Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

Ranged units are currently designed in an ahistorical manner, encouraging players to field forces that are almost entirely ranged. In part, this is due to a number of issues. 1. Ranged units are accurate and typically faster than their melee counterparts, encouraging players to kite with them. This makes players micro their ranged units much like in starcraft. Since 0 A.D. does not wish to have this kind of gameplay, this should be addressed. 2. The proportion of ranged to melee units is historically inaccurate to my understanding. While I think that there should be the possibility of using skirmishing armies, these should have a proper place in the game based on historically informed unit compositions. Here is a general analysis of army compositions during 0 A.D.’s timeframe. An article from wikipedia argues that Alexander the Great used 31,000 heavy infantry, 9,000 light infantry (ranged), and 7,000 cavalry in the battle of Gaugamela . The opposing Persian side had only 1,500 archers in an army that numbered between 52,000 and 120,000. These statistics are not extremely unusual, but they would be in the case of 0 A.D. Here are a few suggestions to address these problems. 1. Ranged units should be much more inaccurate, having the ability to hit targets they did not aim for, making it also possible to have friendly fire. In most cases with at least firearms, it has been common for soldiers to not even aim at a specific target in battle situations. Assuming that this was also the case before gunpowder, the game should attempt to emulate this. Missile trajectories should arc more, and accuracy should dramatically fall off as the distance increases between them and their targets. Highly experienced and champion units could perhaps do better, but these things should at least affect them in part. 2. Most heavy units, especially those with shields, which do a fantastic job of deflecting things like arrows, should be much more resistant to ranged attacks than they currently are. If directional armour is introduced, I think that the idea of them taking more damage from flanking missile attacks would be a nice option, yet for the most part, shields should play a much larger role in calculating defence against ranged attacks. These are just a few options for addressing what I find to be a problem, and I'd be open to suggestions.

I wonder if increasing the footprint of trees is a good alternative for pathfinding. Map design already has far too few chokepoints in my opinion. For some light units, it might be interesting to allow them to just ignore the obstructions instead.

@thankforpie I'm not sure if I am understanding you. The title of this topic refers to the flood being a traditional story, not necessarily arguing that it did or did not occur. While there is scientific and and historical evidence for a variety of stances, there is no definitive proof that it did not occur (Not that it is much easier to prove the other side of the argument.).

@Nescio Okay. My bad with misunderstanding you. That makes a lot more sense. For a clarification on another point though, Hebrew does use word separators as early as the reign of King Hezekiah, evidenced by the Siloam inscription. While there are not many old copies of the Tanakh, examples such as the Samaritan Pentateuch, written using Paleo-Hebrew scripts, also can be seen to have word separators.

I'd say the remarks made about Genesis 1 Genesis 2 being two separate stories seems plausible given the stylistic and thematic differences despite finding the differences easy enough to reconcile. The flood, on the other hand, being two separate stories merged together, seems to be a clumsier argument in my opinion. The closeness in the text of the "inconsistencies" makes the problems, if they were so, absurd if we are adhering to a documentary hypothesis since they are glaringly obvious to an editor. Admittedly, the only textual criticism I am informed about is New Testament related, yet I think that there are so glaring issues that probably would relate to the following case. First, work with religious texts tends towards conservative ends, attempting to harmonise the texts, making the idea of two stories being merged together implausible due to the so-called inconsistencies mentioned of the flood. Furthermore, it seems unlikely given the generally conservative nature of religious writers that they would mesh together two separate stories. A more likely case would be for there to be two accounts, mirroring the cases of Genesis 1 and 2. Obviously, as I have not read much literature on textual criticism of the Torah, I'm sure that other people have made better arguments both for and against my position, but those were just a few thoughts on the recent comments. By the way, I found the points about the Odyssey's structure to be fascinating.

Hence the multiple meanings of "myth." That explanation does have a good scientific framework. What makes the subject interesting to me personally is the comparative mythological aspects of the story/stories, and how despite the linguistic, cultural, and geographical differences, there are so many parallels worldwide. If this topic was more popular, I'd definitely have a prediction for the next Watch.Mojo top ten video.

