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""A variant civilization is a type of civilization in Age of Empires IV introduced in The Sultans Ascend. Each variant civilization offers new unique ways to play one of the classic civilizations while still keeping with that civilization's overall themes and aesthetics. In most cases, a variant civilization uses their parent civilization's architecture, technologies, buildings (including landmarks), units, and audio-design, with a few exceptions where their unique concepts come into play."" https://ageofempires.fandom.com/wiki/Variant_civilization The only thing that can keep me coming back to this place is simply seeing how ideas blossom. Well all nonsense aside let's talk about "Not my new" idea because it's not new, I've come up with this about three or four times before. My inspiration was Rome total war 2 where you could select their factions to start the campaign mode obviously when I raised that my idea was very very green. What happens is that now one of our biggest competitors managed to implement it better than I could have expected. I was seeing that the new version of AoE IV has this idea well implemented. Basically it is a modification of the base civilization. Adapting it to a hero or a chronological stage, we could talk about dynasties. That, for example, with Republican Rome we could have: Julia Gens: Caesar + Augustus + Marius Cornelia Gens or Optimates: Pompey,Sulla...etc We could also have a pre-roman: Kingdome of Rome. With Macedonia we could have the Alexandrian Empire and then the Antigonid Kingdom. With Gauls, we could have several Gallic tribes and we could also include the Eastern Gauls. With the Iberians some things would be quite good for us because we could separate the Iberians into variants. I was telling Stanislao that I would like to include more Italian or Italianic factions, Samnites, Italiotes and some ancient version of Rome. With the sub-factions it won't be so difficult to put so many Greek factions in one package. It occurs to me or I imagine that the folder in the simulation area could be inside the faction folder plain and simple with the name variant. In the mods we would avoid silly debates about which part of the faction we should use as when we were discussing the Byzantine faction for example which period would be excellent to use. If you think about it, Carthage could have its army of mercenaries, a civilization in style like Hannibal Barca would have. And another based in Africa. and in sicily. The Persians could have several versions of the army they had with various types of units. Egypt could have Cleopatra's Romanized army.And the well-romanized armies of Cleopatra's ancestors. The Seleucids they would have would be several of their provinces that later separated, such as the Pontus , Greco Bactrian(?). China could have several armies that were composed of regions and factions. The combinations can be unlimited and this would also give us the advantage of giving bonus to a single faction just by choosing the variant. The variants would be versions of a faction. The base variant could be faction 1.0 then 1.2 then 1.3. The base would be the original one from Wildfiregames. So for example 1.2 would be the armies of the Gallic Wars.(Caesar or Caesarian Army). With Sparta we could already have a Macedonian phalanx version of the Spartan army. I already know that they are implementing reforms in the game. I'm going to put the video that inspired me, it's in Spanish.

The idea of Saturnalia falling on the 25th doesn't quite match with when Christmas was initially established. A better explanation comes from an estimate that Jesus died on the 25th of March. Since he was important, they assumed that he was conceived on that day, leading to his birth nine months later. Biblical Scholar Dan McClellan offers basically the same explanation if you want to hear it from a PhD.

It might be cool if rams gained speed with garrisoned units. The more people pushing the ram, the faster it should go right? I don't think any of the rams were motorized back then

I think the game's engine could support Narrative Campaigns for single player, but due to the sheer amount of work involved, specifically recording sound FX, dialogue tracks, writing the story and dialogue, camera work and cut scenes, building 20 scenarios, etc., WFG can't put that kind of effort into making something official. We could adapt work from others, such as the Macedonian campaign, but to truly make a narrative campaign from scratch would be nigh impossible. That's why I think some kind of Strategic Campaign or multiple Campaigns would be easier to achieve for single player. What do you think? The image above is from an aborted projects I was involved in 14-15 years ago, but is illustrative of the concept.

Interestingly enough, just with a little research I did apparently, the Indian women did wear the clothing depicted in the game. They thought the belly bottom was a door to the soul and so had it uncovered.

This game has a really amazing soundtrack. Years ago when I first discovered the game, I downloaded the zip with the soundtrack in it and from time to time I listen to them while writing. @OmriLahav did an amazing job with composing it. I'm wondering what are you all's favorite songs in the game? My top three: Celtic Pride Calm Before the Storm and finally my absolute favorite and one of my favorite songs from video a vide game soundtrack Tavern in the Mist.

I find 0ad's soundtracks fantastic too. It's very hard to choose favourites, but I'd put these as my top three: 3. Peaks of Atlas 2. Cisalpine Gaul 1. Honor Bound (the main theme)

Fair, yet I find the idea of him projecting trauma onto Spartans to be problematic. Don't get me wrong; the educational system was harsh and did cause suffering, but the extent to which this led to psychological trauma is uncertain, and much of his arguments for this hinge on extreme views of child mortality, participation within the crypteia (and killing a helot being a must to become a Spartan), and extensive practise of pederasty. That is a tricky question to really say, but I would argue that they were about at the same level of other servile classes like Athenian slaves. Certainly the fact that they could and did at times rise from that class is good, but the fact that they were systematically attacked shows other problems. The fact of the matter is that like other downtrodden social classes, their voices and presence were always in the background of history, and I am perfectly okay with at my level of knowledge having a fairly agnostic view on the level of suffering they did or did not enjoy. What irked me with the article however, was this idea that all boys had to kill helots as a sort of rite of passage into manhood. Hodkinson rightly notes that the skills of the crypteia would give would have little battlefield utility, and rather, it would seem to be a way of finding the best of what could make up the future Spartan leadership as they worked with minimal instruction, acting on their own initiative.

How interesting your use of AI. Have you tried doing voices?

QALʿA-YE DOḴTAR, a vast barrier fortress with a lofty palace of royal dimensions, built by the founder of the Sasanian empire, Ardašir I Pāpakān before his decisive victory against the last Parthian king in 224 CE (FIGURE 1). It is built on a high spur of rock above a bend of the Tang-āb gorge, which is the main access point to the plain of Firuzābād from central Fārs. It is mentioned by earlier travelers (see Curzon, II, p. 228, n. 2), but Ernst Herzfeld (1926, pp. 252-52; idem, 1935, p. 95) was the first to recognize the correct layout of the fortress. Aurel Stein provided a more comprehensive description with a good topographic map of the palace, but he misunderstood the outline of the palace, and his interpretation of the building was not accurate (Stein, pp. 123-27). The site was surveyed in 1966 and 1972 on behalf of the German Archeological Institute. Between 1975 and 1977, excavations were carried out in preparation for a UNESCO restoration program on behalf of the Department of Conservation of Archeological Sites and National Monuments (Edāra-ye koll-e ḥefāẓat-e āṯār-e bāstāni wa banāhā-ye tāriḵ-i; Huff, 1969-70; 1971; 1973; 1976; 1978; 1983-84; 1993; Gignoux). https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/qala-ye-doktar

A little bit of that, what happens is that this will serve to have a much greater number of small variations of the same faction. We could have a Rome that has a civil war theme , like Sulla, Caesar and Marius, another that has a triumvirate Crssus, Pompey and Caesar, another that is the second triumvirate Lepidus, Anthony , Octavian, a Roma that is from the time of the Macedonic Wars, the Rome of the time of Spartacus, the Rome before the Punic War, the Rome before the Punic War(Roman Hoplites).

At least it's not pornographic. We lasted these women as best we could but we cannot pretend that antiquity had Judeo-Christian values from the Middle Ages or Islamic. It's actually good to see the comparison of how things changed. The game is build over realistic issues and the fact two the game is done for educational reasons. We are not trying to pervert anyone or be liberal with other people's clothing.

