Mod: MA al-Nadim - The thousand and one nights 1.01)

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I have two graphical comments though. Firstly, it looks off to me that they all have naked legs. Shouldn't they be wearing full-length robes, or perhaps billowy trousers? (my Arabic knowledge is poor at best, althuogh as it happens I am currently writing from a library full of Arabic students!)

Agreed. I really don't know how I could forget the trousers. If anything, they should be more realistic than naked legs.

Secondly, I think the source graphic for the viziers is unfortunately one of the lower quality graphics in dominions, so they don't quite match up to the excellent quality of your other graphics. They're still fine, it's just noticeable that they're not quite as good.

True, the graphic just happened to suit them very well. I'll definately remake them along with the other stuff when I do things like modify the mubarizun sprite for a mubarizun commander. That is, if I find a better sprite to base them on.

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Oh yeah, and I really like the spinning thing for the dervish, but is he meant to look like he has very long grey hair? Cos he kind of does at the moment.

His upper body is apart from arms pretty much completely from the normal indy priest, and I can't see a long grey hair in either of the sprites myself. Though it might be a good idea to edit the sprite to show more neck.

[elmokki]

Originally Posted by Sombre

While we're on the subject of graphics, it might be an idea to get the horse rearing up graphic from the vanilla sprites and apply it to the attack sprites of your non missile cavalry - currently the movement from one sprite to the next is a bit too subtle for a large (size 3) unit.

Agreed, the problem is though, how can I get non-antialiased (or whatever is blurring the sprites ingame) sprites? The bases I currently have are from sprite dumps, but they sadly don't have the attack sprites. For viziers I took a screenshot and built from that, but completely redrawing a rearing horse from a somewhat ok model is a bit too much work if I can get a proper sprite from somewhere.

[Sombre]

If you look in the modding tools thread, I'm pretty sure there's a link to all the vanilla sprites in a zip there.

If you can't find it let me know and I'll upload my copy of it.

[Burnsaber]

There's a download for all vanilla graphics in the first post of Sprite Editing Tutorial.

[llamabeast]

Ah, I bet the imperfect source image was why I thought the vizier looked a bit funny. If you use the image from the sprite archive he should look better I think.

[llamabeast]

Any news on this? I'm really looking forward to it.

[Wrana]

Congratulations!
At last this idea is taken by someone who can draw!
There were some discussions on this already, but I would point to the one where my own opinions were stated:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=38342
There is also another thread currently active.
In short, I think that the EA nation should be mostly genie-based with human nomads as subject race, with MA being based on Khaliphate era (my own version was mostly based on 10th century) and LA on Osmanic Empire.
I agree about difference between city and Bedhuoin troops - you can look up how it was realised in my own attempt in the thread link above.
Considering magic and genies my own short research had shown that appropriate paths should include some Astral (astrology was relatively common, plus genies were often stated as knowing fate of people - plus Arabic folklore is the only place where I've seen something that could be characterized as teleport before 20th century authors). Another thing often mentioned, but mainly with female genies is turning people to animals, charm and production of food/wine - all from Nature path in Dominions. What I decided about this also can be found in the thread above.
As for your graphics - while I myself am not good enough at pixel art (which has already stopped 2 projects), I think yours are good. And I do not think that you should necessarily use an existing tradition of depicting horses in action as rearing. Another thing - Arabs didn't use composite bows like Turks or Mongolians. Their bows were better than common Western design, but not by much, and they didn't particularly like shooting warfare - maybe because of the risk to horses. What they should certainly have is light lancers with very fast horses - which could be deadly at first strike... Later they began to employ a northern Turkish nomads specifically as mounted archers - but those were most often relatively heavy troops (by the way, in Dominions these should be people related to those which conquered Tien Chi in LA, but no name for them is officially given )... If you agree with the general concept I propose or have further questions - I am ready to answer and/or provide some content (as are possibly those who took part in previous discussion ).
So, please continue your good work - twenty centuries are looking at you!

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Wrana

Congratulations!
Another thing - Arabs didn't use composite bows like Turks or Mongolians. Their bows were better than common Western design, but not by much, and they didn't particularly like shooting warfare - maybe because of the risk to horses. What they should certainly have is light lancers with very fast horses - which could be deadly at first strike... Later they began to employ a northern Turkish nomads specifically as mounted archers - but those were most often relatively heavy troops!

Actually, the arabs as of the crusades favored mounted archers, and did use composite bows almost exclusively. Their favorite tactics include riding up to opposing cavalry and firing at close range to shoot the horses out from under them (European cavalry of the time did not wear barding typically, and not at all in the crusades because of exhaustion concerns), and pretending to run away while firing behind them to lead their pursuers into a trap. Islamic mounted archers of the time were perhaps the most accurate in the world, and the practice of archery was quite popular because of Mohammad's pronouncement that archery was the only sport the angels stopped to watch.

Islamic heavy cavalry at the time did not use lances, although they did use spears. The prepared warrior also carried a sword, mace, and axe - although the sword was the preferred weapon (for a number of reasons, but most likely because Mohammad states that the sword is a holy weapon). The idea of a heavy cavalry charge, european style, was shocking to them in the first crusade (and possibly accounts for some crusader wins against superior numbers).

The armor of their light and heavy cavalry was nearly identical - typically a maille shirt, leggings, heavy boots, a metal cap - often worn under turban and robes, although sometimes a metal cuirass was worn on top of this. Heavy cavalry carried a shield.

(Note, in proper usage, 'light' means the unit had a ranged weapon and claims nothing about armor.)

I can provide sources.

[llamabeast]

Tell me squirreloid, does this misuse of the word "light" by dominions bother you?

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Tell me squirreloid, does this misuse of the word "light" by dominions bother you?

Yes, yes it does.

Actually, the rampant misuse of the term by fantasy fans in general does.

I'm pretty sure military buffs get it right, because the distinction between light and heavy still exists, its just weirder now than it was pre-1900.

(Light cavalry today is aircraft. Heavy cavalry is tanks. The light/heavy infantry distinction is, iirc, a matter of armament, mostly to correspond to the historical unit vs. unit dominance paradigm. Ie, with equal training HI > HC; LI > (HI,LC); LC > (HI,HC); HC > LI). So infantry with anti-tank weapons is heavy, and other infantry is light, although with typical modern dispersal of weapon types across squads its no longer really a squad-level distinction)

Of course, dominions also suffers from the 'cavalry is awesome just because it is' syndrome, something also typical of fantasy buffs with little actual military knowledge, and generally based on the dominance of the knight in early medieval europe (which happened because the infantry *did not* have equal training or appropriate weaponry) and a fascination with chivalry and the medieval knight. Such people tend to ignore, eg, Bannockburn (Scotts used makeshift pikes to destroy a cavalry charge) or Avignon (entirely infantry English massacre french cavalry). In addition to not just melting against pikemen, cavalry also get a defensive bonus just for being cavalry. Actual military theory suggests the opposite (cavalry is worse at attacking and defending than infantry because they need to control the horse and fight, whereas the infantry can just concentrate on fighting - heavy cavalry's primary use is therefore running down light infantry).

Ok, this was much longer than intended. Lets just sum up by saying I wish people who did games like this were better at doing their homework.