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  1. Ranged units are currently designed in an ahistorical manner, encouraging players to field forces that are almost entirely ranged. In part, this is due to a number of issues. 1. Ranged units are accurate and typically faster than their melee counterparts, encouraging players to kite with them. This makes players micro their ranged units much like in starcraft. Since 0 A.D. does not wish to have this kind of gameplay, this should be addressed. 2. The proportion of ranged to melee units is historically inaccurate to my understanding. While I think that there should be the possibility of using skirmishing armies, these should have a proper place in the game based on historically informed unit compositions. Here is a general analysis of army compositions during 0 A.D.’s timeframe. An article from wikipedia argues that Alexander the Great used 31,000 heavy infantry, 9,000 light infantry (ranged), and 7,000 cavalry in the battle of Gaugamela . The opposing Persian side had only 1,500 archers in an army that numbered between 52,000 and 120,000. These statistics are not extremely unusual, but they would be in the case of 0 A.D. Here are a few suggestions to address these problems. 1. Ranged units should be much more inaccurate, having the ability to hit targets they did not aim for, making it also possible to have friendly fire. In most cases with at least firearms, it has been common for soldiers to not even aim at a specific target in battle situations. Assuming that this was also the case before gunpowder, the game should attempt to emulate this. Missile trajectories should arc more, and accuracy should dramatically fall off as the distance increases between them and their targets. Highly experienced and champion units could perhaps do better, but these things should at least affect them in part. 2. Most heavy units, especially those with shields, which do a fantastic job of deflecting things like arrows, should be much more resistant to ranged attacks than they currently are. If directional armour is introduced, I think that the idea of them taking more damage from flanking missile attacks would be a nice option, yet for the most part, shields should play a much larger role in calculating defence against ranged attacks. These are just a few options for addressing what I find to be a problem, and I'd be open to suggestions.
    4 points
  2. I don't think one precludes the other. Sure, if there are a ton of civs then players will figure out which civs are better than the others and use those in multiplayer if all they care about is win:loss ratios, but that will happen regardless of how many civs the game has. It happened in Starcraft with every single new patch that was released where top players bounced back and forth from Zerg and Protoss, and that game had the absolute minimum of civs. This cannot be avoided. As @Sundiata mentioned, you can macro balance with culture groups and then tweak that a little on the civ scale for interest. Cultural groups would be maybe 6? Not hard to balance from that POV.
    3 points
  3. Each herd would be capped at a max pop, depending on the species. Same thing for forests. Once the predetermined forested areas are saturated, no new trees would grow. Forest could have different settings depending on the map. In reality, only some peripheral forests would remain because most people would still cut all the forests in their base 100% for quick early income. "Forest management" would be more of a late game thing.
    3 points
  4. would be nice to have same idea for wild animals ... Empire earth had this one if i recall correctly
    3 points
  5. Just a point about this. What could have been the interaction between Iron Age Britons and the Mauryan Empire? Or with the Koushites? Or between the Achaemenid dynasty and the Roman Republic? Or between the Iberians and a possible Chinese faction? Personally I am more about an accurate representation of each faction for a matter of respect for each culture and for the work of historians, but not about hardcore historical limitations. It is still a video game. Edit: my point is that talking about contact is not a good reason to exclude meso-american factions
    2 points
  6. @Genava55 Sometimes we like to argue a lot, but in the end, we all just want the same thing: a great game. I know I'm overly ambitious with regard to what I'd like to see developed, but the Pyrogenesis game-engine is really a dream come true. I'd like to see 0AD, as the flagship project, to make the most use it's potential, and do what all those other games couldn't. Real historicity. Real sense of immersion. Those things require more depth. Not more neurotic microing that scared off the bulk of RTS gamers a decade ago. I think the starcraft and AoK analogy is problematic because those games themselves are problematic, because of the nostalgic hold they have over many people. They're not considered the best games because they're objectively better than other games in the genre, but because they were epic in their day, innovative and refreshing. Now nostalgia is left, but the old formulas will never inspire such feelings of exhilaration again, because they're no longer innovative or refreshing. They're standard, and to achieve the same feeling in a new game, entirely new stuff needs to be developed, not seen before. That doesn't mean that all the standard stuff needs to be thrown out, at all. But the Steppe cultures for example offer a lot of potential in regard to never before seen gameplay. Adding never before seen civilizations (for most people) and their unique traits (like Kushites and Mauryas) is another thing that really adds exotic flair, while civs like Gaul, Rome and Athens provide us with the well known civs we're all familiar with, and provide an anchor in time. The biggest draw-back for city builders is that they lack good combat. The problem with battle simulators like TW is that they lack good base-building. 