#and the viking empire stretched across all those places

[qqueenofhades]

Some additional points about that grave find in Finland that you may or may not find interesting. And that may or may not be dated, because I studied history 20 years ago. That said, I'm not sure if 1000 years ago is firmly middle-ages in this context? At least back in my uni days, they told us that here middle ages got going slowly during 1100's and 1200's when Sweden started converting the population to Christianity and the prehistorical era gradually ended. Maybe they teach differently now.

More about the grave. I don't know why The Guardian would talk about Vikings in this context at all, because the erstwhile population of current day Finland is not considered to have been Vikings, afaik. They were similarly warlike, and the graves from that era have a lot of weapons, and they certainly encountered Vikings, but they never participated in the raiding, and isn't that what makes Vikings Vikings? Their language and religion was also different. But anyway. I don't mean to correct you because the larger point stands. When I saw the headline in a Finnish news paper about that grave and traditional gender roles my first thought was, well, maybe the gender roles hadn't become traditional then yet. Just some additional context, which could be illuminating or could be totally dated.

I did the stupid thing and sent you asks about the Suontaka burial before reading the Cambridge article about it: I'm reading it now, and my comments seem fairly useless. Feel free to ignore with extreme prejudice. We're in agreement on the guardian article.

Aha, well, we all make mistakes from time to time, so no worries! However, since you do touch on a few points that I would like to discuss, I'm going to go ahead and answer, whether for you or anyone else who might find it useful. (It's the teacher in me, I'm afraid.)

First, I have to say that I had a definite "eeegh" moment at the idea that the eleventh/twelfth century isn't "medieval" in Finland just because it (at least prior to the Baltic/Northern crusades, if we're considering them to begin with the Wendish Crusade in 1147) wasn't yet fully Christianized. Scholars pretty universally accept "medieval history" as referring to the time period between 500--1500 CE (the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the Renaissance). These, of course, are horribly Eurocentric frames of reference, but there you have it. Any event or culture taking place within that span of dates, no matter where in the world it is or what its socio-political circumstances may be, is medieval. We have to call out the pernicious equivalence of "medieval" with "Western Christian European," since that seems to be the underlying assumption. This is also what makes people mistakenly think that the medieval world (which, y'know, was just as big as it is now) is exclusively about white Christian Europe, and that no other global regions have a medieval history. Either way, the eleventh/twelfth century is actually closer to the end of the medieval era than it is to the start. I'm certainly not suggesting that you were consciously implying this; I have no trouble believing that that is indeed how they taught it twenty years ago. But yeah, the idea that still-largely-pagan eleventh-century Finland couldn't be "medieval" until it's Christian is definitely not the case as understood now.

The idea that anywhere in eleventh-century Europe is still "prehistorical" in any sense of the word is likewise a little baffling, tbh. Once more, it associates "history" only with "Christianity," and that would get quite a bit of pushback if included in a paper on medieval studies today. That is what also annoys me deeply when I see people describing the pre-Columbian Americas as "prehistoric" (read: pre-white-people-historic). If the chief marker of "history" is "written history," sure, there is a very narrow pedagogical argument to be made that these societies don't have narratives or chronicles in the standard historiographical sense. But also, uh, European colonialism and conquest destroyed vast swathes of records that we have never been able to read, understand, or even access, because they're just not there anymore. There is ample evidence that the ancient (and I do mean ANCIENT, up to thousands of years BCE) and early-to-late-medieval Mesoamerican societies had complex systems of writing, astronomy, calendar-keeping, and other history-recording practices, right up until 1492. There are something like four (FOUR) pre-Columbian Mayan scrolls still in existence, out of probably thousands and thousands, because the Spanish destroyed the rest. So "prehistoric," unless you're literally referring to the Stone Age, is never a politically neutral word or a word to use uncritically...

...and speaking of the Stone Age, we actually have histories for that too! Or rather (iirc) the Ice Age, because for example, Aboriginal Australians transmit their history orally and require each new generation to memorize it, word for word, exactly as taught to them. Some of these histories stretch back over ten thousand years, which means that we actually have first-person accounts of life during the end of the Ice Age, and scientists recently discovered that these traditional narratives accurately reflected the archaeological and geological record of Australia during the time period in question. (Indigenous people know what they're talking about and should be listened to, example number 85,000.) Of course, the Western-white-supremacist model of historiography calls these just "legends" or "myths" or "folktales" rather than history, because I guess not writing it down in a chronicle as a monk in a European Christian monastery in the year 1015 or whatever doesn't qualify as history for some people. (I don't have strong opinions about this or anything. Welp.)

