wowgetoffyourcellphone

Chang Jiang.

Well, I can't imagine that since DE has a Chinese faction. What I propose isn't really awkward. I think it solves your problem, while allowing for civs that are way out of the original "Part 1" scope, like Sassanids, et al. I think it would be super awkward in a Dacian Wars campaign if the Roman civ was training Triarii to combat Decebalus.

? I'm saying scrap the Part 2 thing and just have the option of time periods (or no time period) for game setup. The only "work" this makes is adding one line to the civ.json files and a selection option in the game setup code. With this, the game host can prevent a Republican Rome vs. Imperial Rome or Sassanids vs. Achaemenids situation if they want to (or they can just allow players to choose regardless of time period too).

Eh, not really. This isn't Age of Empires where you are advancing a civilization through eons of time. The factions are (more or less) supposed to represent a general point of time. I could see a game setup option where the host can choose a time period, which would then cap which civs can be chosen by the players. So, this way the old "Part 1" and "Part 2" idea could still be represented. Host could choose Early (Part 1: Republican Rome, Carthage, Athens, Achaemenids, etc.), Late (Part 2: Imperial Rome, Sassanids, etc.), or Any period (some civs can span both periods). Maybe then later WFG or mods can add other periods, like the Middle Ages and Bronze Age. But for now, we'd have Early, Late, and Any.

There are already games that handle this waaaaaay better than 0 A.D. Why try to reinvent the wheel with this particular thing? In Age of Mythology (a very inexpensive game, you should acquire it), soldiers ignore animals until one attacks a nearby unit and then they are triggered to respond. It's simple, effective, and doesn't require extra input (click a stance button to prevent animal holocaust).

Not to be contrarian, I think it would more interesting for the Republican Romans to get a building overhaul to more accurately depict them in their middle Republican form. A less impressive civic center would go a long way there. Keep the more impressive stuff like the current CC and Colosseum and Triumphal Arches and Circuses for the Imperial Romans, a separate faction. I really can't see a reform system working very well in the game (not without a ton of work on the conceptual and programming sides). I am envisioning Trajanic legions fighting alongside triarii and I'm wincing. lol

This actually looks really awesome. Makes me wish someone would make a 2D version of 0 A.D.

I had the idea for "Chicken Coop" tech at the corral that auto-spawned free chickens, X number maximum alive at a time.

While I think this is too in-depth for it all to be done for the game, there are a lot of things there that can be done and should be done. I like these kinds of thought-out in-depth proposals though, especially from someone with some real knowledge to share. I think berry bushes are a standard model as to be easily identifiable from other (wood or cosmetic) bushes. Perhaps pare the berry bush proposal down to one type of berry bush per biome? Or perhaps just 3 types that can be used biome-specifically, so they can be visually learned quickly. They should be modeled to be somewhat similar in shape. It would be neat to actually have these slightly different fields for each civ. We have wheat and barley textures. Now we need millet and spelt. Your ideas for techs and tech names are pretty good. I too have been annoyed by the oddly generic techs in the game. You're also right that the game needs more/better tree models and species.

I like how the art that they stole from 0 A.D. to make their promotional material looks way better than the actual game art. lol they should have stole 0 A.D.'s art for the game itself!

/0 a.d.

You should try 4K on Butanna Steppe or another nice looking map like that.

Nice! Finally the game plays and looks like what it should have been at launch.

I'll take this opportunity to make another plug for Battalions, since doing this with a Battalion would be suicide for a whole bunch of soldiers.

Nice little guide, @borg-. Should help a lot of rookie players. This^ kind of thing I would really like the team to look into minimizing in the gameplay. I think these are the kinds of "tips" which are really exploits of poor unit behavior, things @Sundiata has lamented. Not a slam on you, borg, since players play with the game they are given, not what they wish it to be.

