Constantine: Rise of Christianity - Future Plans, Previews and Historical Discussions

[jjpower24]

the whole look of the unit and every soldier himselfs looks so awesome good job !

[caprera]

To me these are the coolest Roman armies evar

[andrew881thebest]

I have read something about late Roman army and it was divided into Scholae, Domestici, Vexillationes, Legiones, Auxilia. Scholae and Domestici were imperial guard units, all cavalry except for Domestici Pedites. Vexillationes, legiones and Auxilia were divided into Comitatenses and Palatina. Palatina were the elite units, so with best armors.
So I guess the name of a unit should be "legio comitatenses..." or "legio palatina" or "Auxilia comitatenses..." and the name of the legion or Auxilia unit. Auxilia were small units lightly armored mainly used for guerilla actions. Maybe you should make units of 480 soldiers so that each unit could have historical numbers (500 or 1000).

[andrew881thebest]

when will you upload new units in steam?

[andrew881thebest]

can you tell us if you are still alive? maybe Creative Assembly blackmails you?

[Maximus183]

Pretty sure they're alive and busy working on the mod (or any of the countless other ones they're involved in), buddy. Give them some time.

[Ahiga]

Like Maximus said, busy with real life as well as other stuff but still working on it. Have begun the less fun but essential activities of stats/coding in proper abilities or building recruitment for units.

[Undeadsloth]

I have 2 questions:
1. I don't know if this has been answered but are you also making models for the Huns and Picts?

2. Do you need someone to research these factions or an extra hand researching them?

definitely loving the look of the mod .

[Ahiga]

Appreciate it.

I don't have the experience to really make models (and the editing I was able to do to them was back in M&B, and in general doesn't seem applicable for R2). So anything for them will rely on contributions by other artists or permission to use their work. I have a preliminary idea for handling the Huns - face wise there's an eastern face that has something approaching Epicanthic folds. I'll take other greek/roman faces with the same uv mapping, apply it onto that model and try to tweak it to get something that reasonably looks East/Central Asian. Course given the multi-national nature of steppe confederacies the actual true blue Hunnic element will probably be small and limited to two high quality units (horse archers and noble cavalrymen) - and in turn they'll have a wider array of Sarmatian and Germanic auxiliaries.

Dress is easily achieved with the current steppe tunics, though I will have to remove their patterns and make them more drab (and in some cases add fur-edging).

Pictwise they are a low priority given their single-province status, but I do intend eventually to get to them.

I'm fairly well squared away on research but the more the merrier.

[andrew881thebest]

2 questions for me too.
Any possibility to see some lanciarii units soon?
And to see some of your comitatenses units in steam?

[Undeadsloth]

I was mainly wondering what you planned for those factions and thanks for responding. Your mod revolves around my favorite period of Roman history (mainly because the roman uniforms started looking so badass).

[andrew881thebest]

I was mainly wondering what you planned for those factions and thanks for responding. Your mod revolves around my favorite period of Roman history (mainly because the roman uniforms started looking so badass).

well segmentata looks cool too. More than those guys with round Shields and Lorica hamata.

[foot soldier]

The indo-european settlement of Emerita Augusta on Rome 2 doesnt exist.
You have gave the name of Emerita Augustua , a future Spanish city called Mérida, when in this game its Ébora Augusta , a portuguese city called Évora, on a settlement that is situaded in Lusitani/Portuguese territory .

[Dresden]

Emerita Augusta was founded in 25 BC so it should exist at this time period. I did my best with placement of cities based on maps I could find, some are going to be off a bit from the locations.

[Marcus Flavius]

Have to do non-faction colored cloaks (easy, just boring) to keep from having the clone effect of the same bright colors.

Foederati Pedites.



Foederati Armati.



Helmets as usual are a mixture of Dejawolf's, Song of Talesin's, Imperator of Rome, Counterpoint to whom all credit is due. Spear's are dejawolfs when not Vanilla. Swords are a mix of Vanilla spatha, Imperator of Rome swords, Counterpoint Swords.

