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I hear you guys. I think the challenge is volunteer turnover. This game has been in development for so long that is continually evolving due to the people working on it. When I was running it for 6 years, I did my best to maintain a cohesive vision for the game. I took a lot of heat for "locking in" some design decisions and would tell people to hold off on criticism until it could be played as a whole. We got 60% there, but I couldn't finish before I handed off the reigns to Erik. Again due to this being a volunteer effort, people come and people go and that shapes how the game is made. Michael saw 0 A.D. in a very different way than I did, and things started to change (what was once locked was open again for debate) - but I don't think he made it all the way to the end of his vision either. The dangerous end result in this path is a hodge-podge of halfway implemented features that don't quite make sense as a whole. Ken Wood (lead designer back in the early 2000's) once stated: The fate of 0 A.D. is in the hands, of those who have vision and perseverance. This is why it is going to be super difficult to make a game that is cohesive over a period of 15 years, everyone has a different idea of how it should be done. It is both good and bad. The flip side is... If you don't like it, you can get involved and do something about it to change it.

Just looking at this thread, it is obvious that something has to change, but I do not think that hard-counters are the proper way to go. Counters work well in situations in which there are consistent ways to work with it. For instance, in Age of Mythology, the Greeks had from each military production building produced a soft-counter unit that worked within the rock-paper-scissors formula, but also there were hard-counter units that worked against their unit type. 0 A.D. lacks this system, and when it tried hard counters, the result was a confusing and convoluted mess that was not realistic or intuitive, but what it really needs I would argue is clear unit roles. For instance, there could be units that are designed to absorb damage, or ones that can provide reliable long range support, others that can use their terrain to do hard-hitting ambushes before retreating. By giving distinct roles to each unit that provides intuitive strengths and weaknesses in different tactical situations; it encourages players to use their units in a synergistic way rather than necessarily building counters. The mind-game then is how to counter a specific tactic rather than a unit combination generally.

Hi! As you can probably see by my name, I'm another one of those freaks. I'm pretty deep into ancient greek (as a language and as a culture), same goes for latin (and old hebrew, and 5 more!). My main access to this world is books, I guess. Original literature (e. g. Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, Bible^^), but also historical fiction (Simon Scarrow, anyone?). I'm from Germany, by the way, and fifteen years of age ^-^ I didn't only do old languages, though. I've also taken a peek into graphics design, video editing, coding and such (: (Not nearly enough to help out here, though). Forgive me for my mediocre english please.. Not a mothertongue. If you want to be friends (cheesy af?), contact me! x) ~Plaut

Me. I'm pretty freak curious and I usually read everything about game mechanics (like aoe3 info, civilization civilopedias, etc.) I think that should be better discussed on http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20038. I would quote you there.

Just out of curiosity... I was wondering if anyone has ever read this? http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/War_Story

Over a decade ago, the plan was to have ambient sound play a large role in the sound scape for the game - more so than the music. The frequency of music played was a setting in the user configs. Music would be queued on command (attack/under attack) or randomly (frequency settings). The ambiance sounds played were going to be associated with what terrain types were displayed on the screen. http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=308 http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=309 We wanted to get away from endless looping of music and have the dynamically change.

I agree with the weaker buildings, less resources and hard unit counters points but believe the problem lies more with the fact you are not pressured by a slightly weaker player. Once you have more troops/more territory you have won thus turtling at 40-50 percent and training as many troops as possible is the only strategy. I like my idea earlier because it forces the player to plan battles and leave room for much more strategy at the endgame with army's. I love the territory sytem though, I would definitely keep thatm