oshron

i have some suggestions for what animals could be represented in the game myself. there will be some overlap here, and some could be added at later times rather than all at once depending on the environment (for example, its not really necessary to include latin american animals since the game largely takes place in the old world). i'll be listing these all the same, though some would be infeasible (im just listing them from my source): Rattlesnake Pronghorn American Bison Two-Toed Sloth Marmoset Crested Seriema Mole Rat Beaver Fallow Deer Giraffe Gorilla African Elephant Tiger Tarsier Peafowl Greater Bird of Paradise Red Kangaroo Platypus Peccary Raccoon Llama Armadillo Opossum Chimpanzee Rhinoceros Antelope Squirrel Colugo Cockatoo Cassowary Tree Kangaroo Polar Bear Orca Blue Whale Crabeater Seal Leopard Seal Emperor Penguin Raven Arctic Fox Capercaillie Snowy Owl Brown Lemming Arctic Skua Musk Ox Brent Goose Rock Ptarmigan Arctic Hare Wolf Wolverine Caribou Woodchuck White-tailed Deer American Black Bear European Badger Red Fox Aurochs European Wood Bison European Hare Guanaco Saiga Springhaas Plains Wolf Coyote Maned Wolf Prairie Dog Pampas Cat Tawny Eagle Red-tailed Hawk Prairie Falcon Sage Grouse Black Grouse Roadrunner Dromedary Camel Bactrian Camel Addax Dorcas Gazelle Great Horned Owl Gila Monster Eland Wildebeest Grant's Zebra Topi Thomson's Gazelle Lion Leopard Cheetah African Wild Dog Jackal Spotted Hyena White-Backed Vulture Ostrich Secretary Bird Aardwolf Aardvark Shoebill Stork Goliath Heron Sitatunga Hippopotamus Crowned Eagle Sacred Langur Royal Python Orangutan Tree Pangolin Orange-Rumped Agouti Forest Buffalo Okapi Tapir Wild Pig Yak Snow Leopard Blue Sheep Asiatic Black Bear Rocky Mountain Goat Red Panda Amazonian Manatee African Spoonbill Spectacled Caiman however, given this list, another thing that i would recommend is replacing as many of these animals as possible with collective versions instead of so many specific species. for example, instead of having one specifically called "American Black Bear" or "Bengal Tiger", there can just be generic "Bear" and "Tiger" so that those can be considered to encompass all sorts of similarly sized and related animals, even if its technically inaccurate. alternatively, maybe some animals can have different textures depending on the dominant biome in an area, so tigers in a predominantly winter-styled map would resemble siberian tigers instead of bengals also, i think some generic prehistoric animals would be good for design purposes. namely: Seymouria (?) Scutosaurus Dimetrodon Lystrosaurus (?) Corythosaurus/Hadrosaurus Deinonychus/Utahraptor Brachiosaurus/Apatosaurus Struthiomimus Tyrannosaurus Triceratops Plesiosaurus Rhamphorhynchus (cosmetic) ideally, there would be representation of at least one animal from every major group of dinosaurs and other notable prehistoric animals (which i would be happy to look into if anyone else likes it, being a paleo-nerd myself) but these twelve (perhaps replacing a few of them) would be the more important ones. alternatively, a prehistoric animal list could be compiled based on old fiction (like Doyle's original Lost World). and this doesnt even mention animals that died out more recently i could also compile lists of plant life that could be included, if anyone's interested

i think, first and foremost, at least one wonder should be decided upon for each playable civilization and then unique other wonders can be chosen. for example, the currently decided-upon civilizations' wonders could be. for example, the specific wonder for the romans could be the roman senate building while the persians could get the palace/tomb of xerxes

the civs havent been decided aside from Part 1, i was just giving examples of what they could be, but hypothetical civs for Part 2 that have more or less been confirmed definitively include the Eastern and Western Roman empires as well as the Huns. the official mantra right now, as i understand it, is that nothing will be decided until Part 1's alpha and beta phases are completed and the finished product goes gold, then they'll start work on Part 2 with 1-500ad civs like the later romans and huns

