Libervurto

Why is it left click to place buildings, when every other order is given with a right click? This inconsistency continues to confuse me.

I feel like seasons would add more structure to a match. Different seasons would have different effects, food production would increase in the spring/summer, the terrain would be treacherous in the winter, etc. There are some other ideas floating around here for longer matches and seasons would make more sense for longer matches. So, yes I don't think seasons are necessary for a good game and would likely slow down the game but I would love to see someone experiment with these ideas to see how it effects things and what new challenges and decisions it brings. Maybe if I get into the coding side I will make a seasons mod. I have the summer to learn!

Not quite, I would like to see seasons because the seasons played a huge role in warfare in ancient times. There are a whole load of ideas for seasons but that would be appropriate to discuss in a separate thread.

Why not instead make construction sites drop sites for the materials required? This would mean you could place construction sites for buildings even if you don't have the resources at hand to build them immediately. Would that mess with the game? So the Civic Centre would only have a dropsite in phase 1? Then changes abilities through the phases? Interesting idea!

As a purely visual thing I would like it. Possibly if seasons were implemented then different crops could be planted at different times of the year. As for making farms finite, that seems like an option to be set before the start of a match. Otherwise, if you give faster harvesting rates to the finite farms then that's the one everyone will use, so it makes the other farms redundant.

Would it be fun to have optional random victory conditions secretly assigned to each player? Like in Risk. Then you would have to try and work out which victory your opponent is going for and shut them down while going for your own victory. Some more victory condition ideas: Population exceeds X Resources exceed X Build X Civic Centers We could even have some silly ones for fun: Survive for X minutes without progressing from the village phase Breed X hundred sheep Let your enemies destroy X of your buildings

Something that Danny and my ideas share is tying technological progress to physical structures on the map that can be destroyed and thus the technological progress lost. This seems like an avenue worth exploring whether pro-phase or anti-phase.

This discussion highlights everything that is bad about phases. Look at the posts endorsing phases, they are all about ways to restrict the player, and arbitrary ways to categorize things into phases. I understand that this is a game and things have to be simplified, and I appreciate the efforts of people to try and improve upon existing ideas (this is in fact more important than new ideas!), but I really think phases/epoch/ages have always been a dead duck in RTS games. A city/civilisation is something that evolves gradually, it does not jump from one age to the next, there is no reason why we cannot have this authentic feeling, there is no real reason to limit the game to distinct phases other than to emulate games that came before. I edited this part out because I went on a rant about how phases make no sense and seem to be completely detached from the game world, but I have deleted that and instead I will try to provide some alternative ideas. Knowledge as a Resource I want technology to be something tangible in the world, not a flowchart disconnected from the rest of the game. I will start by describing a basic settlement and how knowledge is accrued and used by primitive cultures. Each working citizen will accrue a trickle of knowledge while they work (this simulates the natural tendency to innovate and find more efficient ways to complete tasks). For every working citizen, the science score of the civilisation is increased by a small amount; the science score affects the rate at which knowledge is acquired over time. Advanced buildings and units require knowledge to build, however, knowledge is not spent like other resources, but also unlike other resources it must be maintained. The population itself is the basic and most vital store of knowledge, if your population collapses then your technology will disappear along with it! Libraries (as separate buildings or contained within other buildings, e.g. Universities) greatly bolster the civilisation's knowledge base. Buildings such as the Temple, Library, University and Observatory* are places that provide huge boosts to the science score and thus the rate of knowledge acquisition. So knowledge is not a static resource, it is not something that can be simply piled up but can change greatly depending on these factors of population size, libraries and science score. (For the more mathematically-minded amongst us I have attached an image of an equation that produces the desired relationship.) What this means in terms of gameplay is that knowledge (and thus technology) are bound to tangible objects and people that must be protected. * The effectiveness of the observatory depends on its elevation, being more effective on higher ground, like in real life. Technology Buffs & Building Upgrades Technologies like efficiency boosts would either be unlocked automatically past a certain knowledge threshold, or require a new building to be constructed (which would be unlocked by passing a knowledge threshold). You would not pay to unlock technologies as before; all technologies must be linked to either a specific building or the overall knowledge score (and ultimately the population of course). So technologies would be fluid just like knowledge. My thoughts on building upgrades is that they should be very limited if existing at all. Why? From both an aesthetic and gameplay point of view it seems a bit of a spoiler to simply click on a building and upgrade it. Instead, what is far more natural is to build new buildings alongside the old, or to demolish the old to make way for the new. In real-life cities, the mixture of architecture styles tells you something about the history of the city. I would love this to be a part of 0AD, being able to see how a city has evolved over time; you could look at a city and maybe you will see a clear divide between the old city and the new city as it has expanded over time, or perhaps the outskirts are littered with ruins from an ancient war or perhaps the ruins are simply old buildings that were demolished to reclaim building materials. I am getting carried away with this idea that would require tonnes of new art! Should Other Resources Be Volatile? I think so, yes. So you have 10 000 stone? What if I need stone, why can I not raid your base and steal your stone? Why can I not burn down your granaries so that your people starve? Resources are what most wars are fought over so why is this not the case in 0AD? I think I will have to learn this level of programming because I always have these grand ideas and then I sit around and wait and hope that somebody else makes them!

