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Harlan
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Berkeley, CA, USA
Aug 2005
time: 21:15
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You probably know I don't think they should have a cavalry unit at all. Perhaps they could have an infantry unit and call it the Walker, cos it walks around. Or a crossbowman, and call it the Shooter, cos it shoots stuff.
Sorry, but I can't resist mocking the Rider name.
Its a good question though. Maybe if we come up with something really good they'll change it, just like how they changed the skin tone of Cleopatra. Cavalry for some reason is one military branch that seems to lack descriptive names. Civ2 had to resort to calling a late cavalry unit "Cavalry", probably cos they couldn't think of anything better. Unfortunately, so much of the time, cavalry is just called cavalry, or if you want to get really descriptive, light and heavy cavalry.
Any ideas, anyone, please? Anything is better than Rider! Monkspider, would you be happy with Attack of the Chinese Guys on Horses? 
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Inverse Icarus
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flying too low to the ground
May 2001
time: 00:15
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Cooler words for calvary (from Thesaurus.com)
combatant; disputant, controversialist, polemic, litigant, belligerent; competitor, rival, corrival; fighter, assailant; champion, Paladin; mosstrooper, swashbuckler, fire eater, duelist, bully, bludgeon man, rough.
janissary; myrmidon; Mama, Mameluke; spahee, spahi, Cossack, Croat, Pandoz; irregular, franctireur, tirailleur, bash-bazouk, guerilla, condottiere.
mercenary; bushwhacker, free lance, companion; Hessian.
private, private soldier; Tommy Atkins, rank and file, peon, trooper, sepoy, legionnaire, legionary, food for powder; officer (commander) [more]; subaltern, ensign, standard bearer; spearman, pikeman; halberdier, lancer; musketeer, carabineer, rifleman, jager, sharpshooter, yager, skirmisher; grenadier, fusileer; archer, bowmann.
horse and foot; horse soldier, foot soldier; cavalry, horse, artillery, horse artillery, infantry, light horse, voltigeur, uhlan, mounted rifles, dragoon, hussar; light dragoon, heavy dragoon; heavy; cuirassier; Foot Guards, Horse Guards; gunner, cannoneer, bombardier, artilleryman, matross; sapper, sapper and miner; engineer; light infantry, rifles,chasseur, zouave; military train, coolie.
i think they just lumped in a ton of war words
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Harlan
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Berkeley, CA, USA
Aug 2005
time: 21:15
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Wudi Raider sounds too much like the Woad Raider unit in AOK. Anyways, raiding was extremely atypical of Chinese cavalries.
I like this comment from the General forum:
"As an ignorant pop-culture-raised American, I would have liked the 'rider' to have a cool Asian-sounding name (however inaccurate), be wielding a bow, and have multicolored samurai-esque armor."
I think a Chinese name would be good, and while at first strange, people would come to know and love it, a la the Woad Raider (who knows what the heck Woad means?). What's the Chinese word for cavalry, for starters??
I did a little digging in a couple resources I have. I could not find what the Chinese call heavy cavalry; however, their name for their horse archers was "lou-fan". Also, the Chinese categorized their armies as having ordinary forces and extraordinary forces. The extraordinary forces were called "ch'i". 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!
So, lacking anything better for now, howabout Ch'i Horsemen? Or give em a bow and call them Lou-Fan or just Horse Archers. Horse Archers should be in the game as somebody's special unit, in any caase.
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Melios
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It was a crossbow that could fire several bolts in a row. I think it basically had some sort of mechanism that loaded the next bolt as it fired one. So you could get it to fire 6 or 7 shots in a row. However, it probably depended more on a "spreadfire pattern" that wasn't accurate individually rathar than the precision of European Crossbows (but even those were probably required less training than average bows),
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jsw363
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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)
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Locutus
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ACS CTP1/2 Manager & Civ4 Co-Manager
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Hengelo, The Netherlands
Nov 1999
time: 06:15
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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:
quote:
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.
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Harlan
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Berkeley, CA, USA
Aug 2005
time: 21:15
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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.
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Locutus
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ACS CTP1/2 Manager & Civ4 Co-Manager
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Hengelo, The Netherlands
Nov 1999
time: 06:15
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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.
Last edited by Locutus on 09-09-2001 at 22:37
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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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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 
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08-09-2001 08:25
Chinese UU there is Cho-Ki-Nu. I never heard of it before, but now I know that it's a crossbow that automatically recharges itself. (Kind of that appears in Gladiator, in the scene with warchariots) And who cares that the crossbow was called like that, not the troops that used them, since it sounds Chinese. 
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