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Are you going to make more Saba units for the next release, if so how many. I feel Saba are lacking in units, having only the basic skirmisher unit, cavalry unit, standard infantry and elite infantry units and are the faction most in need of units. Could some of the upcoming previews include Saba units if you are making new ones?
To this point there have been no new Sabaean units implemented that I am aware of. One elite has been worked on, but there is little response to help the artist and it has just sat there as far as I'm aware. Our main guy on them just bailed on us, very very disappointed in him but what are you going to do, and we have had trouble doing much of anything with them in terms of military units. I hope he's happy. But our other guy has just presented the details for another unit that Nate will be working on a developmental art image for next and then it would go to the 3d artists.
I know my opinion doesn't count for beans, but I think the Saba are interesting but useless. They are doomed to being crushed by Ptolemy or Selucia. I think they should be removed and a civ added (one or two have been suggested before, I forget their names) to block Romes ahistorical northeastern expansion. Just my two dinar.
I think most all of the team still is very happy with their presence, we just wish we had some serious and knowledgeable help on them. It's such a great learning opportunity (or I should say "teaching" opportunity) that it's a shame we can't get someone who specializes in them. We are in the process of trying to get someone who really knows their stuff on them, but we haven't got anyone roped in yet. :grin:
Saba, unlike Pontus, survives and does pretty well in a lot of my campaigns and tests. It's a lot harder when you play as them though as the AS and the Ptolies will gang up on you.
Something should be done about Pontus as they are almost every time swallowed by the AS AI, unless you are playing as a faction fighting the AS and drawing most of their attention.
And when is that new unit going to show up in the build? I agree with Dumbass that the Sabaeans really could use some new units. Right now they only reach their full potential trough the Ethiopian reagionals. Which are damn good btw.
Playing them is lot like playing Pontos. You can make a great stack by combining some factionals and a lot of reagionals.
Still they need more good factionals. Mid tier ones mostly. And maybe a couple elites.
Btw. Does anybody know when the arabs started using HA?
Even with very few units Saba are doing better than Pontus.
I have played an little with pontus and I got myself pawned by AS,they attacked me few turns after starting with one full stack with two wild naked men units and lots of falanx while I was trying hard to have an little positive income and an little levy army...
And the Pontus AI in my campains always die faster than Saba.
But about Saba, yes, they need more units... What about camel riders, they are arabs, right? I never have seen an camel rider in EB, are they not historical?
Disagree. In my two campaigns with two other factions ,They remained alive unitil I stopped (Better to say been sopped) from continuing and they were still in the world (Although I played in M/M). I also played a little but nearly successful Campaign with them which once again ended up with a CTD :P Sabean problem is economical ,Not militarily.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fleeb
Camels are really... meh. They show up every once in a while, but don't seem to be particularly effective for combat. They mostly would be used as transport to and from the battlefield, but not for riding during battle.
If it makes you feel better, some of those Saba light units are really awesome.
Another problem though is that heavy units are out of place in their location due to climate. Although, it would be nice to see what they could get as they expand into Hellenistic territories. I think we have a nice Indian unit with a skin just for them, but I can't remember off the top of my head.
But historically, did the Sabaeans simply have a small selection of troops, or do we just not know much about them?
Possibly the former; definitely the latter. What is worse is that what has been published is even less. There are some academic publications published in French that one of the guys on the team is going to be looking in to getting (hopefully that should help) and we've contacted a professor whole specializes in the region.
Basically, everyone on the team has their fingers crossed.
u say camels where probly only used for transport but same w/ the British Generals they only used chairiots for trransportation then fought on foot
Well, there is no truly effective way to have men come off of chariots in RTW. There have been thoughts on how to do it - using siege weapons such as ballistas for a base and then heavily modifying it, but it hasn't really worked. If we could we would.
At least, I think that is the point you're trying to make. You're lack of punctuation makes it hard to follow your thought processes.
AFAIK camels work well enough as archery platforms. I've read Bedouin raiders operating as camel-mounted bowmen gave the Israelites major trouble at one point and presumably also pestered the Assyrians and Babylonians, and Arab camel-archers are mentioned as a part of the Seleucid line-up at Magnesia. Seems to have been a northern Arab thing though, the southerners apparently just used th beasts for transport and used their few horses to form the mounted arm.
