Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

I like what you've done, but currently the wear is only vertical. Slashes from a sword could come from any direction.

Would you clarify who you mean when you refer to 'you?' All of the comments prior to yours have raised valid points that should be addressed in regards to this topic (In my opinion). If the complaints are well-founded, I see no reason why they should not be voiced as long as it is done in a respectful tone. If you have any counter-arguments to anything stated in this thread, I would be glad to hear you out on your concerns.

Age of Empires had a clear idea of what cavalry in the early game did; it scouted. I personally enjoyed this since it allowed for something to do during the slower stages of the game. In 0 A.D. scouting is less important, which is okay since the pacing is different. Due to this, cavalry primarily help bolster the economy. Since these units are highly capable at food gathering when hunting is easy, it often encourages players to mass cavalry for an eventual early rush. I'd personally say this feels immersion breaking. Cavalry were the usually elite, not soldiers that one could expect for a village to field. That said, I would like to open up discussion for possible alternatives to the current implementation. Here are a few things I've thought of: Have cavalry not hunt or be much more inefficient at it. This would by far limit their use. Make cavalry only trainable in the town phase. One thing this does that I like is that it still allows for making cavalry a possible but situational hunting unit. The main downside is that this would make ranged units, unless the meta was changed dramatically, be the dominant type of unit during the village phase in the game. Have an artificial block in place aside from the town phase such as a technology or a building requirement like the corral. Again this would at least delay their production; I'm just not sure if it would be a meaningful enough change.

A more likely case in most scenarios is that sappers constructed machines using available lumber around the area they besieged. Naturally if the engines were too complicated for field engineers to make on site, I'd say a workshop would be a more likely case.

The differentiation is valid, but I'd say primarily from a practical military perspective. As I'm sure you're aware, they had massively different roles in the battlefield. Having chariots, which required different housing than the typical horseman's, trained at the same building as horsemen is an abstraction but an abstraction I don't mind. Probably, assuming that chariots would have a viable enough role to justify it, the chariot stables as you mentioned would be the best option for making a decent marriage of sensitivity to historicity and gameplay.

I'd say the matter of chariots being trained at one place compared to another is more a matter of taste. Yes the frame would have been made by a carpenter or the like, but that doesn't account for the horses. It's roughly the same logic as having infantry trained at the blacksmith, where their weapons and armour would be manufactured. I prefer the stable since it gives a more intuitive logic to the game compared to a building that's generally used for making siege.

I mean for what it's worth, the Total War series has never been the best example of historically accurate unit designs and rosters. Rome Total War was and is an awesome game, but the depictions of Egyptians, Britons, and Germanic Tribes were... shall we say a bit fantastical. This is nothing much worse than that game at least to me.

I know this is a minor nitpick that is kind of arbitrary, but having a few scratches or even dents on the helmet would make them feel a lot more grounded to me. If that's too much trouble, I understand; they look great as is. Just saying.

One of the central reasons is balance for multiplayer purposes. This would be a fun choice if the emphasis was on single player modes, but for multiplayer, the number of options available to one single faction would be staggering. We're talking about 108 possibilities based on the variables for one single faction. I would personally that's too much especially when there are so many factions. A while ago I posted a topic about a much more in depth idea of how Sparta could function at all stages of the game, allowing for offensive and defensive play based on strategic in game options. It's hardly perfect I'm sure, but the point is that I'd say it's better to make these decisions in game more than anything else.

I wonder if a lot of these options are truly worth making an option to customise at the beginning. The most justifiable one would be the hero. Apart from that, I would leave it down to build orders. If the enemy player doesn't know the choices another has done, it would greatly hamper their ability to understand the strategy that would be the inevitable best option of some option taken. Meta that the game misses is primarily due to adherence to a strict formula based upon Age of Empires without attempting to bring any of the depth with it. The civilisations definitely have historicity in mind with their rosters, but I have yet to see any serious attempts to sit down and think about at how a faction would feel to play at each stage of the game.

I in no way claim to be well informed about the siege methods of Persia at this timeframe, but at least the original developers thought that their capabilities were subpar. What's your basis for considering them so good?

The point I wished to make about swords is that there isn't much an inherent advantage to using them over spears, and the game should reflect that. I think that a marginally faster movement speed could be fair, but even that doesn't make too much practical sense. Factions should not have to be reliant on a sword unit. Altogether I like the ideas Alexandermb mentioned for ammo. In regards to which faction was barrack-less, the easier question to pose is which ones weren't. Sparta had men living in their common barracks, but for other factions it mainly was a matter of levying troops (The Romans, Athenians, etc,... all maintained this kind of military). That doesn't mean that men did not have areas where they could do martial training. Much of the gymnasium was dedicated to athletic pursuits of a very military character. I think that the primary problem is that the term barracks is used when troops were rarely quartered (Such a thing would typically imply a professional force). If we want to keep the structure, we just need to think of a more appropriate name for classification. The Seluecids and Ptolemies were one of a few factions that did maintain a semi-professional force, establishing military colonies that were maintained by the soldiers in peacetime; this probably is the closest we could come to a barracks despite a 'kleruch' typically implying an entire settlement, not a dedicated barracks. At the end of the day, the barracks is a decent abstraction of something that would otherwise require more difficult or different systems to learn in order to make the game feel more representative of the social structures of that time. Regardless of that, if there is to be a change, we should make sure to attempt to make it both simple enough for RTS purposes to justify the added historical intuitiveness.

