EB2 discussions.............bigger map?

[scourgeofrome]

China vs. Rome probably only works as a custom battle, but it would be interesting to see even if only in that form.

Thats all I'm asking.Plus,you could have other ones like Sweboz vs China (lets see what China thinks about fighting real barbarians),KH vs.China,Egypt vs China,Carthage vs. China, Eperios vs China,Bactria vs China,Selucid vs China,Sarmatians vs. China.The list just keeps going and going.I mean,who wouldn't want to see the "superior"* Chinese ideal be stomped by elephants,shot by master horse archers,stabbed by hoplites,chopped by axeman,run down by kataphracts,or impaled by ballista.If this is avaible in EB 2, I will almost definately download it.It would be so much fun to do everything mentioned above.

*This is just making reference to the Chinese belief that they were advanced and everyone else was just a bunch of barbarians.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Guys, remember that EB does have an ever so slight tendancy towards realism here. We're not going to go out of our way to include chinese units. That is much more along the lines of Mummy Returns Egyptians that we know from somewhere else. Sorry.

[Laundreu]

Guys, remember that EB does have an ever so slight tendancy towards realism here. We're not going to go out of our way to include chinese units. That is much more along the lines of Mummy Returns Egyptians that we know from somewhere else. Sorry.

Sad to say you are pretty correct, man.

Besides, everybody knows that the Atlantian units take precedence.

[Asean]

Let's use simple logic. China defeated the Huns. The Huns destroyed and burnt Rome to the ground. China can as easily destroy and raize rome to the ground.

[ChewieTobbacca]

China was both more technologically advanced and numerically superior to Rome. The only way they could have warred would have been if they had been in close proximity to each other, but they were literally at the opposite ends of the world.

China really had no true massive organized enemies to fight against in most of its time, so its hard to judge how they would have warred. Some interesting facts:

The Chinese had developed the crossbow and repeating crossbow (chu ko nu commonly known) by the height of the Roman empire.
The Chinese also developed a variant of the halberd (the Ji) long before they appeared in Europe, and was a common infantry weapon. In fact, they have been dated as early as the Shang era (1766BC-1050 BC).
I know this is more medieval history, but the peace time standing armies of England and France in peacetime were in the tens of thousands (40 to 50 thousands). China during the Ming Dynasty had a peacetime standing army of over 1 million

It would be interesting to see a virtual China vs. Rome battle, but that definitely would not be realistic, and in all honesty, the technological and numerical superiority would be hard to illustrate in a game.

[Urnamma]

This discussion is largely asinine. Firstly, the Chinese were technologically different from the ancient Mediterranean, but not superior. I would certainly argue that the Hellenic kingdoms were technologically superior, and that rome was fairly similar.

You have to take it into several dimensions.

1) Logistics. Ancient Chinese states may have had armies of 1 million, what have you. They could hardly have fielded that many troops at one time. The largest army in the same place before the early modern era was at either Gaugamela or at Cannae. You cannot feed that many men in one place for long.

2) Fighting styles. Asiatic armies generally fought in a pre-military horizon style. Even the vaunted samurai still did this. They fought individual duals on the battlefield, and did not generally work as cohesive units.

3) the 'crossbow'. The Romans and Greeks had a similar device, the belly bow, and even then, it was found wanting. Crossbow bearers could fire one volley before the Romans returned fire with pila, cutting the lightly armored chinese down in kind.

Don't listen to everything you hear in video games and on the history channel. It's unbecoming and makes for horrible argument.

Also, the halberd... This is just silly. Falx, Rhomphaia, etc. There are hundreds of weapons the far east doesn't have.

Oh, and by the way. Those 'million man armies' got smashed by 30,000 or so mongols with no better technology than the ingame Sarmatians.

[Anthony]

The halberd isn't much of a weapon and is built around specific types of combat; it came into bigger play in Europe during a time when shields had been phasing out, and was used largely in what were more or less single duels (much like how the period Chinese would have fought). Urnamma mentions some good weapons the Chinese didn't have; the armor splitting falx for one would be an utter nightmare. The falcata too. The way the Chinese fought was vastly out-dated in the west. Celts had once fought a similar way, but had long since dropped it. Why? Because organized units and regimentalism made individual combat irrelevant. While duels still happened, mass combat was no longer based around it, because it was completely inappropriate for fighting a regiment working as a unit (so we see then Celts introducing their standards, horns for commands, etc.). Until then, we see Celts expansions almost stop utterly, even against enemies they were superior in number to. After they began using then-modern regiment tactics, they conquer the Po valley, obliterate early Roman armies and sack the city, and marched into Greece and beat the tar out of Hellenic armies (and totally annihilated the army of Macedonia) the whole way to Delphi (at times larger than their own), fighting largely the way they always had, but now supporting one another more effectively. Lack of organized units and focusing on personal combat would render them ineffective in a melee against most ancient western armies. Ultimately, without historical evidence of any combat between the two, predicting an outcome is dicey at best. There are far too many factors; morale, supply, quality of equipment, allies/mercenaries (like either one went so far to an opposing territory with no aide? No pathfinders, no local mercenary companies, etc.), tactics, skill of the commanders, individual skill and experience of soldiers, etc. The whole argument is completely asinine.

