Celtic Faction Unit Rosters

[cherryfunk]

Since dvk is moving quickly on adding the Boii (and hopefully the Belgae to replace Epirus), and since I'm in the middle of several books on the Celts, I think we should start to figure out what units we want for our three Celtic factions.

This thread can serve as a place to put all info and discussion for the units that the Arverni, Boii and Belgae will have. Much of their unit rosters will be similar, although hopefully we can use different names for each faction so they appear to be more unique than they are. But I expect maybe 60-70% of their units to be the same across all three factions, since Celtic culture clearly had a certain way of organizing its fighting men that seems to have been more or less the same from Britain to Galatia.

[cherryfunk]

One thing that caught my attention was this passage from the Osprey 'Celtic Warrior':

Neither the bow nor the sling featured greatly among the weapons of the Celtic warrior, though both were used to some extent. For the former (bows) there is very little archaelogical evidence, although some iron arrowheads have been discovered at the site of Alesia in Gaul. For the latter (slings), there is ample evidence. Vast stockpiles of slingstones have been unearthed within several of the hill-forts in southern Britain, a clear indication that their use was a major factor in the defence of these sites. Nevertheless , the use of the sling is not mentioned in any set-piece battle.

An explanation is not difficult to find, bearing in mind the ethos of the Celtic warrior. Both the bow and sling are missile weapons best employed at a distance. Moreover, anyone can learn to use either weapon; they do not even have to use them particularly accurately to be effective. The Gallic leader Vercingetorix is reported to have called for all the archers who could be found in Gaul to be sent to him to make up for his losses after the seige of Avaricum. The implication here is that, despite the many thousands of warriors who were already fighting with him (according to Caesar over 250,000) these archers were not among them and might not otherwise have been expected to fight. Furthermore, the principal engagements following Avaricum were two other seiges, at Gergovia and Alesia. Vercingetorix used his archers to help defend his strongholds, just as slingers defended British hill-forts.

The conclusion that has to be drawn is clear. The Celtic warrior used neither the bow nor the sling because they were not considered to be a warrior's weapons. His goal on the battlefield was to engage the enemy at close quarters with spear and sword, and to measure his prowess against that of his opponent in single combat. To stand off and shoot at him from a distance was unthinkable. Where was the honor in that?

This is particularly interesting given the way that vanilla RTW emphasized archers to much in the Gallic faction -- they were totally wrong to do so.

So how can we duplicate this feature of Celtic warfare?

-- First, we have only 1 slinger and 1 archer unit, and they're both fairly crappy. No armor, low morale, very poor hand-to-hand skills. These are essentially militia who have some skill with missile weapons, but are NOT proper warriors as the Celtic swordsmen and spearmen are.

-- Potentially, given that the British celts used slings more, we could give the Belgae a better slinger unit in addition to the militia slingers. Likewise, since the Arverni seem to have been more fond of bows than slings, we could give them a slightly better archer unit -- but it should be expensive to purchase, because it represents a very rare type of soldier in their society.

So to sum up, for missile units I propose:

Belgae: 1 low-end slinger militia unit; 1 low-end archer militia unit; 1 medium slinger unit (better morale, longer range) which would cost more than a typical medium unit.

Arverni: 1 low-end slinger militia unit; 1 low-end archer militia unit; 1 medium archer unit (better morale, longer range) which would cost more than a typical medium unit.

Boii: 1 low-end slinger militia unit; 1 low-end archer militia unit. The Boii will also have access to Getic and Thracian peltasts, who will be superior to their Celtic counterparts, so the Boii will have other options for missile units.

[cherryfunk]

Belgae Units -- More Tattoos / Woad Painting

From Osprey:

"Warriors in Britain presented an even stranger spectacle due to their habit of painting or tattooing their bodies with woad, a plant from which a deep blue dye was extracted."

