Nescio

The reason for the Greco-Roman bias is because quite a lot has survived in Greek or Latin and very little in other languages. Furthermore, those sources are easier accessable and their names more familiar to us; e.g. Xerxes is the Latin spelling of a Greek name (Ξέρξης) of a Persian king (cuneiform was not accepted here ("The value entered includes a character that is not allowed such as an Emoji."), but it would be pronounced Khshayarsha). I agree more diversity would be nice, but I also think an appropiate name should be chosen, independent of previous names. I prefer a good name that happens to be Greek to an inferior one that is chosen just because it's not Greek. Zapotecs, no thanks. Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu) and Han China, yes please.

Actually I think everyone should be able to erect walls in neutral territory. It's a common tactic and well attested. Completely true. Personally I value historical accuracy, but I have no intention to impose my views on others. Please improve your mod in a way you think it'll be most enjoyable.

Not in their homeland, no, they never did, but Spartan colonies had city walls, and the Spartans also repeatedly erected stone walls at Thermopylae and the Corinthian isthmus.

Granted. That's nothing unusual though. Plus seven helot skirmishers per Spartan citizen. Plus allied troops. Plus mercenaries. Sounds a bit anachronistic to me (they erected stone walls in the Archaic and Classical periods, long before they had pikemen or imperialistic tendencies), but it's your mod, so do whatever you like.

True. But it is not impossible to correct it.

Yes, all of it is true, common knowledge amongst classicists, and can be easily verified. E.g. Thermopylae is described in detail at the end of Herodotus' Histories VII. There are a few oddities in 0 A.D., e.g.: Sparta has -10% maximum population limit (in fact it was the largest and most populous state in Greece) Sparta can't build walls (yes, neither Sparta itself (it was a collection of villages, not a city) nor any other settlement in their territory (out of fear of revolt) had city walls; the same applied to Rome for a long time; however, the Spartans did skillfully erect stone walls elsewhere) Spartan basic units are called citizens (citizenship was limited to a minority of the population, only the elite of society)

To clarify, I'm not saying the current situation is good or anything, I'm just questioning whether your proposal, regardless the numbers chosen, would be a real improvement. What should be changed perhaps is not really the distance at which units start attacking enemies, but the distance they continue chasing them before they return to their original position.

Xenophon. Athenian aristocrat, mercenary general, and writer. He's possibly the most important source for what we actually know about Greek and Persian warfare. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophon#List_of_works

Yeah, I understand it's not definite. However, I think a certain stance should mean the same for all units, otherwise it's confusing. Also, attack distance as a percentage of vision range might sound interesting but is flawed in principle: different units have different attack and vision ranges. E.g. if you don't want melee units to be passively killed by default by ranged units, the longest ranged attack range should be less than half of the shortest vision range, which would probably be not a good idea.

Because attack range is often close to vision range, this would imply ranged units will not attack enemies within range by default. Personally I think the distance at which units start attacking is not the most important; what matters more is how long they will pursue foes and how easy they can be distracted and turn to a different target.

Completely true, the GUI greatly affects everyone so a perfect solution might be impossible. I'm not even sure how I want it to be myself Nonetheless, if the GUI is to be redesigned, it does not hurt at to have a critical look at the position of the mini-map as well, even if it stays unchanged. To clarify, I'm not especially arguing for any specific mini-map position; I can see points against every option; but I do believe looking at the GUI of a wide number of games can be helpful.

Yeah, it works, but does it work because it is intrinsically the best position or just because we're used to it? I'm probably biased since games I fondly remember put the mini-map at the top right (Caesar III, Heroes of Might and Magic IV, Patrician III) or bottom right (Cossacks, Empire Earth, Age of Mythology). Undoubtedly games exist which put it elsewhere and I guess all have good reasons for a specific position.

Interesting. I agree the median person would move the cursor from the top left to bottom right. The position of the mini-map does not block large selections, though: The position of the mini-map might be especially problematic because it can be viewed and used in different ways. I'm not entirely sure about my own preference either, which is why I've been trying out different positions myself; there are multiple conflicting aspects of it: it blocks your playing area view (therefore I want it to be small) it gives an overview of the whole game map (therefore I want it to be large) it is something to look at (therefore I want it at the left) it is something to click on (therefore I want it at the right) Ideally every player would be able to customize the position under the game options or perhaps even drag it around and resize it. Realistically that would be very hard to implement (and redesigning the GUI is already frustrating enough). Perhaps we should organize a poll to get a vague idea at the prefered position of the minimap (top left corner, centre-left, centre, centre-right, right corner; bottom left corner, centre-left, centre, centre-right, right corner).

