Different Heights

[Kevin]

Is it possible with M2TW for each soldier in a unit to have different heights? Like one guy can be taller than the other? Just wondering :smash:

[mountaingoat]

hmmmm this would be nice to have but i am not sure if you can play around with the skeletons that much ..(within the same unit)

[Tellos Athenaios]

Animations that is the problem really. You probably "model" it so one person in the unit looks bigger/smaller than another but you still work with one skeleton IIRC which limits what you can do (without clashing with animations) and you are also still limited to one set of animations (and animations for the taller soldier would look different from those for the smaller one).

[Darius]

Well I don't know about making individuals smaller but I could see making certain faction units shorter/taller than others. I remember often reading how the Italian Legionaries were considered fairly short compared to many of their adversaries to the north.

[antisocialmunky]

Animations that is the problem really. You probably "model" it so one person in the unit looks bigger/smaller than another but you still work with one skeleton IIRC which limits what you can do (without clashing with animations) and you are also still limited to one set of animations (and animations for the taller soldier would look different from those for the smaller one).

If you're going to make taller soldiers, can you make units taller while not modifying the horizontal skeletal width very much? It doesn't look realistic if you just upscale units like in EB. Most people can tell that it doesn't look quite right.

When people get taller they don't get much wider though they might get more heavily built(larger bones, more muscle mass, etc). They mostly well... get taller. Also the head is only slightly bigger since the size of the head very much does not scale with the body.

http://www.growtallerhelp.net/images/Human%20height%20increase.jpg
(Don't goto this quack medicine site)

[Mediolanicus]

Well I don't know about making individuals smaller but I could see making certain faction units shorter/taller than others. I remember often reading how the Italian Legionaries were considered fairly short compared to many of their adversaries to the north.

You don't really notice that 4-5 centimeters though... There is a height difference in EB I, but nobody seems to notice it.

[antisocialmunky]

Its most noticable in Celtic units because they are a fair amount bigger than their neighbors and looks a little strange.

[darius_d]

it's rather irrelevant within the same unit of soldiers.
perhaps it would be good to model some geographical ethnicities for certain units, for example - black african units and northern european may look a bit taller than all others. if two units have even a bit height difference then it would be visible. And some eastern asian mercs - if any - a litlle bit smaller - but that's it.

[Blxz]

I have noticed somehting and not sure if its my machine or not. but does anyone notice that in M2TW you can't zoom in as much? I found that in RTW I can get down so the camera is about the same height as my soldiers and I can see them fighting right in from of me. But I played a bit of sicilian vespers and some brocken crescent and stainless steel and it only zooms down to a bit above their head height.

Is this something in the mods, some setting in my game or is M2TW just a shitty game?

[antisocialmunky]

Eh, I'm fairly sure taht you can zoom in closer in MIITW than you can in RTW.

[MeinPanzer]

Well I don't know about making individuals smaller but I could see making certain faction units shorter/taller than others. I remember often reading how the Italian Legionaries were considered fairly short compared to many of their adversaries to the north.

I'm not going to post all the citations again, but this topic has been covered several times on the forums. There is significant evidence suggesting that Greek and Roman men of military age during the EB timeframe were fairly tall on average - taller than most inhabitants of the same regions up until the late twentieth or even early twenty-first century. As such, unless you can provide evidence that Celtic males of military age were taller on average than Greeks or Romans in this time period, there is absolutely no justification for some units being taller than others.

[DaciaJC]

MeinPanzer's citations (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=2306498#post2306498).

[antisocialmunky]

I'm not going to post all the citations again, but this topic has been covered several times on the forums. There is significant evidence suggesting that Greek and Roman men of military age during the EB timeframe were fairly tall on average - taller than most inhabitants of the same regions up until the late twentieth or even early twenty-first century. As such, unless you can provide evidence that Celtic males of military age were taller on average than Greeks or Romans in this time period, there is absolutely no justification for some units being taller than others.

If so, someone should throw this at Epi's Big Shield thread in the EB1 forum.

What about different horse sizes? Steppe ponies have never looked anywhere near their real life counterparts in EB or any other mod I've played.

[Mediolanicus]

What about different horse sizes? Steppe ponies have never looked anywhere near their real life counterparts in EB or any other mod I've played.

I thought I had read a twitter update stating that the Steppe Ponies would indeed get a different, smaller model in EB II.

