The Highlander is a unit in Empires: Dawn of the Modern World. It is the elite of the English Army. Its Whirling Thunder attack damages surrounding units with its sword (costs 100 power, hotkey W).
Strengths[]
- Good vs. sword and spear infantry.
Weaknesses[]
- Weak vs. archers.
Description[]
The "Claymore" derives its name from a huge, heavy, two-fisted broadsword, indigenous to medieval Scotland. The last time that kind of Claymore saw action was when Mel Gibson wielded one in the epic film Braveheart, chopping a bloody swath through masses of English infantry. Gibson's movie about the heroic Wallace and his ferocious army of rag-tag freedom-fighters did not create the stereotyped image of the burly, bellicose Highlander - that bit of type-casting dates back at least to the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD), who built a fortified wall all the way across Britain just to prevent the ungovernable Scots from raising hell down in the more civilized part of the island -- but Gibson certainly reinvigorated it for 20th-Century movie audiences just as Sir Walter Scott's romantic novels did for readers in the 19th Century.
Not to mention providing the inspiration for the Highlanders in Empires. In Empires, Highlanders are powerful life-long trained warriors. Invoke their special fighting power, and they become fearlessly berserk, whirling their humongous Claymores in a 380-degree circle, mortally wounding their enemies and knocking then off their feet. The incredible size and strength of the Highlander leaves no enemy troops standing.
One Scottish historian neatly summarized the average Englishman's opinion of a Highland warrior as being "part Conan the barbarian and part Hell's Angel." Legends to the contrary, History tells us that the vast majority of soldiers in a Highland army - at least up until the period of the English Civil War - were just ordinary peasants indifferently trained to carry spears and point them in the enemy's general direction. Their only edged weapons were the same battered dirks they used at home to slice the evening bread. Given the squalid poverty of their lives, and the monotonous vitamin-free diet they consumed (watery porridge and gristly mutton), most of them could barely lift a Claymore, let alone wield one with Mel Gibson's athletic prowess through an hour or two of smash-mouth melee combat against armor-clad English regulars.
Only the clan leaders - the "knights" of Scotland's patchwork social structure -- could afford a Claymore, a helmet, and a coat of mail, and they spent more time squabbling amongst themselves than they did working to turn Scotland into a unified nation. But when the English tried to conquer the Highlands, they stood united. And there were many such men who brought to the battlefield some measure of Wallace's integrity, courage, and charisma; under such commanders, even an army of half-starved peasants could fight like lions.[1]
See also[]
References[]
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