Hello, I've only recently discovered 0 AD and I've got to say, i love it! Really feels like a trip back to the games I used to love when i was younger, but in a new and awesome way. Keep up the good work! So i've been playing the alpha 9 release and I have a few comments and suggestions for the team. Keep in mind im new here, so i might not be aware that some idea might have already been thoroughly discussed or that some feature might already be on its way - I feel like rotating buildings could be easier. The current system is fine, but often causes problems as you cant really move the building anymore after you've been rotating it! that is, when you're done rotating the building, it gets placed right there. What if, now that I've rotated the building to the direction I want it, I notice i also wanna move it a bit? I know this isn't a major issue, but somehow it makes the game feel less ... fluid? I think it would be nice, while you're placing a building, if you could for example hold down some key (Ctrl maybe?) and use the mouse wheel to rotate the building before you need to left click to place it. - I dont know is it just me, but i can't seem to build walls at all! All i can get is poorly aligned blocks that hardly look like a wall. still, from what I gather, a new wall system is already on its way, so great - The ground textures are great! Sometimes they kinda look like real photographs have been used as the base for some textures, which I'm curious about. Still, some (few) textures such as mediterranean dirt B look a bit ... too white? They remind me of overexposed photographs, and they kind of break the nice look of the ground. I mean, the ground can't be that shiny! - The water looks great. I feel like ships should have some idle animations, like for example just sligtly swinging from side to side in the moving water. But that's probably already on its way. I also think some waves on the shores would be nice! I remember back in the day how great it looked when AoM featured waves on its coasts. - Are there to be 6 civilizations, or will you add more? - One thing I've never liked in strategy games is just how bare the soil looks once you've chopped down trees in an area. No matter how green and lush a grass texture is, land always tends to look really bare. Same happens to your towns. Im thinking of more eye candy: shrubs and bushes, tree stumps, shoreline animals like turtles and swans, fallen trees, rocks and what not. I'm aware that this might be detrimental to the performance of the game for many players, and there might be players who dont even care for all that eye candy anyway, so maybe there could be an option to turn eye candy on/off? All those little details would help the game feel more real. - This kind of relates to my previous point as well, but have you thought of including neutral factions? Not full fledged factions of course, but just some inhabitants of the region that aren't affiliated with any player. You wouldn't necessarily even have to be able to interact with them (not saying no to that either though), because even just being able to SEE for example a little greek temple with a couple priests going about their business or a small encampment of huts with children running around and so on would make the region feel alive. Or maybe you could have neutral markets you could trade with, or neutral inns you could capture that would grant some mercenary troops depending on the map. I just think that the maps could have features that give the illusion of these places existing even beyond your attempt to destroy your opposing players. People live here, people who have nothing to do with your armies or towns! - Love the idea of soldier citizens. That is perhaps the single idea I love the most in the whole game. Only one thing to point out: I think the "town center", or whatever it was called, should have a "town bell" function, which would essentially signal to all female citizens in that town center's area to take cover and garrison in the nearest garrisonable building. When I get attacked and I have to organize my troops for the defence, I find myself wishing my people would have the common sense of running away instead of carrying on gathering berries while a battle rages on right next to them - Farms! Aside from how i think farms could use with a few eye-candy props, i think farms could either have infinite food or be automatically replanted when they run out of food. What sounds the best to me is that the farm structure itself wouldn't ever actually disappear (because in reality, farms dont just disappear), but it still CAN run out of food (it becomes an "exhausted farm") and when it does, you need to task a citizen to replant it. select a citizen and right click the exhausted farm. Replanting would of course cost some wood, so I'm not talking about gratis food for the rest of the game. I just don't like how the whole farm structure disappears entirely, when the whole harvest has been collected. - Fish could respawn every now and then. In this historical period they didn't exactly have the problem of entirely exhausting the fish supplies of a region, so I don't think it should be happening in the game either. I know that infinite resources are bad for gameplay, but food is the most basic resource, I don't think that having a way of being able to collect food for however long you want would break gameplay. It also makes no sense for a region to run out of food entirely, if a game lasts a long time. - I liked in AoE3 the treasures you had to fight for. Like the native americans imprisoned by criminals: you'd see the criminals laughing and messing around a fire in their camp, and you could choose to attack them to free their prisoner who'd join your cause. Im not saying it has to be units, but I think this type of treasure would be neat and add some depth to early gameplay. - I read that units on walls will probably be pushed back to 0AD part II, but what about units on ships? Will they be a part of 0AD? - Im also thinking of the possibility of an outpost function. Your main towns are built around the "town center" buildings. I'm thinking of the possibility of constructing a "military outpost center" kind of building that would extend your control over a smaller territory than town centers do, and not allow the construction of advanced structures (such as fortresses, stone walls, and for example hellenistic gymnasiums or theatres). These outposts would be cheap and quick to build and would serve the single purpose of gathering resources in an area or controlling a key area by simply gaining military control of it, rather than starting a new town there. - A couple things about resource collection, it would be cool if the animation for carrying a huge block of stone would be different than the one for carrying wood. I noticed a bunch of workers carrying HUGE blocks of stone with two arms and i did not get the feeling those blocks were heavy at all. Carrying the blocks on their back and wobbling a bit under its weight while walking would look neat and certainly give you the feeling that these people really are working hard for you - Siege units could have a couple humans a part of the unit. I'm talking of a purely visual matter now, I've never been able to work with magical wooden machines that move by themselves in the middle of the wilderness - This might go a bit overboard in terms of how hard it might be to implement over the actual value of the idea, bu have you thought of a day/night cycle? It would certainly be very cool, but I do wonder even myself would it just look bad, suddenly making building construction times look really bad (waiting 60 seconds for a house to be ready isn't bad, but when you can actually see that those 60 seconds equalled to less than an hour in the day/night cycle, it might suddenly look bad, i dont know). There! I know that's a huge list of suggestions, I hope no one will be shocked by it. I also want to say that these are all suggestions for DETAILS, and that the game overall is absolutely great!
