[Suggestions for 0 A.D.]

feneur and fabio, thank you for your quick and helpful replies!

1. scale = 0.5 works fine; it does look a bit pixel-ish at first glance, but I'm sure I'll get used to that. And 2. the space bar now pauses my games. 3. Yes, I can imagine it is complicated to implement. Nevertheless, I'm pleased to read this is something you would like to have in the long run.

Something else: 4. The Ptolemean foot archer (Nubian Mercenary Archer) has only 30 health points. Is this intentional? All other foot archers seem to have 50. Besides, it costs 25f, 50w, 25m, while the other Age 1 Civic Centre foot archers (Carthaginian, Mauryan, Persian) cost 50f, 50w; the Age 2 Athenian and Macedonian Cretan Mercenary Archer also cost 25f, 50w, 25m, although the Seleucid Age 2 Syrian Archer cost 50f, 50w. Furthermore, the Mauryan Medium Warship has 2200 health points, but seems to be otherwise identical to the triremes of other civilizations, which have 1400 (the Britons, Gauls, and Iberian medium warships have 1600, but they lack light warships).

[Suggestions for 0 A.D.]

So far I do like this game, thanks a lot for all your work and contributions!
However, I do have some suggestions for improvement:

1. The menus, texts and icons look rather small on my screen (3840×2160 pixels). OpenTTD has a setting under “Game Options” to magnify the texts and menus (single, double, quadruple size). Could something similar be implemented in 0AD?

2. Is it possible to define custom hotkeys? E.g. I'd like the spacebar to pause the game (my keyboard doesn't have a dedicated pause/break key), G to garrison, and Z, X, C, ... to change unit stances to violent, aggressive, defensive, etc.

3. Is there a possibility that horse archers, camel archers, chariot archers, elephant archers, and archers on siege towers and ships could shoot arrows while moving?

[A question and a suggestion]

Let me rephrase my first question: can horse archers, chariot archers, and elephant archers shoot while moving?

 

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AtlasMapper and Sanderd17, thank you for your quick replies.

11 hours ago, AtlasMapper said:

It means developers should remove two existing factions and create three new ones.

No, it simply means "Athenians" and "Spartans" should be renamed to "Ionians" and "Dorians" respectively - renaming ought not to be too difficult - and a third one, "Aeolians" could be considered to be created - at a later stage.

11 hours ago, AtlasMapper said:

Moreover, you seems to be greek, am I right ?

No, I'm not Greek, just a classicist.

 

10 hours ago, sanderd17 said:

The game dates between 500 B.C. and 1 B.C., and only includes civilisations

Indeed, civilisations. Athens are Sparta were not two civilisations, they were just two city-states within the larger civilization we now call Classical Greece (they themselves called their shared civilization Hellas. All others were barbaroi.) We might call Switzerland a civilization, but not Bern, Geneva, or Zürich.

Take, for instance, the Peloponnesian War. It was not a war between Athens and Sparta. It was a series of wars throughout the Greek world in which dozens of states participated, which could be grouped into a (mostly Ionian, as pointed out by Thucydides) Delian League, led by Athens, versus a (mostly Dorian) Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta, allied with the (Aeolian) Boeotian League, led by Thebes, and several others. (Of course, this is just a convenient generalization: individual poleis often disagreed and switched sides during the wars). Keep in mind the Athenians, Spartans, and Thebans were vastly outnumbered by their allies. (Not to mention the fact that Athenian citizens formed less than 10% of the Athenian population and that Spartiates were probably even a smaller minority within Lacedaemon).

500 BC - 1 BC: the Classical and Late Classical times were just 1/3 of this period; Athens lost prominence in the late 5th C BC, Sparta in the early 4th C BC, and Thebes in the late 4th C BC. In the Hellenistic (335/323 BC onwards) and Roman periods, Corinth, Syracusae, and (especially) Rhodes (all Dorians) were significantly more important.

10 hours ago, sanderd17 said:

At that time, the terms Ionian, Dorian, ... were mainly cultural terms.

This is not true.

10 hours ago, sanderd17 said:

When comparing it to the current day

Such comparisons are usually flawed, but if you insist on it, it would be better to compare Ionians, Dorians, Aeolians, etc., which were all Hellenes, with English, Irish, Scottish, etc. which are all British. Your "Anglo-Saxon" could be better equated with the Hellenistic (i.e. post-Classical) "Greekness", when the Greek world extended as far as Bactria (~Afghanistan).

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To summarize my point: given the fact that it has been decided that the (classical) Greek civilization in this game is subdivided into factions, it would be more appropiate to subdivide it in existing tribes, such as Dorians and Ionians, than choosing individual cities as subdivisions. Renaming Athenians and Spartans would be much better, and shouldn't be too complicated to implement.

[A question and a suggestion]

This evening I've installed 0 A.D. and played a short game to try it out. I really like what I've seen so far. It seems to me quite similar to Age of Mythology, with some elements of Rise of Nations; however, I believe there's more to discover. Many thanks for all your work!

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My question is, can horse archers, chariot archers, elephant archers, and ranged units on top of siege towers and ships shoot while moving (albeit at a lower accuracy)? I really hope this feature is or will be implemented. In my opinion the lack of this is one of the major realistic flaws of Age of Empires and Age of Mythology.

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Then my suggestion. Currently Greeks are divided in Athenians and Spartans, if I understand correctly. This seems to me a bit arbitrary.

In ancient and classical times the Greeks considered themselves subdivided in four ancient "tribes"; (almost) every Greek knew which Greek polis/people belonged to which "tribe". The four options were:
- Achaeans (Northern Peloponnesos, i.e. area South of the Gulf of Corinth - not as large or important as the others)
- Aeolians (Thessaly, Boeotia (Thebes), @#$%s, Anatolian coastline approximately between Troy and Smyrna)
- Dorians (most of the Peloponnesos: Megara, Corinth, Sicyon, Argos and the Argolis, Lacedaemon/Laconia (Sparta) and Messenia; as well as Crete, Rhodes and its surroundings; and their colonies: Byzantium, Syracusae, Cyrene)
- Ionians (Attica (Athens), Euboea, most of the Cyclades and other Aegian islands, Ionia (includes Milete, Efeze, Samos, Chios); as well as their colonies, e.g. Chalcidice, Chersonesos, Ischia, Massilia)
All other Greek-speaking peoples, such as the Macedonians, were considered to be not proper Greeks; those usually lacked one of the most important characteristics of classical Greece: the specific Greek polis. The poleis within a tribe often had historical, political, religious, and diplomatic ties, which were used to distinguish themselves from others; some other characteristics were shared as well. The famous Spartan laws and political organization, for instance, was nearly identical to the system on Crete (both were Greeks).

In modern scholarship, the Greek language is usually subdivided into:
- Mycenean, which developed into Arcadocyprian
- Northern group:
  + Northwestern Greek (spoken, amongst others, in Epirus (Dodona), Locris (Delphi), and Elis (Olympia))
  + Achaean
  + Doric
  + ?Macedonian? (uncertain)
- Central group:
  + Aeolic
- Eastern group:
  + Ionian (in which almost all Greek texts are written, either in "pure" Ionian, or in one of its two most important (sub)dialects):
    * Homeric (epic Greek)
    * Attic (classical Greek), which developed into Koine (Hellenistic), then Byzantine (Medieval), and finally Modern Greek

Taking into account both how the classical Greeks subdivided themselves, and how modern scholars subdivide them, I think it would be much better if the Greek factions in this game actually are: Ionians, Dorians, and Aeolians (the Achaeans were rather minor, and could be omitted), instead of Athenians and Spartans.
- The Ionians could have naval, commercial, and cultural bonuses (Samos and Miletos were important naval powers, commercial hubs, and centres of philosophy before Athens started to become active)
- The Dorians could have light infantry bonuses (Cretan archers and Rhodian slingers were superior to their counterparts elsewhere in the Greek world, and Sparta enlisted huge numbers of helots as javelinmen)
- The Aeolians could have better cavalry (Thessaly, Boeotia, @#$%s, and the Troas were all famed for their horses and feared for their cavalry, which was used in relatively large numbers by the Aeolians, but almost non-existent elsewhere in classical Greece)

Another reason is that between 500 BC and 500 AD, the period of this game, the Athenians and the Spartans were only dominant for a relatively short time. The most important states in classical Greece were Sparta (Doric), Athens (Ionian), Thebes (Aeolic), Argos (Doric), and Corinth (Doric); roughly speaking, Athens dominated before the Peloponnesian War, Sparta afterwards, and Thebes in the middle of the fourth century BC, until defeated by Philippus of Macedon and razed by Alexander. In the Hellenistic era (322 BC onwards), Athens, Sparta, and Thebes were quite unimportant, little more than provincial centres; Corinth and Rhodes were now the two dominant poleis, which remained important centres well into the Roman period.

Featuring Athenians and Spartans seems arbitrary and inappropiate; replacing them with Ionians, Dorians, and Aeolians would definitely be much better.