Prodigal Son

It doesn't mean you need no women. They're still 25% better at farming and cheaper. Celts have weak structures, so a potential choice of better defense sacrificing a little farming efficiency doesn't seem bad to me. Anyway I'm not currently trying to fix the core game's imbalances, I'm trying to add some extra historical/gameplay flavor and see how it works before focusing on balance. Btw I've set up the github repo. Is anyone willing to test the first changes with me? You'll need SVN, downloading this (download zip) and unzipping it into binary/data/mods of your SVN installation.

I'm using only implemented bonuses for now, some might change when the game supports more.

Thanks:) Helping with tests should be easy if you have an SVN installation. Changes/Implementation of missing things so far: CARTHAGE Exploration civ bonus: It now gives by default +20% line of sight to cavalry, traders and ships making them better at scouting and monitoring trade routes and waters.Colonisation civ bonus:. It now gives by default -20% build time to Civic Centers, Houses and Temples, making them better at expanding and working well with their champion units trained at the temple.Reduced Temple cost to 300, 400 seemed too high.Ship Armor and Construction Speed upgrades now available at both docks, to remove their inexcusable naval handicap.Fortified Barracks tech available at the fortress for 1000 stone, increasing Fortress and Barracks hp by 30%. Inspired by their construction of strong fortifications housing barracks, stables and even war elephants.Mass Production tech available at the fortress for 500 food, 500 wood, 250 metal, reducing siege weapon construction speed by 25%. Inspired by their tendency to construct large numbers of siege weapons (was actually more common for defensive purposes, could be charged if ballista towers are implemented).Naval Trademasters team bonus: Trade Ships move 33% faster (currently not shared).Barcid Armies Reform: Mercenaries cost 20% less metal and gain +1 pierce and hack armor levels.CELTS Rural Lifestyle civ bonus: All infantry citizen soldiers farm, hunt and herd 50% faster. Their farming rate is still lower that the one of females, but now farming with celtic men is considerable for extra defense.Deas Celtica civ bonus: Druids increase attack damage of soldiers near them by 0.5 (low placeholder until non-stacked auras are available).Celtic Valour civ bonus: +10% melee infantry walk and run speed. Inspired by their tendency to charge in melee and their tendency for mass migrations.Wooden Construction civ bonus: Structures construct 20% faster but are also 20% weaker.Gaul only Foreign Service team bonus: 10% decreased train time for Champion and Mercenary units (currently not shared). Inspired by their tendency to serve abroad as mercenaries, settler troops or even royal guards.Trimarchisia barracks tech: Cavalry units regenerate health rapidly over time when idle. Inspired by a special tactic used by Gallic horsemen involving extra horses and servants allowing them to rest while maintaining constant pressure on the enemyLate Reform: +2 hack and +1 pierce armor for melee infantry and cavalry units. Inspired by the increase introduction of chainmail in late Gallic armies.Briton Only Atlantic Trade team bonus: +50% Trade Ship hit points (currently not shared). Inspired by their trade with Carth and Greek merchants reaching western Britain and the need for sturdy ships to do so.Sevili Dusios temple tech: +20% melee infantry attack (placeholder for woad caused fear aura).Turos Maros tower tech: Increases tower hit points by 50% and adds an extra default arrow.Levy Reform: All citizen soldiers train 20% faster. Inspired by the large number of Britons that joined Boudicca against the Romans.Experimental: Low Armor Use civ bonus: Celtic/Iberian Citizen Soldiers cost 20% less wood/metal but also have 10% less hit points and 1 less hack/pierce armor.Very Low Armor Use civ bonus: Persian/Mauryan Citizen Soldiers cost 30% less wood/metal but also have 20% less hit points and 1 less hack/pierce armor.High Armor Use civ bonus: Greek/Roman Citizen Soldiers cost 20% more wood/metal but also have 10% more hit points and 1 more hack/pierce armor.This is a quick workaround with autoresearched techs for checking the effects of differentiating citizen soldiers on economy and combat. Not sure if it will stay.At some point I'll go further on that by making archers/slingers cheaper but train longer (cheap equipment, needed expertise) and other similar changes all with autoresearched techs so that they are easily reversible/rebalanced.

