Sundiata

Lets steer away from the stereotypes. I'd like to reiterate, (I think wolflance or some one else already did), the wagon fort is Han-Chinese not Xiongnu, although it might be possible they also used it, I'm unaware of the references... Xiongnu (who are nomadic, yes) ruled over cities (Tarim Basin and Northern China)! Apart from that, they themselves also built square rammed earthen fortifications at some places, and perhaps even used stone for some of these constructions, they're just not widely known...: Xiongnu should be able to build simple rammed earth walls and perhaps even a simple rammed earth fortress... This is actually not correct. Mongolia has lush forests, and they used to be far more expansive than they are today... Mostly north, south and east of the Gobi desert. Just like the cities they ruled over, the forests don't fit with the nomadic steppe people stereotype, so people tend to ignore these very important details... We shouldn't do that as a historical game: For wonder, how about something similar like the Kushite pyramids, except Xiongnu used burial mounds (tumuli), known as Kurgan... Instead of 1 structure, you'd build up to three of them, or something like that...

@Alexandermb, made a zebu texture using a different reference, but I used the Sanga cattle mesh to test, so I don't know what its like on the Zebu: I might try the brown one later

@Alexandermb, brown and white version for Sanga: I'll try the zebu one a little later..

They look terrible! Actually I meant the UV.blend, like this one: Horse UV.blend But for Sanga

@Alexandermb That looks so nice! Lovely herd Could you provide me with the cow uv-thingy (like you did for the horse), so I can see if I can improve the Sanga textures? The rest of the textures look fine to me!

It doesn't seem to do anything... It just sits there like:

@stanislas69 Sorry, I need you to hold my hand here and walk me through it... I put the mod in ~/Library/Application Support/0ad/mods/ but it doesn't show up in mod-selection? Dragging it over the 0AD icon doesn't do anything either, and my computer doesn't recognize the file if I double click it. Forgive me for my noobishness

From Sierra?? One of my all time favourites!!! I actually downloaded and played it again recently just for the sake of it. I'm still amazed at the complexity, yet fluidity of the economy in that game. Everything made perfect sense (sort of). It was amazing... Industry, processing raw materials, production, supply and demand, transport, long distance trade, social stratification, even some military, it was all there.... You could reach a population of c. 20.000! It was grande! Of course that was a city-builder... But to be honest, I would love to have that style of economy in 0AD. Like 40 different resources, and you actually manage production, instead of microing individuals all the time... You'd just build an economic building, and available workers automatically take up the job. Leave the micro-stuff for military units/warfare... Would be a golden opportunity to work on the civilian aspect of the game... "Bring cities to life". It would also radically change gameplay, which would make it difficult to convince people of taking such a bold step. Also, I don't think there's enough people here that could do make that happen, even if they wanted to

@stanislas69 Does this work with the last release candidate for alpha 23? I'm still waiting for the OSX fix before downloading the official alpha 23 (I'm cheap and I don't want to waste unnecessary mb's, #justafricanthings...)

0AD is a historic game, and the only one of its kind that spends so much attention on historical details, which is amazing in itself, and greatly appreciated by many who can't find this level of historicity in other classic RTS games. The general idea is to stick to what is known about the 500BC to 1AD timeframe. Most of the civilization in this timeframe (and there are many) were inter-connected with each other, if not by war, then by trade, culture and art... Just to show how far flung these ancient connection went: Galatian mercenaries served in Ptolemaic armies, so Kushites may well have faced Celts in battle, its not as far-fetched as you may think... There were Greeks living in Meroë... Galatian mercenaries also served in Seleucid armies and may well have faced armies of the Maurya Empire. Carthaginians allied with Celts and Iberians and Indian mahouts served in the armies of the Seleucids, Ptolemies and perhaps even the Carthaginians, or trained local mahouts, and Indians were also present on the East African coast and even Anatolia.. Numidian cavalry from North Africa was used by Trajan in his conquest of Dacia (Romania), Greek colonists from Phocaea (Turkey) founded the Greek city Empuries in Iberia... Long story short: All the civs in-game knew all of the other civs in at least some capacity, and often traded or warred with each other, or even served side by side as mercenaries in foreign armies (think of Indians, Kushites, Egyptians, Greeks, Thracians, Assyrians and others, in the Persian armies of Xerxes, fighting Athenians, Spartans, Corinthians etc... during the Persian invasion of Greece). The level of interconnectedness in antiquity is often overlooked, or misunderstood... But its absolutely delicious once you start seeing it. The ancient world, from Britannia to China was a giant interconnected network of trade routes, that were often fought over by mercenaries from all over "the known world"... Adding, say, Genghis Khan to this mix, or Montezuma would totally break the immersion, while throwing 15 years of attempted historicity through the window... You can also set matches up yourself so you can go for purely historical map/civ combo or do your own thing (especially with mods, its totally up to you)... I'd agree that a more flexible timeframe would benefit 0AD, and more (historical) civs are always welcomed by myself (especially the Eastern ones), but anything outside of Iron Age Antiquity would totally spoil one 0AD's greatest selling points.

