Sundiata

Dude... There are no peasants in the game. Those citizen soldiers usually represent the upper sections of society and formed the backbone of many ancient armies. They're not peasants. Many of them owned peasants. I for one would LOVE to have generic peasants for each civ, but it's not a thing right now.

What peasants?? These guys own peasants! Well, at least some of them...

I think mostly the historians in conjunction with the artists should be deciding civ specific building rosters. Same for units... It's up to the balance guys make it work. Of course if something breaks the game, it's a no no, but having accurate and relevant structures and units is not something that should ever be able to break the game... We should be able to make the most of what made a civilization or a culture unique. Otherwise the factions are going to feel like generic re-skins of each other. The theatron looks really great by the way!

Those aren't peasants tho... Experienced Citizen soldiers should be able to stand their ground...

There's a couple of pretty memorable quotes in there, like: "Tadaaa, there it is, now you can go home" "I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but if you wing it hard enough, you can do anything" "This is truly an awful program" "Yo, this is where we get whack!" "Is that detailed enough for ya Stan?" "I've got to piss like a Russian race horse" "If you wanted a tutorial, you should have asked for a tutorial. Please don't ask for a tutorial..." That last one killed me, because I did actually ask for a tutorial, and you definitely delivered a tutorial... Of sorts... Thanks man! Anyway, I'm trying... Not quite succeeding, but trying nonetheless... Acacia attempt 3... In Dutch, we would say: "Schoon van ver, maar verre van schoon", which roughly translates into "pretty from afar, but far from pretty"... I have two main problems I see, which is that the geometry of the branches sucks from up close. They're just bent plains (2 bends). And the tris count is getting too high 700 tris, and none of the faces have been doubled with flipped normals to counteract the backface culling, which would increase the tris count to 1200... By the way, why can't backface culling be disabled for trees? Because doubling the branches/leaves to counteract it, essentially doubles the geometry for trees, doesn't it? Is rendering two faces of a single polygon really more "expensive" than rendering 2 separate one sided polygons? Anyway, close up of the ugly: One thing I did like about my attempt, is the detail in the acacia specific texture (512x512). Which is why I decided to post anyway: I'll probably get back to my flora modeling attempts at some time in the future, but for now, if anyone more skilled than me feels compelled to give the acacia a go, here's the CC0 texture I made using wikimedia CC0 images. It was pretty tedious to manually separate the leaves, but with a few adjustments, it would look pretty good, I think... And here's a previous version: Used for this attampt:

The temple was built from sandstone and fired brick, which was then plastered with white lime plaster. In the 6th image of the references you can still clearly see the patchy remains of the 2000 year old plaster. So yes, this temple, like most, if not all Kushite temples, palaces and elite residences in other royal cities like Naqa, Basa, Muweis and others would have been gleaming white under the Sudanese sun (or broken white because of all the sand). Some of the Egyptian pyramids looked white because of the polished limestone they used (limestone is very rare in Nubia). Hahaha, lol... Why do I get this ominous feeling? Like this, right? https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Basic3DImplementation

What about useless stuff? I'm pretty good at useless stuff

lol! I keep getting carried away with things that aren't priority... But I learn so much in the process... Yes! I thought about it and then forgot about it...

Meroë, Temple M 250, the so-called Sun Temple Art by Sundiata (Malcolm Quartey) The 1st century BC Meroitic period temple on the outskirts of the capital. It is still uncertain which god(s) it was dedicated to. Making use of the Kushite textures (by LordGood and Wowgetoffyourcellphone, if I'm not mistaken). I've suggested this structure as the Kushite wonder before, and thought I'd just give it a go myself. The model isn't finished yet (texturing). It's less than 10.000 tris (and I don't expect to add any more geometry), so I sincerely hope it can replace the current wonder (which looks great and can still be used in Atlas). (Those acacia trees were just a free asset I found somewhere. Using an HDRI to light the scene for the first time.) References:

Practice makes perfect... If you knew how many test renders I do when I'm making something you'll laugh....

@stanislas69 Thank you soooo much! Excellent narration by the way!

@LordGood Mmmmm... Nice! All of it... Any chance we could get a quick tutorial on how you make flora? Min/max requirements etc..

As Alexander said, it's in his horse update. Thanks to him for rigging, animating and actually getting the model in game... It was intended specifically for the hero Queen Amanirenas (chariotry was still around in the 500 BC - 1 BC timeframe, but not as common as it once was). I guess it could be adapted for a champion unit as well. It was originally decided to drop chariots because the Kushite roster is already so diverse and other factions don't have such a diverse roster. A new find in the excavation report of the first excavations of Meroë by Garstang himself. A Kushite chariot from a fragmented relief on the 1st century BC Meroitic period temple M 250 in Meroë (in a militaristic context of battles, massacres, marching soldiers, occupied villages etc). Similar to the fragmented reliefs of 2 chariots in the 1st century BC Meroitic period temple of Osiris in Napata, as well as the fragmented reliefs of chariots the 8th century BC, 25th dynasty reliefs of Piye in the Great Amun temple of Napata. I could also give the "Libyan" chariot a go. Just to be clear, do you mean Libyan, or Garamantian chariot? https://africanrockart.britishmuseum.org/thematic/chariots-in-the-sahara/

Why wouldn't it be committed to vanilla?

Nice catch. Personally I always thought the range of fortresses was a little too small. You could also reduce the range of archers of course, but since they're a bit of an underused unit as it is, I'd prefer the first option (fortresses aren't much of an obstacle in late game anyway, so a little buff in terms of range won't hurt gameplay, I think)

@Monder87 Nice stuff! One question, you've probably covered this, but are these units supposed to be some kind of NPC's that take care of their own stuff, and are assigned indirectly to certain jobs, or do you have to keep track of and adjust all these things manually?

The Nuba Village: African Mini Faction, concept art Some concept art made by me (getting carried away again), inspired by Stanislas' Nuba merc camp, and using his texture for the huts. Generic African warrior dude was a free 3D printable model that I imported into Blender (https://free3d.com/3d-model/african-tribal-warriorsknobkerrie-club-v3--170705.html).

Oooh, @Victor Rossi is one amazing artist! Dahomean storyteller: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/k426ll Dahomey was a relatively small, yet powerful militaristic kingdom on the West African coast centred on modern day Togo, sandwiched between the Ashanti and Oyo Empires. It was ruled from Abomey, between 1600 and 1894, and they were probably most known for the Dahomey Amazons (the Ahosi or the Mino), an elite force of several thousand women with a ferocious reputation, fighting as a royal guard, as well as well as separate wings (left and right) embedded in the main army. They actually participated in some major battles like the battle of Atakpame.

. There are more direct comparisons, like the obvious AoE series, but also games like Rise of Nations, the Empire Earth series, Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War, Empires Apart, etc.. There are indeed vague similarities between all the games mentioned, and I think it's good to take inspiration from anything that could benefit this game, regardless of genre. Nothing extreme, of course. In essence 0AD will always be a historical, Classical RTS. But we can also try to expand the meaning of that.

The Kushites seem to have the Thai stamp of approval I don't know what Shaka has to do with it though... Cool art either way

Made my evening...

I'm pretty sure @Trinketos would be happy with some more helping hands

It's still a work in progress. I'll share it in the forum for public scrutiny very soon (it hasn't passed any reviews yet), but the idea is to have an RTS adaptation of an actual Gallic sanctuary, the sanctuary at Gournay-sur-Aronde in particular (but it has parallels in other sanctuaries as well).

Now that you mention it, it would be interesting to explain the ritual aspect of their nakedness (I know there's debate about it, but let's be real, it was probably ritual more than anything, no?). It wouldn't be the only civ to recruit a special unit from their temple either. I stand corrected

I could easily imagine the "auditorium", which probably functioned as some sort of assembly building for nobles, as the place where nobles came together to make important decisions, like hiring a bunch of naked fanatics for the upcoming campaign or whatever.