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Yes, I also was thinking this, considering that the snowballing increase and formation depreciation are good arguments against the whole idea. Still, I'm somewhat in favour of it, more as to set in place the mechanism (for mods to tinker with), and because it's good that new players realise there are things going on besides what's obvious in most RTS. I was thinking then that: -All penalties should be minor, and apply only for very low HP (thus present gameplay is not that drastically changed). -Lowering attack speed (or/and damage) first, and later movement speed (something like at 30% and 15% of HP, or whatever makes sense). -That wouldn't "make hunting overly easy", but it has also been proposed to make animals faster (and weaker), which would work hand in hand. -It would indeed work hand in hand with my proposal of "use an area as target", which was intended to be applied also to many other things. -Would make healers more useful and retreats possible (except for those who are too wounded... understandably). -Penalised units should be sent to the back of formations, whose speed should not be affected by them (they should struggle to keep up instead). -In conclusion, things would mostly "behave as expected", except on extreme circumstances, which is useful for some variation in tactics. That issue has the worse consequence of making some things really funky, but I don't think penalising a bit very hurt units is such an over-realistic game-averse concept as many other concept would be.

An interesting gamemode would be Score Victory, ie when a player reaches a certain score, or else when everyone resigns whoever has the highest score wins (the latter for MP games that need to be cut short). Presets could be 1000, 2000, 5000, 10000, 50000, 100000, etc. This mode would force players to focus on a healthy economy, and could even lead to pascifist games that's only goal is to reach the score first. After playing quite a few Multiplayer matches, I have found that this would be a useful, and interesting, victory condition. ATM the score for players at the end is basically useless, since score is irrelevant to whether you win or lose in all existing victory modes, and sometimes while playing MP I don't have time to finish a match, or ended up with a draw game, and one of us had to resign (creating an unfair win), whereas with the score victory, or even as a fallback alternative to when a player resigns, we could have seen who won. The issue for this topic: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/9128

Something to improve should be that the Scythian bow is more characteristically curvy:

Well, Persians did use Scythian battle axes, or sagaris, so they would look similar, just not like that AI image, but way more slender: Here some discussion about it (and more representations): https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/blog/detail/the-scythian-sagaris-single-or-double-bladed-axe. But I'm not sure where the idea of Hyrcanian Cavalry using the sagaris comes from, Herodotus states in his Histories that the "Hyrcanians were armed like the Persians", which coincides with https://alexander-the-great.org/warfare/hyrcanian-cavalry ("they typically used light armor, spears, and bows"), but maybe I've just not found the source from where this comes from. On the other hand (if a name different from "Scythian" wants to be used for some unit), Herodotus mentions that the Saka (closely related to the Scythians) did use the sagaris: "The Scaran (sic) Scythians had about their heads caps which were carried up to a point and set upright and stiff; and they wore trousers, and carried native bows and daggers, and besides this axes of the kind called sagaris. These were called Amyrgian Sacans, being in fact Scythians; for the Persians call all the Scythians Sacans". And, something interesting that some could have noticed in my first link: many representations show these warriors being women, the idea being that the Amazons were inspired by mounted female Scythian (and Saka, among others) warriors. According to Diodoros Siculus, "at that time the Sacae were ruled by a woman named Zarina, who was devoted to warfare and was in daring and efficiency by far the foremost of the women of the Sacae. Now this people, in general, have courageous women who share with their husbands the dangers of war". The archaeological evidence seems to support the existence of Scythian (and similar) female warriors, I think this being one of the clearest cases to increase their representation in this respect (if this has not been mentioned already in the 15 pages of this topic that indeed I have not read).

I think surely all special techs and hero techs will be unique, while standard technologies will stay common. For instance, I just committed a big change to the Ministry with an all-new tech tree and all-new tech icons, while the common Forge tech icons remain the same as other civs. A nice improvement for techs and their icons would be to allow a _civ or {civ} element in the icon line of tech files: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/8734 This would allow for techs to look unique in the UI, but underneath still be common among civs.

This is super nice! Is your plan to replace all icons according to the civ?

I just realised, even better would be for Emperors and Empresses (only) to upgrade to using an Imperial Carriage (which would be kind of slow). Some of its characteristics, taken from Records of the Grand Historian: "I have always been told that only the most distinguished men of the empire are privileged to ride with the Son of Heaven in his six-foot carriage", "Your Majesty proposes to gallop down a steep slope in a carriage drawn by six horses", "He then began to ride about in a carriage with a yellow top, decorated with plumes on the left side, and to call his orders “edicts” in imitation of the Han emperor, all of which was intended to show that he was an equal of the ruler of China".

I didn't pay attention to that part, but for Han Xin an obvious upgrade could be "Marquis of Huaiyin" then. For Emperor Wu you can't really go higher (and strictly, it's a mistake to use that, since that's the posthumous title, but whatever, it would be a headache otherwise), so I guess a mount would be fine, but, although a horse and hunting enthusiast, he probably never rode to battle (maybe Expansionism should be a Global Aura, and Builder a Ranged Aura instead, to keep him more "domestic", in opposition to others like Han Xin). And, although I'm not really focusing on the Han right now (still at least 600 pages to go for the Athenians, as I've said, things I do to myself), an obvious Unique Tech (or even Unique Building?) for the Han should be the Blast Furnace ("The oldest extant blast furnaces were built during the Han Dynasty", whose effectiveness was enhanced by Du Shi in 31 AD using bellows operated by waterwheels, helping mass produce cast iron, which was already known in China, but unknown in Europe until Medieval times). It could speed up Forge techs and soldier recruitment. Since they are "most efficient at a somewhat larger scale of production", maybe some cumulative effect could be considered in case of making it a Unique Building (https://www.scribd.com/document/248548406/2-Iron-Making, https://donwagner.dk/EARFE/EARFE.html).

so deleting those 2 and reinstalling the civs would potentially yield diffeent results?

