Titus Ultor

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All great points. I can drive six hours and still be in California. Actually, it's fourteen hours up to the next state north.

I had the video game, and I always got angry that it had nothing to do with San Diego whatsoever. I kept expecting to see Mission Beach and Boardwalk or something, I guess. Young Americans (and Texans, but I don't count them) have very odd images for everywhere else. I think the reason lies somewhere in between poor geography education, popular media, and the utter lack of need or desire to care about other countries. But Michael has it right, in my opinion: Europeans believe a lot of untrue things about Americans, as well. Maybe they understand more of our politics and geography, but we are the most powerful country around.

That's why we try to keep guns away from Canadians, I guess. It's hard to remember a time when I was terrified, though one time I completely ran a red light (two streets close together, looking at the wrong sign at night) and drove through downtown traffic, barely missing about three cars in rapid sucession. I just took several deep breaths to calm myself, but the girl I was with decided it'd be good to hit me in the arm repeatedly for it, which served to freak me out a little more.

Impressive! Sorry I haven't been keeping up with the thread, but this is fairly awesome. This is definitely helpful to me, and anyone who'll be working on Iberian art. And Vit, trust me, I've done that. I wrote the Viriato biography, after all. There's just not a lot of accurate information on the internet in English, and even Spanish/Portuguese sites either portray the exact same information, or just add a bias.

Just be sure to cite everything more fully than you need to. Thank you very much ahead of time. Trying to figure out Spanish (I took four years, but Continental Spanish is tricky for me) websites is bad enough, and most of them just contain weak information.

Further research sheds ambiguity over the whole issue. Polybius calls the Lustianians Celt-Iberians, many smaller tribes in the area adopted the name, and the Romans eventually reverted to calling any native tribe from the region "Lusitanians". A good number of historians believe the Lusitanians are simply an offshoot of Celtic blood. The more Portuguese a site is, the more it supports a seperate origin for the entire Lusitanian tribe. Everything I've seen (which apparently contradicts everything you've seen ) points towards the culture of the Lusitanians being only moderately different from most of the rest of the peninsula. Their language has many similiarities to Celt-Iberian, but with some differences from which a variety of contradictory conclusions could be drawn. To the more truly "Iberian"-native peoples, I'd have to agree the distinction was much more decisive. The Iberians, living along that fertile coast of Iberia for millenia, developed a very different culture. For 0 A.D., we've chosen to mix both cultures (Iberian and Lusitanian) together. The choice is made because we (particularly in North America) have access to a very small amount about both when compared to every other civilization represented in the game -- it'd be hard to make a complete civilization from what we know of both. If anyone with access to works in Portuguese or Spanish detailing the subject could provide us with translations or even scans of some text (with proper citations, of course), I'd appreciate it greatly. I read some Spanish, so scans in that language wouldn't require much translation. Even rough translations of Portuguese (enough to draw information from) would be nice, at this point. I can hardly find anything about the various peoples of Iberian in any library I have access to.

As the resident Iberian civilization expert and knowing more than my share of greenhorns (:wink:), I'd have to say at least this: The Portuguese seem very, very protective of their Lusitanian heritage and take great pains to seperate themselves from the Spanish "Iberian" tribes. From my studies on the subject (as well as the late Ken Woods'), I'd have to say the line is much less distinct than the ones the Portuguese draw for patriotic/nationalist purposes. The Celt-Iberians were an amalgamation of both Celtic and the native Iberian stock, that is to say that the Lustianians were both Celtic and Iberian. The Lustianians, one particular Celt-Iberian tribe in the area now known as Portugal, were infamous for raids stealing both cattle and women from other tribes in the reason. This is how, some historians theorize, the Lustitanians were effective enough to warrant a place in history when compared the large number of other tribes -- they simply used the guerilla tactics they had long used on other tribes on the Romans to great effect. Also, the Romans labeled the entire coalition of tribes lead by Viriathus under one name, in an almost typical lack of caring for the actual culture of their enemies. Throughout the years, various levels of influence from the Roman, Carthaginian, Moor, and Germanic cultures led to the social seperations of "Portugal" and "Spain" we know today. Celt-Iberians were prevalent along the eastern shores of Spain, as well. Their culture was simply decimated by the Romans, while the then more wild peoples of the western shore held on tenaciously to their culture and way of life. Just what I've read and learned over the last couple years of study. We know very little about the various tribes in Iberia at the time, so nothing's completely concrete.

I notice you're from Portugal -- if you could translate something about Iberian (or Lusitanian) culture, weaponry, or anything and PM it to me, I'll cry in joy. Oh, btw. Your icon does a bit, but I like the Viriato one.

"When Staff Artists Attack!"

Sub-cultures will be more of an end-game feature than anything else in particular, representing the ultimate disparties in all aspects of life in still fundamentally related civilizations. Basically, expect to see some wildly (even more than we plan on for every civilizaation) customizeability between games even when using the same civilization on a similiar map. It eliminates that repetitive "oh, they're such-and-such civilization, so I should respond by making this and that, as the Such-and-Suches are strong in those."

We have divided two of our civilizations: the Hellenes and the Celts. The Cultures page of our website gives these. Note, however, that we've revised the Hellenes structure to simply two: the Macedonians and the more generic (and thusly more encompassing) polis to represent the city-states.