Sundiata

You play 0AD in the forest?! Maybe I should go for a hike and play some jungle games myself. The scorpions might add some excitement. A bit of an X-factor. If you explore the globe a little from space with google earth, our species is like a cancer... A lot of the deforestation in my area for example is completely nonsensical. Short term benefits, long term problems. A lot of it stems from a complete lack of respect for nature, and the inability to understand how it affects the weather patterns and crop-yields. Subsistence farming is slowly becoming a thing of the past. Big agribusinesses are taking over, with all the associated problems. The world is now producing more food than ever, but food security is simultaneously diminishing at alarming rates... We desperately need to start replanting forests, or I'm afraid nature will do it for us, on top of the ruins of the modern world. I wonder if in a few thousand years from now, when populations have rebounded from the cataclysm of the 21st Century and a new global system has arisen, if there will be forums like this, creating virtual games depicting our time, arguing about whether spear cavalry is anachronistic or not during the Vietnam war, or whether mobile suits like Gundams, often depicted in 21st century art, were actually used in combat or whether they were purely ceremonial.

I think his point is that in many competitive games particular ranged units provide the platform to victory. The Britons' slinger and the Ptolemaic camels in particular come to mind, seemingly being overused, if you look at their historical roles. Both were historically support units, to my understanding, while they are currently used as the primary unit. For the Ptolemaic faction, and most if not all of the successor states as well as Macedon, the primary unit should be some kind of phalangite. For the Britons, from a historical perspective it should be shock troops like noble swordsmen and chariots or something. Of course the player should always be free to compose the army as they see fit, but the gameplay should be tailored around historical unit roles, and when it favors support units instead, there might be an issue in the mechanics somewhere. It's not an easy fix because it's one of those balance things which causes eternal discussions each alpha again, although this alpha it seems to have calmed down a bit.

In team games AI behaves funny too. I usually play up to 5 Very Hard AI's, without set teams, which often actually seems easier than one on one, but it's also more interesting because of all the manoeuvring, and switching alliances Some unsatisfactory AI behavior observations: Repeatedly attempting to build structures within range of enemy ranged structures like towers. The AI should be more aware of enemy teritory and unit movement (anticipation/responsiveness). AI shouldn’t request and never launch attacks against an enemy whilst already being invaded by another enemy. AI should focus on the enemy nearby, rather than getting killed crossing an enemy’s teritory trying to attack another enemy at the other end of the map. The AI should never send civilian units through enemy teritory and keep them out of range of towers (unless they become cut off through teritory loss), choosing to send them around with waypoints instead. Traders shouldn't pass close to enemy territory either. The AI can react excessively to a small threat, but also takes too long to respond adequately to massive invasions, often still having a bunch of military units on eco (or just standing around for too long) when being attacked by an overwhelming force. AI armies attack in long drawn out spaghetti lines. It's often enough to have a group of archers hold ground on the path of an advancing AI to successfully pick them all off one by one. They should move and arrive en mass, the fasted units reducing their speed to keep pace with the slowest units when advancing towards an enemy territory, so they arrive as a single large group, not one by one. Allied AI's don't coordinate their attacks well, often taking turns sending armies, instead of arriving at the enemy base at more or less the same time. AI doesn't build walls. AI doesn't understand how to cut it's losses. Repeatedly attacking fortifications like garrisoned towers on their border, with a numerically insignificant number of troops, often after being fired upon, instead of just moving its forces out of range. It can easily waste several hundred units like that in long matches. One aspect in which I think the AI is overpowered is their all seeing eye, especially if you weren't aware that the AI can actually see EVERYTHING... There's no hiding... Even if it's never been to a certain area of the map, it has no problem making a B-line for whatever enemy settlement is located there.

5 or 2 minutes is indeed waaaaay too fast for trees growing, but how did you arrive at "single player games represent at most two seasons of a year ie: Six months"? Building a town, fortifications, monuments and satellite settlements included, and expanding its population to the point of being able to recruit an army for offensive campaigns usually takes a few generations...

