View Full Version : Byzantine Musketeers
Ladies and gentlemen, they have arrived.
http://xs410.xs.to/xs410/06511/byzantineMuskets.png
Thanks to Casuir who provided the purple texture for them :D
Exxxxxcellent! Muahahahaha!
Looking forward to playing with that mod when it's finished.
Good!
Now I suppose the Byzantines will be that much more fun in the late period.
Yup. Now I just need to give them a decent assortment of cannon, which should actually be easier...
Although I really wanted to give them a heavy musketeer unit in the style of the Jannissary Musketeer... It seems fitting for Byzantium to have armored it's musketeers... But unfortunately I believe it would require the creation of new meshes since the weapons and shields are actually integrated into the mesh files :/
I put a new musketeer unit into the game using the Byzantine Spearmen models, thinking that the greek armor would look good for their basic musketeer, and I could use the Latinkon armor for the heavy version, but unfortunately the spearmen (Despite being given the musketeer animation and weapon attachment point definitions) showed up holding their spears and shields.
It was kind of funny to see them shooting from their spears though, as you can see:
http://xs410.xs.to/xs410/06512/firespears.png
Julian the apostate
12-19-2006, 05:39
keep the spears
cassiusdio
12-19-2006, 05:47
You might consider Handgunners as an alternative. they are already armoured and might suit the Byzantines more than the very western europe looking musketeers
Hand Gunners reek though. I believe if Byzantium had survived and been in a position to make extensive use of gunpowder they would have had muskets at least as early as any other faction...
You're right though, the model is very un-byzantine, which is why I was trying to use the spearmen. Unfortunately there is no Byzantium texture for the Hand Gunners' armor type.
Oh and I was right, adding cannon is easy as heck, because you can give them the bombard crew soldier type, and not have to mess with the modeldb file at all.
Once I get a good handle on how everything works I'm going to be trying to produce an alternate-history mod, where gunpowder is discovered earlier on in history :)
cassiusdio
12-19-2006, 07:15
Yoy could take an alternate approach, turkish naffutan used greek fire in their grenades, an early Byzantine approach could be to use gunpowder instead, i'm not entirely sure what Byzantine war machine crew look like, but i seem to recall they are of the armoured type you are looking for. you might also make them availiable from an earlier time, since they are a fairly crude use of gunpowder. It would also differentiate the Byzantine gunpowder progression from everyone else.
Regards
That's a good idea, although honestly they should just have naffatun... I mean, the culture that developed greek fire should probably use it. Just a thought ;)
I managed to make Byzantine Hand Gunners, using musketeer stats, so I'm thinking that model can be their elite musketeers. I'm gonna see what else I can cook up.
If I can use the portuguese arquebussier model and recolor the textures for that it'll look fairly decent too. I'd really like to use the Aventurier model but of course they'd be holding crossbows.
Hmm... I've made Byzzie textures for the hand gunners and for the Portugese Arquebusier models, but I can't decide which one I like better...
Of course what I really, really want is the greek armors like byzzie spearmen and dismounted latinkon...
If only it were possible to do some kitbashing...
could you explain how you are doing this mate i want to do a few similar changes. gunpowder for the scots, reiters and zweihanders available for more factions etc
Hmm... I've made Byzzie textures for the hand gunners and for the Portugese Arquebusier models, but I can't decide which one I like better...
Of course what I really, really want is the greek armors like byzzie spearmen and dismounted latinkon...
If only it were possible to do some kitbashing...
When in doubt... Ask us...
could someone point m in the right direction to do something like this myself
edit: Explanatory post too long for going in the Citadel really, go to the following link if you wish to get information on how to mod the battle_models.modeldb file:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=1357364#post1357364
When in doubt... Ask us...
You mean it is possible to kitbash at the current time?
edit: Explanatory post too long for going in the Citadel really, go to the following link if you wish to get information on how to mod the battle_models.modeldb file:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=1357364#post1357364
Why are all of you so worried about Mongols!?:dizzy2:
Every mogol army that has come my way runs home with their tail between their legs. All you have to do is focus on their general and send more then one unit at a time at thiers at a time. once u rout a few of their units the army crumbles. personally i dnt mind that when its an enemy, but i hate it with my own troops.
BNut mongols are easy to hunt down. they are only painful because they have huge armies. so keep two on your border ready for them because after a few defeats they will decide its easier to go someowhere else for awhile. So create ur armies and hunt down their family members and send every unit at them in battle and dnt let him get away. i destroyed then mongols when they kept trying to sneak in to my western povinces.
thanks mate
Erm... You're welcome?
What's with the second quote... Did my link send you to the wrong thread somehow?
You mean it is possible to kitbash at the current time?
