Aldandil
-
Posts
410 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Aldandil
-
-
I hadn't thought of that at all, but you're right: serpopards are so similar to sirrush that they might very well be the Egyptian interpretation of the same exact concept. (Plus, sirrush look cooler.)
And yeah, Ammut is technically a "netjeret" (though the word has more meanings than the English "god") but she was never worshiped, as far as I know. One could say that Apep and his spawn are "netjeru" though I don't know if they were described as such, but nobody would think of worshiping them! Of course, not even the gods would let them run around on a battlefield, but some leeway is necessary in a game.
I think the River Man in either Coptic or Late Period Egyptian was called Reme pa-Iar or Reme pa-Yar. I don't have JSTOR access anymore so I can't be certain, sorry! Losing strength outside of water is an interesting idea. Here's another: what about giving him the ability to cause small localized floods that harm land units? I don't know whether that can be programmed, or if it's too similar to other myth units you have already.
Which were the two gods whom you gave Shezmu and Wepwawet to? Or what is your current line up for all myth units and which gods grant them? If you have a river or earth god (like Khnum, Hapy, or Geb) that would be the best way to grant the River Man, and of course Set is the guy to grant a Set Animal if you go with that (sorry that I don't have a lot of creative ideas for its attacks). Any underworld god, such as Wesir/Osiris or Inepu/Anubis, could grant the Serpent of the Duat, Ammut, or Mummy (Akh is another possible name).
My ideas:
Ammit, Mummy, Serpent of the Duat: an underworld god
Apep-spawn: nearly any god really, but not Re (he's Apep's main adversary) and probably not Set (Re's bodyguard), but this is a hard one
El Naddahah: no idea, I don't know what this is
Giant Scarab: a sun god such as Re is the best choice
Inpu Warrior: (or Khaty) would work just fine for any god, since I think any god could command them, and would fit well with Heru/Horus since he and Osiris both have lots of servants in the underworld
Sphinx: I can't think of any specifics here, sorry. I guess it depends if you use a human-headed, ram-headed, or hawk-headed sphinx -- the ram-headed ones are associated with Amun, for example
Uraeus: Practically any god could grant a Uraeus, though underworld gods, sun gods (especially Re) and Re's Eye goddesses (Wadjet, Sakhmet, Bastet, etc.) are the best choices for Uraeus
-
I like the Qareen idea, that's unique.
Asanbosan is spelled wrong. The correct name is Sasabonsam.
For Egyptian myth units, there are some mythical creatures you have not included that would be more appropriate than using Shezmu and Wepwawet:
Setja: (aka Serpopard) has the body and head of a lion or leopard, but the neck of a snake, so it can attack at longer range, like a spearman. You could make it poisonous, too, since it is part snake.
Serpent of the Duat: these are dragons and since they vary so much in appearance, you could give them anywhere from 0 to 8 legs, make them winged or wingless, give them humanoid arms or not, and could give them up to 4 heads at the front end and up to 4 heads at the back end as well. They could also spit fire if you like. There's a lot of potential to customize these guys however you want, and/or to make them upgradeable.
Sha: the Set-animal, which I always thought looks like an aardvark-headed dog, but it could have some minor magical abilities related to deserts or storms. Or it could be like a very tough dog-like unit, but with higher hit points and a stronger bite attack.
River Man: a muddy, plant-covered amphibious unit that can come up out of of water and/or drag people into it. Technically these guys are probably deities, but unlike Shezmu and Wepwawet they aren't a unique, singular deity. Like the minor guardian deities in the Duat, they are very minor and exist in large numbers. They're more comparable to Greek satyrs or nymphs than to major deities like Shezmu and Wepwawet.
I also recommend renaming the Inpu warriors: if they are meant to be very minor underworld deities, then naming them Khatyu (plural) and Khaty (singular) would work well. Khatyu are very minor deities (in the same way that Greek nymphs are minor deities) who are sent out by major gods to punish those who offend them, and when not going on such missions Khatyu can be found in the Duat punishing the wicked dead and protecting the righteous dead. Several of the knife-wielding "demons" in the Duat are probably Khatyu. As far as I can tell, your concept for Inpu warriors would fit the Khatyu well, and in fact you could switch it up and give them human, ram, baboon, shrew, or catfish heads, or make them female (Khatyut plural, Khatyt singular) with snake or lioness heads, if you prefer that instead of jackal heads (but jackal heads work too). Yeah, I know, shrew-headed and catfish-headed Khatyu sound odd, but I'm just mentioning your options.