Yes, you will be able to recruit Comitatus Foederati who will wear armor. No, these guys will not - they are the rank and file warriors who are not a senior member of a Germanic warlord or notable's comitatus, but who are more well off than a corvee'd farmer.

Unfortunately with regards to shine, it's kind of difficult to master the symbiotic relationship of gloss map and specular (I still don't truly know how they work, just a vague sense of "red layer in gloss map is always almost featureless for metal", and stuff like that). And with everything on my plate I'm not able to return to fix that, nor do I imagine I could really achieve a perfect parity with all helmets having the right shine to it (As is true in Vanilla R2). So I'm probably not going to be able to really worry about adjusting the shine until later. If someone wants to do a test when it releases of making the specular much darker or the gloss much darker and releasing that fix, they certainly can. Noted observations Andrew.

Ahiga, hi mate, good work! look very historical, are you gonna revamp the factions of Franks, Lombards, etc to be like thouse untis? have you plans to this factions in the future? =)

[Ahiga]

I forget if they have already been added to the Germans as placeholders (Goes to show I am modding more than I play, which is about never until Croc and LOB are set up!), but either way yeah we will return to the Germans.

[Marcus Flavius]

[/QUOTE]

Why i can´t see this variation on shields too?

[Marcus Flavius]

more inspiration of light units, shield patterns, and spear colours! =)
http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/863/infanteraromanatardasig.jpg

and please, one more suggestion...could you remove the nails on the edge of late-roman shields? they were usually sewn to the leather, not with nails, becouse of the expensive price of made thousends of nails for the shields. Again...Thanks for this mod, i´m excited with this mod, really like the idea! =)

[andrew881thebest]

Hi Ahiga, Reading about late empire soldiers, I read that one of the problems is that since they were chosen by landowners among their farmers/servants, they tended to give to the emperor (as "tax") the worst men, the weakest, the ones with diseases (i imagine weak and short guys). Result of this is that average size of common roman soldier got worse and worse. if in Republican and first empire height limit to enter the army was 165 cm, or 170 cm for first cohort and cavalry, so you can imagine pretty average guys even compared to modern standard, in late empire limit was only 155 cm, so you have an idea of how much the need of more men changed the looking of Typical roman soldiers. Being a typical late roman farmer and living in a far precursor of castle/farm in the middle of nothing, you were probably malnourished so grown less than you could. Something which happened a lot even in middle ages.
Vegetius, I think to remember, compared "Romanorum brevitas" to "germanorum proceritas", which means Roman short height to German high height. This happened even in late Republic, as gauls fighting Romans noticed and joked about, but probably even more in late empire.
I wonder if you make this happen visually in the game, making Germans visually taller (average German was a bit less than average European nowadays, so 175 cm more or less) and roman units (especially low level infantry like Limitanei) smaller in size (even if with differences, since surely there were tall guys even among romans). As I said, only for low units, While I suppose that Comitatenses and Palatine units, being raised even and often among Germans, were less incline to this and maybe the elite units like Palatini were probably chosen even for their being tall and strong. Something which happened since centuries before when tallest and strongest soldiers went into first cohort.
We should not forget that fighting in that age was mainly melee and your physical attitude and appearance was of primary importance. Imagine being a 158 cm roman soldier facing a 185 cm barbarian almost naked and full of muscles yelling like an animal while running at great speed towards you. It should have appeared terrifying and that is probably why Limitanei garrisons in the border towns were always cut into pieces offering almost no resistance to barbarian invasors.

[juanplay]

I think there is some kind of misunderstanding regarding the late roman army, it was not weaker or worse equipped than the army of the principate if anything it was a more centralized army than the Augustan Legions and a much more effective fighting force. For example the Fabricae created by diocletian supplied the legions with the finest equipement roman smiths could create and also the late roman army was by all standards a force able to face a wide variety of foes due to its new found flexibility in the use of Heavy armored calvalry and Horse Archers (Not forgetting the field army had heavier infantry troops). I think the most evident example of roman efficiency is the fact that it was this kind of force that finally managed to defeat the persians once and for all during the reign of Heraclius.