Outis

Starcraft had this and i thought it was very cool

There are no armor upgrades for towers or fortresses, or any buildings for that matter, i wonder if that would make things interesting.

Towers get range upgrade and no minimum range upgrade which fortresses don't. These add more utility. Fortress specific HP or attack upgrades as mere stat boosts are also ideas.

Is there a release note?

Those are just the box seats

Please note the Thracian peltast is a true skirmisher with more but still very limited melee capability than regular skirmishers. The Iphicratian peltast is an outright melee unit, more like a ligher and more mobile hoplite. They share the name merely due to the type of shield they share, namely a pelta, which is smaller than an aspis that covered almost the whole body. As such, there is no evolution per se and in my opinion it is preferrable to handle the two separately.

Peltasts can be upgraded with a tech like Peltast Tradition the way hoplites are differentiated from other spearmen via Hoplite Tradition.

Effectively, this is similar to the hero choices in DE, but with less emphasis on the hero, isnt it?

This is good opportunity to include some anticipated (sub)factions like the Parthians

Maybe Helots can be restricted so they cannot upgrade with experience (because they are slaves and they cannot advance in society like get new equipment). Hero Brasidas gives the option (bonus or tech) to allow Helots to upgrade to Neodamodeis via experience to receive better equipment (like normal citizen soldiers).

Ephors for Sparta?

This was reportedly their shield device

Allow me to make a comment on Spartan heroes: Leonidas and Brasidas fit well. I have no idea why Agis is there. I propose to replace Agis with: Lysander: known for ending the Peloponnesian War with surpise naval attacks, with bonuses for navy (an option for Spartans to have a decent navy, they are Greek after all) And/or, Cleomenes III: known for reforming the society to increase the number of Spartiatai and to introduce the sarissa, allowing Spartans to train pikemen Big nod to DE @wowgetoffyourcellphone

I think having notoriously horrible cavalry should not necessarily mean they have no stables. They have cavalry and the horses need to be trained somewhere. What makes more sense its to decrease their effectiveness as you suggested by limiting their progression or even removing some common cavalry upgrades from their tech tree. Or even introducing a penalty like a civilization bonus (as a debuff).

I propose rather than an overall population limit, to have a limit on the Spartiatai as they had a problem with the number of full citizens rather than an overall problem.

Spartans did not join some fighting competitions such as pankration after some date, supposedly because they are used to taking it too far so the competitors got injured or died, or because they were so good at it that it was deemed unfair to compete.

It was called Hoplitodromos.

I think it fits here perfectly

from Greece and Rome at war by Peter Connoly, citing Xenophon

From "The Border of War and Peace" by Natasha Bershadsky here https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/bershadsky/files/the_border_of_war_and_peace_myth_and_rit.pdf : The Spartan hippeis were an elite corps of hoplites (their equestrian appellation notwithstanding), who numbered three hundreds. In the Classical period, the hippeis fought in close proximity to the king and had the task of protecting him. They also served as the Spartan “emergency force” in cases of internal or external danger. The hippeis were chosen on the basis of their excellence from the body of hêbôntes. The relevance of the hippeis to the present discussion stems from their character as picked troops and from their number, coinciding with the number of the Spartan warriors at Thyrea. In a recent article, Thomas Figueira suggests that the three hundred Spartans who fought in the battle of Champions must have been hippeis. In the light of the previous discussion, we can modify Figuiera’s suggestion: the battle, in which all the Spartan participants die heroically, can be construed as a foundation myth of the hippeis, setting a benchmark for their fighting conduct.

Olympic champion as in winner of the Olympic Games? I thought this was a bit generic. Hippeis is a historical Spartan unit which stood next to the king in battle, hence my proposal .

Why are they called as such? Is it a historical name? I propose to call the advanced champion Spartiates, Spartan Hippeis. Historically, Spartan Hippeis are the royal bodyguard of the Spartan kings, and are picked from the best Spartiates. Fun fact: Spartans were banned from some Olympic Games because they were so good it was considered unfair to compete against them.

Historically, Cleomenes III implemented several reforms which included increasing the number of Spartan citizens and introducing the sarissa to the army. Spartan pikemen could be an option unlocked by selecting him as a hero?

Hey @wackyserious this guy looks awesome! What happened to this guy?

This is in A26.