The Hero naming nomenclature is quite inconsistent. For example, one is "Liu Bang" "Emperor Gaozu", and another is "Emperor", "Wu of Han", when I think that last one should be (considering how the first was written) "Liu Che" "Emperor Wu" (adding "of Han" seems unnecessary given the faction in question). The others, following this nomenclature, would be "Lü Zhi" "Empress Gao", "Han Xin" "God of War" and "Wei Qing" "Grand General" (where I swapped the last one, and I don’t think "God" is a good translation for "Xian"). I'll just check characteristics for the Heroes you asked for. I'm not sure if some things can be done so I give a few extra ideas. As usual, I leave exact values to you. Using "The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han" by M. E. Lewis for Emperor Wu: Builder (Global Aura): faster construction ("The last great builder in Chang'an was the fifth ruler, Emperor Wu", "renovated the two existing palaces and filled out the space within the city walls by building three new palaces. He also constructed a massive sacrificial center to the northwest of the capital", "filled it with dozens of new structures, carved out a large artificial lake, and erected statues of the Weaving Maid and Cowherd stars", etc). Despotism (alternative Global Aura): if the Han are more a quantity over quality civ, this would double down on that by penalising somehow all units, in exchange of a metal trickle as a function of civilian population ("The wars of Emperor Wu required taxes that drained the meager resources of the peasants", "Mercantile wealth was taxed at twice the rate of land, so merchants seeking to protect their wealth bought up real estate", "Thus, large numbers of peasants ruined by the government had to sell their land to merchants and officials pushed by the same government into buying them out. The result was social inequities on a vast scale", while "old ruling houses that had formed the Warring States elite. Such families had served as figureheads for many of the rebellions against Qin and had been forcibly resettled in the capital. They were eliminated during the reign of Emperor Wu", "moved these powerful families to the capital region, he forbade their living near one another precisely to avoid this kind of dangerous alliance"). Expansionism (Ranged Aura): attack bonus ("the emperor turned his attention outward", "Decades of peace had given the Chinese time to develop a new style of army based on cavalry and crossbows that could successfully engage the Xiongnu in the field. In 134 b.c. Emperor Wu finally undertook to destroy the Xiongnu through military action"). Cult Reform (Special Technology): healer and Hero buff bonus ("introduced several new cults, most importantly those to the Grand Unity (Tai Yi) and the Empress Earth", "describe Tai Yi as the embodiment of the state of non-differentiation that existed prior to the division of the world into Heaven and Earth, yin and yang"). Market Supply (Economic Bonus needed?): slow barter price depreciation ("Emperor Wu established an "equal-supply system" intended to stabilize prices by buying up products when they were abundant and cheap and then releasing them onto the market in times of scarcity"). Using the "Records of the Grand Historian", translated by B. Watson, for Han Hsin (Han Xin): Intransigence (Global Aura): units much harder or impossible to bribe ("When Hsiang Yi heard that Lung Chi’s army had been defeated, he was fearful and sent Wu She, a man of Hsü-i, to attempt to bargain with Han Hsin, but Han Hsin refused to listen"). Leadership (Ranged Aura): large aura with combat bonus ("in leading an army of a million men, achieving success with every battle and victory with every attack, I cannot come up to Han Hsin"). Bait (alternative Ranged Aura): small aura that makes enemies attack, even when garrisoned and from behind walls ("As Han Hsin had anticipated, the Chao forces finally abandoned their fortifications completely in their eagerness"). Dummies (Special Technology): again quantity over quality, unlocks unit that looks like some normal soldier (for other players at least), but it's way cheaper and weaker ("Han Hsin thereupon planted a dummy army and lined up a number of boats as though he were about to attempt to cross the river"). Reprieve (additional "Hero ability" idea): he disappears and is recruited again if HP drops below a certain value, but after this, the probability he will suddenly die increases with time, or something similar if this is hard to implement ("Lord T’eng was struck by his words and saw that he had a brave appearance, and so he did not execute him but set him free". "When he returned to Lo-yang he pardoned Han Hsin and made him marquis of Huai-yin". "Han Hsin, the marquis of Huai-yin, began to plot a rebellion in the area within the Pass. Empress Lü followed Hsiao Ho’s advice and executed Han Hsin"). Back to "The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han": Banishment (possible civ tech, didn't search for these, but there could be ideas in these books): reduce recruitment times, more so if quantity over quality is the idea ("In the centuries following the Qin conquest, the gradual demilitarization of both peasant and urban populations and the delegation of military service to marginal elements of society reversed an earlier trend among the competing states which had extended military service throughout the peasantry. In 31 a.d. universal military service was formally abolished, not to reappear until after the end of the last empire in 1911. In place of a mobilized peasantry, military service was provided by non-Chinese tribesmen, who were particularly skilled in the forms of warfare used at the frontier, and by convicts or other violent elements of the population, who were transported from the interior to the major zones of military action at the outskirts of the empire", "during the last century b.c. the Chinese army began to shift away from peasant levies to an army based on professionals, nomads, and criminals").

We need ideas for Han Xin and Wu Han. Global Aura, a Ranged Aura, a Special Technology, and an Upgrade (usually to a mount, but sometimes some other kind of upgrade, such as Empress Dowager for Empress Lu).

Indeed this should not happen, but I also think siege towers should be used for what they were actually used. Then, some other things would need to be changed, like making siege towers extremely slow and expensive.

What do y'all think of adding Empress Lu Zhi for a hero? She was a very strong ruler, brutal even. And then, how she'd look in her Empress Dowager form: