Give me a break!!!!

**Loki** · 01-23-2007, 22:07

Originally Posted by Zenicetus

Okay, and you're also a thousand miles from home and family, you're malnourished, sick with dysentery, and the mosquitoes won't stop bothering you when you try to sleep at night. I know the local terrain... you don't. My faction is a warrior culture at the core, not something where being a soldier is optional. And my religion isn't based on trying to save your soul, but to cut out your heart for a glorious sacrifice. Yeah, let's go. :)

C'mon people... at the risk of repeating something that gets said too often here; it's a game, not a simulation. The game can't represent the imbalance in numbers with a 20 unit limit, so the natives are buffed. In terms of playability, that beats being forced to run through consecutive battles (that you can't exit from) to represent an advantage in numbers. Also, this is an end-game scenario, where you're assumed to be flush with cash and pumping out your most elite units. It's not supposed to be a cakewalk.

Hey I got no problem with game balance.

It's the people that are trying to justify a game balance issue as actual fact that I find so amusing

**Randarkmaan** · 01-23-2007, 22:29

Concerning the middle-east and heat, I find it funny that many people forget or do not know that many middle-easterners actually wore quite a lot of armour (chain mail hauberk, lamellar armours of leather or iron, scale hauberks and the Ottomans actually had a sort of plate armour, but not the kind of plate armour seen in Europe, more like the Roman Lorica Segmenta), the genious trick to avoid having all this burn you up was usually to wear loose fitting robes over metal armour, which would keep it from heating up.
Anyway fighting in a hot, humid jungle filled with mosquities who eat you alive and make you sick and devious foliage everywhere sounds like the ninth circle of hell to me, many seem to forget how annoying mosquities actually are!!

**dopp** · 01-24-2007, 04:15

Originally Posted by Randarkmaan

Concerning the middle-east and heat, I find it funny that many people forget or do not know that many middle-easterners actually wore quite a lot of armour (chain mail hauberk, lamellar armours of leather or iron, scale hauberks and the Ottomans actually had a sort of plate armour, but not the kind of plate armour seen in Europe, more like the Roman Lorica Segmenta), the genious trick to avoid having all this burn you up was usually to wear loose fitting robes over metal armour, which would keep it from heating up.
Anyway fighting in a hot, humid jungle filled with mosquities who eat you alive and make you sick and devious foliage everywhere sounds like the ninth circle of hell to me, many seem to forget how annoying mosquities actually are!!

I live in such a place, and I'm not sure it's that difficult to manage in a tropical rainforest (but then I'm used to it). Dry socks and underwear are a must, plus plenty of insect repellant to keep the mozzies and their nasty infections away. It will take some time for you to get used to fighting in heavy armor, but as long as you get enough water to replace the fluids you lose, it's not really all that bad. You sort of get used to the heat and humidity after a while, it's the fungus and fever that can kill you if you're not careful.

As for dying of heatstroke in drier climates, one of the two notable fatalities at Agincourt was supposed to have died of exhaustion too, and I don't think France qualifies as arid desert at all.

**Booga** · 01-24-2007, 05:22

If you had to run away from longbows in sticky knee-deep mud while wearing a full suit of armor, you'd probably die of exhaustion too ;)

**dopp** · 01-24-2007, 05:56

It was an English duke who died of exhaustion (the French suffered far more than just two notable fatalities), although I'm sure many of the French died that way too. They were so tightly packed by the flanking longbowmen and their own numbers that they literally had no space to fight properly and trampled each other to death in a rather messy way.

Edit: While military accounts are often exaggerated, there's little reason to doubt that the Spanish were outnumbered and still cut their way through large numbers of poorly-armed Aztec warriors. Horsemen were intimidating enough to musketeers armed with armor-piercing weapons (then again, accounts mention musket balls rattling off the thick cuirasses and helmets of the heavy cavalry at Waterloo, so maybe not THAT armor piercing), they must have been utterly terrifying even to the best Aztec troops.

