Map Tags for release 2.6

TheDog

@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?

Cernel

@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.

LaFayette

(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 happened

Those 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..

LaFayette

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

Cernel

@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.

LaFayette

@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?

Cernel

@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)

Cernel

@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.).

LaFayette

@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.

LaFayette

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?

ubernaut

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 warfare

just 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

TheDog

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 maps

Bear 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.

Cernel

@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 maps

Bear 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.
Superman’s-fight-with-the-Nazis.jpg

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.

TheDog

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.

.

Cernel

@thedog In case those descriptions are going to be displayed anywhere by the program, I strongly suggest avoiding every copyrighted name (or reference to it) in every description as that might be misunderstood as the program offering such titles.

TheDog

@cernel
Thanks for the reminder, they are just for reference only.

TheDog

Is the list below, what we are going with, as no comments for awhile?

@thedog said in Map Tags for release 2.6:

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.

.

LaFayette

@thedog I'm not sure i like the 'other' category and would instead that each map be placed into whatever the starting era is. Steampunk AFAIK is a WWII map.

There is a small tension here between categories and tags and we are seemingly using 'tags' more like 'categories'. For example, a blank tag means 'not applicable' and does not mean 'not yet tagged'. It should be more the case that maps get the tags that apply and then no more, tags need not be mutually exclusive. So we have here "Era & Genre" as a category rather than as one or two tags, which is what makes it weird when a certain map does not fit or is not yet tagged.

I'm also not sure how 'fantasy' and 'other' are really different as 'era' and as genre whether anything considered 'other' could be considered fantasy. I'd opt that we scratch those two entirely, blank, N/A and other should be equivalent

Cernel

@lafayette My only understanding is that @TheDog is putting in "fantasy" all maps that are both ancient-medieval looking and fantasy and putting in "other" all maps that are either fantasy but not ancient-medieval looking or neither fantasy nor historically based. My understanding is that he strongly believes that if something doesn't look ancient-medieval, it cannot be fantasy, so the "other" category is mostly needed for zombies and such (though zombies can be either "fantasy", if magically raised, or "fanta-scientific", if virally transmutated).

Cernel

@cernel Personally, I believe that it is virtually impossible to set apart Science-Fiction from Fantasy. Works of Science-Fiction may sometimes contain scientific constructs which virtually every scientist in the world would be sure they are scientifically impossible just as much as Gandalf's magic powers: they are often not writted by scientists (or without the consulence of any scientists) to start with.

I'll cite "Jurassic Park" (usually considered to be science-fiction) also to make everyone notice that science-fiction doesn't need to be set in our putative future (as this novel was published in 1990 and the events in it, as far as generating dinosaurs go, happened before 1989), so I also disagree with having "SciFi" in the thing explaining what the "Future" Era is (meaning that, if something is science-fictional, this doesn't imply that it is set in our future or in a fictional world which has to be scientifically more advanced than our own in everything).

According to wikipedia, what merges fantasy and science-fiction, amongst other genres, is "speculative fiction".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction

Such fiction covers various themes in the context of supernatural, futuristic, and other imaginative realms.[1] The genres under this umbrella category include, but are not limited to, science fiction, fantasy, horror, superhero fiction, alternate history, utopian and dystopian fiction, and supernatural fiction, as well as combinations thereof (for example, science fantasy).

So, I guess we can have a section called "Speculative", instead of "Fantasy". However, I really don't agree with the use that wikipedia makes of the term speculative, as such a term makes me think that you are conjecturing about something that may have happened or may happen within the real world, so I'm not seeing how something having nothing to do with reality (like "The Lord of the Rings") can be considered "speculative".

Anyways, my main point remains that I think "fantasy", as well as "science-fiction", are concepts which are not related to any era. So I think an era classification should not have "fantasy" in it: instead of having an "Era/Genre" classification I rather suggest having a "Genre" classification and, if the genre is "Historical", then you have the "Era" as subset of it, possibly only for the "Historical" maps. Of course, it would be needed to decide whether or not something like "Jurassic Park", which is set within our history but it is obviously something which never actually happened, would count as "historical" or not (meaning clearly defining the term).