- The Tavern -

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

That's not the Hebron, that's an Italic-D which come from Mainz or Krefeld. This one is the Mainz helmet.

EDIT: I stand corrected, just noticed it's a mix of helmets. There are a few Hebron Helmets in there.

[Diocle]

On my screen it looks almost the same old, beloved and glorious Homeworld 2. The best engine ever developed, it's surprising how much is light as dimensions! You can have the view from any single small interceptor! It's incredible! The AI is damn hard, as always with Relic, and the gaming experience is absolutely gorgeous. The AI use a lot infiltration frigates, that is, during a battle you always see at the last moment a small ship ready to board your battlecruiser or even the Mom! It's the pure horror! The AI uses combined use of destroyers and frigates is absolutely terrific!!! Hard game, set in an infinite universe with the enemy always coming when you are still not ready. My god how much I love Homeworld! I never got Homeworld 1, I didn't know the game and then when I searched for it it was no more in production. So if Steam offers the first game as DLC I could get it. Those were great times for Rts, the old Relic Entertainment was a legendary company, they made Homeworld 2, and Dawn of War! That group is a living legend!

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Can't wait for all the mods to be updated for Homeworld Remastered.

[SeniorBatavianHorse]

Agreed! I used to play the Battlestar Galactica mod for HW2 and will be getting the Remastered version as soon as it is available on Steam next month!

[Diocle]

The best is Homeworld 2 Complex, hundreds new units and a new approach to gameplay, economy and research, the mod makes HW2 more strategic and ... complex!

Anyway if you are not expert of the game I would not suggest it, the gameplay is very, very hard, especially because the AI is absolutely evil and the whole balance of upgrades implies many choices, and the choices are difficult and they can bring you on the wrong direction and when the enemy comes you could discover that your strategic assumptions about the enemy fleet composition were wrong (anyway I think that even in the last version if you are able to deploy 3 Battle-cruisers completely developed you have a chance to survive the first wave. I'm talking only about Hiigaran of course, I refuse to play the Huns, I deeply hate everything concerning Vaygr, I hate the shape of their ships, I hate their colors, I hate their symbols ... I hate them all) anyway consider that it's not a Mod for beginners but probably it's the best work ever made on Homeworld 2 it won't be easy doing something better in the future.

Homeworld 2 Complex: http://www.homeworld2complex.com/index1.htm

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Agreed! I used to play the Battlestar Galactica mod for HW2 and will be getting the Remastered version as soon as it is available on Steam next month!

Mods are going to be available for the Multiplayer Beta?

The best is Homeworld 2 Complex, hundreds new units and a new approach to gameplay, economy and research, the mod makes HW2 more strategic and ... complex!

Many of these features actually went into the remastered game. They used modders to help remaster it.

[Diocle]

I like very much the destroyers, their design is beautiful they are better than frigates and they look like real small battleship, sadly I've never been able to manage them in the right way ... you need a group formation and even some frigate to protect them, they can be deadly but they are also weak if faced by tons of fighters and interceptors ... I don't know, I always try to have a solid group of destroyers and then using them as flanking force to hit the Huns in the flank ... but it's always a failure and this is pretty sad ..

[Diocle]

Today, passing the mouse over the astonishing mass of fleur de Lys forming my rep count, TWC told me: 'Diocle lived in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias.'

Now, first of all:

- I lived in Italy for much more than 30 years and I'm deeply bored about this country.

- The Borgias are just little children compared to the Italian politicians I've seen in my life.

- The Borgia family was a family of Spanish migrants ruling the small town of Rome during the Renaissance, the Most Serene Republic of Genoa instead was ruled by an ancient local aristocracy, tracing its origins to the XI century, composed by loan sharks, vampires and merchants (robbers and pirates), who had nothing to share with Borgia Family, at least until they occasionally decided, in their infinite wisdom, to buy some title and some building for their scions, in the small town named Rome.

So, who cares about Borgia family ..

[wulfgar610]

- I lived in Italy for much more than 30 years and I'm deeply bored about this country.

Most of the planet has been like that since the 1970's.

Everybody is mouthing platitudes every which way one looks, we are being buried in a tomb of platitudes.

[Diocle]

Most of the planet has been like that since the 1970's.

Everybody is mouthing platitudes every which way one looks, we are being buried in a tomb of platitudes.

I agree.

The Hollow Men.​

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

[Abdülmecid I]

Ha, just had my first river battle and when I shot down the first Hun, what I'm seeing is... Bubbles! Really funny, I spent the rest of the battle staring at the bubbles each dead Hun or inaccurate arrow produced!

[Diocle]

river battle? bubbles? Huns? .. What game are you playing Hibernian?

[Abdülmecid I]

river battle? bubbles? Huns? .. What game are you playing Hibernian?

IB (SAI)! It was a custom battle in Volga, between Vandals and Huns. I was really impressed by the bubbles, never noticed them in any other mod I have downloaded and I must admit that watching Ellac the Terrible making a couple of heroic bubbles, before dying was ironically funny in a somewhat sadistic way.

[Diocle]

Ah, understood!
You're a sensitive and artistic soul, Hibernian, I've always loved bubbles,
when I was a child I spent whole days making bubbles!
they make me dream about nature and beauty
in all their infinite forms and awesome manifestations,
I think all the noble spirits love bubbles!

[Diocle]

I've just finished the last book of Sidebottom about the Anglian-Roman character named Balista: 'The Wolves of the North.' and ... no, I didn't like it!

I finished it just because I hate the Alans, they were scum, so reading what the Heruli did to the Alan survivors after the final battle in the steppes, it has been an intellectual pleasure for me.

Anyway, you can't end a novel in that way, it's against reason, it's against any moral law and it's against the basic principles of Western civilization!

[wulfgar610]

This Turkish doco on the glories of the Hittite Empire is riveting stuff with the English narration by Jeremy Irons. Make a really great theme for total war.



The Romans claimed spiritual descent from the Trojans who were of the same linguistic group, their own goat herder background just not cutting it in the international prestige stakes.

[Diocle]

Great doc, great music and nice images!

Precisation: the Romans claimed they had Trojan roots more than Hittite roots, the Trojans were the inhabitants of Wilusa they belonged to the same groups of the Achaean peoples, they were a free city-state formally subject to the Hittite Empire but the relations were not so close if the Hittite didn't help them in their long struggle with the other Achaean peoples.

[wulfgar610]

I'd assumed the Trojans were Luvians who of a similar group to the Hittites. I'm unfamiliar with them being noted as Achaeans. All these spoke an Indo-European language of the Western Branch which would have been similar to Greek. Whether they could understand each other I don't know. The original surprise being when the Hittite language was discovered to be Indo-European when prior it had been assumed they had just another ME group.

The mystery remains the Sea People who over ran the Hittites. My bid is these came from the Balkans.

Chariots, spearmen, archers, light infantry............makes it nice and simple.

Like the neat fitting stone work.....Von Daniken missed that one for his ancient Astronauts theory.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

The current theory on the Sea Peoples is that they came from Thrace or something I think. There was an issue of Ancient Warfare about them.

[Gäiten]

And there is an upcoming Osprey book about the Sea People:
https://ospreypublishing.com/sea-peo...400-bc-1000-bc

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