Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

I decided to do some of my own testing based on your work. The first thing I noticed is that first of all a basic swordsman versus a pikeman wins with 41 of the total hitpoints. Personally I would say that kind of one-sidedness is a bit much. Next, swordsmen seem to have too much range themselves. The advantage of range should be that the unit should not have to spend time moving to select a new target, but the second rank of swordsmen somehow are able to attack pikemen as well. Probably with that units could afford to take up a slightly larger footprint for pathing, especially when not in formation. All of these factors seem to make the current iteration of pikemen untenable as a frontline melee unit outside of being a damage sponge. Battalion suggestions intensify.

I was being a bit hyperbolic there and speaking in general terms; also that's a bit of a strawman argument. The point about decreasing pierce armour as alre said would be a good way of introducing a valid Achilles heel to this unit (Which I should remind you I also said in that post). Instead of being a tank, they would turn into effective fighters is cases where numbers are high. When I said straight up fight, I was referring to melee when massed, and a still stand by that position in that specific context. Pikemen could potentially still lose in one-on-one fights against their infantry counterparts. The point I would make is that the differences should be marginal. I could see swordsmen being maybe a bit faster than spearmen and pikemen being a bit slower than them, but the point is not to turn them into human turtles. I would agree. At the moment pikemen have to basically be on standground to take advantage of the extra range, and an increase would make it become a less niche ability.

I would point out that despite pikemen carrying a long pike, that weighed, if we are to believe wikipedia, 14 pounds, they compensated by wearing much less obtrusive equipment. Their shields were smaller and their armour tended to be lighter. An example of their flexibility on the field could be seen in the Battle of Guagamela in which the pike formation was able to move out of the path of Darius' scythe chariots, ensuring that the brunt of the Persian shock force died to the harassment of missile troops. Pikemen should move more or less at the same speed as other infantry, not significantly slower. They should be able to resist melee attacks fairly well yet be somewhat vulnerable to missiles. The key strength, I will reiterate, is that they should be able to make use of their range; currently the range of the pikeman is roughly half of its real-world counterpart. Thus their strength should be when massed, being able to beat virtually everything in a straight-up fight.

I am simply saying that turning it from visible to invisible, if possible, would probably be the easiest solution. I am no programmer and cannot comment on the difficulty of implementing specific things, but to my understanding, typically simple solutions are simple to implement. Actually representing miners as slaves is not very far from the truth. Many slaves who were given that status due to heinous crimes were sentenced to work such areas where life expectancy was quite low. Many impoverished people became slaves as a result of debt, so the idea of a beggar becoming a slave is not entirely out of the question since although they would not necessarily expect a great life, most of their daily needs would be met.

As far as I seem RTS games are major abstractions, unlike city builders or grand strategy games, both of which oftentimes try to represent some of the nuances of their subject matter. The RTS game is far different with its approach, tending more towards simplicity. Examples include units and buildings taking seconds to complete. Thus, a complex system is not necessary to represent its subject matter. That is why a simple, intuitive option can be introduced that does the job even if it does not consider my hoplite Lysimachus' views on the advantages of olive production. As I more or less laid out before, slaves would be good economic units, yet they would be fragile and capable of being captured (I thought for a while about the idea of them being able to potentially run away, but as I saw, a mechanic like could be frustrating.) I would stress that slaves would in many cases be an efficient economic unit, but not necessarily that much better than other units. Freemen would be much like a typical unit yet only be able to advance to the second rank. Citizens would be able to advance to the third rank. There are exceptions to these rules: helots would behave differently, and technologies could possibly make the dynamics change. For instance Rome to my knowledge had some of the best social mobility for slaves, and a technology to represent that could be introduced. Anyways, just to reiterate the primary point of this topic, I merely think that when you look at a unit in game, it should not be called a 'citizen' if it was not historically such. The simplest option of removing that description. Worker does an adequate job of establishing their role outside of soldiering.

The problem is that as already mentioned, slaves are at least mentioned in a technology anyways. Furthermore, 0 AD, like many RTSs requires players to commit virtual genocide to win, hardly an honourable course of action. I think that it is important to recognise that slavery in the ancient times could vary a good deal in how they were treated. There were clearly some people such as Cato the Elder who emphasised pragmatism when it came to the use of slaves over much more merciful practices. That all said, there were oftentimes chances for social advancement for slaves, and there could certainly be other cases of non-slavery in history in which people groups were treated significantly worse. Take for instance, the Leopold II in the Congo. The point being, just because there is the word 'slave' does not necessarily imply one of the greatest evils.

I would say that it might be easier to balance than you might think with the current paradigm. Women are essentially the current dedicated labourers of the game (Which in some cultural cases is a bit odd as well, but I digress). Slaves were primarily used for mining purposes, much to the expense of the slave's quality of life. Making slaves good at quarrying and mining while competent but not exceptional at other tasks would be the best sort of approach. The disclaimer might not be a bad idea, but I think that maybe just giving a blanket statement to the effect of 'there are practices represented in game that we do not condone' might be simpler. 0 AD oftentimes is a game in which winning requires virtual genocide, just about as problematic as slavery to me.

It may not be that important, but either the game should work to properly establish the social class of the units it represents or not do so at all. At the moment, I think that just removing the citizen class from units might be the simplest and and easiest option. If we want to actually represent social class in a simple but intuitive way, I did write up a potential framework that could be used, but that is obviously beyond the scope of this topic.

