Adeimantos

If there were an axeman unit, what civilizations would have it? I think Persians would, Herodotus mentions them in the army that invaded Greece, and anyway they are short on infantry in the game. Who else?

This game does better than most at historical accuracy, but it's not possible for any game to be totally accurate. Reality is too complex to simulate in a game, and gameplay quality is important too.

Is there a way to easily change a units size in a mod? In bfme2 modding all you have to do is add: scale =2.0 to double a units size. That would be nice for a mythology mod, for making giants, great eagles, etc.

Not quite how I would rebalance it, but would work. With these changes maybe the spearmen attack bonus could be reduced. Also remember that infantry have the advantage of being able to pay for themselves by gathering resources.

I submitted a merge request, but got a message saying "pipeline #681930164 has failed." What does that mean? For cavalry, I'd recommend dropping jav cavalry fire rate to 1.5 seconds, and having a horse housing system where you need a corral for each ten horses just like you need houses for units.

Lots of good ideas in this thread, here's a few more. Ships should have a 'boarding' command, or there should be a type of ship that does this as its standard attack: it pulls alongside an enemy ship, allowing the melee units on board to attack those on the other ship, and when that is done, to capture it. Ramming. More use of catapult ships and fire ships (every ship could have the option of being converted into a fire ship, dealing damage until it destroys itself.)

In the original age of empires i got into the habit of using the 'home run' cheat for automatic victory when I couldn't find the remaining enemy units. AI resigning would have been really nice there.

Military buildings should only be capturable below 50% health, maybe soldiers should attack rather than capture by default, and you should not be able to delete buildings (at least recently captured ones). Citizens should have a dismantle order where they harvest the resources of a building. There should be an axeman unit with more attack against buildings, an upgrade that gives spearmen a bonus against buildings, maybe an upgrade giving someone a torch ability and/or fire arrows for archers.

You can set the victory condition to conquest of civic centers.

How does the patch for switching weapons work, can the AI use it, and could it be included in a mod?

I prefer natural counters too, and like you're saying, what's important to me is to have a well developed counter system, not just lots of similar units where whoever sends more units wins. With 3 damage and armor types it is totally possible to have a robust counter system without damage multipliers, and I think we should do more to take advantage of that. For instance, the javelineers could have high pierce armor and low crush armor, making them good against archers and jav cavalry but vulnerable to slingers. Besides line units and counter units, etc i think some units should be more specialized and others more all purpose. I'd make the slingers really good at damaging armored infantry but really vulnerable to cavalry, while javelineers would be less somewhat effective against infantry but a bit less vulnerable to cavalry. Likewise pikemen would be more specialized against cavalry than spearmen but more vulnerable to archers.

It would be interesting to take the game in that direction, but it would be a pretty major overhaul unless we did it to just a couple elite units or something. Unless we decide to totally change course we should stick with making combat work similar to the way Age of Kings does.

If this game was going to be realistic there would need to be fewer units, most would be able to switch between two weapons, with major differences between civilizations. As it is, two different units often represent different roles or actions that the same soldiers would have in real life. With this system the 'rock-paper-scissors' system is an important part of strategy, and I like the general pattern Wow lays out, though I'd do some details differently.

I actually gave chariots a trample aura in a mod i was working on for a23. It might be better if it only dealt damage when moving, but I don't know how to do that. It basically makes chariots better against groups of weaker units, so you'd want to counter chariots with champion units like spear cavalry.

I would think chariots should be a more armored unit, horse archers faster.

Here's how I see it and think it should be: Crush is damage caused by the weight of the projectile or weapon, pierce is damage caused by a sharp and fast moving but lightweight weapon. If someone slings a heavy stone at you and you block it with a shield it's likely to break your arm, which an arrow wouldn't do, but the arrow is harder to dodge and more likely to kill you if it hits you in the bare chest. Hack is in-between; it's a close range attack with both weight and sharpness, and can best be blocked using another melee weapon like a sword. Agility means more crush armor, armor and especially shields give pierce armor, and both of those and having a good melee weapon gives hack armor. Wooden structures are most vulnerable to hack, stone buildings to crush, but both have high resistance to all attacks and siege weapons have high damage multipliers against them.

I like having multiple damage types, without it i think we would need more damage types or more hard counters.

I think of crush as damage that can best be avoided by dodging. So generally lightly armed, agile units would have the most crush resistance. Shields give pierce armor, and body armor and melee weapons both give hack armor. I prefer using regular unit stats rather than artificial counters to make some units good against others, but we need a full system of unit counters unless we add some other major effects to the game, like different terrains giving different advantages for instance; it's important that we be different from other games by having features they don't, not by lacking features they have. I'm neutral on the unit specific upgrades, I'd have to try them some to decide if they function as just general buffs or if they change the way units can be used. I think I like the fire arrows idea; they should slow the attack rate so for a lot of units they wouldn't help much, but should make archers effective against siege and wooden buildings. That would change archers role pretty significantly though, we'd have to test and see how it works out.

Should I put any of these ideas into the community mod?

My ideas: Archers should be good against unarmored units and slingers against armored ones; do this by reducing crush armor on armored units especially, add more crush damage on slingers, (so may need to increase crush armor on buildings and hard counters for siege). Archers should have a little more attack. Javelineers should counter archers and jav cavalry. I'd add armor, especially pierce, and reduce attack rate. Elephants and chariots should cause AoE damage. I think melee units are mostly good now, but I'd like to add an axeman unit with higher damage and lower armor; mainly good against siege.

I was looking forward to using the call to arms command, but it doesn't seem to be working. I added a hot key for it but when I press it nothing happens. Any tips, also general tips on useful hotkeys? I mostly just use idle worker (.) and garrison (ctrl).

A few years ago I helped a bit with a project making a mod kind of like age of mythology. It didn't get terribly far, but maybe the project could be resurrected, I'd like that.

Will there ever be a version that lasts several years without mod-breaking changes, so I can work on mods without feeling like it's a waste of time?

The main obstacle to modding is that every year or two the next version comes out and breaks the mods. For someone who doesn’t have a lot of free time that doesn’t give much time to make mods. I’m waiting till A24 before I do anything, and I hope we can make a permanent version soon, though we should continue with a development version in addition.

I wish we could make one version the standard one so I could build mods without worrying that they may be obsolete in a few months. Also I wondered if there are small tasks someone with moderate modding ability could do to help finish A24.