It's time to present a blender project I've been working on lately, which is a set of buildings that make up a roman castrum. Contubernium (Barracks) The contubernium consisted of 10 units of 8 soldiers and one centurio, I had to cut it down to 6 stalls, so that it wouldn't be way too long. Horreum (warehouse/storehouse) Horrea were special warehouse to hold mostly grain. The floor was elevated to keep it dry. The walls needed to be strong to withstand the pressure from the filling. Principia (Main Building) The Principia was the main building, were the administration was situated and the standards (Aedes) and valuables (Aerarium) were kept. The big basilica was used for gatherings of the troops. Gate (Porta) Walls (short with stairs, medium, long, curved) It's a work in progress, so still some things are missing, especially (normal, spec) texture improvements and more props. Climbing plants like ivy would look good on it. Some parts still look a bit empty, especially the roof parts. The Gate animation is still missing. Possible buildings to add could be: Praetorium Porta praetoria (Bigger and fancier gate) Wall towers Calvary barracks I'm gonna add references later. I know that for now there might not be much use for it, maybe for some mod or scenario. To make it constructable ingame a js wallplacer helper would be helpful. Anyway, it was fun and I learned some more blender and gimp stuff I guess. Let me know what you think:) castrum-0.27.0.zip

If someone want to help me, please reply in this chat: I want to share files here or on github, because I have problems with texture colors

Interesting article about Age of Empire original technology, based on Assembly: https://www.pcgamer.com/age-of-empires-developer-confirms-the-game-is-mostly-written-in-low-level-assembly-code-because-we-could-scroll-the-screen-and-fill-it-with-sprites-as-fast-or-faster-than-competitors-like-starcraft-even-though-we-had-twice-as-many-pixels/ This isn't quite on those lines, but a redditor recently noted that Chris Sawyer wrote Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2 in Assembly language, and apparently Age of Empires was the same: "AoE is written in Assembly: is this actually TRUE?!" It's important to note that this wasn't uncommon back in the day, though it would still be pretty remarkable if an entire game was hard-coded this way. Assembly language, to be as brief as possible, is any low-level coding language that communicates more directly with a computer's architecture than high-level languages like C++. The question about whether Age of Empires was coded in Assembly language hit gold in the replies thanks to Matt Pritchard, one of the founding members of Ensemble Studios, who was in charge of graphics and optimisation on the early games, and on the later HD / DE editions the coding lead. "I guess I can clarify this, since I wrote all the assembly code used in Age of Empires and Age of Kings, along with many other parts of those games," says Pritchard. "There were about ~13,000 lines of x86 32-bit assembly code written in total." [...] The Assembly code remained in use even by the time of Age of Kings: HD edition (a 32-bit game), but Pritchard "re-wrote the assembly functions into C++ for both Definitive Editions, as they are 64-bit programs and inline assembly was never supported by the 64-bit C++ compiler, and the vastly improved register sets and compiler optimizations made it unnecessary. Additionally, sprite drawing in the definitive editions is multi-threaded, and will use up to 4 cores for that task alone."

Interesting video about the current issues with Total War games and the players community reaction to it

I would prefer the Tesseraconteres being a ship rather than a tech. But of course, there isn't even a unique 3d model for it. (A big new Tesseraconteres model, maybe as a catamaran, would be so cool, though)

I think it would be vital to have dedicated transports; that was the case for many important campaigns like Hannibal's.

We can use this as a reference for carts I will also use this for houses and other buildings Like all other Germanic farmers and stockbreeders the Goths lived scattered over the countryside in small villages - which made them vulnerable to the Hun's attack.

Thanks Stan, you're a life saver! It was the multiple materials problem. I removed all of them because I already have the png texture and now that error is gone. Thank you all for your help!

Is our nannybot still on? Haven't seen it in action for a long time.

Hi, thanks wowgetoffyourcellphone. Sorry, I guess I was looking for some additional equipment that wackyserious created more recently, but I suspect they might not have found their way into the game. If you don't mind me asking, I'm not very familiar with how these units are put together: Are there xml files which detail which meshes need to be assembled to comprise each unit? Sorry to n00b it up, but thanks for your help.

