Kingdoms unit profiles at the .com ?

[andrewt]

The TW games have always included a few gimmicky units, personally I just ignore them. I think the only ones I used with any frequency were war dogs and even then I was puzzled hoow a dog managed to tell friend for foe.

Perhaps there should be any option to switch the novelty items off though. Obviously you can refuse to use them yourself but the AI might still produce them.

I had fun with those dogs in my German game. I'm not sure if I finished that campaign, though. They don't deplete unless the handlers die so I used them kinda like a missile unit.

[Callahan9119]

But flamethrowers are fun, so I'll shut up now [/QUOTE]

ever take 2 monster ribaults against the AI, u line them up...drool all over your keyboard thinking about how many they are gonna kill? then the enemy just walks right up to you without stopping to skirmish and your ribaults kill about 6 men before they are useless?

i expect to be faced with similar anger when trying to use flamethrower

like that ribault thing from mtw1, it was so crappy, enemy had to be like 5 feet next to it for it to fire and by then it was pointless anyway

cheese or not, i cant wait to hide a few units in the woods and rush out and roast some unsuspecting bumms, i do it all the time with naptha, but you cannot beat the novelty of a flamethrower, even if it turns out to be a semi useless unit, which i suspect it will be

[Whacker]

RE: the Greek Flamethrowers... I believe there was indeed historical evidence of the Chinese using some boxy contraptions that shot what was essentially gasoline out the front, but they certainly weren't 'handheld'. There was also evidence of Naffatun (and IIRC actual Greek Fire) used in small handheld clay 'grenades' much like is depicted in the game. As for the Greeks actually using handheld contraptions like are depicted, I haven't read anything to that effect, it's my understanding that with very few exceptions Greek Fire was almost entirely and exclusively a naval weapon.

Whatever the case may be, fantasy units really don't bother me at all.

[Furious Mental]

The Chinese did pump gasoline out of boxes, and contrived some mixture of gunpowder and other nasty stuff to be shot out of a charge on the end of a spear, but I've never heard of a Byzantine infantry flamethrower or a pump that could be carried by one man.

[Gorm]

Indeed the conquest of the americas didn't include that many battles anyway. The enormous success of the conquest was mainly based on the European diseases that the American population were not resistant to, causing them to be decimated in a few years.

Indeed, many scholars today have re-estimated the population of the new world upwards from 18 million at 1492 to 80 million. To put that in perspective, that was the total combined population of Europe and Russia at the time. The ancient city of Cahokia in Illinois was estimated to be larger than London!

What we had was an unintentional biological warfare where diseases spread from village to village like wildfire. This led to the assumption by later European settlers that the land was wide open for the taking, since very few lived there.

[Ulstan]

Indeed the conquest of the americas didn't include that many battles anyway. The enormous success of the conquest was mainly based on the European diseases that the American population were not resistant to, causing them to be decimated in a few years.

Precisely. And what few 'battles' there were were almost allways lopsided affairs with handfuls of spanish conquistadors running roughshod over loads of lightly armed and armored Indian troops.

The technology and brutality disparity were almost impossible to overcome.

Sure sure, individual native tribes had undoubtedly brutal aspects of their society (human sacrifice anyone?) but their warfare was just not on the same level as the Europeans...it wasn't anything even approaching the coldly methodical European approach to 'total war'.

[pike master]

think on this.

what materials stand the test of time better?

in order this would be

copper
bronze
iron
leather
wood

basically after about a thousand years of exposure all you will probably find on a battlefield unless it was kept away from moisture would be copper.

there werent very many surviving examples of the longbow until the mary rose was discovered.

this goes a little off topic but it makes you wonder just how long iron may have been used on the battlefield right beside copper/bronze but it has long rusted away where the copper based metals survived.

[Privateerkev]

What we had was an unintentional biological warfare where diseases spread from village to village like wildfire. This led to the assumption by later European settlers that the land was wide open for the taking, since very few lived there.

Actually there is evidence that some of the biological warfare was intentional. One trick the colonists in Pre-Revolution and Revolutionary America would use would be to take blankets from the small-pox hospitals in their forts and give them to the Native Americans as gifts...

Precisely. And what few 'battles' there were were almost allways lopsided affairs with handfuls of spanish conquistadors running roughshod over loads of lightly armed and armored Indian troops.

Historians have pretty much debunked the whole "small number of brave conquistadors conquered the massive hordes of natives" myth. Asides from the massive infrastructure collapse due to disease, the other big factor was infighting among the indigineous peoples themselves. Cortez would not have taken out the Aztecs without the massive amounts of support that the Tlaxcalans gave him. Read "Ambivalent Conquests" from Inga Clenndinnan to read some great accounts of the Mayans wiping out Spanish expeditions on the Yucatan.

