30-12-2000 03:40									#1
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Just to let you know.

I'm working on a chariot sprite. Should be complete sometime in January.

	30-12-2000 05:59									#2
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Hi Tom,

Thanks for the good news. It is nice to see you back active making units again. I look forward to seeing your Chariot and any other new unit sprites you decide to do. The Chariot will make an excellent early period flanking unit. Something that is sadly missing right now.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

	30-12-2000 06:04									#3
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Allrighhhht!!!
I already have The Wheel advance in my new test Tech Tree, ready to enable the first ancient mounted flanker, the Light Chariot. We can introduce "combined arms" into the game by 2000 BC with spearmen (defense), bronze swordsmen (attack), slingers (ranged), and the chariot (flanker) Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou

	30-12-2000 07:42									#4
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Yes, Chariots are vital. Not having them is like leaving out the Tank.

Diodorus, about your early combined arms. I don't think Slinger really belongs, since the Archer goes way back, 10s of thousands of years. The Slinger is just a cheap version of the same thing, for people who couldn't afford or didn't know how to use a bow and arrow. Not necessary in a mod covering all of history. And do you have the Mounted Archer as a flanker- it really bothered me that it isn't in the regular game.

	30-12-2000 23:27									#5
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I always thought slingers were more for herding societies while bows were for nomadic hunters (at least until the development of advanced composite bows increased range well beyond even the best slings). The advantage of the sling was that practice ammunition was plentiful, and so a simple herder could watch sheep all day, and just practice throwing the sling.

Perhaps this could be reflected by having slingers available to different goverments than early bowmen?

	31-12-2000 13:07									#6
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Slingers were definitely associated with pastoral herding societies. On the other hand, professional slingers using lead 'bullets' instead of stones, like the Rhodian and Baleric Islanders, were highly prized as mercenaries in the ancient world because they could outrange and outshoot archers, and in a late Medieval battle Navarese slingers outshot English longbows!
However, I agree that in general,the sling was the cheap substitute for the bow, and that both the simple and the composite bow predate 4000 BC.
Ideally, I wanted the advance Domestication to be an alternate starting advance to Agriculture. Domestication to give you Slingers and the Public Works 'Cattle' which would provide +5 food on plains or grass AND +5 gold. Agriculture would give farms and granaries and Archers. Slingers would have a lower Range factor (15 to archers' 20) but higher mobility (2 instead of 1). Now, I've been told that redoing PW and PW graphics is bloody difficult, so I may have to drop the idea of the Cattle PW. I still think there's a place for slingers early in the game.
As for the Mounted Archer, I'd like to see the first horsemen (Horse Riding advance) to be either Light Cavalry or Mounted Archers, representing the fact that both appeared between 1100 and 1000 BC. Later, with Stirrup advance, you could get Horse Archers, with a higher ranged factor and a higher Attack factor. These would represent the highly proficient composite bowmen of the steppe cultures (Huns, Scythians, Mongols, etc) and if there's some way to make sure Barbarians start appearing as these units after a cetain point, so much the better.
The only 'mobile' units before the first horsemen would be the Light Chariot, which is also a 'ranged flanker' with low attack factor, medium mobility (3?) and a ranged factor similar to the slinger (representing the fact that chariots combined archers with javelin throwers and less accuracy from a moving platform over rough ground). Before the chariot, the only 'mobile' unit would be the Peltast, which I use because it's the Greek term for a light infantryman throwing javelins and operating on the flanks of the phalanx. Use the Javelineer or similar sprite, give him mobility 2, attack-defense-range factors of 15 - 10 - 10 and designate him Flanker, and combined with early spearmen and swordsmen and slingers/archers you've got Combined Arms for the first 2500 - 3000 years of the game. With Bronze, Horse Riding and Tactics advances most of those units would be replaced by Hoplites, Armored Swordsmen, and Cavalry.
All of that is, of course, only my own personal Thought Outline for the early game development, and I haven't had time to test it because I'm just now getting my Tech Advances added to the Med Mod on my machine - then I got to add the early units and try a game with 'em. Stay tuned.