Discussion of the Inclusion of mod civilization in A24

[Genava55]

On 5/18/2018 at 4:13 PM, Nescio said:

No, anachronisms we have already, they are unavoidable. The civilizations currently included have had or could have had interactions with at least some of the others included, so all factions are part of a single network. I'm in favour of including Chinese because they're arguably part of the Eurasian continuum. I'm opposed to including American (or Australian) civilizations because they did not and could not have interacted with the civilizations already in game. But I suppose this discussion is actually off-topic.

Just a point about this. What could have been the interaction between Iron Age Britons and the Mauryan Empire? Or with the Koushites? Or between the Achaemenid dynasty and the Roman Republic? Or between the Iberians and a possible Chinese faction?

Personally I am more about an accurate representation of each faction for a matter of respect for each culture and for the work of historians, but not about hardcore historical limitations. It is still a video game.

Edit: my point is that talking about contact is not a good reason to exclude meso-american factions

Edited October 12, 2018 by Genava55

[Sundiata]

2 hours ago, Genava55 said:

On 5/18/2018 at 4:13 PM, Nescio said:

No, anachronisms we have already, they are unavoidable. The civilizations currently included have had or could have had interactions with at least some of the others included, so all factions are part of a single network. I'm in favour of including Chinese because they're arguably part of the Eurasian continuum. I'm opposed to including American (or Australian) civilizations because they did not and could not have interacted with the civilizations already in game. But I suppose this discussion is actually off-topic.

Just a point about this. What could have been the interaction between Iron Age Britons and the Mauryan Empire? Or with the Koushites? Or between the Achaemenid dynasty and the Roman Republic? Or between the Iberians and a possible Chinese faction?

Personally I am more about an accurate representation of each faction for a matter of respect for each culture and for the work of historians, but not about hardcore historical limitations. It is still a video game.

I'd actually have to agree with Nescio on this one. I think the key-word in his statement is "network". Every single civ in the game right now is highly interconnected with at least a few other civs, and those other civs are in turn interconnected with the rest of the civs, so directly or indirectly, they are in fact all connected. Antiquity was built on trade-networks that spanned Europe, Asia and Africa. The Americas were not a part of this network, which also means they developed along totally different lines:

• No iron age and a very limited use of metals outside of art
• No cavalry whatsoever
• Quinqueremes vs war-canoes... 

Romans did use war-elephants in Britain, and elephants aren't exactly native to the islands... Might have been North-African elephants. Might have been Indian elephants. Might have been a mix of both (not entirely clear). 

About Kushites in Britain. Well, Roman legions were multi-ethnic, and in Imperial times blacks were present in the Roman armies in small numbers. I'm confident most of those blacks were Kushites. Because of the peaceful relations between Kushites and Romans after their war, and Kushites apparently even aiding the Romans militarily during the Jewish revolt, as well as a large resident population of Kushites in Egypt as far north as Alexandria (location of 2 legions). Speculation, perhaps, but then there's this:

The Life of Septimius Severus (yes, that "African" Roman Emperor), from the Historia Augusta:

Quote

On another occasion, when he was returning to his nearest quarters from an inspection of the wall at Luguvallum in Britain, at a time when he had not only proved victorious but had concluded a perpetual peace, just as he was wondering what omen would present itself, an Ethiopian soldier, who was famous among buffoons and always a notable jester, met him with a garland of cypress-boughs. And when Severus in a rage ordered that the man be removed from his sight, troubled as he was by the man's ominous colour and the ominous nature of the garland, the Ethiopian by way of jest cried, it is said, "You have been all things, you have conquered all things, now, O conqueror, be a god." And when on reaching the town he wished to perform a sacrifice, in the first place, through a misunderstanding on the part of the rustic soothsayer, he was taken to the Temple of Bellona, and, in the second place, the victims provided him were black. And then, when he abandoned the sacrifice in disgust and betook himself to the Palace, through some carelessness on the part of the attendants the black victims followed him up to its very doors.

Of course, much of the Historia Augusta today is considered fictitious, but it's still a Roman source placing an "Ethiopian" (read Kushite) soldier in Britain. 

