New Civ Guide: Chola
- Thread starter Nikolai II
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This one seems odd to me. Did they really have doors at just above the water level for loading cargo?
Boris Gudenuf
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There are so few pictures of any kind of Chola period ships that I suppose anything is possible, but water-tight doors in the hull are not likely - it was about 1500 CE before Europeans even got reasonably water-tight gun ports, and those were all well above the waterline.
Earlier, the Byzantine 'horse transports' designed to carry mounted men and their horses did NOT use any 'doors' in the hull, they used ramps attached to the sides of the ships that could be let down to allow the men to ride their horses right off the deck after the ship beached, contrary to some modern illustrations that show them as a Medieval LST (Landing Ship Tagma) with giant doors in front - like this Chola rendition, which I am very suspicious of.
None of the portrait arts in Civ 7 that we’ve seen up to this point could be used as a reference for anything.
Kitbash centurions, goulash architecture, etc. These drawings are all “artsy”, more 300-style comic with a strong theme, fantastical details, rather than a documentary or textbook illustration.
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No, they are in the civ selection screens between Ages. You won't be seeing them very often.
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TheGhostEnthusiast
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I guess that "get across the vibe" is main goal of these pieces, but they look so nice I wish that they were more accurate, if only so that I could avoid having to reckon with their incorrectness while looking at them. Tarnishes their beauty, really. Ah, well, I likely won't mind once release comes anyways...
It's just a stylistic choice.
You can compare them with Humankind's civ artworks which went through several revisions in some cases to correct any errors or inconsistencies. Only making a concession to keep an equal number of men and women depicted even in cases where that wouldn't have been the case (taking a note from AC:Odyssey where they made Greek classes gender-neutral rather than exclusive to boys).
No Chola, but you can clearly see the massive difference in accuracy vs purely vibes of the Mayan and Roman artworks.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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and this too is also imaginary art and not what happens in real life?
You can't make a ship like that without metallic hulls, hydraulics and other modern inventions.
Hence why Boris says this and those modern depictions of Byzantine ships are all just Dday ships (see below) dressed in a wooden camouflage, possibly feasible but realistically unfathomable for people in the past.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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yet there's still an art of a Chelande with this kinda gate.You can't make a ship like that without metallic hulls, hydraulics and other modern inventions.
Hence why Boris says this and those modern depictions of Byzantine ships are all just Dday ships (see below) dressed in a wooden camouflage, possibly feasible but realistically unfathomable for people in the past.
Boris Gudenuf
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I assume you mean this one:
- Which is a Modern Image with no contemporary evidence either from archeology or descriptive narrative.
The Khelandion, or Chelande, was an alternative to the Byzantine Dromon developed from the 8th century CE on. In contemporary accounts, in fact, the words Dromon and Khelandion are used interchangeably, making it hard to tell them apart. They were both 'biremes' with 2 banks of oars, carried marines and in the case of the Khelandion, also catapults and Greek Fire siphons. The principle difference was that the Khelandion was big enough (up to 60 meters long, 10 meters beam) to carry supplies without needing an auxiliary tender to carry food and water for the crew. It could also land cargo right on the beach, but NOT from any fanciful hull doors. As a Hippagogon (Horse Transport), the Khelandion was made wide enough to provide a central set of pens for horses without making the ship unstable, but they were off-loaded over the side by ramps, not through the hull. One of the best modern interpretations of a Khelandion from the evidence is here:
This does not show the ramps from the deck to the beach on the side of the hull, because there is no contemporary description of them good enough to show exactly how they were attached and worked, other than that they could be 'swung out'.
By the 10th century, the majority of the Byzantine ships were classified as Khelandions rather than Dromons, simply because the former were more versatile and still had all the capabilities of the Dromon - Greek Fire, catapults, marines, rams. In game terms, the two types would act the same way: at any Civ VII scale, the difference between having to put in every night for supplies (the Dromon) and being able to keep to sea for up to a week (the Khekandion) is immaterial, an there is no sign that either one would be able to carry a Troop Unit in the game.
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Lonecat Nekophrodite
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^ What are Chelande capabilities compared to Classical Quinqueremes or other heavy polyremes. could the two be 'same' unit with graphical upgrades or best be different units? and how good was a chelande compares to cogs. of 12th - 13th Century (Crusades), and 14th Century (Hansas, Danes, and English)
Also a big articles of Crusaders fleet.
The Third Crusade fleet of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa did have Chelandes, in addition to Northern Clinkers like Cogs, and Longships. Were these chelandes made anywhere in Germany or purchased from Italian Citystates? and did Northern Europeans even know how to build or even adapt Dromons and Chelandes design to their Clinker shipbuilding traditions (or even is it possible to do so because Dromons and Chelandes were designed for flush side plankings and not clinker plankings.)
weaponsandwarfare.com
weaponsandwarfare.com
and what are better? Longships or Chelande? (and did Longships have lower sides than either Dromons or Chelande?
periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com
(And also did cogs of 13th and 14th Centuries became as fast as viking longships? by that time both Hansas and Danish navy became 'All sailer navy')
Also a big articles of Crusaders fleet.
The Third Crusade fleet of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa did have Chelandes, in addition to Northern Clinkers like Cogs, and Longships. Were these chelandes made anywhere in Germany or purchased from Italian Citystates? and did Northern Europeans even know how to build or even adapt Dromons and Chelandes design to their Clinker shipbuilding traditions (or even is it possible to do so because Dromons and Chelandes were designed for flush side plankings and not clinker plankings.)
Ships of the Crusade Era Part I - Weapons and Warfare
A stylised drawing of a Nef
weaponsandwarfare.com
Ships of the Crusade Era Part II - Weapons and Warfare
Thirteenth-century warships. Illustration from the Cantigas de Santa Maria, by King Alfonso X of Castile. (Bridgeman- Giraudon/Art Resource)
weaponsandwarfare.com
and what are better? Longships or Chelande? (and did Longships have lower sides than either Dromons or Chelande?
TWILIGHT OF THE VIKING LONGSHIP
Τop: The famous Oseberg Viking ship. Below: A German cog. These ships – real floating fortresses – were the Nemesis of the Viking longships. Note the high towers on the prow and st…
periklisdeligiannis.wordpress.com
Trav'ling Canuck
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Sailors/soldiers/marines could tolerate pretty cramped conditions, so you could get quite a few bodies onto each ship for reasonably short trips. Since each naval unit can be viewed as more than one ship, I'd argue that pretty much every pre-steamship naval unit could serve as a troop carrier.
The swinging doors at the bow/stern, though, that seems right out of fantasy. In theory you could make the seal around the doors seaworthy, but at the expense of making the doors functional, and the amount of effort involved would dwarf the effort of simply unloading from the top.
Boris Gudenuf
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The Khelandion had 5 men per oar, so technically, in Classical terms, were Deciremes, or 'tenners' (2 banks of oars, 5 men each) - those were the largest classical polyremes ever sent into battle, and carried both catapults and Marines. The 'standard' for Khelandions was 50 Marines, but the classical types of the same size could carry up to 200. In other words, a dozen or so ships could easily carry the equivalent of a Macedonian Taxeis (regiment) of Pezhetairoi (pikemen).
The other question is how often 'Marines' were used on land. There the evidence is very spotty. Certainly they performed raids on enemy coasts, an action that was common throughout the ancient and classical and medieval periods but rarely remarked on except when it was done to the narrators by 'pirates'. There are very few accounts of Marines on shore at all except in extreme conditions - as when there were no other troops available.
There were some states that could be exceptions. Rome regularly embarked regular Legions as Marines during the Republic (especially the Carthaginian Wars) while the Hellenistic states and Classical Greek city states had men especially trained as Marines and only or largely used from ships. Imperial Rome seems to have had regular Marine contingents with each Imperial Fleet, but those fleets were much, much smaller than the massive fleets that fought Carthage and at Actium - the last major fleet action for five hundred years, until the western Roman Empire fell apart in the 6th century CE.
So, the game could pick and choose and probably never be entirely Wrong. after all, some naval powers like the Vikings had nothing but 'Marines' - the entire ship's crew were warriors and their naval battles were largely land battles fought on heaving decks. In fact, there is some discussion academically of whether the Chola 'naval battles' were in fact just massive Land Battles fought between ships or even battles on the shore by landed troops from the ships - there are simply no contemporary accounts that give us any details of how they actually 'fought' with their ships.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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And each Chelande is about as wide as contemporary cogs. and maybe having the same freeboard heights so to hold cargo? (and it uses 5 men per oars! two tiers)
yet a cheland can only be 50 meters long at maximum. i'm not sure if 37 was the common lenght? since this is optimum wooden ship lenghts before steel bracings came to be several centuries later... (and a cog can only be about 25 meters long and 8 meters wide, 25 meters is the lenght of Penteconteres).
Boris Gudenuf
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The length a ship 'can' be depends a lot on the type of construction and the sea it is expected to operate in.
Lightly constructed with the frame added after the planking to operate in the Mediterranean, the trireme was about 40 meters long and even the much heavier polyremes do not seem to have exceeded 50 - 60 meters length - but had much wider hulls, up to 10 - 12 meters compared to the trireme's 5.5 meters beam.
2000 years later, give or take a century, and among the British Royal Navy's ships of the line, the largest warships (1st rates with 100 or more guns) were no more than 70 meters long, because even though they were much more heavily constructed than any Classical polyreme, the Atlantic Ocean is a much harder sea on ships than the Mediterranean. As a rule the ships of the line only went over 200 - 210 feet in hull length after 1805 when the Royal Navy started adding internal bracing and reinforcing the frame with wrought iron members. Even then, the basic wooden hull never got longer than about 75 - 80 meters because the amount of internal bracing required to keep the hull stable started to full the entire hull and make it impossible to carry anything else!
At the other end of development, the largest dug-out vessels that I know of were the ocean-going canoes of the Haida in the Pacific Northwest, made from the trunk of the Western Red Cedar, which is actually a form of Cypress, not Cedar, but grows up to 70 meters tall and 7 meters in diameter, so the Haida made dug-outs up to 50 meters long and, by spreading the hollowed hull with heat and wedges, 8 meters wide. That made these 'dug out' hulls bigger than a trireme of classical Greece, but without 'conveniences' like decks, masts, or oars - they were strictly paddled.
On earth, with the oceanic currents and storms common to the last 4 - 10,000 years, there are strict limits to how big a wooden ship can be without metal reinforcements, and no amount of inventive construction techiques seem to have made much difference. The Southeast Asian ocean-going ships that Europeans encountered in the 16th century had hulls with several layers of planking to withstand the open ocean pounding, but those hulls were not much bigger than the early Portugeuse and later Dutch and Spanish ships that opposed them.
Lonecat Nekophrodite
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This might be an off topic. but can a Cheland having the same high freeboard as Crusader cogs of 12th - 13th Century?
And is this one (still a WIP) what Crusaders use? (one that uses axial rudder) and did two mast variants exists by then? ( the secondary one is placed at the forecastle like in Humankind)
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Or this?
^ Loaned from Medieval Total War mod i can't remember a name.
And is this one (still a WIP) what Crusaders use? (one that uses axial rudder) and did two mast variants exists by then? ( the secondary one is placed at the forecastle like in Humankind)
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Or this?
^ Loaned from Medieval Total War mod i can't remember a name.
The 4th image (lower right) is a reconstruction of the Ajanta caves boat, the sail does not necessarily depict a junk rig but a segmented construction due to the fact that the sail was assembled from several smaller mats -- in junk rig the seam between those segments is bordered with "bone" or battens, typically made by bamboo. Ancient Arabic sail was also constructed this way (see Belitung ship), not as a lateen sail -- lateen being an influence of Portuguese vessels after the 16th century. Arab vessels operating in the Mediterranean could be using lateen earlier, but those operating in the Indian Ocean, before the 1500s, used square sail or settee sail. The sail depicted in Ajanta caves did not indicate battens, it depicted tall square sails (example of miniature).
The 3rd image, on the lower left, depicts Zheng He's treasure ships. Partly due to the Chola Navy hoax, many Indian articles started claiming that Indian vessels were similar to junk from the Song dynasty, and as such, articles about Indian ships also featured Chinese ships. You can check this on the former Chola Navy Wikipedia page (accessible through the 'View History' tab), which claimed that Chola used watertight bulkheads, a claim that used a Qing (not Song) dynasty ship as "proof". The article claimed that there is a reconstruction of the Chola ship, while in reality, the image was a reconstruction of Sinan ship.
These are likely representation of Indian Ocean and Nusantaran galley or fusta (smaller than galley). The sail might not be accurate -- Indian ocean galley would use settee or lateen, while Nusantaran would use tanja or lateen. The images depicted something like a cross between tanja and junk rig.
File:Galliot and Fusta of Java de Bry.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
File:Fusta by Jan Huygen van Linschoten.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
By comparing available data from the Mongol invasion of Java and Japan, the Yuan fleet carried 20 to 50 men per ship on average, which is not indicative of large galleys. Available pictures by Takezaki Suenaga indicated about 10 to 12 pairs of oars per ship, which would be rowed by 20 to 24 rowers. The average Chinese ship before 1500 usually did not exceed 30 m in length. A Yuan ship found near Takashima was estimated to be about 70 m, but this was revised to about 40 m (or possibly smaller, I don't have the source atm). This ship was probably a flagship.
Larger ships were available -- but they're trading ships, and probably were not numerous. The grain ships of Song and Yuan were 5000 liao or about 3000 tons displacement, and could be anywhere between 60 to 70 m in length. The Zheng He's voyages had with them one or two flagships of about 70 m long after the 3rd expedition, while the rest of the fleet were smaller than 50 m long. Chinese military ships were smaller, as bigger ships often criticized by officials. According to Zhejiang Full Military System Manual, large military ships were 8 and 9 zhang long. There is an inconsistency about how long one zhang was, the larger conversion is about 3 to 3.5 m long, while the smaller 1.5 to 1.6 m long. This means that the former translates to 24 to 28 m long and 27 to 31.5 m long, while the smaller conversion translates to 12 to 12.8 m long and 13.5 to 14.4 m long.
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