Most people have heard of the story of the flood. Water came down and wiped out most of humanity. This is most famously told in the Biblical narrative of Noah and the Ark. Interestingly, in many mythological traditions such as Norse, Greek, Sumerian, Chinese, and Native American just to name a few, there is a similar story. Obviously there are differences between them, yet it is fascinating that such a story is told on a global level. One of the more prominent explanations for this phenomenon is to argue that it confirms the Bible's story, but for those who would dismiss this, what do you think of the matter? Is it a coincidence and apologists who argue for the aforementioned statement are simply jumping conclusions? This gets into somewhat controversial territory due to the religious nature of it, so please be respectful of course. :)

Currently Themistocles only has a naval function, which does little justice to his impact on Athenian history. I'd suggest that he also have a bonus to wall build-time and cost. This would reflect how pivotal he was in giving the Athenians the breathing room to finish the long wall before the Spartans could stop them (For more information, read the opening of The History of the Peloponnesian War). This would make him more than just a go to in naval maps.

The point I was making was not that things need to be totally balanced. Rather, I was arguing that each civilisation should have a means doing a specific strategy (e.g. turtling, booming, and rushing.). These do not need to be practised in the exact same way, yet it should be possible to do any of these options even if one might be easier to do for a specific civ.

I wouldn't be too sure about that. The concept of convoys for a caravan implies that they are receiving some protection from soldiers. A better thing for this would be to have the trade carts be guarded and be able to fight back against would be attackers. This probably would be a bit much, making the simple addition of armour to be a fair abstraction. In summary, since any guard would have some amount of armour, it provides armour for the caravan directly.

We also should also consider some of the technological uses of bamboo from this documentary footage.

Just my two cents on the farms around Civic Centres. There were in history farming villages with centralised locations that could be comparable to the Civic Centre. I would personally argue that instead of limiting the placement of farms, have there be more variables such as fertile land (as already mentioned). Furthermore, I'd say that Civic Centres could be understood to have a different function. They could have an aura to encourage the building of other structures that would require the administration necessary to keep them running. In that way, the temples, markets, and blacksmiths would be in a location that makes sense while farms, though possible to place around Civic Centres, would be unideal due to the space they require.

Actually Irish Gaelic is not categorised with Welsh in the same Celtic linguistic group. It is usually grouped more with languages such as Mannish, and Scots Gaelic as P-Celtic (If I am not mistaken.) while Welsh is placed alongside languages such as Cornish, Cumbric, and Breton. It's a pretty minuscule point, but a point nonetheless.

Just my two cents on the pierce discussion. While spears do obviously have the same attack function as arrows, melee combat has enough nuances that I don't think that it qualifies for them to have the same type of attack. For that matter, the predominant way for a legionnaire to attack was by stabbing, but they don't get pierce attack. The basis for how easily units can defend against projectiles should mainly rest on the shield they use followed by their armour. If I were to calculate the ranged and melee armour of units, I would have a shield and armour value for them based on the type of shield and armour used. For melee attacks, the shield value would be halved and with melee attacks, the shield value would be the total amount for ranged attacks. Any attacks that get past the shield then make their way to the armour, which again detracts from the attack. If concepts like flanking are introduced on a unit to unit level, it could become even more nuanced. Also, I think that the wall use in that way demonstrates that there should be a change in how they function. I would recommend making the turret aspect an upgrade to wall connectors. Prior to that point, ranged units would have to man them like walls for any effect.

I think that one of the issues with the ideas you have for food is the complexity a mechanic like that adds to the game. Granted, I am not opposed to a similar concept, but the exact proposal you make seems to add a large amount of headaches to a player in the form of micromanagement, and given the fact that players only can do a certain number of actions per minute, this would force players to concern themselves with probably one of the more boring aspects of war. The fact that it would affect health so much makes the player have to tear attention away from what could be far more exciting. Granted, I could see some alternative options. I'd say that a streamlined idea for representing logistics would be good; in the final iteration of the game, it is planned for there to be a bar on all units called 'stamina,' which can be used for running. As I see, units could recharge stamina fastest in their own and allied territory, recharge slowly in neutral, and don't in enemy by default. This could be mitigated by some of the options. Regarding adding in options like flanking, I personally am for it. Granted, the pace of a single skirmish fight in 0 A.D. could be drastically shorter than those in Total War. The reason that 0 A.D. has not made a very good combat system yet is because the game is in alpha and not all the pieces are together to make the full experience.

I guess one thing that hasn't been explored in this topic is potentially differentiating the train times of ranged units to melee. In Age of Kings, archers took 35 seconds to train to the militia's 25. While the exact numbers don't need to be the same. In the case of Delenda Est, maybe ranged infantry could have training times of 18 seconds. If we are referring to the training times I have proposed, ranged infantry citizen soldiers could have a training time of 25 seconds to the melee citizen soldier's 20. Obviously this would be helpful in making it harder to mass ranged infantry, but does it seem appropriate?

At the moment, 0 A.D. has extremely fast training times. As far as I saw, women take 8 seconds to train. This is extremely fast, faster than the train times of most economic units in Starcraft II, which averages at 11.66 seconds. Given the fact that Starcraft is a fast-paced game, this number makes the general vision that 0 A.D. seems to strive for of being in many respects an homage to games like Age of Kings with modernised gameplay problematic. Age of Kings had a much slower training time for villagers, which was roughly 25 seconds for training time. Granted, Age of Kings is generally considered slow-paced by most standards, and Age of Mythology had the number practically halved for most civilisations, having villager equivalent train times be around 14 seconds. Nonetheless, it seems appropriate to at the minimum increase the training times of women to at least 12 seconds. I would personally say that 15 seems like a rounder number to choose. Since Citizen foot-soldiers serve a similar role yet also have combat capabilities, their train time, currently set at 10 seconds for foot soldiers, should be increased. This number lies well ahead of the Starcraft II numbers of typical base infantry (Zealots, Marines, and Zerglings), which take an average of roughly 20 (27, 18, and 17 are their train times respectively.) seconds to train. I would personally advise trying to stick to the same number to at least match Starcraft's fast pace. Horsemen in 0 A.D. have the number bumped up to 15 seconds. Since they still have an economic role, I would also say that the number should be at least 25, maybe 30 in the case of cavalry archers to make it difficult to mass them. Infantry Champions lie around the a 20 second train time. This is pretty good, but I would say that, in order to match the numbers shown here, their time could probably be brought up to 25 seconds for good measure. I have not checked the times for cavalry champions or siege weapons, but I would advise taking a similar strategy for ascertaining what their training times should be. In general, I think that changes like this will significantly help in making the game, which feels like it should be more slow-paced, at least match other titles, especially since structures such as barracks and houses can be economic unit producing factories, leading to a ridiculous snowball effect. I would personally say that houses should not be able to train women, but that should probably be a separate topic on its own. Anyways, I'd like to hear other people's opinions on the matter since I would say this is a generally unexplored aspect of 0 A.D.

This may have been the case in later years, but during the time of Alexander's campaign, the foot companions generally did not wear things such as heavy metal cuirasses. Even for headwear, there was a tendency to just wear traditional Macedonian hats. That said, it is unlikely at least from that evidence alone that the hypaspists would have been more heavily armed given the already established roles they had in battle. As for my two cents for the light/heavy dichotomy, I think that it seems a bit backwards to base the class a soldier might fall into due to tactics. Generally it seems that the strategies tend to naturally derive from the equipment provided. While it might be an anachronistic example, I would say that tanks are a possible analogy. Light and heavy in this context is directly related to armament and thereby determines how they should be used. While it could be said that training and deployment is a factor, I would not consider it the deciding one. In the context of legionnaires, such troops are not inherently heavy because there was the presence of auxiliary units to support the main blocks heavy infantry. Probably the best support for this argument of semantics is a quick glance at the adjectival use of 'light,' which in the case of militaries, relates to armaments, not tactics.