I likewise don't know why the Guardian article brought up the Vikings, aside from the fact that they were quoting someone who explicitly used the Vikings in a hypothetical scenario about "traditional gender roles." This person expressed surprise that an intersex person living in a medieval Scandinavian society could rise to a high social role, by citing the widespread belief that "Vikings" were all dedicated to being very manly at all times and nobody with feminine qualities/feminine-coded social power could rule over them. I don't know if this was just a bad phrasing (plus, it obviously overlooks the often-egalitarian nature of medieval Scandinavian societies and plays into the favored white supremacist stereotype of the Vikings as some Master Aryan Race Where Men Were Men, etc) or what, but yeah, it's wrong across the board. Viking is the name of an occupation, not an ethnicity. It comes from the word wicing, meaning "seafarer" or "sea raider," and referred only to those guys who went out on their longships and stole a lot of stuff from their neighbors, most notably in the eighth to eleventh centuries. Their families back at home were part of the exact same society and benefited from those raids, but strictly speaking, they weren't vikings. We use the word "Viking" to describe any member of a medieval Scandinavian society, but it's similar to describing everyone living in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, no matter who they were or their social status or ethnic background, as "pirates," which is obviously inaccurate.

As you correctly point out, the Finns aren't considered quite the same as the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes (as anyone can tell from looking at their written language; N/D/S are mutually intelligible and derive from the same linguistic family, while Finnish is COMPLETELY different and comes from an altogether separate branch of the tree) and therefore it's even more baffling that the person quoted in the Guardian article would cite them as an example of a "Viking" society. Likewise as you note, the whole phrase "traditional gender roles" is intensely problematic in most contexts, and especially here. It assumes that modern Western ideals of sex and gender have been static and unchanging throughout history, and that means that we tend to read our own (biased) assumptions onto the historical record and then get surprised when, shock of shock, they don't fit. The burial at Suontaka seems to have been of a biologically intersex person (i.e. someone with Klinefelter syndrome), but this is also the case when it comes to people assigned the usual male or female at birth, without any complicating genetic conditions. I'm working on a book review for an entire edited volume that discusses the intense gender-fluidity and proto-transgenderism in some medieval saints' lives, and how obviously the fact that they have been held up as a holy example, while explicitly subverting the so-called Traditional Gender Roles of the Middle Ages, means that it was (and is) a lot more complicated than shallow stereotypes and Bad Medievalism would have it.

Anyway, this is long enough (especially considering that you graciously offered me the chance to ignore it) so I think we'll stop here for now. But yes, there you have it. :)

[theuniversekidssuau]

Spinel the Swordfighter

The whole family was in the living room watching a movie called Lonely Blade. The gems and Greg all had their own chairs, and the kids were strewn on a rather large sofa. Just then, the big reveal in the movie happened, the janitor was the big villain and Lonely Blade did his signature move, The Boomerang Blade. Steven and Robbie were enraptured. Page loved the visual effects, but kept mumbling that they wouldn't fight lie that with real swords, which Spinel and Bismuth agreed. The kids, as soon as Spinel and Bismuth said they could fight with swords, wanted to see and learn too. Greg had only two rules, he wasn't coming, and the kids couldn't actually use the swords, demonstration only. With everyone in agreement, the group warped off to the Cloud Arena.

Once there the kids took their seats in the stands, with Amethyst in the middle. Bismuth and Spinel stood on the area floor. Bismuth clarified that Spinel had to stay rigid to properly show forms, no stretching or noodling. Spinel handed Bismuth a broadsword, and clarified herself, no shapehifting. Page was interested to see what style they'd use, since she was familiar with kendo, but would also look up other styles in her free time. Steven and Robbie just wanted to see some fighting, and Sophie was just there for the fun of it. She did warn Spinel to keep her focus on Bismuth. The two of them stood ready, Spinel starting with a traditional fencing pose, a rapier, not foil, in hand. Bismuth on the other hand, stood with her sword across her body, and had her arm up as if holding a shield, if fact she was almost tempted to ask Steven for one. They looked like a Viking soldier fighting a French noble. Amethyst shouted for them to start and they started to clash.

Steel met steel, and the sounds reverberated off the walls. The gems went all out in their fight with one another until Spinel had Bismuth pinned to the ground, Bis complaining that she couldn't find an opening. The boys whooped in joy momentarily distracting Spinel, giving the smith an opportunity to continue the fight. When Spinel landed on the ground, her sword on the other side of the room, she called the duel. Bis helped her up, retrieved the rapier, and asked the kids what they learned. The boys said something about distracting your opponent, which was true, but not the point. The girls had valid observations about forms, mostly that they should have both had a second sword or a shield since both had one handed swords. The gems asked Page if her mother had left any training holos for swordsmanship, which there was. Page projected the holo of her mother and activated the built in training mode. The holo picked Spinel as it's opponent which worked out well for style purposes. Spinel kept pointing out her stance and footwork, which bored the boys but engaged Page and her sister. The repetitive move calls of the hologram ended up boring Amethyst as well, who decided to make a bit of a scene by eating a passing cloud. Spinel got distracted by this, and grabbed the leg of her, now floating, friend, handing her off to Bismuth. Sensing the distraction, and before Sophie could warn anyone, the hologram shouted a thrust, and the hologram's rapier went through Spinel's stomach, just below her gem. "Oh shale! Spinel!" Bismuth shouted, as she ran towards the injured gem, passing the puffy purple person to Page. She made it to her friend's side just in time to catch the rosy gem before it hit the ground, as Spinel poofed. The hologram dissipated immediately after, Page in too much shock to maintain it.