Galatian mercenaries (Celts, perhaps not from Britain, but close enough) also served in the armies of the Ptolemies and would have been part of the Nubian campaigns. People of Kushite decent and Galatians served as mercenaries in the same Ptolemaic armies. 

Spoiler

Scenes of Kushites and Celts in the same place and time, like these aren't as far fetched as one might think

 

Add some Zapotecs to those images and none of us would have ever even heard of Angus McBride...

Romans might not have fought the Achaemenids, but they did fight Parthians who were also Persian, and it would take little imagination on the players part to "pretend".

The Chinese would be interconnected once we get the Scythians in game. And the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Strabo writing that "they extended their empire even as far as the Seres (Chinese) and the Phryni (Tarim Basin)" (and Greek artifacts from the period are actually found in Xinjang, Western China!). In fact, The inclusion of the Xiongnu, Han Chinese, Scythians, Parthians and Greco-Bactrians, would be totally amazing, further increase the interconnectedness of existing civs like the Maurya, Seleucids and Achaemenids, and create a very comprehensive and convincing Eastern roster. 

Edited October 12, 2018 by Sundiata

[balduin]

For me it is always fascinating how people argue civilization X and Y did not interact. First of all, if two civilization exist then they spread somehow to that part of the world. Second, history as a science has evolved rapidly especially after WWII. We know more about Celts and Germanic peoples than we knew 70 years ago. I picked specifically those two, because National Socialism abused history extremely when comes to Germanic peoples and Celts. We today know that they were immigrants.

Linguists actually figured out that a large population of the world speaks Indo-European languages. The theory is that there must be some sort of common origin. The current model locates this origin somewhere in today's Russia.

Furthermore, we don't know much about the Phoenicians. They where excellent traders and sailors. The Phoenicians had extensive trade routes. However, even today we don't exactly know all of their trade routes. Maybe they were in contact with more African and European cultures than we currently know.

My point is that we should not try to limit the factions we include in 0 A. D. to only the ones we know had direct contact with ancient Greeks or Romans. I would much rather like to see a snapshot of the world as it was around the year 0 a. d.

 

 

[Guest]

29 minutes ago, balduin said:

My point is that we should not try to limit the factions we include in 0 A. D. to only the ones we know had direct contact with ancient Greeks or Romans. I would much rather like to see a snapshot of the world as it was around the year 0 a. d. 

+1

No reason to not include the Far East and Americas. After all, they did exist even if they didn’t interact with the Greeks or Romans (Maybe the Silk Route existed even back then).

This thread is not for such discussions though.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Guest

[Nescio]

2 hours ago, balduin said:

For me it is always fascinating how people argue civilization X and Y did not interact. First of all, if two civilization exist then they spread somehow to that part of the world. Second, history as a science has evolved rapidly especially after WWII. We know more about Celts and Germanic peoples than we knew 70 years ago. I picked specifically those two, because National Socialism abused history extremely when comes to Germanic peoples and Celts. We today know that they were immigrants.

Linguists actually figured out that a large population of the world speaks Indo-European languages. The theory is that there must be some sort of common origin. The current model locates this origin somewhere in today's Russia.

Furthermore, we don't know much about the Phoenicians. They where excellent traders and sailors. The Phoenicians had extensive trade routes. However, even today we don't exactly know all of their trade routes. Maybe they were in contact with more African and European cultures than we currently know.

My point is that we should not try to limit the factions we include in 0 A. D. to only the ones we know had direct contact with ancient Greeks or Romans. I would much rather like to see a snapshot of the world as it was around the year 0 a. d.

1 hour ago, (-_-) said:

+1

No reason to not include the Far East and Americas. After all, they did exist even if they didn’t interact with the Greeks or Romans (Maybe the Silk Route existed even back then).

This thread is not for such discussions though.

Tin from the British islands was imported into the Mediterranean to produce bronze. Egypt traded directly with India overseas. Roman glass has been found in China. Chinese silk entered the Mediterranean. These are just a few examples. Pre-modern Eurasia formed a single continuum. The Arsacids (Parthians) and Han China peaked before 1 BC and ought to be included in 0 A.D.'s main distribution.

