sphyrth

About a Trained Trader's custom trade route. I believe you can do that... After right clicking the 1st market, then do the shifts up to the 2nd market.

My point is that: If you like the term "Factions", then change the terms in the game. If you like the term "Civilizations", then change the terms in the manual/website. I just want consistency since both terms are being used interchangeably here.

This is me being awkward from start to finish. And this is Anavultus being himself

Now for my comments: Part I, Summary of Current Game Mechanic Issues, Buildings - Bullet Point #2 (Forced Construction of Buildings): I don't exactly know what you mean by "Build everything" because you can build 5 houses (not everything) and that's enough to tech to Phase 2. Build 4 Defense Towers and you're good to go for Phase 3. But I do agree that apart from access to new structures and technology, there is no significant advantage between a player who just teched up to Town Phase and a player who's still in the Village Phase (The Barracks Syndrome). Access to more basic unit types does not mean access better units. Athens just happen to be an exception since there is this kind of rough progression: Phase I – Citizen Soldiers (Barracks) Phase II – Champion Units (Royal Stoa) Phase III – Siege Weapons (Fortress) Tackling a little bit on "Tech Units > Mass Production" comment - The balance there is in the Economy. The upgrades are quite expensive. Your choice to use your resources to either Upgrade or Mass Produce is there. But since your suggestion is intertwined with “There should be a progression of cost rather than an Insta-Expensive then back to Cheap Upgrades”, I can understand your point. And that's where I agree. Part II, General Early Game Changes: 4. Citizen Soldiers – I was like “YES! YES! YES!”. You don’t know how relieved I am that you went from “Get rid of it!” to “Re-work it”. Don’t care how you will implement it, but at least it’s staying. My small disagreement is on the “Permanent Upgrade” thing, even if I favor the first option. 7. Starting Units Reworked – I still like the horseman do the scouting job. Maybe as a starting unit, but not trainable on the Civic Center. At least that will: (a) Prevent the Rush Problem you’re referring to (b) Forces the player to take care of his scout. I personally don’t favor splitting the Metal Resource (Silver and Gold) as I think it adds unnecessary complexity, but I can’t really have a strong comment against or for a concept until I see it implemented. The comment about Unit-direction is great if Formations aren’t broken. I believe that’s where this concept shines. Syntagma Formations shouldn’t be as strong for defense against flank attacks. Well, let’s just say that in every game where Formation is implemented, Total War is the standard stereotype. And it doesn't make sense that my defensive capability is not affected when someone is shooing arrows on my back... especially in formations. Building Dependency Lay-out: Didn’t read this part, but the image speaks for itself. I like the concept because I love the Diablo II skill tree system. Walls + Defense Tower = Fortress… just a little suggestion for this one, as it seems to complete the logical progression for me. I’ll take it by faith to the rest of the developers concerning the rest of the article.

I'll do the silly nit-pickings so hopefully others won't have to. My real comment will be posted later. Introduction, paragraph 6, 1st sentence: Not a Grammar Nazi as my I committed more spelling/grammar mistakes, but this one has to go. Phase I Structures: Palisades Sentry Tower (Mini Defense Tower) Outpost (Renamed from Watchtower) These things are assumed later on in your analysis anyway, but let's just keep the documentation complete. Phase 2 Structures: Naos (Temple) - Kind of vague so might as well say "Healing Temple" or something Phase 3 Structures: Prytareion (Council Chamber) - I personally don't see the Economy aspect of this structure Phase 1 Units: Women (Again for the sake of completion) Phase 2 Units: Peltates Thrax (Ranged Javelin Units) - Also in the analysis, but not on this part. Part II "...removal or repetitive...." --> removal of repetitive

It's true! Siege Weapons are weak against Hack Damage... something present in Swords and Women's Knives.

Lol You can tell the man is on a mission.

No replay from me. Just commenting something related to this thread: Thanks @fcxSanya for the comment on the Anavultus' video. Just had a chance to record my own and I'll try to post within a couple of days.

Really? I find it intuitive, though. Damaging a building while having units capture it is fine with me. Some people don't like the extra micro while I do. But hey. Not a big deal for me if it's changed. It doesn't affect my gameplay. I can adjust myself if everybody destroys by default. No problem.

Infantry have better chances of capturing than damaging, so they capture by default. Elephants are the opposite - It's neither historical nor realistic but only intuitive for gameplay. Many have this evaluation: I love capturing, but it's frustrating I granted the suggestion "Destroy by Default", "Capture by Ctrl+Right Click" for the sake of the new players. But now I'm leaning on "Make that an option in the Gameplay Settings along with the Batch Training Size" route.

Not necessarily. (Please bear with the hasty generalizations about to be committed below) Reading at the wraitii's comment, the game has attracted a player base who happen to like the mechanics (I know I do. I like the frantic pace), but at the cost of some devs who think that they created a disfigured monster. Well, this IS a dilemma. Make the current playerbase happy at the cost of the devs hating their product, or make the the devs happy at the cost of the current playerbase (this will attract another playerbase, I know). With people like fatherbushido (who is involved both the the development and playing) not having much complaints, I actually assumed that majority of the devs are content with the current development. It's actually a shocker to me that most of them don't use their free-time to test their own game as well as develop it. I hope the team will make a successful decision of where this will go. But for now, I'll just dig myself on the "Keep the Mechanics" trench.

So. I've been equivocating Empires Ascendant (Part 1) and Empires Besieged (Part 2) with Alpha and Beta this whole time. Glad that's out of my system.

