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https://www.oriental-studies.org.ua/en/smirnou-syncretism-in-the-religious-life-of-ancient-palmyra-in-the-3rd-century-сe/ I'm going to leave this here and let you know that I'm working together with other developers in Palmira. I am working on the symbology of Palmyra and it is complicated to choose symbols for a very syncretic city. It's impressive, but there aren't many images or details online about this faction. Apart from sculptures and other objects, there aren't many clear images from the 3rd century. There is very little art from that period; the original gods of Palmyra are almost entirely unrepresented. It's interesting that they had an anonymous god just like the Athenians. They had Bel and Baalshamin, two gods from different triads. Baalshamin is similar to Canaanite Baalshamin but more advanced and does not share a monotheism like Yahweh, it is a syncretism between Baal and the god El. He has armor, which indicates that he is a warrior god.(similar to Semitic gods in armor fighting in the skies). I am developing a new eagle, I don't know if as an emblem or as another symbol. Baalshamin is probably a kind of Semitic Zeus; he appears alongside eagles as a symbol. Being an economically Semitic civilization, the gateway to the Silk Road, it is a city of trade and many foreigners with their gods. This city and its civilization should be in the game. It's unique, a cultural mix of things. Visually, they can be unique.

Yes, that's also in Campbell's book: "the vertical blade, flanked on either side by five triangular teeth, was perhaps designed to cut into mud-brick". But none of this confirms it belonged to a log being carried by troops, as mentioned, it's dated from the late 5th c. BC, a time where there were already ramming "engines". But we would need to additionally know: were they targeting stone walls? Mud-brick walls? Wooden palisades? A gate? For the last two probably it would work, for the first two, I would need to see more concrete evidence. Looking at the representation, it would seem that they are running towards the gate:

There is a theory the Olympia one was specifically designed for breaking mud bricks. The Trajan column actually shows Dacians attacking a Roman fort by holding a metal capped wooden beam (too late for this discussion, but at least it's some evidence that this sort of weapon existed in antiquity).

I like the idea of turret points on boats. I think it would go well with #8957. In my opinion we also need some logic to allow shrinking turetable unit model's => When a unit is turreted on a boat, it become 20% smaller. Just for visual consistency with boats being a bit smaller then they should. Also as you pointed out, units should die when the boat sinks.

Maybe after being placed beside a wall, units could go slowly up, in the same way they go up when they are posted on top of walls. Would look a bit goofy right now, but still. Yes, the Assyrians would do that to ram a thinner part of the walls. In this case, Old Smyrna 1948-1951 by J. M. Cook states that "so gigantic a mound, raised from the low ground to overtop the city fortifications, can only be explained as a siegework; and on chronological grounds therefore it can with certainty be attributed to Alyattes", which would seem to imply that they built it all the way up for troops to climb, but then it says "at a low level in the mound (about 8 metres above sea-level) a large mass of solid mud brick was encountered in our excavation; this may possibly have fallen from a breach effected in the superstructure of the city", and later on "the mud brick superstructure of the fortification there fell forward at the time of the capture or very soon after", which seems to imply ramming at a higher level. Maybe "overtop" was not literal, and the second interpretation (the Assyrian way) is indeed the faster way to do things. All this is a bit of a problem since I don't think troops carrying a log (even capped with metal) would have had enough strength to break a wall, even at a higher level. Interestingly enough, this was also the case for the Thucydides quote already mentioned, before stating the "snapped off the nose of the battering ram" bit, he says that "while raising the mound the Peloponnesians also brought up engines against the city, one of which was brought up upon the mound against the great building and shook down a good piece of it", thus, these were already engines, used in the Assyrian way. All this means that I don't see these siege ramps/mounds viable before having proper battering rams, which coincides with both appearing in Greece in the 5th c. BC, as mentioned before. I think the earliest attestations for these in Greece come from the 5th c. BC. In conclusion, and besides the guys with a log (after all, D. B. Campbell in Greek and Roman Siege Machinery 399 BC-AD 363 states that "it is very likely that Western warriors would soon have discovered the value of a stout tree trunk in bursting open a gate"), what seems reasonable in chronological order is: spies, climbing mud-brick walls at certain points, at some point capping the log with metal, after that (EDIT: or before, who knows exactly, both could be independent in the game) and seemingly before the 5th c. BC building a non-movable shed for it, and having ladders for the newer unclimbable stone walls.

I don't have time these days to investigate it, but the first thing I would do is follow @Stan` advice and study how it's implemented in the garrison

The ramps and ladders are interesting but would be somewhat difficult to animate, hence the idea of making it a passive bonus or tech (i think siege ladders are already a technology, or at least they are in the DE mod). One interesting tidbit about earthen ramps is that the famous Assyrian towered rams were apparently mainly used on top of such ramps to damage the enemy battlements. Does this mean the Lydian ramp was meant for rams? perhaps but there is no definitive proof (Rams built in the "Hurrian manner" are already mentioned in Ḫattušili I's siege of Urshu so they might not be entirely new to Anatolia) This is a quite interesting siege method for civilizations without heavier siege equipment; again a bit dificult to implement (and i'm not sure how much it was used in archaic period itself). Although perhaps it would be possible to implement a simpler ''underminer'' unit that attacks enemy walls with the villager's pickaxe.

Indeed, surely this started early. For the ram I mentioned, Thucydides states that the defenders "snapped off the nose of the battering ram", implying it was capped, probably with metal like the Olympia ram, which is from around the same period. There are plenty of engagements for which there are no records, but in any case, attacks were usually concentrated on the gates. I don't see that as desirable, but other possibilities could be: -Spy units hard to see to the enemy, which I proposed recently, could open gates. This is not some far fetched Trojan Horse thing: "political factions aiming at the overthrow of a government could render invaluable assistance in several ways. One method was the opening of the gates of a city under siege. Another was to make it possible for enemy forces to enter the besieged city under the cover of darkness. An excellent example of this is provided by the siege of Plataiai. According to Thoukydides (2.2.1-3), a force of three hundred Boiotians entered the city at night with the aid of Nauklides and his friends who opened the gates for them", from Espionage and Treason in Classical Greece, by A. Gerolymatos. -Later on, siege ladders could be considered, since apparently they "are mentioned in a fragment attributed to Archilochus" ca. 650 BC. -Even later, around 585 BC "the Lydians, presumably under Alyattes II, took Old Smyrna by building an earthen siege ramp" (which included wood). Maybe the Greeks learned from that, but their use by them is not attested until over a century later. -On top of all that, initially walls would have been made mostly of mud-brick, which "resting on a low rubble socle, was not very high or very strong", from Ancient Greek Fortifications, 500-300 BC, by N. Fields. This would have made "climbing the stone and mubrick walls" feasible at some points (as mentioned in the Iliad), where their slope wasn't as steep. For game purposes these points could be where the walls take a turn, and some units could be able to walk over them (at a great speed and resistance cost). In any case, at some point "all-stone fortifications became more common", allowing for taller and steeper walls. Still, there's an interesting difference between both kinds of materials, although maybe hard to implement in the game: "against the blows of engines brick brings greater security than fortifications built of stone. For stones break and are dislodged from their fittings; brick however, does not suffer so much from engines, but it crumbles under the action of water just as wax is melted by the sun" (the last method being how Sparta took Mantineia).

Just downloaded it and tested it. I saw a mod that was yellow, some green, and some white. Also, the check for updates button worked. It seems to be working for me. Maybe being able to update mods from the main mod menu would be nice (though, it takes 5-7.324 seconds to get to the download page that it probably doesn't matter, and if you need to agree to the terms and conditions) Can that be a Pull Request?

Ok thanks @guerringuerrin! Would anybody want to help me with adding the eject units on boat death? Also, the PR is #9211

Also read the commit guidelines and you can always check the Wiki. And this is a very user-friendly guide to the basics of Git. The hard data is here: https://git-scm.com/learn