And to keep the post kind of on-topic, the whole reason most people buy expansion packs is for more units. And if you want complete realism, then no computer game comes close except for wargames used by the US government and even they are not perfect. I say bring on the bee-chuckers, Flamin' Byz's, and Wookie-esque native shock troops!

[Callahan9119]

i tend to agree with you, it CA's job to keep the masses happy, its the modders job to satisfy the realism the minority demands

[Kobal2fr]

And if you want complete realism, then no computer game comes close except for wargames used by the US government and even they are not perfect.

Two words : Combat Mission .

So what if there are better graphics in my toilet bowl every morning. The game rocks, and to get more historical accuracy you'd have to get shot in the face by a Wehrmacht soldier .

[Rebellious Waffle]

Out of curiousity, has anyone else run a google search of mayans+hornets+nest - "maya the bee"? There's quite a few references to Mayan hornet throwers independent of CA...

[Privateerkev]

Two words : Combat Mission .

So what if there are better graphics in my toilet bowl every morning. The game rocks, and to get more historical accuracy you'd have to get shot in the face by a Wehrmacht soldier .

while the WEGO system is more realistic than RTS or turnbased, it can hardly be called "real". In combat, you do not need to wait a minute until you can tell your squad to lay down some covering fire on that window.

[IrishArmenian]

All armies shall fall before me and my armies of beekeepers!
(Surname 'Beegan' comes from some old Gaelic for bee-keepers)

[Kobal2fr]

while the WEGO system is more realistic than RTS or turnbased, it can hardly be called "real". In combat, you do not need to wait a minute until you can tell your squad to lay down some covering fire on that window.

Weeell, that's true enough I suppose.
But then you'd have to find the right middle ground between RealTime (with 200 squads, 40 halftracks and 20 tanks ? All of which need deep micro ? Fat chance.) and 1 minute WEGO. Meaning what, 30s ? 20s ? 5s ? 1s is "turn based" No, really, I think 1 minute is a good compromise.
Also, in combat you do not need to tell your squads to lay down some covering fire. You've got sergeants to do that for you .

But that wasn't why I mentionned CM - we were talking about having tons of units without sacrificing historical accuracy, and CM does a really good job at that. Even though the grogs on the Battlefront forum still squabble about the most minute armor penetration specs of Pak guns

[Privateerkev]

True but my only point was that no computer game can be really real so I roll my eyes when people nitpick about if a unit in Total War is "period" or not. Many people don't bat an eye at the inaccuracies of how politics, religion, geography, and economics are portrayed but god forbid if you have a unit that throws a bee...

lol!

I figure we have units that throw cows so why not bees? If people don't like em, they don't have to build em.

[Rebellious Waffle]

I think they need a healthy dose of Arcanoi and burning Assault Pigs. That'll bring 'em down to earth!

[Didz]

while the WEGO system is more realistic than RTS or turnbased, it can hardly be called "real". In combat, you do not need to wait a minute until you can tell your squad to lay down some covering fire on that window.

Thats true and at the same time not a valid point.

The real problem is not the WEGO system itself but the lack of intelligent reactional behavoiur built into the game engines AI routine.

In an accelerated real time game that squad would probalby be dead before you noticed you needed to order them to lie down anyway. For instance: the factor that killed LOTR3 was not so much the fact that it was converted to an RTS but the fact that the campaign game continued to run in the background whilst you tried to fight a tactical battle. Meaning that when you left the battle hopefully victorious you discovered that the AI factions had almost wiped out your empire.

If the reactional behaviour routines are well written then the issue doesn't arise as in both the WEGO and RT scenario the squad ought to break off from its instructed mission to deal with the immediate threat.

The fact remains that in any strategy game which involves the control of a large number of disperate elements a turn based approach is the only playable solution. A single human player simply cannot control the complexity of a major battle or campaign at a speed 10 to 100 times greater than the real commanders did with a full staff and thousands of subordinate officers and NCO's.

The only way that this can be possible is by 'dumbing down' the game to the level of C&C or A&E, and if I want to play those then I already have them on my shelf gatheirng dust.

[Privateerkev]

Thats true and at the same time not a valid point.

