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Hi, this is Boudica portrait that i worked on , may i ask your feedback and also let me know what is next ?

There are games with 100+ resources, and this not what I want for 0AD, but I don't think having 5 or 6 resources could be too difficult for anybody to handle. I think having some sort of currency could really help soft cap potential OP-units, by adding a different requirement than just throwing some more metal at it. This is one of the problems of the game currently, people just recruit the "best" units they can "afford". If a slightly more complicated requirement like acquiring "coin" to pay for champions or mercenaries, you'd automatically have a more diversified army: peasant levies → citizen soldiers → champions, costing food/wood, food/wood/metal, food/wood/metal/coin respectively, for example. Coin could also be used in research and construction of monuments like the wonder and even temples. It could also refreshen the current market mechanics. Maybe you could even demand tribute from weaker players. Another "resource" I'm fond of is "honor & glory", similar to DE. More like a sort of "health-bar" that is influenced by glorious actions like winning battles and building monuments, and would in turn influence the "moral" of units. A sort of global moral. Could cause units to perform badly when the kingdom's honor is low/units become more bribable, or even susceptible to conversion to another faction. Switching alliances a lot will negatively impact your honor and glory, for example, as will keeping slaves or deleting units. Performing costly sacrifices at your temple could in turn increase it again. These are just thoughts, and I know it sounds rough on the edges, but the 4 resource thing is one of the things I really don't enjoy about many classical RTS games, 0AD included. I believe in at least trying to instill the idea that running an empires requires more than cutting wood, hitting rocks and farming in the middle of town. There was money involved. Tons of it! I know these things are just abstractions, but they're just a tad too abstract for me. Either way, the game is too unit-micro heavy, and unit-microing like dancing units, or having to deal with dancing units is exactly the type of micro that most players really don't enjoy. It's the bad kind of complexity that detracts from the game for most of us. When fighting battles, people prefer to have the feeling that they're actually commanding an army in battle, not constantly be reassigning brain-dead individuals that for the love of god can't figure out how to choose a sensible target. In competitive games, failing to unit-micro will get you slaughtered, and this is really not the way to go in a game of ancient warfare, at all. In League of Legends type games, and even starcraft, yes, but a game of ancient warfare, no! It should be about strategy and tactics. Warfare in antiquity was about formations, the age of the phalanx, battalions, platoons, squads, whatever. Not dancing! Not telling every individual what to do all the time. A lot of these fighters were trained and experienced warriors, but currently they all behave like a bunch of suicidal berserking man-children. So I'd say, reduce complexity in unit-microing by using battalion systems instead, and add complexity in the form of directionality of damage as well as the economy. The Mediterranean has been done a bajillion times already... I'm not against it, and I'm very happy to be able to play with Rome or Carthage or the Athenians. But it's not the type of branding that will make 0AD famous. 0AD has achieved something amazing by adding factions like the Kushites and the Maurya, because they're not Mediterranean, and feature very rarely in any kind of game. Having the Kushites and Maurya makes 0AD unique. Romans and Athenians doesn't make 0AD unique, or memorable... In addition, factions like the Seleucids and Ptolemies whom are both quite obscure as well, adds even more to the exotic flavor of a game that also has all the "standard" civs. What's even more brilliant is that all these civs were in direct military contact/conflict with many other civs, making them actually really relevant, and adding many plus-points in my book. Adding the Kushites to 0AD is making waves, slowly but surely (and I haven't done any promotion yet). The research thread has more than 65.000 views and counting! By far the most popular civ-proposal so far. This isn't some weird testament to myself, but to the history of the Kushites, who's obscurity turned out to be gold! Simply never having heard of them has generated so much interest in so many people, and artists and even historians with Phd's have been consulting the thread for their own research, and there's overwhelmingly positive feedback on youtube video's discussing or featuring 0AD's Kushites. I think the full effect of the Kushite addition will only be felt over the next few alphas, but they're already basically selling themselves... I know that adding the Kushites meant absolutely nothing to some people, but it meant the world to many others. Any number of civs, especially the Han Chinese, Xiongnu, Thracians, Scythians, Greco-Bactrians, Parthians, Garamantes, Numidians, Nabataeans etc have the same potential. Also, as an artist yourself, do you think that you not making new unit textures for new civs speeds up development in other departments? To clarify, I'm not saying that the team should officially commit to adding this faction or that faction to the next alpha or something. The Kushites were originally developed in mods. First in Delenda Est, then in Vox Populi, and then in a vanilla compatible mod. This was a healthy development process that didn't require any official commitments from the development team, until they were satisfied with the quality and decided to add it to the main game. Developing civs in mods is just fine. The problem is that when the development team has this dogmatic stance on not adding any civs anymore up front, it works very discouragingly for potential contributors. I worked really hard on the research for the Kushites (sleepless nights hard), and I did it thinking it would take a miracle for it to be added to the main game. A miracle is what I received, and I will be forever grateful to the development team for granting my childhood wish of being able to play as a proper African civ in a historical RTS. This was a black nerd fantasy come true. A dream! Not just for me! But to be honest, there were moments of depression, thinking I was doing all this work for nothing. Again, I'm not saying the team should commit to anything, I'm just saying the team should encourage independent civ-development with the possibility of adding to vanilla, once certain quality requirements are met. The only thing this would require from the team is to stop saying "we're not adding new civs" like it's the official mantra. I think a lot of sinophiles for example have long abandoned Wildfiregames because of this. But 0AD isn't a commercial project, neither is it bound by corporate deadlines. Those things you describe, DLC's and expansion packs, are blatant money-grabs. Ugly side-effects of 21st century capitalism, rather than a testament to good or even moral game-development. The expansion pack formula doesn't make any sense if you're not about the money, and makes even less sense considering 0AD takes less than a Gigabyte to download. If it was already 20 Gig, I'd understand splitting it up. But it's not even 1 GB...

I think the issue is that the replay or saved game should just load the mods in the proper order when launched.

First walls, and then this? I may be getting a little paranoid, but if the common act of microing units that has been a staple of good age of empires players for years and years is now causing people to be called out as cheaters? Players who are getting beat by a seasoned pro will call anything cheating nowdays (except the wall exploit, that is kind of broken and unbeatable). If your opponent is dancing his units around then guess what, it means he is not paying attention to the rest of the battlefield, good microing does have a large weakness, in that it forces you to pay attention to one part of the map while you micro. If microing is called cheating then what is the point of skirmisher units? Although I am against "banning" this like was done to walls, I do have to agree that the unit ai should be improved so that the units are not total idiots. Sorry, but just do not want to have to live by 50 unwritten rules that are almost impossible to not accidentally do every time I play multiplayer.

Yeah, it would be nice to have minor hero officers, would also be cool if killing heroes/officers gave you a classic "the enemy general is dead" notification, as rn hard to tell when you killed an enemy hero.

I also envision this to myself. Thank you very much @Sundiata Your thoughts and words are truly inspirational. It is nice to have you around, here in the community.

0abc has been largely updated to A23. Changes include, but are not limited to: introduced a new resource: silver pierce damage is split into pierce (arrows) and thrust (spears) units and some structures steadily consume small amounts of resources (upkeep) increased unit training and technology research times a greater variety of aura range visualization markers merged Athenians and Spartans into a single faction, the Greeks disabled unit promotion, champions, heroes, team bonuses; they might be reintroduced at a later stage all civilization bonuses and penalties are replaced with new ones structures: economic structures can be constructed in neutral territory dropsites are just that: dropsites; all economic technologies are moved to the market, which is now available in the village phase town phase requires a market, city phase a temple centres can be part of trade routes walls are stronger but also more expensive and slower to construct; all factions have palisades (village), siege walls (town), and city walls (city) fortresses have a territory root, are purely defensive structures, have somewhat more health, but no longer train any units all factions have cavalry stables (village) and siege workshops (town); most have separate economic docks (village) and military shipyards (town); many have elephant stables (city) units: all units are bribable (vision sharing), except for fauna fauna is no longer visible in fog female citizens renamed to women; they can no longer build or repair cavalry can no longer gather resources camelry, chariotry, and elephantry are no longer considered cavalry chariotry can no longer attack ships, siege, or structures siege engines are no longer capturable battering rams can no longer attack organic units all factions can construct rams (town) changed population costs: dogs and ships: 0 support and infantry: 1 camelry and cavalry: 2 biga chariots and siege engines: 4 quadriga chariots, war elephants, and siege towers: 6 numerous minor tweaks and balances, most of which will probably go unnoticed