[SwissBarbar]

There's a Lord of the Rings mod for BI ,where Units are quite larger/smaller than others, IIRC. So I think it also would be possible for MTW Kingdoms

[Frostwulf]

As far as the stature of the Mediterraneans compared to that of the northern folk, I tend to go with what the classical authors have said. I'm sure your familiar with Caesars quotes, such as the Gauls calling his troops pygmies in height comparisons, and how the Gauls were impressed that such a small people could move such a big tower(something like that). There is also the speech attributed to Germanicus where he tells his troops "While their stature was impressive and powerful in a quick attack, they could not stand to be hurt." I find it hard to believe that the classical authors would have been perpetuating a myth when the Roman people most surely would have seen the Celts/Germans in many facets of life; be it military, merchants and later on in years there were Celts/Germans involved in politics.
As far as modern studies go there are these:

To Romans, Germanic warrior stood frightfully tall and strong. Skeletons confirm this. No wonder, then, that Germanic club-men loom large on Trajan’s Column.

Measurements taken on skeletons from the cemeteries around London show that Londoners of the Roman period were only slightly shorter than modern inhabitants of the United Kingdom. Average heights for men were about five feet six inches and for women about five feet two inches. A man buried in a grave near modern Giltspur Street stood six feet two inches tall. Pg 106Read pg. 275 of this link:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1139741&blobtype=pdf

Measurements taken on skeletal remains in cemeteries in southwestern Germany indicate that the average height for men was about five feet eight inches, statures well above those of late medieval and early modern times. Measurements taken on skeletons in other regions are comparable. In Denmark, for example, the average height for men was about five feet nine inches - just above those for southwestern Germany - and for women about five feet for inches. These average heights were not achieved again until the twentieth century. Compared with earlier and later populations in the same regions, these average measurements show that most people had adequate nutrition during most of their lives and their living conditions were generally good. Pg.140
On pg. 149 of this link:
http://www.meteohistory.org/2005historyofmeteorology2/11koepke_baten.pdf

"For example, if they were born in a Northern or Eastern European agricultural environment and than migrated to the Mediterranean in their later life, we would expect them to be significantly taller." Also there is this:

Migrants from the Mediterranean to Central Europe (especially Roman soldiers and officers, as well as administrative staff) turned out to be 4 cm shorter than the rest of the population. But skeletons that could be identified as “Germanic migrants” were not significantly different from Eastern Europeans. Also not statistically significant, but economically meaningful was their coefficient in the “Mediterranean” regression: Germanic migrants, who died in the Mediterranean region, were 1.63 cm taller.Are these Roman soldiers taller then the average Roman male?

Then there is this one:
http://209.85.135.132/search?q=cache:dllOlHIlQUgJ:eh.net/XIIICongress/Papers/Koepke.pdf+average+height+roman+empire&cd=2&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de
In the conclusion they say:
"We have used anthropometric variation to measure nutritional status, one of the important components of the standard of living, in the Rhenish and Raetian provinces of the Roman Empire in the 1st to the 4th century AD. The provincial-Roman population was remarkably tall, even taller than the nineteenth century population. The population of the ‘Rhineland’ which belonged to the Germania provinces seems slightly better nourished than the people of Raetiain the first two centuries, but in the fourth century Raetians were taller."
This quote says for the first two centuries that the Rhinelanders were taller then the Raetians until later on. Also there is allot of genetic infusion into Raetia, as there were quite a few Gauls settled there since around 600 B.C.
The above two links were on nutrition and the relation to stature, which they say is related but do not think genetics seem to play a role. I'm not sure this is the case when looking at modern people such as the tall Bantu who live close to and with the pygmy Mbuti.

There is some talk of Vegetius and the minimum height requirement of Roman soldiers:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NAADVE04ECoC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=average+roman+size&source=bl&ots=Ls5hgeaAND&sig=DYi4QTPBcjP1g9#v=onepage&q=average%20roman%20size&f=false
But some of the authors I have read tend to think this would be for the 1st cohors which they believe the tallest and fittest soldiers were chosen, to make an "elite" unit out of. I could be wrong, but I don't recall Caesar saying that the "Celts" on average were 7 inches taller then the Romans.

Originally Posted by Kron, 72
I have been able to estimate the (weighted) mean height of (deceased) Italian adult males at 168.3 cm (5' 6.4"), by synthesizing the results of 49 separate studies, based upon the measurements of long bones from 927 adult male skeletons form Italy dated between 500 BC and 500 AD.Thats about 93 per 100 years, but was there any variance in stature say from 500 B.C. to 40 B.C., and then on to 400 A.D., or was there a steady average of 5'6" during the 1,000 years?

I would like to see a comprehensive study on this subject that deals with numbers in graves in both northern areas as well as in the Roman area. There are allot of questions to these studies, as in some cases it seems that there is a rather small sampling. What kind of grave sites where these, elites, common, both? Was there a large population, was there unrest in the area, etc. and did any of these things show to have an effect on the growth of the people?

I think until I see something a little more conclusive, I will have to go with the classical authors and from what I have seen in some of the modern authors that the northern folk were larger/taller then the Romans/Greeks.
Also does anyone know about this:
http://dienekes.awardspace.com/texts/greekmorphological/
Is this what Angel wrote?