-
While it won't work for large fish like tuna and sturgeon, small fish could be stationary but represented with an animated model that consists of many small individual fish swimming around in a fairly large volume of water. I don't know whether this is feasible, but it would create both the impression of movement and of many small fish instead of a few huge ones, or a few small ones.
Presumably large fish like tuna and sturgeons would be represented in whatever way sharks and dolphins are represented.
-
I like the Hamadryad and Teumessian Fox. I am confused why you gave Antaeus to the Christians, though. He's an ancient Greek myth.
It makes sense to make multiples of mythical monsters that supposedly were unique, since it gives you far more options, but I would not use Shezmu and Wepwawet. They're gods, not monsters.
-
I'm half Danish, but Norse isn't available so I voted Roman. My Italian heritage is all Pescaran (Abruzzese), which is actually Samnites, Praetutii, Oscans, Vestini, and/or Frentani, I think, not Romans. I'm 1/4 Italian, but 1/4 is a mix of mostly French, English, and Scottish. Since the French didn't exist at the time and are descended from both Gaulish and Germanic-speaking peoples with some Roman thrown in, I figured my Celticness is actually less than my Italianness.
-
OK, that clears things up a great deal... I thought demigod referred to myth units. Making Lithic archers into super units similar to unarmored plumed archers, and making them universally available at city phase, makes sense.
Regarding shields and armor: Stone age people can and have used shields of wood and/or hide, but wooden armor is really awkward and leather armor isn't that great compared to metal armor. I don't know how armor and shields differ in game mechanics in an RTS, but I would actually consider switching these two, giving Lithics shield upgrades but essentially no armor. Basic citizen-soldiers would have no shield, Advanced ones would have a small hide shield or none at all, and Elite citizen-soldiers could have a less-small wood or hide shield.
I think I'm getting a better understanding of why some civilizations don't have certain units. Thanks for explaining all this!yes, theres far more units than are available to the cro-magnons as well many other civilizations. but, going along with what is to be presented in 0ad, ideally, no civilization is supposed to get every unit type. even in 0ad, no civilization gets every unit, but the carthaginians come the closest (i cant remember all the ones they get at the moment, but for regular citizen-soldiers, they are only lacking a cavalry archer and have all the other ones). denying units to a civilization is mostly for historical accuracy (for example, not all civilizations utilized a horse archery, though a cavalry archer is readily available in that case), but i admit that ive kind of cheated with more than one civilization, such as the aztecs: as far as i know, theres no evidence that they used any form of siege weaponry or warhounds, yet i gave them a ballista, a ram, and a war dog as mortal units to help even the odds.
in general, the units themselves ARE accurate to each civilizations presented timeline, for the most part. i wouldnt get to bent outta shape over it, though
im not sure it works that way. as i understand it, each civilization always gets their initial melee, ranged, and cavalry units right off the bat and then, in the town phase when military buildings become available, they can build a barracks and then train the rest of the citizen-soldiers available to them, and then in the city phase they can build a fortress and get their super units and siege weapons, as well as their heroes.
Aaaannd... now is when I mention that I have never played an RTS, except for one single-player game of WCIII on somebody else's computer. I also have no income, and a graphics card too weak to handle such games so... I can't just go out and buy AoK. Besides, if/when I could/can afford a better graphics card, why would I bother when 0 A.D. will be free and more historically accurate?
I can see why fire archers would be more a Sun Tzu thing... is he a planned Chinese hero? And would fire archers be anti-building units, or would they go after other units?
-
i just decided to call the mythology mod's version of super units "demigods" to go with the mythology theme the only real difference is that all civilizations get one in the city phase, and one in the empire phase
I've been confused by the Godstorm terminology for a while now. There are mortals/mundanes, heroes, super units, and myth units. When you say demigods do you mean myths and supers, or just supers, or just myths? Or do demigods include heroes, or are there no heroes? And will you make all mundane units citizen-soldiers or support units, or will there be some mundane soldier-only units?
