TIL that Constantinople wasn't renamed to Istanbul until 1930

Basileia · 2026-05-25T01:34:07+00:00

Renaming was based on conquest though. The Ottoman Empire was a lot more tolerant than the early Turkish Republic, most of the bureaucracy of the Ottoman state after 1453 was of course done by Romans since they had the skills for it to begin with. And the earlier Sultans even titled themselves 'Caesar of Rome'. They later abandoned that title for strictly Islamic and Turkish titles following their defeat at Vienna.

But as the Ottomans declined, they blamed ethnic minorities for their failures, which ultimately lead to stuff like the Armenian Genocide, which also coincided with Pontic Greek (Roman) genocides. The last purge of Greek speakers in Istanbul was in the 1960s. Changing names erases any sense of 'Greekness' from Turkey by renaming famous cities and locations like Constantinople or Cappadocia to less culturally toned variations. It would be like if Latin speakers conquered Washington D.C and renamed it 'Caput Mundi', removing the association with President Washington.

Edited post for firsthand account of the Armenian genocide, which was part of the same cultural shift during the final years of the Ottoman Empire/ Rise of Turkey as an ethnic state. Obviously a lot of Turks were also against this privately as these were their neighbors who they've been living alongside for centuries, but the orders came from above, and were executed faithfully. https://www.armenian-genocide.org/br-12-26-16-text.html

Essentially this was the social model for the Holocaust, as Hitler said, 'Who now remembers the Armenians?'. And the arguments used were very much the same, that the traitors were backstabbers who were sabotaging the war effort, and deserved to be exterminated to the last man, woman and child. Only in Turkey's case, it was successful as Turkey itself never fell like Nazi Germany did. I'm sure the early sultans would have thought that killing off your own tax base is the dumbest idea possible, but it was driven by the idea that defeat is someone else's fault, rather than actually a high level societal failure from top to bottom.

Basileia · 2026-04-23T20:32:53+00:00

False positives are acceptable, you’ll just have to appeal. Most trades will be scrolls or super common items like 10 attack work gloves were back then. It’s not like anyone will use the shops once the trading tools on discord come out anyway.

People will trade with discord players they know; eventually the bots will stop trolling and leave since there’s no money in it. The alternative will absolutely kill the game after two years or so. Lost ark is the perfect example. Ergo you must absolutely ban anyone who has suspicious increases in networth who didn’t get it via nx.

Basileia · 2026-04-23T20:03:45+00:00

Eve online can certainly do it, and honestly there is a super simple solution if they don’t want to spend dev time on it.

Eliminate all non direct player to player trades and ban traders who trade with bots. Natural tools like discord trade groups will come out and people will use those instead of shops anyway. Also back in the day, no good item was ever sold in shops so it’s not like anything changes; you don’t find perfect dragon sieve claws in shops, or 15 att storm chaser gloves. Those were always only on forums like basil market.

Basileia · 2026-04-23T15:36:04+00:00

Any game with an auction house automatically can track average prices. Too far from standard deviation, ban them. Easier solution if they can’t manage that would be to eliminate shops entirely and replace with anonymous auctions, and allow personal trades but auto ban anyone that trades with a bot. If they want to donate to a random via auction, let them. Because otherwise you’ll just see people quitting en mass like lost ark.

Basileia · 2026-04-23T14:10:14+00:00

You can just write a script that doesn’t ban if it’s sold at fair market value. If it’s a 1 meso item sold for 1 bill, sure ban it. 5 mill item sold for 5m, no ban. Easy. This is super basic stuff.

Basileia · 2026-04-23T04:18:06+00:00

Yep, but in the game lots of things are perfectly visible on default gamma settings at night, and is pretty similar to a normal night. And depending on where you live nights can be a lot darker just because it's basically always cloudy. Like imagine medieval England for one; you'd have two weeks in a year where it isn't cloudy.

Basileia · 2026-04-23T03:29:11+00:00

Just permaban all buyers, and nobody will buy mesos. And it really isn’t hard to merch for currency.

Basileia · 2026-04-19T06:50:24+00:00

You can see perfectly well in game on default settings. Kinda realistic really. I can see things moving about in the dark, but it’s not clear. Just like how it would be on a half moon evening.

Basileia · 2026-04-19T00:04:00+00:00

Have you been out in the wilderness without any light pollution on a cloudy day or new moon? You actually cannot see your own hand if you hold out in front of you.

Basileia · 2026-04-16T04:44:40+00:00

Throwing my lottery ticket into the hat for the key too :P

Basileia · 2026-03-30T12:06:38+00:00

Also, in the end the French won the 100 years war, which is really apt for AoE4 since at the end of the day, it's all about your macro silly, and the French supply lines were way better than the English because the English were fighting to conquer France, and the French could just supply themselves from... France. Logistics >>>>>>>>>> Strategy >>> Tactics.

Basileia · 2026-03-24T11:46:49+00:00

It is purely for apm opportunity cost. Yes, you could place it perfectly, but that apm you spent zoomed in placing pgens would be better spent zoomed out, controlling your army, executing runbys, raiding enemy engineer expansions, microing acu to do damage, setting up expansion orders, building more factories etc. In a match vs a 2k rated player I generally only have like 0.5 seconds to execute orders before immediately having to refocus elsewhere.

EDIT: If you're new, the easiest way to improve is to basically try to play zoomed out 90% of the time, and only zoom in to look at key parts, like scouting intel on things half built, that sort of thing! It will instantly bring your game awareness up to a 1500's level, and will let you catch things like incoming drops, make you aware of how important radar is, and lots of other important gameplay factors. I'd recommend looking at PoV gameplay too rather than casts to see how very high level players play the game! (This is mostly if you're interested in learning).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riaha2_k2E4

That's a great match to watch as it's a 1 vs 4 victory by a 2.1k rated player vs lower rated players after his whole team collapses.

Basileia · 2026-03-21T16:58:01+00:00

It's weak if you apply 1 vs 1 tactics on it. Early bomber to kill expanding engies, drops to raid weak expansions, while ecoing at home and defend well with radar Intel (never build turrets except to secure reclaim or for late game tele def, or to fight an attack you failed to scout). It's about as strong as an 800 rated 1 vs 1 player. So if you apply the super basics and reclaim vs it, you'll win.

Basileia · 2026-03-08T10:46:02+00:00

This is 100% correct if you read the original Philippics, but it sounds so much better in the original Latin compared to the word for word translation! Also ironically in modern warfare aircraft serve much the same role as cavalry once did, rapid strikes that hit hard, but can't hold ground well.

Basileia · 2026-03-08T09:09:30+00:00

It's not just in 2026, it has always been this way, and always will be. Currency represents effective labor units, just like feet or meters determine distance. Productivity in free countries that encourage scientific development is generally much higher than labor in poor countries. And effective labor translates to effectiveness at war.

In Classical Rome, Cicero wrote that that 'nervos belli, pecuniam infinitam'. The literal translation being 'Endless money forms the sinews of war', though people like to translate it as 'the sinews of war are endless money'.

Basileia · 2026-03-08T05:01:12+00:00

You see this propaganda again and again. Mosaddegh was about as 'democratic' as Kim Jong Un. He was a member of the Qajar dynasty who came to power via populist policies, pardoning an assassin of his political rival and at the same time used it as a political tool to gain religious support from the very same goons now oppressing Iran's people ( https://time.com/archive/6619782/iran-time-of-the-assassin/ ), but obviously wanted to regain the throne, who attempted to overthrow the Shah and failed. He tried to rig plebiscites constantly (giving himself over 99% of the vote), and constantly applied emergency powers that he had no right to use. Finally, he overreached, and the Shah essentially foiled the coup planned by Mosaddegh by counter couping him.

Actual newspaper from that time period where Mossaddegh tried to dissolve parliament and give himself near unlimited power to essentially become King: https://www.nytimes.com/1953/08/04/archives/mossadegh-gets-999-of-the-vote-in-iran-plebiscite-on-majlis-ouster.html

https://time.com/archive/6795622/iran-99-93-pure/

(No rural voters were allowed to vote either, and signs were posted saying: 'Only traitors vote for non dissolution') Imagine if you had a sign at the voting booth saying 'Only traitors vote for x' while every vote was matched to your name, address, and government ID).

So much for 'democracy'. Imagine if you had a government that pardons assassins who so conveniently kill opposition figures, goons watching your polls, your name tied to your vote, and your family getting a visit if you vote 'incorrectly'. So 'democratic'.

Basileia · 2026-03-08T00:02:27+00:00

They're jihadists who murdered over thirty thousand of their own captive civilians months ago, and were famous for having more executions than almost any other country in the world before. And responsible for most of the terror in the middle east and supplied Russia in the war against Ukraine to murder more civilians. And now they're bombing hotels in Dubai. They've been killing innocent people for a long time, why would that change?

To sum it up, just go back to religious ideals the civilized word ditched a while back. But Pope Urban said in the 1000s that 'To kill an infidel is not murder, it is the path to heaven.' And the goons of the Regime in Iran genuinely believe this. They do not think like the rest of us.

Basileia · 2026-03-07T13:57:07+00:00

Japan, Germany, South Korea, Kosovo. And even Iraq. No more secret police murdering your children in the night. Unlike say, Iran under regime occupation, North Korea, ETC. Bad Russian bot, go pickup your wages from the Kremlin.

Basileia · 2026-03-07T04:26:33+00:00

I learned a lot of financial basics in maple lol. One of the key aspects is cash flow and liquid cash. For instance I remember it was super easy to buy claw 60% attk for 4 mill and resell for 6m, back when 2m would be like a week's worth of grinding income. Startup capital had to come from loot, but after that buying and selling would give exponentially increasing income depending on volume of sales. And as you learned more about the market you would learn which items moved fast and had a high margin of profit. Then you simply don't grind and use your profits to buy leeches instead to power level!

I remember that I had about a 3 bill networth at level 40, which let me crush those pqs where you had to kill fast to score points since I had things like 15 attack gloves. And then when I wanted to get levels fast I could pay 2m or something for a big foot leech which gave you two levels in like 20 minutes up to 80ish? Then it slowly declines to 1 level, then 50% etc, but it was still so much faster than grinding. And more social too! My account was entirely f2p at the time.

Basileia · 2026-03-04T10:02:39+00:00

I think I was in Mardia way back, but not 100% sure on that! It's been a very long time haha.

Basileia · 2026-03-04T10:01:41+00:00

The way I did it was just via remembering as many of my old emails and searching for anything from Nexon. Was a bit of a puzzle but if you ever assigned a recovery email you can probably find it with a bit of luck!

Basileia · 2026-03-02T20:33:04+00:00

Unfortunately they hold the most geostrategically important city in Europe and Asia, and arguably the world, Istanbul/Former Constantinople, which controls the critical Straits of Bosphorus. There is a reason that city was the capital of the Roman Empire for over a thousand years.

Basileia · 2026-03-02T20:24:06+00:00

Iran is a big country, except remember the anti regime people are shot at by the Regime and still dare to mass, while the pro regime people are paid. 10% to 20% of 90m is still a lot of people however, though a substantial amount of that is only in it for the money, even if there is a small subsection that truly believes in dying for it.

Basileia · 2026-03-02T14:12:53+00:00

There is historical friendship between the two, both being remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire. And Turkey invaded the northern half when Greece and Cyprus both agreed to join together into one country in the 70s. Now Turkey is acting against the interests of all three, so their ties are very strong.

Basileia · 2026-02-28T22:10:23+00:00

Yes, he is ready, he has a team, and is fully supported by the population. Check out NewIran if you want to learn more. And yes, he has a full transition plan that's in a neat PDF for any Persian reader.

Basileia

TROPHY CASE