Indian Factions

[Mystic Ninja]

Hi,

I've been following the progress of this mod for ages and i have to say from what I've seen the team behind it have done a great job. However I have a small concern about the way the Pandayn faction is depicted. From the pictures shown in the gallery they look like a barbarian faction, with poor weapons and little armour.

The Pandayans were a powerfull Tamil empire which used war elephants and its elite soldiers, such as the Warriors of the Sun, had sopistiucated armour and weapons. As a tamil my self and a massive TW fan i have always dreamed on controling a tamil faction in the game. It looks like i'm going to get the opportunity now but i want the faction to be treated with the respect it deserves.

Although my concerns are just based on the images seen in the gallery. I hope things have been changed since then and more research been done.

Keep up the good work any way.

[Zenith Darksea]

Well, the Pandya faction in RoP does actually have armoured elephants anyway.

[Goscinio]

Hi,

I've been following the progress of this mod for ages and i have to say from what I've seen the team behind it have done a great job. However I have a small concern about the way the Pandayn faction is depicted. From the pictures shown in the gallery they look like a barbarian faction, with poor weapons and little armour.

The Pandayans were a powerfull Tamil empire which used war elephants and its elite soldiers, such as the Warriors of the Sun, had sopistiucated armour and weapons. As a tamil my self and a massive TW fan i have always dreamed on controling a tamil faction in the game. It looks like i'm going to get the opportunity now but i want the faction to be treated with the respect it deserves.

Although my concerns are just based on the images seen in the gallery. I hope things have been changed since then and more research been done.

Keep up the good work any way.

I think we're going to redo them. They were made while Faeghi was project leader, but I don't think that a lot of historical research went into the faction. Of course, I could very well be mistaken, as I wasn't part of the team back then. But I do think that we intend to remake them. Someday. Certainly not right now I think.

[rez]

Goscino's right, Faeghi arranged a re skin of some RTR models. I dont think any of us were so foolish to assume the Indians were a poor levy army.

In the unit balancing i made sure they got the proper respect as good soldiers.

However if you have well documented evidence for the beefing up of our Indian factions i would be delighted to read it. Any information on the pandyans of Maghda which is of good historical quality would be nice if you feel we have messed up somwhere.

Of course i do not know whi actually researched our Indians as faeghi produced them as if from nowhere (A mighty fine trick!).

We are a mod that prides ourselves on the level of historical effort which goes into the product. So if you can be a little more specific we can see about some tweaking later on.

However right now were in the middle of forum problems and to brand new factions on the workbench

[Mystic Ninja]

http://www.atributetohinduism.com/Wa...ient_India.htm

http://www.hindunet.org/saraswati/indianarms.htm

hope this helps. ill post som more info once i have gathered more info

Some of the costumes depicted are roughly from the same era as the pandayas, although militry unfirorm did not change much. Guptas, Mauryan, pandyas, cholas all wore more or less the same armour and battle costumes. nothing changed much over many years.

[Zenith Darksea]

Faeghi produced a lot of unit lists as if from nowhere. You should have seen his original Athenian unit list (Attic Spearmen? What the hell is that all about?).

[FliegerAD]

We have no Indian historian aboard, so every info can help us, but:

You have to take the timeframe and map of this mod into account. You can guess, that I will never agree 18th century war elephant armour, e.g. The stuff from that site misses RoP timeframe by hundreds or thousands of years at least. And I can easily prove that 18th cent.AD armour could not be present in any form at India of our time.

[Mystic Ninja]

Hi,

Sorry if some of the stuff i posted was not relevant to the time frame. The point i was trying to get across was that the battle costumes worn by indian soldiers did not change much over the years. Not all units in an Indian army just ran into battle wearing just normal cloth garments (as shown in your game), some of the units wore body armour as well. Take a look at some of the pictures from the Indian tale Mahabartaha (story predates Pandyan period), it shows soldiers wearing sophisticated armour.

Dont get me wrong, I think you guys are doing a great job and i'm confident you guys will treat the indian factions with the same level of respect as the others. I just wanted to make sure that you guys were aware that some indian units wore body armour in battle. There is a mod on this site that includes the Gupta faction, Dark ages mod or something. take a look at their indian units.

[Slaxx Hatmen]

Yeah I've been bugging the guys to redo India at some point since they currently have the most dated units in our mod. We will be redoing india soon but right now Babylon and Lydia have our attenion.(And Egypt soon after)

[FliegerAD]

Don't worry, I understand you want to help the mod, not bash it. And frankly spoken, we don't have much idea about the Indians apart from Herodot... so help is appreciated very much.
But we have to keep up a certain standard as you can understand for sure. And I for one tend to be hypercritical sometimes...

