Re: Announcing India: Total War
Hi All !!!, i'm italian, i can help you as an historian and for the unit profiles, i'm a student of Eastern history & archeology, i wanted to do a mod "Eastern Total War" but i'm not enough skilled on mods, so i join your project if you want.
The Mauryan Simbol was a peacock, but the lions of sarnath have much more impact.
I'm much more interest about the Gupta Empire, i have yet a basic list of units, however here it is an incomplete list of Mauryan Units:
Mauryan Units:
Yavani:
Yavani were the body guards (composed by greek girls) of the Maharajas of the Mauryan Empire and of the Indo-Greeks Kings.
Yavani carried an hoplite-style armour (like males) Javelins or a spear, Hoplon (Hoplite Round Shield) and an iranic sabre.
Maybe some Yavani units carried a bow and the sabre instead of the spear/Javelin-Hoplon style, but i'm not sure about that.
War Elephants:
The Mauryans never had Cataphract Elephants like the Guptas, but war elephants according to the Arthashastra (a good government treatise of the Mauryan Era) were an important part of the army amounting at 9000 units.
Unit Composition: a driver, called mahout or mahaut or mahavat, three or four archers (often 4) and a sarissophoros to push away nearby enemies (for a maximum of 6 men).
Mauryan Cavalry:
Chariot Archers were very much used (in number of 8000 in the ashoka age), but about the cavalry (30000 unit Arth.) i don't know the composition. There are some Greco-Buddhist Art Images of horsemen in the Mauryan Period.
Mauryan Infantry:
The Bulk of a Mauryan Army is composed by very powerfull foot archers.
About the Guptas (it's not complete):
These are exerpts from Wikipedia and various articles of my university books and also my personal additions.
INDIAN EMPIRE OF THE GUPTAS
Military System of the Guptas:
Cavalry:
Cataphract Elephants: a Mahavat (driver), four archers and a sarissophoros, armoured elephant.
Cataphracts: clad in mail or lamellar armour equipped with lance, shield and sword (sabre) or mace, armoured horse.
Cataphract Archers: clad in mail or lamellar armour equipped with bow, shield and sword (sabre) or mace, armoured horse.
notes: little predilection for using Light and Middle Horse Archers, no more use of Chariots.
The Imperial Guptas could not have achieved their successes through force of arms without an efficient martial system. Historically, the best accounts of this comes not from the Hindus themselves but from Chinese and Western observers. However, a contemporary Indian document, regarded as a military classic of the time, the Siva-Dhanur-veda, offers some insight into the military system of the Guptas. Like Indian kings before them, and centuries afterwards, the Guptas would have utilized Cataphract Elephants. These thick hided beasts, supplemented by additional armour and the soldiers that they carried, would have provided a powerful offensive and psychological weapon against an unprepared foe. However, their use carried the grave risk of the elephants panicking and stampeding, which more clever opponents used to their advantage.
The use of chariots had heavily declined by the time of the Guptas, having already proved their uselessness against the Macedonians, Scythians, and other invaders. In response, the Guptas seemed to have utilized Cataphracts clad in mail or lamellar armour and equipped with lances, shields, swords (sabres), maces and bows, who would have used shock action to break the enemy line. It is unclear whether they were used to the extent of elephants.
The Guptas seemed to have shown little predilection for using Light and Middle Horse Archers, despite the fact these warriors were a main component in the ranks of their Scythian, Parthian, and Hepthalite (Huna) enemies. However, the Gupta armies were probably better disciplined. Able commanders like Samudragupta and Chandragupta II would have likely understood the need for combined armed tactics and proper logistical organization. Gupta military success likely stemmed from the concerted use of armoured elephants, armoured cavalry, and foot archers in tandem against both indian kingdoms and foreign armies invading from the Northwest. Guptas also maintained a navy, allowing them to control regional waters.
The collapse of the Gupta Empire in the face of the Huna onslaught was due not directly to the inherent defects of the Gupta army, which after all had initially defeated these barbarians under Skandagupta. More likely, internal dissolution sapped the ability of the Guptas to resist foreign invasion, as was simultenously occurring in Western Europe and China.
Infantry:
Indian Archers (with indian longbow): The Guptas seem to have relied heavily on infantry archers, and the bow was one of the dominant weapons of their army. The indian version of the longbow was composed of metal, or more typically bamboo, and fired a long bamboo cane arrow with a metal head. Iron shafts were used against armoured elephants, and fire arrows were also part of the bowmen's arsenal. Archers were frequently protected by infantry equipped with shields, javelins, spears and longswords (longsabres).
Indian Peltasts: equipped with javelins and shield.
Indian Infantry: equipped with longsword (longsabre) and shield.
Indian Spearmen: equipped with spear and shield.
Cataphract
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The cataphract (Greek: Kataphraktos) was a type of heavy cavalryman used primarily in eastern and southeastern Europe, in Anatolia and Iran from late antiquity up through the High Middle Ages. Nations deploying cataphracts at some time in their history included the Sarmatians, Parthians, Sassanids, Armenians, Seleucids, Pergamenes, Romans, Byzantines, Indians (Guptas and Harshavardana), Chinese and others.
Cataphracts were the heavy assault force of most nations that used them, acting as shock troops supported by light or heavy infantry and foot or mounted archers. Supporting archery was deemed particularly important for the proper deployment of cataphracts. The Parthian army that defeated the Romans at Carrhae in 53 BC operated primarily as a combined arms team of cataphracts and horse archers against the Roman heavy infantry.
A cataphract charge was generally more disciplined and less impetuous than the charges of the knights of Western Europe, and very effective due to the discipline and the large numbers of troops deployed.
Etymology of the Term
The adjective is Greek, with a basic meaning of "mail-clad." The Greek word for mail was cataphractes, which literally means "bandaged-up." The term first appears substantively in Latin, in the writings of Sisennus: ...loricatos, quos cataphractos vocant..., "...the armored, whom they call cataphracts..."
Equipment and Tactics
Equipment and tactics varied, but cataphracts generally wore heavy armor of scale armour, mail armour, lamellar armor, horn armour, or thick quilted cloth, carried a shield, sat on an armoured horse, and charged with lances (kontos) in a tight knee-to-knee formation. Most armies' cataphracts would be equipped with an additional side-arm such as a sword or mace, for use in the melee that followed the charge. Some wore armor that was primarily frontal rather than providing equal protection all around, and sometimes likewise for the horse armor. In some armies cataphracts were not equipped with shields, particularly if they had heavy body armor.
Many cataphract types were equipped with bows in addition to their lances and heavy armor, to allow them to engage the enemy from afar before charging. Cataphract archery was sometimes used tactically in disciplined formations where half the cataphracts stood facing the enemy as an armored fence while the other half looped through the line to shoot and then back behind it to reload, increasing their safety against return fire from the enemy. Cataphracts without bows are sometimes referred to simply as lancers.
Some later cataphract types were also equipped with heavy darts (marzobarbouloi)to be hurled at the enemy lines during a charge, to disorder the defensive formation immediately before the impact of the lances. With or without darts, a cataphract charge would usually be "shot in" by foot or horse archers to either side, or by additional cataphracts who would charge in turn after having shot in the first assault. Some armies formalized this tactic by deploying separate types of cataphract, a very heavily armored bowless lancer for the primary charge and more conventional lance-and-bow cataphracts for supporting units.
Related Types
The Romans used cataphracts only late in their history, and even then primarily in the East. The first unit appeared during the reign of emperor Hadrian (117-138 A.D.). In addition to ordinary cataphract types they sometimes fielded a very heavy type called a clibanarius (pl. clibanarii), named after an iron oven due to their enclosed metal armor. They also formed one exotic experimental unit of scythed chariots with cataphract lancers mounted on the chariot's horses.
Nations in the Middle East occasionally fielded cataphracts mounted on camels rather than on horses, with obvious benefits for use in arid regions, as well as the fact that the smell of the camels, if up wind, was a guaranteed way of panicking enemy cavalry units that they came into contact with. Balanced against this is the relatively greater vulnerability of camel mounted units to caltrops, due to their having soft padded soles to their feet rather than hooves.
Good Bye I hope to be of some help and if you want i'll continue to post for the mod in the future. There's much to say about factions and various regions (Janapadas and Satrapies).
p.s. If someone of you can read or understand italian, you can find my posts about India, Persia and Hellenistic World on Total War Italia and Rome Total War Italia.
p.s.2 About the Map
In my abandoned Eastern TW mod the map was comprehensive of Media (till Araxes river) to Bangladesh (West-East) and from Yaxartes river (Syr-Darja) to Sri Lanka (North-South), i think that a map that embraces all the Indo-Iranian world is the best thing.
Bookmarks