Extra Pack Finalization Project, parts 1-4 compiled

[Viseus]

So what is the status of this part of the project then? Is it all settled, or is it still open to debate? If so, should I start a new thread, or keep it in this one?

I realize I'm a bit late for discussions about this, as I discovered Apolyton just last week. In fact, I don't even think I understand this project completely. Is there some description, mission statment, etc anywhere?

[godinex]

Originally posted by Kharash Tirum
About the Incan UU:
Try an improvement of the archer. As the AoK exp. did. Why not?
Also, where do I download all this? Can I download this?

I like this idea... just imagine all the american tribes with super warriors.
And for Viseus all the old treads are in the Top of this forum, take a look in order.

[Wernazuma III]

OK, here is a short introduction for Viseus: The plan is to make a mod with 16 extra civs. Therefore we had a huge poll about which to include and decided for those you can see in this thread. Then a number of guys presented city lists etc. for the different civs, and we discussed on and on. In this thread, I have put the "conclusion" of all those threads which were really long and hard to look through. The information from here, together with the graphics ( ) and a readme should then be put into a bic file and voilá, we should have a modpack
Thus yes, main discussion should be over, but there can always be errors, mistakes etc., so it's not "completely" over.

[dunk]

Why is the Poles UU worse than the Mongol one?

Polish... 4/2/3 replace knight, needs horses

Mongol... 5/2/3 replace knight, needs horses.

I know everyone likes the Mongols, but their unit shouldn't be better than everyone else's. Up the Polish ones defense value.

The Spanish and Turkish UUs are identical.

2/4/2 needs saltpeter, replace musketman. Can one be 2/5/1?

This is all very good work by the way.

[Alephz]

I think Tercios are too defensive, it was an offensive unit, maybe 4/3/2 or 3/4/2 is more realistic?

[Wernazuma III]

Alephz: As most UUs add only one point to either a/D or Movement, I thought it's the best to give them an add. movement.
The french musketeer has 3/4/1, i.e. one more attck than the musket man.

dunk: You're right. It should have been 4/3/3 for the Hussar. My mistake

[dunk]

Originally posted by Alephz
I think Tercios are too defensive, it was an offensive unit, maybe 4/3/2 or 3/4/2 is more realistic?

If they replace the musketman, they must be defensive, IMO. Otherwise, the AI wouldn't keep them in cities and would be too easy to defeat.

[Imp. Montezuma]

The Mongols

Names: Mongolia, the Mongols, Mongol
Ruler/Title: Gengis/Great Khan
Leaders: Chepe, Sudebei, Muqali, Borte, Kublai, Aqbar, Timur Tamerlane

Ruler name are very strange! Historical spelling are Chingiz-khan.
by the way Chingiz-khan is only title, means 'Lord of [peoples] Ocean' name is Temujin.

Great Leaders spelling are Jebe, Subedei, Khubilai-khan.
Borte is first (and beloved) wife of Chingiz-khan.
Aqbar is Uzbek, no mongol, was ruler of India.
Tamerlane and Timur Leng is equale, means 'Dummy Iron Man' .
And Timur is Uzbek ruler.

Hebrews
Names: Israel, the Hebrews, Hebrew
Ruler/Title: David /King
Leaders: Moses, Solomon, Joshua, Saul, Juda Maccabaeus, Herzl, Ben Gurion, Rabin

My proposal for Hebrew ruler is Solomon. He was great ruler of Israel.

[Imp. Montezuma]

Cartagians

Names: Phoenicia, the Phoenicians, Phoenician
Ruler/Title: Hannibal/Sufet
Leaders: Hiram, Hamilkar, Hasdrubal, Hanno

Why Phoenicians?
Replace Phoenicians with Cartagians. They are most significiant in History then Phoenicians with weak and small land.
Curioselly Ruler/Leaders are Cartagians.
How You mind locate in one point in game map Israel and Phoenicia? Then Numidia region in vacuum!

[Wernazuma III]

OK, you're a settler, so I explain it again:
a) "leader of x should better be person y" is not discussed here anymore, unless we e.g. put a viking as a leader of the Ethiopians
b) most of the time we use the anglizised versions of names and those which are better "known", so Gengis is perfectly OK.

Now to the other things:
Borte is in to represent the high influence of women in the mongolian rule. She was very much a politician.
Timur and Aqbar are in because they referred to mongol culture and heritage even if they were none.
I know that Timur Leng and Tamerlane are the same, that's why there is no semicolon between Timur and "Tamerlane". Tamerlane actually means "the tame" AFAIK.
Phoenicians are in because they were preferred in a poll on exactly that topic, as they also include the Carthaginians. Not all leaders in the list are from Carthage, Hiram was king of Tyre.

You're right though about the geographical problem though, so I set Carthage as the capital, although we all know that Phoenicians are not from North Africa.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
b) most of the time we use the anglizised versions of names and those which are better "known", so Gengis is perfectly OK.

Actually, the proper name would be Genghis Khan, and that is by far the most frequently used way of spelling it. Ginghiz is AFAIK very rarely used, even Google (not that that is the best source to go by, but still) only finds 5 results (compared to about 75,000 for Genghis).

However, Imp. Montezuma definitely has a point with Subedei though, that's probably a typo (by me ).

Timur and Akbar (I think Akbar is the anglicized version of the name, at least the (by far) most widely used one) are, or at least claim to be, direct descendents of Genghis Khan and are AFAIK widely recognized as Mongols in origin (although some prefer to view Akbar as Indian). Timur and Akbar (or at least his father/grandfather) ruled over Uzbek territory but that doesn't make them Uzbeks.


Edit: BTW, the (more or less) final results look nice

[Imp. Montezuma]

With Timur Leng was ended Mongol realm and culture in Maver-an-Nahr, land between great central-asian rivers. Emir Timur beginning proper Uzbek history. Yes, I know that Uzbek name still with Ashtarkhanids 'Roaming Uzbeks'. They divide self to 'Uzbeks' and 'Kazaks'. Timur destroes heritages of the mongol law, military and political systems. He is no mongol, no Chingizid, but from Mangyt (Nogai tribe). May be Sweden is French state, if they kings origines is from France? Or England centuries after William Conqueror? :0

Great leader for Mongols: Kirsan Ilumzhin(ov) - the Prezident of Kalmykia - subject of Russian Federation. Kalmyks are Mongol tribe

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Imp. Montezuma
With Timur Leng was ended Mongol realm and culture in Maver-an-Nahr, land between great central-asian rivers. Emir Timur beginning proper Uzbek history. Yes, I know that Uzbek name still with Ashtarkhanids 'Roaming Uzbeks'. They divide self to 'Uzbeks' and 'Kazaks'. Timur destroes heritages of the mongol law, military and political systems. He is no mongol, no Chingizid, but from Mangyt (Nogai tribe).

Let's see:

Timur


(tmr´) (KEY) or Tamerlane (tm´rln) (KEY) , c.1336–1405, Mongol conqueror, b. Kesh, near Samarkand. He is also called Timur Leng [Timur the lame]. He was the son of a tribal leader, and he claimed (apparently for the first time in 1370) to be a descendant of Jenghiz Khan. With an army composed of Turks and Turkic-speaking Mongols, remnants of the empire of the Mongols, Timur spent his early military career in subduing his rivals in what is now Turkistan; by 1369 he firmly controlled the entire area from his capital at Samarkand.
Campaigns he waged against Persia occupied him until 1387. By that time he had in his possession the lands stretching East from the Euphrates River. He advanced (1392) across the Euphrates, conquered the territory between the Caspian and Black seas, and invaded several of the Russian states. By weakening the Crimean Tatars he helped clear the way for the conquests of the grand duchy of Moscow. Timur abandoned some of his Russian conquests to return to Samarkand and invade (1398) India along the route of the Indus River. He took Delhi and brought the Delhi Sultanate to an end, but he withdrew with little addition to his domain.
In 1400, Timur ravaged Georgia and proceeded to the Levant, where he took Aleppo and Baghdad. His next war was fought in Asia Minor against the Ottoman Turks, and in 1402, at Angora, he captured their sultan, Beyazid I, who, contrary to popular belief, was well treated. Timur died while planning an invasion of China. His tomb at Samarkand was long known to archaeologists, but it is only recently that his skeleton, buried in a deep crypt, was found.
Timur’s reputation is that of a cruel conqueror. After capturing certain cities he slaughtered thousands of the defenders (perhaps 80,000 at Delhi) and built pyramids of their skulls. Although a Muslim, he was scarcely more merciful to those of his own faith than to those he considered infidels. His positive achievements were the encouragement of art, literature, and science and the construction of vast public works. He had little hope that his vast conquests would remain intact, and before his death he arranged for them to be divided among his sons. The Timurids are the line of rulers descended from him. Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine luridly recounts his conquests. 4
See biographies by H. Hookham (1962) and B. F. Manz (1989); J. H. Sanders, tr., Tamerlane (tr. of late 14th-century Arabic work by A. Ibn Arabshah, 1936).

and:


Tamerlane (1336 - 1405) - The Last Great Nomad Power


Tamerlane, the name was derived from the Persian Timur-i lang, "Temur the Lame" by Europeans during the 16th century. His Turkic name is Timur, which means 'iron'. In his life time, he conquered more than anyone else except for Alexander. His armies crossed Eurasia from Delhi to Moscow, from the Tien Shan Mountains of Central Asia to the Taurus Mountains in Anatolia. From 1370 till his death 1405, Temur built a powerful empire and became the last of great nomadic leaders.

There are abundant mediaeval sources concerning Tamerlane. We have the primary source in Spanish from Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, sent by King Henry III of Castile on a return embassy to Tamerlane. There is also a Persian biography of Tamerlane by Ali Sharaf ad-Din and the Arab biography by Ahmad ibn Arabshah; from Marlowe to Edgar Allan Poe, he continues to fascinate us as hero or viper.

Timur claimed direct descent from Jenghiz Khan through the house of Chagatai. He was born at Kesh (the Green city), about fifty miles south of Sarmarkand in 1336, a son of a lesser chief of the Barlas tribe. Sharaf ad-Din explained that he received arrow wounds in battle while stealing sheep in his twenties, and this left him lame in the right leg and with a stiff right arm for the rest of his life. But Tamerlane made light of these disabilities; by 1369 he had possessed himself of all the lands which had formed the heritage of Chagatai and, after being proclaimed sovereign at Balkh, made Samarkand his capital.

He was said to be tall, strongly built and well proportioned, with a large head and broad forehead. His complexion was pale and ruddy, his beard long and his voice full and resonant. Arabshah describes him approaching seventy, as a master politician and military strategist:


"...steadfast in mind and robust in body, brave and fearless, firm as rock. He did not care for jesting or lying; wit and trifling pleased him not; truth, even were it painful, delighted him.....He loved bold and valiant soldiers, by whose aid he opend the locks of terror, tore men to pieces like lions, and overturned mountains. He was fautless in strategy, constant in fortune, firm of purpose and truthful in business."

In 1941, the body of Tamerlane was permitted to be exhumed by a Russian scientist, M. M. Gerasimov. The scientist found Timur, after examining his skeleton, a Mongoloid man about 5 feet 8 inches. He also confirmed Tamerlane's lameness. In his book The Face Finder, Gerasimov explains how he was able to reconstruct exact likenesses of Timur from a careful consideration of his skull.

Different sources indicate that Timur is a man with extraordinary intelligence - not only intuitive, but intellectual. Even though he did not know how to read or write, he spoke two or three languages including Persian and Turkic and liked to be read history at meal times. He had aesthetic appreciation of architecture and gardens. It has been said that he loved art so much that he could not help stealing it! The Byzantine palace gates of the Ottoman capital of Brusa were carried off to Samarkand, where they were much admired by Clavijo. Ibn Khaldun, who met him outside Damascus in 1401 wrote:

"This king Timur is one of the greatest and mightiest kings...he is hightly intelligent and very perspicacious, addicted to debate and argument about what he knows and also about what he does not know!"

Known to be a chess player, he had invented a more elaborate form of the game, now called Tamerlane Chess, with twice the number of pieces on a board of a hundred and ten squares.


The question of Timur's religion beliefs has been a matter of controversy ever since he began his great conquests. His veneration of the house of the Prophet, the spurious genealogy on his tombstone taking his descent back to Ali, and the presence of Shi'ites in his army led some observers and scholars to call him a Shi'ite. However his official religious counselor was the Hanafite scholar Abd al Jabbar Khwarazmi. Timur's religious practices with their admixture of Turco-Mongolian shamanistic elements belonged to the Sufi tradition. Timur avowed himself the disciple of Sayyid Baraka, the holy man of the commercial city of Tirmidh. He also constructed one of his finest buildings at the tomb of Ahmad Yaassawi, who was doing most to spread folk Islam among the nomads.

In religion as in other aspects of his life Timur was above all an opportunist; his religion served frequently to further his aims, but almost never to curcumscribe his actions. It was in the justification of his rule and his conquests that Timur found Islam most useful.


The same as Jenghiz Khan, Timur rose from a nomad ruler; however unlike Jenghiz Khan, he was the first one to base his strength on the exploitation of settled populations and inherited a system of rule which could encompass both settled and nomad populations. Those who saw Timur's army described it as a huge conglomeration of different peoples - nomad and settled, Muslims and Christians, Turks, Tajiks, Arabs, Georgians and Indians. Timur's conquests were extraordinary not only for their extent and their success, but also for their ferocity and massacres. The war machine was composed of 'tumen', military units of a 10,000 in the conquered territories. It consisted of his family, loyal tribes particularly the Barlas and Jalayir tribes, recruited soldiers from nomadic population from as far as the Moghuls, Golden Horde and Anatolia, and finally Persian- speaking sedentarists.

Timur and his army were never at rest and neither age nor increasing infirmity could halt his growing ambitions. In 1391 Timur's army fought and won in the great battle of Kanduzcha on June 18. Following his campaign in India, he acquired an elephant corps and took them back to Samarkand for building mosques and tombs. He led the attack and victory on the Ottoman army in the battle of Ankara on July 28 1402.

With great interest in trade, Timur had a grand plan to reactivate the Silk Road, the central land route, and make it the monopoly link between Europe and China. Monopolization was to be achieved by war: primarily, against the Golden Horde, the mastery of his principal rival, on the northern land route; secondarily, against the states of western Persia and the Mongols to the east in order to place the Silk Road under unified control politically; and finally agaist India, Egypt and China.

Early in his career, he took the title or epithet 'Sahib Qiran' symbolized by three circlets forming a triangle. It was an astrological term which meants 'Lord of the Fortunate Conjuncture'. It expressed his sense not just of balancing or juggling ruler, nomads and sedentarists, as his predecessors had done, but of integrating them into a dynamic institutional system.


The first Ming ruler, the Hung-wu emperor (1368-1398), sent embassies to former Yuan (a part of Mongol kingdom) tributaries asking that the Ming be recognized as the new overlords. One of these reached Samarkand in 1395 and was promptly imprisoned by Tamerlane who was already planning his campaign to control the Silk Road, restore the Yuan, equal Jenghiz Khan and surpass Alexander. The second Ming ruler, the Yung-lo emperor (1402-1424), anticipated an invasion from Tamerlane and sent another embassy to Samarkand. He too was imprisoned. In 1405, the Yung-lo emperor launched the first of his great naval expeditions to the west under the Muslim eunuch Cheng Ho. The primary purpose of these missions was to end China's isolation in the face of an attack from Tamerlane.

Without taking the advice of his generals to remain in Samarkand until the spring, Timur and his army planned to advance northwards without delays, encamp at various points near the river Jaxartes and wait for the first sign of spring to strike towards China. They left Samarkand early in January on a day chosen by the astrologers as auspicious. Thus Tamerlane led an enormous army and departed on his last and most fantastic campaign to conquer China when he was close to seventy years old. He was too weak to walk and had to be carried in a litter. Toward the end of January, they reached Utrar. There Timur's health had suffered from the severity of the journey and he was seriously ill, On 17 or 18 February 1405, Tamerlane died. His body was carried back and buried at the Gur-i-Mir, Samarkand

Even though Tamerlane never successfully invaded Ming China, his threat to do so had a profound impact there.

| Silkroad Foundation | © 1997-2000

[Jay Bee]

Two last-minute nit-picks

In the Inca city list: Cajamarca, not Caramarca; Tiahuanaco, not Tihuanaco.

In the Phoenician/Carthaginian city list: Ebussus and Eivissa are the same city, today's Ibiza

[Wernazuma III]

thanks jay bee. The Incan names were typos, didn't know that about Ibiza.