Fire Giant

Wohooo, Czech won... thank you, guys Now they are already qualified, and aren't under any pressure against Germany. Probably Germany will win against Czech, and then we are qualified as well Sorry for you people from Holland Anyway, it won't be bad to loose and go home as well, because Germany would get a new national team and a new trainer then (though Rudi Völler is quite a cool guy), and IMO we need more young players like Schweinsteiger and Lahm (who, IMHO, were the best Germans in the game yesterday).

- Student (people say that this is the best part of your life, but especially during the exams, I can't support that opinion ) - Some webdesign and PHP coding jobs (they barely bring any serious money, I'm just about to complete a > 5000 line PHP script I'll get 40 Euro for ). - Network administration at my school - Computer support for various relatives, family friends, parents collegues and other people (my currently best-paid job, but no consistent income). That's it, I think.

Noooooooo... Germany only managed a 0:0 against Latvia. Now we have to win against the Czech Republic Oh, and you people from Holland: It would be quite kind if you could allow the Czech to win today, because they won't play with full force against Germany then (they'd already be qualified)

LOL, this thread got reawoken from november 2003 today Anway, my absolute favourite is the banana... I'd really like to know who originally got the idea to make a dancing banana-smilie (and how much he had drunk before )...

he could become a easter-egg Uh, I fear we already have quite many people to become easter-eggs... so you can either say one more doesn't hurt as well or that it's already enough. Still, we should consider the fact that we will most likely reach 200k posts until we even release a 0 A.D. beta, so there shouldn't be tooo many people we need to put in Oh, and btw - about these easter-egg/cheat unit plans: I remember that last year, when we still were at the old forums, I suggested something about Wijit/Jason becoming a cheat unit in our game, and got quite a number of approving replies to that Maybe something to consider when we are about to be done with the game.

Hehe, so the game against Germany was disappointing for you people from the Netherlands ? So it was for us Germans, but not because it was bad (to be honest, I think it was the best game of the German national team since the world championships in 2002), rather because we could have won and didn't

Also, Rome - Total War will feature this idea (they even have the burning pigs in as some kind of unit), and people would believe we stole it from them, especially due to the fact that nearly every game site mentions the flaming pigs in their previews But I agree, it's a nice find

Well, rough outline: Rosemary Sutcliff - The Eagle Of The Ninth: The book is about the Roman auxiliary centurion Marcus Aquila, whose father was the commander of the first cohort of the Ninth legion which disappeared in Northern Britain in a great uprise of the Scots and the tribes that live north of Hadrians Wall. He (Marcus) got into the army at 18 and now just got his first command position, being sent to Britain. There he hopes to get some information about his fathers fate and what happened to the 9th Legion. But first, Marcus is being sent to a border fort in Isca Dumnoniorum, commanding one Gallian cohort who needs to protect the area. He has a good time and doesn't think of anything bad when rumors about a druid being in the area and calling people for a revolution against the Romans start coming up. Due to being very careful and doing the right thing in the right time, he can avoid that the fortress is being taken by a suprise attack in a new moon night. Still, his cohort is much too weak to withstand the enemy for a long time, and the weather is foggy, so he can't call for assistance. The next day, after having lost about 80 men in fierce battles, the Roman patrol sent out on the day before the rebellion started is being sighted and Marcus decides to lead the Romans out of the fortress in order to save their friends who otherwise would be massacred right below the walls. In the following battle, Marcus manages to save the patrols men, but when they retreat to the fortress, they are being attacked by chariots which they can't stand against. So Marcus, seeing a small chance to block the approaching chariots, decides to sacrifice his own life for his comrades and stands against the chariots alone. Still, he only gets severly wounded and since his cohort doesn't want to see their leader getting killed and they come back to stand by him, he survives but is badly injured and gets unconscious. When he wakes up again, he learns that some days after the battle reinforcements came and the rebellion got crushed by his troops and the reinforcement legion. But they also tell him that he can't serve the army any more because his leg is injured and won't allow him to make long marches any more. So, Marcus Aquila has to leave the army after only six months in his command position. But the story doesn't end here - this is more or less the beginning. Later, Marcus lives at his uncles house when he hears some rumors about the golden eagle standard of the 9th Legion having been seen in a druid "temple" at the coast of Caledonia (Scotland). He decides to start a search for the Eagle and his fathers and the legions fate and starts off to the barbarian lands north of the Wall together with his former slave Esca, a Briton who got captive in the Icenii uprise. Together, they have to cross a hostile land and try to get the Eagle back to the south - not an easy job, and quite dangerous as well. I won't reveal the ending, but I think this book is quite great (even though being a "child" book and not having any too brutal battle scene in it). It concentrates on the relationships between the characters and their life in the Roman provincial society of the 2nd century A.D. Rating/Comments: A great book, though not historically accurate at some points and having some flaws regarding Roman army life as well (Marcus is being called Centurion but commands a cohort; the auxiliary troops are using a turtle formation and bow and arrow together and other stuff), worth reading it again and again. There's quite a strong relationship to the main characters, and you don't feel like you have to hate the "evil" barbarians, and this is mainly a result of Rosemary Sutcliff's great style of writing. My first book on ancient Roman army life ever, and a one I still love to read. More info: The book is available on Amazon.com here. There's a description as well as the option to take a look at the first pages of the book. Hmm, that text got quite long... any idea if we could use it as an article for the website (with corrected spelling of course) ? I'll probably write up the same stuff for the other two books tomorrow if I have enough time - and could also make some more reviews of antiquity-related books I got.

Well, sure, in an article like this, they'd be boring, but there's quite interesting books about that theme... like "The Eagle of the Ninth" (Rosemary Sutcliff), which starts with a rebellion in a small border town. By the way, I've just been reading two books by Simon Scarrow - "Under the Eagle" and "The Eagle's conquest", both featuring the invasion of Britain in the first century A.D. - anyone here who read them as well and has an opinion on them ? I'd really like to discuss some points...

Nice work, Paul. You did a really good job on that "Great battles" article. Still, I think there was at least the same amount of heroism in the thousands of small conflicts and battles on the border lines of the empire - the guarding legions at the "limes" in Germania managed it to keep away the Barbarians for almost three centuries, quite a nice job considering the number of attacks made on the fortifications. Same goes for the Hadrian Wall in Britain.

Ah, you mean that old habit of staff interviews ? I think it died when someone decided to concentrate on the game development more and give the website only a secondary role until the new sites are done... but I'm not sure.

Yepp, I think they took some million dollars for it when they sold it SWGB... also, Microsoft didn't like that deal very much (but could not do anything against it because at that time, ES was still an independent company), and they won't allow it again

Huh ? Interesting... it's allowed from 12 years and older in Germany (still, I think they did cut some scenes in order to get into the 12-year limit)

From the legends view, he was his friend, I think. About the death of Achilles: I think, the legend tells that Achilles kills Hector, but is being killed by someone (don't remember if it was Paris, but I doubt that) not much later utilizing his weakness at the back of the foot (sorry, I don't have the English word at hand here ). After that, the Greeks get into serious problems because without Achilles, they are being pushed back again and again. In the end, they decide to make a final try with the horse, and they are successful as we know. Paris gets killed in the final battle around the palace of Priam, I think. But I haven't read the legend for almost a year now - so I'm not sure about all that stuff. Will probably have a look at the text again later today @Curu: Well, LotR did do some changes to the story, but nothing fundamental, like having a major character survive longer than in the original story - at least that's what I think (being not very well educated on all the LotR-Stuff though).

Grrrrrr. My post is gone... I wrote some kind of long text and then there was a crazy forums error Anyway, I'll try to write it again. I originally wanted to see the movie on Saturday together with some friends at a local movie theatre, but in the last minute, they decided to go sailing because of the good wind. So we didn't see it yet, and after all I heard from different people, it isn't so great or epic that it is necessary to hurry seeing it in the near future. We'll see. Oh, and btw: Cheezy, you said the movie ends with Achilles dieing ? That's somewhat strange, because if I'm not mistaken, the original text by Vergil/Homer says that Achilles dies already some time before the Horse comes into action and Troy finally falls... so they changed the story ? If they did, I think it's a shame they put the person of Achilles in the focus that much, because the movie is not called "Achilles" but "Troja" (German word for "Troy")...

Argh, the North Americans have outnumbered us Europeans again Europe is quite a great place for living, I think, also due to the fact that it has a longer and much broader history than other countries (though we never had any Romans near Hamburg, I don't have to go far to see the inherits of the Roman influence that has been already 2000 years ago - together with castles fromt he medieval ages, fortresses from the 18th and 19th century and modern monuments).

Europe Lived all my life on this continent and most likely won't leave it in the next years as well.

Wow, absolutely awesome. I really like this praetorian image It's quite sad that all this great art will be scaled down like nothing in the game... sadly, the Granny-Plugin isn't available for free, otherwise we could put the units into AoM at this great level of detail...

Rome at War of course The mod that brought me into the WFG community - first only as a anonymous visitor, but later - well, you know that part, don't you ?

Hehe... but well, Israel is considered to have nuclear weapons and quite a well-trained army, so it's not THAT suprising that Paul mentions them. Still, it might be quite a problem to get that out "historical" or "realistic" because Israel is strong compared to its Arabian neighbours for sure and might even be able to compare to some European countries but IMO could never stand a comparation with the US, Russia or China (who btw are supposed to have 2.5 mio. people at weapons - that would be like a quarter of the Israeli population ? ).

This kinda reminds me of an episode we had at a German AoM website I'm co-administrating... but it was even worse there. Story was this: We have a special VIP-Forum there, which is only intended to be seen and used by staff members for mostly internal stuff. Now, some months ago we had a forumer who continued to spam the forums and annoy the community by offending people. Well, we warned him a couple of times, and when he didn't stop, I banned him. But upon banning, I placed his account in a new usergroup "banned" where he had no rights any more and could only communicate with the admins. Still, someone must have had forgotten to check the VIP-forums permissions and therefore the usergroup "banned" had read-access to the VIP forum... that was quite problematic for us, as this guy then got in there (we didn't know of course) and read threads where we were talking about him and his ban (including some not-so-nice words against him). Well, finally I found it out and took away his access, but it was still kind of an embarrasing incident

I'm going to feel proud of what we accomplished then (if we ever reach that point, but I'm optimistic) and start thinking about a next-generation game with elements from RPG and RTS - with Roman theme of course. Something in the direction of a multiplayer game featuring the Roman empire where each gamer "plays" a character (or maybe more than one)... but that's utopic, first I need to get through the university then - afterwards I will see if I have been turning into a computer-hater because of too much PCs in my life, if Linux took over the world in meanwhile or if I will go to work at a game developer company. Also I would like to visit Rome and other historical places some time and write something about the Roman era of history or start doing a computer-rendered movie featuring this time period. You see, there's lots of ideas

Wow, that looks great, SUD I really should try to find my Poser CD in order to play around with stags Legionary... that would look great in front of some nice landscape I think... but I do not have ANY idea where the CD could be

Well, I say Eye-Candy, too... it makes an editor great if there's the possibility to produce real looking cities and landscapes with eyecandy, while generic and object-less landscapes make the editor quite mediocre. A personal example: At MWD, we have some good triggerers, but also two guys who are excellent at doing eye-candy. They can do things with the AoM editor I never had imagined (just found myself looking at a full-blown greek city with Thermae, rural suburbs, port and theatre today - everything done by combining objects in unusual ways), and that is what makes their maps look great, though their triggers are average of even below (we do cover this by having good triggerers doing the triggers, so expect some great things to come out in the future... ). But what I wanted to express is that their maps really come to life through the eye-candy and you can imagine to live in the story. That's why I (as a triggerer) think that eye-candy is very important. Second would be good triggers for me, because simple things like renaming units gives your stories much more potential (word?).

Looking good and very professional