oshron

yeah, i oughta fix that link. anyway, what i mean is in the scenario editor, there's a "Simulation test" option at the bottom of the Map tab that lets you move units around as in regular gameplay. i more or less figured out how to have units build structures during simulation tests and save those into the actual scenario, which i plan to use mainly for walls since i think it's easier that way (there really needs to be a "place wall" option in the editor like there was in AOM) but, by default, the simulation test only works for Player 1. i just want to know how, if at all, i can run the simulation test for other players as well

hey, all. i've decided to try my hand at making a scenario but am having trouble getting the simulation test working right. i'm trying to use it to make a map that has ready-made and more "naturalistic" cities, etc., in it but i can't make the simulation test work on anything other than Player 1 (i'm trying to do this for Player 4 specifically). any help on this?

i think a facsimile of AOM's God Powers would be a good feature, just not as part of normal gameplay. instead, they'd be a way for natural disasters to be enacted in skirmish modes and campaign levels and the like. i think one with the most potential would be a flood which raises the water level and kills any units that can't get to higher ground fast enough, with a permanent and temporary version for ACTUAL God Powers, i'd much prefer a mythology-based total-conversion mod with a big variety of civs and units though one AOM-like feature that i think would work well in 0ad is special attacks or other abilities, relegated only to heroes and maybe to champion units. maybe a hero unit that was particularly vicious in actual history could have a Drain power which steals health from enemies he fights against, though the standard would definitely be Battlecry to give a temporary stat boost to nearby allied units, much like Arkantos

i came up with an idea for internal justification as to how heroes and certain myth units can continually reappear. i believe i mentioned the Percy Jackson series earlier in the thread? i'll refresh everyone's memory: in that series (which is alot more truthful to the myths than it may look like on the surface) the continued presence of certain singular, unique beings and monsters such as the Minotaur and the Nemean Lion--which were killed in the original myths--reappearing is that they don't actually die, they crumble into dust when they're killed and are briefly set to Tartarus until they're reincarnated in new versions of their old bodies, retaining their memories but also leaving behind some spoils (when Percy kills the Nemean Lion in one book, for example, it leaves behind a modernized version of its pelt as a lion-skin jacket) anyway, for a bit of artistic flair, i decided that myth units that you can only have a limited number of at a time (the actual number will be determined by "tier" depending on when they're available, with the top-tier only allowing one at a time) turn into different substances when killed, depending on what resources were used to train them. for simplicity, it'll be that each myth unit only costs two resources: one standard (food, wood, stone, or metal) and favor. myth units that cost metal oxidize and crumble into rust, units requiring wood ignite like an enemy in an old video game and burn up into ash, they wither into dust if they cost food, and they erode into sand if they cost stone. heroes, on the other hand, take a cue from AOM by showing their spirits rising into the sky (i guess you could call this the equivalent to the other four for favor). keep in mind that these types of death would be excluded from more unique insta-kill deaths (like being turned to stone by a gorgon, for example)

good to know the fish thing is being discussed, but i'd recommend keeping the chickens in mind, too. it's only happened to me the two times so far, but ideally it shouldn't happen at all

twice in a row i've noticed a problem on the Archipelago map where chickens spawn within the footprint (?) of the default civic center and can't be reached, which has hindered me twice now such that my hunters keep trying to get to them when they can't a much more persistent problem with this particular map, though, is that fish have a tendency to spawn on land and are uncollectable as a result since fishing boats can't get to them. this one i think can probably be fixed by letting citizen-soldiers gather from them as well (like villagers could in AOK) but the chicken problem is the more serious one, i think

this is just a small suggestion for effects: for units that having flaming attacks, meaning that their projectiles leave smoke plumes, maybe the smoke should burn out sooner. i like playing as the Iberians, and since one of their champion units has such an attack, i tend to mass them in place of siege weapons and it can make the game lag hideously if there are several hundred plumes of smoke coming up from a single point (unless this was already addressed)

