Mythos_Ruler

Heroes are extra strong, extra special units. You are only allowed to have one alive at any time. However, we do not plan to have "special abilities" akin to RPG spells or anything like that. But what each hero will have is an "aura" around him by which he/she affects the game around them. For instance, while Alexander astride his trusty steed Bucephalus is a strong unit, with high armour and attack points, he also has an aura that boosts the stats of cavalry units around him. So what you'd do is use him in conjunction with squads of cavalry (standard and super) for flanking maneuvers and cavalry charges because he boosts the stats of the cavalry around him. Every hero in the game will have an aura like this that is unique to that hero. Hope that explains that. Also look here for a great showcase for the Greek heroes and their special aura abilities.

All good ideas for an RPG, but not necessarily for an RTS, where you have 100s of units.

Yes we are.

That is a big big possibility. Wijitmaker and the programmers are spearheading that option and we hope to have something for you this summer. Keep your fingers crossed.

Also, I'll stress that "cheats" will be an option controlled by the game host.

lol... That's the plan, m8.

Most likely just a simple attack multiplier for being on a hill or in a tower battlement.

Here's a little tidbit for Part 2. This is extremely tentative, since planning for Part 2 is only in its extreme early stages - real planning for Part 2 will begin in earnest after release of Part 1. But, anywho, we plan on having two Roman factions for Part 2: Western Imperial Romans, which will take us up to Constantine and will include the stereotypical "Roman Legionnaire", and the Eastern Imperial Romans, which will cover the early Eastern Empire and late Romans with which comes all the chainmail and barbarian influences.

Not too much, no. But do you want just skeletons, or armour and equipment too?

I wouldn't be against, say, 10% of the soldiers that die stay on the map longer than the others.

Pimp

Well, we don't know yet. AI and formations are still in development. Sorry - best I can do.

Yes. There will be blood.

I call this the "mosh pit" style of game play. It pretty much sucks as a game play dynamic, if you ask me.

Usually a battlefield is cleaned up quite quickly in real life. The dead were cremated. Even though we can't really represent this in a typical game, it still doesn't make sense for dead units to lay around for very long.

Well obviously you CAN'T! There were no effective methods of reducing food spoilage except pickling and drying. Soooooo, the army will have to be stricken with food poisoning and dysentery from time to time. I forgot about hygiene! How do you propose we solve the problem of thousands of men and horses relieving themselves in camp?

I think it would be cool that you have to manually feed your units every 2 minutes of game time. A "chef" unit can be trained that follows the army around and cooks their meals (he can be upgraded to the "Sous Chef", then up to the Elite "Chef de Cuisine"!). Also, units should have to forage for food or else starve to death when they are idle for far too long (5 minutes+).

I think Bobby, aka "Aeros", can answer this one.

Sure man. Make a thread about Part 2 and we'll be glad to talk ideas.

That's a fairly academic question isn't it? I mean, we can represent it any way to the game host/players, but it all comes out the same in the end, whether it's shown as 250 per player or 1000 per game or any other way you choose to represent the pop cap. I'd say 1000 per player is high. Your average battle, we are aiming for, would be 150 or so units per player duking it out on the battlefield (add in 50-100 units gathering resources and building structures and you get a pop cap of 250). We'll try to make it so battles are more decisive. We'll try to make it worth every player's benefit to set up his armies and use tactical maneuvers to destroy the enemy's army in an actual set-piece battle, rather than just a huge mosh pit in the middle of the map like in most other RTS games. To do that will take a lot of tweaking and play testing.

The pop cap is not set in stone and I am fairly confident we will allow the game host to determine the max pop cap of a particular game session.

The graphic is only an illustration for a gigantic history article on our website. History and Evolution of the Hellenic Phalanx

When training units, you'll be able to train them in "batches" from 5 - 20 or more (there will be a cost benefit to training bigger batches, but of course will take longer than training 1 at a time)). When fighting, you can use formations. When soldiers are put into formation you can use them just like in Rome:Total War. They essentially become one "unit" until you take them out of the formation or until too many individual soldiers die; in such a case the formation "breaks" and all the soldiers are individual units again. Oh, and the Macedonian Pezhetairoi use the "syntagma" formation, while Hoplitai and Spartiates will utilize the "phalanx" formation.

A major component of weather implementation, particles, has been stalled for a while now. The programmers are focusing more on stability issues that the moment.

Yes, that will definitely be possible.