DarcReaver

Just like in TW. Build a battalion, fight with a battalion, individual soldiers can die and can be healed / reinforced at your barracks. Battalions get experience as a whole for fighting, and if the last soldier was killed the battalion is lost. Reinforcing a battalion costs less than to train a new one. If you dont know games with squad based unit systems, here are some examples: Company of Heroes Battle for Middle earth C&C 3+ Praetorians Warhammer 40k games (DoW 1,2,3) There might be mroe but those are the ones that come into my mind atm. And once more: soldiers_do_not_gather. Soldiers_fight. That's what soldiers are used for.

Afaik the current game is setup in a way that promotes macro oriented manspam strategies, just like AoE II. So the actual veterancy does not do much for the individual soldier. No proper healing/unit preservation for the unit itself, and it's hard to keep them alive because individual units are ant like small. -> pointless clicking/searching for units -> no fun. And, as a general sidenote: why would somebody want to merge different rank battalions in the first place? And furthermore: Why should individual soldiers in the battalion receive experience? And why should the combat performance vary within a battalion? It should be pretty obvious that a battalion system should exactly remove these inconsistencies to make the game rely less on individual pointless clicking and instead focus on getting the correct army composition without the manspam effect...

So, which aspect did you read and understand? I posted multiple times why your "suggestion" or whatever it's called is crap and has nothing to do with the game itself. If you fail to understand that it's not my problem.

Let me repeat once more:

Guess what. We give AI a +1000% resource and build speed modifier on high difficulties and you'll not even be able to beat a single computer. Battalions have nothing todo with the AI at all, not how it's building units, engaging the player, playing in general. It neither has to do with "strategical activity". And towards the argument "Squad leader can ...". Ancient time combat worked differently and is not comparable with this kind of "commando operation" at all. And this also has nothing to do with the AI either. But furthermore, and more importantly: So... just stop it.

So, you're saying that exploiting a programming exploit is good and should be possible for 0 ad aswell to beat the AI? Wtf... Ever considered that beating the AI behavior has NOTHING to do with battalions, pop cap and other stuff? This statement is just beyond me to be honest...

So? doing this in a remotely competitive game - be it against (multiple) hard computers or against a "real" player will lead to a defeat while you're trying to accomplish that. It's just a random exploit of coding weaknesses under unreal condititions and serves no purpose at all except for showing "it's possible to overcome the pop limit of the game". In case you didn't notice : It's certainly not intended. I have no idea why on 0 ad there should be something like this be considered to be put in "on purpose". This is so irrelevant in terms of game mechanics that I don't even know why you bring up such a random thing tbh.

"pop hack" ? Are you serious? That's not related to the "gameplay". It's related to performance. And sloppy programming. To use BFME as example - it uses C&C Generals SAGE engine. Generals had no pop cap and so it suffered from bad performance in team games. Since BFME used a heavily modified engine version and had stuff like "global weather effects", Aura particle FX and whatnot, there was Pop cap used to reduce bad performance in team games. And tbh if you would've done this in a real game your castle is destryed even before you finished to reach your maximum pop cap. This is irrelevant to a point where I say that the same is easily done by adding a higher pop cap limit. Or even a "no popcap" mode that will simply crash with an engine error when too many units are on the field.

AoE III was "killed" by many things, but certainly not by the restrictions.. But I do agree, idk whether it's a good idea to add such a harsh differentiation between eco and military tbh.

I think this may be related because it's your only building at the start. To fix that you'd be required to have another dropsite type building.

He actually sums the point up pretty well. Reinforcing troops can be accomplished in many ways. Either automatically when nearby a barracks, or in owned territory. Alternatively for resources with a timer and so on. This doesn't really have to do with logics, it only depends on how much effort is put in the reinforcement mechanism coding. I'd suggest you actually look how battalion gameplay concepts are realized in other games.

Pop cap over maximum depends on the game code. If the pop is used from the point when the unit training starts it's harder to create situations where the pop cap is above its maximum. Overall I don't get your point. AI has nothing to do with either pop cap or battalions itself. The last paragaph doesn't make any sense either. I think you're mixing several independant aspects which do not belong together.

This would be part of a simulation. Not a strategy game.

So... what is the problem to add a population popcap to the soldiers? Battalions can of course have variable pop cap. Each soldier counts towards it, with an individual value.

For example, yes. There are several military buildings for civs afterall, Stoas, Barracks etc. The military buildings should be tied to the faction type. I.e. Hellenes use barracks and counter barracks, Romans use barracks only, other cives use counter barracks and stable etc.

It would be logical to have civs that require multiple military buildings and other civs which start with a generic barracks that trains all unit types. Take AoM as a reference. Either specialized hardcounter units in a single building or multiple different soft counter units in multiple barracks types. Creates gameplay diversity.

Agree. Comparing to AoE doesn't help. Having slaves buildable in dropsites would be a compromise between my "early CC" concept and your "offshore drop sites". I think as long as stragglers are nearby the main base there is no problem with drop sites costing resources though. it would only become a problem if gatherers have to travel a lot to harvest wood. Tbh, map types can be swapped, reworked or in worst case removed if they don't fit the game. First comes gameplay, then come maps.

Actually, this layout is good. Units have clear roles, economic and fighting units are separated from each other. Would support that for sure.

