revamping the moorish military

[the42up]

summer has begun and I have decided to revamp my favorite faction's military roster.

It will most likely not be a total conversion but will have the following aims-
main goal-
retool the light spearmen choked moorish infantry
retool and streamline the redundant calvary, both missle and light.

solutions so far-
replace lamtuna spearmen with black guard infantry (heavy spearman armored in mail but with high def skill and large shield)
replace nubian spearman with black guard archer (heavy archer)
add lamtuna heavy camel calvary

Any other suggestions are appreciated.

[Son of Mao]

I wish you well with this project. You might want to ask Sher Khan if you can use his models and skins.

[RollingWave]

what were the historical reference for black guards in Moors army again?

as far as I could tell the Moors army were much javlin / spear based with some light cav and occasional heavy cavs . that seem pretty reasonablly represented. your right that there's too many redundent untis (espically the spears) and it's odd that the Spaniard beat the crap out of the Moors in their own game (basic Jinets >>>>> Desert cavs and even more remarkablly, Granadine Jinets)

question though, did the Moors use no horse archers at all? no camel archer? really? one unit they could simply use to bring the Moors back to a more interstnig game again (particularly for SS since now their special unit comes like 10 turns before the game ends) would be giving them back the camel archers from MTW 1 again.

Still though, I think relatively speaking the Fatimid roster might be even more booring.

but the MOST boring roster of all has got to be the Mongols lol.

Mongols should at least get bombards and probably up to grand / monster bombards. yes they didn't start with the tech but they could have / would have learned on their way through wouldn't they?

[Giovi]

gl moors really need an improvement

[Quark]

the42up
Would probarly be a good idea to do a late era Black Guard Musket unit as they developed into such. They started as a general military unit, but became a type of elite imperial guard, so as you procress through the game they should improve in equipment, but have reduced pool numbers. If you plan on using any form of AOR, then they should only be recruitable in Africa.

[Firebat11]

gl moors really need an improvement

Agreed! Most people have not bothered to do their roster.

[the42up]

this is what I am thinking so far-
black guard spear men- available on same tier as christian guard
112 men
6 attack
17 defense (2 upgrades) (high defense skilled spears)

Black Guard Halbediers- high era infantry
90 men
8 attack (AP) (halberd unit)
12 defense (2 upgrades) (high defense skill, lower armor)
Can form spearwall.

Black Guard Heavy Archer
90 men
5 missle attack/4 melee attack
13 defense (1 upgrade) (high defense skill, lower armor, small shield)

Camel archer-
45 men
4 missle attack/4 melee attack
6 defense

[RollingWave]

I find those Tuareg camels in SS to be a lot more useful than vinilla, though maybe that's because the Arab cav manage to suck even more. still though they are much more reasonablly priced in SS than in viniila.

but yeah, early game wise a extra camel archer would be very very nice, and give them a distinct advantage over their iberian rivals. so their early roster isn't just a weaker spanish with better archers.

[BioHazard2121]

Good Luck on this project, I think that it is a great idea, as the Moors are really bad right now, maybe adding more stuff to them, or giving them better units would be A great Idea!

As Quark said, Black Guard Musket would be great, but they need to come not earlier than something like 1450 if it were me (Thats a bit earlier but, yea...)


~BioHazard

[the42up]

a camel archer was definitely something that crossed my mind.

In short, I really wanted to make a camel unit that actually saw some use.


As for the historical reference of using black guards in moorish armies, isnt the entire nation of the moors fairly fantasy-esque in the time frame of M:TW2? I could have sworn that they were just splinter kingdoms for the vast majority of the M:TW time frame.

[Quark]

the42up
If your refering to was there a single unified Moorish 'nation' between 1080 and 1580, then no, but this is true of other factions as well eg France, HRE, Turks, Eygpt etc. So thats not relevant. Was there a unified culture - :hmmm:more of an interesting discussion. But the Black Guard did exist before 1080 and were still around after 1580, admitedly different in make-up, so there is nothing fantasy about them at least.

[BigJake]

maybe not so many blackguards?

[RollingWave]

Having given more thoughts, here's my proposal

for infantry

1. remove : dismounted arab cavs, berber spearman, desert raiders.

