Thalatta

Yes, that would be the usual differentiation. Hippobatai were mounted hoplites for example, they just used the horses to travel to the battlefield. @Emacz, @Outis, it’s really unclear to me about which civs you are both talking about. Greek cavalry did not use shields before the Hellenistic period (at least not in big numbers: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1524/klio.2009.0017/html). This could be a tech then, maybe your mod could change the appearance of units with techs? And in an accurate way, because if I remember correctly, the base game makes hoplites evolve with experience the opposite way they did historically (which should be from heavier to lighter armor). For this subject I recommend On Horsemanship, by Xenophon (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1176/1176-h/1176-h.htm). There’s an interesting part where he says “we would recommend the newly-invented piece of armour called the gauntlet, which protects the shoulder, arm, and elbow, with the hand engaged in holding the reins, being so constructed as to extend and contract; in addition to which it covers the gap left by the corselet under the armpit. The case is different with the right hand, which the horseman must needs raise to discharge a javelin or strike a blow”. Now, many things to disentangle here: 1) neither there not in the rest of the book shields are mentioned, 2) we wouldn’t call that a gauntlet, seems a long shoulder protection, 3) I doubt this was eventually implemented in great numbers by the Greeks, 4) anyway it means is that someone invented such a thing around his time, and apparently it was the Persians (no wonder Xenophon being aware), from this figure shown of an “Achaemenid Dynast of Hellespontine Phrygia” in the center: I found that image striking, because it looks quite similar to the shoulder protection of the samurai, which is not surprising if we understand how samurai armor evolved: Japanese warriors used shields early on, eventually the elite class becomes mounted warriors, archers in particular, and for this, in which both hands are needed, shields must be ditched… or actually, adapted, becoming part of the armor, and migrate to become the iconic squared shoulder protections: Thus, in the Hellenistic world something similar seems to have developed, just not at the same scale. I have not read much about this, but my guess is that heavier armor made the “gauntlet” somewhat unnecessary, while the Japanese used lighter armor for a variety of reasons.

I find it funny that you propose to use a Fibonacci sequence, but then you apply it to so few points that you might have as well used a linear one The problem with Elo decay is that it is quite arbitrary, because it’s not part of the fundamental model, and it breaks the zero-sum game representation (although I guess most here won’t care about the meaning of the math, but deep down it's all about probabilities). You could also consider instead the Glicko rating system, which is seen as an improved Elo rating system, and what incorporates is not decay, but makes one’s Glicko rating change more drastically the more inactive the player is. It has been implemented on many games online. If what you want is for completely inactive players to just lose their ranking, then something that I think could be considered is a mix of the new and old FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking methods. The new method is Elo-based, and uses an importance coefficient depending on the context of the match (and it’s zero-sum game if asymmetrical points cases are removed, like in penalty shootouts), while in the old method old games were weighted less, but not in a subtle way and rankings would unexpectedly jump. I think that by using the new method and modifying the importance coefficient such that it slowly decreases with time (older games becoming gradually less important) what you want could be achieved way more elegantly and mathematically sound.

Sure, but you asked for a reference, not an object, and I did mention the time period issue. For a non-artistic reference, Strabo's Geography says: "For the barbarians were entirely inexperienced in war, and used their weapons unskilfully, which were bows, spears, swords, and slings; but the greater part of them wielded a double-edged axe. Immediately afterwards he took the city called Asca", which was probably modern Al-Lith in Saudi Arabia, around 25 BC. Probably no archeological evidence either, but as it is with many things.

There is, but extremely rare: "According to Robert Graves (1960), in Minoan culture the ritual double-edged axe was forbidden to males, which is certainly consistent with Minoan iconography but not with that of the Achaeans. The implication of images such as that on the ring or on similar objects is that the double-edged axe was the symbol of a powerful priestess or female deity, but other iconography provides evidence of its clear employment by the Achaeans as a deadly weapon." - Bronze Age Greek Warrior 1600-1100 BC, by R. D’Amato & A. Salimbeti (notice that this is way before the timeframe of the game). Also to fell trees. From Homers' Odyssey: "She gave him a great bronze axe, well fitted to his hands, sharpened on both blades; it had a beautiful olive wood handle, hafted well. She also gave him a well-polished adze. Then she led the way to the farthest part of the island where tall trees stood – alder, poplar, and fir – reaching to the sky, long dry and well-seasoned, which would float for him lightly. But when she had shown him where the tall trees stood, Calypso the radiant goddess went home, and he started cutting planks." From Palladius' Opus Agriculturae: "...spades with footbars; grubbing hoes for going after bramble bushes; axes with a single or double head; hoes with one or two prongs..."

In my "Thoughts on the Spartans" thread I argued why they shouldn't be called "olympic". Historically, that position was more honorific than anything. Still, comparing individual units is a complicated thing to do, particularly those having to work in a phalanx, so I was mostly thinking after the introduction of Epaminondas’ “oblique order”. It is not that clear to me that the Sacred Band should be weaker than Spartiates, seems more a “300 fame” thing, although in their favor there’s the agoge system (so, for the sake of gameplay, could make some sense). But after all, the Sacred Band went undefeated until they were obliterated while refusing to surrender against the Macedonians. Regarding Sparta having a longer timeframe of dominance, this is just a few years, and hegemony was not always complete for anyone, so hard to compare under that argument (and could be argued that Athenian hegemony was even longer).

I think the answer is here: This has been discussed recently, and makes sense as a historical Spartan weakness. Although early adopters of the ram, they were not good at sieges: "it took the Spartans years to subdue the helot insurgents, who particularly in Messenia, fought long and hard for their freedom, finally entrenching themselves on the stronghold of Mt. Ithome, where the Spartans, unaccustomed to siege warfare, had very great difficulties in dislodging them" (A History of Ancient Sparta, by T.B. Schutt). Which would be historically inaccurate after just the first quarter of the game’s timeframe (and why I see Thebans as necessary).

Only now I read your answer because I’m finding this topic quite boring already. So what? I could ask the exact opposite, and make perfect sense, which means that your question proves nothing. That is: if the change of meaning to village is the innovation, why is this observed in other Germanic languages? You do have to know what horizontal transfer is, so please don’t fill your posts with non-arguments. As I already said, no, they don’t. More on this later. Old Norse and Old Swedish are attested later. It is perfectly consistent, you just removed all the context regarding what a Roman would consider what a village is (based on his quote). He states that the individual buildings are isolated, this doesn’t contradict having a cluster of isolated buildings. This has already been extensively explained, and how it blurs the concepts of what a bunch of farms or a hamlet were, so let's stop going in circles. This doesn’t even make any sense. The EE glossary exists though the copies made from it: mainly the Épinal, Erfurt (copied from a copy of the EE) and Corpus (also copied from a copy) glossaries. My reference came from the Corpus, which is “virtually a 3rd text of the EE glossary”, and it even “gives a more correct reading” of it (https://www.scribd.com/document/621831732/Old-English-Glosses-in-the-Epinal-Erfurt-Glossary-J-D-Pheifer-Z-lib-org, page xxix). There’s even a diagram of this on the source you mention (https://www.academia.edu/figures/35848219/figure-1-from-the-foregoing-it-should-be-clear-that-ee-was), and just by going further than the “two main manuscripts of the Glossary exist today” line on Wikipedia, anyone can read that “parts of the glossary are also found in other manuscripts, most importantly the Second Corpus Glossary, which contains amidst other glosses a complete text of the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary, descended independently from a common exemplar”. The only issue is that until some decades ago the Corpus was thought to be the earlier one, and this chronology was left as such in the 2022 revision (there’s some funny argument where https://archive.org/details/oldestenglishte01churgoog/page/2/mode/2up, page 3, states that the Épinal “must have been written at least a generation earlier” than the Corpus, and https://archive.org/details/eightcenturylati00corprich/page/n11/mode/2up, page ix, from 5 years later, after quoting that retorts with “his opinion is not shared by competent palaeographers”, which, well, apparently now it is). But, yet again, all that is irrelevant, because, as expected, the reference I quoted from the Corpus coincides with what the Erfurt reference says anyway (https://wehd.com/94/Thorp.html), you just pushed the date even further back (to the end of the 7th century) when pointing out the EE glossary as the source of all this, which supports my position even more. Why don’t you just, you know, go and check what the glossary actually says, instead of mentioning some particular use case of some random law? As if doing the same with a modern word like “country” could determine a single unique meaning. Just go to https://epinal-erfurt.artsci.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/ceperf.pdf, page 35, and find how the cognate of þurpą (absent in the Épinal, but present in the others, with the original EE archetype reconstructed) being translated as “village or hamlet” (unrelated rows removed): I have just undeniably proved the opposite by taking a screenshot of what the earliest OE glossaries state and how they are translated by the people actually studying it. Honestly, I don’t know what is your issue with these ridiculous acrobatics on cherry-picking statistically insignificant obscure references if they seem to align with what you want to push forward while, as I’ve pointed out before, constantly completely ignoring the important relevant sources (even mentioned by yourself, like just right now) that clearly and explicitly state the exact opposite of what you say. There is no doubt on what the earliest OE glossaries say, are you now going to use this information like you tried to insist with the later OHG lexicon? The only attestation preceding all this is the one rare þaurp instance in the Gothic Bible, when Gothic is a mess for all the terms being discussed (as I’ve already shown), and the bible is no glossary, with the manuscript where this one instance comes from, Codex Ambrosianus D, dating to the late 6th or early 7th century (https://www.academia.edu/8007130/Narrating_History_Through_the_Bible_in_Late_Antiquity_A_Reading_Community_for_the_Syriac_Peshitta_Old_Testament_Manuscript_in_Milan_Ambrosian_Library_B_21_inf_Full_Text_). Are we really supposed to believe that the cognates of þurpą kept their meaning for centuries up to that attestation, and changed it a few decades later on the next older attestation, in OE? As I’ve been saying from the very beginning and becomes even more clear the more you try to dig in: the PGmc reconstruction is what it is for many reasons. We are just basically reconstructing the reconstruction, reinventing the wheel, little by little because I’m truly not interested in such a pointless mission as to have done it all at once, besides trying the utmost to keep my posts short and on point. I just came across a nice article, https://telibrary.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Rock_art_and_Celto-Germanic_vocabulary_S.pdf, where lots of terms relevant to the game are given for languages like Proto-Germanic and Proto-Celtic (with þurpa nicely given for settlement).

The problem doesn't seem to be the automatic spam then, but the spamming of a (possibly) broken unit. I have no clue about actual balancing, but if they are unfairly hard to counter (also considering it would/should be almost the only viable strategy for the Spartans), limiting the number of Spartiates has been proposed many times, has historical basis, and it should be trivial to implement, besides ideally forcing the use of units like the Neodamodeis. If the problem is hoplites in general, well, I think it’s ok for at least one civ, the Spartans, to be quite limited in their flexibility. I can’t talk much about the Athenians yet because for now I’ve played mostly with the Spartans after drinking way too much coffee mixed with Red Bull while screaming “this is Sparta".

Exactly my point. Just that I think the capture mechanic can potentially be fixed, as I mentioned. As @guerringuerrin says, it would be a shame to sacrifice it and just do what others have always done, just because it's easier. Well, you never said not to touch Fortresses and Towers to begin with. I think infantry should have an easy time capturing smaller buildings, but I just don’t see why swords should be able to bring them down, this reminds me of that much derided AoE axe guy having a go at a wall. I would hope this game aims at something a bit different. I can’t base any reasoning on swords currently being good against OP rams since it’s quite unclear why this is even the case. If, being generous, one thinks of that as swordsmen having an easier time killing the ram’s crew because of close quarters combat, I see no relation with being good at destroying a building (and I really hope the argument is not that swords chop those things!). Now, infantry eventually setting fire to buildings, that's another matter, and an interesting mechanic to possibly add in the future. The different mechanics have to have their use cases. As you said before, why would I do this, instead of that? It's just that things have to be tuned in a way that these cases are not extremely rare, but appear all in comparable proportions, to adapt and think what would be best to do. Only one thing being almost always the best thing to do would be extremely boring.

Dedicated buildings could indeed be a solution, if for example a Smelter is made the only dropsite for metals. And it's trivial to control who can build the Smelter, and when.

Ok, then the present Specific Name is not following the game's guidelines, which are based on ALA-LC Romanization, and Ναὸς Ἀθηνᾶς Νίκης should be then transliterated as Naos Athēnas Nikēs.

All important questions. It takes around 1:45 minutes for 24 Spartiates (not maxed up in experience) to bring CC HP down to around 200. You are right in pointing out “why even damage it?”, but it has its use cases: for 6 Spartiates (or less) the capture bar won't go down, while if the CC HP is lowered to around 200 first (lets say, using a ranged siege engine), they would capture it in less than 15 seconds. Of course, these borderline cases are almost irrelevant, and I think these effects should be made more relevant by balancing things differently. Before addressing that, I want to come back to "some people want to see buildings razed to the ground without going to the trouble of making siege rams". I think this would be pretty bad, having infantry do what siege engines should do, and not punishing just massing up boring monolithic armies. Considering all those things (and not changing fundamental things on how garrisons or siege engines work, as I’ve proposed before), I’d make siege engines the only ones (significantly) damaging buildings, and I’d make defensive full HP buildings extremely hard to capture, being this reasonable only after taking some damage. At the same time, this damage doesn’t have to be too much, otherwise just destroying a building would be always preferable. There has to be a sweet spot when the preferred (faster) strategy is to damage the building with siege first and to capture it with infantry immediately after. Both only capture or only destruction should be slower. Only then the use of multiple unit types and some tactics would be rewarded, as it was in reality.

I just tested. For a CC with 3000 HP, to lower capture points from 2500 to 500, 24 Spartiates take around 25 seconds, and the regeneration back to 2500 takes around 1:05 minutes. If the CC HP is lowered first to 235, the 25 seconds become not even 5 seconds, while the 1:05 remains the same. The two capture variables of the structure I know are its capture points and the regeneration rate, both seemingly unchanged with CC HP. What changes, which I don't know which variable is controlling this, is the capture rate (either through a lowering of some "capture resistance", or increase of some "capture attack").

It seems you’ll end with an almost unmanageable variety of resources. An alternative path is to indeed consider all this, but differently, a bit inspired on Rise of Nations: I would group each specific resource into main resources, for example all clay, stone and marble would be just stone, then iron, copper, silver and gold would be just metal, but, although they wouldn’t have a different counter, they do exist differently, and the fact that you are collecting different ones could give you some extra bonus, or allow you to do some things, or the Market system could take some of this stuff into account. Still, fibre is more important than most of those resources since it’s what you use to make rope, which ties up everything, for example, and becomes even more important later on when you have proper clothing. What I mean is, wouldn't just having a tech solve this? The easiest way I can think of is to have an extremely low defauult gathering rate, which this tech would modify. And not all civs would have it.

What about specific resources for specific eras? To avoid working metal in the stone age. I guess in practise one could do it by setting ridiculously low gathering rates for more advanced resources until certain techs are researched? (And some civilisations could not have these techs, solving the issue you mention). Or can they be made progressively appear? (Some game was like that, can't remember which, maybe RoN). I guess your resources are faith, water, clay, food, bone, leather, wood, stone, copper, iron and gold. It seems like a lot to keep track of. Also, fibre, as I argued somewhere else, would be a very important one that gets always ignored (I guess it doesn’t sound that cool :P), and leather could be included in it (even if hides are not usually considered natural fibres textile-wise, they are made of collagen fibres), as both have similar purposes.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone, I was messaging with @Outis given that I think there are some issues with his Ancient Greek take. Basically both forms are Modern Greek, as can be seen in the Modern Greek Wikipedia: https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ναός_Αθηνάς_Νίκης, both "Ναός Αθηνάς Νίκης" and "Ναός της Αθηνάς Νίκης" are used, and from the English one it says "Greek: Ναός Αθηνάς Νίκης, Naós Athinás Níkis" (their difference being similar to "Temple of the Sun" and "Sun's Temple"). Using the Ancient Greek translator https://openl.io/translate/ancient-greek for both Modern Greek terms, the difference appears in accents (which makes sense because they would differ a bit in pronunciation), "Ναὸς Ἀθηνᾶς Νίκης" and "Ναὸς τῆς Ἀθηνᾶς Νίκης" (I reproduced this with the https://www.polytranslator.com translator). If I start instead from English "Temple of Athena Nike", I get the first form, "Ναὸς Ἀθηνᾶς Νίκης", while the second form is the one used in the Ancient Greek Wikipedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/grc/Ναὸς_τῆς_Ἀθηνᾶς_Νίκης, which uses the Attic dialect (a more "authentic" one, that's why my username is Thalatta and not the now more known Thalassa). @Outis agrees with the first form, which is also the one I prefer, since we both have the impression that the genitive article wasn't that common in Ancient Greek (that's why he removed it but forgot to change the accents), and I wonder if the Attic Wikipedia is something like the Simple English one, more expanded but not the common way to write things, but I have not invested too much time trying to find the real answer for this since it's a path we can avoid, and just use "Ναὸς Ἀθηνᾶς Νίκης". Then there’s the issue of Latin transliteration, for which there are many conventions. Right now "Ναός της Αθηνάς Νίκης" is being transliterated to “Naós tês Athinâs Níkēs”, which I haven’t managed to reproduce, the closest I managed is using https://transliteration.nlg.gr/Arxiki.html?lang=en, where I get “Naos tēs Athēnas Nikēs” for ALA-LC Romanization, and “Naós tīs Athīnás Níkīs” for ISO 843:1997, the present Specific Name being a mix of these (or another convention? How is this being done?). In any case, for those conventions, respectively, the first Ancient Greek form results in “Naos Athēnas Nikēs” and “Naos Athīnás Níkīs”, and the second Ancient Greek form (which we could ignore) results in “Naos tēs Athēnas Nikēs” and “Naos tī́s Athīnás Níkīs”. I think any choice should align with the present convention of the game, which I haven’t checked if it’s consistent.

The idea is really interesting, and I was thinking about how to have both settlements to fight for (like you did, which sounds fun) and improving the Diplomacy options by adding Vassal alongside Ally, Neutral and Enemy (like I would have done, which is more realistic). To combine both ideas, maybe some pre-existing settlements (like the ones you propose) could be referred to as Client City-State, Petty Kingdom, or whatever is best according to context, and they can’t be truly annexed but at most become Vassals, combining your ideas with a more complete Diplomacy menu (which hopefully will be made even more interesting in the future), which would give the flexibility of vassalage in other situations.

There are many quite interesting things there, like mixed effects that do make sense: "Market: -1 population cap within 20 m, +2 population cap within 60 m". And of course it's funny to see the exact same observations being made over and over again: Then the mod adds lots of things (some of which don't make much sense to me), but my view is that vanilla should add the minimum necessary to make city layouts make some historical sense, and stop making some structures basically useless (palisades and walls), which should be achievable with a few intuitive auras.

In Part I, I mentioned that one civ. bonus was wrongly called Hellenistic Architecture. Now I see it says Hellenic, I’m not sure if this was changed or I misread it (the tooltip explanation is still not right). In Part II, I said that Ship Cladding could be Lead Sheathing, but as I suspected, it should apply only to civilian ships (to make them more profitable, since it reduced maintenance) and not warships (because it would slow them down), which could have instead Pararrhymata (Side Protections), used after some point in the 5th century BC. Now I see Ship Cladding has been removed because the tech tree was too lengthy. In any case, this information might be useful for some (@wowgetoffyourcellphone, I’ve seen DE has a more extensive tech tree, not sure how far do you plan to push that, and for how much historical accuracy you strive for), and it’s my view to have many expensive techs, to penalise blind clicking, and open different ways to play each civ, depending on scenario, enemies, etc, reducing mechanicality and enhancing adaptability. Still, in what follows I’m not really adding techs, just mostly renaming or even removing them. Now, to the last part (planned at least, unless I eventually come across new things). Part III Simple things that should be: -Perioikoi Hoplite/Cavalryman and Skiritai Commando should be Perioikos Hoplite/Cavalryman and Skirites Commando, I think: not to mix plural and singular, if Ancient Greek speakers can confirm (otherwise it reads like Romans Centurion). Simple things that could be: -Hoplite Tradition could be Hoplite Reform: that’s what the bibliography tends to call it. Espionage and Counterintelligence could make use of some Ancient Greek terms (spies is kataskópous, apparently). -In Barracks, Conscription could be State Weaponry: I’d have called this tech Arsenals, but there’s already a building called Arsenal. It doesn’t seem like any change in “conscription” at the time of the game would have sped up troop output. Regarding the “establishment of state stores of weaponry”, in the 4th c. BC it became common for many to have stores with arms and armor, to be distributed to those who didn’t have them. The system of supplying arms and armour to Spartan citizens, helots and former helots was adopted around the Second Messenian War, and from at least 424 BC the state supplied arms and armour to helots and neodamodeis on garrison duty. This was followed by many around this time, like Athens, Syracuse, Carthage and Macedon. In the Early Hellenistic period the system of distribution of arms and armour by the poleis was wide-spread. On the other hand, some detachments like cavalry (at least for Macedon) were expected to provide their own equipment (from The Role of Metals in Ancient Greek History, by M.Y. Treister). -Wicker baskets could be Kalathus: wicker baskets existed for thousands of years. The calathus is a basket that “from the early 5th century [BC] onwards, when women working wool began to be depicted more regularly in Attic vase-paintings and elsewhere, the kalathoi show a more specific shape which would become standardised with remarkable consistency”, “this form which was optimized for wool-work may actually fulfill completely different functions. Among the objects portrayed in the painted architectural illusion decorating room 23 of the Villa A of Oplontis in the Vesuvian region, we see a kalathos filled with ripe fruit. Although there is obviously more to this strange still-life-like combination of a veiled kalathos and an unlit torch, the kalathos in it notably functions as a fruit basket. Using a kalathos for harvesting fruit seems to have been a common thing to do” (A Wool Basket in Clay: Remarks on the Change of Material, the Unusable Object and the Ancient Greek “Culture of Things”, by N. Dietrich). -Regarding the Storehouse, I wonder why all civs (except Carthaginians, for which stone techs are free) have all the techs. Maybe this is a bit provisory anyway, but I guess it would be better to differentiate civs a bit by not giving all of them. Some could have even different costs and benefits (or combined benefits, Archimedes’ Screw should give both farming and mining bonuses). These decisions should be informed by history, and then proper characteristics could be given, and things rebalanced. –Baskets, Wheelbarrow, and Horse-drawn Carts could be Wheel Ruts, Improved Roads, and Logistics: “China had the wheelbarrow over two thousand years ago, but there is no evidence for its use in Europe prior to the medieval period” (Early Metal Mining and Production, by P.T. Craddock). M.J.T. Lewis challenges this (considering a “one-wheeler” mentioned in a list), although concedes that at most it would have been used for light loads in construction sites, while not for farming and mining. Donkeys, mules (particularly on mountains) and oxen would be preferred over horses to draw carts, but had been like that for many centuries. On the other hand, better infrastructure and organisation played a more prominent role at this time. I hope someone will eventually come across better names though. –Wedge and Mallet, Shaft Mining and Silver Mining could be Wind Deflectors, Paired Shafts and Archimedes’ Screw, but not for Sparta: at this time, most mining improvements were on the fields of ventilation and drainage. “The generation of a draught may also have been achieved by means of a wind deflector, as in the case where the wooden shaft lining was used as a forced drain” and the “most original and sophisticated shaft type is that with parallel air ducts”, from The Laurion Shafts, Greece: Ventilation Systems and Mining Technology in Antiquity, by D. Morin, R. Herbach and P. Rosenthal, and “Diodorus Siculus specifically describes the use of the screw in mines” (Craddock). Sparta didn’t engage in large-scale mining, unlike Athens for example. –Servants, Serfs and Slaves could be Crane, Triple Pulley and Compound Pulley, but not for Sparta: the names used right now are not that exclusive of quarrying. “Because most quarries were open pits, prospecting, ventilation, and lighting presented fewer difficulties than in mining, and even drainage was easier to deal with” (Greek and Roman Technology, by A.N. Sherwood). “There is no evidence for the use of cranes or hoists in architecture before the late sixth century B.C., and until then heavy blocks must have been raised by pulling them up earth ramps”, “before the invention of the compound pulley, early cranes must have used a rope passed over a simple pulley”, and “the invention of triple and compound pulleys (trispaston and polyspaston) was a major advance in the design and mechanics of cranes. This has been ascribed, probably erroneously, to Archimedes”. Also, “the earliest secure mention of the compound pulley appears in the pseudo-Aristotelian Mechanics 18 (ca. 270 B.C.)” (The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World, by J.P. Oleson). Sparta probably didn’t use any of these. –Iron Axe Heads, Stronger Axe and Sharper Axe Heads could be Improved Saw, Botany and Hand Plane, but the last one, maybe two, not for Sparta: I’ve read things like “the shape and dimensions of the saws were probably similar to today’s hand saws as early as the 6th c. BC”. Also, “between the third century B.C. and the first century A.D., Theophrastus, Cato, Varro, and Pliny the Elder wrote extensively about silviculture and the uses of various species of trees” (Oleson), and Theophrastus is called the father of botany. Finally, “most of the tools used for working wood were already known in the Bronze Age, and with the use of iron they took on the shapes that, for the most part, are still in use today. The plane, however, which requires a very sharp and durable blade, may have been invented and certainly only became common in the first century AC” (Sherwood), with some saying the Greeks invented it (I’m not sure if when part of the Roman Empire already). I’d remove at least the last one for Sparta. It’s been quite hard to find something relevant at the time of the game. -Regarding the Temple, I’m rearranging techs a bit more thematically. Some won’t be new developments of the time (as I always try to do), but are important anyway. –Sacrificial Ritual could be Amphictyony: which sacrificial ritual? (more later). Given that it reduces training time and removes metal cost, Amphictyonic leagues were religious-political associations that protected sanctuaries and became more powerful after the First Sacred War (before the start of the game, but other Amphictyonies would appear with the years), while they “have recorded their provisions for the upkeep of Sacred Roads (380-379 BC)” (Sherwood), facilitating religious processions. –Olympic Pantheon (Healing Range) could be Dodekátheon (Olympic Pantheon): following proper nomenclature. –Healing Range 2 could be Mystery Cults: it added another layer to the traditional polytheism. –Sphagia (Healing Rate) could be Sfágia (Sphagia): following proper nomenclature. –Hippocratic Oath could be Ierá (Hiera): since it’s Healing Rate 2, and “sacrifices performed specifically for divination—that is, sacrifices offered to obtain the gods’ counsel and approval regarding a decision to be made or an action to be undertaken (hiera and thysia). In contrast, the sphagia, which can in one sense be considered a divinatory sacrifice but in many other respects diverges radically from hiera and thysia (for example, the participants do not consume the flesh of the sacrifice and the internal organs are not burned on an altar)” (“Divinatory Sacrifice (Hiera) and Divine Approval in Xenophon’s Anabasis”, by N.E. Okur). In general, Hiera is done at the altar, Sphagia before battle. –Living Conditions could be Physiotherapy: gives +1 HR to garrisons. It starts with Herodicus and Hippocrates. I’m specifying the Hippocratic Corpus a bit. –Battlefield Medicine could be Physiology, maybe not for the Spartans: a regeneration bonus. It starts with Alcmaeon of Croton and Hippocrates, although maybe Spartans didn’t pay much attention to this. Changes that have been already proposed: -Reduce Stable role: maybe Conscription could be removed, as I mentioned before. -Reduce Arsenal role: maybe most techs could be removed. Rams and oxybeles are fine, since there was “Spartan use of battering rams at Plataea in 429 BC” (Greek and Roman Siege Machinery, 399 BC-AD 363, by D.B. Campbell), and regarding the non-torsion catapult, this “machinery most probably arrived in the Peloponnese along with the troops under Cissidas, sent by Dionysius I in 368 or 367 B.C.”, although it was not used much (Greek and Roman Artillery, Historical Development, by E.W. Mardsen). -Reduce Market role: maybe Commercial Treaty could be removed. -Separate religion and medicine, eventually: I’ve seen the argument that “health is multifaceted”, but if a morale system is added, priests should affect it, while health should be left for physicians. For Ancient Greece, both could either come from the Temple, or the Asclepieion could be added. Units like druids could take both roles, being herbalists, though not as efficiently as a Roman surgeon for example, which could be produced from an independent building (Tabernae Medicae maybe). These are the extremes, many civs would fall in the middle. Then, some techs could be priest “abilities” instead (like Sphagia and Hiera, doing other things). Other changes that could be considered: -Scytale as civ. bonus: transposition cipher for communications, since 7th c. BC, for FOV increase. -Regarding emblems: sources are quite a mess regarding shield emblems, from a 1:1 scale fly to an army of lambdas, to modern authors stating we have no evidence they used the lambda, to someone stating lots of stuff who knows based on what. In conclusion, we don’t know a lot. But I’d have chosen the Gorgon head for the maxed up Spartiate, seems to have more relevance on certain representations, as can be seen along many emblems in The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia at Sparta, by R.M. Dawkins, shown below: Then, some interesting random quotes from Treister’s book, which could eventually be useful: -By the second quarter of the 4th century [BC], fortress towers often incorporated specially designed catapult chambers. -The cost of maintaining an army and even more so of a fleet, even in peacetime, was considerably higher than the expense. -Introduction of the technique for casting life-size bronze statues. -Monetary courts, developed with the growth in the employment of mercenaries, led to an increasing need for coins. -Arms taken from enemies were usually dedicated to the gods. Only the Spartans considered it worthless to dedicate to the gods armour which had belonged to "cowards". And on a final note, I really recommend searching for things on the sources I’ve mentioned, there’s plenty on them that I haven’t read, and they could still hold the key to many relevant things for the time period of the game (particularly Oleson’s and Sherwood’s books). Here is a sphagia scene, from the front of Campbell's Spartan Warrior 735-331 BC:

Not how things were done. Check this post and the longer follow up post:

I guess things could be introduced and for the time being not really work with pathfinding, but still be useful. Roads could work in such a way that if right clicked consecutively on different points (with Shift modifier pressed) then in those parts of the travel the selected units would follow the road and have pathfinding deactivated, which would activate when off-road again. This adds a lot of interesting complexity, reminds me of Caesar III, where gardens and similar would make the area desirable, but other buildings would have the opposite effect (I guess most city-building games work similarly, but haven’t tried many). For example, beyond CC effects, most buildings could have a negative effect on agricultural yield, save the Farmstead, which could have the opposite effect (food storage places took into account many things for better food preservation), while dropsites could have an effect on unit production times (these activities are usually best kept away from population centers), among many other possible effects (Temples already heal, and Libraries improving research times was mentioned). Terrain could have effects not only on Fields but the Corral, with plains or mountains being better for cows and goats, respectively, or even fish if near a body of water (there are fish corrals, although they are structures on water). In fact, I’ve thought Britons could train their dogs there, having a dedicated Kennel just for that seems too much (and I doubt they had such a thing in the first place).

And roads. Roads indeed. Many roads. Foot paths, dirt trails, cart tracks, dirt roads, gravel roads, paved roads... We want all the roads.

In https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/143241-thoughts-on-the-spartans/?do=findComment&comment=749365 I proposed the Proteichisma tech (for the Hellenic factions, eventually the proper terminology has to be found for the rest), emulating "an outer stone wall and ditch" to "slow down units or only siege engines", because, as you say, the whole point of defenses should be to "help you to organize a defense". Regarding garrisons, search "base garrison", a preliminary idea I've put forward a few times.

It wouldn’t if you don't consider quite limited ammunition, as I've discussed somewhere else. It will happen what @Deicide4u says. They would be so OP that just massing ranged units would work out in most battle situations. This is a way to measure if things are not working out as they should.

Hoping I'm not going too offtopic... I didn’t notice different unit speeds on different kinds of terrains (for example over ice and snow). I guess the capability is there, but not yet implemented in scenarios? This would make a nice addition, to have soft chokepoints like mountain passes with snow, swamps, river crossings, etc.