Mythos_Ruler

Indeed. The idea is that meat units (infantry specifically) would capture buildings, while you use siege engines to destroy buildings. Right now we don't have capturing (infantry vs. buildings) or attack bonuses (siege vs. buildings), so we allow meat units to attack buildings.

Pontus, Macedon, and the Seleucids all had "Bronze Shield" corps. Late Macedon split its phalangites into two corps, the white shields (Leukaspides) and the bronze shields (Chalkaspides). The Seleucids had the silver shields (Argyraspides), the gold shields (Chrysaspides), and bronze shields pikemen corps. Another idea would be the "Romanized" Thorakitai swordsmen for the Seleucids. Seleucids also used Scythe Chariots (in addition to Companions, Cataphracts, Agema, and Armored War Elephants). You can see how difficult it is to only choose just two Champion Units for them.

I think the new capes look better because they beef up the unit's shoulders and make them look more intimidating.

IMHO, it's not necessary to make such restrictions. I feel that the curtain wall itself would be enough of an incentive for the player to build within its radius. Just my tuppence.

I don't know. It never seemed to be a problem in Age of Mythology. Maybe a green glow can show up on the buildable shorelines when the Dock is selected for construction.

Hmm, in other RTS games, specifically AOK and AOM, it was simply understood very easily where you could place the dock---on the shoreline with a requisite water depth. The Dock's ghost would be red until you move it to a place that it may be placed. And when you moved it to a suitable place, the ghost "snapped" to a position perpendicular to the shoreline.

The biome for the map is Temperate (oak, beech, and pine trees). You can choose whichever colors you want. The problem is SMST is on vacation and didn't send me the map back with his edits. lol. Perhaps I could have come up with a better way to do this.

Everybody needs to remember that we haven't implemented running yet, so the current walking speeds make sense for a game that will have running and charging.. We could make walking super fast for now until running is enabled, then nerf walking back to normal when we implement the running and charging feature. Not sure when I'll get around to that though. Small correction, I added a nominal 0.5 to all of the walking speeds, not 50%. I can see how my commit message could be misinterpreted though.

Another YouTube video I found:

Oh, I think it's internal. I'll repost it here: WallsClick-Drag So, there is the traditional click-drag way, seen in games such as Age of Kings and Age of Mythology. I think what will need to happen with this method is that the wall needs a short, medium, and long segment, which switches out depending upon what's needed as the wall is being dragged out. Wall towers show up between segments to link them together and hide any ugly seams. Wall Gates show up at regular intervals, provided those intervals have enough length. A simple click-drag-click will place down the walls in one straight line. Holding shift allows this process to continue, placing endpoints down at a maximum angle of 90 degrees. Additional endpoints can be placed as long as shift is pressed. City Walls can only be placed in territories owned by the player. The special Roman Siege Walls can be placed anywhere on the map as part of their benefit. Ring Method, i.e. Curtain Walls This method is not to replace the click-drag method, but as an additional feature. There is a band or ring around a Civ Centre (circle or polygonal) that cannot be built upon by the player (except by other walls). This ring is where the wall will go. Also, no other Civ Centre rings may overlap, creating self-contained cities with their own curtain walls. A button in the Civ Centre's UI can be clicked, which places all the wall foundations for the player along this ring. Actual towers, wall segments, and gates will not cost any additional amount, but the total cost for all wall pieces is paid up-front. The foundations are placed and the player can task citizens to go build it. Optional feature: click one of the circuit wall's foundations to see an additional UI button. Clicking this brings all idle citizens to the nearest wall segment to build it. What if resources are in the way (trees, mines, deer, etc.)?!?!? -- Trees will simply be cut through (you lose them), same for berry bushes or anything like that. Deer will automatically walk out of the way (as they should anyway for building foundations). Since the radius of the circuit walls will be known, Metal and Stone mines can easily be placed elsewhere by the random map script or custom scenario designer. Either they cannot be placed on the ring, or they "snap" to one side or the other. Integration We could use the Ring Method for city walls in territories owned by the player and the click-drag method for the Roman Siege Walls. or We could allow both methods for city walls (and click-drag for Roman siege walls). or Similar to Battle for Middle earth II, the ring just represents a radius where the click-drag city walls can be used. No special auto-placement or anything like that. EDIT: My preference is thus: -- Curtain Wall for stone city walls. This creates a nice visual for the Civ Centre minimum distance, plus creates self-contained cities. It doesn't have to be exactly like my idea with the auto foundation placement and all that, but maybe stone city walls can only be built within this radius (like in Battle for Middle Earth II). -- Click-drag, Own Territory for Palisades. They are cheaper, but also weaker. Not nearly as strong or as defensive as the curtain walls, but work well in a pinch when you have lots of wood and not enough stone for curtain walls. -- Click-drag, Enemy and Neutral territory for Roman Siege Walls.

I was even thinking the spikes could be an upgrade that has a "trample damage" radius, so that enemy units that attack the wall also lose Health. The wall separators (blocks of wood between wall segments) could be upgraded individually to those palisade forts (really, just "towers"), that shoot arrows but are ungarrisonable. Doing this would cost a lot of wood (200 maybe) over and above the cost of building the wall, they aren't particularly strong, are attackable by all units (not just siege), and you would have to do it one separator at a time. Just some ideas.