Actually, in the format of the conversation my point is quite valid. There have been complaints on how "period" flamethrowers and bee-chuckers are. My original point was that no game is or can be "real". Someone brought up Combat Missions as "real" or close to real. I debated that point. You then brought up the importance of the WEGO system as somehow invalidating my point that computer games can not possibly achieve any sort of historical accuracy. While I see and agree witht the merits of the WEGO system, that does not in any way convince me that Combat Missions is a truly realistic portrayel of small unit leadership. Everyone wants to come out of the woodwork and defend the game when I am not attacking the game. I am sure it is a fine game and this thread has convinced me to buy it and try it out. My point is that game and all others can not possibly be real. Only realistic. That may be semantics but it is an important distinction. The same people who complain if there is a unit in a game that has a questionable historical basis, seem to have no problem that every other component of the game is not even close to historical reality. CA was never trying to make "Sim-Medieval International Politics". They were simply making a strategy game loosely based off of a boardgame that has a highly detailed and immersive tactical component.

If you are going to declare parts or all of my points as "invalid" at least try to read the whole thread to understand the context that I placed my comment into. If you only read my comments with Kobal, and not the rest of the thread, I could see your point. But, my comments are a part of a greater whole which is the thread in its entirety with the question of the "validity" of bee-throwing soldiers as its subject.

^_^

[Didz]

Actually, in the format of the conversation my point is quite valid. There have been complaints on how "period" flamethrowers and bee-chuckers are. My original point was that no game is or can be "real". Someone brought up Combat Missions as "real" or close to real. I debated that point.

Ah! sorry I missed the latter inference.

I certainly agree with you that in truth no game can simulate real warfare. I remember a similar debate in the 'Wargamers Newletter" years ago and someone made the valid point that until players were provided with machine guns and encouraged to shoot each other across the table no wargame will come close to simulating real warfare.

You then brought up the importance of the WEGO system as somehow invalidating my point that computer games can not possibly achieve any sort of historical accuracy.

That was not my intention. I was merely responding to the specific point that the WEGO system cannot handle the reaction of troops coming under attack from an unexpected threat mid-bound, by pointing out that this is a problem with the AI and not the movement system per see.

You seemed to be suggesting that an RTS was in some way superior in dealing with this issue, which in my opinion is not the case.

While I see and agree witht the merits of the WEGO system, that does not in any way convince me that Combat Missions is a truly realistic portrayel of small unit leadership.

Not truly realistic, in so far as no game ever can be, as already discussed. However, Combat Mission is probably the best and closest simulation I have seen to the management of small units in a combat situation.

It does for example have quite a good unit reaction response override built into the AI, such that a unit coming under fire does respond quite appropriately to a threat in mid-bound. This can actually be quite frustrating especially if as the player you wanted that unit to ignore the obvious threat and keep doing what you ordered them to. Its basically, very difficult to get soldiers in CM to commit suicide, even if the alternative they choose for themselves is not much better, they will simply ignore your orders.

Everyone wants to come out of the woodwork and defend the game when I am not attacking the game.

Well as i say the only thing that jerked my chain was the apparent suggestion that real time games were inherently more realistic than turn based ones.

I don't beleive that to be true, but accept that generally speaking no game is realistic. The point was made long ago that one of the major problems with all military simulators used for troop training is that no matter how realistic they are the men involved in the simulation know that in reality they are not in mortal danger and so do not behave in the same way as they would in real combat. There is really no solution to that other than some really dangerous game which in which the people involved don't actually realise its a game.

The same people who complain if there is a unit in a game that has a questionable historical basis, seem to have no problem that every other component of the game is not even close to historical reality. CA was never trying to make "Sim-Medieval International Politics". They were simply making a strategy game loosely based off of a boardgame that has a highly detailed and immersive tactical component.

I'm surprised that anyone believes otherwise specifically when CA have stated exactly that in official responses.

However, I think what this issue reflects is a genuine concern amongst long term TW players that the content of CA's games is become more and more fantastic with each release. There is a border line between what is acceptable in the interests of gameplay and fun, and what is detracting too far from the credibility of the game as historically based.

I for one have an interest in TW games based upon my long term interest in military history and wargaming. If CA were to take the current trend towards aHistoric fantasy units too far, then I would cease to have a motive to buy them for that reason, and as I already have a quite extensive choice of fantasy games to choose from I would probably just stop buying TW games.

[Now that of course pre-judges the issue of whether a unit is historically correct or not, and I notice that there is a lot of debate about this point too. I am of course quite happy to have my understanding of history enhanced by a game, provided I am convinced that the game designers have researched the subject thoroughly.]

For me that would be a major issue, because at the moment the TW games are just about the only decent historical based strategy games being produced other than those dealing with WW2 and ACW and so I am keen to try and dissuade CA from stumbling down that path in the mistaken belief that it will somehow increase sales.

I hope that explains both my earlier post and my personal position the points you have raised above.