0AD already has a relatively developed mix of features. The features just need polishing. Microing needs to be removed from some places, to allow more depth in others, particularly eco and civilian stuff as well as battle mechanics. Some people are scared this might become an unholy concoction that will never work. I'd argue the opposite. The deadening simplicity of the eco, combined with complicated unit-micro tactics that take advantage of substandard mechanics that most people aren't even aware of, is the real unholy concoction. @Prodigal Son Thank you for your extensive explanation, I always appreciate when someone takes their time to explain their position. I don't have much to argue about what you said. This is exactly why I'd like to see a coin/gold/silver resource introduced into 0AD, because it could do so much for balancing, helping to nuance costs and expand the sense of economy beyond resource gathering (and sending a cart back and forth to "markets" in the middle of nowhere, serving no one). Some people are scared of more than 4 resources. Like 5 or 6 resources are too difficult to keep track of. I don't understand that. 0AD can be in a league of its own. It just requires bravery, patience and a lot of skilled contributors.
    2 points
  7. Starcraft indeed has this issue, but it's not as severe as you make it seem. Ofc, since it has a large player base, many complains get out loud. It also has complete asymmetry, the 3 races share nothing at all as of units, techs etc. While I agree you can't have perfect balance, you can have acceptable balance. Two of the major factors that contribute to having it or not, are the number of civs and the degree of asymmetry. The Total War example with culture groups including dozens of civs isn't valid to a true RTS. Total war games can be considered acceptably balanced only at a custom battle level, where players purchase units with a set amount of money to fight a tactical battle. Total war campaigns are completely unbalanced. But I think I can partly see what you & @Sundiata mean. If culture groups can function as in Age Of Mythology, where you have each Civ-group (say Norse) with like 90% similar techtree and it's subfactions slightly diversifying off that as the techtree unlocks, it might be doable. Might need even more work than that though, AoM, while not the worst, is not a well balanced game. I've actually thought of that in the past, but then this issue arises: How to group Civs without being too arbitrary? Brits & Gauls seems ok, Iberians could fit here but, among other things, their structures/defences are like on the extreme opposite. Athens, Sparta & possible additional city states is ok. But if you throw the successor Civs on top of that, the unit roosters change quite a lot. The same with Rome and Carthage, so should they get one culture group each? Persians, Mauryans & Kushites have advanced archery but again too different roosters and are too culturally different. Again, one for each of them? So from 3 badly chosen culture groups up to 9 well chosen ones just for the current base game Civs. I feel like the desire to "throw everything interesting/historically valid in", which I also share to a degree, underestimates the hardship of balancing which I can't properly describe without going to extremely time consuming detail, and even then, possibly fail. I don't believe you can have a game that fully pleases the competitive RTS player, the history nerd and the city builder at the same time. The more I think about it the more it comes to me that the most reasonable middle ground solution for the game is to go back to where the game's vision started. Close to Age of Kings, where you can have many civs, big tech trees and an acceptable balance. Decent asymmetry with over 3-4 Civs or Culture Groups (of almost identical Civs each) would doom multiplayer. Experimental gameplay with advanced combat & politics systems, improved city-building, inspiration from real time tactics and grand strategy games etc... would most likely do the same while also increasing development time by a lot.
    2 points
  8. like reality , for small amount of food its ok but after a while you cannot rely on that as a source of food lets say at the begining of the game there is a group of elephant with 5 elephants ... lets say you dont kill them , after every 3 min 1 baby elephant add to their group and after another 3 min it will become a mature elephant .... and of course there must be max limit for example lets say 10 .... At the end considering current game play time it is not a big deal .... but really nice to see reproducing animals in wild instead of killing them in first 2 min and extinction
    2 points
  9. Sorry when I say engine split I just mean splitting the engine from the game. So we can finally brand it as an engine and dissociate the two. Not making one folder per civ
    2 points
  10. Before seriously considering to add any more Civs I'm in favor of settling down on the final gameplay formula. The game already has far too many civs to be acceptably balanced with anything above very minor Civ asymmetry (say AoK levels, which are already surpassed by quite a bit). Do we want a fun game as of "properly competitive" or a fun game as of "large variety in playstyles and cultures represented"? The former option is a golden rule for a successful RTS, while the later is perfectly fine as long as we accept that multiplayer will never have huge potential. Anyway it's impossible to please everyone and balance has to do with far more than just the number of Civs. But the main problem as of now (actually for a long while) is a lack of focus. Btw, what's the point of having all Civs as separate downloads? I mean from a gameplay/balance perspective.
