New Unit: early mounted gunpowder unit

BeBro

King of the Krauts
Joined
Nov 2, 2000
Messages
1,924
Location
Germany
This is one of the units Steph requested a long time ago. It is the one posted as "Reiter" in his request thread. However, "Reiter" means just horseman in German, so IMO it is not a good name for this unit, but unfortunately I can't think of a better one, so I gave it the romantic name "early mounted gunpowder unit" for a mounted guy with a pistol or small handgun of the 16th/17th century. :D

If one has a better idea, please post it here.

Please note - it is not tested in the game, but the anims should work fine. It has attack A (gun) and B (sword), and two different death anims: one with the gun, one with the sword. In that way you can use it with both attack anims (then use the death anim with the sword), or without attack B (in that case use the death anim with the gun) :)

DL http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads7/Reiter_Pistol.zip (ca. 700k)
 

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Attack A
 

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Death (with sword), the red elements on his legs are in civ color.
 

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Looks great. :) This one could also be used as the Hakkapeliitta Finns of this board keep regularly requesting. :D Differences to reference pictures aren't that big - Hakkapeliitta seems to wear just the breastplate, but other than that, it's almost spot on.

Hakkapeliitta:
 
Looks Great :D He's a little stiff falling off the horse but I suppose that much armor would tend to restrict your movement...
 
Reiter might mean horseman for all I know, but I've also read about specialist early gunpowder cavalry called Reiters that would use a tactic of charging at an enemy and firing their weapons in a sort of a column formation, the first line would move around to the back and by the time it was their turn to charge again they would have their guns reloaded.

In any case thanks for the unit! :)
 
Originally posted by Invisible Rhino
Reiter might mean horseman for all I know, but I've also read about specialist early gunpowder cavalry called Reiters that would use a tactic of charging at an enemy and firing their weapons in a sort of a column formation, the first line would move around to the back and by the time it was their turn to charge again they would have their guns reloaded.

Oh, didn't know that, probably Steph meant exactly that :)
 
The name of the unit in French is "Reître". It comes from the German Reiter, and is a kind of cavalry equipped with armor and pistol. They practiced a lot the caracole tactics.
They appeared in the XVth century, and were used as mercenaries by France and Spain. Often nicknamed "black companies" (bandes noires) because of the color of their armors, they were 7000 of them in the army of Henry II in 1558. They were destroyed in 1587, at Auneau near Chartres.
The ditch of the castle was filled with their armors and helmets, and during 2 centuries, peasants came to this "iron mine" to get material to repair their tools.
 
They were too called "black devils" because of their black varnished armor used to hide the average quality of their armor. The black varnish they had on hands and face gave them the nickname "Black devils" and "barbouillés" by frenches.

Steph, it is Auneau ! I live near it !;)

Oh ! I forgot it !

Thank you very much BeBro ! A wonderful unit !
 
Cool! In my newest world scenario I have "ALL" your units. And the best of ripptide, balou, kinboat and wyrmshadow. In the last days i have built in 153 units. Puhhh, that was real work. Now i can´t wait to play. :D

But don´t stop posting new units (especially modern infantry units are welcome)
 
Another wonderful addition :goodjob:

-- To sort of tie together and clarify the points made above, the tactic of riding in circles (reloading while mounted) was called the "caracole" and ultimately proved inefficient due to the limitations of the pistols of the day.

Specifically:

"This is performed by a squadron of many ranks. The first rank comes up to the enemy, fires, then wheels off to reload and reform. The next rank comes up and does the same, and so on. In reality, this technique was probably not incredibly useful, as it took a great deal of discipline and coordination. The first few ranks were usually the best quality soldiers and could usually be counted on to perform properly, but the ranks behind were often "filler." They might fire in the air and wheel off well before their turn in order to avoid danger. The caracole is more of a skirmishing tactic, and does not have the penetrating power of a charge home, where all the ranks force their way through an enemy body. How best to charge -- whether in a shallow line or in deep ranks, how dense the ranks and files should be, whether to begin the charge from a distance or close to the enemy, and so on, were topics heavily debated by military theorists of the time. With the 20-foot lance, the line cannot be very deep, as the horsemen will hinder each other. The traditional French tactic with the lance had been to charge in a single line, en haye (in the hedge). Everyone has an equal opportunity for glory, and if no holes open in the line it can theoretically envelop the enemy. By century's end, it had lost out as a tactic to the charge in a squadron of several ranks, all fairly close together and armed with pistols."

(from "The Art Of Warfare", http://www.lepg.org/warfare.htm)


-Oz
 
First : nice unit :goodjob:

Second : the name. Indeed it is coming from German Reiter because many of them, at least at the beginning, came from Germany. Just as Swiss pikes and German Landsknecht whose original meaning just evolve to mean a mere type of mercenary troop. Then in France their very generic name became a unit type name because they fought there heavily : the Reitres.

Third : about the strategy it is not actually very different from the one Firaxis tried to represent for the Spahis attack.
 
True, but Rise of Nations has a unit like this and it's called a Carabineer. It's just a handy name, that's all. How about Pistolier?
 
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