Mod&Fix ideas for Records mode.

[zoner16]

I disagree about the ranged units being OP. This isn't the fault of the ranged units, but more a byproduct of the absurd amount of shielded light units. Even she shielded units can have tiny shields compared to what we're used to seeing in the West with Rome, Barbarians, Greeks, etc.

Many of the 3D models don't accurately represent the type of shields used in this era unfortunately, though some of the 2D art comes close and the stats are fair. The small rattan round shields that a lot of units have are a Ming Dynasty design for cavalry that was adapted from the southern tribes. Most units used variations of the double arc shields that are currently seen on the Jian Swordguard units. The ones shown in game are on the small side for a double arc shield. Most were a bit bigger than a man's torso, with the largest being almost as big as a Roman scutum.

By the end of the period, the large tower shields seen on the Spear Guard units had become probably the most common type of shield. These would evolve into the the almost direct scutum analogue seen on the Yellow Dragon unit during the Northern Dynasties.

The issue with ranged units is more their absurd baseline accuracy. Levy archers would not be hitting their targets nearly this often.

The meta of China, historically, was some commander shouting MORE CONSCRIPTS at the people in his lands.

No more than it was the meta of most other empires. Later Han maintained a professional military force in the capitol and the frontier, and a well trained system of reservists in the outer provinces. These made up most of the troops that fought in the wars against the Xiongnu and the west. The almost feudal nature of levies in the Chuping and Jian'an eras in which this game starts was due to a breakdown in civil authority that caused most of the professional troops to either desert or declare for Dong Zhuo.

Tactically, Han and Three Kingdoms armies practices a huge variety of tactics. One of the most important aspects of a commander was flexibility and ingenuity. The best catch-all for their model would be combined arms. Different dedicated sections of the army would support each other. This was the basis of the different formations outlined in the Sunzi and what Zhuge Liang's eight unit model was formed around.

While in Europe it was shock infantry focused. Big shields, everyone and their mother's slinging some kind of projectiles, everyone's got at least some basic armor.

Europe practiced many different kinds of warfare. "Shock" infantry was only part of it, insofar as "shock" is merely part of a battle's tools and most soldiers who fight in melee will . Dedicated assault infantry are a rarity on most battlefields as most infantrymen must be expected to perform many roles depending on the flow of the battle.

There are plenty of records of shock infantry tactics from the Three Kingdoms era, and one can find them stretching back all the way to the Warring States. True "assault" infantry makes its appearance a couple times, most notably Gao Shun's camp crushers, though Dian Wei and Gan Ning outfitted their men for the task on occasion at least. Their backseat status can mostly be traced to the prevalence of cavalry and its takeover of the role early on in the era, even if it may not have completed its transition to true "shock" cavalry until the Jin takeover.

There's a reason you didn't see polearms become prevalent in the west until plate became readily available.

Polearms were historically the most prevalent weapon in armies--western, eastern, and in between--throughout most of history. Primarily sword and shield methodologies like those of Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome were the exception, not the rule. Plate had nothing to do with it.

The Han produced swords in huge numbers, up to a third of their total melee arsenal. Every properly equipped soldier was supposed to have a sabre sidearm, and dedicated swordsmen made up entire wings of armies in the Later Han and Three Kingdoms eras.

[LestaT]

The problem with reducing spawn ratio for female is that the game may be populated with all male and diffixult to marry character and produce offsprings.

If it's can be modded via scripting (and UI) maybe so that female have 50% ratio spawn but have a trait that maybe only 5% (or less) that can lead armies then it will be good.

Even at this current rate, it's difficult for me to lead my clan until 3rd generation because of no one to get married.

[SargonTheDude]

Many of the 3D models don't accurately represent the type of shields used in this era unfortunately, though some of the 2D art comes close and the stats are fair. The small rattan round shields that a lot of units have are a Ming Dynasty design for cavalry that was adapted from the southern tribes. Most units used variations of the double arc shields that are currently seen on the Jian Swordguard units. The ones shown in game are on the small side for a double arc shield. Most were a bit bigger than a man's torso, with the largest being almost as big as a Roman scutum.

By the end of the period, the large tower shields seen on the Spear Guard units had become probably the most common type of shield. These would evolve into the the almost direct scutum analogue seen on the Yellow Dragon unit during the Northern Dynasties.

The issue with ranged units is more their absurd baseline accuracy. Levy archers would not be hitting their targets nearly this often.



No more than it was the meta of most other empires. Later Han maintained a professional military force in the capitol and the frontier, and a well trained system of reservists in the outer provinces. These made up most of the troops that fought in the wars against the Xiongnu and the west. The almost feudal nature of levies in the Chuping and Jian'an eras in which this game starts was due to a breakdown in civil authority that caused most of the professional troops to either desert or declare for Dong Zhuo.

Tactically, Han and Three Kingdoms armies practices a huge variety of tactics. One of the most important aspects of a commander was flexibility and ingenuity. The best catch-all for their model would be combined arms. Different dedicated sections of the army would support each other. This was the basis of the different formations outlined in the Sunzi and what Zhuge Liang's eight unit model was formed around.



Europe practiced many different kinds of warfare. "Shock" infantry was only part of it, insofar as "shock" is merely part of a battle's tools and most soldiers who fight in melee will . Dedicated assault infantry are a rarity on most battlefields as most infantrymen must be expected to perform many roles depending on the flow of the battle.

There are plenty of records of shock infantry tactics from the Three Kingdoms era, and one can find them stretching back all the way to the Warring States. True "assault" infantry makes its appearance a couple times, most notably Gao Shun's camp crushers, though Dian Wei and Gan Ning outfitted their men for the task on occasion at least. Their backseat status can mostly be traced to the prevalence of cavalry and its takeover of the role early on in the era, even if it may not have completed its transition to true "shock" cavalry until the Jin takeover.



Polearms were historically the most prevalent weapon in armies--western, eastern, and in between--throughout most of history. Primarily sword and shield methodologies like those of Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome were the exception, not the rule. Plate had nothing to do with it.

The Han produced swords in huge numbers, up to a third of their total melee arsenal. Every properly equipped soldier was supposed to have a sabre sidearm, and dedicated swordsmen made up entire wings of armies in the Later Han and Three Kingdoms eras.

First of all, I've looked into the shields used in Han and three kingdoms era and I've found that Han shields were absurdly small. https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/...ior-Combat.jpg
Later shields during the Three Kingdoms get better, but, again, from what I've read is that these great shield units were typically not the bulk. Now from findings from the later three kingdoms era, they become more common.

On Polarms... No. Just no. If you want to be anal retentive about terminology, and would prefer me to specify long pole arms wielded without the use of a shield, such as the halberd or glaive, fine.
But the overwhelming majority of warfare in history looked like a bunch of guys with big ol shields, spears, and something to shoot at the other side's army with from afar. From what I've been reading up on Han dynasty, and three kingdoms tactics, the mainstay of the battlefield seems to have been the Jian I think, as well as the spear. But from what I could tell from what I've found, big old shields weren't as common place as you claim till much later.
From what I've seen not only in Chinese depictions of war through the ages, but as well as Korean, and Japanese. The area seems to have embraced two handed polearms. My theory is that the smaller frames, combined with the protein lacking diet caused big shields to be more cumbersome... But at the end of the day, it looks like the shield was not as large and common as in the West and Middle East.
Even the historical use of shields I could find in places like Korea and Japan are small, much like the Han shield above.

Similarly "combined arms" is a redundant point. All armies practiced combined arms as you're using the term until we adopted line and shot style warfare. As for my comment about shock troops. Yes. when the mainstay infantry fight in formations like the Boar's Head, and the name of the game is throw javelins/axes/etc to break up enemy formations for the charge, or doing so against a charge to break it up, that is shock warfare.

As for the archer units being too accurate... I didn't find that to be the case for me... I play on Hard/Hard. So maybe it's different on higher difficulty like legendary, or something... But then again, I spam big ol shield units, and run down the archers with my cavalry... So I don't usually have a problem with the archers. (Also, trees. Trees are nice.)

PS: No, most places in the world did not embrace conscription to the point the Chinese did. They simple couldn't afford to. (That's the second paragraph of the PS)
In Europe, typically land owners who owned their own arms and trained with them would do the bulk of the fighting. In Mesoamerica, warfare was an expected activity that all men trained in. This is actually the most common form of culture. Hiring of Mercenaries, or having a specified warrior class was also common.

Conscripts usually were used to shore up the numbers, but you didn't want to have a conscription heavy army since you wanted the men to be back at home farming and keeping the nation from starving... China, however, had 1/4th the world's population at the time... So that probably wasn't as much of an issue.

The problem with reducing spawn ratio for female is that the game may be populated with all male and diffixult to marry character and produce offsprings.

If it's can be modded via scripting (and UI) maybe so that female have 50% ratio spawn but have a trait that maybe only 5% (or less) that can lead armies then it will be good.

Even at this current rate, it's difficult for me to lead my clan until 3rd generation because of no one to get married.

That... Would be a problem. I mostly play as the Yellow Turbans, so I guess I don't really notice that much. As it's not an issue for me.
That said, my 90 turns as Sun Jian... I did have some worries, but I was dominating so quickly I'd figure I would have conquered all of China before Sun Ce died of old age.

[zoner16]

On the Liu Bei quote, Romance, women as property, and sexism during the Han.

Most of my knowledge about the era comes from my disgruntled Chinese friend's ramblings, and the status of women is one of the things he's talked to me at length about. From my recollection things weren't that bad during the Han dynasty proper for women. There were many legal protections, etc. However during the course of this Three Kingdoms period, and carrying into later Chinese dynasties was a increasing limitation on women and their prestige in society.
Fair enough, Romance was written long after the fact, but it's impressions on the populace speak of the conceptions of the time. Now, once again, to be fair, things got worse for women as time went on, so it's not as fair as the Records source.

As for women as property... It's quite telling to me that we only ever hear of these women as Lady X in historical records. It's also quite telling to me that the Han Dynasty's capital punishment solution for rape was dropped like a bad habit during the three kingdoms period and just prior. Going back to that old point, from my understanding, all of those various boons for women during the Han were increasingly burned out during this particular era and the strife leading up to it.

This doesn't have much to do with the status of women deteriorating specifically during the Three Kingdoms era. The curtailment of the punishment for rape was part of a larger back and forth over capital punishments that was going on in the Wei court. The status of women remained mostly the same throughout the Later Han-3K-Jin transition.

