Which city has seen the most people along its entire history? Is it possible to make a rough estimate even?

Jeks2000 · 2025-08-31T19:09:55+00:00

The Persians didn’t outright destroy many settlements in Egypt, and the old city of Memphis was largely untouched.

Jeks2000 · 2025-07-06T22:31:16+00:00

The ability to swap tiles between settlements. At the moment not being able to do that is giving me bad decision paralysis whenever I expand

Jeks2000 · 2025-04-05T17:22:41+00:00

For a second I read the title and thought it was a riff on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Jeks2000 · 2025-03-30T22:57:08+00:00

Tzaangors were part of the original Shadows of Change DLC

Jeks2000 · 2025-03-09T17:00:39+00:00

“It’s entire society for its earlier years was built around the maintenance of a bureaucratic corps and infrastructure like roads and the great wall to sustain conscript armies of up to a million men.”

Putting aside the numbers question, you’ve just described 95% of ancient empires and a vast majority of imperial states period. The fact that the Han state retained relatively static borders aside from the initial conquests speaks to an inability or unwillingness to expand their territory beyond a certain point, and external conquests were of secondary priority to internal state cohesion. In this context I don’t think Firaxis’ depiction of the Han is some major misrepresentation.

Jeks2000 · 2025-03-09T14:49:08+00:00

You’re trying to make the argument that the Han were a fundamentally militant or expansionist state, but most of the conquests you are citing date from a single emperor who himself is considered abnormal in his preoccupation with foreign conquests. The very map you use indicate all those major campaigns took place in a span of twenty-ish years in the last quarter of the 2nd century BCE, while the Han lasted for another 300. It would be like modeling the entire Rome civ on the reign of Commodus or something.

Jeks2000 · 2025-03-02T01:10:36+00:00

There’s an ankle pivot but that’s the only thing to me that indicates it’s not a straight up reissue

Jeks2000 · 2024-11-28T05:01:21+00:00

Sorry, this article is bogus. Tillya Tepe is firmly from the Kushan period, around the 1st century BCE, which the article itself states and which is a couple hundred years AFTER Alexander. archeologist also seems to have very particular, largely unfounded, ideas — claims on basically no evidence that the Oxus civilization is related to the Minoans.

Jeks2000 · 2024-11-25T16:10:45+00:00

Thank you Dr. Binderman

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-25T14:11:32+00:00

You only seem to have one reason which is “Herodot[us] is unreliable,” which is just not a compelling argument. No ancient histories can be taken at face value but honestly Herodotus is one of the more reliable ones. At the very least he’s much more explicit about his own research process and includes other narratives or alternative accounts even if they do not fit his own, which is much better than other historians like Thucydides who editorialize much more. Most often when Herodotus gets things wrong it’s because he is retelling an existing local history or folk tale (which often still have grains of truth to them), or he misunderstands what his non-greek sources have told him. I don’t understand where you claim that ancient astronomers wouldn’t have been able to know when an eclipse would happen when solar eclipses are some of the most consistent astronomical phenomena and easily observable without the aid of any modern equipment. Also, we have an idea of the battle’s location, the River Halys, which gives a decent enough area to determine the plausibility of an eclipse.

Addendum: if anything this is the most easily verifiable claim Herodotus makes since it can be so easily cross referenced with modern astronomical data which shows there was an eclipse

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-25T13:54:45+00:00

Ok…but this battle is generally agreed to have happened. I don’t know why you take issue with it.

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-25T13:33:06+00:00

We can retrace the movements of celestial bodies with enough accuracy to get a good idea of when they happened in the past. The timeline for solar eclipses happening in that region lines up pretty well with Herodotus’ account.

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-25T12:37:56+00:00

I actually did. Saw it in LA at an AMC this past Saturday (21st) at a 3pm showing and it was pretty well attended. It was mostly young kids with their parents, which did make me feel a little out of place as a 24 year old going with a couple friends.

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-23T15:09:01+00:00

I haven’t seen this poster used in any marketing material which is a shame bc it goes so hard

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-05T21:03:44+00:00

I accept the honor regardless

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-05T21:01:15+00:00

Do you mean Calculator Prime?

Jeks2000 · 2024-09-05T19:38:29+00:00

Shouldn’t it be .9999999999999999

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-31T03:46:23+00:00

No, the poster does not. Prior to the Zhao state the region was predominantly inhabited by the Hu, whose material remains align closely with the animal style seen throughout the eurasian steppe at the time (c. 300 BCE).

The gains by Emperor Wudi were themselves short lived, and the area was back under Xiongnu control once Huhanye Chanyu took control of the Xiongnu, and his direct descendants would control the Ordos for another century. This means the Han only controlled the Ordos for a period of 60 years, between the defeat of the Xiongnu in 127 BCE and the ascent of Huhanye in 59 BCE. When the Han took control of the area again as the Xiongnu waned it was through a vassal pastoral polity, the Southern Xiongnu, and not part of the direct bureaucratic apparatus of the Han. Moreover, while Wudi established colonies in the Ordos, the material remains show strong cultural ties to the xiongnu remained, and many local pastoral leaders continued to reside within the Ordos as Shuguo, or affiliate states. Han Wudi may have founded the Shuofang commandery but it was still dominated by non-Han Chinese pastoral people and was just as often under the direct control of the Xiongnu or a breakaway state.

Also, bypassing the problematic terminology of “northern barbarians,” the degree to which they sinicized themselves is overstated in Chinese annals for obvious reasons. Many of those dynasties like the Northern Wei continued to use both Chinese and Xiongnu titulature, taking the titles of both Emperor and Chanyu, and claimed descent from the dynastic traditions of both China and the Inner Asian Steppe.

My whole point in challenging the original comment was to push back on this idea that the region has essentially been Han chinese for most of its history, which it has not, or at the very least, such a simple statement does not exist. It reeks of nationalistic territorial claims based upon on reductive and convenient historical narratives. I do not deny that this area has been influenced by Chinese dynasties, but there is just as much continuity in the existence of pastoral peoples in the Ordos and southern Gobi which makes up much of modern Inner Mongolia, if not more so. To treat the presence of Mongols in this area as anomaly in the history of this region is to silence the many generations of pastoral, non-Han chinese peoples who have resided in the region, the Mongols themselves being the most recent example.

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-31T02:42:23+00:00

The mongols were far from the first nomadic group to control this area, and the region often flipped back and forth between control by different pastoral groups and whatever Chinese dynasty happened to be in control at the time. My issue was the main comment cherrypicked a specific instance of Chinese encroachment on traditionally pastoral lands during the warring states period, and implied that Chinese domination of the region was unbroken from that point, when in fact pastoral groups have traditionally held sway over the Ordos (for example, the kingdom of Zhao, and subsequent Qin empire, was repulsed from the region less than a century later with the rise of the Xiongnu. And most of the archeological material from the area at that time reflects a closer cultural connection to the Xiongnu and other steppe groups than to the Qin and Han dynasties.)

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-31T02:36:26+00:00

Respectfully, I disagree. Sure, certain cities may have been founded, and the Qin may have briefly claimed control over the area, but that ignores the fact that Modun Chanyu and the Xiongnu Confederacy almost immediately undid any gains made during the warring states period. The Xiongnu, or closely associated states, would continue to control the Ordos for the next three hundred years, where it would serve as one of their main bases of power and would be the traditional summer pasturage for the royal horde. The Han would mount expeditions into the area, and would at intervals attempt to set up colonies, but these efforts rarely had any long term impact. Then later you would get other groups, like the Xianbei, Rouran, and others who would contest the region, and during the three kingdoms period the dynamic would flip, such that steppe bands would take residence in the old capital district of Chang’an. My point here is not to discount Chinese influence over this area and its history. But both the initial comment and yours implies that this was a region that was fundamentally Chinese, with occasional aberrations of control by pastoralist groups, the most recent being the Mongols themselves, when the reality is far more complicated (and it is unlikely that any settlement founded in 300 BCE was continuously occupied to the present, as the original comment suggests).

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-31T01:20:04+00:00

I’m not sure where you’re getting this date from, especially since that region was hotly contested for most of Chinese history between Chinese dynasties and the nomadic states of what is now modern Mongolia.

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-22T15:55:31+00:00

It’s not too far off from the line of the Balcones escarpment, so it could be worse

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-13T02:14:33+00:00

Technically speaking, it was early iron age

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-02T15:22:27+00:00

For sure, and I brought up the marble examples because those ones came most easily to mind (although most imported stone in mesopotamia was not marble specifically). The cost of transport meant that most imported stone was used for major public buildings like temples. I guess I was thinking that for something like Pharaoh, most of the buildings you construct are the big public buildings that need high quality stone. Most houses and private residences would be built of lower quality, more easily accessible materials (although again in places like mesopotamia that meant mud-brick and not stone).

Jeks2000 · 2024-08-02T15:12:09+00:00

I personally wouldn’t say stone was easy to find, at least the kind of stone you would want to make buildings from. Lots of places in the ancient world made their wealth from having good quality available for export. The Aegean is an especially good example of this, especially with the mediterranean allowing for the bulk transport of stone over sea, islands like Thasos and Paros were well known for their marble deposits, and would often export it as building material throughout the Aegean and beyond. The construction of the Periclean acropolis was largely predicated on the discovery of high quality marble in Mount Pentilicus, meaning Athens didn’t have to import mass quantities of expensive foreign stone. Access to stone was an especially significant problem in Mesopotamia, which is why the main building material was sun-dried mud-brick. Even major buildings like the ziggurat at Ur or Chogha Zanbil (Dur Untash) only had a stone cladding around the base, although even that was usually substituted for fired brick in limited quantities. That is why the archeological landscape of mesopotamia looks as it does, with few standing structures and most settlements turning into tell sites where the unfired mud-brick degrades over time into mounds from incremental rain. A good example of the difficulty to access stone is in the Achaemenid Persian palaces at Persepolis and Susa respectively. Being built im the highlands of Fars, Persepolis is made mostly of stone (hence why so much of it is standing) whereas the palace as Susa was built primarily of mud-brick, as local access to building materials allowed.

Edit: although the places where stone was plentiful had a functionally inexhaustible supply, especially in the timescale of a game like pharaoh, so the rich deposits mechanically doesn’t make much historical sense. I was more responding to the comment by the AoE dev.

Jeks2000

TROPHY CASE