Palaxin

Honestly I am not that into the idea of recruiting enemy units. You can argue that this reduces civ diversity which is a problem right now...

You mean something like über hoplites for Sparta, über elephants for Mauryans etc.? I fear that would be a bit too special. I want to make room for 2-3 choices so you can act according to your current circumstances. However I could imagine there are 5 endgame technologies and each civ can choose 2 or 3 out of them...

if you ask me 0 A.D. should just incorporate Delenda Est totally

What about instead of the population bonus, wonders allow you to research one of three (cf. heroes) possible endgame technologies that are designed to end a close match: economic boost: 1500 food, 1000 metal, 500 wood for women: +50% carry capacity and gather rate, +25% construction/repair/walking speed for citizen soldiers: +25% carry capacity and gather rate defensive boost: 1500 stone, 1000 wood, 500 metal for buildings: +25% HP, capture points and capture regen rate, +5 HP/s regeneration for units: +25% HP, +1 HP/s regeneration offensive boost: 1500 metal, 1000 food, 500 wood for units (including siege engines, ships): +30% attack and +15% speed

probably this one: The idea was to implement counters purely by gameplay mechanics such as charging for cavalry, directional attacks, formations, camouflage etc. Many of these things would consume "stamina", that would regenerate slowly... Basically to implement counters by making combat more realistic... Many of these features are still in the official list of planned features, but honestly I do not see progress in that direction (may be also due to some programmers not active anymore that were willing to implement these features)... Yeah you are right... I prefer historic realism as well, my point was more to establish are clear counter scheme (that is clear/stable enough to not change overall strategies because of minor balance changes) true... I have to remind myself more often of that! I do not think there are "0ad players" in general... some care more about competition and gameplay, some more about history, some about city-building, ... The game will always attract different players but I think it should stick with its roots

AFAIK many years ago there was an official decision to only use soft counters in 0 A.D. (no fixed attack bonuses). That already has changed. However, it's not always that intuitive. Intuitive, for me, would mean about (+ soft counter ++ hard counter): ranged infantry archer: + heavy infantry ++ light infantry - spear cavalry -- sword cavalry slinger: + light infantry ++ heavy infantry - spear cavalry -- sword cavalry javelin: ++ ranged - spear cavalry -- sword cavalry melee infantry spear: + cavalry - ranged pike: ++ cavalry - ranged - infantry sword: + spear infantry ++ pike infantry + siege -- ranged ranged cavalry archer: + heavy infantry ++ light infantry - spear infantry -- pike infantry -- spear cavalry javelin: ++ ranged - spear infantry -- pike infantry -- spear cavalry melee cavalry spear: ++ cavalry + ranged - spear infantry -- pike infantry sword: ++ ranged + siege - spear infantry -- pike infantry -- spear cavalry

I agree. But I like the framing ornaments They would make a huge difference in 0 A.D. already...

At this point I want to follow you and say Thank you! to the team as well It has never been my goal to earn a badge but I feel honored, well, let's say recognized!

There will be less people agreeing with you on that than what you think there are people supporting A24. You may spread toxicity but the result is that you alienate people around you even if some may agree with your arguments. 0 A.D. has been declared (near) dead several times in the past and right now it rather seems the opposite. Development has increased and that won't change because someone feels the need to be disrespectful. It is obvious that not everyone can be happy with all changes, but everyone can participate in a respectful manner.

For the number loving folks I present some up-to-date statistics regarding development of 0 A.D.'s Alpha and pre-Alpha versions. I am doing this for the purpose of information only and appreciate any work done by the development team so far. The exact numbers can be read in the changelogs wiki page. Enjoy!

I just had an idea: what about supporting two ingame UIs natively, i.e. a "casual UI" and a "competitive UI" (+ maybe an "observer UI")? Apart from the extra work for the developers, wouldn't that solve the problem of different player types? Maybe @borg-@ValihrAnt ("competitive") and @Nescio@Sundiata ("casual") could say something about their preferences...?

I like the way Age of Mythology did it. Basically a simple story for i. and ii. that let you get to know the main character. There was a smooth transition to the main campaign, however, you didn't miss anything essential when you skipped the learning campaign. I would advocate a continuity between i., ii. and the main campaign, however, each part should be playable on its own right from the beginning.

Not sure if that already applies to the tutorial campaign, but definitely for further campaigns: Make 3-4 distinct difficulty levels so you can increase the challenge and replayability. Difficulty should not simply affect AI and their gather rate, but also number of starting units trainable unit types number of starting buildings buildable building types starting resources collectable resources and treasures (already) researched technologies researchable technologies type, frequency and impact of trigger events ...

