Unit Screenshots

[Vercingetorix]

Excellent! This weekend we have holiday in the USA (thanksgiving) so I hope to work on some more Gallic units

[PROMETHEUS]

Are all those gallic units realistic ? I have never heard of Daemons, ravens or sea of spear units where did u took all this info? U used the Bello Gallico? or somewhere else?
since I don't remember those even in this book....

[PROMETHEUS]

Thraex Gladiator , the equvalent of CA veliti....

Actually I deleted for error overwriting this model , so I will remake but I was undecise between this Thraex wich is close to the one CA made and instead the retiarius .... difficult task to make the net ......


or may be we could add the Scissor Gladiator to replace the arcani , actually they look very similar about for the cape .... even if the Arcani where really an exhisting unit in ancienRome , they where more a secret policethan a military unit so could be used to add a fourth gladiator unit ......so a rebel army of gladiators will ave


heavy samnite-mirmillons , scissor , secutor

light thraex retiarius

[PSYCHO V]

Are all those gallic units realistic ?

Yes, to the best of our knowledge.

I have never heard of Daemons, ravens or sea of spear units where did u took all this info? U used the Bello Gallico? or somewhere else?
since I don't remember those even in this book....

All my research was posted and discussed to death at the .com about 2 years ago. Unfortunately it has been lost since, but I still have many of the books used.
The sources are from a whole myriad material, several dozen books by contemporary authors, archeological, anthropological and historical journal articles, and ancient texts including private letters. Basically anything that allows one to garner how the Gauls looked, fought etc within a geograhical context.

At work at the moment but from memory;

A) The term ‘black demons’ was garnered from a private Roman letter (describing the enemy encountered during one of the wars against the Celtiberians) and translated into Gallic. The actual description is from two books, can’t remember which ones.

B) The Raven is mentioned in just about any book one reads on the Celts. The Celtic goddess of the dead would take the form of a Raven and alight on the bodies of the fallen and cart their souls off to the after life. Hence the helmets were worn with Ravens to strike fear in their foe. The Raven Helmets are well attested in the archoelogical / historical record and scholars believe they tended to be worn by either elite troops and / or nobles.





They are particularly noted around Bibracte the Aedui Capital. The Aedui were the leaders of the Northern Condeferacy from the mid 4th century BC on and pretty much represent the Gaul faction in RTW.

We know the Aedui had a special Royal guard. From memory there was a reference I found in Irish text which mentioned 'Raven Warriors' forming a special guard to protect an Irish King. So all the pieces were put together and the Aedui Royal Guard were afforded raven helms and called Bodubatae. The name is just the Gallic translation of “Raven Warriors” / plural. Highly likely that such a unit existed by this name but we can't prove it 100%

C) Same thing for the “Sea of Spears”. The Helvetii, as you would know from Caesar’s works used a form of phalanx formation. It is also attested in other fragments. They were very disciplined and well led.
The Celts, much like other native peoples tended to call things by names which had a direct meaning eg Boiorix ="king of the boii" , Eburones = "people who are protected by the yew-tree" etc etc
The Sea of Spears is the most likely Gallic name for such a formation and thus used as a unit descript.

[Ranika]

Pyscho V is correct, the units he lists are, as best can be researched, quite verifiable. The problem with offering a huge litany of sources, is the unique nature of the various regions of Gauls, and the soldiers they offered locally. That's why the more 'common' Gallic soldiers are easy to verify, they showed up in large areas, with a great deal of regularity. However, some occured in small numbers, but with regularity, in certain regions (a good argument for 'region specific' units, actually).

[Ranika]

I also do not mean to imply that the list is in any manner, incorrect, inasmuch as what we can know. But the Gauls did not write extensively, so we have to go off of what sources we can. Having a truly 100% accurate army, for any of the factions, is going to be impossible, But, we can come close. We will need to stretch things a bit, but believably. Even if there aren't a huge, vast number of sources, we can imply a great deal, with a good bit of accuracy, based upon digs, and descriptions. What we can assure is that what Pyscho V is offering are vastly closer to the real Gauls than the pure fantasy CA offered us. Pyscho V has used as good as sources as we'll be able to get, short of a bloody time machine. I have seen the same sources, and I'm sure some others will offer up a similar back up.

