Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

This isn't so much a huge suggestion or anything monumental, but simply speaking, it's been a while since I've played 0 A.D. (I used to play multiplayer on a regular basis and was pretty decent; nothing more), but I decided, with the new alpha out, to give 0 A.D. a couple more goes to see how development has been, and given the fact that I've not followed the meta or developed a proper build, I decided to stick with single-player. Simply speaking, I was pleasantly surprised by the diplomatic options available to me. While before it was simply a matter of turtling enough to kill off the AI's army while exploiting home-turf advantages, the diplomatic options made the formerly static interactions much more intriguing. Beyond my expectations for the AI, I began to have an emotional connexion with those which I played with/against. With those whom I had formed a stalwart alliance, I felt glad when I saw them actively participating in my border conflicts after requesting their assistance, and those who had refused my offers of friendship or even went as far as to declare war against me became actual rivals. All to say, awesome job! Given the fact that this has been a wonderful addition for me, I was wondering if you could clarify some of the mechanisms dictating their interactions. Specifically why they like/don't like players. What are the future plans in this direction?

Altogether I found your article well informed yet still concise, which is a helpful thing for history articles for games. Two particular points I would make are that first, there are some grammatical errors that could be easily fixed with a quick reread of the article; second, the final sentence does not exactly characterise what happened with Pericles' death. If I were to offer an alternative, here is my take on it: With the death of Pericles, came the death Athenian Hegemony over Greece. Instead of pursuing his shrewd strategy of controlling the seas while depending her walls, Athens, at the urgings of demagogues, set out on a disastrous campaign into Sicily that led to her eventual defeat by Sparta. As a last simple pointer, if tense could be kept consistent, it would make the article flow better.

I personally dislike having women trained at houses. It's too easy to spam them given their low train time and cost. The fact is that a successful raid should permanently cripple your opponent; they can get back into the game by booming, but a building they will build regardless of whether they expect to have their eco raided is a bad choice regardless.

Axes would be a peculiar choice for the era for troops en masse. There are cases for particular cultures; the Persians did employ axe-men, but before considering how counters could function, it remains important to have a proper historical basis for how they would function. It then becomes a matter complementing history with gameplay to best marry the two. Marcus Aurelius was a capable emperor, but the Roman Republic depicted in the game had no emperors, making Aurelius anachronistic. Similarly, with Israel, depicting the kingdom during the time of David is also inappropriate since the timeframe of the game is from 500 B.C. to 1 B.C. The Hasmoneans would be a plausible choice for that, but currently the team has no plans to include any more civilisations into the game given the number of assets necessary for that. If anything was to be added at all, the simplest would be to add in more Hellenic ones such as Syracuse, Thebes, Epirus, or even Pergamum (Epirus isn't strictly totally Greek, but the unit roster would be pretty awesome.). Most people find there to be too many Greek nations depicted already despite the possibilities of creating distinctions for them so I doubt that they could be put into the official game. There is the possibility of mods though....

The point I was making was about the way the Athenians wrote it, which was distinct. The undercase alphas in this inscription come from a different direction. Looking at other ones from Athens, this does not seem to be the only case.

Good work on the Athenian shields. One point of criticism I would make is based on the fact that at least according to several sources on ancient Greek scripts, your alphas seem to be backwards. On notes for the slingers, you might want to have the muscles less defined from a texture standpoint since hypertrophy would not have been so much of an issue for people operating in that role.

Limiting the number of units one can produce of a specific type is a bad choice. Units should have particular roles that make them able to be defeated by specific tactics or unit compositions. For instance, horse archers could be good at hit-and-run, but when fighting the more cost-effective foot missile soldiers, though they may win in some brief engagements, the cost would strain an opponents eco. Also, foot archers could have good range and decent damage, yet due to line of sight restrictions, they could not fight to their full potential without other units doing recon.

That is the case.* As is, while some may argue that the game lacks diversity in the cultures represented, given the fact that the game is still in alpha phase and has not yet formed a coherent goal for how gameplay would function, I wouldn't be worried about the current blandness found in factions beyond their aesthetics. *Unless the team changes its mind.

So in some respects this is a concept art concept art thread. : )

I personally don't like the idea of slaves losing health over time. They could have a base low health and be able to be captured, but making them lose health would add unnecessary micromanagement akin to what is found with Age of Empires II with farm reseeding.

True. Personally I feel a bit annoyed with the hunting and herding capabilities of cavalry. It would be more interesting to see them play scouting/harassment roles in the early game, but their potential has to be limited. If line-of-sight and movement would be reduced, they could probably play a more balanced role in-game.

