Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

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.

And here I was expecting them to be incorporated into Alpha 26.

That too could help.

The best sort of way of bridging that gap would be to look at Etruscan art. That's essentially where artists like the person who did this got inspiration from. Of the little representation I have seen of their depictions of soldiers, this does not seem accurate, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It would be nice to disable gathering in enemy territory or at least have a cursor mode for that. It was especially annoying when I was trying to kite with a group of archers at some infantry in a wooded area but kept on accidentally ordering them to gather wood.

It would be theoretically possible. The point would be considering which nations could have distinctive identities; merely because there were cultural similarities from one civilisation to another does not mean that introducing them to the game would be impossible. Personally I would find more pseudo-greek cultures to help round out the map to be reasonable additions. Areas such as Illyria and Thrace come to mind. Pergamum would perhaps be a favourite of mine since it was a prominent regional power by its own right. There are other, more extreme approaches that could be done however... https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/27864-april-update/

Well that's odd since they had roles in sieges just as much if not more if I am not mistaken.

It is fairly well established that perioikoi served in the military. I'd recommend browsing through JSTOR to see. Over time perioikoi, initially meant to supplement Spartan numbers, increasingly made up the military and even integrated into Spartan units. Neodamodeis were in all likelihood far less common as they represented a route for social advancement for helots, something that Spartans feared. If Neodamodeis were to be introduced to Sparta, it would be reasonable to allow them to be trained through Brasidas.