I deliberately wrote it to be as generic as it could be, such that it could apply to as many people as possible, while still conveying a viewpoint I am intimately familiar with.
I called it "Stuck In-between".
It goes like this:

Is it not okay?
To have my doubts.
Is it not okay?
To not be loud.
Is it not okay?
To take my time.
Is it not okay?
To not know why.

Is it not okay?
For me to be.
Is it not okay?
To have my needs.
Is it not okay?
To possess silent voice.
Is it not okay?
To not make a choice?


I'm stuck in-between
Must be 'This' or 'That'
Why must they label me?
Why must I wear a "hat"?

Why don't they understand?
I do what I'm able.
I am who I am.
Why do I need a label?


Is it not okay?
I want to be free.
Is it not okay?
I wanna be seen as me.
Is it not okay?
For me to stand out.
Is it not okay?
To blend into a crowd.

Is it not okay?
To take both sides.
Is it not okay?
To not be fine.
Is it not okay?
To live and breathe.
Is it not okay?
Life contradicting.

I'm stuck in-between
Must be 'This' or 'That'
Why must they label me?
Why must I wear a "hat"?

Why don't they understand?
I do what I'm able.
I am who I am.
Why do I need a label?


Don't know who I am
Don't wanna wear a mask
​Don't know who I am
Don't wanna wear a mask
​
Don't wanna take a stand
Not up to the task
You can hold my hand
You just need to ask.

I'm stuck in-between
Must be 'This' or 'That'
Why must they label me?
Why must I wear a "hat"?

Why don't they understand?
I do what I'm able.
I am who I am.
Why do I need a label?

I'm stuck in-between
​But that's just me.



I think it works well!

In my defense, I was under the impression I had, so I thought I was good. OH WELL THIS WILL BE A LONG ENOUGH BLOG THAT IT'LL MORE THAN MAKE UP FOR IT.

Basically, today I did a lot of work.
Now, mind you.
Not work on a current thing.
The thing about me is, I continue to revisit past projects of mine even when I am working on a future project. I try to prevent myself from too heavily revising--rewriting, redoing--it, but when I am doing these exercises, I try to extrapolate in areas where I hadn't visited before.

Of course, sometimes I end up rewriting anyway, but mostly through the virtue of having forgotten the original material meant to be canonical and thus replacing it, mostly accidentally. OH WELL CONSEQUENCE OF MOSTLY KEEPING THINGS IN MY HEAD.

But I know for a fact that what I did this time does cover new ground.
It's not for Phyrra and Cyrus.
It's not even for Red Hood Rider.
It's for the webcomic obsession prior to that which I still intend to make at some stage, The Descended.
I actually made two breakthroughs there.

The first is in character ages.
Before, I had kept it generic. "Somewhere in their 30s" for most, and even of those that aren't, "appears to be in their 30s" for at least one or two.

But today I made a ridiculously simple breakthrough.
While the fourth group of four adventurers introduced later into the story largely remain intentionally ambiguous on their age, I realized that I could calculate nine of 12 main characters' ages by relating them to a tenth. And the two standouts, both had ways for me to calculate their ages.

It works like this.
Argus has an older brother, who a couple years before the story begins, died of old age/natural causes. Said brother had a son, who appears to be around the same age of Argus. That gives a very specific age range, since Argus appears to be in his 28-34 age range (technically, I believe the official way I handled it is that he appeared 34 pre-ascension, and was de-aged to 28 post-descent).

If you account for the human lifespan in the setting to be ~80 years, and that the son is ~the same age appearance as Argus, and that the son was probably born when Argus's brother was in his 40s, that gives you a good estimate.

I settled on Argus's nephew being born when his father was 46, and that his father lived to the age of 80, placing the nephew at the target age range of ~34. (36, since this was a couple years ago.) I generally assumed that Argus was around the same age as his older brother, so if he's a year younger, that would make him ~81-82 at the start of the story.

Aria I knew died in her 20s, but at what spot I wasn't sure until I settled on 24 today. That left the question of how long she's been a ghost for; since her younger brother is alive and an old man, and the village she died in has only the elders of it be old enough to remember her when she was alive, that gave me a fairly good estimate. I knew she was younger than Argus, but not by too terribly much.

Her parents died before she hit puberty, so that means her younger brother wouldn't be much younger than her. If you keep the human lifespan estimate at ~80 as per the above, that gives a general range for how old she is. The village elders would have to be less than 80 currently, but more than 10 when the incident happened. So say if they were 15 when it happened and 75 now, that'd be 60 years--a little bit of an overshoot, since it'd also place her younger brother who isn't that much younger than her (I estimated him to be ~15-16 when she died) to be ~76, when I wanted him to be more in the 60s range.

So, adjust slightly, make it be ~52 years having passed with the elders a bit older when it happened and a bit younger at the time of the story, and you get her age as being ~76, younger than Argus, but not by much. It also would place her brother as in his 60s, albeit only just, so that felt about right.

And then there is the key figure for calculating everyone else's ages.
Davos is, explicitly, one of the youngest in the cast, younger even than Nathan Betrax. His age range is in the 18-26 area, though I wanted him to be at least 20 for some reason so more on the higher end of 21+ but sub-26.
Sasha is the same age as Davos--not to the same day, mind you, but within a couple of months and such, the same year. She is ever so slightly older, but not by any significant amount, and it's easier to just say she's his age, whatever his age may be.

