Pemulis

A technology for unique formations? I've always wandered what's the point of unique formations that some civs offer. In reality, they consisted in a material advantage for melee troops during fights. In game, they are more or less completely useless. Would be viable to offer some buffs with their utilization (thought the research of a related technology)? E.g., roman testudo was designed to offer more cover against ranged troops, so it could be reflected easily in game with a buff on ranged defense. I find would be very cool if the historical and tactical revolution such formations brought to the field was represented in game.

I totally agree on this, giving to them something more than the other spear champions would be very reasonable. But I think there were something going on about this on the borg-'s post about differentiating Spartan civ. By now the biggest issue for this civ is imho the very poor mobility.

It's amazing how far entertainment has gone. I wonder if one day we'll see a COD tournament among the presidents of the most important world countries.

Pemulis

I saw his biography, looks like he had very important influences. I'm very curious about him, gonna listen more of his works. I want to say thank you sharing an amazing rock album from my country. Let me know what you think if you give it a chance. At the very beginning I wanted to add The Sound of Muzak in the opening post And I'm a huge fan of Tool as well! Happy to see someone else here who loves that band, they are outstanding: the part of 10,000 days where Marie finally reaches the gates of Heaven is one of the few musical moments that gave me physical goosebumps in my life.

I lost that message, as a football lover I truly agree about what you said in the second point

The album is amazing. It's always hard to make rock music in a different language than english, and I'm always amazed when I find an artist able to do that. I'm grateful you shared that, hope others will share more as well. I'm also happy to see many people here play an instrument, would be cool to share some of our attempts in covering songs or whatever. The greater thing about internet is that it can be used as a passepartout for our shyness.

My ex girlfriend was chinese, and I know what are you talking about very well. She had a pure hatred towards Japan for such reasons. Anyway as you just said, "what imperial Japan did to other Asian countries". Hitler is still remembered today for what he did to German citizens, hope you get the point. It's not a matter of cruelty but of sheer madness, and that's why would be very interesting to point out the reasons of Nazi racism, which are not well known at all even among europeans. I understand that without knowing them it's impossible to understand what Nazism was about, and why I'm so not incline to accept comparisons.

Could be a easily shared opinion if Hitler was just a politician who killed people for exquisitely political reasons: e.g. wars (USA main example), systematic elimination of the internal opposition (Stalin main example) , bad/mean economical reforms (Mao main example) etc. But Hitler led a contemporary european country (not a wild and poor province in Africa) to the systematic and scientific elimination of a part of its own population due to religious reasons (regards that, it's interesting to take a look about the Nazi mysticism that offered the basics for most of the Nazi thoughts about german race supremacy and so on). Organizing the search, the transport and then the elimination of its own fellow citizens in the middle of a war. In the middle of Europe. Literally less than 100 years ago. Yesterday. Of course also the USA massacres in the Middle-East are disgusting, but I hope you can understand the main difference between the two phenomena. Anyway I've noticed many times that outside Europe nazism is perceived just like a form of cruel dictatorship like many others in history, so I can understand your point of view (I guess you are not european). But the reasons of the Holocaust make Nazism something deafening and negatively unique, and I cannot find a single dictator/political movement in the recent history who's crime are comparable in the "quality" and the quantity to the Nazi party ones.

I'm not a fan of censorship at any level, but of course I can understand to control and censor offensive words in the main lobby. Still, I cannot imagine a single person in the world who could be offended by a wtf. Should I consider it a profanity then? A... profanity? Wtf? Wtf. Isn't it a little too much? It costed me days being muted to remember I cannot write "sh1t" in the main lobby, seems like I should prepare myself for some more silent days.

You seem very confused @vinme, and some of your last posts border on sophistry. Imho there are two big mistake in your thought: when you talk about politeness, you are implicitly talking about being polite for purely utilitarian reasons. Which is just a 'subcategory' of politeness (or better, of hypocrisy); which ofc is a disgusting thing, but you cannot use critiques to it in order to attack politeness itself. They are different things, and of course a truly polite person is not polite for the sake of a manipulatory purpose. Your reasoning is misleading and starts from a fallacious point, 'cause nobody would ever use the word "polite" in order to refer to the things you are talking about. you believe that being direct and honest means to be brutal, and that such behavior is even admirable. This is something I've noticed very often, since many young people nowadays believe that the right to spontaneity means the right to be petty. I'm a big supporter of etiquette and I believe that people that deliberately ignore it tout court are lazy and intellectually sloppy. Following your feral self-centered pulses of domination and aggression doesn't make you a direct or honest person, otherwise we should say that all animals are honest beings. When my dogs bite my leg if I step too close to his food, should I consider myself honored with his honesty? Both JC and Shyft are simply violent like animals seeking for domination and opinionated like the worst delusional prophet, I really cannot believe you are doing this words-breakdance to justify the behavior of a person who says "you should have been aborted" when playing a videogame. I've always accepted both of them in my lobbies, I have no problems with them, but it's natural to admit that such conduct is embarrassing and pitiful especially for themselves in the first place. But unfortunately there's no scientific explanation for this, it's purely a matter of personal sensitivity, so maybe it's useless to talk about it.

I really can't understand how some people could say you are toxic. I'm starting to believe that there's an Anti-JC Agenda going on, maybe ruled by... Anyway, to justify a lack of courtesy with the "I say the truth" card is typical from a person who ignores totally the relationship between content and form. Also, knowing some Rimbaud poems doesn't make you an educated person, maybe a learned one. As you surely know, education comes from the latin verb educo which means to extract/push out. Which is clearly referred to a process of self-awareness and development, not to the storing of informations in your brain. Ergo you are just as educated as my hard disk.

Sure it's personal, in fact I would never judge someone who tells me that he doesn't like my favorite composer for reasons that came from a conscious and critic listen of his works. The point is if that person doesn't even know what it means to listen to it. By the way I can suggest to you the albums Zappa made in the '60, the later ones are full of satiric songs that can be funny and cute but imho were a tremendous waste of his talent most the time (maybe you are referring to some of them). Still have to watch all the video, 'cause my brain is very helpless recently. I can say that when we talk about the "why" pop music is what it is I always consider primarily the fact that we are talking about an industry, that works exactly like an industry that sells biscuits of whatever. The purpose of an industry is always the same: to make a good selling product, by matching what most of the people have in common in order to maximize the profits. And... what we all (or almost all) have in common if not feral pulses centered on sex, power, being rich and all irrational stuff? I have a relatively high level of cultural experience, but still I'm interested in sex kinda the same way a 17 yo illetterate from Naples does. It's natural that following this economical rule, pop art production will always be crap: 'cause desires for crap stuff is what we ALL have in common. This is what has the highest demand, what is most profitable to invest in. I don't think it has nothing to do with the "disadvantage" in letting people owning ideas. I think pop industry works in a very naive way, and who works in it doesn't care at all (or probably isn't even aware of) the cultural crimes they are perpetrating over the years. In a world in which songs with political/social meaning sell a lot, pop industry would make them 'cause it would be profitable. It's kinda a problem to concern about the artistic value of what you are producing, if your only real purpose has to be selling 1.000.000 copies of an album in order to not lose billions of dollars. But still I don't if this has something to do with the content of video, I excuse myself if I'm just talking nonsense.

I think you already gave a nice answer to that issue. Some fields in art (let's say all the "serious" art) requires a certain amount of efforts to be at least understood, and consequentially a certain amount of time and energy: now, most of people lack of both for various reasons (work, family, duties in general, etc.) Let's say they cannot/don't want to pay the price in order to understand them, and that's okay. I think it has always been like this through history. I don't believe any kind of "cultural experience" is required in order to be happy, despite the link knowledge-wisdom-happiness is very popular through all the history of philosophy. I'm not saying such things cannot help, but simply they are not the only path. The real special and unique thing that the experience of culture (don't know if I'm using this word properly in english, with it I mean all cultural products like arts, philosophy, architecture etc. etc.) gives us is the ability to understand the world in a better way, and to organize our thoughts consequentially. The real big loss of a life without intellectual experiences is the lack of social and political consciousness in the individual, imho. Because listening to Bach, in our society, requires some preliminary efforts: you have to encounter his name somewhere, then be interested in him, then search his works and check if you like them. I know it sounds very easy to be made, but maybe for some people it is not so banal. I'll never forget the first time I listened to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart: it was one of the most ugly and unlistenable album I've ever encountered in my life. I red a lot about it, and I listened to it multiple times, and now I'm able to understand it conceptually and to appreciate it aesthetically. It required time and energy that I was willing to invest 'cause I love rock music, and lot of artist and critics that I respect loved that album. Maybe if I was too busy working 12 hours a day I wouldn't even have found the time to find his name exploring the internet, you know what I mean? I don't know if my point is clear, but I can summarize saying that art is something very elitist and most of the time talking about music/art tastes is almost like talking about the social class you are in.

@BeTe I really appreciate your story! It's amazing that you managed to improve your listening skills also on a technical point of view. Unfortunately the desire for entertainment has become a real poison nowadays. I don't feel I can condemn it tout court, but still today it clearly became a plague. An amazing novel by D.F.Wallace is centered on a tape containing the final entertainment product, called Infinite Jest. Every individual who comes across that tape and watches it, finishes to die on his sofa forgetting to take care of all his biological needs: the pleasure given by the tape is so profound that erase everything else. I think entertainment can have a positive role, cause a mechanical stop of our inner thoughts can be good sometimes: who could recommend to a plumber, who works X hours a day, to watch an interview of Derrida instead of some sports when he finally returns home after a long day? But when we starts to over-use this possibility, our brain lost itself in this haze made of empty pleasure. It's like heroin, but at least heroin kills you (joking). Returning to music, I failed multiple times in letting my friends see what they are missing. I truly believe that the starting point has be arise naturally, as it happened with you. However becoming good art enjoyers is not mandatory, it's just very sad to be delusional about it.

As a deep music lover, and a musician, I can say that today there's not a more uncomfortable place to sit than the place reserved to whom who truly appreciates music. Can you see yourselves spending your life listening to thousands of albums, just to argue to a random dude about the fact that "a 13 minutes song is unlistenable lmao"? Well, I wouldn't like to. But that's my life. It's not something new to say that art has become a product of commerce under the section 'entertainment' over the last century, but the impact that this had on the various fields is something more ignored. While literature and movies (that with music are the 3 most popular forms of art by far) still conserve some respect by their users, music has going down in a hole of disrespect and violence. Before I speak about how this disrespect is practiced by the nowadays typical listener and producer's behaviours, I would like to say why in my opinion music became the most disrespected form of art. We will all agree saying that every form of art needs a certain amount of attention to be understood and appreciated: if you want to evaluate the beauty of the production of an artist, you forcibly have to experience it. Naturally, every art has a different mode of fruition: A movie, asks you to stay silent on your chair and watch it. A book, asks you to stay silent on your chair and read it. A song, asks you to stay silent on your chair and listen to it @#$%ing start dancing eheh I want to have fun xdxd Films and books require a certain and obligatory amount of attention given by their mode of use. It doesn't matter how much you lousy and silly director want to make a silly and lousy work to sell more tickets: people will still have to find a reason to overcome their laziness, sit and watch it silently for X amount of time. It doesn't matter how much you silly and embarassing writer want to write a silly and embarassing book to sell more copies: people will still have to find a reason to overcome their laziness, sit and concentrate on your words. That's why movies are more popular than books: less efforts needed in appreciating them. And that's why dumb people that don't care about art are forced to admit they are ignorant about them: they don't want to spend SO MUCH time and energy > they don't watch movies or read on a daily basis > they have no reason to pretend they know something about it. And there's no way to really cheat, there's no way to watch a movie without watching it or to read a book without reading it. But music is so kind! If you want to, you can listen to music even when you are doing your work. You can listen to music at the supermarket, at the gym, in the hospital, in the elevator, every@#$%ingwhere you want to. It just requires your EARS, while your eyes and your hands are free to do whatever you want. While your mind is free to pay attention to something else. So yeah, here we are: all the people in the world spend most of their life hearing music everywhere and all the time. That makes music easy to sell, easy to enjoy, the general required attention is near 0, so you can literally sell the same prototype-song over and over and no one will even realize. And the real tragedy: the average casual listener will think he loves music, will think he's really passionate about music, he literally listens to so much genres. More delusional than a seventeen y.o. communist. In reality, he just listens all day long to entertainment music. The same song, over and over again: different title, different words, 80-120 bpm, 4/4 time signature. He's just the final part of the chain of a big sociological research investment, designed to give him exactly what he wants and what he already likes. Guys, I beg you to break the circle: stop listening to music while you do something else. If you truly appreciate that artist, respect him and listen to what he wants to say to you. You would be surprised that maybe he doesn't really have nothing to say at all, and you wasted so much time with a moron. And that's exactly what you just did reading this. Would be better to avoid to commit the same mistake again, uh?

I think it is a self-evident truth. Would be like saying "if you have to do the impossible to achieve something, you can't"; or "you can achieve only what's in your range". The point is that what falls inside the group of the achievable things change following your skill/abilities/knowledge, so technically with endurance and patience a prior beyond-our-limits-thing can eventually be achieved with no overextension. Because our limits are defined by our "power", and our "power" is not fixed. I think this was missing in your interpretation, but it's crucial in order to preserve the dynamic of how our range of possibilities changes. To just say "don't try hard" could be taken as a general excuse to give up on difficult achievement, which is offensive to ourselves. Also, I don't think Laozi was proposing that kind of passivity, which really looks more like resignation (a thing that I often felt from your thoughts). Surely he was more oriented to push the reader into the typical eremitic/ascetic kind of life, avoiding the circle of desires and passions. So avoiding to overextend should mean to live a simple and virtuous life, freeing you of all the egoistic desires etc. Which is a thing shared by most of the traditional spiritual doctrines and that I agree with. So nothing to do with our every day conduct and our every day problems, all such things are simply considered useless and dangerous. I would've agreed with: So don't try hard, 'cause if you have to try hard to succeed you have already lost. All that requires overextension is just a desire that comes from the slavery of your soul: live your life virtuously and simply, achieving things won't give you happiness, there's nothing to be reached, even kill the focking Buddha if you meet him on the streets etc. etc. 'cause happiness is renouncing to this tension towards anything you don't already have. I think this could be a more correct interpretation of the quote.

Amazing despite the issues! Thank you so much, I was lost without it.

Will we have an update for the current alpha? I'm ready to pay in nature.

I don't think they were good soldiers. We know for sure that one of the challenges the young spartans had to face during their "training" for being hoplites was the "crypteia/κρυπτεία". They had to go out in the night and find helots, with the only task of killing them and stealing their food. They were literally used as meat for training, and that makes me think of a more or less null and void military preparation among them. An ancient greek historian, Mirone di Priene, even said that the helots "too physically similar to a spartan in strength and vigor" were killed with no hesitation. As far as I remember, but I can't give a precise source, when called to the military duties helots were usually equipped with a pike but without armor (lol). Sometimes they were also slingers, or simply used to bring food to the soldiers in the battlefield. Hope this can help, finally my 5 years of ancient greek classes in high school are showing some utility lmao

because politics and geography are different fields. That's why after Brexit no one organized some cargo ships to transport England far away in the Atlantic ocean. ...despite the fact Scotia and North Ireland would be very happy about it.

Per aspera ad astra. And the Pope already joined our fight! I like the fact that the article shows a picture of a bag made of crocodile's leather. That's being part of the ecosystem too, satisfying the fetish for luxury objects some people have. Thankfully I will never see a crocodile in my garden like some people in the USA do, so I'm okay with their presence in the world. No hate for crocodiles.

Since some days ago Frinsong started to express very heavy opinions about islamic religion in the lobby (it is a religion made by a pedophile, it should be forbidden in the west etc.). Then he started to join matches, write those things and quit. Would be good to ban him. If it is not enough, he even wrote multiple times "add hommini" instead of "ad hominem". Can someone please stand up in the name of islamic people and latin speakers?

Actually Sparta's army had also slingers, a role reserved to helots. Would be also very cool to consider a new unit based on the figure of the "aulos" players. Aulos is a sort of flute, and those players had the role to guide and keep orderly the formations of hoplites through their music. They were highly respected among the population. They should have an aura and could give some bonuses only to infantry set on formation. Something similar to the Trumpeters of the Gauls. "It was a sight equally grand and terrifying when they marched in step with the rhythm of the flute, without any gap in their line of battle, and with no confusion in their souls, but calmly and cheerfully moving with the strains of their hymn into the deadly fight. Neither fear nor excessive fury is likely to possess men so disposed, but rather a firm purpose full of hope and courage, believing as they do that Heaven is their ally." Plutarch, The Parallel Lives (Chapter II, section III) "And then there was the clash: the Argives and their allies advanced impetuously and full of anger, the Lacedaemonians instead advanced slow and at the cadence marked by numerous flutists placed among them not for reasons of religious worship but to be able to march in step with that rhythm and so the ranks would not get confused, which often happens to the great ones when they go to the assault " Aulio Gellio, Noctic Atticae (I, XI, 1-5) Could also be considered to add a new figure to the Temple: the oracle. Among ancient greek civilization was very common to make animal sacrifices towards the gods before engaging a battle, to determine their will. We could add the possibility to train this figure inside the temple, who can use hunt to make those sacrifices. These can give positive or negative response, in a completely random way, with a consequent temporary bonus (or maybe a malus if response is negative) for the army.

This is an amazing content @cl2488 My gratitude for sharing it, and my respect for writing it. Outstanding job