Sab'Yn in .81 [Archive]

Vorian

01-18-2007, 14:52

I know that this faction is still incomplete but I tried it and found it awesome. Are you going to include new units in .81? Maybe more Arabic and Beduin ones, like camels and more light cavalry (but melee the Arab levies are cool but only for shooting javelins).

Harain

01-18-2007, 15:09

my favorite faction atm, just hope the vanilla peasant unit cards get removed and some buildings get added (temples and stats for goverment building mostly) :yes:

Teleklos Archelaou

01-18-2007, 16:43

temples are added, govts. fixed. I am not sure what changes with units - certainly they get unit cards, but I dunno if there were any changes there.

Dumbass

01-18-2007, 18:04

Sabyn is definetly one of the best factions at the moment, even though it's half complete. Just think how amazing it would be if it were complete. The only problem is the lack of desert provinces in the regions and in ethiopia.

HFox

01-18-2007, 19:59

would be neat of that odd island group to the south was a region....if its the one i think it has a certain historical significance later but I do not know what was there at this time :(

MarcusAureliusAntoninus

01-18-2007, 21:31

Is it true that the team has no intension to add camel units for anyone anywhere ever?

Teleklos Archelaou

01-18-2007, 21:34

That is true. No camels in battle for EB. I'm not the expert, but I know of the decision.

Kugutsu

01-18-2007, 21:43

would be neat of that odd island group to the south was a region....if its the one i think it has a certain historical significance later but I do not know what was there at this time :(

If you are talking about that corner of land that sticks out of the bottom of the map, I dont think its an island... Its the corner of Somalia, which extends a long way east of the mouth of the Red Sea. There is an island, Socotra, to the east of that horn, but Im not sure anything notable happened there...

QwertyMIDX

01-18-2007, 21:48

That is true. No camels in battle for EB. I'm not the expert, but I know of the decision.

Yup, no camels, they weren't really used in battle proper, just for getting to and from battle.

Kugutsu

01-18-2007, 22:00

So were the camel cataphracts another fantasy creatio?

Ludens

01-18-2007, 22:08

So were the camel cataphracts another fantasy creatio?
I understand the Parthians actually did experiment with such a unit. I doubt it was a huge success, though, as they didn't continue it.

keravnos

01-18-2007, 22:10

There is work planned on this faction, but NOT for .81

Sorry, not at liberty to discuss more.

Sab'Yn are a very exciting faction, yes!

QwertyMIDX

01-18-2007, 22:10

Sorry, I was refering strictly to Arabian warfare. There are some examples of eastern armies using camels in battle.

Watchman

01-18-2007, 22:24

Julian the apostate

01-18-2007, 22:39

the socotra islands are just pretty big masses of largely unihabited rock.
This may be a stupid question (prolly is, but is there any chance that there will ever be the entire tricontinetal mass (africa, asia, europe) in a single campaign like if the faction limit was removed.

VandalCarthage

01-18-2007, 23:18

We're working very hard right now to make sure that Saba has a very nice unit roster, and some new material was recently posted. Hopefully they'll be well stacked.

With regards to camels, the only serious consideration was a Nabataean unit, and I've given thought to figuring something out for a regional unit, since there's some indication that the Sabaeans levied bands of them from subject tribes and they were clearly used for caravan guards.

the socotra islands are just pretty big masses of largely unihabited rock.

Socotra was a huge source for medicinal plants and Alexander was advised to settle it in order to control the aloe trade.

QwertyMIDX

01-18-2007, 23:22

From what I've read the ornery beasts kinda suck as shock cavalry mounts, but work decently enough as archery platforms. Or in any case references to camel-mounted archers occur every now and then around the topic of Middle Eastern warfare (eg. the Judeans apparently at one point had serious trouble with raiders fighting that way, and the Palmyrans employed camel archers for desert patrol), and I can't readily think of any technical or logical obstacle either.

The closest the Arabs and southern Arabians came to using them in battle was riding them in retreat, sometimes firing arrows at their pursuers. They often rode two to a camel in this maneuver. Like I said before the point isn’t whether or not its technically possible to use camels as fighting mounts, it’s if the Sabeans and their Arab levies did so, which the experts on the subject and the evidence I have seen agree that they did not.

Vorian

01-18-2007, 23:41

Well, I will just keep playing and waiting patiently for the .081. (Hope it comes soon). The Sabeans will be second after I am finished with the Koinon

Watchman

01-18-2007, 23:43

Fair enough. Mind you, I've also seen a passing reference to the Seleucids having had a screen of camel-mounted Arab archers at Magnesia.