On the other hand, there is no evidence for any trans-Atlantic links prior to 1492 AD. Zapotecs and other pre-Columbian civilizations belong in a separate mod.

However, somehow I get the feeling I'm merely repeating what I wrote myself five months ago.

Let's simply return to the original topic: Alpha 24 name suggestions.

On 5/17/2018 at 7:37 PM, elexis said:

(Which means we can gather, lay out some positive arguments for names but spare the judging, voting and cross comparison until then.)

[Gurken Khan]

1 hour ago, Nescio said:

On the other hand, there is no evidence for any trans-Atlantic links prior to 1492 AD.

 

 

Spoiler

Quote

Two historical cases of pre-Columbian contact are accepted amongst the scientific and scholarly mainstream. Successful explorations led to Norse settlement of Greenland and the L'Anse aux Meadows settlement in Newfoundland^[3] some 500 years before Columbus.

It's not much, but definitely more than no evidence.

 

[balduin]

42 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Let's simply return to the original topic: Alpha 24 name suggestions.

The question is can Han-Chinese names be included. That would require to include them in the main game. If Han-Chinese will be included into the main game, Han-Chinese names can be included into the suggestion.

46 minutes ago, Nescio said:

On the other hand, there is no evidence for any trans-Atlantic links prior to 1492 AD. Zapotecs and other pre-Columbian civilizations belong in a separate mod.

There is more than one possible trans-Atlantic link prior to 1492. First, Leif Erikson who sailed to Canada around the year 1000. I am not sure how strong the evidence is in this case. Another possible trans-Atlantic is the voyage of St. Brendan. His voyage is more disputed.

I do agree that we do not have proven evidence of trans-Atlantic link to pre-Columbian civilizations before 1492 AD. However, it is not impossible either.

[Genava55]

2 hours ago, Nescio said:

Tin from the British islands was imported into the Mediterranean to produce bronze. Egypt traded directly with India overseas. Roman glass has been found in China. Chinese silk entered the Mediterranean. These are just a few examples. Pre-modern Eurasia formed a single continuum. The Arsacids (Parthians) and Han China peaked before 1 BC and ought to be included in 0 A.D.'s main distribution. 

 

2 hours ago, Nescio said:

On the other hand, there is no evidence for any trans-Atlantic links prior to 1492 AD. Zapotecs and other pre-Columbian civilizations belong in a separate mod.

At this little game we can argue there is Asian bronze items in North America through the Dorsets, Inuits and Chukchi trading. There are also numerous hints in plant and parasites paleoecology suggesting that the Americas wasn't that much closed. We have historically overlooked artistic goods to define contact zone and neglected the others things, which is biased in favor of Eurasian cultures.

The problem with the rhetoric as used by Sundiata is its need to stretch the definitions and the boundaries of what is the limits of a culture, what is a contact between two cultures, confusing individuals interactions with societies interactions etc. The best examples are the use of La Tène Continental Celtic mercenaries to justify a possible interactions between British Iron Age populations and Eastern civilization, the use of the Parthian Empire to justify Achaemenid interactions with the Roman world, the use of Romanized Ethiopians in the Romanized territory of Britannia. It is like saying the Gauls could have interacted with the Huns because 5 centuries later, Attila raided the Gallo-Roman territory. At this little game, there is no boundaries and you can stretch anything very far (destroying the timeline of the game).

It is like the debate to know who first discovered America. A lot of people argues with either strict evidences like viking settlement and Arctic cultures trading or with more fuzzy logical evidences like Chinese possible maritime exploration or lost Polynesian canoe. But there is only one true discovery: Columbus. Because it is the only one to have cultural consequences. To have changed the life of the individuals in both interacting societies. The rest is only anecdotal. The fact that tin from British population were bought by Egyptian populations is not an evidence of interaction between these two cultures because if another culture has bought or produced the tin instead of one or the other, it would have had the same effect.

Edit: My conclusion is we have already broke the principle and it is not a problem.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Genava55

[Guest]

Why can’t civiliazations who didn’t interact with rome or greek be included? Seems to me like an unneeded restriction.

But seriously, someone make another thread if this is worth a discussion.

