Preview: The Boii

[Aulus Caecina Severus]

WOW!!!!!

RE-WOW!!!!!

[Horatius Flaccus]

Is it normal the video doesn't have any sound?

Is there supposed to be sound on the video? Mine is silent... Im using VLC player, Windows media wouldnt take it.

No. No sound.

So yes, it's normal.

[athanaric]

The Komatai Toxotai we see in the video, will they have spears, too?

[Apázlinemjó]

Oh man, a Central-European celtic faction...oh man I don't want EB2 to be released, because I won't finish the university either. ;o

[Lusitani]

Really just a little poetic license- a reference to the Hallstatt homeland of all Celtic material culture that the Boii remained close to. 'Empire' is a bit of an exaggeration but sounds cool, and it's not like the Irish or Scots never embellish stories in the telling...

I think it has to do with Guinness and whisky... lol.
How can anyone not accept that as an answer... lol
Cheers!

V.

[Maeran]

I've not looked at all the pics or the tool yet because my connection is having trouble with loading it all. Oh, how the EB gods taunt us. The video looks great- I especially love the jostling crush of the melee. And the officer/signifer's helmet :)

Is it me or do the units switch between two shield positions? A vertical shield (I'll call it 'closed') position, like we are used to in EB1 and a horizontal 'open' position. Do these mean anything (e.g. is the open position a more aggressive stance, while the closed one is defensive) or are they simply two equal options for the engine to choose from?

EDIT: Ah, missed that bit, bobbin.

[bobbin]

No, its just that the animations are not finished yet.

Disclaimer: The General/FM models and the animations (namely the shield positioning) are still WIP. In some places the video is "choppy" due to video-capturing problems.

Just one question. Is this the occultus faction that you gave to us to try and figure out which one it is? You know, after Bobbin found out about the Bosphoran Kingdom

I don't think it is, have a look for yourself.

[seienchin]

Fantastic! The Units look incredible and I cant wait to conquer northern italy with them or having them stop the sweboz Ki rushes^^
Still one of the parts I was happy to read the most was the part about celtic language, esspecially this:
First, and perhaps most important, Gaulish is primarily a reconstructed language. There are not enough surviving records of the language to become 100% certain on certain aspects
Many people taking the languages in EB so seriously, but I think you should not do that and appreciate the incredible hard work of the language reasearchers for what it is.

[JMRC]

Other thing which i was wondering is that you mention in the preview that the Boii nobles, the Argoi unit, use both spears and swords. It seems from the screens that you plan to have them ingame use both weapons as well. I say this because as far as i know in M2TW if you give a foot unit both spears and swords (basically 2 melee weapons, one primary and one secondary) they will act buggy and do not use their spears or swords when ordered, but randomly changing between them. This can be pretty bad for the player because it is quite hard to have them use spears agaisnt cavalry, and swords agaisnt infantry. I imagine that for the ai would be even worse. So my question is, do you plan for the Argoi to use 2 melee weapons (spear and sword)? and if so, do you have any plan to address this issue of having no control over which weapon use the unit?

Actually, they are not random. In the descr_skeleton it's possible to define the distance at which the secondary weapon is drawn. So, they will charge with the spears and after the impact, they will gradually switch to the swords, because they are defined to be used at a shorter distance. However, you can always force the primary weapons again during the melee.

So, yes, the Argoi will use both spears and swords.

On a side note, will they have Gaesatae or something like this?

Watch the next 2 previews and you'll get the answer

Is it normal the video doesn't have any sound?

We didn't include sound because we wantd to maximize the length of the video. The other reason is that we're still integrating the voidemods, so we will only have sounds when the warriors speak their real languages. Possibly the next video will be shorter...

The Komatai Toxotai we see in the video, will they have spears, too?

No. The Komatai Toxotai use a sica a secondary weapon.

The video looks great- I especially love the jostling crush of the melee. And the officer/signifer's helmet :)

It's not a signifer. It's a carnyx (celtic horn) and if you watch the video closely, the carnyx-bearer actually blows the horn when the unit is ordered to charge. The carnyx sound will come next.
EDIT: look at video position 4m:03s to see the carnyx animation.