The northern ones presumably picked up a thing or two from their Parthian, Sassanid and Roman neighbours, but AFAIK the phenomenom is in general a post-Islamic one - a direct result of taking over a lot of Byzantine and Sassanid territory, absorbing a lot of their military techniques (and often manpower - AFAIK much of the Sassanid warrior aristocracy flatly defected to the invaders en masse at some point, and there was also the ghulam slave-soldier practice) and then having to deal with HA-using enemies themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Errant
Damn. I was hoping for a historical excuse to add atleast one unit of HA to the Sabeans. They have their mounted javelin skirmishers, but they suck. Too little ammo to be of use against phalangites.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
Most enemy skirmishers can beat them in a fair fight, so the only really useful function they serve is chasing routed units.
The inhabitants of the southern "hot deserts" for some reason seem to always have favoured javelins for their mounted skirmishers (see the Numidians for another case), whereas bows seem to have been the norm around the northern "cold deserts" and steppes and regions influenced by them.
I wonder what the reason could be?
Could it be the game they hunted? Animals were smaller and more agile in the north?
But the Arabs at least had a fine tradition of infantry archery so I don't think that really holds. Could be that they just didn't have ready access to suitable horn or some similar necessary raw material (which is why they didn't make composite bows in Europe for example AFAIK), and/or that the geography meant cavalry could readily get close enough for javelins.
I think the point he's trying to make is that in EB Celtic chariots are an abstraction, since they were used for transport and not for combat, and hence thinks that the same should apply to camel riders being represented as actual units.Quote:
Originally Posted by abou
That is a similar argument I had developing in my head. Without proper materials for a composite bow you cannot make a bow small enough to be effectively used, or used at all, on horseback. I'm not sure though and haven't done enough research into that portion of Arabia to say for certain though.
Edit: Sorry, I missed your post, Geoffrey.
If that is the case then the argument I would put forth is that Celtic chariots had, at times, played a significant role during battle unlike camels... that is, at least as far we know. If we found a rocking inscription from Arabia detailing camel warfare and all its virtues in our era then we would most likely add camels, but so far that hasn't happened.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey S
Composite bows tend to fall apart in cold, damp weather.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
As the Japanese demonstrated there are ways to work around that, but yeah, I understand the local archery traditions around the "hot deserts" were more of the longbow-on-foot school of thought.Quote:
Originally Posted by abou
Not if you weatherproof them with laquer or similar. The European horn-stave crossbows worked well enough in the North as long as proper care was taken, after all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sarcasm
Indeed but point is, it was one other thing to watch out for and every little complications makes a weapon less and less likely to be used by a large number of soldiers, becoming essentially reserved to a few contingents. There were cases of composite bows being used in almost every area of Europe at one time or another but it never got to the point where it'd replace the much simpler self bow or later on the crossbow (which had a whole new set of advantages to an European soldier).Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
Which really speaks more of difficulties in producing the things rather than maintaining them, now doesn't it ? Remember that the infamously vicious Russian continental weather never kept anyone from using composite bows there - around the steppe part anyway. The further into the northern forest belt you went the rarer composite bows became and the more the wooden longbow reigned supreme.
Well when it comes to bows, they're really a close thing especially in what concerns composite ones. But I see your point, perhaps its one of those cases where there wasn't a need to innovate since there was already something cheaper and easier to make/maintain. Any new technology would find it hard to implement itself where there's already a pre-existing one that can be fielded more easily.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
Completely different. Camels were used as transport to and from battles, more like pack animals than anything else. Celtic chariots were used as transport during battles to get soldiers to and from key points quickly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey S
Anyway, the Sabaens didn't use camels in battle, that's pretty much the long and short of it. There's a chance we might have a northern arab camelry unit at some point, but nothing in the south.
