oshron

though i dont want to lump many civilizations together, i think i may try to just make a collective "First Nations" faction (Canadian American Indians) and make each major god focus on one of the more common or more famous members of the First Nations and tribes closely associated with them. at the moment, though, ill just focus on the 18 that are currently listed down

how 'bout this: Learning Campaign: Unit Movement You are a Roman commander who has been given the task of leading an expedition into Gaul. Recently, the area has fallen back under the control of the local barbarians. Your task is to remove them from power and re-established a Roman presence in the area. But first, you have to move your advance troops there. --learn how to move your basic soldiers and about troop movement and formations; the scenario ends with a roadside skirmish with some gaulish celts Learning Campaign: Economy and Buildings Now that the Gallic guards have been defeated, you must restore the Roman settlement. Build a Civic Center over the old Gallic settlement and establish an economy and a small army in preparation of the operation. --learn how to build basic structures and about gathering resources; the scenario ends when you have 5 of each unit available to you Learning Campaign: Combat Now that you have a small armed force, send out some of your troops to hunt down the Celts in the area and kill them. Then, hold back a Celtic counterattack and destroy their fortified base. --learn the basics of in-game military and what units are used best against what other types of units --learn how to effectively defend yourself by building Outposts and Walls --learn about the uses of professional soldiers (Super Units) against citizen-soldiers --learn how to advance to the next Phase --learn how to use machines to lay siege to a city or base; the scenario ends when you destroy the Celtic Civic Center

well i asked around on a history forum that i frequent for ideas on demigods, and here's what i now have for demigods. these only include new additions: Medjay (Ra's demigod, elite nubian security archer) "Zealot" (Christian) Morningstar (Jehovah's demigod) Pil Malhamit (Tanit's demigod, war elephant archer)* Gibborim (Yahweh's demigod, hebrew warrior protected by God) "Iron Chariot" (Dagon's demigod, canaanite chariot team that was referenced several times in the bible) Saravan (Persian, sassanid-era multipurpose cavalry, meant to compliment the paighan that serves as the persian mainstay infantry here) Anusiya (Ahura Mazda's demigod, the legendary persian immortal) Pil Jangi (Zurvan's demigod, indian war elephant that barrels through enemy lines) Pohiri Ihe (Makemake's demigod, Rapa Nui spearman)* * these two actually arent new, but i now just have better names for them the units with their names in parentheses are ones with english names; i still need to get civ-appropriate names for them i also had a realization earlier: theres a much better aztec infantry swordsman that i can include than the macquital, and its more accurate, too: the Quauhololli, which will fill the same role but uses a CLUB instead of a SWORD. its more fitting for a mainstay infantry commoner than a noble warrior. besides, macquital were pretty much reserved for the jaguar warriors. i also found out about another aztec weapon, the Huitzauhqui, which is also a club, but with inlaid obsidian edges much like a macquital. i decided to make this the unique major god technology of Tezcatlipoca, who is the god of obsidian, and made it so that he emphasizes melee infantry EDIT: i just found out! since ive redone the japanese timeline to go from 250 to 1185, i can now include benkei, who was born in 1155 and died in 1189! the japanese could be a heroic civilization yet!!

i still say that it would just be easier to do a typical--and entirely fictional--roman settlement in gaul just for the purposes of educating the player, since the pre-imperial romans are the most rounded civilization and are the entire basis of the game

i think i may not have said what i meant properly. the idea with an auto-explore function wouldnt be that a unit is automatically diverted from your forces but that you as the player can individually select a unit (say, a cavalryman) and click on an "Explore" button that automatically sets him off to explore the map for you without having to be periodically commanded to do so. you could explore the map yourself by repeatedly having an infantryman or cavalryman explore whatever blackmap or fog of war that you want, or if youre lazy or want to devote your attention elsewhere, just tell a few of your guys to explore the map randomly so that they uncover everything without any real guidance. while exploring, they wouldnt really attack anything, but there could also be a "Search and Destroy" function(also like in EE) where they would explore and automatically attack any enemy unit or building that they come across while exploring

i think i figured out how the leonidas/themistocles scenario could work: after three in-game days, a cinematic starts up that details the death of leonidas and the spartans and explains that themistocles then moves the navy to salamis and, in october, the persian fleet arrives and themistocles defeats them

well, as i said, it would also be good for later in the game, like at the very end, if you have the game set up so that you have to completely obliterate your enemy, no villagers or soldiers left whatsoever. in empire earth, what i would do in that case on random maps is just delete all of the land units that i had before and then pour all of my resorces into making helicopters, which i then set to explore the map, scouring the entire playing field in search of those enemy units and setting to shoot on site.

