Map Tags for release 2.6

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).

TheDog

@Cernel @LaFayette
If we put the Other in Fantasy and call it Fantasy would that be OK for you both?

To get the project over the line we could lump Future+Other+Fantasy, maybe call it Non-Historic?

Within a week of starting I aim to;
Tag all maps with the Era/Genre Tag, so a new upload will be blank.
The Star Tag will be a copy from its current status, so all maps should have this Tag
The AI Tag is even more subjective, I have only rated about 50 maps, so will need help with the other 100 or so.

LaFayette

@cernel said in Map Tags for release 2.6:

Science-Fiction from Fantasy

I do think the distinction is clear:

Lord of the Rings: fantasy
Star Trek: science fiction
Star Wars: fantasy (then eventually it transitioned into sci-fi when they gave the 'force' a physical explanation and it was no longer just 'magic')
Jurassic Park: sci-fi
Starship Troopers: sci-fi
The Last AirBender: fantasy

To get the project over the line we could lump Future+Other+Fantasy, maybe call it Non-Historic?

@TheDog Requiring every map to have a 'tag' value is really changing this concept to 'categories', tags are generally meant to be one dimensional and perhaps not applying to some maps at all. Some other tags could be "fan favorite", the map author could be another.

Categorizing is much more difficult than just tagging as you need to create a taxonomy where everything fits. We can highlight new maps perhaps in the tag editor and allowing some maps to have simply blank tags rather than forcing them into a category would be my suggestion.

Cernel

@thedog This is my current take for the historical labels.
Notice that the labels are merely period labels: a war which happens somewhere in the world in 1930 would count as "WW2" no matter if it has nothing to do with the second world war.
On the other hand, the period refers primarily to Europe, so something can be labelled differently if it belongs to a technological level more akin to a different epoque: a war fought in Japan in the sixteen century can be labelled as ancient/middle instead of as early modern.

ancient/middle age: before 1492
early modern age: from 1492 to 1815
early industrial age: from 1815 to 1914
WW1: from 1914 to 1929
WW2: from 1929 to 1945
early atomic age: from 1945 to 1991
digital age: 1991 onwards (Might be largely useless if nobody is allowed to make maps about the war in Ukraine and such...)

The main changes with what currently is at the opening post are:

Instead of having "renaissance" (also far too stretched till 1790), "napoleonic" (very stretched too) and "american civil war" (too American), you have only "early modern" and "early industrial".
The "contemporary" (1945 onwards) is split into "early atomic" and "digital".

TheDog

I have been trying to do too much with the tags, so a change of direction.

Ideally one tag is required per map and that is the start year/code for the conflict, where;
0 = BCE, all maps that are 0 BC and before
1+= CE, all maps that are 0 AD and after
Fant = Fantasy with magic, fantasy/mythical creatures
SF = Science Fiction, near future, future with space ships

Examples
0=270BC Wars
1561=The Shogun
1939=WW2 map starting in 1939
1942=WW2 map starting in 1942
Fant=Lord of the Rings, Warcraft War Heroes
SF=Star Wars Tatooine War

I am hoping that this could be the default listing of all the maps, or similar.
Is this possible or does it have to be alphabeticall?

Cernel no need to have an age, era or period in history?

Then the map downloader player can enter optional tags to refine their search with optional tags like;
Map Quality like *, **, ***
Map author like alkexr, Cernel, Frostion
where in the world, like Europe, Global, Pacific, this is really useful for WW2 maps
and any other suitable tag.

Thoughts?

Myrd

What about maps that are "abstract" and don't have a clear age, e.g. Risk?

TheDog

Hmm, well we could add in Abstract as a required tag?
Tags: Abstract, Global, Risk

.
But with what's currently proposed
Tags: Fantasy, Global, Risk

.
I think I favour adding in Abstract as there are 10+ maps that could be classed as Abstract.

RogerCooper

Why not use negative numbers for wars fought BCE? 0 can be used for mods with no defined date.

MartyMoose

So… I was going to post that Bilbo left the Shire in 2941 of the third age. He was 50. Frodo left some months after Bilbo’s eleventy first birthday. So around the year 3001. Deciding that answer wouldn’t be useful, I read backwards to find out why the year tag becomes important. Oddly, I came full circle to my original question and answer. I think players know the timeframe of the game that catches their eye. At worst/best they could google Napoleon. With Napoleon/Hitler/Sauron, it’s easy to pick out the fictional character. It’s harder when the map is earth but the scenario imagined. Maybe group the maps on the download page - Earth Historic/Earth Fantastical/Fantasy. When choosing a map to try, I read enough of the Map notes to decide if I want to try it. I think the main distinction is for Earth based games, is it based on serious history or not. Just a drawn out thought. Edit: if Earth fantastical/fantasy doesn’t work, Earth Fictional/Fictional may be good enough. Sure, some believe the third age was a pre historic age on Earth, but I think we can stick to science on that one.

TheDog

@LaFayette
attached is a MapTags-01.xlsx as a zip
MapTags.zip

There are 42 unique tags, there might be a few more, as I only have 150 maps in my spreadsheet, out of GitHub listed of about 200.

I am unsure how the tags will work, is there a web link you can point me at?

For example if I want to list early war WW2 maps would I search for?
1939 1940 1941

then if I wanted just the Global ones?
1939 1940 1941 Global

If I wanted all WW2 that are the Best maps?
1939 1940 1941 1942 1944 ****