Dunno, only defense I have there is that The Persian Empire was (for the most part) a single political entity. At no point until the Roman conquest were Athens and Sparta a single entity. Are you saying we should have Cultures instead of factions? If so, perhaps the Britons and Gauls should be merged and the Carthaginians renamed to Punics. Perhaps we should discuss this for a few more years, eh? Apparently, with a 95% approval, not even unit behavior toward animals can be "agreed" upon around here. We need to spend more time poking holes in each others ideas. Perhaps your mod should generalize the Greeks into one faction and we can see how it feels. Personally, I like to recreate different scenarios in my head when I play the game so would feel sad if the differentiation I feel from the current Greek civs would be lost. You can possibly propose a branching system, but such a proposal is a moot point when there's no one to implement such a system. I'd rather just have the Spartans and Athenians be separate from the get-go. I also like the visual and unit variety, not to mention gameplay variety experienced in a little mod called Delenda Est (Sparta plays as differently from Athens as any other civ does).

I think this is an artificial "problem." Athens and Sparta are the Hellenic states most interesting to players, so that's why they are included. Honestly, I wouldn't mind adding the Argives and Corinthians and Syracusans too. But for real though, some can be Atlas-only civs for scenarios and campaigns (Peloponnesian War). It would be easy to add them. While Athens and Sparta remain the selectable Greek civs.

Please don't go into the Bronze Age. Let mods or a prequel do that. I do like the idea of making 0 A.D. traverse the totality of the (Western) Roman state, or the breadth of "Classical" times. So, going ahead and extending it to the "Fall of Rome", 5th century, would be fine by me. Allows for cool civs like Sassanids. And then making "Part 2" being about the Middle Ages is also cool. It mirrors the Age of Empires franchise (homage), but with all the new and different features the 0 A.D. franchise still stands on its own. But if you still want to have Part 1 and Part 2 being (roughly) the 500 years BC and 500 years AD (any date you set is arbitrary, IMHO @Sundiata, so I don't think this is so bad. If 1AD is too arbitrary a date for you, then perhaps choose the murder of Caesar or the ascension of Augustus as your mid-point, still close enough to 1AD to make it not really matter), then I think Parthians for Part 1 are a must. They are really not a Part 2 civ. Their successors, Sassanids definitely are a part 2 civ. Others would be very desirable for Part 1, in order: Han Chinese, Scythians and Xiongnu (these 2 to tie Eurasia together), Odrysian Thracians (because they're cool), Epirotes. And a few others would be "nice to have", such as Pontus, Nabataeans (pretty cool), Armenians. Heck, to promote the mod.io feature, many of these could be offered as "official mods" folks can pick and choose to add to their game's civ roster.

The great Macedonian-Crocodile War of 328 BC where Alexander and his men hunted and killed every crocodile in Egypt.

The current game does not have separate action range and vision range; they are the same ranges. So, yeah, if an elephant has 100 meter vision range, then that is also his action range, so will walk over 100 meters to go attack something, including crocodiles and wolves. 100 meters is often over an entire screen width of distance. This is why I reduced all vision ranges in DE, for unit control. And, sure, units can be attacked by something outside their vision ranges and this is annoying, but that happens regardless if the average vision range is 50 meters or 100 meters. Decoupling "action range" from "vision range" is a must, IMHO, if you guys want such humongous vision ranges. Perhaps then you could have a separate action range when it comes to attacking dangerous animals? Just spitballing here. I understand that if you were to decouple these things then you'd have more range queries and potentially cause more lag*. *

Sometimes it causes such a reduction in FPS to be confused with freezing in my experience.

yikes

Then vote the opposite? lol The poll was mostly facetious anyway. Point is, other games handle this muuuuuch better than 0 A.D. from a gameplay standpoint. It's annoying for units to go berserking after lions and tigers unless those entities have shown to be a threat first by attacking a nearby unit. It's just annoying to me to see my guys run off to go kill a bear when I've placed them in an ambush or scouting position. See the unit behavior in AOM for example in regards to this. What happens in AOM is that crocodiles and lions, et al., are ignored by military units within range until those animals attack a soldier or villager, then nearby soldiers are triggered to go attack and kill it. Partially it's the core game's massive vision ranges, and partially it's unitAI behavior. Yes yes, stances stances stances, I don't think you should have to mess with stances to prevent something so mundane. Stances should regulate your units reacting to enemy units, not a wolf that wanders into view. Just my respectful opinion.

Indeed. There are many things that won't even show up on random maps, like farmlands, mercenary camps, and special starting buildings. That's because my knowledge of random map scripts is nil. You'll have to play on skirm maps for now.