(used search-strings “Gondor weapons” and “Gondor armour” before posting)

After watching the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King movie one thing I noticed was the lack of thought into the set-up of armour and weapons of the average Gondorian Guard. They had swords and full plate-mail armour, EVERY single one of them (Archers too!). In real life no average guard could afford to be equipped with a sword and plate-mail. They were more likely to get boiled leather and Brigandine for armour. Axes, maces and polearms were common weapons for a lower vassal that is called up to fight (their lords would keep these cheaper weapons average for their retainers). I can understand citadel guards having full-plate mail and swords because they are the higher up guards of Gondor (Somewhat like a knight). Archers on the other hand also used lighter armour because it was cheaper and they weren’t meant to fight hand to hand. (This is assuming that Gondor pays to arm it's soldiers, not give a small amount of pay in which the solider must buy his own stuff) So, the question: Unlike the movie, will Memod feature more realistic weapons/armour for lower soldiers in Gondor’s armies? (Middle-earth has a Medieval Europe base so it’s not unconceivable, is it?)

Thank you for reading this post,
Radagast: Master of Hues

I'm sure devs have tal;ked about this before. They said that armour would be far less common in Memod than Morrowind. I expect this answers your question.

Not really. The amount of armour doesn't really apply to the situtation, as every member of the Army will most likely have some kind of armour. The real question is whwat kind of armour it is, which depends on what the devs think is realistic....

the idea of "uniform" is a very post-17th century concept- true army uniforms only really came into being at that point.

Likewise, the comment "Middle-earth has a Medieval Europe base so it’s not unconceivable, is it?" may well be fundamentally inaccurate. It is more likely that you will find that the armies of Gondor are found to be of a consistent *standard* of arms, and that such will be superficially constant in design pattern.

Beyond that... best to hang on and wait for more screenies to show them.

Suzerain.

“It is more likely that you will find that the armies of Gondor are found to be of a consistent *standard* of arms” -suzerain

This is surprising, as suzerain said a “uniform” is a rather new idea in comparison to the rest of military history. Is there any Tolkein lore that would confirm or point to suzerain’s statement? (I only own the Lord of the Rings books, The Silmarillion, and The Hobbit)

a "consistent standard of equipment" does not mean a consistent uniform. it means that individuals' arms and armour are likely to be of common standard of workmanship - a unit of front-line troops may well have good armour - brigandine, half-plate, etc, whereas a group of equal individuals with studded cuirboullis are likely to be incorporated into an alternate unit.

Consider the tactical difficulties associated with a unit of 100 men, half of whom are in leather, and half in plate, and it'd be a disaster.

each suit is made to measure, in the case of plate - in the case of half-plate, that can be slightly more flexiable. therefore it is only consistent with proper approach that there will be superficial detail variances in such items, even if game mehanics are esentially unchanged.


as a note, the equipping of norse housecarls is a likely equation for that sort of armament, in that each group will have seperate roles and armament..

suz

Sorry, I thought of “standard” as all soldiers have the same type of armour and weapons.

What I gathered from you post was that standard didn’t necessarily mean all soldiers have an axe and scale mail for example, but it meant that they have a different assortment of off the peg armour from the same smith and therefore has a “standard” quality because each suit ether plate or scale mail for example comes form the same smith and both sets have similar quality standards because of this. So a soldier armed with scale mail and a mace and another solider with plate and an axe are standard equipped because the same smiths made their armour to similar quality standards. Do to their different armour they would be in different units and used for different role. For example the footmen with the leather and mace is in one unit that skirmishes while the footmen with plate and the axe is in a different unit for heavy fighting. They both are regular soldiers with different armour and weapon types but are in categorized in two different units for better tactical command and effectiveness, but do to the fact that the same smith made there armour/weapons they equipped in a “standard fashion”. The armour and weapons that a solider is armed with is directly related to which unit he is in and what combat-role they play.

This is my interpretation of what you said.

Watch any of the battles in Braveheart and i think this question will be put to rest. Anyway, I probably wrong since I don't have any real basis for this, but I always kinda thought of Gondor like Rome, with the officers wearing winged helms instead of the Roman plumed or brush-like helms.

peace

Yo thought of the Half-leather type stuff you mean? The prominent shoulder plates and bands tied together to protect the torso? The Romans also used chainmail.

I hadn't thought of that before. I always imagined robes with chainmail and plates underneath. For some reason, not sure why.

Actually,

there was never plate armour used in The Lord of the Rings. The movies got it wrong by placing the look of Middle-Earth much later than it actually was supposed to be set. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as if they were in a pseudo-historical past. The actual look of Middle-Earth would be that of Europe, Asia Minor and Eurasia about the time of Charlemagne.

Suffice to say, plate over mail isnt available. Now, of course, there are anachronistic artifacts in The Lord of the Rings that lead people to concluding that it has more in common with the Late Medieval/Early Rennaisance than the Early Medieval/Dark Ages. The most obvious is the use of steel by cultures in Middle-Earth other than the Dwarves.

However, to get back to armour the closest we come to plate over mail comes from two lines in the novels. Gimli said that one of the Orcs at Helm's Deep had a collar of iron. The other is that Prince Imrahil had a burnished vambrace (presumably of steel). In the latter case, the most obvious answer is that Imrahil's vambrace was splint. This is not altogether unreasonable as the Byzantine Heavy Cavalry and Infantry soldiers of the period around 700 AD (IIRC) had vambraces and greaves of splint. As to the collar of iron, Im not certain. I have been informed that the gorget is a much later invention...but I dont know how to explain it otherwise.

If we want to look at the 'typical' heavy infantryman of Gondor (those that marched to Mordor under Aragorn) they might be armed and armoured thusly: Mail shirt of iron-rings, cap of iron, shield of ash, spear and a shortsword (called an Ekhet....think Roman gladius).

One of Prince Imrahil's company of knights might have been armed and armoured thusly: Mail hauberk of iron-rings, helm with mail, ash shield, lance/spear, cavalry longsword (think Roman spatha).

Nowhere are you going to see plate over mail. It simply isnt part of the lore of Tolkien.

Braveheart was bad?... .....Hmmm...I guess i was fooled in thinking otherwise.

And about the armor topic. You can't really compare Middle Earth to anything that has happened on this earth because there was no such thing as Romans, Middle ages, or dark ages in the history of Middle Earth. And lets also remember that Mr. Tolkien invented Middle Earth, meaning it has no real history.

Anyways, the people of Gondor probably could afford all of that armor because they didn't fight anybody since their last ecounter with Sauron (maybe i'm wrong, i'm not a tolkien historian), and add that to the fact that they were the richest human race on Middle Earth

Also, Peter Jackson didn't create the LOTR movie trilogy exactly like it was in the books, so you shouldn't complain about every minor detail. The guy did a fine job, I think we can all give him that.

Sorry guys. You didnt either read what I said or misunderstood. Middle-Earth is supposed to be in a PSEUDO-HISTORICAL past....not in the real past. That means that there wasnt any kind of Roman Empire or the like. Instead we have the Numenorean Realms in Exile (they're supposed to be the Atlanteans in Middle-Earth).

By the way....lamellar armour is believed to have been invented sometime around 900 BC and was used until the 1500s AD. Thats 2400 yrs. Mail was invented sometime around 300 BC (or thereabouts) by the Celts and was used until the 1500s as well....so its NOT a stretch given the internal reality to which Middle-Earth belongs.

The kinds of armour that would have been available in Middle-Earth at the time of The War of the Ring would have been mail (either a full hauberk or a shirt/corslet. It was invented by the Dwarves of Belegost in the 1st Age), metal lamellar (mostly by the Haradrim. Examples of it are seen in that travesty of a movie [you don't want Suzerain to suffer a coronary, do you? Morgoth]), metal jazzeraint (scale, the original armour of the Eldar especially the Noldor coming back from Valinor), leather jazzeraint (probably Easterling Cavalry; similar armour was used by the Mongols), ring mail, cuir boulli/hardened leather and soft leather jerkin. There may have been variants within this list...but no plate as was seen in the movies.

If we stretch it enough, perhaps Prince Imrahil's vambrace was steel (being burnished would lend itself to that) and could be an early form of plate over mail. However, we arent going to see a coat-of-plates/bringantine because, quite simply, STEEL IS EXPENSIVE. Even Prince Imrahil would be hard pressed to have a breastplate of steel made.

This is about it as far as the books are concerned. Plate as was shown in the movies is impossible.

List of armour that is available (just so we are crystal clear)
Mail
Metal Jazzeraint
Metal Lamellar (bronze mostly)
Leather Jazzeraint
Ring Mail
Cuir Boulli/Hardened Leather
Soft Leather Jerkin

I think there is a lot of different technological, cultural and civilization levels in same time period in ME. if it is hard to understand, i will give you some exemples: rohan is like a mix of arthurian anglo-saxon period and early medieval turkish (hun) civilization, while gondor looks like middle medieval, shire like 1200's ireland, some others like pre-renaissance, some others dark medieval, some like bronze-age middle-east etc...

these are only exemples and are only my thoughts. i mean there isn't a constant or specific or standart civilization or technology level in ME like in our world and time. in our days, now, there is also some clans in africa and australia who don't have the knowledge even to light up a fire. but we can send human beings to space and explore it. i think you get the point.

and also, we don't know the steel production capacity and iron reserves in mines of gondor. maybe in gondor, steel is cheaper then leather. who knows?

Fire has been around for tens of thousands of years and was probably the reason why homo sapiens developed. And I know that even the most primitive bushmen in Afrika and Australia can start a fire faster than you could in the same situation with all our "knowledge". I've seen it in Afrika.
AS for the technolegy in ME, in the sylmarillion the stories on the numenorians have gigantic warships in them carrying a MASSIVE army to valinor. Tall ships of anything remotely that size didn't come into use until the early victorian age, just before the rise of steampower. While the people from the southern lands seem to be like the persian armies of the bronze age.
There is no standard level of tech in ME, with every people having their weak and strong points.

I think what diabolic wizard was getting at when he said the whole fire thing, is that there are different varieties of technology in the world. So you can't say "well, the gondorians have blahblah armor so that means the rohans have to have blahblah armor." If there is a race that has full mail in ME, its reasonable if there is also a race that has loincloths as armor.

You didn't really have to put the fire into specifics Rob, he was just using it as an example.

it is looks off topic but i must say it:
before two years in a national geographic magazine there was an article about two clans in africa stars to war, but one of them has forgot to light up fire, because their fire starters killed in a battle!
building fire with the aid of natural resources or raw materials is an extremely very difficult task. if there is anyone who don't agree with me, can make an experiment by trying build a fire with non technological materials. it is almost impossible if you don't have the specific knowledge and experiance.
poor old african clan... they will suffer greatly from their mistakes...

and i will give an example about the value of steel.
if you are interesting with tabletop rpgs, you will know also Dragon Lance setting. in this world, most valuable material is steel. it is valuable than gold and even platinium. or in Dark Sun setting, anything made of metal is highly valuable, (i didn't say steel, i mean even raw metal) because there is not enough metal sources in the planet.

edit: also, every metal (exept elven steel, mithril) must be effected by corrosion. i can be wrong but i think stainless steel is maded by the technology of early 1800's.

Dwarf Steel

or the fact that the "Henry Grace Dieu" carried nearly seven hundred soldiers, archers, and pikemen as it's standard boarding crew, in 1420AD.

You must remember that living conditions are not the spacious, sanitary environments modern people expect...

s