If Giants existed in BC times...

[MaxWilson]

I still think one good, thematic nerf to Ashdod would be to change their PD from Gileadites, Edomites, and Gileadite Archers (over PD 20) to Human Slaves and Edomites (maybe keep the Gileadite Archers over PD 20? Or just put back the regular Gileadites). Rephaites are rare, right? In Hinnom times they didn't even have any females and were reliant on Qedesot to make more Rephaites.

That's not the only thing you'd probably do to them--gcost raises to mages in order to further hurt their research wouldn't necessarily hurt the flavor, and you could even eliminate the cap-only gem income entirely (which would hurt the early Constr-4 forging, as well as being a totally unique penalty). In fact raising gcosts might even intensify the theme of the nation (quality over quantity, now with less quantity). Or, what if Rephaites had some kind of unique vulnerability deriving from their demonic heritage, like an across-the-board cold vulnerability? I don't know if that one makes sense given the mythology though.

Unlike Hinnom, though, Ashdod's non-sacred troops don't need any nerfing at all because the best of them are already sub-par (about as good as Iron Crows IMHO). Not bad, and certainly usable, but nothing like Dawn Guards.

-Max

Edit: One more possibility. Cannibalistic giants and their descendants are inbred and tend towards megalomania--what if all Rephaites had Insanity (5)? Man, that would be a huge pain.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Edit: One more possibility. Cannibalistic giants and their descendants are inbred and tend towards megalomania--what if all Rephaites had Insanity (5)? Man, that would be a huge pain.

I think Dom3 players are generally not in favour of nerfs based on increasing micromanagement.

[HoneyBadger]

Sombre, 20/40% might have been a little on the extreme side, but maybe 10/20?. It's just guesswork, afterall, and it's not even my idea, originally, but I like it. And yes, with a chance to deflect everything. It's a fantasy game that doesn't attempt to model everything perfectly, and 10/20 wouldn't be an enormous advantage, considering the severe drawbacks samurai armour already has.

[Lingchih]

Originally Posted by Sombre

I think Dom3 players are generally not in favour of nerfs based on increasing micromanagement.

Indeed, you are correct Sombre.

[HoneyBadger]

Endoperez: You're talking about a modern repro blade that has been sharpened. Most likely, it's made from a modern type of steel that didn't exist in the middle ages.

It comes from, and exists, in an entirely different world from Medieval Europe, so while it does answer the question of what's possible, it doesn't bear that much on what actually happened.

The best quality blades coming out of Europe at the time most likely came from Toledo, which was for a long time a Moorish colony.

Certainly, good-quality blades existed in medieval Europe, but they weren't, generally, consistent in their quality until the Moors started showing up. 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.

The Vikings probably had better than average steel, because they were exposed to so many cultures, and had slaves (with their skills) from all over, not to mention owning Jarnberaland, which I understand has lots of high quality iron deposits, thus the name.

Other good steel probably came out of Byzantium, as well as the satellites of the old Western empire, such as Venice, but, aside from the questionable ability of Europe to mass-produce blades that would take an edge, outside of Toledo, there were broad differences in how those blades were utilized.

Like you touched upon, having a sharp blade does little, if it won't penetrate your opponent's armour. Points of swords were made to do that, and the medieval knight was trained to use their points to pierce armour. Sharp or not, and not was more likely even for the high end blades, a sword in Europe was basically just a big iron club with a dagger on the end of it. It was designed to hold a straight, piercing point, and not to break. The blade was a secondary consideration. Some perfectly good swords were never even sharpened. Weapons and armour evolved side by side, in Europe, as mirrors of each other, until the invention of gunpowder.

I think the main thematic difference between a medieval knight and a feudal samurai was that a samurai was trained to kill instantly, and if necessary to die at a moment's notice, while a knight was trained to beat the enemy by whatever means and level of force necessary, and to survive anything that got thrown at him. Their equipment reflects those differences, at it's most basic, even in the quality of their armour, since it wouldn't have been so very difficult for a fully armoured samurai to commit seppuku right there on the battlefield, while a knight-aside from suicide being a mortal sin-might have found it almost as difficult to kill himself, as a peasant with a pitchfork would have found it to kill a knight.

[Endoperez]

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.

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.

[MaxWilson]

One way to make the random-only mages require labs would be to give them some fixed paths, but negative magicboost (just like dragons or Chayot) those paths back down. E.g. Rephaite Sages are S1+100%(F2/E2/S2) with #magicboost -1 in astral. I believe that would force them to be recruited in labs. It would also make them more difficult to empower, but nobody cares about that.

An undesirable side effect, though, would be that you could take an E2 Rephaite Sage and give him a booster (Starshine Skullcap) and he would become E2S1.

-Max

[HoneyBadger]

Cloth might not make an enormous difference, but it does make *a* difference, several infact, depending on the type of cloth, and the weave, and the circumstances around which it is struck. Pretty much anything can make a difference, in the middle of a battle. Armour was often *made* from cloth, typically layers of silk, or quilted linen, which should answer the question right there.

Swords were relatively rare, anyway, as were knights compared to the total population, and knights with swords were happy to have them. Even a very cheap sword was still a lot of metal dedicated to *just* fighting, and the skills to make a really good sword were rare, and sought after. Metal that could be used to grow food and build shelter was instead dedicated to supporting the Noble class, and their wars. All this made swords, of any kind, expensive.

One thing you should understand, Endoperez, is that I've been studying weapons and armour for my entire life. I was taught by my dad who studied and assessed swords professionally, for a living, for years. I was around swords, I read about them since I've been able to read, I've studied fencing and fighting with a wide variety of midieval weapons, both Western and Eastern, I've studied Eastern and Western forging techniques, and I've made a particular study of armour.

I'm not saying that I know everything, there's an enormous amount of material to digest-maybe too much for anyone to understand in a single lifetime-but I am saying that I'm talking from an educated and experienced position, and if there's something I don't know about midieval weapons and armour, I can probably atleast research it, find out about it, and make an educated guess about it.

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by HoneyBadger

One thing you should understand, Endoperez, is that I've been studying weapons and armour for my entire life. I was taught by my dad who studied and assessed swords professionally, for a living, for years. I was around swords, I read about them since I've been able to read, I've studied fencing and fighting with a wide variety of midieval weapons, both Western and Eastern, I've studied Eastern and Western forging techniques, and I've made a particular study of armour.

I got the feeling you knew what you were speaking about, but it seemed to contradict what I had read before. That's why I dug up sources and didn't just go from memory: I wanted to see if my sources were wrong.

It also seems that we are either thinking of different ages or I'm totally off with my image of a knight: I was thinking of a knight armored head-to-toes in expensive armor fit to his body, riding a specially-bred war-charger. Both the horse and the armor would cost ridiculous amounts of money, so the cost of a good sword shouldn't be an obstacle.

EDIT: I knew about cloth armor, but you mentioned that clothing could make a difference, and that didn't seem right. I can't see a shirt stopping a sword, or even a knife. You probably meant something like heavy cloaks or something along those lines.

[lch]

Originally Posted by Endoperez

EDIT: I knew about cloth armor, but you mentioned that clothing could make a difference, and that didn't seem right. I can't see a shirt stopping a sword, or even a knife. You probably meant something like heavy cloaks or something along those lines.

Without having read anything in this thread except for this last reply of Endo, I'd expect that what Max HB had in mind was similar to a Gambeson.