What faction did you play first?

[Aemilius Paulus]

I don't know why, but I'm slightly bothered by the large number of players who first chose the Romans. Maybe they chose it because they only played as them in vanilla, or maybe cause they were their favourites before they tried EB. but the romans i find are very dull. The other factions have been painstakingly crafted and it seems everyone jumps in for the old workhorse. the easiest of them all. I mean when you start off with the Romans, your automatically making tons of coin. Everyone else you gotta put work in. whether it be disbanding units and fleets or conquering, all other factions require you to fight for your own survival. the Romans are the only faction in which your survival is almost guaranteed.

if anyone who hasn't tried EB yet and is reading this, go for a different faction, the challenge is certainly worth it.

By the way, im not really trying to bash the players who love the romans, im just expressing my surprise and awe at the fact that so many people decided to chose the easy route, instead of taking on a true challenge.

I am not sure if the Romans had money coming in after the first turn without conquering or disbanding. I really doubt that. Then again, it has been quite a while since I began my Romani campaign. Ptolemies and Seleucids, from my experience, are much easier to start out with (at least from the financial perspective). People don't play the Romani because it seems like they are the easiest faction. You really don't know how difficult/easy it will be with them before they start the campaign (although the difficulty for each faction is indicated when you're choosing a faction for the campaign, I don't find that to be entirely accurate). No. Gamers choose the Romans mostly because they like the Roman history and the Roman military.

I am one of those people. I am not hiding that fact. To hell with political correctness, Romans and Seleucids were the two superpowers during the EB time period and they mattered the most. As the Seleucids declined, the Romans took their place. When comparing other nations with these two empires, those nations seem trivial. They still mattered, but not as much. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't study the other nations, its just that we need to understand the special place the Latin people held in that time period.

I have read read more than a hundred books on the various aspects of the Roman history, culture as well as military and had not found a single civilization of their time period who had so much written about them, nor one that left us so much legacy (just look at the European languages and laws - most of them are modifications of Latin language and Roman law). It was on the foundation of Greeks and Romans that Western civilization was funded, which came to dominate the globe.

Roman Empire was the most well structured in the Ancient World, if not in the entire history of human empires. It was incredibly long lasting for its time and encompassed the most vital regions of the Antiquity. If the Romans would have controlled China, they would have controlled pretty much all of the civilized and organized world. Although India, parts of Africa and America had their own civilizations, those civilizations were not as organized (in large nations under a single government) as China or the Mediterranean.

[QuintusSertorius]

Romani. Aside from my stint playing Epeiros-as-Pergamon, they're pretty much all I will play too.

When EBII comes out, the only factions I'm interested in are Rome and Pergamon.

[Laman]

Unless I'm remembering wrong, Romans. Thought it would be a good idea to pick a faction that was easy to get going and experience all the new stuff of EB without immediately getting into a very large debt. Was right.

[Tollheit]

To hell with political correctness, Romans and Seleucids were the two superpowers during the EB time period and they mattered the most. As the Seleucids declined, the Romans took their place. When comparing other nations with these two empires, those nations seem trivial. They still mattered, but not as much. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't study the other nations, its just that we need to understand the special place the Latin people held in that time period.

This is not about political correctness. It's more like "Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Catoni", for me.

Edit: The victorious cause pleased the gods, but the defeated cause pleased Cato

[Moros]

This is not about political correctness. It's more like "Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Catoni", for me.

I hope he knows latin otherwise it'd be quite funny!

Edit: am I the only one that is waiting for TPC to enlighten this fella? Cause he seems to have left out a rather big 'barbarian' culture that was a bit important.

[satalexton]

thats y i love this forum, people actually get stumped intellectually instead of being n00bed at.

[Foot]

I love it when people wax lyrical about the Romans, its just so gushing; as if the Romans were their lover, this great and wonderful man who just seems too good to be true. And the Seleucids! Superpower? Only for like 150 years. Blip, just a blip.

Foot

[Artorius Maximus]

I actually played the Getae (Dacians) first. They are quite a fun faction in my opinion, and seeing as Illyrians are not in as a faction, at least the Getae are the most similar availible.

[Theodotos I]

Baktria, actually. I was inspired by hooahguy's AAR and the unique unit choices they possessed. Will have to play them again some day, now that I've got a handle on EB economics. I won, but didn't get to use all their units.

[The Persian Cataphract]

I am not sure if the Romans had money coming in after the first turn without conquering or disbanding. I really doubt that. Then again, it has been quite a while since I began my Romani campaign. Ptolemies and Seleucids, from my experience, are much easier to start out with (at least from the financial perspective). People don't play the Romani because it seems like they are the easiest faction. You really don't know how difficult/easy it will be with them before they start the campaign (although the difficulty for each faction is indicated when you're choosing a faction for the campaign, I don't find that to be entirely accurate). No. Gamers choose the Romans mostly because they like the Roman history and the Roman military.

I am one of those people. I am not hiding that fact. To hell with political correctness, Romans and Seleucids were the two superpowers during the EB time period and they mattered the most. As the Seleucids declined, the Romans took their place. When comparing other nations with these two empires, those nations seem trivial. They still mattered, but not as much. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't study the other nations, its just that we need to understand the special place the Latin people held in that time period.

I have read read more than a hundred books on the various aspects of the Roman history, culture as well as military and had not found a single civilization of their time period who had so much written about them, nor one that left us so much legacy (just look at the European languages and laws - most of them are modifications of Latin language and Roman law). It was on the foundation of Greeks and Romans that Western civilization was funded, which came to dominate the globe.

Roman Empire was the most well structured in the Ancient World, if not in the entire history of human empires. It was incredibly long lasting for its time and encompassed the most vital regions of the Antiquity. If the Romans would have controlled China, they would have controlled pretty much all of the civilized and organized world. Although India, parts of Africa and America had their own civilizations, those civilizations were not as organized (in large nations under a single government) as China or the Mediterranean.

...

Okay. To hell with "political correctness", you say. How do you react if I say I don't believe you for a single moment? What do you mean by "Western civilization" and what do you mean by "Greek and Roman foundations"? What do you mean by that the Seleucids were replaced by the Romans? What do you mean by that the Graeco-Roman legacy "dominated the globe"? What do you mean by not as "organized" as China or the Mediterranean? I suppose that by your flawed logic you would also like to imply that through Alexander's conquests he civilized the Oriental barbarians, and their Persian overlords? Is that it?

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Now, I want you and only you to identify this individual depicted on this coin. I'll give you a hint. His empire stretched from the Oxus, Indus, Euphrates and the Araxes-Kura. His coins are by far the most abundant of his dynasty, and perpetuated well into application by a successor dynasty about two centuries later.

When you are done, try this fellow:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As for the entirety of your well-phrased but ignorant message, I call bullshit, and I'll double it. I say it is the typical early Classicist and Victorian Anglophilic bile which has been perpetuated until this day, and has sought to downplay Eastern nations as back-water nations. The dogma of Graeco-Roman historiography forming the basis of the "Western world" needs to die. It needs to fucking go, because it's all unfounded bullshit and gross trivialization of history and its inherent complexity. Supposedly the Dark and Middle ages up until the Medieval age and the advent of the "European Renaissance" there is a connotation between Western Europe and the Roman world! This is thievery, and worse, what actually is the historical wealth of all of mankind has now been hogged by the entity which calls itself the "Western world".

It is just as bad as the dogmatic designations of "Islamic science/medicine/architecture/art". As much as Britain relates to Roman architecture, does Islam relate to Persian medicinal practices.

Way to go. You managed to effectively erase the following two empires because of your resounding ignorance:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/collec...mes/pargeo.htm

http://www.armeniapedia.org/images/6...-haik2-big.jpg

With all due respect, sir, but your "political incorrectness" backfired into a rant containing outdated, traditionalistic and downrightly colonialist rhetoric which Iranology not only eats for breakfast, but practically lives for when it comes to scrutinizing old scholastics. The worldly influence of the Persianate cultures in the Iranian plateau, Caucasus, Anatolia and Central Asia are not only beyond dispute, but also the core of the concept comparable to the Graeco-Roman legacy.

What you have written in other words is the same as that of Sir Edward Creasy on the battles of Gaugamela and Marathon:

"Alexander's victory at Arbela not only overthrew an Oriental dynasty, but established European rulers in its stead. It broke the monotony of the Eastern world by the impression of Western energy and superior civilization, even as England's present mission is to break up the mental and moral stagnation of India and Cathay by pouring upon and through them the impulsive current of Anglo-Saxon commerce and conquest."

"The Greeks, from their geographical position, formed the natural vanguard of European liberty against Persian ambition ; and they pre-eminently displayed the salient points of distinctive national character which have rendered European civilization so far superior to Asiatic."

Do you identify yourself with these assessments?

I know I identify myself with Hans Holbein (The Younger), as far as these discrepancies are concerned:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...nusHolbein.jpg

[TWFanatic]

With all due to respect, getting angry over these issues only serves to dilute your own arguments TPC by making it a simple case of one pride and arrogance vs. another. You are certainly capable of either brushing those comments off or responding to them in a calm and detached manner. There are plenty of bloviators online and you can't bother to educate them all. I don't think Aemilius Paulus is an academic anyway.

I think that one of the major problems here is that many professors try to press their ideology upon their students. Anyone who doesn't comply is exiled from the academic community, resulting in a strong dogma in many corners. I cannot tell you how many grade reductions I received because of a refusal to comply with the "superiority of the west" nonsense espoused by, for instance, Victor Davis Hanson’s The Western Way of War and Carnage and Culture. I learned the hard way that losing my temper did me no good. Debating those persons in a civilized manner is far more effective, especially when the evidence is on your side as it is here.

All that said, the lack of educational freedom in Iran is even worse. One of my roommates fled Iran so that he did not have to join the army. He was only just learning of the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid empires because his former government forbid the teaching of pre-Islamic history. By forcing teachers to profess that everything before Islam was a dark and evil age, the dogmas of Iranian historiography are far more effective in suppressing the study of ancient Persian history than any feeble attempts by westerners.

[BigTex]

My first faction was the Yuezhi iirc. Which also isnt on the list, kinda sad, was a great campaign destroying the silver plague, or was it the yellow plague whichever plague plagued .74.

Then it was Kart-Hadast, god they were great with their phalanx capable libypheoni/heavy libypheoni infantry. The romans never knew what hit em.

[Hax]

My first faction was the Yuezhi iirc. Which also isnt on the list, kinda sad, was a great campaign destroying the silver plague, or was it the yellow plague whichever plague plagued .74.

My greatest apologies, I had forgotten the Yuezhi were playable before 0.8.

You probably would have destroyed the Silver plague, since they were killing in 0.7, as I heard.

[The Persian Cataphract]

With all due to respect, getting angry over these issues only serves to dilute your own arguments TPC by making it a simple case of one pride and arrogance vs. another. You are certainly capable of either brushing those comments off or responding to them in a calm and detached manner. There are plenty of bloviators online and you can't bother to educate them all. I don't think Aemilius Paulus is an academic anyway.

I think that one of the major problems here is that many professors try to press their ideology upon their students. Anyone who doesn't comply is exiled from the academic community, resulting in a strong dogma in many corners. I cannot tell you how many grade reductions I received because of a refusal to comply with the "superiority of the west" nonsense espoused by, for instance, Victor Davis Hanson’s The Western Way of War and Carnage and Culture. I learned the hard way that losing my temper did me no good. Debating those persons in a civilized manner is far more effective, especially when the evidence is on your side as it is here.

All that said, the lack of educational freedom in Iran is even worse. One of my roommates fled Iran so that he did not have to join the army. He was only just learning of the Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sassanid empires because his former government forbid the teaching of pre-Islamic history. By forcing teachers to profess that everything before Islam was a dark and evil age, the dogmas of Iranian historiography are far more effective in suppressing the study of ancient Persian history than any feeble attempts by westerners.

You misunderstood the nature of my post. I realize that my previous entry had a very crude phrasing to it, but on the other hand it serves to prove that just because I am capable of composing an essay-like refutation, it does not mean I can't lose some steam composing a message which clearly conveys my distaste, without the crud or the convoluted bullshit. Allow me to disagree for a moment with your rationale; I have debated Islamic apologists for years and quite frankly, trying to argue with individuals who are very firmly indoctrinated in their set of beliefs, in a language beyond their comprehension emphasizes absolute futility. A historian who seemingly fails to convey his message to the unbeknown, it does not matter if he has written an impressive catalogue or accumulated some of the most recent scholarship, he will realize the wasteful shame of even bothering.

I don't get angry on the Internet; I do however get disgruntled at certain writings, and the fact is that this way, I can clean out the crud, and instead of giving some lengthy lecture where I enumerate some of the greatest achievements of the ancient Persianate cultures to the worldly heritage itself, I'm just simply putting a halt to the man's crusade in "breaking the silence of political correctness". What political correctness? Has he seen some of Hollywood's "epic" blockbusters lately? That is my point. I don't need to wear a shit-eating grin, or a fancy facade and get into abstract terms when I can cleanly, and bluntly say "Okay, well you are full of it and you have next to no clue what you are talking about, and add to it, it would take too fucking long to copy-paste a few articles for your enlightenment.". It also goes to show just how much courtesy I accord to his "politically incorrect" opinion.

As for the bogus historiography propagated by the Islamic regime of Iran, trust me, you don't even want to go there as far as I'm concerned. All I know is that for each time the dogmas that still are allowed to permeate in "western" scholarship and to poke us in the eyes, the Islamophilic demagogues get another opportunity for a really serious sucker-punch. We are talking about professors and lecturers getting laid off, severed funding, and single individuals being ostracized by the regime in a number of ways, either through persecution, suspended payroll or in a worst case scenario, murder. Nothing gets done, and Iran is virtually an embodiment of historical wealth in archaeological terms. It's like you're stuck in the middle of an ocean and you're suddenly getting thirsty, realizing there is not even a drop to drink!

People are wondering why there is almost nothing written left by the ancient Iranians, but the moment you say "Maybe Islam had something to do with it", whoa, it turns into blasphemy and instead, what happens. They'll think that the ancient Iranians never wrote anything to begin with and start to think of them as illiterate savages. Oh yeah, they apparently bothered to do some lengthy inscriptions on a fucking rock in some remote place in the middle of nowhere, but they didn't know how to write on parchments? Right! That makes sense, of course!

No. I'll stand by my words as they were initially given. If nobody likes it, well, it's really not my problem. All I know is that regardless of the tone or attitude I write in, I asked legitimate, albeit rhetorical questions.

[Che Roriniho]

Gentlemen, extinguish your flamethrowers. Take this to the tavern, and we may allow you to use a cigarette lighter.

[Celtic_Punk]

given the bluntness, stupidity and ignorance of that guys post, your attitude is not unfounded Persian Cataphract. It is ridiculous how much people discount the east on their contribution to western society. But do not forget that the West contributed alot to eastern society (which is probably why the east is blowing itself up right now... hmmm) Even look at the movie 300 (nobody go on about "oh its so historically incorrect!" WE KNOW) for instance, Xerxes is portrayed as a genderless peirced up weirdo (by whitecollar, rightwing standards). hes portayed as "the other" and thats the way western media portrays the rest of the Eastern world. sadly aslong as this continues, the east will be discounted in the hearts and minds of the west.

Then again, as long as the East has its oppressive governments (not that ALL eastern countries are oppressed, and all western countries are not at all oppressed) they will be discounted. shitty buzz i guess...

[TWFanatic]

I do not think that films such as 300 are by any means a result of political incorrectness, but simply out of an apathy toward historiography. It is pure capitalism--in most cases films are made first and foremost to make money, not to accurately represent the diversity of ancient cultures and encourage viewers to study more history. Likewise, EB does not accurately represent the complexity of each and every ancient culture to be politically correct, but to encourage players to study more history. Please correct me if my understanding of the EB ethos is off the mark.

That said, there are cases in which ideology is put before profits. Look at the swathe of recent anti-American films that bombed in the box office. The people who fund these films lose a tremendous amount of money yet continue to do it; clearly they care more about spreading anti-American propaganda than making profits. I believe these isolated attempts at socially-reengineering the populace to be an exception to the rule however. In general, Hollywood will do whatever yields the greatest profits--and at the moment, the populace doesn't give a rat's ass about the fair and accurate representation of ancient cultures.