@stanislas69 Thank you for wording such a nice response. As with Prodigal Son's response, I really don't have much to argue with what you said. I definitely understand the need to moderate expectations, and vocalizing my overly ambitious wishes for 0AD definitely flies in the face of that approach. I've often said it, I'm a dreamer, and I know it. I just think that some of the more visual developments like new civs are a good way to generate some natural hype, excitement, inspiration, etc. Look at the popularity of elexis' Jebel Barkal map, for example. He could have probably done it with any civ, but Kush provided some good inspiration for him. Having the seasonal options for maps like Fields of Meroë and some other map making developments made during the last alpha were at least in part thanks to the development of the Kushites and their need for new maps. I can see the development put a huge strain on some people, yourself included, and I can't thank you enough for your sacrifices, but people also grew/evolved/developed as a result, myself included. So it's win and loose, but in the end, it all goes towards a better, more polished game. The question is how long are people prepared to wait. I myself would love to think I'd still be checking the latest discussions in the Wildfire Games forums as an old man, and play the game with my grandkids Hopefully we'll have the Chinese in by then. If not, at least alpha 24 You're absolutely right about mods. I just didn't grow up using mods for games myself, and most people I know today don't either. Only the "real gamers", whatever that may mean, use mods, and this can be seen from the difference in download numbers (100.000+ for vanilla each alpha vs, few thousand for the most popular mods). I know it's not an excuse or anything, and people should be stimulated to download mods and experiment as much as possible. It's just a slow process to get people to be comfortable with it, and quality content like the Han, don't really need to be mods in my opinion. I'm more excited about total conversion mods, or mods depicting different timeframes. But you're right, mods can be just the same quality or even better than vanilla.

There are games with 100+ resources, and this not what I want for 0AD, but I don't think having 5 or 6 resources could be too difficult for anybody to handle. I think having some sort of currency could really help soft cap potential OP-units, by adding a different requirement than just throwing some more metal at it. This is one of the problems of the game currently, people just recruit the "best" units they can "afford". If a slightly more complicated requirement like acquiring "coin" to pay for champions or mercenaries, you'd automatically have a more diversified army: peasant levies → citizen soldiers → champions, costing food/wood, food/wood/metal, food/wood/metal/coin respectively, for example. Coin could also be used in research and construction of monuments like the wonder and even temples. It could also refreshen the current market mechanics. Maybe you could even demand tribute from weaker players. Another "resource" I'm fond of is "honor & glory", similar to DE. More like a sort of "health-bar" that is influenced by glorious actions like winning battles and building monuments, and would in turn influence the "moral" of units. A sort of global moral. Could cause units to perform badly when the kingdom's honor is low/units become more bribable, or even susceptible to conversion to another faction. Switching alliances a lot will negatively impact your honor and glory, for example, as will keeping slaves or deleting units. Performing costly sacrifices at your temple could in turn increase it again. These are just thoughts, and I know it sounds rough on the edges, but the 4 resource thing is one of the things I really don't enjoy about many classical RTS games, 0AD included. I believe in at least trying to instill the idea that running an empires requires more than cutting wood, hitting rocks and farming in the middle of town. There was money involved. Tons of it! I know these things are just abstractions, but they're just a tad too abstract for me. Either way, the game is too unit-micro heavy, and unit-microing like dancing units, or having to deal with dancing units is exactly the type of micro that most players really don't enjoy. It's the bad kind of complexity that detracts from the game for most of us. When fighting battles, people prefer to have the feeling that they're actually commanding an army in battle, not constantly be reassigning brain-dead individuals that for the love of god can't figure out how to choose a sensible target. In competitive games, failing to unit-micro will get you slaughtered, and this is really not the way to go in a game of ancient warfare, at all. In League of Legends type games, and even starcraft, yes, but a game of ancient warfare, no! It should be about strategy and tactics. Warfare in antiquity was about formations, the age of the phalanx, battalions, platoons, squads, whatever. Not dancing! Not telling every individual what to do all the time. A lot of these fighters were trained and experienced warriors, but currently they all behave like a bunch of suicidal berserking man-children. So I'd say, reduce complexity in unit-microing by using battalion systems instead, and add complexity in the form of directionality of damage as well as the economy. The Mediterranean has been done a bajillion times already... I'm not against it, and I'm very happy to be able to play with Rome or Carthage or the Athenians. But it's not the type of branding that will make 0AD famous. 0AD has achieved something amazing by adding factions like the Kushites and the Maurya, because they're not Mediterranean, and feature very rarely in any kind of game. Having the Kushites and Maurya makes 0AD unique. Romans and Athenians doesn't make 0AD unique, or memorable... In addition, factions like the Seleucids and Ptolemies whom are both quite obscure as well, adds even more to the exotic flavor of a game that also has all the "standard" civs. What's even more brilliant is that all these civs were in direct military contact/conflict with many other civs, making them actually really relevant, and adding many plus-points in my book. Adding the Kushites to 0AD is making waves, slowly but surely (and I haven't done any promotion yet). The research thread has more than 65.000 views and counting! By far the most popular civ-proposal so far. This isn't some weird testament to myself, but to the history of the Kushites, who's obscurity turned out to be gold! Simply never having heard of them has generated so much interest in so many people, and artists and even historians with Phd's have been consulting the thread for their own research, and there's overwhelmingly positive feedback on youtube video's discussing or featuring 0AD's Kushites. I think the full effect of the Kushite addition will only be felt over the next few alphas, but they're already basically selling themselves... I know that adding the Kushites meant absolutely nothing to some people, but it meant the world to many others. Any number of civs, especially the Han Chinese, Xiongnu, Thracians, Scythians, Greco-Bactrians, Parthians, Garamantes, Numidians, Nabataeans etc have the same potential. Also, as an artist yourself, do you think that you not making new unit textures for new civs speeds up development in other departments? To clarify, I'm not saying that the team should officially commit to adding this faction or that faction to the next alpha or something. The Kushites were originally developed in mods. First in Delenda Est, then in Vox Populi, and then in a vanilla compatible mod. This was a healthy development process that didn't require any official commitments from the development team, until they were satisfied with the quality and decided to add it to the main game. Developing civs in mods is just fine. The problem is that when the development team has this dogmatic stance on not adding any civs anymore up front, it works very discouragingly for potential contributors. I worked really hard on the research for the Kushites (sleepless nights hard), and I did it thinking it would take a miracle for it to be added to the main game. A miracle is what I received, and I will be forever grateful to the development team for granting my childhood wish of being able to play as a proper African civ in a historical RTS. This was a black nerd fantasy come true. A dream! Not just for me! But to be honest, there were moments of depression, thinking I was doing all this work for nothing. Again, I'm not saying the team should commit to anything, I'm just saying the team should encourage independent civ-development with the possibility of adding to vanilla, once certain quality requirements are met. The only thing this would require from the team is to stop saying "we're not adding new civs" like it's the official mantra. I think a lot of sinophiles for example have long abandoned Wildfiregames because of this. But 0AD isn't a commercial project, neither is it bound by corporate deadlines. Those things you describe, DLC's and expansion packs, are blatant money-grabs. Ugly side-effects of 21st century capitalism, rather than a testament to good or even moral game-development. The expansion pack formula doesn't make any sense if you're not about the money, and makes even less sense considering 0AD takes less than a Gigabyte to download. If it was already 20 Gig, I'd understand splitting it up. But it's not even 1 GB...

