New unit:mongol heavy archers

[CrackerJap]

I don't really have an issue with the horse. As stater previously Mongol warriors had more than one horse and since I'm assuming the Mongols being fought in M2 will be mostly in Eastern Europe/the Middle East it seems logical that they would be using a horse like that as opposed to a steppe pony. I dont really know a whole lot about Mongol equipment and gear but I have to say that the model is nowhere near to how I would imagine a Mongol would be equipped.

[Ringeck]

Oldest possible handgun is the inscripted made during Kublai Khan's time, dated 1261.

Hmm. That's the one Needham stated having been dated to 1289 by inscription. That's very odd. Do you have any articles on it (not in chinese)?

[[Edit: Make him stop touching the bronze with his bare hands without gloves! Aaargh! Corrosion heaven!]]

[Orda Khan]

Do we have any non-european accounts og Legnica at all? The witchcraft and insence stuff is from Jan Dlugosz, who, besides writing several hundred years after the fact (he is part of the 15th century "Polish Renaissance") does a number of creative things with the battle - conjuring an entire van of Teutonic Knights, along with their Grand Master (who indeed died at Legnica - only several years later and while visiting relatives in the local nunnery), something we from the Teutonic Orders' own records and other accounts of the battle have absolutely no mention of, for example.

I'd be surprised if there were no non-european accounts, no doubt there are Chinese accounts though I am unaware of any western translation. Many accounts name Qaidu as one Mongol commander, ignoring Carpini's report that Orda commanded the Mongol right wing and since Qaidu was born in 1236 these, or at least Qaidu as commanding officer, should not be taken as read.
Poppo von Osterna died in the battle; escaped from the battle; was not at the battle!! He was buried there so he fitted the bill I suppose. Army sizes are another anomoly, ranging from 8,000 to 25-30,000. I guess the actual facts will never truly be known but obvious fabrication such as gas attacks etc are easily ruled out.

Some nice examples rios, however they are from a different timescale. Jin use of such weaponry is not really in dispute. Subedei fought the Jin long enough I am sure, to be well aware of them and since there is no evidence of their use in the campaigns to the west, perhaps we should only expect to see Mongol units using them later in the game, if they are still around

.......Orda

[Ringeck]

Poppo von Osterna was master of Prussia in 1241, not Grand Master. Since he is documented as an active participant in diplomacy in the 1250s, we can safely assume he didn't die in 1241 - it is probably Jan Dlugosz who is responsible for that confusion. Gerhard von Mahlberg was (either elected or soon-to-be) Grand Master at the time of Legnica, replacing Konrad von Thüringen, who had died in Rome in 1240. He died in 1245. We have superlative records on the Teutonic order in the 13th century, due to several chronicles and the orders' own correspondance and records.

I'd be surprised if there were no non-european accounts,

It wouldn't be that weird. Asides from the Austrian Rhime-Chronicle, there are no other primary accounts of, for example, Ladislaus IV and/or the Szekely's defeat of Nogai Khan's force in the last major raid-invasion of 1285, after all, and the chronicle is pretty short on information itself - we don't even have a battle site to name it after (although some historians place it along the river Tisza) - one of the wonders of the Turks' torching of the hungarian royal archives in 1541

[Myrddraal]

About the horses and if they are improved...

Compare:
http://www.jucaushii.ro/images/scree.../pre/prima.jpg

To:
http://uk.media.pc.ign.com/media/800...g_3911423.html

[Orda Khan]

About the horses and if they are improved...

Compare:
http://www.jucaushii.ro/images/scree.../pre/prima.jpg

To:
http://uk.media.pc.ign.com/media/800...g_3911423.html

If I had to choose from one of those pictures it would probably be the first, above all the terrain is more believable. I admit I have not looked at every new screen shot but in those I have seen the horses are wading through some sort of tropical grass that must be four feet high. The white horse in the second picture is an example of what I have been saying. I do not think it is improved at all, any horse from Blue Lotus would be much better than that

.........Orda

[ciprianrusu]

That doesn't look like mongol to me either. I think that the helmet is the first thing that they should change.

