Aldandil

Gauls, Britons, Iberians, jungles, and deserts are already in the game.

I don't like the name Cro-Magnon for them, but Prehistoric Peoples is too broad and could include everything from non-literate bronze-age and iron-age cultures to Australopithecus, depending on what one considers to be "People." Stone Age Peoples is a little less ambiguous though has many of the same problems, but may be your best option. That or Lithic Peoples. I don't know what you mean by a subjective word like "primitive," but I can tell you what weapons technologies are known from archaeology. Which units were you thinking of banning for the Cro-Magnons? They shouldn't have any siege units for the most part, except whatever is necessary for balance. 20,0000-150,000 bc: First Homo sapiens evolve from Homo heidelbergensis. At this time the existing technologies were: hafted stone and wood tools and weapons, eating meat and shellfish, creation of fire and cooking food, wooden spears, boats, burial of the dead, building light shelters, paving wet floors with stones, and making leather. (This gives you infantry spear, and probably hide shields.) 130,000-115,000 bc: quern/metate (stones used to grind wild grain), eating fish 116,000 bc : ochre pigment crayons 90,000-75,000 bc: beads 75,000 bc: bone and antler tools 70,000 bc: bone awl (implies or at least allows sewing clothes) 70,000 bc: maybe ceramics 70,000-60,000 bc: microlith technology 32,000 bc: atlatl, sewing needle, cave painting, carvings (infantry javelin/atlatl) 32,000-28,000 bc: trade networks, prismatic blades, basket weaving 28,000 bc: textiles, ceramic figurines, fertile woman figures, nets, elaborate funerals, semi-sedentism (more substantial buildings) 28,000-12,800 bc: herbal medicine, archery, barbed points, harpoons, pressure-flaking (healer, infantry archer) 15,000 bc: built permanent houses, frozen food storage (underground in permafrost) (quite substantial houses) 14,000 bc: domesticated dogs (cavalry sword) 14,000 bc: ceramic pottery 12,800 bc: natufian material culture begins in the levant (hunter-gatherer villages, including by this time stone buildings) before 9,000 bc: fishhooks, oil lamps, stone quarrying 9,000 bc: first domesticated crop (wheat) (by this time hunter-gatherers are already living in permanent villages in many parts of the world) 8,000-7,000 bc: domesticated goats, cattle, and hairy sheep (but not woolly sheep) (this should include the ability to get dairy, but not wool, from corralling livestock) 6,000 bc: irrigation 5,000-4,000 bc: plow 4,000-3,000 bc: domesticated llama and alpaca (but probably not yet woolly alpacas) 3,500 bc: copper, and maybe domesticated horses (so you could give them cavalry spear, and/or allow them to use horses for dairy) 2,860 bc: cotton cultivation (in the Andes) before 800 bc: domesticated turkey (I don't know the dates for chickens, ducks, and geese) Neolithic technology also includes the spindle and loom.

It makes sense to leave the appearance of the building the same, but isn't there something like player color, where all units and buildings of a particular player have something red or blue or whatever on them? that color could change. Flavorwise it could be justified as a change of uniform (for units) or of paint and/or "banners" (for buildings).

There's lots of mythology for North American cultures, the problem is finding a book that actually discusses them with any detail or accuracy. Once you step outside the more popular cultures, finding info becomes a chore.

To make it shorter how about this: The Rise of Syracuse Build your town from scratch, learning how to erect buildings, create units, gather resources, and launch boats. In the late half of this scenario you also learn the basics of combat vs. the native Sicels and/or Elymians whose land you stole, but who are a bit too weak to be a challenge for experienced players. The Battle of Himera Carthage attacks. Fight a land battle against the Carthaginian faction. The Battle of Cumae Fight a naval battle against the Etruscans. That still leaves the problems of modding Etruscans and native Sicilians. Does anyone have any other ideas for a tutorial? Syracuse can't possibly be the only suitable idea.

Well, auto-exploring would require at least one unit that is exploring instead of strategically fighting, and that unit can be killed by enemy units. It also would take time to explore, instead of having everything already known from the beginning.