Skins for the Begae should feature more tattoos and woad-painting. However, I don't think we should have a separate 'Woad Warrior' unit as some mods have -- I don't think the woad represents a separate type of warrior as much as a decoration used by many warriors. Also, I suggest that the more elite a Belgic unit, the more likely it is to be tattooed or painted. So their most elite heavy infantry, for example, should have blue tattoos like these guys:



BELGIC CHARIOTS

Another point of distinction for the Belgae is that they still use chariots. We could potentially give them 2 types of chariots, a lighter one mainly for javelins, and a heavier one better at close combat. However, Caesar's account suggests that the chariot they used was lighter, although even so it was terrifying and could scare the bejesus out of an enemy if used in numbers.

[cherryfunk]

The Gaesatae

The Osprey book backs up what I've read elsewhere; that the Gaesatae were groups of mercenary Celts with a strong religous background, who fought naked (the infamous 'Naked Fanatics').

Both the Arverni and Boii should be able to recruit them, though possibly only in their capital city (to limit their availability). A special building should be required to recruit them, a temple to Smertrios or Camulos or another war-god.

This will be an interesting unit -- tremendous morale, a very powerful charge, berserk ability, very high attack and defense skills, but no armor besides their shield. They will be particularly vulnerable to missile weapons, as at the battle of Telamon:

"When the light troops in front of the legions began to hurl their javelins, the naked warriors in the front ranks found themselves in a difficult situation. The shield used by the Gauls does not cover the whole body, and the stature of these naked warrrios made the javelins all the more likely to find their mark. After a while, unable to drive off the light troops who were out of reach and continued to rain volleys on them, their nerve broke under the ordeal. Some rushed forward in a blind fury, throwing away their lives as they tried to close with the enemy; others gave ground and fell back creating disorder among their comrades. In this way, the martial ardor of the Gaesatae was broken." -- Polybius

[tone]

Great - keep it coming. Pretty much my conclusions too. I've got a naked model (LOL) to use for the Gaesatae - long straggly hair or clayed spiky hair?

[cherryfunk]

Here are the Celtic faction units for Paeninsula Italica, they've got some very nice units and are including the Boii as one of their factions:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...t=47617&page=3

[tone]

Just thinking about these:
Both the light cavalry (model shared with scythia) and heavy/noble celtic cav should have two javs then spear.

[pseudocaesar]

should we try and get traditional names? like, say Gasbrania Controiti (just made it up on the spot) instead of Gallic spear infantry? i think that would add a nice touch, and i have access to tremendous volumes of history books, so im sure i can get celtic warriors (several thousand history books in the library, i was amazed at the amount, considering im at a small uni with only a couple of dozen studying history, the books are incredible. im reading a book called gallia belgica right now which is a coincidence, il look more into it to find the army. it focusses on the roman province of..you guessed it, gallia belgica. which you might guess was home to the belgae. it has an incredible map too, il post it up in a little while. anyway enough rambling, il hit the books tomorrow and over the next few days and see what i come up with.

[tone]

Yees please

[pseudocaesar]

[cherryfunk]

I've been discussing the overall Celtic army composition with dvk and tone and want to see what everyone thinks of this idea:

I'd love to treat the Celts sort of how we're thinking of treating the Greeks.

So let's say we decide on 4 or 5 key Greek units (medium hoplite, elite hoplite, peltast, theouropoi, etc.), and we create a different one for each Greek faction. Then, a Greek player can recruit city-specific Greek units just like a Roman player recruits different legions. So if I'm playing as Sparta, and I conquer Athens, the hoplites I recruit in Athens will be Athenian, etc. So as the Greek 'empire' grows, the composition of its armies becomes more varied, just as the Roman armies become more varied as it grows.

I'm thinking we can do the same thing for the Celts. Let's say you're playing the Arverni, and you capture a Belgian region. The units you produce there will be the Belgian 'flavor' of Celtic units -- same basic unit, but with different shield designs, different colored clothing, slightly different stats, etc. Same model, different skin.

