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https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/4aggzm/civilization-and-strategy-games-progress-delusion

According to Polybius, the hastati, principes, and triarii were all similarily equipped, and wore three c. 0.5 m long, upright, dark feathers on their helmets: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+6.23&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0233 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+6.23&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234

One ring to rule them all

I think that it would be fair to point out that the armour that the Metatron is referring to is post-Marian reform. The point being that soldiers at that time were provided with their own arms due to their being professionals. Pre-Marian legionnaires would have supplied themselves with helmets and the like, meaning that it would be unlikely that there was one single kind of way to identify a centurion.

One thing I need to agree on with the author though is his criticism of a uniform tech tree... Focusing on the specifics of each culture or civilization to derive specific and unique tech trees from that, is in my opinion a juicier way of visualizing different paths of progress for each civ. Some can be similar to each other, others can diverge wildly. Balance is always the main concern here, I guess, although just giving each tech a civ specific name would already add a more nuanced veneer to the tech tree.

The author seems to be critiquing Hegelianism, or Hegel's Philosophy of History, but doesn't mention him in the article, choosing to talk about Darwin and Spencer's Social Darwinism instead. Those are of course relevant as well but most of these games follow some sort of Hegelian principle more than anything (stages of history)... 19th and 20th century history narratives, both explicit and implicit are still ingrained in our education systems, media, popular culture and the very psyche of society itself, even today in the 21st century. These often erroneous narratives, which are often the result of systematic omissions of certain histories, and idealization of certain other histories, need to be actively addressed, even today, but the social studies crowd are making a hot mess out of it, trying to replace one simplistic narrative with another. Even some historians seem painfully ill equipped to address some of the longstanding biases in their respective fields. And others play this weird game, where instead of addressing the erroneous biases, they try to come up with "explanations" for why things are "the way they are", often based on a lack of knowledge on the subject matter at hand. Germs and Steel is perfect example of this. Rather than addressing the holes we collectively have in our historical understanding of the world, the author of that book tries to confirm our biases, but just provides different "explanations". The author of that vice article does something similar. He doesn't challenge our understanding of historical events, but tries to change the way we perceive them. He argues that we should abandon the idea that one civilization could be victorious over another, that history has no true victors, and that history is not about "competition between nations and/or races". I don't even know what to make of that conclusion, other than that it's poorly thought through, and not in the slightest based on the actual study of history, but rather some kind of misplaced socio-political statement. I wouldn't want to play his idea of a fun game.

Ew vice article

@Alexandermb, @Stan`, @Nescio, the topic of war elephants recently surfaced in the thread : ===[TASK]=== Animations Re-Export and Unit Meshes Fix I didn't want to muddle up the thread so I thought i'd start a more specific one. We were discussing whether the scales on the armor of Seleucid war elephants were turned upside down. I shared a page from a book on war elephants that stated that the Seleucids turned the scales on their elephant armor upside down for better protection against upward thrusts, but it didn't mention the original classical source. The same text also said that the Seleucids also switched to smaller numbers of African elephants in later years, because Indian elephants were becoming difficult to acquire. Again, the original source for this statement eludes us. But I did find something very, very interesting. It had been staring me in the face all this time, and I never noticed... The wikipedia page on the now extinct North African Elephant (Loxodonta Africana Pharaohensis) features an image of a fragmented Roman bronze statue of a war-elephant, currently in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich. It's an African war elephant with scales turned upside down! Now, I don't know if this piece is supposed to depict a Roman, Seleucid or even Ptolemaic or Carthaginian war elephant, but it does show an African elephant, probably the smaller North African type with the unique, aforementioned type of armor, so I just had to share it... Bonus: Historical reenactors using actual African forest elephants for their Punic troops. African forest elephants, though rare, aren't extinct (yet). They have the same stature as the North African Elephant. Note how "tiny" these elephants are compared to the enormous African Bush Elephant (and noticeably smaller than the Indian ones as well)... Alexander, you see your colored Phrygian helmets? Second bonus, very rare historical photographs of Africans riding African elephants (most of these also look like forest elephants): Third bonus, people riding full sized African Bush Elephants. I've always been told that this is impossible, so imagine my confusion when my sister came back from a trip in Zimbabwe, telling me she took a ride on the back of an African Bush Elephant. She did tell me they're difficult to control, and they mostly sort of go where they want to go, lol, but it is apparently possible to ride them. If you're patient enough... 4th Bonus Bush elephant choreography? Anno early 1900's? Looks like some kind of forgotten colonial project/experiment... Not sure... Not even sure where this is... 55580618_324172821782360_7280992477606051840_n.mp4

user1 @Hannibal_Barca @user1 Basiliskos (1301) left a rated match against me, MightyMike9 (1466) commands.txt

Hi there, i created a simple tropical island map - my first 0ad map and i want to share it with you. Start with a chicken farm and lots of fish. On the mountain in the middle you'll find metal and stone... and Gaia fighters! Enjoy! Marcus Caribbean Island(6).xml Caribbean Island(6).pmp

Added one earlier but forgot to include it in the screenshot

I don't really follow your critique of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sundiata. Simply speaking, the book explains the decisiveness of particular technological advancements that allowed for europeans to defeat significantly larger forces in battle and effectively subjugate empires that were sophisticated on their own right and then explains a lot of the factors required to develop such advancements. The topic is straightforward, and the author doesn't diverge. There were impressive advancements to be found in the Americas that are worth study, but those were largely unrelated to the thesis and were not addressed. How is this a problem concerning historiography is baffling to me.

Please be aware of that horizontal crest has been used by centurions, so common infantry should not use it.

No Lorica Musculata?

Those guys look pretty epic...

Vice... Yuck...

Of course! There are lots of very interesting in development mods and current ones!

Yes but we are trying new mods... Stanislas are making new mods... We can help him.

@wackyserious Yas! committ that.

Updated the mod started adding buildings for terrans (just the templates with placeholder art) but it's slooooow.

Sure, that's true... You know I'm just a dreamer that likes all the civs from Antiquity. Yayoi just look really charming, and few games ever depict this period of Japan. Han Chinese were of course the big boys of the East, but it's also nice to give them some local sparring partners, like Xiongnu and Yayoi... Yayoi were relatively isolated, but they did actually have contacts with the mainland, and there is evidence for trade, at least.

Of course I do. I promote the mods on my website. Terra Magna is one of the complementary pillars to 0 A.D. Trying to attract other preferences. The tastes cycle is completed with Starcraft and Warcraft style mods.

People are enthusiastic about Japan new faction. They ask when They will be ready to play.

A Greek theater is some kind easy to figure (actors playing a performance). Library is more difficult because the space of the building. A guy reading something.

Hi everyone! I would like to report UWND for quitting rated 1v1 games. My username in the game is ironbar.@user1@Hannibal_Barca commands.txt Hi everyone! I would like to report Insignis for quitting rated 1v1 games. My username in the game is ironbar.@user1@Hannibal_Barca commands.txt

Hi everyone! I would like to report King_Soly for quitting rated 1v1 games. My username in the game is ironbar.@user1@Hannibal_Barcacommands.txt

Weekly dose of YouTube 0ad

Actually it's the contrary. People playing with toasters urge us not to do it

Spanish OK I have google translate working and it did not mess it up. "Because in so little time they managed to create the most powerful empire of America obvious after Spanish (nor were they submitted as fast as the others), sorry for writing this in Spanish, my phone puts everything in Spanish: /" P.S. There is a new paper out on how the Inca got those perfect fit stone work. Machu Picchu, etc. They may have made a highly acidic grout that dissolved the rock in the joint and re precipitated it as the sheen below the joint. The blocks would have melted together like two ice blocks with a little salt between them. The mix was acidic mine water, organic matter and iron pyrites (fools gold). A basic sulphuric acid (vitriol) mix. Verification experiments are I believe planned. It would have been very dangerous to work with. http://www.academia.edu/37497925/On_the_reddish_glittery_mud_the_Inca_used_for_perfecting_their_stone_masonry