There is further discussion here: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=13684

My main beef is with patents, specifically software and gene patents, and their length (20 years in length, with multiple ways of extending it in perpetuity). Copyrights have also gotten way out of hand, lasting 120 years in some cases. There is a point where these things should become public domain. 70 years after the original author is dead is ludicrous. There is a point where copyright and patent protection stifles innovation, instead of promoting it like intended. However, those concerns are tangential to what Bob is talking about. Most people infringe on more recent works than 120 years. I think cutting off someone's internet "permanently" for 3 copyright infringements, as in NZ, is awfully draconian, and I'm not sure how that could really be enforced.

Agreed.

That would be good, but we still need a way to disable it if we, say, make a special object that inherits from a template that has MaxDistance, but we don't want the entity to have a MaxDistance.

With the minor, albeit useless, territory effect Houses and Mills and Farmsteads have, you get the satisfaction of seeing those buildings add some territory to your empire, but what they do take is too small for any real benefit. If we have dynamic territories, I think it's good to squeeze as much satisfaction into the concept as possible. I think it's a good balance between gameplay and aesthetics.

The only reason I gave them a border effect is to see the border nicely and gently arc around them. Their effect isn't great enough to give room for building anything else or to deny the enemy much room either. It's mostly cosmetic. Ditto! And I'll probably go through the civ profiles and look at the Special Buildings and make some restriction suggestions. I believe there will be these types of restrictions:-- MinDistance: I'm thinking the Iberian Monument will fit the bill. The size of the map will limit the number the player can make. -- 1 constructed and alive at any given time: Persian Palace/Treasury building. -- 1 per Civic Centre: Greek Special Buildings -- A specific number, like 2 or 3: Thinking the Roman Army Camp. -- Unlimited: The Roman Siege Walls... difficult to actually assign some number to this, so will probably effectively be unlimited, although they may have a restriction that they must be built in neutral or enemy territory (most be used offensively, rather than defensively). -- 1 built/alive the whole match: Can only build (or train) one of these entities once, ever, the entire match. Once it's destroyed/dead, then you can't build/train it ever again. I can't think of any current special buildings that would warrant this restriction, but you never know. May do this for certain powerful heroes.

#687 limits are not valid. They were derived from static territories and settlements. In your example, where is the special allowance for it to build in neutral territory? Are we going to do it like this? <Territory>own neutral</Territory> We may want to be able to have an unlimited MaxDistance. Perhaps 9999 would be enough to constitute "unlimited" since our largest maps (currently) are 512x512, or a way to disable MaxDistance (and the other elements) in child entities. The only distance restriction would be the Civic Centre one, as far as I know, and that is only a MinDistance restriction, but it wouldn't hurt to add more functionality than planned, just in case we change our minds later (like Houses can't be built farther than X distance from Civ Centres, etc.). Right now, I can only think of a few build limit restrictions: Scout Towers = 20 or 30. Fortresses = 5 or so. Special Buildings = variable. When we had static territories many of the Special Buildings had per-territory limits, so now we will have to revisit them (which may be a fun task!). Heroes = 1 alive at any given time. As long as these limits are easy to change, then their exact numbers don't matter at this junction (we'll play with it a bit to see what's best). Things like Houses don't need a limit, since there is a hard-capped population limit. If someone wants to build 100 Houses, then let them. And I see no reason for a hard limit on Civ Centres either; if we're going to give them a MinDistance, then they will automatically be limited by the size of the map, which is nice and tidy. Other thoughts: We'll need some UI additions that notify you of why you can't place the Civ Centre so close, etc. Also perhaps a visible ring around the Civ Centre as you are moving its ghost around to determine where to place the foundation.

We hope to include capturing in one form or another. We plan to have a Loyalty or Fidelity feature for capturing buildings, female citizens, and livestock, so we might as well use the same system for ships. I think the original idea is to tally up the health, attack, and armour stats for the units garrisoned aboard each ship to determine which crew will come out victorious. Yeah, the treasure capturing thing was added to give Trade Ships something to do until trading is enabled. I think they'll keep their treasure gathering feature as a secondary function alongside their primary "trade" function.

Ah, makes sense. Carry on, explorer!

Hmm, are you updating the actual pathfinder? Would look goofy to have a visible path line that the units don't actually follow. (the path line is straight, while the actual pathing is curvy).

Right, it looks like he just used it for reference (likely someone gave him the image and said, "Here, draw it just like this!"). But it's too close to be able to say it's a unique work, so it's good that Aviv pulled it.

Perhaps a solid white line along the "walkable" path, then a broken line from the point where it is no longer walkable?

I'm starting to agree, or at least shrink the tower radius to something like the House radius. We already decided that walls will not add to the border, just potentially stop the expansion of your enemy's border. Also, there will not be "wall spam" if we go with the curtain wall idea. And if we add palisades, they will be relatively weak (and destructible by meat units) and only serve to help slow the enemy's attack or slow an enemy's raid. Indeed. It is my preference that the only building that heals garrisoned units should be the Temple. You're in a small minority on this. I just discussed why there will not be wall and tower spam. I'm not against there being settlements in some form, however I would like to run with the current method for a while, or perhaps make settlements a game option.Once we implement the Civic Centre radius, people will be forced to expand with their Civ Centres building new colonies a required distance away from their starting positions. I would like to see how well this works first. I'd say each player's territory is separate. If you want "combined" territories, then play a coop game. For simplicity's sake, I'd say you can build on any territory you own.

That's fine. I was just throwing the idea out there to see if someone could find a problem with it.