Sundiata

How interesting... Are you sure those papers weren't about Southern African elands? We really can't add something like that without proper primary sources. But they do seem to be quite docile indeed... I only see donkeys there... Donkeys were widespread in the Sahara. I think they even originate from there.

@Wesley, the Garamantes are actually on my personal shortlist for another African civilization. References would be tremendously challenging though. But not impossible... We start talking about Garamantes and start sharing references from the 10th message in this thread: They were actually first suggested back in 2011: There's a lot more than 5 small cities. At least 8 important towns/cities and over a hundred fortress settlements! Probably hundreds of more smaller and/or as of yet undiscovered/unexcavated settlements... There was even a Roman style bath house and Hellenistic influenced cut stone temple in Germa as well as elaborate monumental tombs with Hellenistic/Coastal North African influences. And they were fully literate as well! https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/11/111111-sahara-libya-lost-civilization-science-satellites/ I'm not sure where you got that from? African Elands did indeed exist and were hunted by Saharan people, but I've never seen anything about domestication, let alone it being used as a draft animal. Perhaps a misinterpretation of crude cave paintings of horse drawn chariots? There were indeed still a few lakes so they should be able to fish, maybe transport troops, but not much more than that. But the whales date to more than 40 million years ago... It's a little bit beyond our timeframe Exactly... Are you familiar with Dhar Tichitt (and Dhar Walata and Dhar Nema) in the West African Sahara? More than 500 stone settlements dating from c. 2000 BC to 300 BC. Early agro-pastoralists. They were ancestral to the Soninke people, who later went on the found the Ghana Empire (modern day Mali/Mauritania) in the early medieval period.

@Wesley “Dr” Clyde Winters is a fraudulent piece of garbage. Black Supremacist trash. Worthless scum… He has no academic expertise in ancient languages whatsoever. Some of his writings include: The Ancient Celts and Vikings were Black People The Sumerians were Black The Black Greeks The Blacks of China's First Civilization: The Xia Ancient African Kings of India African Empires in Ancient America (2013) The Ancient Black Civilizations of Asia (2013) Atlantis in Mexico: The Mande Discovery of America (2013) Meroitic Writing and Literature (2013) He also claims that the ancient inhabitants of Atlantis, as well as King James I of England were black... In addition to Meroitic, he also claims to have deciphered: Indus (Harappan) script Sumerian Olmec script Clyde Winters is a lier and a fraud. Nothing he writes is peer reviewed. The precursors of the Meroitic language have been spoken for thousands of years before Buddhism even existed. It's mostly Nilo-Saharan, evolving out of Proto-Nilo-Saharan with Afro Asiatic influences, and has nothing to do with Gandhara… If you want to learn about Meroitic, I suggest looking up the works of Dr. Claude Rilly, "Doctor in Egyptology and linguistics, and director of the French archaeological mission of Sedeinga (SEDAU), Co-editor of the Meroitic Newsletters, Member of the board of the International Society for Nubian Studies and of the Sudan Archaeological Research Society, he is also research fellow at the CNRS" https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-meroitic-language-and-writing-system/D1534C93DCCA955D82E0594CE92598FC Clyde Winters on the other hand is a major source of misinformation. A very toxic individual. A disrupter. One of many ugly stains on the internet. He makes a living out of duping gullible people of African decent. I have come across his garbage on numerous occasions, and I shudder every time. Basically I hate him… This website is dedicated to debunking individuals like him: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Clyde_Winters

As wow says, It's the same for everyone, so it doesn't affect gameplay. Anyway, if ranged units spread fire, this would be even less of a thing to think about.

Well, to be fair, it would probably have sounded a lot better in French. I actually thought it was an interesting insight into some of the bottlenecks, that non-programmers like myself have difficulty understanding. Thanks @vladislavbelov. By the way, I never saw this video from Capitole du Libre before... Of course I liked the part where you talk about Kush I liked @stanislas69 part as well. Awkward video thumbnail...

@Lion.Kanzen where art thou? I miss your spanglish... The man seems to be MIA since January...

If they randomly target 1 out 10 of the nearest units (in range), fire would automatically be spread across the 10 nearest units, not just the hero in front, who is only 1/10th of the selection. If 100 archers are in range to fire on an enemy group of 9 units and a dancing hero in front, the hero would only receive 1 out of ten arrows. Which means 10 arrows target the hero, and the other 90 arrows target the 9 other units within range, but behind the hero.

Ranged units should randomly pick 1 out of the 10 nearest enemy units to attack. This will literally solve the issue and we'll have more organic ranged combat as well. Currently ranged units always target the nearest unit. That's the core of the problem. They should spread fire.

@Gurken Khan, Yeah it was just really weird... And it's pretty common apparently, and has been upsetting to more than a few people (I saw some pages full of scolding tirades against admins casually blocking thousands of IP addresses) But then I realized in my case it really wasn't a random dragnet, but actually personal, and I was like: The guy replied again, by the way. First he sort of apologized to me for his heavy handed warning, but his second message still kind of implies that he thinks I did it. He told me not to worry about it though, because it was "some time ago", as if he "forgives" me for my passed transgressions... what an a__ hole...

I love all of that! Especially number 1 has always seemed like a no-brainer to me. Having small icons of crossed swords to indicate battle-events where more than 100 units died over x amount of minutes could also be a nice extra.

@feneur, the dancing thing is indeed quite a disruptive part of many MP matches. It reduces the overall strategy of the game in favor of obsessive compulsive unit micro. It's something that many people have been complaining about for a while. Not an easy fix, surely, but definitely worth the attention. I don't know to what extent @borg-'s mod addresses this issue?

I think the current way 0AD handles garrisoning units in towers is really great, and I also use it for the same reasons as you do. My question is about the default arrows that don't add population. I'm not necessarily opposed to it though. There's just a logical flaw in ungarrisoned towers and fortresses firing arrows, implying someone's home, yet still loosing it to gaia when the CC falls because of the lack of a territory root. Just exploring possibilities.

@Bigtiger Oh man, that looks so good... These biomes will really help spruce up 0AD's maps!

Sure, I get that. But in my opinion who says what is very relevant information. I tend to be innately distrustful of people who try to convince me of something while hiding their identity. Whistleblowers are a special case, but even then it's important to do your due diligence and independently verify the claims in so far as that's possible. Also, could you imagine our legal systems working like that? Guilt by association is an ugly thing. So are dragnets. Still not entirely sure about what happened though. Anyway, I got a response... My IP seems to be conflated with that of a user called Michaelcogbill.

Ok guys, anyway, thanks a lot for helping me figure out what was going on! Sorry if I sounded a bit edgy, I'm just a little sensitive about false accusations (bad experiences...).

I was able to create an account without a problem, it seems (so far). I left a message on Robvanvee's talk page, asking why my IP address was blocked. That's not my issue though. They accused my IP address of vandalism! They didn't tell me to create an account several times to avoid being caught up in a banned ip range in advance. They blocked me first, only to tell me 3 months later, and then told me to create an account to avoid being blocked again in the future. It's just insulting and unsettling. I didn't vandalize anything! They just told me I vandalized something, knowing full well that they're banning IP's by the thousands, which means they also know full well that there is probably a less than 0.1% chance that I was actually vandalizing anything. They should never do something like that. Don't accuse people if you know they didn't do anything. At least have the common decency to apologize for the inconvenience and explain that they know you probably didn't do anything. Look at wildfire games for example. See how upset people get for being banned even when they actually did something wrong. Now imagine for example how upset people would be if 0AD's admins just decide to ban everyone from Germany because a random German account said a bad word, or ban every Verizon users for the same reason... A lot of people are very upset/outraged by this. Including actual contributors who have left wikipedia because this. People even get permanently banned because of cartel like actions by some of the admins. The arrogance is serious in some of those admins... How can an individual casually ban thousands of IP's and then be totally blasé about it when so many of their innocent victims are understandably angry. And they award themselves titles and tags for their "valuable" contributions to the community. Yuk... I still don't understand why in the world people without an account should be allowed to edit anything. You can't even do that on Wildfire Games Forum. I don't understand that. Why would somebody be entitled to anonymity when they are editing the worlds most comprehensive encyclopedia. Unless you're some kind of a political dissident, why would anybody be allowed to be anonymous when editing one of the most frequented sources of information in the world. That's a recipe for disaster, and one of the reasons wikipedia gets a bad rap. It's really inappropriate. It's an encyclopedia, not Chatroulette...

Jesus Christ, you're right! These people are blocking thousands of IP addresses at a time because of individual offenders, and they get rewarded for it too! I thought this was a ridiculous assumption but it seems to be what actually happened... Wow... I'm speechless. This definitely affects the way I see Wikipedia... There's a ton of justifiably upset and even outraged wikipedia users and editors who have been caught up in these kind of dragnet operations. And the Admins doing the blocking, literally blocking thousands of people at a time because of a single rotten apple, are super arrogant and dismissive! What a bunch of @#$%ers... Why in the world would you be allowed to edit anything, anywhere, without having an account in the first place. I get that wikipedia is bit special, but this is just stupid!

Are such viruses common on MacBooks? I've never had messages about a virus before, and I'm not the most risky internet user either... Maybe my phone? But I use that even less for anything... Just WhatsApp and random google searches... Nothing risky...

ok, thanks. Any Idea on what the rest means? Because the IP address they mention does match mine. Supposedly the message is from 17 November 2018, 3 months ago (which is also weird), so if that's true I guess my IP address hasn't changed since then. So I can assume it is genuinely addressed to me, which is so weird, because I've never tried to change anything on wikipedia before, let alone pages for a music album I never even listened to... My IP address isn't shared with anyone, and no one has physical access to my laptop or phone, ever... Neither to my network. It's just a bit startling, because when I look up the warning messages, I got the most severe warning in those respective categories. Like a "category 4 warning" or something: Considering that was 3 months ago, I might already be blocked, without warning, as the message says... That Robvanvee dude, the guy who sent me the message is a member of the "Counter Vandalism Unit", and he even has an "Anti Vandalism Barnstar", whatever that may mean... I don't know this guy or why he is targeting my IP address. I think this is all very strange... I just thought someone here might know a little more about how these aspects of wikipedia work, because there wasn't even an option to appeal this. I wanted to create an account and do some work on their Kushite wiki pages, because they're a mess, but I wonder how that will go down if the first thing those people see is an IP address that is flagged for vandalism...

I'm a little confused about something, it's probably nothing, but maybe someone can clarify this for me. I opened wikipedia today and saw that I had an old message that I've never seen before. Strange because I don't have, nor have I ever had an account there. It said "You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you vandalize Wikipedia, as you did at Kamikaze (Eminem album). Robvanvee 07:42, 17 November 2018 (UTC)". So naturally I'm like, huh? what? I don't even listen to Eminem, and I've never even been on that page before... It said that if it's a "shared IP address" I should create an account, to avoid this in the future... Huh? Also, how come if I check the geolocation of my IP address it says I live in Accra, which is not where I live... Not even the correct region? Or did Wikipedia just block every vodafone user who lives in a 100 km radius of Accra because some snotnose messed with one of their pages? "Wiki Loves Africa", hahaha, ok ...

@Wesley, looks pretty cool! Are you aware of the mod "Terra Magna"? It features the Xiongnu, a nomadic civ who are culturally related to the Scythians. I'd invite you to check it out for some inspiration. Nomadic gameplay is not entirely finished, but it's already very developed and playable: Here's the main development thread for the Xiongnu: Here's the main development thread for the Scythians in Delenda Est: And this thread is a more general Nomadic Civs thread about Xiongnu, Scythians and Huns There's a ton of history, art references and interesting discussions in those threads, so I'd advice you to take your time and go through them.

Yeah, i know about the default arrows. But there's a difference between an arrow and an actual archer shooting arrows. I used to play a game where you'd hire archers for the towers, and that would be their dedicated job. I just don't know if that's interesting for 0AD as well...

Hmm, but the "default garrison" is an abstraction that isn't explicitly mentioned anywhere, is it? Really I'm not sure. I've noticed the default arrows but it doesn't add actual population does it? Maybe it should (like ships) to justify the territory root and replace the castle ghosts that are shooting those 3 arrows? What about towers? Too complex? Dunno...

I think it makes sense to loose an ungarrisoned fortress to gaia when the CC is taken out. Especially seen as garrisoning even a single woman reverses the loss of control. But not being able to build in your own territory anymore, even when the fortress is garrisoned makes even less sense to me. So if that means it needs a territory root, I'm in favor.

@Nescio, I'm a little pre-occupied these days, but I'll keep you informed if that changes. Success!