oshron

alternatively, you could name alpha6 "Flamen Maior", a roman term for a major cult to a deity. for instance, jupiter had a flamen maior assigned to him iirc

just for the record, im pretty sure i recommended something along these lines a while ago to help justify why ships are capable of attack but (presumably) wont be able to fire while moving: the only units which appear on the deck would be units garrisoned on it that dont come with the ship, and when the ship stops to fire, there's a slight delay as units come out of the ship(perhaps unrealistically overlapping models with units on the deck, but what can ya do? *shrug*)and begin firing arrows, throwing spears, etc. simultaneously, they are supported by any dedicated ranged soldiers on the deck. these soldiers coming out of the ship would be the crew which mans the ship. there's even precedent for this, in AOK with the trebuchets which had to pack themselves up to move and unpack to fire. the main difference is that the pack-unpack thing would all happen automatically here: as soon as a ship is ordered to attack and gets within range, it starts to "unpack" and as soon as the battle is over, it "packs up" again incidentally, and this is just a question, what will be the actual armament of ships? will it be arrows? ballista bolts? boulders? i just realized those three things i listed were unintentially put in alphabetical order

have you ever played Empire Earth 2, mythosruler? in that game, there was a special "technology" resource that could only be acquired by putting people in temples or universities, and there was a separate interface for researching technology, and NO technology was unique. i remember reading a long time ago that something like this was, at least at one point, planned as an aspect of 0ad. personally, i disagree with such a notion since the other resources that will be included no matter what (food, metal, stone, wood) can cover the uses of "technology points" quite easily basically, will 0ad's technology research functions be more like AOK and pretty much every other reputable historic-period RTS, or will it be like EE2? aaah. thanks for clearing that up

this reminds me, i heard a long time ago that "technology points" were planned and would be the only thing used to research technology. is this still planned? if it is, i would personally recommend NOT doing that, as that just adds a resource that can be perfectly managed with the other resources that are going to be included anyway

ill say it again: sappers alternatively, maybe it COULD be possible to capture a fortress if its programmed so that you have to eliminate all units friendly to it in the immediate area

then you capture the enemy's buildings citizen-soldiers should be able to attack buildings, etc, if they research a certain technology. maybe it could be sapping equipment? but capturing should be the primary choice and actually ATTACKING the building with the intent of destroying it should be a secondary function that the citizen-soldiers must be forcibly told to do incidentally, i think a good special function for some unique cavalry units should be to be able to capture buildings like infantry can, because i imagine that only infantry will be able to capture buildings, right? it could perhaps be reserved for some civ that famously used cavalry in most of its conquests and they were the most important branch of their military (or something like that)

though this wouldnt work in the iron age like with 0ad, one game im making written designs for features many alternative methods of generating resources, particularly Energy (it takes place in the modern period), basically through "green energy". if such methods could be found in 0ad, that would probably help i would honestly suggest against letting a game literally go on forever. after all, its an RTS, not an MMORPG. if you want games to go on for VERY long periods of time, just make ENORMOUS maps that can support about two dozen players. the "spoils" and "mercenaries" modes that i mentioned before could still work very well in this scenario i mean, what if someone has beaten every single player on the map and is about to win, and then suddenly a dozen new opponents pop up? that would just turn people off that game mode

perhaps there could be a "spoils" mode that can be turned on and off so that all players who were in opposition of another player when they are completely defeated (or otherwise depart from the game) receive a portion of that player's resources. this could also lead to interesting developments in gameplay where a player who is on the verge of losing--suppose their last city was just bulldozed by a coalition of three other players and their remaining units are on the run--transfers all of their resources over to their ally, who has not been attacked once in the entire game, so that they can try to exact revenge. in these cases, it would also be cool if there was a "mercenaries" mode as well in which a defeated player can choose to shift control of all their remaining units and buildings to another player. this would also go well if a real-life issue comes up in which a player has to leave the game but doesnt want to just leave an ally to fend for themselves, so they give their armies and cities to their friend to use for themselves

