FAQ and historical inaccuracies: some odd comments

[Hurin_Rules]

A few things on the latest FAQ for BI seemed a bit... well... odd to me. See what you think:

Q: I was wondering, was artillary actually ever pulled by chariots so they could be moved quickly across the battlefield, or is this just pure fiction?

A: Vegetius mentions wagon-mounted artillery in his texts on the Roman army although, reading between the lines, there's an air in his works of writing about how things should be rather than how they are or were. So, yes, there's evidence of (reasonably) mobile artillery being built by the Romans. They weren't stupid people and had a good grasp of basic engineering, but they were hampered by the materials technology available and - in our opinions - by an inherent conservatism in using new ideas.


Q: Have you changed the pictures of the family members faces in BI? Most importantly, have you removed the face paintings from the "barbarian" factions faces?

A: There are new family portraits in addition to the existing set. And no, not all the face paint has disappeared!

Q: Are most of the Saxon units pure fiction? Oh, while we are discussing historical accuracy vs. fiction, what literary sources (ancient and modern) did you use during the production of BI?

A: The problem with any barbarian force is that their armies were not organised into nicely differentiated units. Most 'barbarian' units were really all the blokes who were prepared to follow a strong man into battle for what they could plunder. If we did them 'accurately' we'd end up with every unit in the game being a variably sized mish-mash of individually equipped warriors. And, at the moment, PCs simply won't handle this kind of level of detail (every man would count as a different 'unit'). So what we have to do is create a unit list that mirrors the type of warriors that a particular people were well known for employing. This also makes the game tactically interesting too, as the chances are that most barbarian battles consisted of both sides screaming 'charge' and then fighting until a victor emerged, which isn't all that satsifying...

A few things I would note:

Though artillery might have been pulled by wagon, it certainly didn't fire while being pulled.

Face paint is inaccurate.

Barbarians were not morons.

And on another note, anyone besides me a bit disheartened that Spartan: Total Warrior gets higher billing on the CA website than BI? To tell you the truth, I hope that game tanks so CA can concentrate on what they do best. Leave the FPS to the console designers. You're not going to outdo Halo, so don't even try.