serveurix

Speaking about heightmaps, I wouldn't mind if they were slightly modified before being converted into random maps, and if some parts were "exaggerated" for the sake of perceived realism. On this particular map, even when setting it to "Giant" I never see a clear separation in the Dardannelles and the Bosphorus Straits. Apart from Lesbos a player can move across the whole map without having to go water.

Checked it again, didn't find more information, but as those maps are based on heightmaps, I suppose the problem is that those heightmaps could have been derived from nonfree topographic data ?

Well that was some very interesting replay ! Too bad for the anticlimatic end. Too bad also that this is happening on a nonfree map that had to be removed from a23 (apparently the scripts were derived from proprietary scripts, I don't know how that's possible, if anybody knows what the story behind this is, let me know). Few thoughts about the gameplay : There were only two moments in the game where the relic really played a role, otherwise the game played pretty much like a regular LMS. I think going for one relic is a good idea, but then the relic bonuses should probably be buffed to make the relic really worth taking with the risk of being team focused. I don't have the impression that the armor and food gathering bonuses from Brutus' rotting body's influence really impacted the match. There wasn't any fight for the water. Some players fishboomed a bit at the beginning and quickly deleted those ships that were taking pop space that was not worth the food income. Trading on water could have been an option I think, but a team who had managed to secure the two sides of the Black Sea could easily secure an even more fruitful land route, so land trade was the choice to go for. A lot of players considered taking control of the Sea of Marmara and built docks on it, but the only one going for the sea's control was orange, putting its catafalque next to the shore to reduce the surface of attack and protecting the shore side with warships, and this tactic didn't prove very fruitful (although I liked the idea). The only use of water that really worked was the retreat of yellow from Anatolia to the Lesbos Island by transporting over the Mytilini Strait (yes, I did some research), and his successful defense of persian archers firing across the sea to discourage any incoming enemy. Some thoughts about the interface : I still think an observer overlay is a must-have. I'm thinking about a small table with a transparency effect like some shoutcasters of aoe have, with the possibility to diplay/hide it with a hotkey. This table would display on each row the names of players with their color, elo and team if applicable. The columns would show the faction chosen, the global score, the team score if applicable, the amount of each resource with the numbers of workers on it, the pop situation, the citizen pop, the champion pop, the traders pop, the current phase, the number of idles, the number of relics, the number of CCs/colonies, the number of wonders, and the K/D ratio for each player. I still think there should be hotkeys to allow the observer to cycle through the players POVs and turn on/off FoW+SoD. I think the observer should have access to a global diplomacy window so he doesn't have to look at each player's diplo window to figure out all diplo relationships at a certain moment. The global diplo windows would have a table with all player's names in rows and all player's names in columns, and at the intersections we would have the letters 'A', 'N' and 'E' for Allied, Neutral and Enemy. Or perhaps icons to represent that, or even colored letters, or a combination of those. I also think the gamerules window should be reorganized to be more readable, so we can quickly find what we want in it. I don't know how to do that though. (putting it all in a table ? using colors ? icons ?) I think the observer should have buttons or hotkeys that allow him to quickly locate relics and heroes at any moment. It would also be nice to have a "battle overlay" table. The idea would be the following : when an event is about to happen (like two armies marching towards each other) the observer could press a key that would display an other table next to the main observer overlay table. This table would display the K/D ratio for all players from the moment the key has been pressed, as well as the Loot. As the armies fight each other the numbers for the concerned players would rise, and when the battle is over the observer could press that key again, and the numbers would freeze. The observer would be able to keep looking at the outcome of the battle, and when he's done, he could press that key a third time and that would close the battle overlay. Otherwise I really enjoyed that replay. Thanks for sharing it.

Agreed. The effect on a building wouldn't be the same though.

