Nescio

Actually I'd favour (re-)merging Athenians and Spartans into a single Greek civilization. Yes, I'm aware Greece was not a unified political entity prior to the Romans, however, nor was Gaul or were the Britons. And the differences between those city states were not as great as many might think. Besides, the current situation raises questions: if Athens and Sparta, then why not Thebes? Argos? Corinth? Syracusae? Etc. Having just one civilization for all Greek city states and leagues would easily solve this.

Yes, I know, however, I'm still hoping they'll eventually be included into the main distribution, where they belong. Besides, I don't want the Zapotecs :)

Parthia and Pontus were actually Hellenistic states as well. Anyway, I fully agree more factions would be nice to have, especially those that fill the gaps in our current roster. My order of preference: Arsacid Empire (Parthians), peaked under Mithridates II of Parthia (r. 121–91 BC) Greater Armenia, peaked under Tigranes II of Armenia (r. 95–55 BC) Pontus, peaked under Mithridates VI of Pontus (r. 120–63 BC) Odrysian Kingdom (Thracians), peaked under Sitalces I (r. 431–424 BC) Scythians Han (Chinese) Xiongnu/Hsiung-nu Greco-Bactrian Kingdom Numidia (Massylii and Masaesyli), peaked under Masinissa (r. 202–148 BC) Epirus, peaked under Pyrrhus of Epirus (r. 297–272 BC) Attalid Kingdom (Pergamon), Bithynia, Cappadocia, Bosporan Kingdom (Crimea), Colchis, Iberia, Albania, Athropatene, etc. are probably too insignificant. Ideally we ought to include the Archaic Period (c. 900–500 BC) as well: Neo-Assyrian Empire Neo-Babylonian Empire (Chaldeans) Etruscans Lydians Urartu Those others are post-1 AD, yes, however, Parthia really belongs in the pre-1 BC timeframe.

Although tigers, lions, bears etc. do not actively hunt humans, occassionally they do kill and eat them: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-44728507 Nonetheless, usually it are the humans who try to kill predators whenever they encounter them, therefore this gameplay feature isn't totally unrealistic.

AoM also had a single scale factor, if I recall correctly.

Keep in mind 0 A.D. is a game in alpha stage. Sometimes placeholders are used. It's not uncommon that factions share structures or ships. E.g. `units/ptol_champion_juggernaut.xml` template (re)uses `structures/romans/quinquereme.xml` visual actor.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44712475

As for your proposal, I agree 0 A.D.'s civilizations are too similar and phases unrewarding. Personally I'd actually prefer to phase out phases and instead allow settlements to promote individually, depending on the number of (different?) structures within its inner radius.

To clarify, I actually like to be surprised. I merely commented because I've not seen you (or anyone else) use paragraph indentation on these forums before. Although I would make different typographic choices, at least you gave time and thought how to mark up your text. Please continue to follow your own style PS English often omits the diaeresis (tréma) on naive, contrary to French. PPS You can use Shift+Enter to start a new line without a white line in between. PPPS Your signature has only one ".

Actually it ought to be the other way around: contrary to popular belief, cities were (and are) a lot dirtier than villages.

Thank you for your post! You managed to amaze me again with your unusual typography. Not only do you type two full spaces between sentences (as you've done earlier), but now you also started to indent your paragraphs (I didn't see you do that earlier) after white lines. Typically people avoid combining the two. And indenting the first paragraph is often considered bad taste in English (but not in French). Of course, everyone is allowed to mark up his messages in any way they like. Unusual typography merely distracts me PS Something I do appreciate is that you use proper “quotation marks” and not programmer's "cat claws".

There are a couple of barrels included in that barracks. Please remove them. They're a Celtic invention. Barrels were only gradually adopted by the Romans in imperial times (post AD).

While at it, I'd also appreciate it if gatherer counts could be displayed: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/643

A pop-up when your cursor hovers over the "change stance" area or a button below to toggle advanced diplomacy overview would be fine by me; I have no idea how to implement it though

Please display everyone's current phase. A table overview would also be nice to keep track of diplomatic changes, e.g.: ×, 1, 2, 3, 4 1, ×, A, N, E 2, A, ×, E, N 3, N, E, ×, A 4, E, N, A, ×

Perhaps because some kind of a feature freeze started in March and is still in place now in July?

Thank you for looking critically at things. I believe dedicated chimneys in houses (rather than just a hole in the roof) emerged only in High Medieval Europe.

How to assign a hotkey to open and close the trade and barter menu?

WARNING: mod version of [mod] may only contain numbers and at most 2 periods

What will be the version number of the A23 re-release then? 0.0.24?

Probably yeah, but if that is sufficient to make it part of the engine then all shared content (flora, fauna, etc.) is.

Interesting. The game can run unproblematically without AIs (it would be a bit boring in single player, though) and people can use other AIs than Petra (if someone would create them), therefore I assumed the AI would count as content (as it is in other games).

Is it?

Yes, we do, I'm aware of that. Suppose we would have the following mod structure tree: modmod + pyrogenesis/engine ++ public/gaia/shared stuff +++ EA (500-1 BC) +++ EB (1-500 AD) I'd imagine both EA and EB would want to use the same maps and AI, as would other unrelated mods (e.g. Hyrule Conquest) therefore it would make sense to put those in the new public mod. However, AI and maps also have civ-specific content, therefore the game would still require EA or EB or crash otherwise. A separation might be wise long term, but will be an enormous and troublesome task short term without immediate benefit.

Yes, separating the engine from the content certainly makes sense. I never dared to propose it myself, though :) Where would you put maps? They include both gaia and civ objects. And the AI? It requires both classes and hard-coded templates. On the other hand, you might want to avoid duplication.