@Genava55 Sometimes we like to argue a lot, but in the end, we all just want the same thing: a great game. I know I'm overly ambitious with regard to what I'd like to see developed, but the Pyrogenesis game-engine is really a dream come true. I'd like to see 0AD, as the flagship project, to make the most use it's potential, and do what all those other games couldn't. Real historicity. Real sense of immersion. Those things require more depth. Not more neurotic microing that scared off the bulk of RTS gamers a decade ago. I think the starcraft and AoK analogy is problematic because those games themselves are problematic, because of the nostalgic hold they have over many people. They're not considered the best games because they're objectively better than other games in the genre, but because they were epic in their day, innovative and refreshing. Now nostalgia is left, but the old formulas will never inspire such feelings of exhilaration again, because they're no longer innovative or refreshing. They're standard, and to achieve the same feeling in a new game, entirely new stuff needs to be developed, not seen before. That doesn't mean that all the standard stuff needs to be thrown out, at all. But the Steppe cultures for example offer a lot of potential in regard to never before seen gameplay. Adding never before seen civilizations (for most people) and their unique traits (like Kushites and Mauryas) is another thing that really adds exotic flair, while civs like Gaul, Rome and Athens provide us with the well known civs we're all familiar with, and provide an anchor in time. The biggest draw-back for city builders is that they lack good combat. The problem with battle simulators like TW is that they lack good base-building. 0AD already has a relatively developed mix of features. The features just need polishing. Microing needs to be removed from some places, to allow more depth in others, particularly eco and civilian stuff as well as battle mechanics. Some people are scared this might become an unholy concoction that will never work. I'd argue the opposite. The deadening simplicity of the eco, combined with complicated unit-micro tactics that take advantage of substandard mechanics that most people aren't even aware of, is the real unholy concoction. @Prodigal Son Thank you for your extensive explanation, I always appreciate when someone takes their time to explain their position. I don't have much to argue about what you said. This is exactly why I'd like to see a coin/gold/silver resource introduced into 0AD, because it could do so much for balancing, helping to nuance costs and expand the sense of economy beyond resource gathering (and sending a cart back and forth to "markets" in the middle of nowhere, serving no one). Some people are scared of more than 4 resources. Like 5 or 6 resources are too difficult to keep track of. I don't understand that. 0AD can be in a league of its own. It just requires bravery, patience and a lot of skilled contributors.

I get the comparison, I just think it's been high time to think outside the box and look beyond the horizon. Not be tied down by a very limited 20 year old spectrum. It's not a question of "or". These things aren't mutually exclusive, at all. That's definitely true.

The problem is that a mass of ranged units automatically target the nearest enemy unit, while they should be spreading fire across the entire group of enemy units within range. So it can indeed be considered a bug i.m.o. There are many of those micro-bugs though, and all of them are regularly exploited, so it's not like you're the only one doing it. It's even ill-advised not to take these things into account in a competitive game (why wouldn't you dodge a missile if you can?).

Sure, mods can fix a lot. Not denying that. But why does SP take a backseat? I'm concerned with the base-player, casual Joe looking for a good historical RTS. Not a stale remake of fantasy genres, but something that oozes good history. Majority of gamers don't mod their games, and having to download mods to make the game interesting is the wrong approach. The game should be interesting by default, not a stale starcraft of AoK clone. I'd rather strongly argue that all the multiplayer guys and galls should come together and agree on their MP-wishes, and put out an official "Competitive Mod" each alpha. Those people are much more likely to actually download and use mods. Then we can finally develop some actual gameplay for the rest of us.

Also, the asymmetrical elements of Total War definitely carry over into MP-games as well, and certainly haven't been an impedance to its popularity. So some some civs might become "stronger" in a general sense than others. This should hardly be a surprise to anyone that has ever picked up a history book. You're still free to choose whichever civ you want, so if you're all about your rating, then you go for 1 of those 5 or 6 "OP-civs". The thing is, a lot of us really enjoy fighting from an underdog position. It's supremely gratifying to win a game when you were dealt "a bad hand". Asymmetry can be just as much an asset as a liability. Especially if it increases unpredictability, like a good player trashing everyone with a "low-tier" civ. It's fun! Mediocrity is always a liability in a game, never an asset.

