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Titus Ultor

WFG Retired
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Everything posted by Titus Ultor

  1. Show up, keep in touch, tell friends, sign up to test when you can, download and help distribute the game when its released, or be a historian. Okay, so maybe not the last one. This game will be nothing without an active and faithful community. That's where you come in.
  2. I don't believe that we will have any sort of attack or weapon that would grant a status effect, at least not in the classic "poisoned", "blinded", etc. However, Heroes and (if I'm not mistaken) certain units will have effects on the statistics of nearby units. For example, having such-and-such hero would increase your infantry's attack by a certain percent.
  3. Base-building is one of my favorite parts, too. In half of the matches I play, I end up going "oh crap, I need an army!" right about when I get invaded. And then my pretty little base dies. The economic side will be as important as the military side in at least one way. When your soldiers are also your villagers, every resource you put into your military pays off economically. Also, you'll have to find a balance between how many of your citizen-soldiers (the standard military unit of every civ, who also performs villager tasks) you leave to tend the fields while your army goes off to war.
  4. When Michael used "rock-paper-scissors", remember that our system will be much more realistic than forced, as opposed to the traditional RTS. Units will have advantages because of what they are, not simply "attackx2 vs. infantry". Formations will work the same. They will grant basic bonuses, but will also simply be effective formations as they effective in the real ancient world.
  5. I saw an article about a guy who sends false information back to the phishers (obviously not the Nigerian Prince scam, but still a scam), so that when they sell the information they get off the net to various companies, the companies find that they're false and lose trust in the phishers.
  6. Very true. Speaking of Empire Earth, I remember that games balancing system. It was really completely absurd, but it made it somehow fun. I even bought Empire Earth 2. Now that one is a horrible game.
  7. Trampling before the stirrup, from a historical standpoint, is just a matter of your equipment. A group of Roman equites would not be able to do the medieval knight approach of leading with a long lance, due to the lack of the stirrup. However, by holding onto the reins, an ancient warrior armed with a light spear and small shield could certainly charge into a group of enemies and inflict some sort of damage upon them. It's probably not the most effective use of cavalry at this point, but it is still possible and still lethal.
  8. That's how I feel, as well. It's also a lot of programming time and effort to put into a feature that only people with top-of-the-line computer can see. If it could be done easily and subtly, it'd be a great feature. But at the moment, I don't see it being cost-efficient.
  9. It's definately planned that the AI will be much more intelligent in that regard that the AoE AI. The computer should build up a varied army (depending on what units you primarily are using), complete with siege engines, when they're going to attack your town. They should also be able to raid with cavalry, defend effectively (most AIs just counter your offensive attacks with their own offensively-geared army) and expand to new areas wisely.
  10. Celtic culture, divided into tribes as it was, never gained the affluence to actually armor its warbands. To be fair, though, the Celts had a much better understanding as a society regarding iron-working, so when you do see fine weapons and armor from the Celts, it is best to be afraid.
  11. Whether or not and to what extent morale will be implemented in the initial game is still up for question, but it looks like it's being put on hold for now. On commanders: we will have "hero" units, as well as formations. Both of these will allow a degree of the ideas listed here. Heroes will affect statistics of units around them, and formations will give a basic stance for the units therein. However, while the idea of autonomous "commanders" may sound cool, it is my -personal- opinion that we'll never be able to make them smart enough for an average player to trust his/her units with. When one of our auxiliary armies is crushed, we'll yell at the computer for some boneheaded move or decision. And players always find ways to exploit the AI's tactics, which is why multiplayer is so much fun. Giving an AI to your units takes out half the fun of it.
  12. How dare you insult our historical prowess? We have it on good evidence that the Celts did have high-level genetic engineering.
  13. Meaning alpha. I imagine there'll be a lot more to show and tell to the community once we get it up and running.
  14. Lol. If you're spending seventeen thousand dollars on a gun with no practical purpose other than showing off and messing around with it, I daresay you are a moron playing with a gun.
  15. Also for the sake of our poor programmers and artists. Super Units, in such a way as we're implementing them, didn't truly exist historically as "super-units". Sure, they were better equipped and trained when comparied to the levied soldiers of most other nations. Perhaps they also inspired the morale of their allies, and frightened their enemies. But they couldn't have taken on several opponents at once, and not expected to run into serious trouble. My point is that Spartiates simply represent a higher class of warrior, in this case taking the form of the bold soldiers of Sparta. Above their literal place in history, they are a gameplay mechanic manifested with an imperfect historical texture.
  16. Lol. The TLA team has a guy named 'Caesar'. We can totally get away with Gandalf as a cheat unit.
  17. Archers can, if used effectively, have a great advantage over cavalry. Remember Agincourt? If the cavalry's mobility is done away with, it is fairly vulnerable to even sword-armed infantry, especially when the horse is unarmored. Which is why, in traditional RTSs, mounted melee troops have always been given unrealistically high armor ratings and hit points. They're really actually more vulnerable than unmounted troops if you can stop them from moving much. They're simply larger and more obvious targets, and they can't wheel around to face you as fast as you can move around them (believe it or not, but a man can run circles around a horse trying to turn about without wheeling around). Their weapons are awkward to use on the left side, and their shields are entirely unavailable on the right. It's excusable, however, that AoK makes the horse troops stop moving to engage enemies. Could you imagine how difficult and complex the graphics and mechanics of the game would be if mounted troops were wheeling about constantly? Also, the numbers used in RTSs (particularly in 0 A.D., where we project that we won't pass a population cap of a hundred) are never enough to really simulate how horses would get bogged down in a sea of men. Oh, and an elephant and mahout would actually cost much, much more than a horse and rider. Elephants eat more, require much more room and more training to be used effectively in war. Also, horses are much more resilient to different climates (elephants wouldn't do well in Gallia; look what happened to Hannibal's army up in the Alps).
  18. We should try to avoid too much micromanaging of armies. Remember, you'll also want to be expanding your economy at the same time, and advancing your civilization in general. Notice that Rome: Total War has you do the socio-politico-economic stuff in one screen, and the military in an entire seperate type of game. If that doesn't highlight how much focus the military would take for that kind of micromanagement, I don't know how else to do so.
  19. You'll find that a British accent is very good when dealing with Americans. We trust people with them, for some reason or another. Chris, your "TV announcer" voice is the sort of sound Americans totally buy into. At this point, the only thing that could be improved is maybe scripting, and removing the filler words (umm, uhh, et cetera). Very informative.
  20. If someone offered it to me, I'd just have to try it. But I don't think I'd go looking for it. If only for propriety's sake.
  21. I usually start at about the calves, and work my way up. I'm not sure if this is for any specific reason, but it's just sort of how I look at people. But I have a definate attraction to eyes.
  22. Lol... I guess we all have our own individual needs. Actually, I'm hoping that our players will find historical errors for us to correct! Hate to leave in an error, and never find out.
  23. Zezar.. maybe you should upload the file to some free image website or something first? I'm looking forward to reaffirming Roman dominance against the rest of these piddly civilizations!
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