Saba units for next release

[Dumbass]

Are you going to make more Saba units for the next release, if so how many. I feel Saba are lacking in units, having only the basic skirmisher unit, cavalry unit, standard infantry and elite infantry units and are the faction most in need of units. Could some of the upcoming previews include Saba units if you are making new ones?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

To this point there have been no new Sabaean units implemented that I am aware of. One elite has been worked on, but there is little response to help the artist and it has just sat there as far as I'm aware. Our main guy on them just bailed on us, very very disappointed in him but what are you going to do, and we have had trouble doing much of anything with them in terms of military units. I hope he's happy. But our other guy has just presented the details for another unit that Nate will be working on a developmental art image for next and then it would go to the 3d artists.

[Fleeb]

I know my opinion doesn't count for beans, but I think the Saba are interesting but useless. They are doomed to being crushed by Ptolemy or Selucia. I think they should be removed and a civ added (one or two have been suggested before, I forget their names) to block Romes ahistorical northeastern expansion. Just my two dinar.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I think most all of the team still is very happy with their presence, we just wish we had some serious and knowledgeable help on them. It's such a great learning opportunity (or I should say "teaching" opportunity) that it's a shame we can't get someone who specializes in them. We are in the process of trying to get someone who really knows their stuff on them, but we haven't got anyone roped in yet.

[Redmeth]

Saba, unlike Pontus, survives and does pretty well in a lot of my campaigns and tests. It's a lot harder when you play as them though as the AS and the Ptolies will gang up on you.
Something should be done about Pontus as they are almost every time swallowed by the AS AI, unless you are playing as a faction fighting the AS and drawing most of their attention.

[The Errant]

And when is that new unit going to show up in the build? I agree with Dumbass that the Sabaeans really could use some new units. Right now they only reach their full potential trough the Ethiopian reagionals. Which are damn good btw.
Playing them is lot like playing Pontos. You can make a great stack by combining some factionals and a lot of reagionals.
Still they need more good factionals. Mid tier ones mostly. And maybe a couple elites.
Btw. Does anybody know when the arabs started using HA?

[LusitanianWolf]

Even with very few units Saba are doing better than Pontus.
I have played an little with pontus and I got myself pawned by AS,they attacked me few turns after starting with one full stack with two wild naked men units and lots of falanx while I was trying hard to have an little positive income and an little levy army...
And the Pontus AI in my campains always die faster than Saba.

But about Saba, yes, they need more units... What about camel riders, they are arabs, right? I never have seen an camel rider in EB, are they not historical?

[kambiz]

I think the Saba are interesting but useless. They are doomed to being crushed by Ptolemy or Selucia.

Disagree. In my two campaigns with two other factions ,They remained alive unitil I stopped (Better to say been sopped) from continuing and they were still in the world (Although I played in M/M). I also played a little but nearly successful Campaign with them which once again ended up with a CTD :P Sabean problem is economical ,Not militarily.

[abou]

Camels are really... meh. They show up every once in a while, but don't seem to be particularly effective for combat. They mostly would be used as transport to and from the battlefield, but not for riding during battle.

If it makes you feel better, some of those Saba light units are really awesome.

Another problem though is that heavy units are out of place in their location due to climate. Although, it would be nice to see what they could get as they expand into Hellenistic territories. I think we have a nice Indian unit with a skin just for them, but I can't remember off the top of my head.

[I Am Herenow]

But historically, did the Sabaeans simply have a small selection of troops, or do we just not know much about them?

[abou]

Possibly the former; definitely the latter. What is worse is that what has been published is even less. There are some academic publications published in French that one of the guys on the team is going to be looking in to getting (hopefully that should help) and we've contacted a professor whole specializes in the region.

Basically, everyone on the team has their fingers crossed.

[pockettank]

u say camels where probly only used for transport but same w/ the British Generals they only used chairiots for trransportation then fought on foot

[abou]

Well, there is no truly effective way to have men come off of chariots in RTW. There have been thoughts on how to do it - using siege weapons such as ballistas for a base and then heavily modifying it, but it hasn't really worked. If we could we would.

At least, I think that is the point you're trying to make. You're lack of punctuation makes it hard to follow your thought processes.