The whole matter of whether civilisations used swordsmen or not is a bit of a non-issue to me. Spartans and Athenians fielded swordsmen. They just happened to use spears, which have better reach as primary weapons. Yes the Romans did use swordsmen, but of course that was due to their having javelins instead of thrusting spears (the triarii being the exception). With that in mind, I'd say that trying to give distinct functions to infantry that only used one weapon or both seems odd to begin with. If anything, they should be only slightly nuanced.

Just to again add some more thoughts, I said that factions should be fleshed out; I think the point still stands. Let's take a classic like Age of Empires II, a title that still has, twenty years in the running, a healthy multiplayer community. A key reason for that I'd say is that each civilisation was designed to synergise with specific strategies and unit compositions. 0 A.D. I'd say lacks that flavour. As for what I would recommend, each civilisation should have at least one economic bonus and a bonus to a specific unit class. Age of Kings has each civilisation matched with three to five types of bonuses. For the most part 0 A.D. lacks that much. Next, 0 A.D. lacks the all important aspect of technological restrictions for specific factions. We should then think about how specific play styles could could be drawn out through them. The reason that I mention these two critical aspects is that balance could be completely turned on its head once a few of these kinds of changes take place.

The issue is that you're missing what we really want: ents.

To add my opinion, which is definitely needed due to the shortage of people who care about this topic (There is not a hint of sarcasm there), I'd say that the team should focus its efforts on fleshing out one single existing faction. They get a full tech tree, unique flavour when it comes to their units, and the whole works. Developing new factions is a great thing, and we shouldn't discourage that, but the existing factions seem to be little more than skeletons of what they would actually be. After one faction has been done this way, there can be an effort to do so with the others as well. Maybe work out one faction per alpha as a minimum threshold.

Okay. Thanks for explaining some of the technicalities that prevent a more streamlined system. It would be nice if there was an easier way to access that information for moderating purposes, but there are more pressing concerns than just the multiplayer scene I'm sure.

Glad to know. Obviously I stand by my position, but if there's a better plan in the works that might be a bit more on the just side, I'm all for it. It came to mind that my simple solution may have been mentioned before, yet I never saw one. It's not the first time I've overlooked something important.

Those are definitely fair points, but even with those extenuating circumstances, I think that the option I've made works better regardless of those particular problems. Aside from the game crashing, most of the other aspects are controllable to some extent by the player, and not differentiating may not be the most fair option, yet it would be equally fair to everyone. The way I currently see the whole thing working is that it doesn't. This option would make for a number of problems, but I think that the end result would be fixing a much larger issue. In some MOBA games that live and breath on multiplayer, there are harsh penalties for going afk during a match regardless of the circumstances. I don't like the implementation entirely, but it generally works and keeps trolls from being able to exploit the system. 0 A.D. might not rely on the same kind of model for its multiplayer scene, yet it still has its merits in my opinion.

I'm not going to say that a quitting a game without congratulating an opponent is the best show of sportsmanship, but unless I'm mistaken, the solution is quite simple. Have quitters suffer the ELO loss that they would experience if they had lost the game. Maybe I'm missing something, but to me this rather simple change would be for the better. Could anyone point out any unforeseen problems with this? Also, I'm honestly baffled that a loophole like this has existed for so long. Is there something I'm overlooked or why have I not seen a solution like this before? Is it primarily a technical issue?

It's a tad ironic that the Spartans are the ones using it.

I think that Delenda Est's model is a good idea, but I'm not sure about how intuitive it is. Choices are good, but overloading a player with too many is a substantial risk. Clicking everything until it's all gone is a problem more for the player than the system in my opinion. When it comes to these technologies, timing is key, and resource efficiency is important to effective build orders. When a player chooses a melee armour upgrade, they are making their melee infantry better, which in turn encourages them to train more. They could try to balance the unit composition with a ranged attack upgrade, but that would divert resources from unit production or other critical technologies. Obviously the blacksmith wouldn't be the only building for unit upgrades ideally speaking. There could be ones that focus on improving the training of units at the barracks. All of these work into establishing a tempo to the game. I don't mean to act as if I don't appreciate a lot of the ways Delenda Est has changed the game; it's a great labour of love, but at the same time, the more choices, the less meaningful they become to me. Thus, I think that restricting choices to tier three would make for more engaging options. Furthermore, a faction such as Sparta might have great infantry, but since their cavalry and ranged units were rather subpar, probably the only tier three upgrades they would have would be for melee armour and melee attack.

The blacksmith upgrades seem rather meaningless to me for a number of reasons. First, they affect things too universally. Compare things to Age of Empires II, and the difference is stark. In 0 AD, there is a distinction given in attack upgrades but not defence in the case of ranged versus melee. Also, the technology cost seems outrageous in the case of the wood necessary to research the armour upgrades. Last, only two upgrades make concern of teching into a specific unit combination practically a nonexistent other than worrying about the cost. My proposal is to have three upgrades that are cheaper but have a less wide range of effect: A line of melee armour that would primarily affect infantry but also cavalry to a small degree. A line of armour upgrades for horses that only affect cavalry. These upgrades would be a bit more expensive than the former. A line of armour for ranged units. Lines of separate attack upgrades for melee and ranged units. There could be armour upgrades for elephants specifically, but that might be too situational. All of these upgrades would also operate under further limitations. Basic experience level infantry would only benefit from tier 1 upgrades, advanced could enjoy the benefits of tier 2 as well, and elite and champion units could work with the tier three upgrades. Ranged units would have fewer available armour upgrades since armour was less prevalent for them, and the upgrades available would probably only affect advanced, elite, and champion units. The reasons for using this system to me would be that the experience system would fit more organically into the game design and veterans would matter more. The third tier for armour might also, with a benefit, have a tantalising choice such as what was originally hoped for like heavier armour at the cost of movement speed.