[Stan`]

I split this topic as best as I could sorry if some posts are missing.

To get on this topic.

The inclusion of mod civilizations have been discussed over the years to some extent and ended up in heated discussions and sometimes bloodbaths as well as general incomprehension.

To be truly honest I didn't think the Kushites would make it into the game. The discussion about it in the staff forums is kinda big considering the number of people actually in the team. Including a civ in a mod is easy. Just dump everything inside a git repository. Fix it along and voilà.

Including it into the game is a bit trickier because we have to make sure everything is in order that the documentation is correct that there are no copyright violations and that the overall thing is playable, balanced, and does not throw weird errors. Including two or three civs at once would be a daunting task I do not wish to do right now. Could also include one civilization you might say. Fair enough, but what about the people that wanted the other one to be included.

Thanks to our programmers combined efforts we have now a good mod support into the game. You want more civs ? Make mods universally recognized such as delenda Est milleniumad terra magna etc. Just want to improve the existing ones, join the modders team.

Want your mod to rely on a another one with civs ? We've got the technology it's called mod dependency

TLDR: The probability of new civs or the existing ones being included is very low because 1 it's a pain to get it right 2 it leads to endless discussions 3 we have mod support now and finally 4 Stan is lazy.

 

[Guest]

27 minutes ago, stanislas69 said:

TLDR: The probability of new civs or the existing ones being included is very low because 1 it's a pain to get it right 2 it leads to endless discussions 3 we have mod support now and finally 4 Stan is lazy.

Thanks for clearing that up and also keeping the name thread clean.

Stan earned the right to be lazy 

[Diptangshu]

3 hours ago, stanislas69 said:

I split this topic as best as I could sorry if some posts are missing.

To get on this topic.

The inclusion of mod civilizations have been discussed over the years to some extent and ended up in heated discussions and sometimes bloodbaths as well as general incomprehension.

To be truly honest I didn't think the Kushites would make it into the game. The discussion about it in the staff forums is kinda big considering the number of people actually in the team. Including a civ in a mod is easy. Just dump everything inside a git repository. Fix it along and voilà.

Including it into the game is a bit trickier because we have to make sure everything is in order that the documentation is correct that there are no copyright violations and that the overall thing is playable, balanced, and does not throw weird errors. Including two or three civs at once would be a daunting task I do not wish to do right now. Could also include one civilization you might say. Fair enough, but what about the people that wanted the other one to be included.

Thanks to our programmers combined efforts we have now a good mod support into the game. You want more civs ? Make mods universally recognized such as delenda Est milleniumad terra magna etc. Just want to improve the existing ones, join the modders team.

Want your mod to rely on a another one with civs ? We've got the technology it's called mod dependency

TLDR: The probability of new civs or the existing ones being included is very low because 1 it's a pain to get it right 2 it leads to endless discussions 3 we have mod support now and finally 4 Stan is lazy.

 

But, atleast include Han, if Kushites can make then I think it will not be a problem for Han to be included. If, anyone think minutely, there isn't a single civ for Sino-Tibetan people. They have a rich culture and rich history (and it's also profusely mentioned in the mod---Rise of The East, and now in Terra Magna) but the authority haven't minded to include it in game.

So, it's my earnest request to include Han in A24 if possible for the authority.

Thanking you...

[Lion.Kanzen]

8 hours ago, Genava55 said:

 

At this little game we can argue there is Asian bronze items in North America through the Dorsets, Inuits and Chukchi trading. There are also numerous hints in plant and parasites paleoecology suggesting that the Americas wasn't that much closed. We have historically overlooked artistic goods to define contact zone and neglected the others things, which is biased in favor of Eurasian cultures.

The problem with the rhetoric as used by Sundiata is its need to stretch the definitions and the boundaries of what is the limits of a culture, what is a contact between two cultures, confusing individuals interactions with societies interactions etc. The best examples are the use of La Tène Continental Celtic mercenaries to justify a possible interactions between British Iron Age populations and Eastern civilization, the use of the Parthian Empire to justify Achaemenid interactions with the Roman world, the use of Romanized Ethiopians in the Romanized territory of Britannia. It is like saying the Gauls could have interacted with the Huns because 5 centuries later, Attila raided the Gallo-Roman territory. At this little game, there is no boundaries and you can stretch anything very far (destroying the timeline of the game).

It is like the debate to know who first discovered America. A lot of people argues with either strict evidences like viking settlement and Arctic cultures trading or with more fuzzy logical evidences like Chinese possible maritime exploration or lost Polynesian canoe. But there is only one true discovery: Columbus. Because it is the only one to have cultural consequences. To have changed the life of the individuals in both interacting societies. The rest is only anecdotal. The fact that tin from British population were bought by Egyptian populations is not an evidence of interaction between these two cultures because if another culture has bought or produced the tin instead of one or the other, it would have had the same effect.

Edit: My conclusion is we have already broke the principle and it is not a problem.

mostly of wars or match in 0 A.D are assumptions of historical possibilities. like others RTS.

Edited October 13, 2018 by Lion.Kanzen

[Genava55]

2 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

mostly of conflics or match in 0 A.D are assumpsion

Yes exactly. The game let the player to create is own event. It is not the re-enactment of a historical battle.

[Lion.Kanzen]

2 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

Yes exactly. The game let the player to create is own event. It is not the re-enactment of a historical battle.

sorry my English ... i don't finish my point...

there many books about assumptions, historical assumptions. for example what happen if Rome never fall.

I'm sure there are a novel about that. 0A.D is basically fiction wars and encounters between worlds and cultures.

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

https://www.amazon.com/If-Rome-Hadnt-Fallen-Happened/dp/1848844298

Quote

his is a fascinating exploration of how the history of Europe, and indeed the world, might have been different if the Western Roman Empire had survived the crises that pulled it apart in the 4th and 5th centuries. Dr. Timothy Venning starts by showing how that survival and recovery might plausibly have happened if several relatively minor things had been different. He then moves on to discuss a series of scenarios which might have altered the course of subsequent history dramatically. Would the survival of a strong Western Empire have assisted the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire in halting the expansion of Islam in the Middle East and North Africa? How would the Western Roman Empire have handled the Viking threat? Could they even have exploited the Viking discovery of America and established successful colonies there? While necessarily speculative, all the scenarios are discussed within the framework of a deep understanding of the major driving forces, tensions and trends that shaped European history and help to shed light upon them. In so doing they help the reader to understand why things panned out as they did, as well as what might have been.

this included later civs.

https://www.amazon.com/Clash-Eagles-Trilogy-Book/dp/1101885300

Quote

Perfect for fans of action-adventure and historical fiction—including novels by such authors as Bernard Cornwell, Steve Berry, Naomi Novik, and Harry Turtledove—this stunning work of alternate history imagines a world in which the Roman Empire has not fallen and the North American continent has just been discovered. In the year 1218 AD, transported by Norse longboats, a Roman legion crosses the great ocean, enters an endless wilderness, and faces a cataclysmic clash of worlds, cultures, and warriors

 

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, Diptangshu said:

. We Could also include one civilization you might say. Fair enough, but what about the people that wanted the other one to be included.

See the quote I made.

1 hour ago, Diptangshu said:

But, atleast include Han, if Kushites can make then I think it will not be a problem for Han to be included. If, anyone think minutely, there isn't a single civ for Sino-Tibetan people.

If we include Han that's not fair for Native Americans, that's not fair for Slav Tribes. That's also not fair for any other country in South Africa, Australia. I get your point you want the Han dynasty to be added so that it can attract people from that area. And it's fine really. Putting the Kushites in was a 2 Month work. And I failed to make it perfect. Also there is a lot of open issues on the Terra Magna mod about historical accuracy and other matters.