Oshron, that wasn't me, it was someone else. I agree 100% that the tutorial should be designed for people who don't know squat about RTS games, and fairly easy. In my list I was suggesting full-length campaigns for each civilization, except for whoever gets the tutorial. I don't know anything about Brennus' sack of Rome, but I had the impression people were suggesting defeating Brennus as a Roman tutorial. I agree with SMST: the Syracuse campaign, building the colony from scratch (they should be able to form alliances with Corinth instead of Athens, right?) and fighting the Carthaginians, may work as a tutorial. But since others pointed out that it would require custom-building Sicel and/or Elymian land units and Etruscan naval units (I don't think a Gelon hero unit is needed), and since there are already two great options for full-length Greek campaigns (Alexander and Rise of Athens/Persian Wars), I suggested giving a tutorial scenario to some other civ. So this is my revised list of ideas: Part I tutorial something with Republican Rome, or Rise of Syracuse, or something with some other faction Part I campaigns Roman Republic: ??? Greeks Poleis: Rise of Athens and Persian Wars Greeks Macedonians: Alexander vs. Persia Carthage: Punic Wars Iberia: defend the homeland from the Romans Persians: Persia vs. Greek Poleis, or Persia vs. Alexander (or were there any Persian-Phoenician conflicts that would make interesting campaigns?) Celts Gauls: sack Rome? or sack Macedonia? or sack Iberia? Part II campaigns Celts Brythons: Boudicca vs. the Roman Empire Roman Empire: conquer the Mediterranean other factions: ???

Xctly.

Nice Aztec stuff. I recommend you find a good, academic Nahuatl dictionary (from an academic library, not the internet) and find out how to turn those weapon names into words that mean "user of weapon X". Old Norse and Norwegian aren't the same language. Norwegian and Norwegian aren't even the same language! (There are more than one Norwegian language.) You should look for real academic sources for genuine Old Norse language, instead of using any of the modern Norwegian or other Scandinavian languages. Don't forget the Obakemono project! There are more mythical Japanese creatures described on that website than you could possibly need. I like the name changes. The Cro-Magnons need a name change the most, but finding a good name is hard because they include both paleolithic and neolithic periods. Epipaleolithic something or Stone Age something could work.I would not try to make a Minoan faction. Nobody knows what their religion was: all the claims that they worshipped this or that goddess or practiced this or that ritual are literally made up off of the top of someone's head, without a shred of reality. None of it is remotely based on real archaeology or even real Greek myths. Most of it is left-over pseudoscience blathering from the 1800s, recycled in the popular imagination by non-archaeologists who don't realize how they're being misinformed. I urge you with the utmost sincerity not to go down the path of totally fictional fantasy and then claim it is actual mythology. The Cro-Magnons are already pushing it quite a lot, and you're already giving them neolithic technology and Greek Titans. Other than bronze weapons, there's nothing that the most fantastical, fictional "Minoans" could have that your Cro-Magnons don't already have with better style.

I'd like it if each faction got a campaign or tutorial written for it, but I don't like the idea of a campaign that switches factions halfway through. I'd find it very weird to play that -- who would I root for? I could see doing this: Part I Roman Republic: some tutorial Greeks: Rise of Athens and Persian Wars, or Alexander Carthage: Punic Wars Iberia: defend the homeland from the Romans Persians: Persia vs. Greece, or Persia vs. Alexander Part II Celts: Boudicca Roman Empire: conquer the world The downside is that I just listed a lot of Romans vs. XYZ campaigns and two Greeks vs. Persians campaigns, which isn't that diverse. Including Syracuse vs. Carthage as a tutorial (either for the Carthaginians, or for the Greeks) would shake things up a wee bit, but then the Roman Republic would need a different campaign. Would it be boring and/or too hard to make it possible to pick one or the other faction when playing a Punic Wars campaign?

??? Linear B was abandoned and forgotten at the end of the Aegean Bronze Age, while the Linear A, Phaistos Disk, and Cretan Glyphic writing systems were all abandoned centuries earlier. The Greek alphabet was adopted during the Archaic, hundreds of years after the end of the Aegean Late Bronze Age. There is no similarity whatsoever between the Archaic Greek alphabet and the Bronze Age writing systems, let alone any written records that fall within the considerable temporal and morphological gap between Linear B and Archaic Greek. Linear B was logosyllabic and was missing several consonants which are present in the Greek alphabet, making its use for Mykenaian Greek rather awkward. The Phoenician script was an abjad*, which Archaic Greeks turned into an alphabet by taking certain consonants not present in Greek (such as Aleph) and using their symbols for vowels instead, then making up some more symbols for the other vowels. And you'll have an easier time seeing the similarities if you compare using the Archaic Greek alphabet, not the modern one whose letters are shaped rather differently and which is missing some Archaic letters, such as Qoppa and Sampi. You cannot possibly expect all the letters to have the exact same pronunciation when they are adapted from one language to a different language that isn't even in the same language family, especially when we are talking about languages that were used over time by people with different dialects, who adapted the letters to their needs as they went. Just look at how the Roman alphabet is used to write Latin, Mandarin, Finnish, Gaelic, and Hmong, and compare those pronunciations to the letters in English! Of course, the Greek language was already spoken in Greece during the Late Bronze Age and recorded in Linear B, and was not borrowed from the Phoenicians. But it's now agreed that Linear A was not designed for the Greek language, leading to Linear B's poor fit for Greek since it was adapted from Linear A, and the Phaistos Disk and Cretan Glyphic scripts probably weren't for Greek either. *Abjad - a script having only consonants. All languages have spoken vowels, including Semitic languages, but Semitic and Cushitic vowels are determined partly by grammar and the languages are legible to fluent speakers even without written vowels. Other Afro-Asiatic languages, like Egyptian and Hebrew, were also written without vowels because recording the vowels wasn't necessary. Nowadays modern Hebrew and liturgic Coptic are written with vowels (Coptic using an alphabet derived from the Greek letters), but earlier Hebrew and ancient Egyptian weren't. I don't know whether Arabic is written with vowels, though.

Well of course, Aldandil is Sindarin! I've never heard of the etymological origin of the Greek names/words in Hell-. But I think that the reason Hellenes became the name for all Greeks was because some folks in Italy, who lived near a Greek colony founded by Greeks from Hellas, started using Hellenes indiscriminately for all Greeks. Some other Greeks living near an ethnic group named Italoi, started using Italoi indiscriminately for all "Italians." As time passed and Greeks compared themselves more often to "barbarians" and people they had colonized, they started to think of themselves as in some limited way a single group. "Hellenes" must have caught on in Magna Graecia and then spread to Greece. I think "Greeks" comes from another Greek group that formed a colony in Italy, the Graikoi.

True. But the myth of Helle, like many etymologizing myths, may just be a folk etymology constructed after the original derivation of the name was forgotten. So it could still be related to Hellas. In any case, where would Helle's name have come from, if it wasn't ultimately related to Hellas?

My understanding is that the Hellespont is named Helles Pontos, Pontos meaning "a sea."

If fishing isn't possible for the first release then eating dolphins won't work either... but how are whales edible then? They're classified as edible in the DD. Are they hunted differently? Tamed riding elephants are listed as inedible in the DD. So are domestic horses and camels. For all animals that can be ridden, you can kill them but not eat them. Syrian Asian elephants aren't mentioned anywhere in the DD, either as tame riding animals or as wild animals. Also, what secondary product are pigs producing that lets them provide a yield in a corral without killing them? I've heard of camel milk, but not dairy pigs. Is their yield literally piglets? Lastly, I'm not confident that walruses are fearful and passive. Shouldn't they be listed as dangerous consumable animals? I admit I have not researched this.

In the midst of a horrendous global recession, it's amazing how many people still assume that everybody has a job and an income and no debt and lives under their own roof by their own money. This also came up when I mentioned that I can't afford a new graphics card... people didn't seem to believe me. *shrug*

OUCH. Oshron, I am sorry to hear that. It stinks bigtime to lose something that you have worked very hard on because of a computer malfunction. I hope you're able to recover your data -- there may be companies that will attempt a data recovery of your computer although I don't know of any. After some close calls I invested in backup flash/thumb disks for all the data on my harddrive. I know that flash isn't as stable or long-lasting as burnt non-rewritable CDs, but it seems more affordable: my 1GB flash disk was about 6 U.S. $ and I got my 2GB disk on sale for less. Flash disk prices have gone down a lot in recent years, so if you are strapped for cash and can't afford to burn a new backup CD every year or so, or can't afford the burner, backing things up on flash might be the way to go to avoid this in the future.

Well, what matters for Cumae is their navy, not their land units. If all it took was re-texturing some Roman or Greek ships, re-texturing the infantry units to stand on them, and writing some unit stats for the ships, maybe that's not so bad. But does a tutorial need to include a naval battle? Are they that different from land battles? Or is there a short scenario with some other faction that would work as a tutorial?

I was looking at the design document and I have a few changes and details to suggest for the fauna. I'm not sure if I mentioned the lion before but here are my opinions: Lions: I've seen photos of Asian lions and unless the photos were mis-identified, they have manes; Greek vases also show manes. North African "Barbary" lions had heavy manes that extended over their whole belly. For example, ccording to ADW they had manes, just shorter ones than African lions. This is not an academic site but scholarly sources should confirm this. Elephants: should be edible Dolphins: should also be edible, and if there's only one texture it should represent the common dolphin Delphinus delphis, the species depicted on the wall-paintings at Knossos Seals: AFAIK Mediterranean monk seals were the main species in the Mediterranean, so they should be this species Sharks: I don't think sharks attack people very often so I think unprovoked attacks should be a rare occurance, and since they are edible and are still eaten today, IMO they should be reclassified as dangerous consumable animals.

I assume they'd be editor-only, at least until somebody decides to mod an entire Etruscan faction, but it wouldn't be right to represent them with Romans or Celts. 0 A.D. is supposed to be set apart from other historical RTS games by its realism and accuracy. Maybe it could work to use existing models with only their stats and textures re-done, I don't know enough about the Etruscan navy to say. But just using the Roman navy wouldn't fit. It would be better to just make a tutorial that stops after the Battle of Himera. In fact, it could be a 2-part tutorial, with Part 2 (Battle of Cumae) simply assuming that you won at Himera. That way, it doesn't have to include complicated alternative history scenarios. The simplest version of a Syracuse tutorial could ignore the natives entirely, and stop after Himera. That leaves out the Etruscans and the natives, so it wouldn't require anything that won't be part of the game at Alpha release, except a few maps. Later versions could build on it by adding editor-only native Sicilian factions to cut your teeth on before the big battle, and/or adding Etruscan naval units and a map for the Battle of Cumae. Or a tutorial could do something else entirely. The Ionian Revolt, or founding a Roman colony somewhere and battling the Iberian/Celtic/Greek natives, or founding Carthage and fighting at Himera from the other side, or founding some historical Iberian city and then fighting one battle against the Romans. There must be other suitable scenarios out there that could work for a simple tutorial.

Good idea! That would include building city and infrastructure, maybe small skirmishes with Sicels or Elymians to first get the hang of battle, one large land battle, and one large sea battle. The battles should all be nicely separated in time so the player has a chance to get the feel for how things operate instead of rushing around. Diodorus Siculus was convinced that Persia must have formed an agreement with the Carthaginians, because of how close together the two conflicts were. He may or may not have been correct, though. The only difficulty I can see with Sicily is that the modders would need to produce Etruscan units and maybe Sicel and/or Elymian units and buildings as well. There's also the question of what happens in 474 if the player got defeated at Himera?

The front page hadn't changed in so long I stopped looking. I had no idea the Alpha had been scheduled for July! This is great news!

It doesn't have to be any particular faction, I'd just prefer a tutorial of some kind that starts out small instead of dropping directly into a war zone. It could also be a Carthaginian colony, for example. Not sure if the other factions started colonies during the time period covered, or what their equivalent would be.

Would a smaller colony be better for a tutorial campaign? It should be less epic and centuries-spanning than an Athenian campaign from hypothetical founding through the Persian wars. Heck, you could found Syracuse or a smaller Sicilian city, develop your economy and infrastructure, get in a few fights with the Elymians or Sicels or Phoenicians or whoever, and call the tutorial over. Save the epic Athenian campaign for more experienced players.

Sorry, your phrasing wasn't literal enough for my brain. I don't read between the lines well.