Greek States Anonymous Roster Expansion (GSARE : AARE / SARE / EARE) SARE v101 released

[Gauloisier de la Gauloiserie]

Update: works now. I build a Neosoikoi, not a military port. Call me stupid.

[Biggus Splenus]

Some suggestions:

Athens

- Ekdromoi Hoplitai shouldn't be wearing body armour; they were the poorest, lightest equipped in the phalanx, and would usually run out from the back ranks of the formation (where they would usually be) and chase down enemy skirmishers. They usually couldn't afford armour, and those unlucky enough to be equipped like this, were employed as Ekdromoi.

- Thracian Peltast Auxilia probably shouldn't exist. Athens needed to recruit them as mercenaries, just like all the other Greek states; Thracians didn't live on Athenian soil, so they're not really Auxilia are they... Also, Auxilia is Latin, Auxiliary is English.

- Scythian Heavy Archers, Scythian Cavalry Auxilia; same point, Mercenaries, not regulars or city levy, they shouldn't exist in the roster in any other way.

- Athens never adopted the Makedonian style phalanx. In fact, they actually stopped relying on citizen troops altogether, instead they hired entire forces of mercenaries to do their bidding (except usually for home defense eg. in the case of a siege).

Sparta

- Thorakitai and Thureophoroi were both equipped with spear, sword and javelins, so you don't really need a separate unit for each.

Epirus

- Scale armour wasn't used in this region; thureos warriors would have just been armed in the native Greek style (only Epirote city guard seemed to have been armed like this, all regulars were in the Makedonian style). Thorakitai and Thureophoroi are the exact same thing, the former is just slightly heavier, relying on his heavy armour and discipline more so than the latter.

- The Boiotian helmet was also only used by cavalry, except in the region of Boiotia (unit idea; Boiotian Hoplitai for Athens )

- The Hypaspistai shouldn't all be wearing that sash around their waste either, it's an officers sash, a show of rank.

[Gauloisier de la Gauloiserie]

Good points above-

As for the names, I am in favor of having them all in Greek, or all in English/French whatever. But a mix of greek and english names is confusing even more.
I say, all in Greek. That's what I'll do for my personal use anyway.
A pity greek alphabet cant be entered in the text field, they display series of ???????
It worked in RTW though ...

[Smarmy]

@Splenyi
Hoo boy, hefty critique. Ok let's see...

The "Ekdromoi" were originally named this because of EB inspiration, there's already a Light Hoplite unit in the vanilla game but is little more than a cheaper militia grade hoplite that doesn't function any differently. The desire was expressed to me for a more "professional" light hoplite that had sufficiently good stats as to be useful as a late game strategy, so the new "Ekdromoi" were created. I kept them in the lightest equipment possible but these aren't historical Ekdromoi, they are hoplites who specialize in being light, not necessarily being so light simply because they are poorer and less skilled. It was the alternative to changing the vanilla stats, which with the way modding works right now, is a huge pain and causes a lot of conflict issues.

Auxilia, auxiliaries, more nomenclature I got wrong. Blarg.
The thracians and scythian additions did have to take some historical leeway, and I tried to address the holes in Athens roster both from a gameplay perspective as well as trying to keep some authenticity. Sources said that Thracians and Scythians were used in their armies, whether or not they are recruited via a mercenary pool or from an auxiliary barracks is a game play decision not a historical one. Personal role play can always come into account however, and just because they are recruited from the barracks does not necessarily mean that they live there. It's just the means to get the soldiers into the players or AI's army.

Again, more historical accuracy that R2 does not stick to, there was already a phalanx unit for Athens present in the game, but their roster was still left rather empty. So I had a problem, they needed a late game phalanx that wasn't a foot companions clone. So I took some inspiration from EB, the phalanx unit that is available to the Koinon Hellenon, and applied a "schtick" to them basically. Athens focusing on more light troops, where as Sparta has a focus on heavier infantry. So there you have the elite light pikemen, the "Koinon Hellenon Phalangitai (Greek Pikemen)".
The Thorakitai and Thureophoroi are divided on the basis of their armor classification, as in EB, one in a heavier scale armor (though selection for this is extremely limited at present), and linothorax.
Thureophoroi are present in vanilla in the form of Thureos Spears, but the heavier variant is not. So that's why I made the Thorakitai, or Thorax Spearmen.

