wowgetoffyourcellphone

I'm replying to the discussion as it has evolved.

Perhaps a Fortified Watchtower could train some Border Troops.

A major difference between the original vision and what the game has evolved into is the territory mechanic. Originally, the map would have pre-defined unclaimed "provinces." You'd see the map divided up in the minimap into your home province, the provinces other players start with, and then a number of other unclaimed provinces. Similar to a voronoi diagram. And then you'd claim new provinces by building your Civilisation Centres (original terminology) on an unclaimed Settlement, very similarly to Age of Mythology. The standard Building roster was much more streamlined (too much, IMHO) and the number of planned civs stood at 6. The way that biomes and seasons planned to work was pretty cool, but super difficult to achieve, so abandoned early (which is fine). I'm personally glad we have many more civs than originally planned because of the cultural diversity we can allow players to experience and play around with. The tech trees were supposed to be 95% choice-based, like with the tech pairs in DE. The tech trees were going to probably be the most complicated aspect of the gameplay. While each of the few civs were to have a slimmed down building roster and unit roster, they would have had 100% unique tech trees that would have determined nearly all of the differentiating features of the civs. It was desired that phase 1 spearmen and phase 1 swordsmen would be nearly identical in stats, only to later in phases 2 and 3 be differentiated via each civ's unique tech tree. The number of phases were limited to 3 (too few, IMHO) for simplicity and to keep these tech trees from growing too massive.

Depends on the map type and biome. You don't want a bunch of trees in the Sahara desert, for example. Also, there's a big difference in the gameplay experience, as far as the map is concerned, between random maps and skirmish maps. What kinds of maps are you playing? Are you single player or multiplayer?

A lot of fantastic information and visual references in this one. Great find and very helpful. It's clear to me that the Dominate Romans should have some kind of difference between "Border Troops" and "Royal Troops," perhaps with 2 different barracks. Possibly, Border Troops could be made of mainline classes of soldiers, while the Royal Troops are the counter-classes of troops, or vice versa (thinking like the Atlanteans in AOM). I do something like this already with the Imperial (Principate) romans in DE. Another thing could be making their territory borders more porous. So, their buildings could possibly having a +10 to 20% greater territory range, but a much less (-50%) territory strength, so that enemy borders push back harder against Roman expansion. Some kind of bonus to Outposts, like upgrading to Watchtowers could be interesting. They would lose the Army Camp and Siege Walls of the Republican and Imperial/Principate Romans, but by upgrading Outposts to Watchtowers, they can project power and cut off trade routes that way. You could have an additional upgrade, "Fortified Watchtower", that adds a palisade around it, with greater health and hack armor. And while "Greek Fire" is still a couple hundred years past the the time period, a Greek Fire Ship would be a nice addition to their Naval roster. With the Dominate Romans and Gothic civs, we could introduce Transport Boats that are super cheap, but are low health and have no attack, just a large garrison space. Wonder could be The Hippodrome. We can introduce "ruined" versions of a bunch of Republican/Principate era structures and Ancient Greek structures for scenarios, campaigns, and skirmish maps. These can be ruins on the map that you can exploit. A great one would be a toppled Colossus of Rhodes, a "Christianized" ruined Parthenon, etc. Temples -> Orthodox Churches.

Yeah. Some of this stuff is just straight up lifted from DE. lol

Correcto, senor.

Indeed, the seated Statue of Zeus at Olympia would be desired, as are all of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World." @nifa

Could the game have 2 modes? Mode A: "Bells and Whistles" All the gameplay and map features, such as: Farmsteads Mercenary Camps Trading Posts Pirate Docks Relics Shrines Cultural Artifacts Map Creeps (bandits, pirates, farmers, barbarians, etc.) Mode B: "Classic" Only basic standard gameplay, used mostly for Rated matches. None of the above features (like it is now in the current Random Maps).

I addressed this in DE with mercenary camps. Don't have Archers in your standard roster? Capture a mercenary camp and hire them.

The thing is, we have several competing ideas of what constitutes Alpha, Beta, Early Access, et al. And what exact milestones are necessary for each of those terms. i think for the longest time, the idea was that to come out of "alpha" to "beta" would require a working full-featured single player campaign and surely a multiplayer environment where we're no longer arguing over what constitutes cheating or not (the mods). Also, where the civ designs are rather solid and complete and the tech tree not in flux. Then with Beta, we can balance all of those things and fix anything that crops up. That's an older view of game development, but the industry has moved on to a more "perpetual development and balancing" environment, in an odd way meeting Wildfire Games where it's at with its development of 0 A.D. So, I'd advocate we get rid of the old view and embrace where the industry and gamer expectations are at today rather than how we wish they'd be or where they were 15 years ago. Having said that, I'd still like to tunnel down and get some things ready to go before officially boosting the game to Beta. I'd still like a single player campaign even if it's not full-featured and "complete," and I'd like to get the rest of the civs differentiated on the level of the Athenians, Romans, and Spartans are in Alpha 27. And lastly, we need to get the multiplayer community under control before we can legitimately go to Steam or wherever we can go after claiming we're in Beta or Early Access. So, I'd say let's make Alpha 27 the final "Alpha", and after that change our mindset and goals toward the next release being "Beta 1" or whatever we decide to call it.

Oops, the animation shows the triremes ramming each other with their asses. lol

Yep! A27 will increase ram speed per garrisoned soldier. { "type": "garrison", "stackable": true, "affects": ["Ram"], "affectedPlayers": ["Player", "MutualAlly"], "modifications": [ { "value": "UnitMotion/WalkSpeed", "add": 0.15 }, { "value": "UnitMotion/Acceleration", "add": 1 }, { "value": "Position/TurnRate", "add": 0.5 } ], "auraName": "Battering Team", "auraDescription": "Battering Rams +0.15 speed, +1 acceleration, and +0.5 turn rate for each garrisoned soldier." }

Because a big difference between the way expansion works in AOM vs. AOE is the Settlements feature. in AOM you can only expand by building your Town Centers on unclaimed Settlements. This differentiated it from the rest of the Age franchise. The Village Center dilutes this.

On the contrary, for AOMR I believe the "Village Center" was a big step back that badly watered down the Settlement concept. For 0 A.D., I've conceptualized different kinds of settlements or civic centers before.

Ooooo thanks! Skirmish maps are a lot like Starcraft maps. They have a fixed number of permutations and little to no randomness, so that players can learn a map very deeply. Furthermore, Skirmish maps offer a lot more features than random maps currently do, as you noted with capturable objects, more types of animals, more detailed terrain, better terrain blending, better aesthetics, etc.

Apologies for not being more specific. Yeah, as @real_tabasco_sauce says, removing the BuildingAI component from the template allows you to use capture attack, but also makes the tower attack like a single unit. A suggestion would be to give units a garrison aura that decreases repeat time for siege towers. This could be a nice simple workaround. Similar to the battering ram garrison aura.

You have to take away Building AI and use unit attacking.

If that's true, then the more literal translation would be best: "If you spend a thing you cannot have it too."

I'd reduce base cavalry speed by the amount of the speed tech, then increase the cost of the speed tech. Same idea for the health tech.

Excellent change, bro. Thanks for taking feedback.