Kerait wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:45 pm
Personally, I am excited to use Almogavars, highly capable Spanish medium foot wielding javelins, swords and spears.
The Aragonese Almogavars were especially famous but Castile also deployed them.
I imagine they will tear through most troops in rough terrain, although they would probably be vulnerable to arrows and on open land. I hope that they won't be lumped into the Irregular Foot umbrella unit.
I´ll like to see the almogavars too, but I don´t know if they should be depicted the same way in all kingdoms and periods. Almogávar, which is Castilian, and related terms in Catalan, Aragonese and Arabic languages, was used to talk about people who made raids in enemy territory. So there were "almogavar" sheppers from the Pyrinees that raided the muslim-occupied valley of the Ebro in the early times in the Reconquista, at least according to an author, and they will be "almogavar" looters in the frontier of Granada many centuries after that. Sometimes almogavars are men with a certain lifestyle, other entire communities of the frontier are labelled like that, others the almogavar are the ones part of a raid, but they could be farmers or shepperds or landowners before that. The kind of fighting they did as almogavars were small raids, not big pitched battles. So if the game models a Castilian army fighting Granada´s Moors in the XIV century, there will be almogavars as light infantry will javelins or crossbows, almogavar light cavalry, some almogavars in the spearmen, almogavars in the ranks of the units of knights and sergeants.
Perhaps the Peninsul armies should have a good branch of light troops, to show the experience of their frontiers communities in raids and small warfare. But I doubt that they should be a special troop, at least in later Castilian armies. Alfonso X, in his famous treaty about law, talks about bringing peones (footmen) in the cavalry raids against the enemy, saying that they should be "always with good spears and javelings, knifes and daggers, and also [the leaders of the raids] they should bring with them footmen that know how to shoot with the crossbow, with their equipment".
"La frontera de España es de naturaleza caliente, y las cosas que nacen en ella son más gruesas y de más fuerte complexión que las de la tierra vieja; y por ella los peones que andan con los adalides y con los almocadenes en hecho de guerra, es menester que sean dispuestos y acostumbrados y criados al aire y a los trabajos de la tierra; y si tales no fuesen no podrían allí mucho tiempo vivir sanos, aunque fuesen ardides y valientes; y por eso los adalides y almocadenes deben mucho mirar que lleven consigo peones en las cabalgadas y en los otros hechos de guerra que estén acostumbrados a hacer estas cosas que antes dijimos, y además que sean ligeros y ardides y bien conformados en sus miembros para poder sufrir el afán de la guerra, y
que anden siempre provistos de buenas lanzas y dardos, cuchillos y puñales; y otrosí deben traer consigo peones que separ tirar bien de ballesta, y que traigan los equipos que pertenecen a hecho de ballestería, y estos hombres tales cumplen mucho a hecho de guerra. Y cuando tales fueren, deben los adalides y los almocadenes amarlos mucho y honrarlos de dicho y de hecho, partiendo bien con ellos las ganancias que hicieren, de común acuerdo".
Now, the name almogavar is famous because of the Great Catalan Company and other groups of Catalan and Aragonese warriors that fought an the end of the XIII century and the beginning of the XIV across the Mediterranean. There we have descriptions of them being equipped as light infantry (little armor, javelins, a spear and a cotell, something like a bracamarte) but they did face heavy cavalry head on, by shooting with the javelins at the horses and killing the knights when they were disorganized. In the Catalan Company they had crossbows too, and heavy cavalry, and the seamen of the fleet did fight, and they use looted equipment from the dead and defeated enemies, so they should have been a mess of equipment. They achieved a good string of victories, in Sicily, against the enemies of the Bizantines and against the Bizantines themselves. Even if they were defeated by Constantinople mobs in street fights, they destroyed army after army and were unstopable. At least, if we read their own chronicles; I´m sure that their enemies will have another versions. But, even if there was some exageration by Spanish pop-historiography, they were very succesful.
So I´m with you, the almogavars of the Catalan Company deserve something more than being generic Irregular Foot (and light infantry). I suppose that they will be Impact Foot-swordsmen, and I expect that the veterans will be superior, and the other units Above Average. They should have tons and tons of elan. So, something like the Romans or Samnites, because I expect that they will be medium foot to be capable of fighting in rought terrain. But perhaps they will be offensive spears, because I think that in the game offensive spears will be better when charging at knightly lancers. An alternative take would be giving them javelin or 50% crossbowmen capability, to prevent enemy cavalry to sit down and ZOC them and force the knights to charge; I dont know if the crossbowmen fought as separate bodies.
Excuse me for the pedantic wall of text
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