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A perfect square would be accurate but it may muddy recognition, since the standard civic center is a plaza with a rectangular building. A large square building with a courtyard and small windows could easily be interpreted as a fortress at first glance. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to try it both ways.

I understand the concern for recognition. Although square Kushite palaces/admitrative centers are some the most archaeologically recognizable structures in Kushite sites, along with Amun temples and Apedemak temples. It's always the same kind of pattern, and people familiar with Kushite archaeological sites will definitely recognize them. But a "squarish-rectangular" compromise is acceptable enough I presume. Just see what you do with it. Even if you follow Juli51's design exactly as it is, it would look great. I'm just nitpicking for the sake of historical accuracy

Personally, I haven't seen you playing multiplayer matches, could this be because you are using a different nickname than on forums or something else? In my opinion, before suggesting a total revision of the whole game you should be intimately familiar with current gameplay in order to see what to improve. (No offence intended by this remark)

First off, I think you do bring up a multitude of great points that have long been problems in your Gameplay Guidelines thread and it's clear you have spent a lot of effort into it. However, in my view, the team isn't just twiddling their fingers waiting for new ideas to implement ; this is a contribution-based project and we do need people to carry them out. On that line of thought, I think (personally) you'd have a much more convincing application if you took the following steps : Create a few patches and submit them to separate tickets on either code.wildfiregames.com or trac.wildfiregames.com. Small patches that a specific issue are best instead of a megapatch (e.g. Decrease movespeed of units, increase population of houses, Move hero production to earlier phases) are much easier to review and merge. Join and be active in our IRC and multiplayer lobby. You can probably find a lot of others willing to help. If you have any technical questions, #0ad-dev on IRC is a great place to ask. It helps if you tone () this down as well, since if you do get accepted, you would indeed get a "WFG Badge" and your actions and tone will reflect on the team as whole.

This is me being awkward from start to finish. And this is Anavultus being himself

Well, I like trading because it bring another historical aspect to the game, plus improve teamwork, etc.

@Tiber7: I would rather go for a complete redesign, not a punishment for using the existing system

@J.Avramenko: This is exactly why I support your and wraitii's idea to transfer the "territory" to a city core. 0A.D. is about city phases, not about territories. A city core fits it nicely and as I already said the civic center distance constraint already supports this idea. Thus it is not too difficult to convert the "territory" into a city core by reducing the territory gain of every expansive building drasticlly (just a few meters for more visually pleasing city borders as I said above)! Combine this with longer enduring units (wounded and only randomly killed) and the slow down + exhaustion and the gameplay gets a lot deeper, actually its Roadmap|design docs as mentioned by DarcReaver are already very good.

I'm not exactly sure what @LordGood will cook up, but I'll just weigh in my opinion on it now. I think @Juli51's drawing is stylistically great. My issue is with the dimensions. The structure should definitely be nearly square, with a small courtyard/light-well in the middle. The windows on the ground floor should be a little bit smaller, and the windows on the second floor could be slightly larger arched windows (an exposed brick arch would be especially nice and accurate) That having said, I really like the drawing, nice work!

@shieldwolf23: children units are more suited for a city building game, not for a combat-driven game like 0 A.D.

Including children units is too much, guys. When things like this come shooting out, I think it's time to step back and reevaluate. I don't like "provinces" as talked about here. I'd prefer something more dynamic as it is now, but I grow tired of talking about this stuff ad nauseum. Just play DE to see what I would do with territory and expansion. To make a long story short, I'd prefer to see the player building cities, rather than grabbing huge sections of land. In reality, empires had no real "borders" like we have today. The "border" was a mountain range or a river or a valley, and even then enemy armies easily penetrate and live off the land for weeks or months. That's why I refocused "territory" to be more about city boundaries than empire boundaries. Empires are the control of cities, IMHO, and their surrounding lands. You only "own" the land that you can defend. And the world at this time was something like 2% as populous as it is now. Large swathes of land were uninhabited or untapped, certainly undeveloped, and "control" from the capitol was nominal at best, hence strong core/weak countryside concept in DE. But, as long as the game remains moddable and I can have my way in my mod, then do what you want with hard "provinces." As usual, lots of reinventing the wheel here, for example about farms. Already good farming concepts available on the forum and in Trac last time I look. Check those out. Directionality: If it can make things simpler, perhaps directionality can be on a per battalion basis, rather than per soldier. Just throwing that out there.

