ShadowOfHassen

So, an iteration of the past idea. So what happens if you have unique name and unique cost? I got this idea because I was thinking what chrstgtr said about needing freeing up metal for mercinaries and champions. I noticed (Or at least think I noticed) that each tech level has a sort of mini focus when it comes to what you really need. Wood and Meat is the first technology level. The second one is wood and stone(Because you have to build things. The third level is wood, meat and metal( because of siege engine and elite soldiers.) I also sort of thing that each play style requires a difference resource focus at the beginning. A blitz needs wood and meat, primarily while a turtle needs wood and stone. A boomer needs basically a fine tune of everything. It would be interesting to try to experiment with a sort of unique upgrade system that would give people a trade-off and a sort of nuance to what style of play you do. I.E. A turtle would choose these upgrades because they improve X resource gathering and only cost so much of the resources they need. Do you understand what I'm saying?

So another PR for market and merchants here: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/3 Markets/ merchants really weren't a big thing in Sparta, and I wrote that in the encyclopedia entries why. I'd love if someone could check it out to be certain that everything is historically accurate.

Feature requests for 0 A.D. in line art and links to other articles @s0600204 I know you're a dev, how hard would those be to implement if/when you update the improved UI?

I found this: https://www.spartapedia.com/reforms-lycurgus/ A good starting point for anyone who wants to help with Sparta?

So you want me to wait and try to put this change in the new community mod... That's fine. However, I was thinking it might be better if we had a bit more mobility in case we want to fine tune them. (We could use different amounts and/or food in stone or metal upgrades) I do think that there should be a trade-off for upgrade/ resources. Maybe we should change and instead of having Axes level one two and three, we should custom name them and have them use different resource costs. So like, the first wood upgrade costs metal and stone and have that axes, then have the second one be metal and wood and call it a saw... Make them slightly more expensive but make them more effective? I think this is too small to bother adding a GitHub repo, but we can experiment with different lay-outs. I'm thinking that the unique upgrades for each level might be fun.

I got the mod to be approved with A 27

I tested the game with a 27 and it worked. I'll update mod.io to work with it. I think it needs re approved, however. You can download the file, put it in your mod folder and add a > before the equals in the version requirement.

The reason I thought of changing it is A: to upgrade stone costs stone (a no no in my mind) B: having them the same resource cost seems like a lazy game design and C: I can't think how I'd utilize stone and food to improve my mining. Iron+Wood = Pickaxe/ chisel for stone and Stone+Wood = wedge and mallet or fulcrum and lever for ore. The game needs to be able to be used with different play styles, and I don't mean to say that the game should be changed until it fits my play style. I usually send some units to each resource but focus more on wood and meat. Gameplaywise the focusing on two resources early and two resources later is a good choice, however early game in 0 A.D. you don't use any metal/ stone in the first tech level unless you have a swordsmen/ slinger unit. With the mod, you actually have something to use the ore with. I'm going to stress that I didn't just make this mod to make the game easier on me, I thought it would be a valid and logical choice for an upgrade. Age of Empires does it and while this isn't Age of Empires, a studio with 4+ bestselling games under their belt might know what they are doing. @Gurken Khan Would you mind playing a game or two with the mod and see if it makes any significant change to your gameplay? Does it make it easier? I'm honestly wondering. Maybe I just, when I started playing, got good enough to win. I really wasn't planning on having this discussion about how good I was as a player because I wanted the community to play it and see what they thought. I wrote all that other stuff to say how I came up with the idea to make this mod.

One of the hugest issues I had with 0 A.D. is the frustrating play experience I had in regard to my economy. I could not beat medium AI, but any level under that was too easy. In medium AI the enemy would always attack me while I was still struggling to get my economy up. spearman cost wood, so did the city level upgrade and every single building I needed to build. However, there was one point that really frustrated me. The upgrades that you can purchase at the store house(excepting the carrying compactly one) don't make any sense. Gameplay wise, it doesn't make any sense to have a wood resource gathering upgrade wood. I mean, if in 0 A.D. you need wood, you really need it. The upgrades just sat there and laughed at me while I struggled to gather enough wood to raise an army. In the same way, I thought it very strange how the metal and stone gathering upgrades both cost stone and meat with no given reason. There was some discussion of that here: I have made a mod(https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/0-ad-balancing-mod) that tries to balance this by changing the kinds of resources that the upgrades use. In the mod, the wood upgrade costs metal and meat, stone upgrades cost wood and metal and metal upgrades cost wood and stone. I would like to try to add these changes upstream, but first I thought I'd like to have other 0 A.D. players test it and see what they think. It seems like a little gameplay change but changing resource upgrade costs are large economy strategy changes. The first game I played with the mod on 1 V 1 against the AI, I still lost, but it was a lot more enjoyable lost where I didn't get murdered in the first 10 minutes. The second time I played with it was a 2 V 2 and while it was slightly tricky I was able to win. Both games felt different. There's one issue with the mod which makes you have to enable it every play through. I'm going to work on that, however I'd be very happy if you would play this and tell me what you think of it. You can get it through the 0 A.D. mod downloader as 0-ad-balancing-mod @real_tabasco_sauce , stan said I should talk to you for gameplay balance things, and I think that's what this is.

