Nescio

Yes, that's why I wrote the 128x256 and 128x512 selection textures: stretching 128x128 or 256x256 to an oblong (e.g. 1:2, 1:4) shape looks quite bad. As a consquence all png output files have the same absolute line thickness. You can open any of the current selection textures, zoom in, and observe the black line is 10 pixels wide, regardless of shape or size. This was not the case prior to rP23636. In game this means the following are equivalent: selection | footprint | example texture | size | 128x128 | r = 1.5 | infantry 128x256 | 3 × 6 | D2496 citizen cavalry 128x512 | 3 × 12 | D2721 crocodile 256x256 | 6 × 6 | However, I don't think it's important that the line thickness is constant for units with different footprints. What matters to me is that the aspect ratio is about right, and that the line thickness is uniform with units with the same footprint; e.g. healers (plus), citizen infantry (circle), champion infantry (arrow), and hero infantry (star) all have a r=1.5 footprint. I gather you're advocating constant line thicknesses for different footprints? That would be only doable if there were separate selection textures for each footprint size. Given that all animals have different footprints, as do ship, siege, and trader actors, I don't think that's a good idea. As for different width-to-depth ratios, the png dimensions have to be powers of 2, otherwise they cause errors. This means that the 128x256 textures are to be used by units with footprints between 2:3 and 1:3 and the 128x512 tectures between 1:3 and 1:6. I believe none of the units in game has a footprint narrower than 1:6 or wider than 1:1, but if those would be added at some point, it's quite easy to tweak the svg files and generate appropiate selection textures for those. That's why I wrote four different oblong shapes, allowing people to choose case by case which shape looks best: (From left to right: rectangle, rounded_rectangle, cartouche, ellipse.) Getting a bit of sunshine and enjoying the nice weather is certainly important.

@feneur, could you split off this selection shape discussion into a new thread, starting with this post to this post (Dec 21), then adding this question and answer (Jan 27), and continuing with this point (May 10) onwards?

How large are they now? In reality, Indian elephants between 2 m and 3.5 m tall; assuming only the largest specimens were chosen, then let's say they would be about 3 m tall on average, i.e. about two-thirds higher than a man (1.8 m). I vaguely recall @Stan` stating a 0 A.D. human (e.g. slave) was 2.1 Blender units high; that means the maur/pers/sele elephants should have the top of their head at about 3.5 Blender units, if we want realistic ratios. Because Greek sources emphasize the African (cart, ptol) elephants are significantly smaller, maybe give those a height of about 2.8 Blender units then. Just a suggestion; what matters more is that things look good in game.

The errors are caused because the lengthened palisades are too long for their wall towers (or because the existing wall towers are too small for the new lengths). It would be great if you could do the following: keep your palisade lengths as is (12, 24, 36); add three new palisade sizes, of lengths 4, 8, and 16 (your short one has length 12); optional: also curved equivalents; increase the round palisade tower diameter to 5; create a new, large, square palisade tower with a width of 7; make a medium length gate of length 24 (basically the same procedure as your long case, except that it's equal in length to your medium palisade). That would allow having three palisade wallsets in game, each with proportionate towers and segment lengths to avoid errors, allowing mods to choose which one they want to use: 4, 8, 12, old palisade tower; 8, 16, 24, round palisade tower; 12, 24, 36, large square palisade tower. Thanks, that's good to know, and that was indeed unclear. Indent is in ordinary length units? A comment in the simulation/components/WallPiece.js file is desirable. Is there an easy way to determine the correct indent, orientation, and bend values? The existing palisades_curve.xml has those nodes, therefore the new curved segments presumably need them too.

Your opening post suggested champion cavalry. While the b/a/e Dahae horse archers (and also the other Persian cavalry actors) currently have increasing amounts of body and horse armour, I believe that's not really historically accurate; I'd prefer it if all armour was removed from the (Persian) citizen cavalry, and used only for champion cavalry; instead, b/a/e could get increasingly fancy clothes.

Yes, as mercenaries, using the same actors as the Persians. The Seleucids were basically the successors of the Achaemenids, but the Dahae were independent nomadic tribes just beyond the empire's border, and those didn't change.

@fatherbushido, to clarify, the purpose of rP23636 is to ensure uniform line thickness given the same size. So for a unit with e.g. a footprint of r=1.5 (e.g. infantry), it doesn't matter whether they use the 128x128 arrow, circle, cross, square, star, etc., all (should) now have then same line thickness. And as stated before, the 128x128 shapes have relatively double the line thickness of the 256x256 shapes, so units with small footprints stand out more. The champion cavalry templates are odd in that they have r=2.5 circular footprints, whereas citizen cavalry have 4×6 rectangular footprints. (I think 3×6 would be better, see D2496, and they should use the 128x256 shape, see D2503.) [EDIT]: infantry using 128x128 and cavalry using 128x256 footprint:

Keep in mind the Dahae lived to the North-East of Iran (in what is now Turkmenistan), not near the Bosporan Kingdom (now the Crimea). Furthermore, the Dahae horse archers were light cavalry, i.e. no body armour or shields; scale mail is only appropiate for champion cavalry, i.e. cataphracts, and heroes. Finally, the Dahae horse archer in 0 A.D. has recently been moved from the Seleucids to the Persians (rP23553).

