Why doesn't Arco have Phalangites (Pikemen) ?

[Keir Maxwell]

re Lance use

There are some very interesting articiles around on Lance use pre the invention of the Stirrups. One that I read in Slingshot (Wargaming mag) was by a guy who jousts etc - and does it without stirrups on occasion. Sure he makes no issue of the fact that stirrups are really useful but he still can joust without them and his descripotion of why is very enlightning. It also confirms the widely held view that Companions were Lance equipped shock cavalry.

Companions are differentiated from all the cavalry around them by the fact that they are shock cavalry. If you give them a spear you are removing their historical role and I believe going agaisnt the overwhelming wieght of evidence - shock, lance armed, cavalry existed for over 1000 years before the arrival of the stirrup and superseded chariots in this role. Equipping Companions with a spear makes them the same as all the rest of ther cavalry from this period which the ancients differentiated then from - which they were not. Another example of early shock cavalry is Lydian Lancers.

If Companions let go of their lance (Sarrissa) at contact then why do we have descriptions of them fighting with broken Sarrissa? A Sarrissa had a butt spike on it and after it broke at impact Companions would often use the shortened lenght of wood with the butt spike as the spear head instead of drawing swords. You can theorise that this is impossible but for some reasons the ancients tell us it happened.

Sure you can equip Companions with spear if you want but you are going against the the generally accepted view that its was the Sarrissa was an early Lance and the Companions used it in a shock role.

Also it takes very little time to adopt tecnhonlogical inovations. The Avars turned up in europe ~500AD with the stirrup and it was adopted very rapidly by the Byzantines. Would Arco do less when everyone around them had stirrups. To me this is like giving Mictlan copper armour when they are surrounded by peoples (including indie's) using superior tech. Treating nations technology in abstract from each other is not very realistic. It was the isolation of Meso Ameriacn cultures that definied their poor level of military technology. Take them out of isloation and things bcome far rosier.

re. .tga's

I've been doing work on tga over the Last couple of days - capturing the images, cleaning them up etc and it does take awhile. Are the .tga's going to made generally available? I have vast amounts to work on and it would save me alot of time.

Cheers

Keir

[ January 20, 2004, 20:34: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Kristoffer O]

I have made some quick sprites in 'spooky sprites' and exported them as tgas. This was a rare occasion. PDF said he was unable to draw and I became stunned by the fact that I had ignored the phalangites when I made Arco. I felt sort of compelled to make them.

I do not intend to export 1100 sprites one by one, sorry

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
re Lance use

There are some very interesting articiles around on Lance use pre the invention of the Stirrups. One that I read in Slingshot (Wargaming mag) was by a guy who jousts etc - and does it without stirrups on occasion. Sure he makes no issue of the fact that stirrups are really useful but he still can joust without them and his descripotion of why is very enlightning. It also confirms the widely held view that Companions were Lance equipped shock cavalry.
[snip]

I agree, evidence for shock cavalry without stirrups is compelling, which always left me feeling the whole stirrups issue was exaggerated, even though it seems so rational.

I'm very curious to read this jouster's views on jousting without stirrups. Do you remember more about it, or perhaps have a link? Slingshot and Joust don't work well as search keys.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Jasper:

I'm very curious to read this jouster's views on jousting without stirrups. Do you remember more about it, or perhaps have a link? Slingshot and Joust don't work well as search keys.

It is clear you are not from the WRG stable of games Jasper. Slingshot is "The Offical Journal of The Society of Ancients."

http://www.soa.org.uk/

With your range of interests Jasper you could do alot worse than Subscribe to Slingshot. I'm lucky in that my brother has recently arrived back from england with a subscription and vast piles of old ones.

I'll try and track done the number of the slingshot in question if you have no joy and I think the best key word for searching would be "Stirrups". I won't be on this group much for awhile so you might have to email me direct.

Pity that there is no easy way of getting the .tga's. I've been thinking of getting cunning and using images of wargames figures and seeing if I can make a nice .tga up from them. The amount of work involved in getting hold of attacking sprites, getting their size right, and then cleaning them up makes the idea of doing entirely new images appealling.

Ciao

Keir

[Jasper]

I'd heard of Slingshot, but just couldn't remember who published it. Probably because I'm not a fan of WRG rules such as DBA. I don't have any oppurtunity to play miniatures anyway.

I'm very much looking forward to the release of Armati 2 however, and am considering trekking to nearby Portland to hunt for competition.

BTW, I agree it's a pity that unit sprites aren't available as .tga. A simple script would suffice to translate all those locked up in "Dom" format...

[PDF]

Debate on the "lance", cont.
Companions Cav were indeed armed with a lance called "Xyton" or stg approaching , that was 12 ft long.
But the length of the spear is not relevant to the weapons'effect : as long as the cavalryman wasn't firmly stabilized with stirrups, he was effectively wielding a "spear".
OTOH however, the speed of the horse DID add to damage.
And the Companions lance was a "one shot" item, as it broke on impact or was dropped to avoid unhorsing, then the warrior drew its sword.
But Lastly the length of the lance itself gave a first strike advantage on "standard" 6-8 feet spears...

What would be needed to simulate it is a "downgraded" lance (dam 18-19 instead of 22 for example), not possible for the moment, we need weapon modding for that.

Either I have to equip them with "Long spears", Lance/sword, or even sword only. I don't think I can have them use a spear then a sword...

If IW have hindsight on this ...

Edited : finally I agree with Keir , it's more rationale to give them Lance+Sword currently.
The added "undeserved" bonus ain't that great, and it'll help Arco field a useful cavalry...

The standard Arco HC will also get "Long spears" to represent Thessalian HC - I'll also boost somewhat their crappy morale

[ January 21, 2004, 11:59: Message edited by: PDF ]

[Pocus]

you can perhaps raise the str of the cavalryman by 2 points, and use a spear (which has the str added I think), to represent the fact that the horse give some more shock to the whole attack?