Sundiata

Poor guy... He needs some tips on how to play, asap!

Do you have 3 forum accounts? I've also witnessed people complaining about this guy randomly kicking them from his games. He's obviously toxic in the forum, and toxic in the lobby as well. Kicking people for using massed ranged units, using siege equipment, or even choosing the "wrong" civ, insulting people in the lobby, etc... There really isn't any need to validate him any further...

Aye

Adding that distinctive red line at the bottom makes the concept look a little better: Some more Principia examples:

I agree entirely with this. Visual communication, authenticity and real scale are indeed 1/3 each, or something like that. There always needs to be a balance. The layout of the Principia/Headquarters building isn't even that different from the other barracks in-game. It's actually quite similar... Historical accuracy and visual communication don't need to be mutually exclusive. A lot of your work illustrates this. We're not saying that we need a scientifically measured historical reconstruction of the Roman Principia, but why not just follow the general plan? Form and function... Especially for a civilization so well studied as the Romans... I made a quick concept based on the Headquarters buildings I shared earlier. Just imagine this with lots of military props like shields, spears, banners, practice dummies or whatever... Adjust the scale as you like... Feel free to use a more monumental entrance. Make the elevated roof of the sacellum in the rear of the building more prominent, or use more stone in the texture, or whatever... This structure doesn't look like any other structure in the Roman building set. With some military props, it will be immediately recognizable as the "barracks". And it would actually be accurate, more or less. The historicity in 0AD is a great source of value and a big distinguishing feature for this game. There are already plenty of mediocre representations of Antiquity in pop-culture. I know this game can do better, and in many respects it already is. It's one of the things i love most about 0AD, and it would be nice to see us all build on this, rather than dumbing it down, which puts us in direct competition with much bigger commercial studios.

That was exactly the one that poked my interest the most, for the same reasons.

Why not just follow the references? The shape has a function. That elevated part in the centre of the rear end of the structure for example is the sacellum, or aedes (don't shoot me, my Latin is deplorable), a small shrine, which was a recurring element of this structure. Yeah, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel when you're modeling structures for a historical game and you actually have primary references to work with. Where's the educational aspect of just winging it? Besides, there is enough historical variation to pick and choose from. Granted, the examples date to imperial times, but maybe someone can find a republican parallel. Here's some more inspiration:

Why not look at actual Roman barracks/fortresses for inspiration? Most of the reconstructions I see have a central structure which they call Principia, the headquarters, which is the central administrative structure/armory/religious centre of the fortress, surrounded by the barracks and other structures. Here's some archaeological info on the Roman Principia: http://www.curlesnewstead.org.uk/pdfs/curlechapter03.pdf These examples are from AD period I believe, but I don't think it really matters...

Good stuff! (Some in-game anti-aliasing would make that video thumbnail look 10 times better...)

Apparently that's what some of the South Indian (Kerala) bananas look like. Those bananas are short and thick, and they grow in huge bunches like that. Plantains used for cooking, and much more widely grown than bananas (at least in Africa) are larger/longer but less densely spaced. Actually I think it's fine. There's usually just a lot of dead leaves hanging down obscuring the stem, but when it's trimmed (most cultivators would cut aways dead leaves), then the stem is visible, and it's about the right size in the screenshots. If those bananas aren't being tended to, then yeah, there could be a mess of brown leaves hanging straight down against the stem. For the rest I think they look good. I only think that some of the leaves could have a more rounded tip. A variant with a smaller bunch isn't a bad idea. And another variant for plantains (cooking bananas) wouldn't be bad either

Hahahaha! No comment... Very interesting, thank you!

I'm definitely no expert, I just thought European Jews influenced the modern pronunciation of Biblical Hebrew, which is why I thought the Yemeni example was interesting. But I really dunno... I meant that it would be nice to have Proto Berber Libyan units speaking Amazigh, to differentiate them from the Hebrew speaking Punics, lol, that sounds so weird.... Maybe they should just speak English. I honestly don't know if Punic sounded more like Aramaic or Hebrew. Seems like there's different answers for different times. During the heyday of Carthage, it seems to have been more different from Hebrew, but again, no expert here. I agree... I was basically just stating that I prefer the Jewish flavor for a Jewish faction, instead of having the North African civ sounding overly Jewish. But then again, maybe they did? I'm just imagining our Hero Hannibal during a 0AD match going "Shalom" anytime I select him, and it sounds a bit funny.

