Thorfinn the Shallow Minded
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Posts posted by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded
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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.
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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.
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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Ranged units are currently designed in an ahistorical manner, encouraging players to field forces that are almost entirely ranged. In part, this is due to a number of issues.
1. Ranged units are accurate and typically faster than their melee counterparts, encouraging players to kite with them. This makes players micro their ranged units much like in starcraft. Since 0 A.D. does not wish to have this kind of gameplay, this should be addressed.
2. The proportion of ranged to melee units is historically inaccurate to my understanding. While I think that there should be the possibility of using skirmishing armies, these should have a proper place in the game based on historically informed unit compositions. Here is a general analysis of army compositions during 0 A.D.’s timeframe.
An article from wikipedia argues that Alexander the Great used 31,000 heavy infantry, 9,000 light infantry (ranged), and 7,000 cavalry in the battle of Gaugamela .
The opposing Persian side had only 1,500 archers in an army that numbered between 52,000 and 120,000.
These statistics are not extremely unusual, but they would be in the case of 0 A.D. Here are a few suggestions to address these problems.
1. Ranged units should be much more inaccurate, having the ability to hit targets they did not aim for, making it also possible to have friendly fire. In most cases with at least firearms, it has been common for soldiers to not even aim at a specific target in battle situations. Assuming that this was also the case before gunpowder, the game should attempt to emulate this. Missile trajectories should arc more, and accuracy should dramatically fall off as the distance increases between them and their targets. Highly experienced and champion units could perhaps do better, but these things should at least affect them in part.
2. Most heavy units, especially those with shields, which do a fantastic job of deflecting things like arrows, should be much more resistant to ranged attacks than they currently are. If directional armour is introduced, I think that the idea of them taking more damage from flanking missile attacks would be a nice option, yet for the most part, shields should play a much larger role in calculating defence against ranged attacks.These are just a few options for addressing what I find to be a problem, and I'd be open to suggestions.
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I wonder if increasing the footprint of trees is a good alternative for pathfinding. Map design already has far too few chokepoints in my opinion. For some light units, it might be interesting to allow them to just ignore the obstructions instead.
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@thankforpie I'm not sure if I am understanding you. The title of this topic refers to the flood being a traditional story, not necessarily arguing that it did or did not occur. While there is scientific and and historical evidence for a variety of stances, there is no definitive proof that it did not occur (Not that it is much easier to prove the other side of the argument.).
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@Nescio Okay. My bad with misunderstanding you. That makes a lot more sense. For a clarification on another point though, Hebrew does use word separators as early as the reign of King Hezekiah, evidenced by the Siloam inscription. While there are not many old copies of the Tanakh, examples such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, written using Paleo-Hebrew scripts, also can be seen to have word separators.
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I'd say the remarks made about Genesis 1 Genesis 2 being two separate stories seems plausible given the stylistic and thematic differences despite finding the differences easy enough to reconcile. The flood, on the other hand, being two separate stories merged together, seems to be a clumsier argument in my opinion. The closeness in the text of the "inconsistencies" makes the problems, if they were so, absurd if we are adhering to a documentary hypothesis since they are glaringly obvious to an editor. Admittedly, the only textual criticism I am informed about is New Testament related, yet I think that there are so glaring issues that probably would relate to the following case. First, work with religious texts tends towards conservative ends, attempting to harmonise the texts, making the idea of two stories being merged together implausible due to the so-called inconsistencies mentioned of the flood. Furthermore, it seems unlikely given the generally conservative nature of religious writers that they would mesh together two separate stories. A more likely case would be for there to be two accounts, mirroring the cases of Genesis 1 and 2.
Obviously, as I have not read much literature on textual criticism of the Torah, I'm sure that other people have made better arguments both for and against my position, but those were just a few thoughts on the recent comments.
By the way, I found the points about the Odyssey's structure to be fascinating.
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31 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Interesting that the other myths "confirm" the Bible's telling, instead of the other way around?
Hence the multiple meanings of "myth."
That explanation does have a good scientific framework. What makes the subject interesting to me personally is the comparative mythological aspects of the story/stories, and how despite the linguistic, cultural, and geographical differences, there are so many parallels worldwide. If this topic was more popular, I'd definitely have a prediction for the next Watch.Mojo top ten video.
