The smell worse than any camel. Wait? Camels?

[DwailerY]

PARTHAIN ARMORED CAMELS LOL! Ahem. Yes what ever happened to those guys? I mean I'm sure there must've been Camel riders in the RS timeline. Are they going to be in RS 2.6 or is it just not happening?

[Darth Bane1]

No, I think that's not going to happen. New units are not coming with the 2.6 Version. It will only fix bugs, add tweaks of units and many other technical things. There is a thread where you can find a big list with all fixes on the forum stickies. It could be that they were left out, because the makers thought they are unrealistic. Maybe other reasons. I don't know. Personal, I would say they are not really effectiv. In vanilla they only scared horses.

[Archesel]

In RTR there were cataphract camels, i guess, because one or two roman historians mentionned them in parthian ranks. But camels were rarely used in battle, Parthians, and later Sassanids and Arabs used them mainly for carrying supplies, and not to fight.

[J0shua]

*huff puff Am I too late for this thread?
If I may contribute with my two cents, I find it to be quite a shame that RS has decided to exclude camel units. I think this for couple of reasons:

#1. Though admittedly not, common there are mention of camels being used in ancient times for direct military purposes. Amongs other places, Cyrus the Great is reported to have used camel mounted soldiers to defeat Croesus of Lydia.
#2. For gameplay purposes, Camels could prove to be a nice variety on the battlefield. I remember they had a quite unique role in Vanilla, where they were slower than cav and had a weaker charge, but had a bonus vs. horses and were more sturdy in prolonged battles. This as well could make them a nice addition, while still remaining a rare and exotic units, only available in desert regions.
#3. though sources of camels being used are rare, then I don' think it is unreasonable to assume that they were used to a minor extend. People living in the region where camels are common, consisted at this time mainly of uneducated normads and tribesmen with no means to document their living. Furthermore we're talking about a timeperiod more than 2.000 years ago, so it is safe to asume that a vast majority of documents from that time has been lost forever. Even this if we are to assume that these might have been hired as irregular auxilias by Parthians and Carthagenians, they have probably not spent too many resources on keeping tabs on this particular group.

It is a lot of speculation I know, but let's be honoest. most of our knowledge from that period is, so it's hardly that much of a stretch and, if implemented properly, they could indeed contribute to adding even more flavor to this already creamy strategic pie

P.S. Sorry for the rant you guys, but I got carried away

[Crymson]

*huff puff Am I too late for this thread?
If I may contribute with my two cents, I find it to be quite a shame that RS has decided to exclude camel units. I think this for couple of reasons:

#1. Though admittedly not, common there are mention of camels being used in ancient times for direct military purposes. Amongs other places, Cyrus the Great is reported to have used camel mounted soldiers to defeat Croesus of Lydia.

Cyrus the Great died more than three hundred years before the year that this mod's time period begins. Many things were done differently in war at that time. For example, chariots were still in wide use as well.

#2. For gameplay purposes, Camels could prove to be a nice variety on the battlefield. I remember they had a quite unique role in Vanilla, where they were slower than cav and had a weaker charge, but had a bonus vs. horses and were more sturdy in prolonged battles. This as well could make them a nice addition, while still remaining a rare and exotic units, only available in desert regions.

If they didn't see any significant use, then they're unlikely to displace any units on the already-full unit list.

#3. though sources of camels being used are rare, then I don' think it is unreasonable to assume that they were used to a minor extend. People living in the region where camels are common, consisted at this time mainly of uneducated normads and tribesmen with no means to document their living. Furthermore we're talking about a timeperiod more than 2.000 years ago, so it is safe to asume that a vast majority of documents from that time has been lost

forever. Even this if we are to assume that these might have been hired as irregular auxilias by Parthians and Carthagenians, they have probably not spent too many resources on keeping tabs on this particular group.

There's a big leap between "used to a minor extent" and placing them in as a full combat unit.

It is a lot of speculation I know, but let's be honoest. most of our knowledge from that period is, so it's hardly that much of a stretch and, if implemented properly, they could indeed contribute to adding even more flavor to this already creamy strategic pie

Historical sources are historical sources. This, in contrast, has no source.

[DwailerY]

Yea I was thinking about that. Like for Egypt I guess you could put them as recruitable in the remote provinces like in Thebes and the place below it but only as mercenaries, or for Carthage in.....that one place where Numidia is etc. And yea considering the likely people who would have used camels either didn't record much of anything(Parthia) or their records were destroyed (Carthage and Egypt). Also it should be noted that Rome who's center was not in the desert quickly started to raise Dromedarii as they expanded east to fight off the horse rearing Parthians in the badlands that seem to dot the Middle east, and I'm sure this wasn't a groundbreaking revelation that only the Romans figured out.

[Darth Bane1]

Exactly. They're not really usefull. Other Cataphrakts kick them away... There are enough Cataphrakt units. Theres no need for armoured camels...

[dvk901]

Given the number of units we wanted to put in RS2, and the extreme rarity of use for camels for anything other than pack animals in our period (they reportedly carried bundles of arrows for the Parthians), we decided to remove them. They were never that popular a unit anyway, and we had a lot of other things we wanted in the mod that were more important.