    2 points
  11. I honestly think you're the one stretching it There is nothing obscure about the (military, economic and cultural) contact of the Han Chinese with the steppe peoples... The steppe peoples (Xiongnu and Scythians) stretched from China to the Black Sea, which is obviously among the many other prime reasons to have them in order to tie in the East with the West. The term "justification" is unjustified here. It's history, not conjecture. Also having the most powerful nomadic civs of the day and their associated gameplay would be pretty unique, and a great added value to a genre like classical RTS as a whole! Comparing the "Baiyue/Minyue, the Qiangs/Chiangs, the Dians and the Nanyue" to the Han Chinese is a little bit ridiculous, so I'm not even going to go there. Overly subjective. And adding new civilizations has little to do with other parts of the game-develoment. Totally different people put different types of effort into the different areas of development. Working on new civs, for example, has little to do with pathfinder reworks, AI, performance optimizations etc... Different "departments"... Stanislass is a rare example of an all rounder, but most people focus on one specific part of the development (Code/Art/Research/Legal/Promotion/etc). Of course there's always a lot of overlap, but halting civ development does NOTHING to speed up development in other departments. I'm 100% confident it's the opposite. New civs generate excitement and attract new crowds. They benefit the development as more people become interested, and may end up becoming contributors in other departments. I don't think 0AD should be looking at these games for too much inspiration anymore. Especially not Starcraft. Both of those games are fantasy based (yes, AoE is historical fantasy), whereas 0AD attempts historical accuracy, where it's possible. We should take it further, and make each civ unique based on their actual history! There is soooo much history to work with to draw inspiration from, and you conveniently left out the Total War series, which can feature more than a hundred factions in a single game! That is the direction we should take, and we should stop entertaining the idea that a 3 faction system is even remotely relevant to 0AD. Total War uses cultural groups. This provides the basis for "macro-balancing". Different factions within the same cultural group would have more superficial differences (micro-balancing). This system would work like a charm for 0AD. My preliminary thoughts: Macro-balancing: there are 4 main civ-types: Barbarian Greco-Roman MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Nomadic Barbarian civs have a simple gameplay, boom early, recruit large numbers of relatively poorly armoured units. Greco-Romans have more advanced gameplay, are unrivalled in terms of heavy infantry, but generally have mediocre cavalry and skirmishers. MMA civs mix heavy infantry and advanced gameplay with good Barbarian or nomadic mercenaries. Their units, however good, are outmatched by their counterparts in specialized civs. Nomadic civs are nomadic… Strong offense, miserable defense. Of course this is a very simplistic representation of what I have in mind, and I'm sure people like @wowgetoffyourcellphone could develop this system into a beautiful flower. Also, there is nothing arbitrary about selecting the most powerful civilizations of the day. Also, China has a population of 1.38 BILLION people and one of the richest histories in the WORLD. Almost 1/5th of the world population. Talking about "fairness" when preferring the Chinese over any other civ at this point is very weird.
    2 points
  12. Whilst the Kushites are not entirely finished, the same is true about all other factions included in game. There are only voices for Greek and Latin; Athenians use Macedonian structure actors; Britons and Gauls share the same unit actors; not all units have corresponding icons; heroes are highly unbalanced, some have superb auras, others are practically worthless; template naming is inconsistent; there are at least three different transcriptions being used for Greek; Mauryas is still spelled incorrectly; etc. Most of these points will probably go unnoticed by the majority of users; however, all factions are rather identical; sure, they look different, but they all play about the same. Additional content is nice but certainly not important . Rather than including more civilizations (any selection is arbitrary), it might make more sense to move all factions into separate mods (one mod, one civ), and keep only the engine, gaia objects, and shared content in the main distribution, allowing people to mix and match their own civilization roster. Besides, mods such as Hyrule Conquest, Millennium AD, and Ponies Ascendant don't really need the default civs, nor would the not-yet-started part 2: 1-500 AD.
    2 points
  13. That is an interesting question. I did not include the modelling and texturing part into the time to make the Kushites, just as I did not include the awesome research Sundiata did for them either. I didn't do much modelling for the Kushites anyways. There were a few annoying things. Licensing. Gathering all the contributors and making sure nothing we took was illegal. Fixing art actor bugs and ensuring a good code quality. Removing any mixed spaces and tabs and empty newlines and adding newlines at the end of files for our dear Unix users. There was also the balancing I did not do. But that's tedious because we want them to be an balanced Civilization while keeping historical accuracy. If it was just a mod, meh. Then there was loading all the art files one by one to see if stuff was missing textures broken references. If I ever get around doing it checkrefs.pl should have mod support (and a few long due updates on Phabricator currently.) Then there is updating the documentation which I failed to do see the recent fixes. Then there is naming conventions but that's fine I guess trimming the suffix if the file is in a folder with that name ex textures with ao in their name is okay. I started recording voices for the Kushites. Never got around finishing that either. So everybody can do it. It's a bunch of little things together that make a huge work. But in the end the one committing has the responsibility. At least I feel like so. So yeah TLDR; What is daunting is the little things not the obvious ones. There is much more going behind the scenes that people imagine. And that's not gratifying until it's done.
    2 points
  14. Indeed limiting renewable trees to SP and/or for a campaign mode where the simulated time line is more than a single season should work. Enjoy the Choice
    2 points
  15. You're forgetting that this is primarily a SP-feature that doesn't necessarily need to be relevant to MP-games. I get the impression that a lot of competitive players don't realize that single players can spend many, many hours on a single map, just toying with the AI and building whatever town/city/empire we can dream of. Perhaps regenerating trees could be an option in game-setup. The trees can be set to grow back over a half hour period or so, making it less or almost not noticeable in short games. But at least the map in a late-game, 6 hour long SP fantasy wouldn't look like a desolate wasteland. The main issue I see is the art side (saplings + growing animations).
    2 points
  16. @Sundiata I think I need to explain myself a little better so that you can see where I'm coming from. We disagree on far less than you seem to think. I too consider 0 A.D. a very unique game. Probably not in exactly the same sense as you, but I admire the amount of hard work put in this over the years by unpaid volunteers. Coding, art, research, mostly everything, even where/when I disagree with design decisions or specific interpretations of history. Until a few years ago you'd mostly find me around here talking about accuracy instead of mechanics. But an RTS (I'd say any game) can benefit from both. For example, when I talk about going back to the original vision (the game started as an AoK mod and then become, more or less, a clone gameplay-wise - if I recall correctly) I don't mean tearing down every bit of historical authenticity to reach Age of Empires levels of "cartoon history". I talk about gameplay and Civ (a)ssymetry. For example if you need to replace the starting melee unit for the Romans due to balance reasons (Spearman instead of Swordsman) is historicity necessarily destroyed? You can argue that Rome was famous for it's Swordsmen or that Hastatii/Principes are a more basic unit and should be available earlier than Triarii. On the other hand, you could name the first rank of Triarii "Roman Hoplites/Spearmen/Whatever". Rome had hoplite-like infantry before forming it's legions and within the game's time frame. Is the second option less historical? And is it so important that Rome starts with Swordsmen even if the game ends up with worse balance? I also don't propose copying the entire AoK gameplay or tech-tree layout, just it's mentality in balancing. That's not because I don't like innovation but because I find it a happy medium between starcraft-level competitiveness and the current confused state of the game. Sure many 0 A.D. players prefer experimentation and/or singleplayer, but also many others would like a game that plays in an acceptably balanced way for multiplayer. I'd love both to the extreme, in fact I've been designing two vastly different gameplay proposals, one of which you might possibly like even more than the current state of the game, if I'm understanding you correctly (the other one is heavily inspired by Age of Empires in the vein I described above, but with many differences as well). But I fear both extreme experimentation and extreme multiplayer focus would alienate far more people that a well designed middle solution. Also not everyone is willing to wait 5 years for the complete game. Btw I'm a decent but not really competitive player who despises ladders (and especially "achievements"), I just try to include all sides of the argument and I want a good effort in balancing RTS games for the sake of fairness. If the game turns it's attention towards grand strategy/historical simulation I'll probably be more radical than you in feature requests. But it can't be both that and an RTS. You can't have an immersive Punic or Peloponnesian War in the game's current scale. That would need abstracting several things to make room for detail in other fields. The only asymmetrical elements of Total War that carry into multiplayer battles are the differences in unit roosters. But that's far easier to balance compared to RTS unit roosters. Each unit gets a price according to it's combat ability. Then equal money lead to (largely) equal armies in the battlefield. You don't have unit tech tiers, upgrades, economy, infrastructure etc messing with balance like in classic RTS. On the other hand, Total War campaigns are highly unbalanced, with each Civ having (often largely) different starting resources, number of cities, structures, armies, power of neighboring Civs etc. It's not a strong point or much played part of the games' multiplayer. Many people will want to play their "ancestors" or their favorite Civ in multiplayer and have similar chances of winning. Many people will want to play several or all factions in that vein. The people who play to win by all means or those who enjoy winning while in disadvantage are not the entire playerbase, so I don't think that's a good argument. I still feel like I haven't explained everything I'd like in detail, but it's just a post that has to end... Lastly, bow to no king, in name or not
    1 point
  17. Why not using heroes or even officers (like Delenda Est) to give the ability to set up a "tunnel" against a building? It could be something with a loading bar before to start or/and something you need to "build" with your men. As officer it could be a Primus Pilus centurion or a Tribunus Militum for the Romans, a Syntagmatarch for the Hellenes, a Corionos for the Celts etc.
    1 point
  18. Yes I agree. It is just to highlight the two ends of the spectra. The truth lies between an unproportional mix between both.
    1 point
  19. I get the comparison, I just think it's been high time to think outside the box and look beyond the horizon. Not be tied down by a very limited 20 year old spectrum. It's not a question of "or". These things aren't mutually exclusive, at all. That's definitely true.
    1 point
  20. Why 100+ ? lets say when you start the game there are 4 groups of camel on map ( 1v1 map , and each group has 4 camel and each group max is 10) normally 1 or 2 of them near you... and lets assume every 4 mins 1 mature camel add to each group (2 min baby , 2 min mature) so each group reproduce 1 mature camel every 4 mins , So after 16 mins in total 4 x 4 = 16 camel added in total i think you assume each camel reproduce a new baby camel, but what i propose is each group of camels reproduce 1 camel after x mins
    1 point
  21. If you exhaust resources that fast that is your choice. However, you also seem to play mostly competitive multiplayer games. Additionally, it is anybodies choice to cut down all the trees and exhaust all natural renewable resources on a map. However, it would be nice to have the choice to do the opposite.
    1 point
  22. The GPL license grants everyone to modify, redistribute and sell modifications or extensions to the 0 A.D., i.e. to compete for funds on third party online payment services. What is left for Wildfire Games to decide is what happens on Wildfire Games online services (lobby, forums, mod.io, download page, ...). The Lobby Terms say promotion of specific goods or services is not allowed (not allowed without WFGs permission in the new revision). I expect restrictions on that by the non-profit status too.
    1 point
  23. An engine split would be interesting for mods which want to become their own game, but still use the Pyrogenesis engine.
    1 point
  24. Anyway, I think that add new animals should also be a problem. Let's suppose for example that a desert map adds 1 camel per minute for every herd of camels (it would be a good amount for a rusher player). This means there are something like 4-5 camels more every minute (considering in the map a total of 4-5 herds of camels) But now let's suppose that 2 players are playing a small map and they both decide not to rush, so not to hunt. This means that when they will decide to attack, around minute 16-17, there will be something like 100+ camels in the map. That's quite crazy, don't you think? XD
    1 point
  25. If you make a certain claim (e.g. "the proportion of ranged to melee units is historically inaccurate") you should be able to back it up with reliable sources. If you can't verify something, then don't quote it. Secondary literature has to base itself directly or indirectly on primary sources. If they somehow give a different number, then read it carefully to figure out their argumentation for their interpretation. Also, Hans Delbrück died in 1921; his views might be outdated. There is nothing intrinsically wrong in using 19th or 20th C sources, however, if you do, always back them up with more recent publications. If neither can be proven, then don't suppose anything. In the battle of Lechaeum, as descibed in Xenophon Hellenica 4.5.11-18, an Athenian peltast force defeated a Spartan hoplite regiment, killing about 250 out of 600 with their javelins.
    1 point
  26. @Genava55 Generally the Total War style of combat, minus morale has been the goal at the very outset of the game to my understanding. @NescioFair enough. I didn't expect it to convince you. The archer estimate was interestingly enough not cited, but since it was listed under a chart depicting modern estimates of the Persian army's size, it seems to be a combination of synthesising Arrian and a number of modern sources such as Delbrück. Your guess is as good if not better than mine as to whether that is a fair idea. What I will say is that the Persian army was of course a multiethnic conglomerate of peoples and that even if the Sparabara formation was that way, that might be difficult to generalise for the entirety of the force (Not that you are.). The number of helots to Spartans is no surprise given the number of helots that populated Sparta in general. All that said, it's rather difficult to find exhaustive comparisons, and certainly there would be artefacts. Whether the statistics support my presuppositions or another's is hard to say. What I would point out is that regardless of the ratios, ranged units still play the decisive role in the game, and although there were definite cases of battles in which light soldiers played an important part such as the Battle of Sphateria, the majority of fights seem to have been won by melee combat generally speaking. Granted, I mainly am considering this from a Western perspective, yet then again that is the primary focus of the game.
    1 point
  27. Interesting; I'm especially curious as to where that number of "only 1,500 archers" comes from. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaugamela#Size_of_Persian_army "the main weapon of the Achaemenid army historically was the bow and arrow, and javelin." And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparabara "nine rows of archers would be protected by one row of shield-bearers." However, we all know Wikipedia is not a reliable source. The most important of Alexander's biographers is Arrian. Gaugamela is described in book III. He also provides numbers for the Persian army: Arrian doesn't break the numbers down into heavy (melee) and light (ranged). And yes, Arrian wrote five centuries post factum and modern scholarship tend to view his round numbers as exaggarations and poetic licence. An example of a battle where the light troops are listed separately from heavy infantry is Herodotus' description of the Greek army at Plataea: There were seven helots per Spartan; the Greek army as a whole had about twice as many light troops as hoplites (69500:38700). Perhaps the army was somewhat smaller than the numbers given by Herodotus, but there is no real reason to doubt his troop ratios. Anyway, "a general analysis of army compositions" based on a single number from Wikipedia does not exactly convince me. Nor does calling it "not extremely unusual" help.
    1 point
  28. I have seen many mods dying for this reason in huge varieties of game but maybe my experience is wrong. I think having a basic game that works well and is well-honed is what attracts people with useful skills. I won't argue anymore since I'm not opposed to new civilizations in the game, I am simply a follower of caution and temperance. If adding new factions does not affect the development of the game then why not. But if you add more tactical depth and more depth to each faction, there is already a lot of work. And stay modest, bro'. 0 A.D. is still a fantasy game. Just like the Total War series. It is only an artistic interpretation of history for amusement.
    1 point
  29. Question 1 is personally really general. It depends on my opinion a lot for the current situation: I never develop a default strategy about it. If I start losing many, anyway, I prefer retire for a while until I have enough troops to win the fight. Better to lose some in a retreat that all in a suicide attack. Best civilization to defend a ground are surely ibers. I personally think that another good civilization is rome, that can hold well with a lot of different siege weapons. Anyway, another good civilization is Carth, with (as Feldfeld already said) heavy walls and archers units, that are deadly for defense (garrison fast, long range). These are the civs also that I use more in Jebel Barkal
    1 point
  30. I agree with Thorfinn. Total War struggles with the issue, but it is one of the finest battle simulators ever created... 0AD would do good to attempt battle mechanics more akin to the Total War series (battalions & directional stuff). Not a blanket copy, but a simplified arcade version (Total War Arena-ish). It might be challenging, but considering the many thousands of units in TW-games as opposed to the few hundred in 0AD, it might end up being "easier" to implement in 0AD. It would also help 0AD move away from the AoE/starcraft type microing of individual units, into microing platoons, battalions and armies, at least for most combat.
    1 point
  31. How is it difficult? The changes suggested here are relatively simple and at least in my opinion make the gameplay more immersive. Granted, the above ideas probably are not perfect, yet they would seem to improve upon the current game-state.
    1 point
  32. Others useful sources for Geto-Dacians: https://fsu.valahia.ro/images/avutgs/1/2005/2005050201.pdf https://www.academia.edu/3195737/Warriors_and_weapons_in_Dacia_in_the_2nd_BC_1st_AD_Centuries_-_Ph_-_thesis_abstract_ Argidava by Radu Oltean http://www.romaniadevis.ro/dacia/zona-geto-daca/reconstituiri-3d/item/cetatea-banita-reconstituire-3d
    1 point
  33. I agree with @stanislas69 it is much harder to include a civilization into the mod. First a civilization has to be researched, models have to be created, documentation, sound has to be selected or created, the legal aspects have to be handled, the civilization has to be balanced, maps have to be created and quality assurance has to be done. The civilizations currently included in the game went through several iteration of development. I also agree, the new mod downloader in 0 A.D. makes downloading mods easy. The only thing you have to do as a user is to select a mod and press download, wait until the download completed, select the mod and play. Furthermore, keep in mind, that 0 A.D. and the Pyrgoenesis development will slow down, if more and more content is added. Because every time a bigger change is made, which requires adjustments for every civilization all civilizations have to be modified.
    1 point
  34. @Genava55, just to clarify my point a little: Han Chinese, as well as Kushites from Sudan, as well as Iron Age Britons made use of chariots for war. This is absolutely not a coincidence. No such thing ever existed in the Americas. War-Elephants were used in India, Britain and Sudan. Again, not a coincidence. Elephants are unknown to the Americas. Cavalry is used by literally every civ in-game. Horses didn't even exist in the Americas. Between c. 1000 BC and 400 BC, literally every civ in-game (or their predecessors) switched to iron/steel as a primary material for making weapons and tools. Iron doesn't seem to have been known in the Americas. Every single civ in-game is connected through military conflict with at least 2 other civs (some a lot more). No civilization in the Americas ever fought a war with any of the civs in-game. All the civs in-game were connected through a vast ancient network of trade-routes, and literary as well as archaeological evidence suggests that most of these civs were fully aware of the existence of most of the other civs, even if they never went to war with them. None of the civs in-game were even remotely aware that the Americas even existed. The main technical problem is that balancing strictly no-cav stone-age civilizations with the existing civs is impossible without throwing out any semblance of historical accuracy in game-play. To clarify further, I love New World civilizations and I hope every major civ of the Americas is developed for 0AD at some point. My concern is that including them in the main-game is simply not possible without messing everything up. Unless people aren't bothered with massively underpowered civs. I'm not saying they were technologically inferior or something. Simply the lack of horses, iron and advanced siege-engines or elephants (on top of mediocre "navies", if that) makes them unbalanceable by definition. The complete lack of interconnectedness is also something I just wouldn't be able to get past (in the main-game). Having New World civs as a standard "expansion" or a "built in mod", included but separate would be my preference. Not including the Chinese is a mistake, plain and simple. Of course adding the Scythians (and Greco-Bactrians) would do a lot to further increase interconnectedness, and of course I'm aware that this wouldn't be a small job, at all. I don't "expect" it to happen over the next alpha, although with a planned release date of 2022 for alpha 24, who knows what might happen.. @stanislas69 You're a hero, for so many reasons. You've done so much and we thank you! Nobody will demand anything from you. We're just a bunch of dreamers. These talks are all purely theoretical, and most of us know this. But if one day Wildfire Games is suddenly magically over-staffed, at least we'd already have a good idea of which direction we'd want future civ-development for the main-game to go.
    1 point
  35. Also a new tech might be in order Silvaculture or more popularly known as forestry Ie; replanting after cutting and do remember that trees typically take years to grow to harvest sizes so your current game would over before you can cut any of the new trees Enjoy the Choice
    1 point
  36. @Rolf Dew I think you overestimate the impact of trees regrowing. If you decide to cut all the trees right away, trees will not grow anymore. Like I mentioned, one condition is that you do not cut all trees in a forest. Grown trees have to be still around to regrow trees. Second trees regrow slowly, meaning it will take 10+ minutes to have another fully grown tree. Furthermore, there would be no change with maps where you have a lack of wood (mostly deserts). The only change here would be do you want to wait 10+ minutes to have a new tree or do you cut all trees right away? In addition, it would make trees more valuable. Currently, if you want wood you go to a place you cut all the trees and bring your soldiers back to safety. With regrowing trees you might have an interest to protect trees or a forest. Regarding merchants, yes having merchants help a lot on maps where you have a lot of space, because the trade income depends on the travel distance of the merchants. On maps where you have neither water nor a lot of space, regrowing trees could be a game changer. For example, mountainous places tend to be exactly like that, you might just have two or three valleys. What do you do, cut would on a sustainable rate or do you cut them all at once? I think the choice should be up to the individual player.
    1 point
  37. https://www.amazon.com/If-Rome-Hadnt-Fallen-Happened/dp/1848844298 this included later civs. https://www.amazon.com/Clash-Eagles-Trilogy-Book/dp/1101885300
    1 point
  38. It is already hard to make something vaguely correct in the Total War series, then in 0 A.D. it is a very difficult mission. Historically archers were used primarily to disorganize and demoralize enemy troops.
    1 point
  39. Just a few quick suggestions/wishes, if I may: - When saving a game, include the play speed in the save; - mark houses just like every other building when there's someone inside; - make it possible to ~fold-out unit lists in buildings, so the health of the individual units is visible (or maybe add a 'release fully healed units' button?); - re-add the perk info to the hero icon on mouse-over; - bring back the number of units working on a building.
    1 point
  40. https://www.docdroid.net/qpO72Yg/thracian-combined.pdf An extract: Something in French in case someone is interested: https://issuu.com/baranes/docs/l_e__pope__e_des_rois_thraces_2__ex
    1 point
  41. I split this topic as best as I could sorry if some posts are missing. To get on this topic. The inclusion of mod civilizations have been discussed over the years to some extent and ended up in heated discussions and sometimes bloodbaths as well as general incomprehension. To be truly honest I didn't think the Kushites would make it into the game. The discussion about it in the staff forums is kinda big considering the number of people actually in the team. Including a civ in a mod is easy. Just dump everything inside a git repository. Fix it along and voilà. Including it into the game is a bit trickier because we have to make sure everything is in order that the documentation is correct that there are no copyright violations and that the overall thing is playable, balanced, and does not throw weird errors. Including two or three civs at once would be a daunting task I do not wish to do right now. Could also include one civilization you might say. Fair enough, but what about the people that wanted the other one to be included. Thanks to our programmers combined efforts we have now a good mod support into the game. You want more civs ? Make mods universally recognized such as delenda Est milleniumad terra magna etc. Just want to improve the existing ones, join the modders team. Want your mod to rely on a another one with civs ? We've got the technology it's called mod dependency TLDR: The probability of new civs or the existing ones being included is very low because 1 it's a pain to get it right 2 it leads to endless discussions 3 we have mod support now and finally 4 Stan is lazy.
    1 point
  42. Well if the answer is no then we'll be settled. And we will be able to provide an answer as to why Can you ask please ?.:)
    1 point
  43. For 0 A.D. to receive recurring donations via Patreon? I need confirmation from SPI that this is an acceptable way for them to handle donations for 0 A.D. I can ask, but I must warn you that the answer will probably be: "No, we will only accept donations using the methods detailed on our website." --- For 0 A.D. to receive recurring donations via PayPal? Nothing. This option is already available.
    1 point
  44. @Lion.Kanzen @Sundiata @Genava55 already did some research in other threads.
    1 point
  45. Visiblegaarrison for archers on top of ships instead of just adding extra arrows, would make for more interesting marine warfare.
    1 point
  46. Is there a way I can implement this now or do I have to wait for future versions of 0AD? I'll probably have Ordona Province complete and ready for public release in the next month.
    1 point
  47. See the quote I made. If we include Han that's not fair for Native Americans, that's not fair for Slav Tribes. That's also not fair for any other country in South Africa, Australia. I get your point you want the Han dynasty to be added so that it can attract people from that area. And it's fine really. Putting the Kushites in was a 2 Month work. And I failed to make it perfect. Also there is a lot of open issues on the Terra Magna mod about historical accuracy and other matters.
    0 points
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