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(hopefully it's ok to answer a more-than-month-old post and use almost-five-years-old quotes for this purpose :D) Inventory system should be JS-only and relative easy to do (at least in a basic form), these two quotes (from To what extent is 0ad moddable ? topic) provide a good overview of two possible implementations:

Normally, when the team feels there are enough new features (or the release is taking too long), we make a decision to wrap it up. At that point, we set the date in the roadmap to some date by which we think we should have finished most features. However, the date in the roadmap is only the date of the feature freeze. After that, there's some testing, a commit freeze, and final testing. The testing is normally just a week or two, but it has happened before that we ran into serious bugs that caused a big delay in the actual release (and a very long feature freeze).

Attack and defense statistics are defined in the simulation. See http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/components/Attack.js , http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/components/Armour.js and http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/helpers/Damage.js

If vanilla version do not add battalions I hope to gether team to do it. Here's how Delenda Est would do battalion and formation. Battalions Troops are no longer individuals, they are part of a group or battalion. Guys, I will give you the rundown of how it would work. Training Soldiers are trained in battalions and live and die in battalions. A battalion of melee infantry would have 24 soldier for example. They are trained 1 battalion at a time. Shift-train queue up 5 battalions in a row and give a "batch" discount not unlike the batch discount game already has. The soldiers exist the building together as a battalion and head off to rally point. Cost A battalion of soldier (Spear Infanrty, 24 soldier) would cost roughly 600http://i.imgur.com/mc1IVBW.png500http://i.imgur.com/c74X0Gq.png10http://i.imgur.com/Fo3YSzo.png, so 1 large house or 2 small house have pop for 1 battalion. In a 300 pop match player might have 20 battalions to manage instead of 200 separate units. Extra Units and Upgrades A battalion will have 1 or more extra eye candy soldier to help distinguish each battalion. Default: Bannerman. He come automatically with the battalion and cost nothing extra. He does not fight and does not die until the last soldier in the battalion dies, then the Bannerman dies. Enemy soldier ignore him like he is just a ghost actor. This is the Aquilifer for the Romans for example. Upgrade: Noise Maker. Upgrade battalion with a noise maker dude that either reduce nearbly enemy attack (intimidation) or increase his own battalion's attack (courage) or some other bonus unique to civ's Noise Maker. For example for the Celts this would be the man who blows the Carnyx (intimidation). For the Romans this is the man who plays the Cornūs (courage). Athenians, Spartans, Thebans get a flutist who plays the Aulos and make the battalion march faster. Upgrade: Officer: Upgrade battalion with a officer unit who does fight. He is tenacious and have double health of soldier in his battalion. He is the Centurio for the Roman civs, the Polemarch for the Spartans, etc. Heroe: We can have heroes trained with a bodyguard so that they are their own battalion (like Octavian Augustus comes within a battalion of Praetorian Cavalry, Leonidas comes within a battalion of Hippeis Spartans, Xerxes come in a battalion of Apple Bearers, etc.), we can make heroes train as individual and then you can attach him to a formation, or we can do both depending on each hero. A hero in a battalion is treated by the enemy just like any other soldier in the battalion. Hero takes his/her place right in front of the bannerman on the right corner of the battalion (the place of the "officer"). Reinforce: If near a barracks a low strength battalion could be reinforced with new free soldiers (they appear behind bannerman and assume their place in line). Can be done with a aura. Promote: Each battalion accrue Experience. When battle is over player can promote the whole battalion at once if that battalion has accrue enough Experience. Selection and Movement Selecting any soldier in the battalion select whole battalion. Soldiers in battalion will squeeze together to fit the battalion through narrow pathways. When sent over long distance, battalion form into column to snake around obstacles and through narrow paths. Resource Gatherers and Builders Having battalions does not abandon the citizen-soldier conceptual. Battalion can still gather resources and build building. When a battalion of citizen-soldier are sent to gather from trees, they will march to the forest and then disperse to nearby trees to chop. If sent to gather on a farm the battalion march to the farm and then spread out to the farms for how many slots are available. If there are too many soldier for gathering slots some soldier will just stand guard near his gathering comrades. Same for building. User Interface Every battalion that is created gets automatically a ctrl-group icon on left of screen. Ctrl-groups can be made by the player for multiple battalions if player wishes. These get a different icon, along the left of screen. Formations How do they work? Soldiers fight in formation and generally hold the shape of the formation within parameters. The more men in the formation the closer they hold the formation. As men die, the formation cohesion is less. Number of formation buttons are reduce Formations give bonuses and penalties Can be altered with a small numnber of Formation Modifier Most civ will only have 3 Formations for their Battalions and then 3 Modifiers Formations and uses Column Civilizations: All Unit Classes: All Auto/Manual: Automatic, when distance between waypoints is long, is applied to the battalion Modifiable: Yes Bonus: 1.25x Speed Penalty: .5x All Armor, so vulnerable to ambush Battle Line Civilizations: All Unit Classes: Infantry and Cavalry Auto/Manual: Automatic, this is the DEFAULT battalion formation for these classes of units Modifiable: Yes Bonus: +2 Frontal Hack and Pierce Armor, +1 Frontal Crush Armor Penalty: .9x Speed Wedge Civilizations: All Unit Classes: Melee Cavalry Auto/Manual: Automatic, this is when Melee Cavalry are task to CHARGE Modifiable: Yes Bonus: +1.25x Charge Bonus in addition to regular charge bonus if charge is initiate at "sweet spot" distance, not too far not too close to target Penalty: -1 Pierce Armor, makes the cavalry more vulnerable to missile, which is usually not Testudo Civilizations: Rome Unit Classes: Melee Infantry Auto/Manual: Manual Modifiable: No Bonus: +3 Hack Armor, +4 Pierce Armor, +5 Crush Armor Penalty: .25x Speed, Soldiers within it can only respond to direct melee attacks Sparabara Wall Civilizations: Pers Unit Classes: Archer Infantry Auto/Manual: Manual Modifiable: No Bonus: +5 Frontal Pierce Armor Penalty: Is a stationary formation, will not move when in this formation Abstract: The famous Persian archery shield wall; Great for archery duels Formations Modifier When a formation above is chosen, the Formation Modifiers available for that Formation are become available (unavailable modifiers are greyed out) Close Order Civilizations: All Formations: Column, Battle Line, Wedge Unit Classes: All Auto/Manual: Auto, this is the DEFAULT modifier for formations Effect: Units are spaced close together, but their shields do not touch or overlap Open Order Civilizations: All Formations: Battle Line, Wedge Unit Classes: All Auto/Manual: Manual Effect: Soldier are spaced farther apart, with additional space between files and rows Benefit: Reduces effects of incoming splash and trample damage Penalty: -1 Hack Armor removed (but any Crush and Pierce bonus remain) Locked Shields Civilizations: Athen Spart Mace Sele Ptol Cart Theb Epir Formations: Battle Line Unit Classes: Spear Infantry and Pike Infantry Auto/Manual: Manual Effect: Units are spaced close enough their their shields overlap, creating a shield wall Bonus: +5 Frontal Armor Bonus in addition to regular frontal bonus for Battle Line (for a total of +7); Units in 2nd rank can attack through the front for spears, units in 2nd and 3rd rank can attack through front for pikes. Penalty: .75x All Armor from Flanks, .25x All Armor from Rear, .8x Speed Abstract: This is the Hellenic and Hellenistic "phalanx" for hoplite-style spear infantry. It is the "syntagma" for pike-style spear infantry. Later, in Part 2, this is the Shield Wall for the Germanic culture (Germ, Alamm, Goth, Frank) Army Behavior When 2 or more battalion are selected, Army Behaviors kick in. When send over long distance, they form column together and snake their destinatio. When the player task multiple battalion to an area they will automatically arrange in a classic "battle formation" (melee infantry in middle, cavalry on wings, archer in back) when they arrive, or... We could add Army Formations if we wanted to that show up in place of battalion formations in UI when multiple battalions selected. Either way, when move command to somewhere, they end up organized, not a mess. Anyway guys, this is how it could work. I think it is very simple and add very uniqueness to the game as well as fresh historical combat. Inspiration Battle for Middle Earth 2

Nah, Cossacks has a waaay toooo complicated battalion system with a high realism factor that wouldn't fit in 0 A.D...

That very like the battalion system in Rise & Fall : empires at war.

May I point out any roadmap for an open source project is a wish for the volunteers to work on this please and a lot on that might be called grunt work and boring so not to attractive to new coders every hacker has his sweet spot so lets take that for granted,and these OT rambles are what makes FOSS work guys so keep talking,help the newbies find the bugs/report and dream Enjoy the Choice

I wouldn't even call it an "approximation" but, I sense that things are kind of psychological here. I am glad to have helped you

I think capturing is fine as it is, honestly at first I thought it would be too good, however In my opinion the devs hit it spot on. Neither is better than the other, it is all situational. A fully garrisoned fortress can be destroyed by 20 champs just over a minute, however it is impossible to capture a fortress with just 20 men. It is so slow that they die off and the capture level keeps going back. Capturing is basically a way of recompensing a player that has a large champion army and instead of having to destroy a civ, they have the choice to make it their own. Even with 60 champs and a hero, it takes 47 seconds to capture a civic centre, whereas with the same amount of champions, you can destroy a civic centre in 29 seconds. Capturing is in no way faster than destroying unless the building is un-garrisoned. The capturing system this alpha is almost perfect. Capturing buffs the usage of walls since they cannot be captured (something that most people didn't even bother to build last version). It buffs champion cavalry units since they can quickly and swiftly "capture & delete" important buildings that are usually un-garrisoned (e.g Barracks, markets) with only a few of them. Adds more in-depth strategy to attacking. Nerfs towers a little bit because they can be captured easily, this is much better because the defence tower spam in previous versions was crazy OP, a fully upgraded tower took ages to destroy. Those are the indirect positive effects that the current capturing system has. In-game, the only real positives are: You can capture a civ to further assure your victory (At the expense of it being slower) Same with fortresses (even though I personally just destroy fortresses because capturing is so slow) You can disrupt your enemies champs spam whole you are attacking much faster since capturing barracks and gymnasiums etc is so much faster than destroying I see nothing OP in capturing, only thing it affects defensively is now I have to protect more buildings, which is good because I can't just build 6 towers and 2 fortresses and survive almost any attack.

Well, if you need to add things rather than just change things it's always going to be difficult, regardless of how easy it is to mod the engine. However, if you are just going to change things, or are comfortable with JavaScript programming, 0 A.D. should be easy enough to mod. http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Modding_Guide will give you an overview (mods can be done adding a folder, and can be activated via an in-game mod menu/execution argument for example). There are probably still things which might need engine or at least script changes even for relatively simple things. For example I think the four resources are hardcoded in a bunch of places, but things like that should be more or less just a matter of search-and-replace with some sense to it. What might be harder is adding things like an inventory system, I have no idea if that's possible using just Javascript or if it would need C++ (i.e. engine) changes as well.

Example of hero trained with bodyguard battalion (Option 1) or Example of a hero attached to a battalion by the player (Option 2) Screenshot: Hero with bodyguard battalion in Close Order formation. Option 3: Allow both options (can train with a bodyguard or without a bodyguard; can attach hero to battalion later if player wants) Regardless of option imp[emented, heroes can still be single soldier in Atlas editor for scenarios.