Please make it a little less ... sexist

[Panther]

Judging nowadays society, 0 A.D must change all actors into genderless, non-binary Humans soon. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

19 hours ago, Palaxin said:

Similar to many animal species, humans do have a sexual dimorphism, e.g. by nature men have a larger muscle mass on average (advantageous adaptation for hunting I guess) whereas women have a higher percentage of body fat on average (advantageous adaptation for pregnancy I guess). Depending on the activity/work, this dimorphism should translate into different work rates in some areas where the differences matter, e.g. where you have to use heavy tools or carry heavy load (lumbering, probably mining, but not gathering berries). At least this sounds reasonable and actually not offending to me. If you are looking for confirmation, compare the performances of women and men at the Olympic games.

While all of that may be true, I personally don't see the need to depict sexual dimorphism in an RTS game. We're not building an anthropology simulator after all. 

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

While all of that may be true, I personally don't see the need to depict sexual dimorphism in an RTS game. We're not building an anthropology simulator after all. 

We aren't?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

We aren't?

At the "scale" of the game it's best to depict institutions rather than granular details like the relative strength of the average man and woman. So, the roles of the lower, middle, and upper classes might be ripe for depiction, while family dynamics could be best reserved for an RPG game or something similar (unless worked into the game in a very broad sense). Dunno, I haven't quite pinned down the working theory yet.

[Palaxin]

On 01/12/2020 at 11:08 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

At the "scale" of the game it's best to depict institutions rather than granular details like the relative strength of the average man and woman.

Ok, I can understand your reasoning, though I think depicting differences would still make it more interesting. Vanilla 0 A.D. just seems quite plain to me regarding unit variety (at least compared to AoE II with 35 civs with special units, unique techs etc. or AoM with a lot of choices through primary and secondary gods). The factions could profit a lot from fleshing out more differences, but that's another topic.

In the context of this thread I assumed equalizing the stats of women and men was proposed in order to address sexism which is not the best way IMO. Simply because women and men are not the same in every aspect on average, especially when it comes to some hard, measurable facts (and I would count work output in measurable units as one - of course depending on the kind of work). The question of sexism is a question of how they are seen, treated and what rights they have, and I think that is something extremely difficult to depict in an RTS with its limited scope and complexity. The problem is that 0 A.D. focuses almost exclusively on areas that were men's domain in the depicted timeframe and as already discussed we get conflicts with historic accuracy if we would derive from that... So depicting men and women in an ideal state (and what that is, is still somewhat subjective I'd say) would result in a non-historic, sci-fiction or fantasy game - which inherently carries a flavour of utopia since the world is imperfect...

On 29/11/2020 at 11:06 PM, Crea said:

I get the time frame women can't "fight" aspect of that time but could you at least make a little less sexist by making it so there are male gathers that also can't fight? Or making it so there are like amazon warriors? Or better yet both? Here's more on the amazon warriors: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141029-amazons-scythians-hunger-games-herodotus-ice-princess-tattoo-cannabis/

I would appreciate these proposals though as far as proven historic knowledge allows us to do and integration into the game concept as a whole would make sense.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Palaxin

[Yekaterina]

 

[Gurken Khan]

17 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

 

For anyone especially interested in the 0AD/sexist thing: it starts at 10:42.

IMHO not worth the watch. ('No, 0ad is not sexist, men are fighters & builders while women are not into tech and they're nursers & caretakers.')

[Genava55]

2 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

For anyone especially interested in the 0AD/sexist thing: it starts at 10:42.

thx a lot

2 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

IMHO not worth the watch. ('No, 0ad is not sexist, men are fighters & builders while women are not into tech and they're nursers & caretakers.')

Indeed, this is a bit of clickbait.

[Lion.Kanzen]

then we need to be asked to be non-binary, genderless and without nationality or ethnicity.

 

Just as Karl Popper envision a world without those features.

 

By the way, that point has an Aristotelian oligarchic base.

[Gurken Khan]

Hey @Lion.Kanzen, you couldn't fit in a phrase against socialism in your post?

[Yekaterina]

36 minutes ago, m7600 said:

Mauryans never fought against Gauls, Britons never fought against Kushites, etc., and yet this is allowed in 0 A.D.