I can stop saying it. And watch people trying to do stuff in vain and lose hope and motivation, like I nearly lost mine last year of ever getting inside the team one day because I wasn't good enough. I don't want to give hope or say I will do something without being able to commit to it. And to commit it. So I could pledge to merge Terra_Magna for A24. But If I don't or I fail to fix it, all I will have is failure, and broken game, or failure and nothing that has been done. The Kushites were made an exception, for one big reason. The research behind them. Not saying that mods don't have proper backup. I would be stabbing Ayakashi, Wolflance if I said that for Rise of the East. No. But you inspired people with your research, Lordgood started making new models, and everyone started to get hyped again. But I can't promise anyone that because he puts his heart, his soul and his blood inside a civ, that it will be included. I just can't. Saying we won't include any Civ is a good way to make people moderate their expectations. Look at it from a manpower perspective. In the last 6 years we had at most 3 artists active in the team. So three people who could take decisions, and get them done, who like every one of us had lives and other things to do. They couldn't keep up with it and nobody has the right to force them to. We recruited new artists now, so it might be better, but I can't promise anything. So here is what I could say: Do your research, make an awesome thread (Keep it organized... please) that make people wonder about a whole civilization nobody's really heard off, gather interest, show us that you are dead serious about it, and we will see if we can make your dream come true. Does that sound more realistic ? I can't really say. But I believe there is something far more important. Stop thinking that mods are any less valuable than the game, that's simply NOT true. Remember, we are ALL modders. Some of us have a badge, some do not but at the end of day we are all here for only one goal, to make the game better, and more to our liking. If you fear you can't do this alone, make a modding group. The council of modders is still there, you are stronger united. It's fine if the public mod is less popular than Delenda Est or any other mod, because in the end, they play the same game they play 0AD. and they have fun, and that's all that really matters.

Right, but I think if someone is loading a saved game or replay the order of the mods should be recorded in the file and the mods ordered and loaded properly by the engine upon launching the replay or saved game. Don't know how difficult this is however.

The transcription is quite inconsistent; either transcribe κ with c and ος with us (Latin style, most common in English and most modern European languages) or κ with k and ος with os (Greek style, uncommon), but do it consistently. Also, it is quite interesting that in the case of Seleucus I his epithet is left untranslated (Nicator means "Victor"), whereas in the case of Antiochus III it is properly translated (Megas means "the Great"), and in the case of Antiochus IV it is replaced with something completely different (Epiphanes means "manifest" (of gods), "coming suddenly into view", "illustruous", or something similar, but not "Righteous"). Of course I know it's not your fault; there are many inconsistencies in 0 A.D., the result of different people with different ideas committing different things at different times.

I will try in next version, I will replace with this style , and thank you for information Could you please explain it more? do i need to include specific background ? i also applied different layers in photoshop for this portrait I will get the source/files from my brother if i have to get them, he will help with SVN if its require Ok next , i will work on Darius

The problem is that a mass of ranged units automatically target the nearest enemy unit, while they should be spreading fire across the entire group of enemy units within range. So it can indeed be considered a bug i.m.o. There are many of those micro-bugs though, and all of them are regularly exploited, so it's not like you're the only one doing it. It's even ill-advised not to take these things into account in a competitive game (why wouldn't you dodge a missile if you can?).

0AD is a very special game. One of the most special Classical and Historical RTS games in my opinion (for a number of reasons). The history is paramount in this. No other game of this particular format has been so serious with regard to history, and that's a major selling point for a lot of us. Age of Empires is truly a joke from a historicity perspective. It's not good at all, and a lot of us have been waiting nearly 2 decades for a game that at least tries to be accurate within the limited format of "classical" RTS. 0AD isn't perfect, I know, but the intention is there. This should be stimulated (as was the original intention to have historically diverse gameplay), not nipped in the bud by talk about 3-4 civs, or many identical civs. There are plenty of neurotic fantasy games with the desired balance for competitive play. More often than not, historical elements and details that could offer juicy game-play are shunned because of balance concerns. Why in the world would you want to turn this into another starcraft (and probably fail). In my opinion, apart from the missing campaigns, 0AD also left Age of Empires in the dust a few alphas ago. The game has been in development for 15+ years, so development time is not something I count. This isn't a commercial project with cut-throat deadlines. If it takes 5 years to develop a certain feature, no problem, I'd still be here and excited once it's ready, as I've been following the development since 2011, I get more excited each year. I've seen many things happen that I didn't expect, and am pleasantly surprised by all the developments each alpha. I've seen the impossible become possible. I just abhor the idea of "going back". Where I'm from, we have a saying: "Forward ever, backward never!". Why copying game-mechanics from popular fantasy games? Why compete with fantasy at all, if we have our own (pretty large) historical niche. Instead of doing what all those other non-historical guys have done, and probably achieve nothing but mediocrity in a sludge-fest of hundreds of similar games, why not try something truly original? Something that emphasises the historical character of the game, rather than reduce it to a superficial historical veneer? What would be the point of the game if all the historical nuances are smoothed out in favor of competitive gameplay? What would be the point? Not that the one precludes the other, but why is that competitive play seemingly always takes precedence over diverse and exciting SP-experience, while the vast majority of players aren't competitive players, at all... In fact, most people never even touch multiplayer! In short, most of us don't want another starcraft. Please. Age of Empires is passé. They had their time. There's a new king. We shouldn't start backtracking now.

Here is the bear I've been remaking with a walking anim. bear3.zip

Is more easy if work together similar to a Factory, for example Sundiata makes the base to the icons outlines for me is easy take and give life with Vectorial and Photo editing program. thats how we make Xiongnu and Kushites emblems. I have previous experience from New Kingdom Egypt I use same technique. some times i asked renders by Alexander our 3D artist I can take photos to make textures or references. i can help Wacky or give some review. Sundiata can research more organized than me and make some conceptual art.(units) Stanislas is 3D but he can be coder too so he can make good maintenance for us. Asterix same he can organized our issues even can take some design documents. make to make a civ is very or highly recommended make a design document. The secret of art department was that. many of us tried to keep our minds open to learn many things.

Maturing trees. Where the new spawns would be tree saplings and these saplings would auto research a maturity tech which is set to, let us say 10 minutes. Saplings provide minimal wood, while moderately aged trees provide decent amount of wood, on the other hand, fully mature trees provide large amounts of wood and are capable of spawning new trees in its vicinity.

I stand with the same POV as Stan. What we really lack is the manpower needed for the maintenance of adding more factions the game and merging it with the dev priority hierarchy. I am not against this, I am very supportive of custom projects as a part of our modding community and would gladly participate in it, once it has been green-lit. What I am really concerned into is the feasibility of adding it under present circumstances. The inclusion of mod.io is a big step towards this, IMO. Mod projects are now directly provided to the players. If popular demand would push this initiative towards the game then I would be overjoyed about it. Having Terra Magna as an umbrella project for civs that parallel the game timeline is also good. Everything was consolidated in it and the workload during release was reduced.

Nope, still github: https://github.com/0abc/0abc-a23.git mod.io is nice in some respects, but it also adds extra work for modders (uploading to github via the command-line takes a few seconds; last time I tried mod.io it cost me over an hour) and the team (who have to check and give permission); for me it's not worth it. Besides, my mod is work in progress, I constantly make changes, and having to ask for a verification every time I change something is highly inefficient.

It's really near the top of my list for A24, but please feel free to remind me as well Nescio

@stanislas69 Thank you for wording such a nice response. As with Prodigal Son's response, I really don't have much to argue with what you said. I definitely understand the need to moderate expectations, and vocalizing my overly ambitious wishes for 0AD definitely flies in the face of that approach. I've often said it, I'm a dreamer, and I know it. I just think that some of the more visual developments like new civs are a good way to generate some natural hype, excitement, inspiration, etc. Look at the popularity of elexis' Jebel Barkal map, for example. He could have probably done it with any civ, but Kush provided some good inspiration for him. Having the seasonal options for maps like Fields of Meroë and some other map making developments made during the last alpha were at least in part thanks to the development of the Kushites and their need for new maps. I can see the development put a huge strain on some people, yourself included, and I can't thank you enough for your sacrifices, but people also grew/evolved/developed as a result, myself included. So it's win and loose, but in the end, it all goes towards a better, more polished game. The question is how long are people prepared to wait. I myself would love to think I'd still be checking the latest discussions in the Wildfire Games forums as an old man, and play the game with my grandkids Hopefully we'll have the Chinese in by then. If not, at least alpha 24 You're absolutely right about mods. I just didn't grow up using mods for games myself, and most people I know today don't either. Only the "real gamers", whatever that may mean, use mods, and this can be seen from the difference in download numbers (100.000+ for vanilla each alpha vs, few thousand for the most popular mods). I know it's not an excuse or anything, and people should be stimulated to download mods and experiment as much as possible. It's just a slow process to get people to be comfortable with it, and quality content like the Han, don't really need to be mods in my opinion. I'm more excited about total conversion mods, or mods depicting different timeframes. But you're right, mods can be just the same quality or even better than vanilla.

Better economy balance, better use of dropsite (walk distance quite high), better use of batch training and more organized attack (have the units regroup before they start to fight would be good) If i were to contribute, AI would be one of the first thing i would try to improve, but on top of being lazy, i could lack some knowledge about it and maybe it is hard to improve these things without using too much computer ressources (especially for the dropsite stuff)

Looks like something that could be polished made an option and submitted to Phabricator don't you think ?

i don't know what games he joined, we're both new to the game and site, all i know for sure is he joined two games and left them in a hurry, then couldn't enter the game lobby. Will he have a game record? I looked for my profile after having played one game yesterday (roundly thrashed) and there is no record of it. How will he be able to give the points to the winner? Should this be in the help section? thanks jnr lg

Thorky used this tactic on me but I don’t mind because this has been used from since couple of alphas already and the devs are either can’t fix or think that this feature is fine. Imo it’s not really good for the game as in MP will keep the gaps between players skills more wider in favor of the micro quick ones and the competitive essence might erode. To me this feature is an annoyance that could add to the reasons why players could dislike the MP games.

@dmzerocold do you have any comment on this? Well that portrait can be not just portrait or icon but if you make it into layers it could be main menu background as well. (when you get to first screen when you start 0AD) BTW very nice portrait. @stanislas69 I believe also Kushites do not have portraits. Sorry just noticed that they are also in your list. @dMAthena Also if you would like after you finish these for 0AD you could also take a look at heroes in our mods Terra Magna, Millennium AD and so on.

Superb work. I love the gaze. If I can be punctilious, I would say the spearhead is not Celtic. The River Thames iron spearhead is a good example of Celtic Iron Age spears. If you want to continue in the direction of Celtic heroes, I can help. The only thing is that I have suggested several changes for the future. But anyway I can help you now and give you good information. For example, Caratacos: General help for British Iron Age art and patterns:

Maya and Zapotec i think should have , no ? other 2 may require more time What kind of information / reference you are looking for ?

I've got an idea on how this regrowing trees could work. Resource trickle rates / healing as said earlier (a very small rate). If the tree gets down to 0 (or a set amount), change it's obstruction mask to allow for foundations and update the model to a stump (or to invisible). This would allow buildings to be placed upon it. A check would be needed in foundations to remove the Stump file / class / model from the world in some way. Hard parts: Animations: They could be added later (if the idea / mod even works). Perhaps percentage based filenames or the animation speed is controlled by the resource value somehow. Growing: I'd say "stumps" are only allowed to trickle it's resources back if it's near fully grown trees and no other entities within a range (similar to the game of life). That part might be hard to implement efficiently. You don't want villagers, buildings, or deer to be trapped by Ents. The check would kind of be needed. A bit of randomness could be added to make them grow at different rates or whether they grow at all. -- If this is turned into a mod of some sort it'd be rather neat to play. It'd add a layer of management. I don't really see how it could be done without modifying the engine itself though. *shrugs*

@Sundiata Thank you too for the nice words If the game goes further away from the RTS formula, I'm all for additional resources possibly including a "currency" one. Some resources could even be just tech-tree requirements or stat bonuses to make things simpler. Say you capture a horse herd or pasture on the map, allowing the training of cavalry (or providing a discount or stat bonus to them). But the more you go down that way, the more you have to simplify other things (like micro in combat or economy) to keep the game manageable. I don't see how this relates to unit costs in Total War custom battles though or how it would help with balancing. Costs in 0 AD are needlessly confusing atm with up to 3 or 4 different resources per unit/structure/tech. Better definition for resource costs doesn't need more than the current 4 resources. Also don't underestimate the number of people that want a modern-classic RTS that is not Starcraft II (me being one of them as well). I believe that isn't out of pure nostalgia either, some like the gameplay but want better graphics and/or historical setting/accuracy. Not every classic RTS is a unit micro hell. Nomad Civs, as much as I'd like them in, would neither be a first in RTS games or a good idea to throw at the moment on top of a relatively poorly balanced game. That was just an example to show that you can often have historical accuracy even with less asymmetry, leading to better balance among civs. Combat balance is another (but related) thing, that can be done with stat bonuses or other attributes, some of the possibilities including the one you describe. Though for the shake of clarity I dislike mixed damage types. If you think about it +50% damage to cavalry isn't really different to cavalry taking +50% damage because they have lower pierce armor. But having to calculate the exact effects of mixed damage types across all units is harder for both the player and the balance designer. So in your example I'd rather have both my Heavy and Shock Infantry deal "hack"/melee damage with different bonuses vs cavalry. Or alternatively I'd give my cavalry low melee armor so that both melee infantry types are cost-effective against it. Then Heavy infantry would have high melee armor to better absorb the cavalry's attacks compered to Shock Infantry, while the later would have a high enough attack so that in can beat the Heavy Infantry. Attack bonuses would be my preferred way to go though, at least in this case. Easier to balance and more clear to the player. I can't see a reason to dump them besides "they're an old idea". Even relatively realistic combat systems like in total war still use them. That's for the spearman vs cavalry duel though, doesn't have to apply to all units or be like the extreme counters in some AOE games.

@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

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.

@Nescio While I more or less agree with your way of validating historical sources, I think that for the most part they show a preference of melee over ranged combat in the target era (so overall I have to agree with @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded). At least for the majority of the included civs in game and generally most of those around the Mediterranean. Even the Persians probably reduced their reliance on archery over time, in favor of cavalry and mercenary infantry. Ranged troops would more often that not be used in fewer numbers than melee infantry and not as the main battle line. There are exceptions that show dominance of missile troops, but most of those are in skirmishes and not large, pitched battles. Unsupported heavy infantry would slowly be decimated by superior numbers of missile troops (easier by peltasts etc, not so easy by archers with their lighter missiles) but normally not when they are supported by faster units and not outnumbered. For those reasons, I don't find mass ranged warfare is that realistic in game terms, at least not as the norm. There's also the availability of various types of troops to be taken into account, at least in the way I tend to balance my creations. Ranged infantry units are made cheap, with lower damage than melee ones, but the more effective they are the longer they take to train (often with reduced time bonuses, say for Persians or Mauryans). Slingers and Archers have the benefit of long range, but usually lower attack/HP and quite long train times (cheap weapons, hard to master), while Javelinists train faster and have often higher damage (and Hp when protected or drilled). On balancing mostly through accuracy, I'm not so much in favor but that's another discussion.

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

I'm not sure but I think he talk about something else. Maybe the split between graphics and simulation in the engine.

does it means: 1- we have 1 core game , and each single civilization become separate from main game 2- user can install game and optionally install civilizations... for example i may only install Persian ... Am i right? interesting idea

Hi , i know WFG team is very busy and also they may have higher priority tasks than adding new civ .. like fixing performance etc .... ( also i hope they put new voice list structure in priority ) Anyway regarding the civilization these are my wish list... who knows maybe one day we can see them in game ======== First: Han , Qin , Zhou dynasty --> China Medes , Parthian empire --> Iran Gojoseon --> Korea ======= Second: Japan --> Yayoi period ( this one may not be feasible ) Hong Bang -- > Vietnam Adena --> native american (north) Maya , Zapotec , Chavin , Paracas --> south america (not all of them maybe 1 o r2 ) Noke --> around Nigeria

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).

FYI, Translation of Persian language completed ! (review / translation)... Farsi voice already shared , up to you if you want to use them or not. if you decided to use them, then after you provided a version that has (Persian translation / voice) then i can help to review them on real game environment (in action) If there is any question or if you need a native Persian person to help for Persian translation / voice .. or any question regarding Persian history , dont hesitate to contact me Wish you best of luck! Your work is inspirational ...

Yeah ... its really sad to see these languages are dead... just imagine if they had camera / digital knowledge to record everything and now we could have access to them , it was wonderfull, When i was in Seoul (South Korea) , there was a very nice/amazing place .... check below https://www.360cities.net/image/seouls-thousand-year-time-capsule-square-namsangol-hanok-village

it is not Old Persian, this language is dead (long before Arab invasion), Arab invasion influenced Middle Persian. it is current Persian but i used some words which are related to Old Persian for example: for Hello , i used "Salam" and "Dorood" / "Farmanbordaram"... first one is so common now with Arabic background and Second/third one are pure Old Persian not common BUT people know it and understand it Or i used "Farman" --> command / order , this one is also very old but still use in current Persian ... Ideally we need Old Persian , but this language is dead and even if we can find a person who can speak this language no one can understand it ... so available alternative and close to old Persian is current Persian + some ancient words that still exist ...

I haven't gotten to listen yet but did you avoid modern arabic borrow words since the game time period would be before Islamic influence on the language?

Unfortunately i cannot help with this language, and you have a valid concern Although Seleucid's language was Greek , but people used their own language which was mostly Old Persians / Arameans / Avesta etc.... and same case for Ptolemaic ... I think closest language to Arameans language at the moment is Hebrew (maybe im wrong), maybe we can use that?

Male voice is for me , Female voice another person not me Currently action + gender is matter, means if you have a soldier and command him to gather food then system use "I will gather food"-Male voice ... but we can have more than 1 file ... for example : Action: command to gather food + Citizen soldier "Persian_Male_I_will_gather_food_1.ogg" "Persian_Male_I_will_gather_food_2.ogg" "Persian_Male_I_will_gather_food_3.ogg" "Persian_Male_I_will_gather_food_4.ogg" Then system randomly can select one of them same action different voice Check this topic, the new voice list structure that i proposed may help you for better understanding (note: it is not implemented)

Yes and thank you

Gitlab ?

If people enjoy this release, I will see about more formally releasing it on a place like ModDB. I am just testing the waters with this release.

I'm reading now book about origin of Rus, all about weapons, that I'll meet there, I'll write here. There are many excavations of Slav's settlements, but I need to find and read about them. There were more than 20 Slavic tribes, the territory, that they lived is very large. From Odra, Wisla in west to Don, Volga in east; from Baltic sea to Crimea, it changed through time. For example, west Slavs had different culture than east in one time cut (because they lived in different cultures with different other peoples). So one could have one weapons, other - others. There are many descriptions of that excavations, even DNA analysis, but I need to find and get known about them.

Hello here! I was thinking about a slav faction. So, I made those models. Starting left is a slavic temple, the next are house models and the last is the temple upgrade. I would like to contribute. Thanks.

@Palaxin your work is very important, work like this give to the game its own unique features.

@fcxSanya Sorry for being inactive for so long... I recently started my first full-time job, which leaves me with less free time and energy for private projects in this free time (actually more the latter ) That said, I regularly track progress of 0 A.D. development, but I am not sure when and how much I will engage again. It certainly helps if I see that people are interested in my work