RTW Numidian Unit Line Up

[Red Harvest]

Here are two basic changes for Numidia to make sense of their line up (especially since the reforms happen early again in 1.3.) Although CA fixed the long shield cav and the onager issue, there are still some odd/non-historical things with Numidia that might be worth your attention if you feel like doing a little modding for them:

1. Elephants--I didn't realize it before, but CA neglected to give Numidia access to elephants. Historically, while Numidia didn't have the big Indian elephants, they did have basic forest elephants, and some with towers for javelins and perhaps archers. These elephants played a part in the Roman civil war, in Jugurtha's war with Rome, and in Rome's attempts to subdue Iberia. For Numidia they are a significant asset that should have become available in the mid 2nd Century BC as Carthage went into decline.

The modding for this is not too difficult since Carthage and Numidia have the same basic skin (different colors) for the elephant rider and archers (doesn't really detract for them to have the white blanket on the elephants back.) You can use the Carthginian unit cards for them (especially since the one seen in battle is zoomed so far out that the faction color is not obvious.) Of course, you need to add them to the build queue. I put them in the hippodrome (which then required I mod to allow Numidia to build this structure.) This seems reasonable as it is not easy for them to get to the point they can actually build the structure, and historically they did not seem to be using elephants in battle until Carthage was out of the picture. The elephants should prove handy vs. the Romans and their early reforms.

2. Slinger/Archer Inversion CA was a bit squirrely and gave archers to Numidia in the lowest level archery structure, and gave them slingers for the next level structure. (Perhaps this was done to help vs. bow happy Egypt?) Since in vanilla 1.3 the slingers have lousy stats it makes no sense to "upgrade" to slingers. I swapped the order around in mine, but keep in mind I have detuned vanilla archers a notch and have them at 100 meter range versus 120. I also increased vanilla slingers to 100 meter range.

Since Numidia relied on javelinmen as the mainstay of its foot and mounted troops, CA gave them javelinmen in the first level infantry barracks...which meant there was a hole where peltast/javelinmen would normally be in 1st level missile barracks--and CA plugged in the archers there, which is very different from other factions.

[Darius]

From what I remember reading the Numidians seemed to have pretty much almost NOTHING but GOBS of Light Infantry and a good amount of Light Cavalry, but I can't seem to find ANY reference to ANYTHING that the Numidians put in the field. Even near the end of Numidian power, with King Juba sending, once again, THOUSANDS of Light Infantry to support Pompey, as well as elephants and cavalry, the enemy were so poorly equipped that two relatively inexperienced legions not only beat down the elephants head to head, but got them to turn around and run, right through Juba and Scipio's line, crippling the Pompeiian forces with just that.

[Red Harvest]

From what I remember reading the Numidians seemed to have pretty much almost NOTHING but GOBS of Light Infantry and a good amount of Light Cavalry, but I can't seem to find ANY reference to ANYTHING that the Numidians put in the field. Even near the end of Numidian power, with King Juba sending, once again, THOUSANDS of Light Infantry to support Pompey, as well as elephants and cavalry, the enemy were so poorly equipped that two relatively inexperienced legions not only beat down the elephants head to head, but got them to turn around and run, right through Juba and Scipio's line, crippling the Pompeiian forces with just that.

Yes, that is pretty much true. They didn't produce any heavy cav to speak of and they were simple light infantry with at best thrusting spears/knives on average. The one exception was the attempt to form a legion style force. It wasn't apparently very successful and was limited in numbers.

Still they did give the Romans quite a bit of trouble despite their primitive infantry. Light infantry can't hold a position against determined assault, but they can harass and enemy to the point it is forced to abandon the field or a campaign.

The elephants weren't useless though, they certainly forced the Romans to develop counters. The Numidian's results really weren't that different from any others facing a foe prepared to counter elephants. Elephants being driven back to whence they came is fairly typical.