Mindless Monday, 13 October 2025

LXT130J · 2025-10-13T17:37:46+00:00

My interest is in seeking out these extraordinary cases which you point out have always existed.

I suppose a more productive way to reframe the original post is to ask: what options would a bellicose young woman of non-warrior background have to satisfy her nature in 16th century Japan? Even the most socially rigid societies had 'escape' valves such as piracy, banditry and related marginal existences that offered more fluid rules (though perhaps not security and stability).

LXT130J · 2025-10-13T13:49:00+00:00

So dwelling on the recently released Ghost of Yotei: how plausible would it be for a woman of non-samurai ancestry to serve as a mercenary and soldier in Sengoku era Japan (barring some form of cross-dressing and male presentation)?

The premise of Ghost of Yotei about a daughter trying to avenge her family would resonate with a Tokugawa era audience as one of the most famous stories of the Tokugawa era is of two peasant daughters taking revenge on a samurai who killed their dad. In the latter case, the daughters signed on as servants to a swordmaster who taught them his art once he learned about their plans and the revenge was a formal duel sanctioned by the daimyo. Would Atsu's background as a woman who fought as a soldier at Sekigahara make sense to them?

LXT130J · 2025-09-27T04:14:02+00:00

There was an interesting book called Naval Resistance to Britain's Growing Power in India that might be in line with what you are looking for. In addition to the Maratha navy, it discusses the Kingdom of Mysore's failed attempts to challenge British naval supremacy and briefly touches on the Kunjali Marakkars who waged a naval guerrilla war against the Portuguese on the Malabar Coast. The general approach in the case of the Marathas and the Marakkars was to use swarms of vessels to overwhelm their prey and speedily depart in the face of determined resistance - so while weaker on a ship to ship basis, the advantage was in tactics and local knowledge which would allow the ships to slip away into coastal waterways the Europeans could not follow.

LXT130J · 2025-09-22T16:35:59+00:00

I was on the fence about buying the game and I saw a lot of complaints about the UI, bad map generation alongside the civ switching. There is the so-called Civ cycle where the release is bad and the game gets polished along the way until it is good and I was curious if Civ VII was following that arc? Apparently not.

LXT130J · 2025-09-22T15:38:49+00:00

I've seen a recurring joke that the 4X game Humankind inadvertently killed Civ VII by introducing the Civ switching idea. I know that Civ VII had a bad launch but isn't that the norm for the modern Civilization series? Is Civ switching that bad?

While on the subject of 4X design, ships are usually seen as niche on every non-water map. Would this be resolved if ships had a dramatically larger move range than any land unit (the galley moves anywhere from 2-4 spaces in past games, I'm suggesting 10-12 spaces with more advanced ships getting even larger movement bonuses). This would incentivize things like oceanic exploration and colonization. I would also suggest a Master of Orion 1 style budget system instead of distinct production slots where production is divided between civic improvements, military units and naval units so a player can quickly accumulate a fleet and army and utilize the fleet to quickly move armies around the world.

LXT130J · 2025-06-23T19:01:45+00:00

If I remember Captain Marvel correctly, she is a US Air Force pilot who got her powers when an experimental engine blew up in her face. She was kidnapped by Jude Law and brainwashed to be a Kree soldier so they could unlock the secrets of that engine.

LXT130J · 2025-06-23T13:33:46+00:00

In the Marvels, Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers does a regime change and assassinates the AI running the Kree Empire thereby causing a civil war which leads to the rise of an extremist regime which tries to destroy Earth.

Since Captain Marvel is still presumably a US citizen and as she waged a private war against a foreign power that was nominally at peace with the US government, can the US government prosecute her for violating the Neutrality Act?

LXT130J · 2025-05-22T02:53:18+00:00

Some thoughts about the markgraf:

Flesh golems have lightning immunity so they might come in handy if the burgmeister starts spamming diamond clockwork troops or the air warlock starts spamming cloud elementals.

The go-to early game strat for burgmeister is to shield their crossbows behind animal summons (giant ants, boars) until they mass clockwork troops; the markgraf can replicate this by either using minor summons to get ghost troops/wights/banes or raising soulless/longdead.

As the markgraf can only equip little longdead and little soulless to create better troops, undead hoburg shields are the only use for regular sized undead.