In this case no, it is purely an archeological category. The Frisian pottery is unique to the region and cannot be grouped within the Rhine-Weser or the Elbe traditions. Frisian pottery has its own features and it is spanning a period from the 7th century BC to the 4th century AD. It is highly probable that the original Frisian people has been replaced culturally during the 3rd and 4th century AD. Probably by migrants from the Lower Elbe and Jutland. It is entirely possible that the earliest Frisians spoke an orphan language since it is naive to believe that we are aware of all the linguistic branches of the Indo-European family. It is very likely that some branches disappeared without leaving any traces or legacy. However, it is important to realize that the Nordwestblock theory has its critics. Many of the arguments in this theory are based on an overinterpretation of onomastics. Several experts have already pointed out that many examples presented as impossible to explain using Celtic or Germanic languages are highly debatable. Furthermore, other experts have pointed out that certain features presented as representing a unique substrate in this region are in fact found in other distant regions. Furthermore, it is quite inconceivable to imagine a language that would serve as an intermediary between the Celtic and Germanic languages. The two language families likely diverged several thousand years ago, well before the Iron Age. The most likely scenario is simply an exchange of words, borrowings from one language to another. But that does not fundamentally alter the structure of the language. If it is a linguistic isolate, there is a good chance that it is a language derived from the Italo-Celtic languages.

Perhaps this basic guide will be helpful

The buildings section is copied from one of the old design docs; tbh i was mainly focused on doing the units and bonuses. My plan would be to largely recycle the names and models from Spartan buildings. They will probably need rams purely for gameplay reasons (it was decide a while ago that all civs will have them iirc). I suppose they could extrapolate from later rams or use the log ram as with the Germans. https://research.vu.nl/ws/files/42190004/chapter 10.pdf The actual archaic siege methods would be a bit hard to portray through gameplay (although a tech or passive bonus that makes infantry stronger against buildings to somewhat compensate for poor siege is possible) The Olympia ram is probably outside the civ timeframe by some decades; with the relative rarity of rams it's possible there were slightly earlier rams that left no record (Siege engines were sometimes built on site because it was easier than transporting, so it's possible they would be discarded afterwards with perhaps the metal parts being melted down or reused in another siege). Although it might be better to err on the side of caution by giving them only log rams. As for siege warfare in Greek epics, there is a moment where Hector uses a large pointed boulder to destroy the gates of the Greek camp; clearly another feat of superhuman strenght by mythicals heroes, but perhaps implying that in some Mycenaean/archaic sieges attackers tried to breach gates. A quite detailed description of how the gate broke and the tactics employed after breaching

New Version, now with a button "Check for Updates" on the mod selection screen prior to downloading anything ewlse (thanks to @Asher) . Unfortunately, for me everything is green as my mods are all updated already... Could somebode please do some testing? Again R28 is for Version 0.28 and R29 for the new SVN version 0.29 (nightly build). There is also a little user and maintainer documentation. modiomod-changes.md modiomod-r28.zip modiomod-r29.zip

So, how do I make a PR, do I need to be added to a list of editors for the repo?

Ok, got it working!

I just got fed up trying to convince the AI that helots are not Durin's folk, so left it at "some of which clearly need to be improved"

Snow Red and the Seven Helots

OK, and now including a simple colour legend on top. Thanks @wowgetoffyourcellphone ! R28 is for Version 0.28 and R29 for the new SVN version 0.29 (nightly build). Looks like the internal mechanisms changed. There is also a little user and maintainer documentation. modiomod-documentation.md modiomod-r29.zip modiomod-r28.zip

How do I specify which one it should use when building? Actually, I think I figured that out...

@Ultimate Aurelian, just after having a very fast look at that: -"Shield: Hoplon": the term is not hoplon, but aspis (which you used somewhere else). -"Peripteros": this does not mean temple (that's naós*), it's an architectural style. -"Epiteíchisma": this is not any fortification, but one built in enemy territory**. -"Only rams": some guys with a log? The first recorded Greek battering ram is from 427 BC. *Are naós and naûs related? https://www.labrujulaverde.com/en/2026/02/is-a-greek-temple-actually-an-overturned-ship-a-new-theory-revolutionizes-the-origin-of-classical-architecture **That's why "epi" is used. Just fortification would be "teíchisma" (literally "walls", the whole "fort" could be called "phrourion", as in vanilla). You also have proteíchisma (what you build before your fortification, like a smaller wall or ditch) or hypoteíchisma (counter-walls).

Hmm I think I fixed that by using brew clang rather than apple clang for spidermonkey

testing some mechanics, to find a balance between a more numerous and strong legion vs fewer and less organized, and so far it's working!

But, it could just check what mods you currently have, and see if there is a newer version on modio. You could still have to agree to update