Goidils

[Ghaust the Moor]

Well, I was just curious as to wether or not the the Goidils were being considered as a faction in EBII. Please and Thank you.


P.S. Plz say yes

[Martelus Flavius]

This question is currently being analized by our occultus specialists, which are going to prepare (or maybe not) a report on this subject written in one of the international language of our era.

I hope this was a decent answer!

Salve!

Martelvs

[Ghaust the Moor]

who are occultus specialists?

[athanaric]

who are occultus specialists?

Team members who work on new factions.

[Watchman]

Drat. Now everyone who read that will be dead by morning.

[Ghaust the Moor]

oh...I'll sleep with one eyed open...So what are the chances of getting an answer to my question?

[Hippocleides]

I think the EB team's policy is not to officially state yes or no to a faction until a preview has been unveiled. However, given that the historical evidence for the Goidels is so sparse and controversial that the Goidel units already in EB 1 had to be removed or revised it seems unlikely they will get a faction slot in EB2.

[Cyclops]

oh...I'll sleep with one eyed open...So what are the chances of getting an answer to my question?

I think the chances are very good for you to get an answer, but probably not anytime this year. And I think the answer will be no, as there are probably better cases to be made for Hellenistic states and the more "civilised" barabaroi factions, in Spain and central Europe.

My reasoning:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I think the basic test of faction deservability for any group is something like: Were they a coherent entity that occupied a significant (ie province sized) territory and either expanded their area of rule or demonstrated the capability (political and military) to do so?

Entities like city-states (Rome, Carthage), Hellenistic and eastern kingdoms (AS, Parthians) easily fit this criterea. They are recognised in the historical sources as persitent entities with clearly narrated lifestories. You can usually identify who the "we" (the position the player or AI faction slot) is in Roman history (either its the senate or the Triumvirs). Even a fluctuating state like Armenia has a succesion, albeit one that was subject to heavy influence by powerful neighbours in a way not readily articulated in the RTW engine.

The barbarbian entities are much harder to fit the mold, because their political cultures were fluid. EG German tribes banded together on the basis of a strong personality or a perceived threat, and their coaltions dissolved or turned on themselves as readily, often for similar reasons (eg tribes banding together under Arminius to repel Rome, then turning on him after his success). Hard to make the engine match that narrative.

Casse and Lussos are 2 of my favourite factions but its on the fringe of this model to include them. One can (and I do) argue they were active persistent entities over the period but they went through fairly fluid changes (and the team did a magnificent job adapting the reforms model to represent the social evolution in the Celtic world).

This is apparent from the lovely FM ethnicity and Wonder descriptions which reference past political groupings of Gauls like the Volsci and Cubi, which were dominant in the century before the EB period but had fragmented and were not really relevant anymore. The way in which a powerful movement like the Gallic surge to Anatolia could redraw the map of the continent yet leave little lasting political trace (Odrysia and Galatia are borderline viable factions at best) sums up the difficulties depicting Barbaroi factions.

Goidels definitely were a pain for the late Romans in Britain but in the EB period I'm unsure if they 1. controlled a province under a unified leadership (or even close) 2. invaded another province to take it over or 3. showed even the smallest capability to do either. For that you need documentary references to the Goidels doing things in the EB timeframe.

Was the high Kingship (Ard Ri is it?) established at this early period? That would provide the "we" for the EB narrative, what did the Ard Ri do? Would he need to pursue a reform to field a certain unit or expand his rule? You could always research and present "The Case For the Goidels..." in the mode of the excellent Syrakousai and Illergetan posts.

An OT afterthought:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As an afternote, the narratives of Epiros and Armenia have their own travails. Will EB 2 be able to depict the movement of Epeiros from an Heroic Hellenistic (or were they Hellenic?) similar to classical Makedonia I guess) kingdom to a tribal federation? That would be soooo cool. Also the frequent violent succession wars in Armenia, wouldn't it be wonderful to recapture that mechanism from MTW where the faction rulers stats had a global effect and his death had a potentially catastrophic effect on the polity.

Loving playing with the formatting.

[Martelus Flavius]

About Occultus :

Team members who work on new factions.

Nope, they are our secret agents, gathering information, spilling doubts, appearing where they are not waited... A mysterious cloud of fog encompass every statement they made, to fool one's soul on the wrong mystical path.

