[UNITS] The Republic of Carthage

[Anibal at portas]

i do not really dispose of historical data that had carthage well equipped armored units and beautifully decorated,i think the armor would be more rough and without much adornment and regular units abound in leather armor and not the metal and that is what in fact lacking in these units.

[Lugotorix]

This is absolutely genius and beautiful to behold. I'm super excited about this mod!

[JPrice94]

I am very excited, you should deffinately add more what-if units though. If I am to rewrite history and conquer the world, I will want to adapt pike phalanxes for conquering terrain that favours the pike. Have you asked about incorparating assets from this guy's mod? http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=384176829 They look really nice. Also since carthage is a naval power, I'd like to see more variety of marines. For example linothorax and short sword armed units with a hoplon for better close range reaving on enemy ships or for working in tandem with and bolstering the army as assault infantry as they leave the ships and fight on the shore. Also some well equipped marine archers with linothorax knives and bucklers to make would-be boarders think twice.

Loving the well equipped units, they're very beautiful.

Some people say it's not historically accurate, but I like it. It'd be nice if it were like medieval 2 and you could give units better and cooler looking armour if you have a really good blacksmith. My late game grand imperial carthaginian army would aspire to be pristine and ornate down to the very last skirmisher. We can afford it afterall, dominating trade in the mediterranean and reaping the riches of iberia, gaul and africa.

[Willhelm123]

Yes Carthage is a faction we'll go back over at some point. I don't know if we can do visually upgraded units.

[Petellius]

we're a mod very much based on realism so those units will likely be revised at a later date, as for late game units you wont be getting hypothetical ones but you can get all the mercs you want from wherever you end up, so you can get pikes if you want when you get to greece.

[JPrice94]

we're a mod very much based on realism so those units will likely be revised at a later date, as for late game units you wont be getting hypothetical ones but you can get all the mercs you want from wherever you end up, so you can get pikes if you want when you get to greece.

The thing is that the carthaginians were extinguished by the romans. If they got the upper hand, you can't say they wouldn't have developed a more advanced army model that didn't just pull from mercenaries. If you just stick to historically accurate, how do you play as factions other than rome? Would it not make sense for them to revolutionize their armies when conquest becomes imperative?

I feel that yes, factions should play to their strengths, but also that I should be free to engineer an army model suited to any terrain or opponent. I wouldn't use pikes or elephants in iberia, they have way too many skirmishers. But I would against some african factions, celts, and perhaps the romans.

The more historically accurate you get, the less potential there is to feel immersed in your faction's own success and development. Rome gets a bunch of units and reforms, the other factions just get kind of sidelined.

If carthage won, they would be the new rome, they would have had military reforms. Would the iceni continue to fight naked and with tiny shields to prove their skill and bravery when they are exposed to different more cowardly fighting styles around the world in their efforts to build an empire?

Would other factions continue the tradition of having their citizen soldiers arm themselves for war? Or would the state equip them with more standard gear to make them consistant and measurable in the fray?
I just feel like you'd be making the game go stale after a while for other factions without hypothetical reforms and units.

[Petellius]

But it was only the Romans who bothered to properly adapt their main infantry to different situations, even then most factions have some units that are legionary-esque. If I were macedon I would have used some Thracians, agranians or thureophoroi in Iberia. Most factions have the ability to be flexible with their tactics and troop rolls. I don't really feel the need to make stuff up to make them able to continue to grow into a big empire. It's not like the Ptols and Seles were small factions, and they could have quite easily have expanded had they not have been constantly fighting each other and themselves.

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

NO hypoyhetical units thxs...

And when released i bet there will be guys that make unit packs.

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

The thing is that the carthaginians were extinguished by the romans. If they got the upper hand, you can't say they wouldn't have developed a more advanced army model that didn't just pull from mercenaries. If you just stick to historically accurate, how do you play as factions other than rome? Would it not make sense for them to revolutionize their armies when conquest becomes imperative?

But they didn't this is not a mod about what ifs

The more historically accurate you get, the less potential there is to feel immersed in your faction's own success and development. Rome gets a bunch of units and reforms, the other factions just get kind of sidelined.

What? thats the most nonsense i have heard"the historical it gets the less you get immersed in your factions" they wont get sidelined they have there own pool and you can get mercs everywhere

If carthage won, they would be the new rome, they would have had military reforms. Would the iceni continue to fight naked and with tiny shields to prove their skill and bravery when they are exposed to different more cowardly fighting styles around the world in their efforts to build an empire?

