edwardlongshank

Donating is different to paying to get advantages in the game

To be honest i don't think its worth putting much effort into reviving disrupted multiplayer games, if its any more than 2 players it becomes very difficult to get everyone ready to continue the game.

Although most of the ideas suggested above may be possible to implement, it think they are very small on the scale in terms of making the game more accurate. I agree with your point thorfin.

I don't fully understand a few of the things that you said but i think the profit making should be kept separate from the actual game play, i would not want to risk compromising the game play for money. Age of empires online did exactly that and the last thing i want is a repeat of aoe0. I think that when you call a game free it should be exactly that, if players have the choice of paying for the game then its not free imo.

how long till alpha 8?

Well maybe something else could be done instead of forcing people who make moderation's to the game to also advertise, the problem is if once the completed version of the game is released and has the advertisements then someone else could release the exact same version of the game only with out the advertising, so then most people would rather just play the non advertising version. Then when o ad is improved upon using some of the money generated from the advertising, the updated version could also then be made to be advertisement free by someone else. Even with out the advertising you still have the problem of games being generated from o ad but only slightly modified becoming available so then you have a few people playing the modified version so that means less people playing the original version. It really makes no sense to have multiple but similar versions of o ad each with very small amounts of players for the multiplayer. The contributors of o ad loose out as well because they wont get credit for there work in the slightly modified versions.

This idea may be silly but i think it makes sense, why not allow businesses to advertise on o ad once its completed and give most of the money from the businesses which pay for the ads to charity and use the rest to improve the game. The game would still remain none profit and free while also having a much bigger budget to improve and further develop the game. Making it a charity provider would undoubtedly increase support for the game in terms of attracting more programmers to contribute and more people donating money to the game with the knowledge that there money will be put towards charity in the long run by improving the game and therefore improving its profits to charity. Obviously the most obvious down side would be that players would have to put up with the advertising but there may be ways to implement it with out substantially affecting the players overall experience like for example playing an advertisement while a multiplayer game is loading. For this idea to work it would have to be mandatory for anybody who produces modified versions of the game to also use advertisements to generate profit for charity to keep the playing field fair. Anyway i am sure there will be lots of objections to this idea so please let me know if you like or don't like the idea and why you like or dislike it.

Well since archers could only fire at close range the wind is not going to change the accuracy of them, the bows of this time period were not like the long ranged powerful ones that the Brits used in the late middle ages. So let me get this straight, you want to add wind to purely increase the role that chance has? To be honest i think you have no idea what your talking about when you say players will be able to exploit the wind. Why dont you actually go into details about how you intend for your idea to be implemented, your speaking in very general terms and i am not at all buying it. Back up plans for wind change? this is an rts game, players don't have the luxury of spending weeks meticulously planning every battle.

yer i was being half sarcastic when i suggested that a player could change unit production for the wind, my point was how do you have a player take advantage of high or low wind speed, the only answers are hold of an attack until the wind changes or as i jokingly suggested above. So your saying a player would have to reposition his archers to take advantage of the wind? are you saying the wind will be stronger in some areas of the map than others? just how advanced do you think rts games such as this will be.... Lastly, if you change the outcome of a battle even ( slightly) as you put it, that's very significant, a single unit can mean the difference between defeat and victory, there's no such thing as an insignificant change in the outcome of a battle. The only reason for putting wind speeds in would be to increase the role that chance plays in the game, chance is something that the o ad don't want as a significant factor in determining the outcome of games.

I think that for the purposes of this game it would be best to just assume that all soldiers will obey orders 100% of the time and that the mind set (moral) of soldiers will not play a role in the outcome of battles. Things like the obedience of soldiers would have to be determined by very complex issues including social factors, political factors and various other things, most of, if not all of which are way beyond the reach of o ad or any other rts game in the near future that i am aware off. I also feel that it is not necessary to incorporate such detailed factors such as the direction of the sun in a game that only partly focuses on military, especially considering o ad is yet to completely balance out all units in battle. We must be realistic, o ad is not going to be the most technologically advanced rts game of its time. I guess you could have wind speed affecting the accuracy of bowmen but i mean how is a player going to take advantage of this? make less archer units when there is high wind? even assuming ancient civilizations had methods of accurately measuring wind speed it would still be unlikely that it would play a large part in the outcome of battles... with the exception of sea battles or if you were Hannibal ( genius Carthaginian general ). There are other exceptions to what i have said, you could have soldiers be stronger in some cases like if they are fighting in their own territory or if they are in the aura of a hero/commander. I suppose these sorts of things would fall under the category of moral but i think for the most part if a player wants to take Hitlers Germany and or the Spartens general approach - no retreat, no surrender, fight till the last man no matter what the odds of victory are, then he should have the option even if its to the players own detriment. I would maybe be open to the idea of players being advantaged if they are playing a faction on a map that is within the homeland of the faction when against a faction that would not of been customized to fighting in that region which is a more broad idea to temperature. Width of battle field i know will be a factor on some maps and the player will be free to use that to his advantage, that's already a factor in o ad and a lot of other rts games.

Age of empires online sucks!!!!!!! People who try to play it for free are not only disadvantaged in pvp, they are also constantly being bombarded with rewards from boring pointless quests that are useless because you need to pay to use them. Why make free players select from a list of rewards after quest completion when none one of the rewards can be used by free players!!! Well obviously its to scam little kids into harassing their parents to pay for the game. If the parents then agree to pay for their child then they will have the task of constantly having to draw a line between what features they will and will not allow there child to pay for. This is done by the release of crap like the booster packs. And what better way to draw the kids to the game than having cartoon graphics, quests which require the person to be 4 years of age or up to complete, and rewards for completing these time consuming quests. I would rather play runescape! I conclude from all of this that the game was made entirely for profit and targets the most vulnerable consumers possible ( children )which in affect is likely to annoy the crap out parents. I wont even comment on the game play because i cant get past the fact that the game was created for the sole purpose of making money sucking leaches very happy. Current age of mythology and age of mythology titans combined online population 33. I will still play aom multiplayer over age of empires online any day of the week! On an unrelated note when i had a quick scan of this thread i saw that someone said that they are insulted by the cartoon graphics because they felt war should not be portrayed in this manner , not his exact words but i think that was the jist of it. Regardless, i think that cartoons have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do WITH THE INACCURACY OF HOW WAR IS PORTRAYED in the broad scheme of things, if you want to go down that road then you cant just target cartoon games, you must target media institutions, writers, movie makers, government recruiting agencies and that's literally less that 10% of the people and institutions which you would be battling against. Just had to give me opinion.

Awesome you got it badmadblack! Hopefully we can get some more people on board. Ok mythos sorry i think i did a poor job of explaining my idea, ill try to explain it a little better The steady stream of peons are not actually real units, so in simple terms they don't really exist. There really just a number that controls how many units you can train. The peons are converted into real units when you train them at the barracks or city center exactly like it is at the moment. So when i want to turn a peon into a hoplite i just click the barracks and click train hoplite, its the same with every other unit. The stream of peons increases/decreases depending on the amount of actual soldiers/workers that have already been trained. The number of Peons must be matched with enough houses to support the peons before the peons can be trained as units. You can have more houses than is required for the peons but this may not increase the rate of peon growth. You can also have the opposite, you can have more peons than is needed to fill all the houses. Ok i did not add this before, maybe if there's a shortage of houses the peon growth slows a little but does not come to a stop. So you need 1 person + part of a house ( somewhere around 5 or 10 units per house like it is at the moment) to then be able to train a unit, you train a unit the exact same way as it is done at the moment. I may be wrong but i don't think this at all increases micro intensity from what it already is. The idea is that it prevents a player from almost loosing there entire population then completely repopulating in a matter of seconds unless the player has a lot of *available population* that was not in use which is not possible if the player was near max pop before he lost his army. Mercenaries might be exempt from this idea because they did not require permanent housing and were often from foreign places so there numbers are more to do with wealth than population. The maximum population should be *available population* + * working population* but the available population should have its cap set a little higher than the working population so that its not impossible for players to come back from very heavy unit losses. The number of barracks could become an extra requirement for training workers/ soldiers but i think it would have to be separate from houses as most people would not want to spend their entire lives living in a barracks and the houses are needed to raise children. To answer you feneur i agree it is mainly for visual affect but i think it would make it slightly more realistic and the path finding might not have to be as difficult because you could make it so they are not obstructed by actual units hence the term ghosts. They could become annoying but if there's only a few of them at any one time and it is made so that its very easy to distinguish them from actual units i don't think it would be to bad. It would probably be best to wait till a later version comes out to add them though since there not essential and some players would probably want the option to be able to turn them of. I am not trying to suggest that the game should be 100% accurate as that is an impossibility although i think that there is plenty of room to make the game more accurate and some of the ways i suggest to do this would also ensure that that the game is set apart from all other ancient rts games. I don't think my ideas would sacrifice the fun for the majority of future o ad players and i think the population idea will add game depth just as badmad said. Sorry i reject the idea that i am lessening the role of economy in the game. Adding complexity to the population resource does not detract from the other resources in my opinion. Even if the *available population* idea did lesson the role of economy it would be balanced by my idea of having to pay and feed soldiers constantly in addition to the training process.

