Genava55

But I don't think we should sacrifice that aspect. I just think that if we're going to have a Germanic faction, we might as well think about how it can include as many things as possible and be complete. I don't think we should leave out the people involved in the Gallic War. I also think we should include the wars with the Roman Empire and I even think we should include the late elements that correspond to the time when Germanic culture was at its most mature and richest. I don't think the Romans and Hellenes should be the only ones to have reforms in the game. I think that, with a bit of imagination, you could easily represent the two or three periods of Germanic history within the same faction. I can still understand separating the Goths, because they weren't called Germans by the ancients. But for the rest, it's a shame to miss out on all their history. The Britons has never been called Gauls. It is even not certain the ancients viewed them as Celtic. And their material culture is indeed different from the Gauls. There is no evidence for any weapon in the Suebian sphere before the very late phase of the Republic and early Roman Empire. No evidence. They practiced a form of cremated burials and they didn't put any weapons in their grave. The Jastorf culture is particularly sober in this regard. In Jutland, there are both evidence of local weapons (one-edged blades) and imported weapons from the Celtic sphere. In a similar situation, the Przeworsk culture practiced a form of cremated burials but in their case, they did add weapons in the burials. In their case, there is also a mixture of local weapons (one-edged blades) and Celtic weapons. The Przeworsk culture is probably the most Celtized culture. The Poienesti-Lukashevka culture who established itself in Moldova and seems to be related to the Bastarnae, included Celtic weapons in their burials too. And when the Suebian sphere started to add weapons in their graves, with the Großromstedt horizon/culture, it included Celtic weapons too. The Celtic sword was basically the Kalashnikov of the ancient time, you find it everywhere. But it doesn't mean the Cimbri were more Celtized than the Suebi. Celtic items were found in the Suebian sphere, simply it was not weapons. It is mostly fibula, arm-rings, collars and belt pieces. Here La Tène B (380-260 BC) finds outside of the La Tène sphere: A significant part of Germany was maybe populated with Celts we didn't know much about but the area of the middle Elbe was not Celtic obviously.

The problem is that it's not a campaign. It's a playable faction. In themselves, the Cimbri are an interesting part of the story. But I think it's reductive to represent the Germans solely with them. And I think players are going to ask questions. Especially casual players. Maybe I'm wrong. But I think we're spoiling a faction that could have been a nice surprise for players. Call them Germans, publish them and let's see what happens. In any case, our players are used to this kind of things.

Basically yes. This is a good analogy. Choosing between a city-state, a tribe or something else, with the idea that it's part of a strategy. In some cases it can be very specialized and in other cases a bit more general.

Many players only know Arminius for the early period. It was a national hero. Netflix recently made a series about him. Arminius is closer to the timeframe than Boudicca. So yeah, players don't know the look of the Germans. But they know a few things about the Germans.

If you bring in a faction called ‘the Germans’, people expect to see ‘the Germans’. People are either going to be disappointed, or they're not going to care.

In this thread, I've seen one constant. People beating their brains out over difficulties they've created for themselves. You want to separate the Germans into several factions when it's particularly difficult to produce a distinctive and unique architecture for them. You can't manage to integrate into a single concept the fact that weaponry and equipment have evolved over the course of their history. At first, you decide to focus on one people but you soon realise that the most interesting historical figures are not part of that people (like Arminius). You soon realise that archaeology isn't going to be able to help you much, because at the outset the Germanic civilisation was a very sober one with little artistic production. All of a sudden, you decide to go for the original game's idea of separating the factions into two periods (before and after the Christ). All this to choose an unknown people with incomplete information about them. But all of a sudden, you have to use this people to generalize about all the Germanic peoples. All because you've included different peoples as heroes of the faction (obviously reluctantly, because of the lack of information). Using the diversity of peoples as an asset is a very good idea, but fascinatingly you've managed to turn it into a bad idea. You should have thought of that beforehand. The original mistake was the Suevi.

I understand, but it is more complicated than that. They had a language, a religion and particular customs. This is the important features to determine a cultural affiliation. If they are coming from Jutland, they are more probably Germanic or they were related to a sister-language who disappeared without letting any traces but with a common ancestor related to the Proto-Germanic language. The issue is that the Cimbri wandering in Europe aggregated different peoples and we know some of them were Celtic (the Tigurini). For the Ambrones, it is uncertain, they gathered little interest and we don't know much about them. Strabo, Plutarch and Pliny generally said the Teutones were Germanic and came from the same area than the Cimbri. It is not the issue. It's just a fascinating effort you make to add to your difficulties and make things more complicated than they are. The Cimbri are not the most prominent of the Germanic people. You're building a house of cards. With the Germans in general.

Oh, that's nice, a messy new thread with so many useless posts it looks like spam. I can't understand how you can refer to the notion of index while at the same time misunderstanding the notion of index.

That's true but the Gauls in our game is not only the Gauls of the sack of Rome, or the Gauls of the Punic Wars, or the Gauls of the Gallic Wars. They depict a civilisation over a time span of four centuries. Why it is so difficult to grasp a civilisation that knew some diversity and evolution in its history?

I'm rather concerned to hear these comments. How do you imagine we'll ever be able to include the Greco-Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian Wars or even the Punic Wars as playable campaigns, if we get stuck at the first non-playable faction? Wasn't it simply a lack of vision at the start of the game's development? I'm thinking in particular of the split of the generic Greek faction into two factions with Athens and Sparta. I think we should have umbrella factions which should allow us to incorporate minor factions into the game and even take advantage of them to include them in innovative game strategies. It's extremely difficult to bring variety to building design. Creating factions that are entirely dedicated to one people has a significant cost from a conceptual point of view. The risk is of producing uninspiring, sloppy content by having to vary the designs for the same cultural sphere, or of giving up on including certain peoples altogether because of this challenge. And multiplying the selectable factions by including lots of peoples from the same cultural sphere is simply going to make the UI less interesting and less user-friendly. If we have to add Thebes, Corinth, Syracuse and Massalia as playable factions, we're walking on our heads. However, these city-states are interesting and can bring in lots of units, technology and interesting bonuses. I think that umbrella factions can integrate these minor factions in interesting and diverse ways. In the case of the Greeks, we can imagine starting with a generic affiliation to the Greek faction and quickly having a first choice offered in the civic centre building to move towards Athens or Sparta. Each brings different bonuses and different units that can be used quickly. However, the player can continue as a generic faction to unlock other choices such as Corinth, Thebes or Syracuse in the next phase. This is just a rough draft to illustrate how it might work. But I really think it's a better approach to bringing diversity into the game without degrading the visual quality of the game and without bringing in too much art. Umbrella factions can also address the problem of balancing civilisations that are either too weak because of a lack of variety, or too strong because of too great a diversity of units and technologies. The fact that certain units are dependent on specific choices can lead to interesting strategies and counter-strategies. This approach could also solve problems such as that of the Iberians. Which is still a faction implemented as a patchwork of three very different cultures. Introducing the option of choosing sub-factions or minor factions during the game would highlight the differences within the Iberian Peninsula without creating new, similar designs. I'm thinking in particular of the difference between the Iberians and the Celtiberians, who were culturally, politically and linguistically very different, but who had points in common in the architecture of their cities and fortresses. The aim of my proposal is to take advantage of the diversity of the ancient world without overloading the game with too many elements. But also to allow for diversity in the scenarios, and to allow for a respectful treatment of ancient peoples and cultures.

Age of Respair Liegecraft

A pile of turf blocks

Tlatoani: Aztec Cities Early Access Release Trailer | Paradox Arc It looks like Pedro Rafael Mena art.

Ancient DNA reveals the multiethnic structure of Mongolia’s first nomadic empire https://www.mpg.de/20098860/0403-evan-mongolia-s-first-nomadic-empire-150495-x The Xiongnu built a multiethnic empire on the Mongolian steppe that was connected by trade to Rome, Egypt, and Imperial China. © Artwork by Galmandakh Amarsanaa, courtesy of Christina Warinner and the DairyCultures Project

At the time of Pytheas, the Oksywie and Przeworsk cultures don't exist. Only the Pomeranian culture. Which is maybe not Germanic. The Gutones were probably still in Sweden at this time. It is quite difficult to interpret Pytheas attributed accounts.

Monkodonja hillfort, bronze age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkodonja

I think it is the case in aoe series. The construction site is not seen by other players before starting to build it. @strat0spheric is it happening only by observing the construction site or the players swarm the future base with several units to prevent the construction by blocking the best spots?

This is simply a flaw in the game design exploited by players. The question is simply to know if it is an accepted behavior. Since it is impossible to give the right to build over enemy units, a new feature should be implemented giving a possibility to the victim to defend itself. And since it is complicated, requiring new ideas, coding etc. The team will give up. So this flaw will be accepted as a normal strategy. Happy to save you some time.

I still think that Massalia is a better candidate if you want to go in the direction of a colony campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massalia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founding_myth_of_Marseille Massalia later founded other colonies, notably Agathe, Antipolis and Nikaia. The other solution would be Hasdrubal the Fair, he was the predecessor of Hannibal and he founded Cartagena. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasdrubal_the_Fair https://punicwars.org/people/hasdrubal-the-fair

I think he says the video title has emoji and it messes with embedding.

The advantage with Alexander is that there is more flexibility. Ideally, you would start with a scenario where Alexander is with his first two tutors, Leonidas and Lysimachus, as well as his father accompanied by Aristotle. Philip II could introduce Aristotle to Alexander during a royal hunt, which would be a bit of a pretext to introduce the player to the simplest controls like movement and resource gathering, but also introduce the minimap, fog of war etc. Philip II could convince Aristotle to be his son's new tutor in exchange for rebuilding Stagira. Then in the second part, there could be a scenario with on one side Aristotle teaching Alexander and his companions in Pella and on the other Philip II rebuilding the city of Stagira to honor Aristotle. In the 3rd part, the player will have more freedom when Alexander will be an adult and will make his first fights and found his first city.

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