Nescio
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Posts posted by Nescio
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https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1524 introduces templates for a domestic horse and camel that don't run away.
https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1523 standardizes fauna templates.
2 hours ago, stanislas69 said:Indeed I liked the mechanism in AOM where if you captured a cow it would take some time before it would reach it's full potential. They could also turn into their adult counterparts but that needs code.
AoM's animal fattening was great, hopefully something like that could be included in 0 A.D. as well.
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4 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
Nothing. It's just that I don't know what is the point of having them vs the time it takes to make them
Oh, that. I have no idea how much time it takes to create them, but I do hope someone with sufficient time and skill is willing to create more animals. Biodiversity is not terribly important, however, it is nice to have; more variety makes the game more realistic and pleasing.
As for the young animals specifically, one use could be that juveniles can be trained quickly at the corral but cost more food than they give; they can then be (automatically?) upgraded for free or promoted to fully grown animals which give a lot of food. Actually I might try it out in 0abc; maybe a experience trickle could work for that.
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2 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
No I meant the baby animals
What's wrong with them? We already have fauna_elephant_asian_infant.xml and fauna_giraffe_infant.xml
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32 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
Yeah I think it would be nice but I don't see the point... We don't have any herd behavior.
No? Now I'm confused. template_unit_fauna_herd_domestic.xml and template_unit_fauna_hunt_skittish.xml are different.
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58 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
I guess making a foal is just a matter of scaling down the horse ? @Alexandermb
Maybe, I'm not sure. Foals seem to be much thinner and have relatively long legs, a different tail, and a shorter body:
While at it, could we also get kids, lambs, and piglets?
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30 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
@Nescio who says I'm an artist ? :p dondont believe the badge it's fake
At least you gave the impression you know how Blender works; anything graphical is too difficult for me; I'm text based
30 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:about the horse what is wrong with it I believe there is fauna horse. Or do you want something else ?
Ah, yes, I see there is. However, it's feral and huntable (<Entity parent="template_unit_fauna_hunt_skittish">), I want a domesticated one that isn't afraid of humans (<Entity parent="template_unit_fauna_herd_domestic">).
[EDIT: that would be easy to fix; I could make a new template and submit a patch later]
Foal would be nice too. And I'm also hoping for the tarpan and Przewalski's horse, as well as other equids.
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2 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
I believe we do have zebu horses and donkeys @Nescio unless you mean recruitable in this case only the zebu is.
Actually I'm only looking at the fauna templates currently in game: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/gaia
I'm not an artist, so any other assets are hidden to me
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Updated first post. It would be really nice if A24 could at least have all domesticated animals.
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1 minute ago, stanislas69 said:
With bear, boar, fox, some other animals a school made for us (IIRC otter, and fish) , gorilla, that'll make a nice start for A24
It would be nice if cattle could be added as well
0 A.D. already has a giraffe, however, there are several subspecies, each with a different skin pattern. Would it be possible to have all of them?
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13 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
Even the kushites ?
The Kushites were a Nile Valley civilization, concentrated in what is now Northern Sudan; some individuals might have travelled deep into East Africa. However, bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas are confined to the Congo basin and some areas to the West of it; Central Africa is a completely different part of the world.
Nonetheless, more fauna is welcome :)
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Although I agree having more biodiversity available is nice, I wonder what these gorillas would be used for. None of the civilizations present in our game ever ventured into Central Africa where the great apes live.
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1 hour ago, Grigoris said:
What is RoN?
Rise of Nations, a game that has infinite resources, income limits, increasing unit and structure costs, wonders that can only be constructed once, horse archers that shoot while moving, towns that upgrade individually to cities and metropoleis when a sufficient number of different structures is within their inner radius, and a maximum population limit that starts at 50 (?) and can be increased to 250 (?) in steps of 25 by researching technologies, if I recall correctly.
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9 hours ago, Sundiata said:
It was also very similar to Xiongnu gold working, to the point that even experts in the field often struggle to assign artefacts to the right culture (there was some overlap). Even Thracian gold working has some similarities (Sarmatian connection)
Yes, there were great similarities, often indistinguishable, but that's hardly surprising. Central Eurasia formed a single continuum, there were no real borders; the region was perfectly suited for (semi-)nomadic lifestyle; culture, ethnicity, and language were rather fluid, constantly merged, and were therefore surprisingly homogenous for such an enormous area; steppe peoples rapidly emerged suddenly, replaced each other, and disappeared for centuries.
9 hours ago, Sundiata said:Scythian gold is indeed among the finest of the ancient world. Absolutely beautiful. They were especially fond of the stag (deer) with elongated antlers... Very important symbol for some reason.
