Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

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.

All part of my evil masterplan to confound you [insert evil emoji]. In seriousness, though, I wanted to avoid an unnecessary amount of text crunched together and still like the aesthetics of indentation in paragraphs; I also am fond of the eclectic French tastes concerning that matter. In regards to sanitation, the point is to make it seem like there is something great occurring with the next phase; it should feel rewarding. While many games seem to naïvely adhere to the Whig Theory of history (things continue to get more sophisticated and better), the important thing is that phases should not just be another technology you press. If this was a city-building game in which sanitation was an in game mechanic, I would by all means stand by that position.

While pacing is most of the time associated with movies or books, most games have a similar format, but the structure can vary from one to the next. In many this can be due to artificial barriers. Are these barriers necessarily bad? Not really, but the important thing for most games that take longer than five minutes is to have a distinct feel to what could be called the early, mid, and late-game. The most familiar example to many would be Age of Kings, which had ages serving that purpose. Assuming that all of you are acquainted with some of the strategies of the game, I will simply point out that it offered diverse options from doing a dark age rush, turtling, and then going fast castle often to do a knight rush or just boom; alternatively one could aim for a faster feudal age, and then do a feudal age rush, which most of the time consist of archers or scout cavalry and then going to castle age at a later point, usually hoping that the map control could pay off. There were many variations to these, but the point I want to make is the fact that there were fairly diverse options for every civilisation. Unfortunately, I do not see the current iteration of the game having these options. To clarify, I understand that the game is in alpha and such things cannot be expected to existed in any full-fledged state. Still, I find it disconcerting that no one has been able to better define viable strategies for each civilisation. A pressing issue is the fact that in its current state, 0 A.D, with unique aesthetics, implies that each civilisation will have extremely unique gameplay mechanics on par with games like Starcraft, but when looking on paper, the spearman of one civilisation, although drastically differing in armament and historical context, is practically identical. This ultimately makes 0 A.D. seem like false advertising; its visuals are almost as different from one culture to the next as in Age of Mythology, yet the gameplay does not follow this. I am not going to say what each civilisation should be like right here and now. I don’t know enough about many cultures outside of Persia, Hellas, Italy, and the Hellenistic states. What I do want to argue is that there should be an intentional way allowing civilisations doing things such as rushing, booming, and turtling to some capacity and also in a way that plays to its historical strengths and weaknesses. Obviously there could be exceptions; Sparta seems impossible to viably turtle with. What this can broadly mean though is a better attempt at designing things such as the tech tree and phases to fit to encouraging interesting options for all civilisations and then with a stable foundation like that, refining the ideas behind each one. One other note to be made is that there should be a feeling of reward to advancing a phase. These currently feel like some of the most lack-luster aspects of the game. First, I would advise making them be named things that are more thematic. Village, town, and city seem matter-of-fact. I would recommend basing it around legal reforms such as “Code of Laws” and so on and so forth; there could be other ways of doing this, but the main point is that there should be some theme behind them, not just what seems like a placeholder name. Also, there should be some fanfare or sound when someone advances to a new phase to signify that something great has taken place. If at all possible, there could even be variations in the music tracks give them slightly thicker musical textures when possible in the subsequent phases. Lastly although changing the models each phase might be difficult, there could be as simple of changing the textures to look dirtier and staler in the village phase to more vibrant colours in the later phases.

This seems to be the correct forum for this topic to me.

My bad with the terminology. It seems that I was mistakenly looking at a section referring to caetrati which also eludes to hypaspists. The point that I wish to make is a small distinction. Hypaspists according to my findings were heavily armed compared to peltasts, but less so than other phalangites. Essentially the point is that they seem to have served an intermediary role in the battlefield that would be cumbersome for others. Why prefer this to simply labelling them as the Macedonian variation of the hoplite, which seems to be the other camp for academics? First, it seems that, as I have hopefully shown, there is a moderately good amount of support for this. Why ardently take one side when the other position also has a good basis? Obviously it would be academically compromising to assert entirely that hypaspists were clearly armed in one way when the primary sources do not give an explicit description of their equipment. The main reason is to provide a consistent gameplay depiction of these units, which as I see would be designed to be used in a historically informed manner based on the tactics by which Alexander used them. I wish that I could say that I found more sources, but I haven't bothered looking for more. As much as I would like to show some pictures of hypaspists, the photos from that time are a bit low quality, but here are some extremely accurate versions of hypaspists from the critically acclaimed game Age of Empires Online.

It is true that the sources may be old, but the simple fact is that everyone had and has biases. Regarding his views being controversial, his advocacy for armoured warfare was in many ways substantiated by the success of blitzkrieg in the 2nd World War. Many of his writings formed the bases of officer training curricula and are in many ways still used for modern military theory. Furthermore, although he may have believed in unusual views, perceptions of a person should not be the sole thing to shape an understanding of a historian's credibility. If you would like to see some more sources, some of which I found that also take a similar position from more modern historiography are articles such as "Alexander's Hypaspists Again" by J. R. Ellis. Likewise, in an article published in 2004 entitled "Philopoemen's Special Forces: Peltasts and a New Kind of Greek Light-Armed Warfare (Livy 35.27)" by Mary Frances Williams, she takes a similar stance, arguing that hypaspists were lightly armed. Another source that has a similar stance is "The Macedonian Sarissa, Spear, and Related Armor" by Minor M. Markel. While there are other views on the other side for this matter, it is no surprise that in academic discourse there is no broad consensus. Obviously this not in any way an exhaustive list of examples, but I think that it demonstrates that the argument of Fuller, Wilcken, and other historians is still quite plausible.

That is a logical argument, but what you are ignoring is the point that they were consistently deployed for mobile operations in every notable battle. Heavy armour would ultimately weigh them down in these cases. In the Battle of Granicus, their purpose was to support Alexander's cavalry charge on the left flank. On the cavalry's right were a group of hypaspists for the charge. He also placed another block on the other flank, demonstrating their mobility. In the Battle of Issus, the hypaspists were deployed closely to mountainous terrain, where heavy infantry would find it difficult to effectively operate. In the battle of Guagamela, hypaspists were next to the the cavalry and light infantry again. In the Battle of Hypasdes, they supported the flank of the phalanx. Heavily armed hoplites were essentially outdated by the introduction of the sarissa, and the notion of wearing as much as possible does not seem to be a viable stance given their usage in all of these decisive battles. Likewise, of the sources Fuller quotes, all of which are major historians of Alexander, none of them argue for a situational kit. I will admit that there could be some flexibility in what they wore, but the evidence seems to strongly work for them being lightly armed infantry.

That would be an impractical thing to have logistically speaking. If there were multiple types of armour issued, the difficulty maintaining the force would be much greater in supplying them with the correct things. Also, manoeuvres would be harder to execute with practised efficiency if they kept on changing armour and weapons. While soldiers did in some cases abandon heavier equipment for mobile operations, the implications for these soldiers seems distinct from the typical phalanx, and thus a standardised set of armour and weapons for all of these situations seems to be a far more likely scenario. Anyways, even if they did alternate between different things, 0 A.D. has to make some generalisations where it would otherwise be unnecessarily complex; the generalisation in this case seems to be for making the hypaspists have lighter armour.