If you have not yet seen EB,

[Simetrical]

EB's goals are much the same as RTR's: basically, making the game more realistic. It started out dedicated to researching barbarians, hence the name, but it quickly grew into a general historical research team, and upon the game's release, a historical mod team. For more info, go to the forums linked above.

Anyway, most barbarians really weren't as barbaric as they're often portrayed. None of them matched the discipline of "civilized" armies, but then, arguably nobody did again after the fall of the Empire until the mid-medieval times. Barbarians also didn't match civilized architectual achievements, and their societies generally had less bureaucracy and the like, and they usually read and wrote a lot less; but their metalworking was certainly just as good, their educational system was often as good, etc., and they weren't stupid or anything.

-Simetrical

[Craterus]

I haven't visited those forums but I'll do so now. I didn't say they were stupid but I don't think they're armies should have an increase in discipline because the Barbarian Armies of that age weren't disciplined at all.

[Khorak]

What Simetrical is trying to say, is that the 'barbarians' were every bit as culturally and technically advanced as the so called 'civilised' states. Although they didn't leave the lasting infrastructure and architecture the Romans and such left behind after their demise, they also had highly developed societies and had their own technical brilliances (such as metalworking).

Hell, it should say something to you that Rome, for all its civilisation and supposed advanced nature, never truly managed to pacify its barbarian opponents. Got a damn good drubbing when they started sniffing at northern Europe beyond Gaul.

[Craterus]

yea i know lol, i think the gauls had it coming though..