A new unit for Rhovanion

[Arsaces II]

Yesterday, I started a Rhovanion campaign, but very soon I realized, this faction has a potential to be an interesting one but at the moment impossible to play a long campaign with it.

Therefore...

When the easerlings invaded Rhovanion (sorry, if anything isn't very correct, I'm not that good in the lore), some of the population living near Greenwood managed to escape into the woods before easterling hordes reached their villages. All of them were at a loss, they escaped with little to none of the possesions. They were going to die either from starvation and wild beasts or to be killed or captured by Easterling raiding parties or their lords who went out from time to time with their retinues for the hunt. But among them were some retired rangers from the north and men-at-arms of RK with their families.
They have chosen the strongest and most agile from them, formed into small companies under their command started to teach them the warfare against the stronger enemy. Bows were of little use because their enemy was one of the best in the use of the latter and in defence from it. So all of the kitchenware has been remade into helmets of bronze, little iron that they had had been used make special armor piercing spear points and narrow axes, their wives and daugthers weaved stout and light wicker shields. In the following months they were not only able to draw away the menace from their camps, but even started to mouth daring attacks on the easterling parties who ever camped nearby the forest.

After the independence they became Rhovanions elite infantry and it's king's answer to the elites neigbours.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Today I was in a good mood and made a unit of elite skirmishers for Rhovanion.
Can I ask to include it into official mod?

[webba84]

It looks very nice! I notice the model seems to be called anatolian heavy cavalry, can I ask where it originally came from? We have a strict policy of getting permission from everyone involved in the creation of assets before we use them in the mod.

BTW, if you think it's impossible to win with Rhovanion you should probably read this. They might well be the most difficult faction in the mod, but we made sure it's winnable.

[Arsaces II]

It looks very nice! I notice the model seems to be called anatolian heavy cavalry, can I ask where it originally came from? We have a strict policy of getting permission from everyone involved in the creation of assets before we use them in the mod.

BTW, if you think it's impossible to win with Rhovanion you should probably read this. They might well be the most difficult faction in the mod, but we made sure it's winnable.

Ah, don't worry about it, every unit that I made during last 2 years was always called anatolian heavy cavalry in production files, and originally I made it yesterday. As for permission, I'm the only right owner of it, since I made it from the first vertex to the last pixel. It is an original work which have never been used anywhere. Sorry for not intruducing myself properly, I'm one of Europa Barbarorum 2 former 3d artists (just open it and view the credits). Also if there are other interesting ideas about other units I might be interested to do some more.

I just want to make the process of winning more interesting and battles more fun.

[webba84]

Oh, very good to know! I got EB2 just a few weeks ago and while I haven't had much of a chance to play it yet I was very impressed with the aesthetic and general level of quality.

I'll discuss with MoN and Count about including the unit - we decided some time ago to make no more additions to the roster but since you've gone to the trouble of making it for us and the backstory fits very well we're seriously reconsidering.

One thing though, while it looks very good the appearance doesn't quite fit in with the other Rhovanion units. Would it be too much trouble to ask you to revise a bit to fit in more? Feel free to use any textures and models from the mod in doing so.

[Arsaces II]

Thank you very much! I'm very glad to hear it.

As an artist I'm always open to the critics (even the harsh ones) concerning technical details of my work, so no problem about changing or adjusting anything.

One thing I wanted to ask, what type of texture map the RTW engine expects linear or gamma corrected, because I noticed that the textures are brighter than I want them to be, am I missing something.

[webba84]

I wouldn't say it's a criticism of the unit - the problem, if anything, is that it looks much more detailed and realistic than our Rhovanion units.

To my shame, I don't know the answer to your question about RTW texture maps except to say that RTW's graphics are extremely primitive by modern standards. If a texture, or part of a texture, looks to0 bright in game to me I just darken it accordingly.

[Arsaces II]

Aside from detail of textures, the other two factors make that it to look different are color scheme, saturation and brightness of textures. I would appreciate if you tell me in more detail what needs to be changed, in particular.

[CountMRVHS]

Not an expert at all in the artistic side of things, but some features of the armor (the conical helmet and the scale design) look 'late antiquity/eastern mediterranean', whereas the other Rhovanion units have a wilder look. The Rhovanion elites (noble cav and March-wardens) have a different style of helm and armor; leather and mail. Now, this unit is described as having some Dunedanic influence, so I wouldn't expect all of their gear to look precisely Northmannish. But that is one feature that makes the unit stand out from the rest of the roster, IMO.

[webba84]

Yes, I'd point out the style of the helmet as being one big element, the textures (specifically the colour and patterns) being the other. With regard to colour schemes FATW follows a not particularly realistic, but gameplay friendly, approach of sticking to mostly faction colour for the more vivid portions of the texture, and quite muted tones elsewhere. Having a look at the textures of the other units in Rhovanion's rosters (they are all intuitively named in the mod files) will give you some good examples to work with.

