Atenmeses52

Hey everyone, I have a quick question. I was just looking at the latest SVN version, and I saw that the game interface now supports other alphabets... does this mean that it's now possible to write the unit/building names, for the Athenians let's say, in Ancient Greek in the Greek script, rather than what we have now (a transliteration into the Latin script)? If so, I think that would add another level of realism to the game. This could get very interesting and somewhat exotic, especially if we made use of some of the lesser-known scripts, ie: Old Persian Cuneiform (which is Unicode Supported!) for Persian or Phoenician/Punic for the Carthaginian names (also Unicode Supported!). Thanks, Atenmeses

For the color I might do a metallic iron sort of color, since the Hittites were known for their early development of iron working... Just a thought though... Also: Really great building references: http://www.hattusadaikigun.com/eng/hattusa.html http://www.hattuscha.de/English/yazilikaya.htm

That looks amazing!... But where are the bunnies?

That should be mutsābiq gamal nabatu

@Mythos: I updated it to say "wooden tower" @Lion: What is the generic name?

I agree-- If you look at artists' reconstructions of what Egyptian houses looked like, or even if you look at photographs of older houses in Egypt, you see that they are not very colorful: I think that if we made them less colorful, it would look more realistic Also, maybe if we toned down the yellowish texturing, and made it a bit more like white-washed walls, they would look more realistic If we just keep in mind that the major building materials in Egypt are and were mud bricks and stucco/plaster to cover them up, it would help

-The Assyrian King Ashurbanipal I think we could maybe give them a unique siege unit that is a "field salter" that prevents enemy farms from growing food, and also kills local animals (the goats and gazelles and camels etc... that often spawn near a city center) We could do this in addition to a "deportation" bonus... See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_Neo-Assyrian_Empire#Psychological_warfare

I have a proposition for the Phoenicians: I think that we should include some features of nearby city-states (Mari, Ebla, Ugarit) that weren't necessarily 100% Phoenician but rather were ruled by other local Canaanite tribes. For details, see this documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5oY_lIoOWk Also, as for the heroes: I agree that Hiram would be a great choice! Also Pygmalion (or Pu'mayyaton) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_of_Tyre and Abdi-Milkutti http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdi-Milkutti both of them seem to be among the greatest leaders of their Phoenician City States

I'm pretty sure it can mean 'pertaining to the Indian Subcontinent" as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indic

Thanks so much! This is super helpful! Just a question on these-- is "ch" supposed to represent an English ch, a French ch (English "sh"), or a German ch (guttural sound)?

Hey Everyone, Here's what I've got for the Culture Groupings (meaning shared building styles, unit styles, and good historical relations) I think we should hold off on introducing any other new civilizations for now, at least until we have made more solid progress on the ones that will definitely be included. (NB: An "x" after a civilization name mean a Design Document has been started for that civilization) Proto-Greek: Minoan Mycenaean (sort of Lydian) Anatolian: Hittite Lydian (I think this is a possibility if we include Troy with them) Levantine: Phoenician x Hebrew/Israelite x (Syrian?) Egyptian: Egyptian Nubian Mesopotamian: Assyrian Babylonian x (Hurrian/Kassite)* Italic/Gallic/Iberian: Etruscan (Terranmarian) (Appeninian) (some early Iberian civ, maybe Argarica, also maybe Tartessos, or any combination of all of them) Indian: TBD *If we can get enough research on these guys, I think they'd be a unique addition to our mod... As for the Sea Peoples: I'm still not sure as to whether or not they should be included--I'm leaning toward including them as mercenaries for some of the factions (maybe Mycenaeans, Minoans, and Phoenicians) On the note of Culture Groups: We are still looking for skilled modelers... if you aren't too busy with the vanilla project, or if you feel like helping us out anyway, please look at the references we have gathered! A lot of them can be used for multiple civilizations' buildings/units, so one model can go a long way!

Also these: For the Palace/City Center: A house: Maybe useful for the civilization emblem?: An overall City plan for the size of buildings:

For future reference: This is full of images that have everything from architectural details, to ships, to soldiers, to civilians: http://www.latsis-foundation.org/default.asp?pid=92&la=2&bID=27&libID=1

The other (feasible) option, of course, would be to just write out the Demotic/Egyptian words for everything in the Coptic alphabet... that might be an easier alternative if the hieroglyphs don't work out... Either way, we should focus on getting accurate transliterations for everything--if you are planning on including the Seleucids in the future, might you need Aramaic/Syriac translations/transliterations (if so, I can do these too!)

Here they are: City Center: pr-'a (pronounced per- a- a) House: pr (pron. per) OR ḥwt (pronounced kh (or german/scottish ch) oot Market: (can't get an exact translation: this means house of things of demand)ḥwt-n-ḫt.w-wḫa.w (pron. khoot en khetoo wekhaaoo) Dock: ḥwt-n-dpt.w (pron. khoot en depetoo) Barracks: ḥwt-n-mš' (pron. khoot en mesha) Stone wall: h-n-njwt (pron. heh-en-niwt) Stone tower: mktr (pron. mekter-- actually the etymological origin of the word "migdol" in Hebrew) City gate: sba-n-njwt (pron. sebba en niwt) Defense Tower: mktr-n-ḏw (pron. mekter en djoo) Outpost or Watchtower: mktr-n-ḫt (pron. mekter en khet) Fortress: mktr-'a (pron. mekter-a-a) Corral: h-n-ssmt.w (pron. heh-en-sesmetoo) Farmstead: pr-n-t (pron. per-en-et) Storehouse: h-n-ḫt.w (pron. heh-en-khetoo) If anyone else has a decent English-Egyptian dictionary, you might want to check these--I can't find some words that have direct translations so I had to circumlocute... Also-- a note on Demotic: after further digging, it seems to me that Demotic is not very different from it's linguistic predecessors (most of the vocabulary from Old Egyptian remains intact throughout the various evolutionary steps of the language's development) all that appears to be different for Demotic is the script (which can get really confusing) and the fact that it simplifies some of the more complicated Middle and Late Egyptian grammatical concepts that go hand-in-hand with the hieroglyphic writing system... it would be super cool though if we could use hieroglyphs as the ingame text... I have mentioned this before, but I know of an open source program that allows users to type in Unicode hieroglyphs... here's the link: http://jsesh.qenherkhopeshef.org/ For now, I think it would be easier to do all of the building/unit names in transliteration, but I think we should, at some point, have them all in the local scripts (the hardest of these, I think, would be cuneiform for Persian... I'm not exactly sure how that would work)