PS: I never used the term Chattle for the women. There's plenty kinds of property, even slavery, that isn't Chattel in variety or feel. But when you and all of your kids can be wiped out due to that weird generational slaughter rule, all because the man of the house slipped up... IDK, I'd probably start to feel a bit like property to the men of the household.

The family extermination to the X degree punishment was used if anyone in the clan had committed treason, not just the patriarch. There are at least a couple instances of it being invoked due to the actions of imperial court ladies.

PPS: I was using "Barbarian" in the more conventional sense of highly looked down upon, or not fully civilized, rather than the Chinese translation of the word which more closely resembles alien/foreigner/xeno.

It's still not correct. The state of Eastern (or Sun) Wu was not seen as less civilized. While they certainly ruled over certain peoples that were, so did everyone else. In fact, the remaining apparatus of the state of Wu became the bulwark of Han civilization following the collapse of Western Jin. It's literary and scholarly traditions were melded into the Eastern Jin court, thus merging with the imperial mainstream. It was helped by the fact that it had made its power base in the region of Western Chu and Sun Ce had aped the legacy of Xiang Yu, thus positing Wu as another Hegemon.

Certain scholars in later years tried to make the case that it was a "barbaric" state, but this was mostly to undermine its place in the narrative of the Three Kingdoms for political effect. The writings of the time make it clear that the northerners were treating it as a rogue Han province, and Shu honestly gets hit with the "barbarian" label a lot more than Wu was, mostly due to its courting of various tribal groups to fight Wei and its employment of some very unsavory characters.

Now as for why I had said Wu was stand out in China, it largely had to do not merely by their presence but their influence. Thus leading me to want clarification about Lady Huang. Since, from what I've been told, she wasn't a heavy presence at court like Lady Wu was. Again, going back to what little I do know. Women like Lady Huang, or Wang Yi, weren't as influential or prominent as their Wu counterparts.

Lady Wu was hardly an isolated case. Women played just as much of a role in the Wei court as well, and probably did at the Shu court, but Shu's records are very incomplete and their state was mostly run by the army anyways. The Dowager of a dynasty typically had the type of power that Lady Wu had, and Dowager Guo came very close in Wei. Her role gets overshadowed by the conflict between Sima Yi and Cao Shuang because it wasn't as dramatic, but she controlled the court faction during that affair and was a political kingmaker until Sima Zhao became too powerful to be constrained. The unholy mess that preceded the War of the Eight Princes in Western Jin shows that women were capable of wielding just as much power as they had during the Han.

If Du Yu's work on the great women of history at that point (the end of the Three Kingdoms) had not been lost, we certainly could have gotten many more examples.

First of all, I've looked into the shields used in Han and three kingdoms era and I've found that Han shields were absurdly small. https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/...ior-Combat.jpg
Later shields during the Three Kingdoms get better, but, again, from what I've read is that these great shield units were typically not the bulk. Now from findings from the later three kingdoms era, they become more common.

That single photo is not representative of all Han shields. It's one of the smallest I've seen, and I suspect that that's because it's made entirely of metal, whereas most Chinese shields of the era were usually mostly wood.

The Qin era shields found in the Tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi were about 28 inches long, and it seems that Former Han kept this model. However, shields during Later Han were specifically noted to have gotten larger from the preceding dynasty. Double arc shields from the Warring States have been found that measured 36 inches tall, and the tower shields used by the Wu and Yue people during the same era and the Chu-Han contention were of the same height and even boarder. "Great shields," tall enough for a man to hide behind, are textually attested in the Book of Later Han and they continue to appear during the Records of the Three Kingdoms in the wars in the west and north.

On Polarms... No. Just no. If you want to be anal retentive about terminology, and would prefer me to specify long pole arms wielded without the use of a shield, such as the halberd or glaive, fine.

"Polearm" to me is any spear, halberd, pike, etc that is a weapon on a pole. The length, number of hands used, or its conjunction with a shield isn't a distinction I make.

But the overwhelming majority of warfare in history looked like a bunch of guys with big ol shields, spears, and something to shoot at the other side's army with from afar. From what I've been reading up on Han dynasty, and three kingdoms tactics, the mainstay of the battlefield seems to have been the Jian I think, as well as the spear.

The Jian had been losing favor for centuries. It was already outnumbered in imperial armories by the Dao by the turn of the calendar, and imperial regulations considered the Dao a more reliable weapon for standard issue to the troops. The Dao was also always paired with a shield in discussion of martial forms.

Among the weapons of the time, the melee trifecta referenced in the tactical discourses during Former Han was halberd-sword and shield-pike and short spear, to be used as the terrain and situation demanded. The former is a two handed weapon, the middle with a shield, and the latter a mix of the two, as the short spear was meant to be used with a shield but a pike was not.

But from what I could tell from what I've found, big old shields weren't as common place as you claim till much later.
From what I've seen not only in Chinese depictions of war through the ages, but as well as Korean, and Japanese. The area seems to have embraced two handed polearms. My theory is that the smaller frames, combined with the protein lacking diet caused big shields to be more cumbersome... But at the end of the day, it looks like the shield was not as large and common as in the West and Middle East.
Even the historical use of shields I could find in places like Korea and Japan are small, much like the Han shield above.

The commonality of shields in Chinese warfare has been a debate for years in academia, but there's little evidence for anything conclusive. References to shields in the histories come and go depending on who is fighting and where. Chinese warfare is far from monolithic. Korea, and especially Japan have their own military traditions that have their own evolutions as well.

Unfortunately, most Chinese historians at the time had little interest in soldier's equipment, so the best we can do is guestimate. Surviving period artwork depicts a range of shield types used across the empire at various points in the conflict. Specifically, one can see the rise of the long spined oblong shield found in some reliefs at the end of Later Han, into artwork from the state of Wei, then finally culminating to its huge prevalence in Jin dynasty artwork. Again, the closet thing to this kind of shield is the oblong ones used by the Spear Guard and Yellow Dragon units, though they're missing the prominent spine, they're still gripped rather than strapped, and the Yellow Dragon version has the metal boss that wouldn't be present until the Norther Dynasties.

While it may not be right for all units to have shields along this line, given that's where most shields would end up by the end of the period, it seems a logical progression point, with the smaller hand-gripped shields being starting militia equipment.

Similarly "combined arms" is a redundant point. All armies practiced combined arms as you're using the term until we adopted line and shot style warfare. As for my comment about shock troops. Yes. when the mainstay infantry fight in formations like the Boar's Head, and the name of the game is throw javelins/axes/etc to break up enemy formations for the charge, or doing so against a charge to break it up, that is shock warfare.

And not all peoples in the west fought like that and even those that did were not bound only to those types of tactics. Likewise, Chinese armies could adopt formations and tactics along those lines when it suited them. There was even a specific unit designation for "shock troops."

PS: No, most places in the world did not embrace conscription to the point the Chinese did. They simple couldn't afford to. (That's the second paragraph of the PS)
In Europe, typically land owners who owned their own arms and trained with them would do the bulk of the fighting. In Mesoamerica, warfare was an expected activity that all men trained in. This is actually the most common form of culture. Hiring of Mercenaries, or having a specified warrior class was also common.

Conscripts usually were used to shore up the numbers, but you didn't want to have a conscription heavy army since you wanted the men to be back at home farming and keeping the nation from starving... China, however, had 1/4th the world's population at the time... So that probably wasn't as much of an issue.

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that everywhere else was conscripting like crazy. I'm saying that the Han did not conscript nearly as much as you seem to think.

Shoring up the numbers was exactly what conscripts were meant to do in the Han. The armies created for the Han-Xiongnu Wars and most other conflicts were drawn from the professional armies at the capitol and the border garrisons as well as the reservists that were regularly trained and called up for service. In Former Han, the reserve system was empire wide, but in Later Han it became restricted to the frontier commanderies. Conscripts were only pressed into service if military setbacks or interior rebellions meant that these latter forces were either unavailable, insufficient, or too far out of the way. This is what happened during the fall of the Han, but the surviving states transitioned away from this by the time of the actual Three Kingdoms division, though they did so in different ways.

[Intranetusa]

Most of my knowledge about the era comes from my disgruntled Chinese friend's ramblings, and the status of women is one of the things he's talked to me at length about. From my recollection things weren't that bad during the Han dynasty proper for women. There were many legal protections, etc. However during the course of this Three Kingdoms period, and carrying into later Chinese dynasties was a increasing limitation on women and their prestige in society..

Three Kingdoms was a period when everything fell apart and laws were ignored due to continuous wars, collapse of government, and mass deaths everywhere. So I don't think it was necessarily because the laws changed that made things worse for women, but rather things falling apart for everyone due to the chaos, and women may have suffered more.

As for later dynasties, later Dynasties after the Han sometimes had even better women's rights, but rights also varied from dynasty to dynasty. The Tang Dynasty saw many many play prominent roles in the government. For example, Wu Zetian became ruling empress and regent of the Tang Dynasty and one of the main generals who helped create the Tang Dynasty was a woman. It is usually only in the extremely conservative neo-Confucian periods that we see women's rights being restricted more. In the more liberal periods and during when neo-Confucianism wasn't as dominant, women's rights were greater.

Fair enough, Romance was written long after the fact, but it's impressions on the populace speak of the conceptions of the time. Now, once again, to be fair, things got worse for women as time went on, so it's not as fair as the Records source...

Romance was written during the Ming Dynasty, which was an era where particularly ultraconservative neo-Confucianism became influential, so that likely affected the novel's depiction and treatment of women.

As for women as property... It's quite telling to me that we only ever hear of these women as Lady X in historical records.

It's not quite telling because Lady X would be her maiden name/family name and not her husband's family name. Women didn't adopt their husband's family name after marriage.
Women were allowed to own property and become heads of households - something that would be impossible if they were no more than property themselves.

It's also quite telling to me that the Han Dynasty's capital punishment solution for rape was dropped like a bad habit during the three kingdoms period and just prior. Going back to that old point, from my understanding, all of those various boons for women during the Han were increasingly burned out during this particular era and the strife leading up to it.