0AD is a very special game. One of the most special Classical and Historical RTS games in my opinion (for a number of reasons). The history is paramount in this. No other game of this particular format has been so serious with regard to history, and that's a major selling point for a lot of us. Age of Empires is truly a joke from a historicity perspective. It's not good at all, and a lot of us have been waiting nearly 2 decades for a game that at least tries to be accurate within the limited format of "classical" RTS. 0AD isn't perfect, I know, but the intention is there. This should be stimulated (as was the original intention to have historically diverse gameplay), not nipped in the bud by talk about 3-4 civs, or many identical civs. There are plenty of neurotic fantasy games with the desired balance for competitive play. More often than not, historical elements and details that could offer juicy game-play are shunned because of balance concerns. Why in the world would you want to turn this into another starcraft (and probably fail). In my opinion, apart from the missing campaigns, 0AD also left Age of Empires in the dust a few alphas ago. The game has been in development for 15+ years, so development time is not something I count. This isn't a commercial project with cut-throat deadlines. If it takes 5 years to develop a certain feature, no problem, I'd still be here and excited once it's ready, as I've been following the development since 2011, I get more excited each year. I've seen many things happen that I didn't expect, and am pleasantly surprised by all the developments each alpha. I've seen the impossible become possible. I just abhor the idea of "going back". Where I'm from, we have a saying: "Forward ever, backward never!". Why copying game-mechanics from popular fantasy games? Why compete with fantasy at all, if we have our own (pretty large) historical niche. Instead of doing what all those other non-historical guys have done, and probably achieve nothing but mediocrity in a sludge-fest of hundreds of similar games, why not try something truly original? Something that emphasises the historical character of the game, rather than reduce it to a superficial historical veneer? What would be the point of the game if all the historical nuances are smoothed out in favor of competitive gameplay? What would be the point? Not that the one precludes the other, but why is that competitive play seemingly always takes precedence over diverse and exciting SP-experience, while the vast majority of players aren't competitive players, at all... In fact, most people never even touch multiplayer! In short, most of us don't want another starcraft. Please. Age of Empires is passé. They had their time. There's a new king. We shouldn't start backtracking now.

Each herd would be capped at a max pop, depending on the species. Same thing for forests. Once the predetermined forested areas are saturated, no new trees would grow. Forest could have different settings depending on the map. In reality, only some peripheral forests would remain because most people would still cut all the forests in their base 100% for quick early income. "Forest management" would be more of a late game thing.

I honestly think you're the one stretching it There is nothing obscure about the (military, economic and cultural) contact of the Han Chinese with the steppe peoples... The steppe peoples (Xiongnu and Scythians) stretched from China to the Black Sea, which is obviously among the many other prime reasons to have them in order to tie in the East with the West. The term "justification" is unjustified here. It's history, not conjecture. Also having the most powerful nomadic civs of the day and their associated gameplay would be pretty unique, and a great added value to a genre like classical RTS as a whole! Comparing the "Baiyue/Minyue, the Qiangs/Chiangs, the Dians and the Nanyue" to the Han Chinese is a little bit ridiculous, so I'm not even going to go there. Overly subjective. And adding new civilizations has little to do with other parts of the game-develoment. Totally different people put different types of effort into the different areas of development. Working on new civs, for example, has little to do with pathfinder reworks, AI, performance optimizations etc... Different "departments"... Stanislass is a rare example of an all rounder, but most people focus on one specific part of the development (Code/Art/Research/Legal/Promotion/etc). Of course there's always a lot of overlap, but halting civ development does NOTHING to speed up development in other departments. I'm 100% confident it's the opposite. New civs generate excitement and attract new crowds. They benefit the development as more people become interested, and may end up becoming contributors in other departments. I don't think 0AD should be looking at these games for too much inspiration anymore. Especially not Starcraft. Both of those games are fantasy based (yes, AoE is historical fantasy), whereas 0AD attempts historical accuracy, where it's possible. We should take it further, and make each civ unique based on their actual history! There is soooo much history to work with to draw inspiration from, and you conveniently left out the Total War series, which can feature more than a hundred factions in a single game! That is the direction we should take, and we should stop entertaining the idea that a 3 faction system is even remotely relevant to 0AD. Total War uses cultural groups. This provides the basis for "macro-balancing". Different factions within the same cultural group would have more superficial differences (micro-balancing). This system would work like a charm for 0AD. My preliminary thoughts: Macro-balancing: there are 4 main civ-types: Barbarian Greco-Roman MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) Nomadic Barbarian civs have a simple gameplay, boom early, recruit large numbers of relatively poorly armoured units. Greco-Romans have more advanced gameplay, are unrivalled in terms of heavy infantry, but generally have mediocre cavalry and skirmishers. MMA civs mix heavy infantry and advanced gameplay with good Barbarian or nomadic mercenaries. Their units, however good, are outmatched by their counterparts in specialized civs. Nomadic civs are nomadic… Strong offense, miserable defense. Of course this is a very simplistic representation of what I have in mind, and I'm sure people like @wowgetoffyourcellphone could develop this system into a beautiful flower. Also, there is nothing arbitrary about selecting the most powerful civilizations of the day. Also, China has a population of 1.38 BILLION people and one of the richest histories in the WORLD. Almost 1/5th of the world population. Talking about "fairness" when preferring the Chinese over any other civ at this point is very weird.

