Lack of Eastern

[Nescio]

4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I think this is an artificial "problem." Athens and Sparta are the Hellenic states most interesting to players, so that's why they are included.

Honestly, I wouldn't mind adding the Argives and Corinthians and Syracusans too.  But for real though, some can be Atlas-only civs for scenarios and campaigns (Peloponnesian War). It would be easy to add them. While Athens and Sparta remain the selectable Greek civs.

The Persians contain dozens of ethnicities in a single faction. Greek city states were culturally and militarily very similar, yet are subdivided into different civilizations.

[coworotel]

7 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Greek city states were culturally and militarily very similar, yet are subdivided into different civilizations. 

Sparta is very different though. It's so unique with all that military focus that even inspired Plato's The Republic, most read book in American universities today.

[Lion.Kanzen]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ancient_Greeks_by_region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_cities

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Nescio said:

The Persians contain dozens of ethnicities in a single faction. Greek city states were culturally and militarily very similar, yet are subdivided into different civilizations.

Dunno, only defense I have there is that The Persian Empire was (for the most part) a single political entity. At no point until the Roman conquest were Athens and Sparta a single entity. Are you saying we should have Cultures instead of factions? If so, perhaps the Britons and Gauls should be merged and the Carthaginians renamed to Punics.  

Perhaps we should discuss this for a few more years, eh? Apparently, with a 95% approval, not even unit behavior toward animals can be "agreed" upon around here. We need to spend more time poking holes in each others ideas.  Perhaps your mod should generalize the Greeks into one faction and we can see how it feels. Personally, I like to recreate different scenarios in my head when I play the game so would feel sad if the differentiation I feel from the current Greek civs would be lost. You can possibly propose a branching system, but such a proposal is a moot point when there's no one to implement such a system. I'd rather just have the Spartans and Athenians be separate from the get-go. I also like the visual and unit variety, not to mention gameplay variety experienced in a little mod called Delenda Est (Sparta plays as differently from Athens as any other civ does).

[Nescio]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Dunno, only defense I have there is that The Persian Empire was (for the most part) a single political entity. At no point until the Roman conquest were Athens and Sparta a single entity.

The same applies to the Britons, Gauls, and Iberians, each of which consisted of numerous tribes and peoples.

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Perhaps your mod should generalize the Greeks into one faction and we can see how it feels.

Maybe I will, I've been contemplating it for weeks. However, I think it actually ought to be the other way around: 0 A.D.'s main distribution has a single Greek faction and a mod could replace it with Argives, Athenians, Boeotians, Corinthians, etc. Likewise, another mod could replace the Gauls with Aedui, Allobroges, Averni, Helvetii, etc.

[Sundiata]

15 hours ago, Nescio said:

Parthia and Pontus were actually Hellenistic states as well

9 hours ago, Phalanx said:

Wait, Parthia was Hellenistic?

Saying that Parthia is a Hellenistic state is misleading. They conquered a Hellenistic Empire where Greek language and culture was wide-spread (but not at all universal), yes, but the Parthians were Iranians and were responsible for the Iranian Revival, which is very significant. Sure the early rulers described themselves as philhellenes, but they were Iranian, very similar to Persians, and looked distinctly Middle Eastern in most respects.  

 

8 hours ago, Trinketos said:

ok no xD

I'm very excited about Zapotecs, and other pre-Columbian civs ! They're just their own kind of thing, so they don't integrate well with the other vanilla-civs (geography, stone vs iron, no horses or powerful navy), so they should be a stand-alone expansion. I'd love to play it a lot though  

 

It's pretty obvious why Sparta and Athens are stand alone civs. No need to argue about that. I get a bit tired of Hellenocentrism, but I'm not totally opposed to other Greek civs, only if more non-Greek civs are added as well. But the focus should really be on the more important civs across Afro-Eurasia in my opinion. 

 

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Please don't go into the Bronze Age. Let mods or a prequel do that.

Who said we should go into the Bronze Age for part 1? I think everybody agrees to keep it purely Iron Age... The question is should we cut Iron-Age Antiquity in half and throw away the beginning and end of it, as if they are some sort of unwanted appendages? They obviously don't belong in the Bronze Age or the Medieval Age either. Those few Iron Age centuries before and after 0AD's current time-frame are just too silly to represent in their own 2 mods. From c. 8th century BC to 5th century AD is all Iron Age Antiquity (across the Old world) and forms a cultural, technological and to a degree even political continuum (in general terms of course)... Bronze Age is for the prequel, indeed. 

 

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I do like the idea of making 0 A.D. traverse the totality of the (Western) Roman state, or the breadth of "Classical" times. So, going ahead and extending it to the "Fall of Rome", 5th century, would be fine by me. Allows for cool civs like Sassanids. And then making "Part 2" being about the Middle Ages is also cool. It mirrors the Age of Empires franchise (homage), but with all the new and different features the 0 A.D. franchise still stands on its own.

Yes!

 

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

(any date you set is arbitrary, IMHO @Sundiata, so I don't think this is so bad. If 1AD is too arbitrary a date for you, then perhaps choose the murder of Caesar or the ascension of Augustus as your mid-point, still close enough to 1AD to make it not really matter),

If you want a specific date like March 15, 44 BC, then yes, it would always be totally arbitrary. But defining a specific date like that for game with such diversity in civs is nonsensical in my opinion to begin with. That's my whole point! That's why I advocate following actual historical periods, which are important across the Old World, and have varying specific dates depending on the geography you're discussing. Major historical periods are absolutely not arbitrary, and are not defined by the death of a single individual in a single civilization. Bronze Age Antiquity, Iron Age Antiquity and the Medieval Period are the three periods that make sense for a game like this. Don't define specific dates for the cut off points. Only use the general period. Anything else is going to be unnecessarily awkward. Create some leeway for yourself. It will help with the historicity of the game to be able to portray the rise and fall of the majority of civilizations, rather than cut most civs in half, because, reasons...  

Also, the arbitrary 500 year increments for the different parts of 0AD not only put considerable and awkward restraints on referencing, they could easily result in 6 different games (1500 BC - 1500 AD), meanwhile the development team is struggling with part 1. The 3 periods: Bronze Age Antiquity, Iron Age Antiquity and the Medieval Period are far more feasible and way easier in terms of referencing. 

 

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I think Parthians for Part 1 are a must. They are really not a Part 2 civ. Their successors, Sassanids definitely are a part 2 civ.

Others would be very desirable for Part 1, in order: Han Chinese, Scythians and Xiongnu (these 2 to tie Eurasia together), Odrysian Thracians (because they're cool), Epirotes. And a few others would be "nice to have", such as Pontus, Nabataeans (pretty cool), Armenians.

   Yes, yes, yes...

  

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The Persian Empire was (for the most part) a single political entity. At no point until the Roman conquest were Athens and Sparta a single entity.

Exactly...

 

41 minutes ago, Nescio said:

The same applies to the Britons, Gauls, and Iberians, each of which consisted of numerous tribes and peoples.

Those are "Barbarian" civs. There's an obvious difference. They never established empires...

 

44 minutes ago, Nescio said:

I think it actually ought to be the other way around: 0 A.D.'s main distribution has a single Greek faction and a mod could replace it with Argives, Athenians, Boeotians, Corinthians, etc. Likewise, another mod could replace the Gauls with Aedui, Allobroges, Averni, Helvetii, etc.

I don't think anybody wants that... Spartans and Athenians are super-duper iconic... And there's lots of research on them, so referencing is a breeze. Further differentiating Gallic factions seems like a referencing nightmare! Also, what's the point of developing 8 new factions, all of which are exceedingly similar to each-other while work on other world-powers like Scythians hasn't even begun yet? 

[Trinketos]

19 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Too much Eurocentrism. by history point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocentrism 

That's why I'm here :v

[Phalanx]

16 hours ago, Nescio said:

However, I think it actually ought to be the other way around: 0 A.D.'s main distribution has a single Greek faction and a mod could replace it with Argives, Athenians, Boeotians, Corinthians, etc. Likewise, another mod could replace the Gauls with Aedui, Allobroges, Averni, Helvetii, etc.

 

I don't think that would be quite good.

 

15 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Spartans and Athenians are super-duper iconic... 

 

This is a good point!

 

But my main argument is we include the Achaemenids.  This is an obvious reference to the 1st and 2nd invasion of Greece, which happened before the Peloponnesian War, which is a pretty significant event in Classical history.  By combining all the Greeks into one blanket Greek civ, it kinda ignores that conflict.  I'm honestly fine with having both Sparta and Athens, but more would be just a tad extra.  MAAAYBE Epirus.... Maybe.  Just for its interactions with Rome.

 

 

On to Parthia:

It is quite historically viable for this game.  They had a series of wars with TWO of the factions we have in our roster; The Roman Republic (and Empire) and the Seleucid Empire.  This puts them squarely in a viable timeframe, and (if my research is correct) they are technically more relevant to the military history of the era than the Mauryans are, as they only fought a tad with the Seleucids.

[Lion.Kanzen]

On 7/9/2018 at 1:03 PM, Sundiata said:

Nabataeans are also very interesting and relevant (architecture, politics, military) 

If they can't build in the rocks how looks like their buildings?

[Genava55]

On 7/9/2018 at 9:03 PM, Sundiata said:

Sabaeans are super interesting (brilliant architecture) and relevant (war with Rome, incense, myrrh and spice-trade) and often overlooked. 

Nabataeans are also very interesting and relevant (architecture, politics, military) 

I support both.

And I support Parthia strongly.

14 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

If they can't build in the rocks how looks like their buildings?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avdat

https://books.openedition.org/ifpo/4896

On 7/10/2018 at 1:04 PM, Sundiata said:

I don't think anybody wants that... Spartans and Athenians are super-duper iconic... And there's lots of research on them, so referencing is a breeze. Further differentiating Gallic factions seems like a referencing nightmare! Also, what's the point of developing 8 new factions, all of which are exceedingly similar to each-other while work on other world-powers like Scythians hasn't even begun yet?  

 It is possible to create an only faction with multiples branches. A Greek faction with branches for Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians, Thebeans, etc.

[Sundiata]

29 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

If they can't build in the rocks how looks like their buildings?

Only a handful of their structures are carved from the rock. They're just the most well preserved archaeological remains of Petra which is why they're so famous, but "regular" structures weren't cut from the rock. There are also other archaeological sites like Avdat, Wadi Rum, Haluza, Mapsis and more... 

Petra:

 

Wadi Rum

 

Avdat (mixed with later ruins)

 

Haluza

Edited July 28, 2019 by Sundiata