Ok this is my next idea I think o ad and all rts games for that matter should have some sort of a time measurement. By that i mean have one minute of a game = 1 year, that is just an example not what it should actually be. Hopefully all the tasks on o ad such as building houses/barracks, training men, building ships and so on would be able to be given a roughly accurate time in which it takes to do the task and have this fit in with the time line or w.e you want to call it. For example if one minute = 1 year then it may take 30 seconds (6 months) or so to construct a house with a team of 5 builders. I don't actually know how long it took to construct houses in the ancient world so obviously some research would have to be done. Another example would be if it took a year to train a certain soldier then that soldier would take 60 seconds to train. I don't think this would significantly add to the game play but it would make the game more realistic and with some research a lot more accurate. Obviously its very unlikely that it would be possible to have units moving and performing actions like wood chopping to fit into the time line so there may have to be some exceptions. You could however go as far as having the time it takes to chop down a tree fit into the time line but that's probably going a little to far. Ok next Idea, and i have probably already mentioned this idea in other threads but ill put it in here anyway. Just to warn you i am inventing new uses for words so hopefully i wont confuse everyone to much. I think to make the game more realistic the game should incorporate *ghosts*. When i say ghosts i am talking about units that you can see but can not be interacted with, selected, moved, controlled, I don't mean actual dead people. These units would be made so that a player can clearly tell them apart from actual units. The ghosts could include children, the elderly, the poor, slaves, women and more. There purpose would differ on what they are, slaves might be carrying building materials from storage to the buildings that the player is constructing, children might be playing in the streets, the poor might be begging outside buildings, the women might be praying outside religious buildings. I think this would add more historical depth as its exposing players to a lot more of the ancient cities. The enemy would not be able to attack the ghosts either, but the ghosts may run into buildings or somehow disappear when the enemy approaches. There might be economic upgrades that can improve the speed/ quantity of ghosts like for example an upgrade which increases the speed of construction of buildings may add some more ghosts carrying materials. ok next idea I think that the population of people should be expanded on from what it currently is. I don't mean have a larger population, i mean have it slightly more complex. I think there needs to be one human population resource controlled by a range of things. I think there should be 3 categories of population - *available population*, *working population* and *maximum population*. Available population would represent mainly children and unemployed people who are available for training (being put to work). This is not the same as *idle workers*. The available population should be divided up into 2 numbers. For example 96/120. The first number represents the number of children/unemployed people who are ready to be trained and the second number represents the amount of people who can be housed. The first number will gradually increase over time and the rate of this increase will be determined by how large the *working population* is. The second number will be determined by how many vacant houses the player has. Both numbers can exceed each other for example you could have 100/70 so the player can only train 70 more units, however if he builds more houses then he will instantly gain the ability to train 30 more units + the original 70. On the other hand if a player has 100/200 then it will take a long time for all the houses to be filled. The *working population* will be the amount of units that have been trained and can perform tasks. The maximum size of this population will be determined by how much *available population* there is ( - 1 from both available population numbers to train 1 unit). In addition to the expenses of *training* the working population i think that the player should constantly have to support (feed and pay) the working population. The resources should be taken directly from the players stockpile (resource level) with out the player having to do this manually. If the player runs out of stock piled resources the working population should gradually weaken (lower hit points/attack) and if the player is unable to replenish his resources then the workers should begin to either convert back to available population in which case they would disappear or alternatively the workers could just die of. The player must have the ability to *retire workers* to reduce the amount of resources being depleted. Once a worker is retired he no longer costs resources or population. Maybe players should be given a small reward for retiring players so that players are less inclined to *suicide* unwanted units into the enemy. If a player just temporarily cant afford to feed and pay some of his workers then he could have the option to *dismiss* some of his workers to convert them back to the *available population*. In addition to paying and feeding the workers some soldiers who use things like arrows should use up stockpiled wood in battle. The maximum population will limit the working population just like it is at the moment. The population resource as a whole could look something like this. 50/90 & 80/200 Obviously the numbers would be varying constantly. My reason for suggesting these ideas is because i think having population controlled by houses alone is very unrealistic so this is my attempt to introduce a few of the other factors of human population into the equation. Ok thats all for now, tell me what you think of my ideas.