I would argue against these points. First, the Athenians had a civilisation. They spoke there own dialect of Greek and had a unique culture. For example their art styles with pottery, calendars, theatric traditions, and much more are their own. Furthermore, Sparta also had its own distinctly unique culture even though they were part of a broad, vague cultural subgroup of the Hellenes. Furthermore, Athens and Sparta did make empires of their own rights through leagues that were not just loose alliances but firmly controlled powers, and may I assure you that they were empires. Furthermore, in the context of Sparta, was an empire by definition when it had subjugated Messenia, an event long before the Persian Wars. Gauls also had empires. I would cite the Boii, a Gallic confederation as only one example.

I would just like to say that I like the design document. It's a definite step forwards with a much more coherent vision than what is currently in place. There is one point I would make. The Stoa. It was a commercial hub. All said, is it bad that there are specialists trained there? No, but they shouldn't be usual to give off the impression that this is a training centre. Rather, they could have unique characteristics like a nearly instantaneous training time but paired with either a high cost or a hard cap to the number of units of them you could field. To make it seem less militaristic, it could have some of the higher tier economic upgrades available at it, making its construction signal either a harder, more invested military push or a strategy towards an economic boom.

Good. I would say one thing about your assessment of 0 A.D., while I do not like the current state of citizen-soldiers, I do not find the concept itself bad. It simply needs to be better implemented. What could really make this game great is if there could be distinct changes apparent in the units with utility from the beginning stage to the later parts. It will be hard to make work, but it could be done.

Personally, Civic Centres seem to make the barracks a bit redundant. Granted, CC's cost a lot more, are highly defensible, exert significant territorial control, and so forth, but should they actually train military units? Frankly, the idea seems a strange (should a citizen be equipped with weapons at what could be considered an administrative building?). What are your thoughts?

I would have to agree. If catapults are purely for attacking buildings, they should be able to do a proper job of it and be distinct from rams.

The problem with that system is the UI; it is hopelessly inefficient for RTS games, in which real time is important. The head set view does have potential, but controls would probably still be left to a mouse and keyboard.

Serapis is a good choice for the Ptolemies, but also don't discount the important of Isis with the Isis Cult. If you are going with cults, the Mithra Cult was a huge thing in the Roman Empire, especially among soldiers. The Isis Cult also had a pretty huge hey-day, but that's up to you I suppose. Rune Stones would be inapplicable to the Britons since they did not right with runes, and most rune-like monuments come from the Megalithic Era. For the Gauls, you could have wicker-men be a basis for that.

This seems embarrassing to ask, but I can't find a delete function for Atlas. Is there anything like that?

Excellent job on the animations. The one matter that I think is problematic is the two-hand sword. To start, the weapon the swordsman uses in the animations isn't strictly a longsword. Two-hand weapons generally differed from their counterparts by having longer hilts for both hands. While the current length of the hilt may be slightly plausible for a @#$% sword, it does not provide enough length. Generally the hands would be positioned at the furthest ends of the hilt to ensure maximum manoeuvrability and so that the individual hands would not interfere with each other.

What are thoughts of implementing the pass-through damage seen in Age of Kings for the scorpions. It was always beautiful seeing massed scorpions in pro-matches.

Relevant point about the blue porta-potty. The colour should match the player colour.

I would like pike units to have a marginal amount of range, encouraging them to cluster in ranks where they could attack simultaneously.

Objectives: Make early game harassment possible by making most resources rest at the fringe of the initial borders. Make expansion an important strategic choices by limiting the number of resources at each viable Civic Centre placements and giving good pockets to place new Centres full of meaningful resources. Make Scouting an important stage of the game by limiting the number of initial hunted animals to be collected at the Civic Centre. Balance between chokepoints and open terrain to diversify the types of possible engagements by balancing between offence and defence, making there be a limited but multiple number of windows of attack. Possible Objections: This seems to make the game seem way more Starcraft-like when 0 A.D. had clear roots to Age of Kings: why the shift in map design? While there are many connexions between 0 A.D. and Age of Kings, concepts such as the citizen soldier, differences in building uses, and passable forests make 0 A.D’s meta far more chaotic since choke-points become few and meaningless and citizen soldiers set an entirely different pace. Also a new map design can provide maps with more intriguing strategic depth since builds would be based largely on which resources are placed where. Below I have a mockup of a hypothetical minimap. The shading represents the elevation: the darker the shading, the higher the ground.

1. I was a general nerd surfing the net for articles on random ancient history and came across a website that had some articles. I read more and learned that it was not so much as history article website as a game in development. This was around the Pre-Alpha stage, and I did not see playability in the near future; not long later playability happened with Alpha 1 Argonaut. I started following development not long afterwards. 2. I like history and I like RTS games. 0 A.D. in my opinion does a fantastic job of making an engaging game without overly romanticising the past or botching up on facts. I also love being able to be in a community in which I have seen my opinions take an active role in shaping the game. 3. It's really great to me, and I don't have many complaints except that I would like more updates. They don't have to be that official, but just casual explanations of recent developments would be brilliant. 4. A witty and funny aphorism? Nah. 5. 21 year old fellow from the States.