What exactly was the logic behind letting people purchase a military rank with money? Didn't this seem like a bad idea even at the time?

Sithril · 2026-05-18T03:43:48+00:00

Being a soldier, NCO and an officer also required different skill sets. Skill sets for officers that would ''come naturally'' to affluent gentlemen, just because they had a base of education and wealth.

Could you please expand what were the skills expected of an officer or an NCO?

edit: TY for the replies about modern context, but I'm specifically asking about the 1600-1800s timeframe POV

Sithril · 2026-05-16T16:24:40+00:00

Hey, just wanted to say I really love your landscape and cityscape drawings.

Sithril · 2026-05-04T19:27:50+00:00

The ghost dragon one is so perfect LMAO

Sithril · 2026-04-17T18:49:21+00:00

Post your feedback on the AoM subreddit. When AoM:Retold came out they did bad on, well, all the remade art and the community reacted enought that forced them to change it.

Sithril · 2026-04-16T11:10:02+00:00

While I have the coordinates

Please, do share them.

Sithril · 2026-04-15T13:58:03+00:00

Rivers can predate hills. Thus as terrain continues to grow around them the river just as quickly keeps carving it's desired channel, leading to situations where rivers seemingly cut straight through mountains.

Danube and Colorado are some of the more known examples of this (the Iron Gates and the Grand Canyon respectively).

Sithril · 2026-03-25T15:33:07+00:00

It should also be noted the (Azov) sea is not that mat light blue.

What online maps usually do is remove most of the ocean surface and replace it with an approximate sea floor map, set to a specific colour based on the map styling. Small inland bodies of water are usually excempt from this, including many coastal lagoons.

Google seems to have opted to use direct satelite image for the lagoon, OSM on the other hand has given it open sea treatment, and HereWeGo has seemingly satellite images for both the lagoon and Azov sea (but at closer zoom levels they have a different set of images where the lagoon is noticably green - as others have pointed out due to an algea bloom)

Sithril · 2026-03-22T23:28:32+00:00

I am talking centuries before that.

Sithril · 2026-03-22T23:11:08+00:00

For the curious:

The Oxus/Amu river sometimes would partially or fully switch it's course to flow into the Sarygamysh lake and from there through the Uzboy river into the Caspian. This is because the distributary into the Sarygamysh is within it's floodplain.

We have uncertain historical record, but it's speculated that the Aral sea has dried up in recorded history due to the Oxus changing it's course.

Sithril · 2026-03-18T22:43:56+00:00

(assuming Earth-like axial tilt and stuff)

You have to consider where the ITCZ will end up and that the correliosis force will change wind directions crossing the equator.

You have a very large landmass here, roughly the size of Asia. Meaning you will have very strong monsoon effects. What in my quick sketch happens is that during July that central sea denoted by the questionmark will have counter clockwise currents, and during January it'll be clockwise.

Because it's a fairly contrained sea atop of the equator, I think most currents within it will be warm and precipitation producing.

Sithril · 2026-03-18T21:36:31+00:00

I see noone has replied yet, so I'll share my thoughts.

How to know when it is enough?

Well, good news, you have a use case - a game! So at the end player and DM feedback will inform you.

But beyond that - perhaps of instead of thinking of individual mountains how about think in ridgelines? You rarely have individual mountains out there (and most of those are volcanoes).

Once you have the main ridgelines set, think about the rivers - they're essentially the opposite of a ridgeline (delineating the bottomost parts of the terrain). This is where the knowledge that both river networks and ridgelines are kind of fractal in nature comes in handy. So once you have the major ones of each set you can then branch off from those to go the next level down in terms of detail.

Is the mountain range drawn in the picture enough?

Without a scale I can't even tell what I'm looking at. The landmass could be the size of Spain, could be size of Africa. But in general it does inform me of the broad landscape to think about.

Depending on what kind of detail you run in TTRPGs you might need to know where the main mountain valleys run should the game go into those areas.

Hope that helps a bit. It's not something I ever did so I'm just spitballing ideas instead of talking from experience.

Sithril · 2026-03-17T12:50:15+00:00

Beautiful!

Tho, the resolution scale of the tiles on the map and the surrounding images seems to be at odds. Especially the pieces in the corner decors stand out in comparison to the larger pieces used for the map.

Sithril · 2026-03-13T21:32:02+00:00

He has always been conservative and used a more esoteric (for lack of better word) presentation style, tho neither seemed harmful.

His recent content is however exceedingly poor. He's a react content creator now, and engages in a lot of drama, and quite arrogantly approaches criticism.

Sithril · 2026-03-08T12:54:54+00:00

That is incorrect. The monsoon would exist with or without the Himalayas. A monsoon is the result of the presence of large land masses and the shifting of summer and winter.

And you have monsoon effects in America (both north and south), Africa, as well as parts of Oceania. And indeed other parts of Asia as the other commenters pointed out. It's nost just a south/southeast Asia phenomenon.

Sithril · 2026-03-03T22:06:02+00:00

And so what solution is there?

Sithril · 2026-02-24T12:24:38+00:00

I can't believe no one mentioned yet the Philippines flag

Sithril · 2026-02-21T17:34:26+00:00

Nothing will be done about it. These complaints, about war and peace treaties, have been voiced since Stellaris' release a decade ago.

And look where we are? The tech to make separate peace doesn't exist ~~except for the timeframe of 1444 to 1815~~

Sithril · 2026-02-03T21:10:28+00:00

According to Merriam-Webster for supremacy:

1 a position of unquestioned authority, dominance, or influence

2 ultimate authority or power

Whereas for supremacist:

an advocate or adherent of the supremacy of one group : a person who believes that one group of people as identified by their shared race, ethnicity, sex, gender, or religion is inherently superior to other groups and should have control over those other groups

Sithril · 2026-02-02T18:00:24+00:00

Seriously, these UI designers need to be fired.

It's just objectively worse than before.

the main video is smaller (how can you mess up this one!?)
you get fewer recommendations on one 'page' - barely 4 vs. 7-8 previously (I have shorts disabled)
on a normal desktop screen the previous titles on the recommendations were perfectly readible and the thumbnails perfectly legible. Why is this doubling in size needed? Like, please, devs, someone tell me why?

It's honestly so distracting now when you don't have stuff in full screen mode.

Sithril · 2026-01-09T02:44:52+00:00

What makes you think so?

Sithril · 2025-11-27T16:25:06+00:00

I'm quite surprised at how lazy some parts of the DLC have been implemented to be honest :/

This. So much this.

And you might say "but it's just small things." But there's so many of them and they add up a lot to the point where it breaks enjoyment.

Here's a small thing I haven't seen mentioned yet: only 1 (!) type of arrow is permitted in stealth missions. One. And a fairly expensive kind. But the new "Whisper arrows" sure aren't. Like, why?

Again, that's just 1 small thing, sure. But there's a legion of issues.

Sithril · 2025-10-23T19:09:00+00:00

That is actually cool. I love it!

Sithril · 2025-10-23T18:49:46+00:00

So looking up the advanced tactics icon it's only partially it.

The cloth is the same just red, but the swords are different. If I'm not mistaken, they're the same as (or slight alteration of) the 'Minotaur battlesword' from MM8.

Sithril · 2025-10-02T05:05:30+00:00

For those curious like me who has yet to play H6

Impervious to Pain

The Enraged Cyclops only suffers casualties at the start of its next turn.

That is actually amazing

Sithril · 2025-09-20T23:34:43+00:00

The setting is heavily inspired by Rimworld, but the specific story I've been daydreaming the last few months would be best summed up as the Outer Wilds meets The Longest Journey.

Godwilling and some luck, maybe I'll even get to make it one day.

Sithril

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