Well, I just meant that if you couldn't decide, then take screenshots of the new Byzantine units and let us decide which one is cooler/more fitting.
Oh hehe. I thought you were saying kitbashing could be done. I've settled on the Portuguese Arquebusier model, but ultimately it's just temporary. As soon as it becomes possible to kitbash I'm hoping I can get someone to make me the Byz Spearman and Dismounted Latinkon with muskets... I'd use the Spearman model for the basic musketeers and the Latinkon model for the elite ones.
PS: For the moment, this is what my elite musketeers look like:
http://xs510.xs.to/xs510/06513/ByzantineMusketeers.png
Erm... You're welcome?
What's with the second quote... Did my link send you to the wrong thread somehow?
ive got no idea how the second qwuote got in there!
Actually that skin isn't half bad... I can only think of the helmet to be the kettlehat instead.
They have fluffy clothes, which the Byzantiens certainly liked (they were known for being stylish), and their armour might not be terribly Byzantine but within the possible range. And we have to assume, given this 'advance' for the Byzantines, that they would get this kind of armour as well.
I'm with Tarrak, that skin is pretty good, besides if you are only using this as a mod, do you really NEED it to be THAT realistic
Hehe, I just want to see them with that characteristic Byzantine look. I can't help it.
Here's the final update of them until such time as kitbashing can be done. They have an icon and text now!
http://xs210.xs.to/xs210/06514/byzantineMusketeersWText.png
Sweet. The Byz spearmen firing had a hilarity factor all its own though. Reminds me of fire lances from Rise of Nations.
Varangian Berserker
12-21-2006, 04:14
Could it be possible that if the Byzantines had lasted long enough that some of the gunpowder units would've been "mercs" like the old-school Varangian Guard and Poronai Allagion/Byzantine Lancers (Knights paid off w/ gold)?
Of course I use the term "merc" loosely since they play more like regular units instead of mercenary ones in-game, but still.
Well, one could imagine a sort of French Musketeer styled unit among the Byzantines. They were very much into these kind of things after all.
I suppose a unit of Spaniards or something. Good with musket and good with sword.
The Spanish Guard.
Yeah but it's not the direction I want to go. The Varangian Guard weren't really mercenaries, they were simply paid professional soldiers. I mean, it was a permanent employment, they weren't freelancers.
They're more comparable to Janissaries than anything.
What I'm personally aiming for it for them to have a Militia Musketeers unit comparable to the standard Musketeer, and then the professional Byzantine Musketeers, who are much harder punks.
But again, I'm developing a relatively specific alternate history here.
Basically I'm positing an earlier development of gunpowder, in a period when Byzantium was at the peak of it's power.
PS: Ph33r.
http://xs110.xs.to/xs110/06514/ByzantineDragoons.png
PPS: Those masochists amongst you who have been asking for a step by step tutorial may now rejoice.
Behold!
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=75706
Don't say I didn't warn you though. The model DB file shall consume your soul as it did mine!
Varangian Berserker
12-22-2006, 00:01
I hope the mod is going well, but can you develop a version that leaves the development of gunpowder within the original timeframe? Just add the new units so the Byzantines can expand their tech tree of buildings/units is all.
Personally, Musashi, I prefer to, rather than ask "What if gunpowder had been developed when the eastern Roman empire was still at the height of their power?" (they still called themselves the Roman empire, I believe), ask "What if the aftermath of the battle of Manzikert and the sack of Constantinople had never happened?" If the empire hadn't been reeling from the loss of their major recruiting grounds in Anatolia and then split by the loss of the capitol to catholic crusaders, I suspect they would have made strong use of gunpowder in their military.
I'm sure they would have... I just have this idea I feel the need to play with :)
I'll see about putting together a version that just provides Byzantium with my gunpowder units and doesn't change anything else, but they may be just a tad uber for the unmodded game.
Basically I'm providing Byzantium with a Musket Militia (Which, historically would not see it's appearance for a long time yet), their professional Musketeers, a Dragoon unit (Basically Reiter equivalents) and a light cavalry mounted rifle force... basically a logical extension of the Byzantine horse archer tradition.
Those four units would give them a not-insignificant boost in late game power... Possibly making them the strongest faction in the late game. But it's certainly within the realm of what they might have developed had they not been crippled by the events you mention Quillan.
I'm sure they would have... I just have this idea I feel the need to play with :)
I'll see about putting together a version that just provides Byzantium with my gunpowder units and doesn't change anything else, but they may be just a tad uber for the unmodded game.
Basically I'm providing Byzantium with a Musket Militia (Which, historically would not see it's appearance for a long time yet), their professional Musketeers, a Dragoon unit (Basically Reiter equivalents) and a light cavalry mounted rifle force... basically a logical extension of the Byzantine horse archer tradition.