My biggest problem is that a city did not start of with slaves and then turn them into fighting men. I can go into this in more depth if need be but its rather obvious to me at least that you cant turn a population of slaves into the main fighting force of your army, you wip a guy for years then suddenly give him a spear and teach him how to use it... i think you will end up with a spear in your throat. My other biggest problem is that in a lot of ancient city's like in and Greece not all men were created equal in terms of having equal choices. A poor farmer would be unlikely to become a hoplite warier, he would be more likely to become a stone thrower, spear thrower or bowmen so i don't think its a good idea to have to select each individual citizen to be trained in a certain area. I think it would be simpler to just have a population of children/untrained men which can not be controlled (moved around) but it determines how many men there are available for training (more children = more units available for training). I think the increase of this population should be based on the number of houses, the amount of food and the amount of trained citizens. Trained citizens have a house and income/food so therefore they are the ones who would be producing the most offspring. However i do not think that the more food you have stockpiled should should = the more children/untrained men. In most rts games the aim is to spend your resources so that you do not have a very large stockpile as having stockpiled resources is not an effective idea when your in the middle of a war unless you have a massive food surplus. I think that instead of the population of children/untrained mens rate of increase being determined partly by how much food you have stockpiled i think it should be determined by how much food and gold (currency) you pay your men. By this i mean if you feed and pay your working citizens more, then they have the necessary means to produce and support more children. Having food stockpiled provides more security to a city but it does not increase the population as its not actually being used. You must give it out if you want it to be used. Even if you take nothing else of what i suggest on board at least stop using the word slaves! Slaves are very expensive to have and only a mad man would willingly arm a slave as he would fear the slave would take revenge for being enslaved! Maybe *subjects* would be a little closer to the word your looking for but still not a the right work to use imo.

Great work hhyloc, ill have a closer look at the content when i have some more time but it all looks great from what i can see! I got half way through the Kagen lectures but then had to stop watching them because my eye condition made it to difficult but so far i have really enjoyed watching them and look forward to finishing them once i get a break from the condition. I am considering maybe going to uni to study history so there really great for me but there is certainly a lot of content. I have a million notes from watching the first half. Just out of interest are there any other dry eye/blepharitis sufferers among us? Its supposed to be a common condition but most ordinary folks i speak to have never heard of it. Its the most awful condition in the world (not literally) but it is a real pain.

