Sundiata

Sorry to keep beating a dead horse, but why can't we have this in alpha 23? With all the other new stuff, this would make 0AD really feel like a brand new game, and make alpha 23 legendary It's also a really good one up over AoE DE...... I wouldn't care one bit if I had to wait another 2 weeks (or more) of testing/balancing for this...

I think you're kind of right/wrong .... Persian quiver for the immortals is actually good. They carried the bow on their shoulder. The fancy broad "Greek" quiver here (bow and arrow case), is some kind of variation of the Gorytos, I believe, which is actually originally a Scythian quiver/bow-case, and was used by both Persian and Greek levies, and probably found it's way to native troops on both sides of the Bosphorus, through Scythians, Sarmatians and Thracians. The "standard" Greek quiver is more bland looking, I think: "The Diana of Versailles, a 2nd-century Roman version in the Greek tradition of iconography" "Piraeus Arch. Museum, Athens - Artemis - Photo by Giovanni Dall'Orto, Nov 14 2009" Persian Both types of quiver next to each-other, just to confuse us even more Original Scythian:

Storytelling with 0AD... it's totally possible! I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a mancrush for Ragnar Lothbrok, he's so awesome... I'd be honoured to stand in the same shield wall as him!

The narration in these videos is absolutely magnificent "King of the Nile", a narrated campaign in Total War: Rome II, Divide Et Impera (mod), by OfficiallyDevin (By the way, Medewi = Meroë) The way he narrates over the weird high Nile Water glitch in the game at 3:50 is just perfect!

Agreed, sort of Also, don't underestimate the similarities between Berber languages on one hand (I know they're not always mutually intelligible) and especially Touareg in particular as the most "divergent/isolated" archaic branch of this language group. Some Berber language(s) have been written down since BC era's so we know a little more about the Berber spoken in our timeframe than hypothetical reconstructions. Exactly Greek Dialects were, and sometimes still are spoken to some degree in parts of Southern Italy, especially during our timeframe, but I'm sure you knew that Sicily and the Mediterranean coastal areas of France and Spain also had some Greek speakers even before the Roman conquest. I'm just cherry picking example here though, I know...

@Nescio comparing Proto-Berber to Proto-Indo-European is totally not a legitimate/genuine comparison though... Indo-European languages are spread from Bangladesh to Iceland... Berber on the other hand is spoken by... Berbers. They are all closely related dialects. Also a historically reconstructed language like Proto-Berber is explicitly intended to be the most historically accurate approximation of the language at hand. I don't see how an equally hypothetical language from another continent is any more historically accurate. It's not like they just made up some stuff... They have written text and archaic forms of modern berber to work with. Hmmm, we should have Old Persian for Heroes and Champions. Wikipedia says: I'm not saying Aramaic wasn't important because it obviously was, it just wasn't universal or exclusive to Persians. Achaemenid Persia is bigger than the Aramaic world... It's also not a good idea to have the ancestors of Iranian muslims speak what's undoubtedly going to end up sounding like Hebrew, especially if the historicity isn't on point. It will be a bit cringeworthy. Aramaic is perfect for Western Provincial levies, but the let the actual Persians speak actual Persian, seen as that's what they spoke... You wouldn't let the Romans speak Greek just because Greek was more widely spoken in the Roman Empire, would you?

That... Hahaha, yeah, my Afro-Asiatic is also quite rusty, huhum, huhum... Aramaic/Hebrew mixed with Proto-Berber then? Any Aramaic/Hebrew and Proto-Berber speakers in the forum? Anyone?