no, i havent started any work on the modification itself. all im working on is the written designs. my ultimate hope is that this would become an official mod or entirely new game (with the same mechanics as the original) by the 0ad design team using my designs for the game itself and tuning it to fit with 0ad mechanics i actually already have a site for it (and two other RTS ideas) that im using to record all the information pertaining to it. some basic unit mods at least to make the original five civilizations playable in the current game would be nice, but id ultimately like for this to be an independent game using the same mechanics and engine of 0ad. i cant imagine that any other games that wildfire games will eventually make will use their own engine, theyll just continue using the one for 0ad i DO have some basic ideas for what some maps and campaigns could be, as well as rough focuses for some civs. civs will have a basic focus (the norse, for example, will focus on infantry and navy), but the player will also be able to choose what direction their civ goes in based on what gods they worship (ex: if the norse worship Freyja, goddess of gold, to advance to the Town Phase, theyll be able to research a technology that reduces the cost of metal for mythical technologies and units) http://rts-database.wikispaces.com/*+Godstorm keep in mind that everything on here is still under construction

there could be special programming so that, for the purposes of gameplay, the trojan horse can never be seen by enemy units. there could also be some more aesthetic units to be used that would be the trojan horse standing still or recognizable by enemies (suppose its for a role-reversal scenario in which the player is troy while the enemies are the invading greeks so you have to destroy the horse when it gets to your gate instead of accepting it) if game mechanics would allow this, you could try playing on a map that is literally to scale with a given region (say, the entire ancient world) and make it a free-for-all between twenty players

im loving that new map, especially that pic of an (i think) iberian tower

....lolwut?

thats one problem i noticed with Empire Earth: no matter how large and advanced your city got on random maps, there were never any roads if possible, dirt roads should DEFINITELY appear in high traffic areas, such as trade routes

you know, i could possibly do that. as long as i have the original text and basic sources, i can update the entire thing with new wording and my own creative flourish (im a writer by hobby)

okay, 0.3 units of health recovered each second

it would only greatly reduce the use of priests if they healed very quickly. if you reduced it to them healing by 0.1 points of health per second, you would definitely want priests or temples to heal them instead

as for places that those civilizations never went to, its my understanding that maps like those are just included for fun. after all, SOME liberties have already been taken, such as the celtic buildings

even so, isnt it worth discussing? since seasons are something thats pretty much definitely gonna be included

i dont see any reason why that wouldnt be possible; its the same basic concept as selecting multiple soldiers and telling them to attack the same unit together. this could also apply to other buildings: suppose you select two different barracks and then click on the swordsman unit's button, then both barracks will begin producing that swordsman simultaneously that sounds like a great idea to me. i remember reading in the design document that it was planned in the polar map that snow would partially melt in the spring and summer and allow you to mine for ore and stone only during those times; it would come to a standstill during the winter, though no mention of farming would come up. disabling the use of farms and perhaps some forage sites would also be a pretty cool detail for maps with seasons enabled speaking of seasons, what exactly will be the effect of seasons on terrain and objects? will snow just fade in on buildings and the ground when it turns to winter? if not, i think that would be a GREAT detail, and that it would also be really cool if there were some terrain textures for, say, grass that got snow and some that didnt. this would be good if someone wants to portray a region where it gets cold and snows in the winter, but not so much that it ever forms in low-lying or more southerly regions. my own area, southern california, is a prime example of this: it doesnt snow here in the winter, but it CAN get cold, and you can see snow on the mountains in the distance. now suppose this was extended to a map which simulated a whole continent, like this map of europe: obviously, africa and the middle east arent gonna freeze over in the winter, but neither are spain, italy, or southern france, while scandinavia, northern russia, and iceland will become covered with snow, even though these regions will presumably use alot of the same grass textures (at least in the current specs of the game, as i understand it). now what sense would that make if, in winter, spain essentially became a glacier? there should be 2-4 different versions of each textures, or however many are necessary to simulate a realistic continent in each season, that show the transition of lower elevations and latitudes into higher ones. so while spain would stay the same in a map like this as you go into winter, northern france and southern england would become partially snowbound while scandinavia would freeze over completely. i noticed this particular problem in a map of the world in an AOM mod where northern canada and eastern russia were permanently snowed over, but scandinavia wasnt, at all times in the game

