Aldandil

It seems there are a lot of different variations, though. Perhaps too many for a poll to list every significant permutation.

I would definitely like to see a tutorial scenario designed for folks who want to play the game but have never used an RTS before in their life. Take me, for example: my entire lifetime RTS experience is one game of Warcraft III against the computer AI, assuming Warcraft is actually an RTS and not something else. What would a complete newbie need to learn? How to manage citizen workers, how to maintain a functional economy, how to manage multiple fronts in a battle without losing track of what's going on and missing something important, how to efficiently advance buildings and units in a timely way instead of a stupid way, how to avoid the most common newbie blunders, etc. Starting small, with a brand-new city that isn't under attack until after you have established it and learned how to run it, seems like a better way to start than dropping the beginning into the middle of a battle, when they don't know the first thing about farming or economics. The narrator could even be a legendary city-founder of the civilization in question. I know this strays into the myth end of things instead of actual history (but then, so does the above suggestion for the Trojan War), but it would be neat. For example, you could start by founding Rome with Romulus as your narrator, or founding Athens with Kekrops as your narrator (presumably he'd be a human instead of a snake-guy, to cut down on the mythiness), or founding Carthage with whoever was credited with founding it. If that sounds too mythical, you could use a colony, such as a Greek colony on Sicily, or a Phoenician colony somewhere, whose historical founder is known, and have the founder as the narrator. I'm far more inclined to play Greeks, Iberians, or Celts first. Where is that thread, anyway? It doesn't turn up in search. Do threads get deleted after a while?

I was thinking that Augustus Caesar should make buildings cheaper to build since he basically rebuilt the city center and infrastructure. Aeneas/Indiges improving the navy is a good idea. Julius Caesar helping the military in some way makes sense too. Romulus could do something with walls, since building the walls and pomerium (a sort of sacred boundary) was a major and indespensible part of founding of a Roman city. However, if there's only one thing that gods can do to improve the walls, it does make more sense to give that to Janus. If Quirinus is to affect buildings as well, he could make them more difficult to destroy.

Yeah, those make sense to me. I want to say that Augustus should do something for your buildings, like make them harder to destroy, or slightly cheaper to build.

It makes sense to give the Romans fewer myth units, since their army is so tough. I think that your earlier idea of the giant bee (or maybe a swarm of bees?) would work better for Pomona then Arachne. It's just as fictional and made-up as Arachne is, but bees are associated with fruit and orchards, so it fits a little better.

I had no idea Aeneas had been renamed.Augustalis means "of Augustus" or "Augustus's." It is the Latin genitive form, roughly equivalent to adding 's to a possessive noun in English, or of turning the noun "he" into the possessive "his." In the nomitive form (as a proper noun), his name was still Augustus. I wish I had ideas for more deity-specific Roman myth units, but I don't. But mer-leopards, mer-lions, and so forth could be fun. Clever!

Hmm, coming up with myth units for deified emperors seems especially hard. I'd just call Augustus Augustus Caesar and Aeneas Aeneas, though. They didn't change names when deified. For deities that the Romans had that the Greeks don't in your set-up, you could consider Saturnus, Mercurius, and Janus. But I agree with you that Hephaistos and Vulcan are different enough to easily include both. Hephaistos is the god of smithcraft and other creative arts, and Vulcan is mostly a god of blowing stuff up and setting things on fire.

That show was so far beyond inaccurate, but it was often hilarious fun. Bacchanal usually refers to a festival in honor of Dionysos, I think. I'm trying to think up another name for the wine spirit... Methe (inebriation)? Akratos (overly-strong/unmixed wine)? Lyssa (rabies/madness/frenzy)?

You're welcome. But -- and this is important -- will the Fauns be drunk?

Yeah, the Colossus is a fun idea. Personally, I prefer as much accuracy as possible without compromising game balance, and I think that a horde of drunken satyrs, centaurs, and mainades would be great, but it's entirely a matter of taste. It's not meant as a criticism, just that I don't have a clear idea what precisely you're aiming for and that makes it difficult to give useful feedback. These websites may be able to help you with the Basque material. I wouldn't assume everything on it is accurate, but at the least it is a good starting point for any future research you decide to do. As for research, there's probably much more written in books or journals than online. http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/eu...e/articles.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_mythology