Idk about "youth warriors" - might become a political issue with Child Soldiers (there are retards on the net who'd gladly start an argument about this, I'm sure of that). I'd simply split military into a later phase and be done with it. Military isn't the main topic in here anyways. Most stuff that I'd propose is pretty similar to Wowgetoffyourcellphones proposals in his design thread.

Okay, glad to hear that. One thing about wonders and "uber techs" - remember one thing: If you balance "extreme lategame" techs by making them very hard to obtain, it's unlikely that they are used or reached in a competitive game. Most of the time those techs are only used for "noob stomping" and create issues in large teamgames (where resource gain is much higher and players can tech up more easily). If you don't get what I mean, take a look at CoH or war 3 for example. Some lategame units on axis side (super tanks, buyable veterancy, mass air in warcraft III etc.) only kick in very late, and thus make axis much stronger in large team games, up to a point where it's almost unwinable from allies at some point. This concept is called "asymmetric balancing" and is a pretty weak one. Means: it works in 1v1 because most upgrades are not available at all times, only under certain circumstances, thus they're "luxuries" and not a central aspect of balancing. In team games this is different however. It would be more of use to make them situational, and the upgrade (wonder) itself cheaper. I can't get that specific because I don't have something in mind right now. I'm also not against "super techs" at all, I just want to put up a warning that "high cost delay" for techs is a weak design element and creates problems while being of limited use in "regular" games (because not affordable). Also while thinking of that: Titan tech/unlock in AoM : Titans - uses that pretty lame concept aswell. Get up to Tier V, build a titan Gate and then it's either win (titan can be summoned) or loss (enemy raids your base and you cant get it). C&C 3 Kanes wrath also does this crap with MARV, Super Bot thingy for nod and that Spider mecha hexapod scrin unit, which makes the game much less enjoyable compared to regular AoM/CnC 3 although the game mechanics of the add-ons themselves are better apart from those super units. (like easier access to myth units in titans and better eco management in CnC 3 + the sub factions). C&C Generals did it pretty nicely - lots of new content, overall many aspects polished in controls, and the core gameplay is similar without adding unnecessary stuff. Wc3 did that aswell with Frozen Throne - new units/damage types to counter the meta present in reign of chaos, lots of new content and finetuning of gameplay aspects, which makes Frozen Throne superior without being too different.

Maybe the concept could be more like a "domination" gameplay type. The wagons (or maybe temples/wonders?) are on the map, can be captured and decrease the enemie's timer until it reaches zero. Like 3 wonders on the map take all 3 - enemy team looses 3 ticks per ... idk 10 seconds take only 2 - enemy team looses 2 ticks own team has 2 and enemy has 1, enemy looses 1 tick per 10 seconds However, unless you'd make it the "default" game mode I wouldn't put much effort in this, because most ppl play annihilation/conquest anyways in multiplayer.

I do agree to many points of wowgetoffyourcellphone - afterall we share lots of viewpoints and the direction we're trying to progress towards is basically the same. The difference is that wow sort of maximizes the current 0 ad layout - similar to age 2 - while I propose to apply an approach more similar to AoM or wc3 or cnc or bfme type games, with faction groups that are more unique. I won't mess with every point proposed, I think the "coin" approach is a good idea for trading, although I'd favor a different implementation - markets generate coins regardless of trading units, they simply are added in fixed time frames, and selling goods on the market allows to gain additional coins. Buying stuff requires to spend coins. That way coins are not linked to regular economy directly by affecting popcap. the "glory" resource is certainly interesting, pretty similar to favor in AoM - research special technologies as a reward for fighting. I'd still favor the "strong core - weak countryside" with "settlement" - weak civil centers though, available from Phase I (instead of phase II) to emphasize the "multiple village/city" approach with capturing mechanics in place so outer villages switch their ownership on raids more frequently. Same with gathering sites - more eco spreading and map control, but at the same time with more options for early defense. The main issue that I see is that once military is on the field one player looses if he is raided. Since players are forced outside their country it's hard to defend and claim new settlement spots. An alternative wiould be to provide neutral, capturable cities early on. I would however make regular military not available at phase I, only citizens. regular Military at phase II and champions at phase III. Apart from that Wonders should be reworked in general. Too expensive and no use (even though they would generate glory here). Wonder defense win condition is pretty lame anyways (which is why most ppl play conquest game mode in AoE). I'll go through the document and put some thoughts in it aswell. Maybe a middle ground could be found to make 0 ad great (again).

Actually main reason is to build Civic Centers is train additional workers. But since the training times are so short in 0AD and you can gather with hundred villagers/soldiers in your base area there is little need for another economic center somewhere else. In AoE II it's usually 30 pop villagers when you enter Castle age to start booming after like 15-20 mins. In 0 Ad you have like 100 women/soldiers within the first 15 mins of the game. Which is a problem in itself but a different topic. I'd go that route: multiple early Civic Centers which are actually captureable with small armies early on, less gathering spots (lower worker hardcap on resources in general. 2-6 gatherers instead of 8,10,12 or 24 ) and delay "real" military in phase II. Edit: also who is voting "keep as it is"?... wtf srsly..

Actually, instead of using storehouses - I'd really suggest to give players an option for Civic Centers in phase I. Reduce hitpoints, capture rate/points, number of units garrisoned, make them cheaper and allow them in phase I and reduce their influence radius by 40%.

I'll replace them with Alpine civs then. It's just a term afterall to unify them in one category.