Davos was born at a time where the remaining 8 characters (save Nathan, who is a bit younger) were all children old enough to have memories and know what their parents looked like (an event happened which orphaned them, around the time Davos was born), but still be prepubescent and not have perfect recollection of that time period. Generally, that gives the 6-12 estimate.

This fits with their age range being 30s while Davos is in his 20s, and can be further broken down.
Sarge is the oldest.
M and Enlec are about the same age, and about one year younger than Sarge.
Kinas and Sanik, being twins, are exactly the same age, and are about a year younger than M and Enlec.
Tyra is about a year younger than them, with Sinaer being six months younger than Tyra.
Nathan is at least two years younger than Sinaer, but no more than ten years younger than Sarge (which gives a bit of flexibility with his age).

So if Sarge was 12 when Davos was 0.
M/Enlec would be 11.
Kinas and Sanik would be 10.
Tyra and Sinaer (albeit barely) would be 9.
Nathan would be anywhere from 2-7 years old.

And scale that up by 20-26 years, which I believe is best at 24.
Sarge becomes 36: a bit on the older side, but he has always looked older than the rest.
M and Enlec become 35: a bit on the older side, but still looking fairly youthful.
Kinas and Sanik become 34: the exact age I pretty much envisioned them as, but didn't want to name until I figured out the chronology (which I have).
Tyra and Sinaer (albeit barely) become 33: just about the same, in their peak.
Nathan becomes anywhere from 26-31, which is about where he should be. I estimated him at 28-32, which would place his Davos birth age at 4-8, which is the right area for him.

Nathan is meant to look youthful, but still have some features highlighting later adult manhood, so I think that 29-31 is the butter zone; I'll make the snap judgement call of 31 on that basis.

Placing Davos and Sasha at the aforementioned 24.

(By the way for those who are curious as to how they look the way they do: adventurers have a limited form of age-halting, based around their level; their race's natural lifespan is extended by however many levels they have, so a normal human living 80 years that's level, say, 50, would live to be around 130, and age appropriately slowly.)

Giving the characters an exact age is something I've striven for, for ages, but never managed to figure out until today in spite of all of the pieces having been there previously.

The second breakthrough I made was actually what triggered the first.
To talk about it though, I need to go off on a tangent.
Back when I was actually trying to produce content for The Descended actively on a near-weekly basis, there was a period where I couldn't make content...but could make canonical filler content.
By that, I mean: a flashback story, giving backstory. Stuff that would eventually be featured in the story proper (and is still planned to be!), and was mostly available as bonus side-material for those devoted enough to read the right places anyway, but which was miles away from being featured.

Yet was not really spoilerific. Stuff that was planned to be integrated into the comic properly, and still is planned to be integrated into the comic properly, but which I could produce quickly and cheaply as filler, as padding, for a break allowing me to do the work I was trying to do.

​That was the Kinas Chronicle. To save you the time of looking for it (warning: insanely long, insanely badly done in most places but more on that below), here it is in full (again, not really spoilers, just backstory, but stuff that you wouldn't learn in the story proper for a long, long time):

...Incidentally, just looking at the alt-text (captions, here) makes me remember why I love Kinas as a character so much and another reason why the chronicle held power to me. He was literally telling a story mirroring my own, in a way that I couldn't possibly have known about, but which is immensely powerful to me in hindsight.

BUT I DIGRESS.

The point I was making here is.
There are self-evidently some huge flaws in the Chronicle. Aside from a little shoddy writing here and there, the narration style is too much text and not enough images. Now, I wrote this as filler, so that's okay, and in a lite novel format that's actually what you'd have, but it's still a little jarring.

Each page is absurdly long. I told the chronicle in eight images; given the length of each image, I should have cut it up to be many, many, many more than that. (Then again, once more, it was filler, designed to be done in as little time as possible, and designed to disrupt from the story as little as possible. NOT THAT THAT WORKED OUT BUT I TRIED.)

The characters, both past and present, have obvious artistic flaws, aside from Sinaer pretty much.
And the reason Sinaer doesn't share those flaws (aside from the child sprite of her) is because I used trace jobs of her for the chronicle. As in, I created a version of her using anime character maker 2, then traced that. I still drew her, technically, but it was as cheating as cheating gets and pretty much plagiarizing to do so. Obviously, that's a regret. (Done for a combination of time saving and the fact that I couldn't draw her that well at the time.)

I was utilizing the Windows 7 version of MSPaint at the time, so I made heavy usage of copy-paste.
The dialog order is incredibly hard to follow.
The images aren't done very well.
Many key characters are kept out of sight to hide my inability to draw them.
I should have done that for child-Kinas/Sinaer because their presence is the absolute low-point. (Though the way I handled Kinas's dad is not far behind.)
I covered up art with text, covered up text with text, and similar issues due to limited space per panel (in spite of the infinite canvas I was utilizing).
And so on and so forth.
It is, self-evidently, what it was.
Something shoddily thrown together that didn't have very high quality all-around.

Yet there were also some things about it that, to this day, I remain proud of.
The way the story was told and written may be flawed, but I still feel like the idea behind it holds some incredible power.
I took time to create original sprites for many of the characters' pre-"descent" appearances (since they did look different before, and after, their traumatic experience that divided the groups).
The original art I made mostly holds up to scrutiny in spite of its flaws as passable. Some of the images of David are atrocious, but I'm proud of that design.
Tyra's pre-descent appearance has some issues with proportion, such as the bow, her hands, her neck, and so on and so forth but that was all done by me and captured the essence of her.
Sanik's pre-descent appearance is almost perfect aside from the elongated neck, the arrow in relationship to his hand, and his bow in relationship to his hand (not to mention, lack of strap for the quiver).

