Prodigal Son

I'm gonna stay almost inactive for the next while and since the new SVN changes have broken the mod again, could someone spot and post the issues so I can fix them?

Thanks for the hard work:)

How about these suggestions on navies: Since capturing is in, ship capturing would be a nice addition as well, as it was very common in naval battles and mostly done through boarding. Would it be that hard to implement the way stated above (no need for real visible boarding, just similar to building capturing, only with an extra attribute killing marines gradually as the "melee" goes on).

Could also be I'm not explaining clear enough even after all those posts, lacking the technical knowledge on some fields as well. Forests currently can either be impassable or randomly passable through small, hard to spot gaps. Besides the pathfinder issues with units being stuck or slowing down, this has other effects as well. It's hard to be sure on what's the passability of each forest mass (without using the developer overlay). That's bad for gameplay. You need to be able to easily spot all pathways, not having to manually path-scout each tiny bit between trees to know if you need troops or walls to guard a place. It's kinda mean when the AI or a lucky/more observant player pass through those gaps and the opportunities for this are currently many and hard to monitor in most cases. Also gaps that allow some units through but not all of them aren't that great for gameplay either and very small gaps in general are bad for they can cause even small numbers of units to get stuck. It's not by accident or foolishness that games like the AOE and Warcraft series have no gaps in their similar forest masses. Ofc the "real forests are random" argument can be thrown in, but it doesn't help gameplay at all. Another rather major thing to consider is trees often being almost on top of each other, with both aesthetic and gameplay issues (more workers try to gather there than possible, and this might have to do with the worker limit per tree and not the pathfinder, I'm not sure about it though - happens with other resources as well in random maps).

I might have some questions:) I'll pm you when I mess with them again.

Glad to hear the pathfinder is getting better and better lately:) My point is that there needs to be a clear forest attribute for gameplay reasons. Creating "light forests" with individual trees or an extra option would still be possible, but dense forests need to be by default impassable (or passable), and easy to place without random, hard to spot, exploitable and buggy gaps.

I'm mostly for it as well, even though I wouldn't mind the other option that much. It can be called realistic: You can pass through a dense forest, but generally armies would avoid them for being a pain to cross (losing direction, carrying baggage etc) and to avoid being ambushed, as most armies were better fit to fight in open or relatively open ground. Units represent larger numbers in such games so for me it's not a bad compromise in realism. Gameplay-wise it's also better on most occasions since vision/control of your units in forests isn't the best even if using silhouettes. Their function as natural borders is interesting as well, having player bases open on all sides on most maps isn't that great for an RTS game. It also fits better in a macro oriented game (it's getting old I know:p). That said, representing some units' and civs' strengths in forests (or uneven ground) would also be interesting, like ambushing careless armies passing next to/in forests, or crossing them to launch an unexpected raid.This made me wonder if a higher ground bonus could be easily implemented for melee units as well (fighting up/downhill). Like on most fields of game design there's pros and cons on each decision, both on realism and functionality. Whatever the choice, the terrible issues with woodcutters/military units being struck between trees and the uncertainty on if a forest is passable or not need to go at some point, with no distance between trees or fully passable forests.

One major related thing to consider is the handling of forests. I see two viable options (there might be more): Like in most RTS games, forests being impassable. This needs to come with a way to place trees in random maps and the scenario editor with no random spaces between them, aligned to each other, maybe with slightly increased obstruction size and distance, so that not the entirety of the upper parts go into each other. A forest paint tool in the editor would come handy as well.Passable forests, coupled with some ambush mechanic for some civs and units. Either with obvious gaps between trees or no obstruction for them.A better looking (not perfectly round) version of single large forest entities like in Wow's Delenda Est might also be worth considering if it proves too hard to totally fix the pathfinder.

Interesting ideas but I'd like to keep it simpler for now, since it's already needing a lot of work and I haven't messed with triggers at all. Might consider some of them later on. Might also want to keep the player slots up to 8 and look for ways for the AI to handle the map. It's a bit early to be sure on anything.

I'm aware of this map, but since the gameplay will be very different with minor or no basebuilding, I prefer the expanded area over the increased detail. I'll have capturable structures representing off-map trade etc. The second link doesn't work though. Do you think I should work on Greece or the GOT map first?

I've started working on what will function as campaigns for the mod, listed as scenario maps. Those will play differently from the mod and the main game, with basic features being: Few structures with either auto generated income, appropriate units trained or both (cities, villages, forts, mines, harbors). All of them will be preset and capturable (still not sure if they should also be destructible and buildable).Traders and Trade ships will be kept in, so that a part of the economy is still raidable.Many unique regional structures representing important locations with a large variety of bonuses for holding them.A basic tech-tree with less techs and no phase advancement, since the maps will focus on local conflicts in set periods.Diplomacy will play a vital role since expansion isn't always easy.Civs will have more or less appropriate strengths and weaknesses depending on their historical state in each scenario.In the long run this could be the start for a turn-based campaign mode with many extract features.The first map is centered on Ancient Greece and might eventually host several starting dates/scenarios. Some of the possibilities are: Greece 490 BC: Persian Wars. Focuses on Athens, Sparta, Persia, (Corinth, Thebes, Thessaly, Macedon, Halicarnassus).Greece 431 BC: Peloponnesian War. Focuses on Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, (Persia, Macedon, Thessaly).Greece 359 BC: Rise Of Macedon. Focuses on Macedon, Athens, Thebes, (Sparta, Thrace, Thessaly, Persia).Greece 281 BC: Galatian Invasion and Chremonidian Wars. Focuses on Epirus, Macedon, Athens, Sparta, Ptolemies, Gauls, Aetolian League, Corinth.Greece 222 BC: Cleomenian and Macedonian Wars. Focuses on Macedon, Rome, Sparta, Achaean League, Aetolian League, Pergamum, Rhodes, Crete.Greece 196 BC: Antiochus In Greece. Focuses on Seleucids, Rome, Macedon, Sparta, Achaean League, Aetolian League, Pergamum, Rhodes. And now for something completely different:

Have you thought of using a neutral player instead of gaia (if that helps in any way)? Or traders could just be cosmetic instead, with markets having a resource tickle, so capturing a market would give you it's income.

The balance between macro and micro can be handled in many different ways. I like the rather detailed economy the game has, so most of my suggestions take it for granted and propose/reject changes in other fields to reduce overall micro. On your macro specifics: - Agreed on tech depth, that's almost exactly what I'm doing in my mod. - As stated, I'm in favor of the general concept in resource gathering. A very basic eco doesn't necessarily favor macro, most games with such an eco are in fact designed that way to allow for intense troop micro, with some exceptions that rely on the (boring IMO) "spam huge numbers of troops" concept. - I'm mostly for soft counters, as they can represent realistic unit roles better in most cases. Slightly stronger than currently in the game though. - Agreed on the rest.

Maybe organizing series of SVN multiplayer games as done occasionally in the past could help? Could be done in groups which would frequently gather for games according to timezone/player availability and reporting observations after each session.

Ofc speed belongs to a RTS, I didn't claim the opposite. But the more you make the game about speedy micro, the more you dumb down strategy, as there is less time left to think of plans. That said most successful competitive RTS game go that way, but it's not something I really like and I think it partly happens to appeal to players more familiar with faster paced, action-packed game genres. Repetition is inevitable as well, but mechanics such as manual or semi-manual looting seem tedious and over-repetitive to me. Handling it automatically depending on unit stance does sound better though.

Indeed not that hard, but imo a little micro here and there in things that could be handled with stats make the game more about repetition and speed than real strategy.

You're right, the merchant ship already functions as a transport, but I think it needs more cappacity, if not from the start, with a tech. Boarding could be done with having the ships lock together (maybe with some hook "missile" animation, like in RAF:CAW Lion mentioned earlier) and have the capture points determined by marine numbers/strength, losing capture points during the action could also reduce the crew.

Triremes did serve as troop transport, but their capacity was not appropriate to their size and they almost always carried only their marines as extras, due to all those rowers and the thin design. Large expeditions would need real transport ships or huge numbers of warships. My suggestion mixing all the ideas above is: Village Phase: Fishing Boat - just fishing, no combat, no point in micro-ing a very small transported size for those. Merchant/Transport Ship - Can trade or ferry units, upgrades for more transport capacity on a following phase. Bireme Class Warship - Can ram like all warships and board or skirmish depending on crew (or maybe civ dependent crew and role). Can land her starting marines, which makes space for loading extra units. Same with loses. Small crew, say 10 units, landing them could work for an early game raid. Town Phase: Trireme Class Warship - Same with Bireme, but bigger, faster, with a larger crew. Alternatively, Biremes could be boarding ships and Triremes missile ships, or the opposite, but none of the two seems historically correct. City Phase: Quinquireme Class Warship - Possibly less agile than the other warships, with the additional option for artillery crew, or perhaps by default an artillery ship. *I think ramming and boarding were scrapped as features, I hope I'm wrong though. Especially boarding and ship capturing would be very interesting.

It could work easier than that I believe. Capturing percentage modifiers could be adjusted accordingly to the game/combat pace. Stopping to gather the wounded from "corpses" would partly defeat the purpose of winning a local battle to gain the chance to advance on your opponent.