I don't agree. Slingers shouldn't be seen as low-grade siege unit. They shouldn't be able to take down buildings, or more precisely they should be as good as archers or skirms in that regard. I don't think slingers and siege engine do the same kind of damage. 300 pebbles sent from 300 slings at the same time don't equal a catapult shot or a ram hit. With the current mechanism we have buildings that are very resistant to hack and pierce, to resist "regular" units (spearmen, swordsmen, archers, skirms), and less resistant to crush, to allow the siege engines to do damage. That means that the slingers will always have an edge over skirms or archers in taking down buildings, which is not realistic. We could minimize that by giving buildings the same armor against crush than they have against hack and pierce, and give all the siege engines super high crush attacks. But at the same time we don't want siege weapons to be OP against units. We don't want rams to mow down infantry like they currently do. I think this is unsolvable if we stick to the current way we treat slingers. Some thoughts on what we could do : - We could treat the crush damage from the slingers as a different kind of crush damage than the one from the siege engines. Although that would be probably the most physically accurate solution, I don't like it because it requires to create a fourth kind of damage (I don't even know if the engine supports it) and overcomplicates the game, just for one unit. - We could give slingers pierce damage instead of crush damage. This is more realistic because the damage they do will be comparable to archers and skirms, both against buildings and on the field. The problem is that it won't be easy to fine-tune to make it even more realistic (for example I expect pebbles to be much less efficient than arrows against cataphracts and any kind of heavy-armored units), unless we add hard counters. - We could keep crush damage for slingers, and go for a hard counter system that would allow for easy fine-tuning of units, but would be less elegant and would require players to rely on memory a bit more. I would like to add that making slingers do pierce damage would not make them "yet another kind of archers", like the archers do not (or are not supposed to) constitute "yet another kind of skirmishers". Slingers would be different from archers, on a general level, in terms of range, damage, firing speed, accuracy, and firing angle (although I don't know if the firing angle has an influence in the game, if you have any info on that let me know). (and on a lower level in terms of cost, armor and walking speed but that's just regular balancing, not what we're talking about)

@Imarok these tables only concern 1v1 right ? They don't take in consideration massed vs massed ?

Why not making slingers do pierce damage instead of crush ?

That would be nice indeed ! (with snow for example)

As long as they look natural, yes. People would typically not spend time decorating a purely utility building.

there's the fact that they're different species growing next to each other, but also the fact that they're quite big. The flowers you listed here would appear as a bunch of colored dots on the texture.

maybe They look really exotic to me.

I'm skeptical about the dedicated cav archer area on the persian and carthaginians archery range. Are the cav archers training at the same time as the foot archers, right next to them, sitting on an immobile horse ? I don't think there's any point training on a standing horse, if you just want to train your accuracy when immobile do it on foot. The big difference in the cav archer training compared to the foot archer training is training to shoot when your horse is moving, and for that you would expect the soldiers to do it by riding in the middle of the yard while shooting at the targets. So this cav archer area in the persian and carthaginian models looks weird to me. I'm also skeptical about the greek archery range. It looks very modern in its configuration. It looks like the modern shooting ranges we have nowadays for firearms or for archery as a sport. Did ancient archery ranges have these wooden panels between the shooters ? What for ?

I would remove those flowers entirely, they don't look very british to me. Keep the ivy though. If you want to give the building a rich look, then have the barriers and pillar be straight, like a well-built and well-maintained building. If, on the contrary, you want to give the building a poorer look, then remove or deteriorate the wall painting and use branches and trunks for the barriers instead of straight beams. (this is just my opinion)

It looks too rich to me, especially with those big colored flowers. And the contrast between the apparent richness of the structure and the wonky barriers and pillars has something disturbing.

Yes the colors are hard to recognise : I think it's because on those shields (or drapes ?) there is an extra semi-transparent dark texture, and that changes the apparent color (blue looks black, teals looks blue, red and orange look brown, etc.).

@stanislas69 of course it's been committed, it's in the game since a22 (old one on the left, new one on the right) lol you should play the game sometimes

This is much better. The colored targets and the horses make the archery ranges and the stables easily recognisable at first glance. For the siege workshop it's harder, I guess the siege weapons could "stand out" a bit more.

Sorry, I meant 0 A.D. Part 1 timeframe.

On an other note, I don't think the theater should look like one particular famous theater but more like a generic spartan theater (it's not a wonder).

But that theater was built during the roman period, after 0 A.D. timeframe.

I'm still surprised by the look of the theater. Why is there a temple-like structure on the stage ?

@Sundiata : I thought the spartans didn't like walls as a way of defense. Anyway if the temenos is a thing, perhaps it should be present on all greek wonders then.

I'm not sure about the surrounding wall. Why would the architects hide the temple to the view of passersby ?

I love the new "white" buildings (CC, syssition, temple, gerousia). What is your inspiration for the new theater ? Like Lion I have a hard time differentiating the stables, archery range and siege workshop at first glance. (and from the picture here : https://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2017_10/screenshot0151.thumb.png.ef44776643a83c5c639d9228013eff7b.png I'm still unsure which one is which)

@DarcReaver , did you check out Alpha22 ? Do you look at the trac updates to see the regular changes ? Did you read the project announcements ? A22 brought significant changes. A23 will bring long awaited fixes and novelties. New code or data is contributed every day. More stuff is happening under the hood. Itms said the game design issue was being addressed. The pathfinder, currently priority number 1, is being worked on. Some other devs are working on formation-related design decisions and implementations. Artists are on huge tasks at the moment. The project is moving on. A lot of work has been done and there's still a lot of work to do, and the resources are limited. But it's slowly getting there.