Sweboz (Germans) slightly underpowered

[Lowenklee]

Also the Germans seem to lack berserker elites wearing wolf hoods or bear hoods which were actually pretty common believe it or not.

Sources please?

[Sarcasm]

My God man! It was in vanilla RTW! Get your act together!

[Sarcasm]

Btw, I should probably drop a line or two about ponies here.

During the Cantabrian wars, the natives used ponies rather than proper horses as their primary mount. And it was not because of it's speed but rather for their stamina, resistance to the bad weather and ability to operate successfully in rugged terrain or even low vegetation.

The more southerly Iberian breeds were certainly much faster and could catch the ponies that the Cantabrians used, or even the small horses the Numidians rode when Hispanic Auxilia campaigned in Africa. The trick in both cases for the locals was to use rough terrain as a place to strike and which to retreat afterwards.

Anthony can probably also tell of stories of Irish ponies giving headaches to more heavily armed cavalry (like late Armorican cavalry, or Norman knights) by operating in wooded or boggy country.

[Frostwulf]

LOL ... Frosty still propagating the same line huh!? I commend you on your labours but I'm sorry mate, this and much of the other material you cite in defence of your argument is just so contextually wrong. Suffice to say, if you took the time to actually read all the material / consider all the data and see the bigger picture, you wouldn't keep making all these ridiculous statements. Trying to take select points out of any semblance of context and extrapolate that to support some hypothesis is just bolox!

First of all your throwing quotes together and Im not sure which one(s) your having problems with. The ones on this thread answer here but the others you must be talking about lets discuss this on this thread https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=83475

To disagree and say so is one thing, but making judgements that you have no authority on (like what someone would think if they read something) is inappropriate.

Agreed and thank you.

Also the Germans seem to lack berserker elites wearing wolf hoods or bear hoods which were actually pretty common believe it or not.

Sorry, as much as I would like to see a beserker style unit I have a hard time believing there were enough around to produce even one unit. I have to agree with Lowenklee and would like to see the source. I hope your not referring to speidels "Ancient Germanic Warriors".

All this aside the documented evidence suggests that Germanic light cavalry, for whatever reason, were able to consistently defeat larger bodies of Celtic cavalry in direct combat. Presently the Ridoharjoz are handily beaten by the Leuce Epos in direct conflict.

I completely agree with Lowenklee's above statement

To all the EB guys please answer these questions.
First of all what is the arms and armor of the Luece Epos?
Second Where are all the chieftains during these battles? Were they all on foot? Did they simply not engage in fighting therefore losing prestige in the eyes of their followers? If they did fight woundnt they be Brihentin and therefore engage the German units?
Third what cavalry units use these arms and armor - Mail shirts, shields, various styles of spears and long-bladed swords?

Lastly as far as Germans and armor it seems the majority went without armor.

Malcolm Todd "The Early Germans"-"Body armor was virtually unknown among the German people in their early contests with Rome and indeed for centuries after that." pg.39

John Warry "Warfare in the Classical World"-"Nor were the Germans ill-armed. Their cavalry wore lofty plumes on helmets grotesquely shaped like animal heads. Their breastplates were of iron and they carried two javelins each and heavy swords for hand to hand fighting." pg.132

John warry is speaking of the Teutons,Cimbri and Ambrones here. With this I think that the reform of 190bc seems fair. But again Im weak on this subject.

[blitzkrieg80]

my current idea on the addition of a new MED-ish cavalry is an alternate skin for some horseman model (we have no space for new units) which will be a "proven" or "champion" rider or early "horse retainer" unit. This horse unit will represent the superiority of the higher class Germanic horsemen over the standard issue Leuce Epos and yet still be very similar to the Ridoharjoz. The regular Ridoharjoz should not be automatically superior, because the examples of Celtic defeat against German cavalry was not a representation of the Celts during their heyday and the Germans at that time suredly had experienced units on that front rather than conscripts more accurately portrayed by the normal Ridoharjoz.

I personally would like a wolf-skin/"werewolf" if you will/berserkr type unit based on common Indo European wolf-cults, shamanistic rituals, totemism. Of course there is no direct evidence of this being in use other than widespread records of Indo-Europeans worshipping the wolf and dressing like them, naming themselves after the wolf, and late Germanics following this practice, I should not have to go into the berserkr which is widely attested (Bǫðvar Bjarki! haha, how's that John) but other examples as such with the "boar" being a representation of a god's protection (Freyr! back to the original Germanic word for lord ) and subsequent decoration/invocation on helmets as mentioned in Beowulf, and many other accounts, and esp. found at Sutton Hoo. The "Seafarer" is an Old English poem with many shamanistic allusions including ecstatic trance and astral travel and if Christian monks are recording theses things which is against Christian teachings, then they must be based on a core practice maintained from those early times. I could scramble together more vague shamanistic/totem worship/shapeshifting references within Germanic and provide the examples I mentioned for Indo-European (such as the infamous Dacians' use).... BUT like I said there is nothing that we can dig up and say "ah hah!" so I won't waste my time at the moment. So, IMO it cannot be argued that it's pure fantasy to have a drugged out naked wolf/berserk type unit for the Germanics, but fiction and unproven enough that it should not be in EB.