And do supers count as myth units or as mortals?yes, the general functions of the mythology mod will be virtually the same to 0ad's, with some other differences, so theres citizen-soldiers as regular units (all units except for Heroes and myth units fall into the collective category of "mortal" units; theres a basic AOM-style rock-paper-scissors function where mortals beat heroes [en masse], heroes beat myth units, and myth units beat mortals. numbers still play a huge role, of course, and many myth units can beat heroes easily, etc)
All civs get only 3 citizen-soldier units? I'm confused... the design document lists more than that. Is it a matter of tech trees before you can unlike the 4th, 5th, and so on? Even for technologies that existed for the civilization at the start of the relevant time period? It certainly makes more sense to give the Lithics just 3 to start, then, now that I know that. I feel silly, having missed that important info.according to the 0ad designs ive seen thus far, every civ can train three citizen-soldiers from the very beginning at the civic center: one melee infantry, one ranged infantry, and one cavalry soldier. the wolfdog was kind of inspired by a unit planned for 0ad's celts, which is basically just a mastiff used for combat. the wolfdog is virtually the same to the celtic war dog. the aztecs and one or two other civilizations will also have dogs if the civilization calls for it (basically, cultures that didnt use horses or camels, or at least not to a great extent, ie the aztecs, cro-magnons, and polynesians). the all dog citizen-soldiers will still be hunting and herding units like regular cavalry (iirc, cavalry wont be able to build structures, which makes sense, but the dogs wont be able to regardless)This also explains why the Coun are cavalry. But do the Lithics get to research more units on tech trees, or whatever the usual way is of unlocking more units, or is 3 mortals all they ever get?
Man, I don't know what fortress building refers to.... that's a phase after the starting phase, right? So archery would be like a tech they research and then add?archery is still more complex than just throwing a spear, but i agree, im gonna rewrite the cro-magnons so that all of them get their archers later at their fortress building.Regarding the plumed archer: are the Lithics going to have any armor at all? Non-metal armor isn't something that would normally show up in archaeology so it could have existed and leave no record, but I'd still think no Lithic guys could have more than leather, so they'd be practically unarmored by default.
No need, but I am getting lost.i must apologize to you several times over; my mind goes a mile a minute most of the time and im almost always trying to come up with new ideas for my dozen or so personal projects, all of which im working on at the same time (well, not LITERALLY the same time, but you get my meaning).
I'm still not following why the archer can't be a super unit instead of a mythical unit, but torch-wielding siege guy sounds great and fitting. Well, burning down buildings is more Vulcanus' thing, but this is war. I don't know anything about Sun Tzu, though.in this case, im just using the term "all-lithic demigod" to refer to the city phase demigod that will go to the cro-magnons (because lithic is SOO much easier to type than cro-magnon). and yes, it means a demigod that will go to all players of that civilization. the firestarter unit is kind of based on the game spore (where you make your own creature and progress from microbial life to a space-faring empire), and one of the stages in that is a tribal stage where you can either befriend or destroy neighboring tribes. one of the weapons there is a flaming torch, and when one of your villagers picks up one, they become known as "firestarters". the main idea with the cro-magnon firestarter is that he's kind of an infantry siege unit, a man carrying flaming torches that runs in to set fire to enemy buildings and occasionally throws a torch at range, kind of like the javelin-attack that some other units will have (if you remember, the planned cro-magnon chieftain will have that ability). i had planned to give the firestarter to all the cro-magnons so that they all have an additional siege unit (which they would otherwise lack) and to go with the caveman theme, but when you persisted in the matter of the archers, i decided that the firestarter was more fitting of prometheus, who, if you remember, stole fire from olympus and gave it to mankind.fire archers as unique units would be a good idea though. maybe they could go to the chinese, in reference to sun tzu?
Makes sense.exactly. when i decided to give them only three citizen-soldiers, i thought "wait, why should they need a barracks, then?" and decided that that would be a good way of making them a bit more unique.