The group sadly warped home, and after comforting the boys, who momentarily forgot this could happen, the kids morosely wandered into their rooms. Bismuth took a rope and tied Amethyst to some junk in the gem's room, then took Spinel into the living room. She tried to soothingly talk to her, this was the first time Spinel had been poofed by injury. She reminded her to take her time, make sure everything was better before reforming. Maybe when she got back, they finish the movie, or even watch the new anime Page found, a reboot of the Solar Scout series. "You remember that series right? Greg showed it to us shortly after you got here. How you loved Luna, and Martia, and we'd watch it every night after sparring. This new one is like a new generation of scouts. kinda like the kids are the new generation of Crystal Gems. You gotta come back, Spin, the kids, especially the boys, are miserable with you gone." When there was no reaction, Bismuth decided to go into her own room for the night.

A week passed by with Spinel still in her gem, the boys slumped in their seats every morning, while Page and Sophie kept themselves composed, for the most part. That Sunday, the family had breakfast together, though nobody ate as much as normal, even Amethyst, who finally deflated after her incident. They had placed Spinel at her normal spot at the table, even placing a plate in front of her chair. This was Sophie's idea, and she wouldn't explain why, but she sat next to the dim gem and talked with Spinel as if she were already formed. Sure enough, just as the young girl was getting to the point of her morning prophecy, the gem lit up with a pinkish glow, and floated off the padded seat. A faint outline formed around the gem, the pulsed a bit, before flashing and landing Spinel, reformed, in her seat, like she had never left. Bismuth was the first to talk. "So I guess we're watching the reboot, you must've heard me in there." Spinel gave a questioning look, then looked down at her outfit, and giggled.

"Must have, if you had mentioned "Solar Scouts". I felt a little out of date before, this is a lot more comfortable" Her new outfit consisted of a pink sailor-like outfit, with a large bow that looked like it sprouted from behind her gem. her hair had formed into long pigtails that, laying flat behind her head. almost formed a heart. She had two pink star hair pins in front of the tails, which were tied up in orange-pink scrunchies. She had on dark pink elbow length gloves and knee high boots. Even her eyes matched the anime's style, shiny pink, and large pupils that looked to sparkle in the light. Page thought it was a nice upgrade from the old cartoon style her eyes used to be.

"As I was about to say before this happened," Sophie interjected "Spinel's coming back today, but well, ta-da" she gestured to the fact it's not a prophecy anymore "and there's a few gem monsters we have to go collect at an Empire City circus, looks like they caught a couple rubies, thought they were little animals or something. I looked a couple times, and if we don't go in the next few days, the fire those three will create will take out the entire borough." The gems contemplated the news, and decided to head out after the day's sparring session.

[bananaangry]

Ancient empires medieval total war 1

Ancient empires medieval total war 1 full#

Ancient empires medieval total war 1 full#

If that's your situation, hang around the sub for a couple of days and leave a few comments - you'll be able to post in no time! Need more details? Read our full rules here. In fact, it is their reverence of the old ways that has brought the empire to a point of stagnation, in a world that has gradually kept moving on. It is a mere shadow because despite retaining the civilised ways of the Roman legacy, the Byzantines have done little to further it. Our automoderator also prevents spam by deleting posts from users less than four days old or who have less than three karma. Byzantium is the shadow that remains of the old Roman Empire. Giveaways and contests must be approved beforehand by the moderation team. For starters, it is the Byzantine Empire that truly carries on the legacy of the ancient Romans, and the notion that the Kaiser (the Germanic name for 'Emperor') truly serves the Roman Catholic. No politics allowedĭon't derail threads with off-topic memes or controversy. The Holy Roman Empire is a particularly misleading name for Europes largest collective of kingdoms and fiefdoms, regardless which way one looks at it. TROY Total War: TROY - Official TrailerĪll posts must be related to the Total War series.WH2 The Twisted & The Twilight Announcement.WH3 Total War: Warhammer III Announcement Trailer.Post your strategies, thoughts, links and reviews here. Ělso includes added functionality for the main game, such as flaming ammunition and three new factions with which to play through the original Grand Campaign.Click here to set your flair! Welcome to /r/TotalWar!Ī subreddit for all of those who love the Total War series.Ědds new Anglo-Saxon and Viking factions with additional units alongside the detailed new Campaign map.Set upon an extended map of the British Isles and western Scandinavia and taking place from 793 to 1066, Viking Invasion allows the player to assume the role of leader of the Viking faction as they raid, loot and pillage their way to supremacy.Īlternatively the player may take control of early Anglo-Saxon factions, such as Wessex and Mercia, with the aim of repelling the Viking invasion and ultimately controlling the British Isles in its entirety. Valour, Vice and Virtues colour your faction’s characters, effecting how other treat them and the men they lead.Ībout MEDIEVAL: Total War™ - Viking Invasion.New siege systems make the most of an era where formidable castles dotted the landscape.Up to 10,000 soldiers on-screen deliver incredible, epic battle scenes.ğourteen playable factions from across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.Carve a niche for yourself through the crucible of battle and become the statesman and king the era demands. Recruit and deploy armies, besiege settlements, fight naval battles and employ agents such as emissaries, spies and assassins to aid with diplomacy, offer alliances or bribes, or execute more clandestine actions.Ī dramatic period of rebellion, civil war, and the birthing of nations provides the backdrop to your own scheme for ultimate power. About This Game MEDIEVAL: Total War™ - Collection Edition is the compilation of the critically-acclaimed Medieval: Total War and its official expansion pack - Viking Invasionįrom the lush grasslands of Western Europe to the arid deserts of Northern Africa, and from the first Crusade to the fall of Constantinople, wage total war in order to expand your influence and secure your reign as you build a dynastic empire to stretch across four centuries.