As for the Boiotian helmets (everyone seems to love them), some leeway had to be taken of course for the sake of helmet variety. Finding that helmet on the head of a hoplite is best thought of as a representation that the man in particular is from Boiotia, since the greek men in these armies can't be thought of to come solely from the city of Athens. Sparta or Athens conquering Greece makes far less sense, better that you think of the faction as forming a "league" with the other greek cities by use of force or otherwise, and the faction city in question is merely the leader of that league.

The Hypapistai, another issue with equipment variety. It's a consistent problem, trying to make a unit appear the way you want with enough variety that they don't look like clone soldiers. There are a lot of bronze thoraxes to use, but as you say they are officer ones, it does bother me but trying make a unit look like a higher strata while at the same time keeping some variety, gets tricky. I can definitely look into it again though, and try to limit them to the selection non officer bronze thoraxes, with some variation in tunics underneath. Most of my attention has been on MPRE so I haven't been doing much tweaking for the GSARE packs as I could be. I've learned quite a bit and gotten into the habit of making my own custom variant meshes for each unit, I can definitely go back to GSARE and go over the units again, trying to apply what I've learned since then.

Thank you for the critique, by the way! I'll definitely look about changing the nomenclature too in the original post so it's more clear, I left the old stuff out of respect for the inspirations that bore them. The unit names in game though are where I think I'll leave them, "greekifying" names will have to be left to an overhaul that unify all of the nomenclature to something consistent. That's with vanilla units included.

[Smarmy]

Hmm, after looking at it a bit more, because of what you mentioned, I did get into the habit of using scale for the Thorakitai where it might not always be necessary. The use of scale for that unit was based on the EB inspiration of Thorakitai, specifically the Epirote and Seleucid ones, Thorakitai found in the Spartan roster, or Athens too if I give them the unit as well, would be armored in mail. Something for the next version, certainly.

[neoptolemos]

Hmm, after looking at it a bit more, because of what you mentioned, I did get into the habit of using scale for the Thorakitai where it might not always be necessary. The use of scale for that unit was based on the EB inspiration of Thorakitai, specifically the Epirote and Seleucid ones, Thorakitai found in the Spartan roster, or Athens too if I give them the unit as well, would be armored in mail. Something for the next version, certainly.

Scale armour was present in Greece since the 6th and 5th cent so having scale linothoraxes is quite historical.

scale linothoraxes-even scales in chalcidean helmet:



Greek full scale armour

[Smarmy]

@Neoptolemos
That's reassuring, though I may change the southern greek Thorakitai to use mail anyway, just for the sake of some variety. I do plan to give all of the units another look over, compare them to the source inspirations again and see what I can change and tweak without breaking too far from it. Variety is the problem..
For instance.. this..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Compare the man on the left to the man on the right, the leather muscle cuirass courtesy of Ahiga. The new Thureophoroi on the right much more closely resembles his EB forebear, except for maybe the boots, but he looks far too good to mix him with the other armors of the same protection value. Most if not all of the "light" armor in the game are very militia grade, most attention being paid to the heavy royal elites that every faction ends up with. The Thureos Spears aren't meant to be militia grade, the Thureophoroi that they derive from are more akin to a professional standard, not a levy. But this isn't R1, it's R2, and greater variety is possible. The only reason I wont use this armor right now is because it's the only one of its kind, aside from some minimal tunic variety the unit would look far too uniform to be considered authentic. The reskin I have right now also suffers from this problem, it's why this unit is high on my priority list for changing.

