Song dynasty - Unit Previews & Roster Development (REDUX)

[Cuong Vu]

In this thread we are going to review different aspects of Sung military structure, military equipment. I would just post this here first since we will need to make heavy adjustment on our current Sung roster. I notice Rollingwave is still around so he might come over and give us a hand.

But first I will post some of the latest updates on Sung military equipment from Mount and Blade Warband: Da Song, a submod of 1257 AD mod. This is a great example of how a Chinese army at this time looks like. In my opinion, they are the best representatives so far compared to any other depictions I have seen. Still some minor glitches in their models can be adjusted for the sake of historical accuracy.

Here I present you the mod:

http://qmyks2009.5d6d.net/viewthread.php?tid=6341

I will try to reach the team over there by conversing in Chinese. But first I need to know what is Yelu's plan on modeling these units? An exchange between two teams may foster further understanding on this dynasty. I notice that they haven't tried their hands on Jin and steppe armies, we may want to co-operate to produce the best illustration about East Asian warfare, that's my grand hope.

I may need to research more on a few days for forming troop tree for Sung dynasty.

This is also a great chance for our Vietnamese assistance to have a look at their northern neighbor and compare the two kingdom's units. Their most concern is simply Vietnamese troops might look too like their Chinese counterparts. But with the creation of Da Song I can say such a fear is now left in the past. I see no similarities at all.

Good work and good luck, teamates!

God blesses you all!

[RollingWave]

That is indeed quite awesome, roster is of course debatable in many ways.

That MB mod say those material are ok for public use.

[Yelü Dashi]

Happy for you to contact them, but may not be needed as the Chinese mod 'Road to Luoyang' has already 'recycled' some of their materials, and even there stuff in Skyrim ! So needless to say they are happy for others to use their work.

I guess I want Cuong Vu to imagine this mod hasn't been released and let me know the purest units ideas, then I can take as many element from this mod and re-engineer them into AUH. IT may models in some cases (defiantly, helmets, weapons, bit of armours) and many of their textures. But I don't simply want to cut and paste this stuff as it is, I want to make it my own in some ways - so still having that link with the primary sources is important.

Let's just start with the lower ranked units and examine the AUH one - and see how much of a transplantation it needs !

Obviously the good thing about AUH is we can have better heads/faces than M&B and more unit variation (where required).

[Cuong Vu]

Happy for you to contact them, but may not be needed as the Chinese mod 'Road to Luoyang' has already 'recycled' some of their materials, and even there stuff in Skyrim ! So needless to say they are happy for others to use their work.

Further exchange with them will help me to locate more important sources as well.

I guess I want Cuong Vu to imagine this mod hasn't been released and let me know the purest units ideas, then I can take as many element from this mod and re-engineer them into AUH. IT may models in some cases (defiantly, helmets, weapons, bit of armours) and many of their textures. But I don't simply want to cut and paste this stuff as it is, I want to make it my own in some ways - so still having that link with the primary sources is important.

I am confident to say that even without this mod we can still create a reasonable good looking Chinese roster, not just for Sung, but for many units of Jin and Xia. The pictorial depiction armours in my arsenal has reached certain level to allow us to reconstruct armours without doing much speculation, as the Vietnamese case.

Let's just start with the lower ranked units and examine the AUH one - and see how much of a transplantation it needs !

Certainly! One of the biggest issues with most mods are the emphasis on armours. This is something I feel quite daunting since a lot of low tier troops won't be able to possess that much armours. But then Chinese civilian clothes aren't that hard to replicate, I guess. Using a variety of civilian clothes can help us to reconstruct local units pretty easy.

Most of your earlier models do suffer from complicating details instead of streamlining them, but I appreciate much of your effort. This is something easy to fix. I actually think militia units will not be too hard for you to re-texture, as the bulk of our job is simply streamlining our original designs.

The hard part though is concerning units in southern border, Tai-speaking community, troops stationed in Guangdong province. This will certainly need a lot of works.

Obviously the good thing about AUH is we can have better heads/faces than M&B and more unit variation (where required).

YES!

[Cuong Vu]

Now for militia units, this is perhaps the best picture I hope you will keep in mind. It looks simple and close to how commoners dress in Sung times.

http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zh...26students.jpg

You already have wonderful hats in the past, just stick it on top of their heads, cloth them with these simple civilian clothes, then we can take the wide-brimmed hat as well, and we basically have the lowest tier troops' customs.

[Yelü Dashi]

LOL - I have that very picture ! What about those Song style little shoes with the bandages/wraps on the lower that we used for some of the Viet units (I noticed DaSong uses something similar) - shouldn't they be the norm for our basic units ?

Also, if its not too much extra work let's start a Jin dynasty REDUX thread as well, I think it will be instructive to look at the two factions together from my perspective in order to perserve or replicate parts where there are similarities ?

Thanks