Guys with your help i want to compile a list of all the different ways people can learn about history. I am hoping that we can create a list of a large range of documentaries, movies, books and lectures that inform people about history. The content of the varies sources of info will be mainly directed towards people with a very low to moderate knowledge of history. At first we will probably focus more on Ancient history as this will perhaps contribute to o ad in a positive way, i will not however discourage any information sources that are to do with other periods of history from being added to the list. The only real requirements for any sources of info that are listed in this topic are that the source (book, doco, movie, lecture) or any other sources must be accessible to everyone. Ideally we would have all content that is listed being accessible for free but i don't think this should be a requirement for the moment. Obviously the content should be informative but it does not need to be non fiction so movies like Troy, Alexander the great, The centurion are some of the sort of thing i am looking for. Ah i would like to give some examples of books but i am not really big on reading although i am trying to change that. Anyways as i was saying i cant really give any examples of books so i would ask that you guys come up with a few to get the ball rolling. I love documentaries but its been a while since i watched any due to two annoying little conditions known as blepharitis/dry eye so i cant remember the names of them of the top of my head, but hears a link to a site which has a couple of goodies. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/category/history/ As for lectures, these will probably be more for people who are interested in a more in depth understanding of history as appose to just wanting to have a general knowledge of it. I think the best one to start of with is this one which is a 24 lesson (approximately 1 hour 15 mins per lesson( lecture on introduction to Greek history and has been done by Donald Kagen, an Ancient Greece professor at Yale university. Only thing you really to help you understand the lessons are some maps of the Mediterranean, particularly in areas around the Aegean sea and a copy of the illiot and the Elliot translated to modern English. You can watch all 24 lessons for free at the following link. http://www.youtube.com/user/YaleCourses#p/c/0/9FrHGAd_yto So guys i need your support in developing and expanding this currently tiny tiny list. If you have any questions on the sort of content that i am after please ask. Do not worry about presenting the name of your books/movies/website/lectures or w.e else in a formal way as that process will be done later on when we have a significant amount of sources/content to list. Sorry you may have to copy and paste the links into your address bar, i am in a hurry and dont have time to work out how to insert links that take you directly there. Anybody else who has already compiled lists with similar content to what i am after please let me know because i would like to join forces. Sorry i did not have enough time when writing this post to check on the forums for similar topics so errrrrrrrr pls don't be mad if you already have a similar idea to this going on. I look forward to hearing comments/feed back for this idea and start contributing to the list right away please!.

I don't mind playing older games, the only problem is that most old games have very few players on multiplayer so its often hard to get much decent playing time. I have played star craft 2 for a little while, its defiantly not short on players but i think the game lacks depth as there's really no room for variety on the economy side of things. The entire economy of sc2 is all about controlling a certain number of basis, saturating those basis and protecting the basis. Thats about it! Once you have a decent understanding of the game it comes down mostly to apm. I dont really like the idea of turned based games but i suppose i should not be so closed minded. I guess i am just far to picky.

