New Civ Guide: Chola

I would have called them Commodores.
 
I find this interesting, it looks like even though the Maurya included some modified versions of Middle Eastern architecture, it looks like the Chola are using the Southeast Asian architecture. Quite clever actually.
 
General and Admiral would probably have been more straightforward for these units, but at least "Army Commander" and "Fleet Commander" are descriptive. Maybe they were trying to get away from Great General and Great Admiral for some inexplicable reason.

(A Commodore, as I understand it, is usually a Captain that has been placed in command of a group. But the Fleet Commander is a civilian unit, so it's a pure flag officer and not a captain/flag officer).
 
I think they don't want anyone to mistake them for Great People.
 
SeelingCat said:
Back at again with Translations (with the Tamil as I could find it):
  • Ottru (Civilian) - ஒற்று? - "spy, espionage" - Ostensibly some sort of naval "intelligence corps"; not much info except for stuff that's repeated between sites; Seems to be ஒற்று /oṟṟu - the Tamil word for "spy"
Click to expand...
So in the midst of trying to find out more about the Ottru unit, I think I discovered that this unique's name may be based on a Wikipedia "hoax."

When you search for "ottru," you'll find a lot of sites that list it as a sort of "intelligence corps" of the Chola. The verbiage is always pretty similar (though sometimes it's spelled Ootru) with the most fleshed out entry being the Chola Navy page on Military History Wiki. Unfortunately, the site doesn't have a citation for this section on the Chola Navy's auxiliary forces.

However, doing some further searching led me to this post on Reddit about the Thirisadai unit that was added to Age of Empires II 2 years ago. In it, the poster mentions that the source was probably the Wikipedia page for the Chola Navy, which described the Thirisadai as "the largest of the Chola dynasty's vessels." However, none of the citations listed matched up with the associated statements, as well as other inconsistencies with the article.

If you were to look at the Chola Navy page today, however, you would not see that, as it has been changed significantly, with much of the information therein being described "as fraud and consequently deleted" on June 29, 2022 (19 or so days after the Reddit post) after being up for over 13 years, as can be seen here on the Wikipedia page for "List of hoaxes on Wikipedia."

When viewing the differences between the original (left side) and 2022 (right side) versions, one can not only see AoE2's Thirisadai, but also the Ottru listed as "Intelligence Corps" on the older version with a description that largely matches the one found on the Military History Wiki. It also may be the source for the name of one of the Civ 5 Tamil mod's Unique Units, the Thalai-Thirvai.

It is my guess that the name Ottru is an adaptation of the Tamil word ஒற்று (oṟṟu), meaning "spy" so there is a continuity to the initial "intelligence corps" idea, which may be reflected by the unit's ability (Opposing Combat Units in its Command Radius have reduced Combat Strength), however, I'm not sure if this was as prevalent of a phenomenon in Chola maritime affairs as supposed, nor if it was was an official title used in the Chola navy.

A potential alternate name might be Taṇḍalnāyagam (தண்டல் நாயகன் [Taṇṭal nāyakaṉ] I think?), referenced in the same Wiki page (as well as its citation) as the title (dating to 1187) of someone believed to be the equivalent of a commander of the karaippaḍaiyilār, the "army of the seashore" (i.e. an admiral of sorts perhaps) and a variation of the older Daṇḍanāyaka (दण्डनायक; daṇḍa "a column of troops", and nāyaka "a leader") commander title.

Of course, there may be something I missed along the way and ottru may be a perfectly cromulent name, and if so I apologize for the false alarm! But, given that it seemed to intersect with another occurrence of a dubious term finding use in a video game, I figured it prudent to bring it up just in case.
 
AriochIV said:
General and Admiral would probably have been more straightforward for these units, but at least "Army Commander" and "Fleet Commander" are descriptive. Maybe they were trying to get away from Great General and Great Admiral for some inexplicable reason.
Click to expand...
Not really inexplicable: the word 'admiral' comes from the Arabic Amir-al-Bahr, or "Prince/Commander of the Sea" and is not mentioned until the 12th century, and didn't get into European languages until the 16th century as 'amiral' and even then was frequently used to mean a Governor or civilian leader rather than a naval commander.

And as late as the end of the 19th century the terms "General Admiral" or "Admiral General" were being used to denote the highest level of naval command in some countries, so the strict division into land and sea commands for the words 'General' and 'Admiral' is pretty much 20th century.

That makes Admiral inappropriate for anything before the Modern Age except maybe the Caliphates or Ottomans in Exploration Age.
 
SeelingCat said:
So in the midst of trying to find out more about the Ottru unit, I think I discovered that this unique's name may be based on a Wikipedia "hoax."

When you search for "ottru," you'll find a lot of sites that list it as a sort of "intelligence corps" of the Chola. The verbiage is always pretty similar (though sometimes it's spelled Ootru) with the most fleshed out entry being the Chola Navy page on Military History Wiki. Unfortunately, the site doesn't have a citation for this section on the Chola Navy's auxiliary forces.

However, doing some further searching led me to this post on Reddit about the Thirisadai unit that was added to Age of Empires II 2 years ago. In it, the poster mentions that the source was probably the Wikipedia page for the Chola Navy, which described the Thirisadai as "the largest of the Chola dynasty's vessels." However, none of the citations listed matched up with the associated statements, as well as other inconsistencies with the article.

If you were to look at the Chola Navy page today, however, you would not see that, as it has been changed significantly, with much of the information therein being described "as fraud and consequently deleted" on June 29, 2022 (19 or so days after the Reddit post) after being up for over 13 years, as can be seen here on the Wikipedia page for "List of hoaxes on Wikipedia."

When viewing the differences between the original (left side) and 2022 (right side) versions, one can not only see AoE2's Thirisadai, but also the Ottru listed as "Intelligence Corps" on the older version with a description that largely matches the one found on the Military History Wiki. It also may be the source for the name of one of the Civ 5 Tamil mod's Unique Units, the Thalai-Thirvai.

It is my guess that the name Ottru is an adaptation of the Tamil word ஒற்று (oṟṟu), meaning "spy" so there is a continuity to the initial "intelligence corps" idea, which may be reflected by the unit's ability (Opposing Combat Units in its Command Radius have reduced Combat Strength), however, I'm not sure if this was as prevalent of a phenomenon in Chola maritime affairs as supposed, nor if it was was an official title used in the Chola navy.

A potential alternate name might be Taṇḍalnāyagam (தண்டல் நாயகன் [Taṇṭal nāyakaṉ] I think?), referenced in the same Wiki page (as well as its citation) as the title (dating to 1187) of someone believed to be the equivalent of a commander of the karaippaḍaiyilār, the "army of the seashore" (i.e. an admiral of sorts perhaps) and a variation of the older Daṇḍanāyaka (दण्डनायक; daṇḍa "a column of troops", and nāyaka "a leader") commander title.

Of course, there may be something I missed along the way and ottru may be a perfectly cromulent name, and if so I apologize for the false alarm! But, given that it seemed to intersect with another occurrence of a dubious term finding use in a video game, I figured it prudent to bring it up just in case.
Click to expand...
That is truly fascinating.

I wasn't even thinking along the lines of espionage returning, but it absolutely would make sense to return in exploration era. Never would have thought of the Chola as a prime candidate for spy units though (especially given what I imagine the larger three-act India trajectory will look like). Will be very curious to see if that ends up being the case.
 
SeelingCat said:
So in the midst of trying to find out more about the Ottru unit, I think I discovered that this unique's name may be based on a Wikipedia "hoax."

When you search for "ottru," you'll find a lot of sites that list it as a sort of "intelligence corps" of the Chola. The verbiage is always pretty similar (though sometimes it's spelled Ootru) with the most fleshed out entry being the Chola Navy page on Military History Wiki. Unfortunately, the site doesn't have a citation for this section on the Chola Navy's auxiliary forces.

However, doing some further searching led me to this post on Reddit about the Thirisadai unit that was added to Age of Empires II 2 years ago. In it, the poster mentions that the source was probably the Wikipedia page for the Chola Navy, which described the Thirisadai as "the largest of the Chola dynasty's vessels." However, none of the citations listed matched up with the associated statements, as well as other inconsistencies with the article.

If you were to look at the Chola Navy page today, however, you would not see that, as it has been changed significantly, with much of the information therein being described "as fraud and consequently deleted" on June 29, 2022 (19 or so days after the Reddit post) after being up for over 13 years, as can be seen here on the Wikipedia page for "List of hoaxes on Wikipedia."

When viewing the differences between the original (left side) and 2022 (right side) versions, one can not only see AoE2's Thirisadai, but also the Ottru listed as "Intelligence Corps" on the older version with a description that largely matches the one found on the Military History Wiki. It also may be the source for the name of one of the Civ 5 Tamil mod's Unique Units, the Thalai-Thirvai.

It is my guess that the name Ottru is an adaptation of the Tamil word ஒற்று (oṟṟu), meaning "spy" so there is a continuity to the initial "intelligence corps" idea, which may be reflected by the unit's ability (Opposing Combat Units in its Command Radius have reduced Combat Strength), however, I'm not sure if this was as prevalent of a phenomenon in Chola maritime affairs as supposed, nor if it was was an official title used in the Chola navy.

A potential alternate name might be Taṇḍalnāyagam (தண்டல் நாயகன் [Taṇṭal nāyakaṉ] I think?), referenced in the same Wiki page (as well as its citation) as the title (dating to 1187) of someone believed to be the equivalent of a commander of the karaippaḍaiyilār, the "army of the seashore" (i.e. an admiral of sorts perhaps) and a variation of the older Daṇḍanāyaka (दण्डनायक; daṇḍa "a column of troops", and nāyaka "a leader") commander title.

Of course, there may be something I missed along the way and ottru may be a perfectly cromulent name, and if so I apologize for the false alarm! But, given that it seemed to intersect with another occurrence of a dubious term finding use in a video game, I figured it prudent to bring it up just in case.
Click to expand...
Wow, crazy. Great research into this mistake and how it has resonated across history games for this long. It’s concerning to wonder what other tidbits in Wikipedia are outright wrong but have been amplified for years.
 
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Boris Gudenuf said:
Not really inexplicable: the word 'admiral' comes from the Arabic Amir-al-Bahr, or "Prince/Commander of the Sea" and is not mentioned until the 12th century, and didn't get into European languages until the 16th century as 'amiral' and even then was frequently used to mean a Governor or civilian leader rather than a naval commander.

And as late as the end of the 19th century the terms "General Admiral" or "Admiral General" were being used to denote the highest level of naval command in some countries, so the strict division into land and sea commands for the words 'General' and 'Admiral' is pretty much 20th century.

That makes Admiral inappropriate for anything before the Modern Age except maybe the Caliphates or Ottomans in Exploration Age.
Click to expand...
Something like 80% of the terminology in a game like Civilization consists of modern English words, so this is a very strange objection. If we're talking about the name of a unique unit for a civilization in a certain period, then sure... it's nice to use period words. But if we're talking about the name of a generic unit that's used in all three Ages, I don't see the objection to using a modern term (if you can really say that a rank as old as "admiral" is modern).

Wanting to distance the new Commander units from the Great Admirals and Great Generals might make sense if there were still Great Admirals and Great Generals in the game, but it seems pretty clear that there aren't and never are likely to be.
 
pokiehl said:
It’s concerning to wonder what other tidbits in Wikipedia are outright wrong but have been amplified for years.
Click to expand...
It's really not. Wikipedia is not an acceptable source even in a middle school school and children get rightfully berated for copying info from it.
Anyone who ignores his own education (bar those old enough to have never been cautioned against it since they separated from education/academia before the creation of the site), every single historian who's ever been asked on the topic and just plain common sense when it comes to "random person on the internet said X, it must be true"... really deserves it at this point.

Mansa Musa being the richest person ever.
Poland miraculously never encountering the Black Death.
Chola navy.
Chinese building pailou gates in the Han dynasty.
The majority of articles regarding Japanese military history (go figure, I believe it's the same for other uber-popular topics like "Vikings"?).
Attestations of ethnic identifiaction of people in multiethnic states (usually different across different language versions; Nikola Tesla, M.Corvinus, Einstein,...).
Overcitation of Taylor's 1983 book Birth of Vietnam and edit wars against using the more modern and researched Taylor's 2013 book A History of the Vietnamese (which corrects many of the statements made in his early years, back when he was a Vietnam War veteran studying a country that still had little to no archeology, accessible archives, etc. done at the time) in an absurdly large amount of topics... and that's without touching on the citation wars between Vietnamese and Chinese nationalists/trolls. Think "Vietnam provided slave girls to china.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]".
The entire Scots language Wikipedia debacle.
The Russian medieval history events and personalities wholly invented by a Chinese housewife to win internet arguments.
Articles on Spanish-Andalusian topics miraculously always citing a historian with radical (pro-Gothic/Spanish) views on the topic to the exclusion of all else.

And it's a systematic design flaw. Historians DO NOT correct the stupidities found on it because it's impossible. On Wikipedia, free time is what makes one right. An internet troll, a misguided student, "5 cent army" employee or a bored housewife will always have more time than an academic. Therefore it's always going to be what they want to see that remains on those articles, not a foolish academic who spends a few hours of his day to edit an article with proper citations, structure and knowledge of the field. :rolleyes:

A popular topic is no good because everyone has an opinion they will fight tooth and nail to insert into it. A niche topic is no good because you can claim anything and there are almost no people to ever spot it, even less have the time to fight you to correct it. A contentious topic. A misunderstood topic,... there is really no historical topic where Wikipedia is a genuinely good and trustable source of info.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/i4wmgy/comment/g0lquzj
 
It seems that the naval-trader playstyle in Civ 7 will be dominated by non-Western civs (Akusm, Chola, etc.) for a good while, which is a welcome change.
 
pokiehl said:
It’s concerning to wonder what other tidbits in Wikipedia are outright wrong but have been amplified for years.
Click to expand...
The visual of Casa de Contratación of Civ 6 is based on the building of the General Archive of the Indies, which indeed houses the Casa's archives, but the building itself was not part of the Casa at all; it was the building for the Consulate of the Indian Traders ("Consulate" here meant a type of the merchant guild, from the Aragonian "consulate of the sea").

If you check the Spanish Wikipedia of the Casa, it explicitly states that the Casa was located in the Cuarto del Almirante in the Alcázar of Seville, and this part of the Alcazar remains today.

I assume FXS thought the Consulate building was the Casa probably because the English Wikipedia page of the Casa did not have any information regarding where the Casa was located at the time, and it only had a picture of the Consulate instead. You can check the English Wikipedia page of the Casa around 2014 and see that the page only had an image of the Consulate building. It was possible that whoever was in charge of designing wonders at the time just checked the English wiki page for the info and did not think further.
 
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Cambrian Chronicles is a good YouTube channel for showing how interwoven misleading information can get.

There’s a line between like are you being paid to provide information and just hobby stuff like modding. In the Khmer thread I mentioned that I’d have preferred Sri Vijaya in that slot but got the response that there wasn’t enough good sources on them. I have a lot of respect for that.
 
A quick research on the English Wikipedia reveals that there are somehow two separate entries about the same Five Hundred Lords Merchant Guild:

Five Hundred Lords of Ayyavolu - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Ainnurruvar - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

In addition, someone copied the entirety of the "Five Hundred Lords of Ayyavolu" page and pasted it into the "Ainnurruvar" page, but nobody have suggested a merge of pages yet.
 
AriochIV said:
Something like 80% of the terminology in a game like Civilization consists of modern English words, so this is a very strange objection. If we're talking about the name of a unique unit for a civilization in a certain period, then sure... it's nice to use period words. But if we're talking about the name of a generic unit that's used in all three Ages, I don't see the objection to using a modern term (if you can really say that a rank as old as "admiral" is modern).

Wanting to distance the new Commander units from the Great Admirals and Great Generals might make sense if there were still Great Admirals and Great Generals in the game, but it seems pretty clear that there aren't and never are likely to be.
Click to expand...
As you posted earlier, though, they are apparently avoiding the use of either General or Admiral, using the much more generic 'Army/Fleet Commander'. Those terms also have the advantage that they are English translations of words in other languages used before 'General' and 'Admiral' were commonly used for either.

I can think of several reasons for doing that not related to the etymology or timeline of word use: saving the words for a set of people associated with an as-yet-unseen Civ or Leader (having a set of Great Generals or just Generals for a Modern Age Imperial Germany or Exploration Age Brandenburg Prussia, for instance), or using the words only in the Modern Age, of which we know very little at this point, to indicate some change in combat mechanics or army/fleet formation related to 'modern war'. Despie all we have learned about Civs and Leaders, there's still so much we don't know about specific mechanics for the different ages, except that they've said that the Ages will be 'different'.

I frankly doubt that the etymology of the word 'admiral' had much to do with it, but it does reinforce the (again, apparent at this point) whatever reason they did have for, so far, not using the word in places where it would appear appropriate.
 
Got a nice short with some Chola music. Sounds good!
 
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