Developed countries today also don't execute people simply for rape either. Dropping execution for rape doesn't mean women were treated worse. It just means the law got more lenient. Rape was still punished by other methods, just not executions. For example, during the Tang Dynasty, capital punishment was entirely abolished for long periods of time. That doesn't mean people had less rights.
For example, females could divorce their husbands and there were laws against spousal abuse during the Han Dynasty. Now maybe the breakdown of government caused women's rights to degrade during the Three Kingdoms era, but that didn't extend to much beyond that.
We know that after the Three Kingdoms era, women's rights picked up again because
1) increasing spread of Buddhism and resurgence of Daoism, both of which emphasized more rights rights and autonomy for women (Daoism especially encouraged the reexamination and change of traditional gender norms)
2) the north became ruled by kingdoms created by nomads that gave women wide autonomy

PS: I never used the term Chattle for the women. There's plenty kinds of property, even slavery, that isn't Chattel in variety or feel. But when you and all of your kids can be wiped out due to that weird generational slaughter rule, all because the man of the house slipped up... IDK, I'd probably start to feel a bit like property to the men of the household..

Generational slaughter has nothing to do with women's rights and isn't influenced by sex/gender though. Every man in the family also gets executed if the head of the household commits a maximum penalty crime like treason. The problem with generation slaughter is it relies on "guilt by association," so wasn't based on discrimination against females.
IIRC, some later dynasties that still used the punishment allowed more lenient sentences for women (eg. slavery) while men were still executed.

PPS: I was using "Barbarian" in the more conventional sense of highly looked down upon, or not fully civilized, rather than the Chinese translation of the word which more closely resembles alien/foreigner/xeno..

The main reason Wu was looked down upon was because their land was mostly underdeveloped, poorer, and had masses of unruly tribes, so it wasn't really due to any particular cultural reason.

On my actual reason for bringing up Germanic Peoples, Wu as being abnormal/Q about Lady Huang. Mypurpose for bringing up Rome II and the Germans in particular, was to point out an ur example of a culture that wouldn't be out of place having this high a spawn rate for female leaders...The problem is they depicted the game as having the entire map and all of the factions as monocultural, so they're unable to correctly represent the different attitudes depending on the regions. From early musings from Gaius Julius, to the works of Tacitus, to Christian recounting of the Germanic Pagan Norse, women were highly revered in ancient Germanic Cultures. The Celts my get the "good for women" wrap due to the Insular Celts, but even lowly women in Germanic society held authority over their home as they were considered a family/clan/tribes spiritual mediators with the gods. A chief could go to war, and a woman could put an end to it. Women were the ones who were sent to hash out peace terms. Women held supreme religious authority. Women could easily break away from their husbands, under favorable terms for them... As such I brought them up to say; hey, it's not like We're playing the Suebi anymore.

Yes, I agree that women in leadership positions for some Germanic tribes seems to have been more common than more agrarian civilizations such as the Roman Empire, Han Empire, etc. As for Celts, I read it varies depending on the area as different Celts in different nations had different levels of tolerance. For example, the statute "Gallic Chieftain killing himself and his wife" was supposed to represent the power that Gallic Celtic men had over their wives. I believe Caesar also described Celtic alliances in Gaul as existing through marriages of female relatives, so females were used as political tools for alliances as well. Whereas other Celts further to the east such as those around Dacia and Illyria had more female leaders and the Celts in Britian had Boudica (though I read her power stemmed from more her husband's position and she was introduced as the "wife" of her late husband).

Also, this kinda feeds into your second part 2... No... Not all women in pre modern societies had it rough. Certainly in more memorable and "Civilized" ones such as those of the Middle East, Mediterranean, and East/South Asia did. However, I know in many Polynesian societies, most Pre-Christian Northern Europeans, West Africans, East Coast North Americans, many Steppe peoples, etc, had fairly equal footing with men. My personal theory is that the more "civilized" places had the highest emphasis on agriculture, hard labor, and had much larger populations, thus artificially inflating the male role's importance while also decreasing the female role's influence...

Yes, you are correct that not all societies were the same. I was referring more to the large agrarian empires like Rome, Persia, etc with most of the world's population, so I should have been more specific.
I agree that is certainly possible or even probable for there to be a link between women's rights and intensive agriculture. Less agrarian societies often had more rights for women than agrarian societies around the world.
Different ethnic groups in ancient and modern China had varying degrees of rights for women, and it seems that the less agrarian women had greater rights as well. eg. The Moso and Nakhi ethnic group living in the mountainous jungle terrain of Yunnan/Sichuan in Southwest China have matrilineal and/or matriarchical societies. The nomadic ethnic groups and nomadic kingdoms founded within China also often had wider autonomy for females.

Now as for why I had said Wu was stand out in China, it largely had to do not merely by their presence but their influence. Thus leading me to want clarification about Lady Huang. Since, from what I've been told, she wasn't a heavy presence at court like Lady Wu was. Again, going back to what little I do know. Women like Lady Huang, or Wang Yi, weren't as influential or prominent as their Wu counterparts.

That is true. Though I think that has more to do with the female figures for Wu being royalty and closely related to the ruling monarch.

On historically accurate units/weapons....While I agree that historically accurate units is very important, maybe even more important than all the rest. It's far harder to completely retexture, rearm, and restat every unit in the game than it is to lower female leader spawn rate, or any of the other suggestions I've made in this thread. At least, as far as I'm aware it is. As such, I don't think this is a fair point to make considering the premise of this thread. ... We both seem to be in agreement that the spawn rate is absurd for Records mode, and is unrealistic. Considering what you've said, you probably also think my rare hidden trait solution to allow for some female generals is a good idea. So... Apart from corrections, I think we can agree the point still stands. Correct? That said, thank you for the added info dump.

Yes, I agree that the records mode can see a reduction in the number of female generals for many of the factions if there is a historical mod that makes things more accurate.

[SargonTheDude]

This doesn't have much to do with the status of women deteriorating specifically during the Three Kingdoms era. The curtailment of the punishment for rape was part of a larger back and forth over capital punishments that was going on in the Wei court. The status of women remained mostly the same throughout the Later Han-3K-Jin transition.



The family extermination to the X degree punishment was used if anyone in the clan had committed treason, not just the patriarch. There are at least a couple instances of it being invoked due to the actions of imperial court ladies.



It's still not correct. The state of Eastern (or Sun) Wu was not seen as less civilized. While they certainly ruled over certain peoples that were, so did everyone else. In fact, the remaining apparatus of the state of Wu became the bulwark of Han civilization following the collapse of Western Jin. It's literary and scholarly traditions were melded into the Eastern Jin court, thus merging with the imperial mainstream. It was helped by the fact that it had made its power base in the region of Western Chu and Sun Ce had aped the legacy of Xiang Yu, thus positing Wu as another Hegemon.

Certain scholars in later years tried to make the case that it was a "barbaric" state, but this was mostly to undermine its place in the narrative of the Three Kingdoms for political effect. The writings of the time make it clear that the northerners were treating it as a rogue Han province, and Shu honestly gets hit with the "barbarian" label a lot more than Wu was, mostly due to its courting of various tribal groups to fight Wei and its employment of some very unsavory characters.



Lady Wu was hardly an isolated case. Women played just as much of a role in the Wei court as well, and probably did at the Shu court, but Shu's records are very incomplete and their state was mostly run by the army anyways. The Dowager of a dynasty typically had the type of power that Lady Wu had, and Dowager Guo came very close in Wei. Her role gets overshadowed by the conflict between Sima Yi and Cao Shuang because it wasn't as dramatic, but she controlled the court faction during that affair and was a political kingmaker until Sima Zhao became too powerful to be constrained. The unholy mess that preceded the War of the Eight Princes in Western Jin shows that women were capable of wielding just as much power as they had during the Han.

If Du Yu's work on the great women of history at that point (the end of the Three Kingdoms) had not been lost, we certainly could have gotten many more examples.



That single photo is not representative of all Han shields. It's one of the smallest I've seen, and I suspect that that's because it's made entirely of metal, whereas most Chinese shields of the era were usually mostly wood.

The Qin era shields found in the Tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi were about 28 inches long, and it seems that Former Han kept this model. However, shields during Later Han were specifically noted to have gotten larger from the preceding dynasty. Double arc shields from the Warring States have been found that measured 36 inches tall, and the tower shields used by the Wu and Yue people during the same era and the Chu-Han contention were of the same height and even boarder. "Great shields," tall enough for a man to hide behind, are textually attested in the Book of Later Han and they continue to appear during the Records of the Three Kingdoms in the wars in the west and north.



"Polearm" to me is any spear, halberd, pike, etc that is a weapon on a pole. The length, number of hands used, or its conjunction with a shield isn't a distinction I make.



The Jian had been losing favor for centuries. It was already outnumbered in imperial armories by the Dao by the turn of the calendar, and imperial regulations considered the Dao a more reliable weapon for standard issue to the troops. The Dao was also always paired with a shield in discussion of martial forms.

Among the weapons of the time, the melee trifecta referenced in the tactical discourses during Former Han was halberd-sword and shield-pike and short spear, to be used as the terrain and situation demanded. The former is a two handed weapon, the middle with a shield, and the latter a mix of the two, as the short spear was meant to be used with a shield but a pike was not.



The commonality of shields in Chinese warfare has been a debate for years in academia, but there's little evidence for anything conclusive. References to shields in the histories come and go depending on who is fighting and where. Chinese warfare is far from monolithic. Korea, and especially Japan have their own military traditions that have their own evolutions as well.

Unfortunately, most Chinese historians at the time had little interest in soldier's equipment, so the best we can do is guestimate. Surviving period artwork depicts a range of shield types used across the empire at various points in the conflict. Specifically, one can see the rise of the long spined oblong shield found in some reliefs at the end of Later Han, into artwork from the state of Wei, then finally culminating to its huge prevalence in Jin dynasty artwork. Again, the closet thing to this kind of shield is the oblong ones used by the Spear Guard and Yellow Dragon units, though they're missing the prominent spine, they're still gripped rather than strapped, and the Yellow Dragon version has the metal boss that wouldn't be present until the Norther Dynasties.

While it may not be right for all units to have shields along this line, given that's where most shields would end up by the end of the period, it seems a logical progression point, with the smaller hand-gripped shields being starting militia equipment.



And not all peoples in the west fought like that and even those that did were not bound only to those types of tactics. Likewise, Chinese armies could adopt formations and tactics along those lines when it suited them. There was even a specific unit designation for "shock troops."



You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that everywhere else was conscripting like crazy. I'm saying that the Han did not conscript nearly as much as you seem to think.

Shoring up the numbers was exactly what conscripts were meant to do in the Han. The armies created for the Han-Xiongnu Wars and most other conflicts were drawn from the professional armies at the capitol and the border garrisons as well as the reservists that were regularly trained and called up for service. In Former Han, the reserve system was empire wide, but in Later Han it became restricted to the frontier commanderies. Conscripts were only pressed into service if military setbacks or interior rebellions meant that these latter forces were either unavailable, insufficient, or too far out of the way. This is what happened during the fall of the Han, but the surviving states transitioned away from this by the time of the actual Three Kingdoms division, though they did so in different ways.

Alright, look, I'm tossing in the towel for a few reasons;
1) My learning of this era is recent, with most of my set knowledge coming from a disgruntled(at romanticism of the era) friend.

2) The person most qualified to have this discussion with you, is merely giving me cliff notes and not engaging themselves because they're fatigued from arguing with people about the era. They said they might get around to getting involved one day, but for now, I'm woefully under qualified and need to read more..

3) While I would normally link what i've read on these topics, such as more examples of shields from numerous sources I've read so far, to tactics and favored weapons. I know from my own delving into various historical cultures around the world, that typically what you find first is surface level understanding that you later come to discard and mock.

4) This has all kind of derailed my thread in a damage control feeling kinda way. With a lot of my points being taken and rephrased more positively, or countered by a "not all" argument, with occasional new info brought in, none of which actually counters my points.

For example, the equipment being not as shield focused as other eras we've played the series in and thus the archers seeming overpowered being an illusion.
The response was basically an admission, but simply pointing out "it's not that bad, we do have shields and shock infantry/etc."
We're still stuck with units not being equipped to handle missile spam. And my musings remain true.

Or me pointing out that the culture is nowhere near as egalitarian as needed for the proliferation of women on the battlefield, unlike other cultures we saw in Rome II.
The response was basically an admission, simply pointing out "it was like that everywhere, and sometimes in rare cases women did play a role."
We still end with there being no justification for women being that prevalent. And my suggestions remain apt.

It's a recurring theme, and as much as I love the occasional new info that creeps into the conversation... It's distracting from what was actually being discussed, and comes across as damage control for the culture and military practices, rather than an actual addressing of the points.

PS: I do appreciate the info on Wu not being a stand out place, and can't recall all of my friend's points on the matter. But until they plan to come and address it themselves, I'm just going to write it off as their Pro Wu bias.

Three Kingdoms was a period when everything fell apart and laws were ignored due to continuous wars, collapse of government, and mass deaths everywhere. So I don't think it was necessarily because the laws changed that made things worse for women, but rather things falling apart for everyone due to the chaos, and women may have suffered more.

As for later dynasties, later Dynasties after the Han sometimes had even better women's rights, but rights also varied from dynasty to dynasty. The Tang Dynasty saw many many play prominent roles in the government. For example, Wu Zetian became ruling empress and regent of the Tang Dynasty and one of the main generals who helped create the Tang Dynasty was a woman. It is usually only in the extremely conservative neo-Confucian periods that we see women's rights being restricted more. In the more liberal periods and during when neo-Confucianism wasn't as dominant, women's rights were greater.


Romance was written during the Ming Dynasty, which was an era where particularly ultraconservative neo-Confucianism became influential, so that likely affected the novel's depiction and treatment of women.


It's not quite telling because Lady X would be her maiden name/family name and not her husband's family name. Women didn't adopt their husband's family name after marriage.
Women were allowed to own property and become heads of households - something that would be impossible if they were no more than property themselves.


Developed countries today also don't execute people simply for rape either. Dropping execution for rape doesn't mean women were treated worse. It just means the law got more lenient. Rape was still punished by other methods, just not executions. For example, during the Tang Dynasty, capital punishment was entirely abolished for long periods of time. That doesn't mean people had less rights.
For example, females could divorce their husbands and there were laws against spousal abuse during the Han Dynasty. Now maybe the breakdown of government caused women's rights to degrade during the Three Kingdoms era, but that didn't extend to much beyond that.
We know that after the Three Kingdoms era, women's rights picked up again because
1) increasing spread of Buddhism and resurgence of Daoism, both of which emphasized more rights rights and autonomy for women (Daoism especially encouraged the reexamination and change of traditional gender norms)
2) the north became ruled by kingdoms created by nomads that gave women wide autonomy


Generational slaughter has nothing to do with women's rights and isn't influenced by sex/gender though. Every man in the family also gets executed if the head of the household commits a maximum penalty crime like treason. The problem with generation slaughter is it relies on "guilt by association," so wasn't based on discrimination against females.
IIRC, some later dynasties that still used the punishment allowed more lenient sentences for women (eg. slavery) while men were still executed.


The main reason Wu was looked down upon was because their land was mostly underdeveloped, poorer, and had masses of unruly tribes, so it wasn't really due to any particular cultural reason.



Yes, I agree that women in leadership positions for some Germanic tribes seems to have been more common than more agrarian civilizations such as the Roman Empire, Han Empire, etc. As for Celts, I read it varies depending on the area as different Celts in different nations had different levels of tolerance. For example, the statute "Gallic Chieftain killing himself and his wife" was supposed to represent the power that Gallic Celtic men had over their wives. I believe Caesar also described Celtic alliances in Gaul as existing through marriages of female relatives, so females were used as political tools for alliances as well. Whereas other Celts further to the east such as those around Dacia and Illyria had more female leaders and the Celts in Britian had Boudica (though I read her power stemmed from more her husband's position and she was introduced as the "wife" of her late husband).


Yes, you are correct that not all societies were the same. I was referring more to the large agrarian empires like Rome, Persia, etc with most of the world's population, so I should have been more specific.
I agree that is certainly possible or even probable for there to be a link between women's rights and intensive agriculture. Less agrarian societies often had more rights for women than agrarian societies around the world.
Different ethnic groups in ancient and modern China had varying degrees of rights for women, and it seems that the less agrarian women had greater rights as well. eg. The Moso and Nakhi ethnic group living in the mountainous jungle terrain of Yunnan/Sichuan in Southwest China have matrilineal and/or matriarchical societies. The nomadic ethnic groups and nomadic kingdoms founded within China also often had wider autonomy for females.


That is true. Though I think that has more to do with the female figures for Wu being royalty and closely related to the ruling monarch.


Yes, I agree that the records mode can see a reduction in the number of female generals for many of the factions if there is a historical mod that makes things more accurate.

Okay... So... The Tang Dynasty, the same one where the practice of foot binding became popularized, is the one you want to bring up as having better women's rights?... That's a hard sell my friend, I'm gonna need more than another case of royal women being allowed to rule. This exact Dynasty was brought up by my friend as an example of how horrible it got for women in later Dynasties.

My point for Lady X being an example of women being marginalized is that nobody even know their names. They had to make up Sun Ren's name, for example. Only the clan name is remembered, regardless of where it comes from. Where as in most other cultures, you have very elaborate family trees where everyone goes down in recorded history. The Lady X phenomenon is like, one step above from the "we're not even going to record them as existing" one.

On law and punishment. While yes, plenty of modern cultures don't give the death penalty for rape, we also don't give the death penalty for anything. Sometimes even not murder itself. So that's a bit unfair.
My point is that there was this legal protection women had, severely enforced, and it was stripped away by society... Which I do think says something about a society.

On the Gauls. Yes, they were the ones that typically had less egalitarian societies... Coincidentally also more agricultural and "civilized", while the Germans were talked about as if they outright mocked the very act of being civilized.

But yes, I think you should look at my reply to that other gentleman. I only replied to this one since it's the first response you had to mine, and I felt I should at least give you a response.

[zoner16]

Yes, you're right. I've delved off topic quite a bit haven't I? I just felt that some of the issues raises were from stereotypes that I didn't agree with. I apologize. I'll get back to the primary concerns.

For example, the equipment being not as shield focused as other eras we've played the series in and thus the archers seeming overpowered being an illusion.
The response was basically an admission, but simply pointing out "it's not that bad, we do have shields and shock infantry/etc."
We're still stuck with units not being equipped to handle missile spam. And my musings remain true.

That warfare isn't quite as shield focused as it is elsewhere is something I can agree with in the sense that a smaller portion of the army was likely carrying shields and the majority probably wouldn't have been as large as the average shield in a Roman, Greek, or Gallic army. Some were, but probably not most. It should however, be an option to focus on developing those kinds of units, perhaps by taking the right reforms.

What I disagree with is that ranged units are definitely out of balance right now and in my opinion, it's due to their baseline accuracy at lower levels. Yes, if you spam great shielded units in Turtle and Shield Wall, you'll run into few problems. However, with unshielded or out of formation units, the killing rate definitely feels too high. Entire units can melt in mere seconds before you can notice, even against just archer militia. This creates a rather large bias towards shielded units in army compositions at the lower ranks, and it doesn't seem that archers were historically dominant to this degree without training.

I think the primary solutions would be to lower the range and accuracy of Archer Militia to better represent their much less well constructed bows and poor marksmanship compared to actual archers. They'd be decent support units who can do a number on enemies over time if they hold still, but hitting galloping cavalry or shredding an army before lines meet just because it doesn't have shields should be beyond them.

Or me pointing out that the culture is nowhere near as egalitarian as needed for the proliferation of women on the battlefield, unlike other cultures we saw in Rome II.
The response was basically an admission, simply pointing out "it was like that everywhere, and sometimes in rare cases women did play a role."
We still end with there being no justification for women being that prevalent. And my suggestions remain apt.

My point about women was mostly that there wasn't a noticeable decline in their status across this era compared to the Han and that Wu was not seen as a strange outlier, which seemed to be the basis of your argument. You are correct that they didn't have equal rights and weren't of the kind of status that one saw in the cultures that Rome 2 was making use of them in.

However, I don't think that the bar them from leading armies solution is the correct way to go. Primarily it's because if you take away their ability to lead armies, there's not much else they can do. The skill trees, stats, and ancillaries are all designed around the idea that any character can lead an army if need be. If you get rid of them being generals due to historicity reasons, you also have to get rid of them being administrators, since the odds of them holding a civil position were honestly even lower due to the more formal status that had compared to the somewhat ad hoc nature of military command. Without court politics or most dynastic interactions, the women in the court would have almost no gameplay without these roles aside from breeding, which I think is an even larger disservice to their often large roles in history. While misrepresenting their status in ancient times is somewhat unfortunate, I'd rather have that than reduce them to just names in a family tree.

I think the better solution is to instead demonstrate the societal issues that pressured women towards the sidelines of the conflict. Take the CK2 route of having only characters with particular traits be alright to share command with women and everyone else take a satisfaction hit for women employed by the court to demonstrate their displeasure with this libertine nature as well as just have that relationship malus with the woman in question just due to that discrimination. It creates a system that embraces the sandbox potential of allowing you to make your own history, while still acknowledging the difficulties faced by women of the time and forcing the player to deal with them.

[Intranetusa]

Okay... So... The Tang Dynasty, the same one where the practice of foot binding became popularized, is the one you want to bring up as having better women's rights?... That's a hard sell my friend, I'm gonna need more than another case of royal women being allowed to rule. This exact Dynasty was brought up by my friend as an example of how horrible it got for women in later Dynasties..

No, foot binding didn't become popularized in the Tang Dynasty. Foot binding wasn't even around until the Southern Tang era (which is not the Tang Dynasty), and the custom didn't become popular until later (eg. centuries into or after the Song Dynasty). You or your friend confused the Tang Dynasty during the time of Wu Zeitan (7th century) with the Southern Tang (10th century AD).

Also, you can't really use one example to claim it was indicative of women's rights in general. For example, we know that the Germans practiced human sacrifices during Caesar's day. During the early middle ages, we had more details regarding Germanic sacrifices that evolved by that time - Germanic peoples such as the Vikings sacrificed wives, concubines and female slaves when a Viking chieftain or warrior died. Sometimes ritualistic rape would be performed right before the female was killed.
Would we say the rights of female Germans was pretty bad because of this custom?

My point for Lady X being an example of women being marginalized is that nobody even know their names. They had to make up Sun Ren's name, for example. Only the clan name is remembered, regardless of where it comes from. Where as in most other cultures, you have very elaborate family trees where everyone goes down in recorded history. The Lady X phenomenon is like, one step above from the "we're not even going to record them as existing" one..

That is true. However, it could also be the result of the lack of records we have of the era in general. There are still some female names (and less important females?) that are recorded I believe.

On law and punishment. While yes, plenty of modern cultures don't give the death penalty for rape, we also don't give the death penalty for anything. Sometimes even not murder itself. So that's a bit unfair.My point is that there was this legal protection women had, severely enforced, and it was stripped away by society... Which I do think says something about a society...

You only said the death penalty was removed. That doesn't mean the crime wasn't still punished in some other way. You'll need to provide some evidence or source if you're implying all punishments for rape were removed (which is highly unlikely).
Reducing penalties for many different crimes was not uncommon throughout history.

Edit: Looks like Zoner already answered this question and stated that Wei was just debating curtailing capital punishment in general.

But yes, I think you should look at my reply to that other gentleman. I only replied to this one since it's the first response you had to mine, and I felt I should at least give you a response.

Yes, I'm reading Zoner16's replies now and looks like he is answering some of your questions and making counterpoints.

I disagree about the ranged units being OP. This isn't the fault of the ranged units, but more a byproduct of the absurd amount of shielded light units. Even she shielded units can have tiny shields compared to what we're used to seeing in the West with Rome, Barbarians, Greeks, etc..

There are actually a lot of large shields in ancient East Asia but these aren't properly portrayed in the game. The shields during the Warring States to Han Dynasty and Three Kingdoms era were widely varied and ranged from small bucklers to larger shields roughly the size of a Roman scutum. Even among a single shield type/shape, there were large variations in size - for example, the "double arc shield" with that polearm rest notches for example varied from small metal shields to large wooden shields the size of Roman scutums.

"Warring States period Shuang Hu Dun currently kept at Jingzhou Museum. At 36.4" × 23" (92.5 cm x 58 cm): https://imgur.com/eGMxGFD

Warring States shield (92.5cm tall, 55cm wide): https://imgur.com/ITzrBP5

Smaller Warring States shield 47 cm tall: https://imgur.com/ITzrBP5

Warring States era rectangular lacquered wooden "tower shield" (measured roughly 36.14 inches (91.8 cm) in height and 19.53 inches (49.6 cm) in width.): https://imgur.com/UE38Hr5

Han era figurines with shields reaching from the shoulder to mid thighs (slightly smaller than Roman scutums):

https://imgur.com/ITzrBP5

https://imgur.com/N2DqZPe

Other types of Han era shields:

Large gourd shields and large curved shields: https://imgur.com/24oyNHH

Smaller types of Han shields: https://imgur.com/mh4kVA6

Smaller strapped shield (similar to the strapped round Macedonian shields given to phalangites): https://imgur.com/TLiALfA

Jin Dynasty era larger shield roughly the size of a scutum:
https://imgur.com/njl3oc4

Three Kingdoms era/Eastern Wu large shield, roughly scutum size: https://imgur.com/WpiN3Kc

Take a look at the shields on this website and wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chines...Shield_gallery
http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.co...na-part-1.html

Some more photos:
https://imgur.com/a/9pgf6Py

The meta of China, historically, was some commander shouting MORE CONSCRIPTS at the people in his lands. While in Europe it was shock infantry focused. Big shields, everyone and their mother's slinging some kind of projectiles, everyone's got at least some basic armor..

Conscription is a type of recruitment system. Shock infantry is a type of role for certain soldiers. The two terms are not mutually exclusive, as you can have conscripted soldiers who serve as shock infantry.

For example, the Roman army before the Marian reforms was recruited through conscription and composed of mostly levied milita forces. Celtic armies under Vercingetorix was almost primarily composed of less well equipped conscripted tribal levies with a small core of well equipped nobles. So you can certainly have soldiers performing as "shock infantry" in conscripted armies.
Also, conscription varied wildly depending on the era in the regions of ancient China. The Western Han Dynasty had a universal conscription system of a well trained milita where men would be trained for a year and served 1-2 years. The Eastern Han Dynasty didn't even have conscription as they initially allowed conscription to be avoided with a tax and then didn't bother with conscription as they had enough volunteers for their professional army, semi-professional units, frontier milita, penal armies and mercenaries to fight their wars without needing mass conscription.

So even within the Han Dynasty, there were huge variations on how important conscription was - ranging from hugely important to not at all important and barely used. The use of conscription also varied widely during the Three Kingdoms era depending on the timeperiod and the faction.
We cannot simply say "China = lots of conscripts" as Chinese reliance on conscription is often over exaggerated

Edit: Looks like Zoner16 already discussed this. I'd like to add that Gao Shun is one of Lu Bu's commanders, and the assault infantry were often heavily armored and wielded two handed long swords up to 5 feet long like this: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qim...b44258d2cb9a55

There's a reason you didn't see polearms become prevalent in the west until plate became readily available.

If you're talking about one handed polearms that includes spears, then everybody used polearms as their most dominant weapon. The Celts, Germans, Greeks, Romans, etc all used polearms. Even with the Roman military reforms of the mid-late Republic, they retained the pila, which is a 6 foot polearm that was used in both melee and as a throwing weapon.

If you're talking about two handed polearms, Macedonian phalangites with their two handed pikes was a dominant form of warfare for centuries in the west.
http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.co...na-part-1.html

Edit: Looks like you and Zoner16 already talked about this.

[Intranetusa]

Looks like you and zoner16 already talked about most of this, so much of our conversation is becoming redundant. I will address two points that I didn't see Zoner16 address:

From what I've seen not only in Chinese depictions of war through the ages, but as well as Korean, and Japanese. The area seems to have embraced two handed polearms. My theory is that the smaller frames, combined with the protein lacking diet caused big shields to be more cumbersome... But at the end of the day, it looks like the shield was not as large and common as in the West and Middle East...

The ancient Chinese soldiers of the era didn't have smaller frames because of height requirements. For example, the army of the Qin Dynasty actually had taller average heights than the Romans during the Roman Principate. See quotes and sources below:

"mean height of the figures to be 177.7 centimetes, with a range from 166.0 to 187.5 cm...the size distribution resembles almost precisely the distributions obtained in most military institutions of the eighteenth century, indicating that the minimum height requirement of the Qin army was close to 175.95 centimeters 'because this is the point at which the same distribution begins to deviate obviously from normal distribution" ...terra cotta statutes were probably true to life approximations of contemporary soldiers"

- Edward Burman. The Terracotta Warriors: Exploring the Most Intriguing Puzzle in Chinese History

"Based on this initial sample, the terra-cotta army looks like a series of portraits of real warriors," says UCL archaeologist Marcos Martinón-Torres. The results also fit well with those of a 2003 study by John Komlos, a now retired German economic historian. Komlos measured 734 terra-cotta warriors and compared their heights to those of 150 Chinese men measured in the mid-19th century. The findings, reported in the journal Antiquity, were a close match, suggesting to Komlos "that the size of the terra-cotta figures could well represent the true physical stature of the Chinese infantry."

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/...a-archaeology/

"Imperial regulations, though not entirely unambiguous, suggest that the minimum height for new recruits was five Roman feet, seven inches (165 cm., 5'4")[five feet four/five inches in modern measurement]...reasonable estimate of a soldier's average height is around 170 cm. 5' 7")." - Roth, Jonathan, and Jonathan P. Roth. The Logistics of the Roman Army at War: 264 BC-AD 235.

[QUOTE=SargonTheDude;15797161]But the overwhelming majority of warfare in history looked like a bunch of guys with big ol shields, spears, and something to shoot at the other side's army with from afar. From what I've been reading up on Han dynasty, and three kingdoms tactics, the mainstay of the battlefield seems to have been the Jian I think, as well as the spear....[QUOTE]

Adding on to what Zoner16 said about jians and daos above, the most numerous weapon during the late Western Han Dynasty was the crossbow. The second most common weapon during the Western Han era was a type of swordstaff or long lance. This weapon may have varied in length and would have been in the form of short pikes and long pikes (I read the Qin version of longer pikes were around 18 feet long). Some other popular weapons were the swords (dao and jian) and other types of polearms such as a sha, which resembled a European Ranseur.

[SargonTheDude]

No, foot binding didn't become popularized in the Tang Dynasty. Foot binding wasn't even around until the Southern Tang era (which is not the Tang Dynasty), and the custom didn't become popular until later (eg. centuries into or after the Song Dynasty). You or your friend confused the Tang Dynasty during the time of Wu Zeitan (7th century) with the Southern Tang (10th century AD).