[satalexton]

THIS IS WONDERFUL. Now the Sweboz are not alone, the Getai gets a new (un)friendly neighbour, and the horrible horrible Romans have more potential Romaioktonoi waiting to kill them.

As for the Celtic voicemod, how different is Boii Celtic (if that's the term) compared to the sort that the Aedui/Averni or Lusotannan speak?

[seienchin]

As for the Celtic voicemod, how different is Boii Celtic (if that's the term) compared to the sort that the Aedui/Averni or Lusotannan speak?

I think it says, that the celtic Voicemod while be different from the in Voicemod in EB so all the celtic tribes will have different names and voices. It also says that celtic is a reconstructed language so no way the Booi will have big difference to other celtic tribe in the voice.

[Bucefalo]

Thank you JMRC for explaining it, i´m excited to hear that it is possible to have two weapons, it should add a whole new level of realism, as many troops carried both weapons

Oh and also, now that you say it, i somehow forgot (silly me) to mention the guy blowing the celtic horn (carnyx), when i saw it i was like WOW it can´t be true! And started imagining how epic would look when the horn sound and the unit charge! Amazing attention to detail indeed.

Last question, thought it don´t have to do much with the boii per se. I was wondering why the late era Argoi stop using plumes or other celtic decoration in the helmets, i suppose it might have something to do with more efficiency at producing helmets in mass quantities. It´s curious because for the romans its pretty much the same, with the hastati/principes and the legionaries, they start with a lot of decoration in helmets (like other italian tribes like samnites) and end up with simpler ones with no plumes or other decoration. Quite interesting to say the least.

[machinor]

I guess practifcal reasons. If the surface of the helmet is round, any blows or slashes from baldes will "glide off".

Fantastic preview!! Keep 'em coming!

[Skoran]

Watch the next 2 previews and you'll get the answer

Does this mean we will get extra previews really soon?

[oudysseos]

THIS IS WONDERFUL. Now the Sweboz are not alone, the Getai gets a new (un)friendly neighbour, and the horrible horrible Romans have more potential Romaioktonoi waiting to kill them.

As for the Celtic voicemod, how different is Boii Celtic (if that's the term) compared to the sort that the Aedui/Averni or Lusotannan speak?

Truthfully this is a very difficult question to answer. The only primary source of a Boian language are a half dozen names from a series of coins called Biatecs. These names are a little weird; Nonnos, Devil, Busu, Bussumarus, Titto, and Biatec or Biatex. We can also consider the sources for the so-called Noric language, which exists in only 2 inscriptions. The Ptuj inscription, for example, reads ARTEBUDZBROGDUI, probably 2 names, and which indicate a reasonable affinity to better known Gaulish sources.

So, we don't really have enough evidence to reconstruct a separarte Eastern Celtic language, nor are we really sure how different the various Celtic languages were at this point. It is important to note that differences in written sources does not necessarily indicate major differences between regional languages- none of these languages were literate, and so did not have a corpus of written material to impose regularity of spelling and style (something that has only happened relatively recently for English). The written sources of Celtiberian show some differences to Gaulish written sources, but it is always possible that whoever was doing the actual writing (chiseling) was not a native speaker**, and was adapting the sounds he heard to Greek (or whatever). There was no IPA phonetic alphabet- how an individual scribe wrote down a foreign language was basically up to him. Plautus, for example, wrote longish speeches in Punic, but he used the Latin alphabet phonetically to do so- so we shouldn`t expect that he is exactly correctly representing Punic spelling.

To bring this back to the various Celtic languages in EB- I, personally, am certain that there were many regional dialects and even distinct languages spreading from Britain and Iberia all the way to Anatolia- but I think that it is very likely that they were all more or less mutually intelligible- like Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, rather than German, Dutch, and English, to use a modern example.

Doing voicemods is a lot of work- and, as I said, we really don`t have enough material to do a Noric voicemod that`s very different from the other Celtic voicemods. We hope to revise the current one, but that is a long-term goal.

