I found out that there was a thing called Arcani but it was the missspelling of a group of late roman empire spies and assassins which are actually spelled Areani.
the funny part is that in the italian version the roman gentes are correct juli remain juli but scipii are turned in cornelii and the brutii are change in junii
Europa Barbarorum is a mod for this that made it much better. You could even start with Pyrrhus. They then moved onto Medieval II for Europa Barbarorum II.
@@reginaldscot165 All of the phalanxes are broken in terms of how they function. Hoplitic forces absolutely did not magically turn their spears into one-handed pikes, however, their efficacy using the vanilla system is appreciated, otherwise spearmen don't really force-amplify in close order as they would realistically. Also hoplites absolutely did charge into contact, they didn't walk gingerly. Rome 2 actually sort of fixes this. Anyway, per the Germans, it's not strictly wrong. There is direct mention of Germans using small shields, and 'Overlong' spears in close order phalanxes. Were they a literal pikewall? We don't know, but it's not without some sort of reference or precedent.
We are the same. The original name of the channel is THFE productions I believe. I used to watch his gameplay commentaries/breakdowns to improve my plays.
Wasn't Mithridates of Pontus the dude who was known most for trying to replicate Roman Legions? Shouldn't Pontus be the faction depicted with replica legionnaries?
Also, if the Seleucid "legionnaires" actually did exist, wouldn't they not be wearing the Marian-era armor that they are seen wearing in this game, since the Roman infantry depicted is from the Republic era?
Mithradates is probably the most famous example of someone trying to imitate Rome's legions but plenty of other civilizations have tried to copy legionaries.
I think they put Scythian head hunting maidens there, because according to Herodotus, their maidens could not marry before they kill man in a battle. So their maidens literally had to hunt heads.
Cesar once had to go to a meeting with the leader of an army of gauls, and they were only allowed a cavalry escort, so he had his most trusted and skilled infantry mount up to join him. That's all I could find about "praetorian cavalry"
Yes, thank you. I was trying to remember the name of the mod I used. That mod, for me, made the game playable for many years after Rome was released. I would love to see them come back for the remaster.
Hearing these comments it’s quite interesting to see how well CA did TW Rome II (post launch). Man I can’t wait till the 29th tho, Rome I is some serious nostalgia
An old British game show called Time Commanders (which used a beta version of RTW) may address some issues as they has historical experts on board explaining stuff and the justifications. The show did feature the battle of Kadesh between the Egyptians and Hittites (the latter unfortunately/fortuneately didn't make it into the game, but decided to keep Egypt as it was). The Spartacus gladiator uprising was also featured and so likely kept the gladiator units in.
12:32 LMFAO!!! I normally do not hear your humor slip like that in videos, I cracked up haha. As usual, amazing video, I played the shit out of Rome as a kid which also accelerated me into learning about history more (the in depth unit and building details were my favorite).
Actually, I discovered Seleucids in this game for the first time, from then till now I love that faction. Probably because of the interesting blend of western and eastern units, good starting location, interesting faction. Great memories, tuned up to play it again, of course with mods.
11:30 The Seleucid empire had a legion-sized unit, according to Polybius (Histories, book XXX, 25, 3). He describes a parade of Antioch's army that "(...)was headed by five thousand men in the prime of life armed after the Roman fashion and wearing breastplates of chain-armour."
I remember playing this back in the day. I think they threw in some of the additional units like silver shield legions as fantasy units as you progress and sort of alter the historical timeliness. I remember conquering the campaign using the Seleucids and created my own form of combat combining silver shield legions and phalanx.
Actually from what I remember the Parthians never used infantry outside of defending cities, so it does make sense that their infantry is really crappy. The Parthians were actually descended from a Scythian tribe called the Parni, and though they ended up conquering much of the former Achaemenid Empire they still retained that steppe archer tradition for a while at least. Also the Scythian tribes did use an axe called the sagaris, so it makes sense to have an axemen unit for them.
If you want a better historical accuracy in your total war games then the mods are what you are looking for. From the classic total war realism to my absolute favourite Europa Barbarorum
Interesting video! But thank god for oversimplified names, I probably wouldn't have gotten into this game as much as I did back when I was a kid if it had gone the intensely-accurate route that many TW mods favor with naming conventions (not dissing on accurate mods btw). I was introduced to many new ideas about the ancient world through Rome TW, but overloading "entertainment" like a game or movie with new ideas and information kills it dead for lay-people who might otherwise gain something from it.
Arcani is a unit used as stealth unit to simulate an ambush probably to help the game mechanics on multiplayer mode. On Rome 2 they changed that to random/skill instead of having a specific unit for that function
A dream feature, inspired by the Silver Shields: Track the kills and battles fought of every individual infantry model, and when one reaches a specific threshold, offer the player a choice to elevate them. This would create a population of Silver Shields, that could then (when another threshold is hit, like 80 models for example) be turned into Silver Shield units. Available Silver Shields would then be based on the general recruiting them, and trained units would be locked into that general's army.
Wiki only tells with much about the Arcani en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areani?wprov=sfla1 (or areani, interchangeable so much so that Italian wiki uses mainly Arcani, English wiki Areani) They're apparently of ancient foundation but only talked about once.
Just to clarify, of course the unit is pure fiction (and it would still be out of place in Barbarian Invasion as spies don't fight in field or siege battles). It just has a very loose historical link to the real "thing". Pretty much like druids
Odd they use the small unit sizes for the intro. The Imitation legionnaires for Selucids I think are a reference to the Argyraspidae Thorakitai who were a super heavy thureophoroi.
The account on the Daphne parade in the 2nd century bc mentions men "equipped in the Roman fashion" as part of the standing Seleucid army. But of course they wouldn't have ACTUAL Roman equipment, they probably wore bronze helmets, mail and had thureos shields, as well as javelins and short swords.
Considering this game came out in 2004 when the internet was not very robust, I think this game was phenomenal and i would wager much of the research for this game had to be done in libraries with physical books.
King Jubia of Numidia is explicitly mentioned to have had "3 knockoff Legions" in this army at Thapsus. It is there right next to the "80 War Elepehants". There were no reports about the quality however, as they never fought in the battle.
Battle axes were actually quite a big deal in the eurasian steppe warfare, but they were used by the cavalry and not infantry, but steppe people were not using infantry that much to begin with.
05:00. Were not gladiators drafted in one of the Punic Wars to serve as troops? Since the Romans were desperate for troops. And they were offered freedom if they survived? The main issue would be the gladiators would've been equipped in standard Roman military gear instead of gladiator garb and were mainly used to chase down fleeing enemy troops, but still.
Majorkill? Luton? Oh no, Alfabusa! With the characters from Text to Speech discussing it. Edit: jokes aside Majorkill would be most likely to do it and it's probably right up his alley.
As Spanish myself, yes, it really hurts seeing 1500 years ago, the word Spain as a faction, Iberian was a better option. It's like seeing the word England as a Rome faction. It really hurts, because it's unreal in all the ways possible. But well, it's not the first time that Spain it's wrongly represented, like watching the flag of our current Spain, in a game oriented at XVI like the saga Port Royale (When our current flag, was adopted at 1785....).
Totalmente de acuerdo. En español, el juego llama a la facción "Hispania". De todos modos, en inglés puede usarse "Spain" como "Hispania", aunque depende del contexto.
I get your point about the gladiators but there were a few occasions where they saw "combat"/ were used as combat units. In the street figths between Milo and Clodius Pulcher both sides used gladiators, the conspirators used gladiators to fortify the capitolin hill directly after the assassination of Caesar and it is said that a wing of Othos army in the first battle of Bedriacum was manned by gladiators. So I know this isnt really a military record but after all it is a video game and so I can accept gladiators as combat units.
I think you missed placing and discussing the Germania Warband. Unlike the other barbarian warbands this one used a phalanx, which iirc caused some irk among some gamers. Iirc a consensus was that the idea behing the unit had been inspired by some Roman writings about encountering "Spear Walls" when romans were fighting Germanic tribes. Later in Barbarian invasion CA introduced Spear/Shield Walls which were considered more accurate but they weren't implemented at the time of RTW1, so instead we got the slightly odd Greek Phalanx in ancient Germany. later in RTW2 I think the barbarians were more accurate in that sense. I remember using a mod which turned the Germanic Warband into identical copies of the Gaul & Brittania ones, which seemed to me at least more immersive and intuitive. If you or anyone has thoughts on that I'd be glad to hear, I'm not an expert and my memory of reading those old threads, from over a decade ago, isn't sharp.
Yup, there sure is some historically iffy stuff in RTWR. And that's why the great news is that it's so moddable. NO DOUBT in my mind that the mod community will come up with some cool, historically valid (as opposed to strictly historically accurate) stuff. What RTWR does do is provide a W10/multi-core/very high rez friendly platform that brings RTW into the modern age. The future is bright folks.
Cool video, fun to watch and think along! Here's my few nitpicks: There are several mentions of Numidians using legionary-style infantry. I think the earliest one is ~215 BC, when Roman-allied king Syphax of the Masaesyli made an alliance with the elder Scipio brothers who were fighting in Iberia in the early 2nd Punic War, and was allowed to use one of their centurions to instruct his own infantry in the Roman style of combat. (Syphax later swapped alliances to join with Carthage in the final years of the war). As for the Seleucids, I think the source is that Polybius described a Seleucid military parade with 'five thousand men in the prime of life armed after the Roman fashion and wearing breastplates of chain-armour'. Though these may also have been Thorakitai or something along those lines, and no other details appear to be known. As for Carthage's lack of chariots and the Spartan hoplite equipment, I think it's just because of the game's 3rd Century BC starting setting. Although the Spartans would not have worn their cloaks in combat of course, but had actual armour underneath. I think the lack of other specific hoplite units is due to the Greek Cities not starting with those cities in-game, Thebes and Argos don't exist on the map while Athens starts under Macedonian control IIRC.
I think if a game like this was made now, I'd add a-historical units in their own category, in that certain cultures/nations if they were as successful as they can be with the player controlling them (an extremely knowledgeable demigod with the ability to reload time), they would likely develop somewhat differently as time passes. So I'd personally say as long as there isn't something blocking them from obtaining a certain unit type, they probably should have it locked behind some building or tech or region or resource or whatever, with an added note in the unit description that this nation did not have this unit historically speaking, due to XYZ reasons. For example, let's say Gaul conquers all of Rome and gains access to a lot of the educate siege engineers, why not make use of that? Similarly, if a faction went into some extremely a-historic route, like let's say Numidia decides to sail its army all the way to Brittania and decide to conquer it, it would make sense for them to incorporate some local soldiers, letting the player train/recruit/hire forces from other cultures would be pretty cool, or even develop imitation versions. It could diminish the unique identity of the faction you play somewhat if the new units are strictly better in every way, or if they're unlimited, but there's probably a balance to be struck.
Egypt is bronze age cause of a british tv show called time commanders i think it was. One of the episodes had to do with bronze age egypt and they never changed them i think it was.
I believe in the original game the cohortes urbanae were the strongest roman melee unit which doesnt make sense at all since they were essentially policemen.
The Numidian legionaries are most likely a reference to the Numidian army that was trained as a legion by Romans. This army fought briefly against Cesar in his civil war. I don’t recall the name of the Numidian king of the Roman who trained them but it’s a thing.
One thing, Gladiators were actually used in Roman armies, true, only when shit hit the fan. They'd also sometimes be conscripted or recruited in desperate times, so their inclusion would be historically accurate, to some degree.
they must have had some source for the head hurlers though. I mean, look at the description they gave them, iirc it said something about the real damage being covering the heads in limestone or somesuch etc. Either that, or the CA history team really had a rampant imagination...
The criticism of the Bedouins/Arabs at 19:40 and of other mercenary units before that is completely misplaced. None of these are units you can train in your cities in the campaign. They are just local mercenary units available in certain regions. Which ones are available in Battle mode is based on what geographical regions the factions started near. I.e. Bedouins weren't a major component of Parthian armies (Parthia was an initially Greek-speaking successor kingdom, near Bactria in the east: I don't know why he keeps insisting they are just one particular dynasty). But they WERE locally available to any armies, of any empire, that fought near/in their territory. Rome is attested to using them as well, for instance. And, in campaign mode, Parthia *CAN* easily obtain Mercenary Hoplite (Greek Infantry) units. They are available in some of the Anatolian provinces they end up near/ fighting around.
09:50 "they might as well do the Thebans" bit hard to do with Alexander the Great having removed Thebes from the face of the earth 60 years before the campaign start date lol - can't have no Sacred Band! Mind you, historical accuracy never stopped CA in this beautiful mess of a game lol. Great game, terrible historicity
i enjoied the video, but theres recorded instanceses of the use of war pigs, to counter elephans, the romans used lions and wild boar and animals and only the flamable pigs worked to scare the animal(elephant) i mean the greeks used too, maybe im incorrect but just like camels, i believe pigs were used to sacre off elephans, at the very least distract them eanogh to no be efective in the battle
I've been replaying the OG Rome before the Remaster hits and I too have noticed how they took elite specialist units and made cavalry versions of them for no apparent reason. Legionary cavalry with segmentata? When? Where? Praetorian cavalry? Sacred band cavalry? It's absurd. Also I have seen SEVERAL barbarian general skins who literally look straight out of the 10th century. Or dark ages. Straight up huge round viking shields and mail. I don't know what they thought they were doing there. Yes, round shields existed. Yeah, some had central iron bosses. No, they didn't generally look exactly like viking shields.
Regarding the names of units, I think they should be displayed with the original historical name, followed by an English translation in brackets or included in the unit description. It's also easier today to find information on the Internet about such historical units by searching using their original names, so I don't think using them would be much of a hindrance for new players.
The depiction of Urban Cohorts in the game should belong closer to the bad category as well. They were historically a paramilitary police unit, but are incorrectly portrayed as the best Roman infantry unit that are better than both legionnaires and Praetorians.
umm sorry but invicta their actually wore some military engagements that involved gladiators. for example they most likely saw some action right after the death of Cesar.
I personally would have ranked the romans higher, since they are not missing anything. When you want to play them historical, you can. The gladiators and so on, aren't even good, when I remember correctly, so you usually wouldn't build them either way. But when units are missing from a roster, I find it worse, than having units I will just not use.
CA did much better job with Rome 2 in terms of units. Having said that, Macedon in original Rome does have Hypaspists, they are named Royal Pikemen and fight as hoplites instead of pikemen which is actually accurate. So called "imitation legionaries" were natural progression from rigid phalanxes to more maneuverable troops armed with swords and javelins. Just like Romans, Greeks took inspiration from Galatians for these units and Machairophoroi were progressively getting more and more armored as arms race between successors continued. When Romans commented on these troops they saw similarities in armament and tactics to their own units and gave them the dismissive name of "imitation legionaries". Egyptian bronze age roster is the most irksome to me in original Rome, Ptolemaic armies fielded Greek colonists (kleruchoi) as cavalry and phalangites, native Egyptians served as psiloi (skirmishers) and spearmen (machimoi which were similar to thureophoroi). And ofc the swordsmen were at first galatian mercs and later on heavily armored professionals. Iberian armies were identified and named by Romans according to their shields. So lighter units with caetra shield were Caetrati, heavier with scutum shields were Scutarii. This was probably the reason behind cavalry naming in carthaginian and iberian rosters. For "barbarian" factions what I dislike most is lack of clothes and javelins. There were special units that fought naked but these are sufficiently depicted as Naked Fanatics. This was totally a thing. They fought naked with swords, spears and javelins, with a large shield for protection and often helmets as well. The idea was to show no fear and terrify the enemy, as well as show exceptional bravery in battle so they would prove themselves worthy of getting chosen(wink wink) for warlords retinue.
Completely historically inaccurate, but I think Egypt was depicted as Bronze Age just for the sake of entertainment and because it would make them look too much like existing factions. Especially Carthage.
4:58 I don't think that idea is "quite laughable", yeah gladiators were trained more for the ludi and less for real fighting, but they still were warriors. Besides the crisis during 2nd Punic war, supposedly Otho also have 2000 gladiators during the First battle of Bedriacum; if gladiators were "just" simple dancers and entertainers I doubt he would have bring them with their army. The equipment thing is something also debatable, the Roman troops during the Punic war times didn't had a standarized equipment and everybody just bring what they had, and even during Imperial era, I doubt the State would've treat gladiators the same way as Roman soldiers, paying them or giving them standard armor. I don't believe gladiators would've used those closed and weird helmets because they don't seem fitted for war, but probably they used most of the protections and things they had, as the State wouldn't arm a group of (probably/mostly) slaves
can anyone explain to me why Carthage does not have an archer unit in it,s roster? every faction in this period had knowledge of archery so why does it seem Carthage has not invented the bow yet?
Not all civilizations of the time period saw the use of the Bow as a necessity. In fact it took the Romans a while to adopt the bow, relying more on their velites for skirmishing purposes.
Attila is hands down the hardest (best) TW game out there. They need to make a new Rome , Attila, or hell anything that isn't Warhammer or some shit trilogy with a small map.
Love this game despite some of the historical hiccups. Check it out for yourself using this link: wehy.pe/y/2/Invicta
I found out that there was a thing called Arcani but it was the missspelling of a group of late roman empire spies and assassins which are actually spelled Areani.
the funny part is that in the italian version the roman gentes are correct juli remain juli but scipii are turned in cornelii and the brutii are change in junii
Will you do one for Rome 2 now, to see if they improved?
Europa Barbarorum is a mod for this that made it much better. You could even start with Pyrrhus. They then moved onto Medieval II for Europa Barbarorum II.
@@reginaldscot165 All of the phalanxes are broken in terms of how they function. Hoplitic forces absolutely did not magically turn their spears into one-handed pikes, however, their efficacy using the vanilla system is appreciated, otherwise spearmen don't really force-amplify in close order as they would realistically. Also hoplites absolutely did charge into contact, they didn't walk gingerly. Rome 2 actually sort of fixes this.
Anyway, per the Germans, it's not strictly wrong. There is direct mention of Germans using small shields, and 'Overlong' spears in close order phalanxes. Were they a literal pikewall? We don't know, but it's not without some sort of reference or precedent.
Egypt might have an army from the Bronze Age but that’s not going to stop them from conquering half the map
Them pharaohs guards and archers are no joke lol
Virgin Classical era vs Chad Bronze age
Boi ; do I hate their chariot.
@@lokkotez and their armor piercing cav
Thatrs because their chariots have broken bonuses in auto resolve, so they just kinda steamroll the rest of the ai.
I'd like to imagine all the Parthians sound like pink guy, and simply scare their enemies away by screaming.
'ey B0ss!
The cataphract were very armored
Even better armor than legions
@@rtwmoder Nobody says that they were not armored. Cavalry can easily have heavier armor than infantry cos infantry has to fight on foot.
@@romanbuinyi that's right
But cataphract are all armored
Certainly the catapults were very different from the cavalry of the Roman army
WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME?!!!
This brings me back to the days of the original channel, it's been so long I forgot the original name, it's making me go crazy
We are the same. The original name of the channel is THFE productions I believe. I used to watch his gameplay commentaries/breakdowns to improve my plays.
Wasn't "Oakley" part of it too?
@@Dethmeister The narrator is Oakley, the channel name was THFE productions th-cam.com/video/mca71iPRBXY/w-d-xo.html
Wasn't Mithridates of Pontus the dude who was known most for trying to replicate Roman Legions? Shouldn't Pontus be the faction depicted with replica legionnaries?
Also, if the Seleucid "legionnaires" actually did exist, wouldn't they not be wearing the Marian-era armor that they are seen wearing in this game, since the Roman infantry depicted is from the Republic era?
That’s was mithradates VI “The poison King” was his tittle and a good book to read.
@@patricianoftheplebs6015 that’s interesting. So he probably came after this era?
Mithradates is probably the most famous example of someone trying to imitate Rome's legions but plenty of other civilizations have tried to copy legionaries.
@@BULLETPHIL99 that's correct. Romans were fighting them after punic wars. A lot of time to Marian reforms, so you have a really good point there.
I think they put Scythian head hunting maidens there, because according to Herodotus, their maidens could not marry before they kill man in a battle. So their maidens literally had to hunt heads.
Hol' up
Did he just completely forget about dacia there at the end?
"My boy ! What did they do to my boy !?! " 🤣
Cesar once had to go to a meeting with the leader of an army of gauls, and they were only allowed a cavalry escort, so he had his most trusted and skilled infantry mount up to join him. That's all I could find about "praetorian cavalry"
That was Caesar's 10th legion.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legio_X_Equestris
I would love to see this but for rome total realism. It has most of the missing units and names I lived and loved that game
Yes, thank you. I was trying to remember the name of the mod I used. That mod, for me, made the game playable for many years after Rome was released.
I would love to see them come back for the remaster.
@@lt.danicecream They are back and they teamed up with the makers of another mod called Roma Surrectum for the Remaster.
@@rorschach1985ify that's good to hear
Hearing these comments it’s quite interesting to see how well CA did TW Rome II (post launch). Man I can’t wait till the 29th tho, Rome I is some serious nostalgia
An old British game show called Time Commanders (which used a beta version of RTW) may address some issues as they has historical experts on board explaining stuff and the justifications. The show did feature the battle of Kadesh between the Egyptians and Hittites (the latter unfortunately/fortuneately didn't make it into the game, but decided to keep Egypt as it was). The Spartacus gladiator uprising was also featured and so likely kept the gladiator units in.
17:46 Recently you could watch video on Kings and Generals account. During Rome Civil War their bring units trained in Roman fashion
12:32 LMFAO!!! I normally do not hear your humor slip like that in videos, I cracked up haha. As usual, amazing video, I played the shit out of Rome as a kid which also accelerated me into learning about history more (the in depth unit and building details were my favorite).
Really enjoyable video! Would love sth like that for DEI since there would be so many cool units to talk about and give some historical background 🤌
Couldn‘t agree more. 🤌🏻
Actually, I discovered Seleucids in this game for the first time, from then till now I love that faction. Probably because of the interesting blend of western and eastern units, good starting location, interesting faction. Great memories, tuned up to play it again, of course with mods.
11:30 The Seleucid empire had a legion-sized unit, according to Polybius (Histories, book XXX, 25, 3). He describes a parade of Antioch's army that "(...)was headed by five thousand men in the prime of life armed after the Roman fashion and wearing breastplates of chain-armour."
I highly doubt they were armed with lorica segmentata like in Rome though
Literally clicked for your thoughts on Egypt lol. Everything else was just icing on the cake.
In the italian version of the game the Scipii are in fact called the Corneli ( Cornelia) and the Brutii the Valeri
I would've enjoyed the ability to build bridges and walls as Rome - some of the Legion's most impressive feats involved construction.
Still have my box copy of this game
Arcani retreating.
"Our men are running from the battlefield! Ah..... SHAMEFUR DISPRAY!.... Wait.... wrong game!"
I remember playing this back in the day. I think they threw in some of the additional units like silver shield legions as fantasy units as you progress and sort of alter the historical timeliness. I remember conquering the campaign using the Seleucids and created my own form of combat combining silver shield legions and phalanx.
Actually from what I remember the Parthians never used infantry outside of defending cities, so it does make sense that their infantry is really crappy. The Parthians were actually descended from a Scythian tribe called the Parni, and though they ended up conquering much of the former Achaemenid Empire they still retained that steppe archer tradition for a while at least. Also the Scythian tribes did use an axe called the sagaris, so it makes sense to have an axemen unit for them.
This was a really good video can you do this for more total war games ?
That would be interesting.
Medieval 2 would be awesome despite the lacking roster of some factions
For the Seleucid’s having legionnaires there is some mention of the at Antiochus the great’s parade at daphne
Incendiary pigs existed. As well as incendiary camels, both used to scare elephants and make them turn arround on their allies
If you want a better historical accuracy in your total war games then the mods are what you are looking for. From the classic total war realism to my absolute favourite Europa Barbarorum
I would love this for the other total war games! I am always curious where they come up with the units for the various factions. Great video!
Interesting video! But thank god for oversimplified names, I probably wouldn't have gotten into this game as much as I did back when I was a kid if it had gone the intensely-accurate route that many TW mods favor with naming conventions (not dissing on accurate mods btw). I was introduced to many new ideas about the ancient world through Rome TW, but overloading "entertainment" like a game or movie with new ideas and information kills it dead for lay-people who might otherwise gain something from it.
Arcani is a unit used as stealth unit to simulate an ambush probably to help the game mechanics on multiplayer mode. On Rome 2 they changed that to random/skill instead of having a specific unit for that function
You can ambush in RTW. You just need a forest tile for it.
A dream feature, inspired by the Silver Shields:
Track the kills and battles fought of every individual infantry model, and when one reaches a specific threshold, offer the player a choice to elevate them. This would create a population of Silver Shields, that could then (when another threshold is hit, like 80 models for example) be turned into Silver Shield units. Available Silver Shields would then be based on the general recruiting them, and trained units would be locked into that general's army.
Wiki only tells with much about the Arcani
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areani?wprov=sfla1 (or areani, interchangeable so much so that Italian wiki uses mainly Arcani, English wiki Areani)
They're apparently of ancient foundation but only talked about once.
Just to clarify, of course the unit is pure fiction (and it would still be out of place in Barbarian Invasion as spies don't fight in field or siege battles). It just has a very loose historical link to the real "thing".
Pretty much like druids
Odd they use the small unit sizes for the intro. The Imitation legionnaires for Selucids I think are a reference to the Argyraspidae Thorakitai who were a super heavy thureophoroi.
The account on the Daphne parade in the 2nd century bc mentions men "equipped in the Roman fashion" as part of the standing Seleucid army. But of course they wouldn't have ACTUAL Roman equipment, they probably wore bronze helmets, mail and had thureos shields, as well as javelins and short swords.
Considering this game came out in 2004 when the internet was not very robust, I think this game was phenomenal and i would wager much of the research for this game had to be done in libraries with physical books.
Ah what a great throwback this is to the original videos of the channel, the gameplay with a ton of historical analysis and events.
King Jubia of Numidia is explicitly mentioned to have had "3 knockoff Legions" in this army at Thapsus. It is there right next to the "80 War Elepehants".
There were no reports about the quality however, as they never fought in the battle.
Battle axes were actually quite a big deal in the eurasian steppe warfare, but they were used by the cavalry and not infantry, but steppe people were not using infantry that much to begin with.
05:00. Were not gladiators drafted in one of the Punic Wars to serve as troops? Since the Romans were desperate for troops. And they were offered freedom if they survived? The main issue would be the gladiators would've been equipped in standard Roman military gear instead of gladiator garb and were mainly used to chase down fleeing enemy troops, but still.
The Iberian (Spanish) Bull Warriors are no joke. They can stand toe to toe with Praetorians and Urbans easily in a lot of situations.
Great concept! Now we need to find someone to do a lore friendly tier list for Warhammer: Total War...
Majorkill? Luton? Oh no, Alfabusa! With the characters from Text to Speech discussing it.
Edit: jokes aside Majorkill would be most likely to do it and it's probably right up his alley.
As Spanish myself, yes, it really hurts seeing 1500 years ago, the word Spain as a faction, Iberian was a better option. It's like seeing the word England as a Rome faction. It really hurts, because it's unreal in all the ways possible.
But well, it's not the first time that Spain it's wrongly represented, like watching the flag of our current Spain, in a game oriented at XVI like the saga Port Royale (When our current flag, was adopted at 1785....).
Totalmente de acuerdo. En español, el juego llama a la facción "Hispania". De todos modos, en inglés puede usarse "Spain" como "Hispania", aunque depende del contexto.
I get your point about the gladiators but there were a few occasions where they saw "combat"/ were used as combat units.
In the street figths between Milo and Clodius Pulcher both sides used gladiators, the conspirators used gladiators to fortify the capitolin hill directly after the assassination of Caesar and it is said that a wing of Othos army in the first battle of Bedriacum was manned by gladiators. So I know this isnt really a military record but after all it is a video game and so I can accept gladiators as combat units.
I think you missed placing and discussing the Germania Warband. Unlike the other barbarian warbands this one used a phalanx, which iirc caused some irk among some gamers. Iirc a consensus was that the idea behing the unit had been inspired by some Roman writings about encountering "Spear Walls" when romans were fighting Germanic tribes. Later in Barbarian invasion CA introduced Spear/Shield Walls which were considered more accurate but they weren't implemented at the time of RTW1, so instead we got the slightly odd Greek Phalanx in ancient Germany. later in RTW2 I think the barbarians were more accurate in that sense.
I remember using a mod which turned the Germanic Warband into identical copies of the Gaul & Brittania ones, which seemed to me at least more immersive and intuitive. If you or anyone has thoughts on that I'd be glad to hear, I'm not an expert and my memory of reading those old threads, from over a decade ago, isn't sharp.
Amazing video. also only 720p? could we also get one of these for rome 2, as to see their progress?
Yup, there sure is some historically iffy stuff in RTWR. And that's why the great news is that it's so moddable. NO DOUBT in my mind that the mod community will come up with some cool, historically valid (as opposed to strictly historically accurate) stuff. What RTWR does do is provide a W10/multi-core/very high rez friendly platform that brings RTW into the modern age. The future is bright folks.
26:13 Berserkers!!!!
**A wild LIndybeige appears**
32:11 i'm pretty sure that incendiary pigs were actually used in war by the romans, amongst other civilizations.
Pretty sure you would be WRONG!!
Scipio used them with light infantry on Haniball elefants
Cool video, fun to watch and think along!
Here's my few nitpicks:
There are several mentions of Numidians using legionary-style infantry. I think the earliest one is ~215 BC, when Roman-allied king Syphax of the Masaesyli made an alliance with the elder Scipio brothers who were fighting in Iberia in the early 2nd Punic War, and was allowed to use one of their centurions to instruct his own infantry in the Roman style of combat. (Syphax later swapped alliances to join with Carthage in the final years of the war).
As for the Seleucids, I think the source is that Polybius described a Seleucid military parade with 'five thousand men in the prime of life armed after the Roman fashion and wearing breastplates of chain-armour'. Though these may also have been Thorakitai or something along those lines, and no other details appear to be known.
As for Carthage's lack of chariots and the Spartan hoplite equipment, I think it's just because of the game's 3rd Century BC starting setting. Although the Spartans would not have worn their cloaks in combat of course, but had actual armour underneath. I think the lack of other specific hoplite units is due to the Greek Cities not starting with those cities in-game, Thebes and Argos don't exist on the map while Athens starts under Macedonian control IIRC.
Isn't Athens rebel controlled?
@@se6369 Oh, right, Corinth was the one that was Macedonian-controlled. I had them mixed up. Sorry.
I think if a game like this was made now, I'd add a-historical units in their own category, in that certain cultures/nations if they were as successful as they can be with the player controlling them (an extremely knowledgeable demigod with the ability to reload time), they would likely develop somewhat differently as time passes.
So I'd personally say as long as there isn't something blocking them from obtaining a certain unit type, they probably should have it locked behind some building or tech or region or resource or whatever, with an added note in the unit description that this nation did not have this unit historically speaking, due to XYZ reasons.
For example, let's say Gaul conquers all of Rome and gains access to a lot of the educate siege engineers, why not make use of that?
Similarly, if a faction went into some extremely a-historic route, like let's say Numidia decides to sail its army all the way to Brittania and decide to conquer it, it would make sense for them to incorporate some local soldiers, letting the player train/recruit/hire forces from other cultures would be pretty cool, or even develop imitation versions.
It could diminish the unique identity of the faction you play somewhat if the new units are strictly better in every way, or if they're unlimited, but there's probably a balance to be struck.
It's funny that Pontus does not get a local legionary variant when they are the ones with the best historic evidence for it.
6:12 I guess pigs really do fly
Egypt is bronze age cause of a british tv show called time commanders i think it was. One of the episodes had to do with bronze age egypt and they never changed them i think it was.
I believe in the original game the cohortes urbanae were the strongest roman melee unit which doesnt make sense at all since they were essentially policemen.
I like how half of these complaints are about the names being in English.
ROMA INVICTA!!!
I would love to see this for other games as well. It would be interesting to see what is missing and what is basically right.
The Numidian legionaries are most likely a reference to the Numidian army that was trained as a legion by Romans. This army fought briefly against Cesar in his civil war. I don’t recall the name of the Numidian king of the Roman who trained them but it’s a thing.
Would it be possible to look at the historical accuracy of the Age of Empires games?
would be great if you could have a look at the historical accuracy mod europa barbaroum!
When are you going to release the Director's Cut of What ifCaesar Lived Part 3?
Remember guys #CAESARLIVES #SPQR
One thing, Gladiators were actually used in Roman armies, true, only when shit hit the fan. They'd also sometimes be conscripted or recruited in desperate times, so their inclusion would be historically accurate, to some degree.
He said that in the video
Please do this for Rome 2 total war to see how they made up for Rome 1
they must have had some source for the head hurlers though. I mean, look at the description they gave them, iirc it said something about the real damage being covering the heads in limestone or somesuch etc. Either that, or the CA history team really had a rampant imagination...
Correct, they brought along severed heads dipped in quicklime which would cause burning on contact with skin
The criticism of the Bedouins/Arabs at 19:40 and of other mercenary units before that is completely misplaced.
None of these are units you can train in your cities in the campaign. They are just local mercenary units available in certain regions. Which ones are available in Battle mode is based on what geographical regions the factions started near.
I.e. Bedouins weren't a major component of Parthian armies (Parthia was an initially Greek-speaking successor kingdom, near Bactria in the east: I don't know why he keeps insisting they are just one particular dynasty). But they WERE locally available to any armies, of any empire, that fought near/in their territory. Rome is attested to using them as well, for instance.
And, in campaign mode, Parthia *CAN* easily obtain Mercenary Hoplite (Greek Infantry) units. They are available in some of the Anatolian provinces they end up near/ fighting around.
Numidia Legionaries were a thing. Jubba had many legions of them
09:50 "they might as well do the Thebans" bit hard to do with Alexander the Great having removed Thebes from the face of the earth 60 years before the campaign start date lol - can't have no Sacred Band!
Mind you, historical accuracy never stopped CA in this beautiful mess of a game lol. Great game, terrible historicity
i enjoied the video, but theres recorded instanceses of the use of war pigs, to counter elephans, the romans used lions and wild boar and animals and only the flamable pigs worked to scare the animal(elephant) i mean the greeks used too, maybe im incorrect but just like camels, i believe pigs were used to sacre off elephans, at the very least distract them eanogh to no be efective in the battle
12:30 ma boi, what do they did to ma boi!
I've been replaying the OG Rome before the Remaster hits and I too have noticed how they took elite specialist units and made cavalry versions of them for no apparent reason. Legionary cavalry with segmentata? When? Where? Praetorian cavalry? Sacred band cavalry? It's absurd.
Also I have seen SEVERAL barbarian general skins who literally look straight out of the 10th century. Or dark ages. Straight up huge round viking shields and mail. I don't know what they thought they were doing there. Yes, round shields existed. Yeah, some had central iron bosses. No, they didn't generally look exactly like viking shields.
Regarding the names of units, I think they should be displayed with the original historical name, followed by an English translation in brackets or included in the unit description.
It's also easier today to find information on the Internet about such historical units by searching using their original names, so I don't think using them would be much of a hindrance for new players.
The depiction of Urban Cohorts in the game should belong closer to the bad category as well. They were historically a paramilitary police unit, but are incorrectly portrayed as the best Roman infantry unit that are better than both legionnaires and Praetorians.
umm sorry but invicta their actually wore some military engagements that involved gladiators. for example they most likely saw some action right after the death of Cesar.
Nice review. Loving the criticism of the egyptians especially
I honestly would've put every single normal hoplite unit in the bad category simply because they're depicted the same as pikes :D
I personally would have ranked the romans higher, since they are not missing anything.
When you want to play them historical, you can. The gladiators and so on, aren't even good, when I remember correctly, so you usually wouldn't build them either way.
But when units are missing from a roster, I find it worse, than having units I will just not use.
CA did much better job with Rome 2 in terms of units. Having said that, Macedon in original Rome does have Hypaspists, they are named Royal Pikemen and fight as hoplites instead of pikemen which is actually accurate.
So called "imitation legionaries" were natural progression from rigid phalanxes to more maneuverable troops armed with swords and javelins. Just like Romans, Greeks took inspiration from Galatians for these units and Machairophoroi were progressively getting more and more armored as arms race between successors continued. When Romans commented on these troops they saw similarities in armament and tactics to their own units and gave them the dismissive name of "imitation legionaries".
Egyptian bronze age roster is the most irksome to me in original Rome, Ptolemaic armies fielded Greek colonists (kleruchoi) as cavalry and phalangites, native Egyptians served as psiloi (skirmishers) and spearmen (machimoi which were similar to thureophoroi). And ofc the swordsmen were at first galatian mercs and later on heavily armored professionals.
Iberian armies were identified and named by Romans according to their shields. So lighter units with caetra shield were Caetrati, heavier with scutum shields were Scutarii. This was probably the reason behind cavalry naming in carthaginian and iberian rosters.
For "barbarian" factions what I dislike most is lack of clothes and javelins. There were special units that fought naked but these are sufficiently depicted as Naked Fanatics. This was totally a thing. They fought naked with swords, spears and javelins, with a large shield for protection and often helmets as well. The idea was to show no fear and terrify the enemy, as well as show exceptional bravery in battle so they would prove themselves worthy of getting chosen(wink wink) for warlords retinue.
With the germanic berseker, arent they refering to Ulfhednar the real germanic wolf berseker troop?
Actually, nomads had their signature axes, so it's ok for scythians to have axemen units.
Completely historically inaccurate, but I think Egypt was depicted as Bronze Age just for the sake of entertainment and because it would make them look too much like existing factions. Especially Carthage.
I think many of those things have been incorporated in Rome II, actually.
Any chance of doing a Video like this with Attila?
Most times I saw gladiators, they would be in revolting slave armies and it would make sense to have them in these
I was taking a dab in the middle of this video and i coughed the words “what the fuck am i watching” in coughs
epic historical accuracy
Spartans: tonight we dine in a fancy restaurant in hell!
6:15 massive YEEET
gladiators did i believe fight in extreme emergencies like when the gauls invaded rome.
Gaius Julius Caesar. Since when is Caesar not a rank/station?
What do you think of Paradoxes Imperator Rome?
Sacred band cav fought with Hannibal
Thanks for the video! Can you do the same for Rome 2?
4:58 I don't think that idea is "quite laughable", yeah gladiators were trained more for the ludi and less for real fighting, but they still were warriors. Besides the crisis during 2nd Punic war, supposedly Otho also have 2000 gladiators during the First battle of Bedriacum; if gladiators were "just" simple dancers and entertainers I doubt he would have bring them with their army. The equipment thing is something also debatable, the Roman troops during the Punic war times didn't had a standarized equipment and everybody just bring what they had, and even during Imperial era, I doubt the State would've treat gladiators the same way as Roman soldiers, paying them or giving them standard armor. I don't believe gladiators would've used those closed and weird helmets because they don't seem fitted for war, but probably they used most of the protections and things they had, as the State wouldn't arm a group of (probably/mostly) slaves
What about the bestbuy elephants and amazon chariots?
Roma Surrectum 2 fixed all of these durimg my time with the first RTW(Not the remake)
Maybe they made one for the remake.
I’m ready for a mod that addresses these issues
can anyone explain to me why Carthage does not have an archer unit in it,s roster? every faction in this period had knowledge of archery so why does it seem Carthage has not invented the bow yet?
Not all civilizations of the time period saw the use of the Bow as a necessity. In fact it took the Romans a while to adopt the bow, relying more on their velites for skirmishing purposes.
Attila is hands down the hardest (best) TW game out there. They need to make a new Rome , Attila, or hell anything that isn't Warhammer or some shit trilogy with a small map.
Maybe they used the term "Spanish" instead of Iberian to distinguish it from the other Iberia in eastern Europe (near modern day Georgia)