What would you name the Chinese UU then?

[yin26]

By the way, I just looked up the Chinese characters for 'cavalry' and it's two characters put together:

1) Horse (ma) + Soldier/Warrior (ma) = Mama

Of course, that sounds odd to us English speakers, so give me a little more time to come up with something different.

[Ribannah]

My favourite Chinese UU would be the Mandarin, but it seems that there are no diplomats in Civ3. But the inventions of the breast-strap harness and the stirrup were significant, so it seems ok to make the Chinese UU a cavalry unit.
However, I see no mentioning of a "Wudi Raider" anywhere, raids were made AGAINST China by the nomadic tribes in the north. Because of the inventions mentioned above I have no problem with the name "Rider".

[jsw363]

I have no problem with Rider from a technical point of view. (The soldier does RIDE the unit), it's more of an aesthetic problem.

Not such a fan of "Wudi Raider" either (though "raider" alone is preferable to rider). I think I'd like just Wudi better, but that's inaccurate.

Mandarin would definitely be a cool UU. Don't know how they woud give him a diplomatic advantage though. More movement points? Increased reputation?

And on a side note, you can't call the UU a Junker as that name refers to Prussian nobility. The Junk is the Chinese ship, though I don't know how effective a UU that'd be. (Wish that they had unique naval units for each civ too)

[PGM]

Mama? I'll stick to Rider thank you very much. Wudi Raider? I kind of like it, it's certainly better than Rider but I'm sure we can do better. Hey Firaxis how about giving us a hand coming up with a new name? You know it can hardly be worst than... Rideeeechr.

[yin26]

I know people associate raids with the nomadic tribes. Give me a little more time...I'll find a cool name.

[Locutus]

Well, I still think the Chinese UU should be called Crossbowman (or Chu-Ko-Nu, if you will), but since we're stuck with a cavalry unit anyway, how about something like Soulun Horseman, Soulun Cavalry, Soulun Raider or just plain Soulun? Here's an excerpt from a webpage on Parthian Horses:

When Qian eventually returned to China with a dozen Parthian horses and two thousand others, many of these Akhal-Teke types, Wu Ti was so impressed with the Parthian horses that he gave them the name of Heavenly Horses. Over the years, a legend grew up that these horses were descendents of dragons. In fact the Chinese name for the Parthian horse is Soulun, the vegetarian dragon. It was also claimed that the Soulun sweated blood, which may have been caused by a parasite, an interesting parasite that infected no other breed of horse.

This Wu Ti figure is of course the same guy as Yin's Wudi but the name Soulun refers to the actual horses rather than to the emperor under whom they were brought to China.

[yin26]

YES! Perfect. I think you nailed it. Great work.

[monkspider]

Originally posted by Locutus
how about something like Soulun Horseman, Soulun Cavalry, Soulun Raider or just plain Soulun?

Perfect!! Are you listening Firaxis?

[Urban Ranger]

Completely off topic

Originally posted by Harlan
Sun Tzu himself says on the subject: "use the ordinary forces to engage; use the extraordinary to win." Sounds like a special unit to me!

Nope

Sunzi was talking about strategy there. He was saying that a general must do the unexpected to win a battle or a war. There were special units, sure, but those were few and far between.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Locutus
Well, I still think the Chinese UU should be called Crossbowman (or Chu-Ko-Nu, if you will), but since we're stuck with a cavalry unit anyway, how about something like Soulun Horseman, Soulun Cavalry, Soulun Raider or just plain Soulun?

Yuck! That sounds completely aweful to an authentic Chinese.

My suggestion for the unit is hurang. Hu is tiger, and rang stands for repulsing or taking by force. Another possibility is hubai, where bai means "breaking with hand."

[Harlan]

Urban,
Here is some of the text around that quote, from a book on the Chinese military in the Warring States, Chin and Han times.

"Elite infantry units were popular; those of Ch'u were armoured crossbowmen who were trained for severn years and could march 100 miles 'without resting'. Other elite formations were the ch'i or extraordinary forces, whose main function was surprise. They were selected from the strongest and bravest men, often by drafing one from each five-man squad. Wu Chi'i's Art of War suggests other sources for shock troops, such as men who have disgraced themselves and wish to make amends by acts of courage. The ch'i units would not have been distinctively uniformed, as they were relied upon to deceive the enemy after the ordinary troops had pinned him. Sun Tzu's advice is to 'use the ordinary forces to engage; use the extraordinary to win.'"

I think this clearly contradicts your statement that special units were few and far between, at least between about 600 BC and 400 AD. Yes he was talking strategy, but also using terms that had specific meanings for the time he was writing.

Soulun has a good ring to it, but if Urban Ranger speaks Chinese and gives it the thumbs down, then I guess back to the drawing board. I'd like more info on what contexts hurang and hubai have been used in.

[yin26]

Well, in Korean (which often uses the Chinese), hurang-do refers to a martial artist and has nothing to do with a horse. As for the 'bad-sounding' of the name above...it was good enough for authentic Chinese as some point in history.

[Urban Ranger]

Harlan,

I am not sure where your book got the info from. I can't say it's incorrect, from what I know though there are some problems:

- There is little information about early military history, but unit organisation seemed to be particularly lacking

- ASAIK there was no standing organisation to Chinese armed forces until after the Qin dynasty was overthrown. Nothing like the modern unit sizes such as divisions and regiments. An army was just a group of a number of combatants.

- Sunzi (Sun Tsu) wasn't talking about special forces. That much I know for sure.

As for my suggested name for the unique unit, I just pulled it out of thin air They are in line with the names of elite forces, though. They were generally given some names based on ferocious predators such as tigers or bears. Long (dragon) was not in general use; it was reserved for the emperor.


Yin,

Hun Wu did send a large army to attack a neighbouring country for some horses after a request for those horses were refused. That country was called Diwan in Chinese history records, I have no idea if that's the same as Parthia. At any rate, large numbers of men died in the desert and in battles for a small number of horses. So it was not possible for those horses to be used in any military unit at all.

[Locutus]

UR,
Those horses came from Fergana (according to my source that's Ta Yuan in Chinese, I presume that's the same as your Diwan), Parthia. There was indeed a number of battles for these horses in which many Chinese died but eventually the Chinese were victorious and brought back around 3,000 'regular' Parthian horses plus anywhere between a dozen and a few hundred of these 'heavenly horses' (depending on which source you believe), both male and female. According to some sources the Wu-sun (inhabitants of Ta Yuan) also had to pay an annual tribute in the form of more of these horses. In any case, back in China the Chinese emperors breeded large numbers of these horses and most certainly used them in combat as well - at least until the T'ang dynasty, but probably much longer (though they were long believed to be extinct, recent research showed, with photographic evidence, that at least some of these horses still exist in China today).

These horses were, as stated earlier, legendary and were known under at least half a dozen names, the most famous ones being Heavenly horses or Celestial horses (Tianma in Chinese), Blood-sweating horses (no idea about the Chinese name) and Thousand li horses (Qianli ma). I did a little research and it turns out that there are at least hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese companies, golf clubs, etc, that have the word Tianma in their name, so that would seem like a very suitable name for our Chinese cavalry unit ('Tianma Horseman' or something like that).

There are literally hundreds of websites that mention these horses, just use a search engine and search for "heavenly horses","blood sweat horses" or "Chang Ch'ien" or something like that if you need more info. Good sources are FE here and here.

Edit: added URL, first one wasn't quite as good as I thought.

[Urban Ranger]

Locutus,

Hm. The Chinese records indicated that the tianma lost their abilities after a couple of generations, so their descedants became normal heavy warhorses. Furthermore, they were supposedly the emperor's own personal horses, not for military use.

"I did a little research and it turns out that there are at least hundreds, if not thousands of Chinese companies, golf clubs, etc, that have the word Tianma in their name, so that would seem like a very suitable name for our Chinese cavalry unit."

It's just not the tradition, you see Chinese military used to name the heavy hitting units tiger-this, bear-that, etc. Tianma just doesn't have the power and ferocity