MORE IDEAS Ok i read the design document and a few things greatly concern me. I think that forcing players to gradually unlock different aspects of the game would be really annoying if it means players who have played the game longer have greater advantages in multilayer games. Time spent playing the game already gives players enough of an advantage with out them having the ability to access things which newer players cant. If your only talking about campaigns and other things that do not effect the competitive games then i have no problem with it. I think saying that having players gradually unlock different things will encourage players to keep playing is incorrect. In fact for me its the complete opposite, i want to be able to compete with all other players right away and lose because of their skill, not because they have access to more upgrades/Armour/buildings than i do. That is just an example by the way, i don't actually know what features will be granted/restricted to players based on *achievements* which will probably be less about skill and more about how much time the player has spent playing. Age of empires online is exactly what i am talking about. They claim the game is free but in reality there are 2 available ways to pay for it. You can either use your credit card or use up hours of your day doing repetitive, uninteresting, unchallenging *quests*. Every player must either pay or waste time doing the quests to be on equal footing in the 1v1/2v2 pvp settings. The quests are probable not so bad if your 8 years old but i think the reason for this is that 8 year olds are more likely to keep nagging their parents for money every time they discover after doing the quest that the reward you get after completion is only usable to players who pay with money. I say with money because this game no matter how you look at it is not free, it was made purely for the purposes of profit and not only that, its also a very poor rts game. Takes a long time to discover just how poor it is because it takes weeks just to unlock all the features so you can have an even game. Oh and when i say *even game* i mean a game where skill factors into who wins by a small amount, money always remains the predominant factor for who wins. A player who is playing for free must have a lot more skill than an opponent who is paying and has all the benefits that come with that. So what i am basically saying is that o ad is a free to play game so why have features being restricted unless your target audience is 8 year olds who need to need to have a reward system to encourage them to keep playing. Ok my other big problem is that it sais the outcome will be effected by decisions, not chance. A. This is to some degree impossible to achieve in an rts game as having so many variables means that chance will allways play a part B. Why would you want to attempt to completely abolish chance as a factor in determining the outcome of games, every historian knows that most of history was greatly effected by chance. The ancient Greeks understood the concept of chance. Although chance should not play a big part in the interest of keeping the game competitive i think chance keeps things slightly more interesting. With out chance it makes it very boring to play against players of a greater ability than yourself as the outcome will most likely always be the same. Some players tend to have a hard time coping with loosing to players that they believe have a lower ability than themselves, i do not think players such as these should be accommodated to as they really need to just grow up. Anyway since these ideas contradict the design document they must all be new ideas (i hope). Please give me some feedback on my ideas, both positive and negative feedback is welcome.

I think children should be represented as *available population*. By that i mean you have a population of children which players cant interact/move/control and the children are available for *training*. Once they are trained they are then controllable by the player ( same as it is at the moment) and they then fall into a different population called something like *working citizens* or maybe *Working Adult population*, it would probably depend on the faction. These adult workers should probably also be paid and fed until they are killed unless the player runs out of resources in which case the soldiers should slowly weaken until the player is able to feed/pay them again. If the player is unable to feed them for a very long time then they should either die or desert. The player should also have the ability to *retire* soldiers so then the player does not have to support ( feed and pay) as many soldiers. The player should also get a very small reward for each soldier he retires to encourage players to retire there unwanted soldiers instead of just *suicideing* them into the enemy as it has been done in i believe all or most rts games.

I think regardless of time its unrealistic to have forests regrow when ever scrap of wood is being collected to build huge navy's and buildings. Once a forest is gone then its gone for a very very long time ( thousands of years), especially when there's likely to be temporary/permanent roads being built over the deforested area. I would love to be proved wrong so if anyone has any facts that go against what i say please let us know.

Well if you want to talk about what farms would really have cost to make/plant/produce then you would have to have fertile land as being a resource since this was the most expensive thing that you needed for a farm. Other costs of a farm such as wood and food would of been extremely insignificant until you run out of fertile land. 90% or more of wealth during the time of o ad was in land and an even greater percentage in 500 BC. If o ad fails to recognize and incorporate the true value of land and especially fertile land into the game then it makes most arguments of what is historically most accurate both pointless and insignificant. Ancient Rome did not capture most of the Mediterranean sea simply because they liked the idea of being able to call it A Roman Lake and you don't need to hold a territory as large as Ancient Rome did simply because you need the room to build barracks and houses.

I think its a good idea. The main problem i have with your idea is that because the maps are not very large and the human population on the map can grow to such a great number i think it would be extremely difficult for the natural environment to be able to recover in the relatively short space of time that o ad covers especially considering that after a lot of the the trees are cleared they will be built over and animals will have houses and farms built in there environment. The impact Ancient Super powers had on the environment was both devastating and unique in that never before had there been such a huge increase in both human population concentrated with in small areas and advancements in effectiveness of tools to gather large amount of resources in a short period of time. I say super powers instead of World super powers because although i am talking about civilizations like Persia and Rome which were both World superpowers, superpowers like Mesopotamia and Egypt also fit into the same category of being environmental devastators. Usually once an area becomes heavily populated with humans the natural resources are completely abused and striped away to then make room for more effective means of producing food. It would be another 1500 years before the full affects of this recklessness started to become apparent and another 500 years after that before we gained somewhat of an understanding of most of the consequences of it. Ok sorry i got a little of topic towards the end there. Anyways if you can find out some facts on just how long it took for trees/forests and wildlife to recover and if they did in fact recover at all during the time period we are talking about then that would help sway my decision. And remember i don't actually know much about ancient history so if your planning on using any of my info in anything then double check it first!

