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Lion.Kanzen

Balancing Advisors
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Everything posted by Lion.Kanzen

  1. Moddb or indieDB Website users need answers. I like read people there... is a good feedback. I have the feeling that we have left the site alone since September.
  2. I dont like old 0 A.D may be A6 Fortuna my first version. https://www.indiedb.com/games/0-ad/videos/0-ad-alpha-5-preview
  3. Animation: Scaffolding appears and disappears as you build.
  4. you have the meshe (3D art) of this; I wnt make a version of this.(optional)
  5. i will make/add: doors(2) props (I'm not sure now) a base(wodeen) the structure above...
  6. @AIEND I will implement that Huns do not need houses and houses serve otherwise( other way) maybe as bonus for combat(defending your children will have more psychological impact in warrior's mind). --- the Huns bonus of starting at maximum population.(AOE II).
  7. it would be nice to include mercenaries from DE to EA.
  8. Bronze censers were cast very early, as evidenced by those of the Zhou period (1046-256 BC). Their forms were often inspired by cosmological themes. In early Taoist rituals, the fumes and odors of censers produced mystical exaltation and contributed to well-being. Under the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), perforated golden vessels with handles were carried in the hand to accompany a votive offering. In Japan, the censer (kōdan) - a vessel with a perforated lid and carried on chains - was used in Buddhist and Shintō rituals. pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru, incense burners were made of terra-cotta and sometimes of gold. The staves of martial banners or standards are often surmounted by the figure of a god, which is frequently in its animal form. Such effigies, used by the Indo-Iranians, the Romans, the Germanic tribes, the Celts, and other ancient peoples, were probably meant to ensure the presence of the god among the armies. .Shields, such as the Greek gorgonōtos (“Gorgon-headed”), were also often decorated with sacred figures, emblems, and symbolic themes, particularly in post-Gupta (4th-century-CE) India, as seen in the 6th-century findings from the frescoes of Ajanta. In the Mycenaean civilization (15th–12th centuries BCE) of ancient Greece, shields were worshipped in front of the temple, and at Knossos (on Crete) votive offerings were made of clay and ivory in the form of shields. The famous ancilia (“figure of eight” shields) of Rome were kept by the Fratres Arvales (a college of priests) and used by the Salii (Leapers), or warrior-priests, for their semiannual dances (in March and October) honouring the god Mars. in ancient Italy, a priesthood usually associated with the worship of Mars, the god of war. Chapters of the priesthood existed in Rome and in other central Italian cities. The Salii, who were all born patricians, were usually young men with both parents living. Their resignation from the priesthood was common on the assumption of high political office, and vacancies were filled by co-option (vote of the Salii). The priests wore the archaic Roman war dress: a conical helmet and a short, red military cloak covering a bronze breastplate. They carried the figure-eight shield (ancile) and the old-fashioned long spear. The chief Salii festivals were held at the opening (March) and closing (October) of the summer campaigning season. Relics Relics of saints, founders of religions, and other religious personages, which are often objects of worship or veneration, generally consist of all or part of the skeleton (such as the skull, hand, finger, foot, or tooth), a piece or lock of hair, a fingernail, or garments or fragments of clothing. Such veneration is nearly universal, as is the production of reliquaries, or shrines that contain relics. The size, form, and materials of reliquaries vary greatly and often depend on the nature of the relic being exhibited. They may be fixed but are generally portable so that they can be carried in processions or on pilgrimages. Wood, bone, ivory, quartz, glass, semiprecious stones, and metals such as gold, silver, bronze, and copper are frequently used materials, and chasing (embossing), enamelwork, and precious stones often ornament reliquaries. They vary considerably in form; like the Tibetan reliquaries, or ga’u, they may be constructed on a small scale to look like churches, chapels, towers, stupas, or sarcophagi, but sometimes they assume the form of the relic, such as in the form of anthropomorphic statues, busts, hands, feet, and other forms. Occasionally, as in Tantrism and Tibetan Buddhism, the bones of holy persons are used to make ritual musical instruments—flutes, horns (rkang-gling), and drums (ḍamaru)—or objects such as the ritual scoop made of a skull cup (thodkhrag) and a long iron handle encrusted with silver. Relic worship was canonically established in Buddhism from its earliest days. Tradition (Mahaparinibbana Sutta) states that the cremated remains of the Buddha (d. c. 483 BC) were distributed equally among eight Indian tribes in response to a demand for his relics. Commemorative mounds (stupas) were built over these relics, over the vessel from which the bones were distributed, and over the collective ashes of the funeral pyre. The emperor Ashoka (3rd century BC) is said to have redistributed some of the relics among the innumerable stupas he had erected. Such shrines became important and popular centres of pilgrimage. According to legend, seven bones (the four canine teeth, the two collarbones, and the frontal bone) were exempted from the primary distribution, and these have been the object of widespread devotion, with a number of shrines dedicated to them throughout Asia. Most famous of these sarira (“corporeal relics”) is the left canine tooth, honoured at the Temple of the Tooth at Kandy, Sri Lanka. Other shrines. suman, in African religions, and particularly among the Akan people, a votary object that is used as a talisman or charm because of its perceived spiritual energy. A suman might be used to fend off evil spirits, to create protection around the defenseless, or to empower people to achieve something that they did not know they were capable of.... The urn is placed in the grave, as in ancient Assyria and elsewhere, on a bronze or terra-cotta support (usually an armchair) and lowered into a large jug, as among the Etruscans, or in the niches of the cineraria (places containing ashes of cremated bodies), columbaria (vaults containing urns of cremated bodies), or catacombs, as in Etruria (in Italy), Greece, and Rome. Among the Zapotec of Mexico, the ceramic urn was placed in the niches of cells, the mogotes, made beneath hills set aside for the purpose, a practice also observed by the Miskito people of Nicaragua. Coffins are sometimes carved or painted, and some are made from hollowed-out tree trunks. Some coffins are modeled according to the human form, such as the colourful wooden coffins of pre-Hellenistic Egypt or the Chinese coffins covered with jade mosaic of the 2nd-century-BCE Han dynasty. The majority, however, are oblong and made of wood; in ancient Greece, coffins were made of cypress. Tibetan coffins (ro-sgam) and Japanese Buddhist and Shintō coffins, however, are cubical, with the corpse placed in a sitting or crouching position. Among certain coastal peoples—e.g., the Vikings—the deceased is either buried in his boat or put out to sea and cremated with it. Sarcophagi—used in many civilizations—were made of various materials: terra-cotta in Etruria, Greece, southern India prior to the 2nd century BCE, and Japan; wood and stone in Japan; and marble in late Rome and in the Christian world. Objects used in sacrifices and in sacred meals The most elementary type of site in which a sacrifice is performed is simply a massive rock or a hilltop, with no accoutrements. Menhirs (e.g., the Hebrew matzeva, a conical stela rubbed with oil at the top), megaliths, and sacrificial posts (e.g., the Vedic yupa) are also quite rudimentary. Altars, properly speaking, are set up either on sacrificial sites or in temples and may be either hollowed out in the earth or raised or constructed. Both of these categories are unknown in Africa and South America, where sacrifices are made on the ground or on a bed of sand. The first category includes the vedi (“altar”) of Vedic rites, trenches, pits, and ditches dug in the earth. Some of the hollowed-out sites are used for a sacrificial fire and some for collecting victims’ blood, as in Greece, pre-Sāsānid Iran, and pre-Islamic Arabia. The altar is most often a table with one, three, four, or more legs. Sacrificial weapons, like the utensils, vary according to the nature of the sacrifice. The most common weapon is the knife, which is used to slit the throat of the human or animal victim, a practice observed, for example, by Semites, Muslims, and ancient Greeks. Sometimes the knife is cast into the sea after use. An ax involved in the Athenian Bouphonia (“Ox-Slaughtering Festival”) was carried to the tribunal of the Prytaneum (the town hall, containing a community altar or hearth), inspected, and then submerged in the same way. Sometimes a poniard or dagger was used, such as in the Mithraic sacrifice of a bull; a ritual knife (khadga) shaped like a sickle, with the outer edge forming the cutting edge, is used in the sacrifice of black goats to Kali (a Hindu goddess who is the consort of Shiva) in Kolkata (Calcutta). In the great imperial sacrifice of the horse (ashvamedha) of Vedic India, a gold-ornamented knife was used to sacrifice the horse, but knives of copper and iron were used for other animals. In the sacrificial rites of some contemporary peoples, a sword, which varies in size and form, generally is used. In ancient Iran the victim was slaughtered with a log or pestle. In all sacrificial rites it should be noted that a flow of blood is always necessary, even when the victim is clubbed. Conclusion Ceremonial and ritual objects in past times have held and still hold, in many cases, a very important place in the civilizations of the world. From prehistoric times, they have played an integral part in the evolution of the various civilizations on two levels: (1) on the level of rites and rituals practiced in everyday life and (2) on the level of the more solemn and rare cultic and communal rites. From a merely functional standpoint, such objects serve sacred or symbolic purposes; their construction, forms, dimensions, and styles have been, from earliest times, codified. Some have been so closely associated with the divine or the sacred that they have been considered either a symbolic manifestation of the deity or an actual manifestation of the deity itself. In general, however, they lose in the course of time this particularistic characteristic. In this process, they generally survive only in a formal sense and thus henceforth are devoid of any sacred power.
