wowgetoffyourcellphone

I don't think Scout Cavalry are that bold of a change. But if you're talking about the other cavalry stuff, like capping them until Phase 2, then yeah, that's pretty bold for a player base who goes crazy over a 10% change in cost from one alpha to the next. lol Better to consider it for A24, along with the new stabs and arches. My Scout Cavalry cost 100 Food, but are very weak. They are literally only good for scouting and hunting. All other cav types cost Food+Wood or Food+Metal. You might be able to use scavs [scout cavalry, just coined the term right now in this post; thank me later] in some desperate circumstances to take out enemy siege weaponry if they aren't properly guarded by the enemy, but I doubt you'd just have a squadron or two of scavs just waiting around for this possibility. No, 99% of the time you'd use them for their intended purpose. Regarding the scavs, since @Alexandermb's new camels are committed, I'm thinking of making the Ptol and Persian scouts into Scout Camelry, "scams" if you will, for a little civ variation. A bit too much micro I think. You're brainstorming ideas at least. I'm not a big big fan of the barter feature. It's this big "meta economy" feature plopped right in the middle of a strategy game that takes place in a game world. That's not 0 A.D.'s fault, as it has become a kind of RTS staple over the years. I'd rather take out bartering and replace it with a Market trickle feature, where you use the 'Upgrade' feature with the market to make it trickle one resource or another. Or, you could have a feature where you sell large batches of one commodity or another at the market and gain the coin. It would be a feature that has to recharge so you can't just flood the market and gain coin whenever you want. It would be similar to the Bartering feature, but each sale or trade is more significant and has a bigger impact. Just brainstorming here. I also think Tribute could work in a less meta way too, as you allude to. Right now, trading in 0 A.D. has a tribute-like feature where your ally gains resources every time your trader stops at her market. You could integrate tribute into the game by allowing the player to "switch" his traders from gathering trade resources to tributing trade resources instead. So, in a team match each player chooses whether trade benefits them, or benefits their ally. If you do stuff like this, I think econ elsewhere would need streamlined a bit, like perhaps Slaves appear automatically when you build a Storehouse or Farm Field and work automatically to gather those resources. The strategy here being where and when you place those assets rather than microing gatherers around.

Eeeeeyah.

Bump, since improving the core gameplay is now a topic again. In DE, I have implemented Scout Cavalry for the game and they work beautifully. They're good for hunting and scouting. You get one free Scout at the beginning. If you build a Stable, then you can train 1 more Scout [or do you use that stone for a barracks or archery range instead? Decisions, decisions]. No other cavalry are available in Village Phase. At Town Phase the cavalry cap for all types, including scouts, is lifted.

Yeah, I didn't want to classify every single superhero movie and franchise. For instance, I didn't mention Logan, which is my all-time favorite superhero movie largely because it mirrors my own relationship with my own daughter, minus all the gunfire.

Just took my son to see Black Panther this weekend. It's pretty good. I'd rank it next to Iron Man 1 and Wonder Woman as a solid tier-2 superhero film. For reference, I'd put Man of Steel, Ant Man, and Thor films at tier 3, and then it gets precipitously worse after that [the less said about films like Catwoman and Batman vs. Superman the better]. Tier 1 for me would be films like The Dark Knight, Guardians of the Galaxy 1 and Captain America: Civil War and Avengers 1. The music in the trailer is pretty dire and doesn't do the film justice. Anyway, I could recognize inspiration taken from all across Africa for the Wakandans. Most interestingly, I saw these shields in the movie: VERY BRIEFLY, near the beginning when Tchala is being initiated as king, there is a flotilla if ceremonial barges with dancing women on them heading toward a waterfall, attached to the sides of one of the barges are these shields above. I said, AHA! out loud in the theater. lol I was also the only one to laughed out loud at the "colonizer" quip toward Bilbo Baggins from Tchala's feisty sister, but that's irrelevant here. Tchala's shield during the ceremonial challenge fights looked very similar to the stick shields @Sundiata suggested for the Nuba units. It also looked similar to Zulu stick shields such as this: Lastly, I'll say Nupita Lyong'o was extremely hot in the film. Wish I could make her my queen!

Indeed. Now needs defined what constitutes a "foundation." Give a bullet point list.

