Thalatta

Indeed, but how historical seem to you many of these fortresses, and how much just a product of nostalgic AoE2 cloning? (something that I've seen discussed many times already). I don't think removing them from some civilisations, not only to make it more historically accurate, but to differentiate civilisations more, should necessarily mean to unbalance the game, but that balance should be found in their differences, otherwise it's just "similar vs similar" (agreed that it would take more work). On a somewhat different note: shouldn’t Germans not have stone walls? At least less so than Sparta (which eventually had, but late, and still this doesn't appear in the game). People are complaining already :P, and will even more when poorly garrisoned ships are stolen like a candy to a baby. Regarding damage distribution, I'd say leave it to the player to decide, by ordering the cards of the units garrisoned (and have some panel somewhere where you can set a default order, to greatly reduce micro). Calculations is something to test, surely in some mod first, and then decide, hard to know beforehand those details, but this is the only simple nice way I see to have siege engines do something that resembles actual siege, and use something more realistic and engaging than capture points (wasn't proposed by me, I just extended the idea to ships). EDIT: I misremembered, virtual combat was proposed for ships and normally garrisoned units, and I extended it to siege and proposed base garrisons in place of capture points:

That's why I still swear on having a non-controllable default garrison on buildings, ships and siege engines against which one has to enter in "virtual combat" that would act as capture resistance and turn around limiter, and would made boarding and siege make more sense

@NationGamer090 I think this has been discussed, it would be a nice addition, but I think there might be problems with pathfinding. Palisades and walls already work like a painting tool (just keep shift pressed), so that shouldn't be much of a problem, I guess. Regarding palisades, I never use them, are they used in MP? I think they should be the preferred defence building early on, but seem underpowered to me. I think they should be faster to build: for Spartans, a house costs 150 wood and is built in 50 seconds, while a palisade costing the same amount of wood is built in over 2:30 minutes. This seems unrealistic, given that houses are more complicated to build, but none of that is really a problem, the problem comes if they are, on top of that, not even used because they are mostly useless. Or maybe people don't want to increase defensiveness in the game.

And, I forgot to say, doesn't give unfair advantages, quite the contrary, unfair would be to force a group of people use an UI scheme that makes things harder for them.

Also, if some people prefer text and others icons, it would be great if both are menu options. This way @wowgetoffyourcellphone's improvements can stay under the text option, and if some day someone wants to do the icon variant, then that's added under the icons option, nothing is wasted and everyone is happy, I guess.

And is it possible to merge it with the other simultaneous thread? (Maybe not). The opposite happens to me... icons and numbers give me the vibe, a bunch of text boggs me down. Besides, in the text the numbers are written down also. Yes please. And simple ship ramming animations

Yes, but with textiles I didn't mean the product, but the natural resources you gather to almost inevitably end with textiles, so I used it like an easy to understand category. Maybe the correct name should be (natural) fiber. Also, for some types of food, like wheat, you have to plant, grow, sow, and process it to get bread and beer. Those are manufactured goods, and invented ten, maybe hundreds, of thousands of years after the simplest clothing, as was the process to separate the gathered ores from metals, although yes, they are not "manufactured" since they existed all along.

All that I think is one of the most important things to solve right now in the realm of stuff that can be off putting for new players. I agree with your edit later on: to show icons instead of text (and hovering on them would show the text), not only looks nicer but after a while one will interpret all that information much faster, which should be the point.

There's a silly detail: should it say 'Unlocks "Scale Body Armor."' or 'Unlocks "Scale Body Armor".'? I feel the 2nd one, not only because I prefer British punctuation, but because I guess the "." is not included in the tech? And to end with ".", like the other points. I agree with visual elements, that's why when "somehow showing if it unlocks another tech, unit or building would be nice" was mentioned I wondered if a small icon instead of bullet points could be something to be considered. Yes, I totally see it would be gameplay breaking, only a mod could consider something like this right now, but things like keeping or killing sheep for either textiles or food would make things like Corrals more interesting. Also, it would come from many sources: cotton, hemp, flax flower, silkworms, shearing sheep, and animals for leather or fur. Water is interesting, lots of city-building implications with that, although maybe not necessarily as a main resource, but as connected structures and auras, since location matters a lot. Also, what is nice about the main resources is that they are like categories: there are many types of foods, wood, stones, metals (and textiles), but only one type of water (which I would cluster with foods). Combining all this, a system similar to Rise of Nations would be nice: to have lots of different resources, but all falling into these 4 (5) main categories, the difference of gathering one thing or the other being some (small for starters?) bonus (or unlocking special stuff, eventually). This could also make things like Markets more interesting.