I like the idea of Priests converting enemies. How would this work though? How would the priest be able to convert an enemy without your other troops killing them and without the enemy killing your priest before conversion is complete? Priests could also be involved in researching tech in some way. This would make sense since historically, priests were the most educated people and some clergymen were the earliest scientists.

Okay, but this does seem to be brushing aside Thorfinn's concern without good reason. Would it be okay if farmsteads or any other non-military building trained spearmen as well because barracks have more troops and techs? However, Thorfinn commits a similar fault… Is it not just as strange that women would be "produced" at an administrative building? Perhaps we need to think of the civic centre with a new perspective before we can understand whether things need to change and how they could be changed. What if we view the cc not as "producing" units but organising the populace? Whenever we build a house we can assume that people are living in it but only once we "build a unit" do they appear to us because they have been "recruited" to our cause. In this way we can view the cc producing basic troops as the "council" deciding to organise the men. Perhaps troops should not gain combat experience if there is no barracks? General tip: if you want to change something in the game, first, before introducing new ideas, see if you can achieve the same effect by using existing mechanics. This is not only helpful for programmers but for the player as well, since they have less to learn and reused mechanics will become intuitive and instantly understood. Also, introducing a new mechanic might have unforeseen effects that are undesirable. By tying the number of barracks to the number of cc's, you'd have to keep a tally of how many cc's you have, would that need another counter on the HUD like for citizen count? What happens if a cc gets destroyed? What if I have an island colony and can't build a barracks on it because I'm already at max; do I need to destroy another barracks first? What if I have an island colony and a cc is destroyed! Do I then have to destroy two or three barracks before I can build one on the island?… It starts to sound a bit messy. To limit the number of barracks a player can build, IMO it makes more sense to impose a minimum distance between barracks, just like for towers.

I like when terrain is very important and I have to plan how to exploit it best. One thing 0AD does not have that I enjoy is units with unique names that upgrade with experience to become legendary soldiers. Yes, units can gain two levels of proficiency but I would like to see them promoted further and have names so I can keep track of them and build a story around them.

Very nice demonstration. The visual effects really suit Red Alert's hi-tech theme, but how would it look in 0ad? You mentioned a "god view", so would you literally be a god? What would the world look like? (A disc held up by four elephants riding on the back of a turtle?) What would the pointers and menus look like? I think this would require someone very talented and dedicated coming in and basically doing this on their own from scratch. Not many people have this hardware. I don't see it happening but you never know.

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21523-my-impressions-and-ideas/&do=findComment&comment=324399 No thoughts on these ideas?

I don't think that is necessary. Having layers of walls is a tactical advantage, no need to buff that with bonuses.

I was thinking this too. I think gaining xp from a combination of damage dealt and received would work best. I am assuming that units have a data flag to state when they are engaged in combat? While in this combat state, we record the damage dealt and received by the unit. The amount of experience gained is only calculated after the unit has left combat—at which point damage statistics are deleted. The experience gained is calculated simply by multiplying the damage dealt by the damage received during combat. Experience Gained = Damage Dealt × Damage Received This relationship makes a soldier's attacks count for more when fighting a tougher opponent; or conversely, his injuries teach him more when he is fighting well. Major battles become historic events. Fighting in one large battle gains far more experience than several minor battles. For example, let's say we have a soldier who fought in a major battle, he dealt and received 50 damage, so he gains 50² = 2500 XP (actual number of XP not important for this). His next combat is a minor battle, where he deals and receives 10 damage, so for this battle he gains only 10² = 100 XP. Therefore, he'd have to fight in 25 of these minor battles to gain the same amount of experience he received from his one major battle! So, either way, you can look at your veterans and know they are truly battle-hardened. Encouraging better battle strategy. Players will start to think about battles more as separate events. Players who are more strategic in the deployment of their troops will be rewarded: by engaging the enemy where they have an advantage or a route open to retreat, their troops stand a better chance of surviving the engagement and gaining XP. Addendum. It is almost absurd to me that I have this much to say about multiplying two numbers together! That's why I like thinking about this stuff, though. Simple changes in how these values relate to each other can have huge effects.