oh, another thing that i think should go in should be an "Explore" function. i LOVED this feature in empire earth, but thats pretty much the only RTS ive ever really seen it in; AOK and AOM lack it. that actually really annoys me about those games: you have to periodically tell your scouting units--scout cavalry, pegasi, whatever--to continue exploring and physically TELL them were to go. with empire earth, you could just train a scouting unit, say, a hot air balloon, and just tell it to explore and it will search the map on its own. this was also really good for very late in the game when theres only a few enemy units left that are hiding in the tiny spaces of map you dont have line of sight for, you can set your explorers to attack any enemy they find and just send EVERYTHING out to scour the coyuntryside anyway, i think there should be a function like that for 0ad. itll also take away the from micromanagement that you guys are working to lessen

minoans were just an idea. what id REALLY like to get is a proper north american native faction to kind of compliment the vikings (basically, quebec and labrador natives) as opposed to minoans or maybe a hunnic faction. the problem is that there isnt much in the way of mythology for any of them as far as im aware. and id only introduce another faction if i could get two so theres 20 instead of 19 EDIT: it just occurred to me that pretty much all famous vikings meet the criteria and previously established timeline for the norse faction. do you guys think i should make the norse a heroic culture instead of a chivalric one? EDIT 2: oh, and here's the major god bonuses that ive come up with so far: 1. Blessing: Toutatis’ bonus; the heroes and demigods of Toutatis are protected by the god from enemy God Powers. They are completely immune to enemy God Powers that target individual units and are less affected by God Powers that affect everything in an area. 2. Chinampa: Chalchiuhtlicue’s bonus; the followers of Chalchiuhtlicue are capapble of building unique Chinampa aquatic farms in addition to regular Fields. Chinampa are functionally identical to Fields, but they can only be built on shorelines and there is no limit to the number of them that you can have per province. 3. Colosseum: Mars’ bonus; the worshippers of Mars can train their demigod units, the Centurion and the Gladiator, from the very beginning of the game. However, each of their demigods are 25% weaker in all aspects until they can be trained normally. 4. Crystal Towers: Beira’s bonus; the followers of Beira are capable of building unique Crystal Towers in addition to regular Outposts and Wall Towers. These towers are practically impervious to attack and can be built out in the field like Outposts, but you can only have five to a province (or five for every Civic Center you control). 5. Deceivers: Lucifer’s bonus; the followers of Lucifer can train special Deceiver hero units instead of Crusaders. Deceivers, like Crusaders, can convert enemy units to your side, though to greater effect than the Crusader, but they have poor health and attack power. 6. Destiny: Thor’s bonus; the Jarls that worship Thor are capable of performing a special suicide attack against mythological units. However, only one Jarl can use this attack at a time, and only once every five minutes. 7. Emulation: Kronos’ bonus; whenever the Shamans of Kronos enter battle, they will be transformed into ferocious cave lions to fight. They will remain cave lions for one more minute after becoming idle again, and then transform back into humans. 8. Erebus: Hades’ bonus; whenever one of Hades’ followers is killed, there is a 40% chance that Hades will send the soldier back to the surface at the Temple as a Shade to fight again. 9. Expansionism: Quetzalcoatl’s bonus; the followers of Quetzalcoatl can build additional Civic Centers from the very beginning of the game. 10. Eyes of Odin: Odin’s bonus; as long as the followers of Odin have a Temple, Odin will send down his two Ravens, Huginn and Muninn, to scout the map for them from the sky. If Huginn or Muninn are shot down, they will reappear at the Temple after one minute so that they can continue scouting. 11. Flaming Arrows: Brigantia’s bonus; the projectiles of Brigantia’s citizen-soldiers, ships, siege, and buildings are ignited by the goddess the moment they are fired so that they do more damage upon contact with the target, especially to ships, siege, and buildings. 12. Mercenaries: Tanit’s bonus; the followers of Tanit can pay 1000 gold at any of their Civic Centers to immediately summon 10-15 mercenaries of mixed origin and random numbers of each to defend the town for them: Celtic Swordsmen, Libyan Pikemen, Iberian Javelins, Mauritanian Archers, Balearic Slingers, Iberian Sword Cavalry, Italian Spear Cavalry, Numidian Javelin Cavalry, and Canaanite Chariot Archers. Each of these mercenaries is a uniquely programmed unit and is not affected by the programming of the Northwest Semitic civilization, and each mercenary is especially powerful against other units of its class. After five minutes, the mercenaries will disappear and you will need to buy their services again if you want their protection to continue. 13. Mother: Rheia’s bonus; if an infantry citizen-soldier and a Female Citizen that worship Rheia are adjacent to each other and idle for five straight minutes, a free infantry citizen-soldier or Female Citizen will appear at your Civic Center for free. 14. Olympus: Zeus’ bonus; the maximum Favor limit of Zeus’ followers is doubled. 15. Plunder: Loki’s bonus; whenever Loki’s citizen-soldiers or demigods kill an enemy gatherer or resource drop-site, 20% of the resources used to create that unit are deducted from the stockpiles of the enemy player and added to those of Loki’s followers. 16. Slavery: Set’s bonus; when the worshippers of Set kill an enemy unit, there is a 25% chance that a free Slave unit will appear at their Civic Center. Slaves can be used for labor and resource-gathering, and have poor health and a weak attack. If a non-Egyptian player captures a Slave, it will be transformed into an infantry citizen-soldier. 17. Terracotta Army: Ying Zheng’s bonus; when the worshippers of Ying Zheng create a citizen-soldier, there is a 15% chance that a free Terracotta Warrior myth unit will appear at their Temple. Additionally, there is no limit on the number of Terracotta Warriors that can be received in this way, and there is a further 10% chance that, if a cavalry citizen-soldier is created, a unique Terracotta Chariot will appear as well. 18. Thousand Ships: Poseidon’s bonus; whenever the followers of Poseidon create a warship, there is a 10% chance that another warship of that same type will be created for free. 19. Vengeance: Izanami’s bonus; whenever one of Izanami’s followers is killed, there is a 20% chance that Izanami will send them back to the battlefield immediately as malevolent ghosts: heroes and demigods return as Goryō, sunken ships become groups of Funayūrei, and citizen-soldiers and Female Citizens are transformed into Onryō. However, one minute after returning from the dead, Izanami will call the ghosts back to the underworld and they will not be able to continue fighting. 20. Vestal Virgins: Vesta’s bonus; the Female Citizens that worship Vesta are completely protected from enemy God Powers and cannot be captured by the enemy, though they can still be killed. and here's the numbered standing for each civilization: Egyptians: 1/3 Celts: 3/3 - completed Mesopotamians: 0/3 Greeks: 3/3 - completed Norse: 3/3 - completed Cro-Magnons: 2/3 Chinese: 1/3 Aztecs: 2/3 Japanese: 1/3 Hindus: 0/3 Hittites: 0/3 Romans: 2/3 Christians: 1/3 Semites: 1/3 Persians: 0/3 Mandinka: 0/3 Slavs: 0/3 Polynesians: 0/3 EDIT 3: oh, and i finally got a demigod unit for thor! his unique demigod is the Væringjar (Varangian). though they were probably best known as russians and byzantine guards, the varangians were vikings at the core. at the moment, ive got them wielding two-handed bearded axes and have given them a large bonus vs. all mortal units. thats all fine and good, but id prefer to change it so that they have something more unique oh, and i also decided to change the norse drengr (their mainstay infantry) to Húskarl, because i just remembered thats what i had planned to have as their mainstay infantry before my harddrive crashed speaking of which, concerning the use of both old norse and modern norwegian....i guess thats just me being lazy thing is, not all of the units that i want to or can include for teh norse have an applicable or equivalent name in old norse, so i fill that in with modern norwegian if i have to. speaking of which, i may end up having that problem for the egyptians, because ive yet to find a latinized egyptian dictionary that can address alot of the units that i have for that civilization. the Mi-neb axeman was a stroke of luck, really

well its entirely possible that i could make the mod itself; my ultimate goal originally was to make the designs for the fun of it and then propose that wildfire games itself pick up the designs once parts 1 and 2 of 0ad are completed, by which time presumably all the designs for Godstorm would be completed. but now making the mod itself doesnt sound too far out there. the main thing that would stop me from working on it myself would be a lack of focus (i tend to work on something furiously for a month and then forget about it for a while and then start again) and a lack of modding expertise and modding tools. thats whats prevented me from making mods for other games in the past, whether it be AOM or AOK or the comparatively easy to mod Jurassic Park Operation Genesis. but since 0ad is gonna be so mod-friendly, that may not be the case this time around. and yes, you can use some of the aztec units. all of the ones i have down thus far are all true historical units, though their hunting dog, ballista, and ram are kind of stretching it.

update time. ive worked out a new table for each civilization that im listing down the civilization traits, units, and buildings of each civilization on directly based on the formats in the design document. so far, ive only done some work on the aztecs. since the aztecs will largely lack in the departments of cavalry, navy, and siege, they get every type of infantryman and they are stronger than those of other civilizations to compensate, utilizing razor-sharp and barbed obsidian weaponry Macuahuitl (Infantry Swordsman) a sort-of low-ranking noble equipped with a macuahuitl (aka macana), the Aztec's answer to the sword. im thinking that, because of the reported capability of the macuahuitl to behead a horse, theyll have a special bonus vs. cavalry units Tepoztopilli (Infantry Spearman) a commoner armed with a wooden spear that ends in an obsidian tip. im thinking that this guy will be the Aztec counter to infantry. Atlatl (Infantry Javelinist) this is probably the most famous Aztec weapon next to the macuahuitl. the Aztec javelin-thrower doesnt really use his hands to loose his darts; instead, he uses the special atlatl weapon, a javelin-thrower, to send his tlacochtli (throwing-darts or throwing-spears) a much greater distance than he would ever be able to with his hands. as such, im thinking that he could have a special trait allowing him to attack enemies from twice as far away as other javelinists. Yaomitl (Infantry Archer) there are several types of Aztec bow and arrow weapons, but i decided on the yaomitl because they are specifically designed for combat. they are barbed, obsidian arrows that the Aztec warrior fires with his tlahuitolli (bow) Tematlatl (Infantry Slinger) this one i have the least information on thus far. 'tematlatl' is the Nahuatl word for "sling", specifically referring to one made from the fibers of teh maguey plant. inciddentally, i decided on of the earlier Aztec minor gods would be Mayahuel, the goddess of the maguey plant, for the sole purpose of benefiting Aztec slingers. im thinking that their "default" units will be the Tepoztopilli and the Tematlatl; because they dont have cavalry, they wont be getting one at the beginning of the game to train from their civic centers, so perhaps this could be compensated by, like in AOK, giving them a Cuauhtli (Eagle Warrior) at the beginning instead of a cavalry unit, which, for the mythology mod, will be serving as the demigod unit available to all aztec players EDIT: i came up with an idea for an aztec siege weapon: Colotl (Ballista) this is actually quite a stretch, because i dont think the aztecs really had any siege weapons. this is more for balance than anything. "colotl" is nahuatl for "scorpion", and i imagine that this would just be a basic roman-style scorpion(teh siege weapon, not the animal). this could maybe go on the atlantis myth that the atlanteans had part of their empire in the americas, so this could be seen as a weapon adapted from an old atlantean design or maybe even captured weaponry (remember, this IS a mythology-based game). it was also the only applicable nahuatl word that i found that could be related to a siege weapon. EDIT: did some more research, and now the aztecs have two more units: Itzcuintli (Cavalry Swordsman) actually, this isnt a cavalier at all; its a hunting dog. while looking into wolfdogs for the cro-magnon faction, i learned that wolves were domesticated in america as well as in eurasia and saw an opportunity for the one and only aztec cavalry unit. at the momet, im planning for only the aztecs and cro-magnons to have dog units; the Coun unit that the celts have in 0ad isnt present in the mythology game speaking of the celts (and other factions as well), ive come up with some other units for them as well. but ill be getting to those in a moment. Temazatl (Ram) this is another stretch. since i named the aztec ballista after a scorpion (lol ) i decided to give them a ram unit as well that was named after a mountain goat. same basic story as with the aforementioned aztec scorpion oh! and i forgot their only warship earlier: Acalli (Light Warship/Bireme) this is partly fictionalized war canoe. i say fictionalized because the canoe is scaled up to be on-par with other warships, and in that way only is it unrealistic. its just a scaled-up version of a typical aztec canoe with half the people on it rowing and the other half firing arrows, not to mention whatever other soldiers are garrisoned on it. these would best be used en masse and are faster than other ships, so theyre kind of like skirmishing ships, i guess and heres some units from other civilizations that ive come up with: the Egyptians will definitively be having a spearman, a javelinist (one of the weapons used by the new kingdom was the "throw-stick", but i havent found out anything else about it yet), an archer (armed with the hyksos-derived composite bow), and a slinger. they also get a cavalry javelinist and archer, both of whom use chariots. their civic center units will be the spearman, composite bow, and chariot archer; the mainstay soldiers of the new kingdom egyptians used weapons that were derived from the hyksos that previously ruled over them. the new kingdom egyptians actually lacked in the departments of siege and ships, so they get only one of each: a siege tower and a river barge (the egyptian "navy" was largely river oriented, and most of their boats were transports, not warships), not counting their merchant ship. i also recently learned that war elephants were actually not utilized by the new kingdom egyptians, so they wont be getting that as a demigod. but i DID get their all-egyptian demigod: the Mi-neb, or Egyptian Axeman, partly based on their counter-infantry unit from AOM. apparently, the egyptians used axes to chop down the doors of temples and fortresses they were attacking because they didnt use much siege outside of ladders and the occasionally siege tower. so i actually decided to make the Mi-neb have a special bonus versus buildings not only to make him unique but also to help compensate for their lack of siege weapons. the Celts thus far have the Gaesata spearman, Iaosae slinger, and Carbanto javelin chariot. these units are all borrowed from the celtic units of 0ad. my idea here is that they will be the civic center units and therefore actually represent the celtic tribes themselves from before a proper unification while the other units that they can later build at the barracks and so on represent the more "civilized" or advanced soldiers that are more closely associated with arthurian myth: the swordsman, the archer, and the sword cavalry that serves as a sort-of primitive knight. they still have only two demigods to their name: Toutatis' Lambton Knight and Beira's Painted Warrior (trying to find better names for them). their ships and siege are still up in the air. the Mesopotamians have less definitive information to them. theyll be getting a swordsman (sickle-swordsman, to be precise), an archer, a javelinist, and a slinger. they also get at least one cavalry unit, another javelin chariot distinctly drawn by wild donkeys rather than horses. like the celts, their ships and siege have yet to be decided upon. i have pretty much nothing on the greeks thus far, but theyll be having more generic versions of their units from 0ad, like instead of "Thracian Peltast", its just "Peltast", and "Toxotes" instead of "Cretan Toxotes". but theyre otherwise all teh same. why mess with a good idea? theres more information on the Norse. their infantry are the Drengr, a technical swordsman that will variably use either a viking sword or a viking axe (though both are functionally the same), the Krokspjot spearman, and the Bueskytter archer. they have only one cavalry soldier, the Riddari, a swordsman who, like the Drengr, uses either a sword or axe. they get only one siege weapon, the Armbrost ballista (armbrost actually means crossbow). the vikings actually used all three of the siege weapons that are implemented in 0ad, but i could only translate a name for the ballista unit. the vikings have access to every type of ship: the Knarr merchant ship, the Snekkje light warship/bireme, the Skei medium/trireme, and the Drekar heavy/quinquereme. ive also got legit norse/norwegian names for all of their unique units thus far and have come up with some other details for them: the Berserker is now the Berserkr () and still rampages every once in a while; the Throwing-axeman is now the Kaster-askemann (literally 'throwing axe man') and has splash damage with his axes(functionally, he's a javelinist even though he uses axes) and is still only available to Odin; finally, Loki's Hersirs use either a viking sword, axe, OR spear (just for variety) and excels at fighting infantry. im still missing a demigod for thor. any ideas? the Chinese still have the Chu-ke Nu and Dragon Rocket that i brought up before, and nothing more has been though up for that faction im thinking ill give all the cro-magnons the Firestarter super unit, basically a cro-magnon raider armed with a torch, he throws it one at a time at range and then runs in to spread the fire by hand, he would be siege infantry, i guess. depending on how many other factions get war elephants, the cro-magnons may or may not get their own war elephants, which would probably be the aforementioned Anancus or otherwise some kind of mastodon. other than that, they get a spearman, a javelinist, a slinger, and the aforementioned wolfdog as cavalry. ill take your suggestion, aldandil, and just make the cro-magnon language english for simplicity's sake. theyll get only one true siege weapon, a battering ram, and a light warship comparable to the aztec war canoe. the Japanese will be getting a spearman, the Takeyari, an archer, the Ite, the Kidousei cavalry swordsman, and the Gunba Ite cavalry archer as basic units. i havent yet decided on their ships and siege. i also decided that Izanagi's unique unit will be the Yamabushi, a mountain hermit that supposedly has supernatural powers. Amaterasu is still missing a unique unit. i also decided to extended the Japanese timeline from the start of the yamato period to the end of the heian period, which covers all of classical japan and stops just short of their feudal era. thats all so far. none of the other civilizations have really been covered thus far. i DID, however, also change a few names: the Iron Age Hindus are now the Vedic Hindus, the Christians are now the Medieval Christians, the Soninke Muslims have become the more appropriately named Mandinka Muslims (in direct reference to the Mali Empire), and the Slavic Peoples have become the Migratory Slavs, directly based on teh slavic peoples from the migration period of europe. im also on the lookout for a slightly longer name for the polynesians and possibly for the cro-magnons, since ive taken to renaming teh factions with longer novelty names ive also got ideas for two other civilizations for an even 20: Shamanic Koreans (with their religion being native korean shamanism) and some form of Minoans, which would reimplement old ideas of legit cretan religion and mix it in with greek aquatic deities in reference to atlantis and some iberian influences in reference to the strong association with bulls that both the minoans and the iberians had. the minoans would be pretty much the only predominantly fictional civilization in the game, aside from possibly the cro-magnons.

i understand what you mean by having two front to work in the leonidas/themistocles campaign, aldandil, but i think that adds to the challenge of it. and plus, werent themistocles and leonidas fighting the persians at pretty much the same time anyway?

now that i think about it, there were special timed campaign scenarios in AOM; basically, youd reach a defensible area and arkantos or someone else would say, "we'll make our stand here! build up our defenses while we wait for reinforcements!" perhaps the leonidas/themistocles scenario could be like that; youd have to move leonidas and the greek army up the road to thermopylae and position themistocles and the athenian navy at whatever the right location is (i keep forgetting), and then a timer would come up, something like "DEFEND THE HOT GATES!! Hold positions for XX:XX minutes." and then there would be a timer and, preferrably, a day-night cylce going for howver many days thermopylae lasted with 5 or 10 minutes to each day, during which time you would be attacked by waves of soldiers both on land and at sea. this would probably be the best time for historical stretches, with mixes of soldiers rather than what was actually sent at the spartans with each wave, like the first wave would include immortals even though(i think) the immortals came in on the second day. this way, youd have to defend both places at once and, at the same time, hold your positions, like maybe there could be no less than 20 spartan hoplites and leonidas at thermopylae and 10 triremes and themistocles at salamis or wherever it was, so you cant go out and raid. speaking of the spartans, for the purposes of the scenario, i would suggest dropping it down to 30 spartan hoplites because 300 would just take up too much space on the map, imo, and would probably make the game lag. oh! i know! perhaps you could only control themistocles' ships and leonidas and the spartans for the battle, and the other greeks at thermopylae are computer players with pretty strong AI; in this way, you wouldnt be able to attack the persians yourself because youd have to keep the spartans there to defend the pass

yes, a roman tutorial campaign sounds good to me. and then in the second pack when (presumably) more legit roman cultures are introduced, there could be an extensive roman campaign pretty much covering their entire history by starting with pre-imperial romans and then moving on to the next stages of their civilization up through imperial rome and beyond for leonidas, what i had intended was him winning and becoming a hero by defeating the "invincible" persians just to make it easier to design the actual scenario. unless, of course, leonidas just had to survive for a certain amount of time, after which you lose control of him and he and the spartans go to fight the persians one last time, after which you have just themistocles and use him to defeat the persian navy

maybe there could be campaigns based on the individual heroes for each civilization, depending on how extensive the campaigns and wars they participating in were, for example, i would suggest against a leonidas or themistocles campaign since they really dont have much going for them in terms of length, unless you decided to do a "battle of the conquerors" type game mode a la AOK, in which one scenario would have you controlling the forces of both themistocles AND leonidas in tandem, and moving either from their original areas to reinforce the other would result in losing the scenario. it could also, perhaps, be a stretch against actual history with leonidas surviving. who knows? on the other end of the spectrum, there could be long campaigns based around the heroes that have more battles under their belts, like alexander and hannibal for the greco-persian and punic wars, respectively, because there were alot of battles to those

ive decided to start work recreating/recopying old information from this thread into a new folder for the game (ive officially decided that the title will be Godstorm). im gonna try to make it as much like the old version as possible, but if anyone has any suggestions as to how it could be made even better, please say so

well yeah, but you get my idea. another one that would be good with be mt. fuji. it would also be great if these were actually very, VERY large units that, if you want, your units could actually walk by but not interact with. my immediate thoughts on that idea are a 0ad mod that recreates teh Code Geass anime, so you see hundreds of futuristic planes flying over mt fuji in the opening cinematic. for shots further away, they would have to be scaled down by triggers

this occurred to me in the bath: it would be great for cinematics (assuming cinematics are a part of gameplay during campaigns and user-made scenarios) if there were editor-only objects that depict very large landforms or buildings. these wouldnt have any function for actual gameplay, but they sure take a pretty picture. it would be great to have a cinematic zoom in on a character overlooking an african savannah and you can see a detailed kilimanjaro in the background, or some roman generals look out over the channel from gaul and see the white cliffs of dover

for me its not so much that they cant be identified without the heroic glow, but i think that it helps, especially if theyre in a crowd of units similar to them, like boudicca among a bunch of celtic chariots. if possible, maybe it could be programmed so that only the player controlling them can see the heroic glow so that they can more quickly pick their heroes out of a crowd?

but visually will it be similar to AOM's heroic glow?

you mean like the characteristic heroic glow in AOM? that would be good

thats one thing i found kind of disappointing about the fauna for 0ad when i read up on that: only a percentage of the animals can be hunted for food. thats how it was in AOE and AOK, but i liked how it was in AOM where any animal you found could be killed for food, unless it was purely aesthetic like a whale or shark(the only consumable marine life in AOM were fish, of which there were only three kinds). i liked that, in desperation, you could go out and hunt dangerous animals like bears, lions, and wolves. thats one thing that i would change: make all of the animals edible another thing i think would be interesting would be to try to come up with a unique bestiary, or as unique as possible, for each faction that can be mixed and matched in the scenario editor. for example, the carthaginian bestiary would include african elephants and african lions while the iberian bestiary would include the spanish lynx. this is especially prevalent for my two RTS ideas, where pretty much the entire world is represented. and if there were maps that simulated environments for a specific culture, only the bestiary of that culture would be present(ex: only french and british fauna on celtic maps) i also think dragons should be consumable

oh, i HAVE backup methods; in fact, i have all of my work-in-progress books backed up(with hardcopies) and my gigantic library of pictures and music on seperate flash drives. i just never backed up the RTS stuff

im already planning to call dell, which provided my computer and has helped me with viruses and other malfunctions in the past, today if i can. whats actually quite fortunate is that teh RTS plans are the only thing ill really be losing if i cant recover the data. there were also many work-in-progress books i was writing on my laptop that are much, MUCH more important to me than the RTS designs and, thankfully, i made hardcopies of them recently, and writer's block has prevented me from writing much more in them, so thats not too bad of a loss now that i think about it, the biggest loss ill be experiencing is the loss of the major and minor gods for most of the factions. but i think alot of those were reposted here, so i may yet be able to recover those if i lose my data

bad news, everyone. my laptop's harddrive crashed and theres a possibility that i may lose all of the information on it. and since i never made hard copies of the RTS designs, both the one for mythology AND the modern era one, that will be the biggest loss. luckily, i DO have hard copies of all the factions, and some information for it all saved elsewhere, so it may not be as big of a loss as before i was just letting you know in case i lose all the information i had for it. if that becomes the case, we'll have ALOT of work to do getting it all together again