Yeah, that's kind of a problem of huge vision ranges, IMHO. DE is better in this regard.

I like this for a spy unit for 0 A.D. But it would be a standard unit though.

Maybe the food regeneration could buffed to be as fast as 1 fishing boat gathering speed, but you can still make the trade-off to fish intensively with more boats.

The nascent "Baltic-Nordic" biome set could be a good starting place.

I'd say that Han administration is particular enough (both historically and in the game) that it's better to avoid making false copycats of them... Basically, leave the Archon units to the Protoss...

Also I feel like many modern games would just call what we have a live service and charge a fee for each update.

Ever heard of Alexander and Gaugameles ?

Posting just to add that which building have their own territory roots and which do not should be explicit. Gaia buildings are way more useful if they have roots...

Yes, something like that is sorely needed. Endgames are a PITA sometimes, for no reason. Also, there should be an option on the minimap to show only enemies (buildings and units).

Also, Persians did have access to catapults. The inhabitants of the Persian city of Tyre famously used many types of catapults and bolt shooters against the attacking Macedonians. Their defense was so dogged, they angered Alexander so much that when he finally took the city he had all of its citizens enslaved or killed.

I have components for that but they aren't fully finished yet. although they're enough if you want to make it for players only use it. PS: in my WIP mod food resources are devided. so, you need few customizations to use it with the public mod. edit: you also need the custom unit ai for the purpose of the units break for launch don't break the cammands' series. MeatSupplies.js VeganSupplies.js WaterSupplies.js UnitAI.js

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/asia-xiongnu-nomadic-empire-expansion nice article about xiongnu.

It´s a shame that there are no archaeological finds of these helmets and armor.

Hello! I would really like to see in the game, in addition to demolishing buildings, also the ability to disassemble them and return some of the resources spent. What do you say to this? Something like a command button that sends construction workers to dismantle the building. Or you can simply return part of the resources to the treasury when a player simply demolishes a building. If the building is damaged, then the percentage of resources should be calculated from the current hit points of the building. This option, which is simpler than the one described above, allows the computer player to use this feature too. In addition, I noticed that, unlike Age of Empires II, repairing buildings and mechanical units for some reason does not consume resources. Is this how it should be?

Hello everyone!!! I'm new to the forum but I've been following 0 A.D for years. As a hobby I've started to develop my own Mod of the Hebrew faction... At the moment I'm still in the embryonic stage (I've only made a few house models with their variants) but I'm paying a lot of attention to the design part by documenting myself well on architectures and other factors... I am trying to bring it graphically up to the standard of official civilisations. The period I have focused on is the first century so between 0 and 70... I have seen other similar mods on github but they very often look like "copy paste" of structures from other civilisations and not very relevant to reality... I don't know if I can help you... In any case when it is ready I would like to publish it.

I was wondering why so little players use theses hotkeys in vanilla game. I find them very useful. "Call to arms" Type: Movement modifier hotkey => All selected military units individually find the nearest drop-site to deposit resources then will make a attack-move on clicked location. "Attack Move (Unit Only)" Type: Movement modifier hotkey => Will ignore capturing buildings on path to clicked location. I use this as default attack-move (Ctrl) instead. Underrated?

I use call to arms a lot; I changed its hotkey to c, and made z select idle and x select wounded so all three are in easy reach. I should use attack move more.

You spelled "t-shirts" incorrectly. You instead used a slang word that means "poop" or "feces".

I will be grateful to you if you make The Great Sassanid Empire It's a popular civilization and you have many iranian(persian) fans here so it would be great to have their medieval civilization and empire. It's a win win situation plssss

The Venetians as a maritime power was later than the time that this mod describes and I even think that the city had not yet been built, although the Lombards and the Magyars could be included