Also, you can't really use one example to claim it was indicative of women's rights in general. For example, we know that the Germans practiced human sacrifices during Caesar's day. During the early middle ages, we had more details regarding Germanic sacrifices that evolved by that time - Germanic peoples such as the Vikings sacrificed wives, concubines and female slaves when a Viking chieftain or warrior died. Sometimes ritualistic rape would be performed right before the female was killed.
Would we say the rights of female Germans was pretty bad because of this custom?

I need sleep, and have a long work day tomorrow, but I want to get to this bit quickly before bed as it's pretty bad counter.

The practice goes back as Early as Sui, and while it exploded in popularity among the non elite during the time you laid out, it existed in high society before then. As for the Germanic spousal sacrifices, from what on hand accounts we have (the Arabic Traveler who's name escapes me comes to mind), these affairs were voluntary even for the slaves. The sexual element being less rape, and more a drugged out orgy before the sacrifice.

Additionally, no I would not consider human sacrificial practices to be an indicator of sexism for two big reasons.
1) Both sexes with targeted for Human Sacrificial rituals, and in the case of Germanic Cultures it was men who had the higher share of such sacrifices.
2) Human Sacrifice is a religious practice, one usually considered to be a mournful thing (hence the term Sacrifice. A Sacrifice is something you don't want to do but do so for a higher cause.) While footbinding practices are Purely cultural and aesthetic. They're not breaking little girls feet and ruining these women's lives to bring them closer to the gods, or ensure the rain. They're doing it for a kink. Because tiny feet were considered sexually attractive. Ergo, women were being mutilated merely to fulfill the sexual desires of the culture...

Explain to me how that is even the remote most equivalent to the (usually gender indiscriminate, if not male focused) practice of human sacrifice in terms of it being an indicator of gender equality.
Both may be horrible things. But one is a horrible thing serving a religious purpose, in this case women sacrificing their own lives to stay with their man. I also recall that women who were of the household, legitimate wives, were typically barred from such sacrifices. Also also, even if I'm wrong about the willingness aspect of the sacrifice, and it can be assumed maybe the Arab only came across the one culture who was so willing to hear the will of a slave... How does the uncared for will of a slave account for free women's roles? Slaves typically don't have self determination in a society to begin with.

Norse women on the other hand, had known rights. From divorces, to even being able to repeatedly turn down suitors against the wishes of her family, owning all the property she brought into the family (which apparently includes the children before they come of age, as they are basically given to the women by default in divorces), This is just the stuff I remember off the top of my head...

PS: Link dump on Footbinding in Tang from my friend.
https://www.chinasage.info/dynastysui.htm
https://www.chinahighlights.com/shan...ot-binding.htm
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...asties1_1.pptx
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...en_WHAP_19.doc

Bonus Dump on the broader topic itself: https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/cgi/...=ancient_world

PPS: this is from my friend in discord
"Wu Zetian is always trotted out as though China was a great time of progressivism for women.
When in reality Wu was simply smart enough to seize the opportunity, and was despised for centuries because she made that move.

People despised her, but western apologists for Tang love to say that she did great things as Empress (which frankly is true), and that she was extremely talented.
But she was considered a curse. Some speculate footbinding became popular as a way to prevent a second Wu Zetian."

He then sent me this link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...s-wu-20743091/

Will be back when awake and not burdened by workloads. Also will address the rest, and zoner16.

[BreadBuax]

Your friend need to stop sending you unsourced middleschool slideshows, they range from basic generalisation to madeup bullcrap, I almost threw up when I saw ‘Uyghurs overthrew the Tang dynasty too much to write not enough time’ in one of them. Do not believe english article/slideshow(on Chinese history) unless its claim can be directly traced back to literary or archaeological evidence, they are consistently full of factual errors or oversimplified and use inaccurate illustrations, it is a sad reality when studying history written in a completely different language.
This became painfully obvious when I cross reference English and Chinese sources. Sorry, but instra and zoner definitely knows how to establish claim based upon credible evidence better.

There is some debate on when exactly footbinding first occured, whether certain mention in written sources are or not, the consensus is that it only became common during the Song dynasty.

I dunno how this became a comparison between Western and Eastern Societies, but misogyny in pre modern societies is not a competition, there is no prize in proving which one respect/hate women more. There is no female general in mainstream societies at that time, it is a established social reality and only part that is relevant to the game.

[SargonTheDude]

Your friend need to stop sending you unsourced middleschool slideshows, they range from basic generalisation to madeup bullcrap, I almost threw up when I saw ‘Uyghurs overthrew the Tang dynasty too much to write not enough time’ in one of them. Do not believe english article/slideshow(on Chinese history) unless its claim can be directly traced back to literary or archaeological evidence, they are consistently full of factual errors or oversimplified and use inaccurate illustrations, it is a sad reality when studying history written in a completely different language.
This became painfully obvious when I cross reference English and Chinese sources. Sorry, but instra and zoner definitely knows how to establish claim based upon credible evidence better.

There is some debate on when exactly footbinding first occured, whether certain mention in written sources are or not, the consensus is that it only became common during the Song dynasty.

I dunno how this became a comparison between Western and Eastern Societies, but misogyny in pre modern societies is not a competition, there is no prize in proving which one respect/hate women more. There is no female general in mainstream societies at that time, it is a established social reality and only part that is relevant to the game.

Off to work in 10 mins, but this won't take 3...
1) Instra and Zoner don't really put up sources concerning the topic of women.
2) My friend probably read the Chinese source, and just linked me articles he can confirm himself.
3) The comparison started, if you'd actually do the courtesy of reading the thread you're responding to, due to the topic of women as generals/administrators being overly prevalent in the game.
4) My friend says 学而不思则罔，思而不学则殆, and that he will study more.
5) I don't think he actually think he feels a need to study more tho..

Once again, will respond to the big points from the above posts when I'm off or tomorrow. Maybe the next day. (I work few days in the week, but when I do it's nearly all consuming when it comes to time.

[zoner16]

Frankly I'm quite mystified how footbinding has any relevance to this discussion. We're talking about the Han dynasty, where the idea doesn't even seem to have been conceptualized, let alone practiced. In fact, most anything from the later dynasties isn't really relevant here. We're talking gaps of centuries and various large scale upheavals in between. Backdating norms and practices through the eras without justification does not hold water

[Intranetusa]

Off to work in 10 mins, but this won't take 3...
1) Instra and Zoner don't really put up sources concerning the topic of women.
2) My friend probably read the Chinese source, and just linked me articles he can confirm himself.
3) The comparison started, if you'd actually do the courtesy of reading the thread you're responding to, due to the topic of women as generals/administrators being overly prevalent in the game.
4) My friend says 学而不思则罔，思而不学则殆, and that he will study more.
5) I don't think he actually think he feels a need to study more tho..
Once again, will respond to the big points from the above posts when I'm off or tomorrow. Maybe the next day. (I work few days in the week, but when I do it's nearly all consuming when it comes to time.

Neither of us put up sources in the beginning as we were changing trading arguments. If you want to compare sources then we can certainly do that too. However, the sources you later linked aren't really good sources.
Those are non-academic sources and pages that copy off the wikipedia format but don't even have wikipedia's details or wikipedia's citations/references.

If your friend is getting sources, then ask him to actually link to sources that are academic articles or pages that have actual citations.

[Intranetusa]

I need sleep, and have a long work day tomorrow, but I want to get to this bit quickly before bed as it's pretty bad counter. The practice goes back as Early as Sui, and while it exploded in popularity among the non elite during the time you laid out, it existed in high society before then...

You and your friend need to distinguish the difference between actual history and folklore/stories from later periods. Like the 14th century ROTK "story" about the 2nd-3rd century Liu Bei discarding women and babies, there are [potentially anachronistic] "folklore and stories" during the 11th cent Song Dynasty about foot binding that takes place during earlier periods. However, as far as I know, the actual history is we know the practice originated in the late Southern Tang or early Song era.

As for the Germanic spousal sacrifices, from what on hand accounts we have (the Arabic Traveler who's name escapes me comes to mind), these affairs were voluntary even for the slaves. The sexual element being less rape, and more a drugged out orgy before the sacrifice.

Do you really believe that female slaves "knowingly volunteered" themselves to be gang raped and sacrificed through stabbing and strangulation? Here are some actual quotes from the account of Ibn Fadlan:

"The girl received several vessels of intoxicating drinks and she sang, before the old woman urged her to enter the tent. "I saw that the girl did not know what she was doing", notes Ibn Fadlān."
"Then the old woman seized her head, made her enter the pavilion and went in with her. The men began to bang on their shields with staves, to drown her cries, so that the other slave girls [would not be frightened] and try to avoid dying with their masters."
-"Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North" By Ibn Fadlan

https://books.google.com/books?id=UP...0doing&f=false

So it's pretty clear that the slave girls had no idea they would be gang raped and then murdered when they supposedly "volunteered" for this ritual.

As for the claim that the ritual was less rape and more a drugged out orgy...raping drugged girls is still rape. Why do you think they drugged her in the first place? The actual first hand accounts suggest that the drugs were to make the woman sure the woman couldn't resist and prevented her from comprehending what was happening when she was being raped and then murdered.

Here is a quote from some modern academic scholars who criticize the mythological interpretations of the "happy slave girl" supposedly "voluntarily" letting herself be gang raped, stabbed, and strangled to death:
"In addition to the exclusive focus on Scandinavian mythology, these interpretations exhibit an alarming discordance with the actual description of the slave-girl’s death. How the scholars mentioned above have been able to construe the depiction of multiple rapes and brutal strangulation as an illustration of a happy or peaceful occasion is intriguing."

-p. 84 "New Perspectives on Eastern Vikings/Rus in Arabic Sources", Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, by Thorir Jonsson Hraundal
https://www.academia.edu/26549730/Ne...?auto=download

And if we want to claim slave girls getting drugged up, raped, and strangled is voluntary, then we can easily claim foot binding was also voluntary too since women did it to themselves or other women to seem more high class. Slave girls getting raped and strangled is far worse than non-slave upper class girls getting their feet crippled to seem more beautiful/high class (or women getting their torsos crippled from corsets as mentioned below).

Additionally, no I would not consider human sacrificial practices to be an indicator of sexism for two big reasons.1) Both sexes with targeted for Human Sacrificial rituals, and in the case of Germanic Cultures it was men who had the higher share of such sacrifices..

