, adding Dumnonia, Gwynedd, Iceni, etc. Even better if they were playable.

[Caligula's_Horse]

It would be great if there were a mod that simply focused on Britain, adding Dumnonia, Gwynedd, Iceni, etc. Even better if they were playable.

Weren't those conquered by the Romans some 350 years prior to the game's start? I doubt they maintained their tribal integrity after more then three centuries of civilized living.
Really, by the time the game starts, the only "celtic" parts left of Britain under Roman rule were rural communities not worth the hassle of Romanizing (and lacking the finance and military prowess to launch a proper rebellion, while we're at it). The elites and city dwellers were very much Roman, culturally.

[TheGoodOld BritishChap]

Weren't those conquered by the Romans some 350 years prior to the game's start? I doubt they maintained their tribal integrity after more then three centuries of civilized living.
Really, by the time the game starts, the only "celtic" parts left of Britain under Roman rule were rural communities not worth the hassle of Romanizing (and lacking the finance and military prowess to launch a proper rebellion, while we're at it). The elites and city dwellers were very much Roman, culturally.

I'm not sure. Dumnonia became a country that lasted for a lot of the dark ages, and according to some, the Iceni did have land between the Roman withdrawal and the Anglo-Saxon arrival.
Here's a map, which shows them: http://www.euratlas.net/history/euro...Northwest.html
Unless it is an Angle kingdom named after them (which is likely)

Either way, it would be good to have some British kingdoms, rather than the Anglo Saxons taking it straight off the western Roman Empire. And they should have celtic units, not Roman soldiers.
And I'd really like to see Gwynedd as a faction.

[Anna_Gein]

Weren't those conquered by the Romans some 350 years prior to the game's start? I doubt they maintained their tribal integrity after more then three centuries of civilized living.
Really, by the time the game starts, the only "celtic" parts left of Britain under Roman rule were rural communities not worth the hassle of Romanizing (and lacking the finance and military prowess to launch a proper rebellion, while we're at it). The elites and city dwellers were very much Roman, culturally.

Are you suggesting rural place were out of Roman rule prior to their great evacuation ?

[GrimmCro]

Might as well do Total War Britain. If Shogun works on an island, Britain would too.

[Geronimo2006]

It's possible Wales was de-facto independent under different kingdoms by 410 anyway. Magnus Maximus's departure in 383 to claim the Roman throne seems to coincide (wikipedia) with the last Roman presence found there. I think Western Britain was still Celtic speaking - as evidenced by the survival of Celtic languages that later evolved into Welsh, Cumbric and Cornish. I'm not sure though what the linguistic situation was in Eastern Britain before the Saxons arrived. If we believe the stories of Gildas, a king called Vortigern is supposed to have given Kent/Cantia to the Saxons in return for service as mercenaries (big mistake if true). The name "Vortigern" may come from a Celtic word for "High King" in Brythonic but that is speculation. Most historians think he was a real person but have doubts about other aspects of the story like his marriage to the treacherous Saxon princess Rowena.

As for how it should look: I'm not an expert on the architecture of 5th century Britain. It had been ravaged by Saxon/Irish/Pictish raids in the 4th and 5th centuries. Some people on the forums or on youtube whose comments I have read think Camulodunom should be the capital rather than Londinium, wikipedia says that the capital was almost certainly Londinium in the Late Empire.

[Boogie Knight]

Weren't those conquered by the Romans some 350 years prior to the game's start? I doubt they maintained their tribal integrity after more then three centuries of civilized living.
Really, by the time the game starts, the only "celtic" parts left of Britain under Roman rule were rural communities not worth the hassle of Romanizing (and lacking the finance and military prowess to launch a proper rebellion, while we're at it). The elites and city dwellers were very much Roman, culturally.

The Kingdom of Dumnonia did rather well for itself, lasting almost up until the Norman conquest of England. It's thought the kingdom actually existed on both sides of the English Channel, comprising some or all of modern day Brittany, and was strong enough to give the Kingdom of Wessex (the one that caused sweet merry hell for the Vikings) a major headache on its western frontier (see my location <). Part of its success, IMO, lay in the fact that it was, as you say, a rural community not worth the hassle of Romanising. It lay in the south-western part of the island, which even today is sparsely populated; the major population centres didn't exist in the Roman period, with the exception of Exeter which only exists because it grew up around the Roman fort there (Isca Dumnorum, IIRC) and was still no bigger than a small town by the time the Romans departed.

