Thalatta

By googling images of "<king's name> crown" one can see plenty of Sasanian coins and representations (consider some kings had many crowns). The crowns of Ardashir I (not the simpler Parthian one, check the famous Ardashir Investiture Relief, he's the one on the right, page 60 in https://archive.org/details/TheTwoEyesOfTheEarth/page/n83/mode/2up), Shapur I and Shapur II look quite similar, like the ones of Heroes 3, 5 and 2 (without the little "crescent" on top), which I'd assign in that order since Ardashir I was the father of Shapur I, and Shapur Il came way later. Then Khosrow I looks like Hero 1 and Khosrow II looks like Hero 4. Choosing some favorable representations for this choice: Ardashir I, on the right (Hero 3) Shapur I (Hero 5) Shapur Il (Hero 2) Khosrow I (Hero 1) Khosrow II (Hero 4).

Doesn’t matter, the power in the game would be the combination of bow and arrow. So, for the first point the consequences were ok, just badly explained, the second point would have been wrong, except in very specific combinations of armour and distance, and the third point was somewhat misleading, but maybe acceptable.

As I’ve already explained to you some time ago (and quoting from The Great Warbow, from Hastings to the Mary Rose, by M. Strickland and R. Hardy, which, although in a Medieval setting, is illustrative for each weapon): -Longbows weren’t necessarily more powerful than composite bows. Actually, the latter were more efficient, delivering more energy for a given draw weight. Usually, composite bows have lower draw weight (the thumb draw being a factor, apparently giving a bit more accuracy), but their power was comparable across a broad range: “a composite bow with a draw-weight of 59.5lb shot the same arrow as fast as a replica medieval yew longbow with a draw of about 74lb” (both of these numbers are below average for their respective warbows, but the comparison stands given a proportional scaling). A different thing is the power of the arrows, for which the longbows would have an edge, given their arrows were heavier, making them usually more armor piercing: “In the same decade in which Gerald of Wales was writing of the formidable penetrative power of the Welsh elm longbows in Gwent, Saladin’s close aide and confidant Beha ad-Din remarked on the effectiveness of the Frankish infantry’s armour against the Turkish bows during the Third Crusade”. -Longbows didn’t necessarily exceed the range of composite bows. Actually, the latter had greater maximum range, as expected from similar bow power but lighter arrows: “Western chroniclers were particularly struck by the range of the Saracen bows”, but both had comparable effective range, taking the previous point into account (although what is effective would depend on the actual units being targeted). -Longbows didn’t so clearly have a slower rate of “fire” than composite bows. Mainly, that has absolutely nothing to do with weapon size, but with variables like length draw and weight draw. For example, “the longbowman could shoot ten a minute and more, though Stanley says that with the heaviest bows he does not like to try for more than six a minute”. Thus, what could be done with a longbow is comparable to what was done with a composite bow, although if longbowmen sacrificed accuracy, and they wouldn’t be able to sustain that for long (all because of the higher weight draw), which wouldn't be much of an issue since they’d run out of arrows quite fast, as I’ve discussed before. In any case, this point is not as incorrect as the other two (given also that it’s much harder to properly source, and if one also considers much better trained composite bow users), but would depend more on the archer's training and technique, and, as with the previous points, on particular bows and tactics. Their advantages and disadvantages relate to other things I’ve also already told you (simplified in simple bows having lower performance, longbows lower mobility, and composite bows lower affordability, besides what I’ve just mentioned). If you keep asking AI of course you’ll get the wrong answers, because it uses misconceptions from other games. Redoubling on something I told you: many civ characteristics should be determined by not having all Storehouse techs. One of the reasons some would make composite bows is not having a lot of appropriate wood (this is connected with that they would also be horse cultures, more viable on treeless landscapes). Thus, they should not have all wood techs, and their bows should cost less wood, but more food (sinew, horn, animal glue) and metal (manufacturing cost), and more training time if that also considers manufacturing time.

Surely his quiver has internal subdivisions (at least three) allowing him to subgroup arrows. Then, at 1:25 you can see that his arrows have two-feather fletching, which determines the orientation of the nock, since the feathers must sit horizontally when the arrows are nocked. When grabbing multiple arrows in one hand, the feathers just sit in parallel layers on top of each other, correctly orienting their nocks. That’s why he can nock four at the same time so fast a few seconds earlier. He has a bit of a harder time with five, but I think it could be achieved with practice, and maybe a few extra adjustments in equipment. In addition to all that I mentioned before, the lethality of an arrow “has very little to do with the KE it possesses“, but that it “comes from broadhead design and durability, arrow design and durability, and the penetrating power (momentum) it carries” (https://cervicide.com/arrow-speed-vs-weight-which-matters). And of course, composite warbows would shoot arrows much harder than on these videos. Still, I’m not convinced that this was indeed what the Sasanians were doing, instead of just holding five arrows to shoot them in fast sequence, but at least it would seem more plausible than one initially would think. Certainly “physically possible”, hard to say if "physically makes sense".

I missed this, but here you have some dude on YouTube doing it, imagine what a Sasanian archer could do And now I think it makes more sense than I was previously assuming (still not sure if enough): shooting 5 arrows can be thought of as shooting an arrow 5 times heavier (not really, it’s more uncomfortable, but let’s say so for the sake of simplified physics). Then, assuming (more on this later) that the bow transfers the same energy to the arrows in both cases, we have E=K=mv^2/2=5mu^2/2, where v is the speed of the single arrow, and u the speed of each of the 5 arrows. This means that u=v/sqrt(5)=v/2.24, which tells us that, while the kinetic energy is divided by 5, the speed u and, in consequence, the momentum mu (also important when evaluating delivered damage) get just a bit more than halved. On top of this, regarding the assumption that "the bow transfers the same energy to the arrows in both cases", this is actually even better, because bows transfer energy to heavier arrows more efficiently (for many reasons, one being that more mass accelerates slower, thus the energy transfer time is increased). In conclusion, if a Sasanian archer can do it comfortably (even more than in the video), the shots might be good enough, particularly 1) from close range against 2) a mass of 3) not heavily armoured people. Furthermore, 1) there’s a horse archer tactic that consists in closing in the distance quite a lot to increase the time (thus number) of effective volleys that can be performed, 2) the source I mentioned states that they were fighting against an army of 100 thousand, and 3) that they were the Abyssinians (and some allies), for which Stuart Munro-Hay in Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity states that "no personal armour has yet been found, nor are there any surviving representations of soldiers, except from one most unusual source", in which "Persians are shown mounted or on foot, fully clothed with tunic and trousers, and armed with bows. Their adversaries wear only a small kilt, and what seems to be a sword-belt diagonally across one shoulder" (I'm not saying that they had no armour, but I’d guess most of the 100 thousand didn’t have heavy armor). I don’t know, I just gathered what I know, saw, thought, calculated, and found, and it does seem that shooting 5 arrows at the same time in certain situations might not be as ridiculous as it sounds (after all, a footnote in C. E. Bosworth's translation of History of the Prophets and Kings by Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari states that "it is presumably related to the banjakiyyah of al-Jawaliqi, al-Mu'arrab: a volley of five arrows, mentioned in a context which speaks of the Khurisanians").

I guess the question is, when this happens, can you still play? I imagine it would be nice to keep doing so while listening to some dialogue.

It is physically possible to do it with both a bow and (some kind of) crossbow, the only question is if it physically makes sense, because indeed the energy would be distributed, so it wouldn’t work against somewhat armoured troops. I doubt a crossbow able to do that was invented at the time, and for a bow, it’s a shooting technique, although holding 5 arrows in one hand could also work (but it’s just a variation of what they were already doing of holding at least a couple of arrows on that hand). I guess the case for barbed arrowheads, put forward by A. Siddiqi, comes from the whole quote: "When I give you the order to shoot, let fly at them swiftly with a five-arrow volley (bi-al-banjakan). The people of Yemen had never seen war arrows before this occasion", which seems to me puts the focus on the arrow themselves, although if taken too literally.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone, nice list. The first person that comes to my mind as an important character at that time is Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, which would become a major religion for a few centuries (would make an important Hero priest). There are a couple problems with this: 1) he was born in 216 under the Parthian Empire, which was succeeded by the Sasanian Empire when he was still a child (I wonder what’s the exact criteria in these cases, but to me it makes more sense to have him with the Sasanians), and 2) the religion would eventually be repressed by the Sasanians, although at the beginning they were receptive to it since it had many similarities with Zoroastrianism, but that started to change around 270, with more intense persecution after 290. I’m not sure how much you are into mutually exclusive techs and alternative history, but all this is a gold mine with that. Other immediate Sasanian concepts that could be used as techs: -Just looking a bit back I see that the “Panjagān was either a projectile weapon or an archery technique”, some have said it could have even been a type of arrowhead. I consider the last one, although the least fanciful, the most probable, but most experts disagree with this, probably the archery technique is the most preferred, and to me is a close second. From the sources, and the lack of evidence, being some kind of weapon seems the least probable. -Seven Great Houses of Iran: the Parthian aristocratic clans of the Sasanian court. More of a civ. bonus since it comes from before. Maybe some champion bonus, but Hero penalty, if no member of those houses would be a Hero, like Rostam Farrokhzad (otherwise I think at some point Hero categories would be nice to have, to deal better with certain bonuses and penalties, as I’ve had this problem before with something else). -Dehqans: came later, minor landowners. -Khosrau I Reforms: fixed harvest tax (which dehqans collected). Both of these could be consecutive Field techs, the first one a normal bonus, the second one to trickle metal. -I don’t know if buildings can be upgraded, but for Fire Temples (for civs that have Zoroastrianism as the/a main religion), there are 3 levels (Atash Dadgah, Atash Adaran, and Atash Behram), depending on the grade of the fire they hold (which depends on how it was originally produced, for which they identify 16 different forms, when all are combined and consecrated, that’s the highest fire degree, which is quite complicated to do, nowadays there are only nine Atash Behram, eight in India and one in Iran). -Maybe the Ayvān-e Kesrā could be the Wonder.

Good catch. But, you could have a unit of left-handed slingers, as was the case of the Judean Benjamites (although the source is the Bible): "Among Benjamin’s elite troops, 700 were left-handed, and each of them could sling a rock and hit a target within a hairsbreadth without missing".

Just in case, the Manchu bow is a bit different since it has string contact, as shown in the video I sent, which I did just to explicitly show parts of the bow like the bridges, which the Sasanian doesn’t have.

@guerringuerrin, no worries, there's zero frustration from my side, just wanted to make sure I was doing what one is supposed to do. Regarding PRs, as I’ve said before, since there’s a lot of work, I didn’t want to overload, similarly as to a thread per point, I wouldn’t want to spam (I’m already posting too much lately anyway). My intention with a poll was not to force the developers to do anything, but to gauge support and increase visibility of simple things that I think could be helpful for many or polish some details (and that have nothing to do with gameplay), which otherwise just get lost in this thread.

Ok, I gave it a go with some other generators (maybe there’s a limit on what can be done for free). Gemini, after prompting “sasanid bow”, “indian horse archer with that bow”, and “don’t show other warriors, has to be Gupta, so look like indian, no helmet but turban. The bow is great”. Then I gave it your picture and the Sasanian (another spelling of Sasanid) reenactor one, and after a bit of tweaking: Then, Adobe Firefly, after just stating “Gupta horse archer, that is, the bow has to be sasanid”. It even has a shield with the Garuda:

Thanks for your answer. Separate threads for many of these details seems too much… for example, alongside 3), these seemed well received and don’t seem controversial (if so, I thought it would be good to know with a poll), besides being apparently easy to implement: 1) loading screen having a “press any key to continue”, 2) double clicking idle worker button to select all of them, 4) Continue Campaign appear only under Single Player, 5) Campaigns must have different names, 6) Restart and Load game options during a game, 7) option to hide full health bars. There are a few more like this, I was going to gather those with more chances of going somewhere after my next 20 points. I’ve seen polls regarding way more controversial things, so I’m really not sure what should be the next step to have a better grasp of everyone’s opinion, how to move from "too early" since those were posted in January

If the units are in a blob, it’s almost impossible to do that to end with a specific number of units selected, BUT instead of a selection box, clicking also works. One still has to manage to hit the unit, which can be a bit cumbersome if the blob is moving. I think CTRL+right click on portraits should remove a random (or some other criteria) unit from that selection, or at least I keep wanting to do that. But what you said is indeed useful.

The lack of this is really annoying sometimes... How do you all deal with the situation of having a mass of units but wanting to select just a specific number of them? Also, should I do a poll regarding many of those proposed points? Many on that list don’t seem that controversial (not so much on the follow up list I made).

Interesting, looks like a Scythian bow. Makes sense the AI being biased towards the most generally known types of bow. Which generator are you using?

I wonder if I make a big mistake by never researching the fruit basket tech (basically the only one I don't), given that sources near the CC will be spent fairly fast, I prefer to put my resources anywhere else, and by the time I'm ready to gather other fruit sources I'm already drowning in food from fields... Haven’t tested if the speed difference you mention makes a big difference at the beginning.

Hey, these are all great images, but one little thing: maybe it would be nice to use the same type of bow represented on the Gupta coins. A big difference is the use of large static tips or “siyahs” (the straight endings). A common example is the Manchu bows (little video testing models of it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHDkUECiwU8). Given the Gupta representations, and assuming they are indeed not being drawn, it would seem they don’t present “string contact”, so the bow wouldn’t need to have string bridges. I think they would look like what https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUmZU51K0-o calls a "Reflex Straight with static tips", traditionally just called recurved, with the culture also mentioned to better specify which one, which that video understandably criticises (but they would be Hungarian, Magyar, Sasanian, Han, Tang, etc). For comparison, here another Gupta representation: A Sasanian representation: And a Sasanian reenactor:

If you say it's common, then so be it, but from other situations I've seen that individual ratings take some time to stabilise, that would be my only concern... that for most of the "season" ratings would be quite inaccurate. My proposal (a mix of the new FIFA ranking system with a softened version of the old one, which had a harsh decay) would soften that reset. EDIT: Another reason I see decay as necessary is that players that have been inactive for too long would have been playing a somewhat different game… this is not as constant as chess, and even in chess there is an “inactive” category, where for example Kasparov is placed (still being ranked 2nd overall).

Ok, I think I get what you are trying to write here. You think I have never seen a solution like yours, that I've only seen the solutions I’ve mentioned, and that that’s not an argument to dismiss your solution. Well, you are wrong, I have seen solutions like yours, that’s why I say they are poorly implemented, because they show a lack of understanding on how an Elo ranking works, and the solutions I proposed solve that. The issue is, the rating is related to the winning probability, although this depends on the scale chosen. In chess (maybe 0 A.D. is the same), being ranked 400 over someone means the odds to win are 10:1, while being ranked 800 over someone is not two times better, but ten times better, the odds being 100:1. That’s why, when wanting to implement a decay, if every week you subtract different numbers from different players, you break the rating differences, and the corresponding probabilities stop making any sense. Your “we can stop here. also can decrease maximum 300 elo and make not lower 1200 that way” phrase just destroys the meaning of the Elo ratings. I mentioned the zero-sum game representation because there’s a mapping between that and the probabilities, which you mess up with the subtraction, as they are related to relative differences. The only way I see to solve this issue with your method is to subtract a given number from everyone every time, but one also has to avoid negative Elo ratings, so this number has to be obtained as a fraction of the lowest Elo rating in the ranking, which could eventually return smaller and smaller numbers with time, defeating the purpose of the decay. Thus, subtraction is a bad solution. If, on the other hand, you implement the decay as I said, reducing the influence of older games equally for everyone, the probabilities are affected correspondingly, the decay behaves always the same, and Elo ratings behave normally. Is this with “solid idea”? Or is there something still unclear?

Maybe you need to learn the meaning of the word "if"? Uh... I explained the algorithms, I didn't write down the formulas because you can check them even on Wikipedia, just go and have a look. They are a bit more complicated than your simple subtraction that completely messes up the zero-sum game representation Elo systems are based on... do you understand this? Or can you explain, in proper English this time, what is that you don't understand? Yeah, mine too, since it includes decay… that was the whole point of the last paragraph of my previous post.

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.

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).