Prodigal Son

Agreed that it's worth a separate thread. I'd be 100% for more varied factions and I'd be full of ideas on it, but since it's a game with 12 of them and not 3-4 as in games with huge differences, I believe that would result in a tough to learn and hard to balance game. Something more than AOK but far less than Warcraft III/Starcraft/AOM should work. Specific building requirements to advance phases isn't something really needed, even though it could work, as in other games. It's a little limiting in strategies and build orders though. Here's my thoughts about factions from the other thread: FACTION SPECIFICS Trying to make each faction unique through historical attributes. Note that the unit lists I'm mentioning are chosen mostly from a historical perspective, balance and uniqueness for each faction on that field would need lengthy discussions. ATHENIANS The Athenians should have bonuses on navy, expansion, infantry mobility, economy and research, with an expand and defend playstyle. Faster built or cheaper Civ Centers will allow quick expansion (simulating colonization or vassalization of other's colonies) with mobile infantry forces and navies to protect them or raid enemy holdings. Later on, Philosopher units can help the colonies flurish enhancing construction, economy and research, to make up for a slightly weak late game military. BRITONS The Britons should be an offensive civ with relatively cheap and weak (in defense) early units and weaker, faster built (wooden) structures. This makes them a viable booming faction as well. More research needed. CARTHAGINIANS The Carthaginians should have bonuses on naval trade, navy, exploration, expansion, defenses and mercenaries. Locating (with bonused scouting) and securing (with fast built or tough structures) metal deposits, to help them make the most out of their mercenary armies, as well as maintaining naval and trade superiority could be their core direction. GAULS The Gauls should be an offensive civ with relatively cheap and weak (in defense) early units and weaker, faster built (wooden) structures. This makes them a viable booming faction as well. Later on they get access to tougher units and upgrades. IBERIANS The Iberians are the ultimate turtle civ with several defensive bonuses and also specialize at guerilla warfare. Their units are quite varied but their navy is one of the weakest. MACEDONIANS The Macedonians field powerful cavalry, infantry and siege weapons and reliable missile units. A mostly offensive faction at early-mid game, that gets more staying power later on with reforms increasing the survivability of several units. MAURYANS The Mauryans could be an aggressive (rush) civ with weak, cheap and fast trained units, relatively weak and fast built (wooden) structures. This can also allow them to play with a booming playstyle, since cheap citizen-soldiers should give an early economic advantage. Their armies are rather weak with the exceptions of archery units and war elephants. PERSIANS The Persians excel at massing weak, cheap infantry units supported by equally cheap but formidable archers. But what really stands out is their cavalry arm, one of the strongest among all civs. Their structures are strong as well, although a little slower to build. PTOLEMIES The Ptolemies should have a well balanced military, with most troop types and better than average mercenaries, but that shouldn't be the core of their strength, somewhat lacking in champion units and military techs. Farming, research, naval and defense bonuses should make them a booming-defensive faction with a variety of secondary options. ROMANS The Romans might have somewhat weak cavalry, but make up for it with easy to mass tough infantry, strong siege weapons/structures and increasingly good technology as the game advances. SELEUCIDS The Seleucids probably have access to the largest troop variety of all civs, including several elite units and powerful reforms. Their other aspects could stay at average more or less for balance, even though historically they could have many other bonuses and their weaknesses don't translate well in RTS gameplay. SPARTANS The Spartans can be a very unique faction with early available, very limited, super-elite infantry supported by average to poor other units. Late game reforms can provide a reliable, massable unit in Cleomenian Pikemen and improve other troop classes through newly unlocked mercenaries, so that they can stand against other faction's now powerful armies. Helots can be used as a unique worker unit with the best default farming rate (even if slaves are added in general).

I doubt an elephant (with a smaller percentage of extra weight as well) walks slower than a human. But let's see their final role and how it works out. I know damage frenzy is planned but I keep mentioning it since it seems to be one of those things easy to implement, thinking it might just be an oversight that it's not in yet.

