desmotes

First: I think it's a matter of politeness to answer somebody that opens up the discussion again and expects an answer, so, after checking in again, I saw two answers and chose to post back. And so it went on, since people obviously feel they need to persuade me into some kind of holocaust denial, because they chose to ignore modern history. Second: Hitler might have flipped and mirrored the original swastika. But fascism didn't end with Hitler. All kinds of variations of the Swastika have been made up (pre-existent and fictional) by Nazis and Neo-Nazis to identify with the Third Reich. There is like no variation I haven't seen yet not used by Nazis, which is why German law doesn't differ. Neither do I. If you think it's clever to ignore modern history in favor of some minor detail, I consider this sick - since it's the majority that thinks so, I feel even more offended by you guys. And yes, feelings are irrational. But industrialized genocide isn't something you should ignore that easily. Third thing: As I said, if you think, using Nazi symbols is a necessary feature of the game, use it - but don't complain if people feel offended by it. If your goal is to offend people, go on! But don't expect me to play or contribute or only expect me to be the only one to be offended. This is the very last post now, don't expect any further answers.

I made my point and obviously our points of view differ on that. To make your opinion absolute just shows how ignorant you are. I made the clear point that I always have to think about the Nazis and the Holocaust, when I see the swastika. Good for you, if you can ignore that, I can't. And I won't contribute to a project that spreads this Nazi propaganda, no matter if you consider it that or not! People also considered it not a crime to kill jews or sell Blacks as slaves - there have always been those who see and those who choose to ignore. Anyway, you won't change my point of view, this discussion is totally in vain, and you can't force me to contribute, cuz whether you like it or not, there's a personal freedom that allows me to chose. It's bad enough that you guys chose to ignore my wish to delete my account stated on Dec 8th.

A rather stupid argument. I discussed it there and made a decision here that I won't share the scenario. It's not my fault, when people start discussing here, too.

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future. Robert A. Heinlein What you call "swastika-fear" is the refusal of a symbol that people do identify with, who then go around to kill people til the very day. Tolerating this propaganda means tolerating racist crime and Antisemitism. Anyway, do you know, what a "fig leaf" is? I think a "German version" would be just that - but I think in a country with a strong nationalist/racist movement and a long history of strong Antisemitism that wasn't forced to learn a lesson from WWII, this is perceived differently...

Then your point is: Because video games have a tradition of using the Swastika for fun that is much older than the use of the Swastika by Nazis, they should be allowed to ignore this connotations? ___ Even if it ain't illegal, it's still more than questionable and I made a decision to not contribute to a project that has this (presumed?) proximity to Nazi propaganda. In the end, I can play it everytime I want and it's lots of fun - it won't become less fun by not sharing it openly. But it would suffer from being included in this game, like the game in toto already suffered much, at least to me.

In fact, if the game was in some way available in Germany with the Swastika included in it, it does make the game illegal, whether you like it or not. As someone who is quite familiar with the laws on this, I don't just trust blindly "some foreigner that has read the wikipedia and thinks he's a lawyer now". I didn't say: "I don't want to do something illegal", I said: "I don't want to be involved in this, because it is illegal". No, it's not "the real point". The real point is, according to German law, including the Swastika makes it "distribution of Nazi porpaganda", no matter, whether it is the "Hindu Swastika", the "Mauryan Swastika" or any other form of Hakenkreuz. But it is indeed a point that I feel offended. Ignoring the modern use of the Swastika, the legal issues and the feelings of millions of victims of the Nazi Regime and their relatives, just to include a minor detail easily replaced by another symbol is an indication of a motivation of saying "Mauryan Swastika" and actually meaning "Nazi Swastika". So, if you want it that way, in the words: "I don't want to be involved in something illegal", you might just read: "I don't want to contribute to Nazis" - I'd rather contribute my scenarios, maps and such to projects without this "sympathy for the devil".

I didn't find the official publication yet, but, to use a right-wing/conservative newspaper as reliable source without suspicion of too much antifascist propaganda, here's what the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (one of the leading newspapers in Germany) said: http://www.faz.net/a...n-11747777.html Translation: Addendum: Prosecution of display of the swastica and such, where the offender couldn't be identified, don't go into this statitic, only when the actor could be found guilty of a political offense.

So the City of Nuremberg, the BundesVerfassungsGericht (Federal Constitutional Court of Germany) and BundesGerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice of Germany) as quoted by leper, the StGB (German Criminal Code) and Federal Ministry of Domestic Affairs (for statistics about prosecution on use of Nazi symbols) are anti-right extreme institutions and not reliable? And why insist on a negligible detail at all, when it's such a sensible matter?

There hasn't been too much significant court ruling cuz the law is pretty strict and there is little chance to win at court. There is lots of prosecution. According to official statistics there has to be about 10.000 cases a year of prosecuted use of swastica with an indisputable rightist background, and according to criticism of these statistics, there are lots of cases where the use of swasticas and alike are prosecuted without claiming a clear rightist background.