So one issue however with Spartans at least is that after Lycurgus reformed them no other Greek country would trade with them. They had iron money. Trading wouldn't be a big part of their economy. I think we should let them still have markets (but maybe add a penalty.) However, the reason I am saying this on this thread is, What do we do when gameplay has made some parts of the game 100% accurate? I think we should just acknowledge where the game isn't accurate. For example. I am thinking of saying in the merchants/markets something like: "Sparta really wasn't known for its trading Lycurgus, Sparta's lawgiver, removed their currency and replaced it with iron coins soaked in vinegar..." I think you get the point. (By the way, I'll do Sparta's merchant's and Market) Also, I think the civilization overview's should be rewritten to add a bit more information on the civilizations. I think the Helots should be at least mentioned in Sparta's

I don't know if you can add images to the encyclopedia. I'd love to be able too, however. @Genava55 I'm sure this will take longer than a summer, so afterward you are more than welcome to review and/or contribute.

I merged my own PR mostly because there were style things in it that, I wanted to get updated before other people started contributing. You can still follow the link and read the history parts however, and if there is an issue I will correct it.

@s0600204 Thanks for the explanation, and I'd really be happy if you could get that advanced UI working and merged to A 27 it'd make the in game help viewer so much better and our work on the encyclopedia better. I'll fork and Pr 0 A.D.'s branch every time we finish a civilization and add the changed files in slow, reasonable comments. In the meantime, we'll use my repository, so we can track the sources without long, complicated forum threads. (And beside's I've already gotten it set up.)

I thought he meant making a manual for his university notes.

Ooh. I thought he meant something he would use on his computer because linking doesn't really work in a book.

I don't know if it'll fit, but I use Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/) for world building. It has linking and searching, and I think the hovering tip, and it also stores everything in plain text markdown files.

I'm not exactly following. If I deleted, say Spartan women and then tried to merge to the normal 0 A.D. wouldn't it (if it was merged) delete spartan women from normal 0 A.D. I am new to git and coding, so, sorry.

I'll make certain that the full names are mentioned in the encyclopedia.

Delete files Via mod, do you mean your python script? I had a feeling that some of the unit files could be deleted, but I don't know which.

Thanks for the script. I didn't see a 0ad repo link on the entire website. A26 and A27 unit files are not cross compatible in mods, so I think it'd be more work to do it for A26. I found the git mirror though it's here right? https://github.com/0ad/0ad We can't just fork the repo because we're also tracking sources, which might not be added in the game. What we can do however is once we get a civilization done, I'll fork and PR it into the main 0 A.D through that git mirror.

So I set up the repository, so I have to PR and not just push things. Could you all review my pull request? It's Here: https://github.com/TheShadowOfHassen/0-ad-history-encyclopedia-mod/pull/1 It needs history fact checked, and it needs to be checked for typos/ grammar. I'd prefer if you gave your reviews on GitHub, You might want to post your Github username here however, so I know who you are. @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded, @Genava55 I saw you are community historians. Could you help review history?

Thanks. I've decided that because we have different kinds of editors and that I couldn't get \t to work, and that I didn't see something about it in the style guide, that our tab will be four spaces long and that the history tags should to be in different lines than the text. Also, did anyone see that Plutarch and Herodotus are on project Gutenberg? I'm sure there are better translations out, It'd be cool if we could use a lot of references from primary sources.

Is there a way I can get tabs in the history tags? I'm working on a three paragraph entry on spartan women, and it looks really bad without tabs.

@s0600204, I noticed in your mod you didn't have all the XML files for the units, only some. Is there a reason for that, and should I do the same with the encyclopedia?

So I think we can use some of the old encyclopedia entries as springboards, but I don't think they should be used in the new version. Also, I think we could expand the civilization overview. Finally, looking at Sparta there are some gameplay elements that don't add up to history, namely the markets. Sparta after their reforms didn't really trade because they had iron currency. I don't think that's a big issue, we can just mention that in the market encyclopedia!