Most Unique Complaint I've Seen Yet

vandyr said:
herp derp

There were 300 spartans and 800 slaves..not 2-3k troops.
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None is saying the action wasn't heroic, however multiple historical sources are clear - there were a LOT more than 300 spartans holding the rear guard at thermopylae and I highly doubt these were combatant slaves. Now I know the Thebans were bound by oath to stay and the Thespians were there voluntarily, but neither were they slaves. It was a common paranoia (especially in Sparta) about even thinking or arming slaves. Im sure they may have had a few helot servants but these were likely not armed.

Quoting Herodotus, "The conefederate troops, by Leonidas' order, left their posts and left the pass, all except the Thespains and the Thebans who remained with the Spartans."

The actual number is controversial, but it is easily over 300 and most modern historians but the figure in ranges between 1-3 thousand, at the last stand. Indeed Herodotus quotes a (now lost) plaque that stated "four thousand, from pelop's land" died there. This includes casualties from all 3 days of combat. Thus more than just the Spartans fought and died at Thermopylae. Modern estimates and Herodotus' totals add up to Greek army of about 10k-12k

Rat
 
Haha don't ty to tell him that he has done" a lot of research" on the subject lol
 
Matth3w said:
Haha don't ty to tell him that he has done" a lot of research" on the subject lol
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Who? Me? I am not an expert but I know the battle fairly well. I have a stack of books to quote here if needed. lol

Rat
 
Matth3w said:
Haha don't ty to tell him that he has done" a lot of research" on the subject lol
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The Persians still got slapped.

Do you think it's okay for Darius to speak Aramaic in the game? I agree that Arabic would be lame. The Persians have a long national memory and are not exactly "friendly" with Arabic peoples (there was a furor several years ago when National Geographic added the name "Gulf of Arabia" or "Arabian Gulf" to the Persian Gulf).

Next they'll add a Cypriot civilization and have their leader speak Turkish...
 
cualpa said:
It is absolutlely obvious that the Persians should speak Iranian, and nothing else!

All the other nations use their current versions of languages, so should it be with the Iranians.

Or don't you think that Victoriy spoke a different version of English than the current one?

Its the same in German, I as a german speaker, wouldn't understand what a german speaking guy from the 16. Century was talking about.

And its the same with Persia. Its their country, its their language, and its their right to have it represented in this game correctly.

Next time Washington speaks French.. One of their Generals during the independence war was french.. so who cares? Its all the same babling... :blush:
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Victoria (I think you mean Elizabeth, a person nowadays would have no trouble understanding Victoria and Washington) and certainly spoke a version of English much closer to what Modern Anglophones speak than Farsi is to Ancient Aramaic. We're talking about a 2000 year difference and an entirely different sub-branch of languages, as opposed to essentially an older form of the same language.

Compare Caesar Augustus, who speaks Latin, not Modern Italian because well, there is a ~1600 year difference there or so to the point where the languages are distinct and one is a dead language. At least when I read Shakespeare's overly poetic drivel as an English speaker I can understand the gist of his meaning.

It seems that historical accuracy was the aim of the devs.
 
MadRat said:
In the rear guard - the actual army on days 1 and 2 was much larger - it withdrew on day 3.

Rat
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Yes. I was speaking specifically of the stand led by Leonidas.

vandyr said:
herp derp

There were 300 spartans and 800 slaves..not 2-3k troops, and those 1100 people did the majority of the fighting, against a vastly superior force. By any imagination other than yours, the Persian army got embarrassed at Thermopylae.

Also, there is only one instance of a full strength spartan army ever being defeated in battle, and it wasn't by Xerxes. And yes, he did face a full spartan army in Greece, along with other Greek forces. No, he didn't win.
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As I stated before there were also 1,500 Thebans. (why does no one remember the Thebans?) IDK about the slaves.

Edit: Face palm! Forgot about the Thespians!
 
Revoran said:
Compare Caesar Augustus, who speaks Latin, not Modern Italian because well, there is a ~1600 year difference there or so to the point where the languages are distinct and one is a dead language. At least when I read Shakespeare's overly poetic drivel as an English speaker I can understand the gist of his meaning.

It seems that historical accuracy was the aim of the devs.
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I agree with this approach - most comprehensible/contemporary incarnation, but historically correct language seems a sensible choice for the developers.

But, which language is the Egyptian leader speaking? I read it's arabic, if that is the case, that's the one they got terribly wrong, and choice for Darius is at least plausable. At least they could have chosen Coptic which is the contemporary incarnation of Egyptian.

Btw, which Latin is Caesar speaking, as I recall what was spoken at the time was pronounced quite differently than how it is done currently?
 
We don't actually know how latin was pronounced at the time, there are two pronunciations out there, Ecclesiastical and Restored Classical. Ecclesiastical is how the church says it, it tends to be better known, Ecclesiastical words are pronounced like this: Veni, Vidi, Vici and Julius Caesar; In Classical it would be more like Weni, Widi, Wici, and Iulius Caesar.

In ciV he is speaking classical which is the reconstruction done by scholars.

And I have always HATED that Ramesses is speaking Arabic! It's not even COPTIC! :mad:

(I'm surprised there haven't been any Sparta jokes yet:))
 
If Ramesses is speaking Arabic that's a pretty big oversight on the part of the devs (I wouldn't know the difference personally). The Arabs didn't spread Islam and Arabic to Egypt until like 1800 years after Ramesses died. Even Coptic (far removed as it is from Ancient Egyptian by 3800 years here) would be better than Arabic.
 
If Washington is speaking Chinese in CIV 5, you will have tens of thousands of Yanks writing hate mails to Firaxis too.
 
Me said:
We don't actually know how latin was pronounced at the time, there are two pronunciations out there, Ecclesiastical and Restored Classical. Ecclesiastical is how the church says it, it tends to be better known, Ecclesiastical words are pronounced like this: Veni, Vidi, Vici and Julius Caesar; In Classical it would be more like Weni, Widi, Wici, and Iulius Caesar.

In ciV he is speaking classical which is the reconstruction done by scholars.

And I have always HATED that Ramesses is speaking Arabic! It's not even COPTIC! :mad:

(I'm surprised there haven't been any Sparta jokes yet:))
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The way we pronounce Latin these days is Medieval Vulgate which as a had a LOT of sound shifts. As others have stated we don't know exactly ho wit sounded but it would be very different from what the pope would say in terms of pronunciation BUT the text would be identical. Caesar wouldn't be able to understand us well but he could read what we wrote and vice versa clearly providing we used the classic fonts (hand written latin was a mess on the other hand). The one advantage of a dead language is it doesn't change much in terms of grammar. Now mind you this is very literary Latin, folks probably did not speak it like that at all.

A few Latin facts
Originally Latin had no J, K, X,Z U, or G
Thus Gaius Julius Caesar would be written as Caivs Ivilus Caesar,
the C would be hard and thus pronounced as Kaius Iulius Kaisar (yes the Germans had it right all along heh). The G/soft C are late antiquity and medieval Latin consonant shifts.

Veni Vidi Vici would likely be Vheni Vhidi Vikhi (not VicHi - that is italianization).

There isn't that much we can get from some grammar text fragments. But I do think a latin scholar would make themselves understood to an ancient roman without too much trouble. Attic greek would be a hell of a lot worse - LOL

Now I don't know how much knowledge of ancient Aramaic we have - For Darius we have to go back 2500 years. We know the grammar but I am not sure if we have anything like some of the Greek and roman works on language.

Honestly I'd prefer Farsi to Aramaic - aramaic may have been the court language and maybe the language of some portions of the Empire, But Darius represents Persia and is the exemplar of Persian culture. Thus shouldnt he be identified with something more readily identified with the culture of Persia than mesopotamia in general??

By the same token I wouldn't have an issue is Alex spoke modern greek - it reflects the heritage of Greece. Katherine II spoke german and french in her court but having her speak Russian makes more sense as she is reflecting Russia not just her court. BY the same token Darius represents persia more so than the persian court

Rat
 
devilhunterred said:
If Washington is speaking Chinese in CIV 5, you will have tens of thousands of Yanks writing hate mails to Firaxis too.
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Actually you would have tens of thousands of people from all over writing to Firaxis telling them how stupid they are, as that's a nonsequitor. It seems Darius would have known Aramaic and probably spoke it as the "court" language, so the issue is simply is that the language they should have picked. Some people think/thought he was speaking Arabic, which would have been flat out wrong.
 
Revoran said:
If Ramesses is speaking Arabic that's a pretty big oversight on the part of the devs (I wouldn't know the difference personally). The Arabs didn't spread Islam and Arabic to Egypt until like 1800 years after Ramesses died. Even Coptic (far removed as it is from Ancient Egyptian by 3800 years here) would be better than Arabic.
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Exactly, but which language represents Egypt's cultural heritage in the mind of egyptians?? Islam and arabic did have a profound impact on Egypt, but Ramses speaking arabic looks silly. Egyptians see themselves as decendants of the ancient egyptians as much as Iranians see themselves as persians. These lineages are true; but egyptians are also culturally arabs today.

Hence should Americans really sound like modern americans or should they just be shown as British accented since in washingtons time before 1776 they were considered brits??

You have to represent the full sweep of a nation's identity not just that during one leader's era!

Thant being said - farsi makes a LOT more sense than aramaic and FAR more than Arabic.

Rat
 
neptune2000 said:
Actually you would have tens of thousands of people from all over writing to Firaxis telling them how stupid they are, as that's a nonsequitor. It seems Darius would have known Aramaic and probably spoke it as the "court" language, so the issue is simply is that the language they should have picked. Some people think/thought he was speaking Arabic, which would have been flat out wrong.
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Maybe the choice of phrase was a bad one considering it is similar in so many languages; perhaps if they had chosen him to say something more uniquely persian; like a reference to Zoroastriansim perhaps like "In the name of the fire maker, Azura Mashda, I greet you!"

Rat
 
You make some good points there. After reading this thread I really feel for Firaxis and how hard it must have been for them with some of the languages.
 
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