Kinas's teenaged self is awful, but Kinas's pre-descent adult self aside from a minor perspective glitch in the chest and head, positioning of hand-to-sword, and lack of real grip on the shield (it wasn't until Red Hood Rider that I was forced to learn how to actually pull that off), is pretty much perfect.

There was something magical about the narration style, too, in the transitions held. 

All in all.
It is something that I have, in spite of its status as filler, wanted to redo for years, to keep the good and discard the bad and give it a grand do-over. But this is nothing new; I've had that feeling pretty much since a year after I made this. (Which, being in 2012 of October, was a full 5 years ago for the desire.)

Why's this relevant?

Basically, the thought occurred to me today.
There is exactly one other main character I could instead make a new Chronicle for.

In the fourth adventuring group later on, two characters have backstories directly plot relevant almost to Argus levels of importance (see below), so I can't chronicle them without massive spoilers. A third has only minimalistic backstory in general, and isn't actually that fleshed out. (Ha ha I am talking about the member that's a lich.) And the fourth has a backstory reserved for a planned sequel-series to The Descended, revolving more around him, so not something I could even remotely touch on since even in The Descended proper it's only hinted at because of the plans to reveal it later.

Kinas's chronicle pretty much tells the backstory of all eight elementals/latens, and how the groups divided into half, splitting up. So no need to cover the perspective of another of the seven others in those two groups.

So it's a member of The Outcasts, Argus's adventuring party.
Sasha's story is fairly minimalistic; the only details that are there are directly plot relevant.
Davos's story is fleshed out, but his backstory is incredibly plot relevant, to the point where there's multiple "arcs" (arcs, being defined as basically what can be thought of as "episodes" or "chapters") covering it; not something to spoil.
Argus's backstory is literally the driving force behind the comic; almost every single event in the comic, he had some hand in, which makes the instances he isn't involved all the more unique for that fact (something lampshaded when it happens; basically his team blames him for why there are a bunch of angry people suddenly, and in those rare instances, he can truthfully say, "This one's actually not my fault!". Because mostly, it is).

Leaving it as being...
...Aria.

Her backstory does come up in pieces in the comic proper, but like the Kinas Chronicle, though there are elements that are technically spoilers, they are not "real" spoilers. It's a fairly self-contained arc, self-resolving. Her backstory is brought up, but it doesn't have an overall effect on the grander plot; it is a detail which if it was left out of the comic altogether would make no difference on the comic at all, other than not fleshing her out as much. (Haha she's a ghost she doesn't have flesh aren't I so funny.)

And the result of that is.
There's actual potential to tell a story in a format similar to that of the Kinas Chronicle, intermingling a series of text with a series of images, interwoven to be almost like a lite novel. And I could actually tell it. And today I actually expanded on her backstory, basically the whole impetus for this idea.

I knew the basics already, which I can say because they are literally how I introduce her as a character. She was taught by her father's principles, inheriting his alignment, and her mother's skills, inheriting her class. The resulting build of a Lawful Good Rogue was ill-suited for survival because a sense of honor and duty motivated her to not run away when running away would have been the tactic allowing her to survive. (And is a move perfectly viable for Good characters that're rogues, so long as they have a plan to take the enemy down that doesn't involve a head-on confrontation, their weakness.)

I knew that the specific form of the way she died forever cursed her, killing her but preventing her from moving on to the afterlife, and that she's thus (justifiably) worried about Cessation of Existence due to Undeath Always Ending (she doesn't know those tropes by name--though Argus helpfully tells her them--but she knows their ideas well enough).

I knew she had been dead for a long time, but not long enough to be older than Argus.

I knew that the village she was haunting was indebted to her for her sacrifice, tolerating her antics as a result and seeing her as mostly harmless aside from her pranks.

I knew she was orphaned at a young age.

But that left a lot of ground uncovered. Specifically, everything from when she was orphaned up to the point where she died, which if you remember from the above, is a full...well, not specific date, but at least 12 years because her parents died before she was a teenager, leaving her to fend for not only herself but her younger brother (who I knew existed, and was alive some umpteenth years later).

And I basically invented the story of that gap today.
All of it 100% original, and I know for a fact not contradicting existing canon. (The way outside of this hypothetical "Aria Chronicles" being introduced to the comic proper? That might, albeit only slightly, requiring minor rewrites of very specific sections of an already-existing plot. But the content of the story? Nope, all original to today and fitting in line with content made prior to today.)

I kinda want to make it.

In fact, I really want to make it, but because it requires an intermingling of (as I envision it) computer-typed text and hand-drawn art edited in whatever I have available (which on this computer...is the MS Paint that comes with Windows 10)...

...I probably never will.

OH WELL AT LEAST THE IDEA IS REALLY FUN. (And in some areas, funny.)

I almost failed to get the shiny kongpanion of the week, in spite of me having gotten every single one thusfar in the year.

There's a special prize, one obtained only by a few thousand individuals each year, for those who can manage the feat of literally every single one in a year. And given how far we are into the year, would be rather miffed if I blew it so close.

Still, I got it now, so no worries. I've been getting numbers record-lows most of the time. Low-hundreds is my average, but I've gotten plenty in the double digits. Never have I gotten a single-digit one, alas, but I have gotten quite close. I think my record's 11? 13? Something like that. Tantalizingly close to single-digit kongpanion, but never getting it.

It's a little bit of a stupid obsession, but one I have all the same. Plus, it's something which usually takes less than 10 minutes per day, because I already have like a good 70% of the badges for games and even of those that I don't, a good 40% of them I have save data sufficient enough to earn the badge instantly because the reason I don't have it is due to playing it before it was badged.

There are plenty of badges I don't have, but mostly badges never given as badges of the day; there are badges I don't have for badge of the day, but those are rarities, coming up about once every two weeks or so.

What can I say.

I grew up on what I called "online flash games". (So called, because they were made primarily with the program of flash. Also, because one of the first places I played them was a place called at the time flashplayer.com. Which also contained animations.)

Kongregate is one of the modern platform equivalents of my childhood.

Specifically, about it being almost finished.
Today I set out with a goal: recheck five possible sources of new units and see if any stuck out that I wanted to add.
Age of Empires, due to its expansion featuring Rome.
Age of Empires II, due to it featuring the Byzantines (tho that mighta also been an expansion, don't quite recall; I know the Hun campaign was an expansion at least).
Age of Mythology, because if covering elements of Atlantis why not.
(I'll also give a lookover of Age of Empires III even though I expect nothing there.)
Zeus/Poseidon.
Also warranting another look at units within Civ 3 itself to see which if any may be suited for the game and check some things (for instance, when looking at the civilopedia, I caught wind of the Cataphract unit in the Medieval scenario potentially not being the Ancient Cavalry unit as I had assumed; I need to check that out and verify that it is, because if it's a different one I want it to be that different one).
And Nemesis of the Roman Empire, a game central to this scenario due to it covering the very same idea.

I discovered a fact about Nemesis of the Roman Empire I did not know before, potentially explaining why information about it was so hard to find before! I knew it was the sequel to a game called "Celtic Kings", but what I didn't know is that both games go by a different name: Imperivm. So potentially the main reason why I was having trouble finding the results I wanted, is that I was looking for the wrong game. (Seems like Imperivm II is a little more obscure than the original game tho.)

So. *Cracks wrists*
I've got some work to do.

​Ideally what I'm looking for is something which puts UNIT PORTRAITS next to the UNIT NAMES. Because I found a list of all the main units used in the game. But I lack art to associate it with, other than my own mental memory of the game. 

Which, to be fair, is quite a good mental memory, but far from perfect. Part of this was also finding the tvtropes page I had looked for a long time ago as a reference. The main page is worthless, covering entirely just the first game (it allegedly covers all the games, and tries to prefix all entries as "In the first game...", but since literally every single trope is about the first game, it becomes stupidly obvious that there's no work done at all on the others), but it has some decisively non-worthless subpages.

​Specifically, these two. The former lists attributes of the game I can borrow. The latter lists attributes of the game I can borrow, and lists actual historical trivia...that I can borrow.

Still would help to have the darn portraits with the units though, and I'm still tracking those down. I'm hoping to do the same for Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, III if I find anything in there worth it, and Mythology, mind you. (I already know precisely where to look for Zeus/Poseidon.) But the hardest task comes first.

Yesterday, I felt great. I went back to work, but while I had zero stamina, I was otherwise fine.
I came back from work and was fine.
I was fine for most of the night, too, when I was awake at least.
...And then, I tried to sleep.

Tried.

The coughing fit was apparently enough where the whole house heard me throughout the whole night.
And come morning I felt like--and pardon this but there literally is no other word for it--crap.
Not crud.
Not junk.
Not hell, or for that matter a more severe curse word either.
Crap.

No other word sufficiently describes how I felt.
A unique combination of misery and general un-wellness, of hellish and yet not hell, of (and for this I really do apologize) shitty, but not being quite in the spot where that's the appropriate term to describe what I was.

Just crap. (Itself a more vulgar term than I'd prefer, and yet the only accurate one.)

I had to go to work, and it was terrible overall.

There were moments where I felt fine!
There were moments where I felt even better than yesterday!
And then I was bombarded with the waves of not-better, so strong that I seriously wondered if I could make it through the day.

Before leaving for work I canceled going to dance because I was feeling too sick.
At work, more often than not, I regretted it because I thought I'd be fine. Especially once home from work, too, I thought I'd be fine.
Yet just often enough.
Every once and a while.
I would be hit with a nasty reminder of why that was absolutely the right call to make.

In spite of this.
You might think that this is doctor-worthy, but...
...Weird as this sounds, I actually think this is what's supposed to happen. Because while most of my coughing isn't productive, for the first time...some of it IS. Not all, only some, but some is better than none.
Now, having productive coughing also means my body just experiences the absolute utter misery of feels-like-death.
But having that is better than not having a productive cough at all.

Because a productive cough means my body is trying to expel the illness from me--and is starting to succeed. An unproductive cough means it hasn't succeeded yet. Basically, I think what happened was the road to recovery.

I was really sick, but untreated.
When I started my treatment, I felt great, almost cured--but there is no such thing as a magical cure. The treatment starting its work made me feel better, thus why I could return to work, but it wasn't me being fully better; I was still, underneath the illusion of healthiness, sick.

And now, when the treatment needs to do the hard work, I'm showing signs of sickness again and actually feel worse than I did before, to the point where working is miserable--but this is me actually starting to get better, and it will work if given the proper time to. Also assistance, from antibiotics!

So I basically made a ton of changes--too many to really list. Like, I've made changes to/added like 75 units, for a start, and quite a number of buildings, too (including one per legitimate government, except for Republic which gets a ton more than that due to not producing good military units and having a more "civilian" focus).

But I basically tried to preserve the mold of the scenario.
I developed seven designations for civilizations:
"English" Civilizations: the Celts and Goths, with access to some medieval traits associated with the English. (Goths are the closest the scenario has to Angles/Saxons/Anglo-Saxons, Celts are already indigenous in the scenario.)
"Iberian" Civilizations: the Celts and Carthaginians.
"African" (and to a lesser extent, "Asian") Civilizations: the Carthaginians, Egyptians, and Persians.
"Barbarian" Civilizations: the Celts, Goths, and Scythians.
"Civilized" Civilizations: the Romans, Carthaginians, Macedonians, Persians, and Egyptians.
"Player" Civilizations: the original four player civilizations, Romans Carthaginians Macedonians Persians. AKA, the Player-four. AKA, the war-four. Terms to that extent.
And "Non-player" Civilizations: the original four NPCivilizations, Egyptians Celts Goths Scythians. AKA, the peaceful four. Terms to that extent. (Of course one of the first changes I made was making each playable, but the term remains useful.)

Each designation serves a purpose.
There are English units, there are African units, there are Barbarian units, there are Civilized units, and there are certain traits universal to the player-four compared to the NPC-four. (I wanted to maintain balance by making those that start at war not be at a disadvantage due to the war, thus, those that start at war have an edge over those that start at peace. Because a war you can't control obviously can have consequences compared to a war you can.)

I also made each civilization have specialties, based around my perception of them.
Carthage emphasizes mercenaries, thus, has a wide variety of units at their disposal...when the appropriate resources are attained. (Units which drew some inspiration from the game Nemesis of the Roman Empire.) Carthage also emphasizes early naval dominance, having a unique sea unit as well as their starting galleys buffed to be elite.

Rome emphasizes terraforming, colonization, and lategame militaristic dominance, thus, has a wide variety of powerful units at their disposal which double as a makeshift work force when needed. (Their units draw from Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, plus ALL eras of the Roman empire present in Civ 3 Conquests: Rise, Fall, and via the Byzantines, Medieval.)

Macedon emphasizes the phalanx formation, as well as trusting in the "wall of wood": naval dominance, thus, two unique naval units, one of which is the undisputed best of all naval units in the scenario.

Persia emphasizes a variety of units, as well as masses of them. The Persians were basically renowned for bringing millions of troops--while most assuredly exaggeration where their actual numbers were in the hundreds of thousands (still impressive against a fighting force which would be hundreds or maybe thousands but certainly not hundreds of thousands), they have that heavy emphasis on not only a LOT of units but also a large variety of units, units that span the entirety of their empire for where they come from.

Scythia emphasizes horsemanship, thus, multiple units based around it. They also were given, via inspiration from age of empires II, the unique Scythian Shaman unit, emphasizing elements of mysticality which I associate with them for out-of-game reasoning. (Or rather, different-game reasoning.)

Goths I associated with a mass horde of units good on the attack but lacking in defense, but also with being essentially the closest the scenario has to forerunners of the vikings--thus, masters of the sea. They also represent the forerunners of the teutonic knights to me, so they have that available to them, too.

Celts, via their Gallic Swordsman being identical to a Swordsman just fast, I associated with "mobile infantry": fast-moving versions of normal units.

And Egypt, via their lore of being a civilization on the decline, I associated with "player self-imposed challenge", which would be a difficult civilization to master, but fully possible, via two opposite playstyles equally viable for a player but which require full commitment (something the AI lacks as it goes for half of one, half the other, and that never works out): complete warmongry (of savescumming and fighting the nearby empires for dominance of Africa and Asia Minor), or complete pacifist (via having no unique units that can be used offensively and aggressively).

I also made basic unit classifications.
"Spear" units, loosely defined as "Defensive" units (even though not all defensive units are spear units and not all spear units are defensive)
"Sword" units, loosely defined as "Offensive" units (even though not all offensive units are sword units though every sword unit does happen to be an offensive unit if you count 'offense value higher than defense' as the deciding factor)
"Bow" units, loosely defined as "Support" units
"Mounted" units, loosely defined as "Speed" units (even though not all speed units are mounted, though all mounted units are in fact speed units)
"Explore" units (loosely defined as "any non-worker unit that treats all terrain as road", even if they don't have the explore box ticked)
"Siege" units
"Terraforming" units (even though all but three--one of them in the original game, the base worker--don't work due to stupid programming limitations)
"Hidden Nationality" units
"Army" units
"Naval Power" units
"Naval Artillery" units (even though thanks to a programming limitation this doesn't work; the AI sees naval bombardment and power as synonymous)
"Naval Transport" units
"Naval Explore" units
"Naval Hidden Nationality" units
And "Building/Government-exclusive" units.

Obviously, there's overlap in quite a few unit categories, but. That's the general gist of how I divided the units.

Each government was thus reimagined as having one trait which made them be unique, but vastly inferior to the three "choice governments". (Tribal Council due to free units, Imperialism due to free units in a different way via a coding oversight present even in the original game!, Oligarchy as starting government until you can switch to Imperialism safely.)

To the map, I made eleven changes.
I added rivers, rivers everywhere. Mostly just 'cuz. This change didn't really serve much of a purpose other than satisfying my personal preference.

