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Same here haha. I think with a bit of creativity we could combine the two systems though. For example we could have individual units just like they are now, but every time they execute orders they receive as a group (so either by box-selection or by control groups) you could make them act like battalions (receiving certain bonuses, moving in special formations or whatever you have in mind). This could be indicated graphically also, for instance by an additional and funky selection circle around these groups. (These battalions could also stay together as long as the player doesn't sort individuals out. A minimum size for battalions of approx. 10 units would also seem reasonable.) This way you'd always preserve control over individual units, but battalions would emerge quite frequently (as group orders are issued quite often). If the player has a preference for a specific group he can save it in a control group just like he can do now. What do you think? (Even if you're not pleased by this outline I think we should look in the direction of integrated solutions; i.e. how to have battalions while maintaining maximum control).

I tend to agree with Spahbod. Mumie and Michael: Again, having farms hold infinite food does not make them overpowered per se. Because of their low gather rates they are a worse option than any other source of food. This is why their construction costs are irrelevant; the mistake you guys are making is that you think in absolute instead of opportunity costs! I will put it this way: From your own experience, would you say that post-AoK farms felt 'unbalanced' or 'overpowered'? Michael, on the number of gatherers: I am against any arbitrary limits as well and AoE3 farms might fall into this category (maximum of ten gatherers per farm). However, having one worker per farm (AoM and AoEO) does seem quite intuitive to me. At least it feels way more intuitive than the alternative (the current implementation in 0AD) which is to have as many gatherers as you like crammed on one field. Consequently I would say you won't get around a maximum number of gatherers anyway (regardless of the amount of food a field can hold). To sum up, 'infinite' does not equal 'OP' and Spahbod is correct when addressing the annoying late-game issues with finite farms: There were good reasons why Ensemble/Robot decided never to go back to the AoK system. Let's move on from there and think of better ways of making the economy a fun part of 0AD . I am sure this community has the potential to do just that.

They are quite bold to say the least... "- You use the Pyrogenesis Engine (http://www.moddb.com...nes/pyrogenesis) by Wildfire Games, right? - yes, but with a minimal part of the 0 a.d. game" ...but feeling like smart businessmen... http://media.indiedb...534982061_o.jpg

They are clearly using the 0AD engine!!? http://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/15/14698/BYZEN_2011-10-01_21-29-50-88.jpg Look at the idle workers button and the developers' overlay.

Haha. Well if there's time I'd implement it the way I described it because conversions out of nothing would seem a bit out of place... Oh well. On a side note it's good to see the creativity in this forum, it's a database of nice ideas .

Do I see a new feature here? It's quite a good idea in my opinion... Give some military units the ability to steal women, and if they manage to drop them off at your home base they're yours... very consistent with Roman mythology for instance; see 'The Rape of the Sabine Women' (rape = old English for abduction). So maybe a special feature for Roman citizen soldiers? To balance it out a bit, you could make so that the bereft player retains the woman's LOS until she's dropped off at the enemy's CC, and make the kidnappers move very slowly. When a kidnapper is killed the woman is set free .

You're probably right... he will know best what to do. It's just my impatience guys

Philip while I do understand the trade-off you described between features, bugs, performance, number of lines, readability, maintainability, cleverness, etc. that a programmer has to face, and the importance of reviewing patches (there's already a number of awesome changes coming up in the new alpha because of that!), I think for the purpose of fundraising it could be a good idea to pull out a new feature in the remaining days that you have. New features, as you said, are the most visible improvements to players (/donors) and could therefore make the biggest impact on the effectiveness of future pledgies I figure. So if possible something along the lines of wall placement, viable ship pathfinding, healers, or any other direly needed feature could prove to be some good piece of advertisement? In the end, after this month, you could make an impressive list that way: 'Implementations that are directly perceivable by the player: - New feature X - Saved games - Reviews of patches allowing for trade, barter, rally point marker lines, etc.'

I do see the original poster's intention; I too feel bad sometimes about losing a few resources, so having workers carry multiple types of resources seems attractive. However, I agree with Mythos that in the end it's no big deal. Also imagine a farmer is tasked to chop wood; he'll not be able to drop off his food at the woodcamp so he'll carry it around for quite some time, so there's design-related problems with different resource types as well. As already pointed out Philip's suggestion is too micro-intensive/not worth the effort. So all in all it's probably a low priority issue .

Sweyn78 I really like your samples, keep up the great work!

