wowgetoffyourcellphone

I am very much in favor of streamlining the maps in the game. There are currently 90 random maps in the game, of extremely varying quality. Many of them don't really follow any kind of theme, some are generic, some are specific, some are "novelty" maps. I'd rather a game have 10 supremely high quality random maps, than 90 random maps that are "all over the map" in quality and theme, lol. That's not to say that the game should only have 10, but 10 amazing maps would be better than 1000 mediocre maps. Ideally, each map should represent the game at its best. New players booting up a map that looks and plays bad would not bode well for the rest of the map set as far as setting expectations. Part of the problem is that the maps can only (understandably) use the assets that the game provides and the assets themselves vary in quality too. It would be great to go back and either (preferably) update or (unfortunately) eliminate some older legacy assets which are just not up to snuff, then adjust the map scripts accordingly. Some kind of overhaul is needed, definitely. Discussion can be had about how to organize the maps too. Novelty maps, like Snowflake Searocks I think should be organized separately from maps which are highly focused on the game's themes like Jebel Barkal. Just to name a quibble. Sorry, went on a tangent. Hopefully I didn't annoy anybody like @elexis

I like some of the UI elements, like the gold icons.

These are going to look super nice. So, are any of the old Celtic shield assets going to be retained?

Thems cliffs are the hotness.

This is a great idea, actually, so I don't have to make multiple versions of the same map with different numbers of players.

While not ideal, DE makes this work with the 'Upgrade' feature. You can switch the Maiden Guard from Sword to Bow to Flaming Arrows and back.

I've been rolling around in my head simply removing named heroes from skirmish mode entirely (but keeping them for scenarios, campaigns, and Herocide of course) and splitting off their uses to other units, such as Officers, Bannermen, etc. I could foresee an option to "upgrade" one of your Officer units to a General (or some other culturally specific designation), which is now your civ's "Leader" with extra bonuses and benefits. For certain Naval-centric civs, perhaps one of your Triremes could be upgraded to Flagship, with aura and other bonuses, or one of your Officers upgraded to Admiral.

@Sundiata's latest work

I reduced max gatherers to 4. Since you have to overlap the quarried objects, the pathing can really only allow about 4 units to gather from the individual blocks without lots of bad bumping into each other and shuttling glitches. These are starting to look really nice. For cliff ones, I wish they were taller/extended further downward.

I believe max and min distance can only apply to objects already under the player's control, not gaia-controlled objects. Instead, could have neutral generic mining camp dropsites on the map next to the quarries that players can capture.

I'm starting to think that the stone quarries should look exactly like this from the start. But yeah, a quarry "diminishing" as it's being consumed is something I've wanted for a while. It could be an extension of the "damage" feature maybe, which is already in-game. I could imagine a "claimed" quarry would have ladders, scaffolding, etc. show up.

3. Should all factions have a battering ram? Yes, even if just 2 or 4 dudes carrying a log. In fact, you could have the "dudes+log" be the default battering ram in Town Phase, and then there be a "Covered Battering Ram" upgrade come in City Phase.

So, the "weathered" variations of cubic look nice m8. I put the sharp cubic ones under the large quarry objects so that it'll look carved up when they are depleted. Not perfect yet, but still nice. The quarries themselves aren't great for this purpose and there could be some nice custom jagged "quarry" objects underneath instead, but the concept is there.

Another vote for SSAO.

The coolest @#$% ever. Mongolian Hard Rock.

lol okay, then what's the consensus? Is this something that should just be fixed in core game?

I see what you mean, but honestly, if the game acquired a model that looked like this, I wouldn't be angry in the slightest: One of the things I like about this sculpt is her facial expression (you may disagree). To me, she kind of looks otherworldly or even psychotic in a way, with her bulgy eyes staring straight through you. Kind of like how I'd imagine a supernatural goddess of war to look. Like she could snap her fingers and murder you without giving it a 2nd thought. We are insects to her, or unfortunate collateral damage at best. She only really cares about any one individual human being when that unfortunate person pisses her off. Just an interesting interpretation of her visage.

Surely the kennel is a gameplay convention similar to the fact that all civs have a "barracks" even if the concept of a barracks is an anachronism. I agree about the cost though. I've said before that costs in this game are super weird.

What's so wrong about the Nashville reproduction? The pose and general details seem accurate.

lolwut

Stone and Wood should suffice, yeah. (same as in DE) I also have a yuge problem with a lot of the costs of things in vanilla, technologies especially. I don't think anything should cost more than 2 different resources except for special cases.

Part of having a socket would be as a gameplay convention, allowing the player to build the dropsite out of their territory.

Indeed. That's why Stone "mines" would be called Stone Quarries and Metal "mines" would be called Metal Mine or Mine Shaft.

I tried mixing the two, to some decent results. Their textures are quite grainy with a lot of noise. It might be better to reduce the detail of the diffuse texture and instead add detail in the normal map, perhaps similar to these:

The weathered one gives a weird lumpy shape to the top of the cliff face. I like the flatter tops of the cubic variant. Something between the two may be ideal. I imagine it'll take a lot of experimentation, though the current variants are already useful on their own.