Fire Giant

Argalius: It was indeed made independant of the thread you posted. As Shan/Centurion said, the idea originates from a certain thread Michael made in the Staff forums.

Also, bows are generally only useful before the main battle commences - afterwards, you'll likely hurt more of your own men than of the enemy if you start firing into the dense mass down there (Rome portraits this in a great way - ever commanded a Archer Auxilia to fire while they were standing in the middle of another unit? No? Well, the better don't try, you won't want to see the result). Also, regarding onagers: That surely depends on what kind of ammunition you're using - if you use the standard Roman "the heavier the better" ammunition or even dead animal corpses (like the Romans did some times), nothing suprises me... Although I have to say that generally, the Roman siege engines were very accurate and did a lot more harm to the enemy than to their own men (see Flavius Josephus and his descriptions of the siege engines at Jerusalem).

Ok, the whole present-getting-and-giving part is over for me - quite a nice thing every year, but I've started to feel less anticipation and eagerness about it in the last years (I guess due to growing up). I got an external USB 2.0 harddrive, some books and a one-year-subscription for the best German computer magazine (c't) - quite some nice presents Also, everyone liked the presents I gave them a lot, so I'm feeling good about it. Again, merry christmas to everyone!

I think Greeks and Romans also considered fighting with bows to be cowardly...? (But that didn't keep the Romans from hiring bowmen auxiliaries, nor did it hinder them when developing their great siege engines).

We celebrate Christmas today - on Christmas Eve - as well in Germany, so a Merry Christmas to everyone - may it be in advance or fitting the day I'm getting ready for the big celebrations (which, besides a lot of eating, involve getting presents) right now - one hour left until it's "Christmas time" (4 pm) in Germany!

Does Santa tell the children in advance which presents he'll bring them?

Point One: We are not selling the engine, since we are not selling the game (at least, it was said that way last time I checked ). Point Two: It's not named "Prometheus Engine" any more (am I allowed to say that publically?!).

As stated before and for various reasons, Standard style

See the battle of Pydna, where the last Greek Phalanx was destroyed. The terrain wasn't too formidable for a Phalanx, the Roman line managed to withstand the first contact with the Phalanx and then little Roman units managed due to rocks and trees, to get into the approaching Phalanx and the greek soldiers had to throw their spears away in order to defend themselves with the sword - and the Romans were trained to perfection at sword usage, so the rest of the battle was just a formality, as after the the Phalanx formation broke, Rome won with less than 200 casualties, while the Greeks lost the half of their army. No problem, the old Germans were just a bunch of barbarians Anyway, I would have rather liked it if Rome had established itself in the north of Germany as well, because we'd have some nice archaeological stuff here then. But as things developed, the only start at the limes line, approx. 200 km south of where I live

Hehe, and I was already wondering wheter my history knowledge had left me alone - because I thought that William of Orange had been shot (by his own servant, I think?). He couldn't have been king of England then But I think he laid the foundation for Dutch independece from Spanish occupation, right?

... only to get cut to pieces at Zama lateron Whichever way you look at it, an army always is only as good as its commander, even if it outnumbers the enemy or is technically superior. Also, Hannibal fought against Pre-Marian legionaries (so did the Greeks), and the Roman Army (IMO) got considerably stronger after the Marian reforms. And the Varian disaster took place due to the commander being a credulous man with no knowledge of the terrain and the people of Germania. It wasn't the common soldiers who caused the loss of the battle, and not the lower officiers of the Centurionate, it was the high command. (That's just my opinion, though )

Likely not too accurate... probably he'd be seeing purple rabits and flying elephants all over the place and try to shoot at them I like the Maenad cheat idea... although they might be of little use against the might legions of Rome - who were used to simply cut down anything that opposed them, no matter wheter man or woman (some Germanic women had to experience this when their men had lost the battle at Vercallae and they had to make their last stand in their camp)...

Hmm, so those BOB-people can just come to any house, ring the doorbell and put up their equipment there? Interesting... you'd need at least a formal, court-approved legimitation and the presence of a prosecution counsel for that in Germany.

Hmm nice, I need to remember that we have native french speakers here once I'm doing my next French homework and I'm struggling to get mistakes removed and phrases clearer... look forward (or fear ) to seing some texts from me soon, too...

AoK is pure 2D (you will never see the back side of any building). Agreed, I especially disliked the "pixelated" buildings on high resolutions

It is, I think - in terms of programming. You do not need to care about sprite/3d-model relations and sprite placement/handling in the game world, but can keep everything down to only needing to support 3d objects. For the artists, it may be harder - they need to have an eye on poly counts, and the art may be less appealing, but for 0 A.D., the way of full 3d was right, with the game being developed by limited (free)-time developers and people having to download all the data over the internet (3d is much more efficient by file sizes).

Hmm, I have to admit that - since I had my own experiences with ambitious modding projects - I'm quite critical against any new TC project. Most ones never have any chances of success, and a great amount of time and work is wasted into something nobody will ever see. That's at least what happened to most TC projects - the WFG ones not being excluded, since they got converted into full-game projects after some time. Sure, developing a full-game is even more time-consuming and needs an excellent team, but this fact shows how unlikely TC projects are to succeed (besides, often the game itself is outdated and forgotten before the TC mod is finished). But I should better keep my pessimist opinion to myself and hope to be forced to learn that I was wrong. Good luck with your project! Be sure to keep us updated on the progress.

Uuuh, interesting - I thought I read that article, but somehow I didn't quite remember the thing about Cartharginians reaching Mexico... although that reminds me of some theory I've read once, which said that a Roman fleet got blown across the Atlantic Ocean one time and in fact reached America - unfortunately, no further colonization followed (I don't remember if they even got back to Europe, but I doubt it). Imagine, legionaries in America

*bookmarks topic for preparative work for next French exam * Nice list, though I knew many of these (*pats self on shoulder*), there are some nice new ones - and with my luck to write bad marks in French exams even though using good vocabulary, I will hopefully make good use of the recent "french-related" threads by Tim - thanks for that

Well, many people on the 0 A.D. team are only here because of RaW - including myself. I think I would never have found out about WFG (still WFS back then) if I didn't search for Roman modpacks for AoK (someone told me there were some), and somehow stumbled into the link to the WFG forums on the AoKH Blacksmith page...

Hehe, number 3 isn't bad either

My list of good "historical" fiction settled in ancient times: - Rosemary Sutcliff: The Eagle Of The Ninth - Simon Scarrow: Under The Eagle - Simon Scarrow: The Eagle's Conquest - Simon Scarrow: When The Eagle Hunts - Simon Scarrow: The Eagle And The Wolves (all of these belong to the "Eagle" series of Simon Scarrow, which is still being continued - they feature the adventures of the two legionaries Cato and Macro, who participate in the conquest of Britain in 42 AD) - Hans Dieter Stöver: The Varus Case (German only, I think) - Hans Dieter Stöver: Spartacus, Slave and Rebell (German as well)

Hehe, this sorryeverbody.com website is quite popular in Europe, too. Many large news sites and newspapers reported about it, and several times it went down because the server collapsed. And some of the pictures are really funny (sorry to all Bush supporters, I hope you won't kill me now)

Hehe, especially things like "Rep Up" or "I'll do it after the merger" could serve as taunts pretty well, since they have kind of a "secondary meaning" in certain game situations, not only the "insider-meaning" from the forum

Sure it won't, but there haven't been that many total conversion mods for RTS games in the past, no (I can't remember a single one that succeeded)? And 0 A.D. will hopefully make total conversion mods easy and powerful, so they can in fact change the whole game, not only its appearance