Both sexes was not targeted for ritual rape in the Norse rituals. And IIRC, the incidence of female sacrifice was higher than male sacrifice during funeral rituals too. So there was clearly a difference in how male vs female sacrificial victims were treated. Furthermore, there were plenty of sexist Tang practices against men too that didn't apply to women - eg. getting your balls/sexual organs chopped off. If you judge sexism standards based on one practice, you really won't understand the bigger picture.

2) Human Sacrifice is a religious practice, one usually considered to be a mournful thing (hence the term Sacrifice. A Sacrifice is something you don't want to do but do so for a higher cause.) While footbinding practices are Purely cultural and aesthetic. They're not breaking little girls feet and ruining these women's lives to bring them closer to the gods, or ensure the rain. They're doing it for a kink. Because tiny feet were considered sexually attractive. Ergo, women were being mutilated merely to fulfill the sexual desires of the culture.....

So horrible practices are more justified if it is religious? Let's give brutality from religion a free pass then. If we want to talk about body mutilation in the name of aesthetics and beauty, we can also talk about the corset, which squeezed a woman's organs into different parts of her body and damaged her internal organs (and caused death in some situations). Corsets were used from the 16th century into the 20th century through much of Europe and the US and had the same purpose of making the woman more sexually attractive.

By the same logic, you will have to argue that every nation that ever used corsets also had garbage rights for women during those timeperiods. That's the type of logic you've pigeonholed yourself into if you want to judge societal rights based on a single practice.

Explain to me how that is even the remote most equivalent to the (usually gender indiscriminate, if not male focused) practice of human sacrifice in terms of it being an indicator of gender equality. Both may be horrible things. But one is a horrible thing serving a religious purpose, in this case women sacrificing their own lives to stay with their man.

On category is the ritualistic gang rape and strangulation of a female sacrifice (if she was a slave then it was likely she had no idea what was going to happen to her).
The other category includes foot binding and corsets, which damages the body for aesthetics to look more beautiful...but the girl is alive.

One is more horrible for religious purposes. The other is less horrible for aesthetics reasons. Horrible practices for aesthetically reasons is worse than horrible practices for religious reasons, but gang rape + murder also is far worse than damaging your feet with foot binding or damaging your torso with corsets.

I also recall that women who were of the household, legitimate wives, were typically barred from such sacrifices. Also also, even if I'm wrong about the willingness aspect of the sacrifice, and it can be assumed maybe the Arab only came across the one culture who was so willing to hear the will of a slave... How does the uncared for will of a slave account for free women's roles? Slaves typically don't have self determination in a society to begin with.

Women in medieval China could also become head of households, and can refuse foot-binding themselves or choose not to do it on their daughters (and it was usually relegated to the upper classes until relatively late in the imperial era). We can talk about the willingness aspect of that too. As for the Arab account, the account made it clear that the slave was kept ignorant of what would actually happen to her.

As for slaves, slavery was limited during the Tang era (to criminals and foreigners) and slaves could win their freedom during the Song Dynasty, and there were a code of laws and rights governing slavery. Female slaves didn't get ritualistically gang raped and murdered in the Tang to Song Dynasties.

If we want to compare simply based on foot binding vs ritual sacrifice in the 11th century, it seems the upper class females of one is better off, while the lower class females of the other was better off. Of course, judging women's rights based on a single practice is huge oversimplification of the issue, which is what I have been arguing against.

Norse women on the other hand, had known rights. From divorces, to even being able to repeatedly turn down suitors against the wishes of her family, owning all the property she brought into the family (which apparently includes the children before they come of age, as they are basically given to the women by default in divorces), This is just the stuff I remember off the top of my head....

Actually, Norse women couldn't turn down an arranged marriage until well after the introduction of Christianity.

"In the Grágás, the laws of Early Iceland, however, there is no mention of needing the bride’s consent to make a marriage legal, only that fathers and brothers were in charge of any marriage arrangements for their female family members." ... "Although having the bride’s consent made arrangements easier for all involved, it was not legally required until the Christian church grew in prominence and authority in Icelandic society. Upon the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, the church made the consent of the female a requirement for a legal marriage" ... "Treated as a business transaction between the groom and the bride’s father or guardian, women were rarely consulted, as it was not required by law in pre-Christian society. "
p. 9-10 of "Pulling the strings: Influential Power of Women in Viking Age Iceland" by Kendall Holcomb https://digitalcommons.wou.edu/cgi/v...44&context=his

"Among pagan Viking Age Scandinavians marriage was essentially a business contract between two families. A marriage was arranged in two stages: the betrothal and the wedding. The initiative had to come from the man or his father, who would make the proposal of marriage to the woman's father or guardian....The woman's consent to the marriage might be sought but it was not necessary...Only in the 12th century, well after the introduction of Christianity, did a woman's consent to marriage become necessary."
http://viking.archeurope.info/index....ge-and-divorce
https://en.natmus.dk/historical-know...-people/women/

Both Norse women and Tang Dynasty women had power of divorce - but only under certain situations. Women also had certain property rights in divorce depending on the situation. Were Norse women a bit better off? Maybe in certain aspects. But Tang women did have similar rights in many situations.

PS: Link dump on Footbinding in Tang from my friend....Bonus Dump on the broader topic itself: https://digitalcommons.imsa.edu/cgi/...=ancient_world

As stated earlier, you and your friend needs to distinguish between history and folklore. I clicked on your first link and what it said about footbinding was there were "stories" about it. These stories originated from much later periods.

Also, I'd like to point out none of what you linked are actual academic sources, articles, etc. and don't provide enough detail or context. The first several links are wikipedia-like entries without the details and citations that wikipedia would have. You last few files contains documents that I can and can't open, and the last document that is a powerpoint doesn't have proper citations.
It doesn't actually provide citation sources or reference any page numbers and just dumps a bunch of sources at the end. That is not how citation is suppose to work as the reader can't look up the exact source or contextual details.

PPS: this is from my friend in discord... "Wu Zetian is always trotted out as though China was a great time of progressivism for women. When in reality Wu was simply smart enough to seize the opportunity, and was despised for centuries because she made that move. ... People despised her, but western apologists for Tang love to say that she did great things as Empress (which frankly is true), and that she was extremely talented... But she was considered a curse. Some speculate footbinding became popular as a way to prevent a second Wu Zetian."

Wu Zetian was considered a curse mainly because she supposedly went crazy near the end of her reign and started executing her own family and competent court officals. Every emperor who does that have typically been demonized.
As for the claim that footbinding supposedly became popular to prevent another Wu Zetian...again, female footbinding didn't become popular until well into the Song Dynasty, and we don't even have actual historical verification of whether foot binding existed during the Tang Dynasty. Furthermore, did your friend forget the female general who was crucial in establishing the Tang Dynasty? Wu Zetian was not the first nor last influential woman in the region's history nor within the Tang Dynasty.

He then sent me this link: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/histo...s-wu-20743091/

Yes, Wu Zetian may have been unfairly judged by later scholars with exaggerated tales. Same goes for the stories told about Qin Shi Huang, Emperor Yang of Sui, Di Xin, etc.
Modern scholars really doubt whether Qin Shihuang actually buried Confucian scholars alive and burned their books as the Han records claims. Wu Zetian being unfairly judged by later scholars does not equate to women's rights being poor in the Tang Dynasty.

[SargonTheDude]

@Intra...
I have a lot to say about the Nordic stuff, because I know for a fact that a lot of that is tripe. For the divorce and marriage stuff. Definitely gonna have to go through the sources, because when I did a refresher last night I recall there actually only being scant evidence for the funerary rights of slave sacrifice, compared to the overwhelming and much older evidence for male human sacrifice... Also, definitely recall a lot about ancient Germanic marriage arrangements, as well as Viking era, and I will get more sources.
Again, you'll have to wait for two days. But it could be I am confusing the marriage practices of the Earlier Germanic Tribes, when it comes to the turning down of suitors. It wouldn't suprise me too much, since I know that Germanic Tribes were monogomous, while the Vikings could have concubines. As for it getting better under Christianity, I highly doubt that and will look more into it because I'm fairly confident that wasn't the case and fundamentalists like to rewrite history these days to push back against the far left being over idealistic about the period.

But yes, to answer your loaded Q about sacrifices being willing. I do believe that it was voluntary, or more likely to be so, because Hel (not the Christian one, the Nordic one) is not a nice place to go to. Such a ritual might be a slaves only chance to reach a higher afterlife, considering how despised thralldom was by the populace. pretty much everywhere in the world, sacrifice was voluntary.
While it might seem crazy to us now, we still have Christians traveling to Jerusalem to crucify themselves. People do some crazy crap when their afterlife is involved.
But furthermore, you deliberately ignored my point about slaves not really having rights at all and being separate from free women legally. In fact you ignored a lot of my points that are still valid counters. Lunch is about over. Will respond when home.

[SargonTheDude]

Frankly I'm quite mystified how footbinding has any relevance to this discussion. We're talking about the Han dynasty, where the idea doesn't even seem to have been conceptualized, let alone practiced. In fact, most anything from the later dynasties isn't really relevant here. We're talking gaps of centuries and various large scale upheavals in between. Backdating norms and practices through the eras without justification does not hold water

It doesn't. Someone got picky about me saying that I realized that Han was when women had it pretty good in China, and was under the perception that it was later Dynasties that ruined things for the women.
Someone brought up the Tang as a counter, to which I said that person needed to provide me with some good evidence for women having it better then due to footbinding getting it's start then.

They then proceeded to completely ignore my call for arguments for better treatment of women in Tang compared to Han, and instead agro'd on the Footbinding comment and brought up Vikings as a comparison in a hyper defensive move.
When I really was asking to be convinced of the opposite, not have the Vikings brought in when I was originally talking about the Germanic Tribes of Han's day, only as an example of a culture that would be more appropriate to have so many women in positions of authority. It wasn't even an East vs West thing, as Bread above you insinuates, until Intra here turned it into one... My guess is because he didn't really know of anything regarding the status of women in Tang to show it was more then in Han.

This is actually one of the very kind of derailings I was talking about with you, and seeking to avoid. But since the man decided to use the example of the mistreatment of slaves as a slander against the Vikings, who weren't even in the discussion, I felt a need to clarify as that is something I know more about even if it's old. (I transitioned from Viking Era studies to more ancient Europe in my teens, so it's old knowledge I'm going to have to hunt down for the man over the next few days.
Though I have already found some clarifications about women being allowed to turn down their suitors. It was in cases where the Brothers acted as mediator instead of the father. But that's really a derailing I shouldn't get into... But I can't really help it with the way the man went out on me. While I may be a peasant when it comes to Chinese History, I'm a scarred veteran of Pre Christian European history. I just need to go consult the runes to make sure my memory's not betraying me.

