Many relevant points are raised there: "If your ships cannot reach your opponent, they become obsolete quickly, unless they give you access to resources": which is why a salvage system would work nicely. Unwanted ships were used from building early temples to laying the ground for port extensions, and when Rome controlled the whole Mediterranean the huge Hellenistic ships disappeared (along with the knowledge of how to build them). "The game designer has to answer a painful question: how important should water actually be?": if the game pretends to have any semblance of historicity for its time period, the answer is obvious (for plenty of civs at least). He also describes at the beginning proper naval combat as having a good variety of ships, already proposed, and currently lacking and inaccurate. "Large warships should feel heavy, they take time to turn, and they also occupy a lot of space, and that’s what makes them insanely cool": which is why I find the puzzling proposals to shrink their size a big step towards blandness and mediocrity. "Amphibious landing should create an exciting D-day moment but, you know, players just have to lead every unit manually, then protect that transport and find a safe coast, and then unload manually once again": a real struggle, which is why, among other uses, I proposed Target Area: "Water must connect different parts of the strategy, ships should support land attacks, and of course, you should have  some real incentive to actually play for that water control. A player who loses the sea should suffer but should always have ways to respond": indeed, water should offer rewards without being snowbally. While the Greeks and others were not that big in fishing, maritime trade should be way more efficient than it is now (as should be maritime looting). I already criticised the Trader and Merchantmen capacity being the same. If one loses all control of the water (a situation usually hard to reverse), but has plenty of resources, maybe an expensive Mercenary Pirate force could be hired (from the Market or something, no Dock needed), to be able to reclaim part of the sea (this would work nicely with my proposal of Mercenaries having temporary contracts instead of being permanently trained like other units). "Water, of course, needs some real terrain. Things like shallow water reefs, islands, maybe some weather-like storm, visual blockers and several narrow routes that can create positioning decisions": 0 A.D. does have some implicit water depths, but the variety of "terrains" should be increased. Reefs are a good idea (I wonder if they could deal some damage to ships, and slow them down), and hopefully some weather is coming.

Yes, "AI" has been a term since the 1950s at least. The grand vision of an "AGI", an Artificial General Intelligence, basically the SciFi scenario of an all-knowing all-capable entity, already existed back then. Many developments in computing that were thought to help achieve this vision hence ran under an "AI" label historically, not only neural networks, the stuff that LLMs and picture generators of today are based on today and that eat so many resources. Chatbots like ELIZA were not based on neural networks. Just classical IF-THEN-ELSE and some clever play on human psychology. But yes, the neural network approach was also known since at least the 1950s, but it was all theory, it was known the required computing power would be infeasible for a very long time. Today's web and Google didn't exist back then, so it was assumed a more traditional knowledge base expert system would also be a necessary component of an AGI, hence many developments apart from resource-eating neural networks also ran under the "AI" label, but I'm almost certain the term AI in video games didn't even stem from that, i.e. from research lab level algorithmic sophistication, it was rather, as said, just a colloquial way to say "non human opponent".

Just a nit. Not really a coincidence, engaging chatbots already existed in the 70' (tho computers were somewhat harder to come by compared to today obviously) and we also had an AI race in the 80', just at that time it was between US and Japan. LLMs (branding) aren't much different, it's basically better hardware and some continued research in this topic, that is all, the hype is mostly just loooooots of money being spent and somewhat broader availability.

Good point. That's why malfunctions and potential exploits should be addressed.  PD: I need someone to give me perspectives I'm missing. Feedback is very welcome. That way I can develop my idea.

Several changes have been implemented regarding the camera and map dimensions. The largest map now has a diameter 2.5 times that of the "giant" size. The camera has also become more flexible, with its minimum and maximum altitude ranges significantly adjusted; this allows for a human-eye-level perspective and a view of the horizon, while also providing enough height to spot anti-aircraft missiles and jet aircraft, exciting features currently in development. Screen Recording 2026-10-19 213153.mp4