Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

Fair objection. There could however be a marginal increase, bringing the value from 1 to 2 or even just 1.5 that would make the option of putting a few women or men to hunting viable but not optimal.

So given the fact that some people like the current gather rates of cavalry, instead perhaps the other gather rates of citizen-soldiers and women could be adjusted to be almost or just as fast. In that way there would not be a massive opportunity cost in using the initial cavalry unit to scout.

The reason I did so was to compare a task that cavalry tend to do with one that women do as well in the immediate early game. Fair points though.

They definitely have that kind of feel, especially when it comes to the impact with units; that said, there are two things I appreciate about that design: they are easy to make out and they lack the weird trails seen in most Total War games.

The thing is that cavalry were not hunting specialists; I can live with them hunting faster than other units, but to me the current approach makes the unit completely one dimensional outside of combat in the early game. Do you ever scout with your cavalry unit at the beginning of the game? Most people don't and tend to only scout once they are attacking. Personally I would like to see there be a roughly 50% divide of preference of scouting versus hunting depending on build orders. Scouting could reward the player with knowing the locations of key resources and potentially allow them to grab treasures like in some maps while hunting would be a greedier yet riskier option since there would be a complete lack of intel regarding a potential rush. The other issue that primarily sparked this analysis was the fact that in a different thread I proposed that Sparta should lack cavalry at the beginning of the game and be only able to train them in the Town Phase to represent their poor cavalry. This suggestion was shot down by borg for the good reason of cavalry being critical to the early economy. I'm okay with cavalry complementing the economy, but if the problem is that by nerfing their hunting skill they become much worse, maybe there could be another way of buffing them such as having the ability to build outposts, tying into a more reconnaissance approach.

Cavalry gather rates are fast, and to quantify that, I ran a number of tests with Cavalry spawning on the two player Acropolis Bay Map. First I tested the cavalry unit collecting chickens. The result was that the cavalry unit gathered 200 food in roughly 1 minute and 19 seconds (I set it to gather the most efficient group.). In comparison, I set one woman to gather from the nearest berry group (without constructing a dropsite nearby) and was able to collect 50 food in that same amount of time. Her collecting less, however, makes sense since a female unit costs one third the number of resources and has more economic flexibility than its cavalry counterpart at the cost of having next to useless stats for combat purposes. Three women, the equivalent resource cost, only gathered 140 food in that same timeframe mostly due to the pathfinding causing them to bump into each other. As some general comments, even if the women worked at peak efficiency, they still would take up three population which makes them at the immediate early game rather poor gatherers in comparison. Granted, hunting does grow much more inefficient after the few animals within each player's border dies, and building more dropsites is generally difficult. This does not change the fact that early on, there is an absolute no brainer to having the cavalry unit hunt instead of scouting the map. Personally I would like to see there be a validity of either approach if we discount the possibility of cavalry being unable to perform any economic role.

I personally think this sounds fun. It would also be appropriate to potentially have Hamilcar be able to recruit mercenaries while we're at it.

Simply speaking, men tend to see better in the dark than women at the cost of having a harder time differentiating colours. Thus, since the fog of war is dark, men should have more line of sight. In seriousness, the issue is not that women can't see that far; there are a few female units that have better line of sight. The problem is that at the moment only women for the most part are dedicated economic units. Introducing non-gender specific workers such as slaves would generally fix this issue.

Honestly I could see the swordsman being purposed as an all-rounder, having a lot of pierce armour but lacking some of the ability to properly chase. Another change I would like to see is reducing line of sight, making it lower than even the maximum range of archers or slingers so that having a screen of units in front would be necessary to maximise the potential of the ranged units.

Giving them crush damage does sound gimmicky to me (See Obsidian Arrows Technology). I would prefer something along the lines of them having longer range; that was a key advantage that Xenophon mentioned. Throw in some extra pierce damage and you have a reasonable upgrade in my mind.

We actually do. Diodorus writes on the Siege of Rhodes and specifically mentions specialists for the construction of the siege weapons. Also Xerxes relied on engineers as well when he had a pontoon bridge constructed to transport his army from Asia into Greece.

Sapper is just an alternative term for military engineer.

A simpler approach might just be a matter of limitations. Soldiers could only construct battering rams. Also sappers could have a high base attack against buildings.

Usually siege weapons were built on site, and ammunition probably was improvised based on the available materials the engineers could use. When Demetrius was attempting to besiege Rhodes, he hired a large number of specialists from Asia Minor and imported materials for the construction of his mother of all siege engines.

That statement is incorrect. Xenophon explicitly states that Persians used stones.

The Rhodians in this case definitely were. Xenophon seems to write about it as an exception to the rule, however, not the norm. As to removing Roman javelin throwers, that would be ahistorical. Velites served an integral role in the initial phases of battle, but their sword infantry should definitely have javelins.

The architecture is a bit interesting. The church looks in the style of Norman architecture. The odd parts are the thatched roof houses, which look like they come from the ninth century instead; another strange thing is the use of red bricks with some structures. It's like Keble College built hundreds of years earlier.

Xenophon is fairly vague on what they did with their other equipment. As to range, these were troops using lead projectiles, which generally went a lot further than typical slung stones. Fun fact as well, it was not unheard of to inscribe messages on these. The one to the right could be roughly translated as 'catch.'

Undoubtedly most soldiers did carry side-arms, but ammunition is a more difficult thing to consider since armies at this time were not standardised. What might have served as the amount of missiles a soldier carried in one campaign might vary with the next. One interesting example of a case of reverse side-arms is mentioned in Xenophon's Anabasis, when a few Rhodian hoplites switched to using slings.

Actually if you look at most artwork of naked fanatics, they generally always were carrying shields. Not doing so would be virtually suicide.

Introducing that many weapons sounds like a large amount of complexity for an otherwise additional thing to manage, especially for an RTS. I would maybe propose a simplification along the lines of units of equipment that work for melee units and separate ones for ranged ones.

The difference should be completely cosmetic. All of these changes seem good to me at least by the looks of them. Good and prompt work as always.

Spartans were not known for fielding competent light infantry. I would recommend alternative routes for buffs. Spartans were famous for their poetry that often had martial themes (See Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Terpander). I would advise introducing a technology that gives a movement buff to all infantry through that. The Athenians could have a later technology for subsequent changes in equipment and tactics that made their peltasts have a more hybrid role by having +1 melee and ranged armour.

The A.D. B.C./C.E. B.C.E. system for chronology has been eliminated. What system do you propose for a replacement and what does it mean for the title of the game? Example: one option would be to use the system of AUC (Ab Urbe Condita), the date of the supposed founding of Rome. Hence 0 A.D. would become either 753 AUC or 754 AUC. It's hard to exactly say since the year 0 does not exist. Probably the best compromise would be 753 AUC or 754 AUC. That way nobody would be happy. What are your completely serious answers to clearly controversial topic?

You clearly have a lot of emotional investment in the game and have grown comfortable with the previous alpha. That makes sense, but I would point out that 0 AD is a collectively developed game. There are a lot of things I dislike about the current iteration, and if I were to take dictatorial control over the game, it would veer in a radically different direction. Luckily some of my opinions have made an impact, and yours can as well. That said, while I like many of the changes introduced, many other people like yourself are disillusioned with the current alpha so you're not alone. You yourself said that you do not wish to nitpick over the problems. Would you mind explaining some of the things you miss from the previous alpha? I doubt I'll agree with any of your points, but I would like to better understand where you are coming from.