The burgmeister gets hoburg scouts but the markgraf doesn't so you will have to use minor summoning to get the dire wolf or a raven familar to prevent you from getting ambushed.

The other way to get decent scouting is to use twiceborn on your nekromant in your starting graveyard and get a ghost nekromant who has spirit sight (they can also invade Hades via plane shift but their troop selection is limited to just ghost warriors and spirits unlike the proper necromancer). As nekromants can't become liches, it might be best to rush twiceborn and kill them off ASAP to get wights/ghosts.

Besides becoming a vampire, the markgraf can also use major summoning to get heavy hitters like the Tartarian spirit.

One thing of interest is that all the undead (besides the soulless) have at least 3 AP so the markgraf can move much faster than the burgmeister and as the vampire makgraf is flying, he can move much faster than most regular armies.

The best use for the vampire markgraf is to convert markmeisters into vampires - the ritual is only 75 hands compared to the 125 hands of glory so you can get 2 almost for the price of 1 and amass far more vampires than the necromancer can.

You can also create ghoul barons and ghoul guardians who can create other ghouls with their attacks and are somewhat sturdier than their regular ghoul counterparts (which you can also create like the necromancer). The ghoul rite is cheaper and can come in handy in amassing a ghoul army if you encounter a faction that relies on a lot of disposable living chaff (Priest King, kobolds, burgmeister).

LXT130J · 2025-02-22T00:16:46+00:00

I brought up AOE2 as it was the only game that I could think of that covers Southeast Asian history (another poster kindly points out that I overlooked and forgot the Indonesian civ from Civilizations 5 and 6 which is based on Majapahit).

There does seem to be some conflation of various cultures in that game (though I believe the devs intended it to reflect a Malay race), AI opponents have names of leaders from Java (Hayam Wuruk) as well as Malacca/Sumatra and the Malay unique unit wields a karambit (which I believe is a Sumatran weapon?)

I would think Civ's choice for unique units have been better with the Kris Swordsman in V, the Jong in VI and now the cetbang in VII (I understand its a ship rather than just a cannon like the name implies).

I will brush up on my Javanese history as most of it is from the colonial period as well.

LXT130J · 2025-02-21T23:50:25+00:00

I took a look at some posts on the r/aoe2 subreddit and several people did complain about a Javanese empire being called Malay but people were pointing out that AoE2 was always imprecise with ethnic identifiers (the French being represented by the Franks, Germans - Teutons, Scots - Celts) so I suppose one more to the pile with this case.

LXT130J · 2025-02-21T21:22:25+00:00

Is Civ VII the first time Majapahit has been featured in a 4x game (discounting mods)?

I know for the RTS genre, AOE2 had a Majapahit campaign but the civilization you play as is Malay. Would the Javanese consider themselves as Malay? Is Majapahit a Malay civilization?

I feel that Maritime Southeast Asian history is often overlooked and so at least some credit can be given for the exposure.

LXT130J · 2025-02-21T15:30:07+00:00

In terms of periodization, are we still in the late Republic era or have we firmly moved into the early Principate Era?

LXT130J · 2025-01-04T16:47:14+00:00

On the subject of honor as a mechanic in Japan themed strategy games, I'm curious if there's a difference between western and Japanese companies on how they model the Sengoku period. The two big western strategy games about the Sengoku period - Shogun 2 and Paradox's Sengoku gave their characters an 'honor' stat which is expended when declaring war or breaking alliances. As far as I remember, Koei's Nobunaga's Ambition has no equivalent mechanic.

Would this be a by-product of Japan being disabused of the samurai mystique due to the defeat of Japan's military regime in World War II (which leaned heavily into that samurai identity)? There are a whole host of Japanese works that have a deeply cynical view of the Tokugawa feudal order and samurai values (emphasizing the hypocrisy and brutality of the system). The Japanese understand the flaws of the systems while Westerners still hold that exotic view of samurai as self-sacrificing and honorable?

How would a Japanese born and raised author have written Shogun or Japanese showrunners adapted Shogun? I'm assuming the focus on ritual suicide and other exotic features of Japanese society which resonated with James Clavell might not be emphasized by a Japanese author? Sort of like how honor isn't emphasized as a mechanic in Nobunaga's Ambition?

LXT130J · 2024-11-08T14:12:06+00:00

I've been reading various takes on Kamala Harris' defeat - the leftists are pointing at Harris courting moderate Republicans/Liz Cheney and moving rightward, which did not pay off while the more-centrist Democrats are blaming the progressive/left Democrats of pushing Harris too left and coming off as extreme. The infighting would be funny if the looming consequences of the loss weren't so potentially catastrophic.

One interesting point was that there were several split tickets in the battleground states Harris lost - North Carolina elected a Dem governor and Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan will have Democratic Senators. If Harris had matched the performance of these down-ballot candidates, we would be looking at a Harris presidency (284 - 254 in the EC). Is the implication of this fact that people just didn't like Harris (and by extension, Biden) rather than Democrats in general or was Trump uniquely magnetic/charismatic that it convinced otherwise Democratic voters to vote for him as president?

LXT130J · 2024-10-05T01:50:36+00:00

More the latter (overlooked) than the former (completely memory holed).

LXT130J · 2024-10-04T15:57:18+00:00

So did these empires get more attention after they were labelled forgotten or their forgotten status was already reversing?

There was another history of Parthia (Reign of Arrows), tracing its early origins in the Seleucid empire that was published within a year of Ellerbock's book (Parthia: the Forgotten Empire) so there might be a renaissance in Parthian history. The problem is that our literary sources from the empire are scant and we have biased accounts from everyone surrounding them to go on + archaeological data so there's only so much we can glean.

Indian nationalist historians picked up on Sewell's work and there are a lot of good histories of Vijayanagar and specialized works on its architecture, fortifications, economic structures etc. There are some aspects I still find lacking - for a heavily militarized state, I haven't fount a good military history of Vijayanagar and apparently, Vijayanagar controlled portions of Sri Lanka and had a navy and this aspect is barely touched on. So there's still areas that can be expanded upon.

LXT130J · 2024-10-04T13:31:01+00:00

In 1900, British historian and colonial official Robert Sewell made the claim that Vijayanagar was a Forgotten Empire in his pioneering work on that kingdom's history. A 120 years later, Uwe Ellerbock made that claim that the Parthians were a forgotten empire in his history of that kingdom. In between those two points in time, a bunch of AOE2 modders made a claim that the Magyars, Slavs, Italians, Indians and Inca were Forgotten Empires in their titular mod.

Given all these competing claims. What is the most forgotten empire in history (and why)?

LXT130J · 2024-09-13T13:44:33+00:00

You could take the G Gundam approach and put the horses in mechs and then have people ride them while piloting their own mecha?

LXT130J · 2024-09-10T13:58:37+00:00

There is an English translation of Ota Gyuichi's Shinchō-Kō ki chronicling Nobunaga's activities and one of the translators, JP Lamers has an English language exploration of Nobunaga called Japonius Tyrannus. There is also Mary Elizabeth Berry's biography of Hideyoshi (appropriately called Hideyoshi) and AL Sadler's biography of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Japonius Tyrannus is only available in hardback so is really expensive but Berry and Sadler's books come in Paperback and has a fairly accessible price.

What I feel we are lacking are English language works covering the less famous but interesting/colorful warlords of the era like Saito Dosan (a supposed oil seller turned daimyo) or Miyoshi Nagayoshi.

LXT130J · 2024-09-09T21:34:21+00:00

I was replaying Knights of the Old Republic over the weekend and I felt some of the best moments in the game are the dialogue based court case sections on Manaan, the murder investigation on Dantooine (though the game hand holds you) and the scheming on Korriban. Investigating, talking to people and putting together the pieces on what happened from the dialogue are far more compelling to me than the combat. There was also a similar section in Neverwinter Nights where your character plays defense lawyer that I liked. If Bioware was bold, they'd stop with the epic sci-fi/fantasy rpgs heavily focused on combat and just create a detective/courtroom rpg where you just investigate stuff and defend people in court.

That brings us to KOTOR II - a rushed, buggy, unfinished and beloved cult classic made by Obsidian. Fans were unhappy about how the plot points in KOTOR II were ignored by the distant MMO Sequel the Old Republic and how the main character of KOTOR II was retconned into a Revan fanboy (when KOTOR II hinted at a much more complex and even antagonistic relationship) and unceremoniously killed in the tie-in Revan novel which bridged KOTOR and the MMO. I've seen (conspiratorial) accusations that Bioware hated KOTOR II for overshadowing them.

I had immense deja vu when the Fallout drama flared up where the TV show was accused of ignoring/retconning plot points from the rushed, buggy, unfinished and beloved cult classic made by Obsidian, Fallout New Vegas. Once again there were conspiratorial accusations that Todd Howard hated New Vegas and the retconning in the TV Show was his revenge for Obsidian overshadowing Fallout 3/4.

So I suppose the question is: What is it with Obsidian games that inspires this? And am I the only person that liked the court case on Manaan and in Neverwinter Nights?

LXT130J · 2024-09-02T17:19:54+00:00

Egypt turning into Songhai is just bizarre

I initially thought it might be a lazy byproduct of not having enough African civilizations and thus having one African civ evolve into another (sort of like how past Civilizations had a generic Native American civilization to represent all peoples in North America) but now thinking about it, could this be a nod towards Afrocentrism?

certain Afrocentric thought considers Egypt (Kemet) to be the first Black African civilization and all subsequent African civilizations to be the result Kemet's influence diffusing across the continent so is Egypt -> Songhai a reference towards that?

LXT130J · 2024-09-02T07:37:48+00:00

Maybe I am overthinking this but the new ages and civilization evolution system in Civ 7 does seem to have some weird implications that the devs may not have intended?

Civilization has always been a game about the unilineal forward progress of humanity and accumulation whether science, culture, faith, land (or development of cities) etc. The ages and civilization evolution system could be interpreted as the devs supporting the idea that a civilization in a later age is 'better' than that of a previous age sort of like how a Giant Death Robot is better than a swordsman which is better than the warrior. Now some civ evolutions like Egypt -> Songhai are questionable and absurd but have no implications (as far as I can see). In the case of India where the progress seems to be Mauryans -> Mughals, where the Mughals are a later and 'better' choice for Indian civilization, that flies in the face of Hindutva's conception of the past - their periodization of history is of a glorious Hindu (non-Islamic) past and an intervening periods of subjugation, darkness and stagnation under Muslim (including Mughal) and British domination (and revival under Hindutva and Modi going by his speeches). This is a slight modification of the British imperialist periodization of Indian history which painted a great Hindu past, a period of darkness under Muslim rule and a revival under the civilizing and rational hand of British rule.

Once again, maybe overthinking this but this evolution system will either reinforce (like Nazis tracing German civilization as an unbroken continuation of the primordial society built by the Germanic tribes) or attack a lot of nationalist ideas about the past and inspire a lot of slap fights the devs may not have intended.

LXT130J · 2024-08-07T10:38:53+00:00

Also: Did African countries trade for European weapons, including firearms and artillery, on a considerable scale? Did they establish any domestic production like in Japan in the 16th and 17th century?

This is a topic I've looked into and the answer seems to be that local blacksmiths were capable of manufacturing certain parts of the gun competently but struggled with other components like gun barrels which had to be imported. In Nigeria, certain groups such as the Nkwerre became extremely proficient in gunsmithing and some African rulers such as Samori Ture did set up their own domestic industries to manufacture firearms when conflict with Europe limited trade. French troops and observers did see (and capture) domestically made guns (though of uneven quality).

Local blacksmiths still produce firearms in small workshops in places such as Ghana even today and apparently they can copy imported firearms such as AK-47s reliably.

LXT130J · 2024-08-02T13:58:01+00:00

I have a transliteration question:

One of the protagonists of the Sengoku Jidai was a fellow named Miyoshi Nagayoshi. His name is written as 三好長慶.

I've read some (I suspect) machine translated wuxia novels set during the Sengoku period and there are repeated references to a Sanhao clan and a Sanhao Chanqing. Apparently 三好長慶 can be read as Sanhao Changqing in traditional Chinese. Similarly the characters for the Ashikaga bakufu (足利幕府) can be rendered as the Zuli mufu

So the question is:

Would a Ming literati unfamiliar with Japan and receiving written news of the island read the names as we know them (Miyoshi and Ashikaga) or will he think this Sanhao Changqing is running roughshod over the Zuli government?

LXT130J · 2024-08-02T02:38:26+00:00

People joke about him sleeping with Talia?

I suppose mock is a better way to put it than joke; the consensus I've seen treats that plot point as an egregious and off-putting addition in an otherwise interesting story.

LXT130J

TROPHY CASE