Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 20 of 46

Thread: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

  1. #1
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Icon4 AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    @Re Berengario I, your signatures link has an address problem...
    Then on a another note, I would suggest to tone down the new Fyrdmen, no peasant militia could afford such colours, especially in these times of post invasions and chaos. (I am aware of the possible uselessness of this comment since it must be mostly WIP... )

  2. #2

    Default Re: AD: Bugs, suggestions and discussion thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Taneda Santôka View Post
    @Re Berengario I, your signatures link has an address problem...
    Then on a another note, I would suggest to tone down the new Fyrdmen, no peasant militia could afford such colours, especially in these times of post invasions and chaos. (I am aware of the possible uselessness of this comment since it must be mostly WIP... )
    The colors are pretty accurate, just look at the Bayeaux Tapestry and you'll discover it by yourself.

  3. #3
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Default Re: AD: Bugs, suggestions and discussion thread

    Hmm, dont start the discussion this way, the tarpestry, wich I have witnessed with my very own eyes, and could again in not much time, also has blue and orange horses... It's a tarpresty, and yes, tarpestrywise, your colours are accurate, but never, oh! never, would a militia of this time have the reasons or means to dye their clothes with such saturated colours...
    And the tarpestry doesn't depict peasant fyrdmen, but heroic norman conquerors...
    And colours are there mostly for compositional reaons, just look at their place, alternance and tone ; be it for shields, clothes, armours or horses - even for tree branches or wooden structures!
    Take a glance near Viollet-le-Duc instead, I'm susprised having not seen anyone quoting his "Encyclopédie Médiévale"(For EXEMPLE)... Time prooved he was right. But Osprey rules unchallenged around here...
    If it's just your aesthetic choices, then, so be it, otherwise, it requires discussion.
    Last edited by Taneda Santôka; February 17, 2007 at 12:57 AM.

  4. #4

    Default Re: AD: Bugs, suggestions and discussion thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Taneda Santôka View Post
    Hmm, dont start the discussion this way, the tarpestry, wich I have witnessed with my very own eyes, and could again in not much time, also has blue and orange horses... It's a tarpresty, and yes, tarpestrywise, your colours are accurate, but never, oh! never, would a militia of this time have the reasons or means to dye their clothes with such saturated colours...
    And the tarpestry doesn't depict peasant fyrdmen, but heroic norman conquerors...
    You could have witnessed it with your very eyes but probably you missed that fyrdmen are pretty well depicted in more than one occasion (usually fleeing from norman knights though ) and the "orange" horses are actually of desaturated (by age) brown.

    About Viollet le Duc I own his "Encyclopedie Medievelle" and despite he was a great architecht he was an exponent of the romantic gothic moviment and his "restoration" of Carcassonne witnesses his personal tastes and not deep filological studies. The romantic gothic movement was also used everywhere in the recent visual arts to depict Middle-Age, but it is very far from the truth.
    The Middle-Age was very colorful, most of the statues were bright colored and also the poor people used colourful dresses as colours had meanings which went beyond the simple decorative scope (one of the best explaination of it is in Huizinga's "The Autumn of the Middle Ages").

    And anyway there were simple procedural problems with dyeing textiles.

    The "light brown" or "grey" colors that you are so fond of are from linen textiles left fading under the sun.

    But linen was used mainly for underwears, outer clothings were usually made from wool and dyed bright colours because pastel colors are also a lot more difficult to use in dyeing with the primitive instruments middle-age peasants had.

    I sincerely don't like to see armies combat in underwears

  5. #5

    Icon4 New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    Here we go, let's organize the discussion

  6. #6
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    Agreed on the medieval colours, but you're speaking of stautues found on churches and cathedrals (Viollet-le-Duc, despite all your cultured self and others can say, saved much-Carcassonne?- and was right about Notre-Dame-de-Paris's sculptures and even intended to have them coloured, but was imediatly dismissed.) and were placed there to contrast with the dullness of ordinary clothing, but also mostly for symbolic reasons.
    About the tarpestry, colours ARE symbolic and compositionnal, orange and blue for horses, for exemple, of course, are placeholders, but the same goes for the clothings and shields and trees and wooden structures (look at the boats...) I am not fond of greyor brown, and I know as you that colour had a very important meaning, but certainly because it was widespread and even since the colouring techniques were well known, they werent wellspread in every farmer's house or villages markets, especially not after the norman conquest (loosing a banner in battle was a dire loss, for more than one reason...), and your sentence :
    the "orange" horses are actually of desaturated (by age) brown.
    does not make any sense, there is no way age will desaturate "horse" brown to bright orange... the colours are in good conditions (thanks to you Mr John Ford... ) and say exactly what Im saying :they are ther for symbolic and compositional reasons, otherwise we'd have to conclude normans had milk-white skin.... look at how colours are positioned, alternating each other, working in contrast and puting the emphasis on certain characters etc.
    If it's your aesthetical choices, so be it, again, but I'm just saying they're too saturated for my weary eyes and cannot be taken as historically accurate thanks to la Tapisserie de Bayeux.

  7. #7
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    And I'm not saying to totally dismiss colours, just tone them down a bit, introduce them in more subtle ways, not so bluntly and "allover"... If you wish I could make some propositions...

  8. #8

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    Ok, your "historical" sources are black and white drawings of a man who lived 8 centuries after.
    Mines are illuminators, painters and other artist of the era that I had to study for being the "cultured self" which can distinguish between a XIX century romantic reconstruction and an original one.

    I prefer my personal tastes (and sources).








    (these are all illuminations from XI century english manuscripts)

  9. #9

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Taneda Santôka View Post
    And I'm not saying to totally dismiss colours, just tone them down a bit, introduce them in more subtle ways, not so bluntly and "allover"... If you wish I could make some propositions...
    They were blunty and allover. You cannot like it but you cannot affirm they're not historical, all the contemporary sources depicts the colors that way. I could make it stained and torn but they'd look very bad as they'd be stained and torn all in the same places (with a disgusting cloning effect).

    And about the industrial difficulty to produce very colorful textiles just think at very poor population of today in Africa or Andes and how colorful are their clothes. It's harder to produce midtones than bright, then they'd wear off with time because of the bad "fixing" but that was the reason people washed so rarely outside clothes in middle-age.

  10. #10
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    "cultured self" was an aknowledgement, not a dagger... Anyway, you're saying over and over what I'm saying. You know perfectly those are works of art and colours there are HIGHLY symbolic and compositional, every single colours is at its desired place, not because the author knew Mother of God's clothing to be red and blue... We both know our History, I might know my Art History way better then you, but lets not turn this in a "whoe's got the best scans" competition (I have only books, no scanner )... If it's all you can respond with, sarcasm on a dead memorable man (maybe reading what he wrote will enlighten you about what he had to say about colour, but I dont want to appear as Viollet-le-Duc fanatic wich I am not...), then I won't bother any longer, it's your very own mod after all, you make your choices.
    But in no case are the represented clothing as saturated as your peasants. That's all I talking about, not yet another rehabilitation or not of V-l-D...
    Last edited by Taneda Santôka; February 17, 2007 at 11:32 AM.

  11. #11
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    Not torned or stained, just toned down and introduced in more subtle ways...
    Lets not speak of indian clothing, or african dyed clothes, they are today massproduced and decolour very fast...

  12. #12

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    don't misunderstand me, I appreciate Violett Le Duc so much to spend a good sum to buy his Encyclopedie. He actually saved many monuments from distruction and he did the best he could, and over, considering the situation and the culture of his era. In my city at the same epoch the geniuses destroyed the medieval city walls to build avenues!

    But you can see, also in those miniatures, that not only personalities of high importance are wearing bright clorful clothes but also the servants (like the ones who are kneeled down in one of the above images).
    The Bayeaux tapestry cannot be accurate when depicting the mail hauberks and completely fantasy when depicting fyrdmen with red, blue and bright brown clothes.
    Having illimitate models and textures we could tuning the "saturation" of the colors in a different matter, but with just 3 textures for model you can't simulate "wearing off" without producing horrible cloning results.
    Last edited by Re Berengario I; February 17, 2007 at 11:44 AM.

  13. #13
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    NP!
    Your commoners kneeling down DO wear brown and grey...
    But here's the first adjustment I'd suggest, just toned down... (quick and dirty Sat/Brigh/Cont tweak...Not much)


    Then it would be a matter of having colours not as all over, with many layers maybe, different colours, linen shirt or so, straps or other things to prevent the pijama effect (most noticeable on the fyrdmen and their hoods...)
    Last edited by Taneda Santôka; February 17, 2007 at 12:02 PM.

  14. #14

    Default

    Is it possible to make the colors of most units in terms of specific colors used. I really think that these colorful armies were, at most, irrealistic.

    Militias, Archers, low ranking army units wore rags. Only professional or noble units had actual uniform. Therefore, could all militias, peasant archers, peasants, etc, etc, be in grey/white/tan colored clothing representing dirty cotton (grey) clean cotton (white) and leather (tan) clothes.

    The less bright does look better...
    Last edited by Re Berengario I; February 17, 2007 at 06:50 PM.

  15. #15

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Mikel View Post
    I really think that these colorful armies were, at most, irrealistic.
    Quite the opposite.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mikel View Post
    Militias, Archers, low ranking army units wore rags.
    (...)
    Therefore, could all militias, peasant archers, peasants, etc, etc, be in grey/white/tan colored clothing representing dirty cotton (grey) clean cotton (white) and leather (tan) clothes.
    Cotton were not popular until the extensive colonization of the Americas while tanned leather was an expensive material.
    The lower classes wore wool clothes which had bright colours and white linen underwears.

    So do you want peasant armies to fight in dirty brownish linen underwear?

    I don't.

    Thinking of middle-age as an era when low class wore grey, worn rags comes down from Hollywood and Disney.



    Look at this image for example:


    These are farmers, not nobles, and just one have a "grey" outfit while the other wore clothes with colors very close to the ones I used. You can have a look also at other illuminations around, you will find that colorful clothes easily surpass "grey" ones, especially in the earliest period.

    This because in late middle-age the Church sanctioned the use of colorful clothes by the lower classes with censuary laws. Actually some of these laws restricted the use of particularly bright colors to very despicable (for them, not me!) classes like prostitutes and jewish people.
    This concept was strengthen with calvinism and protestantism (do you remember the "men in black" of XVI and XVII paintings?) and it still present in the today imaginary.

  16. #16

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    If I remember correctly, the book The Ties That Bound by Barbara Hanawalt backs up what Re Berengario I is saying. I don't have my copy at the moment but I believe there is discussion of the clothes in there.

    Even if it doesn't, it's a highly readable book on English peasant life

  17. #17
    Taneda Santôka's Avatar Artifex
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    Begging around.
    Posts
    1,226

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    I'm not arguing the basis of his work, only the result, wich is in my opinion oversaturated.
    But I like the latest unit, especially the shields. But wouldnt you give norman knights norman shields, using the Latinkon model (just alpha out the turban)?

  18. #18
    CtrlAltDe1337's Avatar Praepositus
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Tennessee
    Posts
    5,424

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    I agree somewhat with Taneda, the bright colors look a little off, even if they are historically accurate. If you could tone down the color slightly it would improve it a lot imo.

  19. #19

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    Quote Originally Posted by Taneda Santôka View Post
    I'm not arguing the basis of his work, only the result, wich is in my opinion oversaturated.
    But I like the latest unit, especially the shields. But wouldnt you give norman knights norman shields, using the Latinkon model (just alpha out the turban)?
    Those are norman knights after their 2nd armour upgrade (which will requirer 2nd or 3rd level armourer I guess) and they represent the period from late XII century to the half of XIII century as you can also see from the helms. Take a look at the seal of Baron Robert Fitzwalter (died in 1235)



    Edit: I updated the screenshot of the Norman Chevaliers with them carrying the new textured shields.
    Last edited by Re Berengario I; February 22, 2007 at 01:56 PM.

  20. #20

    Default Re: AD: New Factions Rosters Discussion Thread

    This is a really great mod. Its the only TW mod I have ever seen that really changes gameplay.

    If you are re-designing unit rosters here is a suggested Byzantine unit roster for you to consider.

    MOTTE AND BAILEY
    Peltastoi (javelin armed light infantry)

    Skythikon

    WOODEN CASTLE
    Kontaratoi (Byz. spearmen)

    Psiloi (archers)

    Turkopouloi (Turcopoles):These were the Christianized sons of Turkish mercenaries who settled in the Empire. They are the same as the Turcopole merc unit in vanilla MTW. They are more historical than the Byz. Cavalry of vanilla MTW, which did not really exist in this period.

    CASTLE
    Skutatoi (Byz. infantry): These should be armed with spears, not swords.

    Doryphoroi (Byz. lancers)

    Toxotai Trapezountoi (Trebizond archers)

    FORTRESS
    Latinikon: Please note the correct spelling, not "Latinkon" as in vanilla MTW.

    Latinikon Pezoi (Dismounted Latinikon)

    Tzangratoroi (Crossbowmen): Crossbows were rare in Byz, but Italian crossbowmen were hired to defend castles. These should be pavise crossbowmen, and more expensive than for Catholic factions.

    CITADEL
    Kataphractoi: see my detailed description in my next post.

    Frangoi (Norman knights): The Byz. believed the Normans were the best troops in the Latinikon, so I think they deserve a seperate unit, the same as the Sicilian Norman knights.

    Frangoi Pezoi (Dismounted Norman knights)


    TOWN
    Tzakones (Town militia)

    LARGE TOWN
    Tzakones Kontaratoi (Spear militia)

    MINOR CITY
    Tzakones Toxotai (Archer militia)

    Hetaireia (Generals bodyguard)

    Patzinakoi (Pecheneg horse archers recruitable at Merchants Guild): These replace the militia cavalry recruitable at Merchants guild in vanilla MTW. Patzinakoi were militia police recruited in the 11th and 12th centuries to protect merchants and civilians from bandits (or hungry crusaders!). Their stats should be similar to Skythikon.

    Amogavaroi: Recruitable at taverns after the gunpowder event, these are the Almughavars of the Spanish faction, who served as mercenaries in the Byz. army in the 14th century as part of the so called Grand Catalan Company.

    LARGE CITY
    Mourtatoi (Byz. Guard Archers): These were a unit of the Imperial Guard consisting of soldiers of mixed Greek and Turkish descent. Since they are Guards, they should be recruited in cities.

    Vardariotai: These were also a guard unit, so they should be recruited in cities.

    Gazmouloi (recruitable at dockyard): These were marines of mixed Greek-Latin descent serving in the navy: a type of light infantry better than town militia. Perhaps they could give a movement bonus to ships when they are on board, since they also served as rowers.

    HUGE CITY
    Varangoi (Varangian Guard)

    ARTILLERY
    Ballistae

    Petroboloi (Catapults)

    Heleopoloi (Trebuchets): The word "heleopoloi" had referred to siege towers in the ancient world, but by the eleventh century it had changed meaning and was the Byz. word for trebuchets.

    GUNPOWDER
    Skopetai (Handgunners): Italian handgunners were hired as mercenaries in the last years of Byz and fought in defence of the city in 1453.

    Bombard Cannon: these were also used by the defenders in 1453.

    This is a simple and accurate Byz unit list. Guard and militia units should be recruitable in cities, all other troops in castles. Beware Byz. unit lists in some other mods, such as Chiv TW, as they include units that had ceased to exist by the 1080s.
    Last edited by Procopius; March 04, 2007 at 08:13 AM.

Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •