Nescio

But then we should also write Old Persian names in Old Persian cuneiform and Carthaginian in the Phoenician alphabet. Although it's possible, I'm unconvinced that would be a good idea. (Different writing directions also tend to complicate things.)

@Alexandermb, @LordGood, @stanislas69, would it be possible to give cavalry a (short) loop rein? Minor details such as this make the game more enjoyable, at least for some people. Closed reins are well attested throughout Eurasia (even for horse archers): Greece: Romans: Han China: Bactria: India: (Yes, I believe I've requested this before somewhere, I don't recall where exactly, hence me starting a new thread).

Yes, I agree. 0 A.D.'s heroes are highly unbalanced. Some have global auras which are much better than civilization and team bonuses combined, e.g. Viridomarus' +15% gather rates for all workers or Maximus' +2 armour levels for all humans and structures. Add to that they are cost-effective super soldiers with very high health and attack. It would be better if heroes were disabled in 0 A.D. As for battalions, cohorts, etc. I'd rather have the system used in Cossacks. Units are trained individually and can be commanded individually. However, they can also be grouped together in fixed-number formations, ranging from c. 20 to 200 units each. Each formation acts as one unit and gives fighting bonuses, however, it does not regenerate, and individual units in a formation can be killed; there is also a button to absorb nearby units into the formation to restore its numbers. So, basically, have formations in addition to individual units, not instead of.

To clarify, there is a difference between “citizens” and “population”. The latter consists of everyone who happens to live in an area, the former only of those who have citizenship, and thus, in theory, rights and political influence. And yes, in times of war, the majority of the population would stay at home and continue doing their jobs. Also, there is a difference between farmers and peasants. The former works his own land and has enough to support an extended family. The latter is poor, has low social status, and has too little or no land of his own, and is therefore forced to work for others. Then there is a difference between warriors (anyone who fights in a war; not necessarily paid), mercenaries (served for the duration of a campaign, in return for payment; typically foreigners), and soldiers (who were in long term service and received a salary; and often land or a pension upon retirement). At its peak, Athens' population (city (Athens) and countryside (Attica) formed one entity) consisted of about 10% citizens (women, children, slaves, immigrants, etc. had no citizenship; citizenship was limited to only the adult male population who could prove both of their grandfathers were citizens). Of those c. 40,000 citizens the majority belonged to the lowest income class, and those were not expected to fight. Which leaves us with a grand total of ... about 15,000 citizen-warriors, war-wide. Also, democratic Athens introduced daily salary for attending political meetings, but also for serving in the navy. At its peak Athens had a fleet of about 100-200 triremes, each of which required a crew of about 150-200 men; therefore the navy provided work for about 15-40,000 poor citizens, part of which were hired amongst Athens' island vassals. As for Sparta, every Spartan citizen hoplite (the “hippeis”) was accompanied by typically seven helots (non-free state serfs, armed with only javelins. Furthermore, in the Spartan army the Spartan hoplites were usually outnumbered by the periokoi hoplites (free non-citizen Lakedaemonians). E.g. at the famous Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. there were, yes, only 300 Spartans facing the Persians. However, the Greek army there consisted of actually about 6,000 hoplites, of which probably 1,200 came from Sparta (not every Lacedaemonian was a Spartan citizen). Yes, there are many examples of men who started out as mercenaries and managed to become extremely rich. Some mercenary captains even managed to seize control of a state by which they are employed. However, these are just exceptions which prove the rule. Most mercenaries started poor and died poor. Yes, guard units certainly existed, and yes, they were standing army corpora; basically these units correspond to 0 A.D.'s champions. What you have to keep in mind is that although these formed the core of the army, the elite, they were not numerous. The Immortals numbered 10,000 ethnic Persians in a total multi-ethnic “Persian” army of millions, according to Herodotes; of course, those numbers are probably exaggarated, but even so, the Immortals were just a tiny minority. Likewise the Antigonid, Seleucid, and Ptolemaic silvershields and companions numbered in the thousands, thus also being a minority of their total fighting force. The Theban sacred band numbered 300; Carthage' sacred band was somewhat larger, but Carthage itself had a much larger population. Etc. So yes, standing forces existed. However, these always formed an elite minority of a the actual army on the battlefield. The vast majority of fighters consisted of (citizen) levies, vassals, and mercenaries. To summarize, I'm not claiming every soldier in Antiquity was always a citizen-warrior. However, 0 A.D. having citizen-soldiers for all factions is historically correct.

How thoroughly have you played A22? Have you tried installing the svn development version? Have you played A23? Do you have any experience in programming projects' teamwork? What exactly are you applying for? What could you contribute? What would you be able to do you can't do currently? As can be seen on the forums, there is no shortage of good ideas. If you ask a dozen people for a proposal, you'll get at least a dozen different suggestions. Getting consensus is much harder. Also, would you be comfortable with assisting in implementing ideas you don't agree with? Hopefully you don't mind me asking questions. I'm just curious

Thank you for your explanation, mimo. Personally I don't really care whether these new structures will be enabled in A23, A24, A25, or never. It's not that hard to use them in a A22 mod already. Furthermore, improved graphics, more civilizations, and additional content are certainly nice to have, but not really important for me. The primary reason I'm looking forward to the release of A23 are the thousands of minor improvements which will probably go mostly unnoticed, but certainly contribute to make 0 A.D. more capable, efficient, and flexible. A shorter life cycle would certainly be more than welcome. There were six releases in 2010 and five in 2011. A21 lasted for nearly nine months and A22 was released about eight months ago now. Maybe it's because the team is ambitious and sets higher targets, to ensure each release will be a major improvement from the previous one. I don't know how much work releasing another alpha is, but to maintain interest, having three smaller releases a year would be preferable to just one major release. Just my two cents. Allow me to emphasize I highly appreciate what all of you are doing!

Actually it's the other way around. The war season was typically in the summer (when there was less work in agriculture); afterwards, armies were disbanded, and the warriors would return to their farms. These warriors were typically citizens who were rich enough to afford their own weapons. Only in times of real emergency the rich provided funds to arm the lower classes of society (the poor, serfs, slaves, etc.). Military power meant political power, at least in city-states and tribal societies. Warriors were usually untrained amateurs. Even Spartans were only professional in comparison: state-serfs worked the land, enabling the Spartan citizens (the elite) to form a leisure class. Their “rigorous training” consisted of dancing, some athletics, chasing hares into traps, and subsequently clubbing those to death. Mercenaries came typically from areas with a lack of good farmland and thus a population surplus; younger sons would typically leave home to have a chance to make a living as fighters elsewhere (they were the actual “professionals”). However, the priorities of a mercenary were obviously different from those of a citizen: the latter fought to defend their land and family, the former to be able to buy enough food to eat and to avoid getting killed in combat. Macedon and the late Roman Republic had standing armies; they were the only ones who actually had real soldiers (i.e. men who received a salary in return for military service). Their military training consisted mostly of one thing: marching. The ability to move around armies quicker than their opponents expected enabled the expansive conquests of Macedon and Rome. After some years of active duty, veterans were given emough farmland to support a family and settled down in military colonies. Summary: citizen-warriors were actually the de facto standard in Antiquity.

Although it is possible to define which structures a unit can initiate, you can not prevent them from building other structures as well. Either a unit can build, or it can't. E.g. the support elephant can not initiate anything but can build everything. You can easily observe this behaviour in the AI.

In case you decide to enable the new structures, you can use: https://code.wildfiregames.com/differential/diff/5994/

The AI is not the problem, mimo is constantly improving Petra, see e.g. rP20389 , rP20399 , and rP20457 Based on those, I also managed to get the AI using stables etc. in my A22 0abc mod.

Just inside /0ad/mods/, not inside any of those subdirectories.

Petra was already modified to handle cavalry stables and siege workshops a few months ago. What is needed is someone to make the decision to enable them in the main distribution.

Did you look at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions ? Those names would imply they were unified states, which was certainly not true for these tribal peoples. 0 A.D.'s factions are quite different (tribal, city-states, dynastic kingdoms, empires); there probably is not a single naming scheme which would be correct for all of them. But it doesn't hurt debating alternatives

Actually I was referring to Imarok's #4915 (hotkey repeat) and not to #5055 (shift lag).

Gameplay-wise we could easily differentiate by role: can gather, can not build (females, available at houses) can gather and build (citizen soldiers, available from village phase) can not gather, can build (mercenaries, available from town phase) can neither gather nor build (champions, available from city phase) Basically all factions should have at least one citizen-soldier, but some can have more than others.

Actually I don't think it's a 0 A.D. issue; the game seems to be behave as it's supposed to. On Fedora, the “repeat keys” feature is activated by default, but it can be turned off or have a different sensitivity: Likewise, I'd expect other operating systems to be able to toggle this non-0 A.D. feature as well.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1342 should fix that. I also inserted a section at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/EnglishStyleGuide#Dynasticfactions

The difference is that “Mauryan” is an English adjective belonging to the dynasty founded by Chandragupta Maurya. “Principate” is neither an adjective nor a dynasty. As you probably know, “principate”, starting with Augustus, is derived from princeps (first one), and “dominate”, starting with Diocletian, from dominus et deus (master and god) Better this way? (Of course, Sparta ought to be Lacedaemon, but let's not alienate too many 0 A.D. players.)

Yes, I'm acutely aware of this. Ethnic Persians were just a tiny minority within this multi-national entity. (For those of you who know very little of the Achaemenid Empire, you can actually compare it to the European Union). By the way, I also considered renaming “Persians” to “Achaemenids”, because the Persian empire was continued by Seleucid, Arsacid (Parthian), Sassanian dynasties. I decided against because I believe it's better to keep names close to 0 A.D.'s main distribution's. PS Although “Principate” is an appropiate and nowadays standard name for the Roman Empire of 27 B.C. to 284 A.D., the term “Principates” is not a proper word (neither in English nor in Latin).

Having a camel per se, no, it won't, but having a camel as its primary mounted unit is ahistorical. Actually I think removing phases would be an improvement Unfortunately the AI is designed around phases at the moment.

