Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

Usually siege weapons were built on site, and ammunition probably was improvised based on the available materials the engineers could use. When Demetrius was attempting to besiege Rhodes, he hired a large number of specialists from Asia Minor and imported materials for the construction of his mother of all siege engines.

That statement is incorrect. Xenophon explicitly states that Persians used stones.

The Rhodians in this case definitely were. Xenophon seems to write about it as an exception to the rule, however, not the norm. As to removing Roman javelin throwers, that would be ahistorical. Velites served an integral role in the initial phases of battle, but their sword infantry should definitely have javelins.

The architecture is a bit interesting. The church looks in the style of Norman architecture. The odd parts are the thatched roof houses, which look like they come from the ninth century instead; another strange thing is the use of red bricks with some structures. It's like Keble College built hundreds of years earlier.

Xenophon is fairly vague on what they did with their other equipment. As to range, these were troops using lead projectiles, which generally went a lot further than typical slung stones. Fun fact as well, it was not unheard of to inscribe messages on these. The one to the right could be roughly translated as 'catch.'

Undoubtedly most soldiers did carry side-arms, but ammunition is a more difficult thing to consider since armies at this time were not standardised. What might have served as the amount of missiles a soldier carried in one campaign might vary with the next. One interesting example of a case of reverse side-arms is mentioned in Xenophon's Anabasis, when a few Rhodian hoplites switched to using slings.

Actually if you look at most artwork of naked fanatics, they generally always were carrying shields. Not doing so would be virtually suicide.

Introducing that many weapons sounds like a large amount of complexity for an otherwise additional thing to manage, especially for an RTS. I would maybe propose a simplification along the lines of units of equipment that work for melee units and separate ones for ranged ones.

The difference should be completely cosmetic. All of these changes seem good to me at least by the looks of them. Good and prompt work as always.

Spartans were not known for fielding competent light infantry. I would recommend alternative routes for buffs. Spartans were famous for their poetry that often had martial themes (See Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Terpander). I would advise introducing a technology that gives a movement buff to all infantry through that. The Athenians could have a later technology for subsequent changes in equipment and tactics that made their peltasts have a more hybrid role by having +1 melee and ranged armour.

The A.D. B.C./C.E. B.C.E. system for chronology has been eliminated. What system do you propose for a replacement and what does it mean for the title of the game? Example: one option would be to use the system of AUC (Ab Urbe Condita), the date of the supposed founding of Rome. Hence 0 A.D. would become either 753 AUC or 754 AUC. It's hard to exactly say since the year 0 does not exist. Probably the best compromise would be 753 AUC or 754 AUC. That way nobody would be happy. What are your completely serious answers to clearly controversial topic?

You clearly have a lot of emotional investment in the game and have grown comfortable with the previous alpha. That makes sense, but I would point out that 0 AD is a collectively developed game. There are a lot of things I dislike about the current iteration, and if I were to take dictatorial control over the game, it would veer in a radically different direction. Luckily some of my opinions have made an impact, and yours can as well. That said, while I like many of the changes introduced, many other people like yourself are disillusioned with the current alpha so you're not alone. You yourself said that you do not wish to nitpick over the problems. Would you mind explaining some of the things you miss from the previous alpha? I doubt I'll agree with any of your points, but I would like to better understand where you are coming from.

My Little Pony Mod merger confirmed! Best of luck.

Limiting slaves based on a resource might be a bit problematic; slaves were a fairly naturally occurring aspect of all societies and tended to come from one of three sources: debt, crime, or warfare. I would definitely like to see warfare play an active role in the acquiring of slaves, but again, limiting them sounds arbitrary.

Okay. I was looking at Athens for reference and guess what they have for skirmishers... and archers. I'm glad for the clarification but annoyed by my lack of thoroughness in analysing the costs.

At the moment slingers cost 100 resources. This is a bit odd when compared to archers and skirmishers, both of which cost 80 as far as I am aware. I'm not meaning to sound hypercritical or anything, but the inconsistency does seem odd. Slingers historically would have been one of the most inexpensive troops to equip in some cases, and if there was to be some way of making them harder to mass, I would find increasing the training time to be the better approach. Would someone be able to explain why this choice was made?

Along the lines of Nescio's idea, I think that the idea of calling them embassies makes little to no sense. Should we also consider having a mercenary camp for the Persians as well given their extensive use of Greeks during Alexander's campaign?

Those would potentially be a fair choice, but think that it works around the key reasoning of why mercenaries were hired: the employers did not risk the lives of their citizenry. If mercs took up less space, it could represent that fairly well. On the other hand, if mercenaries cost less, it avoids one of the their key disadvantages. Mercenaries were usually expensive. The one other area I could see changing a lot would be giving them a massively reduced training time.

I think that having them be trained at rank 2 would be a good option, but it still does circumvent the fact that it is difficult to mass mercenaries for Carthage. One option that I think would be interesting would be to have it so that Carthaginian heroes could train mercenaries. A while ago I mentioned the idea of mercenaries taking up 0 population but having a cap on how many could be trained or making them scale up in cost with the number already fielded. Maybe a compromise can be struck regarding the 0 population idea such as making them cost 0.5 population. That way mercenaries would still have a potential niche to fill that would differentiate them from their counterparts. Still, I think the more relevant point that Alar1k makes is that at the moment, mercenaries are inconsistent across civilisations, something that should be at least considered.

I take it you are not familiar with the Bowmaster of Helm's Deep?

I think it would be fair to first of all point out that there is a good deal more variety in Age of Empires 2 compared to 0 AD at the moment when it comes to civilisations; they might have extremely similar fundamental mechanics, but the variation in tech trees and depth of strategy is significantly better developed there. Then again that is a full-fledged game while 0 AD is in alpha. As to your second point, it holds little water. Spear served as the weapon of choice on the battlefield for a good reason. Its reach is massive compared to most arming swords; the advantage of a sword is that it is a reliable side-arm, something that can be drawn after the primary weapon has been discarded or rendered inoperable. Even legionnaires, who are perhaps some of the most famous dedicated swordsmen in history, used them as the followup to their javelin volleys. The primary point that you have failed to dismantle is the fact that spearmen being worse at dismantling rams makes little to no sense. Also, I would respectfully ask you to consider being more polite with your tone. Needlessly belittling people does nothing to advance arguments and makes one sound immature. My apologies if that came off as insulting.

I would personally like to move away from that approach of the Civic Centre training everything. A simple infantryman would be okay, but having an approach such as making Civic Centre military units be worse or take longer to train would both be good ways to change the structure into less of a military production centre. That all said, there are other intuitive ways of making the game have better build orders for the said scouting point. Cavalry units could only be trained after a corral has been placed; ranged units could be trained only after a bowyer has been built; mercenaries could be trained only after a market has been constructed.

I think the best argument for why archery ranges and stables should exist, regardless of accuracy, would be due to tells if we will. At the moment, when I watch high level 0 AD players, I see little scouting before aggression. While there are undoubtedly other reasons behind that such as map generation, this shows the fact that it is usually difficult to predict the build order based on structures in place. Age of Empires 2 and Starcraft 2 are both games where the idea of working against specific unit compositions is critical to success, and 0 AD theoretically is the same. Having specialised structures do that means that players that look for that intel are rewarded. Whether the stable-barracks-archery range system is historical or not is a bit inconsequential for our purposes. 0 AD is meant to represent the old rock-paper-scissors formula.

Here is a club.

One of the reasons behind there being so many Greek factions can be found by looking at how the game was initially designed. There was first one single faction called the 'Hellenes.' This faction had the choice to go with the city-state or Macedonian route, unlocking unique champions and heroes as a result. The city-state option was a blend between Sparta and Athens oddly enough. The then lead designer Mythos Ruler decided to design four city-state factions: Sparta, Athens, Syracuse, and Thebes. Obviously only the first to were incorporated into the game. The Macedonian option was changed to the successor states we know of: Macedonia, Seleucids, and Ptolemies. The work is hardly done however: