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In older 0ad Versions Civilisations had more differentiations. Then some releases ago there was done a lot of work to make them more balanced. I think there were reasons for that. Altough I am happy that in the two latest realeases there were new differentiations to make the game more interesting. At the moment I rate Athenians highest especially in no Champ-Cav-Games. Although in early game phase I think gauls is strongest. If you manage to boom in late game I think Mauaries are underrated. But if you have to fight an army of 50 elephants mele and ranged..... I think there should be limitations for that heavy units. When you face 20 rams or catapults its also gg, at least if there is a minimum companion army on their side. Maybe you are able to smash the first fiew of them but then everything gets wiped out. Persians and Han can are also very strong if you manage to built a large cavallery.

@Sebastian.ramirez

Personally I prefer not presuming the etymology of those tribal names. It is easier to interpret the personal names as a reference to their tribes.

Empire phase could be called this https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/rīkiją Interesting post from Imperator: Rome forums: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/furor-teutonicus-archaeology-and-tribes-of-the-ancient-germanics.1161206/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347859019_Cimbri_and_Teutoni this article proposes an interesting etymology for the name of those tribes. I'm not sure it's really a composite word (Sometimes the source mention just Cimbri or just Teutones); but the kumƀrii̯a etymology might be plausible. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/lugiz It's the word for lie, although probably coincidence (i think name of the lugii might be celtic in origin).

How you want. I wouldn't mind many PRs if they're small and managable. Feel free to ping me in the PR(s) on Gitea. This is essentially what I meant to say with "their role was unclear", which admittedly was not the best choice of words, though. If I remember correctly, there even is a record where it kinda sounds like they were fighting as cavalry. There has always been debate on whether the SpecificNames ("native" names) always need to be a direct translation of GenericNames (English names). My personal take is that they don't have to, I wouldn't mind (and actually prefer) "Prodromos (Cavalry Javelineer)". The word-by-word translation (like Hippakontistēs here) can be in many cases straightforward, but a bit boring. If there is a more historically interesting and relevant term unique to that civ, I'd use that instead, even if describes a broader group of people/soldiers. Again, a unit can represent more than just the soldiers equipped in the exact same way. One idea floating around is to in addition to the SpecificName and GenericName introduce a "ClassName". Then we could use "Prodromos" as the SpecificName, "Scout" as the GenericName and keep "Cavalry Javelineer" as the ClassName. This would be cool to have for other units too. I'm aware. My point was that the generality isn't a bad thing.

Thanks the bots for the up. I missed that. Who won this priceless prize in the end?

@guerringuerrin thanks! Although this part was easy, Part III has been another matter summarising around 18 pages of notes... Although I'm not coding anything, it's meant to historically improve vanilla and inspire other mods with whatever is too much

I strongly recommend the terms I used, I can copy-paste lots of quotes from books using them if needed Hopefully I'll hear more about those! @Grautvornix, maybe a better idea regarding a champion ship and engine restriction: they cannot be garrisoned, and they cost more population. They are assumed to be fully garrisoned always, exactly because they are always meant for top performance (EDIT: although not all engines can be garrisoned... but hopefully champion versions for those can be avoided).

A lot of work here, @Thalatta! I hope you can pull it off. If you have any problems compiling, or if you need help with anything else, we're here.

I was thinking of changing the basic-> advanced -> elite // champion nomenclature in Delenda Est to something like what you propose, but haven't gotten around to it. I'm quite deeply obsessed in my current writing project at the moment (you'd love it, its subject is the Greco-Persian Wars), but it's on my todo list. The only issue--and it's a big one--is that the current nomenclature is quite embedded into the inner workings of the templates and art. Not impossible to change by any means, just a nice little project on its own. For instance, think of all the actor file names ending in _b, _a, _e, _c. I enjoy tackling projects like that, but I'll only do it if the crew here deems it desirable. Not gonna put all that work into a PR which will languish along the bank of the River Styx. Another one I want to tackle is the Civic Center nomenclature, which is currently quite inconsistent. That's a whole other PR.

