Theme Switching

[Devari]

Scrolls sound(s?) awesome!

[Gen. Volkov]

Scrolls sounds good. And I'll try to keep it as accurate as possible within the constraints of the game.

Everything looks good, cept for militiamen, doesn't sound right, denotes a different sort of time period/fighting man. Maybe hoplites or skirmishers?

All the races in question had cavalry, even the Greeks. The Macedonian plains were very good for raising horses. He ran because a horse was not available. Warbands... hmmm. Fiefdoms? Kingdoms? (Harking back to the Trojan war here, where a leader of a small area could be called a king.) Satrapies... that's a Persian thing though. Armies maybe.

[Urran Voh]

No need to get personal, Urran, I don't think he was calling you ignorant. Let's just debate what to do here. And the same goes for you Alcy, be flippant somewhere else. (Yeah look who's talking.)

When do I ever get personal?

[Devari]

Skirmishers sounds good to me, especially since they're a low-end troop.

I see something like:

Mice -> Skirmishers
Squirrels -> Archers
Hares -> Hoplites
Otters -> Triremes
Hawks -> Spies

Hoplites are just as an example of "heavy infantry". That would be instead of calvary, considering that infantry is still king in those days. If memory serves, calvary was mostly used as scouting troops and "mopper-uppers".

[The Beatles]

But isn't hoplites a Greek-specific term? Not that I don't agree with your evaluation of cavalry, and Neo seems to say they were too expensive to be worth it.

[Urran Voh]

Quick question: Are the troop off/def going to change or are we keeping them?

[Devari]

Probably will change somewhat.

Beatles, I was just using Hoplites as an example of something along the lines of heavy infantry. I'd much rather find a more generic term.

[The Beatles]

Why should we change troop O/D? I've always thought the arrangement one of our strengths.

[Ruddertail]

I like troop O/D at it's current level. What reason is there to change?

Scrolls, eh? Ok. Intelligence Resources could be abbriviated I.T. which could also lead to some good humor "I sent you some IT." "What?" "IT". "What's IT?" "IT is it." "What?" "No, IT"....

But there's nothing wrong with scrolls.

Scirmishers
Archers
Swordsmen
Tiremes
Spies

Swordsmen were generally the best all around combat troops. Sure, spearmen in some sort of circle or squar formation could far outclass swordsmen, but if and when it all breaks down into a mele, the spears quickly lose their advantages, and the swordsmen would cream them.

[The Beatles]

Swords were expensive back then, in an age not far removed from the Bronze Age.

[Ruddertail]

Then it would make sense that they are the third most expensive unit. Only ships cost more to outfit.

By the time of King David, swords were commonplace weapons. Considering this (presumabley) takes place sometime after that point, I'd have to say swords weren't too scarce.

[The Beatles]

Righto. Let's see what our history gurus say about cavalry vs. swordsmen.

[neobaron]

Swords in this era?

No thank you.... the sword was a secondary weapon until the lgeionarres figured out how to use it to its potential...

Small "daggers" were used by Greeks when the Phalanx failed, but the mainstay weapon throughout the world at the time was a polearm of some sort.

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Like I told Beatles, Cavalry was around... no doubt. The steppe peoples in Sarmatia were obsessed with them (esp. horse archers).

However, in the pelloponese, Horses werent commonplace as nothing was too far to walk to, hence armies didnt require speed so much as brute force given the "honourable" manner of war in which it was always necessary to mean ones enemy head on (or at least from behind a wall).

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My vote is on cavvy, though I do agree with the idea of changing the O/D of our troop types.

Spearmen, for example, would take a hit on the offense, but a major boost in D.
Cavvy would take a hit on D but be explosive on the O
etc etc.

[neobaron]

bump

[Ruddertail]

Re: OP/DP

I'd vote for leaving them the same, unless you're going to do different troop names/strengths for each race. That could get really interesting, for example, one group could have a really strong offensive cavalry, while one could have a a spear group that was trained pretty well on both O and D, and one could have pikes that were very poor offenive weapons but great defensive, etc...