MarcusAureliusAntoninus

01-19-2007, 00:23

Everyone loves Camels! They are like the fantasy unit that isn't fantasy (though pretty usless). I remember when I first got vanilla BI, and the Eastern Roman Empire had a camel auxilia. Even though the horses were the same/better, I recruited a bunch of camels just because it was something different.

If EB does consider adding camels make them realistically crappy. But maybe for something for variety, and to represent some factions could have recruited camels but didn't because they had better options.

QwertyMIDX

01-19-2007, 00:41

Fair enough. Mind you, I've also seen a passing reference to the Seleucids having had a screen of camel-mounted Arab archers at Magnesia.

Yeah Appian says there were (he is writting three centuries after the fact of course), but you have to keep in mind the broad use of the term arab in antiquity as well. It was used for a fairly diverse and sizeable number of peoples, pretty much any of the nomads south of Mesopotamia or east of the Mediterranean coast. It's also important to note that what we have in terms of sources from arabia itself (mostly inscriptions and the arab poets of the few centuries before the coming of islam) all support the stance that camelry was not something the arabs (at least of the southern and middle regions where most of these sources are from) used in battle.

MeinPanzer

01-19-2007, 01:08

Sorry, I was refering strictly to Arabian warfare. There are some examples of eastern armies using camels in battle.

And what of the Nabataeans at Magnesia? They were certainly not equipped in any Seleukid manner, so they must have been using their native equipment. There are also Nabataean terracottas from the 1st C. BC/1st C. AD showing unarmoured camel riders with swords and what may be small shields.

QwertyMIDX

01-19-2007, 02:10

Are Nabataeans Sabeans or Arab tribes from their areas of influence or contronl? Not last time I checked. I refer you to the extensive archeological studies of the American Foundation for the Study of Man. We're talking about South Arabians and the tribes of the southern and central western coast here. Not those of the north near the Mediterranean coast, who, as a mentioned in my last post, though often called arabs by ancient sources, are not the same people who are fighting under the Sabeans.

Watchman

01-19-2007, 02:13

Unless, presumably, the Sabateans expand that far north...?

QwertyMIDX

01-19-2007, 02:28

Nope, at it's greatest extend the Sabean polity wasn't even close to that far North. It controled modern yemen, western oman, and some of the western coast of modern saudi arabia as well as arguably parts of the east coast of ethiopia. There was a Minaen (another southern arabian people, often under the control of the Sabeans) trading colony at Dedan (modern Al Ula) that the Nabataean later inhabited, but that's about as close as it gets.

EDIT:

OH...you were saying if they did in the EB universe. We might have a regional Nabataean camel unit if we have model space, it's been kicked around but we're getting pretty tight on the model limit so you may to make do with more conventional Nabataean cavalry.

VandalCarthage

01-19-2007, 03:05

Since I'm the Sabean FC, I really don't command much attention, so I figured I'd repeat this for everyone:

With regards to camels, the only serious consideration was a Nabataean unit, and I've given thought to figuring something out for a regional unit, since there's some indication that the Sabaeans levied bands of them from subject tribes and they were clearly used for caravan guards.

MeinPanzer

01-19-2007, 03:44

Since I'm the Sabean FC, I really don't command much attention, so I figured I'd repeat this for everyone:

I'm curious what sorts of sources you used for them.

Sarcasm

01-19-2007, 04:36

:coffeenews:

Tuuvi

01-19-2007, 05:50

MeinPanzer I think you should be the EB forum's official skeptic.

MeinPanzer

01-19-2007, 07:05

MeinPanzer I think you should be the EB forum's official skeptic.

:) It's always healthy to look at things from different perspectives!

HFox

01-19-2007, 08:22

In terms of the island part of this.......is the local food supply recognised?

........phish?

Also as part of trade routes....or is this s astep toooooo far :)?

VandalCarthage

01-19-2007, 19:46

For the most part our sources were based on the collected inscriptions of the Sabaeans and a number of dictionaries I've been fortunate enough to acquire. Archaeology and a few other linguistic sources have helped as well.

........phish?

Phish wasn't around back then.

QwertyMIDX

01-19-2007, 19:57

There are a few good books about southern arabia but the best sources in english are the archeological stuides published by AFSM which include both artifacts and inscriptions. Most good university libraries will have copies of some of the stuides if you're interested, you'll probably be the first person to take them out in 40 years though. At Brown I was the first person ever to take our one of the volumes, which is kind of amazing considering it was published in the late 50's.