Genava55

1st century AD, by Flavius Joseph: http://lukeuedasarson.com/Lanciarii.html

antesignanus not antisignanus sorry. Thats the singular of antesignanii Like you did with the Imperial Romans? Why not.

Evocatus is a good idea. To replace the velite, you could use the antisignanus.

Yes, the Marian reforms are mostly a myth. The changes were gradual, Marius only contributed to a few modest things. + + So it is something mostly popular in the wargame culture and in general public books.

I want more simple, colorful strategy games like Rising Lords that people will actually play with me By Jonathan Bolding Not every strategy game has to be gloomy and impenetrable. Rising Lords is just the sort of game I'm most vulnerable to: historical strategy with the simple setup of a tabletop wargame and the quality of life and large numbers that are only possible when a computer does the math and moves the pieces for you. What I especially like about it, though, is that it's colorful—which might be one reason I can actually get people to play it with me. Despite what the movies say, the medieval world was not a drab palette of mud and polished steel. It was colorful and wild and flamboyant and made of rich fabrics and painted armors, and Rising Lords gets that. The rich earth and bright gem tones give off the effect of an actual medieval tapestry or fresco painting, with fantastic designs inspired by things like the Lewis chessmen. Sadly, whatever blessing was given to the world was not given to the user interface, which is, while not without charm, either too sparse and lacking in explanation or cluttered with unimportant detail. As a strategy game fan, however, I am never stopped by an insufficient user interface. I am sometimes encouraged by it, perhaps to the detriment of myself and the genre, but it's worth bearing with it in the case of Rising Lords, which is just the kind of easily-to-digest strategy game I'd love to see more of. [...] Full article below https://www.pcgamer.com/i-want-more-simple-colorful-strategy-games-like-rising-lords-that-people-will-actually-play-with-me

Honestly, I have rarely seen a blog post written with such bad faith. In my opinion, the argumentation is of very low quality . First of all, the anecdote of the 20'000 slaves fleeing Decelea is not really appropriate to speak about the condition of the Helots in comparison with the Athenian slaves. Nothing suggest those 20'000 slaves would become helots and nothing suggest those slaves choose to become helots. Most of the helots are actually local populations from Laconia and I don't think there is evidence of new helots imported from prisoners. So the 20'000 slaves would not have been made helots and they probably knew it. Furthermore, as a contradictory anecdote, slaves flew the city of Chios to join the Athenians who were besieging the city and they helped them (Thuc. 8.40.2). So really, this sort of anecdotes doesn't tell anything about the conditions of the slaves. Those are very specific situations and totally unrelated to the everyday life of the slaves. H. P. Schrader also mentions that the Krypteia didn't exist during the Golden Age of Sparta, a claim that is dubious. Using Aristotle and Herodotus account's, Krypteia has probably an older origin. But anyway the whole argument of saying that the Krypteia didn't exist during the Golden Age of Sparta is simply dull, I don't see how it is used as a defense. This is Sparta but not the Golden Age Sparta so it doesn't count? Finally H. P. Schrader mentioned that Athens committed a massacre of the population of Melos, as a sort counter-example to excuse the massacre of the 2000 helots who helped Sparta during the war and who thought they would receive freedom, but instead were slaughtered by their masters. Just this argument gave me a very bad opinion of this person, this is rhetorically the bottom-pit of intelligence. This is pure bad faith and a desperate argument. The situation at Melos has nothing to do with the slaves or with anything related to slavery. This is indeed a massacre but which happened at the heart of the war when Sparta already committed massacres too, notably killing all the Athenians prisoners after a battle etc. I don't think Sparta was worst than Athens on the respect of the enemies and of the prisoners (with the exception of the Messenians and the helots). But this whole argument has nothing to do with the slave conditions which is the topic of her article. H. P. Schrader is simply making a deflective argument, this is basically her saying "see, Athens was very bad too!" while giving an example related to a different topic. In the end, a childish article.

Devereaux's comparison is interesting because it makes parallels with the current goals of indoctrinating childs in such ways. The purpose is not their efficiency in the battlefield but to maintain an oppressive system. I don't see it as something implausible as such systems existed in other societies. Devereaux writing style is rendering his argument as something bold and exaggerated but it has some truth in my opinion.

Did you see the following quotes?