Yeah, and I only suggested explosions because I think fireworks are cool.and yeah, having a war mammoth type unit is just so that theyre @#$%ing cool. it would also help narrow the gap between them and other civs by giving them another siege AND cavalry unit (ive always thought of elephants in RTS games as being siege cavalry, and clearly the guys making 0ad do, too) -
I'm worried my previous post may have come across as somewhat hostile, and if so I apologize.
Archers depend on the time-period you want Cro-Magnons to start at and how much they're supposed to be based on real human groups vs. be a fantasy concept. But their stone-age technology, by itself, isn't a reason to say they have no archers. There might be other reasons (economic? cultural?) for them to use very few archers in battle, though I think they should still have some, and in that case they'd be more of a super unit instead of a myth unit. What does "demigod" signify?
Does your design require that all regular/mortal/mundane soldier units are citizen-soldiers? I think in 0 A.D. there are some that don't double as economic units, like super units, or something. I know that there have to be support units (like women and merchants) that are only economic.
I just thought of something. Your Wolfdog, functioning as a cavalry unit, was intended as one of your citizen-soldiers, right? Dogs are certainly useful hunting animals, but presumably only when directed by a human, who for simplicity could just be a citizen-soldier with the dog(s) abstracted away during the hunt. They can't build buildings or gather wood/ore/stone. Maybe the Wolfdog could be a non-economic soldier and then you'd have room for a third Cro-Magnon citizen-soldier of whichever kind you want. I can't tell from the 0 A.D. design document whether Celtic Coun have regular citizen-soldier economic abilities.
I don't know what the plumed archer is, since I've never played AOK, AOE, or AOM. If the city phase is supposed to represent the copper age, I'd put archery earlier -- if you keep 7000 BC as the start date I still think that archers can be available from the start. Agriculture, to me, is the biggest technology that can separate their phases. That starts around 9000 BC in Mesopotamia, and later elsewhere.
Does "all-lithic demigod" refer to a myth unit that the whole faction can get regardless of major god? I don't know what your firestarter unit is meant to do in-game; but if regular archers can't do it, what about giving Prometheus archers with arrows on fire? Then they can shoot flammable buildings and ships from a distance (chance to hit; if they hit successfully, separate chance to set target on fire). But I admit I can't justify why other civilizations couldn't pull that off just as easily... hmm. I don't think fire arrows are planned for 0 A.D. I like the stealing/acquiring/copying technologies from other factions bonus.
Though barracks may have existed in the Neolithic, I don't know anything about the subject myself, and can't think of any objection to removing that building for Cro-Magnons/Lithic People. It's function will have to be fulfilled by some other building, presumably. In fact, if it wasn't too much work, each civilization could have a unique set of buildings; that is, distribute the essential functions of buildings in a slightly different way for each faction.
If you do decide to let Lithic Peoples tame horses, that would definitely be one tech to restrict to the city phase or later, since the date estimated in that archaeology blog article is 3500 BC, very close to the start of the bronze age. It would be weird to have them tame mammoths before horses, but adding cool mythological or fantastical abilities is kind of the whole point of your mod -- and necessary for game balance with factions like Lithic Peoples/Cro-Magnons
I really want to see a Chinese god who can blow stuff up (instead of setting things on fire or hitting them with lightning bolts) because it's cool, but I have no clue at all whether that can be backed up by any myth. For that matter, I don't know if they had invented rockets by the end of the time span you chose for them.
-
i figured archers and horsemen would be good for unique units because of their requirements of a more complex society and skill to use.
I don't understand. Archery was invented before 9,700 BC. That's archaeology. What is their starting date? What is their ending date? If either one of those occurs at or after 10,000 BC, then they should have archery. If you stick with 7,000-3,000 BC, then there's no reason they wouldn't have archery units from the very start. Even societies like the Greeks and Aztecs who didn't like archery and didn't use it much in warfare still knew how to make bows and shoot them.
I think you're getting hung up on the word "primitive" and guessing what that must mean. Instead I would pick a time period and research what real world technology existed at that time.
Archery was invented before agriculture, before copper. So was mining (for flint). So were javelins, atlatls, and barbed harpoons.