At the moment any all non-champion, woman, or mercenary unit is called a citizen soldier, even when that is not the case. Merely assuming that non-slaves were citizens is an oversimplified approach to demographics of most ancient societies. In Athens, for instance, a good proportion of the population consisted of metics, who still paid taxes and served in the military but had few civil rights. An even more egregious example is Sparta, in which ironically all represented citizen-soldiers were not citizens. Thus, I propose that a different term be used to better reflect the social structure of these societies. Worker-Soldier or Soldier-Worker might be one valid approach, but I would be open to alternatives.

Cool. That sounds good enough. Also, you were wondering about the kardakes. Essentially the role they were given was not really historically informed, making them be removed.

If directional armour were in place, I would definitely agree with that, but it isn't at the moment. Considering the fact that the shield can only cover a limited amount of the body, that alone should not be factored in the equation. It doesn't matter how big your shield is if it is pointed in the wrong direction, and hoplites would clearly have the advantage. That all said, I think that Persian spearmen should be a cost effective ranged meatshield, just not necessarily much better than other on a one-to-one comparison level. On a different note I would say that I am definitely in the camp in favour of mercenary hoplites being available for Persian recruitment.

I could see that argument for the basic level but scaling off as they level up (and generally do not use more armour). Hoplites wore armour that basically protected all of their vitals and probably would have had no major problem with arrows. Javelins? Maybe not. Again, if the Persians wanted to use meatshields, they hired Greeks for that purpose.

The point is that compared to other heavy infantry of say the Greeks or Romans, Persian infantry did not hold up very well. There is a good reason that every major engagement against hoplites in the Persian Wars resulted in the Persians being defeated aside from Thermopylae, and we know how that went. The victory against the Lydians was in part due to Cyrus deploying camels that neutralised much of the Lydian own cavalry. This isn't to say that Persians had necessarily bad; Greeks just happened to be major outliers in how they fought. The most obvious reason behind making them a wee bit inferior is that by the end of those wars, the Persians adapted their military in one major way: they heavily recruited Greek mercenaries, something that honestly should be reflected in their tech tree.

Numbers like that sound kind of insubstantial. Do you know how that marginal of a difference would translate into the game? I don't mean to sound skeptical, but incremental changes like that seem kind of pointless. My take would have been costing ten fewer resources at the cost of a 5% hitpoint reduction (Obviously the cheaper cost is a pretty massive economic boon, and I'm not sure if that specific stat nerf would be enough to compensate.).

I think that for the Persians, if it is there, it should be easier to take advantage of but not necessarily as meaningful. For the most part their infantry should be cheaper but weaker, making them the anvil with cavalry acting as the hammer. I don't have much to say for the Maurya.

If you're talking about the classic 1st century legionnaire, there actually is; just check the atlas editor.

The thing is that Greek mercenaries were a common thing. Greeks hired them, as did Persians. Obviously you could add other notable mercenary leaders that were not Greek; I only mention Greeks because Hellenic studies is kind of my thing. That said, heroes do not require factions to exist. Xenophon is an example of this.

Pyrrhus would also be a great addition by far. Honestly I'm not sure how much this sort of a option would be enjoyed as a staple to the game, but I could definitely see it introduced either as a mod or an alternate game mode.

I would argue for either Kimon or Miltiades; we're thinking about the Athenian golden age, and that generally constrains us to the Persian or the Peloponnesian Wars. I could see a reason behind using Solon although his role would potentially overlap with Pericles to an extent. Xenophon would frankly be an awful choice; he was more sympathetic to Sparta than Athens. I do think think that heroes like him however would be interesting to have as mercenary heroes that could be recruited along with the likes of Memnon and Clearchus. Xenophon should be represented as a cavalry hero though, not an infantry one. I'm not particularly familiar with Ptolemaic history to weigh in on a suitable replacement for Cleopatra, but I'm sure something could be found.

I have definitely argued against his inclusion; it is in conflict with the central point of the game, controlling civilisations during their apex. There are much better choices than him. Lysander could be an option, but he doesn't really reflect the core Spartan ethos. I would much rather argue for Agesilaus II. Other heroes I would say should be replaced include Iphicrates and Cleopatra, neither of which represent the golden ages of their factions.

I don't really see it as such. It's just a double-click. You're not opening some new tab or searching the ui for a button or even pressing a different hotkey. This I can definitely agree with.

I would say that a simple double click would do the job a lot better. Double-click and your unit starts running provided that it has stamina. Once its stamina is spent, it cannot continue running. Obviously stamina could be extended to make the act of attacking even drain stamina and have a unit being idle regenerate stamina at a faster rate, but I digress.

Additionally it would be nice to have more coherent borders for territories. This is purely arbitrary preference, but I would find a map done in the style of Ptolemy's description of the world to be a fun idea. This is obviously not the original, but it would be a fun representation.

A key issue here is that at least according to the original vision running and walking could be toggled similarly to a Total War game, eating away at a stamina bar. Introducing this feature along with charging is something planned at least to my knowledge, but in the meantime we only have a very awkward iteration.

Personally that all sounds like a good thing to me. It makes the prospect of setting up defences to be a way of delaying potentially key upgrades. That means that there is the potential for a meaningful choice.