[DukeofSerbia]

Mongol heavy archer look so much unmongolish.

[Myrddraal]

I've walked in grass taller than me... Grass is short these days because if it isn't cut, it's either grazed or in a wood/shade.

As for the horses, they may not be as good as some, but they are certainly better than the RTW horses. Besides, (and this is in no way a critisism of hoggy's awesome work) hoggy's models do tend to the cartoony style. His horses don't escape that.

Aside from that, I've yet to see this in any M2TW screenshot:
http://www.clubic.com/afficher-en-pl...an-139283.html

Have you ever seen such ridiculously steep earth slopes...

That's not to say it isn't there in M2TW, but I have hopes


Another example, from an official screenshot (though it's less noticable for being further away. You could imagine that those are cliff faces, or at least rocky)
http://www.gameplasma.com/screenshots/577/21.jpg

[Peasant Phill]

Have you ever seen such ridiculously steep earth slopes...

Sure I have and you probably to (think of the hill they do the cheese roll). But that of course doesn't mean that medieval armies would use them as battle ground, as even on the defence it would be incredibly hard to keep your balance.

[Orda Khan]

Hoggy does tend towards 'cartoonish' I agree, it's the general outline of the horse, the shape and features, just my preference I guess. There are many types of grass but endemic species in Europe tends to be shorter than I am seeing. Has there been a screenshot with grass shorter than knee height? I hope so but I've not seen one. Terrain looks improved, though I have still noticed the tendency for hills to acquire geometrical outline when in the distance. There again I have said before that terrain textures are the real improvement rather than the units, I would just like to see some with shorter grass

.....Orda

[Comrade Alexeo]

Mind you, I'm not as good with medieval history (particularly Mongolian), but to me at least this unit is not that upsetting. While it looks more Turkish than Mongolian, if I recall correctly there were probably large numbers of Turks riding with the Mongols, just as they and groups like the Ostrogoths rode with Attila the Hun. My only problem is the horse; it is much too big to be a steppe pony, resembling a Central European charger instead.

Still... I mean, its not exactly, say, Arcani, right?


I'd say its not something to really get riled up about; most of the other units of M2TW look good, and in any case I don't care if the Mongol Heavy Archer looks a bit off if it provides me excellent gameplay.

[Chester]

If the Unit is as bad as you say, then this Faction will probably be non-playable. Just an AI faction with generic, poor quality units.

I'm worried that modding these units will be a very difficult task. Mutliple models per unit and skins that change over the course of battle (blood and dirt).

[Polemists]

I am curious though since CA has stated as others mentioned they want gameplay over historical accuracy how would you guys, assuming you had any say beef up the original light horse archer design.

Basically if CA, said,

"Hey we need a heavier armored horse archer for mongols to balance for gameplay purposes"

Maybe they had a general idea and built off it. You guys do crack me up tho cause your talking about all this historical accuracy of MTW 1, when I'd like to remind you all what they did to vikings, (horns on helm? so cliche)

Plus as other person said there will be a random generator, so they can't all look EXACTLY like that so chill till you see them in combat. Then run for your lives

[Kraxis]

You guys do crack me up tho cause your talking about all this historical accuracy of MTW 1, when I'd like to remind you all what they did to vikings, (horns on helm? so cliche)

And where did the horns appear?
On the box and on the card for the Jomsvikings. The rest of the vikings were very well made, not cliche at all! And most important, they were believeable.
Did you even buy Viking Invasion? If you did then I'm surprised at your conclusions to say the least.

[Watchman]

Well, it's a horse-archer. And it wears armour. The horse's also way too big to be a steppe pony, and I'm under the impression the bigger breeds went to elite warriors.

But I know enough about steppe warfare and equipement to know that sure as **** isn't what would be considered a "heavy" trooper. That guy's pretty much just some run-of-the-mill horse-archer prosperous enough to own proper body armour (or been issued, or looted from somewhere). The steppe heavies were damn cataphracts in full armour atop barded horses (which naturally tended to also be rather bigger breeds than the standard pony just to take all the damn weight).

And everything I've ever read says the normal place for the quiver was the belt; even infantry archers didn't carry them across their backs for battle.

[Orda Khan]

I am curious though since CA has stated as others mentioned they want gameplay over historical accuracy how would you guys, assuming you had any say beef up the original light horse archer design.

Basically if CA, said,

"Hey we need a heavier armored horse archer for mongols to balance for gameplay purposes"

Maybe they had a general idea and built off it. You guys do crack me up tho cause your talking about all this historical accuracy of MTW 1, when I'd like to remind you all what they did to vikings, (horns on helm? so cliche)

Plus as other person said there will be a random generator, so they can't all look EXACTLY like that so chill till you see them in combat. Then run for your lives

The only MTW units mentioned in this thread were the 'Golden Horde' units and a direct comparison between those and this new unit and that the GH units were more realistic. I would also say that the original Mongol units of STW/MI were a better representation.
I find it hard to buy this 'gameplay over accuracy' statement, if this is the case, why are we 'treated' to the new unit role out; they obviously feel proud of them. The 'superb graphics' are a very big deal and I would argue a major selling point of the game. Historical accuracy has its place also otherwise CA could simply make one unit model of a Knight, apply it to all factions and tell you to use your imagination.

Setting aside accuracy and to answer your question.....

Assuming there are Mongol horse archers and heavy cav ( and let's forget also that MTW Mongol heavy cav did not possess a bow...for gameplay reasons ) there are many ways to 'beef up' the HA we can expect from CA. Both rider and horse could be given leather lamellar armour. Rider with metal and horse with leather. Horse with metal and rider with leather. There are so many ways really but whichever option, I would not provide a suggestion that the rider should have his neck area totally exposed. Neither would I suggest that anyone should ride into battle with a quiver on his back, what a recipe for disaster. Far from the laughable rapid fire of that guy in Lord of the Rings the use of a back quiver is far too clumsy. I'll explain...
Most arrows are around 28 inches in length ( the average man's draw length and one reason most bows are weighed at 28 inches ) and trying to pull one out of a back quiver results in a bit of a stretch in order for the head to clear the neck of the quiver. I hadn't realised just how awkward this actually was until my friend started using one. With a quiver at the hip all you need do is reach down and extract. Even the Longbow units we have seen have these back quivers and they never even used quivers. They carried arrows in wicker and linen bags and stuck enough in the ground for use. Even MTW Golden Horde units had back quivers though they did at least have bow quivers at the hip.

If this was an historical accuracy rant for the sake of accuracy, I would have been calling for lasso, spare bow, spear, sword or axe to be present. I realise that would clutter the unit and appreciate these reasons to leave them out. However I don't understand why CA made such an un-Mongol unit considering their past portrayals

........Orda

[rios]

In the cold weapon days, the breed of horse available to a faction would have profoundly influenced its military doctrines. The small size and slow sprint of mongolian horses meant they wouldn't be the ideal mount of heavy cavalries, but also allowed them to do long distance maneuvers with good sustained speeds, which were the characters mongols adapted and their entire military strategy based on.
Even when they had access to other horses in large numbers, furthest they had gone was to try breed them with the mongolian natives and hope to sustain the characters of those step ponies. They needed the small size, light body weight and small consumptions to sustain their 100miles/day maneuvers, and they didn't need heavy cavalries to charge their enemies since to absorb that into their tactics would of meant a new set of problems. In fact, many european and asian factions successfully used circular formations against mongol armies since point contacts were sufficient to the way mongols charged and sustained far less casualties from shoot and scoots.
Mongols employed mercenary units and some of those inarguably were heavy cavalries, but that's far from sustaining those units or adapting their breeds of horses.