Sincerly yours,

Martelvs

[Cyclops]

About Occultus ...they are our secret agents, gathering information, spilling doubts, appearing where they are not waited... A mysterious cloud of fog encompass every statement they made, to fool one's soul on the wrong mystical path....

...like what you're doing now?

Ah ha! You are one of the Occultus! I will expose you, I'll tell everyone and...wait I'll just answer that knock on the door...

(walks away from PC)

...

(never seen again).

[Alsatia]

Don't Occultus members have an Occultus sig? They have a hidden dezign about a new faction, most of it censored in mist. I should make a new thread on this.....

[Constantius III]

This question is currently being analized by our occultus specialists

That's gotta hurt, especially if they're not used to it.

[oudysseos]

Cyclops, your reasoning is sound, but incomplete: our goal is to represent the whole of the world covered by our map as best as is possible, given all the limits of the game engine and our knowledge of the peoples involved. Now, obviously, the peoples of the British Isles (just as an example) have much less information available for the time period in question, so the task of recreating their societies and trying to make a viable faction is very much harder than it is for, say, the Romans. This does not necessarily mean that there won't be any faction(s) there. It would be very unrealistic for such a large part of the map to be "empty", when we know that there was a lot going on there, even if we don't have very many details. But we don't want to fill up the map just 'cos it's empty: there is a minimum amount of information that we need to make something work.


'Goidils', by the way, is kinda meaningless. 'Goidelic' is a term used in the past to group together the Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Manx languages, but as nomenclature is pretty old-fashioned. There is no evidence that there was ever a group of people who called themselves 'Goidils', and particularly not in the EB time frame (the word dates to somewhere in the 6th century AD, I believe). The 'Invasions' model of Irish pre-history has also been by and large abandoned, so you're not gonna hear many modern academics talking about 'Goidils' at all.

So if the OP is interested in seeing a native Irish faction in EB, he needs to do a little more research. Too bad he won't have time before the Occulti remove his internal organs and replace them with Cheez Wiz as a warning to others.

Oh, Alsatia? No, you shouldn't.

[Ludens]

TA posted a long time ago that the Erain (a southern Irish tribe) were a candidate for the final faction slot that eventually went to the Saba. However, my impression is that Ranika and Anthony were the team's Goidel/Briton experts, and that no one has replaced them. Given that they are already short on Celtic historians I doubt they have anyone to work on the Goidels.

[Cyclops]

Cyclops ...

Thank you for responding so courteously and promptly. For some reason I felt there should be hostility between us, but Nobody can tell me why.

...Cheez Wiz...

Mmmmmmmm...cheez wiz...

Well its better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick. Dang, why does that ring a bell?

[oudysseos]

Well, I can do hostility, if you really want.

But seriously, there is a conundrum for us that is both frustrating and fascinating. Sticking with Britain as our examplar, Cunliffe's massive body of work gives us a lot of archaeological material to work with, and we can can broadly identify at least two "cultures" that could fit well into the EB framework: the Arras Culture to the north (maybe the Parisi, or the Brigantes) and the Aylesford-Swarling Culture to the south (the Cassi and others mentioned in Caesar). From these sources we have weapons, chariots, horse architecture, household goods, votive offerings and settlement patterns. A lot, really. What we don't have is any written history until 200 years or so after EB begins, and since we don't do emergent factions, that's a real problem. There is a lot of coinage that gives us the names of Kings/Chieftains and indirectly indicates some of the political history, but these don't appear until maybe 150 years after our starting date, and are anyway probably a result of increasing Belgic influence (not invasion) in the southeast of the island, something which, in an alternative timeline, might not have happened as it did.

Bugger.

So what should we do? Clearly, there were people there deserving a faction, and probably more than one (if we had no hard-coded limits, of course). But we don't have most of the information that we would really need to be historically accurate as per our mission statement. We don't even really for sure know the names that the tribes called themselves in the 3rd century BCE, although 'Casse' is a damn good guess. We don't have any real battle narratives, so we have only a vague idea of what kind of units to model/skin: we have to retroject from Caesar and extrapolate from the physical remains. Which is fun, of course, but a lot more work than some of the Hellenic factions with (relatively) a lot of textual support.

Multiply this problem by every other area of the EB world besides Rome and the Diodachoi and you may begin to see why it's not done yet.

Oh, Cyclops, your poke in the eye with a burnt stick is on the way. With love from the Occulti.
Bwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

[Cyclops]

Well, I can do hostility, if you really want. ...

Sorry its a sort of extended pun on our names...but you probably knew that..same with the burnt stick reference...and the "Nobody" line...I was going to say "Oddysseos, he's a Nobody" but I thought it might sound aggressive rather than humorous.

I must say I love the inclusion of the Casse, I really missed an insular faction in RTR (when that was a going concern). I realise they embody a serious historical argument, but I also appreciate them for gameplay reasons.

Certainly in ancient narratives culture movements were often retold as invasions. To flip that, given the amount of casual warfare in pre-modern societies I would be surprised if any culture shift/transimission/whatever occured without a ripple of associated conflicts.

Tha Galatian move into Cappadocia was a mighty raid, and perhaps atypical of the other Celtic movements into Britain and Iberia, but the later celtic culture included somewhat militarised princedoms. I reckon they loved a biff, as well as a good poem-off-and-dance-with-a-druid. I mean the irish records (imaginative as they are) take for granted a background level of raiding and fighting, so any culture change could have involved a level of conflict not inconsistant with the way RTW models warfare.

Might it match the narrative pattern of EB to have the Casse even begin in Belgium with a stack in rebel held SE Britain, as a way of modelling the "infiltration/transmission " of continental Celtism into the insular world?

Just speculatin'.

I love the possibility of more insulars, but I realise there are better documented areas as you say (and as I posted earlier in my nifty spoilered post-love those spoiler wraps).

[Alsatia]

Oh, Alsatia? No, you shouldn't.

Sorry. Didn't read that post.

So sorry. Honest!

It is hard to do ancient Britain as Odysseous said, there are few sourcers and they only get the information when Caesar invaded. Before then, it seems Britain is a dark world.

[Irishmafia2020]

Here's a vote for another British faction... whether they are called "Goidils" "Caledonians" or some more specific name doesn't matter to me especially, although i do applaud the historical accuracy attempted, but from a gameplay perspective, another faction would really spice up the isles, and the Goidilic unit roster (however inaccurate) was nearly complete in EB1.

[Ludens]

Here's a vote for another British faction... whether they are called "Goidils" "Caledonians" or some more specific name doesn't matter to me especially, although i do applaud the historical accuracy attempted, but from a gameplay perspective, another faction would really spice up the isles, and the Goidilic unit roster (however inaccurate) was nearly complete in EB1.

EB is all about accuracy, so it does matter to them.

[Phalanx300]

Makes me wonder how they even got the units to look that way if they weren't historical in the first place, must have been some sources right?

[Ludens]

Makes me wonder how they even got the units to look that way if they weren't historical in the first place, must have been some sources right?

The problem is Ranika and Anthony haven't mentioned their sources, so they can't be found. For the record, though, that does not mean it doesn't exist. I get the impression that early-Celtic Irish archaeology is an obscure field even for historians. A lot of Celtic material hasn't even been translated yet, simply because there is no one to work on it.

[oudysseos]

I get the impression that early-Celtic Irish archaeology is an obscure field even for historians.

Sadly, this is all too true. While there is (a lot) more to it than this, a great deal of what Anthony and Ranika put together was extrapolated from much later textual sources or based on older scholarship that has now come under increasing scrutiny.

Of course, almost everything in EB is conjecture in some degree: even for the military units that everyone here thinks they know all about, like the Romans, there is in fact very very little concrete, unequivocal evidence. The new work being done on the Celtic units (just as an example) is still interpretation and guess-work: somewhat better documented guesswork we hope, but we will never truly know very much about the warriors of the ancient world. Most of what we have is third-hand opinions recycled as 'fact' by over-enthusiastic fanboys. We are doing our best to root our interpretations in referenced archaeology and texts, that's all.

[Elmetiacos]

The problem is Ranika and Anthony haven't mentioned their sources, so they can't be found. For the record, though, that does not mean it doesn't exist. I get the impression that early-Celtic Irish archaeology is an obscure field even for historians. A lot of Celtic material hasn't even been translated yet, simply because there is no one to work on it.

Yes it has. It is, however, of very marginal interest for EBII because it all dates from the 6th Century AD at the very earliest. Ireland is an interesting place up to the Middle Bronze Age and from the Dark Ages, but in the early 3rd Century BC it's a bit of a dismal backwater with poor material technology and a low population.

[oudysseos]

While you're not wrong, I just wanted to point out that I have been scouring the quarterly archaeological reports put out by the National Roads Authority Archaeology People (the main public library in Dublin has every government publication) and while it's true that there is a real dearth of late pRIA stuff, there is also a real lack of interest in the period and kinda always has been. To quote UCD,

Current knowledge of Iron Age Ireland is largely restricted to an artefact record which is biased towards the north of the country, a limited burial record and a small, but significant, group of specialised monuments – the so–called Royal sites. However, very little is known of the vernacular culture of the Irish Iron Age, particularly where and how people lived, the types of houses they built and their industrial activities. This problem, encapsulated in the phrase “The Invisible People”, (coined by Barry Raftery in his Pagan Celtic Ireland in 1994) has contributed to the enigmatic character of the period.

So, although we really know very little about this period at the moment, it is possible that important finds remain to be discovered. If you're interested, you can search all the registered sites in Ireland by county here.

[Ludens]

Yes it has. It is, however, of very marginal interest for EBII because it all dates from the 6th Century AD at the very earliest. Ireland is an interesting place up to the Middle Bronze Age and from the Dark Ages, but in the early 3rd Century BC it's a bit of a dismal backwater with poor material technology and a low population.

Out of curiosity: why is Ireland interesting up to the Middle Bronze Age, and what happened that it ceased to be of interest?

[oudysseos]

My 2 cents: first of all, Irish Archaeology has always been highly politicized and informed by the nationalist or colonialist agendas of them that pays. Since independence (only 86 years ago) there has been a great desire to establish Ireland as totally separate and unconnected to England in every way imaginable: even to the extent of positing totally separate settlement/invasion histories. Just read Seamus Mac Manus' History of the Irish People , which was still teaching Firbolgs and Tuatha de Danann when I was young. Any archaeology that didn't support the Tain/Finn MacCool version of Irish history was not popular.

Also, it seems to be the case (or is being asserted) that there was a serious population decline after the end of the Bronze Age prosperity in Ireland. If true, this would simply mean that there is not much to know until maybe the 600s AD.

Two interesting works of recent, high quality scholarship in this area are Communities and Connections: Essays inHonour of Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, and A New History of Ireland, from the Royal Irish Academy. Here is a link to the googlebooks preview of the chapter Iron Age Ireland by Barry Raftery, which is pretty much the state of the art for pRIA scholarship. I can read the whole chapter online: I hope it works for everybody.

[Elmetiacos]

Also, it seems to be the case (or is being asserted) that there was a serious population decline after the end of the Bronze Age prosperity in Ireland. If true, this would simply mean that there is not much to know until maybe the 600s AD.

No, not at all: just that there wasn't the same increase in population that were was among the Continental Celts, or even the lowland Britons.

In the early Bronze Age, Ireland was building New Grange, inventing the Hibernian Axe (which I think was the first purely military weapon in Western Europe) and exporting gold lunulae. Roughly at the same time as the Beaker Culture spread, the easily accessible gold and copper deposits seem to have started to dry up and Ireland stopped being the land of milk and honey and was left on the edge of later developments.

[Taliferno]

No, not at all: just that there wasn't the same increase in population that were was among the Continental Celts, or even the lowland Britons.

In the early Bronze Age, Ireland was building New Grange, inventing the Hibernian Axe (which I think was the first purely military weapon in Western Europe) and exporting gold lunulae. Roughly at the same time as the Beaker Culture spread, the easily accessible gold and copper deposits seem to have started to dry up and Ireland stopped being the land of milk and honey and was left on the edge of later developments.

By the Hibernian Axe do you mean the "Halberd"? I know that it occurs more in Ireland that the rest of Europe but not that it was invented here.

In any case the bronze age in Ireland was great, but not nearly as great as some of the theories about its decline (such as Mike Bailey's Comet). Also, two or three years ago they found Irelands first town near Derry, constructed during the bronze age.

As for the Iron Age, part of the problem is that many Iron Age sites were built over/continued in the early christian period. For example, the Cathedral and part of the town of armagh is built on top of a supposed Iron Age hillfort (probably would have turned out to be bronze age anyway).

Next year the DOE are planning to do a series of excavations along the Dorsey (and maybe the Danes Cast) which SHOULD turn up Iron Age material, maybe even of a military nature. Of course planning to do something is alot different than doing it.

[Elmetiacos]

By the Hibernian Axe do you mean the "Halberd"? I know that it occurs more in Ireland that the rest of Europe but not that it was invented here.

Have I got the wrong name? The copper spike on a stick, looking much like a smaller version of the mediaeval bec-de-corbin...