greenknight32

You're welcome - glad you understood what I was saying, I didn't put it very well. To be precise, I should have said "The plane of the blade should align with the plane the forearm moves in". Good rule of thumb (or arm) for anyone trying to model a swordsman.

Beautiful

I find a small map helps a lot, but that means playing a random map.

The way he's holding the sword now looks more natural, but I think the blade is turned the wrong way - he's going to be striking with the flat of the blade! It should be aligned with the line of his forearm. Might work better if the elbow is not bent as sharply. The rest of it looks great, though.

I've won a lot of games with turtle tactics, but you have to be very efficient. Not the easiest way. Try building 10 archers and rushing them across the map. Don't get within range of the enemy Civic Center, attack their gatherers and farmers.

Undermining walls was a well-known tactic. Realistically, it would take much more time than a ram attack, but when it finally had its effect a section of wall would collapse completely.

Another aspect of combat was physically pushing the enemy back. If, pushing with their shields, they could drive the enemy backward stumbling over each other, the enemy's fighting would be hampered. The enemy formation could even collapse. This was a major strength of the Phalanx, and a big offensive advantage - the first rank would push their wall of shields against the enemy's, the second rank would push on the first, the third rank on the second, etc. The deeper the Phalanx, the harder it could push. Phalanx vs. Phalanx battles were basically shoving matches. This was the major weakness of the Phalanx - with their spears woven through the formation, they couldn't easily turn to face a flank attack. As strong as they were in frontal attack, they would quickly go to pieces if attacked from the side. This was a big reason the Romans, with their more-flexible formations, could overcome them. Any formation is weakened by attacks from the side, though. A lot of the advantage of fighting in formation was that they had to worry only about what was in front of them, flank attacks took away that advantage from those on the ends of the front rank. If they stepped back to avoid being attacked from two directions at once, the ends of the formation begin to crumble. This is how the Greek achieved victory at the battle of Marathon, when outnumbered almost 3 to 1 - they strengthened the wings of their line and rushed the Persians, pushing in the flanks and causing the Persian army to dissolve into panic.

In a Phalanx, they used very long spears, and the men behind poked their spears between the men in front to stab at the enemy. Not just the men in front were inflicting damage. What Sander is saying is that the men behind should do some damage, but not as much as the front rank. Makes sense to me.

Yes, it really should say "units don't attack in formation". You can use formations defensively, to some extent. As long as your units are defending in place they remain in formation, though they're fighting as individuals - they may break formation to pursue the enemy.

So I need a Ouija board to contact them? Ah...thought it sounded familiar, but I couldn't recall where I'd seen it. In the forum index, of course! Went ahead and posted that link in the appropriate thread there.

I found a page with some really good info about early Norse history: http://robertlyn-schultz.newsvine.com/_news/2010/10/19/5315813-viking-historical-timeline-of-the-norse-people-part-18000-bc-to-ad-900

You should read the "Known problems" thread at the beginning of the "Help and Feedback" forum. Some of these, like the fact that formations don't work, are known issues - a result of the game being not yet finished, not because it's "not well thought". You have some good suggestions there, though. Welcome.

Dunno what that is.

Varangians is closer, still 3 centuries late. Normans and Varangians are both names given to them by others at a later period. However, they're not completely outside the time frame, as shown here: http://Viking… Historical Timeline of the Norse People - Part 1(8000 B.C to A.D. 900) - by robertlyn-schultz - Newsvine

Varangians, perhaps?

I went and put in 10 bucks via PayPal (it was the least I could do, literally - there's a $10.00 minimum if you go that route). Really pretty easy.

There's no money to be made by hacking the Web site, so why would anyone bother? Donations are handled elsewhere, so there's no financial information to be stolen - it's simply not an attractive target for malicious hackers, and doesn't need a high level of security. You're correct that it's not very secure, but it doesn't need to be.

I thought there might be a balance issue as well as bad AI, but I guess not - I tried reversing that matchup, playing Iberians vs Persians, and pulled exactly the same trick. In both cases the AI seems to be spending its wood to create fields too early. When I wiped out their first troops they were helpless, they had nothing but food and could only create women. The key to this was rushing them very early, using my 2 starting missile troopers and the first 5 I could produce. When I got to the AI position, they already had 3 fields planted. If I wait until I can produce 10 missile troopers, my attacking force gets wiped out and it's a competitive game. Seems like this shouldn't be too hard to fix; the AI just needs to gather the food that's available before planting fields. Compared to some of the AI's other issues, that's pretty simple.

Too bad, had some impressive artwork.Back to the subject of civs that are under/over powered.- I just played a random map game as Persians vs Iberians, early on sent 7 Archers to attack their workforce. Wiped them out completely. All their gatherers were killed, and every new one walked right into the line of fire and died as well, until they ran out of resources. The game was essentially over at that point. That shouldn't ever happen.

@ Michael - I was thinking more like the metal mines would use shaft mining, and require a tech upgrade, while stone would be open-pit mining, just take more labor. But I'm just throwing ideas out there, take it whichever way you want. @ Lion - Nice picture you found, what was that from?

It would be more realistic if mines didn't suddenly run out, but the labor to extract increased as you had to dig deeper, improved technology is required as well. Metal would become more expensive as surface outcroppings were exhausted.Don't know if this would be worth doing, but I can imagine how it could be implemented - mines could progress from surface mines to tunnel mines, maybe a deep mine phase after that.

The Mongol horses were (and still are) small, but they came later - they're not in this game's time-frame.

The main point is, food and wood early - you don't need to produce stone or metal until you've progressed beyond the village phase. Produce a mass of cheap troops at first, that's what the enemy does in the beginning. It is possible to win by sitting back on defense and surviving the initial attack - but you have to produce troops like a maniac, and most of them will be wiped out in the first attack wave so you have to crank out more. You won't gain the upper hand until you can build towers to give you a defensive advantage. That's doing it the hard way.

Of course, I was just pointing out the contradiction in citing that as an example of a "way to ensure as many as possible is able to play" - it eliminated support for millions of computers.There definitely can be performance penalties in supporting outdated hardware and OSes. There is a need to strike a balance between legacy support and optimum performance, and that balance is continually shifting. It will be a subject of ongoing discussion for as long as the game is being developed.

Thought it was something like that. Don't see any need to worry about those, doubt anyone with GMA 900 graphics expects to play 3D games on it. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it works on mine, actually. Absolutely, don't want to mess up Linux support.