Am I the only one bothered by the seeming lack of technological progression in Archanea?

[SoulWeaver]

1 minute ago, omegaxis1 said:

As for not finding alternative fuel source, they may have tried, but maybe they just never could find it.

Honestly, there's no reason Thunder Magic couldn't have been adapted to run Ballista engines. All they had to do was figure out a battery, and as mentioned before they had two millennia to do it. I suppose it's possible nobody ever ran enough experiments on electricity to figure that out, but I doubt Wind or Fire Magic made for better torture devices than Thunder Magic so someone had to have come up with something.

[Emperor Hardin]

1 minute ago, omegaxis1 said:

Magic can be used by anyone. Everyone has the potential to use it. But you have to train and study a great deal to be able to utilize magic. 

It was said in Shadow Dragon, using things like fire tomes is something everyone can do with little training.

[omegaxis1]

2 minutes ago, SoulWeaver said:

Honestly, there's no reason Thunder Magic couldn't have been adapted to run Ballista engines. All they had to do was figure out a battery, and as mentioned before they had two millennia to do it. I suppose it's possible nobody ever ran enough experiments on electricity to figure that out, but I doubt Wind or Fire Magic made for better torture devices than Thunder Magic so someone had to have come up with something.

 

3 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

The engines run on the extinct plant, not the cannons.

Well, say that they did capitalize on these things. Surely it would have resulted in a serious war that may have occurred. It's all a matter on when this was discovered. 

If during the First Exalt's time, Grima destroyed the knowledge. 

If before that, that's questionable. Perhaps the knowledge or production met with some resistance due to how they can create a greater war that could result in mass casualties. You create a weapon like that, it's literally a matter on how long before someone tries to make use of it.

2 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

It was said in Shadow Dragon, using things like fire tomes is something everyone can do with little training.

Basics pretty much. 

[DisobeyedCargo]

4 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

It was said in Shadow Dragon, using things like fire tomes is something everyone can do with little training.

Huh, that I didn't know.

Luthier saying that thing about being born with a certain gift threw me off.

[Emperor Hardin]

5 minutes ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

Huh, that I didn't know.

Luthier saying that thing about being born with a certain gift threw me off.

In the two Archanea games its established, real wizards are those who make tomes, usually by sealing some of power of the spirits in the world. Tomes are very industrialized, hence all the hordes of mage enemies.

The Kaga games also liked to implement lore with gameplay, so I'm sure that section was also referring to how stuff like the Fire Tome can be used with no weapon level/rank.

Kaga also made a distinction between the magic users in Gaiden and the Tome users in an interview, I believe?

Edited March 13, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[Nym]

25 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

How so? Characters like Sully act like all the female knights from Archanea never existed.

Well for what I saw in Marth's time, most female were attached to the most basic class like pegasus, cleric and mage (and dancers), Only Minerva I believe had a physical male oriented class.

But 2000 years later, there's the sudden apparation of female knights, cavaliers and archers (not on the enemy side).

There's also the fact that people that live under the reign of a king in Marth time, they weren't any female leader or Queen by themselves. Then 2000 years later, we got Emmeryn, Lissa and even Lucina as Exalts later on. Not to mention Flavia being a Khan. If they weren't any changes, Chrom would have been the Exalt first after his father's dead since he is a man.

There's also the fact that people are free to critize their own ruler, a thing that doesn't seem exist or is a taboo in Marth's timeline. 

Also Outrealms, but that's a different story.

As for economy, it is mostly how they handle food and goods... I think. At least the Annas have an important role in that regard.

[SoulWeaver]

Just now, DisobeyedCargo said:

Luthier saying that thing about being born with a certain gift threw me off.

The 'gift' is probably a specific proficiency for powerful magic, considering Delthea is much younger than most Mages in SoV, and we only have one or two such young mages of such skill across the early FE games(Linde/Merric using Aura/Excalibur respectively at low Weapon Rank for example), so it's possible that may be related.

4 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

Well, say that they did capitalize on these things. Surely it would have resulted in a serious war that may have occurred. It's all a matter on when this was discovered. 