DarcReaver, your observations have been brought forth before. The military system is under attack often, also for renowned games like Total War there are still unrealistic issues (check the internet for critics). I like the direction the document promotes. It is just that it is a very complicated endeavour. I have literally spent weeks working on increased realism. 0 B.C.'s capability system allows entities to have Goals, Plans and follow a civilization's state of knowledge (no phases, it is continuous). Such untertakings are possible but they are tedious and easily fall behind: * SVN compatibility * getting things to work (UnitAI et alia, complicated) * getting style right and catch up and maintain compatibility with new functionality upstream * being tested well enough So indeed the community - we - must do more to convince a farther spectrum of developers that more realism should be one of the more dominant goals to get steer the general development towards fixing the issues piece meal. > One thing I disagree about is the dynamic line of sight taking too much performance. Warcraft III, released back in 2002, 15 years ago, already had this mechanic that buildings, cliffs and trees limited the sight range of units. This is more a matter of efficient coding than a real obstacle. Of course you need someone who can code this efficiently. But there we're back to the kickstarter option. Such sophisticated functionality is already employed conceptually, entities have a vision range as have ranged entities individual reach. Also auras have individual range. Dynamic Level of sight in terms of height, weather conditions et alia also are possible. Its powers may not be fully unleashed (at last performance is a limiting factor I'm afraid as we are bound to 1 thread for good reasons and many entities are desirable for realistic tactics to become possible). Actually 0A.D.|0B.C. is very powerful. Thus raising a kickstarter for art works looks way more important to me (considering that animations play a huge role in conveying a realistic smooth battle tactics atmosphere). Coders know logic, maths well enough to make a living in other oceans. Also open, free of charge coding is common among world citizen coders or rookies that are keen to get attribution. Open art stands in contrast with this. The ego of an artist is very fragile due to the very artistic nature. Thus very few are strong enough to engage in open source projects. > the role of women Women as population provider approaches real world facts, which makes sense. Women as morale boost also makes sense for the same reason which is why the morale boost makes sense. See guys working when a beautiful woman is close after they realize she's taking notice of them. And everyone thinks it's him. haha Even more, a nice balace of #men, #women is required for a population to work. There are civilizations where women are seen as costly (provide gift to marriage, ...). e.g. China has a lack of women (Germany also has had roughly half amount of women than men according to BayernPortal since many decades). A balance is not only important to avoid quarrels among men (which may have been more common in barbarian times than nowadays). Also too many women or men in a homogenous group might get distracted, chat too much, leading to injuries and reducing efficiency. A man operates a machine more carefully when a female is close than with a about female joking male companion. (own experience, I have seen more than one people lose their eyelight almost entirely only due to that) The real world is dangerous. Not only in battle. But also for battle morale, knowing or at least believing females waiting for one at home increases morale and endurance (in addition to what you said about endurance). wraiti wrote: > -forbidding farms inside territories (or possibly dividing their efficiency considerable) Vote for the latter. If we achieve it the realistic way, i.e. that the ways towards fields, food storage (which has often been outside in the wilderness) and animal handling are longer, then this divides their efficiency. Now that there is free space available inside the territory|city core and not everything full of buildings, this complicates things. A solution could be to introduce a "claim" system similar to how property can be purchased nowadays (the city could have claims to all territory, such that farms have long ways to go if their farm building is constructed inside it. Increasing the role of fertile lands - not only for crops, but also for animals, may also help. The grassland could decrease in fertility once it is within city territory or depending on unit traffic | proximity (maybe an aura on buildings nearby). >-Actually using the concept of provinces from the original design, where the map was divided in provinces and you could conquer those in a largely predetermined way to acquire their resources. This feels limiting, but now that I think of it it's actually probably a much better way to handle this. That being said, it kind of implies larger maps, as do a lot of other things. Artificial regions will lead to issues no matter whether in the concept of provinces or territory. Provinces could nevertheless be a natural realistic addition when military dominance zones or "control" - as the Institute for the study of war calls these regions - can be strengthened. This could be achieved as side effect of the slowing down of gameplay and thus increased emphasis on strategic movements, e.g. close this high pass over the Caradhras with a mobile unit (that gets exhausted up there quickly and recovers virtually not at all, thus must be rotated at times) and the main valley entrance with a military force dug in. Et voila, the region is secured, becoming province of the empire. Now our tax collectors can visit the inhabitants following reconnaissance. > To prevent players from simply sending out their first soldiers to expand everywhere, [...] Again, it may be wise to counter this like it is countered in the real world: supply. You cannot build a base with resources from the city center when you are far away unless you have a train of supply and of course adequate protection for your convoy. Early on this is very difficult to achieve. And as civic centers are not allowed to be built close to each other, there is (and should be no way to increase your city core to spam the whole territory). Building close to the territory border could still increase territory but very subtly, only some meters, e.g. for a house just enough to place another house, not more. These small outbursts into the wilderness away from the busy city core will make the overall appearance of the territory more visually pleasing. > BFME also used neutral creatures like trolls, spiders, Orcs or Wargs to protect settlement points. As you said, in the case of historical accuracy, the neutral creatures could be represented by native inhabitants who may not be happy when a civilization settles in their old, beloved traditional lands. The choice is to either convince them in some economic|diplomatic way or to keep them under control militarily (costly!). Otherwise they will lay fire to your construction site or kidnap your workers or will send animal herds to create chaos and stop construction or what not. Looks perfect for triggers or HybridAI. > To prevent maps to be overburdened with neutral units everywhere, I think the provinces should be connected to map size. I agree with the prevention of too many native units (not neutral or at least only neutral till your units enter their region - at latest when construction starts!). In terms of provinces in general natural geography should - again - be the guideline as this is exactly what the historical community is interested in. We may also want to pitch the ancient civs on artificial or generic random maps but generally we want to see if we can manage to defend this or that realistic territory with all its advantages and disadvantages. Once in the role of the Romans, once the Persians, once the Greeks, and so on. Having all "provinces"|regions balanced could become boring quickly. This is what your proposals also promote, i.e. more flexible paths of development and strategy. I.e. when we have the nasty spot which is overly exposed or has few resources, then we must make the best of it and adapt our strategy. This is how life works. Adaption. From your critics can be derived, that currently there is no adaption, instead there is a clicking rush and respamming of units that directly find death after some minutes of seeing the day of life instead of smart tactics and overall strategy. Grugnas wrote: > but that siege is too hard to defend because enemy units can easly pass through the first line and destroy the catapult True, the penetration of the front lines is one of the more frequently criticized military issues. Shieldwolf with DarcReaver wrote: > > I’d strongly suggest of battalions with multiple units in a single entity. > Yes, something similar to Rise of Nation’s infantry units. You’ve made a good observation in that it would feel you are striving to become an Emperor instead of a glorified village chief. In my opinion this is lost developer effort, because formations are battaillons - just more flexible, so be happy. And rather let's work on how these battaillons could be controlled more efficiently|exclusively et alia. (Maybe a hotkey for selection formations only - and also an option to lock formation members, i.e. to not dissolve and do not resupply?) It is known that I agree with shieldwolf that children have to be added. Maybe together with women as population providers. Both leper and wraitii are right, it is possible but it also is pretty difficult to get a directional combat system work and function beautifully. Shieldwolf said: > I disagree on it being timed, and being permanent. That button will make it the player’s choice to have his citizens be an economic unit or a military one. And - to add DarcReaver's suggestion - have it either lose all resources that it bore or have it bring them somewhere or hide them - depending on personality|global directives (e.g. player decret "Save on resources! We have little."). In 0 B.C.E. due to capability system (complex beast and not working yet!) it is possible, in 0 A.D. not so much as resources are just numbers and can not be transfered to another entity (unless as loot which might somehow be possible to transfer it as loot to e.g. a badger burrow entity). > depending on where the unit is (units travelling in roads are faster), or the seasons (units in winter have slower speeds), the unit’s speed changes. Epic! Attack value randomization could turn out very difficult to balance. (Ranged accuracy already is influenced by spread. Maybe melee will get more interesting with the penetration <-> armor system + then inflict the damage, as also has been brought up often before but not found its way yet.) DarcReaver wrote: > From Feudal Ages to Knights and castles to Gunpowder and Renaissance. In 0 ad there is no such Age Advance. And exactly this is why the units currently die way too early. It no more realistic to spawn random new units out of nowhere than to have some grow up quickly. > "free villagers", afterall this would remove player control on using pop cap. From company of heroes call in system I know that this mechanic isn't >always the best, even if its free hmm.. in my opinion children should be actors only, maybe props to a women, reducing its efficiency but after a certain amount of time (long! because of city phases, not ages), this then should increase the popcap and the female be at normal efficiency again. This way females have a purpose. It's very nice to have them in the simulation (it's so much more realistic). What about a compromise? Make units endure longer (harder to kill, wounded instead -- only randomly transfer them to nirvana, the others immobile on the ground - another strategic resource) and yet include children (because a city is not build within one generation generally and even if, then its flourish point is some generations later - without condition of general validity). DarcReaver about shieldwolf's civilian<->soldier button proposal: > Not sure, then it's pretty much the same as it is now. Either right click a field, or right click an enemy. True. Which is why I think the real issue is timing. The time from citizen to soldier is way to short. If transformation time (in both directions) was longer, then scouting was more important. In that sense. Great ideas and as so often we'll be stopped by the complexity and the fact that it is a lot lot work to get any of these proposals developed in a way that pleases most of our people involved. > Yes, but from my experience artificailly slowing down units is not a fun concept for players, it's more annoying. CoH 2 had a "blizzard" weather system which caused winter storms that made units immobile and have no vision while it lasted. The feature was removed due dto massive complaints from the community. Nobody liked it. If that is artificial, then even the speed of the units as they are now are artificial. Actually everything is artificial as we are coding a simulation which is an approximation at best. When Napoleon (disputed) or the Nazis (fact) got stuck in the snow before reaching Moscow, leaders also were in rage as were the soldiers, e.g. when Nazi officers burnt newly arrived coats to avoid quarrels among the soldiers. It is this kind of events like blizzards or vulcano eruption which is fun for a history interested community as long as it is used very sparsely and not necessarily leads to immediate annihilation|immobility. (Note this is my personal opinion.) > base accuracy increases to 100% upto minimum distance (say 4 or 6). after which it decrease again to 50% due to getting meled. An approximation of this already exists if I remember the code correctly. (Especially if units are wounded and not die so often, this could be a useful addition to have the archer at least take one last enemy unit out wounded before being wounded by melee himself.) The combined elite-military, economic|architectural purpose of the Stoa according to Thorfinn the Shallow Minded, J.Avramenko sounds sensible.

As promised the concept. 6.100 words of pure gameplay related stuff. Note: As this thread digs REALLY deep in the gameplay development, please read the document carefully and try to comprehend what I've written. I don't want read one liner comments like "idea X on page Y doesn't fit my personal view". You have to look at the concept as a whole instead of nitpicking small details. The layout isn't set in stone, it's meant as an approach to get a red line into the game. And thus it's important to get connections between different game aspects. Edit: the current text layout still isn't 100% like I want it to be but oh well... I'll leave it "as-is". If there is a strange looking paragraph simply ignore it Have fun reading! Part I: Gameplay Analysis “From sticks and stones to an Empire: How to employ a civilization concept for a modern time RTS” Game: 0 AD example faction: Athenians Author: DarcReaver Date: March 5th 2017 Introduction This document aims to summarize the current game mechanics, compare them to the original gameplay/game design concept, identify differences and problems with the current layout and create a solution concept. As some of the proposed concepts and ideas require quite a bit of restructuring or addition of code this is to be taken as a serious roadmap that can be followed for all civilizations in the future. If there are technical difficulties are not solvable by volunteers I’d honestly suggest to start another kickstarter campaign to hire a couple of professional coders who are then assigned the tasks that the internal team cannot solve. I know that this has been done in the past and failed, but I think the failure at least partly has to do with the fact that there is no “greater aim” for the game in its current state. There is no direction the game, so there is no amount of code able to finish it, thus the money would have gone to waste anyways (note that this is my personal opinion). But before doing kickstarters, or hiring coders, artists or whatever there has to be clear in which direction the game is heading, which leads us to this document. I believe there has to be a separate discussion on the kickstarter campaign some other time. Don’t get the wrong idea, I know that the proposed concepts below require extensive work and testing. However, please keep in mind that I’ve taken the original gameplay document as reference and adjusted my concepts towards implementation of the intended features. It’s just that my personal believe is that 0 AD in its very heart is not intended to be a “mass up an army and throw them into battle” style RTS. And to be honest – why would someone need another macro oriented game? We already have Age of Empires II HD, Stronghold, RUSE, Starcraft II and a couple of other games which already please that kind of player audience. And trying to mess with those games will most likely lead to a defeat since they’re made by professionals with years of experience in the game creation and have/had huge budgets available to polish their products. The result of this should be clear: 0 ad has to follow its own path instead of trying to copy and combine aspects from other games. So, let’s move on and summarize the current status of the game: General observations: City Borders When starting a game, the player base is surrounded by City borders. Inside the borders, construction of buildings is allowed. The border range can be increased by techs, certain buildings and progression in the city phases. Resource system & starting economy Basic soldiers, cavalry and women can harvest resources. The earlygame revolves around building basic infantry or women and assigning them to resource spots. The training speed is fast, resulting in high counts of collecting villagers in the earlygame (more than 30 or 40 units with 8 minutes). Resources are used to create more buildings and soldiers and research economic and military technologies. Houses and other buildings have comparably long construction times. Various economic upgrades can improve different aspects of gathering processes and are fast to research. Gameflow Most essential military units are available in the first Phase, allowing very early rushes with a variety of units. Building times are very high for buildings and very low for units. Resource costs are mostly the same for all types of military units. The available buildings allow defensive gameplay (farms, citizen soldiers, houses can garrison). The capturing mechanic helps raiding by being able to take over enemy buildings. As the game progresses there are more units unlocked to use. Every building is required to tech up. Siege is available very late, until then the mixture of capturing buildings and raiding economy is the way to go. Synopsis, current faction content: Buildings: Phase I: Agora – main building - House – provides population - Sitobolon – farm tech building and drop off point for food - storehouse – economic tech building and drop off point for minerals, lumber - Agros – unlimited food production - Epaulos – tech building for herdables/huntables/cavalry - Watchtower – scout building - Limen – harbor building - Strategeion – main military building Phase II: - Blacksmith – military tech building - Naos – advanced tech building - Emporios – market - Pyrgion – Defense tower - Theilos – defensive walls - Stoa Hellenica – specialist barracks building Phase III: - Epitheikisma – Fortress - Wonder – wonder building - Gymnasion – advanced military building - Theatron – economic civic tech building - Prytaneion – economic military special building This is the complete building number that is available to a player when choosing the Athenian civilization, 19 buildings. To unlock Higher City phases a number of buildings of the previous phase are required. Units: Phase I: - Hoplites (spearmen) - Peltastes Thrax (skirmisher) - Prodromos (ranged spear cavalry) - Psilos (slingers) Phase II: - Rhomphaiaphoros (heavy melee) - Thyreophoros (heavy skirmisher) - Iatros (healer) - Hippei (melee cavalry) Phase III: - Oxybeles (scorpion) - Lithobolos (catapult) - Epilektos (phalanx city guard unit) - Toxotes Skythikos (ranged archer) - Toxotes Kretikos (ranged archer) - Epibatos (naval infantry) - Heroes (Themistokles, Perikles, Iphikrates) Right now, the player starts off with basic infantry (hoplites), basic cavalry (Prodromos) and a basic ranged attacker (Psilos) without any necessary teching. Building a barracks adds a basic skirmisher (Peltastes) to the mix. Phase two adds healers, a special infantry and a special skirmisher (Rhomphaia/Threophoros), available through a second barracks and cavalry (Hippeis) Phase three unlocks siege (Oxybeles/Lithobolos), a City Guard Phalanx (Epilektos), ranged units (Toxotes Kretikos and Skythikos) aswell as naval infantry (Epibatos) and heroes. Summary of current game mechanic issues (note: “tier” means tech level) City Borders While in theory an interesting concept, the implementation at this stage is limiting the game more than being a useful feature. - Expansion is hard to do (Agoras require Phase II and lots of resources/time to be built) - No good options to expand the city borders apart from spamming houses or barracks - on certain maps it’s impossible to place drop off points for lumber and metal near the first major forest, leading to a low efficiency lumbering early on Result of this feature: Cavalry rushes and booming (don’t expand and spam economic units) are the choices to pick when playing the game. As it’s hard to work towards resources in the center of the map it’s easier to stick to the own borders and produce food with farming and harvest nearby lumber while building more and more economic units. Cavalry is very mobile and useful for harassment. Regular units don’t do the job well because it’s not possible to chase villagers Buildings: - no interconnection of building types: This means that there is no possibility to limit the amount of unit types available to the player. Every unit is trainable quickly, that way there is no interesting unit transition like archers into cavalry into infantry. Of course it’s possible to first field archers then cavalry and then infantry, but this doesn’t require planning or build orders. Just build a barracks and you’re done with your military. - forced construction of building phase buildings does not allow flexibility, players always have to build everything to get access to higher tier: This is an issue for the game duration. There is no possibility to follow a fast tech into a high tier to finish off opponents with superior units, or to deliver a teching advantage. As an example in AoE there are civs which are fit to quickly advance through the ages (like Byzantines, Mongols or Saracens) to field superior units like knights. Combined with the lack of additional military content in phase II the city phase feels dragged out. It takes ages to get through this phase without gaining a significant difference or advantage from phase I. - Building cost- and tech-requirements are unbalanced i.e. a fortress only offers two siege weapons while requiring lots of teching to reach and lots or resources to build. This results in unbalanced strategic options for building progression. Players have to build overpriced or underpriced buildings to get benefits that do not match the initial price. The progression should be: the more important the building the higher the cost should be. Units - Too many units are available at the start Overall the game offers a wide number of different units, but the unit arrangement is strange. In a strategy game the unit strength is usually increased over time, either via upgrades for existing units (called scaling) or by giving access to stronger units. A player starts off with his weakest units and as the game progresses he unlocks more and more powerful units, ultimately with some type of specialist unit that offers a very large advantage in one area. Most units with specific strengths have specific weaknesses which create a so called “rock paper scissor” counter system. The more specialized the unit is the harder the weakness is applied to enable countering it. This is essential for a wellrounded counter system. - Unit upgrades gives too large gaps between unteched and teched units It seems as if the bonuses provided from teching are very large, while unupgraded units are extremely weak, upgraded units almost take no damage compared to them. This is bad, as it requires players to instantly upgrade their units to stand a chance against an opponent, limiting the choice to “mass” weak units instead of choosing to tech up to get a smaller force of more advanced, stronger units. - Heroes come late and require lots of resources for limited effects This is a separate issue and my personal opinion on this matter is that heroes have too little effect on the game. According to the design guide the game takes inspiration from Warcraft III in which heroes have a very large role from the very start of the game. Getting early heroes, leveling them up and fighting the enemy is very important and can decide a match early. The hero system in 0 ad doesn’t nearly as much influence the overall game, which makes me question the reason why heroes are in the game in the first place. - Formations are fiddly and micro intensive The Formations are interesting, as they provide tactical options for fighting, like forming a phalanx to attack melee warriors. It’s a logical thing that there is a necessary minimum of soldiers to form a formation. The problem with the formations right now is that it’s not possible to select units in a formation and ignore units that are not included in the formation. Since units in 0ad are pretty small in a battle there is a constant reforming of formations since new trained units rejoin the formations on double click selection if you reassign the formation. - Unit training times are too quickly, massing troops early game is absolutely possible. Rushing with units from the town center is possible. This dumbs down the game. There is no strategical choice between building a military building path to unlock certain units and an early economic boom defensive playstyle. Instead it’s possible to train relatively potent units from the very start and the “man-spam train” is on track. While creating variety in the early training order this dulls down the tradeoffs that have to be made in the earlygame by players. In a good RTS there is a variety of choices to make. Either train melee units early, train ranged units or try a mobility approach for harassment like cavalry units. Each path means that the other military units are delayed by X amount of time and there is a tradeoff between having more pressure on the enemy or have increased economic power. Since cavalry can also collect food, there is zero disadvantage in training cavalry compared to training economic units. In 0ad there is no delay for fielding other types of units (except for the time to collect the required resources and building time), so army compositions are very flexible. This renders tactical advantages from training certain units useless as they can immediately be countered. I got the feeling this is why there is so much cavalry rushing going on. A mobile early cavalry army allows to put pressure on an enemy, and can only be countered by other cavalry as regular units are too slow to catch up. The mobility of ranged units is high; most skirmisher cavalry and cavalry archers available to the civs at the start. Ranged cavalry can outrun their counters and pick off single units. In RTS players who can choose their battles are in an advantageous position.

@Undying Nephalim: You are the most undying nephalim ever Chasen. I am looking forward to these crystaline lattices. I will do what I can to help you. I also am working on drone armies, so there is some overlap between your and my works. Not only in terms of required functionality, also artwise (it will take a long time (decades?) till our time machine 0B.C. reaches the extraterrestrial phase though).

Another few options to choose from: 1) Add a minimum distance between markets (80-160m) and set a limit of traders/market(5). This will make sure that max 2 or so markets will be made per base and if that player wants to trade using more than 10 traders, he/she must expand(thus partially solving problem reported by @Grugnas). Also reduce trade income with ports by 50% to prevent abuse of those. 2) Add a total limit of X traders/player with upgrades to expand this limit. 3) Limit of 1 market/civic center and limit of about 10 traders. Trade Income should also be reduced by maybe 30-50%(since there are quite a few factions with trade team bonuses). I feel the 1st choice would be the best, since a set limit for a certain unit isn't that inviting.

A simple fix could be that. traders move between CC instead of markets. a single player cant trade until he adds another city to his empire. The distance will automatically get controlled because off CC placement restrictions. (docks could have a limit of 1 per CC) To limit the dependence of economy on trader as compared to citizen gatherers its pop requirement can be increased. to 2. Since Pop space is the most imp resource in late game. Also worth considering the traders are unrealistically fast right now. A 50% speed reduction will make them less efficient and more easily raidable. So only an option after running out of resources- stone and metal. Also cost should be food+wood. food for the human and cattle. wood for cart. what purpose does metal have here? Trader is supposed to earn profit by shuttling goods from high supply to high demand. And this profit is in the form of in game currency. If metal is divided into iron and a currency resource(silver or gold or coin). then it should be the resource which gets earned. The way it works right now. it doesnt make sense how food/wood/stone are gathered by trading.

+ there are many ways to implement trading, it doesn't have to be the AOE way. Asking what trade should accomplish in this particular game (what role does it have) helps deciding on which mechanism could fit

Maybe make trader cost more for each new trader. I already do this with cult statue. Works fine. But I think by the end of a long game you want trading to replace gathering by a large amount, maybe 50%.

I am an active player, that might be true. But I find it strange that you march in and want to change this and this without any previous contributions to the game. Many people in lobby also feel the same - and not all of them play that good. Also you are evading my questions with a single "nope" which is not really a good answer for someone planning huge changes to the game. Every player has a right to know and inquire about the exact nature of any change in the game which he is currently playing. So you are saying that only people who don't play the game should discuss changes to it? Sorry, but you are very blunt and rude, how can you possibly get along in future with developers or other people if you are chosen as "Gameplay Developer"?

Nothing has changed gameplay wise? Unfortunately that's not true, you probably just peek inside, see no "obvious" changes and go away again. If you want to improve anything you should keep track with the game. You say you played a bit in alpha 19 and 10 games in recent alpha.. does that mean you skipped alpha20, or you are unnotified that alpha 21 has been released? Pardon me, but I feel you are absurdly negative, just because this game still needs lots of work on it doesn't mean you have to say that it is 0 right now (that IS what you are saying). You should also go make a mod with all the suggested changes and then we can see how well it turns out and maybe even consider implementing some elements into the official release. The changes you propose are of a huge magnitude. I am also a bit unclear as to what "Gameplay Developer" title would entail. From what I read so far I can only deduct that you suggest changes and want others to implement them right away?

It's been a while. ;-) Still looking forward to this very much!

I think I'm almost at a point where I can comfortably delay my other works.

I would just like to say that I like the design document. It's a definite step forwards with a much more coherent vision than what is currently in place. There is one point I would make. The Stoa. It was a commercial hub. All said, is it bad that there are specialists trained there? No, but they shouldn't be usual to give off the impression that this is a training centre. Rather, they could have unique characteristics like a nearly instantaneous training time but paired with either a high cost or a hard cap to the number of units of them you could field. To make it seem less militaristic, it could have some of the higher tier economic upgrades available at it, making its construction signal either a harder, more invested military push or a strategy towards an economic boom.

I'm getting settled into a new computer, once I have my workspace all set up I'll come back to this and kush

@LordGood Any plans on progressing with the construction-progression actors?

Dacia is for sequel. For Empires Ascendant I think Kushites, Scythians, and Thracians are best bets.

Part II: Solution Concept taking Atheneans as example civilization: Excerpt from design doc: “Developers do not seem to be content to further the traditional RTS in the same vein as Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Red Alert, and Warcraft II. Though some are fleeing, we are going to stake a claim in the RTS genre. There is still much innovation to be made. This for us means: A. Less tedious/mindless micro-management B. More strategic thinking C. Greater stress on planning, formations, and tactics D. Choices, Choices, and more Choice ” Right now, none of this is actually present in the game. 0 AD combines all negative features of the game combined with a broken gatherer concept to make the whole game more “unique”. This is a problem and really unfortunate. We have lots and lots of unnecessary micromanagement, almost no strategic depth, no real planning. Only thing already implemented is the use of formations and tactics like flanking of a Phalanx. My aim is to create gameplay patterns that match the points above: - removal or repetitive and unnecessary micro management - employment of battle tactics in conjunction with formations, trampling, surprise attacks, flanking and directional combat. These battle tactics make up for the fact that there are less total units on the field. There is more tactical micro in place than strategical micro - The fighting duration between units is increased. This reduces the need to permanently replace units lost with the “manspam train” - set the waypoint to the battlefield. Newly produced soldiers move towards the battlefield every couple of seconds and after a while this looks like a train moving along the map. - Enforcing a teching pattern that allows a greater diversity in army compositions, and to make certain “cookie-cutter” unit combos harder to reach. - Creating variety in combat. The outcome shouldn’t always be the same. This is accomplished by varying weapon damage and directional combat and creating small amounts of luck based chances. - Making units more durable allows constructive army micro. I.e. more options to heal wounded units. Unit preservation becomes more important and easier. This punishes mindless suicide raids and rewards taking care of units. General earlygame changes: 1. Remove all units from the Town center except for women and citizens. All units are trained in batches of different sizes (the exact number is up to discussion, I’d say we start with 2 women and 2 citizens per training interval. Training time and resource costs are increased accordingly). Gathering rates are changed, this is covered in a separate point. House pop cap is increased; fewer houses to provide more population. Reason: less repetitive micro required by lowering the amount of clicks to get the eco going. Increased gathering rates allow less gatherers to get the necessary resources. This is also important since military will not be able to gather, too (see below). Less houses for progress means less spam to build them. House walls are less attractive and palisades become the choice of defensive building at the start of the game. This all frees up time for the player to think ahead of how he’s going to setup the game while maintaining a relatively complex economic system. I’d strongly suggest of battalions with multiple units in a single entity. This allows less individual micromanagement (-> “clicking speed”) and allows a better implementation of formations. Additionally, battalions create a better atmosphere of managing armies and an empire, not a bunch of ravaging soldiers and a couple of farmer’s daughters Depending on the eco setup the gathering processes can be tweaked to match the size of women “battalions” and Citizens. I.e. maximum gatherers are 4/8/12 for small/ medium/ large resource spots. 3. Slow down everything. Women speed, soldier speed, cavalry speed. It’s pretty obvious that the game runs like a turbo random map game in Age of Empires on double speed. Way too hectic for a game with such a detailed economy and military system. Instead, the focus should go more into automatization of processes to allow more strategical planning. This also makes “fast clicking” less of a requirement to manage the game well. This will improve the game pace massively. 4. Citizens – they do no longer start with their weapons, instead they only work as male collectors. They collect food, wood, metal and stone faster than women, and they can hunt with spears or bows. They have the option to be “called to arms” to receive their weapons but lose their ability to collect resources (in case of Atheneans: Citizens turn into Hoplites). The upgrade is permanent. Alternative: Citizens “call to arms” is a timed ability. When activated Citizens run towards the Civic Center (or Blacksmith) and receive their weapons. When leaving the city boundaries or after a certain time they drop their weapons and become gatherers again. Reason: having an army that can collect resources is problematic. As soon as a player decides to attack, the player loses resources from not gathering resources. To limit the negative effects of this the Citizen speed must be high so travelling to the enemy doesn’t take too long. This makes units look ridiculous when they sprint across the map. The amount of units collecting resources makes it necessary to slow down individual gathering rates, so unit massing is important to gain economic bonuses. The “call to arms” concept allows players to react to early attacks by calling their citizens to defend the city. Raiding economy easier with regular units, as the gatherers cannot fight back efficiently. There is a tradeoff between military force and economic force. This conceptual change still contains the spirit of “Citizen Soldiers” that the game favors as a core element, but in a less problematic way. Military units should not double as resource gatherers. 5. Women can only collect food, and the efficiency aura is removed from them. Gathering from herdables, fields and berries is significantly more efficient. They cannot hunt efficiently because they are not able to use a bow or spear for a ranged attack. They can still collect from them if a Citizen first kills the animal first. A mix of Citizens and Women early on is more important as both units synergize well. Mindless massing of women is made less attractive, since the amount of herdables or berries is limited early on. On the contrary it’s an option to gain an advantage from taking free food on the map with high efficiency by having women collect wild berries and i.e. protect them from raids with male, called to arms citizens. This also allows players to expand early on and increases the necessity to keep scouting the map for assault targets. Being sneaky by collecting hidden resources rewards players with saved resources on early fields. 6. Neutral gaia herdables on the map: herdables can be captured (copy from AoE II, I know. But it’s good!) and then fatten over time. They can be moved around and be gathered from citizens and Women. 7. Starting units are reworked: Atheneans/civs in general no longer start with a mixure of units. The starting units are limited to two Women and two Citizen. The citizen either serves as a scout or can help with hunting to improve food gathering. Since Atheneans are a defensive civ a fast ranged cavalry scout and Psilos are unfit as starting units. Atheneans should be slooooow. Resource layout: Any good RTS needs a clear role for each type of resource that is available. Example: Company of Heroes features 3 resources – manpower, fuel, munitions. Manpower is used for training new units, teching all kinds of upgrades and reinforcing squads. Fuel is used to bring vehicles on the field and tech global upgrades, for example enable the usage of grenades for Riflemen. Munitions are used for squad specific upgrades like giving an MG gunner to a tank or adding sight scopes, or to give a Panzerschreck to a squad. Munitions also are used for usage of active abilities – artillery strikes, Air raids, smoke barrages, tossing grenades and so on. Something similar is in place for Warcraft III, too: Units require gold. Items and combat enhancing features require gold aswell. Teching, buildings and specialized units require lumber as a second resource. A pattern like this should be enforced for 0 AD. Players need to know that if they want to do X they need resource Y. My proposal would be following: - Food is used for training gatherers, melee infantry and cavalry. Military techs and combat enhancing techs require food. - Wood/lumber is used for construction of non-military buildings and required for economic upgrades. Training ranged units requires wood. Wood is also needed to progress city phases. - Stone is used to create military buildings. Walls, Towers, barracks, Fortresses. The creation of Siege weapons requires stone aswell. Stone is needed to progress in the next city phases. - Concept proposal : Metal is split up into two resources. One is called Silver, the other Iron. Silver is used to tech economic upgrades and army upgrades. Iron is used for training soldiers. Advantage would be that there are more options to customize the gathering process into “unit massing” or “teching progress”. Silver is a teching resource, while Iron is a production resource. Elite units like Chariots, Elephants or mercenaries can require Silver as training resource to mix things up for additional gameplay depth. - Alternatively, Metal is a combined military production and teching resource. It’s used for training every military unit that is fielded. Military techs and combat enhancing techs require metal. Economic techs require metal, too. Upgrading city phases requires metal (or silver). Building layout for Atheneans: Phase I: Buildings built by women: houses, farms. Buildings build by Citizens: Apotheke, Strategeion, Sitobolon, Epaulos, Blacksmith, Naos, Pyrgion, Limen Proposed building dependencies in a picture: Conceptual changes: Apotheke: can be built anywhere, drop off point for lumber, stone and metal Sitobolon: unlocks the option to build fields, contains economic upgrades for harvesting and gathering berries Epaulos: this building contains upgrades for hunting and gathering from animals. This building provides upgrades for the overall performance of cavalry units. It no longer trains sheep or goats (the training herdables will be used in a different way in a different civ concept, will be covered in the future). Blacksmith: contains military upgrades, and unlocks ranged units. Limen: a basic shipyard that contains fishing boats and transport ships. Transport ships can be garrisoned by soldiers and then used to capture enemy ships. Strategeion: by default, it only enables to train Hoplites Athenae. Further contains Peltastes Thrax and Prodromos (require City phase) Naos: contains healers and heroes. Yes, you read correctly, I’d suggest heroes and healers are put in an earlier stage of the game to increase their influence on the gameprogress. Of course, considering that they join the game earlier they will work in a different manner and have different stats. Hero units will be featured in a separate position below. Pyrgion and Palisades: defensive buildings for a defensive styled civilization, cheap, fast to build, but easy to destroy Phase II (600 Wood / 400 Stone/200 metal, requires 3 buildings to be constructed): (all constructed by Citizens) Emporios: Market building, contains upgrades that allow trading, increase economic efficiency (that means: upgrades in here allow resources to last longer, especially metal) Gymnasion: Advanced military building, trains Pikemen and contains upgrades that increase infantry effiency (more hitpoints, better attack, better speed etc.). Also trains Hippeis and thus provides a gameplay focus on infantry units and to make them more versatile. Additionally, cavalry helps out the immobile Phalanx formations by protecting the flanks and applying pressure to the enemy. The disadvantage is that this building does not contain hard counter units, and thus it’s necessary to provide the correct army composition to make use of the units from the Gymnasion. Hellenic Stoa: Advanced military building, contains Rhomphaiaphosos, Thyreophosos and Toxotes Skythikos/Kretikos. This building serves by providing a mixture of dedicated hard counter units that hit hard but are specialized. Also contains upgrades for said units. Agora: main civil building that expands the command area and creates further colonies. Trains gatherers and allows to advance through city phases (mostly like it is at the moment). Theikos: improvement of wooden Palisades. Those walls cost stone and have better stats (obviously). Can be built anywhere by default. Defense Tower: building that shoots arrows (obviously) Phase III (700 Wood/ 1000 Stone / 500 Metal, require 2 buildings to be constructed): (all constructed by citizens) Epistoklisma: Fortress used as ultimate defensive building, contains upgrades for military units in general (i.e. training speed). Furthermore allows construction of various siege weapons. Theatron: economic boost building. This building increases all gatherer speed and efficiency in the civic center radius (similar to the Wheel technology in Age of Empires) Prytaneion: Government building, contains techs that affect cavalry units and provide bonuses to general infrastructure: faster construction of buildings, population efficiency, unit costs, ships and so on. It basically boosts the economy indirectly. Example for Athenians: Reformations of Iphikrates that upgrade regular Hoplites to Naval soldiers and replaces Toxotes Skytikos with Toxotes Kretikos. Wonder: serves double as a victory condition and boosts all military unit’s performance significantly (the wonder is a proud sign of how advanced a civilization is, and thus the population will greatly try to keep it that way) Limen Megalos (military shipyard): Upgrade for the regular Limen, alternatively an own building that enables construction of large ships.

This one is Template Tech tree for Antiquity Theme Based in several Strategy games and 0.A.D Colony Concept is complement to A17. My Technology tree, is incomplete because the other part is the Official Tech Tree (A17 Release) and are missing some Special Technologies for each Faction and Civilizations because is generic have Basic Technologies for every Civilization in Ancient Time Frame (Bronze and Iron Late Antiquity) I was posted here becasuse Im not sure if Devs are interesting in or some Modders. Can be Adapted to Medieval nd other Ages. Civic Centre Technologies Craftmanship Artists Villagers construct buildings 20% faster Phase: 3/4 Cost200 Wood, 300 Food Research Time: 50s Civilization(s): All Illustration: mason and carpenterstools Source:AOE andAOK Local Laws / Legal Documentation Civil Buildings cost -15% wood, Vilagers 10% Health Phase: 2 Cost 50 food, 25 metal 25 wood Research Time: 100s Civilization(s): All (Local Law for Celts,Iberians and Legal for the others ) Illustration: papyrus scroll / Stonerunes Source: RTW II Colony Law / Provincial Law/SatrapyLaw/ King'sWill Civil Buildings cost -15% stone, Vilagers 10% Health +2 terrtory influenceforhouses Phase: 3 Cost 50 food, 25 metal 25 wood Research Time: 100s Civilization(s): All Illustration: godess justice/ Stonerunes/ Persian Symbol/Mauryan Symbol Source: RTW II Needs: Local Law Village Watch Phase: 1 Improves Buildings +25% Line-of-Sight LOS Research Costs: 100 Food Research Time: 20s Civilization(s): All Illustration: a torch or militia walking Source: AOEO, AOK Town Watch Phase: 2 Cost300 Food, 200 metal Research Time: 50s StatsBuilding LOS +4 except Ouposts Civilization(s): All Illustration: a torch or militia walking Source: AOEO, AOK Concil of Elders Research -15% time +20% cost Phase: 3 Cost 1000 Food 1000 metal Research Time: 100 sec Civilization(s):All House Technologies Tailors/ Tailoring Village/Female Villagers HP +15 Armor+1 Phase: 2 Research Costs: 100 Food Research Time: 10s Civilization(s): All Illustration: fabric or scissors Source: Caesar 4 based Corral Technologies Herding Dogs Increases Villager & Cavalry gathering rate from Animals. +50% Speed Herding Phase: 1 Research Costs: 150 Wood, 50 Gold Research Time: 30s Civilization(s): All Needs Hunting Dogs Illustration: dog Source: AOM, AOE III Farmstead Technologies Hunting Dogs Increases Villager gathering rate from Animals. +10% Speed Herding +50% Speed Hunting Phase: 1 Research Costs: 150 Wood, 50 Gold Research Time: 30s Civilization(s): All Illustration: dog Source: Caesar 4 based Dock Technologies Net Lures Improves Fising neat +20% Gathering Rate +25% Carry Capacity Research Costs: 75 Wood, 50 food Phase: 1 Research Costs: Research Time: 30s Civilization(s): All Temple Technologies Philosophy / Folklorik Inheritance/ Concillors Reduces upgrades research time at Buildings. -40% Research Time Phase: 2 Research Costs: 100 Food, 200 metal Research Time: 30 sec Civilization(s):All Illustration Papyre Scroll / Celtic symbol / Iberian Symbol / Indian Symbol Statal Religion/ Natural Gods Increaseshealer speed +20% Phase: 2 Research Costs: 100 Food, 200 metal Research Time: 30 sec Civilization(s):All Illustration Papyre Scroll / Celtic symbol / Iberian Symbol / Indian Symbol Worship toAres/Mars/Kartikeya/Andarta/Belatucadros/Chi You/Anhur/Laran/ Cariocecus/Ishtar/Anat (War God) Phase: 2 BuildingTemple Cost120 metal Stats Melee Attack, Speed, and Hit Points increased 10% Research Time: 30 sec Civilization(s):All Diferent names for ech one Worship toCeres/Demeter/Baal/Damara/Osiris/Bhūmi/Anahita/Damona/Lurbira(Fertilygod) -5 cost farm +25% Farmnig rate Phase: 2 Cost120 metal Research Time: 30 sec Civilization(s):All Diferent names for ech one Source: Caesar 3 based Prophet/Augure/Oracle/Divine visions +50% HP to Healer Phase: 2 Cost120 metal Research Time: 100 sec Civilization(s):All Source: EE I & aoeo Astrology / Astronomy temple generates 20 metal per minute Phase: 3/4 Cost 600 metal Research Time: 120 sec Civilization(s):All Source:RTW 2 & AOE I Market Technologies Tax Collectors Market use bart cost reduced to 15%. Phase: 2 Cost 300 Food 100 metal Research Time: 60 sec Civilization(s):All Source:AOM Common Weights and Measures Improves trade 25% Phase: 2 Cost 200 Food 200 metal Research Time: 30 sec Civilization(s):All Source:RTW II Common Currency Improves trade 25% Phase: 3 Cost 200 Food 200 metal Research Time: 90 sec Civilization(s):All Source:RTW II BlackSmith Technologies Wicker Shield / Wooden Shield InfantryUnits 10% pierce armor Cavalry 15% pierce armor Hero 25% pierce armor Phase: 2 Cost150 Wood 50 metal Time30 Civilization(s):All Source: AOM Bronze Shields InfantryUnits melee10% pierce armor Cavalry melee 15% pierce armor Hero 25% pierce armor Phase: 2 Cost150 metal Time30 secs Civilization(s):All Except (mauryans and Persians) Source:AOM LeatherArmor Infantry units 20% hack armor Cavalry units 15% hack armor Hero units 25% hack armor Phase: 2 Cost150 Food Time30 secs Civilization(s):All Except Source:AOM, AOE I forge Increases melee damage for all Military units. except Elephants andSlingers +20% Melee-Infantry Damage +15% Melee-Cavalry Damage Research Costs: 150 Wood, 150 Gold, 75 Stone Research Time: 60s Civilization(s): All Outpost Technologies Signal Fire Phase: 1 double arrows for outpost +1 range +2 LOS Towers, Outposts, Turrets Cost wood 100 Research Time: 10 sec Civilization(s):All Source:AOM Fortress Technologies BoilingOil Removes the minimum firing range of defensive buildings. Phase: 3 Cost 300 Wood 100 Food Time 40 Research Time: 100 sec Civilization(s):All Source:AOM Barracks Technologies Physical Conditioning Effect: Decreases Training time for all Infantry units -20% Training time Phase: 2 Research Costs: 150 Food, 100 Metal Research Time: 20s Civilization(s): All Illustration: body muscles toned Source: AOEO Combined Arms Decreases Training time for all Infantry units -30% Training Time Phase: 3 Research Costs: 300 Food, 200 Metal Research Time: 40s Civilization(s): All Source: AOEO Illustration: Spear and Sword Close Combat Expertise / Martial Arts Improves for all Infantry units needs Physical Conditioning +15% Health +15% Damage Phase: 3 Research Costs: 900 Food, 600 Metal Research Time: 80s Civilization(s): All Source: AOEO Illustration: hand and fisting pounch Heated Shot Ranged Infantry +20% against Buildings Tower attack against Ships +125%, Castle +25% attack against Ships. Phase: 3 or 4 Cost350 Food, 100 Metal Research Time: 80s Civilization(s): All Source: AOK based Illustration: arrow with fire Bracer Cost: 300 Food, 200 Metal Improves Archers, Cavalry Archers, Fortress, Civic Centers, Towers, Ouposts,Ships+1 attack, +1 range Phase: 1 Research Time: 40s Civilization(s): All Source: AOK based Illustration: Bracer Needs: Leathecraft Mounted Training +10% Movement Speed. Phase: 2 Research Costs: 150 Food, 100 Gold Research Time: 20s Civilization(s): All Source: AOEO