Meshwesh minor errors and typos

[David Kuijt]

Are all lists supposed to have troop type descriptions now? I note that the Sabirs and the Chionites and Western Hephthalites lack them.

Ah. There is a marker in the database for army lists with troop descriptions (to release the descriptions for display) and I had somehow missed setting that marker for those two lists. Thanks for finding that. Fixed now.

[David Kuijt]

In the Umayyad list, there are two allied contingent labelled as "Sogdian, Khwarizmian, or Other Khurasani Allies", one drawn from the Sogdian list, the other from the Tarim City States one. Is there any reason the former shouldn't simply be called "Sogdian Allies", and what's up with the latter - the Tarim basin is AFAIK not normally considered part of Khurasan?

Looking at it now (years after doing the analysis, so forgive me any infelicities of memory), what I think is going on there is that I hated the commonly-used acronym CACS ("Central Asian City States"). I wanted a better name, and the one we agreed on was Tarim Basin Citystates. Silk Road Citystates would have been cool too, but would imply a much more linear distribution in geography and far greater spread than we really could support; Tarim Basin was the more conservative geographical unit. In this case a number of city states in the Transoxus are not actually in the Tarim Basin, but seem to fit better with the Tarim Basin organizational mode. This is also complicated by the fact that a large amount of guesswork is going on by all historical military readers when they pretend they know how such troops fought. It is quite likely that some city states fought in a more hard-charging way, and others in a less -- so even though the army lists call one group "Sogdians" and the other group "Tarim Basin Citystates", we don't really know much more than that both combat styles were possibilities in that region at that time. If you are of the opinion that the Transoxus city states on the Silk Road fought hard-charging, make up that army but call them "Sogdians" at a tournament; if you are of the opinion that they fought more like Elite Cavalry, make up the Tarim Basin army list but tell everyone they're from the Transoxus.

[David Kuijt]

Should the "Jiang and Qi" list mayhap be "Qiang and Di", corresponding to the DBX "Ch'iang and Ti" list and explaining the relation to the Former Qin (a Di dynasty)?

We've largely lost contact with our Pinyin expert; the only thing I'm sure of is that we hate Wade-Giles. Are you asking if we missed a transliteration? Quite possible. I believe the two lists correspond (I'll check later) -- is Qiang and Di the correct transliteration in Pinyin for the Wade-Giles atrocity "Ch'iang and Ti"?

[Andreas Johansson]

We've largely lost contact with our Pinyin expert; the only thing I'm sure of is that we hate Wade-Giles. Are you asking if we missed a transliteration? Quite possible. I believe the two lists correspond (I'll check later) -- is Qiang and Di the correct transliteration in Pinyin for the Wade-Giles atrocity "Ch'iang and Ti"?

Yes, Qiang and Di are the pinyin equivalents of W-G Ch'iang and Ti respectively.

[Andreas Johansson]

Incidentally, while I wouldn't claim to be a "pinyin expert", conversion between pinyin and W-G is largely mechanical and I would be happy to provide any help I can on that front. Most of the time I can also figure out the various non-W-G, non-pinyin transcriptions that randomly occurs in the WRG lists and other wargaming references.

A completely unrelated minor discrepancy: In the Alexandrian Macedonian list, Alex's regent back in Macedon is given the Latin name-form "Antipater" under Invasion Rating, but the Greek "Antipatros" in the restrictions for elephants and Thessalian allies.

[David Kuijt]

Incidentally, while I wouldn't claim to be a "pinyin expert", conversion between pinyin and W-G is largely mechanical and I would be happy to provide any help I can on that front. Most of the time I can also figure out the various non-W-G, non-pinyin transcriptions that randomly occurs in the WRG lists and other wargaming references.

Thanks. Our objective is simple -- to make it easy to connect our army lists for China with commonly available source material. Which means books, wikipedia, and so on. W-G does not fit that objective, and has not for many years.

A completely unrelated minor discrepancy: In the Alexandrian Macedonian list, Alex's regent back in Macedon is given the Latin name-form "Antipater" under Invasion Rating, but the Greek "Antipatros" in the restrictions for elephants and Thessalian allies.

Probably not the only place that sort of problem exists -- decisions about whether to use commonly used names or precise names (what they called themselves) are splattered all over history and geography, and are especially bad in the parts of history that were interesting to the Victorians (who were notoriously inconsistent). Greeks, Romans, and Byzantines, and the cultures in contact with them, are where I recall seeing this issue the most. Alexander the Great didn't use the name "Alexander", as an obvious example, but that's the universal name casual historians (i.e. gamers) use for him.

But we should be consistent with individuals (and fix the problem you pointed out). Not sure which name we should use for Antipatsy, though. Which name is more common in Wikipedia for him?

[EDIT] -- looks like Wikipedia prefers Antipater, so we should use that.

[Andreas Johansson]

The Chinese Northern Dynasties list begins in 317, but the first of the Northern Dynasties (Northern Wei) was established only in 386 (and only unified the North in 431).

I guess the idea might be it covers predecessors like Dai (310-376, ruled by the same Tuoba clan that ruled the Northern Wei), but I'd think those better covered by the Xianbei lists, and the 317 date looks suspiciously like it's copied from the Chinese Southern Dynasties list (where it marks the start of the Eastern Jin, which isn't strictly a Southern Dynasty but can reasonably be lumped with them - they were its direct successors).

[Andreas Johansson]

The French Ordonnance list has the half-translation "Francs bowmen" for francs-archers. The untranslated term (with or without hyphen) is IME universal in English-language literature.

[David Kuijt]

The French Ordonnance list has the half-translation "Francs bowmen" for francs-archers. The untranslated term (with or without hyphen) is IME universal in English-language literature.

Archers means a specific stand type in Triumph; we've attempted to be pretty rigorous in not describing anything as "Archers" in any way if the troop type being described is Bow Levy. It's an attempt to avoid the inevitable argument and confusion when someone asks why his francs-archers aren't archers.

[Andreas Johansson]

The Maurikian Byzantine calls all Elite Cav "Boukellarioi". Those were just a small elite, the bulk should be called "Kavallarioi" (so either change the line to "Boukellarioi and Kavallarioi", or break out 0-1 elements as a separate Boukellarioi line).