Sundiata

Ok, one more mystery solved. You know how I was saying that some of the elephants look like the larger Bush Elephants? Well, according to this interesting National Geographic article, about the significant genetic differences between the two species of African elephants, there was some interbreeding between the species, and at least a small number of Bush elephants carry mitochondrial DNA from forest elephants... It just so happens that the elephants from Garamba, the location of the domestication centers, are considered a hybrid between forrest and bush elephants... At least according to wikipedia. If you look at the map of the geographical range of the two species across Africa, shared in previous post, you'll notice that even today, the territories of Bush Elephants and Forest elephants are right next to each other in Garamba (North East Congo/ South Sudan border region) Some other interesting quotes from the National Geographic article: Why? No elephants were killed, though the capturing of that young specimen must have been super stressful for the poor animal. You know what comes next right? Some more pictures of people riding African forests elephants! yay! I'm sorry, I've become totally fascinated by this... In recent decades Zimbabwe seems to have taken over the torch... Except they use Bush Elephants instead. People doing the impossible... Riding full grown African Bush Elephants like it ain't nothing but a thing... Not without controversy of course... And the fact that a number of handlers have actually been killed by their elephants over the years does illustrate the difficulty in handling the largest land animal on the planet: Random internet comment from a guy who said he's a mahout, said that they control Indian Elephants through pressure points in the neck, but because African elephants have much thicker and looser skin, those pressure points are hard to reach. Another possible explanation for why training African elephants is so difficult? Either way, consider the myth busted. African elephants, both types, are trainable. It's just harder.

Well, the text that mentioned these upward facing scales talks about it as an innovation, or a development. So it's probably not how they were originally armored... I'd say, keep both textures! If you want to get fancy, perhaps add a tech for the Seleucid elephants. A special pachyderm scale armor tech, or something, that increases their health by 5% or so? By all means, I never intended to argue for the removal of the old texture. I was just merely pointing out that 1) they did indeed use upward facing scales, and 2) that the claim that they moved to the use of North African elephants in later years isn't an absurd one. @Alexandermb I was also meaning to ask if you could check the Hero Arakamani's mount in-game. He was using an Indian elephant in alpha 23 (yikes)... It should definitely be African, but it should still be bigger than the other Kushite war-elephants. Perhaps using a large bull as the King's elephant. Basically, bigger than the current North African elephants, but still a little bit smaller than the wild gaia bush -elephants. So we basically get this effect: Small, standard elephants with a single rider, and the large King's elephant with a tower. But still all African, no Indian elephants here. My second question is whether you could model a tower based on this Aksumite tower from the movie. I'm not saying this is more accurate per-se (I have no idea what a Kushite tower looked like) but Arakamni is currently standing upright in a heavy Carthaginian howdah. I'd prefer him to be sitting down in a more lightweight "African" looking howdah. Like this: It just feels more believable somehow... (the stuffed lion-head isn't necessary)

