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visuals would benefit greatly if we had more birds

Only a handful of their structures are carved from the rock. They're just the most well preserved archaeological remains of Petra which is why they're so famous, but "regular" structures weren't cut from the rock. There are also other archaeological sites like Avdat, Wadi Rum, Haluza, Mapsis and more... Petra: Wadi Rum Avdat (mixed with later ruins) Haluza

As a general guideline IMHO: Few colors to not distracte the player to see the player color, to see them as a uniform kind of unit and spot them fast. Would keep the torso with similar patterns, and only small changes in the arms , like the middle one.

Yeah, I was never quite happy with them There's that and ship trails, and a few related effects that we should have, but I think it needs a rethinking of how we handle the water a bit.

Take the simply patterns in mind.

The gigantic red plume could suffice, guys... lol

Bryastovets_b: Bryastovets_s: Reference:

3rd variant of attic helmet:

Allow the use skyboxes from the scenarios as reflection on helmets.

I think it is based on this reproduction:

Also the Hyrcanian cavalry for the Persians. All of these tribes are related to the Scythians I think. Could update all 3 of these units in one swoop.

Big pilos version: Crested variants of the thracian helmets: Rome_variant of the attic helmet (Will delete the last attic i've made):

Hele_attic_b4 + visor Based on the link @Genava55 posted. Raised a lil bit the visor because unit was working in the last Sandra Bullock movie "blindfold".

@wackyserious, That's the inspiration for the Dahae horse archer used by the Seleucids

If it can be useful to have some replica as references: https://www.armae.com/en/articles/hl102-attic-helmet https://www.armae.com/en/articles/hl144-attic-helmet https://www.armae.com/en/articles/hl123-thracian-helmet https://www.armae.com/en/articles/hl104-phrygian-helmet-4th-century-bc https://www.armae.com/en/articles/hl137-hellenistic-helmet https://www.armae.com/en/articles/hl105-boeotian-helmet

What exactly is desired? This could be labelled as a “gameplay change” and such patches tend to be rather hard to get committed. Before domestic animals are overhauled, we probably want to have fattening ( https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1718 ) available first. Realistically, chicken, dogs, and pigs are efficient sources of meat, sheep and cattle much less so. Nowadays we raise cattle primarily for their meat; historically, beef was a rarity; cattle had many functions, but the most important reason for keeping them was their muscle power for ploughing. If animals were garrisonable (UnitAI?) then I suppose they could have a garrisoned resource trickle aura. Personally I think animals shouldn't be trainable; free food isn't realistic.

Meh. I prefer a more comprehensive approach from a gameplay perspective. Like AOK monasteries and "relics" vis a via "gold" resource, 0 A.D.'s relics would be horses, sheep, cattle, goats, etc. that you capture and garrison into the corral for a food trickle (or other benefit, specifically horses and camels).

I get this idea to explore minimap more deeper and remember EE2 but someone else in AOE forums, says about this. more detailed map with icon of resources like mineral or marvel or relics, obviusly needs be explored first. He said this, but I prefer focus in things are hard to se in the map like resources, heroes, CC and wonders.

This is a food production balance proposal. Excerpts from a staff discussion. Tagging @Nescio if you are interested in doing this one.

91 fixes for Millennium AD, but it keeps wanting me to login before pushing.

Really loving the new flora from Lordgood and Bigtiger.

still cavalry armor.

This was also the basis for the Persian cavalry in the Alexander film.

I support both. And I support Parthia strongly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avdat https://books.openedition.org/ifpo/4896 It is possible to create an only faction with multiples branches. A Greek faction with branches for Spartans, Athenians, Corinthians, Thebeans, etc.

Interesting idea. Could be used as well for the Galatians units. Last idea, the Attic and pseudo-Attic helmets can be completed by a metallic mask:

@Alexandermb Do take your time with working on the helmets.

Gryphon. Svg. griffin.svg

I created a thread to solidify all the concepts and ideas, in case a future balance should be implemented. Nothing for now, just keeping the ideas flowing.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone

That was my 13th faction.

Need. Scythian. Civ.

Trees would have 10 health and the current chopping animation would be the "attack". The tree death animation would play. gathering would be a new vertical chopping animation.

Generic ones shouldn’t be, art wise. Implementing this would be the real issue

Something else, in Age of Kings trees had to be cut down before wood could be gathered, whereas in 0 A.D. a tree with 1/400 wood is still standing as if nothing has happened. And in Knights and Merchants, a woodcutter cuts down the tree, brings the trunk to his lodge, where he removes the bark and branches, and then a serf brings it to a carpenter's to convert it into timber. I'm not saying 0 A.D. should do the same, but it's worth discussing whether we want to preserve current practice, or want to have something more realistic eventually. That said, creating cut-down versions (and animations?) of every tree actor is probably a lot of work.

Committed.

It would be great if players could customize the specific names of individual entities in games, e.g. name the first centre “Rome”, the second “Veii”, the third “Praeneste”, or their cavalry champions “My Little Pony”, “Unicorn”, “Pegasus”, “Black Beauty”, etc. [EDIT] Clicking on the specific name field would open a small text window where people can then enter the desired name for that individual entity.

The goal is to: Make unitMotion easier to change, more consistent, and fix some bugs (such as the long-standing bug that units were gliding at the end of their path, which is now fixed). Make UnitAI, its counterpart, also more consistent Thread the pathfinder Formations aren't really changed - I think the pathing might benefit from a little cleanup after all this.

At first, pathfinding and formations should be better. I see a lot of work being done by @wraitii, but I don't know to what extend and with what aim. I miss the dev diaries. (I think are improving the system to thread the pathfinding, among others things, like fixing the gliding units)

Something has been working on my mind for some time, mainly because I'm not a big fan of systems based on rock-paper-scissor. The case of the overwhelming advantage of the ranged units in the recent alphas released stresses the difficulty in balancing different type of units while keeping the game history-friendly. I see often people suggesting balancing changes or different gameplay based on historical facts (or according to their understanding of the history). This makes me wonder if this is possible to satisfy people with both historical accuracy and a balanced gameplay with depth and diversity. Ideas like spearman and swordsman having distinctive efficiency against different units are themselves not very historical. Even the idea that the cavalry is the best counter against ranged infantry is itself contradicted by numerous accounts on the battlefields where the later was often used against the former. This is not a mean criticism, most of the RTS falls in these simplifications to ease the gameplay, even the Total War games. This is understandable. Age of Empire 2 has reached a very high level of gameplay mechanics with this system. Even StarCraft 2 has several aspects from rock-paper-scissor systems. However I wonder if the inclusion of battle formation could be an opportunity to innovate in the gameplay. Historically, the battlefield was unbalanced from a game point of view, mostly filled with infantrymen and this across all continents and across all the time periods. The only exception being the nomads. Therefore why not consider an unbalanced system working around battalions of infantrymen? If the gameplay is unbalanced in purpose in favor of the infantrymen, with the other type of units working as support and counter around them, it could be easier to balance. This is kinda a heretic way to think in RTS games but I throw this idea to encourage further thinking. Even for mods, not only for the vanilla. To sum it up my mind, winning an encounter could be based on obvious parameters like the quality of the infantrymen and the numbers but also on parameters strongly related to the battle formation. For example, the battalion could gives a bonus to all the units (obviously) but this bonus could varies according to the depth of the formation. Like this players should consider both the width of the formation in comparison with the enemy's formation (because it will impact how much units will hit your unit in the same time) and the depth of the formation because each additional rank will increase the bonus. Clearly this is favoring the numbers of units, so outnumbering strategies will often win. But it could be counter by flanks attacks where each units attacked by enemy's melee units while being on the sides will lose all the bonus from the formation. Which will give an interesting tactical advantage for the cavalry. Moreover, this could also be countered by ranged infantry raining their missile on the infantrymen. Not only to cause damages and kill the units but in decreasing the bonus or even causing malus for the units hit. It could even slow down the movement of the whole formation and slowing their rate of attack (DPS). It could also be counter by forcing the player to split his army and to use clever strategies to destroy quickly the army with a smaller force, see this. In my mind, the ranged units and the cavalry should work as support and counter against each other to weaken the enemy main forces (which is the infantry). For the moment, I do not know how it could include the champions cleaverly but I wanted to share my thoughts. This is could be tested in a mod maybe.

I have been playing a lot of practice games at Ptolomies and one thing I don't understand is the starting camel archers ineffectiveness at killing hunt - I have seen contestants on naked and afraid kill African wildlife with home made bows in one shot - and yet just now I had my camel archer try to kill a Giraffe and after like 14 strikes with an arrow the animal is like still at half health - this seems like a really unfair disadvantage for Ptolomies. All hunt should go down as easily for everyone faction or you are putting some civs at a distinct early game disadvantage. And anyway, an animal cannot withstand dozens of arrows, that is very unrealistic IMO.

