Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-25842841-20150529011729

So I was thinking about the Tauredain and how they are going to be mostly based of the Mayans and Incans of South America. Then I saw what I see as a problem. I thought about how the Tauredain's sacred animal is the Mumakil (and how the Mumakil are really just big Elephants with 2 extra pairs of tusks), but the Mayans and Incans never even knew what elephants, much less how to tame them. My solution to this problem is still having most of their culture and faction based off the Incan and Mayans, but including some aspects of ancient and medieval Indian culture (specifically involving Mumakil) as they also lived in some tropical forest areas. This would mainly include the taming of the mumakil and the equipment for them.

Taming:

When the Indians first tamed Elephants their main tactic would be clearing an area and then a wide circular ditch. In the middle of this ditch would be some kind of bait (food, a female elephant, etc) with a bridge leading to it. On the bridge there would be a gate, and when the elephant walked in the gate would be closed. The Indians would then keep the elephant trapped for several days without water and food, and would send in tamed elephants to fight it; this would eventually tire the elephant out and it would let a mahout onto it's back. Then to train the elephants the trainers would use fake swords to lightly hit the elephants so that they would become used to pain. I think for mumakil something similar should be done where a player would have to trap the creature and wait several days for it tired allowing it to be ridden. Putting already tamed mumakil would speed up this process.

Equipment for Mumakil:

Howdah: The tower that would be placed on a mumakil's back. Depending on how big the mumakil are there would be room for a mahout, and 3 or 4 other passengers

Armor: This would include seperate pieces including; a iron head piece, a leather or chain piece covering the front of the trunk, and two pieces made of leather and chain (or iron) on the fllanks. It would also be possible to hang banners on the sides of the mumakil

Tusk weapon: The indians would occasionally saw off the front part of a elephants tusk so they could fit "swords" onto them. If you used an axe you could saw off the front part of a mumakil's tusk by right clicking. This would give you ivory which you could sell to Tauredain traders. Then you could fit on "swords" made of iron onto the mumakil's tusk.

Siege platforms: In the late 1500s and early 1600s the Indian king Akbar had the indians use gunpowder weapons. Part of this were small canons/guns that would be mounted on elephants. When you tame a Mumakil instead of putting a Howdah on it's back you could put a platform that would hold a piece of siege equipment. These would be a bit smaller than the normal kind of siege weapons, but would still do massive damage when compared to normal bows and crossbows. The main one would be a small ballista that could turn to the sides and move up and down a little bit. This however would limit you to two passengers, a driver and a artillery operater. This would be added in the siege weapon's update though, not with the mumakil and/or Tauredain update.

Tauredain culture and equipment:

I understand that the Tauredain are going to be based on the mayans and incans because they live in the jungle, but I think it would be cool to add a few aspects of medieval Indian styled equipment. Unlike most cultures during the middle ages the Indian warriors (called the rajput) would create their own weapons which would then be passed down in their family. This resulted in unique weapons like the chakram (a deadly frisbee), the aara/urumi (a flexible whip like sword), and the madu (a small shield with antelope horns attached to it). I would think it would be cool if the Tauredain had weapons that were much more unique than the other factions. Also it would be cool if some of the lines for the Tauredain warriors could be something like "My great grandfather forged this (weapon name)" or "My father handmade this (weapon name)".

Tell me what you guys think. 