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I forgot the greek name... Epibatai (?) My idea is to launch maritime invasion operations and carry out raids; I was thinking about that yesterday when I was showing you the riverboats. The ship trains troops on board before launching "Blitzkrieg" operations. I like that concept so that ships aren't so boring. I'm going to leave a channel I follow with a couple of thoughts.

"AI that makes you laugh", "AI that has personality", haha, these are all quite moonshot things. Not even many commercial AAA games are that sophisticated. Are people so used to what "AI" can supposedly do nowadays that demands are so high? It's just a terminology coincidence of course, these are not LLMs, computer opponents have been called "AI" throughout practically all of gaming history, "artificial" just meaning "non-human" here, to differentiate from player vs player modes like in Street Fighter or the like. LLM functionality in a game like this would not be practical, they're expensive and someone has to pay for the tokens. On the local machine it would use a lot of performance and even if workable, it will be very hard to design it for the performance levels of different machines users have. But I have seen a thread with a mod experimenting with this. (And of course it will be two layers, grunt work still done by Petra, LLM deciding on the grand strategy "in the background"). Sure, the "AI" in the game could be improved, but it still lacks very basic things that are more important, like spatial awareness, looking at the map and figuring out what the choke points are. But these are not trivial problems to solve. Maybe LLMs can help with some "vibe-coding" to improve the current state but that's it.

Hospitals and oil wells: hospitals will take over the healing function previously served by temples, while oil will be introduced as a new resource. Oil deposits will be distributed across the map, and a "shale oil extraction" technology could be implemented, allowing for oil to be extracted anywhere, albeit at a higher cost.

Which is a huge misconception this game also incurs, as explained in Thoughts on the Athenians :P. That they were good at sea doesn't mean regarding their "marines", but their fast ramming ships used to disable enemy ones, which, ironically, needed to have the least amount possible of deck soldiers to be swift. Thus, not only there's nothing characteristic about them, but they didn't rely on them and used as few as possible (so having them as a "champion" Athenian unit is as misleading as it could be, and why I proposed the Tachunautousa Triērēs instead). The real secret of Athenian success at sea was not just how ships were lightly built, but their expert oarsmen, drawn mostly from the low thḗtēs class, who would train all their lives expecting to be good enough to be selected by some trierarch to man the oars of a navy vital for Athens, which brought them prestige, thus more leverage and participation, in their nascent democratic system.

I have included some of the structures from this into the game.

I agree with that. It should be something that exists to provide greater immersion. +++ On the other hand, I've considered training marines on ships, similar to how the Athenian marines already operate, but aside from some bonuses, I don't know how to make it work. http://amodelcastillo.blogspot.com/2018/03/la-armada-imperial-de-roma-rangos-y.html?m=1 Milites Classiarii for example. We also have the Nautae They are ordinary sailors; they too participated in the combat.

I don’t have a standalone mod specifically for bots, though I did previously upload some tweaked bots to the forum, they’re quite outdated now, though still playable with a few minor fixes. They do have quite a few flaws, however. That said, in the mod I’m currently working on, I’m incorporating the successful features from those earlier bots into an entirely new one. It will include various behavioral modes, pre-loaded tactics along with a few "dirty tricks" if I come up with any, and a degree of randomness in its actions to ensure it doesn’t feel too predictable or formulaic. That’s right, I started a thread about AI quite a while ago, where I’ve been uploading those bots.

It definitely needs to adapt to the role model of the ship.

It also has an AoM influence. The game was still in its conceptual stage in 2002 when Age of Mythology was released.

Precisely because of the golf carts and other vehicles being used in the current war. That's why I said it.

But the game's symmetry also depends on how players can play the civilisations. Directly modifying the civilisations to push them towards more distinct playstyles than they currently have would, in my opinion, be the first step. Today, by sticking to roughly the same playstyle and the same build orders or unit orders, all civilisations remain generally playable. If we play the Carthaginians with a more Gallic playstyle, the civilisation remains fairly competitive. The only real differences between the game's civilisations at the moment are different but rather abstract bonuses (especially for new players), different textures, and a few unique buildings and units that don't fundamentally change the playstyles... In my opinion, we should (still) preserve 0 A.D.'s origins (AoE2) and draw inspiration from it. In AoE2 (or even AoE4), civilisations have things in common but still retain different playstyles! I haven't tried DE, so I can't say whether this mod adds differences between civilisations and meets my "criteria". What could make a difference, and what I also feel is missing, is the diversity and depth of Petra's playstyles, and I completely agree with you on that! But yes, changing playstyles depending on the civilisation would make balancing more complex, and I don't think the developers would put in the time needed to do that at the moment. Is there a mod that has experimented with changing AI playstyles? Anyway, we're starting to drift away from the original topic of the discussion

I also find the game too symmetrical. What I believe needs to be changed and what I have experimented with changing is the behavior of the bots: small civilizations or vassal states should not act like great powers, and nomadic civilizations should not behave the same way as sedentary ones. The issue, however, is that such changes would make balancing the game difficult, and many players likely wouldn't appreciate it.

What do you mean? This is a mod for modern warfare; the bot will be adjusted accordingly. I’ve included drones in the mod and have already showcased one; there will be many more types, and they will be a key focus of the mod, alongside complex air defense systems. Yeah, I have thought about this.

Building a Market unlocks training Slave class units at the Farmstead and Storehouse. 20 max, but +10 per Market (this is the limit I'd like to make global). The Slaves are capturable and die easily, but are 2x better gatherers than Citizens. Slaves are a gatherer unit only, while Citizens maintain the ability to build. There are 2 technologies specific to Slaves: Slave Trade (-50% train time) and Slave Markets (remove training limit, but Slaves are double cost). Citizens also have the "Slave Ownership" aura which boosts nearby Slave effectiveness. This basically replaced the old "Allure" aura of the old Female Citizen units.

"Say hello to my little friend".

What makes a game boring is the lack of variety and the repetition. That it would be more unpredictable, that it would be able to keep you from getting bored and immerse you with its dialogues. A human is capable of using a bunch of camels just because they look cool. Like Hannibal saying satirically: "I use elephants because they are big and look cool in my army, you know there are no elephants in Italy, now they will have them".

I managed a few days ago, I'll mention it after doing another one to completely address one of my Issues, but have not gotten around it yet.

I think it would be fun if the AI had more personality and used unexpected strategies. It would make the game more interesting if Petra sometimes retreated, tried different tactics, or even made funny comments during battles. That would make every match feel a little different.

I think adding more difficulty levels would be a good idea. That way, new players could enjoy the game without getting frustrated, while experienced players would still have a real challenge. It would be nice to have more options instead of making Petra simply easier or harder for everyone.

I agree! The overall style is a big part of what makes a game special. As long as AI content fits the original atmosphere and doesn’t feel out of place, I don’t see a problem with it.

Thanks for explaining! Hopefully you can figure out the PR issue soon. At least you can still report things through Issues for now.

That’s an interesting question! I think the main difference is how the engine handles unit behavior and game logic, not just how many models it can display. The actual limit probably depends on things like pathfinding, AI calculations, and how the game updates each unit. It would be interesting to see some stress tests showing how many units Pyrogenesis can handle before the engine itself becomes a bottleneck.

I think Wi-Fi stability can make a big difference in multiplayer games, especially when there are lots of units on the screen. Using a separate access point sounds like a good idea, but I’d also test a wired Ethernet connection to see if the desyncs still happen. That would help you figure out whether the problem comes from the wireless network or the game itself.

I think it’s a bit of both. AI decompilation can save a lot of time and help developers understand old or complicated code, but it can also make mistakes. It’s a useful tool, as long as people check the results instead of trusting everything AI produces.

Also, the specialists used shouldn't be exactly as attested, otherwise one would need catapult operators for somewhat small ship types, for example. That's why in the naval combat system I proposed I moved those thresholds up, while lowering other things like number of catapults or garrison slots (otherwise one would quite quickly reach hundreds of embarked troops), the latter of which I didn't even specify and, as with other details like which specialists would correspond to which ship types, is open for gameplay recalibration.