The_Avenger

Terrain Editing: How about terrain, or even cliff/water editing, using triggers? Imagine using a cutscene during a scenario where you have many special effects of smoke and all covering your view, then zoom in to discover that the narroww mountain-path has had a landslide and now is covered by a huge cliff, or a flood has wiped out a village and all that remains is the extended lake. Trigger-Style Object Movement Any "object" (embellishment, unit, building, etc) is able to "move" - no animations, simply be dragged across - to a spot on the map, perhaps even on the z-axis. While it might not look natural (making them all llook natural is impossible) and rather like Jesus Ascends to Heaven, it would be useful for a lot of things. But then, I'm asking for some wacked stuff, ain't I.

Hmm, doesn't look any inferior to a retail game. Great job.

An interesting parallel to the AoK Editor layout, but why fool around with a good interface.

You can't really compare their battle performance like Issus and Gaugamela (both of which was a great victory on the Greek side), because it all depends on tactics, commander, etc. For example, if you have a commander like Crassus, even the post-Marian legions can get thrashed. Heck, if you look at Varus you might as well call the Visigoths King of the Ancient Military World. That said, 1-1, I'd probably think the Post-Marian Legionary of early Empire.

AOM couldn't have a bridge the same reason they couldn't have, say, archers on top of walls, because they couldn't make buildings "walkable", since AOM had a proper Z-axis, so that you couldn't "lift" something, and obviously the elevation is still low if you have a bridge over water. AOM Editor has a bridge, but you can't walk on it. (It's a crap bridge too.) If this is in 0AD it'd be great.. especially destructible (only thing missing in AOK.) and reparable. It's just add so much realism. However, it should be cheaper and faster than building a dock and getting a transport, right?

Do you want everyone stealing your stuff? No.

Something with villagers, perhaps. Either garrisoning to increase speed, or perhaps having villagers build ships, with docks for upgrades adn enabling ship building? It's probably too complex for not much return, though.

With your level of forum involvement, I'd think that a simple nomination system among your team members would facilitate a more accurate selection of good beta testers, since people can give away currency. Besides, more posts // better contributor. But as everyone said, this is a year later...

Tall palisades, if not already available as a building...and a SPQR banner, though you might have that already too. Perhaps some crystals or precious gems extruding from the earth to create a mythical area or simply something for fetch missions? Also, it'd be great if every unit in the game was turned into a statue. Unless your engine is something weird, it shouldn't be too hard, would it? Simply have a "base" of the statue for all the statues, then fill the colours of the texture of the unit model with stone. I know it's quite easy in AOM, and if it is in 0AD engine it'd be nice to have.

Civilisation has Immortals.

True. But if each ship had a "Boarding Attack" stat, for example, and each garrisoned unit contributed its original attack value... e.g. 5 soldiers each with 5atk would make the ship have 25 boarding attack stat. And then if you use the "Board" function on an enemy ship, you would use the "boarding attack" stat instead of the normal attack stat to attack the enemy; and if the enemy ship's hp reaches 0, it converts to your ship with full HP. Maybe..

Marcus, simply use manual waypoints if you want to be that specific. It takes like a second, and I can't see anyone using more than 3 scouts.

And you just described RoN nearly perfectly. We should have something different for 0AD, though... why copy RoN's method 100%? It's not like it was awesome.

Let us imagine a two-way bonus/penalty system. Spear-based infantry, for example, might have the conventional RTS bonus of, say, 1.2x attack against cavalry. To most people it would be common sense, and I'm sure you don't want a speech bubble around each spearman saying "I have a bonus against cavalry." Now, then, you could also have the X formation, a nice icon of raised spears, a help bubble (á la AOM) detailing its additional bonus against cavalry, but penalty against archers. A newbie not using formations to his advantage is simply like not using unit stances to his advantage; one would have to pick up on it. Also, I don't know how fast-paced 0AD combat is, but if it's going to have things like formations, it'll have to be a *bit* slower than the AOM/WCIII line.

How about, as part of the bonus unit types have against each other, spear infantry get the special formation of raising pikes and huge attack bonus vs. cavalry, etc? It would be more interesting than the simple "1.2x attack vs. cavalry" statistics.

Well, for 0AD, think of Starcraft. Or even AOM.

Well, are you sure you want to make boats 100% historically accurate? Considering, say, how many people a bireme or a trireme had, your ships would be bigger than in Cossacks, and everyone who's played that knows that the ships took up nearly all of the screen. If you have them bigger than AOM, say, but not too big, they should be fine. I do recall that AOM used to have huge ships too, and garrisoning units to change their types, as an idea.. ah well. How about boarding ships, could we have that at all? I doubt it, but that'd be really cool... but then you'd need to treat each unit on board as an individual unit that moves and has stats, and there's nothing to stop someone from sinking a boat nearly taken over, unless you add slowly-dying ships, like Cossacks buildings.

That was in Caesar III... it was good that roads were actually there for a purpose, instead of having your armies go near roads, away from roads, criss crossing road and swamp...

That you can only change your stance every ten seconds or something? Alternatively, switching into stances could take some time, because really, mid-battle formation switch only works in modern warfare, and not always even in that case. It'd be stupid to say "oh, i'm in a line formation now" if there is no battle line and everyone's in a skirmish.

It'll be great to have formations/stances effect units properly. Age games only had Stand Ground as a useful thing for siege and archers. Y'know.. how about a two-way thing? Each formation effects units differently, then each stances effect them differently also. You could have stance A *and* formation B for incredible speed at the expense of attack power, or have stance A and C for decent attack/speed for lower armour, etc. Maybe too complex.

Any Age sequel. They'd probably follow up RoN later on, so I'd be interested in that. But on something tangible.. eh, Rome: Total War.

RoN's CtW is a complex version of Risk, so no, not really. You're talking more along the lines of Civilisation here. So you could say, capture this TC and you have the territory of Campania, Thrace, or Narbonese Gaul. Well, that would actually be more realistic than RoN, because the way provinces and borders were drawn up in the ancient world were alongside natural boudnaries like the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine, the Channel. In RoN the borders swath through rivers and hills.

Could be, but RoN really does it already with the Conquer the World mode. It's different, but the essence remains with a lot of new spices. I don't see why you'd take computerised Risk over RoN's CtW. But if you were to computerise Risk, the important aspects would be to control your armies and wage real battles instead of.. dice battles.. , and retain its turn-based decision-making nature. Other than that... bleh, RoN does it well.

How about tree roots? Also, there really should be stones you can use in the editor to simulate a dam, or an avalanche.

For the Roman Republic, since generals were nearly always propraetors or proconsuls, you'd think they're important men. In the Principate, well, some emperors did go on campaigns themselves; and you'd see leaders in the front of battle among the Celts, Germans, Persians. Regicide may be a medieval term, but it does fit in well anyway. And it's fun.