New 3d unit: Naffatun

[Beelzebub]

They were pretty good if you were defending a hill. They got better range on a steep hill, and the attacking units came up slowly so if you placed them on the frontline they could unload most of their grenades then withdraw.

[Myrddraal]

If i may add, the Europeans used them TOO. Check out Schilling Chronicles, were you can see Burgundian Troops, the "Grenadiers" using the "bombs"

Naptha was a different thing to the Grenadiers. Off the top of my head, Naptha was a substance that burned on contact with air. Ceramic pots of the stuff can be thrown, and on breaking they exploded, (a bit like petrol bombs).

The grenades of the Grenadiers were lit before throwing (I think) and were designed to explode above the enemies heads, raining shrapnel on them.

Besides, the grenadiers came a lot later than naptha did.

[Randarkmaan]

Nearly all Islamic forces contained a 'fire-corps' of soldiers armed with incendiary weapons, these were professional soldiers who were held in high esteem rather than being viewed as rabble like most other infantry, professional or not, skilled or not...

[Ringeck]

Different incendiary weapons were common all thorough medieval history all over europe - oil, fire and burning pitch are frequently mentioned in medieval norse sagas, and the "Kings's Mirror" of 1250, after listing a long line of fanciful weapons to use for ship-to-ship combat (including several varieties of burning oil and pitch), adds that "the best of all these is still Coal and Sulphur" (which is the same wording the norse sources often use for gunpowder - this would be very early for gunpowder weapons, but between 1294 and 1296 the following events transpired at the king's hall in Bergen: "During christmas Trond Fisiler amused himself by making Hærbrest (lit. "army-boom"/"war-boom"). This makes such a loud boom (brestr) that few can bear to hear it. Pregnant women can lose their foetus when they hear the boom, and men fall of their chairs and onto the floor and twitch in different ways. Trond told Laurentius (the bishop, and the "main character" in the saga) that he should stick his fingers in his ears when the boom came. Many in the king's hall couldn't stay on their feet when the boom came. Trond showed Laurentius what was needed to make such a boom: Fire, sulphur, parchment and stry " (which means something that burns but cannot be extinguished easily) "One often uses such army-booms in war so that those unfamiliar with it, shall flee in all directions" - I just love those sources - they illustrate that gunpowder in different forms had come into common use considerably earlier that most scholars accept)

Whether they were frequently grouped into units that flung what looks like dynamite sticks at each other on the field is of course another matter (re. the Arcani and War Dogs and medieval Katyusha rocket artillery we see in the M2TW demos) - If one stretches the bar long enough, one can argue for naked noblewomen riding horses backwards organized into 50-woman units, causing confusion among the troops

I would be more worried about the screenshots that show mongol infantry tending to Mons Meg - Style bombards, or the Katyusha-style rocket artillery in one demo. Those are based on really flimsy evidence, or lack of it - we hardly know anything about the gunpowder weapons used by the mongols, except a few snippets here and there that mention them and the japanese marine finds of canister for similar psychological effect-weapons as those described above.

[Randarkmaan]

When it comes to the use of gunpowder, it is recorded that some form of it wa also used early in Mamluk Egypt where the word Naft (Naphta) had become synonymous with another mixture which was very similarto gunpowder and which would have exploded.

[Ringeck]

Yep, plenty of "early" examples of gunpowder use all over europe and the middle east. Of course, for effective widespread use of it (what I think should be the criteria of a M2TW unit) we have to go well into the 14th century - in many regions much later, and for it to really start to be the decicive wall-breaker it became, we have to go into the 15th century and beyond. Real battlefield field artillery, as opposed to scare tactics for novelty value or badly mobile emplacements, is mostly beyond the scope of M2TW's time period.

I am a bit worried about the M2TW guys' seeming obsession with gunpowder weapons we see in the screens and videos - correct me if I am wrong, but isn't there a screenshot of Richard I's army with some sort of Culverin in it somewhere? That's pretty optimistic.

[Tittils]

Very nice unit!

[SaberHRE]

Naptha was a different thing to the Grenadiers. Off the top of my head, Naptha was a substance that burned on contact with air. Ceramic pots of the stuff can be thrown, and on breaking they exploded, (a bit like petrol bombs).

The grenades of the Grenadiers were lit before throwing (I think) and were designed to explode above the enemies heads, raining shrapnel on them.

Besides, the grenadiers came a lot later than naptha did.

Not really sure about the 'grenades' being designed to explode. From what i remember they were used mainly in skirmishes and sieges, being an effective weapon of close combat. It was meant to be thrown a group victims.

So therefore 'grenades' as such probably resembled much of the molotov cocktails