[Arsaces II]

Here's a more detailed description about what my original idea was:

My idea was to give them the cheapest, lightest and less metalic equipment possible and stress their anti-missile gear and lightness, so the helmet has no cheek pieces i.e. better vision for wearer but less protective in melee, bronze requires lower temperatures so that easier to work with, provided you have raw material (you're right the helmet is variation of montefortino, I chose it because I'm not aware of later period bronze helmets) , the armor is padded shirt - cheaper than even leather, because you can fill it with even old and no longer used cloths, it is one the best protection against arrowfire and when you run a lot it absorbs the sweet unlike leather. Shields are made of wicker and leather are very light, provide very good anti-arrow protection and are bad in melee.

But anyway, is there any particular type of helmet, you want they use and bronze or iron? Feel free to release your imagination, I have a collection of some 30 - 35 textured helmets which can be adjusted.
For padded shirt, what about adjusting only the color and leaving the pattern of diagonal lines, because I think they look better than any other pattern would do.
For the color I'll do all necessary adjustments.

Thanks for the feedback.

[CountMRVHS]

Interesting! I like the thought process there.

How do you see this unit differing from the current skirmishers available to Rhovanion, apart from design and some armor differences? I admit my first impression of the unit was of a strong, melee-capable skirmisher, with very powerful ranged ability but just 1 or 2 javelins.

[Arsaces II]

The only reason I didn't include more throwing spears is just not to increase polycount. The differences are their axis with special design for defeating heavy armor, just like their spears and that they are trained(better defense skill), and paid from the king's treasury (i.e. higher upkeep). I'd say they inflict good amount of damage in melee especially, unprepared foe, but would take heavy casualties themselves.

[Arsaces II]

I gave them more grim and barbaric look in the scope of their faction color:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

What do you think?

[CountMRVHS]

The color scheme looks good to me. I also really like the javelins slung over the back

Just to be clear, I like the idea of them having just 1 or 2 very damaging javelins, and being effective in melee. I think those differences would be good to distinguish them from the Rhovanion Foresters.

If they have higher upkeep to simulate being paid from the king's treasury, should they then have better quality gear? Or, if they are intended to be an irregular, almost independent fighting force, should they have lower upkeep?

Curious what others think overall.

[Beorn]

my only visual gripe is the helmet, it reminds me a lot what I would normally expect to find at a token battle in the eastern part of the EB I campaign; this effect is perticularly stricking in the images where they fight the Marchwardens, but, to be honest, it may be just me the EB former addict

Regarding their gear: what can be considered better quality gear? a more shiny mail shirt, to distinguish them more in comparison to the Rhov. Axemen? a heavier-looking axe? I like them a lot just as they are currently.

[Arsaces II]

I think their fighting style can be best adjusted with stats, and you can do it better than I.
But one think I would really avoid is exaggeration of their war gear, even with their elite status I see them as warriors of newly formed poor kingdom.

[webba84]

Newer version definitely fits in a bit better!

On the topic of Rhovanion's poverty, it is true that we have it as one of the poorest factions on the map (only North Rhun might have less profitable lands) but this is a setting, generally speaking, where leather, wood and iron are quite common, even North Rhun has access to a lot of iron weapons and armour, albiet of poor quality. In fact, I don't think there is anywhere north of Harondor where bronze or wicker gear is used. Rhovanion may be poor but their elite units can still afford decent quality iron mail and helms (might even be steel for the bodyguard unit, have to check).

So I would suggest we could think of it this way - when these units originally formed they did indeed use very makeshift wargear and developed this unique ambush/raiding/skirmishing fighting style, but now that the Kingdom has established itself they have upgraded their wargear as much as they can. I think the wicker shields look great (though maybe they could be made a bit bigger? This will have an in game effect of increasing their protection against arrows) and make a cool part of the story (maybe the weaving of the shields has become something of an honoured tradition?) so those could be kept, and the padded armour is also fine (and used by other units in the roster such as the Axemen), but I would suggest switching out the bronze helmet for a metal one, similar to what the March Wardens or Rhovnanion Nobles would wear. This is not only the most logical upgrade to make (helmets being arguably the most important piece of armour) but will really tie them into the roster, visually.

Also, something else I noticed, they seem to be holding their shields sideways, would it maybe look better if they held them with the horse head upright?

edit - I see you also got their gamma adjusted correctly, can I ask what method you used to achieve this?

[Arsaces II]

Here, I corrected the shield emblem
Also, retextured helmet's texture into iron, but kept backup anyway in case there will be need to go back.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

For gamma adjustment I used Photoshop's Color Balance, Levels, Curves, Hue/Saturation to a degree, that in 3D software's viewport they looked somewhat weird.

EDIT - concerning their throwing spear numbers, if we look at it practically I think they should have at least 3, because they could hold 2 of them in their left hands and there won't be need for a bag.

[webba84]

Looking better and better! Just being picky but could we maybe lose the montefortino bulb as well? It's quite distinctive and we don't really have any other helmets of that design in the mod. Northman faction design influences tend towards 5th - 9th century Northern European, in general.

Regarding the javelins, for balance we would probably go with 2, 3 at most. We had some experience with even medium quality troops (Harad Swords) being much too powerful when they have more than 2 javelins.

[Arsaces II]

No problem about being picky, that's all right.
Here, I changed the helmet:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: