Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

In concept alone, it seems to be a good idea, but social mobility was extremely rare during the ancient times, as Sundiata has mentioned. Only a minority of residents of a nation actually were citizens, and citizens that were not nobles practically never became so except in egalitarian societies like Sparta (relative to other citizens since rights were the same regardless of social status with the exception of kings.). Next, the consumption of meat by lower classes was extremely rare. The predominant thing they would eat were grain products. Lastly, leadership was not solely based on wealth but more so on social status, and the means of reaching the governmental positions varied based on government type. In Athens, Sparta, Rome, and many other ancient states, mayors were nonexistent, instead having positions like Strategos, Ephor, and Consul respectively, and these functioned in a very different way.

Iarr

There is an online lexicon, including some basic vocabulary here: http://ancientroadpublications.com/Studies/AncientLanguage/Phoenician.pdf I'm fairly sure that it isn't quite the right dialect, but it could be a good starting point. All the words are unvocalised, making the reconstruction a bit hard, but Plautus' play Poenus apparently did have some Punic featured in it that is vocalised.

Are there issues with the current system? Yes, but the line between soldier and gatherer can still be more subtle than what DarcReaver argues. There are a few issues with the current system, some of which have already been mentioned: Citizen-soldiers can instantly react to an attack. They shouldn't. This would properly penalise a player that does not have adequate knowledge of what an opponent is doing while rewarding opportunistic raids. Citizen-soldiers are a broad generalisation for the roles of men in society. Most labour at least in the Greco-Roman world was done by slaves, which should be implemented in some way. It is questionable to have citizen-soldiers be able to mine resources. Furthermore, women are overly generalised. In most Greek and Roman societies, they mainly did housework, not collecting resources. There would be some exceptions such as maybe Spartan and Celtic women. Cavalry probably should not hunt. They represent the nobility, who would not be doing much personally to gather food.

As a similar point, I read that women were occasionally druids as well. While I can't remember the book's title, it seemed academically legitimate enough to cite. For those who are more familiar with druidism, I would appreciate your thoughts.

As one recommendation, add a depiction for temples of Serapis. Serapis was an important symbol of Ptolemies themselves. There are a few visual references to how they looked such this coin for an Alexandrian part. While this doesn't need to be a standard replacement, I think that having it as a variant or even just and map editor prop would be good. .

I would personally beg to differ on the lack of presence of two-handed swords. Hallstatt and La Tène sword blades were unusually long, and although what is left of the hilts seems generally too short to accommodate two hands, this could be the result of them using degradable materials for the rest. Hallstatt swords are even identified as longswords, which is usually an identifier for swords meant to be used with two hands. Granted, I will admit that I was not able to access sources that could provide decisive evidence for either side and I am by no means an expert on Celtic weaponry. Furthermore, the reason that these swords are called longswords may be simply to contrast with much of the shorter blades, making the issue no easier to exactly resolve. That all said, I can't really say that you're wrong, Geneva. The subject just seems slightly more complex than you depict it. Would you mind clarifying your objections?

There's no reason to doubt that he was a proper Roman citizen given his social standing. Technically the Turks had not arrived, making that argument a little difficult to make. What is better to know about Santa is that he had a tendency to punch heretics (i.e. the council of Nicaea).

I think that there are a couple things to be gleaned from the opening post. First, it seems that the team of fork can commit changes more easily than through WFG, leading to bugs and other issues being fixed. Since these three presumably trust each other well, they are able to work uninhibited, making the overall pace of development considerably faster it seems. While these seem to be minor, they are quality of life improvements by far that need to happen at some stage. In honesty, I along with others am intrigued by how substantially the gameplay will change though.

That's fair. My point wasn't to declare that there were moral absolutes even if I do believe in them. The point was to establish that a deontological ethical system generally starts with a presupposition like that. The question of why there are such wildly different value systems if there are moral absolutes that deontological ethics bases itself around is fair, but I think that the point that would be the easiest explanation is that to a deontologist, there is a perfect set of rules to follow to live a moral life. Not everyone or potentially even anyone fully understands them or can articulate them. As a secondary point, although I can assume that you are generalising about the people who do or do not believe in moral absolutes, it stands to reason that even an atheist might believe in them. Why they would, I'm not sure. What I do find interesting is that by and large, you don't seem to argue for any specific universal morals, which seems sensible since as far as I gather, conscience comes from personal experience in your opinion. What use then, is there in attempting to use moral 'truths' if they are simply a result of the human mind? Humans are fallible and any similarity could be considered mere coincidence It seems better to use logical reasoning with utilitarian ethics to create coherent system that could potentially be applied to any context regardless of socio-cultural differences.

So I guess there are a few questions regarding this. Are there any substantial design differences in mind? How does the fork AD team hope to create a different culture from the WFG team to ensure that both individual voices are relevant while also pushing towards a common goal?

Perhaps I have been framing the concepts from the wrong starting point. Yes, deontological ethics tends to derive itself from various codes, but where do those codes come from? In most cases, the deontological ethicist would argue that it is from something similar Plato's ideas about forms. The codes are a written form of various moral truths that exist, just as mathematical proofs represent various natural constants that exist. ...And here's something else.

I would say that while you do give valid points, but in my opinion the issue of a deontological system is usually due to flawed interpretations of the practitioner, not necessarily contradictions inherent to the moral code. A good example would be in Isaac Asimov's Robot series, where the three robotic laws can take wildly different interpretations. Are they flawed because of that? The only way to fully critique the merits of a deontological ethical system is to examine the actions of someone who followed one perfectly, which is admittedly difficult to do. Luther and Calvin, while they could be called "good" men, were more than willing to admit their own faults.

Most people broadly believe the same values apart from a few differences, but what is the reason that something is good is that way? Typically there two major sides to the idea: deontological and utilitarian. In summary these are the general assumptions. Deontological: Things are good simply because they inherently are. (Example: You should not steal. Thus, stealing to feed one's family is unethical.) Utilitarian: Good things are defined by what benefits the most people the most. (Example: If you can save your family's lives by stealing, that theft is ethical.) Granted, they can be more nuanced than just this, but I find that these are good starting points. I personally lean towards a deontological view, but obviously that's just my own view. What are yours and why? Bear in mind, regardless of whether you might think one thing, the other, or not have any definitive stance, please be respectful of others and keep personal attacks to a minimum.

Simply because there were a lot of anti-Semitic aspects in 20th century (and generally throughout history) does not mean that the topic should not be mentioned. As there seems to be no racist comments, I only find that it does a disservice to the Khazars and Jews to actively not mention them just because of the controversies.

Currently it seems that territory is lacking in giving anything very meaningful to 0 A.D. Granted, I like the concept of territory and have no wish for it to be removed. It provides a sense of logistics to the game and makes players feel rewarded when they construct a fortress on their frontier. That said, for such a graphically obvious thing, it's strange that its function seems to only relate to buildings. I would personally suggest that the territorial borders play a larger role in the game to justify their presence. Being inside of home or allied territory could confer a benefit to units such as increased armour and movement speed. Being in neutral and enemy territory could provide movement penalties, and particular civilisations known for scorched earth tactics could possibly even make hostile units slowly lose health when standing in their territory. I particularly like this concept since it would make healers, extremely underused units, have more relevance to extended attacks. Mercenaries and potential unit types could actually have bonuses outside home territory. These are just a few ideas I came up with on the matter; I'd be interested to know what other thoughts people have.

@(-_-)That could potentially be the case, but it depends on where the spear hit and the type of armour used. All to often, in part due to the depictions of media, the effectiveness of armour is severely underplayed. As for whether the changes would be applicable to a non-battalion based combat system, it's certain that it wouldn't be as straightforward, but I think that the implementation would still be viable. Players would just have to think of their archer and javelin units as dealing out area of effect damage as opposed to them being extremely accurate snipers. Their purpose would be for doing things such as skirmishing and other things that are historically informed.

I'd honestly say that it's a pretty good game. To call it a mere Age of Empires clone is a disservice. It features diverse civilisations to make for engaging match-ups. The primary issue that I think has caused the backlash that has been in the community is because of misplaced advertising. They called it a spiritual successor of Age of Empires when in fact it was a multiplayer focussed game with only barebones features for singleplayer. Had they actually been transparent about the evident lack of singleplayer features from the very beginning, potentially stating that they would include those in subsequent updates, I think that the reception would have been less mixed. There is also the issue of bugs, but given the amount of major developers that release games in similar states, it seems fair to note that this oversight, while not excusable, is understandable within the context of modern publishing standards.

The title might be a bit misleading, but the point is to open discussion about the use of lambdas for Spartans (and Alphas for Athenians). I've read a fair amount of classical sources, and nome of them attest to the use of either letter for those cities. There is only one particular case in which Xenophon (if my memory serves me correctly) notes that soldiers of Sikyon were able to be identified by the sigmas on their shields. This, however, does not give any evidence for the presence of letters on other peoples' shields. Furthermore, I have never seen a piece of pottery depicting either letter on a shield. The only basis for these letters seem to be from secondary sources. Granted, I am only pointing out that I have found little evidence of the letters when of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, yet I do find the lack of evidence to be compelling. If anyone does have some source to counter my lack of findings, please do show me, but otherwise, I think that it would be much better to not use letter based textures for shields unless Sikyon is added to the game as a faction. On a separate note, while I was checking this, I noticed that there are no textures for braided hair of Spartans. Their hair being that way is mentioned on a number of occasions by Herodotus and Plutarch. As is, we are missing the chance to see the glorious sight of Spartan hair billowing through the wind, something that everyone deserves to see.

This isn't a suggestion or argument for any specific issue. Rather, it comes from thinking about the game's original design and how the current Alphas have diverged from it. For those not aware, there were initially six civilisations in 0 A.D: The Persians, Carthaginians, Hellenes, Romans, Celts, and Iberians. The Celts were eventually split into the Gauls and Britons while the Hellenes... kind of went crazy, going from just that one simple option to five: the Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians, Ptolemies, and Seluecids. The Iberians on the other hand have remained untouched when they could just as well be divided into the Celtiberians and the Lusitanians just to give an example. Why was this decision taken for the other cases and not for the Iberians? Granted, I don't mind the current civilisation lineup, but on principle, I think that it is a valid question to answer. Do you think that the Iberians should remain as one civilisation or not?

The portrait has a nice aesthetic, but her facial features seem too refined, especially when contrasting with her wounds. I would add wrinkles, and either have the makeup less clear or not there at all; her eyebrows also seem too uniform. She had already been through a lot before rebelling, and needless to say that after she was flogged and saw her daughters raped, I'm not sure if she would have bothered much with her looks. Then again, the art is stylised so maybe my criticisms are misplaced.

This is not based on one single game, although I have experienced the abuse of ranged units. Primarily, the issue is design related. With ranged units due to high accuracy, it is easy to reach a critical mass in which they can one-shot melee units. This makes it generally cost-effective to employ this kind of strategy even against units that are designed to counter them. Most of my experience seeing the impact of this issue comes from observing pro-games of Age of Kings, yet the principle still stands. Mainly this is can only be effectively done by a player that uses careful micro; when it is done, however, the impact is quite profound. As long as ranged units have a highly consistent accuracy at a long distance, this will persist, but if there is more randomness while still allowing the ranged units to deal some damage to any unit the stray projectile lands on. On the second point, heavy units should be able to shrug off arrow fire quite easily while javelins could get through a slight bit easier. These two should combine to make ranged units helpful yet not necessarily independent units that can help to soften up forces while the melee units do the majority of the work.

Just a few clarifications: When referring to the proportion of ranged units to melee units, this was in highly general terms. What I would consider broadly inaccurate was the point that one of the most effectual tactics in the game currently is to field forces of primarily ranged units and only a few if any melee units as meatshields. I did not say that armies of this kind did not exist and were not capable of being used to devastating effect, but the instances seem rare. In fact, I even pointed towards the Battle of Sphacteria, a textbook example of the capabilities of peltasts. When citing the statistic from wikipedia, I was and am aware of the website's reliability or lack thereof and mainly wished to provide a small example, and my noting that it was from wikipedia was mainly to be used as a disclaimer. In hindsight, I could have pointed out the soldiers present on the Sicilian Expedition listed by Thucydides in Book VI, but the fact of the matter is that it is only one statistic and would do little to decisively prove one point, just as noting exceptions to a general rule does not disprove it. My intention is to provide definitive evidence for a generalisation, that's a lot of work. As a final point, the reasons for the changes I have proposed are primarily to make ranged units function as they seem to have been in most forms of ancient warfare: support of melee infantry units. In some cases of military traditions, I think that it is within reason to make them less affected by these aspects, but broadly speaking, these would affect all ranged units to some degree.

@Genava55 Generally the Total War style of combat, minus morale has been the goal at the very outset of the game to my understanding. @NescioFair enough. I didn't expect it to convince you. The archer estimate was interestingly enough not cited, but since it was listed under a chart depicting modern estimates of the Persian army's size, it seems to be a combination of synthesising Arrian and a number of modern sources such as Delbrück. Your guess is as good if not better than mine as to whether that is a fair idea. What I will say is that the Persian army was of course a multiethnic conglomerate of peoples and that even if the Sparabara formation was that way, that might be difficult to generalise for the entirety of the force (Not that you are.). The number of helots to Spartans is no surprise given the number of helots that populated Sparta in general. All that said, it's rather difficult to find exhaustive comparisons, and certainly there would be artefacts. Whether the statistics support my presuppositions or another's is hard to say. What I would point out is that regardless of the ratios, ranged units still play the decisive role in the game, and although there were definite cases of battles in which light soldiers played an important part such as the Battle of Sphateria, the majority of fights seem to have been won by melee combat generally speaking. Granted, I mainly am considering this from a Western perspective, yet then again that is the primary focus of the game.

How is it difficult? The changes suggested here are relatively simple and at least in my opinion make the gameplay more immersive. Granted, the above ideas probably are not perfect, yet they would seem to improve upon the current game-state.