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Both Seleucids and Ptolemies used military colonies, but it was more common for the Seleucids, who used them not only to make an army of non-natives (something both preferred as dynasties on foreign soil), but also as a much needed means of spreading combat-ready levies over a vast territory.On the other hand, not only the Ptolemies were an economic powerhouse, but the Seleucids as well. They controlled, for most of the dynasty's duration, the majority of the most important ancient trade routes, including the silk road (add to that the fertile Mesopotamia). And while all their fancy units may point to a purely militaristic faction, most of their wars (much like the Ptolemies) were defensive ones or against rebelling provinces. Both dynasties fielded relatively small armies as well, compared to their controlled territory size. So both should be balanced between military/economy, with a slight focus on navy and defenses for the Ptolemies (relied on garrisoned forts/towns and fleets for most of their wars) and on land armies for Seleucids (preferred decisive field battles mostly).I'm not sure how you guys figure out that (all?) Ptolemaic mercenaries where made settlers. Does the author claim this? From my impression on what I've read, they mostly went to gather mercenaries in times of war, which indicates short term service and not settlers. Sure they'd have mercenaries turned settlers (most factions actually did, even Spartans in their late years), but all of them or a vast majority, no.So imo this leaves way for two representations: Seleucids and Ptolemies realistically sharing many traits (like the military settlements) which holds true but makes for less diversity.The direction things are taking now. Seleucid focus on settlers (because they had more of them*), Ptolemaics on mercenaries (because they had more of them). Makes sense without going too far unhistorical (most factions don't get many things they had due to balance reasons anyway) and adds more faction diversity.* If you want to challenge this, try figuring out why the Ptolemies eventually had to train natives for about half of their phalanx to rival the Seleucid one in numbers.

And how long has every one said that save games a broken period so till all the serialization errors are fixed don't use them or expect them to behave in a rational manner. Enjoy the Choice

To me it makes sense that you should be able to throw people into the houses for safety, but also to mount a defence. Especially the stone houses that seem more sturdy. Just seems natural that soldiers would want to defend their homes...

I made contact with 0AD two updates before and was thrilled. Without any human enemy I learnt fighting the AI. Now it is no longer a matter of survive but whether I win within 40 minutes or so a random game. This surprises me, shouldn't an AI know everything about internal game mechanics and remain in principle unbeatable? I don't expect the AI conquering the seas or building sophisticated walls around its cities but managing the simpler tasks first. So I thought, what could be removed from the game, so the AI could win? Like in playing chess with a beginner without towers and/or knights on my side. I played without champions, heroes, walls, fences, tower guarded resource traps, siege weapons or didn't advance to city phase all to find out what the AI is capable of. I was not impressed, the AI doesn't repair its last civic center at 1% health while most units stand around freezed. It kept sending female units gathering resources guarded by 25 archers only to let them die one by one. It build civil centres randomly on the map without resources in sight and/or without any defense. Also I have the impression it tends to acquire resources just because it could and doesn't mind the cost. What works good is the startup phase, without the need to use a mouse it builds up an army very fast. But if one survives the first 3 or 4 attacks often only a depopulated city is left, easy to take down. But I don't want to troll here, actually the AI perfectly demonstrates 0AD is an exciting game challenging the player to develop new strategies in every round and spends hours of entertaining game play. May be it is worth to start over from the beginning. The AI should be capable to deal with minimal resources at any game phase. There is no reason for units standing around freezed. If a particular resource costs too much blood, it should be abandoned. Most of these defects are listed in this thread. What doesn't work is obvious, the challenge is to make it work. Some AI techniques are mentioned here, judging from what I internally use I think a good AI needs all of them. Whether and how a given resource can be exploited needs planning and monitoring. If a large scale attack happens all tasks should be dropped and the behavior falls back to defense only and depending on the outcome another fallback to building up. Ultimately a hardwired AI can be probably beaten any time by a human player on the long run, so some kind of learning is required to keep the player rethinking his approach. I tried to understand the AI sources and it seems they demonstrate very good the use of the API and was excited to see it's scripted in JavaScript. Isn't that the language most spoken among developers? Aren't there already libraries dealing with machine learning, planning, neural networks, agents behaviour? Isn't SpiderMonkey getting near native speed soon? How can all these existing resources be effectively exploited? So this is my proposal: Set up an AI tournament for 0AD. Needed is a standard map and the game stripped down to minimal features. Only civic centers, resources and barracks. No healer, champions etc. Let developers select two AIs from the command line to watch them fighting. Include the winner into next alpha. What do you think?

Limited set of feature isn't good enough. All features of an AI are closely linked. You need to be able to beat it on all features. Also I'd like to say that since I arrived here, I have seen no-one start serious work on AIs. 0 A.D. is also limiting because it requires extreme flexibility.

Yeah while it is interesting to get troops from different sources other than training, this way is specially tricky to balance and for me it can't balance at all. Even if you have something like that exactly the same way/with the same power for all factions (like the AOM titans), you have timing and irreversibility thrown in besides cost and power.

It's quite simply because the women kicked the men out the houses lolz

I could see maybe a tech that makes a one-time purchase of war elephants.

If you could, could you list the battles where the Macedonians (not the Seleucids or Ptolemies or Pergamenes or Epirotes) used elephants? Just for my own curiosity.

I'm not a programmer so I can't help you anyway, but to make it easier for them to help you, could you please list the following: What exact changes have you made? In what files? That would make it a lot easier to help you as they'd have a chance to see what it actually is you have/haven't done

This is a good idea. But I think what he actually means is, that many AI versions get coded, and then setup a tournament to constantly prove on the blunders. I mean in reality this is exactly why civilizations have wars. Its the constant "tweaking" the bettering of technology and problems and obstacles the enemy throws at you, necessity sets in, and necessity is mother of invention, innovation and progression.

A tournament would require we have two different AIs Currently we only have one hard-coded AI, so no way to create a tournament. But indeed, if someone ever makes a genetic AI, then tournaments are the only way to improve it (though tournaments against humans, and with all features enabled would result in the best final AI).

Great idea! So what are you waiting for? Roll up your sleeves and get coding buddy! :-)

Sassanid citadel, Arg-E-Bam http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1208/gallery/ http://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/4000/4112/IkoIranquake_2003361_lrg.jpg

I actually think it looks nice with the buildings because markets are usually crowded in between structures. If you go to a market in a suburbs or rural area, you see farmer and flea markets in an open tent. If you go to markets in Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, or even places like La Paz in Bolivia, you see lots of markets crowded on streets. Smelly Medieval London had market stalls paralleling the streets. Since this game involves building an economy through phases of size, I think the city look of a market looks more appropriate.

Walls can already be built in shallows, and Carthage's walls are already very strong. I am not sure how we could implement "sea walls" in a proper way without allowing players to wall off sections of ocean, which would of course be silly.

Concept draft for the new ptolemaic market:

So give Athens and Sparta phalangiates?

I love the square maps. We can have both. The square maps are in mostly of RTS.