First I had an inkling that it was Congo. Then I did some digging. Now I'm pretty sure it's Congo. In 1899, King Leopold II of Belgium opened an elephant domestication center at Kira Vunga. Then operations switched to Api Elephant Domestication Center and then to Gangala-na-Bodio Elephant Domestication Center (North East Congo). At the height of the program they had as many as 80 domesticated elephants, used for maintaining roads, plowing fields and transportation. They hoped to use the elephants to haul cargo from the Congolese interior to the southern terminus for boats on the Nile at Rejaf, in the Lado Enclave in Sudan. (Yes, the Belgians also occupied a small part of South Sudan, something I've never in my life heard anything about, even though I grew up in Belgium. And people don't often mention that the Mahdists in Sudan were indeed fighting the Belgians in the South West (battle of Rejaf), in addition to the Italians and the Abyssinians in the South East and the British and Egyptians in the North, while the French were marching in from the West. Talk about being embattled...) Anyway, back to the elephants... I found more images, and even an old school video. You can clearly see that they are mostly working with the smaller type of forest elephant, as they are much easier to control, but there's a handful of bush elephants as well if I'm not mistaken. If you look at the specific geographical range of forest elephants, you'll see that the domestication centres were located within the northern confines of their range, on the edge of area's that were also populated by the larger bush elephants. The actual capturing and training of the elephants was done by Azande (Zande) people. The program remained active until as late as the 1980's, but yeah, the Cold War wasn't so cold in Africa. Congo basically collapsed during the later rule of Mobutu, and still hasn't recovered. This colonial period video from 1942 is quite spectacular if you're interested in elephant handling and live capture of wild candidates for domestication... First time I've ever seen actual footage of people handling African forest elephants. They're well trained and the degree of control they exercise over these animals is impressive, especially towards the end, when they finally move in to tie the captured young elephant to the already tame ones, you can see that they follow precise commands. Also, the sheer strength of such "small" elephants isn't to be underestimated (said to be 10 to 20 times that of oxen)... Current range of the 2 remaining species of African elephant: Some physiological differences between the species A lot more interesting images (have you ever seen an elephant used for ploughing?): Truly, one of Congo's untold histories. Documentary level interesting if you ask me... I too, have questions...

Weren't we close to reaching some sort of consensus that Thracian Black Cloaks make a lot more sense in the Macedonian roster than in the Athenian one? With the Thracian rhomphaia the Macedonians will be just as capable as any other civ and people might actually start playing with them. More historical accuracy and better gameplay. It's like, literally a win-win. *Not saying that Black Cloaks should be removed from the Athenians (but perhaps a slight increase in cost to reflect their distance to Thrace?)

@Alexandermb, @Stan`, @Nescio, the topic of war elephants recently surfaced in the thread : ===[TASK]=== Animations Re-Export and Unit Meshes Fix I didn't want to muddle up the thread so I thought i'd start a more specific one. We were discussing whether the scales on the armor of Seleucid war elephants were turned upside down. I shared a page from a book on war elephants that stated that the Seleucids turned the scales on their elephant armor upside down for better protection against upward thrusts, but it didn't mention the original classical source. The same text also said that the Seleucids also switched to smaller numbers of African elephants in later years, because Indian elephants were becoming difficult to acquire. Again, the original source for this statement eludes us. But I did find something very, very interesting. It had been staring me in the face all this time, and I never noticed... The wikipedia page on the now extinct North African Elephant (Loxodonta Africana Pharaohensis) features an image of a fragmented Roman bronze statue of a war-elephant, currently in the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich. It's an African war elephant with scales turned upside down! Now, I don't know if this piece is supposed to depict a Roman, Seleucid or even Ptolemaic or Carthaginian war elephant, but it does show an African elephant, probably the smaller North African type with the unique, aforementioned type of armor, so I just had to share it... Bonus: Historical reenactors using actual African forest elephants for their Punic troops. African forest elephants, though rare, aren't extinct (yet). They have the same stature as the North African Elephant. Note how "tiny" these elephants are compared to the enormous African Bush Elephant (and noticeably smaller than the Indian ones as well)... Alexander, you see your colored Phrygian helmets? Second bonus, very rare historical photographs of Africans riding African elephants (most of these also look like forest elephants): Third bonus, people riding full sized African Bush Elephants. I've always been told that this is impossible, so imagine my confusion when my sister came back from a trip in Zimbabwe, telling me she took a ride on the back of an African Bush Elephant. She did tell me they're difficult to control, and they mostly sort of go where they want to go, lol, but it is apparently possible to ride them. If you're patient enough... 4th Bonus Bush elephant choreography? Anno early 1900's? Looks like some kind of forgotten colonial project/experiment... Not sure... Not even sure where this is... 55580618_324172821782360_7280992477606051840_n.mp4

Yes

Welp, so no more Saharan mineral dust for the Amazon, I guess... At least the cattle herders of Chad will be happy...