[sciencespies]

Treasure Trove of Artifacts Illustrates Life in a Lost Viking Mountain Pass

https://sciencespies.com/nature/treasure-trove-of-artifacts-illustrates-life-in-a-lost-viking-mountain-pass/

Treasure Trove of Artifacts Illustrates Life in a Lost Viking Mountain Pass

Above the treeline and accessible only by a tough hike or helicopter ride, the Lendbreen ice patch in Norway’s Jotunheim Mountains, about 200 miles northwest of Oslo, is a prohibitively remote place. But a thousand years ago, long before good roads were built in the valleys, this rugged mountain pass was an artery of Viking Age traffic.

During 2011’s particularly warm summer, archaeologists surveying Lendbreen for the first time found centuries-old horse dung littered all over the ground and ancient artifacts melting out of the ice. Among those early finds was a 1700-year-old tunic, the oldest piece of clothing ever discovered in Norway and one that is puzzlingly complete, perhaps tossed off by a traveler in the delirious late stages of hypothermia.

Now, after several more explorations of the site, researchers have discovered more than 1,000 artifacts including scraps of wool clothing and leather shoes, fragments of sleds, horseshoes and walking sticks. A new analysis of artifacts from the ice patch, published today in the journal Antiquity, offers new information about how this mountain pass was used over time—and some ominous clues about why it was eventually abandoned.

Lendbreen has provided the most archaeological finds of any ice patch in Scandinavia and possibly the world. While most other ice-patch sites in northern Europe were hunting sites, Lendbreen was a place for travelers. Farmers, herders and merchants came through here to cross the 6,300-foot-tall Lomseggen mountain ridge to reach local high-altitude summer pastures and perhaps trading posts and other destinations much further away.

This new research led by Lars Holger Pilø, co-director of the Glacier Archaeology Program in Norway’s Innlandet County, looked at the radiocarbon dates of 60 items collected at Lendbreen. Their results showed that the pass was used from the Roman Iron Age—a time around 300 A.D. when the Romans had increasing influence in northern Europe, although their empire did not extend to modern-day Norway—through the Middle Ages.

Lendbreen site

(Pilo et. al.)

“The pass was at its busiest during the Viking Age around 1000 A.D., a time of high mobility and growing trade across Scandinavia and Europe,” says study co-author James Barrett, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge. “This remarkable peak in use shows just how connected even a very remote location was to wider economic and demographic happenings.”

As climate change accelerates ice melt in the high mountains, archaeologists are suddenly discovering a wealth of artifacts that had been frozen for centuries. Icy conditions can preserve rare, delicate materials like textiles and wood, but these objects may decay and disappear forever if they aren’t collected in time. These sites can be difficult to interpret, however, because meltwater and strong winds may carry objects from their original context. At Lendbreen, for instance, a Bronze Age ski was found in four pieces discovered as much as 800 feet apart, while other objects that might have been dropped on the trail hundreds of years apart can get washed together. Archaeologists also have found hundreds of bones from animals like packhorses as well as a line of cairns marking the trail.

“The Lendbreen route is much better marked than the other known passes over the ridge and even has the ruins of a shelter in the pass,” Pilø says. “Since there are few finds from the other passes so far, it is hard to tell whether Lendbreen was the most trafficked of the passes, but it appears to have had a special significance. Perhaps some of the travelers were not locals but longer-distance travelers and needed better guidance.”

The long-haul travelers may have picked up mountain products like wool, reindeer pelts and antlers, or cheese and butter from summer farms to bring to far-off locations, maybe even outside Norway. For example, the archaeologists have found a birch bark container packed with raw wool. But the researchers think the pass also served as an important route for local travel from permanent farms in valleys to summer farms at higher altitudes, where livestock could graze for part of the year. (In summer, the farmers needed the meadows on their main farms to produce hay for winter fodder.)

For an archaeological site like Lendbreen to form, a mountain pass must cross stretches of ice and snow where items dropped by travelers would survive for centuries or millennia, Barrett says. Similar mountain passes in the Alps and the Himalayas wouldn’t have been used in cold seasons when preservation would be at its peak. But people probably crossed the Lendbreen route in late winter through early summer, when snow on the ground made it easier to travel over the otherwise-rough terrain. Pilø adds that the preservation of organic materials makes Lendbreen “a completely new ballgame compared to normal mountain passes without ice where only a few metal objects remain from the traffic.”

Cairns along the trail in Lendbreen.

(Pilo et. al.)

