Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

I think that you might be mistaking Agis III with Agis IV, who was famous for attempting a series of reforms; likewise, as such, wouldn't he be better served being equipped with equipment to match the pikemen in that case?

A few thoughts regarding your concepts: Ionian revolt is an annoyingly situational. I would rather recommend something based around his colonial efforts in Thrace, making Civic Centres cheaper. For Iphicrates, I would propose giving ranged infantry (particularly peltasts) better melee armour instead of movement speed; it's hard to exactly say what his reforms specifically did, but improving their performance in melee fights is a generally accepted theory. I'd propose that Themistocles' Naval Architect technology be renamed 'Wooden Walls' in reference to the oracle. Other than that, it would be nice if Themistocles had some bonus to wall-building. He was instrumental in delaying the Spartans so that Athens could rebuild its walls and even was a leading mind behind the famous Long Walls.

Xenophon was hardly patriotic and seems like a poor choice due to that. For Carthage, I think that a naval hero such as Hanno the Navigator would be a brilliant option. Regarding Socrates, while I don't want to undermine his importance as an intellectual figure (or military one), it would seem better to feature others such as Cimon or his father Miltiades. Athens could easily represent the philosophic schools with an academy structure.

Well Total War has never really advertised itself as a historically accurate series. Take Rome Total War's disgraceful approach to Spartans, head throwers, berserkers, and Roman ninjas. This take has some glaring issues with the skull headresses, but the armour and such look no worse to me than most any other Total War Game. If the game was an effort to be historically accurate, I'd say that the experience might be a bit disappointing.

Aside from an approach that seems a bit backwards to me, there are some strange generalisations made about each civilisation. The Persians were a force to be reckoned with, but they were easily defeated by a collection of city-states and had to heavily rely on Greek mercenaries to have a decent force of infantry. The Macedonians were well and good, but the other successor states are just as much based on similar tactics as them. You can say that the Seleucids kept on getting beaten up, but there were many enemies around them and general instability; what makes a successor state 'failed' is another rather odd thing to me. Rome's having a good navy is also odd. Granted, if their use of the corvus could be represented in naval warfare, it would have an interesting impact on a meta that in the future meta that would probably focus around ramming. Instead of groupings like this, I would advise considering historical rivalries as a basis as opposed to formal tier lists, keeping in mind that just because two civilisations are equally effective against the same civilisation, it does not mean that they would match up well against each other. For instance, Athens had rivals in the game of Persia and Sparta, so making these fairly balanced becomes just a matter of looking at those to combinations in isolation. Granted, Sparta campaigned extensively against Persia also, making it a prime candidate as a rival of sorts also. The list goes on, examining individual factions and finding about two or three different rivalries to work with. The whole thing would be pretty convoluted, but so is balance.

Agreed. People should keep their mouses out of frame when posting screenshots. In seriousness, that is a bit much. To paraphrase John Cleese: "What did the Romans do to them?"

That first sentence is a bold claim. Simply because there is no physical law does not mean that there are no moral absolutes; even a good number of atheists such as Sam Harris subscribe to the point that a distinction between values and scientific facts is arbitrary and instead use naturalistic principles to derive their moral systems. Just because points of view differ from one time to the next does not undermine that given the fact that humans are flawed.

Well, improvements of this sort are all well and good, but I think that the real thing we need to learn about is when Byzantium will be featured since you can't have forks without that.

I think that it is valid to point out that as far as I am aware, there is scant primary evidence as to how the Colossus was clothed, and while there was a definite tradition to depicting nudity in Greco-Roman art, there are advantages (and of course disadvantages) to censorship.

Well I think that if it is kept in the game, it should at least be used for its actual purpose: a primarily commercial one. Shields are all well and good, but it might be better served having merchant stalls or places for artists. Not to forget as well, the Stoa was an important site for philosophic schools such as Stoicism. I would definitely remove it from Sparta though. A number of gameplay purposes could be drawn from this: it could increase merchant output if by a market for one.

Given Nescio's argument, it seems valid to potentially scrap the unit due to the ambiguities surrounding its use. If we want the Persians to be represented fielding hoplites, there were ample examples of that in simply recruiting Greek mercenaries. The most famous one that comes to mind is the employment of Memnon of Rhodes and his men during Alexander's campaign.

I think that a problem that is summarised to an extent by Nescio is the issue with arguing that just because wood is used, spearmen should require wood. Probably a better approach to take would be to have most basic units cost some ratio of food and wood with the amount being arbitrary to an extent. Cavalry, being more expensive to field, would cost not only more food, but also an amount of metal, and any unit that begins with an amount of experience would similarly cost metal. Champions would cost even more metal while mercenary type units could cost only metal. Stone should probably only be reserved for siege weapons and buildings made available in the Town Phase. Metal would be an additional cost when building structures available in the City Phase. I think that what could be explored in much more depth, however, would be the time investment. For most technologies, I think that it would be interesting to not necessarily care as much about the amount of resources spent on a technology compared to how long it would take to research. The same could be considered with units, in which the training time, something I covered a good while ago, is ridiculously short compared to even fast paced RTS games like Starcraft.

I would definitely find that interesting with the strategic potential it could provide. At one point ranged missiles and to an extent melee attacks could be relatively harmless against most shielded units until javelins disable that, leading to a cool hammer anvil effect.

Just to nitpick to boost my meagre ego, lighter does not necessarily imply better penetration. The primary factors at work are size and density. A huge rock might not be able to be launched at a very high velocity, yet its mass would compensate, giving it a large degree of momentum. The issue with its size then comes with pressure, in which the area in contact with a surface works against that. Obviously you were generalising, but I think that it should be pointed out that the javelin could have functions unlike the others in that they could to an extent render shields ineffective or at least unwieldy.

Depending on the type of weight of the sling projectile, I think that there is a valid reason to give them the ability to ignore armour to a limited amount. Javelins, being even heavier should have even better abilities to penetrate armour at the cost of requiring a good deal of micro to not get caught out after launching a volley with their short range.

I don't really see how that gives too dramatic of a difference unless my understanding of RTS-like control is different from yours. Sorry if I am coming off as a skeptic; I think that an idea like this has potential, and if I could think of a suggestion to make it more engaging and not just make it feel, if you pardon this sounding harsh, like a Total War clone.

I guess to put this out there, the idea of a mode seems decent, but I think it's worth asking what this would really offer that a game like Rome Total War doesn't.

Ah yes, thanks for explaining. Those or some variant of that would look great as far as my opinion goes.

I don't seem to follow what you mean by left panel. Could you clarify? If you are referring to the attachment, I had trouble opening that up, probably a fault on my end. Either way, assuming the icons mentioned match the general concept of guard and use a more historical basis for the shield design, it has my approval for what that's worth.

I have to say that the icons look a lot better in the way you have streamlined them. The primary point I would criticise would be the shape of the shield; obviously you were working off of the previous iteration, and I understand your desire to be conservative about the changes, but the shape seems to be ported right out of a fantasy setting. I think that the game might be better served with a simpler shape such as a legionary's scutum. Otherwise, great work.

I wouldn't say this is enough evidence for the prevalence of studs on that sort of shield, but I did find a piece of pottery that might be a reason to depict them:

One change that is definitely warranted, however, I would say is to add proper braiding to Spartans both for unit textures and hero portraits. It is clearly attested in sources such as Plutarch and Herodotus.

To put forward another Hellenistic structure, the Altar of Zeus at Pergamum would be be a plausible option. The Attalid dynasty based in Pergamum was directly from Lysimachus' successor state, and the structure is in an incredible state of preservation due to the meticulous work of German archaeologists.

Well, I wasn't being precisely candid there, but if the need is for something like that, I'd be willing to give it a go.

Well, if there is demand, I can assure you that I can give monthly updates about the progress of 0 A.D. with the same quality and factuality of the first post of this topic.