Hopefully as time goes on more armors will become available to use, varieties of this muscle cuirass, as well as leather linothoraxes. But it is very promising, and gives me ideas for giving the units more character. For instance I do like the idea of a "Boeotian Light Hoplite" rather than just a Professional Light Hoplite, so it feels like each Polis, as you progress, is contributing something to your joint military, rather than deriving from a bland greek pool of amalgamated units. There just needs to be enough variety within the limitations of giving them more character. This new unit, as an example, giving them Boeotian Helmets of varying crests or no crests or helmet at all, variations of this muscle cuirass, varied greaves or no greaves, spear, hoplon both undecorated and decorated with a symbol unique to boetia?, tunic variation, a xiphos, etc. Ending up with something that has, hopefully, character and variation in equal amounts.
But that's just an idea..

[neoptolemos]

If you need any help with the historical background i ll be around for your aid!

[Biggus Splenus]

Scale armour was definitely popular in Hellas during the classical period, but during the later part of this period it definitely died down a lot; armour must have been reinforced by metallic plates rather than scales (and both), like Alexander's cuirass on the Pompeii mosaic. He's got iron plates on the shoulders and chest for better protection, and a scale mid-rift for better movement.

I think in a region like Epirus, warriors would wear something much lighter than scale (because of the mountainous terrain), perhaps just plain linen/leather, with just a little scale/plate reinforcement? There'd also definitely be padded armour, like Smarmy showed above, but I'm not sure about those leather muscle cuirasses

[dom385]

For some reason all the units only have 1 device on their shields, is this intentional or is it because I'm using more than 1 unit pack?

[Smarmy]

@dom385
Err, no that's not intentional. In my game they have more than one, the marines though are limited to the navy oriented ones. I've heard of one other person having this problem, though theirs was with hoplites, all of them having the medusae device. It was inexplicable, I'm not really sure what causes it, and I don't think it's related to my mod. I didn't make edits to the existing shield meshes, only the marines have a new shield variant mesh that was created to limit them to the dolphins and octopuses.

[dom385]

Yeah that sounds like the same problem, all my karian axemen have dolphins too. How does the game decide what decals to use? Is it in the units variant mesh file?

[.Rory.]

hi, excellent mod. only unit mod i currently use atm.
Quick question: is this compatible with nomadic cultures dlc pack, and seleucid faction dlc? because in custom battle units from the new dlc culture packs are invisible and have strange unit icons.

[Smarmy]

@dom385 It's just a diffuse that's applied to the shield after the fact, it's under variantmodel/man/pattern/hellenic.
@.Rory.
I believe that's an issue with the older version of SARE, I had to remove the unit_variants in that pack that was overwriting the vanilla one. It needs to be updated for patch 5, but I have released a new version with the offending table removed. SARE v101.

[.Rory.]

ahh yes this was this was indeed the case.
Thanks for your prompt reply!

[xD.Dunedain]

Quite bizarre, when i click on the link for SARE 101 mediafire link, it send me to SARE 100 download. Other link just sends me to blank attachment page.

[dom385]

Hmm, I checked all my mods and they all only have 1 decal per unit. Did that other guy find a solution to the problem?

[Smarmy]

@xD.Dunedain
I thought I copied over the old link but I guess it kept the original one in the hyperlink for some reason. I've fixed it now, sorry about that.
The blank page thing for the attachment seems to be a problem with TWC, it doesn't always load. That's the reason for the external links.

[East Londoner]

Hey is there any chance that you could release a new units only version as id love this to work along side legionares skin mods

[Chinaski]

@Chinaski
A proper Koinon Hellenon will probably have to come later, with a overhaul mod like RTR or EB. However modding my mod packs should be relatively easy for you, to give the other cities unit permissions. I don't touch the garrison system, adding any of my units to that would require modding the vanilla armed citizenry table. Athens and Sparta are the same culture and build the same buildings, so to give Sparta or Athens access to the other factions units you'd need only give the faction permission.
See the units_to_groupings_military_permisisons table, you'd just have to clone the entries for the units you wanted to share, and set them to the appropriate military group.

Yeah I've tried that yesterday. It works like a charm for your new units, but when I try to add vanilla units it messed up the garrison, adding three time more units to it. The other issue is that all units are converted to Athens' colors instead of keeping their own, which is very unfortunate. Oh well, I'll have to dig a little deeper when I have the time ..