I haven't played cossacks (but I've heard/read good comments on them), I've played a little bit of "Alexander", by the same developers though. Combat didn't seem more realistic or complex than total war and at the same time managing formations (especially adding new trained troops to them) + economy was a bit of an issue. I don't really like torches (in AOE III and Rome 2) for some reason they make the game feel stranger than hitting structures with weapons for me. I still can't get why:p. I still believe rams should get unable to attack troops and balanced in other ways (like increased hp or slightly reduced pathing size) I'd like elephants to be an expensive all-around superunit. They had uses in siege warfare, such as tearing down gates, but that shouldn't be their focus, nor they should have much lower pierce than hack armor. About them being slow, they should be faster than (most?) infantry. As a weakness they could run amok going gaia + aggressive when reaching some low hp percentage, making them nice targets for focused fire and a potential threat to their owner's lines. Currently they are probably the most underpowered unit considering their high cost, low massability/late availability and relatively weak combat performance.

It's great, getting it in game as well would be even greater. I just noticed some tooltips have full costs and some partial (like only lumber and time for some units that have other costs as well), perhaps a result on reading from main unit files and missing costs that exist only on templates?

Two more games: 0 A.D. Multiplayer: Prodigalson vs SwampGremlin This match starts with some peaceful booming until around 19:45, then the offensive kicks in, resulting in some pretty intense combat around three fronts, with both players focusing on cavalry. SwampGremlin is playing as the Gauls and I'm playing as the Seleucids. There's a little bit of an effort on commentary during the first few minutes before I get absorbed by managing the game. 0 A.D. Multiplayer: Prodigalson & LordigorIIIOfKiev vs theMario & erejum31 A 2v2 with an unexpected twist, having the player considered weaker during team set-up decide the outcome. Myself as the Mauryans, Lordigor as the Iberians, theMario as the Macedonians and erejum31 as the Athenians.

While there's no need to directly copy one of those, the game has to get a fine balance between micro and macro if it is to get successful.

One more, 0 A.D. Multiplayer Commentary: yray & Varrus vs Philosopher & Parkour3k Observing and commenting a game between 4 players I had never played with before. Includes some tips on mistakes that might be useful to some of the participants and new players in general. It's on alpha 17, game map is Watering Holes. Commentary starts at 0:55.

Currently the biggest issue imo is the combat roles for some units: Elephants are too weak for their cost and only semi-useful vs structures (very weak vs troops).Melee infantry isn't that useful in it's supposed main role, doing the core combat... as ranged units do that. Which is very unrealistic for the ancient era. Instead, with the reduction on building hack armor, melee infantry now do the same percentage of damage vs buildings with siege weapons on average, and that added to mass-ability and mobility makes them the game's effective siege weapons, with a secondary meat-shield role in ranged unit wars. I'd suggest an increase of around 25% to structure hack armor.Ranged units are still a little op, especially ranged cav (not to A16 levels though). Imo they all need to do less dps than melee, be even more weaker in defense (compared to melee), be cheaper and get balanced along those lines. They were almost exclusively support units, but in the current state of the game almost all players focus on them. Furthermore they need far more differentiation from each other, but I've wrote on this before and seems it's a bit early for such changes.

Well I wasn't actually suggesting that:p. You got wrong (or I phrased it wrong) that I wrote about doing it with a corral tech, what I ment was that the corral already has a cavalry-related tech. I can see that it could also work with an unlocking tech though. What I ment was that using the corral as a requirement for cavalry will delay it's training, not encourage it. Especially if coupled with a slight nerf on their food gathering rate, which seems needed. At the same time since the corral produces sheep they can slaughter and has a cav tech, it would fit for a cav-related strategy. It would make sense as a "stable" providing horses for the majority of civs which don't have one, and since many herding societies were quite strong on cavalry as well, the sheep + cav combo doesn't estrange me.

Congrats team:)

I might make a Peloponnesian Wars scenario if triggers prove easy to use (haven't checked them yet). Btw your Peloponnesian Wars screenshot isn't accurate, those wars didn't include Rome, it was Athens (and allies) vs Sparta (and allies). Nice contest overall, hope everyone has fun with it and it adds some nice maps to the game:)

One more, 0 A.D. Multiplayer: Prodigal Son vs LordigorIIIofKiev I didn't plan to upload this, as the game start included some unwanted external voices and it generally didn't turn out that good, but since Lord will upload his, here's my perspective, with a little bit of it cut off. I'll eventually include a link to his video. The commentary is rather lacking, doing it live during a multiplayer game proved rather hard for me, but... trying will help me get used to it. This video serves to remind me (or anyone else on the same boat) one thing: Never underestimate your opponent. I saw his low rating and win percentage and was playing rather lazily, while random choice gave me Britons which I'm not familiar with. He chose the Persians. Map is Random-Mainland and game version is A17 (SVN). View to see the outcome.

I was wondering about that but always forgot to ask.

A nice time travel indeed:) I don't think Civic Centers should be restricted to settlements, AOM like. Being able to place them wherever you want is more strategic (and realistic), it rewards good placement, punishes bad placement, and makes scouting more important than having to monitor/fight over a just few majorly important points. The current way every part of the map has the potential to be important, even ones without resources and that brings more variety from game to game instead of a repetition of focused fights.

I've recorded a tutorial commentary on early game economy, which might be useful to new players or those struggling with it. It also doubles as a chance for you to mock my terrible English and newbie self-recorder's anxiety:p. Feedback is very welcome:) It's on current SVN, which should be exactly the same with the upcoming Alpha 17 release.

They're not that bad:) The models are very nice actually, even if they could use some extra detail. The textures are quite lacking though, you could work more one them or get someone good with texturing to help you.

Is anyone up for a game on svn? I'm trying to learn/improve recording commentary videos but it feels boring on single player.

Isn't it decided that corral animals will serve both as a direct resource (slaughter) or a tickle income (garrisoned in the corral)? No clue if training animals other than sheep is intended for the corral. Could do, but I don't believe it would enhance gameplay in some way. Unless some animals get better for being gathered from and some provide a better tickle, but I believe that's a bit too much.

Why would a corral built encourage cavalry spam? It requires extra resources and build time, it would fit for a cavalry strategy with the ability to train sheep and the cav tech it has, but delay it. Cavalry gather rates could be reduced (or the mechanic change in some other way) if that's what you mean, I agree they're extremely fast on it, currently I find scouting a bad alternative until any starting chicken/sheep etc are harvested. Playing almost exclusively SVN the past couple of weeks, I still find ranged cav to be the best all around unit (and not seriously disadvantaged vs ranged inf - just from playing experience, I can't currently recall their armor stats/types). However my point for delaying early cavalry availability (either with need for corral, removing them from the CC or making them tier 2) is quite different, it's not about nerfing them (that can be done in other ways anyway). It's about having fast units later on, not from the very start, as almost all RTS do, leaving any early rushes to slower units. That's also more historical as well, cavalry warfare was later to develop and get an important role and for most civs it was even (or almost) non-existent until the mid/late classical age.

Np:). You should consider it at some point though, the more people playing and giving feedback on test versions, the better the following alphas get.

Perhaps mixed villagers, (male or female trained at random) could work. It won't be unrealistic either. It would change some gameplay basics and require quite a bit of extra work though.

It will be released in a few days. You could also get the SVN version (a little more complex to install - also this should be windows only, I'm unaware of how to get equivalents for other systems).

I can't say I know too much on dogs, ancient dogs or ancient Celtic dogs:p. All I can say it's a semi-ahistorical choice, as dogs wouldn't be real combat units and at the same time all people had guard/hunting dogs. It's a design choice for flavor I guess, just go with what's already decided?

For this one I can't say I'm certain it's inaccurate it's just that Greek/Egyptian came to mind first as the most obvious choice. Which other ones are you concerned/tasked on? They're kind of a lot to check them all one by one.

Given that the population was mostly Egyptian and the rich/ruling class mostly Macedonian/Greek, I'd guess it would make more sense to have one of the two. Not sure on who did the majority of the land trade. They certainly had trade with Arabs, Libyans and others living in the deserts to the east and west of Egypt so I guess the current one makes some sense as well.