feneur

Yeah, the Carthaginians are strong in almost all regards, but as you say, things will be expensive for them (somewhat outweighed with the good sea trade I guess ). Hopefully that and smaller tweaks to the stats (i.e. fewer hitpoints or lower attack or similar) will be enough to balance things, but otherwise we'll have to do something more drastic. For now the design stays as is on that front though, there's no reason to change things on this level before we have had any testing to prove this or that point of view.

You are free to try and get it working yourself if you want to though

No, there will be no such effect. If we find during playtesting that people really can't tell heroes from other units we might have to include something like that, but hopefully it will be easy enough without it.

In this case the word "aura" refers to an area around the hero where a certain effect will take place, for example all infantry units within this area could be 10% stronger or similar.

Animals are to be unique (though a slight overlap may of course happen if the same animal is found in different areas), but not to a specific civilization but rather to a "biome" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome for an explanation of the word biome in case you're not familiar with it).

Those are indeed some of the behaviors we intend to implement.

There is a limit to the number of allowed quotes, and you had too many. I've increased the limit to 20 now though, so now it works (for some reason I had to press the edit button for your quotes to work, but now they do [didn't do anything but press edit and then submit]). Hopefully no one will need to make more quotes than that in a single post

Thanks for fixing this so quickly Philip

Got an email a couple of hours ago and another game has been added to the bundle, i.e. more reason to check it out if you haven't already, and something to not forget if you've already bought it Two days left before the deal is over, and to me it looks like it's a success already.

Really nice to see your success in modding the game

Well, "basic" editor functions are already implemented That is, place objects, paint textures, deform ground. That kind of things are already implemented, and I think I remember Philip saying something about basic scripting capabilities for scenarios being included already (very basic, manual writing of JavaScript scripts, no triggers, risk that things will change making old scripts unable to run/not run exactly the same, but still ). In other words, it depends on how much work you're prepared to put in Our goal is to be able to release new updates fairly regularly in the future though, so hopefully some basic triggers shouldn't be too far of (you might always try to find some good coder and convince him/her to join the team and work on it if you want to see it sooner ).

I'm sorry if I sound harsh, I might have made some bad choices for words etc. My intent was merely to try and give a realistic view of what to expect from 0 A.D. but I can see how it can be interpreted otherwise.

If you want to play another game, then ok sorry to see you go, but feel free to lose your enthusiasm. But if you want to play this game, then I suggest you think about this a bit more. (For a good in-depth discussion of why 0 A.D. is 3D and not 2D, and thus is one reason why it requires a slightly better computer than what might have been the norm in 2001, please read this article on the website: http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/page.php?p=6911 ) My comment about "if you want to play this game" might seem rude, but all I really mean is this: 0 A.D. is not just its game-play, or its "setting", or its history, it's also its graphics. While it could perhaps be an interesting game even if it would have simpler graphics, it would not be the same game. Also, while the idea was first conceived in 2001 (it was actually a mod for AoK back then), the actual development of the game wasn't started until 2003, so ambitions had time to change =) We do still intend to try and keep the game running on as many computers as possible, but in the end the requirements might be a bit higher than they are today (though the opposite could also be true, while we most likely won't downgrade the games graphics to the point that it can be run on a graphics card that only supports OpenGL 1.3 we 'll definitely try to optimize things as much as possible). Truth be told though, we can't know for sure what computers can run the final game until we have the final game, everything up until then is merely speculation. Finally, while I don't know your financial situation I would be surprised if you wouldn't be able to afford a new graphics card by the time 0 A.D. is finished. I mean even if things would be working optimally I don't see the game being finished in 2 years (probably more like 3-4 years minimum unless things really work perfect, things have started to improve with Philip's simulation system rewrite though, so in case the right people find the project/join we could have the game finished sooner than I fear ). If you divide $40 with 24 you get ca $1.7/month, and to me that sounds like something most people could spare (at least if you can afford a computer + electricity + internet connection in the first place). Perhaps I'm wrong and you can't, and in that case I can see why you're frustrated, but then I repeat what I said in the beginning: Maybe this isn't the game for you, and in that case I'm suggesting you spend your time/energy doing something which is for you. Would be sad to see you go as you seem to be a good and passionate person, but for your own sake I guess it's better if you indeed "find out now, not later". If you do lose your enthusiasm and decide not to follow the project any more, please don't forget about us in case you get a better graphics card

One small thought on the "buildings too close to each other" issue, would it be possible to simply limit buildings to only be built far enough from each other that units always will be able to pass between them? With the exclusion of walls (and perhaps towers ) of course =)

Judging by and it doesn't seem it's very useful in this case.