Basically @Alexandermb's Xiongnu ram for all that don't have a dedicated ram yet...

Hunting goats should come with a warning message: "hunting goats is a total waste of your time, focus on farming and cattle rearing instead"

Yes please...

I don't know about Europe, but the black and white variety was common across Egypt and Kush for thousands of years before 0AD'S timeframe: True that not all are mountain goats, but they can all scale steep cliffs. It's just the "vertical cliff" climbing that's specific to some goats. The ibex, one of the wild goats in-game is one of these vertical climbers. I own some West-African Pygmy Goats, and even they can jump, climb and balance on some incredibly small ledges... One of them can summersault! Some non-mountain goats have even refined the art of climbing trees! Check these out:

Just my two cents: you're all kind of right i.m.o. Technically there was nothing wrong here. Technically you both had the same chances. Technically you could/should have checked the match setup beforehand, and scouted better (there are often clues in the map description). Technically, no rules were broken. That having said, I totally understand your frustration and would be equally annoyed if I even noticed what was going on... I've seen these types of "predatory" behavior myself, when "experienced" players pick on the weaker ones, winning matches solely by virtue of knowing things which aren't obvious or sometimes not even possible to know without scouring the forums. I've even seen people sneakily change the game-setting a second before beginning the game, after everybody else had clicked the stay ready button... There are some really weird types out there. My own rating is artificially low because most of the time I play a one on one rated match, my (higher rated) opponents deliberately brake the connection when they realize they're going to loose. Almost systematically... So no points for me and the vicious cycle continues. I never report them on the forum because I ain't no snitch, but its still annoying... I don't know how alpha 23 is in this regard. There are just too many little details about the game that are impossible to know or easily found out by new players, putting them at a great disadvantage. I don't think anything needs to be removed, because I love the details, but there should be an option to toggle on/off in-game pop-up messages, providing specific and clear tips on economy management and unit micro stuff. Especially in terms of dealing with siege, attacking structures, defending against a superior force, fortifying, army set up and build and attack orders. In case of a map with a lot of treasure, a message saying that there may be some treasure worth looking out for might be usefull.

I think the textures you have there are pretty nice-looking... So do you want me to make more of them, or? Check this out: Maybe goats could be allowed to walk on even the steepest inclination?

Indeed... Bulls (and cattle in general) where important enough to be depicted in official state art of most of the civilizations in-game:

I just think Kushites play a little differently, so you have to feel them out a little... But as I've said, I don't know how they compare in MP yet.. We can take note of these impressions and if they keep coming up, we could still look at what can be done for the next alpha. Thanks for your observations @causative!

@Nescio Exactly, I forgot about milk/ploughing/fertilising/leather production, all very important even in our timeframe... Lets not forget they were important sacrificial animals as well...

our "siege tower" is a rough translation from: "a movable construction to overcome the enemy walls", which has also been translated as battering ram by some (but I don't think that's correct). That having said, a battering ram is so basic that I think every-one should have them. Kushites also built fortresses with L-shaped entrance gates, which clearly seem designed against a battering ram. Piye also mentions something that has been translated as "catapults", although this isn't certain. It's something that "casts stones" at the enemy walls... "A (counter-)wall was built to cover the (city-)wall.37 A platform was built up to raise the archers as they shot arrows and the catapults as they cast stones, (thus) slaying men among them daily." 25th dynasty Kushites had direct connections to the levant, where catapults seem to be first recorded They might have some Ptolemaic influence in this regard as well, but I have no information on that at all, and would be purely speculative.