If during the First Exalt's time, Grima destroyed the knowledge. 

If before that, that's questionable. Perhaps the knowledge or production met with some resistance due to how they can create a greater war that could result in mass casualties. You create a weapon like that, it's literally a matter on how long before someone tries to make use of it.

Hm…in the thoughts of the moment I forgot Grima. That happened roughly at the halfway point of the two millennia, right? Huh…I suppose it could trigger enough of a reset to force a loss of such tech. In that instance, though, we'd pretty much have to be about due for another such breakthrough shortly after Awakening finishes. That would be interesting to see...

[Emperor Hardin]

7 minutes ago, Nym said:

Well for what I saw in Marth's time, most female were attached to the most basic class like pegasus, cleric and mage (and dancers), Only Minerva I believe had a physical male oriented class.

But 2000 years later, there's the sudden apparation of female knights, cavaliers and archers (not on the enemy side).

There's also the fact that people that live under the reign of a king in Marth time, they weren't any female leader or Queen by themselves. Then 2000 years later, we got Emmeryn, Lissa and even Lucina as Exalts later on. Not to mention Flavia being a Khan. If they weren't any changes, Chrom would have been the Exalt first after his father's dead since he is a man.

There's also the fact that people are free to critize their own ruler, a thing that doesn't seem exist or is a taboo in Marth's timeline. 

Also Outrealms, but that's a different story.

As for economy, it is mostly how they handle food and goods... I think. At least the Annas have an important role in that regard.

Not at all. There were female Paladins, Mercs, Generals ETC. Every Wyvern rider you get is a female unit.

People also make more of a big deal about Sully being a Knight then they ever did about Media(Famous Paladin general of Archanea) and Cecil(Altea Knight).

And female enemy units have become even rarer. All the bosses in Awakening are men. 

Minerva and Sheena were a queens, you know. Thats not even getting into the women of Jugdral where even the enemy forces had a strong female presence.

People criticized their rulers ALL the time in Archanea and Jugdral.

Then there's the whole taguel nonesense, where an entire race came into existence, then got genocided, which no one bothered to record.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[omegaxis1]

3 minutes ago, SoulWeaver said:

Hm…in the thoughts of the moment I forgot Grima. That happened roughly at the halfway point of the two millennia, right? Huh…I suppose it could trigger enough of a reset to force a loss of such tech. In that instance, though, we'd pretty much have to be about due for another such breakthrough shortly after Awakening finishes. That would be interesting to see...

Mhm. Many people really don't consider the case that Grima may have easily destroyed knowledge in the period of his first awakening. Even things like cannons and powerful weaponry may have been lost forever from this. 

3 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Not at all. There were female Paladins, Mercs, Generals ETC. Every Wyvern rider you get is a female unit.

People also make more of a big deal about Sully being a Knight then they ever did about Media(Famous Paladin general of Archanea) and Cecil(Altea Knight).

And female enemy units have become even rarer. All the bosses in Awakening are men. 

Minerva and Sheena were a queens, you know. Thats not even getting into the women of Jugdral where even the enemy forces had a strong female presence.

People criticized their rules ALL the time in Archanea and Jugdral.

Minerva and Sheena didn't exactly end up as the best rulers though. Well, they tried and MInerva may have been good, but she was taken by surprise quickly by a rebellion. And Nyna wasn't able to even fully lead Archanea without taking a husband first. Sheena tried to lead, but Gra was suffering a great deal and they were already forced to ally with Archanea and fight against Altea's forces. Fortunately, this was averted. 

In the end, it all resulted in Marth taking over as the sole ruler of the entire continent. 

Sully acting like female knights never existed may in fact also have to do with Grima's attack. 

If history books that contained information about the female knights of the past were gone, there there weren't that much info to use. Cain and Abel were famous, so they left a lasting impression, being the Bull and Panther, while the Whitewings were famous for their Triangle Attack, but there was no mention of Minerva. Even in Warriors, there are no Awakening characters that actually talk with Minerva, Linde, or Navarre. 

Even Anri, who is a legend in Archanea, was only regarded as Marth's ancestor, but his name seems to have no been lost in Kjelle and Lucina's support conversation. 

