Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

Simply speaking units of different speeds, regardless of the proximity of the resource, are going to have different gather rates. More time walking back and forth means that there is less time actually working; it's simple math. How would eliminating or reducing the effects of unit speeds on their economic efficiency be bad? Frankly I find it absurd that say a skirmisher is a better lumberjack than an archer due to their uses in the battlefield a questionable thing. I like this, but I think that one of the biggest problems it would face would be the current resource distribution in 0 AD, which is currently less systematic than other RTS games. Still, it's a worthwhile approach.

The first problem is that the sword is not inherently designed to cut. Some weapons such as the gladius tend towards stabbing. On the flip-side, cutting with some spears is viable. Next off, there doesn't need to be a massive difference between the two. As I would suggest, swordsmen should move a bit faster and have more pierce armour while performing a slight bit better in fights against spearmen. Swordsmen historically were not deployed with the sole purpose of destroying siege weapons. Giving all melee units hack damage would overall be a much better way of streamlining the game.

I would definitely go for both of these approaches if my more radical idea proves unpopular (which I kind of expected).

It might be worthwhile checking how things functioned in previous alphas before shuttling existed. I believe it was either Alpha 4 or 5 when the change happened. The following video shows a bit of that in action; aside from that, it's fascinating seeing things like the changes in the UI. That's more or less the point, getting rid of shuttling entirely.

The War Story represents some aspects of the original game. There are a lot of intriguing differences to be found. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/War_Story Probably some more search archaeology could bring up the other points as I didn't find everything I remembered. Obviously this isn't meant to be lifted up as the 'Holier Than Thou' relic, but I just brought it up to show that this idea is nothing new. It would be rates. In this model units would automatically trickle resources to the player much like Khmer farms in Age of Empires II.

The idea of dropping off resources is a staple of the RTS genre, but for 0 A.D, it limits key design aspects of the game. As has been noted, changing movement speeds has a direct impact on gather rates since units have to deliver resources to drop-sites. Interestingly enough, the original vision was to not have this kind of feature, and in some of the first alphas, this was nonexistent. The initial plan was to construct structures that had an aura; units could gather within this aura and not outside it. This was clearly a very restrictive choice. What I would rather propose is that drop-sites (including worker elephants) would provide bonuses to collection rates within their auras. Instead of increasing the resource capacity units could hold, technologies could instead increase the effect or range of the building's aura. This could benefit the game in a number of ways: Movement speeds would have less importance for the economy, making it possible to have greater unit diversity. Performance might increase since units would not have to calculate routes as much. There might be chances for diversity as some civilisations might be better at collecting resources outside the range of drop-sites while others might have ones that are much drop-site auras that are smaller but have much more potent effects.

Yes.

It is, but the unit collision and a few other factors make it very rare to properly show up in gameplay. Unlike kamyuks, in which there seems to be enough range for up to three units to stand between, pikemen instead can only reach about the size of a single person standing. A reason for this is that the sarissa is represented as fairly short in game. According to a random google search, the average man in ancient Greece was roughly 1.6 metres tall. The length of the sarissa according to wikipedia was roughly 4-6 metres. Looking at the game, pikes stand at roughly twice the height of a person, making them only 3.2 metres if the information from earlier is correct. That 0.8-2.8m is a rather massive disparity that translates into their range in game being rather lacklustre. If one watches kamayuks fight in Age of Empires II, their range still plays an important role even without formations since it allows for them to attack more frequently without needing to move. In short, make pikes longer and extend the range of pikemen.

Definitely the defining trait of pikemen that should dictate their advantages in fights should be their long range. That said, all melee infantry should be able to tank arrows relatively well if they are slow. With that in mind, pikemen have to have good pierce armour since they have been defined by the trait of being slow units. I think that by and large there is a good argument for making all melee infantry (with some exceptions) start with roughly the same movement speed. Technologies could then potentially serve to differentiate them in later phases.

Therein I would say is the biggest problem. It should be viable to escort siege weapons.

I think that the issue is primarily in unit ai. For an experiment, I started a singleplayer deathmatch game in which I only trained masses of pikemen. I then sent these units alone to the enemy base, set them on stand ground, and adjusted their position whenever they needed to advance. Granted, this was against an ai fielding a mix of ranged and melee units and using no micro. Overall they performed much better than I had anticipated. I would say that they could use perhaps a bit more range, but the fact that they cannot coordinate as a formation a more relevant point in my opinion. Microing a mass of pikemen in stand ground is awkward to say the least.

I'll just say one thing for this hypothetical. Rams. Pikemen do actually have longer range. If you have them stand ground, multiple ranks will attack simultaneously.

Auxiliary is a bit of an anachronism from post-Marian times. I would just call them Helots or Perioikoi, leaning more on the helot side of things. Since prime specimen Spartans have their own building already, I would say that the normal barracks is good enough.

Even though they probably fielded them, I would say no. That's just personal preference to me.

Seems good. Honestly I would prefer for their slinger to be available in the Town Phase; Spartans have the identity of a melee infantry civilisation and should probably retain that identity since their champions should theoretically deal with infantry well enough. I would say a hard no to archers myself; that all said, I respect your choices in the matter.

If Hannibal could train that unit, I think it would be fair for Hamilcar to be able to train mercenaries since that was his shtick. Maharbal could perhaps train cavalry units.

I did list a number of solutions to this problem earlier in the thread. Pushing the Syssiton to Phase 2 is only one option, and the problem with economy and military technologies sounds like an entirely different problem. Having champions available at the start of the game would be an interesting difference that no other civilisation at least at the moment has, and it would be a shame if it were moved to a different phase just for that reason. That all said, I understand the basis behind your argument; honestly I'm just happy that Sparta can train Spartans earlier. Again that is a fair concern, but there can be a difference in stats of a champion in the Town Phase that are immediately improved upon advancing to the City Phase.

I would say Phase 2.

I am not to any capacity competent with Latin, but I believe 'Castrum Sociis' would be correct, taking the genitive plural form of socii. That all said, my knowledge of Latin mainly comes from the Life of Brian. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lczHvB3Y9s

Having it called an embassy might seem a bit strange as socii were recruited from subject states. I would maybe just call the structure a socii barracks.

I think that there is an argument for introducing a technology for skirmishers that would increase their movement rate. They could start of with just a marginal difference in speed to not make them massively better from an economic perspective. Archers being a wee bit slower seems fair.

I would be in favour of higher training times for them.

The right approach to that question is perhaps to look at the different possible variables at play. Namely, there is defence, damage per second, mobility, and range. All of these are then considered in relation to the cost and necessary training time of the said unit. Fortunately those last variables are constant in most cases. Generally speaking a unit should be able be decent with two of those categories to be potentially worthwhile. Honestly the difference between archers and slingers is more or less a false dichotomy; they had similar roles. It's trying to figure out a niche for the skirmisher that is a bit tougher since their lack of good range, defence, and mobility make their high damage output harder make use of.

Probably they should cost fairly standard resources. One idea that borg was rather favourable towards was having helots be cheaper at the cost of worse combat strength. This kind of practice could be extended to other units as well such as the Persian spearman. I would go with something conservative like -10% resource cost for -15-20% hitpoints. Obviously those numbers could be up for debate, but I think that it could be worth experimenting worth if you want to try that out as well. Fantastic work. My thoughts exactly. One of the key sorts of ways I think would be interesting to see would be something along the line of one approach making the Spartans be more like officer units while the other would allow for a larger mass that could be fielded.

A couple thoughts come to mind for how this could be addressed. Spartan hoplites could be a bit weaker in the Village Phase. Better yet there could be paired technologies available with each phase to personalise them. Yet another approach could be to make their training time a lot slower in the Village Phase to prevent them from being massed (which would be undesirable). Even another option could be to have the Spartan hoplite available at the Town Phase instead, but I like this the least. I would maybe recommend making a helot slinger be possible for Spartans to train in the Town Phase. For Romans, they could have access to a Socii slinger or archer since Polybius states that roughly half of their army was made up of allied troops. The marine could be a gymnasium unit as well. I always found it sad that they are only available on water maps. Geneva had a few ideas that I think might be worth exploring. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37979-britons-rework-guerrila-and-mobility-oriented-faction/?tab=comments#comment-422631