Out of curiosuty, since this topic appears not to have been discussed yet

What should be the role played by the nissi when it comes to battle?
We know the nissi of the Eldar fought valiantly side by their men's side in case of dire strait or desperate defence, and that there was less difference in strength and speed between elven men and women (those who had not borne child) that is seen among the Second Born.

Should, then, the game reflect this?

I actually did bring up a related question (namely camp followers, and no, not prostitutes). It got swatted, in my opinion, rather prematurely. Apparently, the consensus was "women stay at home, because that's what's good for them when the men are at war," despite ample historical evidence even among Humans to the contrary.

Regarding Elven women in combat, I think that there is a fairly simple solution. Most of the Elven units, or the artwork for Elven units, that I have seen sofar, is of individuals who honestly could be androgenous. Consider, for instance, the picture of a Noldor Swordsman by Nolofinwë posted on the news on 20 January link. The "swordsman" could easily be a swordswoman and we would never notice, as there is no reason why she would need to wear different armor, etc. The only way to tell is if units die with a scream, and that particular situation would be solved by having Elven units occasionally giving a high-pitched scream when they die (and that's assuming that TLA even follows that convention).


I think it also quite obvious from Tolkien's other writings, ranging from his stories to his letters regarding his female graduate students, that he did not understand women or their capabilities all that well. There were female Human soldiers in many periods of history (less common than men, but they existed). If the sexes of Elves are less different than those of Humans, then there would be even more female Elven warriors (not just camp followers!).

I must say that I am a little surprised to se no further comment on this idea. While it may be a perfectly plausible response to make the Elvish soldiers have voices of random gender, if units have voices at all, the subject of nissi being active as more than simple villagers in the game is one that should probably be discussed, and personally, I tend to agree with NaurwenT...

Amen to that, Beren
I, too, am a wee' suprised to see the lack of response regarding such topic... not that I was expecting to open a can of worms when I started this thread (although that might have proved "interesting", to say the least ), but definitely, a greater input.

Well, the fact indeed is that Beren allready began such a topic.

Another thing that I fear is that we'll begin to become wildly enthousiastic, and the devs will tease us again with some vague hints

Well, we have two ways of dealing with this, imho.
1)We strictly follow what Tolkien wrote. We could implment some form of "last chance" levy wich includes Eldarie (correct, master Linguist? )
This would imply that a set of graphics and props should be designed for this tiny role only.
2)We include nissi in every unit so that a certain portion of raised troops are of female gender. This doesn't sounds much tolkienish though...
Of course, if i had to rewrite the professors work to fit my taste, i would fill them with deathly and fierce Eldar nissi clad in mail, but since i lack the chance and the skills as well....

But not too much mail, eh? And I mean that in an admiring sort of way ;-).

While I would be a bit hesitant to include female Human warriors, I am more open to female Elven warriors, because they would have more muscle strength than their Human sisters and Elven smiths are able to make lighter mail. On the other hand it can be argued that Elven maidens tend to be more pacifistic than their male counterparts.

I'm in dubio about this issue. I do however think that we should include women warriors just for the sake of feminism, how idealistic that may be. We intend to create a representation of Tolkien's work and altering it to include democracy, socialism and equal rolemodels wouldn't give credit to his work.

Mithrandil,

I have not read Beren's thread, posted under a different title, hence my belief this topic had not been discussed yet.

Anyway, being a girl who loves and practice contact sports, I want to make clear I am in no way campaigning for any XenArwen to save the day, or a tribe of Éowynzones to defend the Westfold.
But since the the role of the nissi is attested in Tolkien's works, and everyday life (& history) teach us many women would not hesitate and fight when find themselves in a desperate situation, we should make this part of the game.
The way I propose to go about this is actually quite similar to that posted by Matteo: a desperate final stand with elven women among those troops. (Matteo, designing armour for the nissi would not be a problem).

Among mortal women, the lack of attested material does not necessarily mean it never took place.
Yes, Tolkien's ideas regarding the role of women are quite outdated - not because he saw women as inferior beings, but because of his Romantic view of the world in general, and in particular that he had created.
But does this mean Tolkien would have ALL the Daughters of Men, once cornered, turning into spineless morons that wouldn't even try to put up a fight and defend themsleves with the help of whatever they had at hand? That would go against human nature, and the most basic instinct of self-preservation. IMO, in this case it would be ludicrous to believe that since it is not explicitly mentioned in the books, Tolkien meant the opposite.
I would personally see that as a mistake as big as having batallions of skimpy-clad war-mongering maidens. No, thank you very much

How could this be recreated in the game?
I would suggest the same approach than with the elven women, but less organization. Less or none chain-mail for the daughters of Men, weapons of any kind, from swords and axes of those fallen, to forks, hoes, even frying-pans... anything they could get their hands on in a desperate attempt to defend themselves and their children. And if the game structure allows us, I would have them fighting individually, and not as part of any levy.

The only way that i could picture this is - when a player starts recruiting Militia - that a certain percentage (depending on the civilisation itself) of the new units are female. having females in regular army units is still not an option i fear. but we will include as many as possible female characters as distinctive 'hero'-units as the texts will allow us ...

BErnd
I believe we are mixing things here. Nobody here is talking about women, be they elven or mortal, as regular militiawomen ("regular army-units", if I've understood correctly your words), we are discussing something different. However, basing the creation of female "hero-units" on what the texts allow us or not, is, IMHO, a mistake, since that would only lead to Elven women bearing arms in case of extreme emergency, but would leave the daughters of Men uttely defenseles... since the texts do not deal with that in an explicit way.

I think we can make some educated guesses about the number of nissi in Elvish armies.

The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), for those not familiar with it, is an organization for the historical and quasi-historical recreation of skills, events, crafts, etc. of the past, particularly of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Among the many things that the SCA does, combat is among them, and in SCA combat, women are treated and expected to be treated as equals to the men. Now, of course all of the members of the SCA are Human, this being the real world. Humans, we know, are highly sexually dimorphic, and there are significant (statistical) differences in what men and women are interested in, and I am certain that some of our societal bias (encouraging men to fight in particular) creeps in even to the SCA. Nonetheless, all of the fighters in the SCA are volunteers, so if we can extrapolate their traditions and tendencies to those of a fictitious army, we would be looking at the regular troops, not the militia called up to fight. Within the SCA, I am not certain of the relative numbers of men and women, and while I myself do not fight in the SCA, I have seen many battles, and my guess is that the total fraction of women on the battlefield is roughly one in ten (more among the archers).

Incidentally, the advantages of size and strength in a real swordfight are not as big as you might think, and neither is the armor really all that heavy. There is no reason why a physically average woman could not be a fully capable swordfighter.

Tolkien’s Elves, of course, are a fictitious people, so their statistics would differ from those of Humans. According to Laws and Customs Among the Eldar (HoME X: Morgoth’s Ring), there is no inherent sexism in Elvish society, so that neri and nissi alike can choose what skills they wish to partake of. Tolkien also says that the differences in physical combat abilities (strength, etc.) between the two sexes are smaller in Elves than in Humans. Because sexual dimorphism extends to mental tendencies as well as physical ones, we can probably assume that a larger proportion of Nissi would be interested in becoming warriors than of Human women. If we can use armies in the SCA as a model for what Human armies might look like in the absence of predetermined gender-roles, we should expect that the fraction of females in an Elven army, even an Elven army that is on the offensive, would be higher than what exists in the SCA. As I said, my guess for the percentage of female warriors in the SCA is about 10%. Based on this logic, the Elves should have at least 10%, and conceivably a good deal more.

With this in mind, it is very clear that Tolkien did not envision these sort of numbers to be the case. This is, as Naurwen points out, because Tolkien was a Romantic, and his sweeping generalizations about groups of people were taken to be absolute: i.e. all the men are loyal soldiers, all the women are spinless idiots, and what exceptions there are are one-in-a-million exceptions that we can put names to (and they’re usually royalty to boot). Tolkien’s feel is of course derived from the Norse Sagas, which have a very romantic feel or style to them. To take the numbers that Tolkien himself plainly envisioned at face value, we may maintain a Tolkienian atmosphere to our game, but at the same time, we will strain credibility. The Last Alliance can solve this problem by either taking one of these mutually exclusive goals, or by zooming out so that everything in the game is on such a scale that individual people don’t matter (which kills any RPG-ish elements the game otherwise might have).


p.s. No, the thread I started was not about female soldiers. It was about female camp followers.

Beren, thanks for sharing your experiences.
The problem is that SCA combat is strictly ruled to avoid injuries. I practice Middle ages and Renaissance fencing, with steel swords and polearms. I assure you that, even if women are more than that 10% you mentioned (roughly around 25% in my association, and in a similar figure in the other groups i know of), they have a hard time finishing combat. Medieval combat was mainly a matter of brute force: men clashed one against the other, pushing, hitting from above (they were often too packed to being allowed other strokes different from the up-down kind), slipping over grass, falling and being trampled over. It was a matter of strength and (most of all) mass, weight.
Since women are generally less stocky than men, it's unlikely that they are able to stand a whole day long battle, under the sun, with heavy armour worn. BTW: this is one of the reasons why i prefer to appear among archers: less skirmish, and less armour, above all...

Yep, thanks Beren for your input

Personally, I would prefer not having the elven women joining the regular troops, regardless of logic and historical accuracy, in order to honour the attested information that can be found in Tolkien's works, and particularly, in order to uphold that Romantic feeling we have already discussed.
However, despite what might - and surely does - look like a contradiction, something would need to be done with mortal women... there is exactly where I believe we should leave Tolkien's corpus aside for a moment and fill the gaps left by the Professor.
I know it could be argued it doesnt make much sense altering the rules for some civs, while adhering to them for some others...

When I was talking about SCA combat, I was referring to the "heavy" combat that takes place at wars, not just at tournaments. There, you are absolutely right: soldiers clashing into each-other, hitting from above, and using the sheer mass of muscle and metal to push over opposing forces. The 10% I was talking about was referring to this style of combat. In fact, the fraction of women is lower in tournaments than on the warfield!

SCA does have fencing, too, or "light" combat. SCA fencers seem to be about half women, but I think that this is an artifact resulting from the men wanting to be in the "heavy" combat rather than in the "light".


I would also expect the fraction of females to vary based on culture and on type of unit for this reason. About half of the archers in the SCA are also female, for instance. The Elves I have always pictured to rely very heavily on ambush and surprise attack, not having the population growth rate to make any sort of war of attrition a feasable option. The Rohirrim, likewise, are cavalry, and there is more space between the horses for this reason (also, if you want to be a living battering ram, your horse is much heavier than you regardless of what sex you are). The Men of Gondor, or the Orcs of Mordor, by contrast, tend to fight in tight units, which would discourage individuals who are less physically imposing (i.e. large). Dwarves I think are a moot point, as from what I understand, there is no significant difference between their sexes. We have to interpret what the Edain were like; depending on the version of the story, they could be like the Gondor-men, or alternatively they might have acted more like the Rangers (who themselves fight as I see the Elves doing).

Well, i confess i spoke about SCA only by reports and media docs, not by personal experience. In any case, i assure that there should be something wrong if tournament fencing is done ina "light" way: when you carry a shield and a 12th cent. sword around, there is only one efficiet way to use it: bash, push, strike from above. There are no wirst tricks that can overmatch this style, believe me

Rapier combat in the SCA is intended to mimic 15-16th Century fighting, and not on open battlefields (e.g. most of the rapier scenarios feature competing factions in situations reminiscent of 15th Century Italy).It's very not Tolkienian - the heavy combat is much moreso. Still, realistically, I don't see how you can realistically get the fraction of nissi in Elven armies below 10%, and it may be as much as 30%, depending on the interpretation.

The thought of female warriors is interesting, though I highly doubt that Tolkien (being a conservative christian) pictured himself legions of female warriors, but rather individuals who took up arms when necessary.

It has been mentioned that the differences between the sexes of elves is less than with their human counter-parts, however the under-representation of female elven warriors is to me a clear evidence that Tolkien pictured elven females in Middle Earth to do the same as human females did during war, stayed home and let the male elves handle the war.

However, totally excluding the role of the "nissi" would be wrong, and perhaps it could be a technology giving female villagers (if there is going to be such a division) a boost in HP, Attack or whatever.

I am quite certain that, as a conservative Christian, Tolkien did not envision women fighting much at all, even in defense of their homes (I have an image that Tolkien envisioned them running away screaming). I probably exaggerate (at least I hope I do!), but still, I think it clear that Tolkien envisioned even Human women as being far more docile than is realistic.

I suggest that villagers generally speaking be competant soldiers, at least when defending their home areas.

Tolkien is rather famous I think about the fact that he neglects women like that. I don't know if it's hard to do in-game, but indeed there are reports of women taking arms. But mostly, they just sit around undergoing everything. They are not spineless, but tend to do things in a different way. A good example for me is Ar Zimraphel, because it is said that she was a strong woman, though she could not resist marying Pharazôn. Tolkien has a wrong point of view regarding women, because it was the point of view in his time. I fear that TLA has to be rather purist and go with Tolkien.
Dwarves are a different thing, but because they look so much like men, there is no need for different models or voices .
The problem here is the elves. We get various accounts from Tolkien is his works outside of HoME that elven females were much like their male counterparts. The fall of Gondolin states that Idril had to be rescued from Maeglin by Tuor. In the fall of Doriath Melian, being a powerfull Maia, doesn't do anything anymore after Thingol is dead.

Well, the issue is that we can either be purist or believable, the problem arising from the fact that our game is based upon the works of an author who (on this issue) was not believable in light of researched facts. Obviously we can envision whatever we desire.

I don't think Tolkien had a wrong point of view about women. Look at the epic tales of the humankind, and see how many women you find. Tolkien couldn't give Middle-earth the special taste he intended without centering inevitably on the deeds of men.

Tolkien represented most women in his books (especially those of the 1st age). In the same way that was done in romantic medieval literature. I don't feel the need to represent women as part of the main fighting force for mainly two reasons:

Firstly I don't think there is evidence in the literature that would suggest that women were part of the regular armies (they took up arms only in extream conditions).

Secondly I don't see how this would affect gameplay, would the player even notice that some units have a higher-pitched scream in the middle of a massive battle?

The historical evidence that Beren presents is interesting and no doubt accurate, but this is a game based on a fantasy (and highly romanticized) world.

Well, in all honesty, from a realism standpoint, much of the time a soldier is killed on a battlefield, there might not even be a scream. This would be breaking the mould of RTS gaming going back to Age of Empires, but we don't need to have units scream at all when they die.

As for sagas and whatnot, capable female warriors aren't as rare as you might think. However, they're not what we're talking about in any case; we're talking about "regular units". The number of women in an actual medieval army was probably somewhere between one in a hundred and one in a thousand, depending on the culture in question (more for some specific cultures, such as the Celts, Scythians, and possibly Minoans). This isn't a terribly large number - it's large enough that having Eowyn being the only woman in the Battle of the Pellenor Fields is almost rediculous, but small enough that the 0 A. D. team, for example, can probably ignore it (again with the possible exception of the Celts).

There are Elves in Middle Earth. I think that the need to have female soldiers among the rank and file in TLA lies in, as NaurwenT originall proposed with the topic of this thread, with nissi, with female Elves. With them the number would be significant - at least one in ten. But again, they don't need to look any different, and if they don't scream when they die, do they need to sound any different?

I doubt that female Dwarves sound any different from male Dwarves, so they can be ignored. The design doc for races over a year ago says that Woses will have both male and female military units; I feel that they should have no more female units than the Elves do. But whatever we do for Woses we also have to do for Elves.