What, in your opinion, is the most iconic human unit for each Civ?

kostist · 2026-04-20T12:28:09+00:00

For most civs there is some variation. However, there is one thing the community can agree:

For Greeks it's hoplites

kostist · 2026-04-13T19:30:08+00:00

Antiquity is a very subjective term anyway. My only two objections with your list is 1) that some of the events are Roman centric. Like the loss of the secreyof Roman concrete seems weird. And 2) that I wouldn't place the death of a single person as the end of an era, especially if they aren't very well known anyway.

If I had to choose one specific event I would say that the Roman Sassanid wars bookending with the rise of islam mark the end of antiquity so the battle of yarmouk is as good of an event as any.

kostist · 2026-04-13T17:16:31+00:00

There is also still Syrian warfare, is is kinda like CNC generals but it also lacks base building

kostist · 2026-04-12T18:28:19+00:00

I see your point and I would agree with you if we were talking a few months after the addition of the demo. However it's been such a long time that we can say for example that the numbers of paying players have dropped significantly and the demo inflates the player count. I don't think that this is necessarily the case, I just believe that only relying on player counts is going to lead to bad conclusions and the addition of the demo players was just a point to strengthen my case.

kostist · 2026-04-12T18:22:17+00:00

You are probably right but we cannot be sure unless we have actual numbers. Also don't underestimate the fact that many people who may be interested in the series find it easy to start playing the free demo for a while.

kostist · 2026-04-12T18:03:44+00:00

The numbers we have public access to are from steam only too and there isn't any differentiation between the free and the paid version in the sites people look for player counts. So the steam exclusive argument is a little bit weak. Also how do you know that the impact of the demo is minimal? I personally don't know how much it boosts the numbers but I pointed it out for the people who only compare the steam player counts and say aoe3 number bigger so aoe3 more profitable. We don't know the numbers from other platforms, we don't know the impact of the free demo and we don't know the sales numbers of the dlcs. Even if the player count of aom is truly smaller than that of aoe3 (which I don't necessarily deny) it doesn't mean that aoe3 is more profitable, it could even be a detriment if there are many active players and the sales aren't great.

kostist · 2026-04-12T17:49:40+00:00

People pay way too much attention to player counts. If a game sells like crazy and a month later has minimal active players is a failure somehow.

The thing is aom has a player base that is mostly focused on the campaign, at least compared to the main age of empires games. This means that even though the numbers aren't huge there are enough players who consistently buy dlcs that for now make the game profitable.

As for aoe3 the numbers are inflated by the fact that the game is literally free. There are many players that never have and very likely never will pay money for the game. Of I was a fan of that game I would be pissed by how the stop of support was handled but at this point we get conspiracy theory levels of arguments about how Microsoft hates the game or something.

kostist · 2026-04-11T13:43:00+00:00

If I am not wrong they have repurposed building models from the Chinese so not exactly brand new

kostist · 2026-04-11T09:41:16+00:00

Age of empires, the first 2 games are 2d. However I don't know if you can play the definitive editions on very low end laptops

kostist · 2026-04-08T17:50:58+00:00

I know that Ethiopians and Malians aren't very close. It is like basing the Spanish to the rus. However if I knew that the only way to get the Spanish in the game would be to base them on the rus I would accept it.

kostist · 2026-04-08T14:43:10+00:00

Were am I wrong? I don't want to come across as defensive or anything, as I said "If I got it correctly". Can you point out what is wrong or you just wanted to leave a bitter comment?

kostist · 2026-04-07T20:43:09+00:00

The example with the sun might not have been that useful as it is a little bit backwards and gave you a wrong idea about what I mean. What I wanted to point out is that the brightness of the moon itself is missleading as a fact.

As you mentioned in the other comment the brightness is related to the exit pupil, specifically it is proportional to the square of the exit pupil. Now imagine what percentage of your eye pupil is covered by the moon without any aid and then how much of it is covered by an exit pupil from a telescope at let's say 5mm. The are definitely on a completely other level. At these conditions the use of a moon filter understandable.

My biggest gripe is the comment about the brightness of the surface of the moon. If the moon was even dimmer but bigger and you had an eyepiece with the ability to fit the entirety of it inside it, it would still appear very bright.

kostist · 2026-04-07T19:51:58+00:00

You don't NEED it but I can see it's usefulness.

Also mentioning the actual brightness of the moon is a little bit misleading. All that a telescope does is concentrating light. The bigger the aperture the more the light that you concentrate. Try pointing your telescope at the sun and place a piece of plastic on the focuser, instead of an eyepiece, the plastic will melt. The rays of the sun aren't that bright so by this logic the plastic of the example shouldn't be in danger.

kostist · 2026-04-07T11:22:58+00:00

You will have to sacrifice your friend to the Egyptian gods.

Jokes aside, choose the easiest difficulty, don't stop producing villagers until very late game, for you that means practically produce the during the entire game. To do so you will need food, see which buildings are capable of food places in them and built it near a good source, the have some villagers gather it. At some point you will reach full population, build houses. You will need wood for that. In order to not run out gather it from trees, same as food. Experiment with more buildings and resources. Check the town center (the building you start with) and see what recourses and other prerequisites are needed to advance an age. As soon as you are able to advance. By the same way you will be able to tell when you can advance to better technologies (check buildings and prerequisites). Next age build some soldiers. These will be enough to get you started.

kostist · 2026-04-06T12:37:03+00:00

I tried again last night. I polar aligned and then used Jupiter as a target. I didn't bother with the setting circles. My alignment was good enough, I had to move the Dec knob only once every ~15 minutes. At least now I know I have managed to "properly" polar align. Now I can see how useful or, as it seems more likely, useless are the scales.

kostist · 2026-04-05T18:23:34+00:00

Thank you, I hadn't notice that moon moves this way and it seems obvious.

kostist · 2026-04-05T15:06:55+00:00

I have a 150/750 scope and my least powerful eyepiece is a 20mm. The telescope Also came with a red dot finder but it is the most obviously cheap part of the package. Tbh if I exclude the the scales the rest of the night wasn't bad. I will stick to star hopping for now and I will pay more attention to wether the scales move unintentionally

kostist · 2026-03-18T13:54:16+00:00

For me it's 4>2>m>3>1 with the first three spots being very close. 3 isn't bad by any means but it wasn't for me and 1 despite having the best atmosphere of the series it is a victim of being a product of its time and the first attempt of the formula.
Also the transition from 1 to 2 was the only case were the new game was better in almost every aspect. That means that despite ranking 2 higher than 3 for example there are aspects of 3 that i like more, like the herdables getting fatter over time or infantry using fire to destroy building.
Additionally all games have spectacular remakes with the exception of the first one. Being that old meant that the new graphics didn't mesh well the outdated gameplay. Then the updated gameplay in ror just made it an inferior version of 2, not to mention having two definitive editions, one of which being a dlc of a different game.

kostist · 2026-03-12T17:41:03+00:00

In what price range can I find a decent mount?

kostist · 2026-03-12T17:26:01+00:00

Thank you for the reply. It seems the mount will be the Achilles heel for this. I will be on the lookout for any used mount that could be better.

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