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Sorta. I think the Iphicratean peltasts were like that.

Actually the modern game as we know it (not counting pong, which is a sports game lol) originates from TTRPGs like DnD, which in turn come from the work of authors such as Tolkien. Maybe your’s isn’t, I’ll have you know that I find reality very fun.

https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/osprey-blog/2026/roman-cavalry-helmets/ Battle helmets began to evolve in the 2nd century AD, adopting what has become known as the pseudo-Attic form. An example from Theilenhofen (Germany) even incorporated a stylized moulded feather crest atop the bowl. Although still a copper-alloy sheathing over a ferrous core, they now imitated the classical Attic style of helmet in the actual bowl, although cheek pieces changed little in their form and decoration. Tinning was still used to emphasize the details of the underlying brass, so it might be said that battle helmets had changed while remaining essentially the same. The Later Principate saw further developments, with another conservative throw-back form, the pseudo-Corinthian helmet, becoming popular for cavalry. These changes in design probably owe more to fashion than to changing needs, since the cavalry helmets of the Early, High and Late Principates are essentially the same: one-piece bowl, decorative skinning and independent hinged cheek-pieces. The pseudo-Corinthian form aped the larger cheek pieces of contemporary infantry helmets, however, and ultimately fused them into a single visor, leaving a T-shaped opening for eyes and mouth, as with a helmet from Heddernheim (Germany). It was then a short step for the two types of helmet – battle and face-mask – to reunite. Replacing cheek pieces with a visor on the pseudo-Corinthian type of battle helmet made it a simple matter to add a removable face mask into the T-shaped opening and, thus, two types became one with the hybrid Pfrondorf (Germany) helmet.

Right. We are delighting in the challenge. The strategy. Competition. The history. For many, history is their "Fandom." Killing and destruction isn't the point. The drama is the point. Lessons learned and relearned. Achievement and politics.

They were used alongside more complex siege engines. Maybe could be an option available at phase 2. I think at least more civs without siege towers or catapults could have them.

I could not agree more and this, indeed, cannot be underlined enough. The game is supposed to be fun to play like solving a complex puzzle, just with way nicer graphics and more axes of freedom. Real war is never fun, for no-one.

@ManasManushyathanks for your initiative! When addressing Atlas itself, could you also make Atlas usable by external tools? That would be absolutely awesome! Here is a little wishlist of changes I would love to see: Pass the game’s command line through to Atlas Write a small status file and set an exit code. Open the game’s archives with read sharing, if nothing depends on exclusivity. (I don’t know why they are opened deny-read) Please have a look at the attached proposal document. I cannot and will not touch the sources myself as I am not a SW developer, hence don't want ot pollute the code basis (I am only using vibe-coding to define tools around Atlas using Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5/Sonnet 5.5). Still, if you agree, I'd ask Claude to provide change proposals for indiviual code sections (based on 0.29 SVN) for your review. Please let me know! Thanks and best regards, Grautvornix atlas-external-control-proposal.md

Perhaps with incendiary units. Someone throwing torches or immolating themselves with amphorae of oil

@ManasManushya Oh! Let me know if I can test it out

That would be excellent. Also, ranged units defending with daggers. Speaking of which, there was also skirmisher infantry that was used for close combat, right?

Not in a satisfactory way yet, and I personally don't support everyone having them—not as a siege unit; they serve more as a substitute for the lack of better siege equipment.

IIRC, grapejuice's overhaul mod adds secondary weapons to missile units (mostly because they have limited ammo)

I'd like to see if there can be automatic spear throw before melee. For thureos units, Romans, Gauls, Iberians, Germans.

Something similar could be implemented in vanilla as optional (it's a mod, @Nicolaus_von_Kues). For example, on top of having units switching weapons like now (Immortals at least), doing so with a modifier (CTRL?) could "lock it", activating automatic switching according to range. Doing the same when producing units could then be the shortcut for "Activate Auto-Queue", and in that way it could be done per unit and not in general, like that button works now.

It's good to know that that ticket has been given continuity.

Now they have to do the same with Homeworld: Cataclysm (later Emergence) and include it in the Homeworld Remastered Collection.

A complete revolution. I've heard that a lot of compilation has been done with AI.

Sure, but that's not what I say. I don't propose weapon switching, I propose to keep them separated, but to use representative types of ships for each task, which I do when going from threes (triḗrēs) to tens (dekḗrēs), the "higher type" that we know saw combat. Edit: if we wanted something switching with ships, it could be sails/oars, but it might be too technical, and oars would need an exhaustion bar for it to make sense.

Grapejuice has this iirc, albeit in a different way than might be expected (bowmen automatically draw swords/knives when enemies get within their minimum range)

Perhaps it could be implemented for more units. I think most ranged units could have a weak melee attack like in AOE3. Thureophoroi, Hastati, German spearmen, Celtic spearmen, Iberian infantry, could throw a single spear before melee.

Have you managed to get siege ladders working? (i cant test the mod right now since im on alpha 28) I think they could be available for all civs.

It is, at least on land units with persians immortals

I think the DE mod managed to have the Xiongnu champion cavalry switch bows and spears but im not sure.

This distinction might be partially due to gameplay limitations, i'm not sure weapon switching was implemented yet. So ranged and melee ships are separated.

It's not about realism, it's about being convincing. That the world you're playing with is convincing you. That's why video games are derived from cinema film. That's why I complain when I see how sometimes the gameplay of the game is about controlling hordes of Greek cavalry. It's also worth mentioning that you don't risk sacrificing game performance for realism. That's why old games weren't realistic, and the other thing is fun; reality isn't fun.