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Shogun: Total War

Shogun: Total War is a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics video game developed by The Creative Assembly and published by Electronic Arts for Microsoft Windows personal computers. Released in June 2000, the game became the debut title in The Creative Assembly's Total War series. Set in Japan during Sengoku jidai—the "Warring States" period from the 15th to the beginning of the 17th century—the game has players adopt the leader of a contemporary Japanese clan, attempt to conquer the nation and claim the position of shōgun. The turn-based aspect of the game focuses on a map of Japan where military force, religion, diplomacy, espionage and economics all influence the player's actions, whilst battles are fought in a 3D real-time mode. Announced in early 1999, Shogun: Total War was The Creative Assembly's first high business risk product; previous products had involved creating video games for the EA Sports brand. The game was initially conceived as a real-time strategy "B-title" powered by 2D computer graphics following the popularisation of the genre through titles such as Command & Conquer. However, the proliferation of 3D video cards amongst consumers led to a transition to 3D graphics. Through the course of development, Shogun: Total War evolved into a real-time tactics game with a focus on historical authenticity; military historian Stephen Turnbull advised The Creative Assembly in this regard. The turn-based campaign map was added to include context for the real-time battles.

Shogun: Total War was well received critically, though complaints surfaced regarding glitches in the game. An expansion pack, The Mongol Invasion, followed only in Europe in August 2001, adding a playable version of the Mongol invasions of Japan. The game's positive reception and sales paved the way for the development of successive Total War releases set in different times and regions. Total War: Shogun 2 is a sequel which returns to the Sengoku period albeit with all the improvements in graphical technology and gameplay since the first game. It was announced in June 2010 and released in March 2011.

Gameplay
Shogun: Total War is focused on samurai warfare in the Sengoku period of Japanese history, which lasted from the mid-15th century to the beginning of the 17th century. The game puts the player in the position of a Japanese daimyō with the objective of conquering Japan through military might, diplomacy, espionage, trade, and religion—thereby taking the position of shōgun. Shogun incorporates two main areas of play: The turn-based campaign map is where the player moves their armies, conducts diplomacy, builds the infrastructure of their provinces and performs various other tasks necessary to run their faction. The real-time element of the game allows the player to assume command of one of their armies and personally direct the course of any battles that take place.

The game consists of seven factions which the player can choose to play as each one of Japan's historical clans. The island of Kyūshū and the southwestern end of Honshū incorporates the Shimazu, Mōri and Takeda clans, while the Oda and Imagawa clans control the central parts of Honshū. The northern parts of Honshū are home to the Uesugi and Hōjō clans. While each clan has access to the same broad units and technology and begins the game with roughly the same amount of land, each clan has a specific advantage in a particular area. For instance, the Imagawa clan trains more efficient espionage agents, while the Takeda clan can produce higher quality cavalry, etc. Smaller, independent factions are represented as rebel clans and rōnin.

Campaign
The main campaign of Shogun: Total War involves a player choosing a clan and moving to eliminate their enemies and become shogun of feudal Japan. Each faction controls various historical provinces. Each province allows for the cultivation of farmland, and the construction of border watchtowers and a castle. Certain provinces possess natural resources that require a mine to be constructed to tap into. Coastal provinces may also construct ports to increase trade. Each castle has space to expand with a variety of military buildings and dojos, which allow for specific army units and agents to be produced. However, each castle can only support a certain number of auxiliary buildings. Castles can be upgraded to increase their defences and resilience to a siege. The production of units and construction of buildings is limited by the amount of koku the player has; koku is generated depending on the strength of the faction's economy and harvest. Units and buildings take time to produce; each turn represents one season.

During each turn, the player is able to move units about the map. Units come as either armies or agents and can only be moved to a province that borders the one in which they reside. However, both agents and armies can travel longer distances using ports, allowing them to move from one coastal province to another with a port in a single turn. Armies consist of military units such as spearmen, cavalry and archers. Should an army enter a battle, these units will be reproduced for the game's real-time tactics mode. Each army is led by a general that possesses an honour rating that rises and falls with the general's success or failure; if a general repeatedly endures defeat, they may commit seppuku. The faction daimyō and his heirs are also represented as generals—if a daimyō is killed and has no available heirs, the faction is eliminated from the game.

When an army is moved into an enemy or neutral province, it will engage in battle with whatever hostile armies already reside in the province. An army may also lay siege to a province's castle; after a determined amount of time, a castle's supplies will run out and the garrison will be forced to surrender if it does not break the siege or receive relief. A siege may cause damage to the castle's buildings, requiring repairs to be sought.

Several agents are available to each faction. The basic agent is the emissary, which can be used to negotiate alliances and ceasefires, as well as attempt to bribe enemy or neutral armies to join the player's faction. As factions build up their infrastructure, other agents become available, such as ninja and shinobi, the former assassinates enemy generals and agents, while the latter can spy on enemy provinces or perform counter-insurgency in home provinces. Each agent has an honour rating that determines how successful they may be at any particular mission. As the game progresses, the player will come into contact with European traders; first the Portuguese Jesuits, who will exchange arquebuses for money and the adoption of Catholicism by the clan, and later the Dutch, who will sell arquebuses without requiring a conversion. If a faction changes from Buddhism to Catholicism, it is given the ability to produce Jesuit priests, who in addition to acting as emissaries, convert the population, therefore making rebellions due to religion less likely.

Warfare
The battle system forms the second area of gameplay. Unlike the campaign part of the game, players control battles in real-time. However, should the player choose, the game can automatically resolve battles on the campaign map, taking into account factors such as the strength of numbers, the weapons used, and the terrain. Outside of the main campaign mode, players can participate in recreations of the historical battles that comprised the Sengoku period. In each battle, players are given access to an army consisting of a variety of units. Units come in the form of samurai and ashigaru, and fall into the categories of archers, spearmen, cavalry and heavy infantry. Each unit has its own intrinsic advantages, disadvantages, cost and overall level of effectiveness.

Players must use contemporary tactics and formations with the units they have available to defeat their enemies; the teachings of Sun Tzu's The Art of War are integral to the tactics used by the game's artificial intelligence and for the player to succeed. The terrain of the battlefield and the weather impact on how a battle is fought. Each unit has morale, which can increase if the battle goes well for their clan or decrease in cases such as heavy casualties or the death of the general. If a unit's morale is broken, they will rout; in certain circumstances, however, routing units may be rallied by the general. Victory in battle is achieved by causing every enemy unit to rout, or by killing the opposing army. Armies can lay siege to castles, replacing open land battles with close-quarters combat within the confines of the castle walls.

Multiplayer
Originally, Electronic Arts hosted the multiplayer for Shogun: Total War. There were two separate servers; one for Shogun: Total War, and one for Warlord Edition. In the foyer, players had their points next to their names. These points were called honour. A player started with 100 honour. Based on winning or losing, the player gained or lost honour. In order to prevent an expert from playing a lot of beginners and gaining a lot of honour, an expert who had 49 more honour points than the beginner would lose points even if he beat that beginner. The honour system was implemented to make the multiplayer more fun and challenging. If players wanted to play without a change in honour points, then the host could simply set the game to 'friendly' mode. The Shogun servers had many players when EA hosted them. Role-playing was very popular and this period is considered by many fans as the best and most nostalgic. The battles themselves were very fast-paced, unforgiving to mistakes and highly reliant on individual skill both in army selection and, above all, army control. In Shogun, any army could win over another using clever, fast and precise strategies. In later Total War games, army selection was given more importance.

Before Rome: Total War was launched by Activision, EA shut down both the Shogun: Total War and the Warlord Edition servers. The players turned to the other Total War series, while the new players avoided the Shogun series. Some players wanted to return to Shogun: Total War. They hosted their own servers where players could join without registering.

Development
Shogun: Total War was announced in early 1999, developed by The Creative Assembly under Electronic Arts. The Creative Assembly had previously been involved with Electronic Arts, producing games for the EA Sports brand. Development was led by Michael Simpson, a former microchip designer who had joined the company three years prior. According to Simpson, Shogun was conceived when the Creative Assembly established a secondary development team from their EA Sports designers to develop an alternate, low business risk product for the company. At the time, Command & Conquer had risen to success, inspiring the creation of a number of similar real-time strategy games. Simpson's development team therefore initially planned to create a "B-title RTS game".

As development progressed, 3dfx video cards began to proliferate amongst consumers, leading the Creative Assembly to move the game from 2D to 3D computer graphics. Initially sceptical of the results of using 3D graphics, Simpson was surprised when a 3D rendered landscape turned out to be feasible for gameplay. From this point, the game began to turn away from being a simple low-risk product to something more substantial; the camera view was moved from the traditional real-time strategy top-down perspective to the position of the general on the battlefield. As this limited the extent to which the player could see across the battlefield, this fundamentally changed the nature of the gameplay. To accompany this, the game took on a more historical approach for its units and tactics.

However, the game was not considered to be substantive enough simply with the real-time battles; Simpson recalls that "the problem [was] that the battles themselves were very short, and we needed something to tie it together and make people care about the battles". The result was the introduction of the campaign map, intended to provide the player with a broader strategic perspective and context for the battles. A feudal Japanese setting was chosen; in addition to being thought of as "cool", the Sengoku period was selected as it allowed for several different factions who could have potentially won the conflict, and due to the introduction of gunpowder to Japan, also allowed for rapid change for the game's technology tree.