“This study is one of the first ice-patch archaeology studies to explore the role of mountain passes in travel over long time scales,” says William Taylor, an assistant professor and curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. Taylor, who was not involved in this research but has explored ice patches in other parts of the world such as Mongolia, says that these results show how the Roman and Viking economies transformed mountain zones. “It is fascinating to see direct evidence for the emergence and re-emergence of mountain travel routes—not as an abstract concept, but as a tangible archaeological phenomenon demonstrated by horse dung, horse bones and the objects dropped by travelers engaged in important pastoral work.”

The age of the Lendbreen artifacts indicates that the use of the pass declined after the Viking Age. This decline could be linked to a cooling period known as the Little Ice Age as well as the Black Death, the 14th-century plague that killed between half and two-thirds of the Norwegian population.

“There were also other subsequent pandemics in the late medieval period making the situation even worse,” Pilø says. “This obviously had a great influence on local settlement and economy, and thus mountain traffic, which dwindled, both long-distance and to the local summer farms.” By the time local summer farms were reestablished a few centuries later, the Lendbreen pass seems to have been forgotten as people traveled different routes.

The current COVID-19 pandemic, which has stymied travel, may doom the prospects of further exploring both Lendbreen and another promising mountain pass this summer. “One more reason to hope that the glaciers do not retreat much this year,” Pilø says.

Regardless, the search for artifacts at Lendbreen may be nearing its end. The archaeologists have scoured an area equal to 35 football fields in what is likely the largest glacial archaeology survey ever conducted. But last summer was an especially severe year for ice melt. The discoveries, though not analyzed in the Antiquity study and have yet to be carbon-dated, were “astounding,” Pilo says.

The field team found the remains of a dog with a collar and leash, a wooden tinderbox and a preserved horse snowshoe, which supports the idea that this pass was mainly used when it was covered in snow. Many of the artifacts were spotted lying on the ice, which normally implies that the melt has reached previously untouched layers. When the team came back weeks later, another few feet of ice had melted, but no new finds had appeared.

“All that was left on the ice was the dung from the packhorses,” Pilø says. “This makes us believe that the ice from the time of the pass has now melted out.”

#Nature

[waynekelton]

The Best RTS Games on Android & iOS

When it comes to the RTS, the mobile marketplace has big shoes to fill. From Age of Empires to Command & Conquer, the frantic blend of actions-per-minute with grand strategy, the macro- and micro-management required to play this genre at peak performance has inspired many a gamer.

What are the best RTS games on iOS & Android?

Company of Heroes

Bad North

Dungeon Warfare 2

Rebel Inc.

Element RTS

Kingdom Rush: Vengeance

Auralux: Constellations

Dominations

Iron Marines

Subterfuge

Rymdkapsel

Tropical Stormfront

Without further ado here are the best RTS games for android, iPhone & iPad to play in 2020:

Company of Heroes

Publisher: Feral Interactive Platforms: iPad Only Price: $14.99

I know when we first started creating these lists I said I didn't want to duplicate games across different articles if I could help it - but Company of Heroes is a good enough experience that it deserves to be in two places at once. Created by the geniuses at Feral Interactive, this is a smart adaptation of the iconic WW2 RTS to iPads. A touch interface is always going to be inferior to mouse when being adapted from the latter to the former, but Feral have done a pretty admirable job.

It's worth noting that, at the time of writing, the CoH port only includes the single-player campaign and 4v4 skirmish content from the vanilla game. The two expansions and multiplayer support are (hopefully) coming further down the line.

Bad North

Developer: Raw Fury Platforms: iOS Universal, Android Price: $4.99

We knew Bad North would be perfect for mobile when we first heard about it back in 2018... it got waylaid some-what, beaching on PC first before finally setting sail for mobile a few months ago - it was definitely worth the wait. The PC version went through a lot of updates and changes, culminating in the free 'Jotunn Edition' update that elevated the game to a more 'definitive' state.

That version is what landed on mobile, and we really enjoyed it. As a 'micro' strategy game it personifies minimalist, simple design. Some of you might find it too simple at least but for those who aren't bothered by the very meagre, but raw tactical options, you'll find a game that's challenging and quite rewarding. It's got rogue-like elements where you can unlock improvements for later runs, and then you must command and nurture your army from island to island as you fight off waves of blood-thirsty vikings. New enemy types will warrant a change in tactics, provided you survive.

Dungeon Warfare 2

Developer: Jin Man Kim Platforms: iOS Universal, Android Price: $4.99

We've been waiting for Dungeon Warfare 2 for what seems like a while now - it was on our list of 2018's most anticipated games for sure, but sadly missed its window and slipped into 2019. Still, as Richard can attest in this review, it was well worth the wait. The tower-defence genre has always been prone to to lazy or bland design, but in Dungeon Warfare everything is turned up to 11.

With over thirty distinct traps, this Dungeon Keeper-esque experience offers you a lot of variety and complexity with which to achieve what are still fairly basic TD goals. This game isn't completely unique in its theme, but nowhere else is it treated with so much passion - a must for TD strategy fans. 

Rebel Inc.