There's no rush

Hmmm, this honestly isn't my field of expertise... I'm not really a balance guy. Is the Nuba merc javelinist no good as skirmish infantry? I always train swords to deal with enemy siege, but I haven't had the opportunity to play MP yet, so I don't know how that would work in that scenario... I'm actually of the opinion that every civ (without exception) should have a battering ram, even if its just a glorified log carried by some men. There is no technology here, its just log meet gate, boom, caveman logic... Why in the world is the default still to "capture" siege, this is SOOOO annoying people. Now you have to task swordsmen to attack siege, individually, every single time... Capturing a siege engine takes waaaay longer than just killing it, and if there is massed artillery shooting at your men, this quickly becomes infuriating to see these blundering idiots try and often fail to capture the engine, while being mercilessly cut down by the rest of the massed artillery or ranged units as if they're playing in an American civil war reenactment... Please just switch the default to attack siege. That would be a lot less micro-headache when defending. I'm sure @Hannibal_Barca has some more insights.

@Alexandermb & @wowgetoffyourcellphone, to match the "Nubian" spearman's cow-hide shields, perhaps we could use 1/5 black and white, 1/5 brown and white, 3/5 full brown: IDEA: Most civs in-game had cattle, and it was very important to them, both for meat as well as spiritually, especially the bull was a powerful symbol to most cattle rearing cultures in history. So, most civs should be able to train cattle. The "civilian" and economic aspects of the game really need some attention. Being able to train cattle from the town- or city-phase, for example keeps things a little more varied and interesting. Animals being trained at a cost of 50 food (just an example), and fattening up over time to become the worth of 100 or 200 food is fun, logical and intuitive. Animals that have been killed should "spoil" overtime, so that you need to gather from an animal as soon as its killed. If you leave it for a certain amount of time, it "rots away". This adds another level of tactics, as killing of an enemy's herd is a serious loss of investment to that enemy, because he can't easily gather all that meat at once. The corral should train a herdsman. All cattle should automatically roam within a certain distance from the herdsman, following him around. Perhaps "herding" should be rewarded, by increasing the speed of the cattle fattening in relation to the distance they travel. So task your herdsman to walk around your town (cattle follows automatically) and the cows fatten up twice as fast as when you'd just leave them in one spot. Units can already "guard", so maybe such a mechanic could be used here, mixed with the roaming/herd mechanic. The cattle would "guard" the herdsman, by roaming within a set maximum distance from the herdsman. This kind of mechanic seems natural, simple and intuitive.

So I noticed something... There exists a type of traditional (vernacular) architecture very similar in both rural Romania and Bulgaria. It's very clearly, pre-Ottoman, pre-Byzantine and even pre-Roman. It looks quite different to Slavic architecture as well... In fact, this type of buildings are very similar to the few reconstructions of village type structures from ancient Thrace and Dacia, and may have served as a source of inspiration for some of the reconstructions. This isn't be the only "remnant" of ancient times, take a look at the Bulgarian Surva Festival and see some pre-Christian traditions alive and well (and that clearly isn't Roman or Greek origin either). The Surva festival also offers a clue for priest/shaman? Anyway, here's lots of inspiration for you @stanislas69, just avoid the obvious modernisms... Wooden shingles (no ceramic roof-tiles), or thatch and even stone slabs. Lots of wood, but also mud plastered mud brick, rammed earth, wattle and daub and stone are used for the lower storey. 2 stories aren't uncommon (ground floor was often used for animals). Upper floor sometimes have a slight overhang. Relatively steep roofs. Often have a squarish ground plan (though not exclusively so) Like the CC and temple, I was thinking that their dock could have a more pronounced Hellenic influence. There were many Greek cities on the Black sea under Thracian "protection", and could/should be the source of their Hellenized navy. Essentially a Greek dock, but with wooden shingles to tie it in with the rest of the building set. We shouldn't forget that the Danube also runs through their territory and provided them with a Celtic connection, so their trading ship could be Celtic (looking). I think it would be nice to use thatched roofs for the storehouse and farmstead (only), emphasizing the rural aspect.

@Alexandermb Really nice! Of course, I have to add some of my traditional nitpickery, but its just details (not so important): For a Sanga bull, the throat should have some noticeable floppiness (thin flap of flesh). His lower stomach should be pulled in just a tad, to give the look of a more robust chest. Maybe a penis? The reddish colour is much more common, and should be the standard colour (if you provide me the texture I could try adjusting the colour).