Saba units for next release

[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.

[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.

[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.

[I Am Herenow]

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.

Er...well I read in "Persian Fire" by Tom Holland (p. 14) that in one battle one of Cyrus' generals got him to bring the camels up from the baggage train to the battle-line, which made the Lydian cavalry swerve as they charged at the Persians, because the horses couldn't stand the smell.

Now, this is a different country, about 300 years before the start of the EB campaign, and apparently a one-off, but the point is, camels were at least used sometimes. The Vanilla thing of "camels scare horses" wasn't made up, it would seem.

[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.