Yes thanks quantum, i will defiantly give the design document a read and try to provide mostly new ideas. I will probably also talk about ideas already suggested by other people if i like the idea but think it needs a few tweaks or if i feel the idea has not been presented as well as it possibly could be to give it the best chance of being accepted. I am not saying that my ideas are better than anyone elses, in fact given that i am a fairly new o ad member id say i can be sure my ideas are not the best but i like to give my opinion none the less.

1. Technologies will be implemented in the future, there is no debate about that. 2. Farming expiration time is already in place, i personally think that having to replant farms is a pointless practice in terms of increasing game depth and historical accuracy, all it does is increase micro intensity. RTS games are often criticized for being to much about micro and becoming click fests according to Wikipedia so i think replanting farms should be abolished. Some Ancient Greek historians attribute sustainable farming and more generally the invention of the family farm to be the most important factor for making the Ancient Greeks so successful. 3. I think diplomacy is a great idea but its hardly an original one and i am pretty sure that it will be implemented sometime in the future. I think the ability to switch a setting on to make the teams unlocked before the game starts will be the easiest way to add diplomacy. This type of game style is typically called FFA (FREE FOR ALL), but it tends to raise a few tempers from time to time. 4. Not exactly sure what a classic flare is but i don't think flares had been invented during the time of o ad but i am sure some sort of signal such as a flaming arrow could be used instead to notify other players of a location. 5. I don't think cows were very numerous during the 0 ad time, i think it was mainly sheep and goats that were the main herd animals, at least i am pretty sure this is true for Greece. But do not hold me to that or any other historical facts i give! 6. What is the purpose of the taxation building in o ad? Temples should be expensive to build but i do not understand what you mean by taxis. Who is being taxed? At this stage players only provide training+housing,they do not pay or feed their workers/citizens/soldiers so i am not really sure how you tax people who have no income. I would like to have it so players must feed and pay their workers and soldiers beyond the training stage and i am currently working on that idea. 7.I think converting enemy units to slaves is a good idea but i am not sure how it can be made possible to do so on o ad, maybe special cavalry units could be added that are able to catch fleeing soldiers with nets and drag them to your territory where you could trade them in for gold. Have no time now to comment on rest of ideas, ill finish this post tomorrow

Yer sorry i am not aware of all the stuff that has been planned for the future so its likely a lot of what i propose has already been thought of by someone else. I do not think it would make it to much more difficult for intermediate players having the people and horse and pop separated as although it is an extra resource it does not require nearly as much management compared to other resources like food. The resource could just be a single number that decreases/increases with territory size. Alternatively it could be made slightly more complex like having the maximum cavalry pop limit determined by territory size but also have the amount of available cavalry for use to be determined by breeding factors, such as having the number of available horses increase slowly over time and having the rate of this increase determined by how many trained horses there are - more trained horses = more offspring = more trained horses. I only suggest this because unlike the Cane Toads in my back yard 1 horse cant breed 50 more horses over night obviously. Having the territory size determine the maximum amount of cavalry would also obviously increase the importance of controlling territory which could perhaps force players to be more aggressive. I hate it when players turtle for very long time. All viewers please read the stuff below, the stuff above in this post is not as important. Guys i have some more ideas but i want to wait and see what the majority of people think of my ideas so far before i go and suggest a load more of them. Put simply i don't want to make myself look like a fool by suggesting a whole bunch of ideas that very few people are interested in hearing about. SO if more people could please tell me what they think of my ideas that would be great. I want to know if they are good, boring, bad or terrible. No fence sitting!