Of Mori Gaesum, have to name them something, and 'Sea of Spears' is a pretty good one. The early Irish and Welsh refered to the phalanx as a 'Sea of Spears', and such a name easily could've come from a more ancient source. It does match the kind of 'poetic' names the Gauls seemed to give things, using metaphor to convey an image of a vast number of spear heads, easily what they may have called the phalanx, and lingually proper.

Edit; For helmet for the lesser general, I'd opt for the one you've got a picture of, just because I think it's an interesting design that'll give a nice, truly unique flair to the Gallic armor.

[Stormy]

Superb unit update from all indeed
No Thracian or German Unit/model update guys ?

[PSYCHO V]

I'm loving the work your doing Prom, great stuff ..

...but some of those unit pics are 1.5MB. It's killing my 56K

[PROMETHEUS]

Ok good you have good sources , I trust , but shouldn't we limit the Gauls to what is effectively described in the Caesar's Book? Anyway even if some of those should be more elite groups and be built only in specific regions and I guess may be some are from other celtic cultures than gauls may be briton , may be celtiberian , may be belgican , may be northItalian , may be caledonian or irish....

ok I will try to resize them more next time....


Also could some of you with good sources post some good very realistic plates about greeks at that given time , I have till the end of the Alexander empire , but is mostly on phalanxes and macedopnian armies.....

Also I hope we are going to use the naked barbarian mod since shows another reality of the celtic fighters ....

[Urnamma]

Great Gallic units!

I hope some of them are shared with the britons, because the rest of us want some unit space too

But seriously, great work. I'd buy all of you a guiness if you were around here!

[PROMETHEUS]

In the fall of the Roman Republic Plutarch describes Cimbrian cavalry at Vercellae as wearing helmets like gape-jawed heads of terrible beasts heghtened with tall feathers plumes, as carring white shields , two javelins and a large heavy sword, wearing iron breastplates.



The helmet with the Raven is from the Ciumesti Maramunes in Romania , it is mounted with a bronze bird whose winged wings would flam in movement.....other helmets with mounted animals do appear in Gundership Cauldron . The romanian helmet was found with bronse greaves and mail corslet......


so according to this the helmet should be from Romanian tribes of Caelts not Gauls .......

also have been considered the Galitians???

[Ranika]

Many of those raven helmets were found in France, particularly in Normandy, Brittany, and areas around them. 'Irish' does not exist yet, Celtic Hibernia has just recently been settled by Celts in this period, who are of mixed Gaul/Briton/possibly Celtiberian extraction, but there are a few unique types of soldiers from there, one or two might be a nice regional unit for Briton/Gaul/Iberia. The units in Pyscho V's list are ALL of Gallic extraction, except for some of the mercs, and one which is Celtiberian (and I suggest we move to an Iberian unit).

The Gauls will not share units with the Britons, the Britons had a completely different military, based on tribal concerns, so mobility is more of a key for them. Gauls had steady kingdoms with large areas of land, and thus could afford themselves slower moving, but otherwise stronger forces, than one would find in Britain, which would look completely different than a Gallic military. Just because they were Celts, doesn't mean they actually had TOO much in common. A similar language, art styles, etc., maybe. But warfare was adjusted to their lifestyle, and the Britons lived a totally different life than the Gauls, so shared units would not make sense. However, we should have enough space for everyone's units. Aymar has already come up with some good ideas to cut down on the units already used, like a universal, rebel peasant unit, no one builds it, only shows up in rebellions, and cutting down, drastically, the number of siege engines by having them universal, since we can have different skins for the crews. There should be plenty of space for every faction to have a unique, interesting military, and still have room for mercs.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Actually I deleted for error overwriting this model , so I will remake but I was undecise between this Thraex wich is close to the one CA made and instead the retiarius .... difficult task to make the net ......