Developer: Ndemic Creations Platforms: iOS Universal, Android Price: $1.99

Plague Inc. this is not, but Rebel Inc. still shares in its predecessor's excellent design pedigree. As the newly appointed administrator of a region that's just suffered a major war, your job is to try and help the population rebuild was also keeping local insurgents in check. It's full of tough choices and challenging tactical game-play as you struggle to pin down enemy insurgents and prevent them from doing too much harm.

Dealing with the concept of reconstruction is no easy feat, and the subject matter could be considered slightly controversial given the recent events that have inspired it, but Ndemic have treated the topic with as much care and attention as they can, even consulting with real-world experts on the subject. Rebel Inc. is a challenging and tense game, but just as rewarding, making this one of the year's best real-time strategy/simulations.

Element RTS

Developer: Flightless Platforms: iOS Universal Price: $4.99

One of the top RTS releases of 2018 to date, Element is a PC port that fits right at home on mobile. It's unique and streamlined design makes it a very accessible strategy game - you've got to balance the production of resources with the construction of units to either defend your base or attack your foes. The matches are short, and the AI is a pretty decent challenge, so you won't want to for entertainment.

It's just shy of being a 'must-buy' - the inclusion of a multiplayer mode would probably cement it as one of the best RTS games in mobile history, but we'd settle for an Android version. According to the devs, the game's been able to run on android devices for a while now, and they're just putting on the finishing touches before they announce a formal release date.

Kingdom Rush: Vengeance

Developer: Ironside S.A. Platforms:  iOS Universal, Android Price: $4.99

The latest entry in the acclaimed Kingdom Rush tower defence series has caused no small amount of controversy, which is likely to continue with it's inclusion in this list. It all depends how much you're bothered by the game's slightly-too-persistent micro-transactions. The only blemish on what is otherwise a stellar real-time strategy experience, these IAPs are completely optional and unnecessary, they're just a tad pushy.

If you're like Dick, who was a bit more forgiving in his review, then you'll find another excellent tower defence game, and one with plenty of humour and content to last you a decent amount of time - each level can take up to thirty minutes to complete. The way Vengeance handles towers as well is also fairly unique, requiring a bit more thought and planning. All in alll, unless you really want to take a stand against micro-transactions, there's a great game here waiting for you to discover and enjoy. Read our review for more.

Auralux: Constellations

Developer: War Drum Studios Platforms:  iOS, Android Price: Free (IAPs)

Auralux is generally brilliant and wickedly simple. Glowing orbs skip across the void of space to do battle over planets, which in turn spawn more orbs for the controlling player. Gestures are dead simple, tapping to select and dragging to assign. There is only one type of ‘unit’ and one objective: take over the entire map. From these givens, Auralux has some intense, hair-pulling and nail-biting levels where the odds are almost ludicrously stacked against the little player that could.

The ‘constellations’ in the title are simply clustered series of levels, each with a gimmick mechanic which must be understood and utilized to power through said levels. The game shows its age a bit, but it also demonstrates how a simple idea with excellent execution can stand the test of time. Another bonus is the variable speed setting, which makes the action go from hyper to sedate, depending on playstyle. Local multiplayer is a nice plus, but the game’s primary draw is solo play.

Dominations

Developer: Nexon M Platforms:  iOS, Android Price: Free (IAPs)

Dominations deserves to be loved and known for the quality of play it provides and its relatively tasteful monetization, but unfortunately the quickest way to worm its way into your heart and home screen are comparisons, so let’s get those over with. It’s Civilization meets Clash of Clans, with empires spanning the Iron Age to Space Age, wonders to build, raids to conduct, and all the usual trappings.

So, yes, there is a certain likeness to established powerhouses, but the devil is in the details, and Dominations gets those spot-on. Playing it to a satisfying endgame without shelling out serious dinero will take patience, but Dominations’ emulation of all of recorded human history and conflict is pretty satisfying to stretch out and play in pieces. Of course, human history never before ran on a timer...

Iron Marines

Developer: Ironhide Studios Platforms:  iOS, Android Price: $4.99

The Iron Marines are a space-trotting, world-saving team of elite squads tasked with putting out fires and defeating hostiles wherever needed. The elevator pitch for the game would be Starcraft...but not? There is a home-base which usually has to be fortified and defended, additional refineries to secure more resources, and just a handful of units. 

From these simple, intuitive elements, the game ekes out a good sense of micromanagement and delectable real-time tension. Its enemies have unusual abilities and synergies, and its difficulty is no joke, especially on the higher levels. Yet the game also retains Ironclad Studios sense of long-term planning and strategy present in its tower defense titles. Read our Iron Marines review for more!

Subterfuge

Developer: SnappyTouch Platforms:  iOS, Android Price: Free (IAPs)

Subterfuge is exactly as advertised: a subtle, long-term game of expedient alliances and stone-cold betrayals, filled with the irrefutable logic of hard numbers and the soft uncertainty of fog of war. A turn just means giving subs and bases a command which will take hours to fulfil, so while it is real-time like warfare is real-time, in Subterfuge the theatre of war sees its stage advance slowly.

Its scale is just grand enough to be deeply satisfying but be warned that it does take some time investment to get a game fired up. The leaders provide asymmetrical player powers, but even these super-units can be captured and bartered. Barring these modifies and special cases,  the bases and subs are more or less identical. The game is simply a question of position, resources and force, but these factors are always shifting because of the partial information and precarious alliances.

Rymdkapsel

Developer: Grapefrukt Games Platforms:  iOS, Android Price: $3.99

Rymdkapsel is about space-base-building and defense, mostly, but also includes some spatial puzzling a la Tetris and ‘exploration’. Its minimalism is more than just stylistic, going instead to the core of every action, options and goal. Perhaps the most satisfying bit is the constant packing problem for expanding the base.

New buildings can be any type and go any spot the player chooses, but also must have predefined dimensions. (all four unit polyominoes) A tightly knit base might come across as more defensible but reaching and researching the far-flung monoliths gives permanent global passive bonuses. The game is a logistics and timing puzzle with a really keen sense of efficiency and management for all its stripped-down design.

Tropical Stormfront

Developer: Noble Master Games Platforms: iOS, Android Price: $3.99

Island-hopping Tropical Stormfront pits the United Democratic Alliance against Order, Discipline and Obedience in a faux-historical struggle across the archipelago. The graphics are deliberately dated and the unit mixture, contrary to every other item on the list, is realistic and accurate. Missions scenarios range from the typical conquest to capture the flag and survival mode.

It’s like a real-time Advance Wars with pretty much no hand-holding, just sink-or-swim gameplay. The touch controls mean a bigger screen is practically a must, for while missing a swipe or tap in another genre would be merely inconvenient, in a game like this it is quite the setback. Still, Tropical Stormfront is a smartly realized real-time-strategy game with staying power.

More Excellent RTS Games on iOS and Android

We want to keep this list lean, so as new comes come into the lime-lite other games will get rotated out. We don't want to forget about them though, so we've added this hall of fame section so we can remember them forever.

Anomaly 2

Mushroom Wars 2

Plague Inc.

Teen Titans GO! Figure

Autumn Dynasty

Eufloria

Cosmic Frontline AR

Front Armies

Dereliction

A Few Minutes of Glory

What would your list of the best RTS games on mobile look like? Let us know!

The Best RTS Games on Android & iOS published first on https://touchgen.tumblr.com/

[doctorwhonews]

Empress of Mars

Latest Review: Written by Mark Gatiss Directed by Wayne Yip Starring Peter Capaldi, Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas with Michelle Gomez, Anthony Calf, Ferdinand Kingsley, Richard Ashton, Adele Lynch, Glenn Speers, Ian Beattie, Bayo Gbadamosi, Ian Hughes, Lesley Ewen, and the voice of Ysanne Churchman Produced by Nikki Wilson Executive Producers: Steven Moffat, Brian Minchin A BBC Studios Cymru Wales production for BBC ONE First broadcast 7.15pm, 10 June 2017​This review contains spoilers. This review contains spoilers.   Earlier in the week, a friend circulated one of the pictures released by the BBC to promote Empress of Mars. It depicted an Ice Warrior serving tea to the Doctor, Bill and the British officers around a cloth-covered table, with hints of reddish cave walls. He declared that we had reached ‘peak Gatiss’. Empress of Mars repeats many of the techniques used in The Crimson Horror, Mark Gatiss’s previous excursion into Victoriana for Doctor Who, but perhaps with more restraint and to more broadly entertaining effect. There’s a great amount of detail in Empress of Mars which enhances its worldbuilding. Careful attention is paid to the Martian atmosphere. The introduction of Friday the Ice Warrior is a canny reinforcement of the idea that a menacing Ice Warrior bearing down on you is not necessarily hostile, a concentrated homage to The Curse of Peladon. From the Doctor’s poetic description of the Ice Warriors, blending or suggesting details established in Brian Hayles stories with Doctor Who Monster Book lore, the accretions of fandom and the innovations Gatiss introduced in Cold War, we move to learn about Ice Warrior hives and tombs that are not really tombs. The imagery owes something to The Tomb of the Cybermen via Dragonfire, but more widely to every film or television production featuring people or creatures preserved in ice. This is a fortress of solitude for superbeings more than it is a memorial to the dead. Influences are mixed and matched. The rhetoric surrounding the discovery of Iraxxa draws from late-nineteenth century imperialist fiction; I can spot H. Rider Haggard’s She but Gatiss doubtless knows his way around many more. However, the presentation of her tomb owes more to the European Middle Ages than Haggard’s sub-ancient Egyptian fantasies. Bill’s fourth-wall breaking recognition that the Ice Warriors are modelled on Vikings is in some way honoured, though Iraxxa on her bier looks more like a mediaeval knight, gilded like the armour of the Black Prince. Her awakening helps justify the awkward idea that reptilian Ice Warriors have hives like bees, the gold leaf fragmenting and disappearing like the pupal skins of some social insects. Dialogue throughout presents the Ice Warriors as guardians of military honour, but their military honour proves a concept over which there can be debate without integrity being compromised, in contrast with the non-negotiable values of devotion to Queen and Country and of bravery and cowardice proclaimed by the British soldiers. As this last point indicates, worldbuilding isn’t just a matter of sketching in Ice Warrior culture. One of this story’s observations is that the imperial culture of the Victorians is alien to their modern British descendants. By locating the soldiers as veterans of the Anglo-Zulu War – the battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1879, is mentioned as the site of Colonel Godsacre’s desertion – the soldiers are associated both with both imperial conquest and with one of the British Empire’s most substantial defeats in southern Africa, where a European army equipped with technologically-superior weaponry was no match for a force armed with assegais which they held in contempt. There’s more than an echo of this in Captain Catchlove’s dismissal of the Ice Warriors as ‘upright crocodiles’; and the demonstration of the ‘thin red line’ formation in the episode only shows, as it did at Isandlwana, how soldiers could easily be picked off. Just as there are parallels between Iraxxa and Ayesha of She, then Catchlove has something of H. Rider Haggard’s imperialism about him. He’s far more the ideologue of empire than Godsacre is, and that he is also a practitioner of blackmail and unapologetically avaricious is not just a good character sketch for a forty-five minute drama, but a sharply unsubtle commentary on the reality of the supposedly civilizing mission inspiring British rule as presented by Haggard and others in the late nineteenth century. The most sympathetic of the soldiers is Vincey, the one who has a girl back home, and with deliberate irony this black character he’s given a name which is, in She, the family name of the British descendants of the forgotten white rulers of Kôr in central Africa. Gatiss enjoys the irony of depicting the reality that Victorian Britain was not monolithically white ‘Anglo-Saxon’ with a character name borrowed from a figure intended to represent white superiority. Likewise, his inclusion of Catchpole’s evident attraction at their first encounter towards Bill, whom Haggardian imperialism would regard as inferior to a white person. Bill’s stunned, appalled face at the casual way in which the British officers have named their Ice Warrior ally Friday, and by extension why they think he should to wait on them, helps pay off her earlier string of cultural references. It’s juxtaposed with the way the script is already establishing Friday as a courteous warrior, a mind rather than a shell. Arguably it also points towards Godsacre’s journey from servant of colonialism, whose demeanour is that of a dead man walking (as his grave name suggests) to a more self-aware person serving the colonized, much as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, rescuer-captor of the original Friday, passes through several states of consciousness of his own actions during Robinson Crusoe the novel.   The regulars have quirks here which might not be found welcoming. Neither Bill’s tendency to spout film anecdotes nor the Doctor’s apparent ignorance of so much pop culture (which surely his tenth self knew about) rang as true as the production hoped or expected. Nevertheless, Peter Capaldi’s fiercely deliberate portrayal of the Doctor’s observation of Martian ritual helps bring home how crucial for all those on Mars negotiation is, and though I found Bill’s characterization early in the episode to be at odds with how she has been portrayed earlier in the series, Pearl Mackie restores her to alert and intelligent Everywoman by the second half of the story. Empress of Mars feels much more cohesively whole somehow than several other episodes have this series. It also feels more welcoming. Perhaps the assembling of recognizable old-fashioned ‘types’ among the characters helps; but so do the warmth of the red Martian soil, the fire, the gold and the green-hued Ice Warriors themselves. In recent years Doctor Who has often seemed grainy and blue, and so much of The Lie of the Land seemed to take place in a dystopian grey haze which reminded me of the post-nuclear Yorkshire of the BBC’s 1984 film Threads. Faced with a warm colourscheme it’s up to Murray Gold’s music to suggest cold and the thin atmosphere ‘topside’, and his thin, reedy notes manage just that. She featured a mysterious African queen who beguiled white men to do her will. Iraxxa, here, does not perform that part of Ayesha's role. Instead, it’s another queen behind a veil who is acting as seductress. It’s never explained why the TARDIS returned itself to the Doctor’s study at St Luke’s with only Nardole on board, but we are invited to guess who is its secret remote operator. The final scene of Missy as contrite woman-child facing the Doctor, backlit, as Murray Gold’s score slithers across the speakers, sets up how compromised the Doctor might just be by Missy, and also how the end of this Doctor’s era, now so close, might be brought about by his belief in an old friend's better nature. On a lighter note, perhaps… Who else of a certain vintage grinned or even punched the air when that high-pitched voice turned out to belong to a certain hermaphrodite hexapod? Who else exclaimed ‘It was Ysanne Churchman’? As the Ice Warriors are welcomed to the universe and give up isolation, those who regretted that this episode wouldn’t be set on Peladon learned that one doesn’t have to go there to use the Ice Warriors to make comments about Britain and its relationship with its neighbours in Europe. By invoking one of Doctor Who's own imperial phases, that of velvet jackets, Venusian aikido and broad political allegory, to warn about British imperial nostalgia (the brief visit to NASA is a concession to contemporary expectations, but feels like a stand-in for a Pertwee-era British Space Control), Empress of Mars recalls strong storytelling values whose appeal rightly stretches beyond the fan audience these references court, and help Doctor Who feel more anchored on Saturday nights than it has sometimes felt this year. http://reviews.doctorwhonews.net/2017/06/empress_of_mars.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=tumblr