**Stlaind** · 01-24-2007, 06:43

Actually it was around the period in late M2 that te word "Bulletproof" entered into the english language. It had to do with the piece of armor being tested by a musket having been fired against it, leaving a noticable dent but not a hole.

**dopp** · 01-24-2007, 08:17

According to some sources on the French army, the cuirass of the heavy cavalry was specifically 'proofed' by taking three musket balls at 'point blank' range, which I gather didn't have the same meaning as today (for example, 'point blank' for a cannon was something like 300 yards). Due to the difficulty of manufacturing such armor in bulk, this requirement seems to have been relaxed to one shot at 100 yards. We can perhaps conclude that bulletproof armor against the firearms of the time was possible, but just not very feasible outside of a few elite units that needed and could afford the protection. In any case, heavier armor would just mean a return to more powerful muskets and rifles, an 'arms race' that the armor would probably lose eventually.

**MilesGregarius** · 01-24-2007, 13:16

Originally Posted by dopp

Edit: While military accounts are often exaggerated, there's little reason to doubt that the Spanish were outnumbered

The Spaniards were no doubt heavily outnumbered, but Spanish claims still have to be taken with a good dose of skepticism.

**dopp** · 01-24-2007, 16:33

Originally Posted by MilesGregarius

The Spaniards were no doubt heavily outnumbered, but Spanish claims still have to be taken with a good dose of skepticism.

Well, the commentator himself (whoever he is, no reference to prove its authenticity) takes their claims with a healthy pinch of salt, but it seems quite clear that they won and the account is fairly consistent with other, more verifiable, battles of Europeans vs natives. Wellington is supposed to have defeated 200,000 Indians (of which maybe 15,000 were actual warriors) with less than 10,000 Redcoats, even though they had disciplined musketeers, twice as much artillery as him and plenty of cavalry on their side. Europeans know how to fight and do it really well.

**baron_Leo** · 01-23-2007, 22:31

Obsidian is strong...pretty strong. You can believe me, my dad is an archeologist and we have lots'a stuff made of obsidian. Knives, spearheads etc. It can cut through anything. Actually I dont have a plate mail at home, so I cant test it but with not a that hard hit it goes through wood easily.

**Loki** · 01-23-2007, 23:37

Originally Posted by baron_Leo

Obsidian is strong...pretty strong. You can believe me, my dad is an archeologist and we have lots'a stuff made of obsidian. Knives, spearheads etc. It can cut through anything. Actually I dont have a plate mail at home, so I cant test it but with not a that hard hit it goes through wood easily.

Strong is an irrelevant term... The attribute that is most pertinent to Obsidian in terms of use for a weapon is "brittle". It shatters and chips quite easily. Which BTW is why primitives could make edged weapons from it in the first place.

There is a very good reason cultures using STEEL were termed ADVANCED (technologically) compared to cultures who used STONE. It's because it is a superior technology for weapons and tools, end of story. Ask your dad, he'll explain to you why cultures rose from Stone to Brass/Bronze and then to Iron and then to STEEL for tools and weapons.

BTW you can make extremely sharp implements from plastic too (disposable scalpels for instance), but dont for a minute think it would be better than STEEL for a weapon.

**Booga** · 01-24-2007, 02:48

The atlatl was not in prominent use when the Spanish first appeared on the scene - it was reinvented/readopted when its effectiveness was realized. I'd imagine by the time its use had spread again the Spanish had plenty of cannon fodder in the form of native auxiliaries to soak up the damage. And muskets weren't really a factor - the few guns the Spanish had were obsolete and of limited utility. They did make effective use of ship-borne artillery in the siege of Tenochtitlan, though.

dismal: Don't believe everything you read. Like it was pointed out before, numbers are often inflated to make a battle seem more impressive. You didn't state a source for that account, but it sounds like a propaganda piece. Cortez needed to make his expedition sound glorious - he was actually disobeying his superiors by fighting the Aztecs and his life depended on garnering support though smashing victories. If he didn't win decisively, he either made it sound like he did or painted overwhelming odds nobody could win against.

Anyway, all this talk of equipment is relative. The man behind all the armor and weaponry is vastly more important a factor, as is good generalship.