I have a question about the Saba faction as it relates to the units they currently have now or perhaps will have in the future and how they employed them in battle. Or perhaps clearly stated short of actual facts ; i'm interested in my fellow EB'ers opinions. The Saba clearly is not a cavalry dominated army like the Pahlava or some of the nomad horse archer factions as they stand now. My question is who did they most resemble in battle in terms of tactics?. Their clearly not a Diadochi type army..we already covered their not like the Pahlava, not barbarian.....How did they fight?..What were their tactics like?..or were they just simply a mixture of all of the above?
Almost alittle Italian/Gallic with there love of Javelins .
That's hard to say Lysander, but my guess is that missile infantry or cavalry would be used to distort the battle line or flank once the enemy had been engaged by the line infantry. Other than that I wouldn't think there would be much more to it except archers to soften up the approaching enemy.
If the early Islamic-era armies (from nearly a millenia later date granted) can be used as a yardstick, in pitched battles those apparently chiefly fought as close-order infantry backed by lots of infantry archery ("composite" troops capable of both archery and heavy-infantry melee combat were apparently common). The cavalry mostly acted as a scouting, flanking and pursuit force - largely because there simply wasn't much of it to go around, which rather limited what could be done with it. Or that's what I've read about them says anyway.
Granted, that's a big time leap but it would have been more or less the exact same people with the exact same resources (although mail changed to iron at some point) dealing with the exact same geography and sundry circumstances, without having been severely disturbed by any major foreign incursion I'm aware of, so...
Er...well I read in "Persian Fire" by Tom Holland (p. 14) that in one battle one of Cyrus' generals got him to bring the camels up from the baggage train to the battle-line, which made the Lydian cavalry swerve as they charged at the Persians, because the horses couldn't stand the smell.Quote:
Originally Posted by abou
Now, this is a different country, about 300 years before the start of the EB campaign, and apparently a one-off, but the point is, camels were at least used sometimes. The Vanilla thing of "camels scare horses" wasn't made up, it would seem.
If you've been around a camel you know they smell like **** . I think there size would also be a factor in scaring off a horse too .
The EB team hasn't denied that they were used, only denying that they were used in combat in the Southern Arabian regions.Quote:
Originally Posted by I Am Herenow
I have to show my ignorance here, while asking some questions:
Did the Saba (not sure of plural form) expand their territory historically, and if so how far?
RTW and EB deal quite bit in "what if". What if they were given a camel unit in a territory to the North, as a regional unit? Presuming, fictionally, that they were confronted with enemies with different thinking and found that Camels were useful to scare cavalry.
I am convinced that the EB team are correct in their assessment that if something didn't exist historically, then it should really have to justify its existence in EB. However, AI and players many times do some very a-historical things and some latitude may have to be given in these cases.
One problem that has come up is Saba economy. There are not many trading ports in this part of the EB world, limiting the trade potential. Looking at the way land trade ONLY happens between neighbouring territories, if the Saba are at war with Ptollies and/or Arche Seleukeia, their trade income can not amount to much. Most of the Saba territories, after expansion have only two neighbouring territories for trading goods (I am looking at the map).
But you also have to realise that we are dealing with a limited number of unit slots and model slots, and we would rather use those precious commodities on something other than a unit, whose only real reason for being added to the game is because it looks unique! Camels are pack animals, I'm sure that at some point people have ridden mules into battle, but we are not going to make a unit just for them because "what if".Quote:
Originally Posted by Sygrod
Camels look stupid anyway :clown:
Foot
I wanted to include a scythed chariot drawn by bactrian camels cataphracts ~:mecry:
Saba was kind of a trade empire. At times they controlled modern day Yemen and parts of Ethiopia/Somalia/Eritrea. Saba didnt' really have a rise and fall, so many different 'Saba's came and went from Solomon's 'Sheba' til Ethiopian isolationists. But I'm far from an expert.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sygrod
BTW, I like camel units.
More like it had numerous rises and falls. At the start of EB Saba is battling with Qataban to regain its former glory.
thats very offensive to us camel fans!:clown:Quote:
Originally Posted by Foot
well i'm pretty sure camels are pretty offensive to horse fans...and horses, too. xP
Thanks for your insightful input Watchman. Your thought process seems logical enough to me. I wish i could say that my interest in how the Saba waged war and fought their battles was a scholarly pursuit. However, as with most things the truth is alot less appealing. I'm simply playing around with original Darth and Sinuhet Battle formations with EB to see which one i like better and was kind of scratching my head on how to classify the Saba for use with the supported_factions flag. :clown:Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
If that's the case. Then the Sabaeans should have atleast one unit of native archer-swordsmen. Akin to the Dacian Komatai Agrianai, Kretikoi Toxotai or Syrian Archers. Basically a unit (possibly more than one) with an infantry bow of superior range, and enough armor (heavy, light) plus a sword or axe.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
The unit would perform the same type of dual role that the other units listed would. They could pepper the enemy with arrows from outside their range. And once they run out of ammo, they could fight reasonably well in a melee.
Brings to mind the Mongol Foot Archers from M2TW.
Tough, overpowered bastards. You would think Byzantine Infantry could stand against a couple of leather armored archers wielding scimitars. Bastards went trough my infantry like grass. :wall:
Swords were pretty rare in South Arabia at the time. We have the archer with the spear that fulfills roughly that role at the moment, and there may be a Sabaean archer in the works that's more along the lines of what you're talking about.
The current Sabaean Archer-Spearman type sucks in melee. It's great for baiting enemy generals and shooting flaming arrows against wavering enemy units, but engaging them in a melee against anything but the weakest enemy light cavalry or skirmisher cavalry, is suicide.Quote:
Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX
They don't have the stats or the morale, for any kind of protracted melee fighting whatsoever. I swear that Persian Archers, although armed with nothing but a knife. Are better in melee then the Sabaean Archer-Spearmen.
Now. If I could get a Sabaean unit with a bow, some armor, and possibly an axe/sword as their secondary weapon. That might actually be a useful unit in a melee.
The only reason Saba outlasts Pontus is that they are located in bum **** nowhere. It takes over a decade just to lug it over to them :whip:.
Since I cannot contribute anything I'll just chime in and agree. They do indeed need a few more units to flesh them out and make them more interesting/competitive.
I'm more pro expand there native AOR .
Don't you mean bartixian camel cataphracts? :clown:Quote:
Originally Posted by Spendios
Bartixian ninja camel cataphracts. Let's keep it historically accurate.
So the camels were the ninjas?Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
What is that "Bartix" everybody started to talk about? And what does it have to do with something called Khelvan? Just wondering...
Unfortunately. No one can be told what the Bartix is. You have to see it for yourself.
So. Are you interested in staying in wonderland? And finding out how deep the Rabbit Hole goes? :clown:
Obviously. That's what made Bartixian camelry so peerless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dumbass
Ah Ok, thanks for clearing up that little conundrum.Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchman
I've been playing Saba and I think they need a new general unit skin, it looks a bit dull, and there's already and merc and elite unit of the same unit, except with 80 men instead of 50. Also I'm not sure but the general unit may need to be made more powerful, with the unit size made 60 instead of 50.
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...ghlight=bartixQuote:
Originally Posted by Basileus Seleukeia
read every post in there. noob
We will do our best to make their rooster more fleshed out, but remember folks, the wish list is constrained by what is actually accurate, and the Sabaeans just weren't the military powerhouse some of our factions are. By the way though, both the general and general bodyguard are being worked on right now.
Like dude, I knew you had a weird penchant for chariots... But combining thisQuote:
Originally Posted by Spendios
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...rian_camel.jpg
...with this...
http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/16600/166...t_16657_lg.gif
...Yeah, no comment ~:joker:
I mean look at the damn camel, how can you not laugh :laugh4:
I'm already dreaming of the next preview, btw is that guy who made the getai general still with you the details on that model were awesome.
We are very lucky to have Xprime working with us. A few hours ago he posted another splendid unit :verycool:Quote:
Originally Posted by Redmeth
Why not the camel riders? compares from the time of Ciro the Great, look the battle of Magnesia Antioco have some camel riders-archer mounted all ARABS.
Is instead historical correct to insert the camel but is incorrect to exclude this, you can insert this troops as regionals in northern Arabia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Principe Alessandro
They were very rarely if ever used. Camels were used to take soldiers to and from battle, but they were rarely used in battle. Horses were avaliable and much better in battle.Quote:
Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX
Foot