[Watchman]

AFAIK camels work well enough as archery platforms. I've read Bedouin raiders operating as camel-mounted bowmen gave the Israelites major trouble at one point and presumably also pestered the Assyrians and Babylonians, and Arab camel-archers are mentioned as a part of the Seleucid line-up at Magnesia. Seems to have been a northern Arab thing though, the southerners apparently just used th beasts for transport and used their few horses to form the mounted arm.

Btw. Does anybody know when the arabs started using HA?

The northern ones presumably picked up a thing or two from their Parthian, Sassanid and Roman neighbours, but AFAIK the phenomenom is in general a post-Islamic one - a direct result of taking over a lot of Byzantine and Sassanid territory, absorbing a lot of their military techniques (and often manpower - AFAIK much of the Sassanid warrior aristocracy flatly defected to the invaders en masse at some point, and there was also the ghulam slave-soldier practice) and then having to deal with HA-using enemies themselves.

[The Errant]

AFAIK camels work well enough as archery platforms. I've read Bedouin raiders operating as camel-mounted bowmen gave the Israelites major trouble at one point and presumably also pestered the Assyrians and Babylonians, and Arab camel-archers are mentioned as a part of the Seleucid line-up at Magnesia. Seems to have been a northern Arab thing though, the southerners apparently just used th beasts for transport and used their few horses to form the mounted arm.

The northern ones presumably picked up a thing or two from their Parthian, Sassanid and Roman neighbours, but AFAIK the phenomenom is in general a post-Islamic one - a direct result of taking over a lot of Byzantine and Sassanid territory, absorbing a lot of their military techniques (and often manpower - AFAIK much of the Sassanid warrior aristocracy flatly defected to the invaders en masse at some point, and there was also the ghulam slave-soldier practice) and then having to deal with HA-using enemies themselves.

Damn. I was hoping for a historical excuse to add atleast one unit of HA to the Sabeans. They have their mounted javelin skirmishers, but they suck. Too little ammo to be of use against phalangites.
Most enemy skirmishers can beat them in a fair fight, so the only really useful function they serve is chasing routed units.

[Watchman]

The inhabitants of the southern "hot deserts" for some reason seem to always have favoured javelins for their mounted skirmishers (see the Numidians for another case), whereas bows seem to have been the norm around the northern "cold deserts" and steppes and regions influenced by them.

[Redmeth]

I wonder what the reason could be?
Could it be the game they hunted? Animals were smaller and more agile in the north?

[Watchman]

But the Arabs at least had a fine tradition of infantry archery so I don't think that really holds. Could be that they just didn't have ready access to suitable horn or some similar necessary raw material (which is why they didn't make composite bows in Europe for example AFAIK), and/or that the geography meant cavalry could readily get close enough for javelins.

[Geoffrey S]

Well, there is no truly effective way to have men come off of chariots in RTW. There have been thoughts on how to do it - using siege weapons such as ballistas for a base and then heavily modifying it, but it hasn't really worked. If we could we would.

At least, I think that is the point you're trying to make. You're lack of punctuation makes it hard to follow your thought processes.

I think the point he's trying to make is that in EB Celtic chariots are an abstraction, since they were used for transport and not for combat, and hence thinks that the same should apply to camel riders being represented as actual units.

[abou]

That is a similar argument I had developing in my head. Without proper materials for a composite bow you cannot make a bow small enough to be effectively used, or used at all, on horseback. I'm not sure though and haven't done enough research into that portion of Arabia to say for certain though.


Edit: Sorry, I missed your post, Geoffrey.

I think the point he's trying to make is that in EB Celtic chariots are an abstraction, since they were used for transport and not for combat, and hence thinks that the same should apply to camel riders being represented as actual units.

If that is the case then the argument I would put forth is that Celtic chariots had, at times, played a significant role during battle unlike camels... that is, at least as far we know. If we found a rocking inscription from Arabia detailing camel warfare and all its virtues in our era then we would most likely add camels, but so far that hasn't happened.