@Vantha I guess I'll make a big PR of names, not to spam with too many PRs. Regarding Ekdromoi and Prodromoi, as mentioned, they are roles, but: -You state there that "the Skiritai's role in battle still unclear to this day. It's not proven they fought as Ekdromoi", but Thucydides in his Peloponnesian War states "Agis afraid of his left being surrounded, and thinking that the Mantineans outflanked it too far, ordered the Sciritae and Brasideans to move out from their place in the ranks and make the line even with the Mantineans". This "move out" and "making the line even" sounds, at least to me, extremely similar to Xenophon's "maintaining a front level with the sallying troops" I previously quoted, with "sallying troops" being what's translated from the ekdromoi word he uses. This is not to say that the Sciritae were in that role always. -The game does have the unit Prodromos (Cavalry Javelineer), for the Athenians at least, but that's clearly not the correct translation. I was going to propose in Part II either Prodromos (Scout) or Hippakontistēs (Cavalry Javelineer). I prefer the second one, people would realise it's what makes sense to be used as a scout. Regarding psilos, I have to disagree, considering I quoted from five different books precisely to show the generality of the term, with Sekunda even stating for certain context that likely "it can be taken to mean non-combatant 'attendants'". Regarding "Athenian slingers for instance are only slingers for gameplay reasons", I guessed this could be a reason (although I was hoping it was random!), and this is the kind of explanation I'd like to hear from people that know since I have no idea, because it's unfortunate that things end being the other way around than explicitly attested , although if gameplay reasons are too strong I do see the difficulty in adjusting everything else for this.

Exactly, that's one of the secrets of Athenian ships speed: rowers from the thetes (lowest citizen class) training all their life to get a place as oarsmen. Champions are supposed to be the full-time troops, the elite. But it's also about the machines themselves, strict specifications is what made certain triremes fast, and the best were given a top rating (coming in Part II). I'm more inclined to give them restrictions (like organic champions). I mentioned going back to the Dock or Arsenal because specialised tools and materials would be needed to properly repair these fine-tuned machines. As you say, this would be more accurate for ships than for siege engines. For engines there were "depots" back in their city-states: the arsenals (there are surviving storage lists). One cannot really build most catapults in the field, they are built in workshops, transported by parts, and assembled close to where they are going to be used. Smaller engines would then need proper replacement parts, and while armies would be carrying them, one can also think they'd eventually run out of them (and if close to one's territory, one can "emulate" proper supply lines by building an Arsenal there, which would just represent where the engineers are making the proper adjustments). Bigger engines were indeed built in situ, but they would be destroyed or abandoned (and/or salvaged, pending implementation), they should be extremely slow and make any further marching after repairs unviable (that is, I wasn't expecting players to return those all the way to an Arsenal from enemy territory in the first place). All this means that with imperfect but simple rules (same for ships and engines) one could end up emulating more realistic situations than expected. Hopefully

Great. Feel free to ping me then in the issue or assign it to me. Or even better, if plan you to do it more often in the future, make a PR yourself; changes like this can be made pretty easily, the unit names are defined in the template files in binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/units/. I could help you figure out the Gitea stuff. Regarding the Ekdromoi, I made this thread a few years ago: Regarding the Prodromoi, they are already present in the game, no? About the term "Psiloi", I don't think it's too general. There's always a balance to strike between making it perfectly accurate, but also interesting gameplay-wise. That's why we often chose the native name describing the people that a unit actually represents rather than what it ended up as in the game. The Athenian slingers for instance are only slingers for gameplay reasons, but they historically represent any skirmishers in general, including the ones that just threw rocks.

I'm on a forum a lot and I had miss both your posts still. I only dug into the issue when realizing the bug myself. Since games can have diplo turned off, there is a small chance this bug could have even made it to next release unnoticed even... This is a formal invitation to help on git by opening tickets when you encounter such bugs..

Looks like the latest SVn update solved this issue. Thank you very much!

Phantastic - it seems the latest SVN update solved this issue!

Just some very basic consideration (non historical of course): My first reaction was "Anorganic entities like ships or siege engines actually cannot learn, which is the basic conditions to move upwards on the elite training ladder", but the crews operating them can and these are in our case part of the virtual anorganic unit. Like, a good artillery or sailing/rowing crew can move quicker and aim and hit targets much better than newbies. Therefore it does make sense. I believe, auto repair (self-healing) is something that would realistically be feasible only ashore for ships, e.g. at a shipyard at best - and it does cost resources (wood and metal). For siege engines there were no depots, instead I guess they were built near the battlefield. So repair is done by other units.

Sure, I guess after I finish with the coming two parts for the Athenians I'll gather all my hopefully non-controversial naming improvements (and icon proposals?) and do that.

oh yes, how I love charging into town with my cavalry and killing a bunch of pregnant women.

Huh... I was kinda thinking maybe it could be implemented as a type of unit for Athens. Maybe I can try modding that and see how it goes.

Thanks for your concern . We've already resolved this.

Correct, except helots in vanilla have same stats as pretty much all other javelineer units which doesn't make as much sense to me and dont bother with @Arup He talks a lot, but wont ever try anything

Yes, for sure you would already have Perioeci hoplites, so it's ok if you leave the javelineers just as helots (like in vanilla!).