WRE: regional recruitment of War Camels and Elephants using ports (vanilla)
Ok, it’s fun to have War Camels and Elephants for the WRE but simply adding them to the Cavalry Stables does not feel right. Because they are available everywhere. Yeah right, just train some camels in Britain.
So to add some regional recruitment with historical accuracy… War Camels can be trained in Military Wharfs and Ports. That makes sense from a geographical perspective because they are transported by ship from the deserts. Level 3 gives you Camel Lancers and level 4 adds Imperial Dromedarii. As a player you think twice before building a Military Wharf, you need the food and/or money from the Fishing and Trade Ports. You don’t get those camels for free.
To recruit War Elephants you have to find a Spice Port. For example, travel to the Kingdom of Aksum and occupy Adulis. This port is the meeting-point for maritime and inland trade, playing a central role in the trade network between India and the Mediterranean, exporting ivory (from African Elephants), gold, emeralds, slaves (why not?), tortoise shell (of course) and importing silk and spices. Asian War Elephants arrive by ship in Adulis and can be recruited there. At level 3 you get the Indian Elephants, at level 4 the Armoured War Elephants.
You may ask yourself, why use War Elephants from India while the African continent was teaming with these large beasts? Because the North African Elephant, used by Hannibal, was already extinct around the year 100 and the huge African Savanna Elephant proved difficult to tame for war purposes. The same applied to the smaller African Forest Elephant. That’s why they preferred Asian Elephants. By the way, Hannibal himself was riding a Syrian Elephant and sadly this (sub)species is extinct too. To cheer you up, this may also be the near future of the Sumatran Elephant, one of the three subspecies of the Asian Elephant. It is critically endangered. Ok, now you’ve learned something about elephants, who said gaming is bad for your personal development?
Back to the mod: this is real regional recruitment, no elephants jumping around in Norway unless you marched with them all the way from Adulis, like a true descendent of Hannibal.
This mod gives some new in-game goals. Now it pays off to go south. Some nice War Elephants are waiting for you. But when do you start a fight with the Eastern Romans or did the Garamantians occupy the port?
For me, it’s about clean and simple mods that bring subtle changes. Attila is a great game in itself but some fine-tuning may help. This mod is safe: only a few rows are added in data.pack tables, no scripting, no changes in startposition.
This should work with other mods and is save game compatible.