Those four units would give them a not-insignificant boost in late game power... Possibly making them the strongest faction in the late game. But it's certainly within the realm of what they might have developed had they not been crippled by the events you mention Quillan.
I'd be interested to see those other units that you're coming up with... I'd assume you'd make something like the handgunners and the musketeers respectively? Methinks two mounted gunpowder units may be a bit much with the current state of the game... Though in general, it's a great idea. I just feel that the overall MTW unit rosters had a bit more diversity and selection than M2TW's. It'd be really nice to see CA do a rather large overhaul with the next patch and potentionally "pad the rosters" a bit with some new stuff.
Pikes. Give them pikemen too. Or halberdiers. You can also still simulate their "conservativism" by only allowing them to build musketeers from the royal barracks and nothing else. No handgunners, no arquebusiers. This way they won't get cheap and plentiful low-level gunpowder units, but the ones they do get will be very good. Make the musketeers a "royal guard" unit like those elite guard archers, something like the Greek equivalent of the janissary corps.
It's too bad you can't edit the meshes. Giving the elite guard archers muskets would make for some really cool Byzantine musketeers. All that lamellar gives them a truly unique appearance, compared to the ribbed tunics of the existing musketeers.
Daykeras
12-22-2006, 03:45
Give them an elite group of "Roman" Legionaires to use from the beginning as well, but only in constantinople. I want to see the Legion against these pathetic useless excuse for Knights
Dopp: Their elite musketeers are actually a castle troop. You have to have the highest level castle barracks to produce them. So they're not easy to get your hands on. You get militia muskets from the city barracks, but they're no better than any other faction's musketeers.
I don't think you can really say the Byzantines were conservative. Their armies were actually ahead of their time. Employing a professional military is something the rest of the western world wouldn't be doing for a long time... The western style feudal armies were more of a throwback than a new development... They're basically just a more developed form of the warband, a style of warfare that Rome's professional armies decimated in the ancient period.
TheSeated
12-22-2006, 15:08
A TW modder is a lonely person indeed.
antisocialmunky
12-22-2006, 15:23
@Musashi, didn't the Byzantines move to more of a feudal way of troop recruitment dring this era with local lords providing X amount of troops to the Emperor?
- Sorry, please be more clear next time -
TheSeated
12-22-2006, 15:27
A TW modder is a lonely person indeed.
meaning there is not many of them.
I just finished implementing my Light Dragoons, they look like crap though, since I used the Camel Gunners model with purple textures. They don't look even slightly Byzantine, but the Reiters model would have looked far too armored for what I was going for. Oh well... These are basically all just placeholders until CA or someone gives us modelling tools and I can swindl... err... convince some kind soul to make me a quartet of quick kitbashes.
Until then all I can do is lay the groundwork.
By the way, I'm trying to think of a more Byzantine sounding name for my Dragoons... Obviously the term Dragoon came from the fact that they used short carbine muskets which were referred to as Dragons due to the amount of muzzle flash they produced... Dragon is from a greek root, drakon, if I'm not mistaken... So would the Byzantine version of Dragoon be something like Drakonarioi?
That's just my stab at it... it's probably painfully incorrect... Anyone know?
http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozilla-search&va=dragon
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French dragun, from Latin dracon-, draco serpent, dragon, from Greek drakOn serpent; akin to Old English torht bright, Greek derkesthai to see, look at
Draco in Latin and drakon in Greek is correct. I don't speak Greek, so I'm not certain of the correct term, but just by association with other terms drakonarioi sounds right. They used Greek instead of Latin mostly at that point in time anyway.
Yeah, I'm just making a totally wild guess with it though, based on the names of other units hehe.
Incidentally, anyone have any idea if/how you can set what unit type generals/family members use? I'd like to have Byzantium's late period Bodyguard units be Heavy Drakonarioi ;)
That would be cool. Won't it be very OP though? BG abuse will become even better if you can use them to shoot up the enemy first.
I'm posting from work, but I think down in the export_descr_unit.txt file there are unit listing for the various bodyguard units. It should be greek_generals_bodyguard or something similar.
Katank, did you ever play the Barbarian Invasion expansion for Rome? Sassanid bodyguards were Clibarnarii archers. They had cataphract level armor, 2 hp each, armor piercing maces as a secondary weapon, and composite bows as primary that shot as far as foot archers with the Long Range missiles tag. That was serious abuse.
Hehe, I loved those guys :D
But remember, I'm going to be tweaking every other faction too... So while things may seem overpowered, there's going to be foils.
