Ryze

It's not the same thing, nor are the starting Iberian walls a substantial enough challenge for a turtler (I imagine they are simply intended to deter early rushes...).

Thanks for the info. As someone who likes to turtle and then in the late-game enjoy the feeling of crushing through the lines of fortifications of my opponents (even if just an AI), eventually having it implemented will be amazing

'Ziz' if no Chinese civ, else 'Zhū Què'.

I've observed a handful of AI-only games in A25, with Petra bots on Medium difficulty and Defensive attitude. In none of those games have I ever seen the AI build palasides or walls, leaving it extremely vulnerable to small-scale raids even in the very late game (e.g. 1 hour in...). Is this a bug, or has the AI for this been disabled in A25 for some reason?

Why "no armor"? Various civilizations had archers with varying degrees of armor protection...

I think that in order to have a proper unit balance analysis we need to factor in cost-effectiveness. Thus a unit may be admittedly stronger than another as long as it's price (and, dare I dream, maintenance) is proportionally higher. E.g. horse-archer vs foot-archer This would allow tthe existence of heavily-armored horse-archers, which did exist as an elite component of several armies, instead of the suggestion above of nerfing their armor as part of a purely gameplay consideration rather than an historical example...

Simple, the lance is too cumbersome to waive around and duel with swords...

Yes, it would be more like a short campaign. The inspiration is more Empire Earth, which has a nice concept of "territories" with different resources which you had to dominate in order to exploit it...

The 20 to 45 minutes part kind of puts me off... A game with such level of detail should be savoured like the finest of meals, not devoured as if it was fast food Would you consider adding a second game-mode (Empire Building?) where the game takes between 40 to 90 minutes? Then people could have time to develop more cities other than a huge metropolis and epic fights could ensue where one defeat in open battle doesn't mean total destruction, since even if that leads to the loss of your best city, you'll have places to retreat and try to claw your way back to victory... In short, a mode where (grand?) strategy is as important as tactics

As stated in the other thread, I love the idea and I hope the team seriously considers this, if they think it feasible...

THIS. Local resources. Please make this happen

Love the idea As a player, I totally fall in the "Imperial" category. However, having recently played a lot of AoE2HD multiplayer, I do worry about the time necessary to "build-up" before actual fighting occurs... My suggestion is gto go for the two separate game modes ("Arcade" and "Imperial") and then, in "Imperial", starting with a map 10x bigger and with far more costly/complex Age upgrades, so that player can still enjoy early Age fights...

You are forgetting the Xiongnu. They were sort of "proto-Mongols": they had a big emphasis in horse archery and tribal structures. Their confederation was so strong that it took the Han (at its heighest) nearly one century of 'total war' to subjugate them. Thought I'm not certain, I think that the Hun migration was (partially?) caused by the confederation's defeat against the Han. P.S.: Please correct me if I wrote something wrong. 0 - 500 AD history is a rather 'foggy' subject to me.

Sorry, but that argument is flawed. Britons and Mauryans never fought each other and they are in. Don't get me wrong: they should be. My point is the eastern civilisations didn't fight with the western ones BUT the Chinese and the Koreans fought the Xiongnu, the Xiongnu fought with other steppe people, those steppe people fought Persians, Seleucids, Macedonians, Romans, etc. Therefore, the eastern civilisations are isolated because, to put it bluntly, the in-game civilisations stop in the steppes. What do people think? I think that those civilisations should be in. Maybe in a late patch (afterfall, game development does need priorities). P.S.: Playing a steppe civilisation would be lots of funs.