I think there is no truly "neutral" and universal language for that... Even if you would go strictly scientific and define years by a universal constant as the speed of light c, that would confuse most people and would still presume our scientific view of the world as mandatory (when you look at all cultures in history and even present, many have different views and explanations of the world as a whole)... So years are usually counted relative to an event important to a culture... which for the Western World for many centuries has been the roots of Christianity. For 0 A.D.'s civs that is somewhat arbitrary since 1) our timeframe is before Christ 2) many civs probably had their independent naming scheme As with Christianity, Roman and Greek culture has been important as well for the Western World, so I could follow your proposal. However, Rome was still small when Persians, Macedonians, Mauryans reached their peak so you could as well pick their system... barrels, feet, inches, °F (not that °C is that much better), mmHg and whatever... Same reason as above, but at least make one system for the "Western" world (better for all the world)

I understand we want to provide a game also for limited hardware. And I am happy as well when my 7 years old ultrabook with 4GB RAM, i5-4200U and integrated HD 4400 can run games that are less than 15 years old But then I don't understand why models and textures get heavier with every update - at least there should be some kind of option.

Thanks for the explanations. Yes exactly, I meant pixel perfect UI. I think that in several years 1080p will be minimum and 4K quite common, so we should aim to provide 4K displays with full detail. I mean it is kind of a waste if you scale up to 4K with low-res textures (so several pixels are essentially used for the same color reducing the effective resolution). So the UI elements you are talking about are just abstract elements (with the same relative proportions independent of resolution) which are filled with a texture that is chosen according to resolution. In theory we could have 2n x 2n textures for 720p 3n x 3n textures for 1080p 4n x 4n textures for 1440p 6n x 6n textures for 2160p where n is any natural number. Right? EDIT: if we want more different resolutions then 4n x 4n for 720p 5n x 5n for 900p 6n x 6n for 1080p 8n x 8n for 1440p 12n x 12n for 2160p

yeah you're right, my words are misleading I know about the automatic window scaling in some cases and gui.scale (but I never used it since I have a standard 1080p screen). I mean the UI should horizontally stretch over a 3840x2160 display natively (without any scaling / reduced quality)

I have seen quite pretty vector graphics with a considerable amount of detail but I guess it takes time and practice... Sorry for the confusion, I didn't mean that each element should be 4K. I meant that the GUI as a whole should be designed for 4K displays, but the individual elements could have a much smaller resolution depending on their proportions... 4K masks sound interesting I wanted to include something that is decorative and breaks the straight lines - but I may come up with something that consumes less area... AoM was one of the games I have played most, so I am biased probably...

Actually that is a question that I had in mind for quite long - because if we redesign the GUI we should take every opportunity to make it scalable... vector images - major design decision + ideal for infinite scaling + memory saving (I guess) - a lot of work (to use it consistently) - I don't know much about their usage in RTS and if their technical implementation is feasible huge bitmap images (full details on >=4K displays) + basically the same approach as we use now + not all GUI elements need to be redesigned (but may still be better) - takes a lot of memory (even more if we do not scale them down dynamically but use a set of different resolutions) no scaling / what we use now + least amount of work - GUI would shrink extremely for huge displays (limited to the central part) - no future-proof solution I think I would go for high resolution bitmaps for this part (500 B.C. - 0 A.D.) of the game and for something fancy - ideally vector graphics - for the second part (0 A.D. - 500 A.D.) in the far future... EDIT: My personal skills don't allow me to fully flesh out these ideas as e.g. @LordGood would be able to do - I am probably limited to deliver ideas drawn by hand...

You make me curious...

Thanks for the feedback, @Dragonoar To be honest, I had most of your concerns in mind, but I was mostly focusing on the overall layout, proportions and impression. I wanted to give an example for a "framework" around individual buttons/icons/words... hoplite helmet (something else for other civs) could only be added/visible for higher resolution where it would not negatively affect the functional UI not sure about the shields... if functional (e.g. for stances and formations) at least 5 would be needed - otherwise agree yeah vase probably overkill... - could replace the big hoplite helmet e.g. for Athens player name could be put in the central roof triangle (forgot the actual name for that element in greek architecture) agree healthbar is better (was just quickly/randomly putting some symbols in there to fill the space ) I would associate laurels also especially with romans, however I couldn't think of a better replacement to decorate the minimap regarding pop cap - as I said I didn't go for the details the +/- was intended to indicate units this unit is strong/weak against (as a shorter way for listing classes, damage multipliers etc.) of course this doesn't mean that other useful information could be shown as well yeah need to think again if formations go somewhere to the shields or (probably) into another field

Would make a great cheat/easteregg

I think the dark/light theme would depend on the civilization... Maybe some work could be shared to avoid 13 completely different GUI's

I have roughly... A first sketch for the Spartans! - may be a bit overloaded, just to show some possibilities/ideas...

1366x768 as minimum supported resolution for the vanilla version of 0 A.D. sounds most reasonable for me. It also shares the same aspect ratio (16:9) like the de-facto standard 1080p which allows the same proportions for GUI elements when scaling. However, when talking about GUI, resolutions are only one part. What I miss in 0 A.D. is something more immersive and organic/natural than the current (flexible, but kind of technical for a historical game) one... Note that the following examples also use a minimum of text, numbers and/or signs which every good gui should aim for IMO (in any case make extensive texts optional, as part of an overlay and/or in-game encyclopedia). I really liked the old settlers games in this regard, where the gui featured marble surfaces and small decorative plants: or Stronghold Crusader