Based on the other characters we saw Baal is the given name and Hannid the surname. Also Baal was a given name in this region:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_I
And some more with Baal in their name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Tyre
Imperator - Development Diary #7 - 9th of July 2018
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Based on the other characters we saw Baal is the given name and Hannid the surname. Also Baal was a given name in this region:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_I
And some more with Baal in their name:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Tyre
I think I might've accidentally deleted part of my comment where I mentioned the use of Ba'al in proper names as a component, such as "Hanni-ba'al"/"Hannibal". Having now been presented evidence of its use as a personal name, albeit rather rare for obvious reasons (like if a Greek was just named "Zeus"). I am not sure if the Carthaginians would've done such, as their customs are a bit different than that of the Phoenician homeland, but in any case I suppose it's fine.
Thinking about the book Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, would that increase prominence, population, both and if both which by which degree? Could I just send characters with a bad martial attribute, but good leadership skills, to war as a General, against relatively weak enemies, in order to push their prominence or population even quicker?
Don't feel like starting a race debate, but "Baal Hannid" is obviously a Phoenecian semite and as such should be fair skinned with brown eyes and pitch black hair. Maybe you didn't get to developing all of the different portraits for different cultures, but the game's characters will all be very bland if they just look like Romans.
I've been previously chastised for making assumptions due to lack of information, so I am only making conclusions based on known and published information now. So far, we've been presented with two female characters, therefore I am only commenting on those two women I've seen.
Equal representation of genders in art is not the product of intentional bias or political agenda. It is a representation of reality as it has been observed both in the present and the historical past. Unless your specific sources tell you that there were no female citizens, female workers, or female slaves, then the game's presentation of these groups has been biased because so far of all the numerous women that have lived during the Hellenistic age, we've seen all of two, and they are limited to the higher social classes that the game's characters seem to be drawn from.
I'm deeply sorry that you feel under attack for this, because Paradox has in the past gone to great lengths to be gender inclusive in its presentation (specifically with Stellaris, and with EU4's Women in History expansion) so this reversal of direction in graphical representation has come as a bit of a disappointment for me personally.
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The only characters in-game are those of the upper classes. The POPs are neither male nor female, they're faceless, genderless social classes represented in their collectivity.
Paradox is really not doing any reversal here, there's just no reason to single out female slaves and citizens out the collective of faceless POPs.
It's actually 3 female characters, a little girl, a young woman and a middle-aged woman and we've seen maybe just like a dozen characters in total so it's not like women are being deliberately excluded on this point.
We're not talking about "art", we're talking about a video game based in history.
Athens quite literally excluded women from citizenship and it was similiar with other Greek city states. Roman women had a limited citizenship, could not vote, stand for office and the freedoms they did have were highly reliant on the status of the men they were affliated with, such as their father or their husband. Therefore it makes sense to make the Citizen a male.
Freemen(not "workers") are the source of manpower in this game. Women had marginal to no roles in the armies of Antiquity(and the rest of history) so having a women represent Freemen simply makes no sense.
In a similiar vein Slaves produce money, meaning that these slaves generally reperesent the slaves working on the farms or in the mines which were overwhelmingly male. Female slaves were primarily used for domestic use such as housemaids, concubines and other servant roles, with the notable exception being female slaves used as prostitutes.
So the slaves that were specifically used to create wealth were either male working in the fields or mines or female slaves working as prostitutes. Take one guess why a male icon is used.
EU 4's Women in History DLC(not expansion, thank god), is entirely optional, which is good because it basically shoehorns female rulers and heirs into your game.
To be entirely honest I wouldn't mind if the icons displayed both men and women for every pop icon but at the same time it's should not be in any way suprising that men take the center-stage in a historical game taking place before 20th century.
I just think there's bigger things to be concerned about than giving pops a female icon, especially because the icon isn't what matters at all.