To attempt to make the setting as authentic as possible, The Creative Assembly enlisted the aid of Stephen Turnbull, a military historian who specialises with samurai warfare, although the jidaigeki films by Akira Kurosawa also provided a source of inspiration—excerpts of the famous Mt. Fuji castle scene from his 1985 film Ran even feature in the opening credits to the Warlord edition of the game. Elements of Sun Tzu's The Art of War were integrated into the game's artificial intelligence to provide more authentic decisions by computer-controlled factions in the real-time aspects of the game. The game was showcased at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in both 1999 and 2000, where it garnered interest amongst the video game media. A demonstration was released in January 2000, and the game was published on 13 June 2000.

Expansions and sequels
Shogun: Total War was followed by The Mongol Invasion expansion pack, set in the Mongol invasions of Japan and released only in Europe on 8 August 2001. Additional battles and a campaign were also added in the game. The player could play as either the Mongol invaders or as Japan. The Warlord Edition was also released, containing both the original game and the expansion; likewise, the Gold Edition is the same as the Warlord Edition, with minor differences in the loading screens. Warlord, for example, has an introduction movie with scenes from the Japanese film Ran which inspired the game. The Gold edition was released in a later DVD form, whereas Warlord was released in CD form. The Total War series was continued with titles mainly set around Europe, including Medieval: Total War, Rome: Total War, Medieval II: Total War, Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War.

In June 2010, it was confirmed that the series would return to Sengoku-era Japan, now with all of the graphical and engine improvements since the first; a direct sequel, titled Total War: Shogun 2. The game was released on 15 March 2011 and critically acclaimed, and was followed by several expansion packs set in earlier and later periods of Japanese and Samurai history.

The game was later re-released on Steam with upgraded visuals on 25 June 2015.

Shogun: Total War
Shogun: Total War received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Jason Samuel of NextGen said, "Once you figure out the realtime interface, this is a thoroughly enjoyable experience that has a lot of replay value. Shogun is only the first of a proposed Total War series. We're sure looking forward to more."

In December 2002, the game received a "Silver" award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating lifetime sales of at least 100,000 units in the UK. The ELSPA ultimately raised it to "Gold" status, indicating sales of at least 200,000 units. The game achieved sales between 100,000 and 390,000 units in the U.S. by August 2006, but was outsold by its successor Rome: Total War. The Creative Assembly's Tim Ansell later said that "it didn't set the world alight in terms of sales, but it was still up there with the big guns."

The staff of Computer Gaming World nominated the game as the best wargame of 2000, although it lost to Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord. They called the former "a dream come true for fans of medieval Japanese warfare", and wrote that "there has never been a game that so stunningly depicts historical warfare." Similarly, the game was a finalist for CNET Gamecenter's "Best Real-Time Strategy Game" award, which went to Sacrifice. The staff of Computer Games Magazine nominated the game for their 2000 "Strategy Game of the Year" award, whose winner remains unknown. The game won the award for "Best Strategy Game" at GameSpot's Best and Worst of 2000 Awards, and was nominated for the "Best Sound" award, which went to The Sims. During the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Shogun: Total War for the "Computer Innovation" award, which ultimately went to Deus Ex.

It was nominated for a 2000 BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award, in the category of 'Games – PC'.

Warlord Edition
The Warlord Edition expansion pack received a bit more "favorable" reviews than the original according to Metacritic.

It was a nominee for Computer Gaming World's 2001 "Best Wargame" award, which ultimately went to Squad Battles: Vietnam. It won the award in BAFTA's Music category.

The Mongol Invasion
IGN gave The Mongol Invasion a score of 8.9 out of 10 and called it "a good expansion pack".

title: Shogun: Total War


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Medieval: Total War

Medieval: Total War is a turn-based strategy and real-time tactics computer game developed by Creative Assembly and published by Activision. Set in the Middle Ages, it is the second game in the Total War series, following on from the 2000 title Shogun: Total War. Originally announced in August 2001, the game was released in North America on 21 August 2002 and in Europe on 30 August for Microsoft Windows.

Following a similar form of play to Shogun: Total War, the player builds a dynastic empire in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, spanning the period of 1087 to 1453. Gameplay is both strategic and tactical, with strategy played out in turn-based fashion on a province-by-province level, while military units of varying types and capabilities fight against each other in real time on a 3D battlefield.

Medieval: Total War received acclaim from reviewers; several critics commending it as a milestone in gaming. The real-time battles were praised for their realism and the new feature of siege battles but also received some criticism for unit management. The depth and complexity of the strategy portion was also received well by reviewers, together with well integrated historical accuracy. The game was a commercial success, topping the British video game chart upon release.

Gameplay
Medieval: Total War is based upon the building of an empire across medieval Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. It focuses on the warfare, religion and politics of the time to ultimately lead the player in conquest of the known world. As with the preceding Total War game, Shogun: Total War, the game consists of two broad areas of gameplay: a turn-based campaign map that allows the user to move armies across provinces, control agents, diplomacy, religion, and other tasks needed to run their faction, and a real-time battlefield, where the player directs the land battles and sieges that occur.

The strategic portion of the game divides the campaign map among twenty factions from the period, with a total of twelve being playable. The initial extent of each major faction's territory, and the factions available, depends on the starting period of the game, Early (1087), High (1205) or Late (1321), reflecting the historical state of these factions over time. The factions themselves represent many of the major nations at the time, including the Byzantine Empire, France, England, the Holy Roman Empire and the Turks. Several factions, such as the Golden Horde, emerge during the course of play at their historical time. These factions, together with several other factions appearing at the start of the campaign, are unavailable to the player in the main campaign. Each faction varies in territory, religion and units; however, factions of the same culture share many of their core units.

In addition to the main campaign, Medieval: Total War also features a game mode where the player can undertake various historical campaigns and battles. Historical campaigns allow the player to control a series of famous battles from a war of the medieval period, such as the Hundred Years War and the Crusades, playing as historic commanders like Richard the Lionheart. Individual historic battles have the player controlling a historical figure in an isolated battle that occurred in the era, such as controlling William Wallace through the Battle of Stirling Bridge.

Campaign
The main campaign of Medieval: Total War involves the player choosing one of the fourteen playable factions and eventually leading them in conquest on the strategy map. Each of the factions controls a number of historical provinces, which on the map contain a castle and, if located by the sea, a port as well. In the campaign, the player controls construction, unit recruitment and the movement of armies, fleets and agents in each of these provinces, using these means to acquire and defend the provinces. Diplomacy and economics are two other aspects the player can use to advance their aims, as well as having access to more clandestine means such as espionage and assassination. Religion is very important in the game, with the player able to convert provinces to their own religions to cement the people's loyalty. Another campaign mode is available, called "Glorious Achievements", in which each faction has several historically-based goals to achieve, which score points; the faction with the most achievement points wins the game. The campaign mode is turn-based, with each turn representing one year, allowing the player to attend to all needs of the faction before allowing the artificial intelligence to carry out the other factions' moves and decisions.

The campaign is carried out in a similar fashion to Shogun: Total War, but features many enhancements. The game is set mainly in Europe, but also features the Middle East and North Africa. Production can occur in every province, with the player building from one of the hundreds of connected buildings and units in the game's technology tree. Income to develop provinces and armies comes from taxation of the provinces and trade with neighbouring provinces. There is no specific technology research, but several advances, such as gunpowder, do become available over time. Castles provide the basis for more developed construction in the game, with players having to upgrade to the next castle level to be able to build more advanced buildings; upgrades such as a curtain wall and guard towers can be added to individual castles. Many buildings have economic functions, such as trading posts that generate money, while others are military buildings and allow the training of more advanced unit types. Whilst there are many common unit types, several unique units are available. These units are either restricted to a single faction or are dependent on the control of a particular province. Each unit possesses different strengths and weaknesses.

Each faction has a variety of different generals, some related to the royal family and in line to the throne, and the rest members of the nobility, who command units in the field and can assume offices of the state. Each of these characters has a base ranking for several attributes, such as command ability and piety, which affects how they carry out duties on the battlefield and governing the provinces. These attributes, and other factors such as health, are influenced by "Vices and Virtues", defining the character's personality and actions. These traits can be acquired seemingly randomly, or may be given to the character through actions in the game. Non-military units, collectively referred to as "agents", may be trained. The types of agent a faction is able to produce depends on its religion, but all factions have emissaries, spies and assassins available to them. Emissaries conduct diplomatic tasks such as start alliances between two factions, or bribe foreign armies; spies allow detailed information to be collected from foreign provinces or characters, while assassins can attempt to kill both foreign and domestic units. Factions also have access to various religious agents to spread their religion, and Christian factions can marry their princesses to domestic generals or other factions for political reasons. Occasionally in the game, a character will be trained bearing the name of a famous historical figure, with better than normal starting abilities. A general such as Richard the Lionheart, El Cid or Saladin will be a capable military commander, while a bishop such as Thomas Becket will have higher piety than normal.

Rebellions can occur if the loyalty of a particular province falls too low, with a rebel army appearing in the province to attempt to assume control from the owners. Civil wars may also take place if several generals commanding large armies have sufficiently low loyalty. In the event of a civil war, the player is given the choice to back either the current rulers or the rebels. It had been planned to allow other factions who had established a prior claim to the throne by marriage to princesses to join in a civil war to claim the throne for themselves; however, this was never implemented. Naval warfare is carried out upon the campaign map, where ships can be built and organised into fleets. These fleets can be used to control the game's sea regions and form sea lanes, allowing trade and troop movement between provinces that have constructed a port. Fleets can engage in sea battles with foreign fleets, although unlike land battles these are resolved by the computer. Religion plays an important aspect in Medieval: Total War, with religious differences between the Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim factions affecting diplomacy and population loyalty. Catholic factions must also respond to the wishes of the Papal States; factions gain favour by refraining from hostilities with other Catholic nations and responding to Crusades, else they run the risk of excommunication. The option to launch a holy war in the form of a Crusade or Jihad is open to both Catholic and Muslim factions.

Warfare

The battle system takes place on a 3D battlefield in real-time, instead of the turn-based system of the campaign. Battles are similar to those in Shogun: Total War, where two armies from opposing factions engage in combat until one side is defeated or withdraws. Warfare in Medieval: Total War occurs when the player or the artificial intelligence moves their armies into a province held by a hostile faction. The player is then presented with the option of fighting the battle on the battle map, or allowing the computer to automatically resolve it. Alongside the campaign battles, players have the option of both historical and custom battles, where the player controls what climate, units and terrain will be present on the battlefield.

During battles, players take control of a medieval army containing various units, such as knights and longbowmen, each of which has various advantages, disadvantages and overall effectiveness. Players must use medieval tactics in order to defeat their enemy, using historical formations to give units advantages in different situations. All units in the game gain experience points, known as "valour", which improves unit effectiveness in combat as it increases. Every battle map contains various terrain based upon that of the province on the campaign map, with separate maps for each of the borders between provinces – four hundred unique maps are available for the game. The climate, surroundings and building style for every map varies depending on the part of the world it is located in; for example, a map based in the Middle East will have a hot, sunny climate, sandy terrain and Islamic architecture. Sieges are an important aspect of the game introduced to the Total War series, occurring when the invading army elects to attack the defending army which has retreated inside the province's castle. Upon starting the engagement, the attacker has to fight their way through the castle's defences, winning the battle once the enemy units have been defeated. Each unit in the game has morale, which can increase if a battle is going well for their faction, or decrease in situations such as sustained heavy casualties. Morale can drop low enough to eventually force a unit to rout off the battlefield, with the player having the option to attempt to rally the men back into the battle through their general. Each side's army can capture routing enemy units and ransom them back to the owning faction, with important generals having greater ransom values.

Multiplayer
Medieval: Total War features a multiplayer game mode similar to that in Shogun: Total War, where players can engage in real-time battles with up to seven other players. Players create and control armies from the factions available in the game, where players can use them to compete in online tournaments or casual battles. The campaign mode cannot be played multiplayer; this feature was later added to the Total War series in Empire: Total War – but only at the beta stage, before being later removed.

Development

Medieval: Total War was originally announced by The Creative Assembly on 3 August 2001, with the working title of Crusader: Total War. Development of the game started shortly after the release of Shogun: Total War. Early in development it was decided to change the name to Medieval: Total War; this was to have a name that better reflected the scope of the game. In a press release, The Creative Assembly announced that the game would be published by Activision instead of Electronic Arts, the publisher of the previous games. The Creative Assembly also outlined the features of the game, including the game covering the medieval era from the 11th to 15th century, with players being able to participate in various historical scenarios of the time, such as the Hundred Years' War. Media releases over the subsequent months gave screenshots of the game, with more information on Medieval: Total War's features. The game uses an updated version of the game engine used in Shogun: Total War, allowing larger battles than previously possible with an increased troop limit of ten thousand. The improved game engine also allowed more battle maps than previously possible, now based upon where the conflicting armies are located on the strategy map. Other new battlefield enhancements included terrain detailed with villages and vegetation and improved castle siege mechanics, with players now having to focus on destroying the walls before assaulting and capturing the castle. The game features improved artificial intelligence from Shogun: Total War, with the individual unit AI and the tactical AI—which controls the overall army tactics—separated to more effectively control the opposing forces.

The Creative Assembly's creative director, Michael de Plater, stated in an interview that "We were never 100 percent satisfied with the name Crusader...it didn't cover the full scope or the rich diversity of the game". The focus on the medieval period was chosen because "it was perfectly suited to the direction in which we wanted to take the gameplay....we wanted to have great castles and spectacular sieges." Designer Mike Brunton wrote before the game's release that sieges were one of the most important features to be added to the Total War series, explaining how it led to increasing the troop limit from twenty in Shogun: Total War to over a hundred in Medieval: Total War. For increased authenticity, research was carried out into the medieval period aspects such as assassinations and historical figures. Leaders from the period were included in the game; to represent their personalities and actions the "vices and virtues" system was incorporated into the game, designed to make characters more realistic in their actions.

A demonstration of the game was released on 26 June 2002, featuring tutorial missions and a full single-player mission. The game was released on 21 August in North America and on 30 August in Europe. The Creative Assembly released a patch on 5 November 2002, which was targeted to fix the several bugs that were still present in the game. A new historical battle based on the Battle of Stamford Bridge was later released by The Creative Assembly, made available through Wargamer.

Reception
Medieval: Total War received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In the United Kingdom, the game went straight to the top of the video game chart after its release, staying at the top for two weeks. It ultimately received a "Silver" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 100,000 copies in the United Kingdom. The United States charts saw Medieval: Total War reach fourth in its second week after release, behind Warcraft III, The Sims and its expansion The Sims: Vacation. It sold over 100,000 copies in the region by August 2006, but was beaten by its successor Rome: Total War's 390,000 sales there.

Reviewers praised the many different factors adding to complexity of the campaign, ActionTrip noting that "Medieval adds a new strategic balance to the game, which teaches that great empires come with an even greater responsibility". Eurogamer praised the way the player had to manage production queues, guard the loyalty of important generals and make use of spies and assassins, calling the level of control "far ahead of anything seen in the previous game"; many other reviews shared a similar view. The number of factions in the game, each with their own historically accurate units and territories, was commended, with IGN and Game Informer stating it "gives the game huge replay value", with GameSpot adding "the strategic portion now has a lot more options". Many reviewers gave praise to the fact the historical setting of the Middle Ages was said to be well integrated into the game; PC Zone acknowledging the "brutality and instability" of the era is well included in the game, with GameSpot praising the religion in the game, "religion played an enormous role in shaping history, and so it is in the game". GameSpy stated that the different historical starting positions made the games attention to detail "impressive and noteworthy"; the historical battle system was also highly received from Computer Gaming World, stating that they successfully "provide an authentic glimpse of the past". However, GameSpot commented on a problem with a lack of information, "you'll have a tough time keeping track of all the goings-on in your provinces", suggesting this could be solved through a more informative interface. Overall, reviewers highly complimented the strategic gameplay, many saying it was similar to a Civilization-style game.

The battle system in Medieval: Total War was considered by many reviewers to be the highlight of the game. In their review, Eurogamer felt "The sensation of scale and drama in these conflicts is incredible", praising the visual effects and combat. The different battlefields and their environments were praised by IGN, with ActionTrip agreeing that "Medieval: Total War looks better than Shogun", adding that the terrain and units are more detailed than those in Shogun: Total War. GameSpot praised the realistic battles, mentioning that the real-world battlefield considerations like fatigue, ammunition, facing, and morale included in the game was a "welcome change". GameSpy also stated the "chaotic" battles were appropriate to the era, but criticised the siege aspect, claiming it to be "too plain and underwhelming", with a lack of detail compared to the other 3D elements. The soundtrack to the game was well received by IGN, "The soundtrack is full of rousing context-sensitive orchestra moments which get you in the mood for bloody slaughter" commenting it is fitting for a game that "delivers body counts like no other" ActionTrip also admired how the game's music changed pace as the battle commenced, praising The Creative Assembly for its "masterfully placed audio and visual effects". The artificial intelligence for Medieval: Total War was thought to be much improved over its predecessor, CGW mentioning the AI was intelligent enough to prevent brute force alone from winning fights. Criticism was received on the larger battles giving low frame rates and performance, while ActionTrip also noted several unit management issues with path-finding and unit facing, stating "it's demoralising to see archers facing the wrong way".

Medieval: Total War received very favourable reviews, despite a few criticisms, gaining high distinction from the industry. GameSpot summarised by saying that while the game "isn't well suited for the casual gamer", most strategy gamers will "find a lot to like in it, for a very long time." Although GameSpy described Medieval: Total War as "hit[ting] a few bumps in the road", they mentioned the game has enough to keep players interested for many months. Eurogamer was enthusiastic in pronouncing Medieval: Total War "a milestone in gaming". IGN closed by stating that the game "delivers an encompassing experience", while CGW finished by proclaiming "there simply isn't enough room in this magazine to extol its virtues."

Awards
Medieval: Total War was the recipient of a number of industry awards. PC Gamer UK named it the top game of 2002, replacing the previous entry, Valve's Half-Life. In awarding the distinction, PC Gamer stated: "It was the only contender." The game received an EMMA award in Technical Excellence for its audio by Jeff van Dyck, commended for having a "game soundtrack and score that is lush, well-mixed, and adds dynamically to the gameplay. The extensive diverse musical tracks sound authentic and fully engage the user." The game received a number of distinctions from game publications, such as the "Best Strategy Game of 2002" award from GameSpy, mentioning "It's not that Medieval is just two great games in one. It's two games that feed off of one another for the ultimate rush." The Creative Assembly itself was also awarded the European Computer Trade Show PC Game Developer of the Year award, for the production of Medieval: Total War.

GameSpot selected Medieval as the best computer game of August 2002, and later presented the game with its annual "Best Single-Player Strategy Game on PC" award. The editors of Computer Games Magazine named it the eighth-best computer game of 2002, and called it "rich in atmosphere and compelling for long hours." It was nominated for PC Gamer USs "2002 Best Turn-Based Strategy Game" and Computer Gaming Worlds "Strategy Game of the Year" awards, which ultimately went to Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin and Freedom Force, respectively. The latter magazine's editors highlighted Medieval's "grandeur and flourish in simulating European history". During the AIAS' 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Medieval: Total War received a nomination for "Computer Strategy Game of the Year"; it was ultimately awarded to Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.

Expansions and versions
The Creative Assembly announced the development of an expansion pack, Medieval: Total War – Viking Invasion, on 7 January 2003. The Viking Invasion expansion pack adds a Viking campaign taking place from 793 to 1066, set upon an expanded map of the British Isles and western Scandinavia. The campaign replaces the original factions with earlier Anglo-Saxon and Celtic kingdoms such as Wessex, Mercia, Wales and Scotland, as well as the Vikings. The Viking faction is designed to raid the British Isles; to achieve this the faction has access to faster ships and gains money for every building destroyed upon the battle map. The Anglo-Saxon and Celtic factions have the goal of repelling the Vikings and ultimately controlling the British Isles. New historical units were included with the expansion pack, such as the huskarls. Medieval: Total War: Viking Invasion brought several enhancements that were also added to the original campaign: flaming ammunition giving the player an option to set alight enemy castles, and a pre-battle deployment screen, allowing the player to organise their forces and view the terrain and opposing forces before the battle begins. In addition, three new factions were added to the main Medieval: Total War campaign, along with ribauldequin artillery and the game's patch. The expansion pack was released on 6 May 2003 in the United States and on 9 May in the United Kingdom.

Activision, the game's publisher, produced a combination of Medieval: Total War and Medieval: Total War: Viking Invasion, called the Medieval: Total War Battle Collection, released on 7 January 2004. Medieval: Total War Battle Collection contained both games, patched to the latest version, and their manuals. On 30 June 2006, Sega, the company that took over the publishing of the series, released a collector's edition version of the Total War series, called Total War: Eras. The edition included patched versions of Shogun: Total War, Medieval: Total War and Rome: Total War, together with their expansion packs, a documentary detailing the creation of the game series, and Total War memorabilia.

Reception
Viking Invasion received "favorable" reviews, albeit slightly less than the original Medieval: Total War, according to Metacritic. Reviewers felt the new gameplay features for the Vikings were the most important enhancement of the expansion pack, with Eurogamer commending the Vikings' raiding system as something that fixes what "the original Medieval lacked". ActionTrip praised the new campaign as being a challenge for players: "even on the normal difficulty setting, Viking Invasion is a very challenging game", a view shared by other critics. The pre-battle screen was commended by GameSpot, calling it a "handy new feature." GameSpot also praised the new additions to the original campaign, mentioning they have "made castle sieges more interesting". The main criticism for Medieval: Total War – Viking Invasion was the graphics, with both ActionTrip and Eurogamer stating that they were "starting to feel a little bit creaky". A lack of new multiplayer options was considered by GameSpot to be "unfortunate", mentioning that "a multiplayer campaign option would have been a great new feature". Overall, the expansion was received well by critics in the industry. IGN concluded by saying fans "won't be disappointed with the Viking Invasion", while Actiontrip finished stating; "the graphics are beginning to look old" but the challenge made the expansion "worth it". The review by GameSpot finished by saying "overall, the expansion is a great addition to Medieval", and Eurogamer concluded with praising the addition it made to Medieval: Total War: "It's a worthy expansion pack to a truly excellent game".

The editors of Computer Gaming World nominated Viking Invasion for their 2003 "Expansion Pack of the Year" award, but it lost to Battlefield 1942: Secret Weapons of WWII. It was also a runner-up for Computer Games Magazine's "Expansion of the Year" award, which ultimately went to EverQuest: Lost Dungeons of Norrath.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Medieval: Total War


text:
Rome: Total War

Rome: Total War is a strategy video game developed by The Creative Assembly and originally published by Activision; its publishing rights have since passed to Sega. The game was released for Microsoft Windows in 2004. The macOS version was released on February 5, 2010, by Feral Interactive, who also released the iPad version on November 10, 2016, the iPhone version on August 23, 2018, and the Android version on December 19, 2018. The game is the third title in The Creative Assembly's Total War series, following Shogun: Total War, and Medieval: Total War.

The game's main campaign takes place from 270 BC to 14 AD, showcasing the rise and final centuries of the Republican period and the early decades of the imperial period of Ancient Rome. Gameplay is split between real-time tactical battles and a turn-based strategic campaign. Within the campaign, players manage the economy, government, diplomacy, and military of their faction and attempt to accomplish a series of objectives on a map that encompasses most of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East. On the battlefield, the player controls groups of soldiers and uses them to engage in combat with enemy forces.

Upon its release, Rome: Total War received widespread acclaim from critics. In the years since the game has frequently been referred to by critics as one of the greatest video games of all time. Two official expansion packs, Barbarian Invasion and Alexander, were released for the game. A sequel, Total War: Rome II, was released on September 3, 2013. A remastered version of the game, developed by Feral Interactive, was released on 29 April 2021.

Gameplay
As with previous games in the Total War series, Rome: Total War has two primary modes of play: a turn-based, single-player campaign that takes place on an overhead map of the world and a real-time battle system that occurs on 3D battlefields.

Control over territory in the game is represented by capturing and holding a settlement in that territory. New cities are conquered by either training soldiers in cities that are already in the player's control and then using those soldiers to besiege enemy cities or by bribing the city into switching sides. Apart from simply expanding one's faction, cities can have positive or negative effects on a nation. For example, well-managed cities can provide the faction that control them with valuable tax income, but poorly-managed cities may cost the player more money in maintenance than they make in taxes. Cities have a variety of buildings that may be built or upgraded, such as temples, barracks, and amphitheatres. Buildings have different effects on the city; for example, aqueducts improve public health and decrease urban squalor, which in turn makes the inhabitants of the city happier. If cities grow too unhappy, they may revolt and either return to a faction that previously controlled them or become a part of a generic "rebel" faction.

Each faction starts with a set of family members. The head of the family is the leader of the faction; any male above the age of 16 can be designated as the current leader's heir. Males above the age of 16 can govern settlements and command armies as generals. Male family members can be added through births between married family members, adoption, or marriage with a female family member. Family members eventually die; natural causes, battles, assassinations, diseases, and natural disasters can all cause a character's demise. Family members can develop character traits from life experiences or heredity. These traits can have both positive and negative effects on the character's stats, which in turn affect their battlefield performance, how well they manage their settlements, and how persuasive they are in negotiations. The stats of family members can also be affected by members of their personal retinue.

Agents are special types of characters that can be recruited in cities with the proper buildings. Agents can also acquire traits and retinue members. There are three types of agents: spies, diplomats, and assassins. Spies can be used to gather intelligence about the composition of armies, infiltrate foreign cities, and serve in a counter-espionage role in the players own cities. When besieging an enemy city, spies stationed within that city have a chance to open the gates. Assassins can assassinate characters and commit sabotage in settlements. Spies and assassins can both be killed during their missions. Diplomats can offer a variety of diplomatic deals to other factions, such as alliances, tributes, and trade rights. They may also attempt to bribe foreign armies, cities, agents, and family members into either defecting or, if the soldiers being bribed are not "compatible" with the other faction, deserting.

Battles
In addition to the turn-based campaign, Rome: Total War also features 3D, real-time battles. Battles can be played as a part of the larger campaign, as a custom battle against the AI, as a preset "historical battle" based on a real-life military engagement, or as a multiplayer battle against other players. As opposed to the campaign, which features an overhead map of the world, battles take place on individual battlefields. The terrain of the battlefield can play a key role in how the battle plays out. In most cases, the ultimate goal of the battle is to defeat the enemy forces by either killing or routing all of their troops; in a siege, the attacker can also achieve victory by capturing and holding the town center for a period of time. In battles, the player commands a variety of soldiers that are arranged into units. The game features a variety of units for battle, which may be broadly categorised into infantry, cavalry, archers, and siege weapons. Different units have different morale, hit points, and general combat skills. If a unit's morale drops too low, its soldiers try to flee the field. Units can create different formations that alter how they perform in combat; for example, many spearmen units can form the phalanx formation, while many Roman units can form the testudo. Both of these formations sacrifice mobility in favour of defensiveness. The player can also employ complex tactics to help them achieve victory; for example, soldiers can ambush enemies from a nearby forest or flank them to avoid a frontal engagement.

Barbarian Invasion
Barbarian Invasion allows the player to take control of the barbarian nations of Europe and the Middle East during the migration period. It also adds a more complex portrayal of religion, with changes in the state religion affecting unrest and the popularity of the ruling family. The campaign takes place from 363 AD to 476 AD.

Alexander
The Alexander expansion puts the player in the role of Alexander the Great and replays his conquests and battles. The campaign takes place from 336 BC to 323 BC.

Development
A demo featuring a playable version of the Battle of River Trebia, with the player taking the role of the general Hannibal, was released on August 23, 2004, and is freely available for download.

Prior to release, a preliminary version of the game engine was used in two series of TV programs: Decisive Battles by the History Channel, where it was used to recreate famous historical battles, and Time Commanders by BBC Two, where teams of novice non-gamers commanded ancient armies to replay key battles of antiquity. Military historians fine-tuned the game engine specifically for these television shows, ensuring maximum historical accuracy. Both series also used the same music track as the battles in Rome: Total War.

Jeff van Dyck composed the original music soundtrack for the game and received a BAFTA Interactive Awards nomination for his work. Some of the vocals, including the song "Forever" played during the game's credits, were performed by his wife, Angela van Dyck. Angela also wrote the lyrics for the song "Divinitus," which was written in quasi-Latin.

In May 2014, GameSpy's multiplayer services were shut down, and as a result, the game was migrated to Steamworks as of patch 1.51.

The iPad version of the game, developed by Feral Interactive, was announced on August 12, 2016 and released on November 10, 2016. The iPhone version was released on August 23, 2018. Although an Android version was announced on November 8, 2018, no release date has been provided.

Modifications
Rome: Total War allows for the manipulation of some game resources, including its text files and textures, which has led to the creation of modifications. Among the most notable are Europa Barbarorum and Roma Surrectum, both of which aim to introduce more historical accuracy and rework how the factions are played.

Sales
According to The NPD Group, Rome: Total War was the 20th-best-selling computer game of 2004. It maintained this position on NPD's annual computer game sales chart for the following year. In the United States alone, the game sold 390,000 copies and earned $16.8 million by August 2006. At the time, this led Edge to declare it the country's 40th-best-selling computer game, and best-selling Total War title, released since January 2000. The series as a whole, including Rome, sold 1.3 million units in the United States by August 2006. By 2013, Rome: Total War alone had totaled 876,000 sales in the region. It also received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA), indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom.

Rome sold at least 100,000 units in the German market by December 2004.

Critical reviews
The game received "universal acclaim", according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Many reviewers regarded it as one of the best strategy games of all time; it won numerous awards and high scores from gaming websites and magazines alike.

 * PC Gamer (UK): All time 5th best PC game "95%"
 * IGN: Editor's Choice Award, 4th Best PC Game of all Time, 14th Best Game of all Time.
 * PC Gamer (US): Editor's Choice, Best Strategy Game of 2004
 * GameSpot: Editor's Choice, PC Game of September, Strategy Game of 2004
 * Adrenaline Vault: Seal of Excellence
 * GameSpy: Editor's Choice
 * E3 2003 Game Critics Awards: Best Strategy Game

Computer Games Magazine named Rome: Total War the fifth-best computer game of 2004. The editors wrote, "If there's a magic formula for how to make a great strategy game, Creative Assembly has it down pat." The editors of Computer Gaming World nominated Rome as their 2004 "Strategy Game of the Year (Real-Time)", although it lost to Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. It was nominated for GameSpot's year-end "Best Graphics, Technical" award. During the 8th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences awarded Rome: Total War with "Strategy Game of the Year", along with receiving nominations for "Outstanding Innovation in Computer Gaming" and outstanding achievement in "Original Musical Composition", "Sound Design" and "Online Gameplay".

Sequel
On 2 July 2012, The Creative Assembly announced the development of Total War: Rome II as the next edition of the Total War series. Rome II became its successor on 3 September 2013 when it was released, featuring gameplay during the time of the Roman Republic and Empire, a larger campaign map, as well as a number of game mechanics both new and carried over from previous Total War entries.

Remaster
On March 25, 2021, 16 and a half years after its initial release, a remastered edition named Total War: Rome Remastered was announced. It would feature improved visuals, additional factions and a modernized interface; and cover the original game and all expansions. Developed by Feral Interactive, the remaster was released on April 29 of the same year. The reception was positive with reviews stating that the remastered edition was the best way to play Rome: Total War today, but that the game mechanics felt outdated compared to more recent releases in the Total War series.

Like the original game, the remaster supports modding. Among the most notable, Imperium Surrectum made by the mod developers behind mods Rome: Total Realism and Roma Surrectum for the original game.

title: Rome: Total War


text:
Caesar (video game)

Caesar is a 1992 city-building video game published by Sierra On-Line in which the player undertakes the role of a Roman governor, building ancient Roman cities.

Released in 1992 on the Amiga and ported the following year to Atari ST, PC and Macintosh, the game is similar to SimCity. In addition to similar graphics and user interfaces, it also came with issues of micromanagement, including complicated city-planning requirements such as building the right number of schools, theaters, libraries, bathhouses, and other amenities within suitable distances of residential areas.

An updated version, Caesar Deluxe, was released in 1993 for the Amiga. Caesar spawned three direct sequels and several spin-offs set in other ancient civilizations, which are together known as the City Building series.

Reception
According to Sierra On-Line, combined sales of Caesar and Caesar II surpassed 400,000 units by the end of March 1996.

In June 1993, Computer Gaming World recommended Caesar to SimCity fans who "wished for more buttons to push, knobs to adjust and wires to reroute". The magazine concluded that "Caesar provides that rare quality in strategy gaming — an experience whose rewards prove equal to its challenges ... [it] provides the serious player with a real lion's feast". A survey of pre-20th-century strategy games in the issue gave the game three-plus stars out of five, calling it "More of a game than a simulation, but it can be fun".

Caesar and its sequel were named, collectively, the 96th best computer game ever by PC Gamer UK in 1997. The editors wrote, "Impressions keep on keeping on with the likes of Lords of the Realm [...] but have never managed to regain the dizzy peak they climbed with their handsome brace of think-'em-ups."

Sequels
Caesar was developed and designed by Impressions Games and distributed by Sierra On-Line. Impressions also developed another Roman-themed game, Cohort 2, at the same time, which allowed players to direct ancient Roman battles in a style akin to a crude precursor of the Command & Conquer series. Impressions included a feature in Cohort 2 which allowed players of Caesar to load their saved files and play out the battles from Caesar in Cohort 2. Later, Impressions released an updated version of Caesar which automatically launched a version of Cohort 2 whenever the player engaged in battle. This version was released under the title Caesar Deluxe in 1994.

Impressions released the sequels Caesar II in 1995 and Caesar III in 1998. A third sequel, Caesar IV, was announced in August 2005 by Tilted Mill Entertainment and was subsequently released on September 26, 2006.

title: Caesar (video game)


text:
Knockout (1971 comic)

Knockout was a weekly British comics periodical published by Fleetway Publications from 12 June 1971 to 23 June 1973. A humour comic, the title ran until 1973 before being merged with another Fleetway title, Whizzer and Chips.

Stories
Its strips included:

 * Beat Your Neighbour: two families live next door to each other; although the introductory title picture shows them arguing, the two families often tried to be pleasant to one another while secretly trying to outdo each other. The results were quite often far-fetched but unexpected. One example was when one family said to the other that they should drink more milk for health reasons: the second family ordered more milk, the first family ordered even more, and eventually they were both ordering milk in churns, until the dairy brought the cows to their houses and told them to milk the cows themselves.
 * Boney: Boney is a skeleton. The strip began with a boy called Billy, who went on an inane ghost train ride at a fair. The ride was so boring that one of the artifacts, Boney, decided to escape with Billy. The strip records the pair's adventures as they try to stop the owner of the ghost train from recapturing Boney. Boney joined Whizzer and Chips in 1973 after Knockout merged with it.
 * Booter
 * Dead Eye Dick
 * Fuss Pot: about a teenage girl with a pointy nose of the same name, who fussed about everything and everyone in her path. At one stage the full title was: "Fuss Pot, the Fussiest Girl of the Lot!" Fuss Pot joined Whizzer and Chips in 1973 after Knockout merged into that comic, and became a Chip-ite. She then joined Buster in 1990 after Whizzer and Chips, in its turn, merged with that publication. Through the medium of reprints, the strip stayed with Buster until the end. The strip was mainly drawn by Norman Mansbridge. He was replaced in the 1990s by Trevor Metcalfe, whose strips introduced Fuss Pot's cousin Scruff Pot. Artist Jack Edward Oliver included Fuss Pot on the last page of Buster's final issue, revealing how all the characters in the comic came to an end. Fuss Pot's excuse was that she was too fussy to appear in the comic.
 * Joker
 * Pete's Pockets
 * Sammy Shrink (originated in Wham!, moved to Pow!, then Knockout) — about a boy who is only two inches tall; by Dave Jenner
 * Stinker
 * The Group
 * The Haunted Wood
 * The Super Seven
 * The Toffs and the Toughs
 * Thunderball
 * Wanda Wheels
 * Whistler
 * Windy

title: Knockout (1971 comic)


text: User talk:217.40.187.220

title: User talk:217.40.187.220


text:
Retracted article on dopaminergic neurotoxicity of MDMA

"Severe dopaminergic neurotoxicity in primates after a common recreational dose regimen of MDMA  ("ecstasy")", is an article by George A. Ricaurte that was published in September 2002 in the peer-reviewed journal Science, one of the world's top academic journals. It was later retracted; instead of using MDMA, methamphetamine had been used in the test.

Original publication
An editorial article on the paper indicated that researchers had observed dopaminergic neurotoxicity (death of neurons involved in dopamine pathways) in monkeys following MDMA injections, a finding which suggested that recreational users of MDMA may be at risk of developing neuropsychiatric disorders associated with dopamine dysfunction.

Following the release of the paper, Science published a “News of the week” article by Constance Holden. The article noted that the results of the study had caused the researchers concern that even a single night of MDMA usage could cause brain damage, and leave a person vulnerable to neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease. Holden also noted that the findings of the study were surprising, due to MDMA being known for prompting the release of large amounts of serotonin, but not dopamine. In the article, cognitive neuroscientist Jon Cole was described as being “skeptical” about the risk of Parkinson’s from MDMA use, stating that there had only been one case report of Parkinson’s related to the use of ecstasy. In response, the researchers stated that this could be due to symptoms not presenting until "70% to 80%" of dopamine had been depleted.

Alan Leshner, a former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, also commented on the study, stating "This says even a single evening's use is playing Russian roulette with your own brain."

Retraction
In June 2003, a letter to Science was published in which the results of the study were questioned. Ricaurte stood by the findings.

In September 2003, the paper was retracted. In a statement published in ‘’Science’’, the research team indicated that due to a labelling error, methamphetamine had been administered to 9 of the 10 test animals instead of MDMA. The team had consistently been unable to replicate the original results, which lead to them conducting an investigation and ultimately discovering the error.

Following the retraction, Ricaurte stated that he would continue to investigate the possibility of a relationship between MDMA and dopamine dysfunction, and that the laboratory would be adjusting its chemical handling procedure.

Reactions
In a review of the year's events published in the December issue of Science, Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy wrote, "It was also a vintage year for scientific fluffs. We shared in one: Some vials containing the recreational drug Ecstasy got switched with vials containing methamphetamine, and we wound up publishing a paper we wish we hadn't".

Journalists such as Larry Smith and Carla Spartos have stated that the inaccurate study may have influenced drug policy being made at the time, such as the RAVE act of April 2003.

In an interview in The Scientist, British scientists Colin Blakemore and Leslie Iversen described how they expressed concerns about the article with editors at Science. "It's an outrageous scandal," Iversen told The Scientist. "It's another example of a certain breed of scientist who appear to do research on illegal drugs mainly to show what the governments want them to show. They extract large amounts of grant money from the government to do this sort of biased work."

A study of the 50 largest American newspapers with available online archives found that 26 (52%) covered the original article's publication, while 20 (40%) covered its retraction. Of the newspapers that covered the article's publication, only 14 (54%) covered its retraction, suggesting large numbers of newspaper readers who had been exposed to the misinformation were never made aware that the study had been in error.


text:
Kay Francis

Kay Francis (born Katharine Edwina Gibbs; January 13, 1905 – August 26, 1968) was an American stage and film actress. After a brief period on Broadway in the late 1920s, she moved to film and achieved her greatest success between 1930 and 1936, when she was the number one female star and highest-paid actress at Warner Bros. studio. She adopted her mother's maiden name (Francis) as her professional surname.

Early life
Katharine Edwina Gibbs was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Territory (present-day Oklahoma), in 1905, the only child of Joseph Sprague Gibbs and Katharine Clinton ( Francis), an actress. Wed in 1903, her parents divorced in 1909 when Kay's mother left her alcoholic father and took Kay with her.

Her mother had been born in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was a moderately successful actress and singer on a hardscrabble theatrical circuit under the stage name Katharine Clinton. Kay often traveled with her mother. Kay attended Catholic schools when it was affordable, becoming a student at the Institute of the Holy Angels at age five. After also attending Miss Fuller's School for Young Ladies in Ossining, New York (1919) and the Cathedral School (1920), she enrolled at the Katharine Gibbs Secretarial School in New York City. While there she did nothing to discourage the assumption that her mother was Katharine Gibbs, the pioneering American businesswoman who had established the Gibbs chain of vocational schools.

In 1922, 17-year-old Kay was engaged to James Dwight Francis, a well-to-do man from Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Their marriage, at New York's Saint Thomas Church, ended in divorce three years later.

Stage career
In the spring of 1925, Francis went to Paris to get a divorce. While there, she was courted by Bill Gaston, a former athlete at Harvard and member of the Boston Bar Association. Secretly married in October 1925, their marriage was short-lived, with only occasional visits between Bill in Boston and Kay in New York City following her mother's footsteps onto the stage.

She made her Broadway debut as the Player Queen in a modern-dress version of Shakespeare's Hamlet in November 1925. She often "borrowed" wardrobe for fashionable nights out in New York that were reported on by the day's press. Francis claimed she got the part by "lying a lot, to the right people". One of them was producer Stuart Walker, who hired her to join his Portmanteau Theatre Company. She soon found herself commuting between Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, and Indianapolis, Indiana. She played wisecracking secretaries, saucy French floozies, walk-ons, bit parts, and heavies.

By February 1927, Francis returned to New York and got a part in the Broadway play Crime. A teenage Sylvia Sidney had its lead, but later said that Francis stole the show.

After Francis's divorce from Gaston in September 1927, she became engaged to society playboy Alan Ryan Jr. She promised his family that she would not return to the stage – a vow that lasted only a few months before she was playing an aviator in a Rachel Crothers play, Venus.

Francis appeared in only one other Broadway production, titled Elmer the Great in 1928. Written by Ring Lardner, produced by George M. Cohan, and starring Walter Huston, the play nonetheless flopped. Though flat broke at the time, Francis was unwilling to ask friends for help and determined to "crawl out of this mess herself."

Huston had been impressed by Francis's performance and encouraged her to take a screen test for his new studio, Paramount Pictures, and the film Gentlemen of the Press (1929). Paramount offered her a starting contract of $300 per week for five weeks. Francis made Press and the Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts (1929) at Paramount's Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens, New York before moving to Hollywood.

Film career

Major film studios, which had formerly been based in New York, had relocated successfully to California. With the coming of sound pictures, even more Broadway actors were enticed to Hollywood, including Ann Harding, Aline MacMahon, Helen Twelvetrees, Spencer Tracy, Paul Muni, Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Joan Blondell and Leslie Howard.

Signed to a featured players contract with Paramount Pictures, Francis also made the move and created an immediate impression. She frequently co-starred with William Powell, first teaming in Street of Chance (1930) when David Selznick fought for the pairing after having seen Francis briefly in Behind the Make-up (1930). It worked, and they appeared in as many as six to eight movies together per year, making a total of 21 films between 1930 and 1932.

Francis's career flourished at Paramount in spite of a slight, but distinctive rhotacism (she pronounced the letter "r" as "w") that gave rise to the nickname "Wavishing Kay Fwancis". She appeared in George Cukor's "thrillingly amoral comedy" Girls About Town (1931) and 24 Hours (1931). On December 16, 1931, Francis and her co-stars opened the newly constructed art deco Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, with a gala preview screening of The False Madonna.

In 1932, Francis's career at Paramount changed gears when Warner Bros. promised her star status at a better salary of $4,000 a week. Paramount sued Warner Bros. over the loss. Warner Bros. persuaded both Francis and Powell to join the ranks of their stars, along with Ruth Chatterton. After her first three featured roles had been as a villainess, Francis was given roles with a more sympathetic screen persona, such as in The False Madonna, where she plays a jaded society woman who learns the importance of hearth and home when nursing a terminally ill child. After Francis's career skyrocketed at Warner Bros., she was loaned back to Paramount for Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932).

Mainstream successes

From 1932 through 1936, Francis was the queen of the Warner Bros. lot, and, increasingly, her films were developed as star vehicles. By 1935, Francis was one of the highest-paid actors, earning a yearly salary of $115,000, dwarfing the $18,000 Bette Davis – who would one day occupy Francis's dressing room – made. From 1930 to 1937, Francis appeared on the covers of 38 film magazines, second only to child sensation Shirley Temple's 138.

Soon after her arrival in Hollywood, she began an affair with actor and producer Kenneth MacKenna, whom she married in January 1931. MacKenna's Hollywood career foundered, having spent more time in New York with the couple's amicable 1933 separation; they divorced in 1934.

Francis frequently played long-suffering heroines, in films such as I Found Stella Parish, Secrets of an Actress, and Comet Over Broadway, displaying to good advantage lavish wardrobes that, in some cases, were more memorable than the characters she played – a fact often emphasized by contemporary film reviewers. As Belinda in Give Me Your Heart (1936) with co-stars George Brent and Roland Young, her performance had "reticence and pathos" and garnered welcoming reviews from The New York Times.

In October 1937, Francis met aviation businessman Raven Freiherr von Barnekow at a party of Countess Dorothy Dentice di Frasso's in Beverly Hills. In March 1938, Louella Parsons reported on their intended marriage and that Francis would retire from films, but by October the two were traveling separately and Francis was still acting; by December, Barnekow had returned to Germany.

Francis's clothes horse reputation and statuesque frame often led Warners' producers to concentrate resources on lavish sets and costumes rather than the quality of the storylines, a move designed to appeal to Depression-era female audiences and capitalize on her reputation as the epitome of chic. Eventually, Francis herself became dissatisfied with these vehicles and began openly to feud with Warner Bros., even threatening a lawsuit against them for inferior scripts and treatment. This, in turn, led to her demotion to programmers, such as Women in the Wind (1939), and, in the same year, to the termination of her contract.

"Box Office Poison" and revival

The Independent Theatre Owners Association paid for an advertisement in The Hollywood Reporter in May 1938 that included Francis, along with Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Fred Astaire, Mae West, Katharine Hepburn and others, on a list of stars dubbed "box office poison". After her release from Warner Bros., she was unable to secure another studio contract. Carole Lombard, who had been a supporting player in Francis's 1931 film Ladies' Man, insisted Francis be cast in her film In Name Only (1939). Francis had a supporting role to Lombard and Cary Grant, and it offered her an opportunity to engage in some serious acting. After this, she moved to supporting parts in other films, playing fast-talking, professional women – holding her own against Rosalind Russell in The Feminine Touch, for example – and mothers opposite rising young stars such as Deanna Durbin.

Francis had one lead role at the end of the decade opposite Humphrey Bogart in the gangster film King of the Underworld, released in 1939. The movie was a remake of Paul Muni's Dr. Socrates (1935), with Francis in the role of a doctor who is forced to treat Bogart's injured gangster character and then gets caught up with the law. Originally titled Lady Doctor, the film was shelved, then retitled Unlawful for reshoots to beef up Bogart's role. By the film's release, Warner Bros. had again changed titles to King of the Underworld while demoting Francis to second billing.

World War II era

With the start of World War II, Francis joined the war effort, doing volunteer work with the Naval Aid Auxiliary, where she was named head of the NAA's Hospital Unit. She also performed extensive war-zone touring, first chronicled in the book "Four Jills in a Jeep", written by fellow volunteer Carole Landis. It became a popular 1944 film, Four Jills in a Jeep, with a cavalcade of stars and Martha Raye and Mitzi Mayfair joining Landis and Francis to fill out the complement of Jills.

At the end of the war, Four Jills was given a four-star production by 20th Century Fox, but still needed distribution through Monogram, and the decade found Francis virtually unemployable in Hollywood. She signed a three-film contract with Poverty Row studio Monogram Pictures that gave her production credit as well as star billing. The resulting films Divorce, Wife Wanted and Allotment Wives had limited releases in 1945 and 1946.

Francis spent the remainder of the 1940s on the stage, appearing with some success in State of the Union and touring in various productions of plays, old and new, including Windy Hill, backed by former Warner Bros. colleague Ruth Chatterton. Declining health, aggravated by an accident in Columbus, Ohio during a tour of State of the Union in 1948, when she was badly burned by a radiator after passing out from an accidental overdose from pills, hastened her retirement from show business. This incident was first reported as a fainting spell brought on by the pills, with a complication of respiratory infection. Her manager and traveling companion had arrived at Francis's hotel room and, in an attempt to revive the unconscious actress with fresh air, burned her legs on the radiator near the window. She recovered in an oxygen tent at the local hospital; soon retiring from acting and then, public life.

Personal life
Francis married three times, to James Dwight Francis (1922–1925); William Gaston (1925–1927); and Kenneth MacKenna (1931–1934). It was erroneously reported by Walter Winchell that her third had been to screenwriter John Meehan around 1929. She had affairs with Maurice Chevalier and Raven Freiherr von Barnekow.

Her diaries, which are preserved along with her film-related material in an academic collection at Wesleyan University open to scholars and researchers, paint a picture of a woman whose personal life was often in disarray. She regularly socialized with gay men, one of whom, Anderson Lawler, was reportedly paid $10,000 by Warner Bros. to accompany her to Europe in 1934.

In 1966, Francis was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy, but the cancer had already spread. She died in 1968, aged 63. Anxious to be forgotten, she wanted neither services nor grave marker. Her body was immediately cremated, and according to her will her ashes were to be disposed of "how the undertaker sees fit."

Having no living immediate family members, Francis left more than $1 million to The Seeing Eye, an organization in New Jersey, which trains guide dogs for the blind.

Short subjects

 * Screen Snapshots Series 16, No. 3 (1936) as Herself – Observer
 * Show Business at War (1943, Documentary) as Herself (uncredited)

title: Kay Francis


text:
Sulaymaniyah

Sulaymaniyah or Slemani (سلێمانی; السليمانية ), is a city in the east of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and is the capital of the Sulaymaniyah Governorate. It is surrounded by the Azmar (Ezmer), Goizha (Goyje) and Qaiwan (Qeywan) Mountains in the northeast, Baranan Mountain in the south and the Tasluja Hills in the west. The city has a semi-arid climate with very hot dry summers and cold wet winters.

The modern city of Slemani was founded in 1784 by the Ottoman-Kurdish prince Ibrahim Pasha Baban, who named it after his father Sulaiman Pasha. Slemani was the capital of the historic principality of Baban from 1784 to 1850.

History

The region of Slemani was known as Zamwa prior to the foundation of the modern city in 1784. The capital of the Kurdish Baban principality (1649–1850), before Slemani, was a territory named "Qelaçiwalan". At the time of the Babani's rule there were major conflicts between the Safavid dynasty and the Ottoman Empire. Qelaçiwalan became a battleground for the two rivals.

Being of strategic importance and lying deep inside Safavid territory, there was concern that Qelaçiwalan would be attacked and captured if the Babani did not give the Safavids military support, as both Sultan Mahmud II and Nader Shah were trying to gain the support of the dispersed Kurdish Emirates. This obliged Mahmud of Baban in 1781 to think about moving the centre of the emirate to a safer place. He chose Melkendî, then a village but now a district in central Slemani, to construct a number of .

In 1783, Ibrahim Baban became ruler of the emirate and began the reconstruction of a city which once constructed by Ottoman Sultan Sulaiman (the name of Sulaimaniyah came from his name) new city which would become its capital. In 1784 he finished erecting a number of palaces for trade called Qeyserîs and bazaars, which were also used as baths, and began inviting people from the surrounding villages and emirates to move to the newly established city. Soon Melkendî, which was originally intended to be the city itself, instead became one of its quarters. The new city of Slemani was named after Sulaiman Baba, who was the first Baban prince to gain control of the province of Şarezûr. Sulaiman Baban invaded the neighboring Kurdish vassaldom of Ardalan, defeating their forces in 1694. Ottoman Sultan Mustafa II assigned him the district of Baban.

According to Jewish tradition, Sulaiman baban emphasized the importance of a town having Jewish residents for its completeness. A mission was then sent to Qaradagh, a town with a thriving Jewish community, and surrounding villages. The Jews of Qaradagh responded by sending the first group of Jewish inhabitants to Sulaimaniya.

In the early 1800s refugees from Ardalan moved to Slemani, including Mastura Ardalan, the widow of Xosraw Xanî Erdalan, the ruler of the kingdom. Erdalan wrote an account of Kurdish history in Persian and was buried in Slemani when he died in 1848.

From 1922 to 1924, Slemani was the capital of the Kingdom of Kurdistan, a short-lived unrecognized state declared by Iraqi Kurds following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Demographics
In 1820, only 36 years after the creation of the city, a British man named Rech visited the city and estimated that its population was more than ten thousand, containing 2,144 families of which 2,000 were Muslim, 130 Jewish, and 14 Christian.

Ottoman documents from 1907 suggest that there were 8,702 Muslim and 360 non-Muslim residents living in the city at that time. The Peshkawtin newspaper which was distributed in Slemani in 1920 estimated its population to be around ten thousand.

The early 1920s Iraqi Revolt against the British rule of the Mandate for Mesopotamia led by Shaikh Mahmud triggered a wave of Jewish emigration from Sulaymaniyah.

According to Iraqi government documents, by 1947 the number of residents had increased to 23,475. In the same year, records documented the existence of three hundred Jewish families, comprising a total of 1,517 individuals. Notably, nearly the entire Jewish community, except one family, made aliyah to the emerging State of Israel in 1951–52.

By 1998, the local population was estimated at 548,747, which grew in 2015 to an estimated 656,100.

The American University of Iraq, Sulaimani estimated the number of inhabitants in 2016 at 800,000.

Geography and climate
The city is located in northern Iraq and Southern Kurdistan. Of the main population centres in the country, it is characterized by its cooler summer temperatures and its rainier winters. Average temperatures range from 0 to(-). In the winters, there can be a significant amount of snow. Snow falls every year or two.

The Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies its climate as hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa).

Education
The University of Slemani was opened in 1968 with instruction in Kurdish, Arabic, and English. It has faculties in engineering, agriculture, the arts, science, and medicine. It is the largest university in the Kurdistan Region. A second university, Sulaimani Polytechnic University was established in 2012, also teaching in Kurdish, English and Arabic.

In 2007 The American University of Iraq – Sulaimani, (AUI-S) was a new addition to the American universities in the Middle East, graduating its fifth class in 2016. Instruction at this private, not-for-profit liberal arts university is in English only, featuring a US-accredited program in English as a Second Language (ESL). There are a number of other private universities.

Culture
Two independent newspapers Hawlati and Awena and two independent political magazines Lvin and Shock, are published and distributed in Slemani city. Since 2016, there exists an International Film Festival in the city which is organized by the College of Fine Arts of the University of Sulaymanya.

Slemani is the only city in South Kurdistan that regularly celebrates World Music Day or Fête de la Musique. In one trip to the city, a journalist working for the BBC wrote about Slemani's distinct culture:"Culture is hugely important to the Kurdish people, especially in Slemani, but there is a strong pull to the west—modernisation and consumerism—driven perhaps by the satellite televisions they have had access to since they started running their own affairs...And at the university, students mill around the campus, chattering with each other and doing some last-minute cramming for their exams. The war only stopped lectures for a few weeks. There are probably more women than men and they are happy to air their views to anyone who asks."

Slemani was the home of poets such as Nalî, Mahwi, and Piramerd.

Economy
Since 2003, Slemani has experienced a growing local economy. Its economy today relies on tourism, agriculture and a number of small factories, most of which are involved in the building trade.

In 2004 the Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis in Iraq released an in-depth survey of the Slemani Governorate in which they surveyed each city. In this survey, one can see the economic boom of 2003 mentioned earlier.

Tourism

The city was visited by more than 60,000 tourists in 2009. Slemani attracted more than 15,000 Iranian tourists in the first quarter of 2010, many drawn by the fact it is not subject to strict laws faced at home. Newroz 2010 drew an exodus of Iranian tourists choosing to celebrate the event in the region.

Museums

 * Sulaimani Museum: It is the second biggest museum after the national museum in Baghdad. It is home to many Mesopotamian, Kurdish and ancient Persian artifacts dating back to 1792–1750 BC.
 * Amna Suraka museum
 * Museum of Modern Art (Mozehanai Hunari Howchah)
 * Sulaimani Archeological Museum

Notable people

 * Khâlid-i Baghdâdî (1779–1827), sufist and Islamic thinker
 * Salim (1800–1866), poet
 * Nalî (1800–1873), poet
 * Mahwi (1830–1906), poet
 * Said Pasha Kurd, (1834–1907), Ottoman statesman
 * Şerif Pasha, (1865–1951), Ottoman diplomat, ambassador and statesman
 * Mustafa Yamulki (1866–1936), Minister of Education in the Kingdom of Kurdistan
 * Haji Mala Saeed Kirkukli Zada (1866–1937), Minister of Justice in the Kingdom of Kurdistan
 * Piramerd Tawfeq Mahmoud Hamza, (1867–1950), poet and journalist
 * Mevlanzade Rifat Bey, (1869 - 1930), journalist and politician
 * Muhamed Amin Zaki (1880–1948), historian, statesman and politician
 * Taufiq Wahby (1891–1984), linguist, politician and poet
 * Sheikh Nuri Sheikh Salih Sheikh Ghani Barzinji (1896–1958), journalist and poet
 * Ahmad Mukhtar Baban (1900–1976), prime Minister of Iraq 1958
 * Abdulla Goran (1904–1962), founder of modern Kurdish poetry
 * Ibrahim Ahmad (1914–2000), novelist, poet and translator
 * Jamal Nebez (1933-2018), Kurdish linguist, mathematician, politician, author, translator and writer.
 * Nawshirwan Mustafa (1944–2017), politician, historian and media proprietor
 * Barham Salih, 8th president of Iraq
 * Ahmad Hardi (1922–2006), poet
 * Sherko Bekas (1940–2013), contemporary poet
 * Bachtyar Ali (born 1960), novelist
 * Muhamad Salih Dilan (1927–1990), musician and poet
 * Shahab Sheikh Nuri (1932–1976), politician
 * Dilshad Meriwani, (1947–1989), actor, poet, writer and journalist
 * Rizgar Mohammed Amin (born 1958), judge
 * Mahmoud Othman (born 1938), politician
 * Jalal Talabani (1933-2017), 6th president of Iraq
 * Mahir Hassan (born 1963), actor and playwright
 * Shwan Kamal (born 1967), artist
 * Sara Omar (1986-), novelist
 * Simko Ahmed (1972-), artist

Sites

 * Tomb of king Cyaxares of Media, Qyzqapan

Politics
In recent years, many people in Slemani have distanced themselves from Kurdish nationalism as the Kurdistan Workers Party is experiencing a surge.

Twin towns – sister cities

 * 🇺🇸 Tucson, Arizona
 * 🇮🇹 Naples

Transportation
The city is served by Sulaimaniyah International Airport, with service on many commercial airlines, including Iraqi, Qatar Airways, Royal Jordanian and Turkish Airlines.

title: Sulaymaniyah


text:
Talk:Ante Pavelić

"Talk:Ante Paveli?" listed at Redirects for discussion
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title: Talk:Ante Pavelić


text:
Talk:Retracted article on dopaminergic neurotoxicity of MDMA

(William M. Connolley 08:47, 2004 May 14 (UTC)) I split this from the Science (journal) page because it was unbalanced there.

I've also edited para 1 somewhat, to point out that this is not really a peer review problem.

And I've deleted the Blakemore "quote" because as written its impossible to tell whether its a quote, paraphrase, or where Blakemores words end and the editors opinion begins.

"The Ricaurte article was not sensationalized by Science for its implications concerning any pending anti-rave legislation before Congress." This is a POV statement without any qualifications. Or was it supposed to be a quote? 80.203.115.12 13:00, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This article needs renaming
The article refers not to the general controversy about MDMA neurotoxicity but a specific issue of "the retracted finding of dopaminergic MDMA toxicity in primates". It should be renamed. I'm not sure how one goes about doing that.

--67.101.96.107 (talk) 03:52, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Question about supplier
As quoted in the article, Holden wrote that the MDMA was supplied by Research Triangle Institute. But in the supporting material by Ricaurte et al. they write that MDMA was obtained from the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Any explanation for this discrepancy?--Custoo (talk) 14:56, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
 * NIDA presumably does not manufacture chemicals itself. RTI may have been the supplier for NIDA. I haven't looked deeply into this, however. Sizeofint (talk) 17:15, 1 October 2017 (UTC)


text:
Marion Rung

Marion Rung (born 7 December 1945) is a Finnish pop singer. She is known for having represented Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1962 and 1973. Her 1962 Eurovision song placed 7th, and in 1973, she managed to bring Finland's second best result in the contest until 2006 by finishing in 6th place. She also won the Grand Prix of the Sopot International Song Festival in 1974 and the Intervision Song Contest 1980 with "Where is the Love."

Life
Born in Helsinki, Rung is Jewish, and she is of Russian descent through her mother, Rosa Manulkin, and of Polish descent through her father, Oscar Rung. She started her career in 1961, when she placed second in a Finnish song contest. The success gave her a chance to record her first single Brigitte Bardot. Her most famous schlagers include "Tipi-tii", "El Bimbo" and "Eviva Espanja." In the 1970s, she also became well known in Germany. She continued her career, and in 2000, she was one fourth of the Leidit lavalla line-up with Katri Helena, Paula Koivuniemi, and Lea Laven.

Rung's mother tongue is Swedish, and she has appeared in Swedish radio and television. In 1962, she made a show at the famous Swedish live music bar Hamburger börs in Stockholm and also made records in Swedish.

During the 1970s, she recorded five singles in Germany 1975-79, and the most successful, El Bimbo sold 100,000 copies. She also made an LP in English, Love is... in 1978.

Marion Rung won "Syksyn Sävel" ("Tune of Autumn") at schlager Finnish song festival in 1977, as the first woman so far, with the song "Rakkaus on hellyyttä" (Love is affection) and in 1974 and 1980 she won the Sopot International Song Festival.

She celebrated 45 years on stage 2005 with concerts in Savoy-teather, Helsinki. The same year a 4CD- collection "Shalom, rakkaimmat lauluni" (Shalom, my favorite songs) was released as well as her biography "Minä ja Marion" ("Me and Marion"). She also played the leading role in the musical Annie get your gun. In 2009 Rung received a golden record of the album "Elämänvoimaa" (Vitality).

From 1961 to 2023, Marion Rung made almost 100 singles and 24 albums.

Stamp
Rung is shown on a stamp.

Selected discography
Singles
 * Tom Tom Tom / My Son John 1973
 * El Bimbo (Hal Shaper, Morgan) / Go Your Way (Henriksson, Robson) 1975 EMI Finland
 * Baby Face / Totuuteen (Tu T'en Vas) 	1976
 * Kylähäät (Ballerino) / Leikki Kaukana On, Gino (Es War Mehr Als Ein Spiel, Gino) 1976

title: Marion Rung