oshron

thats actually one problem that i noticed with empire earth 2; just like any other RTS, there was a definitive border, but it looked just like the blackmap that you had to expose to see more of the map and it never went away, so it could be confusing. if there's just a regular "blackmap" border, then it should be a strait line so that you can easily tell that thats where the map ends

say, how do you guys plan to get that whole "units on ships" thing to work? i know it really adds to realism and is certainly within capability, but will those units on board physically BE the units that you sent aboard, or will they just be generic models relative to the civilization that appear in relation to how many units are on the boat? (in AOM and a few other games, units being on a boat was signified by a flag flying from the mast, so i imagine the latter method would function in exactly the same way)

are those celtic ships? love the first one, it just looks so epic for some reason

why not make the edges of the map surrounded by...well, the edges of a map? like in this pic? (its too big to actually post here): http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/...ap_shepherd.jpg alternatively, there could be the option of making it either "blackmap" along the edges (btw, i really liked AOM's system where you could see how deep or high a valley or mountain was because of layers of rock an earth that are under the edges of the map, it adds a bit of realism and also helps the player to see where the limits of the map are) or making it have stylized map edges that could possibly change with the dominant biome or at will (so the player could make it so that, if the map edges are selected, they appear in one of six variants depending on which one they like or what feel theyre trying to establish)

DPFAR: an idea occurred to me earlier. wouldnt it be cool if you could "make" canals for some maps of the game? by that i dont mean actually designing a building that literally carves out part of the map as water, but instead that, in the scenario editor, you dig down into the ground to make water and then cover it with a special "terrain" that can be destroyed by the player's citizen-soldiers. instead of actually being terrain, it merely replicates teh appearance of terrain (perhaps for many different regions, such as sand, grass, snow, and maybe even solid rock). this "terrain" should ideally be able to be walked over by land units, and the attack animation for this particular building would be the unit digging with a shovel instead of actually attacking it with a spear or sword. by removing the "terrain" you can uncover teh water and form a river that ships can move over. this would work well for recreations of the mediterranean to open up passage in the same place as the suez canal today, or the panama canal for any maps that simulate north america another idea that occurs to me is a sudden possibility for bridges and tunnels (though bridges may not work so well): instead of actually creating the tunnel itself, there's a special neutral entrance building that can be used by all players that teleports units that approach it to the other opening, unless you plan for events to take place in the tunnel (i think it would also be a good idea to make some "indoor" areas, but thats beside the point) thoughts, anyone?

iirc, the ancient greeks stabbed boars while hunting with spears

lol, i guess that pretty much sums it up i made that comparison because, iirc, it was archangels that destroyed sodom and gomorrah. in short, you dont want to @#$% with them if you have the choice buuut, for the purposes of the game, they would, of course, be powered down and not at all invincible like they are in the bible. theyd still be among the most powerful christian myth units, and flying gives them an added advantage, but i dont think theyd be any more powerful than the mesopotamian pazuzu or the semitic ziz (which are both flying MUs as well) EDIT: any ideas for which patron saints i could use as minor "gods" for the christians, as long as we're on the subject?

for the record, i plan to only use the aforementioned cherubs and archangels as myth units; all other angels that are mentioned would serve as minor "gods" (and one major "god" if you count lucifer ) as i always understood it, cherubs were basically like God's footsoldiers while archangels could, i guess, be called "problem-solvers" (kinda like the "state alchemists" from the anime 'Fullmetal Alchemist'; theyre brought out when the government has had it with people's bullshit). so, fittingly, cherubs are available very early while archangels come in very late

the cherub and archangel myth units are meant to be generic, nameless angels in the same feel as the regular mortal soldiers while the important angels like gabriel and michael function as minor "gods". btw, the cherub isnt the fat little winged infant that its usually depicted as, its a fierce warrior of God that flies low to the ground and uses a sword, while the archangel is a legitimate flying unit that attacks from above. i think i'll be going over the christian pantheon again and switch it up so that named archangels/seraphim are the late-game gods while patron saints replace the earlier ones. also, the idea of giving angels and whatnot to lucifer is kind of that those would be angels that are deceived by the devil and join him in rebellion against God thats definitely a possibility; minor gods specific to a single major god arent uncommon yeah, im mostly giving them djinn as myth units (also note that, in islam, the devil--Iblis--is held as a wicked djinn) to emphasize their muslim aspects while the rest are filled in with native african units, going outside their normal range only when necessary; im trying to give them as many legitimate west african creatures as possible, so they'd probably get something along the lines of a catoblepas as one of their MUs