So it's easy to assume that only the most famous people from the Archaena's history survived in history to be known in Awakening's time. 

[vanguard333]

1 hour ago, DisobeyedCargo said:

I put this in general cause it envelops the whole of the Archanea series. 

I get that there wouldn't be any from Shadow Dragon to New Mystery, but in the 2,000 years from New Mystery to Awakening, from what I've seen the level of technology they currently have is very similar to Marth's time. Am I just missing something? 2000 years is a lot of time.

It's called Medieval Stasis, and the trope is very common in fantasy. It's hard to keep making a story be Medieval fantasy, have the story span generations, and show progress.

 

27 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

Magic can be used by anyone. Everyone has the potential to use it. But you have to train and study a great deal to be able to utilize magic. 

Exactly; in FE, anyone can use magic in much the same way anyone in real life can be a neurosurgeon. It takes study and practice, and natural talent, while not necessary, definitely helps.

[Dandy Druid]

Nope. I feel the same way for different reasons.

The Jugdral games happened 1000 years before Marth, yet they're the same technologically-speaking and society speaking. Very city-state, classicist, etc. The world is more divided.

For Awakening, there was some progress, although remarkably little for 1000 years. There's more unified countries as opposed to city states/smaller countries. "Big" countries are more modern. Take Germany for example, it was comprised of many similar medieval houses, but then was unified as one.

Plus, there seemed to be some newer forms of discipline and education, such as science (Miriel could be a pioneer of it). Fashion-wise, there's more boots than sandals. And there's more pants. I know SD gave characters pants, but let's not forget that Marth's original outfit (and many of the OG game characters) was more reminiscent of the Ancient Greeks rather than Medieval Europe (which is was later changed to). It's possible that the context has gotten muddied. But Marth's era is definitely more early Medieval with Chrom's being late Medieval.

Awakening always struck me as something pre-Renaissance. Like they were on the cusp of greatness, technology and art-wise.

[Nym]

10 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Not at all. There were female Paladins, Mercs, Generals ETC. Every Wyvern rider you get is a female unit.

People also make more of a big deal about Sully being a Knight then they ever did about Media(Famous Paladin general of Archanea) and Cecil(Altea Knight).

And female enemy units have become even rarer. All the bosses in Awakening are men. 

Minerva was a queen, you know. Thats not even getting into the women of Jugdral where even the enemy forces had a strong female presence.

People criticized their rules ALL the time in Archanea and Jugdral.

Ahhh i thought so, well I might be wrong for that part. I didn't play any of the Marfth games.

I think there's a Valkyrie in Valm. But yeah, bandits are all male. And also because the developpers wanted to save time.

Minerva was maybe the exception though. I don't know much about Jugdral.

Yes but not openly in public, mostly at their homes.

[Water Mage]

Actually, this is something that is very easy to answer. Why is Archanea still stuck on medieval times? Because things like magic, pegasi and wyverns exist.

Necessity is the mother of invention after all. We don’t know how magic is used outside of battle in Fire Emblem, but we can make some assumptions. Why invent a fridge, where there could be ice magic to store food? Why create  lantern and electric lights, when you can use fire magic to light up a place? With healing magic, the need for the improvement of medicine might be different. The existence of pegasi very likely have affected the need to invent something to communicate at long distances, and there are likely other examples as well. The existence of magic and flying horses is cool and all, but it might have halted technological improvement in the world.

EDIT: Also @Nym other examples of females in male oriented class are Midia, Malice, Cecil and Athena.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Water Mage

[Emperor Hardin]

12 minutes ago, Nym said:

Ahhh i thought so, well I might be wrong for that part. I didn't play any of the Marfth games.

I think there's a Valkyrie in Valm. But yeah, bandits are all male. And also because the developpers wanted to save time.

Minerva was maybe the exception though. I don't know much about Jugdral.

Yes but not openly in public, mostly at their homes.

Its good to play or at least read up on a game before you making judgements on it.

Thats still less then Rigel's army in Valentia, which had a fair number of women in it. Also, its clear IS has an aversion to female enemy units.

