Mythos_Ruler

Good work Enrique! These walking animations are much better than the originals. More natural and realistic. I'd quibble with the way the armor moves on the front legs, but it looks so good already. For everyone else's reference, these are our chief references:

Caesar's legionnaires: Trajan's Dacian Wars:

The Battle of Mycale:

Rich hoplite, late 6th century or early 5th century: "Illyrian" style helmet:

Animated units can indeed use normal maps. Look at the Carthaginian elephants. As far as your animation goes, I think the bell could sway a little bit left and right. Also, remember that elephants aren't very animated when they walk.

Just used walls to great affect tonight in a 1v1v1 multiplayer match. They kept one enemy player busy and staved off while I struggled with another.

oshron is right. We'd have the "German" culture, with common buildings and some common units, but then have multiple "Factions" within that culture that have some unique attributes. Just like the current Hellenic, Successor, and Celtic cultures and their factions.

FeXoR, we have the "Sandbox" difficulty for this.

I actually like your death animation much better! Don't forget all the prop points.

It's okay that you're working on it. I'm just wondering if there is a problem with Enrique's models. We can always see if you'd like to give something else a try.

1st one, the brick. Also, I don't think the ramp will need to be that long, considering that the shoreline will be right there. I don't think the lighthouse should stick too far into the water anyway (think: like a dock).

No offense to your skills, Duke, but why aren't we using Enrique's models? They're already made and mapped.

The Ptolemies definitely get a camel unit, called the "Nabataean Camel Archer." And of course, a camel will be used as the Ptolemaic trader unit.

Yeah, not digging the grass. I think a block/brick base would be best.

Hmm, what about a block base? So it looks like your men are building it instead of summoning rocks from the deep. I love the look of the tower though. The door could be scaled to the unit better. It's okay that the tower itself isn't at 100% scale. if the footprint of the tower+block base isn't much bigger than this, then the footprint should end up around the same size as a dock, which is great.

I think some folks are putting too much stock into the religious motivations of pagans of this time. Sure, some believed that glorious death in battle guaranteed a better afterlife, but I don't think this was the main basis for great deeds and warlike-spirit. Most Roman soldiers during the 2nd Punic Wars were likely fighting because they were defending their city and homes from a foreign invader (Hannibal). Persian soldiers fought at Thermopylae because they were conscripted to. As far as I know, Ahura Mazda blessed truth and justice and things like that, not reckless battlefield heroics. Carthaginians in the 3rd Punic War fought to prevent their own enslavements and slaughter. Alexander fought for everlasting fame and glory, not to gain some kind of comfortable afterlife. The men beneath him fought for riches and plunder. The Teutones fought the Romans under Marius in order to secure a new homeland (and lost badly). I think it would be cool to have some kind of tech at the temple that boosts your units, but base it on religious rites or rituals. These were very important to superstitious soldiers and helped curry the favor of the gods for their cause, or so they believed. Alexander sacrificed with his army's priests every morning. Priests from many cultures ritually slaughtered goats, chickens, and cattle prior to battle (Greek: "Sphagia") for favorable omens. Ritual feasts accompanied religious and civic festivals, with burnt offerings "given to the gods." Spoils of war were dedicated to temples in honor of the gods and to gain their favor. Religious oracles were consulted by private citizens, governments, and kings for guidance.

Actually, it's true that we'd like to hack off the back third of the temple to fit a good footprint size and shape.

LOL, I didn't realize that tech affected siege towers. I think I will review and redesign the entire Fortress tech tree sometime in the nearish future.

Some nice ideas there. We can definitely pick and choose some of them. I'll paste the ones here that I find the most interesting or useful with some comments: For Part 2, we could have a bonus or tech for Parthians and Huns called "Parthian Shot" (or we can be cheeky and call it "Parting Shot") where their horse archers gain the ability to fire on enemy units even when retreating. Would probably require the implementation of a "turret" feature (the top part of the rider actor is its own model or actor prop that can rotate toward its target, like a tank "turret").

That would be my preference, but we must first get real formations implemented. Though, I don't think counter-bonuses will go away completely, just be less important. About some of the specific examples brought up by Prod... There have been examples in history of swordsmen being used to hamstring elephants. There have also been examples of archers mowing down cavalry, so we've shown this by giving them a bonus vs. cav spearmen, but still keeping them vulnerable to cav swordsmen--a trade off. Historically archers and cavalry archers were used well against swordsmen (see: Crassus). Archers weren't very effective against heavily armored spearmen though (see: The Greco-Persian Wars). I would agree that we could give more nuance to this instead of blanket bonuses. There is some nuance there already (swordsmen are really only good vs. elephants when paired with ranged support), but perhaps not enough. It'll all get shaken up once we have proper formation support.