The winds blow from North to South like this between November and March, but it's usually worst between December/February.

Yeah, it's definitely an interesting and complicated topic. Over here in West Africa it does this every winter: Harmattan. Dust, EVERYWHERE! It's horrible, lol... Some years it's not so bad, but some years it's extreme. The air is super dry. You can taste sand on your cracking lips all day long. It can even affect your breathing. Sometimes no rain for 4 months straight. Not even a drop, even in the forested zones. I guess it's not as bad as winter snow blizzards though...

I'm a little skeptical. I've heard the claim before. Even saying that it would destroy the Amazon. A hyperbole assumption if you ask me, considering that the Amazon didn't just disappear the last time the Sahara was green (though it was smaller). About the plankton, some studies have shown that global plankton populations have already dropped by more than 40% since 1950, while others note rapid plankton growth in the North Atlantic, both phenomenon directly tied to global CO2 levels. A greening of the Sahara could significantly reduce global CO2 levels, cooling the climate, and rather lead to the stabilisation of plankton levels. The dust also mostly comes from a specific place in the Sahara (Bodélé Depression), so, if we just leave that place a desert, we should be ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_climate_cycles (of course, human activity is making things way worse than it needs to be)

Thank you for the laugh, I lol'd a little... I sort of agree with what you're saying. I always thought the Romans were among the most researched and well documented civilizations of antiquity, so it seemed logical to me to develop them far beyond what they are now, and then use that as a quality benchmark for every other civ. But the whole republican vs imperial thing turns the current Roman faction into a more difficult one to research (why not a IV'th Imperial phase, would be amazing...). I also think each civilization should be developed on it's own merit. Look at each civ, what makes them unique (strengths, weaknesses), and design the faction around that. Be more bold with what makes a civ unique, but not as bold as to just give them free stuff because they needed a gimmick to stand out gameplay wise. History is a great teacher. Allow it to inform the game, and things will start making more sense. Ignore it and you get things like marauding Celts destroying everything in sight with nothing more than a shower of glorified pebbles. I lol'd again... We love your trees man...

I buy internet bundles for my modem with phone-credit. 4GB at a time (most economical option). It's a pain, but it's the way it is... And my 3rd world internet connection is sometimes actually better than that of some of my European counterparts, so I shouldn't really complain... Either way, download size is almost a non-issue for 0AD right now. First time I downloaded it I was super suspicious because it was so small... It could easily double in size and still not be considered a big download anywhere... I mean, It's currently the size of single movie... And you only tend to watch a movie once. I've played 0AD hundreds of times. Some people play it all day long, every day... If you're not willing to "spend" even 5GB on downloading one of the best free and open source games in the world, you're probably just not excited about the game to begin with... Priority should definitely go to finishing, fleshing out and polishing of factions already in-game. But I don't believe that should preclude development on new factions either. People need a motivator, and working on the latest faction is definitely something that keeps the interest going. Of course we shouldn't add anything to vanilla until it's as good as ready, and is up to standard (quality, historicity), but it's nice to have something to look forward to, like the latest new civ.

There are enormous aquifers in the Sahara, such as the North Western Sahara Aquifer System, the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System, the Lake Chad Basin Aquifer System, and Iullemeden Aquifer System, dating to the African Humid Period. Regenerative agriculture, or at least agricultural developments in the Sahara, are technically feasible to an extent. Muammar Gaddafi actually successfully exploited the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer with the construction of the Great Man-Made River, "the world's largest irrigation project". Problem is that the water is often very deep... Like, more 500 meters below the surface. The entire Sahara is also notoriously difficult to control from a political perspective...

I'd say if someone quits a rated game without resigning, for whatever reason, there should be a 5min window or so, with timer, for that person to reconnect. If the person fails to reconnect, then the points should automatically go to the player still in-game. Having a decent connection is the responsibility of anyone playing a competitive multiplayer game. A tennis player can sprain his ankle during a match, preventing him from playing any further. But that doesn't mean the game becomes an automatic draw.

In his book "War Elephants", p. 154, John Kistler makes the claim twice. I don't know the original source for this... On another note, he also mentions the temple of Athena Polias Nikephoros in Pergamon as a source for the crested headpiece for the elephants. I just spent more than an hour looking for it because I'm dying to see it, but I can't find it (I did find the crested headpiece for the horses though )

Unless something changed, isn't it very important to mention that the images need to tile? It was a big headache for Pedro when he was making his background, because his piece wasn't originally intended to tile. (though I still don't understand why this is made to be like that, as long as the image is long enough on the horizontal axis).

I noticed that too, but then I realized it actually makes sense. Since people are much smaller than elephants, when they attack it with spears and swords they'd be stabbing upwards. If the scales are orientated downwards, the blades can dig underneath the layers of scale, especially when the scales are so big.. That having said, I haven't personally seen the original sources for these types of scale armor, but they're apparently described or depicted somewhere. From "Animals in the Military: From Hannibal's Elephants to the Dolphins of the US Navy", by John Kistler also repeated in his other book "War Elephants", he says: Apparently Seleucids were also also forced to switch to the smaller North African elephants in later years, just like the Ptolemies (Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Indo-Greek Kingdom and Iranian Parthians would have blocked their access to Indian elephants). Perhaps it would be an interesting option for Ptolemies and Seleucids to be forced to choose from either stronger but more expensive Indian elephants vs cheaper but weaker African elephants? 2 more pretty art refs: "A turreted war elephant wearing a saddle cloth decorated with a hippocampus (Eastern Iran, ca. 3rd-2nd cent. BCE"

Dude, no way you could bother me. But, I'm not sure what I'm looking at here?

Oh, dear, have I been committing art assets in my sleep again? (I think that was a wrong tag )

Something like these? Different? Do you want different colors?

I would love this...

@Alexandermb Have you tried using an HDRI to bake in some fake but realistic reflections from the sky and such? I think Enrique suggested something similar recently. It would add to the realism of the helmets, which currently look a little as if they were lit under a spot, reflecting whites but no blues from the sky. (I know lighting is probably one of the most difficult things and an HDRI might be a bit hard on your system). Here's a beautiful example of how outside lighting reflects the sky in the polished metal As LordGood said, I think adding dirt and scratches afterwards with the spec map offers the cleanest approach, perhaps even using normals for heavier denting? Of course I'm not an expert in the matter. I just see you're still experimenting a lot so I thought I'd my 2 cents.