Sounds good. And don't worry, keep the grammar section as long as you need

Would it be possible to have two versions of this? I.e. one for programmers who needs the "deep-down" version, with the RELAX NG Grammar and so on, and a simpler one for scripters/modders/artists who might want to/need to edit these files? That could be too much work/make things unnecessarily complicated, but at least a notice at the top which makes it clear what goes in the actual XML file and what's for the game to understand so to speak. I'm guessing (/hoping) there will be examples in each section as well which would help a lot (and lessen the need to split things/oversimplify). I'm not sure if it's just me, but it can be hard to remember exactly what's the difference between integer/decimal etc, do you think it would be possible to add some quick reference, either to each listing of Value type (which sounds a bit too much) or a cheat sheet at the top of the page? I'm not sure how much use it will be, but it would make it easier to edit/mod the entities. And since editing the entities is something that's probably going to be needed to be done a lot when we start playtesting + it can be a boring/menial task it would be nice if it would be as easy as possible to allow for as many as possible to do it.

(And just to make sure I'm not misunderstood I meant "is" in the future tense not the present, though I hope it gets present not too far into the future )

Ok, as long as it is updated it's fine with me

Michael, are you sure about that for the Hellenes? Because in that case the DD could use an update

You are allowed to write a proposal Seriously though, if you want us to give you some kind of official status you'll have to show us that you are ready to put in the time and effort to get this finished + show us an interesting enough idea We can't, nor want to, stop you or anyone else from using the art or any other resources we provide as long as you or anyone else do what the license allows you to do, but it takes a bit more than a good idea to be a part of the Wildfire Games team. Please tell us more about your proposal though.

Hmm, seems like I'll have to explain the design a bit. Only the Citizen Soldiers have economic abilities as well, each civilization also has what we've chosen to call "Super Units" who are meant to represent the professional soldiers. They're better than the Citizen Soldiers at fighting, but cannot be built until later in the game and don't have any economic abilities, and of course cost more. Also the Citizen Soldiers upgrade (Basic-->Advanced-->Elite), which means that the more they fight the better they get at fighting - but also less and less good at economic tasks. Speaking a bit more about Rushing: At the start each player will have a few units + a small amount of resources, if one really wants to one can of course take those first units + the few one can build using the resources one gets at the start of the game to go attack the enemy at the start. But unless on a very small map I'd guess the enemy would have time to gather enough resources in the amount of time it takes to travel to the enemy to have a larger army than the attacker. And even if not, the enemy is still likely to have the same amount of units as they have the same starting amount of resources/units and he/she doesn't have to choose between military civilian units so it should be a fair fight. That said, it can still be a valid strategy to try and rush, for example your enemy might spread out his units too far so you might take them out one by one or something. But that could happen regardless of whether you get units which can fight at the start of the game or later. Finally I'd like to say that before we make a final release we want to take a lot of time to playtest the game to make sure it's as balanced as we can make it. In other words, if we find that it's too easy to rush we might lower the amount of resources a player get at the start of the game or if we find that a unit is too overpowered we'll lower its attack or whichever is making it overpowered and what else might be necessary. EDIT: Seems like Michael had something wiser to say while I wrote the long post above I still think some of it might be valid, but yeah, the game is still a work in progress, and if we find that things don't work then we'll have to change them.

Philip is one of the team members, and sure creating a browser game could potentially be interesting, but at least within the closest future I think the main 0 A.D. game will be our main priority. And even in the case there will be an official browser game I don't think it's a bad idea for someone else to do it as well, to use the graphics he'll have to provide a link back to us so we'd still be getting the news out about 0 A.D.

Eh? Where have we said we consider creating a browser based game? It's not something we've considered to my knowledge, and I should at least know about it if it's been discussed the last couple of years since I'm the project leader (We have discussed using Webkit, which is used in browsers, as the basis for the GUI, but that's something totally different.)

Hello Pavan, thanks for your interest in 0 A.D. To address the first issue of military units being available from the start I quote from the Design Document: So yeah, military units will be available from the start, but while you are free to think what you want about that it would be more interesting if you would provide a reason for why you think that's a bad decision than just to say that it's a flaw. I'll provide some reasons why I think it's a good idea, and then you are free to provide some reasons why it's not, I doubt we're going to change one of the most fundamental ideas of our design, but you are free to try and convince us why we should To me it seems like it's less likely to encourage too much rushing, the enemy will after all have units who are capable of fighting back, so you'll probably want to wait until you either have more units/better units. If you are good enough you'll probably still be able to rush, it's just that you have to be more careful about how you do it. Another reason why I think the concept of having Citizen Soldiers rather than just either villagers or soldiers (though there are more advanced military units who will be available later in the game which haven't got any economical capabilities) is a good idea is that it allows for the units to be useful even when they're not used to fight. Can you please explain why you think not having a specific Stable/Siege Workshop is a design flaw?