i mean in total. ten 500-1bc civs introduced in Part 1, ten 1-500ad civs in Part 2, and five civs from each of those timespans for a hypothetical Part 3: 10 + 10 + 5 + 5 = 30. didn't you take first grade math class? you probably already know this, but there's ten civs, i think, that have been set up for Part 1: Achaemenid Persians Athenians (Brythonic) Celts Carthaginians Gauls Iberians Spartans Macedonians Mauryan Indians Republican Romans so it stands to reason that the second pack should have an equal number of civs dating to 1-500ad from roughly the same regions, and perhaps even matching the civilizations themselves in their historical roles and geographic regions. for example... Sassanid Persians/Sarmatians/Parthians Eastern/Byzantine Romans (Anglo-)Saxons Himyar Arabs Franks Vandals Huns Goths Han Chinese Western/Imperial Romans obviously, some of these civs are more desirable than others, so the design team would want to work out what they have the most information on and what would be the best civs to include with respect to the other civs. personally, i would relegate a hypothetical Part 3 to civs that were either encountered by only one of the preceding civs, or which was not encountered at all (like the Japanese or the Mayans)

ive said it before, but i'll say it again: Parts 1 and 2 should focus on Europe and the Mediterranean, and hypothetical Parts 3 and 4 should focus on other regions, with some european/mediterranean civs as filler, with 1 and 3 focusing on the 500-1bc period, and 2 and 4 focusing on the 1-500ad periodgiven how the game has evolved since i first proposed that idea, i think it should now be that Part 1 just focuses on "BC" civs, Part 2 on "AD" civs, and a hypothetical part three would include an equal number of BC and AD civs from regions aside from the European & Mediterranean/Greco-Roman World (since the mauryans were known to and encountered by the Greeks, and before the focus was basically just Rome and civilizations that it encountered; previously, i had suggested that the Mauryan Indians be in a hypothetical part 3 because of their geographic distance from Europe/Mediterranean) the Mayans (who were the major civilization in mesoamerica within 0ad's timespan--with the height of the aztecs and inca being during the middle ages rather than the classical period) would be one of the Part 3 AD civs, perhaps alongside the Yamato period Japanese (which, incidentally, would predate the samurai, so those couldnt be included as a Japanese champion unit, but there should definitely be an editor-only samurai unit for the purposes of scenario design) altogether, this would mean that there would be 30 civs in all: 15 civs dated to about 500-1bc, and 15 dated to about 1-500ad

what i would personally recommend is that part 2 match the number of civs from part 1, and include some eastern civs (as well as the mayans as the sole representatives of the americas)

id say no, though using a world map for the random map selection screen would be a good, innovative way to handle that part of gameplay, as well as regional maps for campaigns

well 0 AD isnt so much an ancient period game as a classical period game

well the iberians never encountered teh mauryans, did they? i believe the original intention was just going to be rome (republican romans in part1 and both the eastern and western empires in part2) and civilizations that they historically encountered, but now that its expanding outward, anything's game. and the mayans were quite a unique culture who were at (or nearly at) the height of their civilization within 0ad's timeframe

#10 should be the Mayans, if you're planning to go outside the scope of the roman world right off the bat. personally, i think it would be easier to limit it to fewer civs for each release but make more releases that will be introduced over time, with the general focus of each pack being the romans and civs they encountered (for the first two) and ones that they didnt encounter (at least not on a large scale), with each of those focuses being split along the BC and AD divide that's already been decided on

so the civs in 0 AD part 1 will therefore be:Achaemenid Persians Athenians Brythonic Celts Carthaginians Gauls Iberians Macedonians Mauryan Indians Republican Romans Spartans so, yeah, cool, ten civs in all! i would have been content with just the six that were originally planned, but awesome! does this mean that part 2 will be matching them with 10 more civs?

speaking of numidians, i'd say the first options for minor factions would be ones that are already represented in the game to some extent, like the Thracians, for instance, or the peoples represented with the Carthaginians' mercenary units

i would totally agree with this; personally, ive kinda always wanted to make an RTS based on my fantasy crossover RPGalternatively, attention could be diverted to Godstorm, the mythology RTS im making written designs for

another request for second-opinions: im thinking of replacing Zeus' champion unit, the Myrmidon, with a Hypaspist or Pezhetairos, and am also thinking of just making the unique champion units for each of the greek major gods a macedonian unit (or at least macedonian-themed, since ive already got poseidon having the companion cavalry). alternatively, each one will be from a different major culture in ancient greece, with poseidon having macedonia, zeus having athens, and perhaps sparta for hades. thoughts?

thanks for your input maybe ill relegate greek cataphracts to a unique technology, then; im pretty sure ive got a cavalry-oriented greek minor god in there somewhere

quick question, id like some second opinions. im working on revising the articles for all the civilizations on my database site and decided to work on teh greeks first. my question is this: Should the second Champion unit available to Poseidon be the Hetairoi or a Cataphract?

tbph, its more descriptive

id say a better name for this would just be "arson" and maybe it just gives the graphic effect of fire to every building on the map

okay, a quote-unquote "hellenic" faction iirc, the byzantines were really just greeks who considered themselves romans, and were ethnically distinct from teh romans themselves. my point remains, though: i personally think that, in terms of representation for greece, there should be the Macedonians and Hellenic Poleis in part 1 and the Byzatines in part 2now, speaking of part 1 and part 2, those two are going to be put together, right? so, for example, the BC period Macedonians could face off against AD period Huns, instead of being limited to only facing civilizations from their respective periods? because, as unhistorical as it is, i think it would be terrible if the BC civilizations couldnt fight the AD civilizations in random maps and user-made scenarios (as a note, it would also be useful for scenario design if, for example, you wanted to include just a random roman village in imperial rome, but wanted to make it look different from the big cities, so you could use the Pre-Imperial Roman civilization for the village and the Imperial Roman civilization for the city

in AOM, there was a spatter of blood that appeared and the body itself would slowly sink into the ground and disappear, leaving behind an impression of the body (kinda like a colored-in version of the chalk lines you see at crime scenes) which eventually fades out into a skeleton and disappears. it could perhaps be something ike this i still think that there should be just the two BC hellenic factions--the Macedonians and the Poleis/Hellenes--with the latter splitting into four major city-states: the Athenians, the Spartans, the Syracusans, and some other faction (whichever city-state was next-important after the first three, like the Thebans), with less-influential peoples being included as unimportant units, like the thracians that are already in the game, or as the "minor factions" that are being discussed elsewhere. then in part 2, just one other hellenic faction--the Byzantines--would be included

well it would be good if the player could set their civilization to their favorite color (you could do that in EE1's expansion and in EE2, but only in scenarios for vanilla EE1), but i agree that its unnecessary right now

personally, ive thought that that would be a roughly good idea for some future civilizations, but not that they actually transition into those civs; going on the original 6 civilizations, my personal ideas had been Republican Romans to Imperial Romans, Hellenes to Eastern Romans/Byzantines, Celts to Germanics, and Achaemenids to Sassanids (for example). since there's ten civs now, it would probably be better to figure out closer analogies, perhaps going on how similar their cultures were even if they werent ethnically or geographically similar (for example, the Spartans could be the BC equivalenet to AD Huns)

ethiopians would probably work best as a full, playable faction than a minor one (or perhaps the aksumites)

i think the AOE3 natives would be the better example; the EE2 natives arent as unique, they just look like the ancient equivalents of a given culture, whereas the natives/religious sects in AOE3 are alot more characteristic. ive never actually played the game, so i dont know for myself, but i assume that the natives in AOE3 used a similar set of buildings depending on the region. so, for example, teh mesoamerican tribes would use the same set of buildings and basic units while theyre more closely differentiated by different unique units, such as the aztecs in this example having jaguar warriors while the mayans and zapotecs would have something different so, anyway, i think in terms of minor factions we should take a look at what other peoples are already included and, in terms of one-off scenarios and campaign modes, what other minor peoples could be included. for example, the etruscans could be included because of their general "importance" to the ancient world and their apparent popularity here on this message board. as an extra note, one scenario-editor function that should be included should be the capability to have it so that any unit that is trained by a given player is automatically replaced with another one. i'll give an example from another RTS game but use 0AD's mechanics to get it across: suppose that the final version of 0AD has an Alexander campaign which includes an opening scenario similar to the alexander portions of the greek campaign in empire earth. in addition to the Macedonians (the player), there's also the Thebans, the Athenians, the Mytileans, the Spartans, and generic hill tribes in this scenario. the Macedonians, Athenians, and Spartans are already regular playable civilizations in 0AD, byt the Thebans, Mytilieans, and hill tribes arent. the Mytileans play no military role in the game, so they should just be represented by an appropriate pre-existing civ, like maybe the Athenians. the hill tribes could perhaps be simulated by the Celts, or alternatively there could be a few generic "barbarian" units that could be thrown in for general use in other scenarios and random map scripts (generic random bandits, basically). in the case of the Thebans, i dont think there would necessarily be much reason to make an entire Theban mini-faction, but just simulate them in-game with the Athenians and replace their champion units with some editor-only Theban units. i believe mythosruler already wrote up some stuff for potential Thebans, so that could be used as examples: the Sacred Band Hoplite and the Fire Raiser. these units would also, in general, be useful for scenario design anyway, doing something like this would limit the number of mini-factions that could/would/should be included to simulate "unimportant" civilizations of the time, while more unique/exotic peoples like the arabs, hebrews, kurds, nubians, and so on would need full-scale mini-factions for them

i wholly support the idea of mini-factions and editor-only units and buildings and have speculated on that myself quite a bit. i think it would be fun to include some fantastical/mythology content, like maybe an Atlantis mini-faction