I am curious... were these 4 even aware of each other's existance? 

39 minutes ago, m7600 said:

- Elephants shouldn't destroy stone buildings, especially fortresses. Historically, maybe there are cases in which elephants destroyed wooden outposts or something like that. However, name me at least one historical case in which elephants destroyed a stone fortress.

Yes, I made a patch to fix that by giving elephants high pierce and hack instead of crush but it was never approved by the other devs  

40 minutes ago, m7600 said:

Human beings do not spontaneously generate from buildings. As if you could, in reality, have a single worker construct an empty barracks and then troops just start appearing from it, out of thin air. This is one of the most anti-realistic conventions of RTS games in general.

I guess you have to deal with that for abstraction purposes. We can simulate citizens marrying, giving birth, going to train and finally becoming a soldier. However, these details are unecessary for the gameplay and increases the CPU's load, so it is a necessary sacrifice in my opinion. Also we don't want the game to be too new-player-unfriendly. 

43 minutes ago, m7600 said:

male citizens who only gather stuff but do not fight.

I think two gendered citizens are a great idea, as long as they wear different uniforms to the military units for distinguishing. @wowgetoffyourcellphone

[maroder]

True. just merge the two-gendered citizen mod and be done with it.

[Genava55]

1 hour ago, m7600 said:

If 0 AD is supposed to be historically accurate and realistic, then:

It is often phrased that way but indeed 0AD isn't a real portray of history, nor putting historical accuracy above everything else. Actually, the gameplay and the design of the game are above the historical accuracy.

HOWEVER, the gameplay and the game design themselves try to take inspiration from history to create a basic set of rules to follow, a framework. There is a kind of back-and-forth logic in how the game was framed and designed. History and gameplay aren't contradicting each other all the time.

Now this is true the game didn't follow historically accuracy in absolute. But this is like everything in real life, it is rare that something follows an absolute rule. From a more practical oriented phrasing, the community made a huge effort to portray ancient civilizations as accurate as possible without hindering the gameplay and the fun from playing the game.

Obviously there is a line to not cross. If someone argues about naked Conan-like berserkers with giant two-handed axes or to put lorica segmentata on Punic Wars hastati, this should not be ok. Even if it is cool or fun.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Genava55

[Lion.Kanzen]

59 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

Obviously there is a line to not cross. If someone argues about naked Conan-like berserkers with giant two-handed axes or to put lorica segmentata on Punic Wars hastati, this should not be ok. Even if it is cool or fun.

A cheat unit idea.

[Yekaterina]

1 hour ago, maroder said:

True. just merge the two-gendered citizen mod and be done with it.

That was my thought, although I personally don't feel any sexism in the game and not offended by the idea of cavalry rush killing all women neither. I do that a lot myself!  

[alre]

1 hour ago, Genava55 said:

Obviously there is a line to not cross. If someone argues about naked Conan-like berserkers with giant two-handed axes or to put lorica segmentata on Punic Wars hastati, this should not be ok. Even if it is cool or fun.

Agree, also there is a line at the other hand: for an example, it would be bad, even if historically accurate, if soldiers could catch and rape enemy women, that would be repulsive and unnecessary. I think that women having different roles from men, and also slaves, both stay well between these lines. In any case, we could add a disclaimer remembering that a game based on historical facts is not meant to advocate the return of any practice of that timeframe. I guess someone may wonder...

[Genava55]

3 minutes ago, m7600 said:

3) For some mysterious reason, it seems like it's not a problem to accept 1) but it is a problem to accept 2)

Because the Britons have fought the Romans and the Gauls, because Greeks and Carthaginians had knowledge of the Britons. Since the Romans, the Gauls, the Greeks and the Carthaginians are in the game, they can fight each other and the same for the other civs. We shouldn't restrict a civ to fight only a couple of others. If it bother you, the game has even illogical things like the Mauryas, a dynasty founded in 322 BC that could fight the Achaemenid empire that fell in 330 BC. The game portrays historical events occurring between 500 BC to 100 AD approximately. So it is mandatory to broke a bit the reality to fit everything in the game. Both geographically and temporally.

Quote

So here's a simple question: Why? What criteria are you using for accepting 1) but not 2)?

Name one ancient civilization that employed female fighters in an equivalent amount than the male fighters (even nomads didn't).

An egalitarian society in ancient time isn't something credible.

There is no historical motive for this.

There is no gameplay motive for this.

This is purely political.

At least, the idea that two distant civilizations clash is much more credible than something that wasn't observed anywhere at that time. And like I said, there are gameplay motives for it.

20 minutes ago, m7600 said:

1) Historically, Britons did not fight against Kushites.

In the future, there won't be any campaign portraying Britons fighting Kushites. There will be campaigns about real historical events like the Punic Wars, Alexander's conquests, wars between Kushites and Romans, the conquest of Britannia by the Romans etc.

At least those events would be fairly portrayed in the campaigns. For the custom battles and the multiplayer, this is logical they could fight each other to let the player have fun.

[Lion.Kanzen]

8 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

This is purely political.

that's the way it is and our game is apolitical, for political correctness, the companies are already there. our game does not marry politics and any ideology.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Now is funny beat and kill women?

 

--- I'm not attacking anyone, it's just a double-edged sword .----

[Genava55]

I will go further, I want to see blacks, asians and whites in every civs. Because it is FUN. I want to see white nubians among Kushites and black hastati among the Romans.

[Zophim]

As I see it, the original vision of 0 AD was to create a gameplay setting in which the ancient civilizations of a certain timeframe could all fight it out. Even if historically some of them never crossed paths, the fun was in seeing what the result might be if you took two or more civs, as-is, and pitted them against one another. From the beginning, historical accuracy was paramount, except insofar as the mechanics of gameplay demanded.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0AD_The_Vision

“It is a moment in time that never was. It is the spring of the world, and the dawn of history. It is a glimpse into an era when the empires of the world are at their zenith. It is but a breath of an age when mighty rulers wield rods of iron and brazen swords; to demonstrate that they are indeed the greatest ancient civilisation!”

Now, no one’s denying that women served in leadership capacities or even in specific elite unit roles every so often, but I take issue with any proposed altering of the nearly-universally-male composition of 0 AD’s fighting forces to give the impression that the duly constituted armies of the Greco-Roman cultures and of their enemies contained a significant obviously-female rank-and-file presence.

I fail to see any compelling reason, gameplay-based or otherwise, why such an ahistorical change is necessary, and the development team would need to see some reliable sources before they consider taking such a drastic step.

[Yekaterina]

It's just a game... no need to get too serious about politics and equality unless there is something explicitly sexist /racist

[Yekaterina]

The point is, it is perfectly acceptable to have Greek women only farming because that is what the ancient Greek women did whether you like it or not, so this feature is perfectly justified given the setting and historical background. No need to interpret sexism. The only reason why I mentioned two gendered citizen mod was because I thought that not every single male in a city-state is a capable, professional soldier. There has got to me some male civillian population, right? 

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

Who would know that a spiteful comment, made almost a year ago would generate such a fuss.

[Yekaterina]

Another problem: people don't enjoy 0ad purely because it is historically accurate or politically correct, they find it FUN. 

What makes 0AD enjoyable: the challenge to survive and thrive with your  civilisation on a map with limited resources, while facing attacks from the opponent. 

At no point did absolute historical accuracy come into that statement. We can even forego history completely and make the game full of cheat units, aliens, gunners and so on and it still would be just as enjoyable as long as the balancing works. However, we still want some historical accuracy to be consistent with the theme of Classical era history. 

Another aspect is commanding these civs to fight with others and rewrite history, which is also fun. It doesn't matter whether Mauryans ever had a fight with Britons, it is fun to watch how it plays out in a theoretical situation and say gg at end. So unit roster is probably more important in my opinion than whether the civs made contact with each other. 

Sexism is not that important unless it actually offends someone. I am not offended at all because women in 0ad are just javascript AIs, they are not relatable at all so I really don't mind. 

5 minutes ago, m7600 said:

Let's also give each civ their own mythological units. Greeks can have centaurs and Ptolemies can have a Sphinx.

And what will these units do? We can turn them into monumental structures like the iberian monument