Make sure they get HAs like in BI. That's one of their charms, I'm playing them now aamof.

Lab

Eastern infanty for them? To represent levy horde troops?
Cataphracts, HA's, sogdian warriors,
Anyone see much reason to change them?

I'm not well versed in their history or units, so from my point of view we're going to be working on their AoR, if we have one for them, along with faction leader/heir name changes and starting map. Of course the map will happen later.

The principal changes which time had brought about were an almost entire disuse of the war chariot, the advance of the elephant corps into a very prominent and important position, and the increased use and pre-eminence of cavalry on the Parthian model, including both heavy cataphracts and horse-archers. Four main arms of the service were recognized, each standing on a different level: the elephants, the horse, the archers, and the ordinary footmen.

About infantry:

Infantry was divided into the following types:

* Daylami: heavy infantry
* Dailamites Elite Infantry
* Paighan: medium infantry armed with spears and large shields
* Levy Spearmen
* Kamandaran: elite foot archers
* Light ranged troops, such as Kurdish javelin-throwers

so i agree to keep the basics of vanilla, but with a updated infantry?

The heavy cavalry was complemented by lighter cavalry, which were not made up of Sassanids, but were recruited from among their allies and supplemented by mercenary troops. Gelani (Guilani), Albani, Hephthalites, Kushans and the Khazars were the main suppliers of this light- to medium-armoured cavalry.

I guess we can get some of the AOR units from these allies.

This [The Azadan nobility] class of nobility was first formed in Parthian times, and was carried over into the Sassanid state, where they were a force to be reckoned with. They accompanied the king in the wars and displayed great courage and discipline. It was the elite cavalry of Sassanid Persia. The amount of money involved in maintaining a warrior of the Asawaran (Azatan) knightly caste required a small estate, and the Asawaran knightly caste received that from the throne, and in return, were the throne's most notable defenders in time of war.

Woudn't the Azadan be a good elite unit? ofcourse really expensive to be a bit historical acurate.

sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassanid_army
http://www.iranchamber.com/history/sassanids/sassanian_army.php

Easten armies always lacked quality infantry. But the Sassanids seem to be an exception. The Parthians could do little else than raid the roman countries. The Sassanids actually took heavily fortified cities. To do this, proper infantry was a required. And siege weaponry of course. Maybe they have even imitated the testudo (though there's no evidence for this, it could be possible).

Both Rome and the Sassanids had allianced with various arab tribes. So some arab warriors (camels, camel archer, light cavalry and some infantry) will fit nicely.

Of course their famous armored cavalry and horse archer can not be forgotten.

I propose to change the name to Persian Empire, instead of the Sassanids. Their country was Persia, their dynasty the Sassanian. We don't call the Parthian Empire the Arsacids, or the old Persian Empire the Achaemenid Empire, do we?

My knowledge about the Sassanids is limited to what I know from Adrian Goldsworthy's the fall of rome. The Sassanids were without doubt the strongest enemy of Rome. But we should not exaggerate them. They never managed to capture large parts of the eastern empire, and usually lost their captured lands quickly back to the romans. The Romans did capture the Persian capitol several times (mostly before the time of this mod). Like Rome, persia had civil wars that prevented it from focusing solely on rome. Rome and Persia were mostly staring at each other at the fortified border during uneasy peacetimes.

Sassanid decent infantry could be tied to their homelands but must be easier to get- perhaps all starting regions, not just Baghdad.

I very much like Seneca's ideas.

Four main arms of the service were recognized, each standing on a different level: the elephants, the horse, the archers, and the ordinary footmen.

Let's base our efforts around these 4 areas. I think we can keep the elephants simple - 2 versions, War Elephants and Armored W Eles. The basic one is too weak for anything.

Infantry
Levy Spearmen
Paighan - medium infantry armed with spears and large shields
Daylami - heavy infantry
Dailamites - Elite Infantry

Missile
Kamandaran - elite foot archers
Kurdish Javelinmen (or they could be AoR)

Cavalry
As they were (Could someone please put up a vanilla roster?)

AoR
Hephthalite Horsemen (jav cav with some melee capabilities)
Khazar (Light lancers?)
Arab Raiders (medium archers or camel chase cav)

Elephants
War Elephants
Armoured War Elephants

I have no particular opinion regarding the name change - both seem apt enough. There is no easy way to take civil wars into consideration though, except by the vanilla Loyalty ratings, and since we ran out of faction slots centuries ago, a shadow Sassanid rebel faction is out too.

vanilla cavalry roster:
Camel raiders
Armoured camel raiders (cata camels)
Cataphracts
Clibinarii
Clibinarii imortals (warlord)
Nomad archer cavalry
(War Elephants)

i would add the javalinmen to AOR, and add a light archer type to the missile department. Otherwise they might be to powerfull with only one archer type that is "elite".
From what i found the Khazar were indeed known for there light lancers (and horse archers).
As for the Arab Raiders, maybe light sabre cavalry?

One idea to make the Sassanids/Persians more unique would be introducing the concept of satraps and shahrabs. This would be done by ancillaries, where the governor of a particular province receives an ancillary representing the office of shahrab of that province, which will give special bonuses based on the province, similar to the nobility feature found in M:TW and many MII:TW mods. Certain provinces that were historically important to Persia will also give their governor the office of shahrab of the provincial capital, which will give further bonuses. In addition, the satrapies of some provinces in the ERE (Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, etc.) will be particularly good, encouraging the Sassanid player to take on the Roman empire.

hey never managed to capture large parts of the eastern empire, and usually lost their captured lands quickly back to the romans.

To be fair to the Sassanids, at one point they took Egypt and along Palestine/Syria way. But yeah, they lost it pretty quick.

And apologies again for not participating, I have been travelling the world and have only just settled, albeit on the opposite side from whence I came.

Quoted from Seneca:

As for the Arab Raiders, maybe light sabre cavalry?

Lightsaber Cavalry would make my day.

Quoted from Wiki:

Administration of the Sassanid Empire was considerably more centralized than that of the Parthian Empire; the semi-independent kingdoms and self-governing city states of the Parthian Empire was replaced with a system of "royal cities" which served as the seats of centrally appointed governors called shahrabs as well as the location of military garrisons. Shahrabs ruled both the city and the surrounding rural districts. Exceptionally, the East Roman Empire also adopted the title "satrap" for the semi-autonomous princes that governed one of its Armenian provinces, the Satrapiae.

How about a title-trait? Something like the "Office of Pontifex Maximus" trait back in vanilla RTW, except this is triggered by yearly central appointments. We can just give the currently outstanding generals that office trait and the bonuses, instead of granting a retinue member that would theoretically follow his lord anywhere (even when he leaves the shahrab's original appointed province, which would kind of defeat the whole point of being a shahrab. See my point?).

Is that a better way to do it, and can it be done?

Doing that would require all sorts of complex trait writing or hidden cultures and superfactions, I think. (If we're talking vanilla Roman-style titles)

I like the BI system of titles, personally. Sure, changing them between characters can be a hassle, but so is attempting to play historically and having my consul changed before his limited movement points even get him to his army, let alone start conquering.

[This message has been edited by Drakontos (edited 01-09-2011 @ 05:07 AM).]

The BI system simply puts the Office in a general's retinue as an imperial seal, to be transferred to any other general as normal retinue members would be, yes?

Well it is simple to do, and direct. I can live with shahrab position retinues.

On another note,

Quoted from Mythic:

In addition, the satrapies of some provinces in the ERE (Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, etc.) will be particularly good, encouraging the Sassanid player to take on the Roman empire.

I don't quite understand the concept of making satraps better - something like base farming level?

Yes.

Each satrap seal would presumably be unique - so the trait bonuses for these western satrapies could be better than, say, satrap of armenia.

That said, would this be settlement based, or broader region based? ie, is every settlement going to have its own title, or only more important cities within a broader region (Italy, Spain, Africa, Egypt, Syria, Thrace, Mesopotamia... etc etc)???

I'd go with regions, as there'd be too many. But you'd have "North Italia" and "South Italia" rather than just all of Italy, likewise split France into three sections, Greece into thracian and Greece proper...

Region-based for me.

There are certain mechanics' questions I want to ask though.

1. What happens to the seal when its bearer, in other words the satrap, dies? If it goes away, when and how does it come back?

2. How would the various still unconquered regions' seals (eg. Hispania, Britannia, Baltics, etc) come into existence?

3. When the player loses the particular region, will the seal go with it?

Thanks.

1) It should respawn at some time or another and be given to another general of the faction which owns the requisite territory

2) They'll spawn when the conditions (owning the territory) are met

3) The seal will stay, but I think it is possible to make it have no effects without controlling the territory. It certainly is in Med2, unsure about Rome.

This is based on my very limited knowledge of such things - I nonetheless hope that helps, and do invite anyone to correct me.

*EDIT*

We'll also need to tone down the Immortals. Currently, they seem to steamroll anything that moves, and the AI has no choice in recruiting them. They seem to crush the ERE just about every time.

[This message has been edited by Drakontos (edited 01-09-2011 @ 09:55 AM).]

Quoted from Drakontos:

but I think it is possible to make it have no effects without controlling the territory.

Refresh my memory - how do we do this in Medieval 2? Through a script, or can we do something in the export_descr_ancillaries?

Not sure, to be honest. I haven't modded in a while and even then it never was a gameplay mechanic I played around with.