[Rebellious Waffle]

Are the Mayan bee throwers unhistoric, though?


From ancientworlds.net:

In battle, soldiers carried shields made from thick animal hide. The warriors fought with wooden clubs, flint knives, spears, and slingshots. Warriors were also known to use hornet bombs, in which a hornet's nest was thrown into a group of enemy soldiers. All fighting stopped each evening, and there was a truce that lasted till morning. If any armies commander was wounded or killed, his army retreated and the battle ended.

That same passage is reiterated verbatim at Mayanet and also in a Unit Plan from Indiana University South Bend.


There are a few other references, but most of them refer to either Civilization III or a scene in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, at least that I can find. There may be more, but I'm not keen on sifting through a gaggle of false positives resulting from the widespread use of the colloquialism "stirring up a hornet's nest", as well as from a proposterous-sounding franchise called Maya the Bee. Searching for "hornet bombs" doesn't help either, because Google thinks you're looking for pesticides or the bombs carried by the F-18 Hornet.

So if it's unhistorical, Mel Gibson and Sid Meyer have a great gag going.

[Didz]

I suppose the issue in these cases is whether the existence of the weapon warrants promotion into a special unit.

It is a fact for instance that many ancient troops carried darts fixed to the inside of their shield which they could throw at unsuspecting enemies, but it is one thing to recongnise that such a weapon existed and quite another to create a unit of 'dart throwers'.

It could be argued that 'bees', 'wardogs', 'grenades' and other novel weapons are merely part and parcel of the cut and thrust of melee combat and exist but don't deserve a special unit dedicated just to their use as they were not the primary weapon of choice. Not as much fun but probably more historically correct.

[Husar]

Biene Maya?

[Kobal2fr]

Its basically, very difficult to get soldiers in CM to commit suicide, even if the alternative they choose for themselves is not much better, they will simply ignore your orders.

Hehe, sooo true. "For chrissakes, what are you, French ? You're under sporadic MG fire, STOP CRAWLING TOWARDS THE STUPID BRUSH YOU JUST LEFT AND *RUN* FORWARD TO THAT RUBBLE, YOU IDJITS ! Concealment vs Real Cover, people !".
And it's variation : "I swear, if you pop smoke and reverse one more time because you happened to glimpse the backside of a panzer, so help me God I'll order the arty right on top of your cowardly head."

@Privateer : I think pretty much everyone accepts that the political, diplomatic and economical elements of the TW series are highly simplified - we accept it because it's not the focal point of the game. The whole strat map game is just there to provide a backdrop to the 3D goring of infidels. But that makes it doubly troubling when said goring of infidels becomes either functionnaly unrealistic (with cav not getting utterly slaughtered in woods, for example, or much reduced weather impact) or the units themselves come out of nowhere, because it's supposed to be the highest and most developped point of the game. Like Didz say, we like those games not only because they're good games, but also because they're believably close to history or at least not so outlandishly out there that we may think so.

You see, the problem is that you amalgamate "realistic" with "historical", when those are two separate points. If a truely realistic game could ever be made (see Didz prose as to why it's impossible), it could be used to *realistically* portray hoplites fighting dinosaurs, with perfect physics and adequate freaking out on the hoplites' part. By the same token, Shogun semi-unrealistically portrayed quite historical Sengoku Jidai warfare, before they put Kensai and Ninjas in that is.

Same goes for M2TW : right now we have precious few really a-historical units (from the top of my head : Sherwood Foresters and both types of battle assassins, that's it. And even them, one can make-believe they are just very experience bowmen and elite bushwacking parties, respectively) and what a-historicality there is in the game is more tied to the LACK of some units that were there but aren't in the game for a number of reasons, like Byzantine pikes, Muslim foot swordsmen etc...

But the expansion threatens this state of affairs with, depending how you look at it, either total fantasy units (like the byz personnal Turkycookers and the pagan battlepriests) or gimmicky, historical-but-probably-without-any-significant-impact-on-battles units like the beekeepers. EDIT : Gah. What Didz said when he outposted me.

And to be honest, I'm not that bothered about a few fantasy units, as one can just edit them out if they're too weird to feel good about using them or fighting against them. But they're still a troubling symptom.

[Didz]

@Kobal2fr
The problem as always with the idea of self-regulation to enhance historical accuracy is that as humans we can decide how we play, unfortunately the AI can't.

A classic example of this were the realism rules I drafted for playing the Napoleonic Battleground games, which worked brilliantly for PBEM play against other human opponents but which were quite obviously completely ignored by the AI in single player games. The difference merely highlighted how poor the game was a simulation of Napoleonic Warfare.

