Barbarian Subcultures

[green juniper]

I would really like for Barbarians to have a variety of units and playstyles as opposed to what we currently have, after all there are many different types of barbarians that would be amazing to play as, and they should all come with aesthetic differences. I'm going to give the rough idea, but the unit changes I leave up to the imagination.

Viking Subculture - Passive changed to Battle Vigor, gain health on crits (Or perhaps even increases Morale?) instead of inflicting extra damage. Units are a little tankier with gambesons and chainmail, leading to a more heavily armored barbarian culture, while still maintaining the overall feel.

Hun or Mongol Subculture - A cavalry focused Subculture that specializes in mobile ranged units and skirmishers. I would love to play as a horse-raider type barbarian culture but it doesnt quite feel right with the Barbarian culture's units as is. Part of their passive gives optional cavalry units their cavalry (I.E. Tome units now will automatically get mounts even without mount masters and what not)

Celtic Subculture - Less armor, more mobility, and perhaps even intimidation to their enemies? Painted warriors march into battle wearing very little. Skirmishers and Shock based infantry focus. Perhaps their passives could include giving slippery to all their units? However that might be too strong...

There are many different barbarians in the world with really cool aesthetics and units tied to their cultures, it would be a shame to not get to indulge in that variety with our Barbarian Culture!

[granite egret]

Not sure about Celtic barbarians being "less armored." During the time that they were most relevant, they were notoriously more heavily armed and protected than the "civilized" hellenic and italian cultures that they typically ran roughshod over.

[desert crater]

In general I would go for a battle focussed, spiritual focussed and mobility focussed subcultures.

For battle I just came up with the idea of battleborn. Their main thing could be another racial Tier IV unit similar to feudal knight. Unable to build them but after battle you can choose to promote one of your units to a battleborn unit for an additional cost in mana depending on original tier. Would require a battleborn version for each of the unit types (shield, charge, skirmisher etc. ) but would be great in the theme of "proving prowess in battle". You would obviously need the respective city tier in your throne city and maybe even an additional cheap building to u lock the trait? But once you have it in your throne after every battle. You could choose to promote a number of units in your party to their respective battleborn unit.(Similar to raising skeletons UI wise). As for the cost there could also be a specific resource for it to clkeep it in check similar to war spoils/souls etc.

[proper cypress]

I wasn't actually aware of that although I'm not entirely surprised (our idea of how advanced ancient civilizations were is more a factor of how much they liked writing things down / if they had a writing system at all, since oral traditions often got wiped out in the transition to Christianity in Europe, or from any other factor from colonialism to some dictator / monarch wanting to rewrite the past and banning stuff), but I do think it's worth keeping in mind that this is a fantasy game that operates a lot more on pop cultural perceptions than the real world history that inspired those perceptions.

Real life indigenous groups were / are typically not especially in line with the primal culture that takes very loose inspiration from them (and from an incredibly diverse pool of real world cultures that had nothing to do with each other), and architects take some inspiration from Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians but they don't really do so beyond aesthetic and the idea of those cultures as monument builders (which partially comes down to just their monuments looking fancier to us because they shaped our architecture). Oathsworn aren't based on real life feudal Japan, they are based more on The depictions of samurai and the world around them in old movies and even a little bit of anime.

Which is kind of to say, while the real world celts were a very diverse cultural group that included heavily armored warriors, people's perception of the Celtic warrior is very shaped by a small number of Roman texts about various Brittonnic groups that says that some of them fought naked and covered in woad. So having a fast-paced rush down culture that takes from that trope would make sense, even if thought to have been exaggerated (from my understanding the thought is that there were likely a small number of warriors who did that in certain battles, but I think historians are generally pretty skeptical that entire armies were doing that regularly since that kind of thing only really happens in far more heavily ritualized warfare)

[amber pier]

A bit of a necro here, but having played with Nomad culture for a few days, I can't stop thinking of how cool it would be to have barbarians working similar as conqueror nomads. The mechanic is already there, and the best way to implement it would be to just create a subculture for Barbarians that would deploy it.

Archetypes: orc tribes from Warcraft or Norscans from Warhammer

[granite egret]

My only concern with that is having Barbarian step on the toes of Nomad.

[granite egret]

It really doesn't have anything to do with Christianity. It doesn't go that deep - this information has been available and well-known for longer than either of us have been alive.