I added roads, roads everywhere--especially near Rome, where every single tile except those occupied by a Barbarian tribe has a road, leading into the Celts, Goths, and Macedonians; everything from the silver a little southwest of Masillia to the silks in the middle of nowhere, roads.

I added forts to that same area for Rome.

I added random barricades in locations sporadically throughout the map, representing some of my favorite settlement locations. (Basically a way of saying, "I'd put a city at or near this spot".)

I made some modifications to a couple of spaces, deleting forests in favor of coast in order to allow for naval shortcuts if founding a city in the right spot. (Mostly for Ireland and England, but there's also that spot which in the Medieval scenario is where I believe it's Denmark would be; I made it possible to bridge the ocean and that sea which in the vanilla game is landlocked.)

I added barbarian goody huts sporadically throughout the map--and placed heavy emphasis on some around the player four civilizations, once more to emphasize: these four civilizations get an advantage compared to the four original NPCs.
I added Barbarians sporadically throughout the map, mostly Russia, and reinforced heavily those that are around Rome. (Mostly for grinding purposes, of causing the conscript units to become regulars and even veterans.)

I added a few bonus resources here and there, especially to marshes (every marsh spot has some kind of resource on there because if I'm gonna have to deal with clearing the marshes out due to their disease I'm gonna get something out of it, dangit!), but did add a few resources. In Africa and Asia minor, there's a little more of what was already there, basically. Ivory, Silks, Spices. One spot in Africa has gold, silver, and gems added, but takes a long time to reach. (Similarly, the Oasis in Africa also has some bonuses, but is time-consuming to reach.)
Across the whole map, I added an eighth luxury of Wool, too.

I terraformed a fair number of spots, mostly adding irrigation to deserts and quite a number of plains with the occasional grassland irrigation thrown in for good measure: wherever there was a spot that would normally be impossible to reach, I added it. Speaking of which, every island got roads pre-added, many spots got pre-mined, and many more got pre-irrigated, due to the pain of transporting units there.

The four player civilizations were given outposts. Rome's are particularly noteworthy, as they allow first-turn contact with the three barbarian civilizations, and contain units pre-loaded onto them to defend them from attack. (To compensate for this, Carthage was given more starting Numidian Mercenaries as well as starting with some War Elephants, particularly in Hispaniola. Which, I felt, was thematically appropriate--and as I learned, surprisingly devastating to go up against!)

Most extensive of all though was the adding of units.
Each NPC starts with an Army now.
To compensate for this, each original player-civilization was given three of their initial golden age unit with elite experience based in the same city as their army. (Three Legionary Is experienced elite, three Hoplites experienced elite, three Immortals experienced elite, three War Elephants experienced elite.)
I developed a naval unit, the naval blockade, which can't be build and is immobile, and had each of those four start with a fair number. Carthage blocks off the pillars of hercules plus has presence near their starting islands, Rome also has presence near those islands as well as blocking off the lower half of the passageway through the island of Crete to Africa (or whatever that land is), Persia has a naval blockade which was my attempt to simulate Xerxes' Pontoon Bridges, and named them such, though because I was lazy and couldn't pinpoint precisely where said bridge would be, they blanket basically that whole sea. And Macedon blocks off any non-Persian square in that same sea, plus some spots near Italy.
There's also a Celtic one blocking off the narrow point between England and mainland Europe, plus Barbarian ones throughout that same area.

I gave the Romans a unique unit, the civil defender, envisioned as a "mobile defender": high early-game defense, and respectable lategame defense, but with an extra movement point as to keep pace with Roman Citizens and defend them from attack (since what good is two movement if your only way of covering them is with cavalry units that specialize in offense and have virtually no defense?), and placed them on each spot with a citizen (plus a couple extra which I thought had citizens but didn't).

To compensate for this, Carthage and Macedon got one extra settler in their capital city; Persia got two. Each also got their preferred defensive unit for said settler; Carthage got a Numidian Mercenary, Macedon a Hoplite, and Persia two spearmen. I may have given them one additional defensive unit prior to that, too, considering you start the game regardless of civilization with a settler unit--and normally, lacking the extra defensive unit to cover said settler.

From there, it's just a matter of specifics for the modifications I made.

I feel I did successfully preserve the dynamic of the civilizations, too, for what it's worth. Carthage always starts out lacking manpower compared to Rome, but having more cities than Rome. Carthage can take Sicily if lucky, but once Rome launches her initial invasion, all of Carthage's islands can fall, depending on the roll of the die. Soon, Carthage gets access to War Elephants relatively early, and storms Rome, launching a counter-offensive with their gained manpower. But when Rome gains Legionary IIIs, the tides turn against Carthage. Carthage eventually loses the Iberian Peninsula, and probably their islands, too, but Rome always lacks the manpower necessary to launch an invasion of mainland Carthage, stalemating the two. Unless at any point, the player intervenes on behalf of one.

Persia starts out with a manpower advantage over Macedon, but Macedon starts with their forces concentrated densely into a tight area, and is able to launch an initial wave of attacks. Eventually, Macedon controls the sea. Usually, Macedonia can control some Persian cities, such as Icosium (or was it Iconium?) and Ancyra, but after the Persians take the long way around, they start to lose ground. Ultimately, they juggle back and forth and it takes player intervention to break the stalemate.

Egypt is at a disadvantage, but can expand aggressively to the point of being the second-largest civilization in number of cities. As an AI, she messes it up by declaring war against the only civilizations capable of destroying her (Carthage and Persia), but as a player there's an opportunity to peacefully gain control of the world or via the AI's tactic done with player manipulation of the odds, aggressive expansion militaristically.

The Celts storm the world with their Gallic Swordsman, cheap units capable of launching an endless horde on their enemies, capable of coming in and getting out.

The Goths storm the world with their Teutonic Warrior, capable of launching an endless horde on their enemies of cheap, strong units--undisciplined, failing in the defensive, but relentless on the offensive (which is how any player would use them).

The Scythians storm the world with their cavalry, capable of utilizing hit-and-run tactics. (In the original scenario, their riders had an unlisted property of treating hills and mountains as if grassland--I upgraded this to be all terrain as roads. As I found out the hard way, "all terrain" doesn't just mean friendly/neutral/no territory terrain; it also includes terrain controlled by someone you're at war with so this buff was rather notably stronger than I originally thought!) Hordes of horsemen swarming, endlessly, even better at hit-and-run than the Celts, but utilizing it in a different way.

Even decisions that I to some extent regret--notably, terrain modifications which massively amp up shield/food production--have become an asset to the scenario, since I upped the size of a town to 10 rather than 6, and city up to 24 rather than 12. (And frankly, when it comes to that size, I always found it annoying that you had to have a metropolis to have every tile in a city be filled; now you don't!)

I still have alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll that work to do and this doesn't even cover most of the changes.
How I increased turns to 250, made percent of terrain 50% (a number which is actually challenging to achieve! Not impossible, but an actual real challenge to get, rather than something where you're struggling to try and avoid triggering too early which is what 20% was for me), population up to 65% (which frankly is a bit low; I should set it to like 75% to match the difficulty of terrain at 50% but whatever), the added police and civil engineer (not that I need them since corruption is way, way down on Chieftain and due to a perfect storm shield production is through the roof), the whole second era's worth of techs, the increased ease of cultural conversions (I looooooooove culture-hugs; regardless of game, it's my favorite type of tactic and the cousin of the turtle tactic I am so fond of where you expand via defense rather than through offense), enabling Espionage (because c'mon man that was a shortcoming of the original scenario in my opinion; don't pretend that time period didn't have spies because it VERY NOTABLY DID HAVE THEM in some rather famous cases and in warfare that's actually more important than normal to have!), a few general settings modifications, governments, resource values, terrain values, buildings/improvements/wonders, units...

...But this can give you some sense of the type of aesthetic I'm utilizing. A combination of multiple games covering the period (one recentish addition was adding a few things flavored off of Zeus/Poseidon), some inspiration from myths (I tried to keep this at a minimum and mostly in the form of, "you can think of this as allegory meant to invoke the image of the myth rather than literally being it"), some rather questionable and debatable historical evidence/facts/etc. borderline outlandish speculation which are meant to be artistic liberty (for instance, I gave the Macedonians a Hidden Nationality unit called the "Sea People", because ancestors of the Mycenaeans are one possible source of the Sea Peoples even though this is of dubious certainty).

Raising both into the past of the Mesopotamia, and into the future of the Middle Ages with some flavor from beyond, but mostly pre-gunpowder. (I had to take some exception there in naval units since the curragh, galley, longship, and dromon are literally the only non-gunpowder units.)

That's what I was aiming to build. And I've built it, and have pretty much finalized it. My seventh playtest is almost complete, and while I do need to make the easter egg harder to obtain (it's a little bit broken and poorly disguised right now), basically all that remains IS the civilopedia which is an extensive project to undertake.

I even managed to mostly fix the eighth luxury. In the city overview it still gives a blank icon, but at least now it is correctly labeling each luxury (whereas before, they were scrambled). Also got it to display properly on the map, albeit the way I did so borked a prior save and probably all prior saves. A comparatively minor thing, one which the fix is fairly simple, I think.

It's just. Kinda falling into place, as something worth playing for me. Over and over again. And when I've finished, and when I've played it.

That'd be one down, at least two more to go. (Fall of Rome and Medieval Ages use basically the same map. So too does Mesopotamia albeit a little further southeast, but that one, not sure if I'd make a new one of.)

Not recovered, but better.

Also, just before bed, had a mouse-death-scare (it ended up working, but wasn't responsive for a while) and trying to make a blog in that timeframe I'm hoping didn't mess the site up.

How sick?

Sick enough that I the person who only uses antibiotics as an absolute last resort (I don't like using them because they are the micro-biological equivalent of a nuke, killing everything both the bad and the good, plus the risk of use when not needed leading to increased chances of superbacteria immune to them) rushed to the doctor and was prescribed two antibiotics.

It's not like I'm actually miserable.

I have a swollen, sore throat, and my cough is frequent yet dry-because-it's-trying-to-be-wet-but-isn't, but this is an annoyance at worst. I don't have any symptoms in my head aside from the throat; it's mostly in the chest. But I can just tell that this is a bad sickness, off of feeling.

I don't get this feeling for a normal cold.

Sure enough the doctor took a look at me. With me having come back negative for strep throat, at first the doctor thought it might be viral due to the sore throat...until the doctor actually started the examination. I described the nature of the cough, I described the feeling of gunk in my chest, I described what I could feel in me, and after listening to my breathing (not to mention, perfectly timed, hearing my cough), the doctor surmised that it was high enough a probability of bacterial to take those extreme measures.

I am, after all, still recovering (and not recovering well) from months of Vitamin B12 deficiency.

The initial diagnosis, they called pneumonitis. Which I suspect was a mixture of the Vitamin B12 symptoms in. But I am treating it, aggressively, because this is something I need to stay on top of.