Anyway, if you can provide an article about the representation of India with respect to our timeframe (ca. 560-480 BC) and map, which is backed up by sources and literature, we would be very, very happy to read it. You have a lot, really a lot time until we start with the Indians...

[rez]

I could have sworn i already posted a reply to the research here... weird.

Anyway, thanks Mystic Ninja we appreciate the effort. But as has already been said we can't use that research for time period reasons.

However that epic "the Mahabartaha" sounds interesting. Could you possibly look into researching that? That would be very, very helpful indeed.

Thanks for the help and the encouragement

[hellas1]

Hey rez,

It's Hellas1.

I emailed the celt the music files. I only asked that if used I be listed for that particular usage.

BTW, how's he doing with them? I've emailed him and heard nothing in response.

Thank you sir

[rez]

Thanks for the help Hellas1. Of course you will be credited for your contributions!

But if you need confirmation from Celtic man i would PM him as its much faster cutting me out as the middle man.

He is "the Celt" on TWC and hes around enough to rinse my post count! But hey he had a massive headstart

[hellas1]

Hi rez,

I emailed him already, no response yet.

Listen to the music man, I think you'll groove on it. If your Arabic or Iranian, of Middle Eastern descent.

As a greek, I love it!

Thank you sir!


Hellas1- BTW, Concerning ROPII, If you need steppe warrior help, you got it from me!

Yia Sou! -That's both Hi and Bye in Greek!

[medieval5467]

Hi,

I've been following the progress of this mod for ages and i have to say from what I've seen the team behind it have done a great job. However I have a small concern about the way the Pandayn faction is depicted. From the pictures shown in the gallery they look like a barbarian faction, with poor weapons and little armour.

The Pandayans were a powerfull Tamil empire which used war elephants and its elite soldiers, such as the Warriors of the Sun, had sopistiucated armour and weapons. As a tamil my self and a massive TW fan i have always dreamed on controling a tamil faction in the game. It looks like i'm going to get the opportunity now but i want the faction to be treated with the respect it deserves.

Although my concerns are just based on the images seen in the gallery. I hope things have been changed since then and more research been done.

Keep up the good work any way.

A related question - there were other factions in India at the time, some perhaps more powerfull than the Pandyans, will these be included as 'barbarians'?

[Zenith Darksea]

We have the Pandyan and Magadha Kingdoms in India. Unfortunately, the map doesn't go far enough East, and we don't have enough faction slots, to include any more Indian factions.

[Nero666]

There are plans to put the tip of india on the map too, allowing an accurate playground for both Pandya and Maghada. Could anyone tell us if we are correct with the choise of these two Indian factions? Were there more powerful factions around in our timeframe (559 to 490 BC) or not?

[The Fish]

Magadha (note the spelling) was definitely a very strong kingdom in North India at the time centered around the mod, and it actually started to really grow during this time, as well, which makes it a good choice for an expansionist game.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magadha

Finding a suitable South Indian faction is a bit more tricky, since no one knows for sure when the three big empires of the south (Pandya, Chola, and Chera) actually arose. Pandya was one of these big three, though, so it's not unreasonable to include them as the representative S. Indian faction. Mauryan documents (around 300 BCE) clearly refer to the Pandyan empire, which means they were probably well established by the time, suggesting they certainly could have been on the ascent during the time period of the mod.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandya

[Mystic Ninja]

The Pandya were at constant war with the Chola. As a tamil my self, I've read countless stories on the rivalry!

[medieval5467]

Unfortuantly, although I really love South India, I must admit that at the time of the game, the Pandyas were probably one of the weakest factions in India - South India would host magnificent empires in the future - but it was mainly the northern Mahajanapadas that were powerfull in the Indian iron age.

We have the Pandyan and Magadha Kingdoms in India. Unfortunately, the map doesn't go far enough East, and we don't have enough faction slots, to include any more Indian factions.

Thats good to hear - although the centre of Indian achievement tended to move around the country a lot, sometimes being located in the South, sometimes in the North, sometimes in the East, etc - it was really the Magadhan dynasties that first united India, and proved to be the main centre of power up until the Hunnic, Sythian and Kushan invasions, when the South stole the limelight. Their inclusion in this mod is brilliant.