Again they didn't but you can with the units of that time and mercs

I just feel like you'd be making the game go stale after a while for other factions without hypothetical reforms and units.

It won't if if it would it would be also go stale with hypoyhetical units,

This MOD is about recreating the history we know not what if this would have happend what if that would have happend it didn't so you get to play with the real units that fought during that time and believe me there are enough for you to choice from.

[Causeless]

I think Carthage's roster is large enough to not need many hypothetical units. They've already got a really big and impressive roster - second only to Rome's I'd say. The Iceni have a great roster too.

Hypothetical units would be better suited for some of the horde steppe factions, in my opinion, as the historical choice for them at the time is quite limited. Perhaps they could research more infantry units etc when they settle.

[JPrice94]

You say this mod is not a mod about what iffs, but isn't that what total war has always been about? I can choose to play as the caledonians, ride elephants and conquer the world if I wanted to. I appreciate the painstaking historical accuracy, but it's based on a game where you are writing history. I don't want to sail someone all the way to greece and recruit some mercenaries that I probably can't afford.

What I mean is the romans will continue to reform into late game, whereas the other factions only reform a little, and then historically they were wrecked by the romans, so their story ends and thus, they remain static for the rest of the game.

[Petellius]

The Romans hardly reform much more than other factions, also the main reforms are things not really represented in the mod as you don't get that complexity of problems like you do IRL. If anything the main thing about the marian reforms would be the ability to allow other manpower classes to be used for Rome as otherwise they would quickly run out of men.

Carthage wouldn't have that problem specifically as they massively relied on mercs and had a system set up to it. Also in AE the roman legionaries of the Imperial period aren't as OP as in other mods/vanilla, they are still human and aren't miles ahead of any other units that fight for a living (and as such are professionals) that is their main advantage (plus armour and shields) but these advantages doesn't mean that other units such as Hannibals reformed veterans aren't as useful, if anything hannibal's veterans and the reformed sacred band units are one of the best units in the game.

[ABH2]

There's already not quite what-if units, but a healthy amount of development for Carthage. I think this is less applicable for them. For instance, they do have a scutum/mail armed unit. They already have a pretty good dose of everything. There's a degree of what-if you could go into - adopting a pike phalanx and such, but you end up with a high level of complexity there. The general trend among Carthage, especially by our start date, was adopting more Roman-esque tactics. That's my own interpretation.

I don't think what-if pike units are necessarily a route we'd want to go down for them. A quality phalanx wasn't something you threw together. It required a system of training unless you were just going for some cheap knock-off like, in my view, Pontus. So when we look at why the Ptolemaic phalanx was done away with (they struggled to keep it up to a high level and it wasn't well suited to their internal situation, on top of dwindling number of Greeks), or the Macedon and Seleucid. The phalanx required a high degree of support and infrastructure in terms of local training. In order to develop their phalanx the Macedonians had created a number of settlements organized around that military function. Similarly with the military colonies that dotted the Seleucid territory. It was ingrained with those societies and their local military tradition.

We do have 'what-if' to an extent, but the important question there to me is what path of development was this group going down before their conquest (if conquered) or would have they have plausibly done so. It's about that question to me more than anything. One thing we want to avoid in this mod is giving every faction a choice of everything. Not only is that just going to be far more difficult and time consuming to mod. There's also the fact that you still want factions to play somewhat differently from one another.

There definitely are factions right now that are weak on reforms that we'd want to develop fuller at some point. Mainly some of the 'minor' subcultures, I'd say.

[JPrice94]

Yeah that's true I imagine carthage would have continued to develop the copied the scutum and short sword model army (but keep the beards amirite?). Pikes are good even for lower quality units though, they're great for keeping enemies at arms reach and really good for clearing or defending towns and plugging up streets. I'd say allow them as cheap knock-off units for more factions, but make them inferior quality to macedonian pikes, meaning they would have to conquer macedonia, and their pikes would fall to the macedonians easily, plus the macedonians and greeks maintain coherency and can keep enemies at bay much easier. To exploit their pike culture you'd have to conquer or subjugate them, or make investments such as building a pike related building (phalangite barracks as opposed to hoplite barracks) or getting a certain percentage of a culture/citizen class which is created by the pike building. This would simulate a transition period of conditoning and training citizen soldiers in the use of the pike until it's as established a cultural practice as cretian archers or baleric slingers.

[Willhelm123]

We won't be having Pikemen for Carthage. Aside from no historical evidence for it, the direction they developed was in the Roman style, not into the Macedonian style. If you conquer much of the Hellenic world you will be able to recruit AOR pike units.

[Igor85]

We won't be having Pikemen for Carthage. Aside from no historical evidence for it, the direction they developed was in the Roman style, not into the Macedonian style. If you conquer much of the Hellenic world you will be able to recruit AOR pike units.

http://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showth...Pikemen/page2&

[Willhelm123]

Phalanx doesn't mean Pikes it means close formation infantry. The Romans are described in a phalanx at times, it doesn't mean they used 22ft Sarrisas, same for Celts and others.

[Causeless]

Phalanx doesn't mean Pikes it means close formation infantry. The Romans are described in a phalanx at times, it doesn't mean they used 22ft Sarrisas, same for Celts and others.

I think better points are on the previous page:

True, but Polybius is rather vague for being a military man. He refers to both Macedonian and Carthaginian troops as "Hoplites". However it is interesting that in book 18 when he talks about the "Advantages and disadvantages of the Phalanx" he mentions Hannibal and the Carthaginians right alongside the armies of Pyrrhus and the Macedonians (who both used pikemen).

Polybius' early mention & writing off of Hannibal in that 'why the Roman style is better than the phalanx' bit seems to be pretty strong evidence for a Carthaginian Pike phalanx.
Its obvious that he expected the first criticism of the piece to be along the lines of "But Hannibal used a pike phalanx & he kicked our asses many times with it" so he tried to brush that off with 'but Hannibal was a superb & inventive general so that doesn't count & anyway he requipped his troops asap with better Roman gear'

I'm no historian, but I think those points are relatively convincing (given the context) that Hannibal may have used pike phalanxes early on.

However given the relatively late starting date of AE it's likely that even if pikes were used, they'd have been phased out of the Carthaginian military by then.

[Willhelm123]

It's not strong evidence, they simply use the word phalanx which was the word used to describe a tight body of men fighting in a large line. It does not mean pikemen. When ancient writers refer to pikemen they make it very clear, usually by saying they fight in the Macedonian style. Like we've already said, the Carthaginians primarily relied on mercenaries and auxiliaries, their own citizens were far too few to form a pike phalanx, they formed a spear phalanx instead. A pike phalanx requires a lot of men, it isn't like in game where its a single unit of 256 men, they needed thousands to form a solid line of pikemen across the battlefield, that's how they were used, and with the Carthaginian citizens being 3000 or something it just wasn't going to happen.

[Causeless]

It's not strong evidence, they simply use the word phalanx which was the word used to describe a tight body of men fighting in a large line. It does not mean pikemen. When ancient writers refer to pikemen they make it very clear, usually by saying they fight in the Macedonian style. Like we've already said, the Carthaginians primarily relied on mercenaries and auxiliaries, their own citizens were far too few to form a pike phalanx, they formed a spear phalanx instead. A pike phalanx requires a lot of men, it isn't like in game where its a single unit of 256 men, they needed thousands to form a solid line of pikemen across the battlefield, that's how they were used, and with the Carthaginian citizens being 3000 or something it just wasn't going to happen.

The thread has more evidence that they fought in Macedonian style:

Secondly, we have Fabius Pictor, who tells us that the Africans were arranged in phalanx-like groups. Now, we also have Xanthippos, who re-trains the Carthaginians to fight in a phalanx formation. He puts them in Macedonian (not Greek) style Phylae, and reorganizes their command in the model of the Successor kingdoms. Carthaginian cavalry of the period is also changed significantly, as much of it becomes shock cavalry not so different from that of the Macedonian model.

Add to this two mentions of 'twelve thousand very long spears, sixteen cubits in length' as part of an armory's inventory in 245 B.C. Carthage, and we can really begin to appreciate that there is definitely a unit of native pikemen. Now, most of our Carthaginians (Liby-Phoenicians) will fight much like Hoplites, but the citizen phalanx will be ordered like it was under Xanthippos, in the Macedonian (pike) style.

The evidence is indirect, but very, very strong. The way he organized the units is 100% Macedonian. The Carthaginian army started to have Dekarchs, Phylae, etc. Their army, without any mention of the sarissa in Xanthie's day, had all but adopted every organizational piece of the Macedonian phalanx. Have you ever heard of hoplites organizing themselves exactly in the Macedonian manner without Macedonian equipment?

This seems to be a very compelling implication that the Carthaginians did at some point utilise a pike phalanx.