We have no lack of people who want to decide on gameplay as a whole. The gamedesign plans where one doesn't know which individuals will implement them, doesn't how they can be implemented, doesn't know when they will be implemented by the envisioned individuals are doomed to remain pipedreams. The plan usually put forward by gamedesign proposals is that someone invents a fun game concept, and then Wildfire Games is supposed to implement that. The reality is that Wildfire Games is not a company, doesn't have any employees. The people that have worked on 0 A.D. and pyrogenesis at a time, throughout the soon two decades of existence one way or another were countable on one or two hands. When they worked on it, they worked on it in their spare time. In contrast, some commercial companies that provide comparable "triple A" RTS games may spend millions on hundreds of employees. What a single person can accomplish in their free time is very small, in particular when every possible alternative proposal by players shall be taken into account. S, to be honest, what 0 A.D. needs is more people who are capable and available for years to work on 0 A.D as a whole, so that they can decide on 0 A.D. as a whole and then implement 0 A.D. as a whole. Gameplans that decide on 0 A.D. as a whole without being able to plan an implementation with our current technical C++/JS implementation is not able to estimate the amount of work that is needed for that plan, not able to demonstrate the feasibility of 'the whole'. So it should be I'm pointing this out because if we only get "someone who decides on gameplay as a whole" without the proof of concept, we might actually worsen the situation for 0 A.D. as a whole, because it removes the freedom of the contributors to plan what they will implement. They are degraded from the developer to the programmer. I do get that the point that is often brought about is that developers can keep adding random stuff if they didn't subscribe to a common vision. But it seems rather that this is due to the absence of experience with the game and existing game concepts (implemented and not implemented), rather than the lack of "a person who decides on the game as a whole". (Also notice that Wildfire Games as a whole should decide on 0 A.D. as a whole in an ideal world (i.e. no time and effort cost to gain knowledge and take decisions and no possibility of mistakes due to partial knowledge).) But that's reversed. If we didn't had to spend past and future years on defects (and too long or sometimes emotional discussions on minor details), we could instead spend (and have had spent) our time on implementing new features and mechanics and revisioning the game. Depends on whether "planned" means "scheduled" and what threshold one defines for "major", because we have several lifetimes of plans on trac issues, in the old design documents, in forum threads. And I guess everyone has desires and imagination of the potential 0 A.D. could become, but fails to develop them (both figuratively and literally) because of the reallife constraints (the time it takes to implement it). I can provide a recent example. From August 2017 to February 2018 I worked merely on fixing bugs of the rmgen codebase. There was no space for any imagination, because there were just defects in the code that consumed months to rework. While doing so I gained a lot more knowledge on the gamedesign background, what the authors of these maps and map library methods (Spahbod, matei, Mythos Ruler, FeXoR) had in mind (or at least published) at the time of authorship. After most of the defects were gone and after months of time to think about the essence of that codebase, I gained the freedom to envision and implement the Kushite mapscripts, 'as a whole'. Exchange the program folder worked on, and we get the same storyline that we would need for someone who will work on formations/batallions, or a history mode, or as in this thread, many news civs. I elaborated on this because (a) it has potential for damage if put into action as is (spending time and effort on possibly unrealizable project ideas), (b) the same is stated by others in other threads, (c) there are no hypotheticals or conditions in that statement. I agree. On topic, it would be great to have many more civs, but they should IMO be part of separate games that use the same pyrogenesis engine. Like the 0ad mod for civs between 500 bc and 0 ad, the 500ad mod for the civs between 0 and 500ad, and so forth. Then if someone wants to go bananas and do extremely ahistoric fights, they can launch the games as mods simultaneously. 0 A.D. has the claimed purpose to inform players of the history of each civilization. So there should be a historical campaign for each these civilizations that should be more fascinating visual entertainment than any movie or documentary while the player gains the knowledge without any efforts to blindly learn it, like in school. At least that's what I would spend my time on before spending equal amount of time adding more civs. (Though I still think that the celtic tribes that aren't britons and aren't gauls, north of rome are missing if we want to implement the early history of rome in a campaign.)

I'll contact BBC next time.