I agree with Thorfinn. Total War struggles with the issue, but it is one of the finest battle simulators ever created... 0AD would do good to attempt battle mechanics more akin to the Total War series (battalions & directional stuff). Not a blanket copy, but a simplified arcade version (Total War Arena-ish). It might be challenging, but considering the many thousands of units in TW-games as opposed to the few hundred in 0AD, it might end up being "easier" to implement in 0AD. It would also help 0AD move away from the AoE/starcraft type microing of individual units, into microing platoons, battalions and armies, at least for most combat.

Ah, no problem. Thought is was worth a try. Anyway, maybe you're interested in this topic: Most of the juicy academic stuff seems to be either in Bulgarian or Russian. @Genava55, I'd also direct you're researching prowess to that thread, as it's the main one on Thracians for now.

You're forgetting that this is primarily a SP-feature that doesn't necessarily need to be relevant to MP-games. I get the impression that a lot of competitive players don't realize that single players can spend many, many hours on a single map, just toying with the AI and building whatever town/city/empire we can dream of. Perhaps regenerating trees could be an option in game-setup. The trees can be set to grow back over a half hour period or so, making it less or almost not noticeable in short games. But at least the map in a late-game, 6 hour long SP fantasy wouldn't look like a desolate wasteland. The main issue I see is the art side (saplings + growing animations).

@Genava55, just to clarify my point a little: Han Chinese, as well as Kushites from Sudan, as well as Iron Age Britons made use of chariots for war. This is absolutely not a coincidence. No such thing ever existed in the Americas. War-Elephants were used in India, Britain and Sudan. Again, not a coincidence. Elephants are unknown to the Americas. Cavalry is used by literally every civ in-game. Horses didn't even exist in the Americas. Between c. 1000 BC and 400 BC, literally every civ in-game (or their predecessors) switched to iron/steel as a primary material for making weapons and tools. Iron doesn't seem to have been known in the Americas. Every single civ in-game is connected through military conflict with at least 2 other civs (some a lot more). No civilization in the Americas ever fought a war with any of the civs in-game. All the civs in-game were connected through a vast ancient network of trade-routes, and literary as well as archaeological evidence suggests that most of these civs were fully aware of the existence of most of the other civs, even if they never went to war with them. None of the civs in-game were even remotely aware that the Americas even existed. The main technical problem is that balancing strictly no-cav stone-age civilizations with the existing civs is impossible without throwing out any semblance of historical accuracy in game-play. To clarify further, I love New World civilizations and I hope every major civ of the Americas is developed for 0AD at some point. My concern is that including them in the main-game is simply not possible without messing everything up. Unless people aren't bothered with massively underpowered civs. I'm not saying they were technologically inferior or something. Simply the lack of horses, iron and advanced siege-engines or elephants (on top of mediocre "navies", if that) makes them unbalanceable by definition. The complete lack of interconnectedness is also something I just wouldn't be able to get past (in the main-game). Having New World civs as a standard "expansion" or a "built in mod", included but separate would be my preference. Not including the Chinese is a mistake, plain and simple. Of course adding the Scythians (and Greco-Bactrians) would do a lot to further increase interconnectedness, and of course I'm aware that this wouldn't be a small job, at all. I don't "expect" it to happen over the next alpha, although with a planned release date of 2022 for alpha 24, who knows what might happen.. @stanislas69 You're a hero, for so many reasons. You've done so much and we thank you! Nobody will demand anything from you. We're just a bunch of dreamers. These talks are all purely theoretical, and most of us know this. But if one day Wildfire Games is suddenly magically over-staffed, at least we'd already have a good idea of which direction we'd want future civ-development for the main-game to go.

You're probably right... Maybe just stop using the internet... We took a wrong turn somewhere... It's like 90% adds nowadays anyway (most of them concealed/subliminal/not immediately obvious). It's been a good 20 years for me, but I'm a bit tired of paying for my own brainwashing. Might throw out my t.v. as well. For entertainment I'll just play alpha 23 into eternity and bounce a ball off the wall or something when I get bored of it.