Military barracks separate from the community center/ritual grounds, probably were not invented before agriculture -- though they would be appropriate for at least some neolithic cultures, perhaps the Maori during the pa era (I'm not an expert on that). Stone age people did engage (and still do engage) in warfare, usually in skirmishing fashion in small groups targeting individuals or small groups instead of engaging in large organized armies.
You might have to give the Lithic Peoples large companies to make them playable versus other civilizations (or use quality of troops over quantity -- this is where mammoths and other tough, impressive myth units would be good, and make for a unique play style), but playability should be the first consideration. IMO if the Lithic Peoples are too crippled, they'll be boring and hardly anybody will want to find out whether they can successfully take on the Roman Empire.
Regarding horse domestication and riding, let me look at that website I had up earlier...here it is:
http://www.livescience.com/animals/091127-...rses-botai.html
They found strong evidence of domesticated horses and horse-riding from a 3,500 BC copper age site in Kazakhstan. I should actually add that to my technologies list.
I don't expect huge war canoes existed before 3,000 BC, and IMO warships probably wouldn't fit for Lithic Peoples. But I haven't researched this. I know people had boats quite early.
-
But... bows and arrows and javelins and atlatls were all invented in the Upper Paleolithic, during the Ice Age... and your Lithic Peoples are supposed to go all the way to Neolithic... and they're supposed to be able to fight a battle against other civilizations... giving them only 3 regular units, in the whole game will make them unplayable and boring.
If by 'primitive' you mean "no technology at all" then they shouldn't even be Homo sapiens. You can't call them stone age people and then... not give them stone age technology.
Please look again at the list I gave you of when various technologies were invented.
Here's that list again: mya = million years ago, kya = thousand years ago. This is a list of inventions and hominin species.
7 mya Sahelanthropus tchadensis
6 mya Orrorin tugenensis
5.8 mya Ardipithecus ramidus kaddaba
4.4 mya Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus
4.2 mya first Australopithecus
3.5 mya Kenyanthropus platyops
3 mya first Australopithecus africanus
2.5 mya Australopithecus garhi
2.5 mya stone tools (crude flake tools)
2.5 mya certain meat eating
2.33 mya first Homo?
2.3 mya first Homo rudolfensis
2.3 mya first Paranthropus
2 mya first Homo habilis
1.9 mya Australopithecus sediba
1.7 mya first Homo ergaster and Homo erectus
1.7 mya maybe use of fire?
1.65 mya crude hand axes
1.6 mya certain use of built shelters (my have been earlier)
1.37 mya sophisticated, artistic hand axes
840 kya boats
800 kya Homo antecessor
700 kya maybe use of fire?
600 kya first Homo heidelbergensis
500 kya certain use of fire (may have been earlier)
375 kya certain wooden spears (may have been earlier)
300 kya creation of fire, cooking
300-200 kya first Homo neandertalensis
250 kya burial of the dead, eating shellfish, certain hafted tools and weapons, certain wooden tools, paving floors with stones, Levallois flakes
250 kya certain hide scrapers (may have been earlier)
200-150 kya first Homo sapiens
130-115 kya quern/metate, eating fish
116 kya ochre crayons, certain core tools
100 kya carved ochre crayons
90-75 kya beads
75 kya bone and antler tools
70 kya bone awl
70 kya maybe ceramics?
70-60 kya microliths
32 kya atlatl, sewing needle, cave painting, carvings, trade networks, prismatic blades, certain basket weaving
28 kya textiles, ceramic figurines, fertile woman figures, nets, elaborate funerals, semi-sedentism
18 kya Homo floresiensis
15 kya built permanent shelters, frozen food storage underground in permafrost cellars
14 kya certain domesticated dog (may have been earlier)
14 kya ceramic pottery in e Asia and Japan (may have been earlier)
before 9700 bc: herbal medicine, bows and arrows, barbed points, harpoons, pressure-flaking
9000 bc domesticated wheat in Mesopotamia
8000 bc pepo squash and bottle gourd cultivation in Mesoamerica
8000-7000 bc domesticated goats in Iran
8000-7000 bc domesticated hairy sheep in the Levant
8000-7000 bc domesticated cattle in Anatolia
7000 bc Asian rice and foxtail millet cultivation in China
7000-6000 bc domesticated cattle in the Sahara
6500 bc domesticated cattle in s Asia
6000 bc irrigation
5500-5000 bc banana and taro cultivation in New Guinea
5000-4000 bc plow
4300 bc domesticated maize in highland Mexico
4000-3000 bc domesticated llama and alpaca in Andes
What are the starting and ending dates for your Lithic Peoples?
-
Flint Archer: unique cro-magnon archer available only to Prometheus
Maybe I'm missing something, but what do the other Lithic Peoples tip their arrows with? I thought chipped flint was the thing to use before people get metal...
-
I guess it would be a matter of archaeology to find out what metal weapons they had, and examining art to see if they left any images of shields or weapons or armor. There are pictures of ships, but I don't know that they're warships, and I don't know of any Minoan weapon finds.
And my name has two Ds in it. AlDandil. I don't know anybody named Alan or Alandil.
Heh, and only two Ls.
-
Despite being set during the Trojan War which supposedly was during the Bronze Age, the Iliad and Odyssey actually depict society and warfare as it existed during the "Dark Age" of Greece, meaning the early iron age. For anything that purports to be based more on history and archaeology than on myth, it would be a bad source to use for Mykenaians.
-
σπίτι
is spiti, not sniti.
Woman is gine or ghini in modern Greek, gyne or gune in ancient Greek. I've seen gamma rendered as gh only in transliterations of modern Greek, and ypsilon rendered as u only in transliterations of Mykenaian or occasionally of ancient Greek. The ghu combination looks very bizarre and mixed up.
I recommend gyne... then players can adopt whichever ancient pronunciation reconstruction they prefer. In fact, I recommend just adopting some specific (academic) transliteration method and using it consistently.
-
Sounds interesting and cool.
For the time period, Etruscans would probably be more interesting than Hellenes, plus they haven't been given a spot in 0 A.D. yet.
-
Crosses didn't start out as religious items, of course. Even for Christians, the Fish was an earlier symbol of the faith. Anyway, I and others have suggested sacred grove trees, temples, shrines, Pyramids, Stonehenge, graves, altars, etc. In fact, for the first release (500 - 1 B.C.) there should be no Christian objects at all (except for the editor-only objects). Those would come in the second release (1 - 500 A.D., specifically the later half when it was legal to build churches and worship in them).
I'm especially hoping for sacred trees (i.e., those marked by ribbons or garlands or unspun wool or whatever), graves, and small roadside shrines. In some cultures (such as ancient Greece) these were relatively common sights, but they aren't player-created buildings.
-
I thought it was put on hold due to 0 A.D. not being near enough completion to know what the game engine would be capable of or how the game would be structured, let alone to start programing it.
And as for being a mod... wasn't that what it was always going to be? A mod of 0 A.D.?
As for Generic Middle-Earth Rip-off #7564... blech, count me out. I find all such "settings" to be depressingly dull, colorless, and lifeless. They lack the flavor of Middle-Earth that makes me love Tolkien's work, and have nothing whatsoever of their own to attract me. If there won't be a TLA mod, then a generic copy wouldn't interest me at all.
-
Oh, you're planning to have a game that stretches into the modern day, aren't you? Yeah, that does pose a huge problem for Native American nations, unless you want to do alternate histories.
-
Why would you use Viking invaders when the Native Americans had tons of different cultures in North America? If you want a "civilization" use Cahokia or the Anasazi, Calusa, or Northwest Coast.
-
I said "of sorts." ... that could mean anything.
-
While not every culture has necessarily left historical or archaeological evidence of it, I think it's fair to assume that every Homo sapiens society has had medicine and medical practitioners of some kind. And realistically, a soldier who has been shot in the stomach, or had a bone broken, or lost a limb, won't be put back together and ready to re-enter the fray on the same day. So unless you assume a flavor that injured but surviving soldiers only have minor injuries like bruises, you'll either have to give unrealistic (magical?) abilities to mortal healers, or replace them with actual magical effects, to make the game playable.
-
The alpha is scheduled for this July, so a playable public release of sorts isn't far away unless disaster strikes.
-
I don't have any expertise with Canaanites or ancient Hebrews so I can't offer a historically or mythologically specific opinion, but if you are wondering whether they should have a healer unit, ask yourself this: if they don't have a healer, what specifically could/would you give them instead (what hero, god power, or myth unit) and would you prefer to use that or a healer unit?
-
well christianity was a bit more localized than islam was (with islam, youve got peoples from persia, arabia, the levant, and most of africa included, whereas, for the relevent time period, christianity was almost entirely in europe). the reason i was thinking of redating it was, again, because when it started out as a sect of judaism, it was pacifistic and remained as such pretty much until it became rome's state religion
I know. I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just pointing out that the Crusades happened many centuries after Christianity became Rome's state religion, so you have more options than just the Crusades.
post-0 AD idea: mythology
in Game Modification
Posted · Edited by Aldandil
I don't see the need to replace the Apep-spawn as much as to replace Shezmu and Wepwawet. Apep-spawn isn't perfect, but if something else isn't available I think it works better than Wepwawet or Shezmu.
OK, not knowing which major god gets each of the minor gods, here's my suggestions:
Bastet:
Ma'et (Ma'at is a misspelling): Ammut, because if you fail Ma'et's test at the weighing of the heart, Ammut is the one who eats your soul.
Sobek: El Naddahah is good. She kind of reminds me of the River-Man, actually, but it shouldn't be too hard to make them distinct from each other -- she doesn't strike me as something that actually gets in a fight.
Hathor:
Khepri: Giant Scarab is perfect
Khnum: River-Man/Mud-Man/Reme pa-Yar
Anubis: Mummy
Isis:
Ptah:
Horus: Khaty
Sekhmet: Uraeus
Thoth:
Set-animal could go to any minor god who is associated with Set in your set-up. Serpent of the Duat would work for Thoth, Ptah, Anubis, or Isis. Uraeus works best with Sekhmet but could go with Bastet or Hathor instead. Sphinx fits with Sekhmet, Bastet, or Hathor fine, I'm hazy on concrete suggestions for it.
Apep-spawn is the hard one, but any minor god not connected with Re should be OK.
Khaty best fit Anubis or Horus but could be given to any god. Or like Mummy, you could give it to two different minor gods, each associated with a different major god.
Personally, I don't see the River-Men as being made of mud, but I don't know whether or not that's the concept behind them, so I don't see anything wrong with using that idea.
If you want to you can include a myth unit or demigod with a net, and give it to Horus or any minor god connected with Osiris or Re. I don't know how that would work as a unit, though. They could be similar in appearance to Khatyu, but with a different head, and they could be armed primarily with nets. I'm kind of going off of some of the minor deities in the Book of the Dead. Budge called them Tjatjau (singular Tjatja), though there's no telling with Budge whether his transliteration is close to accurate or wildly off.
Another idea I have is for a Sacred Bull. I don't know if this would be too similar to the Mesopotamian Bull of Heaven (could the Bull of Heaven fly?) The sacred bulls were worshiped as gods but also incarnated in actual bulls which lived and died and were mummified, so it doesn't seem too far of a stretch to use them as myth units, as long as they are more impressive than the ordinary bulls that are already in 0 A.D. as animals. There's Hap (Apis), Bakh (Buchis), Men-wer (Mnevis), Kem-wer, Gem, and the Sky-Bull (Bull of the West). They are associated with Ptah, Re, and Osiris, but at a stretch Bull of the West can be associated with Hathor. There was supposed to be only one at a time of each (and I don't know that the Bull of the West ever had an actual earthly representative) but since there were 5 or 6 different bulls, that provides some justification for having multiples of them (more than there is for multiples of Ammut, at least) as myth units. The question is whether they can be made distinct enough from the Bull of Heaven.
Other than that, there are the crocodile-rams that show up in artwork, which may or may not represent gods, that are just as usable as sphinxes: a crocodile-ram has the head of a crocodile and the body and horns of a Khnum-ram. Khnum and Sobek are the most obvious gods to associate with these, but if they already have El Naddahah and River-Man then you could give it to another god.