[Privateerkev]

You seemed to be suggesting that an RTS was in some way superior in dealing with this issue, which in my opinion is not the case.

Yeah I am not a fan of RTS either. Games like Starcraft become a contest in who can type in hotkeys faster. You can't actually watch the battle unfold because your too busy activating all of your units abilities and traits. Meanwhile the computer can activate everything simutaneously giving it an unfair advantage. Even with macros programmed into a mike headset, I can't keep up. At least with the TW series, you can issue orders while paused which helps somewhat.

Not truly realistic, in so far as no game ever can be, as already discussed. However, Combat Mission is probably the best and closest simulation I have seen to the management of small units in a combat situation.

Yeah, I was never debating whether CM was a "good" game because it seems to be one. Just that it isn't and can't be perfectly historically accurate nor truly realistic. This is not a knock on the game but merely pointing out the inherent weakness in all games to at least partially rebut the complaints over bee-chucking soldiers.

However, I think what this issue reflects is a genuine concern amongst long term TW players that the content of CA's games is become more and more fantastic with each release. There is a border line between what is acceptable in the interests of gameplay and fun, and what is detracting too far from the credibility of the game as historically based.

There may be numerically more units in subsequent TW games that are "fantastic" but I think each game has around the same percentage of fantasy units. Each game has more units period so that may at least partially explain why the number of fantasy units have increased.

I for one have an interest in TW games based upon my long term interest in military history and wargaming. If CA were to take the current trend towards aHistoric fantasy units too far, then I would cease to have a motive to buy them for that reason, and as I already have a quite extensive choice of fantasy games to choose from I would probably just stop buying TW games.

This is where being a history major has helped me. Since I am convinced that no game could possibly be historically accurate, I am not disappointed when it isn't and can simply enjoy the game on its own merits.

I think pretty much everyone accepts that the political, diplomatic and economical elements of the TW series are highly simplified - we accept it because it's not the focal point of the game. The whole strat map game is just there to provide a backdrop to the 3D goring of infidels. But that makes it doubly troubling when said goring of infidels becomes either functionnaly unrealistic (with cav not getting utterly slaughtered in woods, for example, or much reduced weather impact) or the units themselves come out of nowhere, because it's supposed to be the highest and most developped point of the game. Like Didz say, we like those games not only because they're good games, but also because they're believably close to history or at least not so outlandishly out there that we may think so.

I guess my perception is different because I remember that TW's roots are actually in the boardgame Shogun. When boardgames get made into computer games, most just have the strategic component and simply jazz up the graphics like in Risk or Axis&Allies. With Shogun, TW added an awesome tactical component instead of just making battles resolved by die rolls. But, I am still a fan of strategy and would not mind if there was no battle component at all. Sometimes I just autoresolve everything. Thats one reason why the fantasy units don't bug me as much. But, I think you are right that most people do play the TW series for the battle component. I just play for a different reason.

You see, the problem is that you amalgamate "realistic" with "historical", when those are two separate points. If a truely realistic game could ever be made (see Didz prose as to why it's impossible), it could be used to *realistically* portray hoplites fighting dinosaurs, with perfect physics and adequate freaking out on the hoplites' part. By the same token, Shogun semi-unrealistically portrayed quite historical Sengoku Jidai warfare, before they put Kensai and Ninjas in that is.

I think your right that I conflated the two. The term I should have used to make my points is "historical accuracy". I blame it partly on my own training as a historian. We strive to make history=reality when it is actually an impossibility. The secret is, we make stuff up. We infer from the evidence and write a narrative. This is one reason why history is a humanity and not a science. But, many of us strive to be as historically accurate as possible. I think that is why I was using the two terms interchangeably when I probably should not have. What I meant is that people complain about the historical accuracy of hand-held flamethrowers, hornet nest chucking, and indigenous soldiers who suspiciously look like large furry bipeds from the planet Kashyyyk when they seem to accept the historical inaccuracy of every other facet of the game. It is this seeming dichotomy that I meant to bring up when my incorrect conflation of the other two terms threatened to distract from my main point.

[Didz]

Yeah I am not a fan of RTS either.

Just to clarify my position.

I am not opposed to RTS games, I actually play a lot of them including Command and Conquer, Dawn of War, Settlers, Dungeon Keeper 2, and Starcraft. I just recognise the medium is not suitable for a long complex strategy game.

As you say the secret to success in RTS games is keyboard skill and processing, establish the right sequence and repeat it as rapidly as possible whilst explioting any AI weaknesses such as target fixation.

Fun for up to two hours, but not suitable for a campaign which could last days.