If my old laptop hadn't died on me recently I'd flick through the various mods I had collected and check. As is, I'm afraid I can't. If anyone has VI2 by MasterOfNone, that ought to have it, if it is indeed possible in RTW.

I did nonetheless quickly check the forums and it looks like it is possible, but someone who has the mod can shed more light on the situation. It looks like there is an ancilliary, plus a trait which is given if the ancilliary and region are held, and lost if either condition is no longer valid.

That's what I thought. I'll give it a look in my copy of VI2.

I like the idea.

I was suddenly hit by a realization: What if the player manually puts all the satrap seals into the same general's retinue? Is there a way to forbid this?

Also, since both the offices of satrap and shahrab are going to be represented by seals - as gathered from the conversation so far - how do we differentiate them, like, with different seal artworks?

There is a way to exclude this. In Vanilla RTW there are some retinue members (and traits) that exclude others.

I guess the rest of us should find some other stuff to discuss while Mythic and Drakontos busy themselves with modding issues, so let's take a look at the roster, shall we?

* * *

Infantry (Revamped)
Levy Spearmen
Paighan - medium infantry armed with spears and large shields
Daylami - heavy infantry
Dailamites - elite infantry
Immortals - slightly less kick-ass than they used to be, for balancing purposes.

Missile (Brand-new, baby)
Desert Skirmishers/ Archers
Kamandaran - elite foot archers

Cavalry (Vanilla, almost)
Camel Raiders
Armoured Camel Raiders - Cata-camels
Cataphracts
Clibinarii
Clibinarii Immortals - warlord
Mounted Nomad Archers
War Elephants
Armoured War Elephants

AoR (Suggestions are welcome)
Kurdish Javelinmen (kind of like stealthy Hillmen with javelins)
Hephthalite Horsemen (jav cav with some melee capabilities)
Khazar Lancers
Lightsabre Cavalry (just for kicks)

* * *

As you can see the infantry dept has been substantially revamped as per Seneca's research and ideas. I've added Immortals in the hope of completing the mix. Cavalry is virtually untouched, but I would prefer knocking out anything starting with a "C" and ends in an "L".

RE: Immortals
What I want to do to help differentiate Dailamites (elite infantry) and Immortals (kick-ass infantry), if everyone approves of the first unit, is to have the former be defensively inclined - line-holding infantry. And the latter offensively inclined - shock infantry.

I approve this list. It seems balanced and historical. Who's making the models by the way?

I would prefer knocking out anything starting with a "C" and ends in an "L".

Or perhaps make it a very low level knife unit. And I mean knife. Not sword or another sabre, more like a lowly raider unit that was recruited from the caravan bands of the desert.

@VC: No one, as far as I'm aware. We've still a long way to go in planning as it happens, so no point in worrying too much about that right now.

Has anyone ridden a camel before? Or a horse?

@GKA
i rode a camel once on a vacation. The driver of the beast said i was allowed to control it myself. Imediately the beast run wild, and the driver had to run as fast as he could to get to the rope of the beast. He managed to do that at the end of the "desert track area". But i didn't really enjoy the ride.

Back to topic: maybe kick out the armoured camels, but keep the camel raiders as "chase desert cavalry"?

Agree. Armored camels seems strange. I say we stick to lightly (if any) armored arab camel riders. Perhaps make a spear, sabre and bow version?

Because I was thinking it would be kind of hard to wield a knife effectively on camel-back (or rather, camel-hump). Yes I know Punic's idea was to limit their power, but knifes would look kind of lame - sorry

I vote we drop camels altogether. If you scroll up and check out the AoR roster, you'll find that we've already got two promising units of light cavalry - Khazars and Hephthalites - so I would not be too eager on seeing a third tag-along camel raider unit.

Camels are a good option for counter-horse tactics and should therefore be kept, imo.

Do the Sassanids, the faction with arguably the most fearsome cavalry in the east, need camels for counter-cavalry tactics?

Don't forget that camels are far cheaper than cataphract/clibinarii cavalry. So yes, even for the sassanids they are a good, cheap, cavalry counter.

Tactical example

Rome vs sassanids:

Rome inf in center, archers to rear and cav on the flanks.

Camels are useless against inf, but cataphracts can wipe those cohorts from the earth. So camels attack the roman cav at the flanks, cataphracts supported by inf smash the roman infantry and victory.

In summary: You can use camels to free up other cavalry units for other tactical options.

Well, I can't argue with you on the freeing-up bit, but I think we've got other AoR units now able to perform the same tasks - Hephthalites and Khazars, for instance.

I can live with camels though, if that is the consensus. Guys...?

To be fair, camel units can just be made an AoR for all factions. It just so happens that the Sassanids are likely to get better access to them than most. Everybody wins!

