Maybe a few pros have been playing for 20+ years, but most of the top players (by championship wins) are young.
Hera, Lierrey, Vinchester, Lewis...are in their 20s. And even the previous #1 Viper isn't that old.
I'm also in my 30s. You could've played this game at 12 and still been playing it without turning 40
Is it lower APM and therefore less RSI? A more niche market?
Top 4 at the latest ASL are all born before 1995 - they're all millennials. None of them are from the first generation of BW pros, but they've been in the game for a long time.
In practice I suppose this must have been the case because you can’t easily impose monocultures especially when information travels slowly.
That makes me curious if military tactics of the time also had regional variation and if the relative strengths of various regions came from their awareness of certain tools being effective. Bringing in a foreign army with its foreign techniques might have been like bringing small pox to a population- they’d have no defense the first time around so if you’re fast you get them all.
Altogether an enjoyable read. Thanks.
However, Rome (and Byzantium) were actually very good at integrating conquered populations into their culture.
Very early in the empire, a law made all conquered people officially Roman, with all the benefits and protections it entailed.
After 2-3 generations, there was not much difference between a Roman from Gaul and a Roman from Rome: they spoke the same language, worshipped the same gods, had the same education, and viewed themselves as Roman. And critically, the Romans from Rome didn't see their compatriots from elsewhere as different.
The Senate was composed entirely of men, but apart from that it was a DEI dream. Some of the emperors were dark-skinned, originating from current Syria: we only know because of their genealogy, their portraits, but otherwise no one cared enough to mention their skin colour, especially in a negative way.
To such an extent that, for most of their existence, Rome and Byzantium did not actually fit the definition of empire.
Wouldn't call this "early" in the empire. Caracalla [1] did this in 212AD by granting Roman citizenship to free noncitizens, well after the beginning of the empire in 27BC. W Roman Empire fell in the late 470s so about half of the empire's lifetime had severe legal stratification between citizens, free noncitizens (peregrini) and slaves.
I highly recommend...the author's blog for very in depth articles about this subject including
- this one on mounted warrior cultures and how they often dominated https://acoup.blog/2020/02/28/collections-the-fremen-mirage-... - this long series on why the legion ended up dominating the phalanx https://acoup.blog/2024/01/19/collections-phalanxs-twilight-...
https://acoup.blog/2019/11/29/collections-where-does-my-main...
The article talks about it, and makes the point that people who created AOE may have been biased by the same misconception that is also visible more generally. And it is an interesting thing to raise.
edit: in fact, it is illustrated by the ridiculous recent Elon Musk fit about "the odyssey" cast, itself fueled by the misconceptions that "having black guys in a roman army is woke because everyone knows the romans are not black".
And I suppose New York as a major centre of the American empire. Multicultural cities are the rule rather than the exception.
Do you know how many slaves were black in the Roman empire? More than had American accents I assure you.
None of them spoke English either.
You don't know what's historically accurate. You don't understand why there was a black community in Rome. You don't know why there was one in 17th century London. But you still think you know better than me bubba.
Thank you for confirming my suspicions!
That's rich from a guy who also tell someone they don't know that they are "obsessed with Musk". You are so full of it, and too stupid to even notice everyone here see you for the laughing stock you are.
(ps: and the fact that you end up with "and in hollywood, they depicted a roman army that was not entirely Rome-inhabitant-looking, so it is the proof that it's "wokeness" seems to also illustrate that indeed you have assimilated the misconception yourself)
I'm laughing so hard right now. You resoundingly do care about Musk; you're obsessed with him.
Second, who said anything about me alleging that "they depicted a roman army that was no entirely Rome-inhabitant looking"? Those are your words not mine, and if anyone is looking for the king of strawman arguments, we have a winner with you.
Rome was a very ethnically diverse place, including the demographics of its slaves, contrary to America's slaves.
The only thing I said was that they recast the Gladiator as black, not being true to the original MOVIE character. If you didn't understand that, the solution is not to put words in people's mouth. The solution is to work on your reading comprehension.
I love those self-defeating argument, it's still a mystery how people don't realise how stupid they look. You know that I know better than you how much I care about Musk, right? You are trying to convince me that something that I can observe, as a fact, to be totally wrong, is in fact true. You realise that all you do is confess that you are unable to conceive that something that you have made up may not be true.
Ok, ok, let me try. complianceowll, you are a little dog called Popo. You say it's not the case, you say you are not a little dog, but I'm laughing so hard right now, because you resoundingly are a dog, you are named Popo. See, I'm so smart, you cannot hide the truth from me.
Did it work? Did you believe to be a little dog (because you are)? No? Well, guess what, similarly, I still don't believe I'm obsessed with Musk. But I do believe, based on that proof, that your opinions are worth nothing, because they are the result of someone who not only is convinced of something false, but also believe that they can convince someone who see it's not true that it is true. Silly little dog.
Is this addressed in EU5 with its new population/culture system https://eu5.paradoxwikis.com/Population / https://eu5.paradoxwikis.com/Culture? I have not played it yet.
> an empire is a state where the core ruling population exercises control and extracts resources from a periphery which is composed of people other than the core group
By definition, doesn't the later Roman Empire cease being an "empire" as there isn't really a "core" population anymore outside of some vague multi-ethnic military aristocracy.
Sure, Rome had a few lingering privileges and prestige, but little in the way of direct power. And certainly, the post-crisis Empire didn't exist to siphon resources on their behalf. Heck, pretty much as soon as the 3rd century crisis ended Italy itself lost most of its special status and more or less just became yet another province.
And once that was gone, they weren't really replaced by anyone except the imperial bureaucracy and aristocracy itself. So who are the "core" people here, because if "an aristocracy" is enough to count, then who the heck isn't an empire under this definition?
Maybe it's enough that they began as an empire under this definition. Or maybe Devereaux is fine with the stereotypical Empire losing its status as an empire long before losing its territory and power. Or perhaps would have some counterargument at hand if he happened to read this. Who knows.
It's almost harder to define what the core of the Galactic Empire even is. We are told Coruscant is core to the Empire, but the glimpses of it in the Old Republic era certainly implied it was a very diverse place and we aren't really shown Coruscant in the films of the height of the Galactic Empire. To some extent the only truly "core worlds" and "core peoples" that we see in the films are the Star Destroyers and Deathstars, the military demanding taxes from every planet they pass.
The Empire may not be taking full advantage of the military power of a diverse people because of the over-reliance on clones and treating draftees as if they were clones when the clones start to run out, but beyond that it certainly seems to resonate like an Empire in the way this article describes an Empire to me.
The Galactic Empire showing a clear citizenship "caste" favoritism of Citizen/Officer Humans, General Humans, Cloned Humans, Aliens, and then Droids, but also working with all of those at the same time in its military efforts (there are a few aliens in the Empire's military, there are a lot of droids) does seem imperial in the way the article suggests, especially because that core of clear "Citizen/Officer Humans" seems so relatively small versus they armies they command of all the other types.
>The third, predictable and annoying argument is “stop overthinking it, it is just a game.” Which is – if you will permit me to paraphrase C.S. Lewis – an unserious ‘boy’s philosophy’ unfit for adults. Video games are cultural products, like books or films or any other – and to say that those cultural products have no impact or importance is to argue against the historically obvious, given how frequently we find such things at the roots of important political ideologies, social movements, and wars.
>I bring this up not because I demand utter historical accuracy in my games – I will almost certainly happily play Age of Empires IV despite this. Instead, I bring it up because I find that this overly simplified view – sometimes, depressing, held to be the truth by some – in its errors, reveals some important things about empires, which again, I should note, seem to have been the dominant very-large-scale organization system for humans generally in the historical period.
First it tends to obscure the necessarily diverse nature of empires – as we have just laid out and perhaps more to the point, it obscures the power that empires derive from being diverse....
I would like the article better if it took an approach such as "Age of Empires is a bit of a misnomer, let's explore the actual definition of an empire," rather than its current combative approach.
Indeed, you should write about what you wish especially considering the authors usual material. Even so, I didn't have the relationship between distinctively modern ideas of diversity (in a positive light) and traditional empires within a critique of "Age of Empires", a real time strategy game! on my bingo card. These are the sorts of ideas for better or worse that only an "intellectual" will come up with.
Plus, some films are like Casablanca. Some are like History of the World Part 1. Additionally, if someone relies on media like Age of Empires, The Empire Strikes Back, or the novel Empire by Gore Vidal to gain an understanding of what an empire is, just because the word empire is in the title of these works, there are bigger issues at hand...
The author, basically, says: I know games are not realistic, but the way AOE illustrates a misconception gives me an opportunity to talk about this misconception because too many people are still seriously believing it.
Of course, movies and games can take all the liberties they want, the author does not care about that. What the author raises is the fact that too many people still have an incorrect idea of what is an empire, and that this idea is a bit ridiculous when you look at the fact.
And it has current real consequences. For example, there are political parties that rely on such misconceptions to sell their fake news (edit: as illustrated below with someone commenting that the correct description of "empire" is the result of the author being "woke").
Except NvN games, I except FFA and 2v2v2v2 games to show elements of empires, it's only games with two sides where minmax becomes a viable strategy and damaging the enemy is the same as strengthening yourself.
Two powerful players can decide to cease hostilities in order for each to preserve their own ability to ultimately win the game, but if one player's ability to win has been irreparably compromised, then they will probably just fight to the last man in a way that real civilisations pretty much never do.
And if the victor dies, you would then be free. Not necessarily game ending. And it might match up with actual history too, how many towns have outlived their tributee empires?
It's not a great argument because the game takes place pre-empire, and the end of the game is intended to be when one player, the winner, is now an empire. This is evidenced by the final age in the game being called the Imperial Age. Most empires in history fought their neighbors in more or less the same manner as exhibited in the game before they became big and strong enough to be an actual empire.
I guess you could make an argument that the game doesn't transition into the most powerful player beginning to behave like an empire in the imperial age as you keep steamrolling your opponents until the end of the game, but it's a weaker argument and it's not clear why you would want to change the entire game's mechanics right before the game ends.
ETA: To add, as a young nerd I did appreciate the history section of the game.