Amazons Total War - Refulgent
Amazon Priestess Hierarchy
As this author is fond of saying: "If the word 'History', or His-Story, as coined by Herodotus, does justice to the human existence, it would record that 95% of human existence is actually Her-Story". For matriarchal societies governed much of the societal evolution of the human existence. As we know it more from the science of anthropology than from the study of "history", for history is a mere few thousand years of records over the hundred thousand years of human's societal existence. And history as records go, are often written by the victors over the vanquished, by the indoctrinators over the uninformed, by the mass-propaganda machine over the sheep flock known as the citizenry, aka the general public. One victim of such "scholarly study" is the stories of the Amazons: for in the world views of Herodotus and his contemporaries, Amazons are the people they don't want their womenfolks to be. And that sets the trend of the downward spiral, the trend that vilify women's leadership along with their martial prowess.
Amazons: Women With Names Tied To Horses
Never mind that the ancient horses with very few exceptions are almost glorified ponies, about less than 12 hands tall. And horse breeding people would know, and should know that, given the quality of the war mounts, women makes eminently better cavalry soldiers than men. And it is no surprise that most of the Amazons recorded by the Greek "Historians" kept the nom de guerre which have connotation to horses.
The Amazons Total War as a mod is unique in that it hypothesizes the plausible origin of the Amazons. That they are a powerful goddess cult governed by a sisterhood of priestesses. And connecting the influential temples of these goddess cults are the network of equestrian message dispatchers. Many of such temples might have been controlling the local politics and ruled its municipalities in all but names, Very likely these message dispatchers are junior priestesses of the cult. The network would operate in a fashion not dissimilar to the modern history's pony express in that it has maps and routes as well as the operators, but without the highway or road infrastructure similar to the messaging system built by Darius for his Achaemenid Empire.
So the Amazon factions in the mod, as well as those factions in the mod who can assimilate into the Amazon culture, must have the following units recruitable units from its municipalities.
Priestess Dispatchers
Amazon Goddess Theocracy Dispatcher - Mod DB
The lower level of the combat unit is the Message Dispatchers, formed in time of the war into a military unit. They are trained in peace time to be an effective combat team. Delivering message over enemy or unknown territories takes survival skills, combat skills, guise, cunning and guile. And the Amazon priestesses cannot manage such feat without proper military training.
Amazon Scouts
Amazons Total War Refulgent Elite Scout - Mod DB
The higher level is that of the Amazon Scouts, In the mod's storyline, the Amazons Scouts also double as the judge of peace, to punish those who presents a threat to the goddess theocracy, or to the community the Scouts are tasked to protect.
Amazon Pathfinders
Amazon Priestess Pathfinder - Mod DBAt
the next higher level is the Amazon Pathfinders, which is like a field marshal, an civic engineer, and a navigator all rolled into one persona. When a temple seeks to connect to a new territory or another temple through unknown territory, the Pathfinder is tasked to find viable route, with coded map and signal. She also needs to ensure the human resource for the operation of such a new connection to the network.
The 8.0J release represents the best release that matches this goddess priestess sisterhood.
Wow,what a presentation on ancient nudity! Good to know that they were put together pretty much the same as us. Read somewhere that in the ancient world, food consumed 50% of a family's budget. Not much left for clothing.
One hole in both Rome TW and Medieval II TW was that ancient battles - not just sacking cities or castles - were profitable for the winners - loot (personal possessions, weapons and armor), slaves, and sometimes even baggage trains.
Keep up the great work!