Please depict the Gauls accurately this time (duplicate from TWcenter)

[wangchang]

I went to total war center and made this long thread. However, there was some misunderstanding, and they banned me (thinking i was an alt).
This thread is the only one to actually defend the northern factions cause, and if we keep it alive as much as possible, CA may notice the matter and take the problem into consideration the Rome 2 TOTAL WAR.

They banned me from their forums under false accusations, and i'm afraid that since i'm banned, people may not continue posting in the thread and keeping it in the first page.
the thread is here : http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=548834
If you have an account in TWcenter forums, you can go and participate in the thread, post suggestions or argue over the matter.
If you can, you can also inform people on my situation, since I can't do it myself (banned). You can also try to put some sense in the moderators so I can be unbanned and participate in my threads.

If you don't have an account, then you can participate here too : Here i'm not banned so I will be able to answer :)

Overall, on this forums or the other one, let's defend the northern faction cause (in the case the Gauls) :)

Now Here is the OP :


I have decided to register on those forums after I learnt that they were making a new total. I'm ususally not very found on posting sugestions or advices for games, since devellopers almost never read them, but I found out this wasn't the case on those forum and that CA is pretty much more attuned. Also the community seems great and really enthousiatic when it comes to discussing stuff like game design.


Ok so now to the point: I simply loved the first rome total war, but some stuff disapointed me in the vanilla version : mainly the many historical inaccuracies in the game. It could go from simple details to a whole factions depiction. And about depiction, four factions were particularly affected : The Egyptians, the germans, the Britons AND the GAULS.

Now I saw that a thread about the egyptians was already made in the section, so i'm not going to talk too much about them. I'm not going to talk too much about germans and britons, since I think that the Britons, germans and Gauls are all an unique case and should not be put into the same basket.
Since i've been an exchange students in france during 2 year, I had the occasion to learn a lot about this old culture, and I had access to historical reconstitutions and the latest archeological findings.
In rome total war, the gauls were basically depicted as a generic barbaric culture, and really had that hollywood barbarian style : hordes of unwashed, primitive savage, barely equiped and living in hovels.
This depiction was reflected in every aspect of their design : from their town (who could'nt even have stone walls) who looked like a bunch of hovels and huts put together and linked with dirt roads, to their unit design, who like I said, were the generic barbarians units.

Now evidence, mostly recent, shows that they were in fact a pretty sophisticated civilization, and had a level of advancement comparable to the romans. Of course, they were indferior in some fields (the most notable one being engineering, the roman being pretty much the best of antiquity in that field), equals on other and even superior in some.

I can list those fields were they equalled and even surpassed the romans :
-philosophy & theology : the druids weren't only religious leaders. In fact, like many civilizations of that time, the priest and scientist class were the same, look at the egyptians, the persians, the mayans... They were great philosophers, even the greeks and the roman praised the deepness of their thoughs
-Litterature : the fact that they didn't write doesn't mean they had not complex litterature. In fact their poems, essays and stories were transmitted orally. Even today most people have heard of the bards, which is a testimony to their prowess in this fields. They capable of Literary techniques that would have put sometimes some of todays writer to shame. Their litterature wasn't just instinctive.
-Craftmanship : it's one of those fields were they were often (not always) surpassing the romans. Everything ivolving smithing or building objects (made of woods, or other materials). They were by far the finest metal workers in antiquity, smithing being very complex in nature, this is a testimony of their overall level of advancement. They invented the mailcoat (that revolutionized armament ), the plow (that indisputably revolutionized agriculture) and had left a lot of very fine artworks, most of them having only been recently uncovered. They also invented the barell, one of the most ingenious way to transport liquids and other goods.
-MAthematics : yeah, now i know most people are surprise and often don't believe it when they hear this, because it's really the antithesis of today's cliche image of the gauls. But the druids did travel a lot, goign to place like alexiandria, the capital of sience at the time (great library) to discuss and exchange theory with the others sicientist (greek,romans,egyptians sometimes even indians). What we know for sure is that they had the same knowledge of those people. What we don't know yet is if they discovered theorems themselves. Since they did not leave any written notes, it's hard to tell. So I'm going to assume theey didn't had a big impact on mathematical theories and were just educated, just like the romans : the romans didn't really liked abstract thinking themselves, so both gauls and romans are probably equals in those fields.
- Art : it's difficult tho judge art, and I think you can never say one painting is superior to another. You can't judge creativity But, you can judge the level of complexity, the level technique used, and the overall finesse . In those two, the gauls were equals to the romans.They made extremely fine piece piece of art, mainly using metals and wood, while the romans prefered marble and stone. I've many books with lots of pictures about the art of the two civs, and myself i can tell they they are both equals when it comes to the finesse.


In the fields of architecture, the romans surpassed the gauls, like they surpassed everybody anyway.
But that doesn't means the gauls had a primitive architecture. In fact they had a very unique style.
Again contrary to the popular belief, they did build more than just huts and longhouse. Their cities were fully paved, like their roads, their road systhem was one of the most develloped and well kept of those time, with every roads being made of stone or woods. Only the poorer lived in huts, and most of them had big houses, improved from generations to generations, with fine artwork all around the house, low relief, sculptures, and paintings. The cities had big administrative buildings, again with lots of artwork and decorations, large public facilities (even baths, although not as extended as the romans ones), large central places...


If you want to picture one of their largest oppdiums (cities), just imagine any other big cities of that times (carthage, sparta, even rome) just a bit smaller (there was a bigger rural population) and replace the stone and marble by a wood/stone combo and metal working : you have your gaul oppidium, the same grandeur, the same imposing feeling (or almost, let's not exagerate ). But DEFINITEVELY NOT a small town with dirt roads, simple house with little to no art or style. So they should NOT be portrayed like they were in rome total war 1.
Bibactre, one of the biggest gallic oppidium, had over 150 000 inhabitants. Which is still kind of big for that time.
I could go on and one, about how the gauls also invented soap (they weren't the only ones, germans, phoenicians, syrians... did), were master Dyers (they had very colorfull cloth and gave a lot of importance to their clothing, more than the romans did) (which also means most of them (at least more than 50%) did not went naked or bare torsed in battle, but actually put some nice cloth)...



So it was a pretty long demonstration, you can check every point in various sources, I even encourage you to do so, not just wikipedia (even if wikipedia pretty much approves what I said, it's just incomplete on some part), but also the works of some historians and some pictures of the gauls art. I also recommend you ''l'univer des formes'' it's a famous french collection on civilizations, and it was translated in english (i think, but anyway it's mostly pictures of artworks no need translations for that ).

I wanted to break most of the préjudice and the comon lie that sticks to the gauls image, even today.
So the point was to provide a more accurate overview of this people and get rid of this stereotypical view.




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Now how it should reflect in-game compared to the previous rome total war :

-Units shouldn't be generic and shouldn't be the same as the germans. They should look well equiped (at least for the medium and high tier), and well clothed (for most of them, yet some should be naked or half naked, since SOME gauls did fight that way) and should have that gaulish look.

-Big cities should look neater and more refined : stone roads, imposing facilities, stone walls, fine architecture, presence of pieces of art, scultpures low relief, big temples.... Basically it should have that ''grandeur'' that the other civs cities are going to have. And and also, it shouldn't be the same cities as the germans : they were both different civilization and should not be put in the same basket.
In the end, in the game, if one look at a gauls cities, he ewon't say : ''Meh, this city looks pale in comparaison to the carthaginian/egyptian/greek... ones'', it should look as develloped and as fine as those cities. It should have this ''magnificient'' look the other will have, or at least at a comparable level, in the same scale.

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So yeah, that's about it. My hopes is that a CA employee will see this and that it will help, along with many other things (i'm not pretentious ), make him consider some more options for the design of the gauls. And anyway, I'm also curious to hear your people think about all this, what's your opinion on how CA should stick to historical accuracy and some design ideas you can come up to. I'm also eager to see the debate that will come out of this thread.



Thanks , certainly have fun debating

PS : I can't edit anything (don't have permission yet), so if there are grammatical errors I won't be able to correct them. Thanks for your comprehension


PS : on TWcenter my nickname is Akarnir.

[quadalpha]

RTW was not known for its historical accuracy, and there is reason to hope it will be better this time round. Part of the problem may be with time and money: one large city in the Greco-Roman style is on many levels pretty much the same as another, whereas it would take more work to build up the assets for architecture in wood, especially as we have no surviving examples.

You don't want to be with that rabble at TWC anyway! We all know this is the real TW community.

[Arjos]

I find these threads useless and at fault comparing what CA used to be at the time of RTW, to what is now (I didn't see such generalizations or stereotypes portrayed in later titles)...
Not to mention, basically all you are asking for, has already been addressed in the few interviews...

[Vuk]

I find this threads useless and at fault comparing what CA used to be at the time of RTW, to what is now (I didn't see such generalizations or stereotypes portrayed in later titles)

Did you not see M2TW then? How about TWS2?

[Arjos]

They have to work on that edge of hollywood style/accuracy and the former is the one that pays big bucks...
And S2TW wasn't as bad as don't know arcani XD

[Nelson]

I would like to see oppida properly fortified. They had much better walls than the stockades they get in Rome I. IIRC, the Romans pretty much gave up trying to go through Gallic walls only to go over them at great expense.

[Graphic]

Did you not see M2TW then? How about TWS2?

I'm fine with the stretches in vanilla Shogun 2. If they didn't have hero units, a bunch of warrior monks, ninjas etc. and it was all realistic, you'd basically be left with a handful of generic spear, bow and cavalry units. Even the idea of a group of samurai charging the enemy with their katanas was fantasy.

They did go back to reality with Fall of the Samurai though because they could, which is a pretty down to earth game along with Empire and especially Napoleon. I think CA wants to be down to earth whenever possible but will stretch things if reality isn't enough for varied gameplay. With all the totally different cultures in Rome 2 I don't see them being forced down the road of fantasy again. I think they've grown out of fantasy units for fantasy's sake.

[latinos]

OH HAi WAngchang!

Lol I've already seen this OP in TWcenter. Fully agreed with what was said BTW. I, like feel, feel that the celts are too often stuck with the generic barbarian design, and that their town are unfairly depicted, and don't get the proper attention. And didn't knew if I should made a thread or not.

But then I saw that you already did one, and that you exposed the matter way better than I could have possibly done. I just don't want to see this thread burried under the other threads, and it seems that since your banned, this tread may have some troubles to be kept at the TWcenter front page.

It's unfair, the gauls don't get the attention they deserve on the forums, your the only one so far to have stand up for their cause. So I wanted to congratulate you. And I fully support you. I would really like to help too, so if you want I could try to talk to some moderator on TWcenter.

what do you think?

PS : BTW my name is latino in TWcenter, u are akarnir right?

[wangchang]

You don't want to be with that rabble at TWC anyway! We all know this is the real TW community.

Hahaha yeah I agree. The community here is smaller but i prefer it. Especially since I was banned from TWcenter for no reason. Yet, TWcenter is a bigger community, so CA has more chance to notice the demand.

[wangchang]

RTW was not known for its historical accuracy, and there is reason to hope it will be better this time round. Part of the problem may be with time and money: one large city in the Greco-Roman style is on many levels pretty much the same as another, whereas it would take more work to build up the assets for architecture in wood, especially as we have no surviving examples.

You don't want to be with that rabble at TWC anyway! We all know this is the real TW community.

So, to make a map of the city of Carthage; to resurrect a dead people; to recreate a historical battle told only by the victors; these are all huge research challenges. Creative Assembly has overcome them by... reading lots of books. They have spent thousands of pounds on old books, they’ve pored over satellite photos, they’ve studied the nearby tombs of the Carthaginians (which were based on the city’s buildings) and they’ve looked at nearby cities that surrendered to the Romans. The cities themselves feel far more lived in than previous games; the streets of Carthage in the demo were covered in graffiti, and lined with litter and garbage. The streets were narrow and winding, dirty and grubby, the harbour contrasted mighty stone piers with dingy wooden fishermans’ jetties. The whole city felt like an ancient maze.

From an interview of CA here : http://www.pcgamesn.com/totalwar/tot...stion-answered

I think it would be unfair if they didn't put the same effort for the other factions. What I don't like either is that they constantly refer to the northern factions as barbarian while they refer to the other factions with the words ''exotic'', ''eastern'' , ''empires''...

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Of course it'll be unfair, and of course that's what they're going to do. The people they need to sell games to (that is, a larger market than just people who know the Gauls weren't all shirtless maniacs with war dogs) don't care if the Gauls in game are all shirtless maniacs with war dogs. So it's not a priority.

Carthage will look great, and might even be passingly historical. Don't expect that kind of level of detail on (say) the composition of the Carthaginian army, because the target audience doesn't know and doesn't care.

[wangchang]

That'S what I fear the most.

the biggest problem is the cities : even if the game is decently moddable, I doubt it will be to the extend of custom cities. ANd even if it is, no modder will be able (becomes graphics and modders are more complex than before) to reproduce them in their full grandeur. The amount of work would be too Big.

But I have hopes, that if the whole community ask for it, they will consider it. The point is to educate the community, and to do that, the thread need to be in the first page.