Variation for the sake of variation seems to me a bad idea. Horse-back riding was the forte of the Iranian peoples (Persians, Scythians, Bactrians, etc.). If anybody should use cavalry, certainly they. What I would recommend (and actually have implemented in my 0abc mod some months ago) is: remove cavalry from centres and barracks enable stables for all factions in the village phase give cavalry a population cost of 2 Limiting cavalry in the village phase would be a contradiction of history. Horses were kept on the countryside, near manors and villages, certainly not in the cities. Semi-nomadic peoples living in nothing larger than villages were cavalry heavy; city-states often lacked cavalry; cavalry to infantry ratio in the armies of large kingdoms seldom exceeded 1:10. Gameplay-wise, people should not be unnecessarily restricted, they should have a choice. Do I build a barracks to train infantry? Do I build a stables to train cavalry for some early raiding, hunting, and exploring? Or do I neglect my military and rush to the next phase, hoping I won't be attacked early on?

Yes, I'm fully aware of this. Naples continued to be “Greek” until c. 1100 A.D. However, languages are not mutually exclusive; e.g. Oscan was spoken there from long before the Greek colonization to at least the eruption of the Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Roman theathre, the oldest form of Latin literature, also originated in Campania, which is culturally and linguistically one of the most interesting areas. (Since we're cherry-picking again.) I won't deny Berber languages were important in the area controlled by Carthage; the coastal cities were Punic, the inland population was Berber (North Africa), Iberian (Spain), Sicul (Sicilia), or something else (Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta). However, even though we know the Massyli and Masaesyli (the Numidians) were ethnic Berbers, very little has survived from the Numidian language; we can state it's probably Afro-Asiatic, but it can not be determined whether their language was Berber, Punic, both, or neither. (All of them are realistic possibilities; the evidence is just too scanty). On the other hand, we know the Carthaginians did speak Punic, which seems to have been different from, but mutually intelligible with Aramaic. Besides, most of their armies consisted of mercenaries, and there is evidence Carthaginians also used Greek to communicate with their soldiers. As usual, we agree in general, we just happen to like disagreeing on minor details

To clarify, I certainly did not want to equate Proto-Berber to Proto-Indo-European. Proto-Indo-European is the latest common ancestor of a complete language family, therefore Proto-Afro-Asiatic would be comparable; Proto-Berber is the latest common ancestor of a specific branch within a family, as was e.g. Proto-Germanic. Furthermore, I absolutely did not intend to belittle reconstructed languages. In fact, I'm a great admirer of comparative linguistics. With very limited material and an analytic approach they can reconstruct what has been lost. PIE frequently turned out to be correct where archaeology stubbornly favoured theories which turned out to be wrong. My concern with the use of proto-languages is multi-fold: Only a handful of experts worldwide have knowledge of proto-languages (except for PIE, which is taught at several universities, and better known than all others combined) Although grammar and morphology (word forms) can be reconstructed with reasonable certainty, its exact pronunciation is just a guess When something is written down, it enters history. Proto-languages existed per definition long before any of their descendants was written down. E.g. the language we now call Proto-Berber probably ceased to exist before 3,000 B.C. Again, if you can find anyone who can provide translations and pronunciations for Proto-Berber, or actually any Berber language, great, you have my blessing! No objections at all. Is it possible to use multiple languages for a faction? If so, then ethnic Persians (heroes, Immortals) and Medians (light cavalry, healer) should speak Old Persian, Eastern Iranian units (e.g. Bactrian lancer) Avestan, other units Aramaic, unless a better equivalent can be found in specific cases (e.g. for the “Persian” Indian War Elephant). Our current timeframe predates the Roman Empire ; besides, even though two-thirds of the population spoke Greek under the Roman Empire at its height, Latin was the language of the state and the military, and continued to be so until 620 A.D. Likewise, Greek was spoken by a minority in the Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms, but it was the language of the government and the military, therefore the language 0 A.D. uses for them should be Greek.

Especially amongst the common people: it was adobted as the language of the bureaucracy because Aramaic was spoken by far more people than any other language at the time. Old Persian was probably spoken amongst the Persian elite, but the Persians themselves were a tiny minority in the ethnically diverse Achaemenid Empire. PS To clarify, I do not have any objections to the use of Old-Persian, which is well attested and was certainly spoken and written; it was also an official language of the Persian Empire, as were Elamite and a few other prestigious languages. However, if you want to know which language was used in communication between different ethnic (army) groups, in trade, and in daily usage by a large part of the population, then the answer is Aramaic.

Proto-languages are called “proto-” for a reason: they are hypothetical, reconstructed, unattested languages; e.g. Proto-Berber is the latest common ancestor of all Berber languages and Proto-Indo-European is the common ancestor of all Indo-European languages. Using proto-languages would certainly be ambitious but not historically correct In that case we should seriously consider using Aramaic for the Persians: it was the lingua france of the Near-East and the language of the Persian Empire's bureaucracy. Old Persian was limited to Persia proper but certainly not widely used.