@Nescio, I just noticed something, and I wanted to share it with you. It's not directly relevant to your question about straight swords, but it's still interesting. I get the feeling sometimes that you're not the biggest fan of comparative history, which is understandable. A healthy dose of skepticism is good, and drawing conclusions from comparisons between disparate societies separated by space and time is definitely questionable. What I'm trying to say is that this isn't the case when comparing the 2nd Kingdom of Kush (Napatan and Meroitic Period) with New Kingdom Egypt. In fact the parallels are sometimes direct. I try to draw as much as I can from primary period Kushite sources (written, archaeological and pictorial). Then more secondary sources, like written accounts and depictions by foreigners (Egyptian, Roman, Greek, Assyrian, Persian and Aksumite). But these don't always suffice to create a complete picture of Kushite society. This is where I start comparing, and looking for potential parallels in New Kingdom, Late Period and Ptolemaic Period Egypt to the north, Nuba and other South/South-West Sudanese populations, and Beja/Blemmye in the East. Sometimes there is simply nothing to compare. But sometimes you end up staring at exactly the same thing, and the argument for incredible levels of cultural continuity in Sudan become all the stronger, and all the clearer. In my last post I referenced a New Kingdom image of Ramesses II, smiting his enemies, while Amun stands next to him offering him a sickle type blade. The image is from Abu Simbel, c. 1264 BC. I did this to quickly illustrate a type of blade I hadn't seen in Kushite art yet, but seemed to be the "knife of Amen-Re" that the Kushite King Aspelta was referring to in his stele. Here it is again: Here's the actual relief from Abu Simbel: Well, I recently found myself staring at a partially reconstructed facade of Temple 200 from Naqa, built by the Kushite King Amanikhareqerem in the 1st or 2nd century AD (Meroitic), at least 1300 years after Ramesses' relief was commissioned at Abu Simbel. Open and download image and zoom in for detail. It's the same scene! Especially the panel on the left is basically an inverse image of Ramesses' scene, created well over a millennium after the original source of inspiration was created. This is an example of a direct parallel between the New Kingdom and the 2nd Kingdom of Kush, well into the Meroitic period. Which is a little crazy... You might wonder what is the value of the Kushite version of the scene, if it's just a copy? Well, it's not a carbon copy. Kushites remixed everything and gave it their own spin. In this scene, Amun of Thebes seems to be replaced with Amun of Napata. There are lions at the feet of the king, unlike the Ramessede scene. Lions in such scenes aren't unknown in Egypt of course, but the style in which the lions are depicted is totally different. Amanikhareqerem is also wearing a similar, but more elaborate outfit than Ramesses in the left scene. The same type of outfit seen on Natakamani from his relief on the pylon of the lion temple in Naqa. Amanikhareqerem in the left panel is also wearing the same crown as Ramesses II. On the right scene the King is wearing a full body scale armor from his torso and arms, down to his knees. This type of armor isn't present in similar Egyptian scenes, but it's the same type of scale armor seen on a relief of Kushite King Tarekeniwal on the pylon of his pyramid chapel at Meroë. Also, the king is holding prisoners by their hair, while a spear with a massive blade can be seen sticking out vertically above the prisoners' head. Again, this confirms that the large blade sticking out above the head of prisoners in a variety of Kushite reliefs isn't a sword as some assumed, but the immense blade of a spear, whose shaft is obscured by the prisoners. Very similar spears with blades between c. 50 and 70 cm were actually found in the royal graves of El Hobagi (Post Meroitic). These types of spears are not known in Egypt to my knowledge. So basically, we're looking at the same scene as the Ramessede scene, adapted to a Kushite reality, with the king wearing typical Kushite versions of royal attire and armor, while holding at least one typically Kushite weapon. But not all the weapons in the scene are different from their Egyptian counterparts. The sickle shaped blade in the hand of Amun can be seen on both sides of the pylon. Essentially the same type as the one in the Ramessede scene. This is the blade that I believe the Kushites referred to as "šꜥd n ’Imn-Rꜥ" or "the Knife of Amen-Re", which is apparently distinct from the Khopesh of Amun. Note that just above the sickle shaped blade of Amun on the right panel, there is a circle (I assume to denote the holiness of Amun's weapon). The victory stele of King Tanyidamani (c. 100 BC), which I believe features a stylized full sized khopesh also has this circle above Amun's blade, which is much larger than the small blade in Amanikhareqerem's relief. Close up of one of the lions from Amanikhareqerem's temple. Lions aren't an uncommon depiction in Egyptian smiting scenes, but this Kushite style is totally different. The temple in question, in Naqa, right next to the Amun temple One example of an area where a comparative approach was necessary was Kushite boats/ships. There was very little to go on for a while, until discovering the crude graffito that depict a number of types of vessels similar to Egyptian models. I originally provided the following New Kingdom example of the ships of the King's son of Kush in a Theban scene: Well, I just came across a crude Meroitic period graffiti from Philae, depicting a ship which looks quite similar, more than a thousand years later. Typical high, upward and inward curving stern, elevated prow, cabins, double rudder, and this one also has a central mast. Of course there are many, many parallels that can be drawn between the two civilizations, and the ones mentioned here are simple illustrations of a concept that can be expanded to almost every aspect of their respective societies (with caution), including military. There were many differences as well, and that's why sticking to purely Kushite sources when and where possible is always the best approach. But where this isn't possible, for specific things like military formations or details in ship-design, looking at the New Kingdom is the closest you're going to get, for now. And this isn't a bad approach as long as you're already intimate with all the Kushite sources on the respective subjects first. So basically when it comes to comparing the New Kingdom to the Napatan and Meroitic periods, many aspect can be summed up as follows: same same, but different. This is also why I thought it was a bad idea to remove Nuba and Blemmye mercenaries, because you'll essentially end up with a Kushite faction that's pretty much just a rebirthed Iron Age New Kingdom, which is kind of how the Kushites viewed themselves, but it's also not the full story. What differentiates Kush from Egypt is the Kushite periphery, a tribal wild land, a savannah biome full of exotic people plants and animals, as opposed to the Egyptian periphery, which was just sand.