A picture on some changes that have come with the units, which include more accurate armor textures from the 13th century to late 13th century.

https://www.docdroid.net/UAhXdak/xiongnu-combined.pdf It seems that the Xiongnu did have some agricultural fields in the south-east border of their Empire where foreigners could settle. It wasn't really their own population but they were a kind of vassals the Xiongnu used to have enough food the winter, to have metals, textiles and others craftsmanship. There is small walls even in pastoral fields and fortified small settlements probably to stock and protect food and goods. The Xiongnu seems to have the same superior bow than the Huns. Edit: to summary a bit what I see for the moment. - The Scythians have a varied roster possible. From the Greek authors, there is mention of mounted javelinists and horse archers with the famous hit-and-retreat and ambush tactics. From archaeology, there is swords and pickaxes, spears, various squale armours and shields. The pickaxe is probably an answer against armours and must be an advantageous. The Sarmatians and the Eastern Scythians developed further heavy lancer cavalry and cataphracts. Normally each Scythians warriors, even armoured ones, have both bows and lances. Something to think about if the switching weapons is implemented one day. Crimean Scythians seem to be often separated from their northern Neighbors, having sometime a different king than the others Scythians. I suggest then for balance and historical reason to put the Crimean in a reform to be chosen with the further Sarmatian's development as an alternative. Since the Sarmatians destroyed the Crimean Scythians, it is logical that the player must chose between two different pathways. - The Xiongnu is more obscur but several patterns seem to emerge and we can make reasonable assumptions. The Xiongnu built their empire on a multiethnic basis with sedentarian populations in their border. They must have the possibility to built defensive fortifications and farms. Since the mod make the difference between civilian and militarian buildings, it should be possible to let sedentarian based units to build such civilian buildings. It would explain why sometimes the Xiongnu have a lot of infantry during the defense of their borders against the Han (although with a very mediocre efficiency). Contrary to others nomads cultures, the Xiongnu have inhabited on their territory for a very long time. The Xiongnu have superior "hunnic-like" bows, long double edged swords, spears and leather and iron squale armour. For their horses, it doesn't seem there is any cataphract, only padded linen and silk protection probably against the arrows can be guessed from archaeology. - The Huns are clearly the more mobiles and have clearly the best horse-archers. Not only because of their superior bows but also thanks to battle tactics. In the archaeology, the Huns seem similar to the Xiongnu but with indications they start using mail armour in Europe. They must be the best raiders. The possibility to hire Germanics units should give them better shock units both in cavalry and in infantry. There is not mention of any cataphract or any armoured horseman. The Avars (closely relatives to them) did have good lance cavalry. Attila was very good in siege warfare during his campaign against both eastern and western Romans. Hierarchical classification, I suggest (to discuss): Horse-archers - Huns > Xiongnu > Scythians Close-combat cavalry - Scythians > Huns > Xiongnu Armoured cavalry - Scythians with nomad reform > Xiongnu > Scythians with Crimean reform > Huns Lancers cavalry - Scythians with nomad reform > Huns > Xiongnu > Scythians with Crimean reform Combat infantry - Huns > Scythians with Crimean reform > Xiongnu > Scythians with nomad reform Archers infantry - Huns > Xiongnu > Scythians Economy (self-production) - Xiongnu > Scythians > Huns Economy (Raiding) - Huns > Xiongnu > Scythians Siege abilities - Huns > Xiongnu > Scythians Defensive structures - Xiongnu > Scythians with Crimean reform >> Scythians with nomad reform = Huns This is clearly a matter of interpretation.

I don't think that would be quite good. This is a good point! But my main argument is we include the Achaemenids. This is an obvious reference to the 1st and 2nd invasion of Greece, which happened before the Peloponnesian War, which is a pretty significant event in Classical history. By combining all the Greeks into one blanket Greek civ, it kinda ignores that conflict. I'm honestly fine with having both Sparta and Athens, but more would be just a tad extra. MAAAYBE Epirus.... Maybe. Just for its interactions with Rome. On to Parthia: It is quite historically viable for this game. They had a series of wars with TWO of the factions we have in our roster; The Roman Republic (and Empire) and the Seleucid Empire. This puts them squarely in a viable timeframe, and (if my research is correct) they are technically more relevant to the military history of the era than the Mauryans are, as they only fought a tad with the Seleucids.

Dunno, only defense I have there is that The Persian Empire was (for the most part) a single political entity. At no point until the Roman conquest were Athens and Sparta a single entity. Are you saying we should have Cultures instead of factions? If so, perhaps the Britons and Gauls should be merged and the Carthaginians renamed to Punics. Perhaps we should discuss this for a few more years, eh? Apparently, with a 95% approval, not even unit behavior toward animals can be "agreed" upon around here. We need to spend more time poking holes in each others ideas. Perhaps your mod should generalize the Greeks into one faction and we can see how it feels. Personally, I like to recreate different scenarios in my head when I play the game so would feel sad if the differentiation I feel from the current Greek civs would be lost. You can possibly propose a branching system, but such a proposal is a moot point when there's no one to implement such a system. I'd rather just have the Spartans and Athenians be separate from the get-go. I also like the visual and unit variety, not to mention gameplay variety experienced in a little mod called Delenda Est (Sparta plays as differently from Athens as any other civ does).