  9. Places of worship and sacrifice Throughout history there is evidence of worship at natural sites as well as at sites constructed for ritualistic purposes. In the protohistory and perhaps the prehistory of most ancient civilizations, people venerated trees, stones, bodies of water, and other natural objects, which gradually became the objects of established cults and which often were included, in some form, as aspects of later official ritual. Initially, the objects of this frequently occurring process were sacred trees considered to be the habitats of spirits or gods, such as in Vedic, Brahmanic, and Buddhist India or pre-Islamic Arabia; sacred stones, such as fragments of meteorites, menhirs (upright stones), and rocks—for example, the Black Stone of Mecca in the Kaʿbah; flowing waters, natural lakes, and sacred and purifying rivers, such as the Ganges; crossroads and junctions, such as the tirtha (river fords and, by extension, sacred spots) in India; and other such objects or places of nature. According to Hesiod, an 8th-century-BCE Greek writer, such objects of nature were venerated in the popular piety of the rustic people of Greece in his time. The association on the same site of four natural elements (mountain, tree, stone, and water) is supposed to constitute a sacred whole (a quarternity of perfection), a sacred landscape or “geography” similar to the world of the gods. Such sites, in many civilizations, were the initial points of departure for pilgrimages or for the establishment of places of worship. In some instances the natural sacred places were gradually adapted for religious use (e.g., the oracle at Delphi, in Greece), but in others the earlier natural sites were artificially recreated by using man-made symbolic equivalents. An artificial or natural hill, such as a barrow, mound, or acropolis (elevated citadel), often served as a base for the temple, but in many instances the temple itself has been an architectural representation of the mountain, as were the bamot (“high places,” usually constructed with stones) of the ancient Hebrews, the ziggurats (tower temples) of the ancient Babylonians, and the pyramidal temples of Cambodia, Java, and pre-Columbian Mexico. A branchless tree has often been transformed into a cultic object: a sacrificial post, such as the Vedic yupa; the central pole of a nomadic tent in Siberia and Central Asia, the yurt (ger), or initiation hut; or a parasol shaft (chattravali) in the Buddhist stupas (buildings) and the Japanese and Chinese pagodas. If represented in stone, the tree evolved into a column gnomon (a perpendicular shaft), such as the Buddhist lat, the sacred pillar (matzeva) of the ancient Hebrews, or the obelisk of pre-Hellenistic Egypt (before the 4th century BCE, especially from the 3rd millennium to the early 1st millennium BCE). Stone, transformed into an altar, has been used either to support or to seat the image or symbol of the deity or to receive sacrifices, burnt offerings, plant offerings, or aromatic perfumes. Water almost always plays an important role in or near sacred places, because to it is generally ascribed a power that is purifying or even curative or miraculous. The whole assemblage of actual or symbolic mountains, trees, stone, and water is usually arranged architecturally within an enclosed space. An example of this arrangement is the typical Christian church, with its raised chancel (the mountain), the cross or crucifix (the tree), the altar (usually stone, but sometimes wood), and the baptismal font or tank (water). The most-sacred furnishings of temples are those most closely related to altars, such as the Jewish ark of the Law (Torah), or aron ha-qodesh, in the synagogues, which is made in the image of Moses’ Ark of the Covenant, and the tabernacle (the receptacle containing the consecrated bread and wine) of Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The ark, which is portable, is a kind of chest (aron) with a cover (kapporet), and the tabernacle, made of wood, metal, or stone, is a locked chest. On the fire altars of Zoroastrianism (a religion founded by the Iranian prophet Zoroaster [flourished before 6th century BCE]) is a sacred metal urn (ātash-dān) containing the eternal fire, ashes, and aromatic substances. They are waved before the iconostasis during the Eucharist in the divine liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and they also are placed on either side of the papal chair in solemn processions. The parasol, or umbrella, is generally a symbol of the vault of heaven, as in India and China; the domes of stupas are often surmounted by parasols (chattras). In its symbolic and protective role, the umbrella can be compared to the baldachin (canopy) in many of its forms. Whether it covers the altar, the statue or symbol of a deity, or even the imperial throne—as in Zoroastrian Iran during the Sāsānian period (3rd–7th centuries) and in Orthodox Byzantium (during the 4th–15th centuries. Torches have been used throughout history: in ancient Assyria and Babylonia they were used to carry a newly consecrated fire from torch to torch throughout the city three times a month; in ancient Rome they were sometimes placed in a hollow clay or metal shaft; and in the ancient Hebraic religion a lamp (ner) filled with sacred oil was used in the worship of the god Yahweh.
