Quote:
Originally Posted by HoneyBadger
Aside from that, a sharp piece of metal can cleave through a deer carcass-and a sharp wedge of copper could probably have done the same exact thing, and certainly an Aztec obsidian sword could have-but that's a much different thing from slicing through a moving, fighting human being, with just clothing on, let alone armour, and doing it again, and again, and again.
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Do you have any sources? I don't see why cloth alone would make such a huge difference in the cutting power of an edge. Furthermore, the ability to deliver a good hit to a moving target, while difficult, comes from the skill of the fighter and not from quality of the edge.
I agree with many of your points: many European swords probably sucked, the quality varied wildly, and good swords were rare. I was talking about the good swords, because I was thinking of knights and presumed they'd have the best swords they could buy, along with the best armor and horse and whatever else they needed to stay alive.
When you mention unsharpened clubs, you might be thinking of the estoc, which had (at least sometimes? really out of my comfort zone here) octagonal or hexagonal cross-sections that indeed had no blade whatsoever, and were meant to focus enough power to the (possibly unsharpened) point that it could benetrate armor. They were specialized weapons and not just normal, unsharpened swords.
My understanding (mainly from the ARMA site) is that swords weren't used against knights, but against people who couldn't afford to wear good armor in battle or for self-defense outside of battles. There were other weapons more suited for hurting people in armor, like maces and "hammers" and estocs, and halberds against mounted knights, and lots of other weapons I don't know proper names for. Since there were better weapons for harming other knights, I don't see why a knight would take a poor sword into a mace-fight.
I'm running out of time here, but here's a nice article about how swords were used for different purposes. I didn't have time to see if it goes into detail about western swords' qualities versus Japanese swords, but it looks like it might.
http://www.thehaca.com/essays/nobest.htm
For KO:
Ashdod could be made to only have access to expensive castles, and could perhaps have more expensive labs and/or temples.
Also, Ashdod's random-only mages should NOT be recruitable without a lab! They might not be their best battlemages, but it's still not right. A general "you need a lab before you can recruit this unit" ability would probably have uses in modding as well, if Johan decided to add it.