To clarify, I'm not saying I agree with them, but I can understand why they did what they did. Releasing the game at the promised date was perhaps the only promise they could and did keep. Personally I think they should not have announced any release before their product was finished and they had done a decent amount of playtesting, but they made a different decision, and I'm sure they've had good reasons.

They put themselves in a position they had to release it. Last year they declared the game would be released in 2017; on February 15 they announced the release would be at March 29. Once you've declared a fixed date you can't simply say `sorry, we're not quite ready yet, please wait another year or two`. And yes, they were probably desperate for money as well, personnel has to be paid etc.; hopefully for them they make break-even.

Their publicity might actually have been their undoing. They grapped attention, raised hopes, and published promising teasers, therefore people had high expectations and they were unable to live up to them. Selling an unfinished game might be a disappointment to many, but if they had postponed their release they would probably have lost most of their potential customers too. Contrast this with 0 A.D. Wildfire Games does not promise anything, clearly indicates the game is in development, and does not sell it is a product. It's a long-term project and I hope it'll never be finished: the honest permanent alpha stage is possibly its greatest strength. So what can we learn from them? Nothing we already know: publicity is nice, but focus on developing and improving the game; do not release or endorse an unfinished product. Let players do the publicity instead of the team. Basically business as usual.

Yes, I will update this mod to A23, but only after it's officially released, not before. The reason this mod also changes the GUI is because the default interface does not support displaying five resource types, nor more than 24 structure icons, etc. I'm not entirely satisfied with the results myself, it's a temporary solution, and will be changed later. Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean. EDIT: If the corners are problematic, why not try putting the minimap in the middle then?

It was certainly not launched almost vertically with an arc like that to bombard other ships; your own ship would risk going up in flames (especially if the wind changes direction) before the enemy's. Greek fire was a short range possibly hand-held weapon that would be directed at the target horizontally:

"On PDF" would be more appropiate, or if you're more poetical inclined, "To PDF or Not to PDF". Better suggestions are welcome, of course :)

To clarify, I have no objections to moving the discussion into a dedicated thread per se. What I don't appreciate is the arbitrary cut-off point. If posts x+1 to x+10 form a sequence, it wouldn't make sense to make a split starting at x+7, it's better to keep it together. would have been a better starting point. If you have Word, know how to use it, are comfortable with it, and have no desire for anything more efficient (four ifs that do not apply to me but do for many), then write your text in Word and export it as pdf. Any text editor will do. Although I don't have a Mac, I'm sure OS X has at least one text editor pre-installed. No idea how those work, but Adobe software tends to be expensive, complicated, graphical, and not necessarily better than free and open source alternatives.

Then split it from there. I'm not claiming every reply was productive (nor is this why split? discussion ), however, these expelled posts were part of a wider "to pdf or not to pdf", started by Sundiata earlier, and I think a discussion on how to present the material is relevant to the topic it is about.

Why was it necessary to split it then?

To start with, I think it's weird to split in the middle of a discussion. Furthermore, I don't understand the "vs" dichotomy: it is possible to use md to generate a pdf. Also, this artificial topic is probably in the wrong subforum. Finally, although somewhat off-topic, it was relevant to other posts in the previous thread, starting from https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21602-the-kingdom-of-kush-a-proper-introduction-illustrated/&page=32&tab=comments#comment-353551 until https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21602-the-kingdom-of-kush-a-proper-introduction-illustrated/&page=33&tab=comments#comment-354006

Yes, I can't agree agree more. MS Word is a horrible program that does all kinds of things unasked for and makes typesetting text unnecessarily complicated. Better use any simple text editor than a word-processor.

It depends on how a pdf is made. You seem to be talking about Google Books or some similar project, where physical objects are scanned and afterwards the digital images are gradually analysed and converted into text. However, these image-not-text pdfs are a tiny minority. Most pdfs are made from text files, contain text strings, and are thus searchable. And yes, if you can select a text string and copy it, it will still be a text string when you paste it. Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but a wikibook is little more than a collection of wiki-pages, and has thus the same limitations. Of course, it is not forbidden to make one, but its usefulness would be more limited than a proper pdf (preferably typeset with (Xe)LaTeX ) The great advantage of a pdf is that, unlike other formats, it preserves and display the contents exactly as defined by its author. It doesn't matter what hardware, operating system, pdf-viewer, installed fonts, etc. you use, the pdf will always look the same everywhere. Also, it's printable; devices, software, ink, and paper may vary, but the printed content is always identical, as intended.