Women + Spearmen Basic spearmen are slow-moving, making resource-gathering a little bit slower, and also prevents early cavalry rushes. Edit: Rome defaults to the Swordsman however. His veteran spearmen can only be trained in the barracks.

Hopefully this will be my last post on this thread concerning this matter. You know what why don't we have players who employ the booming strategies being put forth here? I mean, I concede that the Citizen Soldier system is inherently broken but for a lot of forum players, it's mere theory. Why not have at it? Boomer vs. Attacker. I personally think that the defender will always have an advantage with strategies like: "Oh here comes a raid. So what? I'll just keep them at bay with my spearmen." "Oh my women just got killed. So what? Easily replace-able. I'll just let him have 'em." No sarcasm there, by the way. I've seen replays posted in the forum and 90% of the time, the rusher fails. I often attribute that to the fact that the rushers often neglect their economy back in their base. But even if they manage everything right. The attacks have very little effect. It's as if nothing happened and the attacker just wasted have of the game time for it. The Citizen Soldiers had everything to do with it. I still want to keep the Citizen Soldiers, but let me assure you that I no longer have any strong reason to. If you want to contradict me, then provide the replays to prove the thesis: "Attack + Eco > Pure Boom"

I share your sentiments @Grugnas as a fellow player... especially after watching the good replays posted on this forum. But the recurring theme is that these guys (Drac and Enrique) have enough playing, and development experiences to have a concrete, long-term vision for this game. And that we just can't grasp the things they're talking about. I'm only waiting for feneur to say something about this. Regardless where this goes, I'll still love this game.

DE will be my haven for Citizen Soldiers if you could implement that @wowgetoffyourcellphone. I still can't wrap head around why they're currently game-degrading right now, but I do love that call-to-arms idea just to get rid of that immediate pickaxe-to-sword non-realism thing.

Woah! With those concepts you're better off having a team to build a mod for the game... a total conversion even.

I'm kind of done with this as well. I kind of miss arguing about some "trivial" things with someone. But I have to take a breather. Whether Citizen Soldiers should exist in the game or not will be in the hands of the developers. For now, I'll be fighting for it. Unless the team suddenly changes it, which leaves me crying in pain until I get over it and move on. That's just me. It's one of the few things I'm willing to be close-minded on... sort of.

Originally posted in the wrong thread (Suggestions for 0 A.D.): r 0

Well, how about the economy I just disrupted? Gaining resources was the addition to that as I mentioned. So, it's kind of a pay-off. They're actually imbalanced (Alpha 20), and the developers gave the slower train time. By my estimates, 5 Citizen Soldiers or more to take down 1 Champion Unit. 20 for the Heroes I think. No. Not a game developer, only played a handful of RTS (Red Alert 2, Battle Realms, and this one), and I don't have any experiences in the same way you have. Now that's out of the way, please don't think I'm trying to lecture you. Think of it as me who loves this particular game trying to state his case. My question, though, is: Are you looking at 0 A.D. from a Marketing standpoint? I'm considering that because majority of the comments against the game's gameplay decisions (especially the Citizen Soldiers) is that "A lot of players won't like this, so it's losing its potential for promotion."

And that's the main reason 0 A.D. is unique from all of them. Because I'll be gaining 1 Food, 1 Wood, 1 Stone, and 1 Metal. For each woman I kill... things that I don't usually get especially in the Village Phase. Not to mention exp points for my soldiers. For gameplay reasons. But how about Marius' Mules? Like I said, there are Champion units in the City Phase for that. Not all units are Citizen Soldiers. I don't actually have a problem learning to play with it. I'm actually considering the fact that AoE 2 wasn't my childhood and I have to learn the game from scratch. You have a standard way of playing RTS and you want that imported here as well. This I believe is more of a battle of preference than actual standard of what makes RTS good or not.

Either the game, or the manual should adjust accordingly. Posting this one as a whole since it also shows the brokenness of the Structure Tree for my 1024x768 screen.

The Citizen Soldiers is what makes 0 A.D. 0 A.D. I'll never want that removed. The main reason you think that they're only used for booming is understandable ("Why should I waste time attacking when I can do is gather->populate->build houses->rinse and repeat? By the time the enemy is attacking, I'd mustered enough units." Well, you might want to build up until City Phase to get the real non-working soldiers up and running. So you'll have to end your cycle that way. Also, you know the advantage of attacking? The loot system: Your units gain experience, and you certain resources by killing enemy units as well as disrupting their economy. So it's not necessarily a "waste of time booming".

The better players in the forums have suggested this as well.

@Lion.Kanzen Let's just put it this way: "0 A.D. has too many 'redundant' factions. It's becoming a waste of space for more diversity." 5 Greek factions (3 Native and 2 Hellenized), and 2 Celtic Factions. Now you're considering another Greek Faction (Thebans)? I personally have no problem with the current setup since this is where I learned about the diversity of the Greek City-states (starting from Spartan Hoplites, Athenian Navy, and Macedonian Foot Companions). So the redundancy didn't really catch on to me except for the too subtle differences in the architectural styles (I can't be bothered squinting my eyes on each faction's doric, ionic, and corinthian order of the buildings' columns... even if I like it. Good thing the Civic Centers have a much more obvious difference). But I think the debate is only falling into two categories: Add factions ASAP, or a little bit later? Add distinct factions, or diversify already-existing ones?