The Chinese and Koreans will have their mangonels replaced by the new nest of bees in the next update. However, there isn’t any change about the Mongols, while I also expected them to get the nest of bees.
Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols adopted chinese siegecraft (as we do in Genghis 3 by capturing the engineers), which filled a major gap in the traditional steppe nomads inventory (which beforehand were terrifying in open battles but couldn’t do much against fortified cities), they then used it to bring gunpowder in the Middle East and Europe through their conquests. So it would make sense if they got the nest of bees too to replace the mangonel line, as they took it from the Chinese and used it (documented for the battle of the Savo river in Hungary).
Mongols are infamous for their catapults. Ask any Hungarian… it’s even in the games, i think the Cuman campaign.
So No, please don’t replace the Mongols Mangonel-line for the Rocket Carts.
Yea, same for early France and Holy Roman Empire. We also had Traction Trebuchet here
It’s supposed to be a cheaper, weaker, shorter range version of the regular trebuchet.
My guess is that it’s a Bombard Cannon replacement.
Trainable in the Siege Workshop in Imperial Age and either not needing to pack/unpack or doing so very quickly.
But without the full range of the real Trebuchet. I don’t think that unit will ever be replaced for any civ.
Aside of balance issues, I think the if the game goes the way of regionalization based on history, it should be consistent within its own new rules.
Mongols quickly began adopting chinese technology after the Genghis conquest, and became an integral part of the “chinese world”. They should have at least unupgraded rocket carts and fire lance.
Catapults or traction trebuchets? I mean, what does a trebuchet means now that some civs don’t have acces to them, anyways. Is it torsion stone throwers? Did chinese actually used torsion catapults? Other civs didn’t used them as well, right?
I don’t know what mangonels and onagers are supposed to represent now instead of being a generic unit for all civs like trebuchets or petards. But it must be consistent.
If civlizations that had acces to chinese gunpowder technology have acces to rocket carts and fire lances, mongols should belong to that group too. It would be thematically inconsistent otherwise.
Thank you for asking. I have actually proposed them some time ago.
Actually they were very common in Europe during the AoE2 timeframe. They are known as Couillard.
They were more used because they are cheaper and easier to move.
The big trebuchets that we think of as normal in AoE2 were actually very big and very expensive. They were used only a few times in history, mostly the crusades.
The traction stonethrower was also used in china starting from classical times. As far back as the Zhou dynasty 1000BC.
Yes, I’m aware of what a traction trebuchet is. My question was rather oriented to what a mangonel means for the game. Until now, it was a generic unit broadly representing stone throwing mechanisms. In some instances it didn’t represent nothing at all, like the case of american civs. It was just part of the standard unit roster.
Now it’s no longer the case. If a specific group of civs consisting of a cohesive theme lacks this unit and gets another one instead, then it must mean something. Mangonels must represent something specific that these civs lack.
What is this? Torsion rope mechanisms? European style stone throwers? Whatever this is, this new concept of what a mangonel is should be consistent across all civs. Now all civs that didn’t have this… whatever this is, must lose the mangonel line and optionally get something in replacement.
Well, Indian civs lack knights for some reason, theres not any goof explanation for that. The Indian feudal system was probably the closest thing to European feudalism and heavy cavalry was also composed by the high ranking nobility
Franks lack arbalests despite arbalests being integral to the army and skirmishers despite the French using skirmish tacticts to push the English out of France during the 14thcentury
I think the lack of mangonels for these civs is purely a gameplay decision. The rocket cart’s gameplay function (presumably) overlaps heavily with the mangonel and they train from the same building, so civs who get rocket carts will not have mangonels to avoid redundancy in the tech tree.
There is, actually. Except for the North-westernmost regions, medieval indian cultures lacked any horse raising and training tradition, to the point most of their horses were imported from their neighbors. This is mentioned in Osprey’s Men at Arms tome “Medieval Indian Armies I: Hindu, Buddhist and Jain”. It is speculated this was related to climate or illnesess.
Heavy Cavalry only became prominent during the islamic era (that is, the Hindustanis civ), when turkic invaders brought their deeply rooted tradition of cavalry armies to the region.
I’ve always thought since the rework that Ghulam should have been heavy cavalry units. It would beautifully represent this historical fact. India had bad horses, so no knights for hindustanis, but the newly incorporatid turkic tradition of cavalry is there in form of a UU.
From the best of my knowledge they never used any torsion siege weapons in history.
From the Warring States period up until the medieval Song period, their primary siege equipment were the traction trebuchets (picture already posted by someone above) and the siege crossbow called “Little Bed Crossbow”, basically a giant crossbow with two or three interconnected bows mounted on a bed-like wooden frame with a windlass mechanism at the back, as pictured below:
I agree that a Tamil and Bengali civ shouldnt have good knights or even knights at all, but thats half of the civs. Gurjaras should have heavy cav instead of being a light cav civ, and ofc, Hindustanis should also have something for that (tbh I like your idea since the current version is just a Huskarl with a gimmick and the stricly “anti arche cav” is the Savar who shouldnt really count)
Also the Kannadigas used cavalry quite a bit, and cavalry was common around Uttar Pradesh and Maghada before islam arrived
Then it makes sense for having a replacement for them specifically. But now it’s kind of weird to let other civs that didn’t had similar siege weapons have them, like SEA, african or american civs.
