wowgetoffyourcellphone

IMHO, a gameplay design that tries to make every player happy will likely fail to be a coherent gameplay design.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Entity parent="template_entity_unit_battalion"> <Battalion> <LineUnit>units/athen_infantry_spearman_b.xml</LineUnit> <NumberOfUnits>24</NumberOfUnits> <SpecialUnits> <StandardBearer>units/athen_infantry_standardbearer.xml</StandardBearer> <Officer>units/athen_infantry_spearman_officer.xml</Officer> <NoiseMaker>units/athen_infantry_noise_maker.xml</NoiseMaker> <Healer/> </SpecialUnits> <Directional/> <Permanent>true</Permanent> </Battalion> <Cost> <Population>10</Population> <PopulationDivisible>true</PopulationDivisible> <BuildTime>60</BuildTime> <Resources> <food>500</food> <wood>400</wood> <stone>0</stone> <iron>0</iron> <coin>0</coin> <glory>0</glory> </Resources> </Cost> <Health> <RegenSoldierRate>10</RegenSoldierRate> </Health> <Identity> <GenericName>Athenian Hoplites</GenericName> <Formations datatype="tokens"> formations/battle_line formations/column </Formations> <FormationModifiers datatype="tokens"> formations/modifiers/close_order formations/modifiers/open_order formations/modifiers/locked_shields </FormationModifiers> </Identity> <Looter/> ... </Entity> So, there would still be "single soldiers" in the game, easy for modding or modes, or scenarios. The battalion entity simple calls and places these soldiers into the battalion, what you train is the battalion template in a standard match.

Celts and Germans definitely had slaves. Iberians is the only one I am not sure of their status on this item. Some sources claim Persians don't have slavery, others do. The ones that say they don't have slavery seems like semantics to me, kind of like saying the Spartans didn't have slavery, they had helots, which are almost identical to slaves in most respects... But they don't have to be called a "Slave" genericly in the game. "Laborer" is fine for the generic name, while for most their specific name would be "Slave" in their specific language. "Thrall" works too. But we can just say, "this is the Helot, the Spartan slave class of unit," and it still works fine. /The exact word does not matter to me one bit, though I tend to prefer to call something what it is: slavery.

Not a bug, clearly. They are meant to overlap.

Of course the team can do whatever they want to with my proposal: include some of the ideas or ignore all of them completely. However, I find the battalions to be crucial to the combat mechanic, so much so that I'd rather they just ignore my whole proposal if they don't implement battalions. Soldiers don't fight as individuals in ancient combat. It's just not done. Even in the "age of heroes" with "single combat", the bulk of the battle was completed by formations of soldiers. If you want combat with individuals making great big choices for themselves, then don't make a strategy game based on ancient combat, especially not based on Romans and Greeks who prided themselves in their formation combat! That's just my PoV.

I'm not even sure that guy has ever played RTS game before... lol

Indeed. Happens with many large footprints, actually. See: Warships along the shoreline. Very ugly, not exclusive to DE. About the aura graphics, @Enrique has offered to create nice custom aura graphics for each culture if only the feature was there.

This is because the game uses the <Footprint> for ungarrison and training exit position. In DE, I use the footprint to add the Temple healing aura graphics--it's currently the only way to achieve what I wanted. Unfortunately,they are not fully compatible.

Throw away the current implementation. What I'm talking about is a different implementation.

@Lion.Kanzen, in my design, the Citizens are your militia, who are called to arms with a town bell at the civic center, storehouse, and farmstead. They have a muster time --reduced via techs-- and then they can fight back against attackers or raiders.

Another possible solution would be to remove the "no resources" option in game setup, only allow it for scenarios. I know people don't like to remove options, but think of it as streamlining. How many players really play matches with zero starting resource? I'd wager only 1 out of every 1000 match, if that. One thing i will admit is that this is a pretty big change to get used to at first. When I played a test match I totally forgot about my changes and wondered why my shuttlers were bypassing the civic center to drop their wares. lol It does take a change to the thinking of what your Civic Center's abilities are. You can't rely on the CC to be the dropsite anymore. But after that first match I was fine. Also, even in that match, once resources were cleared from the area around my CC and I had built farther out, the issue was resolved automatically.

That's what I was thinking too. We can come up with ways to make Polar Sea or any other map or gametype work with any new paradigm we come up with. It's all good, as my mother says.

It's true. I like how the Persians have a barracks and stable, while the Spartans have a barracks and military mess hall, and further the Romans only have a barracks. Maybe just have a basic rule than any civ with more than 2 cavalry types is to receive a stable building. I can't imagine forcing a stable building into the Spartan civ building roster. Side note: About AOM, I never understood the Barracks and Counter-Barracks for the Atlanteans. Why would you ever train any barracks units when your Counter-Barracks units hard counter everything? Especially if you're a good twitch gamer, microer, just always train the hard counter units. But I was never a fan of the Atlanteans. Zeus4lyfe.

, I meant player.xml.

I just remembered I don't need to use a tech hack, can just use player.js.

Indeed, a Stables/Barracks split could be possible. I might throw it in there. For your last point. I think maybe battalion formations could get more organized as the units promote to new ranks. Basic level troops their lines would be kind off messy, while Elite and Champion battalions would have laser-straight lines and files.

In my gameplay proposal thread, I proposed that you can build slaves from dropsites. They're econ units only. I could see the possibility for a strategy in a nomad match where the player miiiight want to build a few storehouses and farmstead first, before their starting CC and gather some more resources before they found their city and announce to the enemy where they are. Dunno.

I can do this right now with a hack. Field template <RequiredTechnology> would be something like "Unlock_Farms", which is an auto-research tech with prerequisite of a Farmstead class object. Then with Player.js, make it so for every 1 farmstead, up to 8 fields are unlocked. The first bit is a hack, the last bit isn't. The non-hacky way would be to code the game to allow templates to have a RequiredClass or a generic Requirements element, with different requirements possible within that element. Right now, the only requirement possible in the templates is RequiredTechnology. It's not a super ugly hack, really, and may be the preferred way to do it for all I know. Anyway, we can combine all of these things, really, since they all make sense separately and together.

Only skirmish maps for now. Easier for me, plus the skirmish maps can be made to exacting standards that maximize the gameplay changes I have made. Just way easier to test things with skirm maps.

I already synced the CC/dropsite change to git.

I hate hate hate hate committees. It's the reason I do not offer to work for or with the wfg team. IMHO, I don't care what analogues the Civic Center has with Age of Empires buildings. We are way beyond Age of Empire here. I want to make clear distinctions for buildings and units. It's why I want to alter the citizen-soldier concept. It's why I want to remove soldiers from the Civic Center and refocus them onto the Barracks and Merc Camps. It's a big reason I want to split the Civic Center from the Dropsites. In a zero resources at start match, first 2 dropsites can be free or something. Place them wisely.

That is for "Lookouts" on ships, cost food and increases ship vision range. Could also be used for a scouting tech. It's taken from the box art of AOE1. "Cloaca Maxima" could maybe look like this:

You addressed zero of my points.

Hi. Let's remove dropsite ability from the Civic Center. Why would I propose this? Forces building storehouses and farmsteads from the start of a typical match, introducing the concept early. Refocuses the Civic Center on its primary purposes: training citizens, upgrading your settlement, and claiming territory. The player places new Civic Centers for optimal territorial claim, rather than as a forward dropsite which more often than not is not an optimal territorial claim. It's a soft encouragement to place farms around the farmstead instead of around the Civic Center. I can get rid of the "Civic Spaces" farming penalty. I know that there's also the defensive benefit to placing around the Civic Center, but it's a step in the right direction here.