Crowd-Sourced Civ: Ptolemaic Egyptians (Ptolemies)

[thamlett]

You guys are the best ever; only the open-source people want their stuff to be the absolute best. Otherwise, they won't get donations. In the paid-game industry, all they want is to sell games. Period.

[Lion.Kanzen]

  On 06/12/2013 at 3:58 AM, thamlett said:

You guys are the best ever; only the open-source people want their stuff to be the absolute best. Otherwise, they won't get donations. In the paid-game industry, all they want is to sell games. Period.

this not the topic to say that. But thanks I think.

[wraitii]

Latest ship iteration (changed the textures ever so slightly, made the boats a little longer). Still no animations as I can't really animate the dude without IK.

Model is currently still mauryan but that can be changed easily.

[wraitii]

Now with 100% more better.

(props are custom-made, though separate if we wanted to reuse them (they do use the boat's texture file though), used the nubian archer for the kicks).

[Josh]

  On 20/12/2013 at 5:06 PM, wraitii said:

Now with 100% more better.

(props are custom-made, though separate if we wanted to reuse them (they do use the boat's texture file though), used the nubian archer for the kicks).

fishboat1.png

fishboat2.png

The fish lying on the deck look out of place in my opinion, you may want to consiter removing them.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Josh is right. No self-respecting fisherman would let his catch rot on the deck. Maybe make the baskets bigger so we can see the fish inside. Would be good. Other than that, it's looking good now.

[wraitii]

Yeah, you both are right, it looks better. Made the baskets bigger, moved them a bit, made 3 small variations.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Make sure to set the actors to cast shadows.

[wraitii]

I think that's done, I just have deactivated shadows as a default setting on that computer (for some reason). Anyway if it's alright I'll commit whenever the bundles for A15 are finished.

[RoekeloosNL]

Nice but is it not better looking with the player colors on both ends and not in the middle

[wraitii]

It looked weird on both ends... I might try only on one end though, that could work.

[wraitii]

RC:

[Mythos_Ruler]

I liked it better with the 5 stripes.

[hollth]

I agree with Mythos. Its more difficult to see what team/colour it belongs too with only one stripe.

Is there an iteration with the stripe(s) near the person removed?

Edited December 21, 2013 by hollth

[RoekeloosNL]

Or delete the middle stripe so you got 4 color stripes ? or is that not possible

[Lion.Kanzen]

Artist speculative reconstruction of the tessarakonteres of Ptolemy II. Some scholars have speculated that this ship may, in fact, have been a double-hauled catamaran; with the deck overlaying the two large hulls.

During the reign of the dissolute Ptolemy IV, the fleet was allowed to deteriorate (wooden fleets rot if left without maintenance and replacement). From 201 BC onward, the fleet only took to the sea in small squadrons. Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, was able to furnish but 60 ships for service under Antony for the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. These included some large warships, including a number of deceres (10-rowers). Due to malaria sweeping through the Antonine camp, the entire fleet was undermanned during the battle. This depletion in rowers meant a lack of propulsion; accounting for the unusual sluggishness of the entire fleet, and particularly the great dreadnaughts, the larger warships. Octavians light libernians were able to maintain a safe distance.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[Mythos_Ruler]

Nice reference for the Juggernaut, Lion!

[Enrique]

Found this, thought it's interesting: http://deadliestblogpage.wordpress.com/2013/12/06/armies-of-the-macedonian-successor-states-the-ptolemies/

[Mythos_Ruler]

Very cool blog.

To put my thoughts down "on paper," I am now thinking we should make the "Military Settlement" system a "Successor" trait and give it to both the Ptolemies and Seleucids. We can use the Mercenary Camp as a capturable Gaia structure for the training of mercenaries in a new "mercenary" system for the game. That would mean the Ptolemies and Seleucids both need a "Military Settlement" structure, each with the same basic layout but unique Egyptian and Seleucid details.

[Zeta1127]

A great reference for the Juggernaut is the Ultimate Weapons episode of the H2 show Ancient Impossible. The last segment of that episode is about the Tessarakonteros or Forty, they only ever refer to it as the Forty. Their version doesn't have sails, but it has a solid representation of how rams might work on such a massive polyreme.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Zeta1127

[Stan`]

The Quinquereme is not planned unless someone wanna do it

[Lion.Kanzen]

https://weaponsandwarfare.com/category/shipbuilding/page/3/

  Reveal hidden contents

Hellenistic war galleys with a Trireme on bottom, Quinquereme in middle, and the top is a massive Polyreme with a crew of 4,000.

 

In the wake of the disastrous Athenian invasion noted above, Dionysus of Syracuse had seized power and built up the influence of Syracuse over eastern Sicily, working mainly against the increasing influence of Carthage, originally a Phoenician colony in North Africa, over the island. It was probably the maritime power of that opponent, rather than the experience of the war with Athens, that prompted him to use the increased resources of the city and its expanding possessions to build up his navy. Crucially, he did not simply build large numbers of triremes but began experimenting with tetreres and penteres-four-fitteds and five-fitteds-purportedly inventing the latter. What the arrangement of rowers in these larger ratings was is still a matter of some, but they were clearly larger, more powerful, ships than triremes, and they upped the ante still further in naval competition. By the time of the Battle of Amorgos, in 322 BCE, both the Athenian and Macedonian fleets had substantial numbers of fours and fives (50 fours and 7 fives for Athens) alongside their triremes, while Dionysus II, son of the inventor of fives, had introduced sixes into the Syracusan navy by the 340s.

 

After Alexander died, the competition among his generals resolved itself after two decades into a three-way competition between the Seleucid dynasty in Asia, the Antigonids in Macedon, and the Ptolemies in Egypt. The first remained exclusively a land power, but the latter two engaged in a fierce naval competition that stimulated further developments in the architecture of warships. Antigonus and his son Demetrius initially led the way, with Ptolemy and his successors playing catch-up, although eventually the largest ships were Ptolemaic. 

 

Fours, fives, and sixes could have been created simply by adding an extra rower to the oars on one, two, or all three tiers-that is, by slight modifications to the trireme. But putting more than two men on an oar entails a significant change in the style of rowing. More than two men cannot row from a seated position but must, due to the length of the oar, stand to get the oar into the water at the start of the stroke and then fall back onto the bench. It seems to have been Demetrius who initially designed the new kind of ship that could accommodate this style of rowing when he introduced sevens into his navy. 

 

The broader hulls required to accommodate extra rowers on the oars would have reduced maneuverability somewhat at the expense of raw power and size, but such ships had corresponding advantages. Putting multiple men on an oar provided extra power without demanding extra numbers of skilled rowers, for only the man at the head of the oar needed to be trained; the others simply supplied muscle. For the large kingdoms with abundant untrained manpower, such ships thus allowed expansion of naval manpower without the training- or indeed, political-issues raised by the skilled crews of triremes. Furthermore, while reduced maneuverability corresponded with a decrease in ramming tactics (though all warships retained rams for opportunistic use), broader hulls meant more deck area on which to carry marines for boarding tactics and catapults or other large missile weapons as anti-personal or possibly even ship-killing weaponry. Here, too, such navies favored large, autocratic states with abundant manpower. 

 

The obvious advantages of size and numbers of marines for naval combat in this environment pushed designers to build ever-larger ratings. Tens and elevens became common, and from twelves to twenties not uncommon, and by the mid-200s, Ptolemy II was building thirties that performed well and saw action. But there is no arrangement of three tiers of oars with up to eight men to an oar that can produce a thirty, never mind the forty constructed by Ptolemy IV around 205. These two, the top ratings ever built, were clearly double-hulled ships-oared catamarans made of yoked together fifteens or twenties, connected by a broad deck that could have carried hundreds of marines. 

 

The sight of these monsters, almost like oared aircraft carriers, clearly impressed contemporaries who wrote about them. And they were meant to. Ptolemy IV’s forty never saw action and was probably designed from the start as a ceremonial ship meant to show off the monarch’s wealth, power, and grandeur. In this respect, the Hellenistic naval competition was psychological as well as military and paralleled cultural and political developments in other areas of the Hellenistic world, which had moved a long way from the small, sometimes democratic city-states that had launched trireme fleets. 

 

But the naval arms race between the Successor Kingdoms of the eastern Mediterranean had reached a sort of stalemate by the beginning of the second century BCE and would be brought to a conclusion not by any of the powers engaged in it, but by the winner of another naval competition going on at the same time in the western Mediterranean.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

This how, look like mixing Hellenistic art with Egyptian

 

[Enrique]

Lion, the problem that people point out with the mix of cultures in the ptolemies is not architectural-wise, but texture-wise. I understand that people wants authenticity, but gameplay also demands uniqueness, and having 3 civs using already a hellenistic-like textures the decision to go more into the egyptian-side looking for ptolemies was made.

If the discontent with how ptolemies look is so wide I guess we should consider tuning the colors to the white side to match more closer the hellenistic set. However I'm not a big fan of this due to the 4 white-centered civs in the game.

[Lion.Kanzen]

@Enrique yes I feeeling that thing too...
 is even more challenging than Seleucid. I like Lordgood suggestion