well i dont think the farmer would really just be doing nothing; he'd be working towards reseeding the farm (ie, building it) and then get right to work

as i said, im just giving an example as to how it could work. as an aside, i think that farms should look different depending on what civilization is using them instead of it always just being grain. this could work to the end of adding realism and historicity. like, just as a random and inaccurate suggestion, one civ could farm grapes while another farms grain and yet another farms some kind of herb that reminds me, could it also be possible that you could plant orchards as an alternative to farms? orchards could perhaps have a slower yield (the fruit, etc, needs to regrow over time) but only need to be planted once. in a sense, this would be less realistic because the fruit would regrow faster than it would in real life. its just an idea, really. this could maybe tie in to fruit trees that you find where the fruit is deposited at a farmstead and you then have the option to plant that kind of tree btw, how exactly are farmsteads, farms, corrals, and vacant lots gonna work? i get the idea with farmsteads--theyre like granaries in Empire Earth--but are farms, etc, otherwise built independently? for scenario design, can vacant lots be placed independently of a farmstead so that you could just have a random farm or corral set out in the middle of a field? do farmsteads work as dropsites? and are the foundations of farms and corrals set up from the farmstead or by workers?

as i said before concerning re-seeding, there could simply be an option in the game to reseed farms indefinitely as long as you have enough resources to do so. this way, you have one person working each farm, they go and do that forever, while you have other guys chopping down trees so that you can keep reseeding those farms incidentally, i think the cost of planting and reseeding farms should be slightly disproportionate to their cost. here's a rough outline of how farming, its cost, and its efficiency could work: by default, lets say that a farm will cost 80 wood to plant and replant, and provides 150 food. this means that a single farm will provide enough food for 3 villagers (i know there's no dedicated villagers, but this is just an example) before having to be reseeded, and thats three villagers that could be tasked to a forest to gather more wood to reseed the farm. your villagers at the farms at this point will gather food at a rate of just 1 unit of it per second after your first upgrade (say, Irrigation), your farms will still cost 80 wood to seed and reseed, but will provide 200 food and you can now gather food at a rate of 1.5 units of food per second the second upgrade will add a bit more food to the cost but make it more efficient: it now costs 100 food to plant a farm, but it provides 250 at a rate of 2.5 units per second the third and final upgrade adds to teh cost again (120 wood) but now provides 300 food before having to be reseeded

nah, id go with vacant lots (perhaps designated by small fences and including a small gate/opening on each side) instead. this may be a nostalgia factor for me: in Empire Earth, what you did was build a granary and then your farms appeared around it, as long as it wasnt obstructed. this will also prevent people from just building a million farms for the number of farmsteads, i think it should instead be that you can build three of them on particularly fertile maps (iirc, one of the random maps thats being made is "fertile crescent"), two of them on standard maps, and only one on unfertile maps like deserts. if possible, there should also be changes to the farms themselves where you cant build them on certain terrain (like solid rock); this would add to realism and, on certain maps, force you to do what people really do in those situations and raise animals instead of crops

hey, late reply to this thread, but i would like to present the idea that there are unit classes for animals as well, which change depending on what the "gaia" player of the map is, either by which civilization is used, by biome, or by continent. this way, there's only archetypal animals as units but they are changed via encoding so that (generally) the correct animals are presented if you all want, i could come up with a good listing of animal archetypes

to give an idea of how that could work, in Empire Earth 2, there was an option on construction buildings where, in addition to queuing units to be built in a certain order (say, either 1 swordsman over and over or maybe 2 swordsmen, a spearman, then another swordsman and repeating in that order), you could also press a button that would allow you to continue training that queue of units indefinitely as long as your resource stockpiles and population allowed it, this way, you wouldnt have to queue up a dozen units at a time and then go back after it was done in order to make a large army incidentally, in regards to population, there's only gonna be 200 units per player, right? i dont really disagree with that, but there should be an option for scenario design to allow more or fewer units (i think the ultimate maximum should be 500, though)