Countdown to Open Beta - Tabula Orbis Terrae

[The Wizard]

Greetings Europa Barbarorum fans!

As I’m sure you’ve noticed by now, this is a different kind of preview. As of late, EB has been concentrating more on scripting and other matters which never have gotten a lot of the limelight when a preview came around. Therefore, we decided to show you some of this in stead of the usual faction highlight.

Thanks go out to Stormy and Eadingas for taking and uploading the screenshots. Big thanks once again go out to Teleklos Archelaou, this time for making the antiquated map, complete with ancient monsters et cetera. And, of course, props and kudos are due to the map making team, which has done a wonderful job.

Still, EB is a team effort and this preview is a product of all our efforts.

This week, the EB team is proud to present:

To the left is a smaller in size map, to the right is a larger one.

Please take into account that this is a work in progress. We are very close to completion of the map, but this map is subject to changed nevertheless.

A comment on the mountain ranges. As some of you have probably noticed, mountain passes are not accurately depicted in Rome Total War. We cannot accurately depict them completely either: we must cut a relatively flat path through a mountain range. That is also why we cannot make as many passes as there are in real life, to keep a homogenous mountain range. We need to have roads go through, but they can’t go through without a relatively flat space. So that is why the map has fractured mountain ranges.

Now, here are some pictures of the varied terrain of the world that is Europa Barbarorum:

Here we’ll compare the landscapes of Europa Barbarorum to the real thing over two thousand years later:

















We hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s update!

Please note that unless stated otherwise, ALL pictures shown in our previews are of works in progress. We continue to improve on all parts of EB, and we will continue to do so long after our initial release.

Since some areas where these news items are posted cannot handle wide images, we appreciate your restraint from quoting full-size images.

As always, if you have questions or comments, the best place to post them is here, where the EB team is most active:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=70

Or here:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=31


We give special thanks to http://www.imageshack.us and https://www.photobucket.com that provide us with a simple, foolproof, and free way to show you all these pictures each week.

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

The Europa Barbarorum team

[Region]

Sweet! This is so great... I think I shed a tear...

[Superbus]

For pete's sake, you latin scholars, you: noun before modifier.

Sinus Adriaticus and Pontus Euxinus are correct.

Mediterraneum Mare, Germanicum Mare, Persicus Sinus and all the rest are not .
"removed baiting attempt - barocca".

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Well, those are the exact names the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (by far and away the best and most accurate map of the ancient world) uses. Sorry you don't like them.

[Superbus]

It's not that I don't like them. They're not correct.

I'm not about to make any great claims for my latin, but latin and every language descended from it puts the noun first and its modifier second. The inversion happens in english and probably german I think. Perhaps someone on your team has the latin expertise to come up with the appropriate term.

And anyway, at the very least the terms on the map should be consistent with one another, and they're not. That suggests one set is incorrect, no?

Of course, if this is part of EB's new emphasis on the barbarian element, that's different. But you should also put the "R"'s backward.

As for Barrington, I like the map fine. Better than fine.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

It's not that I don't like them. They're not correct.

I'm not about to make any great claims for my latin, but latin and every language descended from it puts the noun first and its modifier second. The inversion happens in english and probably german I think. Perhaps someone on your team has the latin expertise to come up with the appropriate term.

And anyway, at the very least the terms on the map should be consistent with one another, and they're not. That suggests one set is incorrect, no?

Of course, if this is part of EB's new emphasis on the barbarian element, that's different. But you should also put the "R"'s backward.

As for Barrington, I like the map fine. Better than fine.

Good choice of a name to register here under as it is very fitting; kudos on that part. If you want to say that "the most important and most complicated project to be undertaken in classical studies this generation" is "ignint", then I think the "haughty" part is incredibly fitting. (Here are more reviews in case you're interested) As I said, the names for the bodies of water come straight from the Barrington (the only change is noted below), making no attempt to name them in the languages of the local peoples since they really don't affect the game itself, just this map.

The name Mediterraneum Mare is used instead of Internum Mare, but the same adj.-noun order of Internum Mare is kept and the Barrington reference for the form and origin and correctness of name is to V. Burr, Nostrum Mare. Ursprung und Geschichte der Namen des Mittelmeeres und seiner Teilmeere im Altertum, Stuttgart, 1932.
Their name of the Germanicum Mare is referenced by the BA in Ptol. 2.3.4 (but Latin used as it is for all of these) and further referenced in the Der Kleine Pauly, Lexikon der Antike, 5 vols., Stuttgart, 1964-1975 under the entry "Nordsee".
Also, they give the reference of the form Persicus Sinus as being the Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Stuttgart, 1893-1978, as well as in F. Vallat, Les noms geographiques de sources suso-elamites, Beihefte zum TAVO Reihe B Repertoire Geographique des Textes Cuneiformes, Tubingen, 1993: 8, 227.

I don't feel like listing all the rest, but I hope that my point is taken.

[Marinakis]

HOLY &$% GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


..... this brings tears of joy to my eyes!!

EB just took the lead ahead of RTR


AMAZING JOB WITH THE NATIVE NAMES!!!!

[Quietus]

Woot! You guys are really swell!

Quick questions:

How many provinces are there again?

and

Are those forest passable?

[ScionTheWorm]

marvellous. the scenarios are really beautiful and the campaign world map is just amazing. really like what you've done with the south there

[thrashaholic]

Could I inquire as to the lack of rivers in Britain? Everywhere else on your fine map seems well endowed with rivers, but Britain does not. From what I can tell none of the major waterways in Britain, such as the Severn, the Thames and the Trent, have been included.

They may not be as long or globally significant as mainland rivers, but they were of tactical and strategic importance here, and since you are going for accuracy, I'd have thought you'd have included them. Since this is a work in progress (and a very good one at that) I hope you can fix this little 'error'.

[Birka Viking]

Great work.....This is marvellous...Keep up the good work EB.......

[Dago]

Will you implement this map into the game?It looks realy nice.Ar those forrests passable?

[Copperhaired Berserker!]

awesome stuff, but one thing. the baktrian capital ( by the looks of it ) is spelled wrong. you need a "i" in the middle of "r" and "a" .

[eadingas]

Could I inquire as to the lack of rivers in Britain? Everywhere else on your fine map seems well endowed with rivers, but Britain does not. From what I can tell none of the major waterways in Britain, such as the Severn, the Thames and the Trent, have been included.

They're all there, they're just obscured by the writing :)

[Keyser]

Very nice work. :)
The map looks promising.

About the debate on the place of the noun... I don't speak latin, but i've learnt it like 2 months (before giving up, not enough time) and iirc, what i was told was that there is no formal order for the words of a sentence (since it's usually done to know what word stand for what and that's what the endings are for in latin), if it seems it was more classy to put the verb at the end of a sentence, it wasn't required (at least that's what i was told...).

For instance, in history, I've always heard of Nostrum Mare as Mare Nostrum (contrary to the practice of the modern romance languages), so i think this discussion is irrelevant in fact, and to my (limited) knowledge both forms may be correct.

However if i said any bulls**t please enlighten me, i like linguistic :) (and i am, by far, not an expert :( ).

[ENSAIS]

A sincere thank you to the EB team for the excellent work on the world map and individual maps.

I take it the location maps (river jordan, etc.) are for custom battles. Tell me you didn't (GASP) re-tile the entire world with new maps for each tile?!!! That was one claim from CA that had disappointed me before... I eagerly await battle maps that reflect the macromap terrain features. If you have actually done this massive retooling, for that alone I cannot thank you enough. What a significant contribution to the RTW community!


Thanks again.

ENSAIS.

[eadingas]

We did no such thing (yet), what you see are screenshots of the map as it is made using only regular map editing.
CA actually did a very good job with the way battlemap is rendered using campaign map. It's just that they didn't use these features well in vanilla. You can do the map very detailed even without custom tiling.

[Greek_fire19]

Are there some new terrain types? whats that greyish snow that covers part of germany in winter time?

[Boon]

not to sound horrible but i think superbus may be right, it just sounds wrong (not a good argument i know).

i am sure they have been put in many different ways, because i can remember distincly doing translations that featured the 'mare nostrum', so all i would say is that it just sounds clumsy.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

awesome stuff, but one thing. the baktrian capital ( by the looks of it ) is spelled wrong. you need a "i" in the middle of "r" and "a" .

The transliteration of the greek word would be Baktra. This is the capital we are talking about, not the satrapy/province/kingdom, which is still Baktria. But Baktra was the city itself, and it doesn't have an iota. Check a little more out on it here:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin...ut=&loc=bactra

You can see the word in parentheses after the initial (Latin) "Bactra" is "ta Baktra" which is the greek. It's a great website by the way! Hope this helps; I honestly am thrilled that there is a difference between the two - it has made referring to them a little easier than having both be the exact same.

[The Stranger]

no need for me to check.

[Freeze]

I agree with Superbus on the names, it is Mare Nostrum just like it is Pontus Euxinus. This is how I've always seen it in my 5 years of Latin. Next year will be my 6th year I do Latin so i'm pretty sure Superbus has a point.

[KingOfTheIsles]

Wasn't the term "Mare mediterraneum" first coined by Saint Isidore of Seville in the 7th century, in any case? I've seen it referred to as mare mediterraneum more often than mediterraneum mare, but it seems somehow inappropriate to use this term in any case. Still, it's up to the team to decide on the correct terminology used.

[eadingas]

It doesn't really matter anyway, you know, the names of seas don't appear in the game anywhere

[Pycckuu]

Awesome looking landscapes!

[Moros]

It doesn't really matter anyway, you know, the names of seas don't appear in the game anywhere

wasn't it your signature who said realism in everything ?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Anyone pay attention to the references I cited above?
I guess complaining about it without actually doing the research is ok, but when the research is presented and then things like "well, I think it's wrong maybe" or something like that are still being stated, it is frustrating.

I pick up a copy of the Oxford Latin Dictionary and see examples of both Sinus Persicus and Rubrum Mare, of Persicum Aruspicium and Sinum Persicum, of Persico Maro and Persica Braca all next to each other in the same entry. There are some rules guiding latin adjective/noun word order, but they are often broken for various reasons (which occasionaly are not even understood, but which sometimes are), and so if you want to complain that Juvenal and Catullus and Ovid and Horace and Pliny and Curtius are wrong, and that the BA researchers don't know what they were doing (when they cite all that they do and took a decade to make it), then you better have some good arguments. Is Sinus Persicus right? Absolutely. Is Persicus Sinus right? Absolutely. Am I perfectly content to use the names the Barrington Atlas uses, given the extensive references they provide and the highest level of quality and competency the scholar who have put it together have shown? Yes, of course.

What did the Romans call the Caspian Sea in 272BC? I have no idea if they even had a name for it then. Did they call it the Mediterraneum Mare in 272? The answer is definitely no. It isn't used till the seventh or eighth century AD as far as I've seen, but then we don't have extant maps from until something like the 12th century anyway and they certainly wouldn't have had anything like we're looking at here, so arguments about some of the niceties of this map (e.g., the latin version of names of seas) and a hardcore attitude about realism should dictate that we have no map at all, and if we do, they would dictate that we form it to fit 272bc pereceptions of geography, in which case it's some round image with regions heavily distorted from what we know them as today - and thus we get back to the 'why even have it' idea. gah.

A little inquiry about a "cartographic bonus" is totally fine, and I was happy to answer the first question on this particular topic, but I'm more than a little tired of all the subsequent bickering about the names of the bodies of water, especially when none of the arguments has shown that any of the names were wrong in the first place, just that other versions would also be acceptable (with which argument I totally agree). Especially considering that no one else has taken the time to look up the variances or at the B.A. reference entries or the O.L.D. or any of the other stuff that I did in an attempt to explain it.

I guess I should have just posted this instead:

[Big_John]

well i, for one, accept your explanation and respect your impeccable source, teleklos.

[Greek_fire19]

SwebMtraustastámnMz?

GáwjamHáttMz?

GáwjamRugMz?

GáwjamKimbrMz?

Seriously? Or are you just kidding?

...I hope they have catchy nicknames....

[Big_John]

those "M"s are supposed to be "o"s, i think. if you look at http://img7.echo.cx/my.php?image=image94ve.jpg you'll see those same cities have "o"s in place, and some of the "a"s lose their accents. it makes it a little easier. i'm guessing the "M"s come from a non-english version of the game or something? oddly, if you compare that first image i linked to this one http://img206.echo.cx/my.php?image=forests9bp.jpg, "gáwjám silengoz" becomes "limios alsos".. hm...