I normally hate taking antibiotics, sure. But when I was hit by this sickness, there was just a level of intuitive panic to it. This was not something that I feared off of rational reasoning; there was a deep-seated feeling that this was wrong and very very dangerous to leave untreated. Rationality happened to back that up, sure--I am recovering from Vitamin B12 deficiency, so it makes sense that if I get sick with an actual sickness, the effects on my body are going to be far more dangerous than normal.

​But that level of fear was something which I knew I needed to listen to. Because it was scary. I am vulnerable right now, and having what I frankly suspect is a triple-hit of the B12 deficiency, a viral infection, and a bacterial infection (at least that's my hypothesis) is something which if I tried to "tough it out", could potentially have literally killed me.

So treating it's the best option.

Some things, I'm not sure I'll be able to fix.
Right now, I have a couple of buildings which have the 'requires this good to be within city radius' icon checked.
Right now, I also have harbors.
I have wonders which put these things in every city.
The intention behind the harbor-in-every-city wonder was for it to be every coastal city. But it puts it in every city, even landlocked ones. The intention behind the wonder placing buildings requiring the good within the city radius was for it to place those buildings only in cities which had that.

Except.

Right now.

They're not working.

That's a technical glitch I'm baffled by. All evidence suggests that it should be working the way I intended, and yet it's not. A side-effect of this is that my cities are producing many, many more shields than intended since the buildings meant to require the goods within the city both have bonuses to shield production.

Now, in cities which build wonders, I'm okay with shield count skyrocketing into the high hundreds.

But in cities that only have normal improvements, while breaking the hundreds is inevitable with the modifications I've made, it should be the low-hundreds. (Honestly tho shield production is something which I might just have a bit of a global reset on to do over since I increased shield production and decreased corruption to degrees where things seem reasonable...at first, but then the bonuses keep stacking and stacking, spiraling into no-longer-reasonable levels as I mentioned where cities can be producing over a thousand shields.)

Having two shield-boosting improvements be in every city rather than select few cities is...stronger than my design intention.

I may also face a technical glitch in city displays since I added an eighth luxury in a scenario which only had seven. I downloaded the proper images, so things display properly (this did have the side-effect of royally borking my current save and probably all past saves, which in my defense, was not something I could have anticipated), fixing a VERY long-standing problem (I'd been using rubber as a stand-in symbol for it), which is putting me on the right track.

Revamping the Civilopedia to have everything is a massive project though. I've implemented about two dozen units...and I still have...lemme count, I made a list...54 more units to implement.
Then after having implemented all of those units, there's getting all the links to those units up and running. And a massive cross-check there.

And even after having done all those units. Then I've got wonders to do, and to tackle buildings. (I might have figured out how to do wonders, but I'm not positive; I'm a little worried about buildings so it's going to be one of the last things I tackle.) And then I'll have all of the links to them.

Plus, I need to do resources and terrain and such thanks to my modifications there. (Though, again, I might just do a gigantic reset of sorts there, which is one reason I haven't done this yet; I'm not sure if I'm going to keep things as-is or if not what changes I'll make and so on and so forth.)

All-in-all, the Civilopedia is probably less than 10% complete.

Still, since I borked my last save and did make significant changes (eighteen new units, a number of new buildings, a new great wonder, six new techs, plus changes to the way a few units work including changing what was basically "Legionary with two movement and all terrain as roads"--something I realized was broken only after I began my fifth playtest and put the unit into action, thus the need to alter it--into something that had a more unique function), I am going to launch my sixth playtest of the scenario.

At this point, I think that all the major changes are done.
If I can fix bugs, I will.
I will need to make the Civilopedia updates (which, incidentally, carry over into existing games), but this can be done progressively.
I may adjust terrains and resources and such and maybe production in some cases, but if I had to say.

The scenario should be a good 80-90% finished, it's just fine-tuning it now. Not much will change from my current playthrough to the final playthrough, other than hopefully less errors occurring.

Of course, before I do the test, I need to run a quick debug mode due to changing PRTOs of units; if I made a change inaccurately, it'd crash the game due to lacking a connection between the animation and PRTO, so. Gonna do that, then try my sixth.

Wish me luck; I'll need it, given my track record thusfar! (Of my playthroughs, I've made one as Carthage way back in the earliest stages, one as Persia way back in the earlyish stages, three or so unofficial Rome playthroughs, and then the five official Rome playthroughs. Finished the Persian one, finished the Carthage one, but of the Roman playthroughs, I've managed to finish...one. So my success rate for running games to completion is like 3/10 right now.)

I do think that the mod is a fun and creative one...if I can actually get it working well. It's not exactly challenging especially not to a notorious save scummer, but it's still. Filled with many interesting ideas, and I did my best to maintain the dynamics of the civilizations. (Having the "barbarian" civilizations start at a disadvantage but be viable to play to victory; having Egypt start on the decline and be challenging but possible to play; having Persia and Macedon duke it out with the Macedonians having an earlier edge but the Persians having the later edge, yet still having the Macedonians dominate the sea; having Rome and Carthage struggle for control, with Carthage being formidable across the game but Rome being more powerful, etc.)

I realize people tend to say "less is more", and they're probably right, it's probably too many ideas in one scenario for it to work as well as I want it to.

But I like it, dangit, and I'm the one who's making it so if I like it and will play it over and over and over again that's the important bit.

So here I am going to sleep!