Hunting was a very important part of their lifestyle and deer were one of the largest and most widespread game. The longer and more complex the antlers, the older the animal, and the more prestigious the kill. Divine stags and hinds also appear in many mythologies. It remained an important symbol up until modern times. Here's a beautiful example from 18th C AD Qing China, combining the Persian taste for lapis lazuli with a Central Eurasian golden deer (the Chinese touch is the flower in its mouth):
Another very significant and frequently recurring symbol is the griffin, typical amongst Iranian peoples.
Now we've seen lots of pure gold, let's finish with an example of Scythian (gilded) wood carving (5th C BC):
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3 hours ago, Loki1950 said:
They where one of the first peoples to do lost wax casting which is the technique for almost all the gold work shown here.The other civ was the Indus valley early period.
Enjoy the Choice
Actually the lost-wax technique was already known and used in various areas of the Near East in the fourth millennium B.C., i.e. thousands of years before the Scythians existed.
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22 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
I see, not sure my sculpting skills are up to the task, but maybe we don't need that much details
So I could have wannabees animals
Not any animal, only Scythian animals
A few examples (and please zoom in to enjoy the rich details - Scythians were far more advanced when it comes to metallurgy and jewellery than Greeks or Romans):
Various animals:
A fish:
A stag:
Mythic animals:
An eagle:
A panther:
Horseheads:
Griffins: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Dress_ornament_MET_DT5051.jpg
Boar: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/Золото_Скифов.jpg
Men:
A combat scene:
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53 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
I love those crown / helmets. Any close up on the queen's ? I wonder what kind of inscription there would be.
No inscriptions - that would imply writing - but engravings. Most likely deer, animals, and hunting scenes or possibly horses and warriors; those are common Scythian motives. (And yes, I fully agree Scythian jewellery is beautiful.)
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Yet another example of Greek influence (or bias?) on our modern culture: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180521-the-100-stories-that-shaped-the-world
The Odyssey is ranked #1, the Iliad #10. Other classical Greek entries are #29, #31, #49, #51, #70. Interestingly only one Latin work made it into the top 100: Ovid's Metamorphoses, #80.
(Personally I greatly dislike polls and other popularity contests.)
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45 minutes ago, JonasTuo said:
i believe africa has been inhabited since 3000 bce
Seriously? More like 300,000 years ago, when homo sapiens branched off. Or are you one of those who believe the universe was created in 4004 B.C.?
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42 minutes ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:
I would propose Xiphomachaira, or ξιφομαχαιρα, a curved Greek sword. This could be a nice way of highlighting new helmet and weapon variations introduced into the game. Obviously it's basically just xiphos with a few letters added on, but I think that it provides bit more nuance.
Interesting. A xiphos is a true sword, double-edged, symmetrical, useful for stabbing. A kopis or machaira (Xenophon uses both words as equivalents) is a sabre or sword-knife, single-edged, curved or straight, useful for cutting. Now I don't know what to make of a xipho-machaira, it seems a bit of an oxymoron to me.
20 minutes ago, Sundiata said:Oh, that's not what I meant. I meant that they can be included as a standalone expansion: click a button on the home-screen and it goes to Terra Magna with the option to play with those civs (not with the other civs). It would just be cool if it was included by default. Separate, but part of the main game/download. Sorry for going off topic..
Stand-alone expansion and official mods can be published at mod.io (that's what it is for, right?), but should not be installed by default. Including content that's not used is not a good idea.
11 minutes ago, Sundiata said:Also, why is the Wildfire Games logo the Chinese character for "fire"?
There is nothing wrong with that, I hope?
12 minutes ago, Sundiata said:How could there be any resistance to including the Chinese as a playable civilization when the actual logo of Wildfire Games is CHINESE???
You know I'd welcome the inclusion of the Han, but I don't see what the logo of Wildfire Games has to do with it. Or with the name of the next release.
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1 hour ago, Sundiata said:
I think your sentence was pretty straightforward... Not that I don't know you know these things, there just wasn't any real nuance in that statement or the argument it was supporting, namely that non-Greek or non-Roman names may be an "inferior" choice, or that a name may not be chosen because its Greek. That's the opposite what's happening. Greek and Roman names have been chosen in the past, because they were Greek and Roman (and therefore more widely known). Otherwise you wouldn't have 15 out of 23 Greek and Roman names.
The sentence you quoted was an explanation, not a justification. I don't see what's subjective about merely pointing out the fact that we have book-shelves full of Greek and Latin texts. Etruscan? Thousands of inscriptions of less than three words, but only one text, which was preserved because it was recycled as mummy wrapping. Iberian? Not even enough to determine how it relates to other languages. Celtic? Mostly names, many of which were preserved in Roman sources. Illyrian? Macedonian? Thracian? Enough to determine they were Indo-European, but that's about it. Etc.