That's what I'm worried about. There are some modernisms in regard to pronunciations and expressions in modern Hebrew derived from the modern Yiddish and Sephardic speakers that reconstructed the language. It's exactly in their pronunciation that they differ. And Berber words enter at unexpected places.. It's just things like the following quote that make me apprehensive about having modern Hebrew sounding carthaginians in what are today Arab and Berber countries: "Add to that the fact that Phoenician does display some rather surprising discrepancies with Hebrew when it comes to some of the most basic verbs, such as “to be” and “to do”, which are, at least in writing, identical to their equivalents in Arabic and Aramaic respectively rather than Hebrew, the closest relative, and it turns out the answer to the question whether Hannibal could have a talk with the priests of the Second Temple becomes less and less clear." Mixing archaic Hebrew with Berber would work though.

@sphyrth, I think you brought up a very valuable point there... The current playerbase should be taken in to account and maintained of course, but there are much larger playerbases for other historical strategy games which often use different, yet interesting mechanics. As @Nescio points out, we shouldn't shy away from looking at other, yet similar genres like historical city builders and civilisation management games. I think most historical strategy gamers have been waiting for an epic marriage of historical city builder/civilisation management, with Real Time combat mechanics. Something in between a simulator and classic RTS. 0AD probably has the most potential in this regard. To keep it manageable to play for the more simple players, both the city builder aspect, as well as the combat mechanics need to be simpler versions of the respective industry standards. This means something like an arcade version of Anno in regard to city building, and an arcade version of Total War in regard to combat. As it stands now though, the classic RTS format is too "simple" for most historical gamers to enjoy. It's also nice to have many factions, and it's even good to have some of them be very similar to each-other (like the Hellenic civs) as some sort of "Culture Group". But having fundamentally different factions (culture groups) with fundamentally different styles of playing is also a must in my opinion. Look at Hyrule Conquest... This is a balancing nightmare, I know, but balancing "Barbarian" factions along the same line as imperial powers like Rome or Persia is killing the historicity and potential for original/creative/accurate/challenging game-play (derived from these histories). Also, if wow's battalions can drastically reduce the number "combat entities" a player would have to control, and simultaneously increase the scope/scale of battles because each "combat entity" consists of 20 or more individual soldiers, that would be a big plus to battalion systems, and possibly lay the foundation for Total War style battles. Just my 2 cents

Remember that modern Hebrew is not the same as ancient Hebrew, and ancient Hebrew is not the same as Phoenician, and Phoenician is not the same as Punic. I think modern Hebrew for Carthage is a recipe for controversy. Phoenician mixed in with proto-Berber is the most appropriate approximation for Punic, I believe.

I haven't seen the movie yet myself, but I will at some point. Lol! Dem Azande shields... I'm honestly not the the biggest Marvel or DC guy... I always prefer history over fantasy , but the production value on Black Panther seems through the roof, looks gorgeous and everybody seems to love it... It's also an interesting premise for a movie and it kind of reminds me of Coming to America with Eddie Murphy taking the role of Akeem, the crown prince of "Zamunda"(totally different movie, but you get me...). It's nice to see a technologically advanced Africa for a change. We're used to the image of an underdeveloped starving, warring continent, but there's so much more... In Ghana for example, we have a lot of problems, but we also have a lot of cool stuff going on. Kind of reminds me of some "corporate" friends I have over here who are totally in to tech and gadgets. I saw my first advanced drones in action here years ago, when my friends in Belgium barely knew it was even possible for a private individual to own one. Using it for digital surveys/mapping and HQ promotional videos for tourism. Kantanka Automobile has been producing quality Ghanaian cars (4x4 ,SUV, Sedan) for a few years now. The first Ghanaian built satelite was launched in to space (by space X and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency ) last year. Just yesterday I was watching a news-piece about a Ghanaian video game company in Accra . One of the chief robotics engineers at Nasa and "the leader of the team that designed the Mars Rover robot that landed on the red planet", the Ghanaian born Ashitey Trebi-Ollennu, has established the Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation to inspire and teach young Ghanaians how to build and code (simple) robots. These are just some example from Ghana, and It's difficult to keep track of all the developments continent wide but it's an exciting time.. So I should watch Logan huh?

