Unarmed

I do not think one person can be the spokesman of all players, new or old. Opinions differ, although some a-like are more numerous as others. I came back to this forum partly to defend the game. After playing the newest version for some time I grew fond of the unique features of 0 A.D. Some of which I had other opinions back when I was active here. That being so, I disagree whole-heartly with point number five. I genuinely like the territory mechanic. Not only for being somewhat unique to 0 A.D. (at least compared to Age of Empires). One other reason is that I dislike towers, as example, build closely to other towers as was the case with Age of Empires 1. Personally, I would like this be futher developed so that there must be space between buildings of factions in the same way. So that player 1 can't build towers in front of player 2's (the enemy) buildings, which is now possible. I find it too arcadey (aesthetically) and somewhat annoying or unfair, and I acknowledge that the game will remain more or less an abstraction of reality. The city building itself is such an abstraction, in order to make it more realistic you would have to uncouple it in a similar way total war does it (the building part is decoubled from the battle part). As for this game, I am not advocating for such kind of realism but would welcome the towers not being buildable in front of enemy buildings. In response to another post, perhaps not in this thread, the second part that I want to defend is the citizen-soldier. It is another unique element. The only issue I can think of is that it is difficult to attack when there's resources such as forests around. I click and the citizen-soldiers start to cut wood instead of attacking soldiers. It seems that the part in which soldiers carry resources to an attack is partly solved. I remember that I suggested to expand the experience to champion units, but I am not sure if that's necessary. Something I never liked about the combat from Age of Empires is that you could attack individual soldiers with a lot of soldiers. I would prefer the system that Knights and Merchants or Total War has in which a group of soldiers is attacked. Perhaps somehow the transformation into a group could be combined with the citizen-soldiers being able to attack - which seems difficult to do by the way. Another nit-pick on combat is that the arrows shoot too straight. Otherwise combat is good for this type of game: I cannot expect Total War type of combat in a game which combines city building, resource gathering and combat. My fondest game is still Seven kingdoms: Ancient Adversaries. As such, what I am missing is diplomacy. This is something which not all players would miss, at least in Age of Empires it played a minor role. I understand that diplomacy is still in its infancy. The new trade mechanic that has been added made me happy. Mostly what I'm missing is that I can't start alliances or neutral trade with ai. Another thing I liked about Seven Kingdoms is the resource mechanic which seems incompatable with 0 A.D. In that game, a bigger army, more buildings required maintenance, while in 0 A.D. you can expotentionally grow without any drawbacks. Only the market seems to have a mechanic in which you lose a part of the resources. Of course, Seven Kingdoms has other things that I am found of (loyalty, spies, reputation etc.) but I do not see them as compatible. The charm of Seven Kingdoms for me was its unpredictability and dynamic system. While 0 A.D. is at the moment much more predictable and static, but I know that the majority of players like predictability in games. I also talked about Company of Heroes before, I liked how this game made spamming less desirable and unit preservation more important (but they ruined it with the German veterancy). It does seem that champions are limited because of metal and thus unit preservation becomes important. The citizen-soldiers are however somewhat expandable still. What I liked about Seven Kingdoms also was that the soldiers in barracks gained experience, which required time investment and thus stimilated unit preservation. Now I think it is important that the developers decide which way they want to go. They are the onces who invest time in the game. I have grown to dislike suggesting, my own especially, because suggesting does not come with much, or any, investment and rarely with the acknowledgement that it costs time and effort to implement these suggestions. So take this as you wish. I also want to apologize for not reading into the vision of the game that much; I might be talking here about things already planned. Additionally, with this game being so moddable I feel that those who do not like certain elements or want elements added, which includes me, especially me, should instead try to mod the game. Which seems to be happening already. Again, I want to stress that the developers should decide which way to go. We can only provide feedback, it is up to the developers to see what to do with it. I expect them to do that anyway. But, you know, I know that I can be fanatic about my own vision and the suggestions that results form them, and so I make this preach in order to limit myself a bit. This is not directed to other posters as much as it is directed to myself. Lastly, I want to praise the developers for making such a beautiful and fun game - even when there is still much in development. It is not mere a clone of another strategy game but has an identity of its own. What to say of the attention to detail? The historical accuracy is one thing (though I wouldn't now how historical accurate it is exactly), but what to think of the siege machines? Most games have generic siege machines. Medieval 2: Total War had mostly generic catapults and ballistas for each faction, only a few unique siege engines were added. So keep up the great work!