if it hasn't been suggested already, i'd like to put forward the idea of using some select stock sound effects as well as original ones. there are plenty to choose from, but i'd specifically suggest that the famous Wilhelm Scream be used in a few places, namely for maybe one hero per civilization so that it's not overensaturated

it's my understanding that bartering resources at the market in pretty much all RTS games operates on the basic laws of supply and demand: flood the market with one resource, and its value will go down, so if you do so much with that in a short time you'll end up having to trade 100 food for 1 metal, for example; i notice this a fair bit late in the game against AIs since their own activities inhibit my expansion out of what i initially land-grabbed earlier in the game so, eventually, i become reliant on internal trade with merchant units and trading resources at the market (since farms at present have infinite food, i use this to do so since, for as little as it gets me, i can get more food much more easily than the other resources) debt would be impractical to fit into the regular gameplay of an RTS game, though. i could see it coming up in a specific scenario with triggers put in place to simulate it where, in order to win you need to pay off those debts (which probably cap at some point for fairness' sake) and periodically rise or else you'll be attacked. stuff like that.

in any case, these guys would be great for a non-historical "just for fun" map alongside dragons and unicorns and stuff

that or Jason and the Argonauts XD

the Ragnarok power in AOM is useful situationally, just like all of the God Powers in that game. suppose you're playing the expansion and your opponent manages to summon a Titan: just mass-produce villagers (they're the ones that change into Heroes of Ragnarok--iirc your normal soldiers are unaffected) and then, when he's close enough, use the power to get an instant army of powerful hero units to defeat the giant myth unit more to the topic at hand, i think it would make more sense for the Imperial/Western Romans to get the legionaries since (though i don't know as much about it as i should) they clearly postdate the height of Republican Rome but WERE around at the height of Imperial Rome (Trajan's reign, iirc)

i wasn't saying it was strange, i was explaining why they don't change when you advance from Village to Town to City: it's not a passage of time, just what becomes available to you. though it WOULD be pretty cool if there were different architectural styles for buildings like houses for each phase, showing which ones were built when. thinking about it, i'm kinda reminded of the city-building portions for a SNES game called ActRaiser, which has each region starting with basic huts but, as they advance through expansion, they get more sophisticated-looking buildings depending on region: the first one gets some log cabins, one set in a desert goes from tents to adobe-like buildings, a Southeast Asia-like region gets elevated bungalows, stuff like that

i think what nguyenhuukhoinw is asking is why the buildings' architectural style don't change with phase advancement, similar to how they did throughout the AOE series and in some other RTS games. the answer is simple: phase advancement doesn't represent the passage of time like advancing from the Stone Age to the Tool Age in AOE1, it represents the level of sophistication that your faction is going through. iirc, the idea is that you're not playing as a fledgling civilization in an untamed world, you're playing as a colony of that civ far and away from where they're supposed to be (usually)

been over a year now, so i don't remember if i mentioned this before: i think i've worked out how the "worship" system for this idea would function. instead of there being civilizations with three Major Gods to each like in AOM, i've decided that choosing your Major God and subsequent Minor Gods will be handled like technologies: in order to advance out of the Village Phase, you need to build a Temple and then select one of the Major Gods available to you, and repeat the process for the other Phases as well--selecting one would be a prerequisite for advancement rather than exactly HOW you advance, and this would also enable certain other aspects of gameplay, namely certain units (mainly myth units but in some cases mortal soldiers and heroes) as well as buildings and some other techs. in particular, to emulate AOM a bit, selecting a given Major God will enable the Minor Gods that were assigned to them otherwise. i've also decided that not every civ will have the good-neutral-evil dynamic anymore. most of them still will, but some will just have a good-evil dynamic, namely for the monotheistic civs.

the best way to establish an ambush, frankly, would be for units to become invisible while among trees and idle

Gaia is really just a holdover from when this was an Age of Empires total conversion mod. it just refers to anything not controlled by human or computer players, mainly amounting to natural resources such as trees, stone/metal deposits, and wild animals, but also anything "neutral" that you could find, such as a building. in Age of Mythology, for example, some maps included bandit fortresses which were hostile to all players, intended to protect gold mines and whatnot for a bit of extra challenge; another example from the expansion pack for the same game is a God Power which summons a gate to the Underworld that demons aggressive to all players come out of as a form of area denial. though even if there hadn't been precedent of a gaia "player" with Age of Empires, i'm almost certain there would have been something to that effect, probably called "Nature", but it would've been the same

going back to Greek fire, i decided to look into it and Greek fire itself wasn't developed until after around 672 AD, well outside the timeframe Ascendant AND Besieged. i DID also find that a primitive flamethrower is mentioned as being used against the Athenians in Ascendant's timeframe, but not by any currently playable civ. that said, i think Greek fire is just too impressive to NOT be included even if it's not part of a playable civ's repertoire. if it were to be implemented for any civ, i'd say save it for the Byzantines in Besieged since they're the ones who used it historically and are most famous for doing so

yeah, the Syracusans could be a very technology-driven faction

shouldn't the Macedonians also be able to get this bonus? iirc Alexander used Catapult ships in the Siege of Tyre

i think at least some civs should still be able to do that--the Iberians, for instance, have their whole guerrilla warfare thing going on, so they would qualify for "can navigate forests"--but it cuts down on the strategic value of forests for other purposes: against civs which can't navigate them, they make natural walls and reduce your own costs of construction, and if you are up against a civ that can cross forests, you can use those forests as a choke point, building towers and whatnot at one end forcing the Iberians or whoever into a meat grinder

okay, so i improved my playstyle a little bit (using the Iberians at first since i like to play defensively until late in the game). now, my mention of Petra being too aggressive earlier, i think some of the big things that the 0ad really needs, but which would definitely be closer to the bottom of the list, are some aesthetics: resources should look like they've been worn down over time depending on how much of them has been gathered, and buildings should have visual indicators that they're damaged--at the very least, it could be fire coming from them like in Empire Earth. the only other things i would (currently) recommend is that trees are knocked down when you start gathering from them, like in AOM since it adds some realism to the game, and that thickets of trees should be mostly impassable, with some civs having special traits allowing them to navigate forests. while i understand the reasoning behind trees being passable, i think it hurts the game on a strategic level. in my most recent game, i had a defensible position with lots of cliffs around my starting point, but because trees fill in alot of the valleys leading to my base, i can't build walls to block off those routes and fully exploit the defensive position without knocking down an entire forest first

i actually wasn't aware that there was a difficulty setting, but the default seems to be medium. if medium is roughly equivalent to moderate from AOM, then i think that's still too aggressive EDIT: played a new map on easy and i was still overwhelmed pretty quickly. oh well; i mainly wanted to install 0ad at this stage so i could use the scenario editor, anyway

so i finally installed 0ad on my laptop (school semester ended) but am still becoming accustomed to it. a couple things are discouraging me from playing the random maps, one more than the other: first, the game is sorely in need of customizable hotkeys (i like being able to find idle units instantly); second, i think the AI needs some balancing. even considering that i play rather slowly, every game against the Petra AI that i've done so far has always ended rather quickly with a large invasion. this seems like the same kind of problem with Empire Earth where the AI just collects resources and produces units at an arbitrarily fast pace

i'd say a good way to balance tunneling would be to make destruction of the entrance equate to a tunnel collapse. while there would realistically be a chance to dig the tunnelers out, i think that would probably be too complicated to try and emulate in a game. the tunnel could be dissimilar to other buildings you can garrison in that units won't automatically bail out when it's nearly destroyed (the justification being that the tunnel is too difficult to escape from in a pinch like that compared to, say, a fortress) and, unlike other buildings, it could be vulnerable to regular soldiers as well as siege--the justification here would be that a soldier comes up to the tunnel and just goes to town on the entrance, smashing it with his sword or a field shovel or whatever he has on hand to trap the tunnelers within also, i think such a feature should be specifically labeled a Siege Tunnel, while other tunnels could be used for various purposes, namely scenario design--think a tunnel connecting two group of soldiers that the player controls but are separated by an impassable mountain range