satchitb

I'm not sure the umbrellas were only for protection from the shade. Ancient statues, engravings and popular depictions that I have seen all seem to suggest that the chhatris (umbrellas) were made of a harder substance (perhaps metal) and protected the warrior from arrows. To give you a stylised example: https://www.google.com/search?num=10&hl=en&site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=664&q=mahabharat&oq=mahabharat&gs_l=img.3..0l10.574.2662.0.2842.10.8.0.2.2.1.294.1307.2j3j3.8.0...0.0...1ac.1.jIQcvjJohws

I'm Indian, and I would say that ox carts are most prevalent now, and, based on my knowledge of ancient India, in the Mauryan period.

I have the same problem as NOXAS1. I have an Acer Aspire 5738 running Ubuntu 11.04.

WHY? WHY? WHY? People disliked Age of Empires III partly because of the arbitrary building restrictions on everything. If people use buildings offensively, why is that such a problem? Let there be a vibrant churning of strategies instead of people being forced into certain strategies. It is inevitable that somehow a strategy emerges which you will not like because it's not the way you intended the game be played. That always happens. Let players have freedom.

Please let's not include rowers and things. That would involve WAY too much micromanagement, and a simple speed boost for an expendable ship would not justify training rowers anyway. I'm still unhappy over Loyalty, and units jumping back and forth. It's theoretically possible for you to lose half your army in a single swoop, which will be devastating to a player who's already (presumably) losing.

We need icons for the winners as well as for the player with the highest score. I don't see the point of the Vegetarian Ratio stat? What does it tell you about someone's game? Nothing.

I dislike this. Give players the freedom they want to fix things. I was incredibly annoyed with Age of Empires III. There were restrictions on everything: how much you could build of something or the other, the godawful "cards" and you couldn't even do something so basic as make three teams. Building civ centres is a strategic decision that should be left to the players. If they want to build one just a tiny bit closer to the enemy, or build six of them for whatever reason, let him. This whole concept of Loyalty and Capturing, while probably more realistic, adds unnecessary complications to the game. If there's a lone building way out in enemy territory, let there be. It's the opponent's foolishness for not knocking it down.

Significantly better. What does that do?

Just tried Alpha 6. It's looking (and especially sounding) awesome. Just one thing that's been nagging me since Alpha 3: why is the mouse sensitivity so low? It's a real chore moving the mouse around the screen, both in-game and especially at the menu. OS: Ubuntu 11.04

Ooh, we have to have whimsical cheat codes in the game!

YES. AoK had this major drawback where you could only select some 40 units at a time. I'm glad 0AD will get over this.

I thought the AoE UI was decent, but not amazing. It requires too much mouse movement up and down the screen. I wonder if something could be implemented, where the options (generally build/spawn) appeared over the unit if you held Alt down. That would save a lot of space. I think the UI takes up a bit too much space at the moment. P.S. 0A.D.'s home screen currently doesn't fill my screen and the mouse sensitivity before starting a game is extremely sluggish. It picks up while a game is on, but I don't know why that should be.

This is a great idea, though, I'd like to request that whenever this game lobby IS implemented that it should support cross-OS gameplay, if that's possible. Age of Empires 2 (which I am an unabashed fanboy of) did not let Windows users play alongside OSX users, and, of course, did not have a Linux version. It would be great for the game's growth and for the players if they could play with one another, no matter what OS they ran.

You know what would be awesome? Text commands. I don't know about you, but I always preferred using the keyboard over the mouse. In AoE2, the AI commands were terribly unreliable. In 0AD, however, I'd like to not only be able to issue orders to computer allies, but also to your own units. Simple scouting presets, or an order to all barracks/TCs to produce x number of certain troops. You could also set it to say only affect troops in the current screen view, to allow for more precise control. Text commands should naturally be short, because one doesn't have a lot of time for typing in a fast-paced game. One major advantage it would have is that the player doesn't have to go around searching for his buildings and, more importantly, change his view. So he could be controlling his economy, while still keeping a close eye on the battle. Another (perhaps simpler) solution to the problem I see is more advanced minimap filters. In AoE2, you only had normal, econ and military. But how about if you could just display your scouts? Or metal miners?

Ugh. Not limited ammo, PLEASE. That would be horrible, because when you have giant armies, you don't know which troops need re-arming, and you may end up sending mostly useless troops into pitched battle.

It would probably be very easy to protect archers, then. Just plonk one square of wall, and put your archer in it. It would be up really fast, and pesky cavalry would die before being able to knock it down.

Not a coder, but I just wanted to congratulate the team on creating this AI. I remember when I first got interested in 0AD, the AI was its biggest weakness in that it was barely functional. Now, we can create a dynamic and intelligent AI. 0AD is going to be awesome.

I don't even want to think how complicated that would be. I don't support this, quite frankly. Having soldiers convert back and forth would confuse the hell out of me. Reputation is also something I don't support. It would make the game too complicated, and I don't think adding this mechanic would do anything in a short 2-3 player game.

HOLY parent of pizza, that's awesome! The third screenshot looks like an upside down aerial shot

An excellent idea. Preset behavioural stance and autoflaring would be great. However, we have to be careful with this. If the scout is on the fringes of the enemy's town, the player could get bombarded with distracting flares. Also, this could continue way into the game if the player forgets about the scout. How about soldiers (especially cavalry) who have been idle for x amount of time to automatically be set to scout mode?

Yeah, this is something I had thought of as well. What is the point of building citizens? I haven't run any tests, but I don't believe that they, at this point, gather or build any faster than soldiers. Apparently, they "inspire nearby males to work harder", but that's hardly justification in creating them. The other incentive I could see is that they spawn from houses, but I have a problem with that. At this point in development, you can play virtually the whole game with just two buildings: the TC and the house. Just keep spamming those, especially the houses early on, and you can have an economy up and going in just a few minutes.

I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 on an Acer Aspire 5738 with an Intel Mobile 4 Series Integrated Chipset.

I could translate the game into Hindi, but won't, because as feneur points out, the text is far from finished

Huh? I don't see any units on my minimap. I see terrain, and visible area but no units.

At some point, you'll also have to balance out unit stats. Iberian rams do WAY too much damage to soldiers; two shots and one's out. Similarly, they TAKE too much damage from archers. Much too much. Hope Alpha 6 will also see the minimap populated.