Middle East has Meharists
Nomads have Steppe Lancer
America has Eagle Warrior and Xolotl Warrior
Pacific Asia has Battle Elephant
India has Armored Elephant and Elephant Archer
The Elephant Archer is particularly interesting here, as it was a UU for the Indians nation, but became a regional unit after its division.
I wondered - what regional units could the Slavs have had after the division of the umbrella? I’m talking about: Rus, Kyiv + Chernigov (later they become Cossacks), Serbs, Croats and possibly Romanians (who are Slavs by 1/3). I’m not sure if it’s worth touching on the already existing Bohemians, Poles and Bulgarians in this case. May be.
Here is a short list of what could be regional units for the Slavs:
Druzhinnik (means “man of the brotherhood”, “friend”) - he is not very different from other infantry, but I insist that he could be an alternative evolution of the militia line, like Legionary does. Druzhinnik is not very strong on his own, but his bonus would be that they become stronger in large groups. This comes from his very name.
Druzhina is already a part of lore but in Mstislav mission they are presented by other civ’s sergeants which is not good.
Good for Rus, Kyiv, Serbs, Croats
Spearman with shield - an alternative evolution of spearman. It has higher defense and is effective not only against horsemen but also against other troops. That is, more versatile. Costs more.
Was very common among many Slavic peoples
Heavy cavalry warrior - an alternative evolution of the knight. This unit did not have a special name, they could be called differently, but the Slavs are indeed known for breeding especially large breeds of horses. This unit would have a lower speed - still faster than infantry, but slower than normal cavalry. Increased health. I don’t know what exactly the rider is armed with, there were different options. Probably also a spear.
I can also suggest making Konnik, who already exists in the game as a non-producible unit, a regional unit for all or most Slavs. This is a simple and plausible option. His name is slavic already which simply means… horseman.
And ironically the old Indians that reworked into Hindustanis lost the unit.
Some regional units are not exclusive to the region though. Camel is all over the places where camel live - from China to Morocco, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, Greece, India, China.
BE is present for both SEA and half of SA civs.
So would you mind elaborating which civs, present or future, could get those regional units? And maybe even some non-slavic civs still got them as they had Slavs soldiers as mercenaries like Byzantines.
I seen some players are unhappy with this civ because this is still an umbrella even after a division happened. There is a topic here from an Indian guy and he convinced us good that one more Indian dlc and one more split is possible. Though I wouldn’t believe it before.
This will require a detailed research. May be it is enough to find 1-2 active members of those nations on the forum and just ask them. Locals know things better.
I can say for sure that units 1, 2, 3 go for Rus and Kiev.
2 may go for most Slavs (except Bohemians and Poles) if smb doesn’t have a strong argument against.
1 and 3 may also go for Balkans.
4 may go to any Slavs but this is a pretty neutral unit, kinda faceless.
He must become first of all a renamed unit. Boyars are managers and not fighters at all. They looked like this:
Well… How many Indian civs there must be in total?
Anyway I don’t see a reason to give 100% concrete advice where to put all those units exactly. Because devs decide in the end anyway. We are giving ideas to them, pointing things to notice. I am sure all those units apply to Rus but no way they add 3 or 4 regional units to one side at once. In best case they will pick 1-2 anyway.
This could happen when they had double status. For example a man is a son of an old boyar but at the same time he serves in army. But a just-boyar is not a fighter. He is a politician, manager, minister and things like that.
I think we need to stop somewhere. Lets go back to Slavs.
Until about the 1500s, Rus’ consisted of many principalities, which were at times allies or enemies of each other.
1 Principality of Kiev (882-1471)
2 Principality of Pereyaslav (1054-1239)
3 Principality of Galicia-Volyn (1198-1392)
4 Principality of Turov-Pinsk (c. 998-1168)
5 Principality of Polotsk (10 ct -1399)
6 Novgorod Republic (9th century - 1478)
7 Principality of Smolensk (c. 990-1404)
8 Principality of Chernigov (1024-1356)
9 Principality of Murom-Ryazan
10 Principality of Tmutarakan (c. 988-end of 11th century)
11 Principality of Vladimir-Suzdal (1125-1389)
12 Vyatka land (1181-1489)
13 Great Perm principality (1323-1505)
14 Yaroslavl principality (1218-1463)
Being a Slav, do I think that we need to create a separate civilization for each of them? No.
In the richest case, three would be enough: Rus (most of the principalities together), Kyiv, Novgorod. Although I agree that we can easily do without Novgorod. These lands were separate at the political level, but not at the national, technical or language ones. In the game, we could have a mission in which there are several principalities on the map, but it is enough to depict them as one technical civ.
I think when it comes to splitting umbrellas, we need to understand that somewhere there is a level of “this would be enough”.
IMO if such a change was applied, they should all share the Konnik, one because all slavs were usually fighting both on horseback and on foot in melee, and two because kisten (iron flails) were pretty commonly used by slavs.
Then the question becomes, what Bulgarians get instead. Maybe some unit like monaspa, heavy cav?
All three of these are Ruthenia. Do you want to call Muscovites Rus???
Just one Rus civ is enough!!! In the Middle Ages the Eastern Slavs were very similar to each other. Kiev and Novgorod were the main centers of Rus. Moscow was an insignificant principality.
Subtle changes for this game I’d like are the renaming of Slavs to Rus (which includes both Kyivan and Muscovian Rus), Saracen and possibly Berber to something else, Persian architectural change.
Anyways should a regional unit like the Boyars replace the whole Knight line or just the Paladin?
NOBODY in Russia even knows this word! Seriously! This is 3rd party terminology. In our books you will barely ever find this word. Very rarely you can but in very specific topics.
This reminds me how Americans call half of Europe “Caucasians”.
You decide it? If you read my post I was actually saying that many are not needed and most principalities can indeed be covered by 1 civ. However I also said that 2 are needed. Which is more than fair when India has 4 and is suggested to have 4 more.
Good question. I generally think that there must be no knight at all for any non-Euro civs. Because there were no knights in Japan, Afrika, India and so on. So in this case better replace the whole brunch. But at the same time we know devs would not do that.
And it must not be called Boyar because I explained it already.
This forum is so cynical… Don’t get me wrong, I think that guy was really not that bright and I even got into an argument with him because I called him “kid” in a friendly manner and refused to apologise, but to cheer because he’s banned? Come on…
Yeah, I kinda feel bad for him now. His family is in serious danger because of the Russia-Ukraine war. This forum was his escape, but everyone criticized him, he didn’t take it well, and then he got banned. He came back and then got banned again. His actions are his fault, of course, but his circumstances are not. If he had properly conveyed that initially, I think people maybe would’ve gone easy on him.
