oshron

well actually i wasnt planning to give the egyptians a standard bearer; the only use of arabic for the egyptians so far is in their El Naddahah myth unit (it means "the caller"), and thats mainly because that the authentic name for that unit its decided then: simply "Beast of Suez" it is hopefully, we'll be able to get a coptic or arabic name for it, but let's not stress over that right now

maybe ill drop the tjeku beast then. otherwise, we could try a coptic or arabic name

hey i figured out the favor generation method and, surprisingly, the team bonus for the japanese. they gain favor by building special Honden buildings (honden are the main buildings of shinto shrines intended as the residence of local kami) in a combination of the greek and egyptian favor generation methods. they get favor passively simply by having honden and can have up to 3 per civic center, but they can task up to 6 citizens per honden to make favor generate 5% faster for each one (so a total of 6 citizens worshipping makes the honden generate favor 30% faster). honden function similarly to temples, granting protection in an area where applicable, housing relics, benefitting from temple techs, and researching temple techs, but they cant train any units the japanese team bonus is Tamahagane. y'see, the japanese actually mastered steelworking much earlier than contemporary civs and used it mainly to make samurai swords. for the team bonus, though, i made it so that it benefits all types of weapons. their team bonus lets them teach their steelworking skills to their allies and makes their allies weapons stronger and reduces metal costs. not as creative as it could be, but its a start i also renamed the Na-Dene, so now theyre called "Mesoindians". yes, im cheating in this respect by making them a mishmash of different cultures, but to be fair, ive still tried to divide it into three general factions: eastern woodlands (specifically iroquois), pacific northwest (specifically haida), and great plains (especially sioux). i also chose an earlier time of amerindian history just after the paleo-indians (i HATE that term) when they would be less distinct, so its more like the three factions are just now diverging from one another into distinct cultures within a blanket culture

well fire should be how it starts out while deteriorating condition should be included in later patches or expansions

devote a fair amount of soldiers to gathering resources while i have one or two wall off the area. i usually play against the computer in any case

i think it would be easier to make them "use" metal even though they wouldnt actually have them; the idea of "crafting stone" is for scenarios and accuracy

my point remains valid. 0ad is still in the buggy, incomplete alpha stage; you can only expect most or all things to run without a hitch when they get to the beta phase

welcome to modern fiction, auron; avatar isnt the only one the have pre-existing content and elements

well how bout just a word for "animal"? i decided to make henkhiseswy ptah's "terrestrial" myth unit. he flies but low to the ground like the celtic pendragon and christian cherub, so he clears rough terrain, cliffs, and water but can be attacked by melee infantry (true flying units can only be attacked by ranged units), and i gave him a whirlwind as a special attack: he creates a miniature tornado that seeks out enemy soldiers and temporarily removes them from teh battle by lifting them into the air and spinning them around. they come out virtually unscathed, but its a useful power for if you want to simply preoccupy them or keep them from chasing you while you make your escape

remember, tzink, this game is still in its earliest stages of playability; you cant EXPECT perfection on the very first run.

well until an addition for tjeku comes up, itll remain as is. thanks for the wind spirit info; any ideas on a name?

cheats should by no means be available in ANY form of multiplayer game. but for single-player mode, you should have the option to turn cheats on and off.

tjeku it is then . i decided to give him to isis maybe ill just recycle my old wepwawet idea and give him to ptah

theres nothing wrong with the creature itself, but just to go with the whole language authenticity thing, it should have an ancient egyptian or coptic name, even if we have to make it up; we could just plug together "Suez" and the ancient word for "beast" and call it a day

i think you should name some of the cheats after the various alpha and beta modes (so one of them could be "argonaut" and maybe reveals all water on the map). perhaps you could name others after movies or books set in the period, so maybe one cheat could be "this is spartaa!!" and gives you a bunch of spartan hoplites, or another could be "videssos" after the harry turtledove series (which focused on pre-byzantine romans being transported into a fantasy world analogous to the byzantine empire) and maybe give you some kind of fantasy creature (i actually havent read the book, so that would require a bit of research). internet memes would be good inspiration, too; i always thought it was awesome that the instant win cheat in empire earth was "all your base are belong to us" aside from that, id look at all of the other AOE games for ideas for cheats. after all, 0ad is pretty much the spiritual successor to the AOE series

id gladly include it if we can produce a name. if all else fails, we can just bullshit up an ancient egyptian or coptic or even modern arabic name for it, and then toss it in as a much-needed naval myth unit. but not for ptah; i made sa-apep a naval unit and what he needs is a terrestrial unit. it doesnt even need to be an especially impressive one--ptah could compensate by offering a powerful godpower and great technologies (similar to artemis for the greeks, who has the erymanthian boar, comparatively weak alongside MUs from those other phases--the Minotaur and the Nemean Lion im not too sure about giving ptah a sacred bull, since the mesopotamians have gugalanna--cant really think how the two could be different. but that bull-scarab sounds interesting. ill look into that i'll keep this one in mind, but seems a bit too similar to the greek hamadryad an excellent idea! an elemental-type creature sounds like a good idea to me; there's wind-like creatures elsewhere in designs, but no actual embodiments of wind. is there a singular name for them?qebewy sounds a bit too complex and awkward to be practical (speaking of which, i may need to revise the hydra so it has less heads). no comment on henkhiseswy. shehbwy honestly doesnt sound like that good an idea, looks kinda like a toned-down version of a mesopotamian myth unit, pazuzu perhaps. those wind gods seem like the best idea at the moment

build up a defensive force and start gathering resources, get right to work building walls and towers so that i can build up further in relative safety until i feel confident enough to stage my own attacks

clarification there would likely be established with in-game history and unit descriptions, so Sa-Apep would be described as "Sa-Apep: demon-spawn of the snake Apep that hypnotizes enemies," and, as other examples, there would be things like "Khaty: jackal-headed warrior of Anubis" or "Mestyt: lion-headed follower of Sekhmet" and "Nau-Duaty: giant serpent-dragon of the underworld" i also decided to drop the winged giraffe entirely. since i transferred teh crocodile-ram over to bastet, ptah is now lacking a terrestrial myth unit. any ideas for what could go to him? i also decided to give the earthquake godpower to the mesopotamians in reference to the epic of gilgamesh (humbaba caused an earthquake at uruk that killed shamhat, one of the central characters)

trust me, they arent dead. if you get a thousand views and no comments, THEN you can say theyre dead. it may be that they just either have no input or dont know what it is youre referring to; you WERE rather vague

oh, yeah, roads would be a GREAT idea. thats one of the features that i loved in EE2; i just loved making roadways through my towns to improve efficiency and unique resources? thatd be a great idea. ive always thought some trade commodities would be cool as details if nothing else (like the aforementioned ivory) and that some resources would make excellent "replacements" for other resources, like maybe an obsidian resource that provides metal for scenarios set in lands without many metals (like if there was a mayan faction, something like that, where they didnt have iron or bronze or whatever)

i think that, like in empire earth, there should be options for how high you want the total population cap set, that meaning the GLOBAL cap for every player. for example, if you set it to, say, 500 and there were 5 players, every player would be able to get 100 units in total (assuming every unit took only 1 pop; having siege, ships, and cavalry would result in having less than 100 units). the population should be set in increments of 50 up to a certain point, then increments of 100, and then 200 or 500, with the absolute limit being two or three thousand in the entire game. it could also be that certain pop limits would only be applicable with a certain amount of players (so, for a standard 1v1 game, the limit could be just 500, while for an 8-12 player game would allow a capacity upwards of 2000. it could also be that the game could be set to redistribute the population of defeated players. i would also recommend these "levels" of territory: Colony, Developing, Satellite, and Capital. Colony would be the very earliest stages of a territory where only a few houses and economic buildings, not even allowing for their own military, while Developing is the one that first allows a "native" military to that territory. Satellite would be the highest level that newly conquered territories could achieve. Capital, as suggested, would be the starting territory and EVERYTHING would be allowed here. Capital territories that are captured become Satellite territories. you should be able to upgrade territories from colonies to developments to satellites first by building certain buildings (a farmstead, a barracks, etc) and then paying to upgrade it to the next level ill also bring up that i think is a good idea: when you capture a territory (by capturing the local civic center or razing it and building your own), you should automatically acquire all the non-military and non-defensive buildings in that territory; what choice do the regular citizens have than to submit to you? (lol, the anthem of a fictional imperialist state came up on my ipod just now ) however, the soldiers in teh area can still resist, so you dont automatically acquire any barracks in the area, so they can still be producing soldiers to act as a resistance, while you cant capture the towers so they have to be razed. walls should automatically be captured as well; they may be defensive, but theyre YOURS now, you control the inside ill also say that, at least for the scenario editor, you should be able to modify the borders of territories into any shape so that you could imitate a real state, province, or territory instead of always getting generic polygons (those are all fine and good for random maps, but who wants those when youre trying to recreate a realistic rome or greece?)

nice-lookin' map you got there

while it would be fitting of sekmet in her stories, i think i'll leave her godpower as acid rain--i may have said it before, but another unwritten rule is that each civilization is supposed to get around 2 "natural disaster" godpowers, the kind of powers that can pretty much completely destroy a town in one fell swoop. blood would be a far more passive godpower (its supposed to be like the plague of blood, where all of the water in egypt turned into blood), so itd probably go to an earlier god. candidates right now are Bastet, Ma'at, Sobek, Hathor, and Khnum. of these, hathor and khnum seem the most worthy to me, but thinking about it more logically, khnum makes the most sense since he's the god of the nile and the power has to do with water i also just remembered that we dont have an ancient egyptian name for the Apep-spawn myth unit. this could be remedied by just giving it apep's egyptian name and leaving out "spawn", though it would still be the same. i also think ill transfer the Ba-kapu (crocodile-ram) over to bastet because i cant think of anything for the winged giraffe, which also means that ptah needs a new terrestrial myth unit (since apep-spawn is naval). any ideas on that one? also, i went over it all earlier, and, minus those things i mentioned above, all of the egyptian myth units are down! thats quite an achievement in my book, considering egyptian mythology isnt as famous or as readily available as greco-roman or even norse, celtic, and chinese mythology.

i dont know that much about it either, but i was looking up some of its practices yesterday to try to get an idea as to what their favor generation method could be. meditation was the only idea i could come up with, though of course, it could be that the chinese could have a special hero that prays or meditates or whatever to generate favor by the way, i also came up with these various ideas: TECHNOLOGIES -- Urban Revolution: a civic technology that increases a civilization's maximum population capacity by 8%, but its only available to "urban" civilizations -- Irrigation: an agricultural technology that improves farming rates by 10% -- Wheel: a civic technology that improves the movement speed of civic units -- Plow: an agricultural technology that improves farming rates -- Metallurgy: reduces metal costs -- Written Language: speeds up research rates -- Salinization: reduces food costs (meant to be like salted and preserved foods) GOD POWERS -- Flood: raises the water level on the map significantly, drowning mortal units indiscriminately if they cant get away from the rising waters fast enough and rendering flooded buildings useless for the duration of the power. this also allows naval units to move over flooded areas, but theyll become stranded if when the flood ends -- Blood: transforms all the water on the map into blood, slowing enemy ships and halting all naval and shoreline economic actions. this is supposed to be like the plague of egypt and will likely go to one of the egyptian minor gods -- Locusts: borrowed from AOM (so not really an idea ), this would call on a swarm of locusts that would devour the crops in an area -- Firstborn: a "stealthy" god power (meaning its activation is not announced) that remains hidden for one minute, and then reveals itself, with an announcement of the plague and a visual effect like in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCXqHd4Bhwg . with that, every unit that has been created in the last minute is instantly killed, even your own (this is for balance) -- Exodus: dries up all the water on the map and forces all gates to open and allow passage, allowing all players to cross the ocean floor (unless theres some terrain that prohibits passage) and leave or enter enemy cities. at the same time, though, no combat can go on anywhere on the map. this is, of course, in reference to the biblical exodus. -- Plague: a more generic plague intended for the christians, this can be invoked on any enemy unit and thus infect them with the plague. theres no time limit on this one: invoke it in a populated area and you can infect the whole town. it can spread from the original host for five minutes, and linger at buildings and continue to affect units indiscriminately for eight minutes each. if youre not careful, you can infect your own units with it, too. its supposed to be like the black death. -- Rapture: clearly intended for the christians, this is kind of a last-resort power. you activate this anywhere and it starts the rapture, bringing all of the faithful (your citizen-soldiers and female citizens) into heaven, replacing them with favor. heroes, myth units, and super units arent affected just so that you still have some defenses. its meant for your last big push of the game where you make alot of super units, crusaders, and myth units for the final battle -- Trumpets: based on the Undermine power from AOM, when this is invoked on a wall, the sound of a trumpet is heard and the wall collapses. it can spread to other walls and defensive structures as well, and is in reference to the story of the walls of jericho falling at the sound of trumpets. this would go to the semites -- Sakura: a japanese power, this is invoked in a large area, and cherry blossoms will fall in that area and favor output will increase dramatically for a time. ive already decided that Sengen will get this power; it goes with her focus on favor output (plus, as the goddess of cherry blossoms and Mt. Fuji, what could be more fitting of her?) -- Blizzard: this is intended as a slavic power (the infamous russian winter that turned back napoleon and hitler), and causes a snowstorm all over the map that both slows down all enemy units and lowers their morale, basically a global version of Ra's Exhaustion power -- Wildfire: not sure which god or what civ this could go to, but it makes lightning strike in the center of a large area and spark a huge fire, spreading over the entire area and burning everything indiscriminately. it also spreads quickly: cavalry can escape, but infantry are doomed if they are too close to the center of it -- Earthquake: borrowed directly from AOM, this causes the earth to shake and topples buildings. units are hurt by it, but not as much as buildings, and fields are completely unaffected. not sure who could get this, but im kinda leaning towards japan (they experience earthquakes pretty much as frequently as california does)

perhaps; i was planning for the main basis of the chinese mythological elements would be both their folklore and taoism. that just came up on the spur of a moment, really