This way we can create the sense of building a 'Celtic empire' by allowing the player to field armies with different Celtic tribes -- which is how they actually fought, in tribal groups. And the look on the battlefield will be wonderful -- imagine a Celtic host fielding Arverni, Belgian and Boii contingents... each with different types of armor, different shield designs, different banners...

Naturally, each faction will have a handful of unique units (like the Belgian chariots), but I think we will need to have the bulk of the Celtic units be similar across factions, because the troops they fielded were similar. But as we can see with the Roman legions and Greek city hoplites, 'similar' does not have to be 'identical'....

[tone]

The only issue with this is that you end up needing extra slots to allow this, but if we've lost a few legions this should be possible.

[cherryfunk]

I think we're down to 12 legions...

Kidding!

[dvk901]

Yeah, and I removed Seleucid and Bosporan, so we should be fine!

Seriously though, this is possible even using an existing unit. For example, take a Celtic swordsman....one .cas file, one skin for each barb faction. Or one skin for all of them. The City hoplites are just one unit that's available to every Greek faction. So you could have a Belgian Swordmaster, an Arvernian Hackexpert, a German BladeCutter...or whatever....all the same basic model, but with different names for the same unit.

OR, you could just do what we did with the City Hoplites, which requires less hassle, and use one model\skin for A unit that ALL barbs can recruit if they hold an area or city. You could even use an existing unit and use no extra slots.....say like, a Germanic Forest Archer, or an Iberian (soon to be Cantabarian) unit like the Celtic Spearman, etc.

I think the idea of using a mid\upper level unit like the City Hoplite was a stroke of genious for whomever thought of that. It's an extremely useful unit, and the players basically make their Greek 'Legions' out of them.

[tone]

What Cherry is talking about is having a different skin for the same unit available if you are playing for example Arverni and take Belgae - you can then have two differently skinned units in your army....like the city hoplites. uses more DMB slots, but we could have one or two like that.

[dvk901]

What Cherry is talking about is having a different skin for the same unit available if you are playing for example Arverni and take Belgae - you can then have two differently skinned units in your army....like the city hoplites. uses more DMB slots, but we could have one or two like that.

Well, after removing the 5 Legions (sniff) there are 20 slots free as it stands. I have to use a couple....yeah, I'm going to cave in and add the Hastati back in, after considering Pseudo's pleas... ..so let's say 18 free. I'm assuming that all or most of the eastern slots are going away, since most are based on the Scythia, Armenian, Parthian units...correct me if I'm wrong. So there will be a slight gain in slots there..with a few special units thrown in.

Then the Greeks. The gain in slots was at the expense of removing all the units I added in the beginning (sword hoplites, Hampoii, auxiliary pikemen, etc.) So they still have their 'base' units. Add a few specials there (already have all the City Hoplites)..let's guess 5 for eastern, five for greek (which may be high) and we're left with 10. That's WHY I decided to remove the 5 extra Legions. 10 slots is a whole faction, or ten different 'models' upon which to create variants.

That's the way I envision it, anyway. Could be wrong.

[pseudocaesar]

Well, after removing the 5 Legions (sniff) there are 20 slots free as it stands. I have to use a couple....yeah, I'm going to cave in and add the Hastati back in, after considering Pseudo's pleas...

ahhh i knew you would cave in. it was my artistical mastery that won you over im sure!

[tone]

My reckoning was that after I'd added in all the units I want to (Eastern, greek and barbs) there would be none left so I reckon you're right.

[dvk901]

We reckon pretty good!

[pseudocaesar]

another tidbit, the painting of warriors, as said before, was widespread... every warrior did it. but i want to point out that the skin painting persisted the longest in britannia, the gauls were doing it less and less i believe, so perhaps one or two units without the blue paint on them in the mainland factions? and also..i bought germania by tacitus today, and it is very illuminating, il put together the main points to give a more historically accurate germanic faction, not so much as the specific units, but more so geography and religion and culture etc.