As it did with the case of Ibn Fadlan's account. His was the one that showed it as not being willing, though I did point out as the man ignored, that the will of a slave isn't the same as the will of a free woman. Meaning it doesn't really matter I recalled wrong. But it's alright, I'm brushing up on my Nordic history and have found things I had forgotten about. Like women being allowed to divorce for being slapped by a man three times before Christianization. Or at least it heavily being implied so based on the writings from closer to the time. (Apparently latter Christian Authors ignored these writings, and.. Well... Abrahamic Faiths had never been kind to the records of the heathen.)

I apologize, but I feel my dued response to you will take a significant more time. As I have a decades' worth of rust to shake off... And likely, new information and findings to ponder on.

here you go:

Thank the HEAVENS for you, and whoever made that mod, brother!

[SargonTheDude]

You and your friend need to distinguish the difference between actual history and folklore/stories from later periods. Like the 14th century ROTK "story" about the 2nd-3rd century Liu Bei discarding women and babies, there are [potentially anachronistic] "folklore and stories" during the 11th cent Song Dynasty about foot binding that takes place during earlier periods. However, as far as I know, the actual history is we know the practice originated in the late Southern Tang or early Song era.

Like I said above to zoner16, I plan on shaking the rust and bringing you a nice an hearty plate. But one thing I do want to say on behalf of my friend. That impression is entirely *my* fault for various reasons.
The man's an anti-romance, pro-records old Chinese guy who frequents kongming.net, who's currently under the impression that the reason I'm getting this much push back is due to a misconception of me being a pro west, east asia basher, due to peoples assumptions from my name.
He's actually admitted he's probably warped my perception on accident by using me as a place to vent his frustrations on occasion.

(Carl Benjamen can bite me, I've had this handle since 2013 and I don't even watch his videos.)

[La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham]

Hello, could you chaps please stay on topic, after all this is Three Kingdoms a Chinese themed game and not Germanic or Viking.

[Intranetusa]

@Intra...I have a lot to say about the Nordic stuff, because I know for a fact that a lot of that is tripe. For the divorce and marriage stuff. .

If it's tripe then you will have to provide academic evidence to refute it. I provided several scholarly sources saying arranged marriages did NOT require the consent of Nordic women. You're saying you know more than these scholars I cited or know these scholars are wrong...well let's see some comparable evidence to the contrary.

Again, you'll have to wait for two days. But it could be I am confusing the marriage practices of the Earlier Germanic Tribes, when it comes to the turning down of suitors. It wouldn't suprise me too much, since I know that Germanic Tribes were monogomous, while the Vikings could have concubines.

I've read that the Germanic Tribes weren't monogamous either - polygamy was practiced by those who could afford it:
Tacitus portrayed the sexual habits of the Germans as upright and austere and marriage as a solemn undertaking in which monogamy was implicit, at least for women." ... "Polygyny was also a common feature of Germanic domestic life, although most men probably contented themselves with a single wife because they could not afford to do otherwise. Among royal families and the upper ranks of the nobility, however, polygyny was common prior to the conversion of the Germans to Christianity. In many cases the practice persisted for several generations after conversion, and the law continued to ignore sexual promiscuity among men while penalizing it among women"
-p. 128 of "Law and Sex in Early Medieval Europe, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries: The Germanic Invasions and Germanic Law" by James A. Brundage

Here is a full copy of the book: http://the-eye.eu/public/concen.org/...e.Jan,1990.pdf

As for it getting better under Christianity, I highly doubt that and will look more into it because I'm fairly confident that wasn't the case and fundamentalists like to rewrite history these days to push back against the far left being over idealistic about the period...

Maybe it got better or maybe it didn't get better under Christianity. Even if people over-exaggerated the benefits of Christianity, what we do know was that pre-Christian Vikings did not require the consent of the women for arranged marriages. Consent was beneficial, but in most cases was not necessary.

@But yes, to answer your loaded Q about sacrifices being willing. I do believe that it was voluntary, or more likely to be so, because Hel (not the Christian one, the Nordic one) is not a nice place to go to. Such a ritual might be a slaves only chance to reach a higher afterlife, considering how despised thralldom was by the populace. pretty much everywhere in the world, sacrifice was voluntary..

The most detailed eye witness accounts of the medieval Viking sacrifice clearly portrays it as not voluntary because the slaves didn't know they were going to get gang raped and murdered. And the Vikings had to hide the noises from her scream so she wouldn't scare the other slaves from "volunteering."

@While it might seem crazy to us now, we still have Christians traveling to Jerusalem to crucify themselves. People do some crazy crap when their afterlife is involved..

The two are not in the same category. Self Crucifixion is more similar to foot binding and corsets as it is just physical mutilation - they don't actually die. They are not volunteering themselves to get gang raped and murdered. They're all crazy practices, but they're on different levels of crazy.

But furthermore, you deliberately ignored my point about slaves not really having rights at all and being separate from free women legally. In fact you ignored a lot of my points that are still valid counters. Lunch is about over. Will respond when home.

And you ignored my point about 1) no historical evidence of foot binding during the Tang Dynasty and 2) foot binding being an optional practice for high class women, and was not even practiced by commoners until very late in the imperial era (eg. by the time corsets came around).

If we really want address slaves vs free women and distinguish between female slaves vs female non-slaves, we can distinguish between female upper class vs female everybody else too...see discussion at the end.

It doesn't. Someone got picky about me saying that I realized that Han was when women had it pretty good in China, and was under the perception that it was later Dynasties that ruined things for the women. Someone brought up the Tang as a counter, to which I said that person needed to provide me with some good evidence for women having it better then due to footbinding getting it's start then.

And that someone let you know that there is no evidence foot binding even originated in the Tang Dynasty, as there are only anachronistic stories from Song era and later. We really only have evidence that foot binding existed during the late Southern Tang and early Song Dynasty, so your original claim that the women's rights during the Tang Dynasty (especially during the early Tang during Wu Zeitan or Princess/General Pingyang) was bad simply because of foot binding is based on a faulty premise.

They then proceeded to completely ignore my call for arguments for better treatment of women in Tang compared to Han, and instead agro'd on the Footbinding comment and brought up Vikings as a comparison in a hyper defensive move.!

I refuted your claim that women were treated worse in the periods after the Han Dynasty, so you brought up the issue of foot binding to claim the Tang Dynasty women were really badly treated (even though we have no evidence of the practice during the Tang era). You were implying that society's rights for women can be judge by a single bad practice, so it was logical to bring up the Vikings who gang raped and murdered slave women in rituals because you kept harping on the idea that pre-Christian Germanic peoples as a shining example of women's rights.

When I really was asking to be convinced of the opposite, not have the Vikings brought in when I was originally talking about the Germanic Tribes of Han's day, only as an example of a culture that would be more appropriate to have so many women in positions of authority. It wasn't even an East vs West thing, as Bread above you insinuates, until Intra here turned it into one... My guess is because he didn't really know of anything regarding the status of women in Tang to show it was more then in Han..!

It never was an east vs west argument. It was an argument about how it was silly to use a single cultural practice to judge the entire society. Your only argument for your claim that the Tang Dynasty had poor women's rights was your claim about the practice of foot binding...which is a practice that likely didn't even exist during the Tang Dynasty.

I only brought up examples of Viking gang rape and murder and corsets so you can see the problem of the logic of judging societies based on a single practice. You're claiming one bad practice = entire society is bad, so I said let's see how your logic can be applied to the pre-Christian Germanic peoples and others.

This is actually one of the very kind of derailings I was talking about with you, and seeking to avoid. But since the man decided to use the example of the mistreatment of slaves as a slander against the Vikings, who weren't even in the discussion, I felt a need to clarify as that is something I know more about even if it's old. (I transitioned from Viking Era studies to more ancient Europe in my teens, so it's old knowledge I'm going to have to hunt down for the man over the next few days...!

You claimed the Tang Dynasty's rights for women were bad simply because of one practice: "foot binding," which likely didn't even exist during the Tang Dynasty because there isn't historical evidence it existed during that time outside of anachronistic stories from later periods. I brought up Vikings gang raping females to prove a point about your own logic, not to claim the Vikings had poor women's rights.

You brought up an anachronistic story about an optional practice for mostly upper class women to slander the Tang Dynasty, when there is no evidence the practice even existed during the Tang era in the first place.

Though I have already found some clarifications about women being allowed to turn down their suitors. It was in cases where the Brothers acted as mediator instead of the father. But that's really a derailing I shouldn't get into... But I can't really help it with the way the man went out on me. While I may be a peasant when it comes to Chinese History, I'm a scarred veteran of Pre Christian European history. I just need to go consult the runes to make sure my memory's not betraying me.

I've already provided academic sources stating that pre-Christian Germanic arranged generally did not require the women's consent. Seeking their opinion was beneficial, but not required. As a scarred veteran of PreChristian European history, you can go ahead and provide sources proving me wrong.

As it did with the case of Ibn Fadlan's account. His was the one that showed it as not being willing, though I did point out as the man ignored, that the will of a slave isn't the same as the will of a free woman. Meaning it doesn't really matter I recalled wrong. But it's alright, I'm brushing up on my Nordic history and have found things I had forgotten about. Like women being allowed to divorce for being slapped by a man three times before Christianization. Or at least it heavily being implied so based on the writings from closer to the time. (Apparently latter Christian Authors ignored these writings, and.. Well... Abrahamic Faiths had never been kind to the records of the heathen.).

Ibn Fadlan's account is one of the most detailed [if not the only detailed] accounts of a early medieval Viking burial ritual we have anywhere, and he had a mixture of praises and criticisms in his writings. If we judge them based on even the standards of their time - the gang rape and murder of female slaves would be pretty shocking even to slave owning civilizations.

The distinctions you're drawing between slave women vs free women brings up distinctions that we can also apply to foot binding. So we can ignore certain groups of women in this discussion about women's rights because of their social class? If we want to remove entire categories of women from the women's rights equation based on social status, then we can do the same for foot binding, because it was a procedure relegated to the upper class for much of its history. The vast majority of women during the Song Dynasty did not practice foot binding, as the practice didn't spread among the other social classes until many centuries after the Song collapse.