'Frontier patrol' or something as a light cavalry unit, which is fast but isn't good for much more than chasing down fleeing enemies unless a good general and decent tactics are used? They do need SOMETHING which doesn't need buckets of water poured on it regularly to cool the poor mount down.

i agree with drakontos.
Also Khazars and the other AOR cavalry can't be retrained everywhere. I think the Sassanids need at least 1 unit of light cavalry (less usefull than the AOR units ofcourse) that can be retrained in every city.

Would it make sense to allow camel units to be retrained in someplace like Norway?

If the consensus calls for a camel unit, I would suggest limiting it to Eastern regions, and substituting the role of light chase cav with regional AoR choices/ Mercenaries in the area. Is that good enough?

Camel units require the camel resource, do they not? If not, we'll make it so!

What if we were to allow the Sassanids to recruit all faction's basic light cavalry units (in the appropriate regions, of course)? That way, we don't have to use any extra descr_model_battle slots making AOR units.

What if we were to allow the Sassanids to recruit all faction's basic light cavalry units (in the appropriate regions, of course)? That way, we don't have to use any extra descr_model_battle slots making AOR units.

If that can be done, so be it. (Why did you not throw this on the table earlier, Mythic? )

And it kind of brings up another question: Do we allow the same luxury for any other faction?

I only just thought of it :-P Still, it is quite a convenient solution. Perhaps other factions with a reputation for using local forces could do this (eg the Huns with heavy cavalry), It adds a lot to unit rosters without being too heavy on game files, so it's a pretty convenient thing to slip in for factions we want to "expand".

I don't know if it's a good idea or a very bad one, but I'll just throw it in. Is it possible to change the unit's recruit-time based on the region. So if you're in Norway it takes longer to train them because the camels have to come all the way form the nearest resource. I have absolutely no clue about how to do it, I don't even know if it's possible. Also, it could be too much hassle, or it sucks anyway, forgive me then.

I still maintain my 60%-of-units-accessable-as-AoR idea, if perhaps making those classed as more elite require a higher level barracks.

@Crownjumper, unit recruitment times can indeed be changed, however to do so requires creating a new unit type, so I think that units from quick recruitment regions would not be able to be retrained in slower recuitment time regions.

Quoted from Mythic:

Perhaps other factions with a reputation for using local forces could do this (eg the Huns with heavy cavalry), It adds a lot to unit rosters without being too heavy on game files, so it's a pretty convenient thing to slip in for factions we want to "expand".

I say, let's do this. Erm, I mean let's make this Mythic's and everyone-actually-doing-modding-work's call.

Question: How does it allowance work exactly? Do you make the Sassanid trainable regular roster in foreign regions different? If I should see camel raiders in the light cavalry slot, I'll see e.g. Francisca Cavalry in Frankia instead, is that it?

Quoted from Drakontos:

I still maintain my 60%-of-units-accessable-as-AoR idea, if perhaps making those classed as more elite require a higher level barracks.

I buy it, Drak, but stand by 40% instead for individuality's sake. Regardless you should still try and look at each faction's roster and propose to everyone which units you deem good for adding to the AoR.

Which brings me to a related question: We've reached a consensus on Camel Raiders, haven't we? To let them stay as Sassanid assistant light cavalry, and tweak the system so that in different conquered cities different light cavalry units from that conquered people's roster can be trained, but not the camels. Right?

Last thing, is the roster good enough for you?

Yes, camels only in the eastern and african provinces (so they will need the camel resource)

I'm cool with it, except this bit:

Immortals - slightly less kick-ass than they used to be, for balancing purposes.

I think we've already given the Sassanids enough infantry, and would rather we left the Immortals as the mounted bodyguard of the Shah and his generals - albeit in a slightly weakened state compared to vanilla BI.

Infantry
Levy Spearmen
[We'll need a unit to plug this gap if the Immortals stick to being bodyguards.]
Paighan - medium infantry armed with spears and large shields
Daylami - heavy infantry
Dailamites - elite infantry

Missile (Brand-new, baby)
Desert Skirmishers/ Archers
Kamandaran - elite foot archers

Cavalry (Vanilla, almost)
Camel Raiders
Mounted Nomad Archers
Eastern Light Cavalry (jav cav for the Sassanids?)
Cataphracts
Clibinarii
Clibinarii Immortals - warlord
War Elephants
Armoured War Elephants

AoR (Suggestions are welcome)
Kurdish Javelinmen (kind of like stealthy Hillmen with javelins)
Hephthalite Horsemen (jav cav with some melee capabilities)
Khazar Lancers
Lightsabre Cavalry (can we add it as a cheat unit? )

Why do we have to plug a gap? They have levy spears, a medium inf, heavy inf and elite inf, plus some ninja archers and many a AoR unit...

Alright, sod that then.

Daylami - heavy infantry
Dailamites - elite infantry

What should these guys be armed with?