Since it's a mod an I'm working alone that would be too much extra work for few people playing it. It could make some sense for the main game as extra option at some point in the future. I'll keep scythe's gameplay for now, to see which of my ideas on techs and civ bonuses might fit in the core game. Radical gameplay changes would be very time consuming now since I'm still learning the files and change the game too much so I'll leave those for later. The other civs will change as well after the Carthaginians, I've already started work on the Gauls/Brits.

I like what you aim for, I just don't believe most of your suggestions would help to achieve that. A good game takes in consideration players of all skill levels. A very different economic model from civ to civ, besides frustrating many newbies, will just end with people copying the most successful builds and civ choices. A balanced one helps prevent that, actually adding more variety in the long run. Keep in mind that when water maps are really playable and corrals properly implemented, the early game will get more variety just by that, having two more viable food sources on many maps and one more on all of them. Which will also lead to various side effects.. corrals fitting with cavalry builds, fishing boats allowing civic centers to focus more on military production and goes on. If you want to discuss anything in detail, I'm currently (and pretty often) on the irc dev chat.

Making my first changes, thanks to everyone who helped me grab the basics Started tailoring the current game for more unique factions with small changes in civ-specific bonuses and techs for now. First is Carthage. So far I have: Made Exploration a civ bonus instead of a tech. It now gives by default +20% line of sight to cavalry, traders and ships making them better at scouting and monitoring trade routes and waters.Made Colonisation a civ bonus instead of a tech. It now gives by default -20% build time to Civic Centers, Houses and Temples, making them better at expanding and working well with their champion units trained at the temple.Reduced Temple cost to 300, 400 seemed too high.Ship Armor and Construction Speed upgrades now available at both docks, to remove their inexcusable naval handicap.Fortified Barracks tech available at the fortress for 1000 stone, increasing Fortress and Barracks hp by 30%. Inspired by their construction of strong fortifications housing barracks, stables and even war elephants.Mass Production tech available at the fortress for 500 food, 500 wood, 250 metal, reducing siege weapon construction speed by 25%. Inspired by their tendency to construct large numbers of siege weapons (was actually more common for defensive purposes, could be charged if ballista towers are implemented).Exact numbers on techs and bonuses will need testing. More changes to come. Btw I'm also thinking of removing/heavily altering or replacing with civ-specific tects the Fortress techs reducing siege weapon costs. I don't see them as very useful in their current state due to a low effect for low-massability units and high costs. Thoughts?

I've just started gathering my concepts, but interest always helps:). I don't think I'd add two different docks for all factions since's there are already many buildings in the game. Unless it somehow turns out to have an amazing impact on gameplay (that I currently can't see), then I might steal the idea:) Question to all people who have messed with modding the game. How should I start? A clean installation of the game? A mod folder? Some online file hosting?

I get the point but I wouldn't represent leather as food (nor we need to represent every tiny gear piece on each soldier, just the most obvious ones). It's not coming just from animals anyway. If we wanted too accurate resource costs, then almost all soldiers should cost food+wood+metal+more and we'd need to add many extra resources as well, while 4 is seems like the limit in all successful RTS games and 2 resources types per unit seem to also be the limit while we already have 3 for some units. Major starting economy differences would make it hard for begginers, not because they already know the game, but because they'd have a hard time changing from civ to civ. They also are REALLY hard to balance in a game with 12 civs. Even in games with few civs major differences come little by little in the tech tree and mostly later on, for a good reason. A rather unified early game is a good way to go. Same with not having players focus on too many different resources early on. Same with units of the same type costing the same resource types for all factions. Differences like civs having a focus on wooden or clay (free) structures is acceptable and realistic, but adding many extras on top of that is not. Things that would be easy to change without being gamebreaking are unit strengths (with appropriate cost adjustments) but the citizen soldier concept isn't very generous with that. So, we need more well thought ideas on it. Unless we go with things like what you suggested like "faster macedonian skirmishers carrying less resources to balance it out", but this looks like poor design and unrealistic to me. Same with things like Athenian houses costing more in total, two resources instead of one, handicapping the stone they would need for a slinger strategy that is also one of the two "rare" resources (and why they should be different from other greek (etc) houses of the same look and materials?). I'd love to be enlightened on why the stone fortifications of the "barbarian" Iberians would be better represented by wooden palisades than by a stronger Civic Center. And still that wasn't my major point. I could go on and with more detail on many of those suggestions. Don't get me wrong or get angry like it's something personal, I just disagree with you on many concepts. I still believe a good portion of your suggestions here and in general is interesting and realistic (mostly the environmental/pve things) but still it's majority wouldn't fit well for RTS gameplay, especially the 0 A.D. kind. I've noted the ones I liked here. Another portion of them are not well thought as if you ignore the aim of history meets gameplay in order to just to propose something. Unless you just don't explain some of them enough and I get something wrong. By hard to implement I mean the ones that require extra programming.

Ancient Empires for WC3 released (first beta) The map is at a playable state with a working AI on all difficulties, including 5 Civs: Athenians, Carthaginians, Macedonians (with 3 successor sub-factions), Romans and Spartans. I've decided to push a beta release to be able to focus my modding time on 0 A.D. Made the map a bit smaller and player count got reduced to 4 to prevent some lag/crash issues that no one could solve (delaying the release for months now) and since then it works great so far. Link (awaiting authorization - should work soon) To install simply un-zip and put the map file in your WC3 maps folder or any sub-folder of your choice. If someone wants to play (I'm on EU battlenet) pm and I will If I'm around. Known issues: Starting Phase - Post Imperial doesn't work for AI players Some tooltips need improvement A few hotkeys might not be working Some Icons need changes or passive versions

Yeah, I'm well aware and not really optimistic about it:p. Current plan is to stick with available troop production facilities for now (or in general) and use placeholders for merc camps and academies. The overwhelming part was on gameplay.

To better explain this let's assume that civs can only train spearmen in the village phase. Persian Spearman gets: 8 sec train time, 50 food/30 wood cost and is weaker.Spartan Spearman gets: 12 sec train time, 50 food/50 wood cost and is stronger.This can work, or can be rebalanced accordingly if it doesn't. But, if they are workers as well, the Persian player can train more during the same time since they are faster trained and cheaper, having a clear economic advantage in return. This could be tuned down by making the time/cost differences smaller, something that I don't like as it kills flavor, but could work for the core game.It could also be balanced by making the Spartan Spearman a better worker, something that's artificial so I don't like it either.Looking at the game's reality without the simplified assumption, a lot of such differences between civs and unit classes would make it hard to balance, forcing players to choose certain civs or units to get the maximum potential out of their economy. That's why I'm saying it doesn't really fit with citizen soldiers. I think it's also one of the reasons why Scythetwirler leveled almost all differences between units of the same class for A17 and those were even smaller than the ones I have in mind.

I doubt it's the first guide, I think the official game channel has some for quite a while now. Might make more sometime in the future.

This could work if someone helped with modeling edits. Still wondering if 4-5 extra structures per civ could be overwhelming. Hi Itms and thanks:) I'm very interested with helping differentiate civs in the core game as well. However since I plan to change things such as unit costs, train times, etc between civs and units of the same class as a big part of the differentiation, this might be very imbalancing coupled with the concept of citizen soldiers. That's why I'm asking on feedback on what to do on this part and other related ones. Keep the citizen soldiers for now and have those changes being minor to see how it turns out, or go full on my plans?

Cavalry now have reduced pierce armor, spearmen deal pierce damage, so they counter them.

Attack and defense types are the counter system now.

