12-14-2017, 11:59 AM | #11 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
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Mail shirts with exposed limbs, six-feet spears and unarmoured horses make them medium cavalry, not heavy cavalry. As shown clearly in the confrontation betwenn 1,000 Parthian cataphracts and 4,000 Gaulish horsemen in the battle of Carrhae, Gauls were badly disadvantaged against true heavy cavalry, at least in face-to-face charges. Last edited by Rasna; 12-14-2017 at 12:02 PM. |
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12-14-2017, 12:18 PM | #12 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
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The Hellenic world and the Roman world that overlapped it was a wholly different world than the primitive TL2 Iron Age world which came before it. If we aren't going to add more Tech Levels, the cleanest way to represent this would be to assign the more advanced areas of the world from the 3rd century BCE onward to TL3. As I noted earlier, the technological differences between Rome in the 1st century CE and pretty much any European polity in the 10th century CE are minimal, not to mention that even if there might be a few inventions that weren't available a millenia or so ago (horse collar, etc.), there will probably be significant areas like architecture, engineering and medicine where Rome was superior. Quote:
Also note that 295 BCE is, in fact, centuries before Caesar invaded Gaul. Quote:
Plenty of real world shock cavalry / heavy cavalry have ridden unarmoured horses. Most of them, in fact. 18th to 19th Cuirasseurs or British Household cavalry didn't ride armoured horses and they wore less armour than Aedui or Remi cavalry. But because they rode on close order and were prepared to push a charge home, they are heavy cavalry and the Gauls weren't. This isn't something that would necessarily change by changing the TL from TL2 to TL3. Parthian cataphracts, for example, are TL2 and do not change measurably in equipment when they become TL3 Persian cataphracts.
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12-14-2017, 12:20 PM | #13 |
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
These were temporary tribal alliances under a great chief's banner rather than empires. You see it again and again: Rory O'Connor, Fiach O'Bryne, Gerald Fitzgerald, Hugh O'Neil, the Jacobite Highlanders, and many more. Tribal divisions remained in each of these armies.
Last edited by sir_pudding; 12-14-2017 at 12:25 PM. |
12-14-2017, 01:33 PM | #14 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2016
Location: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
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Cataphracts able to use the bow were a tactical innovation of late TL2, probably a response for the extremely mobile cavalry of Hephtalites and Turks. Being unable to engage in melee the light cavalry of the steppes in open fields, they had at least to be capable to return the arrows back to their enemies. Last edited by Rasna; 12-14-2017 at 01:44 PM. |
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12-14-2017, 01:44 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
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12-14-2017, 02:02 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
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Off hand you could do just about anything with the post-collapse Celts but I'd probably go with the north of France/Gaul being occupied by Germanic invaders, Britain broken up into a psuedo-Arthurian melange of micro-kingdoms suffering from Germanic sea raiders, and the south of France/Gaul being a tottering rump state under pressure from north and south. Meanwhile Iberia is occupied by a complacent Greco-Celtic realm that has gone it's own way and is a center of arts, culture and philosophy but is ripe for catastrophic collapse. Last edited by David Johnston2; 12-14-2017 at 04:02 PM. |
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12-14-2017, 03:31 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
I'm interested in finding out what's going on in the eastern Mediterranean in this alternate history. Does christianity still happen, under some Ptolemaic king instead of Roman rule? Without Rome in the way, do the Parthians or Sasanians swallow up Greece? What about the Arab conquests?
Anyway, without the flourishing of Rome, TL 3 would probably come pretty late to western Europe. Unless somebody invents a heavy plough independent of the Romans, or brings one over from China (they had them, right?), large parts of Gaul are going to stay pretty marginal for farming, and without Roman administrators and the church, is anyone going to bother with literacy? Most societies over human history have not been very inventive when it comes to technical progress; the Romans were an outlier there. Instead of a Gaulish High Middle Ages or even a Carolingian golden age, you might just get century on century of more of the same: the lifestyle will probably be of the clannish, cattle-rustling, Highlander variety.
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12-14-2017, 04:18 PM | #18 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
The entire class of poet-priests and their huge formal schools probably do. They had an interest in literacy historically, even beyond the extents of the Empire, and even before Peglacius.
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12-14-2017, 04:26 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
"Historically" they were illiterate. The Druids were poets because poetry is a good way to preserve oral tradition. But of course the Irish did invent Ogham later so there's no reason why the Gauls couldn't. In fact the creation of a strong central government almost guarantees they would either invent writing or adopt a script from the more civilized cultures.
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12-14-2017, 04:41 PM | #20 | |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Alternate history - What could tech 3 Gaul look like?
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"A strong central government" is significantly less likely than literacy, IMO. The former requires a level of national identity over tribalism that Gaels didn't demonstrate until the 20th century while the latter is something they had significant cultural institutions which historically (after Rome, since that seems to be confusing)were interested in developing. Last edited by sir_pudding; 12-14-2017 at 04:48 PM. |
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