2. add: Al-Anduris Infantry, Sudanese Tribesman, blackguard Halberdier.

reasoning:

a.the arab cavs were suppose to represent the richer folks of the islamic world that fought on horses in times of war, they came from a HUGE variety of background with a variying degree of equipment, which is reasonablly represented in this game.

but what the hell is dismounted arab suppose to be then? richer folks fighitng on foot? wouldnt that be exactly what the Al Anduris Infantry is? except that unit makes more sense as it's bigger with formation ability and start out with better armor and shield ? the other islamic factions all have saracen militas, the Moors already have the Al Anduris infantry running around as mercs, why not just do this? (and remove this unit for other islamic factions too since they already got saracen militas)

b. what the hell are desert raiders suppose to be? who the hell fight with nothing but a schimtar? that sound like some fanatsy junk. they might make a ok merc / rebel units to represent untrained brigades or something, but a actual military unit? all the while you have the sudanese tribesman sitting around, the Moors used plenty of African troops thats a fact, so why just limit them to the Nubian Infantry?

c. Latumas WERE berber tribesman, they were the elite onces, but isn't it redunden to have both?

so the new tech tree looks like

castle: Peasents->Nubian-> Sudanese Tribesman -> Latuma -> Dismounted Christians -> Black Guard Halberdier

cities: Spear milita -> crossbow militas -> Al Anduris Infantry -> Urban Milita

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Cavs: basically fine as it is, though i think that Christian guard is very weird, they were essentially normal European knights hired as mercenareis. why should their stats (not to meantion looks) be so different? consider either weakening them a bit (to better suit their represented figure, no horse armor, small shield? shouldn' they at best be just slightly better mailed knights then? it might make sense i guess since wealthier knights probably wouldn't sign up for security jobs ) and lower them down the tech tree.

desert cav-> Granadine Jinets -> Granadine Lancers -> Christian Guard -> Black Guard (lamelar horse armor, mace)

Granadine Jinets in it's current form is hilarious, it's not only much higher up in the tech tree than normal jinets, it's also considerablly worse. what the? same deal with Christian guards, very high up to get basically mailed knights? huh? Lancers are the same story, high up in the tech tree for unit that's barely better than mailed knights? even with their better training rates considered (for real recruitment) I have trouble seeing that.
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archers: peasent crossbows are really really useless right now, they got lower range than desert archers AND milita crossbows, they're AP isn't nearly noticable enough to justify them being a higher tech unit (what's more embarrsing, their lower moral / stamina / H2H means that desert archers are actually significantly better in melee too!) there's no point in making them having light crossbows while militas have heavy. unless your going to make them level 1. that might make some sense though. soemthing like

peasent crossbow -> desert archers -> camel archers (need caravan too) -> mounted crossbows

Sudanese javlin seems both redundent and never used. for a faction that gets a mounted version of javlins in it's level 1 stable who would build these guys?

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thoughts? feed back?

[BigJake]

that sounds much better than what we have at the moment
nice work +rep

[Gorrrrrn]

Terry Jones "Chaucer's Knight: the portrait of a medieval mercenary" has a neat section on christian mercenaries in north africa.

"Ever since the middle of the 13th century the Berber tribe of Zayanids had employed Catalonian and Castilian mercenaries, and their rivals, the Marinids of "Belmarye" continued the practice throughout the 14th century."

quotes J.N Hilgarth thus:

There were Christian mercenaries,merchants and slaves in North Africa, and Muslim mercenaries, merchants and slaves in Castile and Aragon. In the 12th century Christian mercenaries had fought for the Almoravids against the Almohads in Morocco. In the 13th century the declining Almohads depended largely on Castilian and Portuguese mercenaries. When the Almohads fell, Castilian and, at times, Catalan mercenary captains recruited bands to serve the new masters of Morocco, the Banu-Marin. There were Catalan militias in Tunis and Tlemcen from the 1250s onwards for at least two centuries.

Spanish Kingdoms vol 1 pp158-159

He also quotes the 14th century Arab historian Ibn-Khaldun at some length as to why they were employed - mainly because of their discipline and ability to hold the line in close order, whilst other troops were deployed as skirmishers. The Maghribi rulers only employed them against Arabs and Berbers, not for holy war, because they might take sides against their Muslim employers. Quite simply they were available and the right troops for the job required.

(Terry Jones book is a very useful text for description of 14th century mercenaries and what they got up to. Chaucer's knight was far from the chivalric ideal!)

[RollingWave]

it would depend on the definition of these Christian Mercenaries, there's a sliiight difference between say.. spearmans and knights.

[Lupu]

http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~kuijt/dba155/dba155.html

It's for DBA rules etc. for the "grenadine" army, but has much interesting info on arab-iberian armies.

[the42up]

I have given some serious adjustment to the unit rosters, no new skins yet, but that is on the way

What I need to do now is move around some unit cards and unit sprites. I just dont know how to do it .

[Caesar Clivus]

What I need to do now is move around some unit cards and unit sprites. I just dont know how to do it .

Unit cards are in Stainless_Steel_6\data\ui\units.
Unit info card pics are in Stainless_Steel_6\data\ui\unit_info.

Each faction has a directory.

If you want to use old ones for new units, you just need to rename the .tga files. For unit cards, you just need a "#" in front of the filename. For info cards, you need "_info" at the end of the filename. Look in the above directories for many examples.

[RollingWave]

I suggest that you eventrually extend this to the other islamic faction too. particular the Fatmid, who's got a even smaller / crappier / boringer roster