greenknight32

The problem of adjusting to different heights reminds me of a game I got for Christmas, Grand Ages of Rome (gold edition). In it, to build on land that's too steep, you build platforms - you can add layers to the platform until it's large enough. Maybe, to build a bridge, you'd first build bridge footings, the elevations of which have to match before you can build a bridge on them. If they didn't match, you'd add an approach ramp to the lower one to make it higher - ramps would have a fixed slope, and you could add layers to them to make them tall enough. When heights matched, you could then stretch a bridge from one to the other like building a wall. This way, you could bridge between different elevations if there was enough space for the ramp, which would be longer the taller it needed to be, and the cost would be higher. The bridge footings could be graphically very simple, only the bridge itself would need an elaborate design. Also, the bridge could be a destroyable structure, the bridge footings not - which would be realistic.

Sarissa - the long spear introduced by th Macedonians.

I was thinking Spence would be good.

Seems to me that it should be automatic that your troops target enemy combatants first over women if both are in range..

Alexander did get to Afghanistan - they may have adopted the style from the Macedonians.

Perhaps make it so a team player could hand off control of their faction to a teammate. That would accomplish the objective of letting the game continue while a player goes AFK. Much more straightfoward to program, I would think. Dividing up the control of a single faction sounds interesting, but it also sounds complicated.

I've never noticed the bodies while playing the game, much too busy.

Great video, Lion. Whether a man or a woman, it's the momentum of the tool that does the work - it has to swing through a good long arc. A shorter swing means more force has to be applied to achieve the same speed at impact, the only reason to do that is if there's something in the way that prevents talking a full swing. You don't just use your arms, either, you put your back into it. The mining animation looks great.

Realistically, swords, spears, arrows and such should not damage walls - but then, you should have siege hooks and ladders available. Walls could be defeated without siege engines in the real world, they were effective only if actively defended. Adding the ability to scale walls with ladders or pull them down with hooks would add a lot of complexity for a small increase in realism. Having the infantry's regular attacks do the job is a reasonable substitute, and much simpler. It's much too easy now, though - I agree with Lion, the effectiveness of such attacks against walls should be reduced.

I've given up on using walls - even where there are choke points, you need to be able to attach walls to cliffs and run walls into the water in order to close off the choke points. Cost is too high, as well. Palisades are too weak and temporary to be worth the wood and time you invest in them.

I'd call that a big improvement.

I'm well aware of the advantage of women, it's just that if you build nothing but women you have no defense against an early rush. This was a problem with the AI in earlier versions - you could make 5 ranged units, send them + the 2 you start with, and it was game over. They'd kill the workers, the you could park them just out of range of the CC and kill any units that emerged. Making mostly women early makes sense, but you do need a few soldiers to counter that tactic.

The problem with making women in order to phase up faster is the women provide no defense. Helpless against an early rush.

The biggest difference with the Mongolian draw is the use of the thumb instead of 3 fingers to draw the string - note in the Manchu archery video, the thumb ring which is used to protect the thumb. Of course, that's not going to show in the game animation.

The way I look at it, you've got many things to do - create units, construct buildings, scout - and seconds count early in the game. Anything you can do to save a few of those seconds is good. Set the CC to make a batch of units, set the rally point on a resource so they go start work there, then do something else for a few seconds until it's time to do it again. Line up a team to build a batch of houses as soon as you have enough wood. Hurry, hurry, hurry, that's the only way to win. Getting a tiny bit of a resource a few seconds sooner is not worth the extra micro - if a scout gets killed because you didn't get back to him soon enough, it wastes much more than you gained. Maybe the first few females, like niektb said, but otherwise it's better to streamline your process as much as possible.

Maybe a cooling pad for your laptop would do the job.

This page: http://silverhorde.viahistoria.com/research/tactics.html has a nice summary of the subject. You can find plenty more just by googling "mongol tactics". I first learned about this by reading this book - "Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan_and_the_Making_of_the_Modern_World. I highly recommend that for an alternative view of the Mongol Empire - though some have accused it of glossing over some of their more unsavory practices (Yes, they took slaves, who didn't in those days?).

Bows and arrows could have been stored in the towers, so that anyone could use them. I don't know that it was ever done, but it's not totally illogical.

Mongols didn't really fight as a disorganized mass, it just looked that way to Europeans because their formations were totally fluid. They'd probably be tough to program...

My screen resolution is 1024x768. I can't afford a new monitor. I think there are plenty of others like me.

You sure about that?I tried to test it, but the AI wouldn't destroy the partially-completed CC. Attacked my troops and marched on my base instead. Gives me the idea - kill the builders but leave it standing so it ties up resources. Anyway, maybe you shouldn't get the resources back, if that's how it works - that would make the tactic a lot riskier. Or maybe you could get back only the percentage that hasn't been completed. Capturing buildings would also make the tactic risky.

I don't see where there's a problem. You can prevent opponents from building forward CCs with cavalry, keep some scouts deployed to detect any building activity. If they invest in a CC and you destroy it before it's completed, you gain a big economic jump on them, so it's hardly a surefire strategy.

Actually, the Cinnamon, MATE, and XFCE versions of Mint will all run on 512 MB, but 1GB is recommended. The KDE version calls for 2GB.

After having a unit set to hunt an animal, and having him chase it way across the map, I started having them circle around behind the game so they ran back toward the Civic Center.

Try Linux Mint if you don't like Unity. The main thing is enough RAM - looked up that laptop model, it has 4GB, which is plenty. Mint 17 will run well on 1 GB.