Phoenician mixed with some Proto Berber would be the closest approximation of ancient Punic. Phoenician, Aramaic and Ancient Hebrew are related, but it's debated to what extent they were actually mutually intelligible. There were apparently some fundamental differences in pronunciation, and in some cases Phoenician was more similar to Arabic and Aramaic respectively than Hebrew, which is technically more closely related, I believe. I think Phoenician and Hebrew were quite similar in the early first millennium BC, but diverged more strongly in the second half of the millennium, with the emergence of Punic widening it still. Potential Yiddish accents flavouring reconstructed modern or classic Hebrew for a North African civ also seems a bit weird. Perhaps Yemenite Hebrew is something interesting to look at (seems to be more archaic). And what about Amazigh for Libyan units? Then we can reserve Hebrew for a future Hebrew faction, the Maccabees/Hasmonean Dynasty... They're from the right timeframe, super interesting, relevant (Seleucid/Ptolemaic/Roman interaction), and there's definitely interest (has been requested many times now).

I don't know what Kushite voices he's talking about.. I know Stan' the man did some recordings, but were they ever committed? 90% of the written language in-game is the Napatan dialect of Late Egyptian, which was used as the official language of the Kingdom of Kush until the 3rd century BC and I believe a broken version continued to be used in some religious inscriptions for several centuries after that. Both languages were spoken during our timeframe, but I avoided too much Meroitic because there are literally only a handful of people in the world who have any real understanding of the language, and the huge bulk of the referenced texts in the research are also written in Napatan. Only a handful of terms and titles are Meroitic in game. As for the rest: Months are like days in 0AD... 17 years of development so far. Alpha 24 is still going to take many more months... Patience is key. The more antsy you get, the less likely people are going to sacrifice their free time to help you out with this. Many people have waited years to see their favorite features in game. I'm not saying it needs to take years, preferably not, but if you can't manage to reach a consensus, no progress is going to be made. Either change your approach, or properly evaluate and try to understand others' viewpoints. @Nescio's knowledge on Greek subjects is respected in this forum for good reason. If you claim one standard, and Nescio claims another standard, and both of these standards are used in academia, it's probably going to take a little more than belligerence to convince the community of one direction or the other. Frankly, this war of standards is probably a matter of personal taste, more than anything.

Same here...

First time player. Excellent narration... Player: "Are these sheep or pigs? They look like sheep to me." Gaia animal: "Baaah" Player: "That is definitely a pig. Yeah, you can tell by the sound it's making. Pigs go Baaah" "Yes, the women of Rome, known of course for their heavy logging", lol...

@LordGood, marvelous! Your "Civil War collection of art assets without entities yet" is look finger-lickingly delicious as well...

But you're right. I don't mean to sh*t-talk AoE or anything, and this AoE II DE is looking promising. As I said I actually like a lot of the architecture sets. I'm just always a bit nit-picky with my favourite histories. Anyway, renewed popular interest in classic RTS games can only be good for us, so it's a win win either way.

I never liked their look in HD either Just their mosque and wonder is really well done. The rest of the set is a little meh (same for the Ethiopians), but then again, age of Empires goes for uniformity over historical accuracy, so they have a very narrow format to work with, I think.

Yikes, lol... I see Malian villagers are still white people, because why not... And what's up with those walls? The buildings looks so generic. Sad because the Mali Empire was one of the pioneers of the Sudano-Sahelian architecture style, which is pretty distinct and still popular in the region today... I'm sure we can do a lot better for one of our future mods... Some of the other architecture sets look really nice though! Cumans look delicious...

Vertical cliffs are really an RTS staple, and in combination with the more natural look that 0AD is going for, these cliffs look fantastic! Thank you @LordGood! Nice to see them being put to good use. The terrain textures and flora from @Bigtiger look equally exquisite... The different elements combined demonstrate a beautiful synergy... Congratulations guys! Keep it up

Practice makes perfect... You'll be slaughtering the AI in no time. Don't let your economy slack. You need to continually be pumping out units in early game. Don't forget the eco techs. There's a few good video's on youtube that give you a good beginners guide: Also, do you realize that you can now set the behavior of the AI, with the choice of balanced, aggressive and defensive. So you can play against defensive AI's if you want to take it a little easier while learning...

I feel like we've been here before Interesting nuance though.