Neither is Helios. Besides, Sol Invictus was a major god among the Romans, but other than the Rhodians almost no Greeks worshipped Helios at all. His worship was so rare that worshipping the sun was regarded by some Greeks as a hallmark of "barbarian" religion. Besides, Dionysos was very powerful in myth, as well. Haven't you read Euripides' Bakkhai? Or read about what he did to those pirates who tried to abduct him? He was a very important god in Greek religion. Well, you put the most important gods (like Zeus and Poseidon) at the beginning so I figured it would be more consistent to have the most minor of the gods come last. Just because AOM did something doesn't mean its wrong. Presumably they based some of it on real religion and myth. Hephaistos was far less important to Greek religion and myth than Athene. I never suggested giving Medusa to Hera. Keeping her for Hekate, or moving her to Persephone, makes far more sense. Karkinos (unlike Hydra) was actually sent by Hera, that's why I suggested giving it to Hera. Persephone is both an agriculture (not nature) goddess and an underworld goddess, so it works fine to include the underworld part. I'm not aware of the Lamias being part of Hittite myth. Are you sure they were invented by Hittites? Overall, I think you have to decide, are you trying to be as accurate as possible to the history, religion, and myths (allowing for the mixing of different historical periods) or would you rather have more freedom to make it up and not worry about making it resemble anything real? If you want to be accurate, you need to do a lot more research than you have so far.

Looks good. I think that Dionysos is a better choice than Helios, mainly because he had far, far more worship than Helios. He could focus on agriculture, special buildings, and maybe the economy, or on reducing the effectiveness of debuffs against the Greek units. You can give livestock to him or to Hermes. His myth units could be centaurs (instead of Hermes), satyrs, or mainades (maenads), who are actually a lot scarier than they sound. I'd also switch the order in which the player gets favor from Hephaistos and Athene; I think they should get Athene first. Some of the myth units don't really fit all that well with the god who provides them, but it's not always easy to find something that fits, since several Greek gods don't have any fantastic creatures associated with them. I'd consider giving Medusa wings and making her fly (which is how she's depicted in ancient Greek art), and maybe giving Karkinos to Hera. Another option for Hera is Argos Panoptes. I'm not sure what he would do, other than being a really good melee unit and almost as large as a Cyclops, but if individual units have different perception levels, he can see very far in every direction thanks to his 100 eyes. Sirens are associated with Demeter and Persephone more than Hamadryads are: they can basically perch somewhere and lure enemy units away from battle and within range of their claws. Persephone could have Medusa, and a different option for Hekate are ghosts or Lamiai: they could sneak into enemy areas in disguise and then ambush them. Apollo could send the drakaina Poine instead of the Lernaean Hydra. She's got the rear half of a snake or dragon, the upper half of a woman, and snakes for hair.

I honestly can't comment at all on the Celtic material. I know almost nothing about their myths, and I know absolutely nothing about game balance for games like this. If you want to add some interesting human heroes for myth units, complete with unique superhuman abilities, you could try to find a copy of the Mabinogion at your local library or online. Culhwch and Olwen (in the Mabinogion) is one of the oldest known Arthurian stories, originally in Welsh, and is full of random and sometimes obscure heroes with weird powers. Kei (Sir Kay) and Bedwyr (Sir Bedivere) are also in there, with weird abilities, though as far as I can remember, Kei's powers aren't all that useful in combat -- I think he can hold his breath for a long time underwater, and heat up tea with his bare hands. Or maybe he has a special sword, I can't remember. Bedwyr has a magic spear that does nifty stuff. The Greek myth units look good. Poseidon's other unit could be Aiolos, who can work as an infantry spear (or maybe sword instead?) and can summon the four Anemoi (winds) to mess with naval units. However that might be too powerful an ability. Maybe it could be balanced by messing up your own naval units as well (a storm is a storm...), but that might make the ability useless instead. Which other Greek gods did you write up? You mentioned Ares.

I don't know much about Celtic myth, so the only comments I can make are about names: Gobannus should be named Goibhniu, that's his Celtic name. Gobannus looks like the Latin mispronunciation. The units should have Gaelic or Welsh names, not Old English ones. The Old English were Germans, not Celts, and they invaded Britain and beat the Celts. They're the folks King Arthur supposedly rallied the British to fight against.

Well, if King Arthur was a real historical person, he would have lived in the 5th or 6th century, so he wouldn't have armor like that, and probably not that kind of shield either. Also, I think the Celtic gods kind of belong to an earlier Britain than King Arthur does. The Lambton knight is an interesting idea, though I don't think that doing constant damage to everyone around him really makes sense. Spiked armor might do damage to anyone who hits him, but it wouldn't reach out and attack people on its own, like flaming tentacles.