[Frostwulf]

blitzkrieg80 If you wouldnt mind I have a question for you on this thread https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=83475 I'm trying to keep this thread to the German topic.

As for your second paragraph I mostly agree with you. I do believe there is enough evidence for what I call the "true" beserker, those of the viking type. I know Speidel in his book has a wider definition of beserker, but just in my opinion the ones he talks about are not in the same mold as the Norse ones. Also just to make things clearer its not just the Norse that have beserkers, they are just the well known ones. My only problem is with what I said earlier that there is just not enough of these type of individuals around to make up a unit. This again being my opinion based on the books and articles I have read.

[blitzkrieg80]

I agree they would also not be common enough to justify a unit, but I am planning a character trait, although I have not developed the idea yet (like Proto-Germanic or whatnot)- Shapechanger: "believes himself able to transform into an animal, +2 morale to troops on battlefield, -1 command, -1 Management... so it would still exist and no one can claim that that character does not believe it to be so whether it was historically common or not, like madness and Roman Emperors

Frostwulf, I don't see any question to me on the other thread? Are you asking for me to justify keeping the Ridoharjoz at their current strength? Or the question on this thread concerning weapons, ect... you say "these arms and armor" but then don't specify? I can't really answer for decisions of the Celtic Faction people concerning who has what, nor the specifics of their leadership in battle during that era... otherwise I'm pretty sure the Brihentin are only buildable post-reform similar to the non-existent Sweboz reform and they have a cavalry spear, sword, mail and helm, although generals are early Brihentin... the Leuce Epos (just checking the EDU) has javelins, cavalry spear, leather armor, helm... sorry I didn't think theres paltry answers merited a different post.

[the_handsome_viking]

Sorry, as much as I would like to see a beserker style unit I have a hard time believing there were enough around to produce even one unit. I have to agree with Lowenklee and would like to see the source. I hope your not referring to speidels "Ancient Germanic Warriors".

I am.

And I started a thread on it a while back asking if anyone else had read it. Though I don't agree with everything in it, it did make a pretty strong case for the existance of wolf skin wearing warriors amongst the Germans.

[the_handsome_viking]

My God man! It was in vanilla RTW! Get your act together!

It wasn't that far off then. Some German warriors carried war clubs, and EB's revised version has some German warriors still carrying war clubs.

[the_handsome_viking]

Sources please?

Ancient Germanic Warriors

Warrior Styles From Trajan's Column to Icelandic Sagas

Michael P. Speidel.

I made a thread about it a while ago to see if anyone else has read it.

It was something of a famous Indo-European warrior style, or warrior thing to emulate the wolf and wear wolf hoods.

When it comes to the Germanic people, there are clear depictions of wolf hood wearing germans on trajan's column scene 36, you also see depictions of bear hooded Germans.

As I've said before, it was a very big thing amongst the Indo-Europeans to emulate various animals I suppose they saw something quite likeable in, and this is why you have examples of Romans, Germans, Greeks etc wearing wolf hoods or referring to Wolf skin clad bersekers and elite warriors.

We know that there were clearly Wolf skin wearing warriors in the late Roman empire, and we definitely know they existed to some extent still in the middle ages, the top of a seventh century scabbered from Gutenstein shows a wolf headed warrior with a giant sword, he also seems to be wearing chain mail.

A silver foil from Obrigheim, depicts a wolf skin wearing warrior offering his sword to Woden. A bronze die from torslunda depicts Woden with a twin-dragon helmet and a wolf headed warrior standing near him drawing his sword and holding a spear.

I can understand that a lot of people get wary when it comes to things like depictions of ancient Germanic warriors wearing things like wolf hoods, at least elite berserker types or sort of moral boosting elite soldiers, but it seems evidently clear that not only did they exist amongst the Germans, but that it was something commong throughout the Indo-European world in general.

There should be at least one band of German warriors in EB that wear wolf skins because it seemed to be quite a common thing in general, or at least perhaps the standard bearers in German units could wear wolf hoods.