Uhu, imagine, if the game gets optimised to the point that this map becomes comfortable to play, you could have a Roman/Kushite campaign (The sack of Napata). Prince Akinidad apparently died at Dakka in 24BC, after failed negotiations with the Romans, so: "After failed negotiations to end the war with Kush, and the "accidental" death of prince Akinidad, hostilities reopened and Gaius Petronius at the head of a large legion, pushed on to Napata, to face the treacherous cult of Amun and the Napatan temple guards as well as a bunch of really pissed of townspeople..." The Queen Mother Amanirenas was apparently away from Napata at the time. Prince Akinidad apparently died at Dakka in 24BC, after failed negotiations with the Romans. King Teriteqas had died at the start of the war, and with the sack of Napata and the decimation of the cult of Amun (again), this seems to have presented the perfect opportunity for Amanirenas to assume full power. Now Queen Amanirenas, she marshalled a large army from the South, and eventually pushed the Romans back to the Egyptian border, and besieged Roman positions at Qasr Ibrim with an army of 30.000 men. Frontal assaults were made impossible because of Roman artillery, but from the topology of the area, it seems clear that the Roman forces were entirely encircled, which might have been an important factor in the negotiated peace-deal that was remarkable favourably to the Kushites.

Yeah, Napatan, was basically a dialect of late Ancient Egyptian language, was in use throughout 0AD timeframe, especially during the Napatan Period. Meroitic replaced Napatan as the dominant language around 300BC-ish. Meroitic is not understood, but has some resemblance to proto-Nubian (Nilo-Saharan) and Beja (Afro-Asiatic). Modern Nubian seems appropriate enough. I'll still try to do some recordings myself soon, but I don't know if it will be up to standard. We'll see

One of my pet peeves with the game is the outdated look of the Home screen selection panel. I think it only looks outdated because of the dull dark grey tiled texture which is neutral enough, but pretty bland... I put a number of textures to your disposal here, (all CC0), and if you like any of them, please consider using them to jazz up the home screen, or any other element of the GUI. I don't know exactly what the changes are to the GUI for Alpha 23, but I suspect one of these textures would go well with all the other exciting new updates to get an all round new-ish look. What it looks like now: What it could look like: Textures:

Actually... Something not often mentioned, by anybody, is that New Kingdom Egyptian nobles built small steep sided pyramids, as royals started using rock cut tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These were in all probability the inspiration for the later Kushite pyramids (as opposed to the much larger ones from Gizeh). Deir el-Medina, the home of the workers and artisans that worked in the Valley of the Kings, is the most famous site. No need to wholly "transform" it in into a Kush settlement, although adding some Kushite models will add some authenticity. I found that Kushite houses mixed in with Carthaginian houses provide the most authentically Egyptian looking feel for any Nile Valley settlement (Carthaginian houses look a lot more Egyptian than the Ptolemaic Egyptian houses...):

"Shanak, the Warrior Kandake" (from Queen Shanakhdakheto)

Now I honestly thought you were just making up words...

Yeah, they were all over the place, those series! From the minotaur of Crete, to centaurs and Amazons, titans and harpies, gods like Poseidon, and Ares and Hera, to Roman legions, barbarian warlords, ancient China and the underworld! Remember Callisto? She was sooo bad! Funny memories coming back.. Lots of fun mythology though... Good for kids! Good laugh for adults... And that "low-key" lesbian vibe between Xena and Gabrielle throughout the entire series... lol! I think that's what attracted a lot of fathers... They were like "oh, but the kids really like this show", lol!

Hahahahahahaha, OMG, Xena.... The Warrior Princess! I grew up watching the series ... And Hercules, The Legendary Journeys... And both series crossed over! God, I could still enjoy those when I was a little kid. Funny stuff to rewatch today... And let's not forget Gabrielle! Hercules and his trusty friend Ioulaus!

I still love that movie...

Exactly... When it comes to Kushites it's impossible not to come across this forum when you're doing a bit of in depth searching. And indeed, by no means is it limited to the Kushites. When I'm searching for good reference stuff for other 0AD factions, much of the best stuff redirects back to some thread on this very forum, lol... Anyway, I have my suspicions about Civ VI and their "Nubians" as well... Hey, it's open-source and I don't own most of the reference material anyway, so who cares, right... What I don't get about Total War is that they have such beautiful models, yet increasingly negligent in the historicity department. It's like historical-fantasy now... Those female archers? Sexy, but what's the source, other than that one dude saying their women also fought (which I believe, but that doesn't mean you know what they looked like). Why do they use falcatas? Why does the female swordswoman (?) carry a Touareg hide shield? Why do Kushites employ Greeks in giant towered African war-elephants of the large bush-elephant type? I'm going to lose my @#$% over those zebra hide shields... Nabatean cavalry uses Seleucid horse-crown? Sabaeans look like Hellenised Persians... And that's just the intro-video.. I'd be more impressed if they didn't just try to monetise free mods.

@Lion.Kanzen Hmmm... They just reused the content from the free mods, which in themselves are just reskins, and slapped a price on it... Concept art is cool though: Their Lion-dude looks a lot like a combination of our own lion-dude and our full scale armour hero... But it's not like I haven't shared Total War (mod) references here

So I guess AoE DE is nothing to worry about huh? I'm curious what they'll come up with for AoE IV... It seems like this DE was just to keep the memory alive and spark some interest in the upcoming 4th instalment... If it's anything like DE, they better just not...

A pretty decent video to understand first impressions: A random selection of comments: That's why I stopped playing, as much as I like the game you have no time to establish a colony before the A.I. slaughters you. Oh but once you get good and play online with friends in PvP or PvAI it gets awesome! I love dominating the seas with OP ships harassing the enemies then dropping a swift land attack from another side while simultaneously stealing their resources. Muahahahah But yeah by default this game throws you in at the deep end. I kind of like that. It's not a game that holds your hand as you play. It's a game that takes your hand then violently mauls it for every little failure until you learn. if it was super easy people would just play AOE2 The latest version has a tutorial built in. You can also set each AI to sandbox mode and just play around with it. The music is simply awesome and free for download, btw. it's the best game ever that one!! (in the opensource and non openra world) What is the minimum spec for this game???? You could probably run it with a potato connected to a raspberry pi. Awesome game...! hahahahhahaha how do you expect to win with a hand full of solider!! you must expand as quickly as possible. increase your workforce, increase your army, increase your resource and area of dominance. Conquer all other nations. this the game I play everyday, when i get a chance Not for the faint of heart Yeah when you play this prepare to get the crap kicked out of you. You'll be starting out, especially bad if you're getting your bearings, then you'll just have the wrath of God drop out of nowhere and unleash unholy blitzkrieg on you.. [Hahahahahaha...! I died when I read that one...] Dude you need to use trump tactics! Build a big fat wall and towers along it! PS: I suggest you to install the game from the official ppa. The game build version you were playing is from 2016 lol https://play0ad.com/download/linux/ I get swamped by the enemy too. Neat game though. Age of Empires? Is that you? Mate, this game kicks ya butt nearly all the time but the visuals a good and teaming up helps..is fun me thinks.. The AI can be a little brutal, though they've improved the balance in newer versions. Once you know what to build and how to manage resources, you'll find it much easier to prepare yourself for that zerging mofo. 0 ad really disappointed me years ago I think most of these "concerns" will be addressed with the introduction of different behaviours for the AI and improved tutorial in the new alpha... The AI is fine (could even be tougher), first-timers just need to be able to ease in to it a little.

@stanislas69 Thank you! It looks so lovely On a side-note: in order to react adequately to posts without having to comment, I wish there was a blue "like" buton in the form of a thumbs up, and a red "love" button, in the form a heart, to nuance beteween, "hey, that's pretty cool", and "oh my god, I looove this!"