  10. Sacred Artifacts. Throughout the history of religions and cultures, objects used in cults, rituals, and sacred ceremonies have almost always been of both utilitarian and symbolic natures. Ceremonial and ritualistic objects have been utilized as a means for establishing or maintaining communication between the sacred (the transcendent, or supernatural, realm) and the profane (the realm of time, space, and cause and effect). On occasion, such objects have been used to compel the sacred (or divine) realm to act or react in a way that is favourable to the participants of the ceremonies or to the persons or activities with which such rituals are concerned, or to prevent the transcendent realm from harming or endangering them. These objects thus can be mediatory devices to contact the divine world, as, for example, the drums of shamans (religious personages with healing and psychic-transformation powers). Conversely, they can be mediatory devices used by a god or other supernatural being to relate to humans in the profane realm. They may also be used to ensure that a chief or sovereign of a tribe or nation achieves, and is recognized to have, the status of divinity in cultic or community ceremonies. Statues and painted images occur most frequently in religious iconography, as noted above. These are often viewed as the permanent embodiments of the deities they represent, whether they are located in sacred places of religious communities, such as temples, shrines, or chapels, or on domestic altars, which contain statues or icons of the divinities of prosperity and fertility, mother goddesses, household gods, saints, relics, the tablet of the ancestors in ancient China, and other similar domestic cult objects. Many household cult objects are made from clay or terra-cotta and are sometimes multicoloured. The material of which major cult objects are composed is often explicitly defined and assumes a certain importance. If the statue is fashioned in wood, the choice of the wood (acacia, sandal, or any other) is symbolically important because it is considered auspicious. By the same token, the choice of stone is likewise important, depending on the region. If metal is chosen, it is one that is deemed precious (e.g., golden statues bring prosperity). In the case of bronze statues and other cult objects, the composition is carefully defined and often corresponds to alloys to which symbolic values are attached. In addition to a proper and distinct form and material, the technique of fabricating and the procedural patterns of composing such objects are controlled by traditional rules that have become established rituals in many religions—sophisticated and not. In the production of statues in human or animal form, the last procedure is often the “opening the eyes” (i.e., the painting of the eyes of a statue of a deity or inserting gold in them by an officiating priest during the installation of the statue [pratishtha] in the sanctuary, along with the reciting of appropriate prayers that make the statue “living” and “real”), particularly in Brahmanic India and Chinese-influenced areas (see also religious symbolism and iconography). https://www.britannica.com/topic/ceremonial-object
  11. Sacred sites is a mode called capture flag, similar to controlling the ruins of AoE I.
  12. For now the bad thing about DE is the Ai , it doesn't know how to play the game. The other thing is the random maps. ------+-+ It would be good if the artifacts are inside the Shrines, that the Shrines are captured by priests or heroes(the heroes of antiquity were considered sons of the gods).(for the same reason they had the right to reign.)
  13. Sacret sites. and in SVN would they be available for A28 SVN?
  14. That dirt texture is our game? It's coming! it's coming...
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