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From personal experience with A23 and reading all the forum posts I can, I'd like to summarize my own suggestions/features that could be of interest for the next release. I'd try to be as synthetic as possible, but of course we can develop this ideas further if there is interest/discussion. Siege engines Battering rams. Actually I find even sword cavs to have problems while chasing a retreating rams, lets not even talk about walking soldiers Should have a lower base speed. Garrison units inside rams should increase the speed and even damage a bit Pykes and spear soldiers should be able to damage them, to simulate the fact a ram is driven by other soldiers which will take damage from the enemy (but I think this would need to differentiate between archers and pykes/spears damage) Bolts. By far the most efficient tool to kill enemies I have seen on A23 They need to be more vulnerable, specially when chased on retreat with again another base movement speed reduction It could be nice to "garrison" units inside which could increase rate of fire and it's defenses. If this can be packed with additional animations showing the soldiers of that units, could be awesome Catapults Packing and unpacking speed should be raised, this would emphasize on the decision making when using them. Actually players can pack and unpack them soon enough to deny their opponents the possibility to retaliate when attack goes wrong Should be easier to take down, with incremental resistance with garrisoned units Siege towers. Actually have little to no use Same as battering rams, should get lower base speed and increase it with garrisoned units but walking units should be still able to catch it They should be able to capture at least certain targets (castles, cc, military colonies and towers, to not make them OP) to better define their role into the battlefield while being able to keep attacking - maybe at a slower rate when capturing War elephants They could have some extra armors in general but most important they must deal some damage around them, if possible only while walking to better simulate their use Ranged infantry units You may already know my opinion from other posts, IMO it's not about "ranged/slingers win games" but about choice. Actually there's dominant choice when composing an army: few frontline units (if any) and about 10 times those units as ranged. From this dominant choice, Bretons arise as the first choice civ: "one-size-fits-all" slingers from the beginning, faster eco, the security of being hard to be rushed and a fair possibility to be the first one to attack the enemy. Archers New feature: suppression. I will explain this later Minimal range, same idea of towers. If a unit enters this minimal range, it cannot be shot and the archer need to fall back Javelins New feature: suppression. I will explain this later Slingers New feature: suppression. I will explain this later Same health than other units maybe but definitely much less armor Lower base damage, movement speed (they carry rocks), attack speed and remove blast damage but let them be improved by techs: Clay ammunition: extends range and attack speed Casted lead ammunition: improves damage Also note Carthagians merc slingers should have a bit better stats than others, as Balearic Slingers were widely known in the ancient era for their capability. I guess this should also includes Iberians slingers, but I am not sure if that's historically accurate. Features Melee infantry block probability. Positional damage is still on developement, wouldn't be easier to add a block probability to incoming attacks meanwhile? I am probably wrong, but a similar process used from the game when deciding if an arrow hits or not, could be used to determine if a shielded unit blocks incoming damage or not Suppresion. Archers and slingers should slow enemy units to better reflect their support role in the battlefield. Spears, but specially pykes, should also slow enemy cavs to increase their utility on the battlefield. Terrain as strategic factor River crossing All units should move much slower when walking on water Siege engines should not be able to cross rivers, but need to be transported instead Trees Slows cavs, as it's harder to maneuver Protect from ranged attacks (maybe block feature related?) Elevated places. I am not sure about this, but I am pretty sure the game already takes into account if a unit is on a higher place to extend their attack range. However, it should also be taken into account to extend their vision range A LOT more. This is specially true for towers and vision towers. I am sure I left something behind, but probably it's enough to discuss for now. I hope you all enjoy the post and join a productive discussion.

UPDATE: Initial faction commit Champions Cavalry Infantries Auxiliaries Non-combatants

Teutonic Order Faction Update. Walls are about 90% finished, as the gate animations are still under development. The gate door will fit 2-3 units wide, making for a choke point if used this way. gate size reference, https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photo-gate-malbork-castle-medieval-teutonic-order-crusaders-poland-image72248634

Melee soldiers are going to be diverse, as im looking at having light to heavy infantry with each one having their own perks and weapons. I hear you on the range units, they are going to be hopefully setup to work as a support unit, easy to maneuver in the battlefield with good speed, but not dominating the battlefield (except for the English long bow men as they are an exception). One kind of troop that I want to make are banner men. They will have a small area effect which will give good melee/range perks, close to what some heroes currently do. Im not sure if there is a cap on how many troops the game can allow to be made from a barracks, fortress or civ center, but if a large, balanced, diverse troop selection can be made then that would make me happy. Allowing for many different army builds is always a plus. INFANTRY Swords/Blunts/Axes 2 types of light infantry 2 types of medium infantry 1 type of heavy infantry specialized unites: vanguard, champion units. INFANTRY pole-arms 1 type of light infantry 1 type of medium infantry 1 type of heavy infantry specialized unites: pole-arm vanguard, champion units. CAVALRY Light-Lancers Sword-Cavalry Heavy Lancers Champion Lancers Range Units Archers Support Priest (healer) Banner Men (melee/range boost)

The only real threat to siege towers are catapults and cavalry swordsmen/spearmen, and war elephants. All siege weapons should be made slightly slower and all civilisations should be at least given swordsmen (Macedonians don't have a single sword unit). Giving siege towers ability to capture buildings would be interesting. Losing 7 siege towers to 2 rams can only be summed up to very severe user error. Siege towers have good crush damage and easily destroy buildings, siege machinery and units, while outrunning swordsmen, spearmen and rams. The reason most have an impression that siege towers deal low damage is that they send the siege towers into the middle of the enemy base where the siege towers are firing upon 15+ buildings and probably some units, making them appear weak. The real reason they aren't used is their cost. Each siege tower costs 500 wood and 300 metal, and also requires to have 10 units garrisoned in it for maximum efficiency. That is 1800 resource cost and 13 pop for each siege tower. It's simply just a bit too much for most.

Because the savegame of that point is not saved to the disk and hence can't be loaded before the replay starts.

We are experimenting on this in Millennium AD, the Carolingian infantry can train elite (heavy infantry) units in their fortresses. The same thing will apply to the Umayyads, with their Jund (Military colony) also being able to train elite units.

Another idea is that you can train light, medium, and heavy versions of most types of units (affecting speed, armor, attack, cost, etc.), depending on your tactical needs and overall strategy (and the amount of coin in your purse; if you're low on funds you can still train light troops to hold the enemy at bay until your treasury can be refilled). Only light is available at first and you have to unlock medium and heavy options at the Blacksmith by teching different armor and weaponry options. Would take a little GUI work, but not bad; imagine clicking the swordsman icon at the barracks and you see the 3 swordsman options quickly slide up. And while I think this should be moved to the Gameplay Discussion forum, I don't think Empires Ascendant is going to change much in this regard, so whatever you want to do will probably have to be part of a mod. Unless your goal is to join the team and implement some of this stuff into EA.

Hmm, perhaps some better explanation. What does "actual" mean in this context? Some examples would be nice too. I imagine you mean by "actual" is just the current Empires Ascendant way. "unlocking next tear of the same unit and improving it by that" would be the Age of Empires way. "having basic unit and choosing its path (light vs heavy)" would be like starting with a generic soldier dude and then customizing it. So, you'd start with a generic melee dude with a knife, then you can choose a path from spearman to hoplite to pikeman, or from knife dude to light swordsman to heavy swordsman. A branching way. Or a generic militia knife guy, you can branch from melee options or ranged options. This is kind of cool, but feels kind of generic to me. Perhaps have a meta "soldier customization" feature/UI that's done before matches, not in real-time. This would go well with battalions, because you could customize your battalions with different kinds of historically accurate kit, and their costs and stats change accordingly. "unlocking light / heavy unit but could train all of the types after unlocked" so basically is a tech barrier to melee and ranged branches. Kind of the least inspiring options. I think by building an archery range that kind of implies you should get access to some kind of light ranged units without having to tech them.

Replays only contain command sent by human players. The commands AI players order are determined at runtime and are not present in the replayfile. The Pyrogenesis engine is deterministic, which means in theory the replay should always compute the same state and serializing/deserializing (=rejoining a multiplayergame or saving+loading a game) should too. If it computes a different state sometimes, it's an "Out-of-sync" error, which is one of the worst errors that can happen and a release-blocker bug as it breaks multiplayer games and replays. In order to verify that there is no such error, the simulation state is hashed (you can see the hash in multiplayer replay files commands.txt). I'm wondering if we shouldn't add hashing for singleplayer replays too for that purpose (replay integrity). AI bots are not deterministic, they are Out-of-sync, because they create new plans upon each deserialization (savegame loading, multiplayer rejoin), rather than serializing and deserializing their plans. Fixing that is important as we can't play multiplayer games with AIs currently - players will drift into parallel universes when playing with AI currently if one of the players rejoins the match. (Also performance of AI is tough) Replays starting from savegames will probably work with my patch hack linked above. If you're not familiar with patching and reading code, lobby to have me commit this replay+load commandline option, otherwise wait (possibly some years, or put a high enough price on the feature for devs to prioritize finding some solution). Notice that savegames can be 2-10MB or something each, so there can be an accumulation problem if its stored for every replay starting from a savegame and every replay of a match starting from a rejoin. Otherwise that what smiley said.

They sure are pretty, those Zapotecs...