Mythos_Ruler

Not only that, but by the WAY Sarkozy is pushing the reform through. No debate in parliament. Very quick votes. No chance for alternate reforms. Anywho. I would like to live in Greece for a while. probably somewhere near Argos, as I have a good friend with family there.

This is a gross misunderstanding about what the strikes and protests are for. I blame the media for this. I really do. The French understand the need for reform. The problem is the way the reform is being handled by Sarkozy and parliament. It's much more nuanced than the, "French=lazy," meme I see spreading around the Internet and news media. In fact, I wish more people would take to the streets in their respective countries. I look at the apathy of my own countrymen with disdain.

Great work on this. People will enjoy finally being able to pour over their stats. Somebody though really should create a more aesthetically pleasing look for these dialogs and screens. I fear it might fall to me to do it.

Right, just mentioning how easy it would be to do. Personally, I think bits and pieces of eyecandy flying about when the building is hit with a siege rock or whatever will suffice.

It would actually be quite trivial to add fire to the game, to denote a building's health, once we had particle animations. Once a building hit a %-age of health it would choose a bigger fire actor prop.

I took a look at the new portraits. Great job in separating them out. I've already started adding more portraits to the folder.

There's actually two implemented: Open Order Line and Column. Units will automatically switch back and forth.

Yeah, I recently rebalanced all the units. The balance should be better for Alpha III.

It amazes me that so many people have a problem with this. Others on the team wanted to keep the formation buttons out of the UI, because they felt people would be easily confused. I argued that the buttons should remain so people can see what's in store for later releases and that players wouldn't get confused, because the buttons are grayed. I was wrong.

Formations wouldn't be "basic" if they all worked.

I'm not really going to delve into it here, because this is the wrong discussion for it, but yeah, one involves click-drag and another a radius around the Civ Centre. Neither are mutually exclusive though. In fact I would like to see both. Anyway, no more about Walls in this thread plz. They will not be going into Alpha III, that I can be sure of (unless an intrepid fan of the game programs it for us in the meantime).

Walls are complex. We're not sure when we'll even begin to work on those. Plus, we have a couple of competing ideas of how walls should/could work. I even think there is room for both implementations, actually.

You guessed it--most of these are already known to us! However, it's great to hear feedback from players and see what jumps out at them right away or which features and bugs feel important to them. We've gone back and forth on this one. On one hand we'd like to display as much info as possible, but on the other hand we really really like the lean UI of games like Battle for Middle Earth II. We tried to have the best of both worlds by allowing you to hover your cursor over the Health Status Bar and see a tooltip that tells you the pertinent information. Try that next time and see if it works well enough for you! More units* especially and more factions will be forthcoming in upcoming releases. Plus, within the next couple of releases we will implement the feature where units 'Level-Up' automatically based on their experience. Basic -> Advanced -> Elite. *I have added a few units into the editor (Altas) for Alpha III that I think people will like. In the future you will be able to select stance by clicking the "sword" or 'shield' icons next to the unit portrait. Right, siege will eventually get special bonuses vs. buildings (rams vs. gates, especially). Also, infantry units will gain the ability to capture buildings.

Not so sure about that. Then people will assume a Celtic-themed release when we have no such plans.

I agree that "gameplay" per se doesn't need to be a focus in the next release. It can clean-house, sweep away the bugs, and add some much needed features like an Option Menu. A better looking Loading screen would be mostly a UI and Art dept thing rather than "gameplay." The only significant gameplay things I'd like to see would be the gathering auras. I can even give the impression that we're releasing more gameplay stuff than we really are by releasing another faction. All it takes is to move the assets from the Internal to Public mods. That alone would make some end-users happy. EDIT: EDIT2: Nixed "control groups" suggestion.

Perhaps in later ages "victory" is redefined.

I think in later ages you basically evolve your "empire" into a nation-state, so actual physical expansion becomes less important.

Right. No dragon heads or any of that.

Well, yeah, sure.

Some of your questions, Philip, seem rather intuitive to me and are easy to answer. When hover over resources out of range, then the cursor changes to the appropriate gathering cursor, but with a red "no smoking" symbol over it. Try to task them and you hear a simple, "ang!" sound. Also, clicking a drop site should give you a visual representation of the aura. When a dropsite is destroyed (and the gathering units are not within the radius of another dropsite), then they would go to idle. I don't know what you mean by "too many gatherers" for a given dropsite though. I really hope we don't use Rise of Nations' system with "slots." It should be fairly free and unencumbered. No slots.

I didn't say that. A coracle is fine for a FISHING BOAT.... but for a large troop transport and combat platform? I think not.

Well, some factions can have "cataphract" cavalry an age early. I am thinking along the lines of Cataphract -> Knight -> Paladin. Like that.

Yeah, what Jason posted is the most flexible way. I was just throwing an idea out there, that repair and building are identical, in a misguided attempt to make it easier. What Jason links us to is the most flexible and ideal way to do it (although we no longer use the <Actions> tag).

Nope. A gathering aura is a radius that allows units to gather within it. A <DropSite> is a building that casts this gathering radius. Like in AOE3, there is no resource shuffling. As an addendum to Jason's post, I believe we decided that: - Hunting could occur throughout the map, without auras. This is so a player could "poach" an enemy's herd of deer. - If the Mill's gathering aura bled into an adjacent territory that you don't own, you can still gathering within it. This allows you to "leech" resources from an adjacent territory. - Fields and Corrals must be built within the aura of a Farmstead or Civ Centre.

Major feature: I'd prefer something like gather auras, so that the Mill, Farmstead, etc. have a reason for being. I've given scout towers a large LOS radius, so they are useful, even if they arent up to spec. But Farmsteads and Mills currently have no use, gameplay-wise. Some UI things: Switch over to individual portraits for unit icons instead of portrait sheets. Remove "stamina" bar from buildings and give them "fidelity" or "loyalty" status bar instead. New Loading Screen.