While I generally don't like the current naval combat with garrisoned ships being much stronger in attack to ungarrisoned ones, having them trained with a starting crew is a nice workaround, since it prevents many possible imbalances/annoying cases like having to constantly move new ships around to add troops to them or losing your only/few garrisoned ones and being left with a much weaker navy even if you still have many ships. Having less and stronger ships sounds valid as well, given the huge ship size in the game which makes large navies a messy/buggy display. Marine units could also make sense this way. You can unload the ship's starting crew to land, instead of having some ships train units. Capturing ships with some visible boarding action (or just similarly to structures if visible implementation is hard) would be a nice feature as well. Ships could be geared for ramming, boarding or ranged combat (or a couple of those each) giving different tactics/ship classes and civ bonuses. Still, fighting with fishing ships in a no from me, and transports should be available to ferry land troops, the merchant ship could easily double as a transport.

Water maps could indeed be almost exclusively fish-reliant in food gathering if they are ment to be too punishing for losing water control, but I'm not sure about that. But both Darc and Roek you seem to have missed my other point, maybe because I didn't expand on it. Food is the most basic resource. Farms are most basic/stable way of getting it. Limiting them to pre-placed slots, and given the hard (and imo uninteresting) to totally balance random map generation, can lead to cases with severe imbalances to a resource you'll need throughout the game, not one you can do without for a while and plan ahead to get. Corrals are bit hard to decide on. I kinda like the way AOM handles herdables, having them fatten over time (starting from the time you capture them). You could slay them fast for a food boost or wait to get more later. Garrisoning them for income is also a viable idea, but it seems too similar to farms in the end. Autoproduction with a limit could work too. In my mod I haven't touched them yet, besides replacing the cavalry speed tech which went over to the stables with some "herd techs" reducing cavalry/camel/elephant food costs, that might stay in place of the planned mechanic to capture and garrison animals for cost reduction, as I generally prefer to represent minor things with something simple instead of extra micro. I'm also considering the possibility of removing the corrals and have herdables available only though scouting/as starting units.

Capturing individual units, especially small/numerous ones sounds like too much micro. Reminds me of a less crazy (but still complicated) version of the disastrous feature in Ancient Wars: Sparta and other games of that franchise, where you could pick individual weapons from the battlefield to sell them or equip soldiers with them reducing their costs and creating new unit classes that could be unavailable to your civ. Not every cool sounding concept translates well to gameplay. A percentage of kills as captured slaves granting some bonuses is a nice idea though to reward combat and add another layer of realism. Some Civs could be bonused in capture percentage or exploitation of prisoners.

Farms built only in farmland might be hard to balance, especially placing them in random maps and even more so, how would they work in maps with small islands? Have weird looking islets full of farmland, or have almost no farming for those maps? Overall almost any (relatively) flat ground should be farmable imo, and for balance reasons at the same rate. In my impression RTS games who have huge placement limitations to very basic resources didn't work that well. Some old discussions could be revisited though. Maybe the Civ Centre could have a small-ish radius around it where structures can't be constructed (or just farms) but units can pass through. This would make the econ more vulnerable to raiding, while being realistic, as you wouldn't farm in a City Centre. I'd prefer farming being available from the village phase, for realism and for preventing early defeat in cases where the opponent has map control and you can't venture far from your starting region for hunting. At the same time, starting mines and to a lesser degree forest masses would be nice to be a little more distanced from the CC as well, for similar reasons. Also limited starting exploration of the map to the Civ Centre's vision instead of the whole territory would make scouting more important, especially coupled with the ideas above, since you would have to locate your starting resources. I more or less agree with the OP in the resource and ranged unit dominance parts.

I don't really like capturing as a classic RTS mechanic, it feels to me more weird and messy than soldiers just attacking structures when you have to control basebuilding, combat and a rather detailed economy at the same time. That said it might turn out good in it's final form. Certainly though more expensive units (considering overall mass-ability through resource/time costs and how many structures can produce the unit - fortress only units could be considered slightly more expensive for example) should have more capture points/second else massing weak units will be a huge advantage. In addition to that, Swordsmen and especially champion ones can be extra bonused here as assault infantry, while units like Pikemen are more effective in open field battles.

It's not a bad idea but I see two problems, one in functionally and one in balance: - The game uses a "normal" looking wallset for their walls due to placement issues Murus Gallicus would have and the mod has the same limitation even if the model exists for them. - They play best as a pretty offensive civ from early on, in addition to one of the strongest abilities to mass elite units in the lategame. Adding a huge defensive bonus like that would make them overpowered without major changes being applied, especially vs civs that can access only rams as siege weapons. It would also break the cohesion of structure/unit roles making gameplay frustrating for some of the new players.