Minimum move cost for fliers

[piranha]

The history from apes to humans is quite well documented. When you read about it it definetly doesn't seem like we were dumb. It seems we lived great lives from 7 million years ago (the first ones to be considered human ancestors) until around 6000 years ago (the start of the first civilizations). During civilization people had to work hard and eat food of lesser quality and until like 100 years ago it was like that for the majority. If you look at how long the average life of a human was it went from the same as us to like 40 years life and then you were done when we went from hunters to farmers.

[Molotov]

KGB, 100 km is for tatar and russian horses, 50 - european. Europeans breeded very heavy (up to 1 ton for medieval knights, 600 kg for cuirassier cavalry, whereas avg horses weight is 450 kg for now) or fast horses (for hussar/ulan cavalry), not enduring. thats why they werent capable of traveling long distances.

[Chazar]

The real issue might be the dwarf getting a 1 pnt pathfinding skill in hills. The idea with pathfinding is you point out the straightest path for other units to follow, but even if the path through the hills is straight it wouldn't be as level as a road.

Consider that a dwarf moving through hills is faster than an elf moving through forest. Seems a bit of a stretch. Same with his pathfinding, why does a dwarf allow a horse to move faster through hills than an elf does in forest. If both are showing the easiest path the forest path would still be equally difficult.

Oh, that one is easy to answer:

[Dwarf]: "Hey guys, if we can't go over the mountains, why don't we take the shortcut through the dwarfish mines?"
[Elf, busily pathfinding behind some trees, just shakes his head in amusement]
[Dwarf]: "I think a cousin of mine runs a mine in this area, so a hidden entrance must be close."
[Giant]: "Our stack is too big go through obscure small dwarfish mine tunnels!"
[Dwarf]: "Oh, don't worry, we build them pretty big. That is why the entrances are so well hidden."
[Dwarf, ignoring all logic, opens some huge double doors on the side of the next best mountain.]
[Elf, busily pathfinding behind some trees, just shakes his head in terror]

So don't take away the Dwarven-Taxi-Relay! It is so much fun, even if it breaks the time-slice anology.

If a change is needed, then give Dwarves the ability to lead non-flyers through mountains at a cost of 8 per square.
Make sure to place the dwarf at the end of the fight order, for otherwise a stack might get lost in the mountain tunnels and never reaches daylight again.

[KGB]

Chazar,

ROTFL. I love your story. And it's definitely plausible for some hills/mountains because I've considered that potential as well, but certainly not all of them.

[Dwarf]: "Oh, don't worry, we build them pretty big. That is why the entrances are so well hidden."

I never quite understood that part in fantasy literature. We are a short race so we'll build huge tunnels and halls so that Dragons, Giants, Balrogs and all other manner of nasty monsters can invade, kill us and take up residence while gnawing on our bones.

Making a huge entrance hall area to host visitors for trade / visit makes perfect sense. But not making every place like that.

KGB

[Molotov]

maybe dwarves are suffering from gigantomania

[LPhillips]

It's just an advanced case of "little man syndrome". Dwarfs think they have something to prove

By the way, I'm quite the history student and well aware of the currently accepted view of man's history, and the reasoning behind it. But I must avidly disagree with your statement Piranha:

The history from apes to humans is quite well documented.

That's a simple lie, which is accepted almost subconsciously because this generation has so much faith in the scientific community, as opposed to a critical mindset (which is exactly what proponents of that view charge other viewpoints with). The theory of apes to man is well documented. The trouble is that it's almost exclusively based on speculation, and viewing evidence in such a way that it supports such speculation. IE: "This is the most likely answer to my mind, even though it's flatly impossible by what we understand of biochemistry, and therefor it must be true because everything else is ridiculous!" In the matter of simple observation, what we know of science cannot explain the origin of life on our planet, among many other things. We're really still working on it, and the day may possibly come when people will think the theories of today are as stupid as those in the middle ages who began to insist that the world was flat, even though their ancestors had known better since the earliest history.

And history has shown that those with a predilection to one mindset will do everything to twist the information to fit their view. You can make the same charge against creationists or those who believe life started with physical extra-terrestrial intervention. Now I don't honestly believe that aliens were here on earth; I'm no scientologist. That's probably the least likely explanation of all given what we know of the difficulty (read impossibility) of interstellar travel.

But anyway, that's enough of a derail. I just encourage you all to take less on faith from arrogant members of our scientific community (or whomever you want to credit with this false sense of certainty about things we don't understand in the slightest), and have a little bit of an open mind toward the strange things found on earth. I'm more interested in the prevalence of 3-4 meter human skeletons in some areas of the earth than I am in speculation about a prehuman hominid based on half a jawbone. One is scientifically significant; the other really isn't.

[LPhillips]

Hmm. It doesn't lend credibility to fantastic discoveries that the people who continue on and on about them are completely nuts and draw their own insane conclusions. After a little internet "research", I thought I should point out that I'm not one of them

I just don't find it easy to accept modern speculation as solid fact. It's not. We shouldn't be so desperate for certainty that we accept unverified (or usually, unverifiable) assertions as concrete fact, disregarding any dissenting opinion as lunacy. We don't discredit the report that there were horses whose abilities were nearly double that of most extant breeds, but we disregard reputable written accounts of armies exceeding hundreds of thousands because they fly in the face of the idea that mankind could not adequately feed and supply such armies, because we must continue with that assumption to maintain our other assertions about history.

[KGB]

but we disregard reputable written accounts of armies exceeding hundreds of thousands because they fly in the face of the idea that mankind could not adequately feed and supply such armies, because we must continue with that assumption to maintain our other assertions about history.

I suspect these get disregarded because it's not easy to estimate what 100,000 or 200,000 etc men look like. There were certainly not accurate census records kept of men in military uniform in most armies back then. Nothing like today's standards where it's all computerized and we have fairly accurate census's etc. So when you looked at your opponents army you probably tried to guess their numbers by looking at how big your own army was and saying it seems 2 or 3 times or half our size. Then there can be the tendency to exaggerate to make your own accomplishments sound better (the 300 movie for example where the movie depicts 300 men killing tens of thousands is absurd).

All that said, there are definitely ancient battles that took place featuring large armies on both sides.

KGB

[LPhillips]

The remark was intended as an example of skewed observation regarding history. We simply assert our assumptions over the evidence. You're right; that reasoning is forwarded to support the assertions that the armies could not have existed. Notice that what you've forwarded as the likely reasoning is the supposed incompetence or even dishonesty that we attribute to past men. The trouble is that this is backwards thinking; we have a prior conclusion and so insist that the evidence and first-hand accounts must be less accurate than our speculation. Absurd, non-empirical, and fallacious. But common practice.

There are far more clear-cut examples than the Persian Army, where archaeology has eventually managed to empirically establish the facts over the assertions of modernists. One example is Egypt's one-time 10,000 chariot army. In spite of all the naysayers, ass-backwards reasoning, and straightforward denial, the massive stables and much related material have been discovered in recent years. Because Exodus is a religious asset of the Jewish faith, it was disregarded as an historical record by persons and organizations with an agenda to discredit it. Other corroborating records were likewise disregarded because they might lend credit to this "religious" book. Apparently the issue of religion is more important to these "scholars" than the truth is.

Historians with subverted agendas piss me off as much as crooked politicians. Lies are equally bad in all directions, no matter what point of view they come from. Gosh, I guess I just really hate lies and academic arrogance. I'll stop the rant.