[Sarcasm]

But the Arabs at least had a fine tradition of infantry archery so I don't think that really holds. Could be that they just didn't have ready access to suitable horn or some similar necessary raw material (which is why they didn't make composite bows in Europe for example AFAIK), and/or that the geography meant cavalry could readily get close enough for javelins.

Composite bows tend to fall apart in cold, damp weather.

[Watchman]

Without proper materials for a composite bow you cannot make a bow small enough to be effectively used, or used at all, on horseback.

As the Japanese demonstrated there are ways to work around that, but yeah, I understand the local archery traditions around the "hot deserts" were more of the longbow-on-foot school of thought.

Composite bows tend to fall apart in cold, damp weather.

Not if you weatherproof them with laquer or similar. The European horn-stave crossbows worked well enough in the North as long as proper care was taken, after all.

[Sarcasm]

Not if you weatherproof them with laquer or similar. The European horn-stave crossbows worked well enough in the North as long as proper care was taken, after all.

Indeed but point is, it was one other thing to watch out for and every little complications makes a weapon less and less likely to be used by a large number of soldiers, becoming essentially reserved to a few contingents. There were cases of composite bows being used in almost every area of Europe at one time or another but it never got to the point where it'd replace the much simpler self bow or later on the crossbow (which had a whole new set of advantages to an European soldier).

[Watchman]

Which really speaks more of difficulties in producing the things rather than maintaining them, now doesn't it ? Remember that the infamously vicious Russian continental weather never kept anyone from using composite bows there - around the steppe part anyway. The further into the northern forest belt you went the rarer composite bows became and the more the wooden longbow reigned supreme.

[Sarcasm]

Which really speaks more of difficulties in producing the things rather than maintaining them, now doesn't it ? Remember that the infamously vicious Russian continental weather never kept anyone from using composite bows there - around the steppe part anyway. The further into the northern forest belt you went the rarer composite bows became and the more the wooden longbow reigned supreme.

Well when it comes to bows, they're really a close thing especially in what concerns composite ones. But I see your point, perhaps its one of those cases where there wasn't a need to innovate since there was already something cheaper and easier to make/maintain. Any new technology would find it hard to implement itself where there's already a pre-existing one that can be fielded more easily.

[QwertyMIDX]

I think the point he's trying to make is that in EB Celtic chariots are an abstraction, since they were used for transport and not for combat, and hence thinks that the same should apply to camel riders being represented as actual units.

Completely different. Camels were used as transport to and from battles, more like pack animals than anything else. Celtic chariots were used as transport during battles to get soldiers to and from key points quickly.

Anyway, the Sabaens didn't use camels in battle, that's pretty much the long and short of it. There's a chance we might have a northern arab camelry unit at some point, but nothing in the south.

[Lysander13]

I have a question about the Saba faction as it relates to the units they currently have now or perhaps will have in the future and how they employed them in battle. Or perhaps clearly stated short of actual facts ; i'm interested in my fellow EB'ers opinions. The Saba clearly is not a cavalry dominated army like the Pahlava or some of the nomad horse archer factions as they stand now. My question is who did they most resemble in battle in terms of tactics?. Their clearly not a Diadochi type army..we already covered their not like the Pahlava, not barbarian.....How did they fight?..What were their tactics like?..or were they just simply a mixture of all of the above?

[russia almighty]

Almost alittle Italian/Gallic with there love of Javelins .

[abou]

That's hard to say Lysander, but my guess is that missile infantry or cavalry would be used to distort the battle line or flank once the enemy had been engaged by the line infantry. Other than that I wouldn't think there would be much more to it except archers to soften up the approaching enemy.

[Watchman]

If the early Islamic-era armies (from nearly a millenia later date granted) can be used as a yardstick, in pitched battles those apparently chiefly fought as close-order infantry backed by lots of infantry archery ("composite" troops capable of both archery and heavy-infantry melee combat were apparently common). The cavalry mostly acted as a scouting, flanking and pursuit force - largely because there simply wasn't much of it to go around, which rather limited what could be done with it. Or that's what I've read about them says anyway.

Granted, that's a big time leap but it would have been more or less the exact same people with the exact same resources (although mail changed to iron at some point) dealing with the exact same geography and sundry circumstances, without having been severely disturbed by any major foreign incursion I'm aware of, so...