Karbantos

From Warbirth Wiki

In game[edit | edit source]

Issedon wbi.png
Karbantos — Vital statistics
Karbantos

Light cavalry unit, with a fast, javelin-based attack. Very useful against slow-moving targets, especially low-tier infantry, but must be protected from cavalry and archers.

Prereq: Build time HP LOS Attack Attack speed Movement
speed
Level 6: Hereditary Service Military
13.1s
(196t)
165 9 23 12.7s
(19t)
33
Cost Created from Armour Weapon range Specialty
Base Ramp Pop
Timber: 80;
Wealth.jpg: 60
Wealth.jpg: 3
2 Stable.png 6 0–6
  • Attack bonus versus levy and regular infantry.
  • Attack debuff versus buildings, heavy cavalry.
  • Defence debuff versus long spears, pikes, elephants.
  • Can attack enemies while moving.

Roundel celtic.png Roundel gaul.png Roundle belgae.png

Overall strategy[edit | edit source]

The Karbantos is a Celtic variant of the Light Chariot, which features two things - a stronger attack versus infantry at the expense of lower rates of fire and range (because it is armed with javelins, not arrows). While this makes it ideal for punishing infantry armies, it leaves it very vulnerable to cavalry, particularly ranged cavalry such as those used by Egyptian or Iranian civs (or any mercenary cavalry unit with sufficient range, such as Scythian mercenaries). The wise Celtic warlord thus would normally use the Karbantos as an "infantry support" unit, using its ability to massacre infantry from within its range whilst being covered by skirmishers and archers of its own. Karbantoi come into their own if you can use them against enemies who depend heavily particularly on light infantry and who have no effective fast counter-units such as Lancers or Light Cavalry.

Sadly, Karbantoi have a very steep research cost - you will need to have researched at least 6 Military techs at the Library before they can become available, as opposed to just 4 for Medium Chariotry, and none at all for Light Chariots. As a result, the Karbantos sometimes is useful only when fighting nations that do not have chariots or cavalry of their own, such as the Bach Viet, Euskaldunak or Germans.

See also[edit | edit source]

Notes[edit | edit source]

Velvetclaw (talk) 02:42, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

  • Check our resources
  • Consider reusing Rigissedones instead of Issedones for KArbantos.

Missing stuff but we have new resources:

  • WBI_royalchar_boii2_nohorse, WBI_royalchar_boii_nohorse generated for use with pre-existing royal chariot skin.
  • 2 Boii charioteers are ready for integration into this mod.
  • Horses? will most likely use black horses used by a Greek or Tyrrhenian politician from Project Sparta.

History[edit | edit source]

A chariot is an ancient horse-drawn two-wheeled vehicle used in primarily for war and transport, then later in races and processions. There is much debate on how the chariot first emerged, with people arguing that chariots first emerged along with the wheel in Mesopotamia. Excavation of graves in the ruins of the old Sumerian city of Ur (near Nasiriyah in present-day Iraq) by Wooley in the 1920s revealed that the Sumerians of the early 3rd millenium BCE used large four-wheeled vehicles possibly drawn by donkeys, but these wagons differed greatly from true chariots, which were built for speed, could at best carry only up to three people, and had two wheels instead of four - possibly for reasons of speed and mobility. In contrast, others postulate an origin with Central Asian horse-breeding cultures. Excavations in Russia during the final years of the Cold War revealed that chariots might have been invented at least 2 millenia earlier by the people of the Eurasian steppes, as represented by the Maykop culture in the Caucasus.

Some have argued that the rise of lighter and faster vehicles and better equestrian skills lent the Indo-Aryan peoples the ability to disperse their culture far and wide across the world, from India and the Middle East well into the heart of Europe itself. Exactly how and from where the use of chariots first emerged in northern Europe is still a mystery - but what is most certain is when. Beginning around the 3rd century BCE, Celts of the regions around the Marne and the Moselle Rivers began burying their chieftains in light, two-wheeled chariots with their sword, shield, spears, and drinking vessels. Similar chariot graves from this era are also found in the British coastal regions of Yorkshire. The evidence for the use of these vehicles is clear. A Roman coin from 110BCE dramatically depicts the naked Gallic warrior-king Bituitus of the Averni casting spears from his chariot. And documentary evidence of the chariot in combat on the European continent is left to us by the Roman poet Propertius. In describing the fighting between the forces of Republican Rome and 30,000 howling Celtic warriors in 222BCE, Propertius depicts the chieftain Viridomar “clothed in striped trousers” hurling javelins from his chariot with deadly accuracy. In fact, many of the Latin words for chariot—carpentium, carrus, essendum—have Gaulish roots.

The use of chariots in combat in Gaul apparently died out before Caesar’s campaign of the 50s BCE, because Caesar makes no mention of them (though he did of Gallic cavalry) in his De Bello Gallico. But chariots certainly remained in Britain—though few have been found there—into the Caesarian era and beyond, because they are included in the writings of Caesar, Tacitus, and in the old Irish epic the Táin Bó Cuailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley) composed in part around the 2nd century CE.


References[edit | edit source]