Controversy : Kris Swordsman

IMHO..

And the mythical aspect of kris is well presented by Firaxis IMO..
The initial promotion is mystical flavored, but all of random promotions -for now- is not bounded by mystical aspect anymore..

I agree. It's not easy to present such a culture-laced weapon in a video game and Firaxis did a great job at it.

They did a great job with the Candi as well.

:clap:
 
These are two men posing for a photo. First, Two men an army does not make. Second By that logic, the Thai army would have to wear their bright poofy parade uniforms and weild abyssmally outdated m1 carbines into battle in the year 2013. It's for show, in actual combat the Kris would be a hinderance in most cases.

That is not a parade uniform for the show.. =__=a
That photo is taken by VoC to create a documentary of the near obsolete army..

Of course not the entire division of the army uses the kris as a primary weapon..
The kris usually used as a primary weapon for close battle in a harsh terrain which is common in the ancient Indonesia such as paddy field and thick jungle behind Gajah Mada.. :D
 
It ain't a puzzle piece criteria. It's that all the other units existed and fought in an army at least once (minus mohawk, but I was allready opposed to their handling of them, as they made them a cheap zerg rush unit, pretty much the exact opposite of what they were known for) That's a pretty wide margin. I completely respect the culture of Indonesia, I am simply opposed to imaginary units, imaginary sides (looking at you "celts"), and imaginary buildings, reagrdless of cultural impact. Some of my ancestors were Aztecs, however I would still oppose the Aztecs getting an obsidian sacrificial knife UU, even if it was culturally relevant, a good 1v1 weapon, and not clunky to say. Men simply did not fight with these in any numbers worth counting.
 
You say 'not really' but by that same logic you could read the Kris perks as having a real world function (e.g. the 50% bonus to attack = particular swordsman being a strong fighter)

The only true issue here that I can appreciate is those who say the Kris is not a proper UU. But in my post earlier (and ones later on) I explained why that doesn't bother me

As someone has already pointed out elsewhere-The Immortals were, in fact, nothing more than an oridnary (though elite) group of soldiers, who were called "Immortals to strike fear into their enemies. I see the Kris as being no different to this.
 
That is not a parade uniform for the show.. =__=a
That photo is taken by VoC to create a documentary of the near obsolete army..

Of course not the entire division of the army uses the kris as a primary weapon..
The kris usually used as a primary weapon for close battle in a harsh terrain which is common in the ancient Indonesia such as paddy field and thick jungle behind Gajah Mada.. :D

... You just said they posed for a... Whatever. I was less refering to the uniform and more to the kris, I was using a modern example to speak of the unreliability of the Kris as a primary combat arm. For a better example, weapon only to avoid confusion, do you believe the english royal army leap into battle with a pike? No, that is for show, they weild rifles. Sure the pike most certainly has terrain where it surpasses the rifle, it is still highly unnorthodox to fight with it in an actual combat situation.
 
A quote on Wiki about the Kris;
" ... every man in Java, whether he is rich or poor, must have a kris in his house .. and no man between the ages of 12 and 80 may go out of doors without a kris in his belt. They carry them at the back, as daggers used to be in Portugal... " — Tome Pires, Suma Oriental
I had to look it up as I wasn't that familiar with it. After reading the article, it looks like a great UU embodying the culture and traditions of the civilization. It actually looks like it will be fun. It was a weapon, and from what I read every soldier carried one. Maybe as a secondary weapon, but standard issue to soldiers, and popular, even required among the men. Uniquely Indonesian.
We now use the M1 as a ceremonial weapon, only for shows and parades. Does this mean we should remove it from the WW2 soldiers because it's role in warfare has disappeared with new technology?
 
No. The M1 WAS a primary weapon in te US for over 20 years. The kris was a side arm. Should we instead add a colt 1911 unit, because of its impact and because it lasted 100?
 
Well, if you have such a massive problem with the Kris, may i point out a solution? don't buy the game containing them or mod them out.
 
... You just said they posed for a... Whatever. I was less refering to the uniform and more to the kris, I was using a modern example to speak of the unreliability of the Kris as a primary combat arm. For a better example, weapon only to avoid confusion, do you believe the english royal army leap into battle with a pike? No, that is for show, they weild rifles. Sure the pike most certainly has terrain where it surpasses the rifle, it is still highly unnorthodox to fight with it in an actual combat situation.

Now I can't be 100% sure, because I wasn't around at the time, but having studied a bit of history I'm fairly sure that there was a point when the English army did use pikes rather than rifles. I think it was some time before guns were invented.

As for the sidearm/carrying them into battle thing, I'm fairly sure officers in the army used to carry swords into battle long after they lost any relevance as actual fighting weapons. So it's not unprecedented for someone to carry a weapon in to battle as a symbol more than a primary weapon.

Again, mysticism builds YOUR empire, while these nonsensical swords can destroy your enemies. None of the mysticism beliefs give your men supernatural powers, they simply make them more culturally aware of cows/ forests/ gold, giving more culture, or giving you a greater means of communication, making you better able to exchange info an make science. The closest to supernatural would be defenders/ just war, but all that one does is fill one with devine purpose and a sense of being, not embue him with super streangth.

Of course, the same argument can easily be applied to the Kris. It isn't giving them magic powers, it's making them believe that they have magic, which makes them fight better. Exactly the same as your description of Just War.
 
... You just said they posed for a... Whatever. I was less refering to the uniform and more to the kris, I was using a modern example to speak of the unreliability of the Kris as a primary combat arm. For a better example, weapon only to avoid confusion, do you believe the english royal army leap into battle with a pike? No, that is for show, they weild rifles. Sure the pike most certainly has terrain where it surpasses the rifle, it is still highly unnorthodox to fight with it in an actual combat situation.

Before the rifle was founded, how was the Englishman fight at war?? Bare hand??
And do you think the pike is never become a primary weapon before?? No, right?

That's same with kris warriors in the photo above..
They are obsolete, but in the past, they were used in the battle..

Edit : Ninja'ed :crazyeye:
 
Why no Atlantis Civ? It is not a serious game about history so what is the issue.We could have Dragons appear as a random event too.The X-com units means Aliens should invade too in late game.
 
As someone has already pointed out elsewhere-The Immortals were, in fact, nothing more than an oridnary (though elite) group of soldiers, who were called "Immortals to strike fear into their enemies. I see the Kris as being no different to this.

This. The complains that you can build Kris armies (that wasn't used en mass by soldiers) is the same as against armies of Persian immortals (That were the elite regiment).
 
i'm confused here? Are you saying that 'immortals' never existed?
Or that kris swordsman do exist? Coz both is not true

He's saying that Immortals weren't special, they were simply soldiers, it's propaganda by Persians who made the enemies beleive Immortals had supernatural abilities.
 
Precisely this. It's not just the fact that the ability is called "Mystic Blades" (although some of G&K's religious bonuses skirted too close to being magical effects, such as Faith Healing); what makes it worse is that the unit is not a real-world formation. A kris is a dagger rather than a sword, it was not used in regiments of kris-armed soldiers, and in any case the beliefs in magical ones relates mainly to silver kris, and silver is not a suitable metal for a battlefield weapon. So even if we fudge a bit and say that the unit's abilities refer to their belief that they have magic weapons, rather than actually having them, it doesn't make a lot of sense - if they have silver kris they aren't going to be useful combatants. If they have steel or iron kris, they wouldn't place much faith in the weapons' magical abilities.

As with so much in Civ games, an implausible ability may pass muster in itself if it works well thematically within the game - such as some magical religious abilities, the Huns' city naming system or calling Sweden's UA "Nobel Prize". But when it's both implausible (say, the idea of 10-year carnivals spreading one's influence throughout the world) and a bad idea in concept (Brazil in Civ, say), the whole becomes difficult to stomach. A nonexistent unit with a magical ability falls into the same category.



Faith Healers is a magical effect, without an explanation you can arrive at even at a stretch. Messenger of the Gods is a magical effect (it doesn't give you greater means of communication, just gives you extra science if you already have a means of communication - i.e. roads). Goddess of the Hunt is a magical effect (if invoking a goddess genuinely makes your people better hunters, it's magical. If it doesn't, invoking a goddess would have no benefit to food production). Fertility Rites is a magical effect that's still harder to explain away. Guruship appears magical, but it's not even clear enough why it gives you a production bonus to be sure.

Any religious belief that gives you "physical" bonuses that relate to environmental products (faith healing, food or production) is intrinsically magical, since it's saying "your belief is affecting the physical environment around you". The kris swordsmen fall into this category. Religious effects on abstract concepts of faith, culture and to some extent science, and on gold generation (since this is an economic product rather than an environmental one) are acceptable in principle, but not all of these are handled in credible ways - such as Messenger of the Gods.



There are far better ways of representing this - if they had to include a kris-armed unit (to you it may seem like capturing the 'essence' of Indonesia, to me it feels a way of capturing moderately well-known Indonesian stereotypes), they could have simply given it an effect that related to culture or faith generation.


I can't believe nobody has addressed this already, but this is not at all how I interpret the game.

I don't see adopting Goddess of the Hunt as having a god on my side helping me hunt. I see it as forming the cultural identity of my nation to put more emphasis on hunting. As such, children learn to hunt younger, hunters are given a privileged place in society and so on... After a generation, this has the impact of raising the amount of hunting that goes on; which the game models as getting more food on tiles with camps. Of course, this is an abstraction, and one that isn't spelt out directly in the game, but it is such a natural one that it never occurred to me someone would not automatically assume it.

Similarly, Faith healers is a sign that you're civilization places a large emphasis on health and healing. As such, the wise men in your country (who live in the cities) devote time and effort to researching remedies and plants that can heal others. This, combine with the placebo affect that your men really believe that these faith healers have special powers, means that your men are recover faster (both in health and morale - which I've always thought of HP as partially representing) when nearly a friendly city.

Fertility rites is possibly the easiest to explain. You're culture is focussed around having lots of babies, so married couples in your society copulate more. Furthermore, state sanctioned fertility rites provide a placebo affect. Game models this as faster population growth through saving food.


Absolutely nothing mystical at all. At least, no more than building a market is invoking some sort of god to make the gold in your city multiply by 25%.
 
While almost entirely unversed in Indonesian history, I have no problem with the Kris Swordsman. As far as I can see, people who have an objection with it fall into one of 4 categories (or several).

1. The Kris was never used as a battlefield weapon
Entirely true. But I don't see how that is a problem. I see Kris Swordsman as Swordsman which carry Kris with them, which they attach a lot of importance to. Someone said that would be like having a US colt 1911 unit; but thats not entirely fair as (from what I've read) the Kris is more important in Indonesia than the colt in the US. Although, if there was a wild west Civ, a colt unit would probably make sense.

2. The Kris isn't actually a magical weapon
Well yes, that's true. But the unique ability isn't that the Kris is a magical weapon. Its that the soldiers behave/fight/etc... in a different way because of the powers they ascribe to the Kris they are carrying. This is true about just about every UU. Persian immortals aren't actually immortal, but they heal faster in game to represent the consented effort of the Persion state to keep the number of immortals constant.

3. The special ability of the unit doesn't reflect it name
This I partially agree with, but its also true for a lot of UUs. Would a man who carries a weapon he thinks is magical learn a special skill (aka, promotion) faster? Probably not. I think though that if someone lucky happens to him, he may ascribe it to carrying that weapon and the belief that he can do well in that circumstance again. Hence, extra confidence in a particular situation translates to a promotion that helps in a particular circumstance. The randomness comes from not being able to predict when/where he'll get lucky.

4 The Ability is random and that's bad/I don't like it
Understandable, but not entirely valid IMO. A little bit of randomness makes strategy more interesting often. This is a long argument, with one side invariably bringing up Chess, but not playing the same every time is something I like.
 
The thing is that faith and belief have caused humans to exceed their bounds since the dawn of time. If you fully believed in the magical attacking powers of your sword then doesn't it stand to reason that you would attack with supernatural vigor? (Supernatural in a beyond normal/natural sense)
 
I take the UU as 'kriss wielding soldiers' and not 'kriss fighting warriors'.
What I mean is that the guys carry a Kriss along with a real weapon.
And it stops here.
The soldiers in indonesia were carrying a Kriss so ....they have kriss carrying warriors...It is a culturally emblematic unit.
Then you can add a psychological effect doubled with a tradition surrounding those soldiers that makes em quite resolute. Actually facing a resolute opponent is quite something ....and that something needs to be reflected in the game as a bonus of some sort.


As for the religion/pantheon bonuses being magical ....i m sorry I ll sound disrespectfull (since actually I am ) but it s total nonense from someone who never gave 1s of reflection about the gameplay model. Of course those bonuses reflects an inclination deeply engraved into the society structure. How can a production bonus or a growth bonus be assimilated with magic ?????
a production bonus on fishing boats means that religion creates an occupation for most people in the society to creates things out of the fishing products (some oils , some shell based tools whatever) and a fertility things ...well it just means that the morality in this society is to encourage people to have sex, since that s how babies are made (yeah i m not kidding , it s true , i ve seen it on TV) :)))
 
I think the devs threw practicality and realism out the window when the gave Carthage war elephants as a UU and traversing mountains part of the UA :p . Anyways, my point is the Kris swordsman is uniquely Indonesian, has a cultural history, and was standard-issue for the Indonesian army. That, to me, warrents a UU.
 
I think the devs threw practicality and realism out the window when the gave Carthage war elephants as a UU and traversing mountains part of the UA :p . Anyways, my point is the Kris swordsman is uniquely Indonesian, has a cultural history, and was standard-issue for the Indonesian army. That, to me, warrents a UU.

You realize that they gave war elephants + that ability because Hannibal croosed the Alps with elephants. The devs just represented that side of history by giving this ability, and not "out of realism".
Besides, I just feel this thread is a bit of making a storm in a glass of water ... I'm not indonesian, and I don't know much of its history, nor about the symbol of the kris blade. All I know is that these kind of ondulated blades cause deep wounds extremely hard to heal, because that shape. Giving mysterious power ... I personnally don't think so. Anyway, with such logic, shouldn't the american minuteman be weaker than the regular musketman ? After all, minutemen were a militia, not trained soldiers. And the Mandekalu cavalry ? They shouldn't be any different from the knight. And so on ...
 
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