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Hello, I'm working a bit on reviewing formation code in hope to make them at least useable. Before trying to implement changes I'd like to know how formations should work. From my point of view formations are linked to stances and can be divided in two groups: pre-battle formations and in-battle formations. Pre-battle formations are used to set up a battle. Like moving melee on front line, support on back-line and cavalery on flanks, everyone arriving at the same time before going to the real mess. When close if aggressive, attacking or defensive units will leave formation to run in battle, if hold ground, they will wait in line for incoming ennemies. These are most of the formations, including travel-column formation. In-battle formation are advanced military manuvres to keep formation while fighting, like phalanx. Attackers will always keep formation and fight from it. The tight formation allows multiple melee rows to fight at once. and advance like a bulldozer (or crushing wall to be more antic-friendly). Civil tasks ignore formation. No point to lose time to rearrange to go cutting some trees, building, repairing and so. Women can't go in formation, workers would have the same behaviour. There is also some code to handle picking targets in formations (that is attacking a formation instead of a precise unit). That is attack order should distribute target more or less randomly for more efficiency (pick the guy in front of you for example), less running to target while being assaulted from everywhere. An other thing making formations usefull requires reviewing units speed and range to require some time to prepare your assault/defense for a line not to be flanked in 2 seconds. We set a few units, maybe 200 units for big battle, where there were line of thousands of men. So in short: - Ignore formations for civil tasks - Most formations are used to place units more effectively before running a battle, take advantage upon unprepared units (macro-strategy) - Some formations are kept while fighting, maximizing effect Watch this for pre-battle and in-battle fromations (warning, very violent video) https://youtu.be/jYchCMe5btI?t=9m53s

Thanks to bug fixe by sanderd I added some techs for temples that increase building loyalty (capture points), based on cultural happiness. "Religious Games" for "civilized" civs and "Harvest Fair" for "barbarian" civs. (I used the terms civilized and barbarian loosely and mean no offence). Romans have "Bread and Circuses" for this tech. And I'll modify "Cyrus Cylinder" for Persians.

I think no matter how it's implemented, formations to place units will make the game too slow. Perhaps it's better to include a "move" formation for all units (even females). When tasked to a point (rather than a target), units will go in that move formation (probably a 16:9 rectangle, as that's a very natural-looking ratio). When they are tasked to a target, that target can be economical (buidling, gathering, ...) and then they don't use a formation (or perhaps check the distance to see if a formation would be useful). And when tasked to attack, I'd keep special formations as an option for certain civilisations / unit types. Then loose units should fight a formation like they fight a building, deal damage to the formation, and the formation should distribute it logically over its members. So perhaps we first need to focus on the "move" formation, make sure that long walks are fluent, and the distinction between targets., before we focus on battle dynamics of a formation.

Charge attack simple: double-right-click like in Total War. Boarding, hmm, would need button or maybe Alt-click.

Ok, a tiny progress report with screenshots. My recherches showed that during some of the biggest naval battles of antiquity (in the first and second punic wars), the main ships of the punic and roman navies were quinqueremes. The romans also had hexeremes as command ships, while carthage used some septiremes (that they bought from greece). Both navies also used smaller ships (Hemiolias, Trihemiolis, Liburnias, Triremes and Quadriremes) though these smaller ships were not the main fighting vessels and had tasks like troop transportation, scouting etc. In carthage, for instance, at 219 B.C., a squad of ships was made up of 50 quinqueremes, 2 quadriremes and 5 triremes. So what I wanted to start with is roman and punic quinqueremes. Here are some screenshots concerning the (about half way modelled) roman ship: It's based on a reconstruction from the naval architect J.F. Coates and on the way to being improved with images from coins, parts of ships that have been found since then and some literature that has been published since then. If anybody is interested, I can also provide a little background to the ships, if people enjoy it Yes, I agree: naval combat alltogether needs some overhaul. I've looked at a few multiplayer-matches on youtube and have not found a single one with mayor naval combat. Is it perhaps possible to enable ramming, ranged attacks and boarding as three seperate attack modes for ships? I also though of having ship models as 4 seperate parts (left right, front, back) that could be damaged individually, and depending on the part that is destroyed first, different death animations. I also though of having the option to change the armament in the ships after they are built. E.g. heavy naval artillery (light naval artillery also was on almost every large ship) <-> corvus (for roman quinqueremes) <-> siege artillery (a squad of roman ships that had siege artillery equipped just before was ambushed in the first punic war and several cities were bombarded from ships in antiquity) <-> archer towers <-> nothing (for extra speed and maneuvering) <-> fire pots (rhodesian navy used them for a close in battle once). I can certainly provide the necessary 3D models, textures, animations etc I've also found somebody asking about LODs somewhere. I'll also provide some LOD models in case this will be implemented in the future (and then people can have truly massive naval battles).

I think this game should simplify the formations or player will never use them. I don't think the game will allow the player time to form up in nice battle formations like in Rome: Total War because there is current no benefit to the player for doing it, only downside (player that attacks first and harder gets the upper hand). But... there are ways to simplify the process and team should look to Battle for Middle Earth II for an easy way to do it. In that game when you have battalions selected and player want to task them together to go somewhere, left+right button drag-click quickly draws out a battle line preview for those battalions at the tasked point. Those battalions then march to that point and form up into the previwed line. The lineup is alwayys the same (melee infantry in the main line/front, range infantry in the back, cavalry on the sides).