IMO, you shouldn't make the Retiarius. It will be very dificult to make the net, specially because we can't remake the animation. I would prefer the Thraex. But that is up to you.

or may be we could add the Scissor Gladiator to replace the arcani , actually they look very similar about for the cape .... even if the Arcani where really an exhisting unit in ancienRome , they where more a secret policethan a military unit so could be used to add a fourth gladiator unit ......so a rebel army of gladiators will ave

No. No Arcanii. No Scissor Gladiator. Only the ones that are there. Besides the Arcanii has been deleted from the files.

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Ranika is very correct when commenting on unit space. The generic units, like siege engines and peasents, will be condensed in a single unit with several faction textures. We can have 300 max units, being 268 occupied in vanilla RTW. Just from deleting ahistorical and duplicates I'll reduce occupied slots to about 230 (I'm doing that for Alpha 0.3 as I write this post). Since a lot of the units are being remade from the ground up, like PSYCHO V's warbands, a lot of the "new" units won't even ocuppy unit space. So, on an crude estimate, we'll have about 70 free slots for new units, which means that we'll be able to add several new ones per faction (depending also on the number of factions available).

[PROMETHEUS]

I would say that for the romans should be


early legion to be redraw like the Caesar ones


the actual early legion to be named medium and the segmenta heavy since they where both used at the same time in the early empire......

[PROMETHEUS]

[PROMETHEUS]

temporary version of the Equites....


final version

[PSYCHO V]

Finally some realistic looking equites! Nice job Prom!

Is it possible to thin out and reduce the height of, the helmet train..thingy on top the helmet?

[Ranika]

The Equites look great, but should the tadh be so thick? Wouldn't it be rather stringy or thinner? (What's the English word? Is it Tadh? The hair that comes from the helmet, that thing).

OT: Pyscho V, thanks for the Briton input. Please clean out your PMs when you get a chance, and everyone interested check the Briton Group's thread for a very, very preliminary list (I expect many rewrites/removals, but have to start somewhere).

[PROMETHEUS]

Yes sure I can reduce the tail , but my concerns where more about the shield pattern ....what should I use???

[Dead Moroz]

Prometheus, some changes to equites should be done.

There is pic from Osprey's book (think, you already saw it... but one more time ):



There are my recommendations:



I think you don't need to change the helmet in 3d model, it's possible to represent it's proper shape just by texture.
Also maybe you can depict harness more realistically (it's almost absent in vanilla units)?

[eadingas]

How about this for a shield pattern [IMG]http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/Images/Gazetteer/Periods/Roman/Topics/Warfare/weapons/parma*.gif[/IMG]

Seriously though, I think simple blue shield with golden umbo would suffice. There were many patterns on equites parmae, but most I could find are various golden patterns on blue, and some had no patterns at all.

[eadingas]

(hmm, you'll have to cut&paste the url, forum engine gets confused. yes, there's an asterisk in it)

[PROMETHEUS]

Yes I already tought to alter it in photoshop as well as add some other things like the red line.....

harness more realistically (it's almost absent in vanilla units)?

what u mean ?

[The Wizard]

Dead Moroz is completelly right on this subject. This is an Historical correction MOD. We're not making units because we feel like it. We are making them to simulate History in the best possible way. We prefer to be sure and make things perfect than to rush stuff just to release the MOD earlier. Speed is the enemy of perfection.

I partially disagree. We aren't only doing this to correct incorrect units, we're also taking unit speed, tactics and everything else besides units which we can mod (i.e. is not hardcoded) and which is historically innacurate and making it accurate, like we believe it's supposed to be.

At least, I thought that was the goal of this project.



~Wiz

[PROMETHEUS]

Cretan archers......

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

I partially disagree. We aren't only doing this to correct incorrect units, we're also taking unit speed, tactics and everything else besides units which we can mod (i.e. is not hardcoded) and which is historically innacurate and making it accurate, like we believe it's supposed to be.

At least, I thought that was the goal of this project.

Of course. I wasn't just refering to the units part, but, in this particular case, we were talking about units...

[Aymar de Bois Mauri]

Cretan archers......

They used javelins too? I didn't know that...

[Dead Moroz]

Cretan archers......

Are you sure they looked like this? And javelins... Can you show us pictures of ancient depictions or modern reconstructions, or text describing them?

[Dead Moroz]

harness more realistically (it's almost absent in vanilla units)?

what u mean ?