The article starts like this: Many self-professed champions of freedom throughout the centuries have looked to ancient Sparta as an inspiration. The doomed stand of 300 Spartan warriors against the Persian Empire at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E.—the subject of Zack Snyder’s 2006 film 300—has been particularly influential for figures ranging from Lord Byron rallying support for Greek independence from the Ottomans to Cold Warriors mythologizing the virtues of the “West” against the Soviet Union. It’s easy to ridicule such a simplistic view of history, and to point out that the Spartans might not have deserved their reputation as invincible warriors. But the blunders and brutalities of today’s champions of “Western civilization” follow Sparta’s example remarkably closely. This should give us pause. So it is not the last stand of the 300 but the idealization of Spartans and of the city-state Sparta that is criticized.

You are confusing the Perioikoi and the Helots. The Perioikoi lived in cities and were free men. The Helots lived in the countryside, in villages. If I can quote an excerpt from the book "Greek Slave Systems in their Eastern Mediterranean Context c.800-146 BC" to answer you, here it is: << What we might call ‘communal intervention’ went much further, however, than merely the occasional borrowing of a helot without the permission of his owner. The Old Oligarch, writing in the 420s, laments the inability of Athenian citizens to strike capriciously any slaves within their reach, a practice that he fondly notes is possible in Sparta ([Xen.] Ath. Pol. 1.10–12). This ability of non-owners to beat slaves is further attested by the Hellenistic historian Myron of Priene, known for his pro-Messenian and anti-Spartan attitudes. Myron writes that the Spartans forced the helots to wear degrading clothes, prescribed for them an annual whipping (to remind them they were slaves), and permitted magistrates to execute any helots whose physical size and vigour they thought inappropriate for a slave—fining the helot’s owner as well for letting him reach such girth (FGrHist 106 F2 ap. Athen. 14.74. 657c–d). This might sound sensational, but the rationale of such measures— that is, targeting large, powerful helots who might be potential rebel leaders—is observable in fifth- and fourth-century sources as well. Aristotle’s description of the krypteia is perhaps the best example of this. According to his account, from time to time youths would be sent into the countryside armed with daggers and carrying only the most meagre rations. They would hide during the day, emerging at night to kill any helots whom they found abroad on the roads (surely some manner of curfew is implied). They would also infiltrate the fields and dispatch those who were particularly large or vigorous (Arist. fr. 538 [Rose] ap. Plu. Lyc. 28. 1–4; cf. Arist. fr. 611.10 [Rose] ap. Herakleides fr. 10 [Dilts]). Aristotle further noted (ap. Plu. Lyc. 28.4) that the ephors declared war on the helots each year, thus absolving those Spartiates (surely for the most part the krypteia) who murdered helots from miasma, effectively granting them a ‘licence to kill’. All of these sources tally with the remark of Critias (in the epigraph to this chapter) that at Sparta were to be found the most enslaved and the most free of men, which must refer to helots and Spartiates: helots—of all Greek slaves—were subject to the most oppressive and unusual means of control; Spartiates—of all free Greeks—were those most liberated from the need to perform manual labour. Let us sum up so far. The picture painted by our contemporary sources is that individual Spartans were able to own helots, and this included the power to sell them, though not outside Spartan territory; they could not manumit them in any way whatsoever. Furthermore, their helots could be commandeered by their fellow citizens for minor tasks, and could be disciplined by them as well. Most remarkably, the state could manumit or even kill these apparently privately owned slaves. It is now necessary both to explain why these rules existed and then to determine whether or not such measures of communal intervention push helotage outside our classificatory scheme of private ownership. >> Another one: << The most famous act of state brutality of this ilk is the alleged massacre of 2,000 helots narrated by Thucydides (4.80), who says that a proclamation was made to the helots inviting those who thought they had served the state well in war to come forward and receive their freedom. Those who answered the summons processed around the temples, but then promptly disappeared; nobody knew how each individual died. >>

Which claim do you find too extreme? When they say Sparta relying heavily on slavery?

Collections: This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part I: Spartan School – A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry (acoup.blog)

Interesting. How do you work together on this project? Do you have an internal section on the forum or do you use other means like discord? Or you are only submitting changes through github or others?

Interesting article about Age of Empire original technology, based on Assembly: https://www.pcgamer.com/age-of-empires-developer-confirms-the-game-is-mostly-written-in-low-level-assembly-code-because-we-could-scroll-the-screen-and-fill-it-with-sprites-as-fast-or-faster-than-competitors-like-starcraft-even-though-we-had-twice-as-many-pixels/ This isn't quite on those lines, but a redditor recently noted that Chris Sawyer wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2 in Assembly language, and apparently Age of Empires was the same: "AoE is written in Assembly: is this actually TRUE?!" It's important to note that this wasn't uncommon back in the day, though it would still be pretty remarkable if an entire game was hard-coded this way. Assembly language, to be as brief as possible, is any low-level coding language that communicates more directly with a computer's architecture than high-level languages like C++. The question about whether Age of Empires was coded in Assembly language hit gold in the replies thanks to Matt Pritchard, one of the founding members of Ensemble Studios, who was in charge of graphics and optimisation on the early games, and on the later HD / DE editions the coding lead. "I guess I can clarify this, since I wrote all the assembly code used in Age of Empires and Age of Kings, along with many other parts of those games," says Pritchard. "There were about ~13,000 lines of x86 32-bit assembly code written in total." [...] The Assembly code remained in use even by the time of Age of Kings: HD edition (a 32-bit game), but Pritchard "re-wrote the assembly functions into C++ for both Definitive Editions, as they are 64-bit programs and inline assembly was never supported by the 64-bit C++ compiler, and the vastly improved register sets and compiler optimizations made it unnecessary. Additionally, sprite drawing in the definitive editions is multi-threaded, and will use up to 4 cores for that task alone."

Interesting video about the current issues with Total War games and the players community reaction to it

There are 11 pages in this thread... so obviously no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_stones_culture

The Silk Road should not be a technology, it is better as a team bonus. Instead, give them a technology about producing paper maps and give them a speed bonus for the merchants.

<< S. K. Chowdhury’s analysis (Gaur, 1983) of the plant remains found in the Atranjikhera excavations reveals some important details. The OCP and BRW phases yielded a few remains of rice, barley, gram, and khesari. The PGW (Painted Grey Ware ~1100-800 BC) level gave evidence of wheat, and the manner in which plant remains were scattered about and found in heaps suggested more abundant grain production than before. The NBPW (Northern Black Polished Ware ~600-200 BC) phase showed the cultivation of rice, wheat, and barley, with the addition of a new pulse (Phaseolus mungo). The wood remains included laurel, farash, bamboo, deodar, and Himalayan cypress. As cedar and Himalayan cypress grow in the northern mountains, these finds suggest contact with these regions. Almost a thousand pieces of bone fragments from the site were analysed. Those belonging to the NBPW phase included bones of domesticated humped cattle, buffalo, goat, sheep, pig, and dog. Horse remains occurred in the PGW and post-PGW phases. Many animal bones were split or cut with sharp tools and charred—clear evidence that the animals were killed for food. The bones of cattle vastly outnumbered those of other animals, indicating that beef was an important part of the diet, apart from venison, mutton, and pork. >> - A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, p. 278 << Excavations in the Parashurameshwara temple at Gudimallam (Chittoor district, AP) have revealed the history of this Shiva temple from the 2nd century BCE onwards (Sarma, 1994). In the earliest stage, the stone Shiva linga carved with the image of the god was placed within a 1.25 m square stone railing. The temple was hypaethral (open-air, roofless). Bones of domesticated sheep with cut marks on them suggest animal sacrifice. Phase II in the structural history of the temple is dated from the 1st to the 3rd centuries CE. An apsidal temple was built around the Shiva linga in this period. Considerable architectural elaboration took place in early medieval times. However, it is interesting to note that the same Shiva linga remained the object of worship in the sanctum throughout. >> - A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India: From the Stone Age to the 12th Century, p. 447

The original Vedic religion didn't forbid the consumption of cow and beef meat. It is Brahmanism which started to incorporate new elements, notably forbidding the consumption of cow. See the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sacrifice_in_Hinduism The Brahmanic texts explicitly state that five creatures were suitable for sacrifice in Vedic India, in descending order man, horse, cattle, sheep, and goat. The texts of rigveda and other vedas provide detailed description of sacrifices including cattle sacrifice Although it is true that it started progressively during the Mauryan period. Ahsoka notably promoted a vegetarian life.

Liburnian ships