All Grimleal and members of the Plegian Army are also male. The Grimleal are even mentioned many times to specifically target women.

Sheena was also a queen. As for Jugdral, besides the female rulers on the player side, the enemy side had several female soldiers and even enemy commanders.

And people don't criticize Gangrel in public either.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[omegaxis1]

14 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

And people don't criticize Gangrel in public either.

Yeah, uh... why would any Plegian criticize a man that would actually put you to the axe if you spoke against him? Of course only the other nations would criticize him, but no one in Plegia were gonna be dumb enough to do that. 

[Slumber]

30 minutes ago, Nym said:

I don't know much about Jugdral.

Well, let me educate you! In general, major holy blood+seniority dictates who rules in Jugdral. Which has no real gender bias.

Silesia is a country pretty much run by women, a country largely of pegasus knights and mages, so that sort of lines up with the "Base classes". Linoan is the duchess of Tahra, a large independent city in Manster. She's also a sage. Freege is another mage country that's predominantly represented by females, with Reptor and eventually Bloom, two of the only males representing the country the leaders. HOWEVER, Bloom is largely manipulated by his wife. His daughter, Ishtar, inherits major holy blood and has way more agency in the story than her brother Ishtore, who only has minor blood and only pops up occasionally. Isaach is a country of myrmidons and mercenaries, and seems to generally be neutral with a bit more bias towards men as far as gender goes. It's ruled by a man, but should Shannan die die in gen 2, Arya's son succeeds the throne. Should BOTH die, Arya's daughter becomes the ruler of Isaach. There's a lot more that I'm probably missing, like Lachesis and stuff.

Class-wise, Jugdral's a lot less gender-focused. There are still gender-only classes like Peggies still are female only(As they are until Fates) and Bandits/Pirates are still male only, but pretty much everything else's on the table. We got our first canonical female axe user with Lachesis... before Minerva and Sheena were retconned... and our first canonical female Hero in Thracia 776 with Machyua.

I think Jugdral's a bit more political than Archanea, so it's not quite so "might makes right, and men are mightier, so men are rightier".

Edited March 13, 2018 by Slumber

[Nym]

13 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Its good to play or at least read up on a game before you making judgements on it.

Thats still less then Rigel's army in Valentia, which had a fair number of women in it.

All Grimleal and members of the Plegian Army are also male. The Grimleal are even mentioned many times to specifically target women.

Sheena was also a queen.

And people don't criticize Gangrel in public either.

Would love to play the game but the DS remake is as rare as a shooting star.

Witches are in good numbers yea.

Can't deny that one.

Not before she was married to Marth I think.

That's different, that's because of fear of retaliation and nothing else. Look at Mustafa for example, he does express very openly his discontent to his soldiers by saying that he understand the feelings of a soldier that choose to not point his lance. But he can't do anything too flashy because the moment Gangrel realizes, he will murder his family.

Look at Emmeryn, when she got in power, power in Ylisse were mean to her all over the place. She even needed help.

[SMinairo]

57 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Yup, the narration of the ballistician chapter in FE1 and its DS remake even describes the whirring of their motor engines.

Though in FE3 and its DS remake, all Ballistas are stationary, though the cannon/Flamethrower/Lightning Rods still exist. The DS remake has Beck, a playable Ballistician from Shadow Dragon explain the plant they were using for ballistician fuel recently went extinct.

They also seem to have forgotten Duma and their own history.

My country's translation definitely didn't mention the sound of motor engines, and locking at the english one, the closest I see is "Missiles crashed down, rocking the earth as the enemy ballistae rumbled forward", was that it? Because that doesn't necessarily mean a motor.

As for the plant thing, I haven't played FE3 nor FE12 yet, but the only thing I've seen is Beck talking about oil being necessary for the ballistaes to move, so I supposed it was used to grease the wheels or something like that.

The sprites themself... yeah, they definitely look metallic, but the dissonance with the map sprite and the fact that the chapter with lots of ballisticians is called "the wooden cavalry", tells me they really aren't. And FE12 being supposedly how the story really happened kinda retcon those sprites I suppose.

Also, it appears to be that there are ballisticians in awakening. We have to remember that the playable characters aren't the whole army, there are random soldiers who we don't controle, and since Cynthia is almost runned over by a ballista, we can asume that they still exist and there simply weren't any notable ballisticians or Robin's strategies made the heroes avoid the enemy ones.

[Emperor Hardin]

8 minutes ago, Sbuscoz said:

My country's translation definitely didn't mention the sound of motor engines, and locking at the english one, the closest I see is "Missiles crashed down, rocking the earth as the enemy ballistae rumbled forward", was that it? Because that doesn't necessarily mean a motor.

As for the plant thing, I haven't played FE3 nor FE12 yet, but the only thing I've seen is Beck talking about oil being necessary for the ballistaes to move, so I supposed it was used to grease the wheels or something like that.

The sprites themself... yeah, they definitely look metallic, but the dissonance with the map sprite and the fact that the chapter with lots of ballisticians is called "the wooden cavalry", tells me they really aren't. And FE12 being supposedly how the story really happened kinda retcon those sprites I suppose.

The localizers translated it as rumbled forward, but the direct translations specifically mentions the engine roaring. 

Again, the Japanese is more specific, the fruit was specifically used as fuel for the engine.

Also it'd be hard to "travelled the world" with a ballista and the phrasing, "but it eventually stopped movin'... " makes it pretty clear Beck wasn't just pushing around his ballista everywhere to travel the world.

Parts of the carriage are metallic and again, they are motorized carriages, similar to early cars. Being mostly made out of wood doesn't mean no engine.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[omegaxis1]

2 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

Again, the Japanese is more specific, the fruit was specifically used as fuel for the engine.

Wonder what exactly was in that fruit for it to be the ONLY method of fueling those things?

[Emperor Hardin]

5 minutes ago, omegaxis1 said:

Wonder what exactly was in that fruit for it to be the ONLY method of fueling those things?

Nothing else is mentioned about before you asks, the rest of Beck's dialogue is about his horse tricks, before anyone asks, he got the horse to replace his ballista.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[SMinairo]

2 minutes ago, Emperor Hardin said:

The localizers translated it as rumbled forward, but the direct translations specifically mentions the engine roaring. 

Again, the Japanese is more specific, the fruit was specifically used as fuel for the engine.

Whelp, nothing can be done about it then.

Still, the FE12 retcon changed the flamethrowers and cannons for arrows, and even if it didn't, why waste resources in a flamethrower when you already have magic?

And again, as shown in Cynthia's support, they probably figured the fuel thing out if she was almost runned over by a ballista.

[Emperor Hardin]

6 minutes ago, Sbuscoz said:

Whelp, nothing can be done about it then.

Still, the FE12 retcon changed the flamethrowers and cannons for arrows, and even if it didn't, why waste resources in a flamethrower when you already have magic?

And again, as shown in Cynthia's support, they probably figured the fuel thing out if she was almost runned over by a ballista.

Here's a video.

Basically the rumble was from the carriages moving. Also the name "Wooden Cavalry(Horse in JP)" emphasizes the vehicles move on their own.

I believe they weren't retconned, just given simplified battle animations for time. Descriptions and weapon icons still depict them as cannons. Also while the ballista animations do have a flame and explosion effect.

As for Cynthia, it really depends, we aren't given enough information for us to make any judgements on whether the Ballista had an engine anyhow.

Edited March 13, 2018 by Emperor Hardin

[Acacia Sgt]

With all this ballistae talk, it really makes me wonder about Fates's ballistae, which are undoubtly mechanical metal constructs. Didn't the Before Awakening DLC states Fates takes place in the very distant past from Awakening events? It's amusing, considering that, seeing how ballistae were in Fates, then how ballistae were in Shadow Dragon, then to what happened to them in New Mystery...

Artillery really took a dive instead of advance, aye.

[NinjaMonkey]

1 hour ago, Emperor Hardin said:

All the bosses in Awakening are men.

Both Pheros (boss of Fort Steiger) and Aversa are female, so that statement is clearly false.

Edited March 13, 2018 by NinjaMonkey