Thalatta

Just to give you a heads up, I'm preparing a Thoughts on the Athenians post, with naval combat reserved for its Part II, where I’ll briefly explain how it really was, and what could be done about it to make it more realistic.

Hola @Duileoga, lo que puedo mencionar rápidamente es que las mujeres de los xiongnu tenían mucho poder político (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-uncover-new-evidence-warrior-women-inspired-legend-mulan-180974774, https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20231106-the-powerful-women-of-an-ancient-empire), aunque no es claro si realmente peleaban en batallas. Una arqueóloga en esas referencias menciona que es una posibilidad que no puede ser descartada, ya que hay evidencia de que practicaban arquería y montaban a caballo, al menos más frecuentemente que los pueblos túrquicos. Las que sí no peleaban en batallas eran las gladiatrices (gladiatrix es singular), existieron solo como una forma de entretenimiento exótico. Las banfhéinnithe (banfhéinní en singular, no sé si hay una castellanización estándar) son primariamente una leyenda (https://ansionnachfionn.com/seanchas-mythology/na-fianna). El término "amazonas" es mitológico y griego, aunque entre los escitas sí había mujeres guerreras, lo que era más común por dicha zona, y no en Europa Occidental (salvo excepciones). Es así que entre los sármatas (mitológicamente, descendientes de las amazonas) muchas mujeres eran guerreras, y más tarde en las guerras marcomanas los romanos encontrarían mujeres con armadura entre los cuerpos, pensando que eran germanas, cuando posiblemente eran yacigias, una tribu aliada sármata que antes había migrado hasta lo que hoy es Hungría.

Los Nazca son bastante característicos como para ser incluídos, considerando sus líneas, Cahuachi, y que hay espacio entre los Tiahuanaco y los Moches. Los Moches comienzan alrededor del 150 DC, y su extensión no era tanta, una cultura que más correspondería con 64 en el período 500 AC - 100 DC es la Chavín (al menos los primeros 250 años). El término Arawako (que debería ser Arawak, en inglés, o Arahuacos, en español) es confuso, fue dado por los Europeos a ciertos pueblos que encontraron, y hoy en día se usa para una familia lingüística que llega hasta Argentina y Paraguay (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenguas_arahuacas). El término que tenía el pueblo marcado con 58 para denominarse a sí mismos y su lenguaje es Lokono (los Taínos también parecen incluídos). Esto está bien explicado en el prefacio de https://tiboko.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Arawak-English-Dictionary.pdf. De cualquier manera, en general en el mapa hay una mezcla bastante grande de lo que son culturas, lenguas, y agrupaciones "raciales" (como los pámpidos), así que una posibilidad, dado el período y ubicación, es usar la cultura Saladoide, de la cual se puede leer en https://univ-antilles.hal.science/hal-00968898/file/Chap13saladoid.pdf, y donde se menciona que su presencia llegó al menos hasta el "Cotuan complex", en https://www.academia.edu/figures/7001856/figure-4-upper-orinoco-area-cotua-atures-raudales-atures indicado cerca de Puerto Ayacucho.

That effect is really well done, did you use a trigonometric function to obtain its positioning, or am I just, as usual, overthinking? I was thinking, if the game has some choppy oceanic waters at some point, that could become handy. Besides, that could give different advantages to ships, since Mediterranean ships weren’t ocean-going, unlike northern Celtic ones.

What are them, exactly?

Indeed it looks good, although infantry seems to be moved less than it should on the first video, and the ship way more than it should. I’d reduce the "mass" of infantry (I guess it’s not really possible to throw some to the ground or send someone flying from time to time? :P), and increase it quite a lot for the ship, along with greatly increasing the "dampening" effect of water. Ships getting cramped and not able to break off was a thing, and a weakness for ramming ships, which needed some space to accelerate for ramming, and didn’t transport a lot of soldiers not to be slow, making them vulnerable to boarding in those situations.

Press C while attacking (I agree there should be a more intuitive way). I have no problem beating very hard AI and I never batch produce (only because I haven't played enough matches to get used to it, as I understand it, it gives some advantage).

If you want to be historically accurate (as the mod claims), don't use flags, banners, standards, etc for the Ancient Greeks.

Completely wrong about what? Are you leaving open the possibility that they would work the fields while wearing armour? In any case, in theory you could make them return to their houses/barracks/whatever to rearm themselves, but the problem is, as usual, if you are super realistic in some things, and not in others, then you’d end with even more unrealistic situations! If you were to make them rearm, then you’d need to rework things like FOV, etc, to give you ample warning about approaching troops, besides on how to deal with the actual proportion of time being taken by all that, which is not trivial. Right now the game is more realistic than only taking half of those things into account because of reduced FOV and fast pacing. At the end no approach among these two is baffling (unless you only think about half of the issues and just mess up things), they are just different ways of doing it.

The only baffling thing is what you say. It's obvious that units are not holding everything at the same time, they hold tools when working, and weapons when fighting. You don't show them making those changes for the same reasons you don't show them eating or taking a dump.

Not really. I mean, sure if you are thinking about a light ram, but the larger rams in the game are what is called tortoise rams, named like that because of their slowness. Kind of pointing to the (uncontrollable, but renewable and killable) base garrison idea I’ve mentioned many times, which would also take the place of the abstract capture points and not really increase micro, if properly implemented. Which, also as discussed, is nonsense, and boring. Everything should be needed depending on the situation. Yes, but that doesn't mean they'd all be levied at the same time. For most Greek city-states, that fraction would have been around one third, for example. I agree with your proposal that siege should be fixed, but, as I’ve said a couple of months ago, "when people bring it up, then some jump to say that they "don’t understand the game" and "things are balanced", which completely misses the point of being inaccurate, thus counterintuitive. I could make melee infantry fly and make a perfectly balanced game".

@wowgetoffyourcellphone DE goes up to 500 AD, if I remember correctly? I can see all factions in https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/delenda-est#description, but is there a place where their heroes and bonuses are stated, for fast reference?

Artemisia I is well known and was held in high regard even by those sympathetic to the opposite side. That you need to Google her and instead get a plant, thus incorrectly concluding she was not "emblematic", only exposes your own ignorance. Try reading Herodotus, or something actually substantial. Artemisia II's marriage could have been a non-physical arrangement for all we know, but your comment is utterly irrelevant, not only by itself but also given the period, culture, and considering we have plenty of Ptolemaic royal heroes anyway. What I count is allegiance, not ethnicity, which is what matters in combat. Regarding Lǚ Mǔ, I really wonder who are you to say that the first female rebel leader in Chinese history has a "low history", do you conclude this by the length of the quoted French Wikipedia article your extensive research is based on? Or can you share with us which Chinese history books on the matter you have read?

Just for your consideration, one of my early suggestions was to remove this redundancy:

This could have a late Screw Press tech if you want that to improve its efficiency: J.P. Oleson in The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World states that “the lever and screw press was in many respects an improvement using the mechanical advantage of the screw to apply greater pressure. Pliny the Elder (HN 18.317), writing in the A.D. 70s, mentions this as a Greek invention of the last 100 years (i.e., late first century B.C.)”. Of course technically the animation would have to change, but I think presently techs don’t do this (maybe eventually?).

Fair enough. Also, javelins at that time were not just some long pointy stick, a very important part of them was the ankyle, a leather loop used to throw them, increasing their range by at least 50% (I haven't proposed it as tech because it precedes the timeframe of the game). This would require some throws to get a proper hang of it, which one could assume someone owning one would have, unlike helots. Then, besides range you could also penalise accuracy. A channel that could be of interest for some around:

When I said the Attic dialect is more "authentic", of course I meant in reference to Athens. The problem is, Spartans would use the Doric dialect, which would mean all their Ancient Greek names in the game should ideally be revised, but I didn’t manage to find an Attic to Doric translator. One could follow some transformation rules, but would be a bit time consuming and error prone for a non-expert.

Still not what it "ACTUALLY Looked Like" :P. That fits around 50 warships in the outer ring, and the inner ring is not being used. In reality, it would have been around 200* total (military port only, the circular one). Something closer to this:

Excuse my ignorance regarding MP, but what happens with the units of those who resign? If they are basically removed from the game, couldn’t the AI take over them, not to make the change too drastic? At least as an intermediate solution, since I’ve seen this happening in some online boardgames.

Yet I can’t imagine how speed could be affected negatively. What about range? The whole point is, what is a normal peltast? It’s not like there was peltast training. Roles were more or less determined by status, that is, wealth. Roughly, either you had money for a horse, if not, maybe for the panoply, if not, maybe for a bow, or javelins, and if not, then sling or even throw stones by hand, or be an oarsman. Much of our impression that cavalry and heavy infantry were the really relevant troops while the rest almost cannon (arrow?) fodder comes from the fact that those who wrote down the stories were in that position, from having some wealth (thus, the time and education to write). Yet unprotected hoplites could be obliterated by peltasts (as Iphicrates knew), the idea that they were impervious to that is just a myth. But I digress. My point is that I don’t see a speed handicap between a helot farmer and a free potter (if anything, the opposite). Then, helots would be given weapons that one might imagine were not ideal, giving a penalty on attack or defense, but you don’t want that. One could instead generously think that, because the potter owns a javelin, he should have thrown it a few times (even when peltast training was not really a thing, although what I said about a lack of hoplomachia applies mostly to hoplites), putting him at some advantage when comparing with a helot (although ignoring that a farmer might tend to be in better physical shape than a potter). Because of this, a penalty on range would make a bit more sense.

All well known, my point (one of) being that, even when others did have weapons, they didn’t really train with them (save those who hunted, or participated in games, for example). I’m mentioning all this just because it’s just such a counterintuitive thing, yet that’s how their culture was.

Haven't watched the whole thing, but looks a bit better in some parts in the video. The rectangular merchant and circular military parts still would have the wrong orientation though. For those who don’t know, it left its mark to this day:

I think you are using the words "LITERALLY" and "historically" a bit too generously. What even is a fighting class at that time? Ancient Greeks, at least until the end of the Classical period, didn’t practise hoplomachia (weapons training)*, thinking courage alone would carry the day. No, not even the Spartans, their training consisted mostly in improving their fitness, and for the other city-states, people just didn’t have that much free time. They would go from working to fighting and back to working, and only at most one third of those who were able to fight (randomly chosen per campaign, only the generals had a more fixed position). That’s maybe why they insisted on the belief that courage was enough, otherwise their impossible to train militias would be demoralised. Helots were good enough, to the point that both Thucydides and Diodoros Siculus state that those who served under Brasidas were "freed" (implying that they distinguished themselves), while the Spartans that surrendered at Sphacteria were disenfranchised (at least for a time). What is more, a helot farmer could have been more combat ready than an Athenian trader or potter. Diodoros Siculus also states that "since Brasidas had been joined by a thousand Helots and troops had been levied among the allies, a satisfactory force was assembled". Now, if you want to nerf them for some not-so-historical reason, you could think of an "enslaved" characteristic (imagining that their fear would have been greater than their courage, or something), although I don’t understand why you propose a penalty on speed and not, as I think would make more sense, a penalty on attack or defense. But still, they would have fought satisfactorily enough, their fate being tied to that of their masters in the battlefield, and although they revolted and were liberated by Sparta’s enemies at other points in time, a battle is quite a convoluted scenario for any of that to happen, and I’m not aware of any records of it happening. *Certain ranged units like archers or slingers did have to practise, otherwise they’d be useless. Same with cavalry.

Using those values for the function I proposed (rounding): G(200)=2, G(300)=3, G(400)=4, G(500)=5, G(800)=8. Would seem the behaviour is obvious, but, as expected, G(1000)=10, G(2000)=16, G(3000)=20, G(4000)=22 and G(5000)=24, for example.

A little shuffling: I really don't like this one as a ranged Aura, since centralisation is quite global and fixed (that’s the point of it), so I changed its name and made it a tech. I also thought Sanctuary as a ranged Aura, alongside an alternative bonus inspired on the Maritime Silk Route tech (if this one is not wanted): Sanctuary: increased resistance for non-military units under Hero's aura (taking a longer quote now: “many skilled Roman silk workers immigrated to the Sasanian empire to find work after Justinian I’s tariffs and price fixing practically killed the industry in the Roman empire, and took with them, no doubt, motifs and imagery as well as technical expertise. Similarly, after Justinian effectively closed the Athenian Academy in 529, prohibiting the teaching of law and philosophy there and pagans from teaching anywhere, six prominent philosophers led by Damascius traveled to Ctesiphon to seek refuge at the court of Kosrow I. This sort of intellectual movement also occurred as a matter of diplomacy. Procopius records that Justinian I lent the sickly Kosrow I the services of a physician over the course of a year. Persian Christians traveled to the Roman empire because it was a center of Christian learning or to escape persecution”). Coastal Control: reduced enemy port capture resistance, either as Hero aura or global bonus (not only "control of all coastal areas" was already quoted, but "Sasanian control of the Persian Gulf prevented the Romans from having direct access to the Indian Ocean trade (Daryaee 2003: 1-16). Under Justinian they sought to circumvent Sasanian middlemen by allying with Ethiopians who would buy silk directly from the Indians. Procopius reveals that it was “impossible for the Ethiopians to buy silk from the Indians, for the Persian merchants always locate themselves at the very harbors where the Indian ships first put in (since they inhabit the adjoining country) and are accustomed to buy the whole cargoes” (Procopius, I. xx.12)", from The Sasanian ‘Mare Nostrum’: The Persian Gulf, by T. Daryaee). Centralisation: renamed Autocrat bonus to tech that increases stats of a given CC, but penalises all others. I wonder if the chosen CC can be determined either by being under the Hero’s aura when researched, or it can be researched at CCs, and where it's researched in particular becoming the chosen CC.