Both planned. Imperial Phase and Academy (for greek/hellenistic/roman/carth civs with the library as a placeholder structure). Not sure on what to do with the rest. The techs included there and a structure of this type wouldn't fit with brits/gauls/iberians, so I'm looking for a balanced alternative and ideas on mau/pers as well, were it seems semi-fitting. Another question is if stables/archery ranges/siege workshops should be added to a majority or all factions. Biggest concern is lack of models and the huge number of structures already in the game.

The plan is to have only one soldier plus the worker for the CC, with the exception of civs with weak spearmen (mau/pers) who will also have archers. That is no-matter if citizen soldiers are removed or not. Agreed, I'm still like 50-50 on if I should remove them. Maybe what's best is to keep those unchanged at the early stages of the mod, so if something turns out great, it can be transported to the core game without unpredictable side-effects.

This isn't a bad alternative, it's quite a different approach though and not fitting with civ specific discussions.

Thanks:). Destroying the CC early on isn't that easy, while spamming archers as the Mauryans and Persians (with their train time techs) makes for a good economy and a numerical advantage. Once the opponent loses the battlefield, their Civic Center won't stand for long anyway.

Before starting to work on my mod I'd like to get some feedback and discussion on some of it's aspects. The mod would cover the same era as the core game, being by far my favorite in history and at the same time having a solid base to work on. It will probably carry on with the extremely original title of my Warcraft III mod, "Ancient Empires", possibly something like "0 A.D. Ancient Empires". Depending on the final changes decided, my free time and motivation and any possible help I can gather, it might be out soon or take a good while. The goals are: Bringing gameplay closer to Age Of Empires II, while keeping several 0 A.D. mechanics and throw in extra ideas of mine, as well as some from the community and other strategy games.Creating a game with civ attributes and unit roles heavily inspired from history, even more so than in 0 A.D, without overdoing it with complexity and keeping a steady look on balance.Keeping the game slightly macro focused to suit my personal preferences, without totally neglecting micro possibilities.Adding a few extra structures, many more techs and altering how recruitment works quite a lot. Overall the tech-tree should be at least 50% different in the end.Editing a few core mechanics. Ranged units should be weaker and cheaper, buildings tougher but deal less damage (especially garrisoned ones), melee units slightly tougher, cavalry stronger but more expensive and goes on. Workers/builders might separate from soldiers (with very few exceptions) to allow for bigger price/attribute differences without breaking the economic balance and making raiding more important. Territories might be removed. Mercenaries will be completely reworked into a separate, major part of the tech-tree. Big units will be done justice but cost more pop.Population cap might be reduced to 200 to reduce pathfinding lag. If it's done this way, farms might get 1 worker only (with balance changes), to free up more space for military units and keep the combat part of the game almost at the same number of soldiers.Quite a bit more, but let's keep it simple for now. You can find many of them here (not all of those fit with the mod's concept though).Any feedback and ideas are very welcome:)