Given that Delenda Est seems to have a copy of practically every simulation template, you could easily purge them (delete all <SpecificName> lines). Or perhaps even better, reassign them, keeping the <GenericName> for the generic `template_*` files and the <SpecificName> for the specific `structures/{civ}_*` and `units/{civ}_*` files; e.g.: tempate_unit_infantry_spearman.xml: <GenericName>Infantry Spearman</GenericName> units/athen_infantry_spearman_b.xml: <SpecificName>Athenian Hoplite</SpecificName> which will show up in game as “Athenian Hoplite (Infantry Spearman)”. To be clear, the suggestion is for the <SpecificName>; the <GenericName> can stay unchanged; it would show up in game as “Krēs (Cretan Mercenary Archer)”.

Assuming your intention is a place for producing firearms, then maybe armory is the best term for this specific structure (and the thread title), see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory If its purpose is artillery, then arsenal, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlestown_Arsenal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watertown_Arsenal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Arsenal

Also, a blacksmith is a person, not a structure; the proper English word for the corresponding building is forge or smithy. Given its function in 0 A.D., another appropiate word would be armo(u)ry, a place where weapons are kept: https://www.lexico.com/definition/armoury https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/armory Nowadays, especially in American usage, armory and arsenal overlap, but historically (Early Modern Period, c. 1500-1800) arsenal was more for the navy and artillery, and armory more for the army and militia. [EDIT] ὁπλοθήκη also means armoury. However, one has to keep in mind that troops were typically responsible for supplying their own arms in Antiquity.

Yes, an arsenal is a place for storing, repairing, or producing artillery, ammunition, etc.: https://www.lexico.com/definition/arsenal https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arsenal And historically also ship materials (oars, ropes, sails, masts, anchors, etc.), because artillery was primarily used in naval warfare (and city defence), rarely in field battles. Furthermore, “arsenal” is the proper translation of the Greek specific name used in 0 A.D. (Hoplothēkē).

(Arsenal is the correct English term for what is called “workshop” in 0 A.D.)

After a bit of experimenting, I figured out there are realistically only two options: either halve the lengths of all palisades, i.e. from 12, 24, 36 to 6, 12, 18. or make the palisade towers significantly larger: [EDIT]: Or a combination of both, of course. Basically what matters is the <WallPiece/Length>, which is practically equal to the <Obstruction> width (and the length of the actor). Workable numbers include: long , medium , short , tower 13.5 , 9.0 , 4.5 , 3 : 0ad palisades 18 , 12 , 6 , 4 : 24 , 16 , 8 , 5 : 30 , 20 , 10 , 6 : 36 , 24 , 12 , 7 : 0ad city walls In the mod the long, medium, short segments have lengths of city walls, whereas the palisade tower is unchanged, hence the errors.

The new palisade segments are as long as siege walls or city walls, as requested by @wowgetoffyourcellphone earlier, i.e. 12, 24, 36. Here you go: interestinglog.html

Here is your mod expanded with simulation templates: palisades.zip Development version (A24), mind, not latest stable (A23). It also attempts consistent naming for the art files. With the mod, players can build both the old palisade wallset with the current palisade actors and a new palisade wallset with Pablinski's lengthened palisades in game: Now a few things I noticed: palisade curves need to be recentred: round tower is open on one side, which shouldn't be: the square towers of the new gate are too far from the centre; they should be directly adjacent to the doors: the new gate does not have open or close animations. when hovering new palisade towers close to existing ones, the game spawns a long list of errors; I tried solving this with a <BuildRestrictions> node, to no avail; apparently <WallSet> takes precedence. @s0600204, you committed 20589; could you clarify what the <Orientation>, <Indent>, and <Bend> nodes exactly do? There is no explanation in the simulation/components/WallPiece.js file.

It turns out I have to revert the patch whenever I want to upload something to phabricator, and manually reinstating it every time is simply too much work, therefore I posted @pcpa's patch to phabricator: D2745. Next time I want to rebuild 0ad it can simply be loaded with: arc patch D2745 and subsequently reverted with: svn revert -R *

Thanks. After applying that patch manually, cleaning everything, and rebuilding from scratch, this error appears to be solved, and make continues. It would be nice to get that patch committed soon. (I should remember not to svn revert -R * until then.) Now I get an entirely different and probably unrelated error: Running binaries/system/test fails, but binaries/system/pyrogenesis works, so I'm happy for now.