Indeed, my approach, believe it or not, despite allowing for massive battles would only actually have the player controlling maybe 20-30 actual combat entities. Entities being the operative word here, since each of these "entities" represents a battalion of 20-24 soldiers. Add in about 25-30 citizens and maybe 30 or 40 slaves and other support units, and you're only maintaining 100 actual entities in the game. Meanwhile, you actually get the feel for real ancient combat through the use of large armies in battalions, formations, charges, and all the rest. Absolutely! I've reduced unit speed and more importantly reduced vision range considerably in DE. This would carry into any gameplay proposal as well. I agree this is a huge huge problem for the game's current mosh pit combat, and probably one of the many reasons that AOE games have such similar looking units. With my proposed battalion system this particular problem is all but eliminated. You mention Warcraft 3, which is basically a hybrid RTS-RPG. A battalion system is essentially this. Each battalion is like a unit from WC3. You pick the class of battalion, which has different bonuses and penalties and abilities. You can upgrade each battalion to be different, much like its own character. Imagine a "battalion" of 5 elephants. This is akin to a character that you can improve with better armor, better weapons, towers, pikes/archers, even a squad of support soldiers [a real thing that happened; war elephants almost always had escort troops], officers ["zooiarkhoi"], noisemakers [bells around their necks, scares enemy cavalry]. You can do similar things with a battalion of Celtic warriors [naked-> clothed-> armored; karnyx; noble officer; etc.]. A battalion of Companion Cavalry. A battalion of Roman Hastati. A battalion of Greek Hoplites. A battalion of Persian Chariots. etc. Weapon-switching becomes easier with battalions. Stances [reduced to 3] and formation [reduced in number as well] control becomes easier. All those cool things about ancient combat becomes easier. Economics. You can still have multiple resources, but perhaps streamline how you assign gatherers to harvest those resources. Imagine this: Build a Storehouse next to some trees. Click one button once, and that storehouse trains 10 slaves who immediately start gathering the nearby trees once complete. Slaves* are your primary gatherers, while your Citizens are your builders and traders**.

Heh, yeah, feel ya there.

I think the general vision for the longest time had been: Age of Empires 2 + citizen soldiers + territories Boom done. But many see some gameplay problems with that as well as a huge missed opportunity to build something more interesting. Hence all the broken mods and bloodbath gameplay threads. In the end I think just voting on each feature individually as had been done in the past misses some of what Prodigal and Thorfinn are talking about, which is coherence. Imho best way would be to have a small number of self contained gameplay proposals that are widely regarded to be coherent and fresh. When you have these 3 or 4 self contained proposals then you can choose one and tweak from there. Experience has taught us that debating individual features ad nauseam is folly. Each feature has to fit within a whole for a complete and coherent experience. So choose an overarching theme or idea, like: "0 A.D. aims to give the player the satisfying experience building and maintaining an ancient empire, through resource harvesting, city building, and conquest through iconic ancient combat." Gather up a handful of gameplay proposals which more or less fulfill your thematic statement, and choose the one which you think most carries out the potential of the premise.

True. Then perhaps set the length to whatever is maxly* possible for 720p. *eh hem

Including a wider variety of units is why core game should look at DEs mercenary camp feature. In it, I provide Persia with Kardakes hoplites, Mercenary Greek hoplites, Kardakes skirmishers, and Scythian Horse Archers. I was thinking of closing one of their unit type gaps by possibly including Nubian Swordsmen too. The Anatolian Skirmisher citizen soldier in the game could cover the Lydian Skirmisher you mention, though I am sure that unit needs reskinned and propped for accuracy.

The gif is obviously posted in jest since I have previously admired your work and other posts. Perhaps you don't understand the sheer amount of blood spilt over this single issue over the many years. The only answer is modding so you can demonstrate your ideas, else you just start the 50th thread where good ideas go to die.

This helmet does not match the other helmets in look or texture. That's why I suggested that. This texture currently looks flat and dull.

2 and 3 seem to be the same issue just manifesting in different ways. I have found out what is happening. If the 'Upgraded' entity inherits from the original entity, then the Viewer only gets the information from the original entity--it doesn't see the upgrade entity as a new entity. If the 'Upgrade' entity parent is a new parent [template_structure_xxx] then the viewer updates the information accordingly. hmm. Can test this in DE by viewing the upgrade units for the Maiden Archer. The Maiden Fire Archer's parent is the Maiden Archer, and thus the viewer does not display the new information. The Maiden Swordsman's parent is a new base template [swordsman instead of archer], and thus the viewer displays the Maiden Swordsman correctly.

Just set the size of the dropdown to 1000. It resizes to the number of civs automatically according to my testing. I am not sure if this can be applied elsewhere too, perhaps the struct tree civ dropdown too, but I haven't tested. I had already fixed it locally, but seriously can't be arsed to push it to git.

No need to make some kind of separate building for the cannon fodder units as all the barracks and archery range units should already just be cannon fodder. The Immortals are already separated by making them only available from the Apadana.

Really? What's the plan?

It would be great to have a highly detailed and textured Blessed Mountain object for the game. Maybe about half this size. Looks incredible though. I can imagine a "siege" scenario where the Romans and Kushites fight over the city.

texture needs some mild roughness and some mild imperfection.

https://kotaku.com/company-of-heroes-was-the-perfect-rts-1791898789

Add some Desert Trading Posts that can be captured. See: Atlas.

Don't know where to start on fixing all the actors. Well, I started, but then realized the gargantuan task ahead and gave up. Unit actors all renamed to a new scheme. All infantry need fixed for carry anims. All new camel stuff. Soon, cavalry will need fixed for the new movement animations. They already all need fixed because variants were moved... Just too much. Motivation completely gone.

I'd say all of these are acceptable colors. Men from Caesar's legions especially would have access to these, though the Coolus would be the most prominent style and still some Montefortino helms here and there.

Ctrl-H has been and always shall be your friend.