I know that the civilizations for the first "expansion" are already planned, but do the developers have any idea if they might do any others far down the road? I think that Ptolemaic Egypt and one of the other Italian civilizations (maybe Etruscans, native Sicilians, Osci, or Umbri) would be good ideas. Libyans/Berbers/Imazigen/Mazices would also be interesting.

It sounds like a reasonable economic strategy to me. And perhaps it would simply be balanced by the fact that your citizen-soldiers are running around hunting instead of doing something else.

Well, if the map starts with buildings on the board, the random map generator could be programmed not to put wild animals within a certain radius of human settlements. But since most species of wild animals will be programmed to flee humans (except the very aggressive ones), I think that they'll try to clear out of player-controlled areas pretty quickly once the game starts. I don't know how the programmers could prevent inequitable distributions of strategically useful animals, though.

This is my suggestion: it would be great if the random-map-generator randomly adds plants and animals appropriate to the biome.

I don't know enough about Mesopotamians to help you with that. The only comment I have at the moment is that Hercules is the Roman name; his Greek name is Herakles.

I think it would help just to have a clear, easy-to-find FAQ and a stickied link to it that is visible from every part of the forum. The Overview post helps, but it does not contain a full FAQ and is difficult to locate on the forum (I have to Search to find it). I read that the current FAQ is very out of date (last updated 2004), and I didn't know how to find it from the website. Looking at the Getting Started Guide and Trac Wiki did not answer my questions either. I ended up posting a stupid question on the Technical Discussions forum that makes me look like a spammer/idiot/jerk, because I don't even know which forum to ask these questions in. I still don't know if this is the correct place to ask it. Questions I have, and don't know where to ask them: 1. If the game is not in alpha or beta yet, why is there already a version available to download? What is it for if it can't be played yet? 2. What can people with no programming or art skills do to help? 3. What should people with no programming or art skills NOT do to avoid getting in the way/wasting developers' time? 4. Is it OK to post on forum sections that appear dead? 5. How do I delete forum posts that I accidentally posted in the wrong sub-forum? Other Questions that it would be helpful to put in the FAQ for newcomers: 1. When will the game be released? 2. When will the alpha and beta bug testing happen? 3. What system requirements will it have?

I am sorry, maybe I posted on the wrong forum. I don't know how to delete this. Sorry. Mods can delete it if they want.

Windows XP Home edition, Service Pack 3. And if I need to get a new computer (I hope not soon!) it will probably be a Mac: I doubt I have the technical knowledge to install or use Linux.

I'm just saying that you shouldn't need to "fill in" the myth units by making stuff up, it should be entirely possible to get them from the same culture as the mortal units, by doing research on the myths and stories of the culture. My comment about dinosaurs and cryptids is just about my personal preference. Obviously, the Cro-Magnon/Neolithic units will have to be almost 100% made up. Man oh man, I wish I could help out with 0AD, TLA, and the mods by coding or creating art. But neither of those is part of my skillset.

Yeah, Wikipedia is often a good starting-place. Pantheon.org is another. A lot of what I know about mythical creatures are just one or two sentences from sites like Wikipedia and Pantheon. But I had interpreted your earlier post to mean that was your only source! Some websites are really excellent, though. Theoi.com has become my first stop for Greek myths now, because it rocks. Mythindex is also pretty good. The Maya and Aztecs had lots of gods, probably enough if you can get good sources about them. I may be able to help me on that research a little, I have a couple books at home that have a little info about the gods. I do have a book of Maori myth at home that has the major gods in it. I don't know if you need to add any gods, or if the Hawai`ans have enough. For the Polynesian myth units, a list of what sorts of Taniwha you could use might include: Land Taniwha Ngarara (giant black, grey, or white lizard/alligator/wingless dragon) Moko Taniwha (as Ngarara, but can shapeshift) Ngarara Kei Runga (a flying Ngarara with feathery wings) Water Taniwha Marakihau Rongo-tumu-here (giant octopus Taniwha) plesiosaur-like Taniwha giant shark giant fish whale Taniwha giant eel/sea-serpent/giant sea-snake giant sea turtle Megalania is specifically Australian, so I don't consider it appropriate for Polynesia (and you don't need Megalania if you have Taniwhas). I personally don't like the idea of using dinosaurs or modern cryptids for the Neolithic people, either -- if you extend back to the Pliocene or Miocene there are numberless cool prehistoric mammals to use, some of them larger than mammoths, which should be more than enough, and give a much more consistent feel to that civilization. EDIT: added more about Taniwhas