Anything to make these tooltips more readable, I enjoy. I'd like to see how those resistances on buildings get more readable. I agree with removing "level", and anything unnecessary for that matter. Unrelated: what is that star? Glory from Delenda Est? Why does it take that resource? I would have loved to see textiles as a fifth resource though, when thinking about all kinds of historical resources, the usual 4 and textiles seem the ones needed to cover most things. It seems to me it’s ignored because that’s what most RTS have done (and could have many sources, both animal and vegetal).

Is there a way to also show ranges of buildings that shoot arrows? To know where to place buildings. Ideally showing all these ranges when pressing something, while not cancelling the placement process.

Added slingers and javelineers to my (very preliminar) proof of concept with no bonuses (tweaked a couple of numbers from before). Following what I said before (Javelineers: high pierce attack, low crush defense, high dodging, Slingers: high crush attack, low defenses, added very high dodging), I get what you want: archers are more all-around (deal decent damage and have average resistance), slingers are strong against ranged units (and very weak, as I wanted), and javelineers are quite strong against cavalry (from a distance). Maybe there's something not quite right becase I didn't verify everything, it's a matter of fine-tuning.

Spartans would live and train at barracks from the ages of 7 (others say 14, maybe permanently from then on) to around 20. Then they would be admitted to the syssitia, to have mandatory meals in small mess halls. They are different things (always check the sources, for example Kulesza in Sparta: History, State and Society says that "Clauss (1983, 79), as well as Jones (1964, 153) believe that Agis planned to change the form of the syssitia, transforming them from intimate dinner clubs into large mess halls"). Regarding the Perioikoi, since they were mostly free in their communities, and Xenophon says "followed with him also many of the Perioeci as volunteers, men of the better class, and aliens who belonged to the so-called foster-children of Sparta, and sons of the Spartiatae by Helot women, exceedingly fine-looking men, not without experience of the good gifts of the state", they had time to train, I guess in their own barracks (still have to find a source on that). One can think the base game just conglomerates barracks (or wherever people trained) from all Sparta (or Lacedaemon, which is more encompassing). Outskirt camps are a bit weird, they had their own towns, and were considered part of the state, saying they were not citizens is a misleading simplification. Kulesza puts it nicely: "Formally speaking, the perioikoi constituted a part of the Spartan state (though the question remains whether they were still inhabitants of separate city-states; see Eremin 2002; Mertens 2002), which is reflected in its official name, the Lacedaemonians, which included both the fully enfranchised citizens (Spartiates) and the perioikoi. In my estimation, the perioikoi were both citizens of the Spartan polis and citizens of their own city-states, which justifies using the term “double citizenship” (Hall 2000). On the other hand, the perioikoi had no political rights, and thus were fully dependent on Sparta in the most fundamental issues, which is why they are sometimes described as “second-rate citizens” (Lotze 2000, 171–183, see Cartledge 2000, col. 582–583; Ducat 2018, 612)".

Yes, this is another yet another post about the Spartans. No, I’m not going to complain about broken Spartiates. A few things caught my attention when I started playing some weeks ago, and then I just went down a rabbit hole (things I usually do to myself). The purpose of me joining this forum was to write about this, but then other things got in the way. Also, recently “More Unique Civs: What can we do?“ was asked, I hope some of the following points give some ideas. I think it’s great to name things like “Limēn (Dock)”, but I’ll leave those details to Ancient Greek speakers. Then: PART I: Simple things that should be: -Tyrtean Paeans should be Tyrtaean Paeans: that’s a typo, and maybe the icon should be different because people will think it’s about some sandal tech. Of course it would be nice somewhere to add a small explanation of things. -Carrier Pigeons should be Phryctoria: Pigeons were used already by the 8th century BC (there’s a big issue regarding anachronical technologies in general). Systematic fire signaling would have been developed at the time of the game. -The Loom should be Loom Industry: the Loom has existed for thousands of years, while from the Classical period onwards there’s production on a scale beyond personal needs. -The Sacrificial Ritual icon should be changed: it’s the same as Kripteia, and shouldn’t seem to represent human sacrifice. -Spartiates should be Hoplites Spartiates: there could be Spartiates that were too old to be hoplites anymore. -Embolons should be Three-Finned Embolon: around the time of the start of the game, the triremes and two-pronged bronze rams appear, while the three-finned version appears around 400 BC, a bit more appropriate for such a late tech. -Gerusia should be Skias: Gerusia was not a building, but a council. They might have met in a Bouleuterion, but anyway, the building has Brasidas, an ephor, and Kripteia, overseen by the ephors, and the ephors formed a council independent from the Gerusia. I think Skias is a better fit since Pausanias says “they have built what is called Scias (Canopy), where even at the present day they hold their meetings of the Assembly”, which was made up of all Spartiates to elect the gerontes and ephors, and ratify their proposals (of course, many things are still discussed by scholars, Sparta is not as well documented as Athens). Figure 6 in https://books.openedition.org/pcjb/7647 shows how it would have looked like (search “Skias et Oikodoméma”). -Hellenistic Architecture civ. bonus should be Doric Order: it says “the Greeks used stone construction from early Mycenaean times”. This is confusion of the highest order. Those stones (Cyclopean masonry) have nothing to do with Hellenistic architecture, which corresponds to the Hellenistic period, starting with Alexander’s death. Maybe “Hellenic” was meant, referring to the preceding period, but their architecture had little to do with reusing those stones, just mainly for walls. And in any case, Sparta didn’t really reuse them, Athens and others did. To fix this: they had 3 orders of architecture, Doric (appearing before the game starts), Ionic (appearing a bit later) and Corinthian (appearing in the Classical period). Then, Athenians could have a Cyclopean Masonry civ. bonus for cheaper stone walls or something, and with Sparta they should start with a Doric Order civ. bonus (basically the only one Spartans used) for sturdy buildings (they were building temples with wood before that). And that’s it for the Spartans. Others could also have Ionic Order and Corinthian Order techs, but that’s another matter. -The Spartan Olympic Hoplite should be Hippeus (Royal Guard): this has been proposed already, but I have something to add. Hippeis (I’d add “Royal Guard” as translation), a designation of hundreds, are being ignored in favor of what would have been a handful. Besides, I think this is based on imprecise translations, since I’ve found variations stating either Olympic, great or public games (https://lexundria.com/plut_lyc/22/prr), and the original (https://scaife.perseus.org/reader/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0007.tlg004.perseus-grc2:22.4) says “a crowned victor of a contest”, only later specifying the Olympics for a particular warrior. -The Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia should be Athena Chalkioikos: I’m being nitpicky with this one since both were important, but it was Athena, not Artemis, the polyadic (protector) deity of Sparta, and it would be only in the 2nd century AD that her worship would be overshadowed by that of Artemis Orthia (check Guy Dickins’ The Hieron of Athena Chalkioikos). Artemis’ cult could give Spartiates stats enhancement bonus (it was related to the Agoge, and notorious for the diamastigosis, a ritual flagellation event). Athena’s cult was more civil in nature, and could give a metal bonus (apparently related to metal workers, chalkioikos means bronze house, I think the building had bronze outside). Simple things that could be: -Cartography could be Geography: cartography has existed for thousands of years, it was geographical knowledge that made maps more precise, and Erathostenes, at the time of the game, was the first to use that word. -Naupegoi (Shipwrights) could be Neōsoikoi (Shipshed): shipwrights are not new to the time of the game. Spartan shipsheds were probably built at this time, and this would work well for Athens and others also. -The Persian Stoa could be the Wonder: I’ve read there’s some unused model. Pausanias says “The most striking feature in the Agora is the portico which they call the Persian Stoa, because it was made from spoils taken in the Persian Wars”. Figure 18 in https://books.openedition.org/pcjb/7647 shows a diagram of it. -Laws of Lycurgus could be Great Rhetra: Great Rhetra is the name of their constitution, the info tip could say it’s the Laws of Lycurgus, as he is already mentioned in other places, like the Catafalque Bonuses icon. It still refers to the thankfully renamed Champion Hoplites and Olympic Champions, thus all this has to be rephrased now. -Unlock Neodamodeis could be Helot Emancipation: emancipation is how Xenophon constantly describes it. Brasidians was also proposed I think, but that refers only to the Helots that served under Brasidas. -Lycurgan Military Reforms could appear only once: in Catafalque Bonuses it says 2 times Lycurgan Military Reforms, I’d write it just once, since both are infantry cost bonuses, and could be grouped under the same name. It still refers to Citizen Infantry Spearman and Champion Infantry Spearman. -Lycurgan Military Reforms could be Melas Zomos: just a detail in line with names "teaching" something interesting, and Lycurgus already appears, as mentioned. The bonus lowers hoplite costs, and melas zomos, or black soup, was the staple of Spartan cuisine, simple and frugal, that other Greeks apparently mocked. -Ritualistic Exercise (in place of Spartan Women) civ. bonus could be Bibasis: Bibasis was a difficult Spartan dance done by both men and women, and made Spartan women capable of notorious physical feats for which they were very proud of. I meant this for the Spartan Women, but it would work for Citizen-Soldiers also, as referred to now. Changes that have been already proposed: -Remove the Theater: something like that was built later in Roman times. Many state that the Skias was the oldest known odeion in ancient Greece (I guess the wooden theater some were mentioning), but this could be a misconception from some Medieval dictionary. A generic Odeion building could be also added, if they’ll eventually do something (cultural buildings and techs could influence expansion and capture times). -Add Agiads and Eurypontids civ. bonus: although my naming, the ability to train two Heroes at once has been discussed a lot. One of them could be garrisoned for Hero bonuses to work to ensure one king stays in Sparta (it doesn’t matter if non-king Heroes are trained, one can imagine that one has to stay for other reasons). I’m not sure if there’s a problem with regicide mode, losing one of them should be losing, making training an extra one in regicide mode a more dangerous choice. One could get nitpicky about not having 2 kings of the same dynasty at the same time, but that’s too much, why not complain about Han vs Britons then, or training Heroes in the wrong chronological order. -Add Oliganthropia civ. bonus: reduce maximum population (-10% has been proposed, maybe applied only to Spartiates). -Revise building availability: I’ve seen discussions regarding the Stables, the Market, the Stone Tower, and the Arsenal, and I also think they should appear later, if even, and with less techs and units. Weak trade and cavalry would be balanced in what follows. Other changes that could be considered: -Make the Skias train Ephors: ephors held the real power, they applied the law (applying fines) and oversaw training (checking fitness). Similarly to the Han Ministers, Ephor units could be trained, up to 5, to generate metal and affect stats of units produced from the building they would be garrisoned in. Ephors could balance weak or no trade considering payment in resources (I couldn’t find direct references on sources, but Spartans shunned gold and silver and paid in food and iron, maybe in other resources). Brasidas would be a Hero Ephor, increasing both counts, penalty balanced with the Agiads and Eurypontids civ. bonus. The same could be for Chilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Sages of Greece, although he lived a bit too early for the game. -Add Skias techs, like Bribe Gerontes and Cleomenes III Reforms: a Bribe Gerontes tech, returning a direct reference to the Gerusia, could make Heroes a bit more powerful (Agesilaus II, a proposed hero, and other kings did it). A late Cleomenes III Reforms tech (introducing him in a way, as proposed) could kill one’s Ephors (a condition could be to have at least 4 of them) in exchange for some mostly military bonus. Bribe Gerontes sounds better as a building ability with a cooldown, if this sort of thing could be even considered. -Make Skiritae faster and with larger FOV: they were used as hoplites, scouts, sentries, and later on, skirmishers. Some think they just used pelts as armor. Skiritae would then balance a weak cavalry, and everything falls naturally to the Barracks, quite Spartan, a concept someone also proposed. -Change how units level up: it was confusing for me that units got automatically upgraded to yet another type of infantry, messing up with double-clicking, and having them not really go through all ranks (if I understood correctly how it works, maybe not). I’d only upgrade them when a 4th rank is reached. Also maybe an Hippagretai Chosen tech should be researched first, if upgrading to Hippeis, explaining that this will happen (the 3 Hippagretai chose the 300 Hippeis). This is long enough for now. I have 8 points already done for Part II, but I’ll need some time to flesh out other things.