I've already quotet the §86a of German StGB, which is the only reliable source thats really important. There have been a few lawsuits about the swastica, some artist that was found "not guilty" because he had built up a visible info-table that he dissociated himself from the Nazi ideology, the Falun Gong sect obviously also won a lawsuit, but they don't provide any info on the reasons, might have to do with religious freedom. The site "www.recht-gegen-rechts", an antifascist homepage driven by the city of Nuremberg, lawyers, policemen and antifascist activists, says tha swastica is "illegal in any form", but this obviously does not refer to the legal uses in art, education and such. Here's an english translation I found. §86 (3) Subsection (1) states: http://www.gesetze-i...stgb.html#p0823

Ok, once more on the swastika: AFAIK (and I'm involved in the anti-fascist scene in Germany, I'm in contact with antifa activists etc, I've been studying history at the university - so I'm rather good informed, I think) there is no distinction between the swastica and the nazi symbol. Games are referred to as Art, but when it says "Art", the emphasis is on anti-fascist art and such, not pro-fascist or neutral art. A game that uses any of these symbols wouldn't be legalized by this, no matter whether historically accurate or not, when there is no classification of the symbol used provided along with use. Some time ago there had even been an argument over whether anti-fascists should be allowed to use anti-fascist symbols that feature nazi symbols - though they had ultimately won at court, I think it gives you an impression on how sensitive Germans are about this matter. Also, there has been an argument in this thread on WW2-RTS using Nazi symbols and that's another cup of tea: If the game was historically accurate and provides infos on the Third Reich and it's gigantic crimes as well as the propaganda it used, it wouldn't be a problem, because there was an "educational purpose" and classification, it would probably even be easier to justify the swastica, other than some historical game that could easily do well without it, just using something else, but insists on using the swastica - lawyers would argue there is some political reason to insist using the swastica instead of other symbols. And since there are no players, who play the game in <1930, all use of the indian swastica has a connotation of nazi swastica, so it's pretty stupid to argue like that. Everybody playing the games plays it post-1945. So, as I already mentioned: Using the swastica, toggable or not, would make the game illegal in Germany and other states. Even making it available in Germany on US servers wouldn't actually save you from prosecution, it's your local government that would, when German lawyers might demand extradition - which is most likely not going to happen, cuz there is little chance to that in most cases; yet you probably shouldn't go to Germany for vacation. So there would have to be some regional block for these users to use the original swastica game and detour them to the culturally sensitive version. It might be an option, to add an info panel in main menu featuring some longer information on symbols used, how they are used, how they have been used in the past and that you don't agree with these uses or want to express any kind of relation to these uses. This ain't a matter of "cultural sensitivity" or "people might be offended", it's strict law in a number of countries - probably you'd also be "culturally sensitive" about up to 3 years of arrest?^^

I just checked the §86 StGB and §86a StGB (for Germany) again and there is a part about it, that might be misunderstandable; It does say: The symbols used in the context of the Nazi ideology are banned, no matter the context they are actually used in, not symbols used in the Nazi context - the author of english wikipedia might have mistaken that. So a Swastica is always banned, not only in Nazi context. This refers to all symbols actually used, rotated, mirrored or in other way similar to them of banned parties, organisations and their successors. Especially 86a is important here, I'll stick with German law for this:

To German law, there is no difference between a Swastica and the "Hakenkreuz" Nazi symbol, there are also some derived and ancient German symbols banned due to use in Nazi propaganda til the very day, it's similar in Austria as fas as I know. There are two exception to this: In satire and political/historical depiction for educational purposes. Though the game has some kind of historical context, it's clearly entertainment, so the game would be illegal in Germany and players could be prosecuted for Nazi propaganda, if it's in the game, whether it can be toggled or not. Of course it would be hard to actually prosecute players, but I've seen a German fansite around and this would probably be shut down and the guys in charge and other contributors could of course be accused of spreading Nazi propaganda. So the question is: Are you willing to make the game illegal to play, distribute or review in Germany and Austria (maybe Israel, too?), just for the sake of showing Swasticas?

It's quite obvious, Isntit?

Well, I guess the point on slaves is already made, so on settlements: Slavs once settled all over Eastern Germany up to almost the Hamburg area, then German settlement and "colonisation" (the "Ostsiedlung") began and slowly Slavic tribes were pushed eastwards, towards Poland, German hegemony over main parts of the "Western Slavic" area was established without a military campaign - so you are right in saying "they haven't been conquered", but the territory was indeed seized. What you describe as the interaction of Slavs and Romans I don't disavow, but this can't be compared to the massive military campaigns of Romans, Anglo-Saxons and Normans in Britain or those in Gaul and Germany, which led to building the Hadrian's Wall in Scotland and the Limes in Germany, nor with the massive attempts of Charlemagne to subdue the Saxons (and still I'd refuse to have them in). And you just shouldn't get me wrong: It's got nothing to do with personal bias or some kind of racistic affection towards the Slavs that I speak against having them in. It's just that I think they didn't play the major role in the ancient world to justify having them in. And I'm just some player, so it's just one opinion among the many. Addendum: For the same reason, btw, it doesn't make sense to include Germans: They only once united against the common enemy Rome, under Arminius (or Herman), but disbanded as soon as the legions were down. They traded with Rome (including the same Amber), pissed them off, raided others and such - but as a culture they just didn't play a major role; Gauls and Britons were much more united as a culture then (north-)eastern ethnicities of that time.

I'd say Slavs would merely be a Celtic faction - though they are ethnically and culturally different (and indeed are a considerable ethnicity), gameplay would be pretty much the same - Slavs also never have been a considerable military power AFAIK; it's actually no surprise the word "slave" is directly derived from "Slav". They haven't been battled in a narrow sense of the word, but just "pushed aside" from the rising powers of Franks, Saxons or later the Teutonic Order, Western Slavic areas "colonized" by German settlers (you probably know about the Piper of Hameln, a Grimm's fairytale that is based on the fact that 130 young adults left the town to settle in the Uckermark region in todays Eastern Germany; the Byzantines in the south and the Vikings that founded the Kievan Rus (which might be the root of "Russia" and "Belarus") "liberated" the city from Khazar Khaganate. They played only little role in history, at least of those early days - it would be more manifest to include Saxons as a tribe: with the Angles they are the ethnic base of modern Britain, settled among the whole baltic area, merging with the population, same for southeastern Europe, where "Saxon" became a synonym of "miner" and resisted the armies of Charlemagne. Yet both are more medievalish tribes, just like the Byzantines and I think they don't fit the "0 AD" setting... This way or the other, there would be little chance to have them engaged in bigger scenarios.

- suspended til clearing on the use of Nazi symbols in the game - When in doubt, I rather quit taking part than being involved in something illiegal in this country.

I just compiled the latest stable release and had the same problem, so here's what I did, might probably help: I checked for errors and the only one I found was wxwidget profile something during make-process. I'm on Gentoo, so I've run "eselect wxwidgets list" to find only one available at all (for me), so "eselect wxwidgets set 1" and rerun make - et voila, there are the binaries!

Nope, no maps-folder at all.

This explains, why the error appeared to be the very same. I checked the folders, but there's obviously no cached file - there is a "temp.0adsave" I can't attribute to anything, but loading it with editor fails, so I guess it's a game's autosave...?

I've been playing 0AD for a little while now and recently had a great(?) idea for a scenario, so I just started to map it. The editor is actually pretty good, I had little problems using it, though I got little to no experience in this...but after working a few hours on it, trying to save it, I almost got a nervous breakdown cuz the editor refused to save. It's obviously a common problem and that's just logical, because the game has, fortunately, no root access - but even trying to save a map in $HOME fails, cuz the game still tries to write into a root directory. My question now is: Why does it write into some root directory at all? Wouldn't it be easy to create a /home/user/.0ad folder, where all scenarios are automatically saved? I'm now also pondering, whether it makes sense to try some custom made build inside my $HOME, but doubt it would change anything...

Just read this thread and have to say there is a pretty easy way to win most of the maps (played Laconia today and had like 60 vs 720 deads, though the strategy described here won't fit 100% to Laconia: Of your initial units, you send four to gathering food, the other four to build houses and the cavalry starts scouting. Build up villagers to collect food and wood, around 10/10 for now, continue building houses til you reach five, so you can advance to town phase. Build another 10/5 villagers to gather stone/metal (you'll need the metal to advance to city phase and civ centres only for now), and some military units, By the time you should have scouted a few bottlenecks through which the enemy will attack (using rivers/mountains as defensive structures): Build some towers here and garrison soldiers inside (preferably bowmen, never checked whether others will fire at enemies, too^^), you'll probably have to build a civ center or two, don't defend an area too small. Then advance to city phase as soon as possible, to strengthen these bottlenecks by walls, so the towers are hidden behind towers and enemies can't slip through, garrison units in walls, too. Towers are primary target for the enemy, so ranged attackers will fire at these, while melee attackers are useless, for they can't attack the walls. The enemy will probably start to counter this by siege weapons, so make sure you always got some quick reaction forces near to get them down. Keep building up villagers to counter a shortage of resources, present or future. Once you made it this far, you can take your time, gather resources and build up your structures as well as your army, the enemy forces will crash on your walls like water, all you'll have to do is repair the structures every now and then. Depending on the number and strength of enemies, build up til population limit the military units of your choice or, if you're rather sure that you'll need only one campaign to bring down the enemy, consider killing villagers to enforce your army - if you won't make it, you can still rebuild villagers to gather resources and ultimately build up a new army, since all your base is still save thanks to your defensive structures. (Thanks to this strategy I made it down to only six lost units on a 1:1 map - five of them during the very first attack of the enemy, which is the most critical one with this strategy - make sure you can fight back that one! - only another single unit while tearing down all of his city, thanks to pulling most of his army into my defenses, using cavalry) ___ For Laconia, building up walls is no good idea, it's better to build some fortresses and towers at fords. A tower and a fortress for each usually is enough, if you fully garrison them. ___ For open maps, it's still a good idea, to wall your self in and then garrison the walls, if you're playing defensively, which I prefer. It just gives you more control over the map and the enemy - especially when playing with more than one enemy, you won't end up with one pillaging your town, while you are raging in anothers one's.