wowgetoffyourcellphone

Good in 2023 means what?

I think there could be a Strat Level of resources that you get from holding territories and winning battles, and then you can translate those resources to upgrading your territories and choosing bigger amounts of starting resources for the next skirmish match. So, let's say the campaign map is Greece/Aegean/Asia Minor. The Campaign resource could be called "Talents." It's a nice neutral, but historic money designation. Each territory you hold could either grant you more talents or cost you talents. Holding Laurium, for example, where historically there was a very famous and productive silver mine, would grant you talents, but holding Marathon would be neutral or cost you talents. What you use talents on is you could buy starting buildings for each territory. So, if you erect a Storehouse in the Marathon territory you'd start any skirmish in that territory with a free Storehouse. Buy a garrison with your talents and that territory will start with extra soldiers or defend itself against an enemy attack even if you have no Hero or General there. The enemy could take it before you get there, but it would be costlier for them to take it in deaths. You could even "store" talents in specific territories so that you start a skirmish map there with extra resources.

Thank you! Glad you liked it. Have you done any more testing? Run into any problems or imbalances?

I honestly wondered if this was the case. I might make some adjustments to coin trickle rates. I can look into it. What do they need, do you think? Alpha 26 version or Github? Thanks

Have a map of the ancient world and you move armies and characters around and take cities, etc. There would be the high level "strat" map of the Mediterran, Middle East, North Africa, Greece, or wherever the campaign takes place. You'd drop into RTS level to play out the moves. So, if you want to take a province, you'd drop down to the level of a skirmish map and play it out against the AI. If you win the match, you're given the province.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Achaemenid_architecture

I still don't think everyone understands the work necessary to create a good narrative campaign that will work for modern players. Yes, we can string scenarios together and put some text on the screen. That was fine 20 years ago. Today, people will want to see cut scenes (whether pre-rendered or with camera tracks in-engine) and have audio tracks and dialogue. You'll want custom animations too for the cut scenes. What you're talking about is: A screenplay for the entire thing New animations Camera tracks Scripted events 20+ custom maps New code for cut scenes and other things Foley work for new sound effects Voice acting work and sound editing - Huge UI work --- Essentially, you are taking what we've done for the game so far and then almost doubling it. The Macedonian campaign took and is taking a lot of work. Good work has been done. Even then, it has almost none of the things I listed and what an official campaign will need. I'm not poo pooing anyone's ideas. But if it's the will of the Council to cast the Ring into the fires of Mt. Doom, then I'll see it done. I just think a Strat Campaign, while taking a lot of work in itself, would be easier to achieve.

Could a basic narrative campaign be done? Sure, but because of the nature of the game it would have to be historically based, and that limits how many civs you can use. We could go the AOE2 route and have a dozen different historical campaigns, but that's now 12x the work. Audio tracks alone, a lot of work. Finding voice actors, etc., making music cues. A narrative tutorial is necessary, I agree. But that will need to be done regardless. Creating fully-realized narrative campaigns would be the difficulty.

I think the game's engine could support Narrative Campaigns for single player, but due to the sheer amount of work involved, specifically recording sound FX, dialogue tracks, writing the story and dialogue, camera work and cut scenes, building 20 scenarios, etc., WFG can't put that kind of effort into making something official. We could adapt work from others, such as the Macedonian campaign, but to truly make a narrative campaign from scratch would be nigh impossible. That's why I think some kind of Strategic Campaign or multiple Campaigns would be easier to achieve for single player. What do you think? The image above is from an aborted projects I was involved in 14-15 years ago, but is illustrative of the concept.

You are right to point out inconsistencies. We can definitely correct them.

A good plan.

Aegospotami -- We are defaulting to the classic English translation names. For instance, Themistocles, not Themistokles. Aegospotami, not Aigospotamoi. etc etc etc

Ah yes. In SVN, tech requirements are moved to their own component. Just move this out of Identity: <Requirements> <Techs datatype="tokens">phase_village</Techs> </Requirements>

Perhaps: <Requirements> <Techs datatype="tokens">-phase_town phase_village</Techs> </Requirements> Remove the old requirement too. May work

Unfortunately, the camera in Atlas is not isometric/orthogonal.

Click the little ring icon in the bottom left next time?

This would be difficult, but not impossible. I imagine you'd have to download all of the assets, import them into Blender, then render them all in 2D, including the unit key frames to animate them.

Okay. Thoughts: This Fortress expansion could have a smaller territory effect, like Military Colonies, and only train women and Spartiate champs. Or not train women at all.

Agreed, this is good too. You can even turn off the GUI with alt-G. And then if the distance fog is too much at that height, you can turn that off in options.

The screenshots are likely created in Atlas, where the camera is easily changed without any restrictions.

Remember that it is a game though.

Oops

Nah, in fact, I'd add Agesilaus II and give him a cavalry bonus. As others have said, we could remove one or more of the standard Stable techs to effectively nerf the Spartan cavalry. The Market is an important structure besides trading. I'd just remove some Market techs and then give the current Macedonian storehouse bonus to Sparta instead (and make up something new for the Macks). As discussed, I'm no longer against this. Mehh, again, we can just make their Stone Defense Tower upgrade more expensive or something. The towers fill an important role in the overall meta. Yes. Yet, Helots were used many times in skirmishing roles. Yes. Except I'd maybe suggest they train from the Storehouse and Granary. Yes. Yes.

We already have the Syssitia for their Academy* class structure, so I'm not sure what a Dromos would be for, other than to give some kind of global movement aura. It also has the same problem as a Roman Circus, in that the model would need to be relatively large in order to adequately convey what it is. Well, the Spartan houses have already been modeled and textured to look rougher than the other Hellenic houses. *What I call any special champion-training building: Syssiton, Gymnasion, Han Academy.