Well guys what I think has been left out a bit in this discussion is that infinite farms are not OP per se just because they have the word 'infinite' in them . The caveat for infinite farms in AoM/AoE3/AoEO was that their gather rates were substantially lower than those of hunting/fishing. This way you'd always go for the latter if you had the option. Only later on in the game, when these resources were depleted and the player was confronted with more important decisions, the game designers would let you 'settle down' in exchange for lower gather rates. So infinite farms are quite a smart solution actually: They force you to do micro-intensive hunting etc. early on in the game, while letting you concentrate on military micro in late game. (In my opinion they're also consistent with reality because agriculture is a renewable resource while game, fish etc. is not.) Finally, in order to force the player to build more than just one farm, AoM/AoE3/AoEO also restricted the number of max gatherers (1 in AoM, 10 in AoE3). In addition, infinite farms can be implemented quickly if desired: Just let them hold 999999999999999999999 units of food (= an amount that is virtually infinite) and decrease the gather rates a bit. (Optionally you could hide the amount from the player if a programmer finds the time to implement that. Technically that's exactly the way it was done in AoM I think. Same with AoM's Greek temples; they held a large amount of 'favour' that could be gathered by villagers, but the number was hidden from the player or replaced by 'Inf.' if I recall correctly.) In the long run a number of max gatherers should be considered as well. Do it; it'll improve the alphas for now and we can still discuss farms again on the way to the final game .

Strongly agree. Changing routes should be possible. Yes!!! In AoK/AoM you often totally forgot where your traders were going. vts' rally point lines would be the ideal solution .

haha confusion all around

Cheers Philip. I am not a programmer but I think I do see the point of your critique. Hmmm.... now what could that be?

+1. With the addition of the Persians there cannot be a better one. Edit: Well obviously to us as Western historians the Greco-Persian wars is the first thing to come our minds when we talk about the Persians, and he is our main source for that, so... he is obviously the most significant name for us in that context.

I agree with everything that's been said, oshron's idea of messages in the original languages sounds funny as well. Maybe as a subtitle? By the way, where did you guys get the native names for Iberian, Celtic etc. units? edwardlongshank, I prefer 0AD's option to continue to play over AoM's forced ending though so I think that's fine

Great job all

Just make a big 'You are victorious' text message and make the music set in more rapidly, shouldn't be too much of a deal?

'You have won the battle. Do you want to leave the game now?' Meh. I'd rather have a huge 'YOU ARE VICTORIOUS' and a fanfare setting in. The way it is now is rather unrewarding .

On the concept of Ages. I was thinking that maybe instead of simply copying AoE's Age concept you could add a little twist to that: It is obvious that some sort of über-techs like Ages should be implemented as they let the player advance through the course of a match. However, instead of recycling the concept of a handful of Ages that unlock a huge range of techs and units across the board, it would possibly be cooler to have certain techs that are meta-techs as well but that unluck only a specific branch of new techs/units, e.g. something like 'iron smelting' for a range of military improvements/units, something like 'geography' for trade, diplomacy and scouting. 'Iron smelting' could be followed by 'Marian reforms' (or a more multicultural name, whatever) that enables the next line of military improvements/units, and so forth. Units/buildings could visually show improvements when you have researched an über-tech that affects them ('iron smelting' may change the appearance of military units, but not of buildings; for, say, 'masonry' [possibly unlocking building improvements/new buildings] it would be the opposite). This way you could have more über-techs than 'just' four Ages (each being a bit cheaper than Ages of course), say ten or so, allowing the player to specialize in some fields over the course of the game, and it'd emancipate 0AD from AoE as well . Key to this would be simplicity though; avoid cross-references in the techtree, clearly indicate the techs/units that will be unlocked by each über-tech, etc. Has there already been a discussion on Ages etc. so far?

Yeah that is really annoying. You can't access resources in no man's land. Anyway I think territories still need some good thoughts put into them... at the moment they're mostly a restriction instead of strategically valuable / fun.

Yeah but let's not make him waste too much of his time on writing stuff for us rather than doing actual programming work haha. Maybe one of your PR guys could step in and make things transparent so he only has to file some of his cool reports every now and then. Just my 2 cents though Edit: Then again you're probably right in saying that some PR commitment on his part would make people more likely to continue donating.

Ummm... now that we've all praised him for his reports he stopped writing them

Thanks for the info Philip, especially for that on the fundraising operation . Keep it up! EDIT: I don't have any clue about performance issues, but it seems like the game eats a lot of CPU power. I have quite a new quadcore processor (Intel 2630QM) and yet my antivirus gives me a 'heavy CPU consumption' warning for pyrogenesis.exe. Just thought I'd let you know

Well yeah but why stop there. I think I once read something on these boards along the lines of making highly ranked units more useful for combat and lower ones more useful as labourers (make sense historically right). That would maybe introduce a twist that could make ranks more important. [EDIT: Sorry that's what you were saying .] Or maybe you guys or the community will come up with something else that's cool. Then again: Having different unit types and different unit types countering each other is at the heart of any RTS, much more than any rank system, so "double click -> all units of the same type" as a control mechanism is probably a must in any way.