[iberus_generalis]

This discussion is largely asinine. Firstly, the Chinese were technologically different from the ancient Mediterranean, but not superior. I would certainly argue that the Hellenic kingdoms were technologically superior, and that rome was fairly similar.

You have to take it into several dimensions.

1) Logistics. Ancient Chinese states may have had armies of 1 million, what have you. They could hardly have fielded that many troops at one time. The largest army in the same place before the early modern era was at either Gaugamela or at Cannae. You cannot feed that many men in one place for long.

2) Fighting styles. Asiatic armies generally fought in a pre-military horizon style. Even the vaunted samurai still did this. They fought individual duals on the battlefield, and did not generally work as cohesive units.

3) the 'crossbow'. The Romans and Greeks had a similar device, the belly bow, and even then, it was found wanting. Crossbow bearers could fire one volley before the Romans returned fire with pila, cutting the lightly armored chinese down in kind.

Don't listen to everything you hear in video games and on the history channel. It's unbecoming and makes for horrible argument.

Also, the halberd... This is just silly. Falx, Rhomphaia, etc. There are hundreds of weapons the far east doesn't have.

Oh, and by the way. Those 'million man armies' got smashed by 30,000 or so mongols with no better technology than the ingame Sarmatians.

well everyone talks about Crossbows and all, and say they are the best missile weapons since the invention of the Whell..that's not true you know.... a bunch of trained slingers could have wiped out the crossbowmen with little work, as from all of the roman man used armament, the slingshot was the one with bigger damage, and longer range, some estimates say that they could kill people at 400 meters(really long range), outdoing archers, and of course crossbows.... as for Archers..they too could cap crossbow's ass...because a trained archer can kill at 278(+-)meters. while a crossbow can only hit and kill at 147(+-) meters.... of course crossbows were also good cuz they didn't need much training...but alas, a trained force of archers or slingers...could be the end of an army with crossbowmen...

as for the Halberds and other polearms.... all i can say is that i pity the guys who would use them against the roman legions...they wouldn't stand a chance against the cohesive roman manipules, and fighting technics... i even say more...had the roman fighting technics been know to any faction of the Medieval Era. they would be virtually invincible....imagine portugal, a small country...if it had been able to use the legionary tactics and techniques, they would have swept across all of europe, as armies of the time relied on the duel tactics, and the steamroller tactic to destroy the incoming armies.... a bunch of men fighting as one would have changed the face of Medieval Warfare...

[CaesarAugustus]

This discussion is largely asinine. Firstly, the Chinese were technologically different from the ancient Mediterranean, but not superior. I would certainly argue that the Hellenic kingdoms were technologically superior, and that rome was fairly similar.

You have to take it into several dimensions.

1) Logistics. Ancient Chinese states may have had armies of 1 million, what have you. They could hardly have fielded that many troops at one time. The largest army in the same place before the early modern era was at either Gaugamela or at Cannae. You cannot feed that many men in one place for long.

2) Fighting styles. Asiatic armies generally fought in a pre-military horizon style. Even the vaunted samurai still did this. They fought individual duals on the battlefield, and did not generally work as cohesive units.

3) the 'crossbow'. The Romans and Greeks had a similar device, the belly bow, and even then, it was found wanting. Crossbow bearers could fire one volley before the Romans returned fire with pila, cutting the lightly armored chinese down in kind.

Don't listen to everything you hear in video games and on the history channel. It's unbecoming and makes for horrible argument.

Also, the halberd... This is just silly. Falx, Rhomphaia, etc. There are hundreds of weapons the far east doesn't have.

Oh, and by the way. Those 'million man armies' got smashed by 30,000 or so mongols with no better technology than the ingame Sarmatians.

That was very well put Urnamma, great research. I will also add that in that general time period Chinese blacksmiths used new bronze forging methods to produce even longer blades to be used in the army. These blades of course would be horribly ineffective against the Roman scutum-and-gladius combination, which would mean heavy casualties for Chinese infantry. The Chinese also carried no shields, mostly relying on armor.


However, i do think that historical realism should come before a bigger map in EB, and China would just make it more complicated. EB already has a great amount of diverse factions, and I would rather keep the same old map and instead have it made even more detailed, using the new faction slots to fill out the rebel spaces.

One idea though is that the discovery of the new world mechanism could be used for the discovery of the Far East (unlikely), or the Mogol invasion that takes place part way through the game could be made into a Chinese/Xiongu invasion. Neither of these are really historical, i guess, but could be interesting if added.

(For example, the invading Mongol armies coul be changed in to the army of Ban Chao, who took 70 000 men all the way to the Caspian Sea before turning back in the year 97).

[Urnamma]

Let's use simple logic. China defeated the Huns. The Huns destroyed and burnt Rome to the ground. China can as easily destroy and raize rome to the ground.

Simple logic how? That's post hoc ergo propter hoc if I've ever seen it.. Your logic is silly.

Rome during the time of the Huns was a different beast to Rome at the time of the high Empire, or the late Republic.

The huns didn't do a god damned thing to Rome either. The Visigoths sacked it.

Let's reduce your logic:

Afghanistan defeated Russia. Russia defeated Germany. Therefore, Afghanistan will defeat Germany.

Umm...