To be fair, MEP's are totally inept... At everything... Even if the laws pass, they wouldn't have a clue on how to implement it. There are only a few agencies around the world that are somewhat able at monitoring most of the known internet. Nobody in Europe ever came close, so how they're going to enforce such draconian crap is beyond me. It's just the sheer nerve, ignorance and arrogance of these asshats that gets to me... Especially considering all the anti-Chinese propaganda that's out there, they're now going try and create the architecture to reach to same level of content surveillance. The only way to do it would be to refuse access to any website that isn't EU-approved, which would cause everyone to use VPN's... It's just stupid and flies in the face of everything Europe supposedly stands for.

Just a point about this. What could have been the interaction between Iron Age Britons and the Mauryan Empire? Or with the Koushites? Or between the Achaemenid dynasty and the Roman Republic? Or between the Iberians and a possible Chinese faction? Personally I am more about an accurate representation of each faction for a matter of respect for each culture and for the work of historians, but not about hardcore historical limitations. It is still a video game. I'd actually have to agree with Nescio on this one. I think the key-word in his statement is "network". Every single civ in the game right now is highly interconnected with at least a few other civs, and those other civs are in turn interconnected with the rest of the civs, so directly or indirectly, they are in fact all connected. Antiquity was built on trade-networks that spanned Europe, Asia and Africa. The Americas were not a part of this network, which also means they developed along totally different lines: No iron age and a very limited use of metals outside of art No cavalry whatsoever Quinqueremes vs war-canoes... Romans did use war-elephants in Britain, and elephants aren't exactly native to the islands... Might have been North-African elephants. Might have been Indian elephants. Might have been a mix of both (not entirely clear). About Kushites in Britain. Well, Roman legions were multi-ethnic, and in Imperial times blacks were present in the Roman armies in small numbers. I'm confident most of those blacks were Kushites. Because of the peaceful relations between Kushites and Romans after their war, and Kushites apparently even aiding the Romans militarily during the Jewish revolt, as well as a large resident population of Kushites in Egypt as far north as Alexandria (location of 2 legions). Speculation, perhaps, but then there's this: The Life of Septimius Severus (yes, that "African" Roman Emperor), from the Historia Augusta: Of course, much of the Historia Augusta today is considered fictitious, but it's still a Roman source placing an "Ethiopian" (read Kushite) soldier in Britain. Galatian mercenaries (Celts, perhaps not from Britain, but close enough) also served in the armies of the Ptolemies and would have been part of the Nubian campaigns. People of Kushite decent and Galatians served as mercenaries in the same Ptolemaic armies. Romans might not have fought the Achaemenids, but they did fight Parthians who were also Persian, and it would take little imagination on the players part to "pretend". The Chinese would be interconnected once we get the Scythians in game. And the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Strabo writing that "they extended their empire even as far as the Seres (Chinese) and the Phryni (Tarim Basin)" (and Greek artifacts from the period are actually found in Xinjang, Western China!). In fact, The inclusion of the Xiongnu, Han Chinese, Scythians, Parthians and Greco-Bactrians, would be totally amazing, further increase the interconnectedness of existing civs like the Maurya, Seleucids and Achaemenids, and create a very comprehensive and convincing Eastern roster.

Do you have access to quality sources on Thracians? Especially accurate artist' reconstructions of buildings? I thought I'd just ask...

If I read correctly, there is NO clause for fair use. None... Please, please correct me if I'm wrong! These laws are impossible, and would end internet as we know it if actually applied. As long as people realize these laws CAN NOT BE APPLIED if we refuse them, we should be good. As I said, civil disobedience means that they can't prosecute 3.5 billion internet users, most of whom will never even realize that they are participating in civil disobedience... lol

But we need the name to start with an X... Xthankfor24... There, I fixed it for ya!

Mongol Eagle Warriors: special ability: Gouging out the enemies' eyes, reducing the attacked units' visibility by 90%, lol Would be a cool fantasy unit for some game someday... Assassin's Creed: Wrath of the Khans