@Alexandermb I really love the work you do! But I guess you know that by now. Maybe it doesn't get said enough, but you art contributions all look fantastic, and I love to come to the forum and see what you're up to this time. I'm one of those people who zooms in a lot. A lot! In single player I remove the camera restrictions almost by default, and love to bring the camera down to a really low angle every once in a while to "see things from my soldiers' perspective". I've been doing this for years before ever even joining the forums. I've noticed friends of mine zooming in like that to appreciate the art up close as well. We notice details a lot, and love them. The more the better, lol... I also agree that it's good practice to make new art assets of the highest quality, even if they're not immediately useful or need to be downscaled for their final inclusion in the game. I think it's obviously a bad idea to constantly be playing catch up with bigger titles... Currently there are issues on the game-engine side, which limit the productivity and effectiveness of the art contributions. Artists should make the best art they can, and game engine needs to be updated to implement industry standard functionalities like anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, instancing and LOD systems (aren't there dynamic LOD systems that don't require any new modeling work?). Aside from all the other stuff that needs to be done to bring the performance up to scratch, like pathfinder improvements, moving as much as makes sense to C++... if I understand correctly there was even some GUI stuff that causes lag... I think asking artists to make sub-standard models or textures, because the engine can't handle what is considered low-poly by most other engines is not so good. (20.000 poly's is considered low-poly, pretty much everywhere these days). I don't think anybody still uses 256x256 textures anymore, so having 512x512 or even higher variants on hand for when the engine gets on point is a good idea. We shouldn't be thinking about what looks acceptable today, but ask will it still look acceptable 2 or 3 years from now. The game is still in alpha, and if it gets released with models and textures from the previous decade, it's going to look like a game from the previous decade. We need to think ahead about these things... The same person that's complaining about not being able to run this game on a 10 year old potato is eventually going to buy a new computer, and ditch 0AD in a heartbeat because it looks so outdated compared to all the other games he can now run on his system.

Not sure, those typical short swords only appear in the Meroitic period, to my knowledge (Meroitic not being understood). Previous iterations of blades approaching the size of a short sword during the Napatan and even Kerma period look like oversized daggers evolved from Kerma-Period designs. I suspect they'd be referred to as knives or daggers: Kerma Period daggers: At 52 cm, the one on the left is the largest one I've seen so far +30 cm Napatan period blade: From the stele of Taharqa in Kawa, we have the term "ḥmt sft", among his donations to the temple, which means "copper knife", "sft" meaning knife. The Adoption Stele of Aspelta refers to the knife of Amen-Re, as "šꜥd n ’Imn-Rꜥ". I suspect this refers to the smaller type of curved blade also sometimes referred to as khopesh. New Kingdom example of what I think "the knife of Amen-Re" refers to (human form of Amun on the left): Here's another example of a type of bronze knife, from Kerma. I don't know it's date though: Also, if you're wondering, khopesh refers specifically to a curved blade: So yeah, my best guess for straight, double edged short swords would be "knife": "sft" How interesting... So yeah, "sft", "zft", "zefet", "sfy", or "sefy", your choice