The last time I built the game must have been at least a month, therefore today I decided to rebuild the game. Unfortunately I encountered errors and building the game failed. Here is the terminal output: My operating system is Fedora 32 and my compiler version is gcc-10.1.1-1.fc32.x86_64. Firstly I checked whether any of the dependencies listed at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions#Fedora was missing (“[...] already installed / Dependencies resolved. / Nothing to do. / Complete!”). Then I deleted .cache/0ad, just in case, and ran the usual: svn revert -R * svn up cd 0ad/build/workspaces/ ./clean-workspaces ./update-workspaces.sh -j7 cd gcc/ make clean make -j7 The last step failed. When I try to run the game or tests, I get: [0ad]$ binaries/system/test bash: binaries/system/test: No such file or directory [0ad]$ binaries/system/pyrogenesis bash: binaries/system/pyrogenesis: No such file or directory In the past I was able to successfully build the 0ad development version, so I don't really understand why this is no longer the case. Any suggestions?

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2742

Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but I suspect this Greek specific name might be a translation of the Engish. Recently I've been reading Polybius a lot, especially book V, and noticed he uses the word τοξόται “archers” only twice (Plb 5.53.9 “all light troops” and 5.79.6 “Agrianians and Persians”), whereas Κρῆτες (5.3.2, 5.7.11, 5.14.1, 5.14.4, 5.36.4, 5.53.3, 5.65.7, 5.79.10, 5.82.4, 5.82.10) and Νεόκρητες (5.3.1, 5.65.7, 5.79.10) simply appear as such, without qualifiers. Apparently it was clear that Cretans were always mercenary archers. Therefore I wonder whether it wouldn't be better to use simply Κρῆς Krēs as the specific name.

Polybius' account on the Battle of Raphia (217 BC) provides valuable information on elephant warfare. First the size of the Ptolemaic army (Plb 5.79.2): οἱ μὲν οὖν περὶ τὸν Πτολεμαῖον ὥρμησαν ἐκ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας, ἔχοντες πεζῶν μὲν εἰς ἑπτὰ μυριάδας, ἱππεῖς δὲ πεντακισχιλίους, ἐλέφαντας ἑβδομήκοντα τρεῖς· Ptolemy accordingly set out from Alexandria with seventy thousand infantry, five thousand cavalry, and seventy-three elephants. and the size of the Seleucid army (Plb 5.79.13): καὶ τῆς μὲν Ἀντιόχου δυνάμεως τὸ πλῆθος ἦν πεζοὶ μὲν ἑξακισμύριοι καὶ δισχίλιοι, σὺν δὲ τούτοις ἱππεῖς ἑξακισχίλιοι, θηρία δὲ δυσὶ πλείω τῶν ἑκατόν. so that the whole number of Antiochus's force was sixty-two thousand infantry, six thousand cavalry, and one hundred and two elephants. Then there is a paragraph on elephants in battle (Plb 5.84): And finally the outcome (Plb 5.86.6): ἐλέφαντες δὲ τρεῖς μὲν παραχρῆμα, δύο δ᾽ ἐκ τῶν τραυμάτων ἀπέθανον. τῶν δὲ παρὰ Πτολεμαίου πεζοὶ μὲν εἰς χιλίους καὶ πεντακοσίους ἐτελεύτησαν, ἱππεῖς δ᾽ εἰς ἑπτακοσίους· τῶν δ᾽ ἐλεφάντων ἑκκαίδεκα μὲν ἀπέθανον, ᾑρέθησαν δ᾽ αὐτῶν οἱ πλείους. Three elephants were killed on the field, and two died afterwards of their wounds. On Ptolemy's side the losses were fifteen hundred infantry killed and seven hundred cavalry: sixteen of his elephants were killed, and most of the others captured. (Texts and translations taken from Perseus.)

Here are five pages with information on Hellenistic war chariots and elephants from The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Warfare (Cambridge 2008): And five pages with images of war elephants from B. Bar-Kochva Judas Maccabeus : The Jewish Struggle against the Seleucids (Cambridge 1989):

For information on the Seleucids specifically, I can highly recommend: Susan Sherwin-White, Amélie Kuhrt From Samarkand to Sardis : A new approach to the Seleucid empire (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1993) Most publications on the Seleucids are biased by essentially Helleno- and Romano-centric sources and historiography, and often by 19th C colonianist and imperialist notions as well, thus fundamentally reinforcing traditional views. SW&K stands out in that it makes extensive use of Babylonian cuneiform records and various Asian archaeological sites. It makes a strong and convincing case for grounding the Seleucids as a successful continuation of Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid traditions, as well as correcting various misconceptions.

Yeah, but if at some point people decide visible garrison slots for outposts, gates, and towers are desireable for the default game, then it would be nice to be able to see their heads.