Thalatta

@Genava55 As I said, literally, "proper villages [...] in the eyes of the Romans", you can just go and read Tacitus: "It is well known that the nations of Germany have no cities, and that they do not even tolerate closely contiguous dwellings. They live scattered and apart, just as a spring, a meadow, or a wood has attracted them. Their villages they do not arrange in our fashion, with the buildings connected and joined together, but every person surrounds his dwelling with an open space, either as a precaution against the disasters of fire, or because they do not know how to build", he's trashing their way to do it, for him they looked like big farms (and the ones you posted seem to be the biggest ones, a few extended families). But all this is, yet again, not even the point. The point is, according to A Grammar of Proto-Germanic, and the PGmc dictionary, and whatever other Proto-Germanic source we can cite, and if we agree that wīhsą can describe some kind of big farm or small village (which, again, could also be put into question according to yet another one of your cherry-picked criteria, since weihs has been used to translate agrós), then which term is closer to it, þurpą or haimaz? That is the ONLY question, and for whoever reads those sources the answer should be clear, as I already stated in my previous post.

I do check my info and make an effort I shouldn’t even do because I’m really not interested in arguing if the accepted Proto-Germanic reconstruction is wrong, which it isn’t, and what you have to check is your tone. Re-read my comments and realise that it’s not me stating you are “defending something weird that nobody talks about”, that’s you when for example called BS on the opinions I quoted from experts in the field. “Once again” it is you who acts like a condescending 12-year-old brat that feels the disgusting need to make pseudo-patronising “Brandolini's law” comments. It's not my fault if you can’t check info properly, just go to https://archive.org/details/diealthochdeutsc01steiuoft/page/n7/mode/2up, the column header meanings are on page 1. From there (and volume 3) you get the Sg. 911 and Sg. 242, which are dated from the very late 8th century (around 790 AD) and the 8th-11th centuries, respectively, as can be checked in https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch. It took me 20 minutes, no library needed (perfect place to make a condescending comment, I know, but lets have some class, shall we?). I only missed giving more span to the latter, because, again, I really don’t give a darn about spending time questioning the accepted reconstruction. I’m just giving evidence on why things are how they are, while you keep digressing towards centuries apart changes and ignoring any source that contradicts you regarding what matters: Proto-Germanic, from 500 BC to 1 BC. The only relevant thing is if haimaz is better or not for what is wanted. Nothing else. Luckily, I think I found exactly what’s needed: https://folksprak.org/common/material/pdf/A-Grammar-of-Proto-Germanic.pdf, which states that the Germans did not form villages but rather lived in isolated homesteads. Old Norse heimr, Old English hām and Old High German heim mean house or home, while Gothic uses haimos (only appearing in accusative plural) for village, and translates agrós 'land' to þaurp 'land, lived-on property', like Old Norse þorp 'farm, estate'. In West Germanic it means 'village', as in Old English þorp, Old High German dorf. In Gothic weihs 'village' also translates agrós. This is exactly what I meant with the demographic change, þurpą means what we need because there were no such things as proper villages, and both it and wīhsą seem to refer to whatever was there, call it land, property, farm, estate, with surely an extended family or more, and in the eyes of the Romans. I don’t see how any of them would be smaller or less appropriate than haimaz (taking from ON, OE and OHG). All this is exactly what the preferential reconstructions (are ordered entries important or not? Or is it just cherry-picking?) from the PGmc dictionary are telling us: haimaz is “house” first, “home” second, and “village” last, for þurpą the order is “village, settlement”, “gathering of people, crowd”, and “cleared land”, and for wīhsą it’s just “village, settlement”. All fits perfectly. If one travels in time it will look like a big farm or estate, conceptually it was the closest you could get to a village. They were not thinking in Phase I, II and III. And, as I said before, some branches kept it literal, while others kept the concept (which is what matters), and depending on each word. You are not going to convince me that the dictionary is wrong because, considering the source I cited and all the methodologies used that go way beyond your knowledge, it just isn't. If you have a problem with that, just take it to the ones that put it together, and use whatever word you want, I have better things to do honestly.

I agree, that's kind of my point 9 of the 20 points I suggested a couple of weeks ago

This sounds like just going with what the dictionary states, which is my position, mostly because in general it would be too much work to question what they say, and because things beyond our knowledge were also taken into account. In any case, I find using warją for the fortress a more pressing issue, I don’t think it is good to have repeated words if there are alternatives, all these situations deserve a second look given that @Vantha said “that's the case for some other civs too already”.

I’m just skeptical in ignoring what the Proto-Germanic dictionary says because of what Gothic says (which seems to have made choices opposite than the rest regarding this), when clearly this was already considered when the consensus was reached. It’s like reinventing the wheel. An interesting thing is that þurpą has been proposed to be related to the Latin turba, and for any Spanish speaker this is clearly related to a collective (meaning something like a mob). The Italic-Germanic split happened over 3000 years ago. Uncertain, but on the table, and shows that it is not generally assumed that þurpą was a singular unit early on. Only Gothic does that (as said, “in anderer Bed.”). With haimaz the Proto-Germanic reconstructions are home, house and village. I think there’s no way around that. It’s just like modern “home”, I could refer to my house, my hometown, or my homeland. That’s why I questioned it a bit, not that it can’t mean village (not from -heim though, but directly), but that it seemed too ambiguous. I don’t have a better alternative, I think we have exhausted what the PGmc dictionary has to offer. Alhs can mean settlement, but it seems too singular, and many other meanings are preferred https://kaikki.org/dictionary/Proto-Germanic/meaning/a/al/alhs.html.

@Genava55 Definitions 1 and 2 refer to Gl 1 and 3, both from the 8th century, so the meanings seem more simultaneous than sequential (one would need to believe the shift happened exactly there). The second line states "got. thaúrp (in anderer Bed.)", showing that in Gothic (the black sheep in all this) the meaning is different. Looking at the Old English lexicon: https://wehd.com/94/Thorp.html, the earliest reference, from 725 AD, treats conpetum, tuun, and þrop as equivalent, closer to a village than a single farm. The ending -heim doesn’t originally refer to a settlement, it’s the genitive ending of a singular personal name, as in Mannheim and Ingenheim meaning "Manne’s home" and "Ingo’s home" (or homeland), with the settlement meaning derived later.

@Genava55 The Codex Abrogans is from the 8th century. I shortened “villa worker” to “villager”, maybe changing the exact meaning, but the point remains that these things happened, even when they are later examples. I’m just trying to make sense of what the dictionaries actually say. Another issue could be how big these settlements are in context. You say the original meaning is farmstead, but what if a very small collection of farmsteads is also valid? At Proto-Germanic times this would have been the equivalent of a village (again, there has to be a reason why this has been reconstructed as such, besides commonality), and what meaning exactly had on the different branching languages could have turned out to be quite arbitrary and relative, Gothic could have retained a more farmstead position, while all the others considered the increased demographics. And related to this, coming back to the very beginning, what does say that þurpą has to be smaller than haimaz, which is primarily reconstructed as home? Maybe you can quote the relevant passages from the Codex Argenteus and Abrogans.

@Genava55 But Euler’s work comes after Ringe’s. Downgrading happens particularly with things perceived as "less than": ‘villain‘ comes from Latin ‘villanus‘, meaning ‘villager‘ (which would give credence to ‘village‘ being downgraded to ‘farmstead‘ and not the other way around), or ‘sinister‘, coming from Latin ‘left-handed‘, obvious for Italian speakers. So, what happened? A downgrading for Gothic or a collection for West and North Germanic languages? Even if Gothic was the more conservative, a consensus considering many other variables was reached and written down in Proto-Germanic dictionaries. If we grab a time machine we might find out that this was the wrong call, but it wouldn’t be an error on our part, but the academic consensus, and what can one really do about that but guess.

@Genava55 those books are over 20 years old (almost 40 in the first case), studies now support the notion that they were mutually unintelligible, for example linguist Wolfram Euler’s (curiously, yes, related to the famous mathematician) Das Westgermanische summary, https://www.verlag-inspiration.de/euler-das-westgermanische, already states “by the time of the Gothic translation of the Bible, Western and Eastern Germanic were already so dissimilar that Gothic and for example Frankish people could not have held a fluent conversation”. He got his PhD in 1979 but maybe you can send him an email stating that his work is BS anyway :P. Philologist Friedrich Maurer states that Old English, Old Dutch, Old Saxon, Old Frisian and Old High German (which has the word dorf) were already quite different early on, instead of just branching off from a common Proto-West Germanic, and for all those languages the meaning is village. In any case, even if we are dealing with scholars not agreeing among themselves (and we can cite their books ad infinitum), the elephant in the room is still the same: why not to think that Gothic was the one that suffered the semantic shift? And, more importantly, why has þurpą been reconstructed in PGmc dictionaries as village? (https://kaikki.org/dictionary/Proto-Germanic/meaning/%C3%BE/%C3%BEu/%C3%BEurp%C4%85.html).

@Genava55 but þurpą has been reconstructed as village because many other languages that come from Proto-Germanic have been studied and that was the conclusion reached. Gothic is an example of East Germanic languages, which were already unintelligible to West and North Germanic languages by around 200 AD, and for almost all of them the meaning is village, þorp in Old Norse for example. That Gothic is the "earliest Germanic language with significant information" doesn't mean it is the one that kept the original meaning, this would imply that all the others changed, even when they split before the time of the Codex Argenteus.

Warją could be used for the fortress, it means fortification (also embankment or dam), and it's the root of the German "Wehr", meaning defence.

Maybe wīhsą could be written like that. There’s also þurpą (the root of thorp and German Dorf), and alhs can also mean settlement. I’m not sure what would be the size ordering for all these and haimaz, which sounds too much like home for me, but it apparently did mean village also.

I just won the Coast Range scenario on Very Hard AI Difficulty when I thought I was about to lose because towards the end Petra seems to give up for no reason. I managed to repel a big attack (losing like a third of my territory, which was almost half of all land) and from then on it was a walk in the park... not sure what's the underlying issue, but I feel I should have lost. Open maps are a bit hard to defend with such a low population cap, unlike the Isthmus of Corinth, but I guess I have to be more aggressive. In short, it seems I just have to hold my ground until the AI has an existential crisis.

@Vantha@ShadowOfHassen well it seems I was going for historical accuracy when historical ambiguity was decided, which I find suboptimal since it misses the opportunity of teaching history. That's why I was thinking for each scenario to be specific historical events, like Hamilcar gaining control of the gold and silver mines of Sierra Morena, subduing certain Iberian tribes, and expanding to the east, for people to learn more things besides Hasdrubal and the (re)founding of Carthago Nova. At least these things are what I find interesting in historically themed RTS. I agree with not doing “the great commanders a bit of a disservice if you scale them back for a beginners tutorial”, but that's the opposite of what I proposed with the prelude concept (in case a proper Hannibal campaign was also wanted).

Indeed I think this will be a problem if implemented as proposed, and that there are solutions that could be also applied to other things (I've proposed a base garrison that can't be controlled for ships, siege engines and buildings), but maybe people complaining that the feature is broken will need to happen first.

@Vantha I think your idea around Carthago Nova as a tutorial is really good, but I wonder if this could be put in the framework of a larger campaign. Stories are interesting when they are character driven, and one of the most interesting characters around that time is Hannibal Barca, and as I see it there are 3 options: to have just Carthago Nova and miss Hannibal's story, to have both separate and risk being thematically repetitive, or what I like most, for the tutorial to be a prelude of a Hannibal campaign. The whole campaign wouldn't need to be ready for just the tutorial to be released first, it could later on be incorporated into the campaign when it's finished. Regarding how to narrate it, I was thinking about how the Mongol campaign in AoE II is done, the author of The Secret History of the Mongols (as revealed at the beginning) narrates it in cutscenes for each scenario. No cinematics, just drawings, which is how things could be done at first. I think movies like The Last Samurai are nicely told (historical accuracy apart), with the narrator (who takes part in the movie, one realising it at the end) saying something just at the beginning and the end, as an epilogue and prologue. The middle of the campaign would be like a movie, or Starcraft campaigns, for more immersion. Hannibal’s campaign would be the only one with a prelude (tutorial). In it, hints would be given to the player (checkboxes is a great idea, like StarCraft II), but not by the narrator since I feel that cheapens the experience (having some ancient author telling you to click here and there). So, I’d structure them like a book, also with a foreword and afterword (explained in a bit). Combining all these ideas for a Hannibal campaign, a foreword would briefly explain the contents of it, then as prologue a narrator with drawings could tell about Carthage’s defeat in the First Punic War, and the prelude would be the tutorial, starting with Hamilcar (Hannibal’s father) and Hasdrubal the Fair (his son-in-law) taking Hannibal as a child to Europe, founding Carthago Nova, etc. Then the main campaign would start with Hannibal in command, and end with his defeat in the Second Punic War, with many battles being interesting to have (I hope camouflage will be a thing in the future, for Lake Trasimene, and an ability of Numidian cavalry for Cannae). An epilogue would mention his exile and the later destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War, that the narrator, revealed around this time to be The Histories author, Polybius, witnessed. An afterword would then mention that he’s remembered as one of the most brilliant tacticians of all time, that Rome would end having his monuments because they considered him their most worthy foe, and that later on the Roman emperor Septimius Severus would be born in those lands, being himself a native Punic speaker, to end on a not so grim note. I hope all this is somewhat relevant and doesn't deviate too much from the present plans.

"However, artillery being captured, turned around in the heat of battle, and starting firing on the troops of its previous owners? Unlikely." That's probably right (can't remember any counterexample), but the same argument could be applied to ships, and that's going to be in the game now. It’s like proposing removing the building of towers because that didn’t happen while a battle was taking place meters away. It's all a representation of things, numbers and time are shrunk with respect to what in reality would have been, it seems to me that completely removing something that happened just because it didn’t happen in the same battle is the wrong call. Capture times would have kind of prevented turning things around in the heat of battle, and if not, a “use cooldown” could be implemented, one being able just to move the piece in the meantime. Edit: I think something like that was proposed for towers and fortresses, to avoid turning them around fast, although more from a gameplay perspective than a realistic one. For ships it would also make sense to have a use cooldown.

If one's civilisation has the arsenal, then it should be assumed that there would be engineers in the army that know how to handle equipment, it makes no sense to remove something that happened in reality because there’s not a differentiated engineer unit in the game. I’d even argue that even some things like rams could have been used by anyone. Without the arsenal maybe one could capture and move, but not use (the Rhodians captured very complex siege equipment from the Macedonians, which they sold to finance the Colossus). In reality equipment was even reverse engineered (the Romans used Carthaginian techniques after capturing one of their ships), but this would be too much, so what I mentioned before (having the arsenal) should be a reasonable minimum requirement for using captured equipment, without altering what one’s civilisation can build (which is harder than just using), to make things simple.

I think capture for siege units is a great idea and should be part of the main game (now that capturing ships has been also proposed). It would be a way to force a realistic use of them.

I never stated nor implied the opposite, just that since this is far less profitable than plundering a city, simplifications could be considered (like they are on many other things).

From what I've read, loot doesn't have a big impact in the game anyway. I'd leave loot just for buildings being captured (would have been less probable to salvage something from a destroyed one), after all plundering a city would have been way more profitable than scavenging a battlefield. One gets experience from fighting and surviving already. And no need for small treasure icons to appear on the ground. Also, capturing and deleting would stop being a troll move and would make sense in many situations, just like in reality, plunder first and set ablaze later. Although, deviating from the present game, I'd prefer if no self-destruct button was there, and one would have to destroy buildings manually (attacking them, setting them on fire, or dismantling them and getting resources back).

I've tried to Watch Replay a couple of times after a game, and in both instances the same thing happened: my units do absolutely nothing and I lose the game. But that's certainly not what happened

Since I was told that “creating a dedicated post for a specific feature” is a good idea, as is including “diagrams or mockups to make communication with other community members easier”, I’m going to do that for my idea of how to better deal with selections, formations, groups and battalions, explained here: In summary, selections automatically define battalions, which override groups and can be disbanded by breaking formation, making all these concepts unintuitive and entangled, when they could be useful and independent. I proposed for battalions to be defined and selected with ctrl+alt+number and alt+number, respectively. I mentioned battalions to appear as a box surrounding group icons, but I’m going to invert that since battalions are a more “compact” concept than groups, thus icons will be battalions and boxes with labels will be groups. The following figures are edited, I did not code anything Figure 1: this is how battalions would look like, with battalion 1 for hoplites and battalion 2 for javelineers. Battalions must have exclusive definitions since their function is just to treat the battalion as a unique unit. Each would have the little flag, and the icons on the left are representing them with their number. A formation has been set for them. Figure 2: this is how 3 groups, group 1 for hoplites, group 2 for javelineers, and group 3 for all of them, would look like. The boxes around each icon with a label indicating the group they belong to are shown on the left. The icons themselves don’t have a number because in this example they are not part of a battalion. No little flags. No formation is set here, but it could. Figure 3: this is how battalions 1 and 2 belonging to group 3 would look like. A formation is set for the whole group 3. Clicking on the icons would select the battalions, while clicking on the label would select the group. The label is thinner but one could smash the cursor against the side, and when a label is there no sideways movement should happen. Right clicking on icons or labels would disband battalions or groups, respectively. Figure 4: same as before, but if one were to use alt+formation instead, for each battalion to acquire that formation. The same could be achieved by forming each battalion independently, but it would be slower, particularly when having a lot of battalions in a group. Figure 5: splitting battalion 1 into battalions 3 and 4 to better show the advantages of the previous concept. This is how Total War games work. It would be good if 2 digit numbers were allowed, not to run out of single digit ones (for group labels maybe they should be written vertically). Figure 6: now to something TW games don’t do, groups inside battalions. Battalion 5 has been defined for all units, with group 1 for hoplites, group 2 for javelineers, and group 3 for all of them. When a group doesn’t include the whole battalion its label should be shown on the right. This is useful to sometimes have different parts of a given battalion do different things, for situational flexibility. This is the last case, the following figures are considerations and variations of this. Figure 7: to show its versatility, this is what would happen if group 1 includes more units, mostly Skiritai in this case, and group 3 includes more units besides battalion 5, mostly surgeons in this case. Clicking on the label 1 besides battalion 5 could select the onscreen units from group 1 belonging to that battalion, clicking on the Skiritai could select the onscreen units of group 1 not belonging to that battalion, using alt would also select the offscreen units, and double clicking any group 1 label would select the whole group 1. Similarly with battalions, clicking once on battalion 5 with label 1 would also select the onscreen units from group 1 belonging to that battalion, but double clicking it would select the whole battalion 5. Edit 1 day later: I think better to forget this "alt" modifier and make no differentiation between onscreen and offscreen units (just like groups work now anyway) since it would be confusing with alt+number, used to define battalions. Figure 8: an option or alternative to have for Figure 6, show an icon for composition of the subgroups. This also increases the area for clicking them. They don’t need to have a number 5, because the parent already has that number, and it would be redundant, there cannot be sub-battalions, by definition of what a battalion is. There can be subgroups of subgroups, just that for now they would appear as new groups (just as 1, 2 and 3 appear here, 1 and 2 being subgroups of 3), but there could be another way I’ll describe at the end. Figure 9: an alternative of how to represent Figure 6. I like this more, but wanted to show more intuitive things first to be clearer. Figure 10: final figure, using the previous concept, with the icons for composition of the subgroups to expand the area to click them, and considering that more units, mostly surgeons, not belonging to any battalion, belong to group 3. With this fleshed out representation there could be an alternative way to represent subgroups of subgroups and so on, just by attaching them horizontally (vertical multiplicity of icons and labels for parents will also increase, but I doubt anyone would need so many subgroups). I hope this was clear and be considered as a possible way to comfortably use groups and battalions at the same time, and if there's a weird case you think this wouldn't work let me know, it would be fun trying to figure out what the representation should be.

Ah yes, it seems they did use tight formations, I mixed that up with what I read about the Iceni.

Thanks! It's a bit inconclusive, someone says "On "normal" difficulty the AI does indeed use ships to transport troops", and I was playing on "very hard". I think the map is the issue, it was the Isthmus of Corinth, once I took the isthmus itself the AI would smash against my defenses there, no attempt to cross the water by ship.