This just makes the early game more confusing for new players for no real gameplay value. Again confusing and requiring extra balance for no real benefit. If some bonus is intended for Macedonian skirmishers, attack or attack speed would do (simulating their fierce northern tribe recruits) without messing with the economic balance The idea on hoplites isn't bad, it's one of the ways to have them different and historical, it could also mix well with existing suggestions. The rest seem more or less like random things popping out of your head, or hard to implement for no real value (last stand - can just make them stronger). That would be the pilum used by swordsmen, not skirmisher javelins. Iberians had heavy javelins as well, before the Romans. I'd make such a thing a tech buffing swordmen's missile damage if pre-charge projectiles are implemented at some point. That should be the case for Persian and Mauryan early units (besides the cost - it should be unit-dependent and the cost differences should be on wood. An average human would eat more or less the same no matter where he's from). As I've told you before.. replacing starting walls with palisades solves only half the issue. Weird wall pre-placement and forced town layouts remain and the desired starting stone fort aspect is lost. I'd say make the civ center a fort. One more default arrow and some extra health and here's the forty-anti rush attribute without many issues. Weaker soldiers don't really fit with Iberians imo and the house bonus is a boring one, unless we really lack bonuses for them or it somehow really fits with some other of their aspects. Your last suggestion on them could prove interesting from a gameplay perspective. Since they are a mostly defensive faction, they are prone to choice by new players and not having to micro veterans in and out of eco would be helpful to them (or to players like myself who almost never bother with that anyway). It could also just not decrease for them instead of increasing. Ptol archers might be a common strategy but it should be removed imo. A mercenary unit, spammable in the village phase and one that wasn't even used by it's faction doesn't seem right. If we want a civ with heavy early metal use for mercs so that this tactic isn't lost, let's have that be Carthage. I'll also repeat that imo mercs should cost metal (their payment) and if full metal is too much, food instead of wood (they'd be fed by army supplies/not wood, and this is not messing with game balance anyway since they both are common resources). They should also train faster than other units overall. I'd say a good farmer civ should have a default farming bonus. Let's keep the econ tech-tree clear.

- If it turns out to work the way I suggested for slaves in general (and that if they are added to the core game) I can't see why Helots shouldn't lose hitpoints if other slaves do. Treatment of Helots was varied, depending on the period, different Spartan leaders, need for extra manpower in war etc. I wouldn't say they had it better on average compared to other slaves. The Spartans even had their youths and crypteia murdering and torturing Helots without a reason but to harden the former and oppress/demoralize the second. Differences I'd suggest are helots being bonused at farming, being trained at civ centers for food instead of bought at the market for metal and perhaps some tech(s) having to do with liberation/military enlisting. - Then, if it's not something related to/alternative to late reforms, it could work historically. However there's already the agoge tech buffing spartan hoplites. On the aura thing, I've suggested something similar.. an aura buffing allies or one debuffing enemies, related to their fame as the best soldiers. Could be a default or tech, or something coming with rank up for citizen hoplites.

- The Spartan Hoplite could be trained in many different ways, your suggestion could work for better or worse compared to mine, depending on how early game balance works in the end. - I've suggested slaves with degenerating hitpoints as a further differentiation from normal workers, simulating the increased abuse on them, often to the point of death. They could also combo with healers this way to increase their effectiveness/prevent revolts (if those are implemented). Your suggestion wouldn't be bad or unrealistic as a Spartan specific though. However helots did fight as skirmishers/peltasts and in general followed the Spartans into war in numbers often bigger than those of the Spartans. - I'm strongly in favor of a merc camp for all factions, a buffed one for ptolemies and a super buffed one for carthage, and rebalancing mercenaries in general. Mercenaries weren't trained the same way as local units. Barracks or (especially phase one) Civ Center training them seems wrong. An extra merc camp for each faction also opens up alternative-metal heavy strategies, with many possible related techs as well. - Perioikoi as the average units for Sparta sounds about right, although I still pref the early hoplites being Spartans (either slightly buffed citizens with a champion version as well, or champions from the start with a limiting factor). - If reforms for all factions get in, which I'd really love, I'd prefer to implement real ones not fantasy ones. Traditionalist "reform" in place of the Cleomenian one wasn't possible because: "true Spartan" manpower was in the low hundreds and hoplites were severely outclassed by other units for decades (and outclassed for almost 150 years) by then. Gameplay-wise it could work/add variety though.

A couple more: 0 A.D. Multiplayer: Prodigalson vs Hanniball Massive Mauryan archer rush vs Hanniball's Carthaginians, Alpha 17. 0 A.D. Multiplayer: Prodigalson vs phalanx A rather fast game in which I planned for my usual booming (economy development) before going in for combat, the rush attack I faced though acted like a call for counterattack. Phalanx as Carthage and myself as Seleucids, Unknown Land, Alpha 17.

As much as I'd love several extra civs for the core game, 12 are already hard enough to balance and some of them still need extra artwork, especially the Seleucids.