Quote Originally Posted by Scipio
I have to agree with Tommh and thwe others here Pindar, sure they were barbaric but not that uneducated! They could build roads, ships etc just not on the same level Romans and other civilisations could. Seige equitment is a hard one. I could see them using basic things like rams etc but the thing is, seige equitment wasnt used much in that period by anybody. Most lacked the technology for good equitment so for the most part nations just starved out their foes...

Hello,

I had quite forgotten about this thread of mine. I hadn't noticed any real replies. In any case, sorry my good man I must disagree. The barbarians were quite barbaric. The Celts and Germans were without any of the social accoutrements one would associate with their betters to the South i.e. no written language, no developed engineering, no large urban centers, no centralized states, no interconnected system of trade etc.

Roads: as I mentioned, for game purposes the roads play a key economic/strategic function. No such equivalent existed in the barbaric North. To argue to the contrary is to suggest some builders, maintainers and centralized interest existed. This is ahistorical.

Ships: building a ship an maintaining a fleet for war purposes are not the same. There are no examples (minus the Britons) for this occurring. Thus the options should be removed.

Siege: I have no problem with barbarian use of ladders or perhaps rams. Towers, sapping etc. were beyond their ken. I agree, that starvation was more of the norm than what the game portrays even amongst the civilized powers. The point however, siege war, if included in the game, should not allow a parity between the barbarian peoples and their civilized adversaries. There are no examples of Celts or Germans using such.