You mention some fair points, yet I find that the first two seem to be speculation. I could be wrong, yet that seems to be what I see at least. Anyways, the point is not necessarily about whether they used the sarissa; I have not researched that topic heavily and could be misinformed (All that I do know is that a number of experts think that they would have used the hoplite spear). That said, the point is that at the moment is that some of the soldiers that were used for mobile operations are shown wearing rather cumbersome armour in game. Even if you take the camp of Tarn and those who have followed his arguments, I think that they would be in agreement with this notion.

The thing that you are ignoring is that aside from some basic safety, there is little advantage to be had from killing wildlife since their deaths in no way directly contribute to the victory conditions. If there was some reward such as food, it would become more plausible to have it done that way. As such, having the units automatically attack wildlife is a liability. If there is a low hp unit, they will end up dying due to the player simply marching it too close to a predator. There are cases in which predators do yield food such as crocodiles in Age of Empires. Even with this potential benefit though, there are definite risks to fighting against violent animals in the game. Thus, there is more than only one argument against the current unit behaviour.

I would agree with wow. The objective rarely has to do with actively killing wildlife in 0 A.D, and making soldiers pursue this automatically seems peculiar. The wildlife wound them, potentially weakening the troops for the next engagement. The issue is that there is no actual purpose to killing them other than the point that they might need to be killed later. What reward does the player get? A good analogy is from mangonel behaviour in Age of Kings. Prior to the conquerors expansion, they would actively target enemies regardless of the presence of friendly units. This could prove disastrous. For reference, here is a highly informative video depicting the destructive power of mangonels.

Bear in mind that many times there have been new factions added even when the benchmark has been set. At first it was just six. It expanded a lot from there obviously. Rest assured; there is the possibility of having new civilisations like Thebes, Syracuse, Pergamon, and the Achaean League because the more Hellenic civilisations, the better. :)

I chose pacing because phasing is only a mechanic that affects the pacing of the game. What is being aimed for is regardless of whether phases exist, there should be a major effort to ensure that the early, mid, and late game are distinct and are able to keep the game reliably interesting. Concerning sidearms, I would say that they are viable in particular cases. Let's consider the Roman legionnaire. First of all, if they had a javelin side-arm, it would be logical for it to be a special attack that can only be done every thirty seconds or so. After all, they only did one or two volleys during a given battle. Next of all, in comparison to Velites, they should be slower, more expensive to produce, and have lower line-of-sight. The possibility of legionnaires being able to use pila should probably only be available in the mid-game as well. Will mechanics like this make balance difficult and more complex? Yes, but with a dedicated team and community, progress can be made for a competitive multiplayer game. One example of a game that really pushed the bounds when it came to a solid multiplayer experience was Empires Apart from a design perspective alone (There are definite issues with the game in other ways, yet that is a different matter). Of their six civilisations, there were extremely unique aspects to all of them. From the multiplayer games I saw, these came together is a fun game to play from that standpoint alone.

Precisely. Obviously the spearman is only the tip of the iceberg here; my hope is to shed light on the idea that all unit types can be tailored to general, but the way that they vary from one faction to the next allows enough diversity to make a variety of strategies possible for every civilisation.

I would say that phases are an unnecessary aspect of the game. The primary point I wished to make is that if phases exist, there should be a definite difference between the feel of one to the next. Furthermore, the primary thing that I wished (and still wish) to have is a proper feeling of unique early, middle, and late game. The spearman actually is an intriguing element of the game since the roles could differ quite strongly from one civilisation to the next. For instance, the hoplite was heavily armed and fought in close order. The Persians deployed their infantry with significantly lighter armour (until they started arming soldiers like hoplites). In general, the tactics Persians tried to use seemed focussed around the notion of anvil and hammer tactics, with the cavalry playing the decisive role while the infantry mainly just supported. This can be seen in the Battle of Guagemela, where Darius was deliberate about the chariots being the trump card by even preparing the ground ahead of time. The point is that these infantry were extremely different in how they were used. I decided to do a bit of research, and checking on the Athenian hoplite compared to the Persian spearman, there was absolutely no difference in their stats. The fundamental idea that they both could be effectively deployed against cavalry in head-to-head situations is valid, but there should be distinctions, which I find the striking visual differences do imply.