SP Antiquity [WB] Shadows in the Desert - An Ancient Middle East Mod

[Sahran]

The main thing is to use the Khergit buildings and other stuff that looks like it's made of mud-brick with or without plaster or lime or clay, but not stone or wood structures. Otherwise you can pretty much just imagine a regular village scene, replacing Nord or Swadian or Vaegir (not in snow) village buildings with Khergit ones. It's hard to find any great concept art for what I had in mind since these are of fortresses or cities, not villages, but here's a series of Trojan and Mycenaean fortresses & cities: http://imgur.com/a/LsZwu

http://www.apartmentkalkan.co.uk/images/KAYAKOY.jpg - This is a Greek Village from the 13th (I presume AD, not BC) century, but the whole 'hillside village' vibe gives you an idea.

http://www.aegeanselectproperties.co.uk/img/about_destinations/14/big/sirince.jpg - Same deal as above

So you'd be going with rugged hillside and hilltop and mountain villages (1-2 scenes could be of a more plains, lowland village), rustic and rural with the usual farming stuff and khergit buildings.

 

[Arrakhis]

btw I been thinking u not gonna put women(like amazon) in fight right? yes or no doesnt matter for me

would love to try some alpha/beta 

 

[Sahran]

They'll probably be mercenaries and spawned in Scythian armies, and Iran'll have Gordafarid as an NPC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordafarid)

 

[Sahran]

Just as an interesting plug, my University mentioned on the main page a professor's project to help illustrate the complexity of Homer's Iliad's battle scenes. If anyone's interested in it: http://www.homerstrojantheater.org/

 

[Korgoth]

Sahran I got a question.

What happened to Litus?

 

[Sahran]

It's dead, since the fall/winter of last year. Neither I or Wei.Xiadi are going to return to it, but he's decided that all his textures & work from Litus are Open Source, and in the coming weeks I'll try and upload a clean OSP of the Litus material.

 

[Sayd Ûthman]

litus items are open source???

 

[Arrakhis]

u gonna do alpha launch or directly to 1.0?

 

[Sahran]

litus items are open source???

Wei.xiadi said

As for Litus, all I  care about is the work we invested our time in doing.  So most of it will be open source material anyway.  Just include the armours, weapons and re-textures we did and let anyone use it so long as credits are given, and be sure to emphasis what is whose work.  Although we worked together, my work is my work - yours is yours.

Arrakis - Alpha will be an interior release probably, then we'll do a public 1.0.

 

[Sayd Ûthman]

So i guess we wouldn't have any problem if i use some armors with giving credits ?

 

[Sahran]

From litus, yeah you can go ahead as long as you give credit to Wei.Xiadi.

 

[Sayd Ûthman]

Yeah okay, thank's

 

[Sahran]

Bit of public opinion sought here. For Babylon I looked to earlier, old and middle kingdom babylonian organization for them as otherwise they'd probably be a duplicate of Assyria (Even more so than normal). There's a variety of terms appropriated in those periods. So here's the options.

Terminology would go "Babylonian ________ (the tier term) Infantry/archer/spearman/cavalry/ect."

Tier 5 is covered by the term Qurubuti (Royal guard, private soldiers, royal corps, ect.)

Tier 4)
Kibittum - "Heavy", fully equipped, ect.
Kirrum - professionals
Kirretum - campaigners
Pihrum - regulars

Tier 3)
Diriga - "Reservists"
Ruddum - "Replacement Troops"
Takhkhum/Takhkhashu - "Reservists"

Tier 2)
Qallatum - 'light troops'
Diriga - Reservists
Ruddum - Replacement troops
Takhkhum or Takhkhashu or maybe Takh-khashu - Reservists
Dikutu - Levy/arriere ban. Right now tier 1, but if made tier 2 we'd make tier 1 commoners (Muskenum)

Tier 1)
Dikutu - levy/arriere ban
Muskenum - commoners

Might end up going with another option than what's preferred, but this'll help give me an idea.

 

[Ritter Dummbatz]

I take it. Qurubuti is the word that I don't want to read when facing the enemy. 

 

[Sahran]

I take it. Qurubuti is the word that I don't want to read when facing the enemy. 

To an extent. While Babylonia certainly had to get better militarily as time went on, we're (or at least my conception, not sure bout Kuauik's) is more of the little brother to big bad Assyria. Even though they modeled themselves after Assyria I haven't been able to find anything suggesting they followed the Assyrian practice of a large standing army, instead just having the Qurubuti as a standing army with a larger militia corps. I was thinking Babylonian commanders will get higher tactics ratings so they can field large armies that are predominately levies and militia and such and especially archers. Babylonian Qurubuti will probably be akin to the Assyrian Kisir Sharruti, which are the Assyrian's rank and file professional troops.  With Assyrian Qurubuti being walking iron and bronze statues of spear and bow destruction.

 

[Ritter Dummbatz]

Good luck on your try to balanced that out through numbers. I am currently in the process to balance out the romans with more than less troops in chainmails versus many more barbarians. The armor seems to kill the fun as usually they kill at least twice as much as they lose. Not really funny if you ask me. The good thing about it for now is that beating them gives you a real good feeling. But armor in general has a big impact on the result. Well trained troops in good armor give me a headache. 

 

[Sahran]

I know what you mean, it's going to be a pain in the balls to balance things and odds are I won't be able to get the goal on the first go.

I am thinking troops of all kinds will be deadlier than in vanilla. For Swadians it goes weapon skills 60 (Tier 1) to 75 (tier 2) to just 105 (tier 3) at the highest, to 125 (tier 4), to 155 at the top. Haven't figured out how it'll work yet, just that I'd like to see the deadlier effect you get in other mods like Sword of Damocles or PoP.

Was originally thinking a split of 50 between tiers, but that's too much with the addition of 'cultural' bonuses. For instance let's say it goes:

Tier 1 = 75
Tier 2 = 125
Tier 3 = 175

So a tier 3 philistine would be 175 + 25 or 50 to 1h for a culture bonus, think 200 or so is too high for a rank and file.

 

[Ritter Dummbatz]

I tested a bit and found out that if you want to have horsearchers that actually hit at times need to be pretty highly skilled (around 200) or they just shoot their arrows off in the air and end up light armored with a spear or sword in hands and pretty much after that they are dead.

 

[Sahran]

I tested a bit and found out that if you want to have horsearchers that actually hit at times need to be pretty highly skilled (around 200) or they just shoot their arrows off in the air and end up light armored with a spear or sword in hands and pretty much after that they are dead.

Good to know, especially since horse archers besides the Scythians are presumably not going to wield a shield, so we'll want them to actually be effective. Think we'll make their melee skill high too, so they can actually do well as cavalry.

 

[Ritter Dummbatz]

They definetly kill even with a lower skill in melee as long as they are on horse and as long as they don't get hit. May be they would block a few more hits better with a higher skill but the way they use horses they probably won't need it.

To be or not to be ...on a horse. That's the question.  Well, something like this although you could also say to wear armor or not.