I see myself as a Frysian, and so kind of a Frissii. I live in a very small village (if you talk about "boerengat"...) by the way, I'm pretty sure it was what we call in Dutch "woeste grond" meaning savage ground, since it has been "çivilised" only recently (18th century if I remember correctly, I have a book on it). I would say it would be forested bogs and swamps in Ancient times. Now the ironic thing is, I kind of have this small distaste of French and English people (nothing extreme mind you). And guess what my family history goes back to the English (Cambridgeshire), which goes back to the French. That's my fathers side, my mothers side goes to the Dutch, that's all I know. My mother side also had darkish gypsies, possibly Romani people, who can be traced back to India. So the history of my country is not the history of myself. And of course, almost everyone has some Genghis Khan genes. I hope that wasn't too offtopic.

A very big inaccuracy is the wildebeests in the Near-Eastern badlands. At no point in history have wildebeests lived there, and there are no animals that look like them. Another inaccuracy is the name of the Roman battery ram. I came across this when researching siege engines: Well, it's not a inaccuracy actually, but testudo arietata would be better.

This seems like the real thing to me. In Atlas I have seen two variations of the Indian elephant. Great! One is a bit larger than the other, but I think that's great because even within the species there are height differences. I think todays Indian elephants might actually be much smaller. Confirmed (by Wikipedia though!): North African elephants would be 2.5 meters. The picture shows about 1 meter difference, just about right. The picture you have shared would be a Syrian elephant. Also I read about a Ptolemaic king boasted about tamming Ethiopian elephants (it's in the civ profile too). And I've read that they used Ethiopian mahouts. Might be cool to add Ethiopian mahouts or Ethiopian elephants. However we have no idea what species the Ethiopian elephants were, so because of that it might not be worth adding. Extant (living) forest elephants would be unlikely, so it could be that they tamed African bush elephants which are even larger: Or who knows a other subspecies of elephant lived in Ethiopia that time. Anyhow, this will be one of my favorite factions for sure!

(This is all I want to say about it, and I'm not angry at all:) The user made a fair complaint, though the way he said it was immature and unnecessary; there was no need to attack us "personally". We weren't even the only ones going off-topic. However, I did go off-topic, so I apologized for doing that, and I pointed out he could have been more politely. It's easy to just ask: "Can we please stay on-topic?". He did not even take the effort in his last post to go on-topic, instead he made a provocative comment that could have turned it into a nasty off-topic discussion. I do not take such "bait". I agree with Enrique. I prefer to train units than upgrading them when they are trained. Even if you mean that citizen-soldiers would upgrade like they do when they fight. You need to explain the unit types better Lion Kanzen. Even so, I think I only like the spy. But what I've heard so far about the spies, I don't like them that much. I don't know how it works, but it seems annoying that spies can open gates and kill units easily. Bribing sounds bad too. Why I find this annoying; I can't seem to do anything about it. In Seven Kingdoms there are counter spies who will find and kill spies automaticly, you'll easily notice when someone strange goes into your barracks to bribe or kill generals or soldiers, killing generals (or soldiers) is not easy in that game, your spy needs to be high level otherwise he will get caught, and loyality makes sure not everyone can be (easily) bribed. You could even sabotage resource production, steal information of the kingdoms, and in Seven Kingdoms 2 you can do false flag operations, false flag operations means you operate as if another nation does it. So you can do something bad to a nation and that nation thinks another nation but not you did it. Spies can be good as proved by Seven Kingdoms. But this game is so different compared to 0 A.D. In Seven Kingdoms you have to put soldiers into barracks or their loyalty will go down and they will betray you, spies can only kill and bribe soldiers inside buildings. The economy in Seven Kingdoms is very different. Etc. Etc. Since this game is so different I only suggest things that could work in a 0 A.D. type of game (like the diplomacy). Spies cloak to another faction in 0 A.D. And there are random civilians who join your nation so you are not always sure if it is a spy or not.

I'm sorry for going off-topic, I will remove my off-topic stuff. It's however little effort to ask so politely. You don't have to say it like that...