pentagrams are associated with the devil. hellhounds actually appear in numerous european legends, but giving them to the christians seemed the most fitting.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellhound and its not JUST a hellhound that could be summoned, just an early-game christian myth unit; teh hellhound was just the only one that came to mind when i was typing that before. also note that i actually plan to make it so that both Dieu (i renamed Jehovah to give Him the french name for God, since the christian language will be rendered as french) and Lucifer can acquire the hellhound unit because of the obvious association of hellhounds with hell, but also because there's some thinking that hellhounds are actually used by God, not the devil, to keep the souls of the wicked from escaping hell thats very true, but remember that i have to consider the other civilizations as well. lucifer's pentagram is just the only one that ive put down so far i plan to give as many overtly bible-based powers and other abilities, creatures, etc to the christians, but i have to leave a fair number of other supernatural events and natural disasters aside for the other civilizations, and be creative whenever possible: i made one of the late-game greek god powers "solar flare", and as i envision it, that could very well look like the power of God raining down on sodom and gomorrah. maybe i'll make it so that the christian hero unit, the crusader, generates favor whenever he converts an enemy unit (but only a small amount). and only mortals can be converted, so no getting heroes, demigods (super units), or myth unitsbtw, the christian myth units that i have down so far are: Antaeus (based on the divine comedy), Archangel, Basilisk, Cherub, Cockatrice, Fiery Serpent (subject to change), Furies (based on the divine comedy), Gargouille, Hellhound, Leopard (based on the divine comedy), Peluda, Quinotaur, Salamander, Tarasque, and Unicorn yknow, i just realized that a fair number of those myth units are french in origin, and french is gonna be the christian language here EDIT: i finally added the last myth units for the celts; before they were missing a few terrestrial MUs where they had only naval ones before. now, they have these myth units: TOWN PHASE: Pech, Grindylow, Bogeyman, Banshee, Selkie CITY PHASE: Questing Beast, Knucker, Lambton Worm, Jack-in-Irons EMPIRE PHASE: Cu Sith, Green Knight, Lake Maiden, Dullahan, Niseag LEGEND PHASE: Redcap, Water Giant, Leprechaun, Aughisky, Wyrm

no problem at all as far as im concerned; it IS important to maintain historicity

the current idea for christians gathering favor is through "Mass"; all of their units generate favor indefinitely as long as they exist, but just at a very slow rate (so with all of the starting units that you have at the beginning of a a random map--what, four melee, four range, three cavalry?--you would get one unit of favor every ten seconds or so) so if you wanted to get favor faster, you would have to make more units. for the semites as a whole (which includes the israelites), they give Offerings to gain favor, and ive decided that the Mandinka favor generation method will be Prayer pretty much identical to how the greeks got favor in AOM (here, they get it from a theatron) as for christian god powers, the only one that i have so far is "Pentagram" for Lucifer, which summons one early-game christian myth unit to fight for the player (such as a hellhound). for the record, youre probably not gonna see many of the plagues of egypt as christian or semitic powers because im actually giving those to the egyptians

actually, as i understand it, egyptians simply accepted christianity when it started out--the coptic church was teh first large-scale christian movement before it became the roman state religion, iirc. but pretty much, yeah. well, yeah. for the game, "minor gods" that arent actually gods are referred to as such. for example, i redid the chinese pantheon earlier today and not all of their major AND minor gods are even deities. in fact, i think the only one of their major gods thats actually a god is Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, who is more of a culture hero than a god in any case. when a being that is often held as divine or is otherwise very important to that religion (for the christians, like Jesus and Lucifer as major "gods" alongside Jehovah), they arent called a god in the game. for the purposes of programming, they function exactly teh same as an actual god for another civ (say, Athena) and are referred to as such in the coding for simplicity's sake, and would probably still be referred to as minor gods as a blanket term even if both choices given to you were spirits or prophets or angels instead of actual deities. so even though Lucifer/Satan is treated as a god for the purposes of the game, he is not described as one in-game and is still "the Devil", whereas Jesus is "the Son of God" and Jehovah is "God of omnibenevolence" (thats the best descriptive term i can think of without calling him "the One True God" since his jewish and muslim equivalents are also presented; for the record, even though Jehovah, Allah, and Yahweh all refer to the same deity and not seperate gods, they are treated seperately in the game based on how those different practicioner's interpret their version of God and also based on their actions in their parts, so Jehovah is the omnibenevolent God of the new testament while Yahweh is the more vengeful God of teh old testament/torah. i dont yet know enough about his role in the koran to effectively described what his differences for the mandinka would be from the semites and christians) wow, that was a long side-note! for the last part there, as i said, they would still function in the same way as the actual gods of another civilization even though they in all correctness are not true gods. changing it to say things like "major power" or simply "patron" may be possible, but i dunno. also note that i already use the term "patron" quite frequently for major gods so that there's mention of major gods within a civ being the "patrons" of different peoples or aspects within that civilization. for example, the mesopotamians are technically divided into three seperate mesopotamian peoples: Marduk for the Babylonians, Ishtar for the Sumerians (even though Ishtar is actually her babylonian name and not the sumerian; i just think it sounds better ), and Tiamat for the Assyrians (the assyrians, with their genocidal reputation, being cast as the mesopotamian villains here). with the semites, theyre divided with Tanit (phoenicians/carthaginians), Yahweh (israelites), and Dagon (canaanites). those are the only two civs that come to mind at the moment, though, but methinks theyre good divisions

no problem

pretty much. ill try to give an example based on my mythology mod: for the mythology mod, its planned that there are four to six false factions for each civilization, but those can be given to any civilization. suppose, for instance, that you wanted to play as werewolves, which are a slavic false faction, but really like the greek civilization. instead of having to play as slavic werewolves, you could instead play as greek werewolves, where all of your regular units are werewolves and your buildings have a wolfish theme to them, but all of your unique mythological units, technologies, and god powers are still greek, so youd see werewolf infantry fighting alongside cyclopes, for instance. alternatively, you could have another human false fact, say, the atlanteans (which are intended for the greeks) and instead make it so that they go over the egyptians so that, while your civilization LOOKS greco-roman, the gods that they worship are egyptian i hope that cleared things up

EDIT: aldandil posted while i was still typing the main reasoning is that, to someone who is not a christian, jew, or muslim, those faiths are false and tantamount to the mythology of ancient greece and egypt. besides, shinto is still practiced in japan--by more than 119 million people, i might add!--and i dont see any objections to that. a main point of this is to present mythology and religion from all over the world, and that's exactly what is being practiced here. and the christians, muslims, and jews fought against "pagan" civilizations for centuries: in addition to crusades against muslims in the middle-east, there were crusades against pagans in poland-lithuania; mesopotamia and persia had their own native religions before being conquered by muslims and converted to islam; and the israelites quite famously fought against the canaanites, who were not jewish. if anything, it would be more of an insult NOT to include them when such obscure mythologies as the inca and the slavs are included! by definition, "mythology" refers to the religious texts and tales of a particular people or religion. therefore, the Bible, the Torah, AND the Koran are all mythology, just very widely practiced mythology, the same as how roman paganism was very widely practiced before the fourth century. nothing but the utmost respect is given to ALL of those monotheistic factions without exception EDIT: on another note, it would make no sense to include atheism as a faction because it is literally the belief that there are NO gods in any way, shape, or form. i'd also like to clarify that, for the monotheistic factions, their only real gods are their major gods (ie, Christian Jehovah, Mandinka [Muslim] Allah) while their minor gods are instead beings held as being divine or otherwise very important to the religion, such as angels, prophets, and patron saints

right. the idea is that there's a few false factions to be applied for each civilization even though they can be used on any civilization

i actually really like those on-the-ground pics; it reminds me alot of empire earth i think the player should be allowed to zoom in considerably (even if that means the textures dont look as good), but actually walking around on the ground seems to be FAR too complex for the game, especially since that isnt the focus. one of the things i liked about empire earth was being able to zoom in on the units on the ground and get right in the action. again, it made the textures look rather poor, but youll more often than not be commanding from the third-person bird's eye view because you can see more. getting right down on the ground was really good for cinematics, and, for the record, AOM skirted the problem of low-quality textures and models by not only letting the player zoom in only a bit (like in AOK) but also made it so that there were special models and textures that the game only used during cinematics, so a low-quality arkantos in normal gameplay became a detailed, epic-looking atlantean admiral in cinematics

one of the ideas with false factions is that they could be used for any civilization, and not just one that they are closely related to, so while the etruscans would be INTENDED to use greeks, they could go for whatever civilization. used in conjunction with this would be editor-only super units to make a civilization more unique. for example, (and im using NO research for this) suppose there was a pictish/scottish false faction and you apply it to the celts. instead of having the celtic unique units, changes set up in the editor by the player make it so that they, instead, get a "Woad Raider"-like unit like in AOK. this could also potentially be used to simulate civilizations at later points in history, perhaps for an alternative historical perspective so you could have the same civilizations but in a present-day setting, so, say, a roman horseman could be replaced by a modernized roman centurion on a motorcycle, and a roman ballista becomes replaced by a tank, like that. it can also go for early-modern, so some ranged infantryman unit could be replaced by a man wielding a primitive firearm so, for false factions, the idea is more that every unit and building is programmed to be changed for that civilization even though the civilization theyre inspired by or are meant to complement may or may not have a unit like that. in this way, even if its a bit historically inaccurate, theres options for every civilization: want to play as australian aboriginals but like all the traits of the romans? no problem! like that.

lol, i guess i shoulda defined that the idea behind traits is that theyre inherent advantages that a major god grants to the civilization and that remain for the rest of the game. for example, the Celtic major god Brigantia automatically gives more armor and hunting prowess to her soldiers. so that means that her soldiers receive less damage than the units of other civilizations at the start of the game (and this also adds up with later improvements that cost resources to research) and also that theyre better hunters than those of other civilizations at the start of the game (so where it would take another civ three hits to kill a boar, brigantia's celts would do it in only one) of course, that example is a very rough approximation

why, thank you! any ideas for what can fill out the egyptians?

hey one of the ideas i came up with while making designs for my mythology mod idea is the concept of "false" civilizations, that meaning civilizations that don't really have enough going for them to be independent civilizations or that are outright fictional but could still be useful for scenario design. basically, when a certain technology (lets say, "Dinosauria") is enabled for a civilization in the scenario editor, all of the units and buildings of that civiilization will remain functionally the same, but all of their appearances will be changed. for the example with "dinosauria", lets suppose it was applied to the hellenes. therefore, you get units like "Dinosaur Spearman" and "Dinosaur Catapult" and all of their buildings have a primitive, jurassic feel to them, though they are still greeks and have all the technologies and whatnot that they do. it works most easily with humanoid creatures, so you could alternatively have one thats just generic "Savages" that turns everyone for a certain civilization into generic, old-movie-style caveman-savages while still staying as a civilization that your soldiers could encounter any opinions? if i was unclear on something, please say so

that would look stupid, and it would also conflict with the celts in my mythology idea, who use trees to get favor from the gods holy @#$%, that is awesome!

DPFAR: the egyptians are almost ENTIRELY complete! all of their mortal units (except for the Hekay magician) and buildings are completely filled in now. all that remains are their civilization bonuses (which would be inherent traits or special abilities that their units have no matter what gods they worship), a team bonus, and some details on their major gods (minor gods and mythological units still need to be sorted out) Osiris' traits are still missing, but they'll be focusing on agriculture and improvements to the pharaoh Ra's traits, bonus, and unique technology are missing Set's traits are missing any ideas?

yknow what would be a great tool for the editor? to be able to select terrain and everything on it on a map and then just move that terrain freely, leaving water behind and sheer cliffs where terrain is "broken", kinda like continental drift