Topic: new tribe: amazons

Feedback from transifex regarding the name of the Youth Gathering:

• Maybe another name would be more appropriate. Enlistment point or something that doesn't contain youth would be better.

• I used a typical czech word similar to "junior". Sometimes translated "adolescent" as well.

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Feedback was received on transifex:
"The association of young gatherings with military forces doesn't seem good to me. If Widelands has a young audience, this may look as if it were normal (or a good idea) for young people to join the army. And also, that adult people cannot join the army. Apart from this, I would go for a more descriptive name, that states directly the relation of the building with its military purpose."

This was my response: "Ok I see your point. So first a bit of explanation. The amazons are meant to be a somewhat archaic tribe. As the creator said they are stoneage steampunk. So we found it suitable that all young women (as they are purely female which should be reflected in their profession descriptions) would receive basic training. As this is kind of an initiation rite would you go along with "initiation site""

Any othert thoughts / suggestions for a new name

Edit: Update from transifex "Initiation Site" is acceptable for the issue reporter. So I suggest to go with it.

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Alasia wrote:

Hi all,

A huge thank you to the coders and contributors and artists in this thread and on Github - I've found the premise of the tribe fun, and appreciate the work that has gone in so far. I am looking to help by updating the lore and history and information for the Amazons, notes for Translators etc, and I have some questions and feedback.

Thanks for the flowers and many thanks for contributing to our project.

Lore

I noticed through reading this topic that the tribe is intended to be based on the Amazon rainforest tribes, and as such I would welcome thoughts on the following:

1. Comic/film/myth vs rainforest/ river basin Amazons, small language clarification that should help: I realise people in the forum may understand it's Amazon location rather than mythology, but the lore isn't quite developed enough for newcomers to the tribe/game. The tribe lists help for some workers as "she/her" pronouns (eg liana cutters), which may give rise to confusion regarding Widelands Amazon tribe origins. This might be why the Greek mythology/megafilm/comic/Xena versions of the Amazons is being mistaken. Noting above hessenfarmer's comments, I still think we need to remove the gender from worker helptexts (much as I love the idea of a feisty women-dominated tribe). I don't argue to remove gender entirely as lore is a different thing: flavour text of wisdom from elders should be taken in a natural way, including non-gender specific language and non-binary genders which are part of many cultures (and frequently coexist with shamanic spiritual practices). Edit: I'd also like to remove he/him references too from worker descriptions, eg jungle preserver woodcutter https://www.widelands.org/encyclopedia/amazons/workers

Well they are intended not to be the actual or former indigen tribes of the Amazon basin but the mythical female warriors tribe that gave the River and the region its name. This is described by the monk Carvajal who was a member of Francisco de Orellanas first cruise on the river. So they are definitly female, and by this we should keep the gender forms as they are.
Furthermore all graphics are made as females

1. Amazon capitalisation: I would suggest that Amazon needs to be capitalised by default in English (and as per other language/nation norms in translations) as it is a real place, and refers to a real (although generalised) grouping of peoples. While we're extrapolating to early ages and it is a fantasy world, I think it's good to be respectful of the modern denizens and capitalise appropriately in help text, lore, etc. I note that in the code tribe name is lower case for barbarians, empire etc, but none of the other tribes are also used to refer to actual groups of people. Edit to clarify: by which I mean public facing texts should be capitalised, and for translations, but not in the inner workings average players don't see.

If you are refering to the tribe name I thought we already capitalized all tribes name in the visible strings. If not this should be rated a bug or a string issue feel free to correct this for all strings of all tribes and provide a respective PR.

Feedback

1. Warrior Gathering vs Dwelling: Please could we change the order of the buildings for medium build plot, so that initiation site is immediately next to warrior gathering (then ferry yard then ship yard)? As the IS and WG are both soldier production sites, and used less often than military sites, this is more logical. I would also like to suggest changing the name of "warrior gathering" to 'warrior training' (although I think that may be in use?) or "School of Spears" or something else very different from "warrior dwelling".[^1]

+1 for reordering the buildings, undecided on the renaming though "school of spears" sounds appealing. Reason is that a renaming would break savegame compatibility

1. Rare tree plantation mechanics: I also think it is worth a new thread here on the forum for discussion of rare tree plantation mechanics, as raised in #4981 on Github by @MXB2001, but I flag it here too for those interested in the nuances of Amazon gameplay.

As already said on github this needs to be explained at least to the player. best in a yet to come campaign, minimum in the encyclopedia and as you already did in a PR in the loading screen tips.

[^1]: Seriously, the number of times I've built a gathering instead of a dwelling by mistake is ... embarrassing.

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