New Immortals historically correct?

[JD XKiller]

I recently found an interesting article at HELLAS:NET about the Persian Immortals:
http://monolith.dnsalias.org/~marsar.../p_immort.html

If I take this as reference, your new Immortal unit appears to be way "over-armoured" (more suitable for MTW if you ask me):


:hmmm:

[Kara Kolyo]

the picture is of persian immortal, while in this time frame the iranian kingdom was Parthia, which is quite different. i'm not a specialist but they and the sasanids that came after them didn't have immortals at all
i think that Dime somwhere said that the immortals are there for gameplay reasons.

[DimeBagHo]

The Immortals in XGM are really a "what if" unit in a couple of ways. The Parthians didn't use infantry at all, and certainly never had anything like the Immortals. They did, however, have heavily armoured cavalry, and they certainly would have been familiar with the idea of the Persian Immortals, armed with spears and bows, which were ideal for supporting cavalry. So the XGM Immortals are a guess as to what the Parthians would have come up with if they had decided to field elite infantry.

[Kara Kolyo]

here are some short, but nice articles about Achaemenid, Parthian and Sassanid armies:
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/a...menid_army.php
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/a.../immortals.php
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/p...thian_army.php
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/s...anian_army.php

[JD XKiller]

Ok, I see my question answered. Thanks for the info and the links.

[Racer X]

The first image (not the model) should actually have scaled bronze armour over his torso and partly over his groin, and may have also been equipped with a short axe. The rest of his costume is accurate for the Persian Wars period, though.

[Kara Kolyo]

racer not necesserily /hate this word/ in persepolis and other reliefs they are shown without armor

[Racer X]

Most Persian reliefs do not depict the proper apperances of people, some of them are based on Assyrian art, etc. Furthermore if they are proper representations, most are not battle-ready soldiers, and probably wouldn't gear themselves until before a battle.

Remember we see Greek vases showing naked hoplitai... and that isn't necessarily true either.

Finally, Herodotus describes how their scaled armour shined in the sun, like fish, too.

This is just why I think they were armoured, you're welcome to believe otherwise though.

[JD XKiller]

Racer X:
The first image (not the model) should actually have scaled bronze armour over his torso and partly over his groin...Finally, Herodotus describes how their scaled armour shined in the sun, like fish, too...This is just why I think they were armoured, you're welcome to believe otherwise though.

"His clothes in this picture were used in combat, he wore completely different clothes when he acted as the bodyguard of the king...A corset with metal plates is worn under his tunic to offer some protection."

didn't read the article to the pic?

[Racer X]

Over, not under. Like this.

[Locky]

I personally love that little immortal. Sadly they suffer pretty badly in combat with toher elite soldiers, they have spear attribute, which gives them penalties agaienst infantry, but bonus againest cav, they aslo have a slow attack attack like all spearmen, except the hoplites. Although i would fry wearing that full scale and branded armour, lol. Pitty there's no two handed spear animation.

[DimeBagHo]

I personally love that little immortal. Sadly they suffer pretty badly in combat with toher elite soldiers, they have spear attribute, which gives them penalties agaienst infantry, but bonus againest cav, they aslo have a slow attack attack like all spearmen, except the hoplites. Although i would fry wearing that full scale and branded armour, lol. Pitty there's no two handed spear animation.

I made the Immortals with the idea that they would be used to support heavy cavalry units, rather than fighting as a stand-alone unit. Killing infantry is what Cataphracts are for. What the Immortals are for is holding off enemy missile units with their bows, stopping enemy cavalry charges, and holding infantry units in place while the Cataphracts manouver to attack.

It would be nice to give them a two handed animation though.

[Watchman]

AFAIK destroying enemy heavy infantry was more of a horse archer/cataphract tag team job; catas alone tended not work too well against decent close-order infantry that hadn't first been shot full of arrows. The issue with horses refusing to run against large solid obstacles (like formed infantry) and the threat of getting swarmed yet again, I understand.

That famous one... whatwasthename... Carrhae or something where the Parthians ate Crassus' legion for breakfast illustrates the point nicely. The cataphracts mainly forced the Roman infantry to close ranks and stand still under the threat of charge and thus become nice obliging targets for the horse-archers, and destroyed Roman cavalry that tried to engage the HAs. Only after the legionary lines had been worn ragged by extensive exposure to archery did the catas roll in to mop up the rest.

I understand both the Parthians and the Sassanid successors tended to have a bit of a problem whenever Roman armies brought along enough missile troops to match theirs (the Sassanids apparently relied mainly on infantry archers, mind you, although they also seem to have made a point of having their armoured cavalry carry bows too); I've read they on several occasions rather retreated than wasted their expensive catas in futile frontal assaults against intact legionary blocks.

Anyway, by what I know of them replica Immortals wouldn't really be appropriate for the Parthians. Those guys were originally a steppe people (Iranian-speakers like the Sarmatians IIRC) with preciously little connection to the Achamenid empire dismantled by Alex, even in rhetoric, and even after they became relatively sedentary after gobbling up the crumbling Seleucid empire the infantry always played very much a second fiddle in their armies (I'm under the impression they used mercenaries whenever something more substantial than unenthusiastic levy spearmen and archers were needed). Conversely the kingdom of Pontus apparently actually had genuine pretensions about "Persian" resurgence - Alexander never actually conquered that corner of Asia Minor, and the realm's first king was an ambitious native Satrap who stopped answering his nominal Seleucid overlord - as did the later Sassanids, the homegrown rebels who cast down the Parthians. If someone's going to try resurrecting the Immortal guards in the RTW timeframe it'd really be Pontus, or hypothetically the Seleucids if one imagined they tried to re-invent the bow/spear hybrid armoured trooper to help turn the tide against the horse nomads gnawing at their north-eastern borders - if EB is to judge by tribal infantry warriors of the Iranian plateau employed a combination of long spear and a composite bow to keep steppe raiders at bay and much of the old Persian aristocracy existed intact under Hellenic rule, so the basic know-how and manpower pool required would certainly have been available. The Seleucids copied the cataphract concept from the Parthians and Armenians too after all, so they obviously weren't adverse to ripping off good ideas.

One thing one would imagine the Parthians to try getting is some phalanx-style heavy infantry to hold the line if necessary against Diadochi pikes though. Enlisting the same pool of Hellenic settlers the Successors themselves recruited into their phalanxes from conquered regions would probably be the most practical method of achieving that - archers, mounted and foot, and light infantry were something the Parthians could easily enough recruit from amongst both their own ranks and the native populations.

[Watchman]

As for the animations, have you tried asking the EB folks if you can use theirs ? I know Alin made a 1.5-compatible version available for public consumption as it were back before he quit or whatever it now was that happened with him - I actually still have a copy saved on my HD - and AFAIK there's as such no game-related obstacle to simply replacing the one-handed spear anim with the non-phalanx EB two-handed one. Or at least I've been able to swap the EB two-handed cavalry spear anim to the vanilla one-handed one (shield clipping issues) without a hitch.

Although in the case the bow held in the Immortal's left hand isn't swapped off when the unit enters melee it's going to look damn strange...

[JD XKiller]

two-handed anims and resized shields for the phalangites are the mods most needed features. I mean, by all dacian falxmen here and naked fanatics there discussion, this is a GREEK mod afterall, or not?

[Zarax]

Unless we borrow some EB animations...