Because so much more has survived in Greek and Latin means it's perfectly understandable that those are "over-represented". That doesn't imply that's good or bad.
1 hour ago, Sundiata said:And now you're arguing to make it 16 out 24.
No, I'm not. The best name should be chosen. Language shouldn't matter, nor should previous choices.
1 hour ago, Sundiata said:It just furthers this self-enforcing illusion that there wasn't much going on outside of the Greco-Roman world.
Much more must have been going on outside rather than inside the Greco-Roman world. The problem is we know so tantalizing little because of a scarcity of sources. Nor were Greeks and Romans overall superior; in some ways, yes, they were more advanced, in many others they were not.
1 hour ago, Sundiata said:With "violates realism", do you mean anachronism in civilizations from an extended timeframe?
No, anachronisms we have already, they are unavoidable. The civilizations currently included have had or could have had interactions with at least some of the others included, so all factions are part of a single network. I'm in favour of including Chinese because they're arguably part of the Eurasian continuum. I'm opposed to including American (or Australian) civilizations because they did not and could not have interacted with the civilizations already in game. But I suppose this discussion is actually off-topic.
To return to my point, let's not discount or favour candidates because of the language. Nor should previous results matter.
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38 minutes ago, Sundiata said:
That's actually not a relevant argument, is overly subjective and really isn't true when taking Persians, Egyptians, Kushites, Mauryans (and Chinese) into account... Why do you like to trigger me like that? lol!
Always feel free to take individual sentences out of context.
39 minutes ago, Sundiata said:I don't believe in reinforcing historical biases.
Nor do I.
39 minutes ago, Sundiata said:Mauryans
Let's hope that can be corrected into Mauryas in A24.
40 minutes ago, Sundiata said:the legacy of Xerxes and the Achaemenids has been thoroughly dragged through the mud by that unspeakable movie (who's name we shall not mention) which has had an incredible impact on popular culture.
300 is a fantasy film based upon a comic book series that does not claim in any way to be historically accurate. Or did you mean a different movie?
43 minutes ago, Sundiata said:If we use a more flexible timeframe for the pre-Colombian civs (600 BC - 600 AD, why not, it's a separate game anyway), we could have a really cool collection of factions and add it as a "built in mod", like those AoE-expansions (except it actually comes pre-packed with the game, with an integrated button on the homescreen). add Zapotecs, together with Maya's, Olmecs, Moche and Teotihuacan... Would be absolutely delicious!
A pre-Columbian mod (perhaps c. 1500 B.C. to c. 1500 A.D.) would be nice, but I object against including it by default. That another game violates realism doesn't mean we have to follow.
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2 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:
Why the hate ? :p
Nothing personal, just that there were no trans-Atlantic exchanges in Antiquity
In contrast, there is evidence the Han interacted with Parthians and Romans.
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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.
1 hour ago, Sundiata said:How about finally merging Rise of the East with the main game and naming alpha 23 "Xiongnu"?
Zapotecs, no thanks. Xiongnu (Hsiung-nu) and Han China, yes please.
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2 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
The point is, if we were to take your view then why do the Athenians have the ability to build walls in neutral territory?
Actually I think everyone should be able to erect walls in neutral territory. It's a common tactic and well attested.
6 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:Because it's a video game.
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.
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===[TASK]=== Crowd Sourced - Thracians (Faction)
in Game Modification
Posted · Edited by Nescio
b/a/e/c/h
Thrace is not really my cup of tea, so I'm not sure of how much help I can be. However, let's give it a try
The Odrysian kingdom, which was a union of dozens of tribes and minor kingdoms, covers Thrace in 0 A.D.'s timeframe. Getting units is relatively easy; some Thracians are already in game as part of other civilizations. Creating appropiate structures would be more difficult; wood was a primary building material, so I doubt anything is still standing today.
Anyway, about the unit rosters. Thracians - and Dacians - were famed and feared for their use of one-handed sickle-swords and two-handed scythe-swords (both called falx) and slightly curved sword-spears (the romphaia). A short, forward pointing sickle-dagger-sword (the sica), also used by Illyrians and Romans, was their favourite side-arm and "national weapon". (Giving separate names for similar weapons is a modern convention; sica-falx-romphaia probably formed a continuum.) However, Thracians often prefered using javelins, spears, and bow-and-arrows to close combat.
Thracians frequently adopted Greek-style helmets (but not Illyrian helmets, interestingly) and armour, sometimes after the Greeks switched to other types. On the other hand, Thracians were also notably influenced by their Scythian neighbours.
Here's a first proposal for a Thracian unit roster:
Ranks: