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I like simple solutions sometimes. 1 market per cc, 5 trader per market. Slow traders down by 50% and adjust the gain a bit higher. I think traders should be less numerous but higher gain that make them high value targets. Exact values subject to change. Trading with self is okay imho since cities in an empire traded between themselves. But the profit for self trade can be lowered. Give a max distance between markets and CCs (markets cant too far from a cc) so the markets are tethered to the center of each city.

Play, get to be good, suggest, test, (learn from our most active dev in the lobby), in the end you might even become a moderator or just someone who is asked his opinion before things are done. This is my suggestion to everyone like you, I am online a lot of the time and can help you if you want.

"Work on 0 A.D. began in 2001, first as a mod concept for Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. In 2003 development moved to a standalone game with its own engine, Pyrogenesis. In 2009-2010, the game was released as free, open-source software and and much of the codebase was rewritten. Learn more about the story of 0 A.D. »" Read our game description and of course you won't be surprised if we are similar.

Another main pillar of a civilization is the mass of indifferent looking people who power the whole machine. Anyway, why some of your proposals could maybe fit into the game (after some adjustments to fit into the game), I find that the restricting units trainable from civic centre thing unappealing. It would make the early game much more eco boom centred, which is currently fine. At the moment you can choose to "rush" enemy or concentrate on economy. Rushing an enemy of equal skill is risky and makes you neglect your home economy. It is also a burden on your growing settlement as wood is needed to train men to fight which could otherwise be used to further economy with farmsteads, houses, more strategically located storehouses etc. That's my personal opinion on your suggestion for the Civic Centre. Also for example your idea of prolonging fights and making units into battalions isn't appealing either, one of the fun points of this game (IMO) is the speed, sudden changes and battles that can decide the victor of tiny wars between players or even the whole game. Anyway, as I feel that the topic has strayed off too much (you might also lose interest in talking with me again) , this is my final post here. I wish you luck in your "concepts", but to tell the truth, I do not see the need for you getting the "Gameplay Developer" official title. You should observe, discuss with other players (since they are the ones who are actually testing and playing this game, people who don't play really shouldn't just start changing stuff without prior discussion with them) and finally suggest changes and maybe even upload a patch if its agreed to by most. There is no need to get a title for all that, if your opinions and suggestions are good they will be heard anyway without people feeling that you are above them.

Another few options to choose from: 1) Add a minimum distance between markets (80-160m) and set a limit of traders/market(5). This will make sure that max 2 or so markets will be made per base and if that player wants to trade using more than 10 traders, he/she must expand(thus partially solving problem reported by @Grugnas). Also reduce trade income with ports by 50% to prevent abuse of those. 2) Add a total limit of X traders/player with upgrades to expand this limit. 3) Limit of 1 market/civic center and limit of about 10 traders. Trade Income should also be reduced by maybe 30-50%(since there are quite a few factions with trade team bonuses). I feel the 1st choice would be the best, since a set limit for a certain unit isn't that inviting.

A este si lo texturice asi nomas, pero esta mas facil de texturizar que los otros, mañana lo hago bien. Busque por la carpeta "public" texturas de otras armas de asedio para sacar la textura de la rueda y demas, pero no las encuentro, donde deberia buscar? igual voy a tratar de terminar de texturizar el gastraphetes

Maybe, I'm looking it in the perspective of realism and scenario making, and maybe you are looking in the perspective of multiplayer and continuous battles. Having children as a working unit like I suggested would open up tactical choices by the player. Think of children as Age of King's sheep, controllable while at the same time, capturable by the enemy. With children, there's a plus of having "free citizens" if you capture them. Or, if this can't happen, then maybe the suggestion of @Radagast. is more suitable, like a prop/ support for women? A little off-topic: Regarding mixing RTS with city-building, I am of the opinion that actually, those two could be combined, albeit with the city-building aspects simplified. I believe scenarios would be more realistic, and battles would be more interesting. I know though that multiplayer is a totally different area, and that a system that mixes both RTS and city-building must minimize or totally abandon the city-building aspects when in multiplayer. Maybe that could happen, maybe not. Most probably not. But I'll continue dreaming.

I have been playing rts since AoE1. I knew about the mod in those days. Rediscovered the project last year. And have read through a lot on the forum and that page you linked. I just want to help this game reach its potential faster. but i dont have any necessary skills to aid.

@DarcReaver we also have hero mechanic similar to warcraft. CC and area concept similar to RON. Expanding boundary concept taken from Settler. Most of the game including market and trader mechanic is heavily inspired from AoE2. But 0AD is still unique, because it takes the best of everything and mixes it into a RTS which we always wanted. And because of that the implementation i described above (imo) is an upgrade over what was in AoE2. I think the distance shouldnt factor in the resource gather rate. Otherwise it becomes impossible to monitor and balance between different kinds of maps. But the min'm distance between CC helps in standardising it. I dont see why we cant have the trained traders selected and do some shift clicks to create a curved longer trade route avoiding the enemy. I mean it shouldnt be difficult to implement. Anyways this will decrease the amount gained from traders because of longer routes, so wouldnt be used unless really necessary.

I think I'm almost at a point where I can comfortably delay my other works.

Either the game, or the manual should adjust accordingly. Posting this one as a whole since it also shows the brokenness of the Structure Tree for my 1024x768 screen.

Man, I didn't know that I was touching on another trivial-but-sensitive sibject. Basically, we're dealing with 2 traditions based pn word preference. I happen to belong to the "Faction" tradition because I was relying on the manual. If I was an AoE player, then I would probably be in the "Civilization" tradition... which majority of the initial devs belong to (which also explains why the terms is used in-game). We might be dealing with a little problem here. 0 A.D. places these Warring Factions (Village Phase) while giving them technologies that made them Established Civilizations... even to the Empire level. About traditional terms like "aging up", "Town Center", and lumbercamp... it's interesting for me to see that nobody's using the term "Castle". I mean "Fortress" is the only thing I see used natively in the game.

Thanks. I think I can do playtesting fine, and with some help will learn to report errors. But due to upcoming PG exams and personal commitments after that. I am actually restricting myself from playing for now. After 4-6 months I'll become more active...

Una mina de cobre a ver que les parece. les adjunto la foto de la mina, la textura que hice, el .DAE por si quieren verlo mas a fondo y una ultima foto de el establo de las dianas pero con otras texturas mina de cobre.DAE

@Hannibal_Barca I'm sorry. I thought that the team bonus affect the faction itself too. Anyways we can let minor inter faction cost balancing slide till beta. This would remove one of the main features of the market building-not really that good IMO The market still is a building used to train and upgrade Traders. Like most other buildings. + Its main function is actually to allow buying and selling resources. And this remains the same. Letting trade happen between CC is a simple and logical option. Adding a minimum distance between markets. Is addition of another unnecessary complex mechanic. And it would be difficult to explain to a player why he is not allowed to build markets closer. And it is difficult to monitor and control resource gathering rate of traders with this system. because you wont have a maximum distance limit. CC are already at a fixed distance from each other. have their own minimum distance restrictions which makes sense to player. And traders moving between them would signify trade between your cities. While traders moving between markets would just show as trading between 2 of your buildings in the vast territory. What I mean is- It will be possible that Traders move perpendicular to the line joining your two Cities(CC), if you place both markets in such a way along the border of the territory. I feel the appeal to let market be that building. Is because of habit. Since this was the way in many games before. But it can be improved upon in 0AD because we have Settlement concept with multiple settlements in an empire. Trader limit can solve the end game problem. But wont be a correct design. Because it doesnt change the fact that traders are much (faster) effective resource gatherers. With build limits people will just rush to maximise the traders when they are able to train them. And after maxing the limit (each and every game) they will shift attention to other forms of gathering. This might balance the end game scene. But would be a missed opportunity to add strategic depth. The different resource gathering options should be balanced at their core level. Like how Farms and Hunting are. Farms require investment(100w). (And should be slower to gather). Hunting is a finite resource and is gathered faster(with cav only). (But the corral makes them infinite and makes other food sources redundant). Mines are a finite resource. While Traders are infinite resource. So Traders should require more investment.(Cost, another CC). And also at the same time should yield less resources per pop space. Also as an infinite resource Traders should not gather food. Then it competes directly with farms. And replaces them. Right now players can just build a lot of traders and forget about their macro. they can anytime change their scales of which resource is being traded, and are saved the trouble to have proper planning of citizen distribution and re-distribution to various resources. If we get this much right. then there wont be any need of build limit of Traders. players will soon learn, and meta will evolve. Because it would become less efficient to rely on traders till you have mines easily accessible. And traders would be able to gather only metal. So farms will always be important to gather food. And getting only metal(/gold) from traders would mean that you use market building to barter resources if you need stone or wood(market - more important). To make less efficient- 1 trader(2 pop) going between two CC(placed as close as possible) should generate metal(/gold if metal is split) per second. Half(or maybe 60%) of what 2 male citizens can gather from a mine per second. Then if the CC are placed farther away. then the increase in amount should be in proportion to the increased time required to travel, so that the gathering rate per second remains constant. Speed upgrades to trade cart will increase the gather rate, but still should be taken care that it is 80% or less as compared to gathering directly from mine. About cost- Food and wood are still needed to train. So the choice would be- should i gather more food and wood for traders. or use workers to gather metal for age up. this requires more preparation and forethought than deciding what to build with metal present in bank. Also Food and wood. because they are likely to be available to player when mines run out. If metal is included in cost of Traders. then player is forced to train them before mines run out, because aftewards he wont have resources to train it. You can see here- which approach gives more strategic options and decisions to player, and in which approach player mindlessley follows same routine everytime. @DarcReaver Though your proposal is novel and doesnt have hard caps on trader limit. But it is essentially same as Hard caps. Players will soon learn with experience that because of the coin regeneration rate at market, 'X' number of Traders is what can be used maxm per market (hard cap). And then they will try to train X number of traders- first thing after reaching phase 2. always. Players should have an option to either invest in a short lived faster gathering resource or a long term slow gathering resource. Depending on the matchups, maps etc. this provides variety and strategy to gameplay.

Let me ask the other way around: what does the current market/trading design provide to the game that makes it unique and fun so it's worth keeping it and working on it to fix it with your proposal to "hard cap" caravans? As of micro: of course it's fine to have micro. However it's clearly stated that repetitive, boring, unproductive micro is to be avoided by the design document. Having to train and micro a multitude of indifferent looking, ant like units is the epitomy of "unecessary, repetitive micro". Also, hiding behind the "features require coding work" is a lazy excuse. I already said aswell, if the devs would actually setup a road map of how the game should look/feel/play when it's finally done they could hire a coder (or even a couple of coders) with kickstarter money or donations and let them work on the desired features. But yes, like I stated before I'll start supplying some patches for the game and see how it will work out. But first I need to get the hang on how all structures are connected.

Concepts are there, lots of them. Concepts for reducing side and rear vision of units, concepts of corralling animals, trample damage, charge damage, ramming, stamina, upkeep etc. There is no shortage of ideas of features to be implemented, it is the actual implementation of such things that is the problem. So if you are going to add yourself to the mass of people asking for this feature and that, I don't see how it would further the game. Unless you would actually create patches (after approval) and put them up to be tested and reviewed. Micro is fine, teaches you that without a sound, stable, detailed plan of economy you won't get far. Military could use more features but as mentioned they are already in form of ideas, just waiting for the time when they finally will be accepted or rejected for good.

Right, "Greeks" is a civilization, while "Athenians" is a faction within that civilization. You can even say that about the Mauryans, they are a faction within the "Indians" civilization. But that's semantics. It may be useful to just use civilization because that's the term players are used to, semantics aside.

I feel "Empire" suffix will go better with the selection of races we have. Since Civilization is usually represents people. eg Sumerian civ. But Empires are based on a dynasty or certain ruler in a civ. But can be used to indicate a very large group united by conquest. Eg. Seleucid Empire, Roman Empire, Mauryan Empire. Greek goes well with civilization. But Macedonian Empire sounds better. Faction sounds like a smaller group. But could be true for Spartans. Gauls etc.

It's true that perhaps the game should choose one or the other. Civilization sounds broader, like "Western Civilization" while Faction sounds smaller or more specific. One thing that "Civilization" can boast is that it's been the standard term for historical rts, while faction has been used in non-historical rts, at least in my experience.

It's just, I have played rts games with "soft" battalions and rts games with "hard" battalions, and the games with soft battalions made me wonder why they even tried. The combat and behavior of hard battalions in games like Battle for Middle Earth 2 just plain worked, and was very straight forward. That's where I am come from in my views. Maybe others, like Yves, have other experience and have gained a different perspective. Fair.

My point is that: If you like the term "Factions", then change the terms in the game. If you like the term "Civilizations", then change the terms in the manual/website. I just want consistency since both terms are being used interchangeably here.

I think you should take a step back first: Question 1: why is trade necessary? Answer: because resources are finite and certain units and techs require those resource(s) Question 2: What is the core mechanic of trading? summary: - trade replaces one resource with another with a trading ration (i.e. 100 food = 20 metal, or 100 stone = 200 wood etc.) - trade takes population which replaces gatherers to gain said resource - trading route length / amount of traders = profit from trading - players need trade to aquire resources that deplete over time Issues: - trading is unbalanced (resources are created out of nowhere) - no trading hardcap (except for population), so the more caravans the more free resources - trading looks weird (many cramped units in a line, another example of the "manspam train" that I refer to in my civ critic thread) - trading causes pathing issues / performance issues Now, the way I see it the intended mechanism is heavily inspired by AoE II. However, even there trading is a pretty stupid mechanic since 1v1 games turn into "trash unit wars" because single players cannot trade. The most broken version is AoM where players trade with their own town centers. For example Egypt civs lategame strategy is to spam caravans and then spam massive amounts of mercenaries to fight enemy units. while its sort of funny to see huge amounts of camels carrying gold around the map it's pretty dull from a gameplay perspective. Anyways. I'll just throw in an entirely different idea, as I think no matter how you implement trading, those caravans will always look odd. How about this: We have 3 options: Option 1: Each map contains "trading Centers". Depending on the map I'd suggest between 2 - 8 (0.5-1 per player), those are played at a decent range away from the player starting locations. They can be destroyed but they can be rebuilt for a infinite resource (or rebuild automatically after a certain time). If destroyed they offer the destroying player some silver resources as a bonus. Trading centers can be captured. after capturing they produce a chosen resource in certain time frames (i.e. income of 50 stone/minute). Or they automatically trade a resource i.e. trade food and get silver/iron/stone in return.. This way, trading centers would be a combat place, as players need to gain control of them for lategame units. Players who have control over trading have the control over lategame tech units and thus they have an advantage. If other players cannot take hold of trading centers, they can instead to a sneak attack on those Traders to interrupt the enemy resource income, thus create an option for a comeback. Option 2: markets still are buildable by players, but to profit from trading they have to establish "Trading Routes". A trading route must be between 2 different civic centers (so players can trade among themselves aswell). Each city can support 1 market (or 2). Market has a resource : coins. it automatically increases by a set ratio to 100 over time (rate and maximum can be increased with market techs). Each resource is worth a different amount of coins. 100 food cost 5 coins, 100 metal cost 50 coins (just to give an example). If a caravan comes by and trades a good the coins reduce. If the coins of the market become 0 the trading stops until it has refilled enough to buy a resource from it. This way, caravans are limited by the amount of coins generated by the market, thus there no longer is a manspam train to get the highest profit from the market trading. Plus, there are options to customize the own trading even if there's a 1v1 situation (in which trading is impossible atm). Issue that I see with this is that it's pretty complicated to code compared to the other options while not offering a unique different approach to trading, but I think it would work aswell. Option 3: Markets are simply constructed buildings with a limit and work like the favor generation from AoM: after buildign them, assign citizens and the markets start producing Iron/silver at a slower rate than mining them. Straightforward and no manspamtrain aswell. from my personal view I find option 1 most appealing since it's dynamic and promotes fighting positions on the map, just like mining spots do.

Actually trade is an hard feature to place because it goes from being the main income of resources ( personally speaking, it upsets me when players even trade food for more income) expecially in turtle games with only 1 narrow passage and water in middle to a more than convienient option to expanding for a strategic resources guarantee. Also depends by the random generated map resources and a hard to find solution. I think that trading should be the feature to rely on when there are no more spots of the desired resource, and clearly less rewarding than gathering for 2 main reasons: 1) it is very profictable despite the common "no walls" rule of multiplayer games. F.e. if a player spends 80 metal for a trader, he will regain that amount in less than 2 minutes or just bartering goods. 2) it kills the strategic expansions that should / could have a big impact on the economy of your opponents. Expecially in 150 pop cap games, expanding requires control of a wide area of territory while trading relies on allies attention. Market usage has too high impact expecially in 1v1 games because while player gains control of a metal mine for having advantage of that or any other desired resource, on the other hand the opponent can just comfortably barter obtaining metal. He may obtain lower amount, thats true, but it is an instant gain that would require several workers / time for the gatherer player tho. Trading has a high impact on team games, and barter has higher impact the lower number of players in a game.

I didn't have any other idea to eradicate too short trade lines, to limit the number of traders and forbide players to totally rely on trading. I do agree with you @wowgetoffyourcellphone but your still allow to trade within your city which should not be possible. You don't trade with caravans in one sole city, caravans are trading between cities and ideally between two allies. Btw the way I'm not saying your solution is bad. I'm not saying my solution is better too, but I didn't find any other solution to achieve the 3 goals I talked about in the beginning of the message. I still think my solution is a too harsh "punishment" (I would rather call it a limitation). I think it's not the best solution but it's the only one I finded that matches with the 3 goals. @niektb, if you have a better solution tell it

Personally, I haven't seen you playing multiplayer matches, could this be because you are using a different nickname than on forums or something else? In my opinion, before suggesting a total revision of the whole game you should be intimately familiar with current gameplay in order to see what to improve. (No offence intended by this remark)

Including children units is too much, guys. When things like this come shooting out, I think it's time to step back and reevaluate. I don't like "provinces" as talked about here. I'd prefer something more dynamic as it is now, but I grow tired of talking about this stuff ad nauseum. Just play DE to see what I would do with territory and expansion. To make a long story short, I'd prefer to see the player building cities, rather than grabbing huge sections of land. In reality, empires had no real "borders" like we have today. The "border" was a mountain range or a river or a valley, and even then enemy armies easily penetrate and live off the land for weeks or months. That's why I refocused "territory" to be more about city boundaries than empire boundaries. Empires are the control of cities, IMHO, and their surrounding lands. You only "own" the land that you can defend. And the world at this time was something like 2% as populous as it is now. Large swathes of land were uninhabited or untapped, certainly undeveloped, and "control" from the capitol was nominal at best, hence strong core/weak countryside concept in DE. But, as long as the game remains moddable and I can have my way in my mod, then do what you want with hard "provinces." As usual, lots of reinventing the wheel here, for example about farms. Already good farming concepts available on the forum and in Trac last time I look. Check those out. Directionality: If it can make things simpler, perhaps directionality can be on a per battalion basis, rather than per soldier. Just throwing that out there.

DarcReaver, your observations have been brought forth before. The military system is under attack often, also for renowned games like Total War there are still unrealistic issues (check the internet for critics). I like the direction the document promotes. It is just that it is a very complicated endeavour. I have literally spent weeks working on increased realism. 0 B.C.'s capability system allows entities to have Goals, Plans and follow a civilization's state of knowledge (no phases, it is continuous). Such untertakings are possible but they are tedious and easily fall behind: * SVN compatibility * getting things to work (UnitAI et alia, complicated) * getting style right and catch up and maintain compatibility with new functionality upstream * being tested well enough So indeed the community - we - must do more to convince a farther spectrum of developers that more realism should be one of the more dominant goals to get steer the general development towards fixing the issues piece meal. > One thing I disagree about is the dynamic line of sight taking too much performance. Warcraft III, released back in 2002, 15 years ago, already had this mechanic that buildings, cliffs and trees limited the sight range of units. This is more a matter of efficient coding than a real obstacle. Of course you need someone who can code this efficiently. But there we're back to the kickstarter option. Such sophisticated functionality is already employed conceptually, entities have a vision range as have ranged entities individual reach. Also auras have individual range. Dynamic Level of sight in terms of height, weather conditions et alia also are possible. Its powers may not be fully unleashed (at last performance is a limiting factor I'm afraid as we are bound to 1 thread for good reasons and many entities are desirable for realistic tactics to become possible). Actually 0A.D.|0B.C. is very powerful. Thus raising a kickstarter for art works looks way more important to me (considering that animations play a huge role in conveying a realistic smooth battle tactics atmosphere). Coders know logic, maths well enough to make a living in other oceans. Also open, free of charge coding is common among world citizen coders or rookies that are keen to get attribution. Open art stands in contrast with this. The ego of an artist is very fragile due to the very artistic nature. Thus very few are strong enough to engage in open source projects. > the role of women Women as population provider approaches real world facts, which makes sense. Women as morale boost also makes sense for the same reason which is why the morale boost makes sense. See guys working when a beautiful woman is close after they realize she's taking notice of them. And everyone thinks it's him. haha Even more, a nice balace of #men, #women is required for a population to work. There are civilizations where women are seen as costly (provide gift to marriage, ...). e.g. China has a lack of women (Germany also has had roughly half amount of women than men according to BayernPortal since many decades). A balance is not only important to avoid quarrels among men (which may have been more common in barbarian times than nowadays). Also too many women or men in a homogenous group might get distracted, chat too much, leading to injuries and reducing efficiency. A man operates a machine more carefully when a female is close than with a about female joking male companion. (own experience, I have seen more than one people lose their eyelight almost entirely only due to that) The real world is dangerous. Not only in battle. But also for battle morale, knowing or at least believing females waiting for one at home increases morale and endurance (in addition to what you said about endurance). wraiti wrote: > -forbidding farms inside territories (or possibly dividing their efficiency considerable) Vote for the latter. If we achieve it the realistic way, i.e. that the ways towards fields, food storage (which has often been outside in the wilderness) and animal handling are longer, then this divides their efficiency. Now that there is free space available inside the territory|city core and not everything full of buildings, this complicates things. A solution could be to introduce a "claim" system similar to how property can be purchased nowadays (the city could have claims to all territory, such that farms have long ways to go if their farm building is constructed inside it. Increasing the role of fertile lands - not only for crops, but also for animals, may also help. The grassland could decrease in fertility once it is within city territory or depending on unit traffic | proximity (maybe an aura on buildings nearby). >-Actually using the concept of provinces from the original design, where the map was divided in provinces and you could conquer those in a largely predetermined way to acquire their resources. This feels limiting, but now that I think of it it's actually probably a much better way to handle this. That being said, it kind of implies larger maps, as do a lot of other things. Artificial regions will lead to issues no matter whether in the concept of provinces or territory. Provinces could nevertheless be a natural realistic addition when military dominance zones or "control" - as the Institute for the study of war calls these regions - can be strengthened. This could be achieved as side effect of the slowing down of gameplay and thus increased emphasis on strategic movements, e.g. close this high pass over the Caradhras with a mobile unit (that gets exhausted up there quickly and recovers virtually not at all, thus must be rotated at times) and the main valley entrance with a military force dug in. Et voila, the region is secured, becoming province of the empire. Now our tax collectors can visit the inhabitants following reconnaissance. > To prevent players from simply sending out their first soldiers to expand everywhere, [...] Again, it may be wise to counter this like it is countered in the real world: supply. You cannot build a base with resources from the city center when you are far away unless you have a train of supply and of course adequate protection for your convoy. Early on this is very difficult to achieve. And as civic centers are not allowed to be built close to each other, there is (and should be no way to increase your city core to spam the whole territory). Building close to the territory border could still increase territory but very subtly, only some meters, e.g. for a house just enough to place another house, not more. These small outbursts into the wilderness away from the busy city core will make the overall appearance of the territory more visually pleasing. > BFME also used neutral creatures like trolls, spiders, Orcs or Wargs to protect settlement points. As you said, in the case of historical accuracy, the neutral creatures could be represented by native inhabitants who may not be happy when a civilization settles in their old, beloved traditional lands. The choice is to either convince them in some economic|diplomatic way or to keep them under control militarily (costly!). Otherwise they will lay fire to your construction site or kidnap your workers or will send animal herds to create chaos and stop construction or what not. Looks perfect for triggers or HybridAI. > To prevent maps to be overburdened with neutral units everywhere, I think the provinces should be connected to map size. I agree with the prevention of too many native units (not neutral or at least only neutral till your units enter their region - at latest when construction starts!). In terms of provinces in general natural geography should - again - be the guideline as this is exactly what the historical community is interested in. We may also want to pitch the ancient civs on artificial or generic random maps but generally we want to see if we can manage to defend this or that realistic territory with all its advantages and disadvantages. Once in the role of the Romans, once the Persians, once the Greeks, and so on. Having all "provinces"|regions balanced could become boring quickly. This is what your proposals also promote, i.e. more flexible paths of development and strategy. I.e. when we have the nasty spot which is overly exposed or has few resources, then we must make the best of it and adapt our strategy. This is how life works. Adaption. From your critics can be derived, that currently there is no adaption, instead there is a clicking rush and respamming of units that directly find death after some minutes of seeing the day of life instead of smart tactics and overall strategy. Grugnas wrote: > but that siege is too hard to defend because enemy units can easly pass through the first line and destroy the catapult True, the penetration of the front lines is one of the more frequently criticized military issues. Shieldwolf with DarcReaver wrote: > > I’d strongly suggest of battalions with multiple units in a single entity. > Yes, something similar to Rise of Nation’s infantry units. You’ve made a good observation in that it would feel you are striving to become an Emperor instead of a glorified village chief. In my opinion this is lost developer effort, because formations are battaillons - just more flexible, so be happy. And rather let's work on how these battaillons could be controlled more efficiently|exclusively et alia. (Maybe a hotkey for selection formations only - and also an option to lock formation members, i.e. to not dissolve and do not resupply?) It is known that I agree with shieldwolf that children have to be added. Maybe together with women as population providers. Both leper and wraitii are right, it is possible but it also is pretty difficult to get a directional combat system work and function beautifully. Shieldwolf said: > I disagree on it being timed, and being permanent. That button will make it the player’s choice to have his citizens be an economic unit or a military one. And - to add DarcReaver's suggestion - have it either lose all resources that it bore or have it bring them somewhere or hide them - depending on personality|global directives (e.g. player decret "Save on resources! We have little."). In 0 B.C.E. due to capability system (complex beast and not working yet!) it is possible, in 0 A.D. not so much as resources are just numbers and can not be transfered to another entity (unless as loot which might somehow be possible to transfer it as loot to e.g. a badger burrow entity). > depending on where the unit is (units travelling in roads are faster), or the seasons (units in winter have slower speeds), the unit’s speed changes. Epic! Attack value randomization could turn out very difficult to balance. (Ranged accuracy already is influenced by spread. Maybe melee will get more interesting with the penetration <-> armor system + then inflict the damage, as also has been brought up often before but not found its way yet.) DarcReaver wrote: > From Feudal Ages to Knights and castles to Gunpowder and Renaissance. In 0 ad there is no such Age Advance. And exactly this is why the units currently die way too early. It no more realistic to spawn random new units out of nowhere than to have some grow up quickly. > "free villagers", afterall this would remove player control on using pop cap. From company of heroes call in system I know that this mechanic isn't >always the best, even if its free hmm.. in my opinion children should be actors only, maybe props to a women, reducing its efficiency but after a certain amount of time (long! because of city phases, not ages), this then should increase the popcap and the female be at normal efficiency again. This way females have a purpose. It's very nice to have them in the simulation (it's so much more realistic). What about a compromise? Make units endure longer (harder to kill, wounded instead -- only randomly transfer them to nirvana, the others immobile on the ground - another strategic resource) and yet include children (because a city is not build within one generation generally and even if, then its flourish point is some generations later - without condition of general validity). DarcReaver about shieldwolf's civilian<->soldier button proposal: > Not sure, then it's pretty much the same as it is now. Either right click a field, or right click an enemy. True. Which is why I think the real issue is timing. The time from citizen to soldier is way to short. If transformation time (in both directions) was longer, then scouting was more important. In that sense. Great ideas and as so often we'll be stopped by the complexity and the fact that it is a lot lot work to get any of these proposals developed in a way that pleases most of our people involved. > Yes, but from my experience artificailly slowing down units is not a fun concept for players, it's more annoying. CoH 2 had a "blizzard" weather system which caused winter storms that made units immobile and have no vision while it lasted. The feature was removed due dto massive complaints from the community. Nobody liked it. If that is artificial, then even the speed of the units as they are now are artificial. Actually everything is artificial as we are coding a simulation which is an approximation at best. When Napoleon (disputed) or the Nazis (fact) got stuck in the snow before reaching Moscow, leaders also were in rage as were the soldiers, e.g. when Nazi officers burnt newly arrived coats to avoid quarrels among the soldiers. It is this kind of events like blizzards or vulcano eruption which is fun for a history interested community as long as it is used very sparsely and not necessarily leads to immediate annihilation|immobility. (Note this is my personal opinion.) > base accuracy increases to 100% upto minimum distance (say 4 or 6). after which it decrease again to 50% due to getting meled. An approximation of this already exists if I remember the code correctly. (Especially if units are wounded and not die so often, this could be a useful addition to have the archer at least take one last enemy unit out wounded before being wounded by melee himself.) The combined elite-military, economic|architectural purpose of the Stoa according to Thorfinn the Shallow Minded, J.Avramenko sounds sensible.

Dacia is for sequel. For Empires Ascendant I think Kushites, Scythians, and Thracians are best bets.

Impressive artworks. Now that you earn 900+ $ a month is there a chance you find time to finish this mod? https://www.patreon.com/undyingnephalim

Good luck. Seriously, good effing luck on that one, m8.

Well, the important part in reply to your comment was that if something as big as adding a new civilization is done it should not be done during the Beta phase but before it. I guess it would be one thing to add a well-developed faction from a mod in one of the first Beta releases, but certainly not to add a completely new faction during the Beta phase, and even if it's already developed in mod form I don't think it would be a good idea to add something during the Beta phase at all.

Still not understand your suggestion.

I find that difficult on the auto-healing side. Which units should they auto-heal? They don't automatically choose the one in the middle. But your idea seems better applied to Hero Healers... just to make them more unique or something. Well, since we're talking about it: it's a pet peeve seeing units that "pray to treat wounds". It even got me asking, "How DID people treat wounds back then?". But I just brushed it off since classical RTS just uses priests instead of real medics or something. But, yeah. Make (non-Wololo) priests more useful in-game.

1° Interesting proposition but have to be balanced wisely, with a group of priests maybe you can make a group of champions invicible for seconds. But at a certain point it can be useful even without being broken. Also, with this fast heal, you can consider that some can, in let's say 300 pop game, mass healers enough to constantly area heal army, because some priests would still heal while the cooldown has passed for others, so infinite heal. also, keep in mind that in fight infantry champions takes not that much place to fight so easy to heal. Healing wisely would maybe counter massed ranged units. 2°I think medical center as you described it would be not that much used, pretty slow healing rate, if you don't have 5 healers in you better go back to nearest temple but i might be wrong. Priests definitely need a change.