A year or two ago I visited an archaeological dig on the site of an late Roman-era farmstead on the south Devon coast. I got to speak to the person heading up the dig, and asked her what sort of impact the Romans would've had on the people living there. She said the people living on this farm would probably have been rather glad the Romans were around, as the Romans provided a ready buyer of their surplus produce. But that would've been the only real interaction they had with them. As I say, aside from Isca Dumnorum and perhaps a smaller fort deeper in the peninsula, the Romans had very little to do with the area other than purchasing grain and occasionally ore from the mines that were still in use at that time. They never rebelled against Roman rule because they profited from the Romans, and so the Romans never cracked down on their culture or identity.

So not only did the Dumnonii maintain their tribal integrity well enough to build a kingdom that challenged the might of Wessex and established military alliances with Vikings (not that this helped them any) after however many centuries of Roman occupation, but they grew wealthy, expanded and possibly made it as far as the 10th century AD.

I know less about Gwynedd, but after the Roman occupation they established a kingdom (which became IIRC a principality - messy business, that) that lasted well into the 13th century and gave the Normans, and before them the Angles, absolute hell.

As for the Iceni, we have only speculation about them, and their fate sort of melds with myths and legends. There are theories, though no evidence to my knowledge, that during the Anglo-Saxon arrival they moved a short way west, to the area around the Lincolnshire fens. Today this area, despite being sandwiched between what was East Anglia and Mercia and falling within the Danelaw, consists almost entirely of Celtic place-names. This is in stark contrast to the surrounding areas, which are all decidedly Teutonic in name. The Anglo-Saxon chronicle, and IIRC some of Bede's writings, make a number of mentions of monks who travelled to the area encountering what they refer to as Welshmen, most of whom were none too happy to be bothered by Angles. Granted some of the stories have to be taken with a pinch of salt, as at least one I've read ends with the Welshmen disappearing in a puff of fire and smoke while cackling gleefully, but then that's par for the course with Anglo-Saxon accounts of anything; if it wasn't Welshmen, it was elves.

So it's quite possible that even the Iceni maintained some degree of integrity beyond the Roman invasion, despite having been put down arguably harder than any other British tribe.

Hope this helps.

[Geronimo2006]

Probably Latin speakers in the towns, a bilingual rural elite, and a Celtic speaking peasantry (majority of population) according to wikipedia. The fact the Saxons - unlike the Goths and the Franks - didn't assimilate into the Latin/Romance speaking population suggests to me that Britain was much less Romanised than the Continental WRE. There is some evidence for a possible survival of British Latin in St.Albans (Verulanium) las late as the 8th century.

Also St.Patrick's father was Calpurnius, which suggests some Latin influence in his family.

[Boogie Knight]

Probably Latin speakers in the towns, a bilingual rural elite, and a Celtic speaking peasantry (majority of population) according to wikipedia. The fact the Saxons - unlike the Goths and the Franks - didn't assimilate into the Latin/Romance speaking population suggests to me that Britain was much less Romanised than the Continental WRE. There is some evidence for a possible survival of British Latin in St.Albans (Verulanium) las late as the 8th century.

Also St.Patrick's father was Calpurnius, which suggests some Latin influence in his family.

I've been talking about this subject on another thread on this forum, and the question of Anglo-Saxon assimilation came up there as well. A paper I read a while ago (I forget which university, though it was hosted on Medievalists - I'd rather not trawl through that site to find it again, but it'll be there if one were determined enough and if I must find it, I can) talked about this exact subject and compared it with the experience of the Franks and Rus', both of which achieved similar conquests in which a minority elite gained supremacy over a much larger native population. But while the Rus' and Franks were mere fractions of the total population in the areas they came to conquer, the Anglo-Saxons might have made up as much as 20% of the population of England in the immediate aftermath of the settlement. On top of this, their dominance was far less certain from the outset, as the Britons put up a far more determined resistance than the Gauls or the Slavs. As such, while the Franks conquered quickly then came to terms with their new subjects, and so saw their ways and language as far less of a threat, eventually coming to meld almost completely in both of these aspects, the Anglo-Saxons continued to see their British rivals as a threat, and treated their culture and language accordingly.

Hence even in the 9th century we see laws being passed that, while granting legal rights to conquered Britons, make it very clear that those speaking "Welsh" were to be afforded a far lower Weregild in the event of a murder than those speaking English. If a Briton wanted to be accorded the same privileges, it really was a simple matter of changing to speak English. By speaking it, he was considered it, and so instead of the Anglo-Saxons assimilating with the Britons, the Britons came to assimilate with the English. This legal issue became particularly important in the 8th and 9th centuries with the West Saxon campaigns against the Cornish, which conquered most of Devon and so brought a large number of Celtic language speakers into the dominion of Wessex.