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I can't improve on SISEGV's hilarious explanation. We do have some advances coming up to reduce tomb maintenance. I think there's a lot of 'we need to balance the late-game economy in some way, so let's just make tombs have a somewhat excessive amount of maintenance' thing going on. And of course, tomb-robbing most definitely was a thing.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:15
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There are definitely also more places for food in Memphis such as the antelopes. I'm not sure on the balance of workers in terms of fully exploiting those versus continuing on with the expeditions, scouting, etc. on the Egypt map though.
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Jun 9, 2021 18:17
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I think this is about the point where I just start chaining food worships because
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Jun 15, 2021 19:40
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Yeah, food is really the thing that gets me every time, especially if I try to play the endless mode since it has that nasty mode that reverses population growth, and yes, negative population does produce negative resources.
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Jun 15, 2021 22:37
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So this thread is trying to tell me something. It keeps unbookmarking itself against my will, and I swear I posted an update in here yesterday. Anyway ...  Civil War (22:47) The latest crisis forces me to admit defeat and abandon, at least for now, the historical building path. The idea of spamming food cults isn't viable due to favor costs and other priorities, at least for now. . As it is, we narrowly survive the separatist crisis and appear to have a tumultuous time ahead filled with more difficult decisions.
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Jun 23, 2021 17:43
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In my opinion, in those situations when we don't know what happened they should just use little grey men as stand-ins. To be honest, now I'm wondering what I'd put in if I was making a game that spanned across the Greek dark age. "And the grey men came and pointed beams of light at our kings, and so they fell to ashes, and so they told us that we now would have assemblies at all times and that all would vote, except slaves and foreigners and women, those don't count." But on the other hand there were already senates and archontates in various places in Crete and Greece (and perhaps Cyprus, since we know embarrassingly little about Cyprus). SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 02:17
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I can see that. There's a chess channel I watch every so often, and sometimes there's a game where we have a record of the moves and one notable player, but the other player we have no idea. The presenter will present them as 'Hoodie Guy' and have an avatar of someone shrouded in a hoodie, and even wear a hoodie himself on camera. It's an amusing kind of schtick but also clearly gets the point across that we don't really know who made these moves and we aren't going to pretend otherwhise.
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Jun 24, 2021 06:08
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Respite & Recovery (27:25) With the Nile regions now back under our control, we set about the business of getting the economy back in gear. The Third Dynasty arrives, and with it the first step pyramids and the beginning of the Old Kingdom proper. We're still a bit off the pace when it comes to worker count and control of more remote regions, so I endeavor to close that gap. And I find myself somewhat annoyed by some unnecessarily muddled history, but we are emerging from the 'dark' period now.
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Jun 29, 2021 15:48
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The Third Dynasty (16:30) Compared to previous episodes not a whole lot happens here. Gradual exploration continues, working to bring the outlying regions into the fold continues, worker expansion, etc. Comprises on tomb constructions are still the order of the day, and mostly it's preparation for the next trial which will coincide with the arrival of the next dynasty. That basically means getting as much production/expeditions going as possible.
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Jul 14, 2021 22:34
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The Sixth Trial; The Great Age of Pyramids Begins (24:55) There's a lot of history - some muddled - to sift through as we've reached the stage where it's time to build big-boy pyramids. Including, apparently, building the same one in multiple locations at the same time because the game feels like it. From a game standpoint, this is really the fish-or-cut-bait moment as well. If you're prepared enough to handle building these, you can benefit enough to really break the game's economy. In my case, what's broken is my workers ability to finish expeditions without meeting with disaster as another rash of bad luck strikes. Which means we can write off a gold rating here, I'll be fortunate to get silver at this rate. Nonetheless we shall soldier on, as we haven't yet gotten to that one pyramid that has spawned a zillion alien theories.
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Jul 20, 2021 20:10
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You are really getting some amazingly bad luck here.
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Jul 21, 2021 17:30
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Phenomenal luck, I wouldn't recommend trying your chance in a lottery right now. Historical accuracy is getting quite spotty. The standard of Ur reminds me of (most likely ceremonial) shields decorated in similar ways from continental Greece in the Bronze Age and Greek Dark Age that are divided between a scene of war and a scene of peace. Consider also Homer's description of the shield of Achilles. I've been reading a little about Ancient Egyptian myth (or myths, really) and I have to say, I have a lot of commentaries to make about Hesiod (and apparently, according to Paul Veyne, so did the Greek lower classes) and while the Seth / Horus ("the younger" if applicable in your nome's local myth) fight is good and honest fun for the whole family, some of the other myths are quite a bit shameless and obvious in the "know your place, peasant" dimension. (Like, just for example, the whole Geb trying to rape his mother thing. No, the God-king is still a God-king even if he's bad, he's actually good, Atoum confirms it, just deal with it.) I do like the fact that Egyptian myth is a giant mess because the lack of standardization of the stories and genealogies possibly indicates things regarding the way that religion formed itself.
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Jul 29, 2021 03:49
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SIGSEGV posted:I wouldn't recommend trying your chance in a lottery right now. The amusing part is I'm having absurdly good rolls in the start of Distant Worlds, so I'm figuring Egypt thinks it has to make up for that or something. Justice is balance and all that. SIGSEGV posted:the whole Geb trying to rape his mother thing. No, the God-king is still a God-king even if he's bad, he's actually good, Atoum confirms it, just deal with it.) A giant mess is an apt description IMO. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jul 30, 2021 |
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Jul 30, 2021 00:12
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Grandeur of Giza (18:13) In which sacrifices are made to support building the Red Pyramid and the Great Pyramid of Giza, among others - although the *big one* is actually not as pricey as it should be. Economy is getting back on its feet thanks to finishing our long-term quest, and we should have a successful conclusion to this trial next time out.
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Jul 30, 2021 00:15
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Finishing Up Giza (20:29) Starting out by giving Khafra the short end of the stick, we move on through the rest of the 6th trial, concluding by misrepresenting Shepseskaf in one of the most wrong-headed historical statements so far IMO. Oh, and more workers die on expeditions. Go figure. Next up we'll be taking a break from the game so I can spew  about some of the most compelling, to me at least, aspects of the Great Pyramids. Now that the economy has been turned loose with enough favor to spam cults as needed, most of the conclusion should be a relative yawner from a gameplay perspective.
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Aug 4, 2021 16:05
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Will you cover some of the controversies surrounding the dating of the sphinx in that deep dive video?
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Aug 4, 2021 17:31
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I wasn't planning on it, but as I look at this more I think I need to touch on that briefly. I will say that the amount of speculative and borderline conspiratorial nonsense proliferating on the general topic of ancient Egyptian monuments/pyramids/etc halfway depresses me sometimes. One could spend hours even scratching the surface of bad theories that have been propounded, and I don't want to spend a ton of time on that rabbit hole.
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Aug 4, 2021 19:23
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Quickish update; for those who don't know, I recently took a bit of a YouTube hiatus for reasons of personal health, and I've been back from that for a couple of weeks. As far as this project goes, I have finished the research and scripting for my blather for the Pyramids video, which is by far the most time-consuming part, so I'll be working on putting that together and hopefully it won't be too much longer before I finish it and we're moving forward here again. It's ended up shifting focus some and getting longer than I anticipated, but I decided to make it as long as it needed to be instead of covering some aspects inadequately, so that's just sort of part of the process.
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Sep 27, 2021 07:49
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Great that you're feeling better and it's good that you're back. 
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Sep 27, 2021 08:58
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It's good that you're getting better as we head into the bronze age collapse, also the other collapse.
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Sep 27, 2021 10:23
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Awesome. Looking forward to it.
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Sep 27, 2021 13:12
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Strategic Sage posted:
So i'm going to talk about multi-part souls, because egyptian souls are dope. Rather than "Protestant conciousness Juice"(tm) the soul had an anatomy and different parts and functions. The Ka or Lifeforce, is uhhhh what kept you alive when you died bye bye ka, your ba left with your akh to the afterlife and your ka became someone elses ba. The Akh or Afterlifeforce or Magical Energy, literally described as "to the afterlife as the ka is to life" this is what your ba uses to live after death, this is what you lose to suffer the second death or deader than dead. The Akh is ALSO tied to magical power and used in the casting of magic. The Ba or Essence, This is who you truly fundamentally are, it's not directly destroyed by the sheer number of things that destroy some part of your soul in egyptian mythology but it has no presence without them. There are a number of gods who are the Ba's of yet other gods such as Bennu the Phoenix being the Ba of Ra and Later Horus. While Atum-Ra and Ptah would switch off during who was the original creator having their Ba be the void before creation. The Ren or Name, this is your life, your memory, "So long as a man's name is spoken he is not dead", this is why so many monuments have scratched out names they were literally trying to destroy parts of the soul. The Sheut or Shadow, it's....it's your shadow, like LITERALLY YOUR SHADOW. And Uh i'm missing 2 I think? That's just off the top of my head.
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Sep 29, 2021 09:26
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WhitemageofDOOM posted:The Ren or Name, this is your life, your memory, "So long as a man's name is spoken he is not dead", this is why so many monuments have scratched out names they were literally trying to destroy parts of the soul. If you kept watching the series, we did eventually get into this whole bit with damnatio memoraie, Akhenaten, and all of that kind of fun thing. It's certain made Egyptian history harder to study having that motivation to just erase the 'bad' people from the records.
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Oct 2, 2021 01:57
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Mysteries of Giza & the Great Pyramids: A Reasoned Perspective (49:00) This will go public at 9 AM EST, but I may or may not be around at that time and I wanted to post a few thoughts along with it. The first half is essentially rebutting the most common and popular criticisms, nearly all ill-considered in my view, of the 'mainstream' view of the Giza monuments having been built by the Egyptians of the 4th Dynasty; second half is about the pyramids themselves, what we know and don't know, etc. This was by far the longest time I've spent on a YouTube video; don't let that stop you from making any suggestions/criticism as I always want to get better, but it was quite the process. There were about a half-dozen times when I thought I was getting close to done, and then realized 'nope, you've actually got a lot more to do'. There's never any end to the ways in which you can improve something like this, but at a certain point you reach a stage where you don't have the capability to make it enough better to justify the time that is required for that incremental gain, most of your best ideas are in there, and you just accept that it's 'done'. I've also been re-impressed by how great it is to live in the Internet Age, with so much information available for the low price of just looking and people generously contributing to the global community. As I mentioned in the thread, I wasn't initially going to talk about what is in the first 20-plus minutes of this, but as I did research I realized more and more that I really needed to. The influence of conspiratorial thinking/tribalism is evident to anyone paying attention to current events of course, but I wasn't fully aware of how much that infection had metastasized in this particular historical/archaeological subject matter. It's grown so much further than Erich von Daniken's Chariot of the Gods. Professional scientists, 'alternative storytellers' like Graham Hancock, ancient high technology YouTube channels like UnchartedX (currently at 182k subscribers as a rough scaling of the audience), so very many technically impressive productions that purport to show 'step by step how the pyramids were definitively/probably built' and are 95%+ pure, unmitigated speculation ... it just goes on and on. I admit there were points when I was quite discouraged to be a member of the human race and had to regain my bearings. It's also become more personal to me. I mention a bit at the end of the video about how I've gained a newfound respect for Egyptian achievements by doing a deep dive into this period; that's really happened throughout the Historic Perspectives project and is a big part of why I'm doing this. I'm reminded fairly regularly of how important it is to me in terms of teaching myself humility, perspective, appreciation for the great majority of human existence that has been quite unlike my own experiences. There's also the fact that while I've been immensely blessed to be relatively untouched by the pandemic compared to most, it's definitely changed my life and the circle of people I know personally. There are people who I valued, and still do, but basically have shut me out of their life on both ends of the spectrum. Not many thankfully, but I'm either not pro-vaccine or not anti-vaccine enough for them (more complex than that of course, but that's a big dividing line right now). I find myself regularly struggling to emotionally deal with not the pandemic itself, but the ways in which that and similar fissures have been permitted to divide us. So this is my small contribution to the discussion of Giza, and in smaller part to the hope for critical thinking, objectivity, and acceptance of people who think differently without assuming nefarious motives of them. After wrapping up the last scenario of the Shang Dynasty in the Emperor thread, I intend to return here and complete the final chapter(s) of this game. So much has happened, and yet we are still about 4500 years before present day. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 08:23 on Oct 26, 2021 |
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Oct 26, 2021 07:36
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This is mostly a cross-post from the Emperor thread, but I wanted to put it in both places so that everyone interested in this project will see it. It's time for another round of ideas for what comes next. What I Know For Sure ** Emperor, Rise of the Middle Kingdom continues on for another more than two millenia. So we just keep going there as we reach each scenario. ** Something something Bronze Age Collapse. I have a couple of links I'll put up about that, but basically it's been covered far better by others than I'd ever do so I'm not doing another deep dive there. ** Less is said about what happens afterwards, aside from the Greco-Persian wars, Spartans, the later emergence of Alexander the 'Great', etc. Not to get too far ahead, but I plan on doing a bit (shorter than the Pyramids video but still worth exploring) about the developments over the next few hundreds years after the Collapse, empires reforming/rebuilding/recovering, new ones arising - a chaotic and interesting period of history. What I'm Still Pondering ** I don't know any great candidates for games during this period. Marble Age is similar to Egypt: Old Kingdom in style but by all accounts not nearly as good. Troy: Total War is a bit too divorced from reality. ** Zeus could get us into the Greek timeframe; I worry here that it would be too repetitive with Emperor, both being Impressions city-builders and all. From what little I've seen, it appears to be a bit shorter than Emperor but still quite long, but just more 'compressed'. The years covered appear to be 1150-485 BCE ish. If you think this is a good idea, now's the time to talk me into it. ** Definitely open to considering any other games I don't know about. I like the idea of a Greek-focused title next if I can find one I'm comfortable with. ** The other plan is to just skip to one of the Total War Rome games, which I want to do eventually anyway. I think the Punic Wars are basically essential from a historical point of view. Best mods are for the original game but I'm told it's not very cooperative with modern OS so ... that's going to be a play it by ear situation when I get to it.
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Nov 3, 2021 02:49
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There's Hegemony, though that's very militarily focused. It could be good for a quick discussion of Philip's conquests, or other Greek wars. You could also look at 0 A.D., which is an open-source (and free as in beer) Age of Empires that covers +- 500 years from its nominal imaginary date. Some custom campaigns might have a narrow enough focus to work. I know there is for instance, a Macedonia/Alexander one, but I can't recommend any specifically as I haven't played them.
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Nov 3, 2021 21:18
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Thanks Kangra! Hegemony Gold looks really interesting. I didn't know there was anything that really focused in on Philip to that degree, definitely being military-focused would be appropriate for him. I need to ponder how much I'd want to focus in on that, but it definitely could be useful as a quick visit like you mentioned. Really a revolutionary time for warfare and that had a lot of ripple effects so ... yeah. That's going on the list of possibles.
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Nov 4, 2021 03:47
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The Fifth Dynasty: Decentralization (29:27) Yes, we are actually progressing towards the end of the game this LP is supposed to be about! We finally get to the mysterious end-game resource we've been hoarding ahead of time; Decentralization. Basically it gives us more abilities to shift around resources in our economy, and gives a couple of small bonuses, one of which we no longer care about by this point in the game. We also progress to the 5th Dynasty, past now the time of the builders of the great pyramids, with it's focus shifting to Ra. The game makes a whopper of a claim about the 5th Dynasty that I'm calling hogwash on, but they have good points in their presentation as well; we're still in the period where they at least do well enough to hit the mark pretty often. Next up is the 7th trial, which we've already foreshadowed here. There is yet more controversy coming. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Nov 10, 2021 |
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Nov 9, 2021 17:43
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There was a weird black screen before the Palermo Stone showed up. The Inefficiency event seems to me a lot like "oh hey, here's some justification for a little game balance, see you later!"
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Nov 10, 2021 03:14
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Thanks, I'll put up a corrected one.
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Nov 10, 2021 03:39
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SIGSEGV posted:There was a weird black screen before the Palermo Stone showed up. Yeah. Like "Oh, Egypt suddenly forgot how to do resource storage" is CERTAINLY a statement.
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Nov 10, 2021 03:44
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Wait till you see the 'endgame crisis'. I'm saving my most outraged vitriol for that. It's .... it's really something.
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Nov 10, 2021 03:49
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They could have gone with "actual resource storage doesn't really work that way and you don't really need it anymore, so here's a debuff, address your bags of poo poo in protest to XXX XXX XXX" but that would be a little too much. Although I'm not sure it would have been, I think the game could benefit from having several writing styles in it, one being a teacher, one to give the ancient Egyptian point of view and one for explaining the game elements of the game outside of the historical context. We're already working in 4 year steps and have broken actual history once in order to make playing the same city stick, telling us outright that this sort of resource pooling is no longer available now that the great pyramid era is over shouldn't hurt the game.
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Nov 10, 2021 03:51
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The Seventh Trial: Reform Controversy (32:36) The length of this one got away from me a bit, but I wanted to finish up the Fifth Dynasty and did end up doing that. Our economy proves robust enough for a Gold rating on this trial, and I talked a bit about the end of the game and final trial just because the 'good' way to finish it is so over-the-top and would require massive preparation. We aren't taking the 'Horus ex machina' approach of accumulating 2k favor, we'll go through the intended pain of the descent into the First Intermediate Period when we get there (I think that part is actually done well overall). Two episodes are left now. The next one will cover the Sixth Dynasty, and the last one the aforementioned end of the game. There is also a post-game challenge which I will have about as it really grinds my gears.
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Nov 16, 2021 17:40
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Crumbling from Within: the Sixth Dynasty (17:45) This is basically a preamble to our conclusion which will be coming up next session. There's definitely a more rapid distintegration of the power of the pharaohs here, and eventually the natural world doesn't cooperate fully either. The pace of building has slowed considerably, and our main task is just to be as prepared as possible for the storm on the horizon.
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Nov 22, 2021 17:42
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I agree with Narmer being the first known emperor by the definition of "Hey you fucks over there as opposed to over here, with sort of different cultures and so on, give me your money and or resources as I occupy your territory." even if the ancienter Egyptians shared a lot of culture, I'm not sure I'd call it homogeneous and after all if the Delian League counts as one, I don't see how Narmer's wouldn't. Oh, by the way, Sargon's name, a regnal name to be clear, means "the king is legitimate" which leads a lot of assyriologists to think he definitely was an usurper, evidently pretty good at it too. E: As for Pepi II, he might indeed have had little choice in the matter, not everyone is Louis XIV. (Which is also a good thing, I suppose.) SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 00:46 on Nov 23, 2021 |
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Nov 23, 2021 00:42
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I find that interesting regarding Sargon. I definitely don't know as much about all the ups and downs of the various empires in that part of the world. It kinda makes my head hurt from this point in time forward.
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Nov 24, 2021 04:01
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Conclusion: the First Intermediate Period (36:50) Our pass/fail endgame crisis has arrived, and with it the end of this LP. Who names something the '4.2 ka event'. Who just does that? Overall I think, 'miracle' aside, that the game handles this well. The post-game escalating option though, really grinds my gears. Thanks to everyone who read/watched/participated. Bird's - eye overview of the 'Late Bronze Age Collapse', before and afters, impacts, controversies will be next. Then Zeus, which will be fun as it graphically does not wish to cooperate with my system. Strategic Sage fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Nov 29, 2021 |
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Nov 29, 2021 15:10
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I need to catch up, i've been so busy in real life i've fallen off. I thought the end game was interesting myself
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Nov 29, 2021 16:41
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| # ? Apr 27, 2024 23:32 |
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The sudden arrival of Sea Peoples is definitely a strange choice. I've recently been fascinated by the Late Bronze Age Collapse, so it's nice to see them mentioned, even if it completely mind boggingly early.
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Nov 29, 2021 23:18
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