Map Tags for release 2.6
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@LaFayette Yes 3 tag headings.
At All Last call for defining the Map Tags.
The only tag change is 30-Renaissance is now 30-Early Modern.
The Era Tag is prefixed with numbers to put the list in chronological order to aid with finding the desired era. the 60s are sub divided into 4 WW2 tags to aid in the type of map/theatre to search for.
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Era Tag
00-.....................................it is a new upload or not tagged yet
10-Fantasy
20-Ancient-Medieval
30-Early Modern
40-Revolutionary
50-WW1
60-WW2-Alternate
62-WW2-Europe
64-WW2-Global
66-WW2-Pacific
70-Nuclear
80-FutureStar Tag
Blank/no star...it is a new upload or not tagged yet
*...............................current Experimental tag
**.............................current Good tag
***..........................current Excellent tagAI Tag
Blank.........................it is a new upload or not tagged yet
Satisfactory...........the AI is exactly that
Hard only................only the Hard AI should be used
Unsatisfactory......the AI copes badly with the maps requirements -
@cernel As far as I know these definitions have different meanings in educational and entertainment industries.
I used to study screenwriting (which is basically for entertainment). If there is nothing supernatural, it cannot be classified as fantasy. For example "Inglourious Basterds" cannot be called fantasy when Hitler got shot in a movie theater in France.
Of course no WWII game can be even remotely used to tech history because its not their purpose. Some things would always remain unrealistic even if a map maker does everything to make it even remotely realistic.
Even if we assume somehow is able to implement all realistic elements in a map (attrition, logistics, fuel, food, insurgencies, diplomacy, manpower, simultaneous rounds, fog of war etc...), it would still be unrealistic because realistically nobody can have full informations and control of everything.
That's why I think it doesn't make sense to consider World At War fantasy because at best, a map maker could do is just a bit more realistic but in the end it would be still fantasy and wrongfully share the same category with Lord of the Rings. Putting all maps fantasy category basically means having no category.
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@anil-yuksel I make a distinction between a scenario with a realistic intent and that which is about a hypothetical situation. World at War has many distortions of geography and even alliances, but the distortions are for play balance and interest or our oversimplifications of complex events. On the other hand, Pact of Steel specifically postulates a successful Italian Mediterranean campaign.
The AAG40 game specifically ignores the complexity of Vichy France. That is a simplification of the actual events, as opposed to a hypothetical .
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@thedog said in Map Tags for release 2.6:
Also, I think we are only having one era tag per map.
Where do multi-era mods like Age of Tribes go? -
@rogercooper
A good question, currently its in Ancient-Medieval, where it starts.
It could be where it ends or maybe classified as Fantasy.Im not fussed, where would you put it?
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@thedog said in Map Tags for release 2.6:
@rogercooper
A good question, currently its in Ancient-Medieval, where it starts.
It could be where it ends or maybe classified as Fantasy.Im not fussed, where would you put it?
I am fine with an "Other" category and save WW2-Alternate for WW2 based hypotheticals.
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@Cernel @rogercooper
You both have me thinking maybe we should have another Tag called 90-Other
It could contain as Roger said Non-WW2-Alternates, so could be;Age of Tribes
Steampunk
Steampunk Advanced
War of the Relics
Zombieland
Zombies-World War 2 (Maybe WW2-Alternate?)I was trying to shoehorn all maps into the current Tags, but maybe not.
Thoughts? -
@thedog said in Map Tags for release 2.6:
@Cernel @rogercooper
You both have me thinking maybe we should have another Tag called 90-Other
It could contain as Roger said Non-WW2-Alternates, so could be;Age of Tribes
Steampunk
Steampunk Advanced
War of the Relics
Zombieland
Zombies-World War 2 (Maybe WW2-Alternate?)I was trying to shoehorn all maps into the current Tags, but maybe not.
Thoughts?Well, obviously, since I see no reason why something should stop being "fantasy" just because the common soldiers dump spears and take up rifles (while wizards and whatever actually fantasy are still there), at least Steampunk and Zombieland are clearly fantasy to me, even though you could classify Zombieland as alternate history on the concept that there is nothing supernatural about the zombies because they are the result of a virus or some sort of speculative yet realistic occurrence (but many medieval fantasy settings do about the same, postulating some forces like "mana" or whatever to give a pseudo-scientific basis even to the most extreme fantasies, much like futuristic science-fiction does).
I really see absolutely no reason of existence for this requirement that the ambiance has to look like an ancient/medieval world for the game to be "fantasy". The concept (by which I understand you go) that "if it doesn't look ancient/medieval, it ain't fantasy" is completely meaningless to me. The fact that "fantasy" settings are typically medieval-like worlds is just a trend, nothing more.
I'm not a fan of the "other" solution. It looks to me like solving classification problems by not solving them.
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(1) We need proper names for the tags. "Era", "Star Rating" and "AI Rating" seem like the obious choices.
(2) Are we sure we want the '00' uncategorized maps? And if so, are sure we want it to also sort first? Tags are not strictly required, by default new maps will have empty tags, and the lack of a tag means 'uncategorized' on that dimension.
(3) Early modern & nuclear seems off as an era. My impression of modern is relative to the technology of the battlefield. 'Modern' to me means conflicts like Vietnam and the first or second US-Iraq wars. Those conflicts contained 'modern' tanks (sloped armor, counter-measures like smoke, re-active armor, etc), modern long range rifles, modern helicopters with laser guided munitions, satellites, etc.. The 'early' modern is therefore when there were early tanks, early or no helicopters, unguided munitions. Often the very end of WWII is considered early modern, the jet fighters of that war were flown in the later conflicts, tanks were starting to become much more capable and started to incorporate more modern features.
I would call this era 'pre-industrial' & 'industrial'. 'pre-industrial' is before replaceable parts, when guns were smooth-bore, and all bullets and guns were essentially made at home by artisans. 'Industrial' is when this process began to be industrialized, factories, steam power, ironclads, replaceable parts, mass manufacturing of artillery (cannon) guns and bullets.
So, I would rename 'early modern' to be 'pre-industrial', add an 'industrial' age, and rename 'nuclear' to be 'modern'. Our 'early modern' is already broken up across the different WW2 and WW1 maps, so there is no need for an 'early modern'
(4) RE: fantasy - fantasy is not an era, it is more a genre. You can have fantasy taking place in a medieval period, or earlier, or later. Basically throw 'spell casters' into any era and it becomes fantasy.
Fantasy = something that could never exist, exists (magic, grpyhons, unicorns, super-heroes), the existence of the impossible thing is beyond science
Sci Fi = something that could maybe exist, exists (starships, teleportation), a science backed explanation is plausible
Alt History = something different happenedThose three genres can be combined. 'Abe Lincoln vs Zombies' is fantasy alt-history. "Dies the Fire" is sci-fi alt-history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_the_Fire), and "Guns of the South" is alt-history, arguably sci-fi alt-history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guns_of_the_South)
So all in all, I would classify era regarding the weopon types and materials. Pre-historic means primitive weopons, flints, sharpened stones & sticks, hand axes. Bronze & Iron ages are later where you get primitive armor and swords. etc..
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More concretely, I would have the following 'era'values and would focus on having 'era' only answer "when" does the map take place.
Era:
Pre-Historic (Before 5000 BCE AKA, stone age)
Bronze & Iron Age (5000 BCE - 1000 CE)
Early Medieval & Medieval (1000 CE - 1700 CE)
Pre-Industrial (1700 CE - 1850 CE)
Industrial (1850- 1920)
WW1
WW2
Early Modern (1946 - 1980)
Modern (1980-2100)
Future & Sci-Fi (2100+)Perhaps we should consider a 'theatre' tag. For exampel "WW2-Europe" is both an era and a theatre. If we had a theatre tag, some possible values
would be:- Pacific
- Europe
- Global
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@lafayette said in Map Tags for release 2.6:
(3) Early modern & nuclear seems off as an era. My impression of modern is relative to the technology of the battlefield. 'Modern' to me means conflicts like Vietnam and the first or second US-Iraq wars. Those conflicts contained 'modern' tanks (sloped armor, counter-measures like smoke, re-active armor, etc), modern long range rifles, modern helicopters with laser guided munitions, satellites, etc.. The 'early' modern is therefore when there were early tanks, early or no helicopters, unguided munitions. Often the very end of WWII is considered early modern, the jet fighters of that war were flown in the later conflicts, tanks were starting to become much more capable and started to incorporate more modern features.
I would call this era 'pre-industrial' & 'industrial'. 'pre-industrial' is before replaceable parts, when guns were smooth-bore, and all bullets and guns were essentially made at home by artisans. 'Industrial' is when this process began to be industrialized, factories, steam power, ironclads, replaceable parts, mass manufacturing of artillery (cannon) guns and bullets.
So, I would rename 'early modern' to be 'pre-industrial', add an 'industrial' age, and rename 'nuclear' to be 'modern'. Our 'early modern' is already broken up across the different WW2 and WW1 maps, so there is no need for an 'early modern'
Early Modern is the correct term used by western European historiography to describe the period spanning from the discovery of the Americas to the French Revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_period
The early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages of the post-classical era. Although the chronological limits of this period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late post-classical or Middle Ages (c. 1400–1500) through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions (c. 1800). It is variously demarcated by historians as beginning with the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the Renaissance period in Europe and Timurid Central Asia, the Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent, the end of the Crusades, the Age of Discovery (especially the voyages of Christopher Columbus beginning in 1492 but also Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India in 1498), and ending around the French Revolution in 1789, or Napoleon's rise to power.
The meaning itself of "Middle Ages" is the period "in the middle" of the Classic and the Modern periods.
The only problem I see with "Early Modern" (beside the ending time with the French Revolution, which I don't consider a good watershed especially for war-games) is that it is a bit strange having it without having a period called "Late Modern". "Late Modern" means everything from the French Revolution to the present day so would be Revolutionary + WW1 + WW2-Alternate + WW2-Europe + WW2-Global + WW2-Pacific + Nuclear.
If you say "Pre-Industrial", however, that means everything before the Industrial Revolution, that is Ancient-Medieval + Early Modern, which may be good on the account that TripleA has very few early modern maps. But (to mention two maps made by the same person) is it really good putting "The Great Northern War" together with "270BC"?
An alternative to "Early Modern" may be "Proto-Industrial".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-industrialization
The term was introduced in the early 1970s by economic historians who argued that such developments in parts of Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries created the social and economic conditions that led to the Industrial Revolution.
If having "Proto Industrial", "Revolutionary" can be called "Early Industrial".
However, I prefer "Early Modern" (for XV to XVIII century) over "Proto Industrial", but I believe that both are fitting.
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@cernel In this case I would scratch the term early modern entirely as it overlaps with other existing eras. That overlap makes for bad categorization. The concept of era is so subjective here, there is no right answer. We can use the era of human history, an era of warfare, or any kind of era we choose (it is arbitrary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_modern_warfare
Perhaps instead of 'pre-industrial', call it 'early industrial'. I like 'pre' better as it really connotes, 'right before'. We should also keep context in mind, if someone sees "Stone Age", "Medieval", "Pre-Industrial" and "Industrial", would a reasonable person really think "Pre-Industrial" encompasses the entirety of the first two eras? Or would it be more reasonable to assume that they periods are non-overlapping?
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@lafayette said in Map Tags for release 2.6:
I like 'pre' better as it really connotes, 'right before'.
No, it does not. "Pre" means just "before". Dinosaurs are pre-industrial.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/pre
before (a time or an event)
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@lafayette said in Map Tags for release 2.6:
Perhaps instead of 'pre-industrial', call it 'early industrial'.
Early industrial would mean the early phases of the industrial period (which continues to this day). So I would say that "Early Industrial" is something like from late XVIII century to mid XIX century. Practically "Early Industrial" would be about the same as "Revolutionary".
The problem with any "industrial" tag, however, is that industrialization had a much delayed direct impact on warfare. The industrial revolution dates since about 1760, but for about a century it didn't much apply to warfare. For example, the Napoleonic Wars were after the industrial revolution, yet the muskets, the rifles, the cannons, the sabres and the horses were still about the same as those fielded in pre-industrial times (Arguably the only major change was having cheaper uniforms.).
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@cernel That is getting exceedingly pedantic. Sure, if you strip away all context and look at just the definition of 'pre', I would agree it simply means before.
In the context of a mutually exclusive list, eg: late medieval', 'pre-industrial', 'industrial', 'early modern', assuming a reasonable person would see this as being a mutually exclusive, then 'pre-industrial' is clear to mean anything after 'late medieval' but before 'industrial'. If you say 'early indstustrial', then we are in the 'industrial period.'
Early industrial would mean the early phases of the industrial period
I would disagree. It basically means whatever we want it to mean. There is no definition here. It is context dependent. The industrial period of microbiology is different from the industrial period of human history, to the industrial period of a persons work day, to the industrial period of warfare.
The problem with any "industrial" tag, however, is that industrialization had a much delayed direct impact on warfare. The industrial revolution dates since about 1760,
I agree, I am making a distinction and am completely arbitrarily defining the 'industrial' era in TripleA to mean you have weopons made in factories. In terms of human history, that happened at different times in different places.. So it's arbitrary. Overall the 'era's I suggest I would say mostly map to the game Civilization.
For the purpose of this conversation, a user would be interested to know which type of units they should expect. That is why era is interesting, are we dealing with spear-throwers, or machine gunners? Hence the 'era' of warefare and really just mapping a meaningful era name to the type of units one would expect is all we are doing.
edit clarification:
I would disagree to the following:
Early industrial would mean the early phases of the industrial period
The reason is because the first "early industrial" words there refer to arbitrary map tags defined in TripleA. The latter refers to human history and presumably there is a wiki article that gives rough dates. In the context of the map tag, it may not at all have any correspondence with the era in human history.. This is super pedantic.
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Let's get back on track...
(1) it seems 'AI rating' and 'map rating' are for sure pending any better names for those tags.
(2) We are still hashing out 'era'. IMO the intent is to have something that synonymous with 'unit type' (hence 'fantasy' units makes a lot more sense).
(3) There is a new proposal to have a 'theatre' tag separate from era, so we would not need to have the distinction of 'wwII-Pacific' vs 'wwII-Europe', instead it would be two dimensions.
For (2), i think it would most useful to agree on what are we trying to accomplish. Are we trying to give a user a sense of the starting date of a map? Or are we trying to give a sense of the types of units they will encounter?
If start date, then "industrial" would mean the "industrial" age, which according to google is "1740 - 1860". That would mean the US Civil War was a 'post-industrial' war, and the US revolution war was during the "industrial age". This goes right to a lot of the points that @Cernel 's made, and I think calling wars during the late 1700s and early 1800s as 'industrial' is odd.
If type of units, then "industrial" refers more clearly to "industrial warfare", which according to wikipedia is "a period in the history of warfare ranging roughly from the early 19th century and the start of the Industrial Revolution to the beginning of the Atomic Age," (basically 1820'ish to 1945).
Perhaps as one clarifying question: should LOTR and Star Wars both be in a Fantasy era, or should they be in a Stone Age and Future era?
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not to try to further derail this conversation but if we getting hung up on these periods perhaps we divide things the according to the ages of warfare (more or less) from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history#Periods_of_military_history we get 6 divisions:
5.1 Ancient warfare
5.2 Medieval warfare
5.3 Gunpowder warfare
5.4 Military Revolution
5.5 Industrial warfare
5.6 Modern warfarejust got to decide where we make the cutoffs exactly, rename #3 since that name is a bit weird when applied to a timeline and then add future and/or fantasy
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So many words have been written trying to find a word/phrase to define the era, why not use the years, so just use CE and forget the text ?
-1000
1000-1700
1700-1850
etc.Using lafayette ideas, so trying to get a sense of what it will like for a downloader.
Maps (the numbers are only as guide.)
1 Pre-Historic (Before 5000 BCE AKA, stone age)
9 Bronze & Iron Age (5000 BCE - 1000 CE)
7 Early Medieval & Medieval (1000 CE - 1700 CE).. also add 17 Fantasy maps
5 Pre-Industrial (1700 CE - 1850 CE)
0 Industrial (1850- 1920)....................................................assuming this excludes WW1, also add 2 Fantasy Steampunk maps
12 WW1
64 WW2..........................................................................................split between 3 theatres, also add 13 Alternate WW2 maps, these could be Fantasy
5 Early Modern (1946 - 1980)
2 Modern (1980-2100)
8 Future & Sci-Fi (2100+).............................................also add 2 Fantasy Zombie mapsBear in mind that we have no filtering so having a sub tag of Europe, Global and Pacific or even Fantasy it would display badly.
....For me it would be better to have just one era/genre tag.I dont think having the "Fantasy" genre mixed in with historical/semi-historical maps will be liked by the public.
....For me it is better to have a separate Fantasy tag even though its not an era. -
@thedog said in Map Tags for release 2.6:
So many words have been written trying to find a word/phrase to define the era, why not use the years, so just use CE and forget the text ?
-1000
1000-1700
1700-1850
etc.Using lafayette ideas, so trying to get a sense of what it will like for a downloader.
Maps (the numbers are only as guide.)
1 Pre-Historic (Before 5000 BCE AKA, stone age)
9 Bronze & Iron Age (5000 BCE - 1000 CE)
7 Early Medieval & Medieval (1000 CE - 1700 CE).. also add 17 Fantasy maps
5 Pre-Industrial (1700 CE - 1850 CE)
0 Industrial (1850- 1920)....................................................assuming this excludes WW1, also add 2 Fantasy Steampunk maps
12 WW1
64 WW2..........................................................................................split between 3 theatres, also add 13 Alternate WW2 maps, these could be Fantasy
5 Early Modern (1946 - 1980)
2 Modern (1980-2100)
8 Future & Sci-Fi (2100+).............................................also add 2 Fantasy Zombie mapsBear in mind that we have no filtering so having a sub tag of Europe, Global and Pacific or even Fantasy it would display badly.
....For me it would be better to have just one era/genre tag.I dont think having the "Fantasy" genre mixed in with historical/semi-historical maps will be liked by the public.
....For me it is better to have a separate Fantasy tag even though its not an era.I certainly preferred your previous proposals. Especially in the moment the prevailing historiography collocates "Early Modern" at about 1500 - 1800, I see no reason to reuse the label somewhere else.
As I said, I agree that any such labels should be always followed by the timeline between brackets.
An example of what I would consider a WW2 fantasy map is the boardgame "Axis & Allies & Zombies". I would also consider fantasy an otherwise highly historical WW2 map featuring Superman fighting against the nazis.
Unfortunately, I believe there is no good solution at finding the watershed between science-fiction and fantasy. Both examples above can be argued to be scientifically based: the zombies can be persons transmogrified by a virus and superman's powers are supposed to be scientifically based on some reasons. It may be better putting them together into a single "Fantasy/Science-Fiction" category.
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Here is another reiteration.
With no filtering of tags and just using ascending/descending ordering in mind, I think should have one era/theatre/genre tag like WW2-Global. (Not two.)
The Fantasy genre has 16 maps with fantasy units in and for map makers is even more popular than some historical periods combined, it deserves its own tag and not mixed in with SciFi or future tags.
In the table below changes are in bold.
- A new map will have a blank Prefix/Era/Genre label
- A new Other genre this is for Earths Other timelines it is similar to WW2-Alternate and will hold earth like timelines that stray too far from the "historical" time periods, keeping them "purer".
- Note, the non-historic tags (Future, Other, Fantasy) are now all at the end of the tag list. Keeping a distinction between "historical" and non-historical tags.
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