** Pure conjecture on my part. The inscriber could also be a native who learned some other people`s letters- and as a corpus of material accumulates, people learn from previous examples, thus developing a `correct` spelling.

[WinsingtonIII]

It's not a signifer. It's a carnyx (celtic horn) and if you watch the video closely, the carnyx-bearer actually blows the horn when the unit is ordered to charge. The carnyx sound will come next.
EDIT: look at video position 4m:03s to see the carnyx animation.

I noticed that! So awesome! In later stages will the carnyx-bearer actually make a horn sound when he blows the carnyx before the charge?

[Gustave]

In later stages will the carnyx-bearer actually make a horn sound when he blows the carnyx before the charge?

yes we are currently adding them !

[Ludens]

To bring this back to the various Celtic languages in EB- I, personally, am certain that there were many regional dialects and even distinct languages spreading from Britain and Iberia all the way to Anatolia- but I think that it is very likely that they were all more or less mutually intelligible- like Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, rather than German, Dutch, and English, to use a modern example.

What makes you think that Celtic languages would have stayed close to each other?

[soibean]

very glad to see a faction filling in the eleutheroi (sp?) gap in that area of the map, great job

[WinsingtonIII]

yes we are currently adding them !

Oh man, this is going to be so awesome!

For some reason, I've always found that simply having historically accurate sounding battle horns (like the sound of the legionary ones in EB1) just adds a surprising amount of depth to the game.

[oudysseos]

What makes you think that Celtic languages would have stayed close to each other?

There just doesn't seem to be any evidence of massive divergence- to the extent, of course, that there is much evidence at all. And we do have to consider that personal names might well persist longer than other parts of speech. But still, the Italian Boii aren't reported as speaking a language incomprehensible to the Senones, for example. The most divergent seems to be Celtiberian, at least in its written form.

The truth is there are many equally plausible scenarios. One critique to raise to my minimal divergence theory is how then is language congruency maintained?

[Power2the1]

Last question, thought it don´t have to do much with the boii per se. I was wondering why the late era Argoi stop using plumes or other celtic decoration in the helmets, i suppose it might have something to do with more efficiency at producing helmets in mass quantities. It´s curious because for the romans its pretty much the same, with the hastati/principes and the legionaries, they start with a lot of decoration in helmets (like other italian tribes like samnites) and end up with simpler ones with no plumes or other decoration. Quite interesting to say the least.

Its not exactly known why the Celts did away with some of the more impressive helmets, at least I have not read a theory on why. Honestly the older helmets before 1c. B.C. helmets appear much more spectacular than the later Agen Port style helmets.

THIS IS WONDERFUL. Now the Sweboz are not alone, the Getai gets a new (un)friendly neighbour, and the horrible horrible Romans have more potential Romaioktonoi waiting to kill them.

As for the Celtic voicemod, how different is Boii Celtic (if that's the term) compared to the sort that the Aedui/Averni or Lusotannan speak?

In harmony what info Oudysseos mentioned, there is not enough attested Noric, or dialects of, to really give a certain picture on eastern Celtic, or at least what the Boii spoke. Chances are it remained rather close thorough the Celtic realms. Dialects are know, such as the Narbonensis (sp?) dialect of Gaulish which is rather well recorded, and shows some alternative ways to write and pronounce certain words. The Galatians must have had different words than what is noted in Gaulish, thousands of miles away, as a few words, writings, and the like from the east do not have a parallel in Gaulish dictionaries. Keep in mind that these dictionaries are not a couple pages, but hundreds of pages long and pretty extensive in the amount of terminology and variations of a word that are included form all over, not just France, but Britain, Wales, Germany, Switzerland, Northern Italy, the East, Austria, Celtiberian Spain, etc...

Fantastic! The Units look incredible and I cant wait to conquer northern italy with them or having them stop the sweboz Ki rushes^^
Still one of the parts I was happy to read the most was the part about celtic language, esspecially this:
First, and perhaps most important, Gaulish is primarily a reconstructed language. There are not enough surviving records of the language to become 100% certain on certain aspects
Many people taking the languages in EB so seriously, but I think you should not do that and appreciate the incredible hard work of the language reasearchers for what it is.

The language is the best part IMHO. Learning how these guys would have talked and some of the ways they said certain things is really interesting. I had to learn a bit of French to understand the dictionaries as all but one that are used are in French, but it was so worth it. I really hope that folks learn a bit form all this. The names used in the preview with the * denote a reconstruction that I used based on the terms.

[moonburn]

amazing work ^^ so the naked spearman and gaesatae will most likely be one of their units considering their regions map and the batle of telamon

the lack of cavalery seems a bit troubling but i guess i will just have to wait for the other 2 previews (note i haven´t seen the video yet)

as for the boii empire one can remember brennus when he went to delphi who created alot of small celtic kingdoms in the balkans so the empire can refear to conquering the regions with keltic populations in it such as scordasci tyles transalpine gaul and ofc the alps (or even going all the way to galatia and reuniting the eastern celtic population into a powerfull confederation)

will the boii be able to build 2nd tier mines or just the basic mines ? i mean if they can build 2nd tier mines considering their previledged position to take over the alps and the balkans they will be in no time a true superpower with all the metals coming from the balkans and the alps and thus the richest faction in the game in less then 60 turns for a decent general (and all of this without the need for trading ports nonetheless)

one small remark ... lusitania and therefore lusitanian was not a celtic language

i got the boi right now lets see if the belgiums and the celtiberians will be included ^^ i suspect western europe will be one hell of a interesting place to be in only problem is that if the belgiums appear then the chattii won´t most likely

[Khazar_Dahvos]

great preview i had a feeling the boii would be included!!! Cant wait to see if another or two more new celtic factions are going to make an appearance!!!

[Glewas]

Noticed that the carnyx blower's helmet is a little odd:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think I've seen the "horn" part before in a text that I have buried away, but I did find something that is similar:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I've not seen anything in regards to Celtic helmets with such a protrusion in the back however...

Can anyone share some info, or will that be part of an upcoming preview?

[Tux]

Noticed that the carnyx blower's helmet is a little odd:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think I've seen the "horn" part before in a text that I have buried away, but I did find something that is similar:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Can anyone share some info, or will that be part of an upcoming preview?
I've not seen anything in regards to Celtic helmets with such a protrusion in the back however...

A little?! It's a freaking xenomorph with hundreds of matrioskas heads:


As a side not, that is not the carnyx for the boii which will feature a bull that has been done recently and it's the britsh carnyx that was used as a template. In conclusion each celtic faction will get they own carnyx.

[anubis88]

Well this helmets are really insane... Had i've not seen the evidence that they existed, i would think it's a vanilla thing :)

[bobbin]

the lack of cavalery seems a bit troubling but i guess i will just have to wait for the other 2 previews (note i haven´t seen the video yet)

Two cavalry units are shown in the preview.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

as for the boii empire one can remember brennus when he went to delphi who created alot of small celtic kingdoms in the balkans so the empire can refear to conquering the regions with keltic populations in it such as scordasci tyles transalpine gaul and ofc the alps (or even going all the way to galatia and reuniting the eastern celtic population into a powerfull confederation)

see this.

Really just a little poetic license- a reference to the Hallstatt homeland of all Celtic material culture that the Boii remained close to. 'Empire' is a bit of an exaggeration but sounds cool, and it's not like the Irish or Scots never embellish stories in the telling...

one small remark ... lusitania and therefore lusitanian was not a celtic language

Its debated a lot but little is known about the language, it was certainly Indo-European and the celts were the only indo-european tirbes in the area, it did have some noticable differences from celtic languages though.

[Knight of Ne]

Wow i have just read the preview and wow. We will finally get a faction to the north of italy and wow they look good. Thank you so much EB2 team, i think i have just fallen in love with the Boii.

Ne

[antisocialmunky]

Many wuvs 4 EB team.