Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

Actually those seem to date from the Imperial era or extremely close to then. The republic era shields had a sort of a brace in the front to maintain higher durability of the shield. The final one does look suspiciously Samnite-like however.

Personally though, I don't see that with this game. The units and buildings are clearly stylised given the low-polygon models and simple textures, but I frankly find this choice to merely be minimalism as Lordgood explained. The gameplay seems promising and the units lack the wild exaggerations of AOEO; frankly I find you being too dismissive when it is clear that they are attempting to make a game that is old-schoolesque and the artwork reflects that. Also regarding this game's audience, it seems generalised to call it simply call the targets casual. Age of Kings was a simple game but offered a rich meta-game that rivals highly competitive titles like Starcraft.

I have to second wow's opinion; formations carrying an integral role to combat has been core to 0 A.D.'s vision for a long time, and denying those mechanics to combat would be a major turn from the game's original ideal.

Regrettably my Gaelic only extends to a small amount of Old Irish. The little I do know cannot be a legitimate enough basis for an objective opinion.

"Ti esti;" as it would be more or less spelled to convert the Greek letters to Latin, is the combination of "Tí," which means 'what,' and "esti," a conjugation of the Greek word eimi, which is the 3rd person singular form of 'I am.' All of that to say, it basically means "What is it?"

First, I wish to say that it is not entirely wrong; in fact it is a unique and innovative system I appreciate. The concept is not inherently flawed, but there are cultures in which it is an easy way to misconstrue the actual social and military systems present. It should not be removed entirely, but it should be changed and adapted better reflect the cultures. The Athenians, Romans, Iberians, Gauls, Britons, Persians, Mauryans, and Spartans all remain fairly viably accurate though differentiating Persian levies from actual citizens and Spartan Champions from other champions could lead to greater diversity and depth to the meta and historicity. The remaining have problems though. Macedonians, Seleucids, and Ptolemies all maintained professional forces that were employed outside of a few exceptions, but those can be exceptions to better diversify the three. There still could be citizen soldiers, for the military colony maintained retired soldiers that were called Kleruchoi if I am not mistaken. These could act as experience tier II or III units, not being tremendously reliable from an economic standpoint, but capable of providing protection while simultaneously building and collecting from strategic yet disputed areas. Carthage also lacked many citizen soldiers, and the depiction of mercenaries as citizens not only for Carthage but for other Civilisations is peculiar inaccuracy. Mercenaries could be expensive and competent, but also have short training times to compensate. Making them at least Champion-esque would be a good idea. These are simple things to alter, and any economic setbacks they would have could be remedied by the employment of slaves. Although I do not claim that slavery was necessarily a justly conducted institution, it was a very present part of Ancient life. In the period of Imperial Rome, for instance, it could be that even one fifth of the population was enslaved. Making these a way to channel labour in a new way would lead to interesting strategic implications.

The buckler there seems to be scanty evidence for Roman presence; buckler shields were preferred during the 13th century A.D.

Perhaps the problem is that we are not looking in-depth at how functional games do it. Upgrading buildings seems a bit strange; in Starcraft there were building tech trees. The same could be done for 0 A.D. the Civic Centre would unlock barracks, which unlocks more units, which in turn unlocks the fortress after a tower has been constructed. If we are talking about phases still existing, I would look to Age of Kings as an example for our framework and move from there. In Age of Kings the Dark Age could see rushing, but this was mainly just simple harassment. The actual contact would come in the Feudal Age, in which fighting could occur with soft counter units used offensively and the hard counter ones defensively. The alternative would be to wall, a practical option, and jump to the Castle Age, when crossbows, knights, and siege revolutionise the battlefield. In the Imperial Age real power could come to play with unique units, trebuchets, and gunpowder, yet the army compositions would also have to be balanced with cheaper trash units as the game continued since resources, being finite, would continue to limit the purchasing abilities. The point is that there must be a point to the phases, and Age of Kings did that job extremely well. While everything seemed coherent, it was also distinct with one age to the next. Currently 0 A.D. lacks those distinctions, so the purpose is lost. I personally would advocate for the ageless concept. It may seem avant-garde, yet it works for the current vision of 0 A.D.

Penalty? Walls in 0 A.D. take far too long to construct in most situations, and compared to most walls such as in Age of Kings in which they cost 2 wood for palisades and 5 stone for a stone wall. Compared to these rates coupled with the fact that there are very few chokepoints in 0 A.D. games means that walls are impractical. Age of Mythology priced them at 3 gold. Surely the walls could be more inexpensive in 0 A.D.

The only issue with this proposal is that it could detract from the historical flavour of the heroes.

I do not really wish to sound too critical, but the system you propose doesn't really seem to make much sense to me. Running/Charging based on stances? I prefer the stamina bar. It is not that complex compared to the mana bar to units in Starcraft, and certainly the abilities cast in Starcraft introduce far more complexities. Double-clicking being like too much micro compared to the stances option you propose, and also micro is an important component to RTS. Double-clicking is intuitive with games like Total War, and 0 A.D.'s combat would emulate that in some ways.

I am pleasantly surprised by how good the implementation sounds. The only thing I would argue against is the name of the Spartan officer. Polemarch is an Athenian term and hardly had any military background. Strategos is a more appropriate generic term for a leader. Perhaps rather than giving an armour debuff to units in the column formation, flanks should simply be a more present relevant part of the weaknesses of formations.

I would point to the classic Age of Kings that rushing often occurs at 6-7 minutes into the game, and furthermore, there is the feudal age rush, which occurs near a later mark in the game. This is due to Age of Kings having various stages in the game in which multiple aspects of aggression can be seen. I recommend that 0 A.D. emulate this by perhaps locking specific unit types until a later age, but that's just a suggestion. Regardless, rushes can occur on many different stages and earliest ones should only be able to harass above anything else. In later stages the damage could be more noticeable, but walling should provide a viable counter to this later aggression. In the later stages siege should make it possible to work through this strategy, yet fortresses can provide another source of defensive advantage.

I would point out that rushing is generally a tactic that is about harassing the enemy by doing things like attacking the woodline, which might be primarily defended by women. Attacks during the second phase hardly can be considered rushes and need to be planned in a different way. Rushing by entering range of the Civic Centre generally is a bad call depending on the circumstances.

Game speed is a major component of affecting how long games take. Consequently, you can simply change that and have a more meaningful game experience.

Just looking at this thread, it is obvious that something has to change, but I do not think that hard-counters are the proper way to go. Counters work well in situations in which there are consistent ways to work with it. For instance, in Age of Mythology, the Greeks had from each military production building produced a soft-counter unit that worked within the rock-paper-scissors formula, but also there were hard-counter units that worked against their unit type. 0 A.D. lacks this system, and when it tried hard counters, the result was a confusing and convoluted mess that was not realistic or intuitive, but what it really needs I would argue is clear unit roles. For instance, there could be units that are designed to absorb damage, or ones that can provide reliable long range support, others that can use their terrain to do hard-hitting ambushes before retreating. By giving distinct roles to each unit that provides intuitive strengths and weaknesses in different tactical situations; it encourages players to use their units in a synergistic way rather than necessarily building counters. The mind-game then is how to counter a specific tactic rather than a unit combination generally.

Why should the chariots do more damage though?

And what is your basis for this claim? The Spartans defeated the Athenians on land time and time again and were practically undefeated until the rise of Thebes. Surely Roman legionnaires were capable, yet most were simply conscripts prior to the Marian Reforms and suffered many defeats. There is not simply one reason that Rome had an empire while Sparta did not. (Naturally when Sparta was in its height it only controlled most of Greece with a league.) Reasons for Spartan decline were many including decreased birthrates and unequal land-distributions. Romans, realise, were pathetic in defeating Hannibal in Italy unless it was by attrition.

Regarding the Ptolemaic architecture, I would point out that as of a whole, it is extremely inaccurate regrettably. While the houses retaining Egyptian elements seems good generally, the architecture the Ptolemies had was at large Hellenistic. While it may not seem to help building diversity, having most structures look like things from the New Kingdom is quite a stretch.

Do realise that at the front the pikemen held their own very well to any legionnaire. The problem for pikemen was the inflexibility of the formation, which the Romans lacked. As a result, a properly done flanking manoeuvre was a disaster for the pikemen.

The fundamental point of walls is to prevent rushing from being an effective form of harassment at the cost of limiting the potential for expansion and phasing up through the high stone cost. Players who choose to wall would not have fortresses as early to help and thereby would be deterred.

I support this notion at least regarding stone walls.

At the moment, walls are practically a pointless investment. This is due to them first being extremely expensive, many times making a short length of wall cost the same or more than a defence tower, but with palisade walls, that is not case at least, yet still practically minded players would generally not bother investing in walls. The fundamental reason behind not even making palisades let alone stone walls is because of a lack of choke-points. Forests, being passable, are not a defendable option, and neither are there many cliffs around. I would highly recommend working that problem out as walling has interesting strategic implications that should be cost effective.

I have a few suggestions myself. First, it would be good to have walls be cheaper since they are rarely effective at the moment. If players would like their wall turrets firing arrows and potentially ballista shots later, that should be an upgrade. Having walls cost hundreds of stone is ridiculous balance-wise and Age of Kings recognised this problem. Next, archers generally should not be as effective as they are. Historically they were actually nothing that decisive in most battles and their role should most likely be limited to supporting infantry. Persia also is depicted having very good archers, but I see no historical basis for that. If there is any bonus they should have, it should be in rapid deployment. Third, blacksmith upgrades should not be generalised with melee infantry upgrades being with ranged as it makes little logical sense. For that matter, having them cost food seems obscure to say the least. With food there may as well be stone added.

I do Sparta since I enjoy using lots of infantry.