[Sundiata]

@Genava55, just to clarify my point a little: Han Chinese, as well as Kushites from Sudan, as well as Iron Age Britons made use of chariots for war. This is absolutely not a coincidence. No such thing ever existed in the Americas. War-Elephants were used in India, Britain and Sudan. Again, not a coincidence. Elephants are unknown to the Americas. Cavalry is used by literally every civ in-game. Horses didn't even exist in the Americas. Between c. 1000 BC and 400 BC, literally every civ in-game (or their predecessors) switched to iron/steel as a primary material for making weapons and tools. Iron doesn't seem to have been known in the Americas. Every single civ in-game is connected through military conflict with at least 2 other civs (some a lot more). No civilization in the Americas ever fought a war with any of the civs in-game. All the civs in-game were connected through a vast ancient network of trade-routes, and literary as well as archaeological evidence suggests that most of these civs were fully aware of the existence of most of the other civs, even if they never went to war with them. None of the civs in-game were even remotely aware that the Americas even existed. 

The main technical problem is that balancing strictly no-cav stone-age civilizations with the existing civs is impossible without throwing out any semblance of historical accuracy in game-play. 

To clarify further, I love New World civilizations and I hope every major civ of the Americas is developed for 0AD at some point. My concern is that including them in the main-game is simply not possible without messing everything up. Unless people aren't bothered with massively underpowered civs. I'm not saying they were technologically inferior or something. Simply the lack of horses, iron and advanced siege-engines or elephants (on top of mediocre "navies", if that) makes them unbalanceable by definition. The complete lack of interconnectedness is also something I just wouldn't be able to get past (in the main-game). 

Having New World civs as a standard "expansion" or a "built in mod", included but separate would be my preference. 

Not including the Chinese is a mistake, plain and simple.

Of course adding the Scythians (and Greco-Bactrians) would do a lot to further increase interconnectedness, and of course I'm aware that this wouldn't be a small job, at all. I don't "expect" it to happen over the next alpha, although with a planned release date of 2022 for alpha 24, who knows what might happen..

@stanislas69 You're a hero, for so many reasons. You've done so much and we thank you! Nobody will demand anything from you. We're just a bunch of dreamers. These talks are all purely theoretical, and most of us know this. But if one day Wildfire Games is suddenly magically over-staffed, at least we'd already have a good idea of which direction we'd want future civ-development for the main-game to go. 

[balduin]

I agree with @stanislas69 it is much harder to include a civilization into the mod. First a civilization has to be researched, models have to be created, documentation, sound has to be selected or created, the legal aspects have to be handled, the civilization has to be balanced, maps have to be created and quality assurance has to be done. The civilizations currently included in the game went through several iteration of development.

I also agree,  the new mod downloader in 0 A.D. makes downloading mods easy. The only thing you have to do as a user is to select a mod and press download, wait until the download completed, select the mod and play.

Furthermore, keep in mind, that 0 A.D. and the Pyrgoenesis development will slow down, if more and more content is added. Because every time a bigger change is made, which requires adjustments for every civilization all civilizations have to be modified.

[Guest]

Just my 2 cents. Not making a demand or anything.

What was the hardest thing about getting Kushites in vanilla? Was it the models? I always thought that Art was the most limiting factor.

In case of Han, aren’t the models already available? Still would not be an easy task though, but better than nothing.

(I also agree with the community made mod idea. After all, this game had been designed from the start to make these things possible.)

[Stan`]

47 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

What was the hardest thing about getting Kushites in vanilla? Was it the models? I always thought that Art was the most limiting factor.

That is an interesting question. I did not include the modelling and texturing part into the time to make the Kushites, just as I did not include the awesome research Sundiata did for them either. I didn't do much modelling for the Kushites anyways. 

There were a few annoying things. Licensing. Gathering all the contributors and making sure nothing we took was illegal. Fixing art actor bugs and ensuring a good code quality. Removing any mixed spaces and tabs and empty newlines and adding newlines at the end of files for our dear Unix users. There was also the balancing I did not do. But that's tedious because we want them to be an balanced Civilization while keeping historical accuracy. If it was just a mod, meh. Then there was loading all the art files one by one to see if stuff was missing textures broken references. If I ever get around doing it checkrefs.pl should have mod support (and a few long due updates on Phabricator currently.) Then there is updating the documentation which I failed to do see the recent fixes. Then there is naming conventions but that's fine I guess trimming the suffix if the file is in a folder with that name ex textures with ao in their name is okay.

I started recording voices for the Kushites. Never got around finishing that either.

So everybody can do it. It's a bunch of little things together that make a huge work. But in the end the one committing has the responsibility. At least I feel like so.

So yeah TLDR; What is daunting is the little things not the obvious ones. There is much more going behind the scenes that people imagine. And that's not  gratifying until it's done.

 

[dmzerocold]

Hi , i know WFG team is very busy  and also they may have higher priority tasks than adding new civ .. like fixing performance etc .... ( also i hope they put new voice list structure in priority  )

Anyway regarding the civilization these are my wish list... who knows maybe one day we can see them in game

========

First:

Han , Qin , Zhou dynasty  --> China

Medes , Parthian empire --> Iran

Gojoseon --> Korea 

=======

Second:

Japan --> Yayoi period ( this one may not be feasible )

Hong Bang -- > Vietnam

Adena --> native american (north)

Maya , Zapotec  , Chavin , Paracas  --> south america (not all of them maybe 1 o r2 )

Noke --> around Nigeria

[Genava55]

10 hours ago, Sundiata said:

, just to clarify my point a little: Han Chinese, as well as Kushites from Sudan, as well as Iron Age Britons made use of chariots for war. This is absolutely not a coincidence. No such thing ever existed in the Americas. War-Elephants were used in India, Britain and Sudan. Again, not a coincidence. Elephants are unknown to the Americas. Cavalry is used by literally every civ in-game. Horses didn't even exist in the Americas. Between c. 1000 BC and 400 BC, literally every civ in-game (or their predecessors) switched to iron/steel as a primary material for making weapons and tools. Iron doesn't seem to have been known in the Americas. Every single civ in-game is connected through military conflict with at least 2 other civs (some a lot more). No civilization in the Americas ever fought a war with any of the civs in-game. All the civs in-game were connected through a vast ancient network of trade-routes, and literary as well as archaeological evidence suggests that most of these civs were fully aware of the existence of most of the other civs, even if they never went to war with them. None of the civs in-game were even remotely aware that the Americas even existed. 

For the moment the game is coherent with this huge European/North-African/Middle-Eastern network but adding the Han dynasty for example will mess it up a little bit because the Han are very far and the only pretext should be obscure stretching and justification through steppe civilization (a black-box where you can throw every cultures in to justify anything). Don't forget too that at this time China is not an homogeneous world. There is a lot of other factions that could be justifiably introduced through the Han, like the Baiyue/Minyue, the Qiangs/Chiangs, the Dians and the Nanyue.

10 hours ago, balduin said:

Furthermore, keep in mind, that 0 A.D. and the Pyrgoenesis development will slow down, if more and more content is added. Because every time a bigger change is made, which requires adjustments for every civilization all civilizations have to be modified.

Even if I'm not against new civilizations, I agree and I think adding new factions should not be a priority. Even the Scythians, the Thracians or the Hans are excessive and we should let the mods experimenting and gathering information.

I think there are two extremely opposed examples of successful RTS: AoE with numerous clone factions, Starcraft with only three factions but with huge difference and depth.

0 A.D is clearly between both, but we must ask ourselves the question of which side it is heading.

[Nescio]

Whilst the Kushites are not entirely finished, the same is true about all other factions included in game. There are only voices for Greek and Latin; Athenians use Macedonian structure actors; Britons and Gauls share the same unit actors; not all units have corresponding icons; heroes are highly unbalanced, some have superb auras, others are practically worthless; template naming is inconsistent; there are at least three different transcriptions being used for Greek; Mauryas is still spelled incorrectly; etc. Most of these points will probably go unnoticed by the majority of users; however, all factions are rather identical; sure, they look different, but they all play about the same. Additional content is nice but certainly not important .

Rather than including more civilizations (any selection is arbitrary), it might make more sense to move all factions into separate mods (one mod, one civ), and keep only the engine, gaia objects, and shared content in the main distribution, allowing people to mix and match their own civilization roster. Besides, mods such as Hyrule Conquest, Millennium AD, and Ponies Ascendant don't really need the default civs, nor would the not-yet-started part 2: 1-500 AD.

[Stan`]

I agree with Nescio. I really hope to do what I call the engine split for A24. But I'll need other devs onboard like @elexis because technically I can't do it alone.