Quillan: The bodyguard units are in the EDU file, but I can't figure out how the game knows which units are the bodyguards for which periods... Like there are NE_Bodyguard and NE_Late_Bodyguard entries... But how does the game know which unit, out of all the units in the EDU file to use for bodyguards? Byzantium only has one unit, Greek_Bodyguard, and I don't want their bodyguard unit to be the Heavy Drakonarioi at the beginning, only in the later periods.
@ Quillan, I never really got into BI so I can't say I've tried that before. Does sound pretty crazy though.
I have a feeling that heavy dargoons are going to be even more OP considering that with camel gunner missiles (range 180), they outrange long range archers (range 160) and the missile is high attack and armour piercing not to mention inducing a gunpowder morale penalty on the enemy.
I'm not certain what triggers the late_bodyguard switch in any event. In RTW, it was the Marian reforms, caused by building the first Imperial Palace on the Italian peninsula aside from Rome. If you can find that switch, it might be possible to add in a greek_late_bodyguard unit that uses the dragoons, but only if the trigger is post-gunpowder.
Personally, I wouldn't give dragoons a long range. Camel gunners are supposed to represent those Bedouin tribesmen who used long muskets/rifles from the back of camels, so long range there is fine. Dragoons used carbines or pistols; their ranges should be much shorter, perhaps slightly shorter than arquebusiers even.
Arquebusiers have 120 range, same as any non-long range foot archer. My Heavy Drakonarioi have 100 range... Which is actually fairly short. Longer than Reiters, but that's because they're using a Carbine Musket, and not a wheellock pistol. Still shorter than any archer in the game.
My light dragoons have a range equivalent to long ranged horse archers, but they have basically no armor at all. They're a skirmisher/flanking enfilade fire unit, and won't hold up under fire from foot archers (Who outrange them) and certainly can't handle melee.
Again though, I'm going to be giving the other factions tricks of their own to compensate. However, I'm probably going to be treating it like RTW... With Byzantium playing the role of Rome, the all around solid faction, and other factions are more challenging to win with.
I see, so it wouldn't be that unbalanced. I was expecting heavy dragoons to get camel gunner's range and reiters missile attack, thus mowing down all opposition before charging in to finish off the ragtag survivors.
Yeah, I was gonna go that way originnaly, but then I decided to make two separate units, where the Light Drakonarioi serve as the long range skirmishers, and the Heavy Drakonarioi are basically Kataphractoi with a little added punch due to the ability to shower the target unit with heavy musket balls during the charge.
Wouldn't Drakonikon would a more fitting name? Or is that related to a specific place or people? But as far as I have understood Drakonikon would imply that it is 'the unit of Dragons' (a more similar name to the Dragoon version), while Drakonarioi would be 'Dragonriders' or some such, which to me sounds like some people riding on dragons.
But technically it is a small issue. But perhaps you could mix the two. Have one of each... A dragonrider seems a little more powerful than a dragon itself, so perhaps Drakonikon as the light version and Drakonarioi as the heavy?
See that's why I asked the question... I was just making a wild guess based on unit names in the game ;)
Thanks for the advice :D
Whoa, the castle armoury? That will make them way cheaper to get than any other musketeers in the game. Byz will go from having no gunpowder to being the best faction for early gunpowder spam.
No other faction gets firearms from castles, forcing you to have to switch to cities if you want to spam them. Only 6-7 factions can even build musketeers at all (Spain, Portugal, Milan, Venice, Turks, Russia, Moors). To get muskets, you have to spend 15 turns and 27k to build the royal barracks, 2 levels above the castle armoury. An armored, elite musketeer unit that can be produced from a castle is the Medieval equivalent of the A-bomb. Erm, militia muskets that are equal to other factions' musketeers? Those fellows aren't militia, they're actually professionals.
Excellent work on your part, but I fear than when update 2 comes out and we discover that muskets now have the range of javelins and the accuracy of drunken peasant archers (to better reflect their *historical* effectiveness), we will all scratch our heads, wonder why we gave musketeers to Byz, and go back to building trebizond archers again. Maybe the Byz had the right idea to begin with, ignoring all that nasty gunpowder stuff. REAL MEN use longbows (and composite bows).
Well, Dopp's correct about that, but the solution is just to mod in two additional barracks for the castle: Army Armoury and Royal Armoury, and have the musketeers recruited from that. Perhaps do it with stables instead for the drakonioi, since they are cavalry. That should be a moderately simple change.
Well... My other alterations to the game make building up to the top tier for a castle very, very slow.
My Drakonikon or Drakonarioi or whatever they should be called are already coming out of the stables :D
Rheinhart
04-23-2023, 00:38
This is a very old thread, but I would like to know if anyone has any of the files still with them.
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