Unfortunately, most of history was not exactly tolerant of women. I mean, this is the bloody ancient era we're talking about here. Athens, a city often cited as being a beacon of western civilization, didn't even grant women citizenship. Like most areas of history, this was a male-dominated time period. I wouldn't want women shoehorned into the game because that's just rewriting history. Even the infamous "Women of History" DLC for EU4 was seriously close to going from "somewhat accurate depiction of women" to "revisionist nonsense", and that involves an era that takes place more than a thousand years after this one.
Could just be placeholder graphics.
I sincerely hope we don't get a rerun of CK2's "pay to be black" nonsense.
Athene's role as 'beacon of western civilization' is way to overrated. In Academia (at least were I life) don't work with this line anymore.
Women should be powerful in certain realms (Like Ptolemaic Egypt) or the berber states, or there should be a law the player can enact to give them more power which shouldn't be easy to go. And it should only grant power as much as the Ptolemaic realm.
So you want artists working for free? The artist doing the work isn't part of Paradox. They just pay him. And you basically asking him to make face packs for free... Blacks were not in the basegame, because the basegame didn't even had Mali for exemple on the map.
I do not disagree with what you said about women. I'm simply stating that prominent women were a relative rarity in this era and thus should be relative rarities in the game. People like Cleopatra and Boudica did exist, but they were not the norm.
As for your point about blacks, I'm not saying that the artists should "work for free." I personally disagree strongly with Pdox's DLC policy, and their microtransactions (like face packs) are part of that, but I understand making unique faces for different cultures takes time. In the case of the Malians, however, I just think it was kinda ridiculous. You're literally adding an entirely new race to the map, yet you're selling the actual graphics separately?
Also, nice job trying to guilt trip me with the "artist doesn't get paid" lol. Why do you think I'm suggesting that he doesn't get paid? Pdox could pay him and then make the faces part of the patch or the actual expansion. I never suggested the artist shouldn't get paid lol.
It's depending on the place. In Ptolemaic egypt Cleopatra WAS the norm since men and women succeded each other which results in a lot of female rulers. And many Berber tribes had a matriarchaic society so for them it WAS the norm to have powerful women. It should depend on the place and society. For Rome itself powerful women don't make sense without a lot of reformation,
That's exactly what they do now. Which results in a more expansive expansion, because the price for the art is added to the price of the expansion. The only difference now is that you can't buy them seperatly anymore. They selling them seperatelly was because they wanted the players to have the choice to pay for the art or not. So it's nothing like 'microtransactions'.
I highly doubt paradox will go bankrupt if they pay the artists yet keep the expansions cheaper.
"Marsica" is the genitive form of the noun. In the context of "Terra Marsica" it makes perfect sense. However Marsia is a much better appropriation.
And more importantly, could such kind of characters launch by their own a conquest of Galliae, like many imperatores used to do?
Those are, in fact, most probably neutral nouns: Citizens, Freemen, Tribesmen and Slaves are inclusive words which potentially all include hermaphroditic men, women and wers. That is why they aren't called "Female Citizens", "Hermaphroditic Freemen" or "Male Tribesmen".
Saying that there are no women represented by POPs in this game, like Sabotage did, seem to be an attempt to impute erroneous motives to Paradox on the ground of an misunderstanding of the grammatical neutral gender. However, opposing to those allegations by saying that there shouldn't be women represented by POPs in the game seem to be grounded on the same bias, and lead to conclude to what I feel is an erroneous conclusion: POPs should represent all inhabitants, regardless of their sex, and it is a good news that they most probably do.
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I think Sabotage was talking about the pop icons rather than their names. The icons are all male.
That's not really a big deal. If it was a big concern the pop icons could be changed to all be one male and one female, but all male icons for this is fairly standard and was the same in Victoria 2.
Maybe diligence, or maybe even perfectionism or meticulousness?
Ah, yes... I understand it better. Icons might perhaps had ideally represented families?