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Most people have heard of the story of the flood. Water came down and wiped out most of humanity. This is most famously told in the Biblical narrative of Noah and the Ark. Interestingly, in many mythological traditions such as Norse, Greek, Sumerian, Chinese, and Native American just to name a few, there is a similar story. Obviously there are differences between them, yet it is fascinating that such a story is told on a global level. One of the more prominent explanations for this phenomenon is to argue that it confirms the Bible's story, but for those who would dismiss this, what do you think of the matter? Is it a coincidence and apologists who argue for the aforementioned statement are simply jumping conclusions?
This gets into somewhat controversial territory due to the religious nature of it, so please be respectful of course. :)
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Currently Themistocles only has a naval function, which does little justice to his impact on Athenian history. I'd suggest that he also have a bonus to wall build-time and cost. This would reflect how pivotal he was in giving the Athenians the breathing room to finish the long wall before the Spartans could stop them (For more information, read the opening of The History of the Peloponnesian War). This would make him more than just a go to in naval maps.
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The point I was making was not that things need to be totally balanced. Rather, I was arguing that each civilisation should have a means doing a specific strategy (e.g. turtling, booming, and rushing.). These do not need to be practised in the exact same way, yet it should be possible to do any of these options even if one might be easier to do for a specific civ.
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I wouldn't be too sure about that. The concept of convoys for a caravan implies that they are receiving some protection from soldiers. A better thing for this would be to have the trade carts be guarded and be able to fight back against would be attackers. This probably would be a bit much, making the simple addition of armour to be a fair abstraction. In summary, since any guard would have some amount of armour, it provides armour for the caravan directly.
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We also should also consider some of the technological uses of bamboo from this documentary footage.
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Just my two cents on the farms around Civic Centres. There were in history farming villages with centralised locations that could be comparable to the Civic Centre. I would personally argue that instead of limiting the placement of farms, have there be more variables such as fertile land (as already mentioned). Furthermore, I'd say that Civic Centres could be understood to have a different function. They could have an aura to encourage the building of other structures that would require the administration necessary to keep them running. In that way, the temples, markets, and blacksmiths would be in a location that makes sense while farms, though possible to place around Civic Centres, would be unideal due to the space they require.
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Actually Irish Gaelic is not categorised with Welsh in the same Celtic linguistic group. It is usually grouped more with languages such as Mannish, and Scots Gaelic as P-Celtic (If I am not mistaken.) while Welsh is placed alongside languages such as Cornish, Cumbric, and Breton. It's a pretty minuscule point, but a point nonetheless.
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Just my two cents on the pierce discussion. While spears do obviously have the same attack function as arrows, melee combat has enough nuances that I don't think that it qualifies for them to have the same type of attack. For that matter, the predominant way for a legionnaire to attack was by stabbing, but they don't get pierce attack. The basis for how easily units can defend against projectiles should mainly rest on the shield they use followed by their armour. If I were to calculate the ranged and melee armour of units, I would have a shield and armour value for them based on the type of shield and armour used. For melee attacks, the shield value would be halved and with melee attacks, the shield value would be the total amount for ranged attacks. Any attacks that get past the shield then make their way to the armour, which again detracts from the attack. If concepts like flanking are introduced on a unit to unit level, it could become even more nuanced.
Also, I think that the wall use in that way demonstrates that there should be a change in how they function. I would recommend making the turret aspect an upgrade to wall connectors. Prior to that point, ranged units would have to man them like walls for any effect.
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I think that one of the issues with the ideas you have for food is the complexity a mechanic like that adds to the game. Granted, I am not opposed to a similar concept, but the exact proposal you make seems to add a large amount of headaches to a player in the form of micromanagement, and given the fact that players only can do a certain number of actions per minute, this would force players to concern themselves with probably one of the more boring aspects of war. The fact that it would affect health so much makes the player have to tear attention away from what could be far more exciting. Granted, I could see some alternative options.
I'd say that a streamlined idea for representing logistics would be good; in the final iteration of the game, it is planned for there to be a bar on all units called 'stamina,' which can be used for running. As I see, units could recharge stamina fastest in their own and allied territory, recharge slowly in neutral, and don't in enemy by default. This could be mitigated by some of the options.
Regarding adding in options like flanking, I personally am for it. Granted, the pace of a single skirmish fight in 0 A.D. could be drastically shorter than those in Total War. The reason that 0 A.D. has not made a very good combat system yet is because the game is in alpha and not all the pieces are together to make the full experience.
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I guess one thing that hasn't been explored in this topic is potentially differentiating the train times of ranged units to melee. In Age of Kings, archers took 35 seconds to train to the militia's 25. While the exact numbers don't need to be the same. In the case of Delenda Est, maybe ranged infantry could have training times of 18 seconds. If we are referring to the training times I have proposed, ranged infantry citizen soldiers could have a training time of 25 seconds to the melee citizen soldier's 20. Obviously this would be helpful in making it harder to mass ranged infantry, but does it seem appropriate?
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At the moment, 0 A.D. has extremely fast training times. As far as I saw, women take 8 seconds to train. This is extremely fast, faster than the train times of most economic units in Starcraft II, which averages at 11.66 seconds. Given the fact that Starcraft is a fast-paced game, this number makes the general vision that 0 A.D. seems to strive for of being in many respects an homage to games like Age of Kings with modernised gameplay problematic. Age of Kings had a much slower training time for villagers, which was roughly 25 seconds for training time. Granted, Age of Kings is generally considered slow-paced by most standards, and Age of Mythology had the number practically halved for most civilisations, having villager equivalent train times be around 14 seconds. Nonetheless, it seems appropriate to at the minimum increase the training times of women to at least 12 seconds. I would personally say that 15 seems like a rounder number to choose.
Since Citizen foot-soldiers serve a similar role yet also have combat capabilities, their train time, currently set at 10 seconds for foot soldiers, should be increased. This number lies well ahead of the Starcraft II numbers of typical base infantry (Zealots, Marines, and Zerglings), which take an average of roughly 20 (27, 18, and 17 are their train times respectively.) seconds to train. I would personally advise trying to stick to the same number to at least match Starcraft's fast pace.
Horsemen in 0 A.D. have the number bumped up to 15 seconds. Since they still have an economic role, I would also say that the number should be at least 25, maybe 30 in the case of cavalry archers to make it difficult to mass them.
Infantry Champions lie around the a 20 second train time. This is pretty good, but I would say that, in order to match the numbers shown here, their time could probably be brought up to 25 seconds for good measure. I have not checked the times for cavalry champions or siege weapons, but I would advise taking a similar strategy for ascertaining what their training times should be.
In general, I think that changes like this will significantly help in making the game, which feels like it should be more slow-paced, at least match other titles, especially since structures such as barracks and houses can be economic unit producing factories, leading to a ridiculous snowball effect. I would personally say that houses should not be able to train women, but that should probably be a separate topic on its own. Anyways, I'd like to hear other people's opinions on the matter since I would say this is a generally unexplored aspect of 0 A.D.
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This may have been the case in later years, but during the time of Alexander's campaign, the foot companions generally did not wear things such as heavy metal cuirasses. Even for headwear, there was a tendency to just wear traditional Macedonian hats. That said, it is unlikely at least from that evidence alone that the hypaspists would have been more heavily armed given the already established roles they had in battle.
As for my two cents for the light/heavy dichotomy, I think that it seems a bit backwards to base the class a soldier might fall into due to tactics. Generally it seems that the strategies tend to naturally derive from the equipment provided. While it might be an anachronistic example, I would say that tanks are a possible analogy. Light and heavy in this context is directly related to armament and thereby determines how they should be used. While it could be said that training and deployment is a factor, I would not consider it the deciding one. In the context of legionnaires, such troops are not inherently heavy because there was the presence of auxiliary units to support the main blocks heavy infantry. Probably the best support for this argument of semantics is a quick glance at the adjectival use of 'light,' which in the case of militaries, relates to armaments, not tactics.
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You mention some fair points, yet I find that the first two seem to be speculation. I could be wrong, yet that seems to be what I see at least. Anyways, the point is not necessarily about whether they used the sarissa; I have not researched that topic heavily and could be misinformed (All that I do know is that a number of experts think that they would have used the hoplite spear). That said, the point is that at the moment is that some of the soldiers that were used for mobile operations are shown wearing rather cumbersome armour in game. Even if you take the camp of Tarn and those who have followed his arguments, I think that they would be in agreement with this notion.
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Why Just Iberians?
in General Discussion
Posted
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?