But the people who designed the siege engines (and build the prototype), and build them (using the design) were not the same. I would think am sure siege engineers were way too valuable to deploy in combat! I made a project for school about siege engines (I suck at building them), and siege engineers were very valuable in the Middle Ages. The siege engine designs were top secret! EDIT: Removed, see suggestions thread.

Hunters were not special in Ancient times, citizen hunted and soldiers hunted but not "full-time". Only true hunter-gatherers had hunters. I like the idea of spies. But I would merge assassins and spies personally. Look how Seven Kingdoms 1 & 2 did spies, it was awesome (but not sure if it is do-able for 0 A.D.) I think, I'm not sure, Seven Kingdoms 2 which I'm playing now, even had false flag operations, so when your spies get caught it looks like someone else had the spy. Siege engineers were very important in Ancient and Medieval times. I'm not sold yet on the idea though.

I really like the system actually. Maybe it can be futher improved, but I have no idea how. Maybe when you are used so much to AOE and AOM it takes time to get used to? The only thing I don't like is seeing a army carrying wood when it attacks me. I'm not bothered by citizen soldiers visually changing in citizen and soldiers.

When I searched chess and starcraft, I indeed found the game Go. I think Go is also played competively by Koreans on computers. Or something like it.

I might express concerns, but I'm pretty confident Wild Fire Games makes it into a very high quality (it is already) great game. Never heard of Paradox. Civilization of course. But never played any of those games. The only game with a "tactical" map I've played is Lords of the Realms 2, but that game is nothing special. (though it had some cool things, the characters I loved)

Well you can try out the game and it's being updated, so I think you can play it on windows 7. Or use compability mode. But yeah I might search for a good video or make my own. And sorry if my above comment was considered rude. I think 0 A.D. is great, it is very high quality, but lacking a bit in certain areas right now. But this is alpha. And I'm hard to please. Seven Kingdoms 2 is quite awesome. It is funny, the game has monsters and the monsters can deploy gorillas and rhinos. It's quite ridicilous but cool, so I understand gorillas and rhinos are on the official list. What's even more funny, the game is not at all historical accurate, but it has the right species of elephants for Carthage and India (just like 0 A.D. which I love). Lion Kanzen, here is a tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf_L5_CUto4 As you can see it is very different from Age of Empires, but still some features could be "imported". Don't let the poor graphics fool you. Around 6:00 you'll able to see a little bit about the diplomacy. I think I might make some screenshots so you can better understand, this is from Seven Kingdoms 2. EDIT: some screenshots showing the diplomacy options and AI diplomacy: I think I will make another one when I have played a little longer. Exchanging technology is very interesting, but I fear that for 0 A.D. this would lead to balance issues.

Is Seven Kingdoms type of diplomacy too difficult? It seems like this type of diplomacy of Rome Total war is more something for a turn based part of the game. I'm talking about real time strategy diplomacy. Rome Total War could have features that fit into 0 A.D. but it is very different. I wouldn't like battles like Total War in 0 A.D. as of now; combat is simply not interesting enough. But yeah I don't know how everyone feels. Age of Empires was about building a city and stuff like that so I feel diplomacy could be expanded, improved. It isn't supposed to be only about fighting for example. I was playing Seven Kingdoms 2 and noticed some other things (I actually prefer playing this singleplayer to 0 A.D. singleplayer as of now, not to be mean). Seven Kingdoms also has surrendering to players. Since converting would be made, this could perhaps be done (not requesting it however). But maybe this is too radical? So when a player surrenders to you (not resigns!) you get acces to all his buildings and units. (I don't like the idea of converting a single building and gaining acces to the units of the faction, though I like the idea of capturing buildings) It could be helpful in multiplayer games. Your teammate needs to go, to sleep, eat whatever. And he surrenders to you. Seems better than your teammate turning into AI. You could also piss someone off by surrendering to your favorite player. (the same pop cap would still apply to you)

Well, I'm not saying it ain't fun. I'm sure it is. I haven't played such games however. But I think it would be a good idea to first make a very simple campaign map.

No need for a campaign map to have diplomacy! Look at Seven Kingdoms. That game was all about making alliances, breaking them, betraying them, letting other factions kill eachother etc.