a suggestion : trade routes

[Mapkoz]

Hi to all,

I was thinking it would be cool if 0ad would have (perhaps in future releases in order not to overload programmers and staff) a trade route system similar to the one of games like Imperium (anybody knows it ?).

Basically the thing works like this :

• usually units in other games can go from one corner of the screen to the other without showing the least symptom of fatigue, while in Imperium the more units travel outside of a route providing them with food, the more they are weak
  
• food is produced in farms or villages and can be sent to cities for stocking by creating a trade route. Once the trade route is created, the village will start sending food to the city/port/outpost/whatever regularly basing on the population of the village itself
  
• chariots carrying food can be intercepted and destroyed by enemy troops
  

The advantages in the gameplay experience would be (in my opinion) :

1. the game would be more tactical and would require a higher control of the territory, more strategy, thus bringing more possibilities of missions, not to mention customization through editor
   
2. "kill all the enemies" / "conquer the city" / "win the battle"/ "collect n quantity of resource x" wouldn't be the only main tasks
   
3. a large army, if badly nourished or too far from home can still be defeated or suffer high damage from a well nourished army even if smaller
   
4. if well nourished and supported a not-so-big garrison of soldiers would be able to keep the borders of one's controlled territory safe
   
5. basically muscles and large armies would not be the only determinant factor in battle.
   

This is my suggestion. I think it would bring some extra interesting features to an already well promising game, making it also more unique and different than other games. I know it is a bit late since the game is already in advanced developing but, as I said, the idea can be used for future releases or mods...

What do you guys think ?

Hope this helped in some way.

Greetings to everybody here and massive compliments and kudos to everybody involved in the game. You are doing a hell of a job and should be proud of it. (especially for making it open source).

[Jeru]

Hi Mapkos! Thanks for your suggestion. Definitely something worth looking into in the future.

How did you find out about 0 A.D.?

[Mapkoz]

Hi Jeru,

I found out because I am a linux user (ubuntu 9.10 and Opensuse 11.1) and I was looking for some strategy games to be used on my system. I think I found some links in some italian website but they didn't work well, then I checked on Wikipedia and I got the info on your game.

I enjoy Warzone 2100 on linux but it is a bit monotonous to me, and I don't really like playing my favourite games under wine so I am looking for open source alternatives to them.

The work of the 0 A.D. team is impressive so far. Definitely something remarkable.

I would not be surprised if once released the game would set some kind of milestone for open source games.

It was my pleasure to submit my suggestion, if you think I can help in any way with that in the future, don't hesitate to let me know.

[Jeru]

Thank you very much for your compliments. Kind words from fans like you really mean a lot to us.

You are welcome to join our community and participate in more discussions. We have a few other fans like you who like to talk about their ideas for 0 A.D. scenarios, campaigns, mods, expansion packs etc. and I think you might enjoy exchanging ideas with them.

[Mapkoz]

will do.

Compliments for you all are well deserved.

[mfmachado]

Another game with a fantastic Trade Route system is Dawn of Discovery. It's more of an economic RTS than a strategy/warfare one, so I can understand how they got the time to create such a complex trade route system.