@guerringuerrin ah, that's a different thing, and makes sense. Then maybe each bell should mention something about that, I would have thought all bells are for all civilians. Well, regarding "balance was a huge concern", I think I didn't see more than a couple of people complaining, while the rest seemed to be on board, but maybe I'm still missing part of the discussion. I wonder if it wouldn't be more efficient, to have a better sense and gather all these regularly mentioned ideas, to have somewhere some kind of perma-poll that orders items by approval (most for:neutral:against on top). With the link always visible or added to the title of this thread.

Then shouldn't it be in every building? What I mean by weird is that it's present on buildings that don't garrison, and absent in buildings that do. I'd add it only on buildings that garrison because if one at some point has only buildings that don't garrison then the alarm wouldn't do much.

What's this?: Maybe something that is not public?

Now that you say it, isn't that a bit weird? They don't garrison troops with the alarm. I'd only have it in all buildings that can garrison, and maybe add a garrison of 1 to the Lookout just as an excuse to have it there also.

Ah, wait. I think you think I coded something. Sadly, no, it was just image editing. But I'll get into it at some point. I'm just not very fond of pushing changes, considering all the open tickets I've read there are, most of my proposals are just "what do you think about this?" first, not "this is incorrect, in fact, a bug" (with very few exceptions).

I don't think anyone wants something like that. There has to be a separation on what is mechanical and what is (too) automatic. Basically, I'd say that if there's only one simple way to do something, then that's mechanical, and if you need a tool that solves more complex issues and/or makes choices, that's automatic. That's why I like auto-queue in vanilla, there's only one simple way to "keep producing these units from this building". That's why I don't like auto-scout, there are many ways to do it, and auto-target is much worse, the point of a FPS should be to aim first. Now, maybe many things in ModernGUI are hard to classify, and then it's a matter of consensus on what would be mechanically boring for most people, and with most people it has to be taken into account that most people here are not necessarily representative of most people overall.

I care about how neat it looks like for someone just starting the game, considering how those panels look like in other games. So a mod wouldn't do

I'm not sure what you mean by "the tone", it was an honest question :P, I was thinking maybe the way it's coded made harder to position and order that, and maybe there was a reason to be coded like that, like if it was easier if things were constantly changing, and not worth any arrangement right now. Or if an alternative panel was being worked on already.

@guerringuerrin Thanks for the ModernGUI explanation, I didn’t know all those details. I think its capabilities are very interesting, but maybe for a game that has a lot of complexity in other parts, and as we all know, it’s still work in progress, maybe much of that will be implemented eventually if the actual clicking has be done somewhere else (unit’s formations, abilities, more city-building, who knows). I agree that in MP everyone should play under similar conditions (unless something else is agreed), I use the vanilla auto-queue in SP because all that clicking seems mechanical to me, not because it gives me an advantage, even when at the end I think it does, and although I don’t find the AI challenging anymore, I’d rather fight a much harder AI than deactivate auto-queue. So, it’s not that I want things to be easier, I just don’t want them to be boring, but I guess what is fun or not depends on each one. What really surprises me (and this from ignorance) is why the game in MP mode has not been made to detect which mods are being used by the players (maybe for some reason this is an impossibility?). It’s not that I want to minimise the MP aspect of a game, it's that I feel the opposite happens too often, and I stated what problems I see with that. In fact, as I hinted, I don’t even see it as a MP vs SP issue, but more as a mechanicality vs creativity issue, which is different since both could occur in MP and SP, although in competitive MP there’s a clear tendency for mechanicality, which I find unfortunate since for example a MP battle in Total War can be fun, tactical, and not just a clicking race, but it is what it is.

Well, this started with "I think stopping the birth of new units due to lack of resources is a big mistake", and "unit production queue should be restored automatically when resources become available", and "This is incorrect. This can be considered a bug" (I just copy-pasted that last one because it's funny :D). Then I said "I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from". I guess I'm aware of what's being discussed, unless I missed something in between all the mayhem. I totally agree with "the sense of fair play matters", in fact I take it to such an extreme that that's why focusing on thinking and not clickiness seems fairer to me. The first criteria is fair only between players that have memorised not only at which time what building orders must be executed, but also have a click rate only achievable by playing often, while the second criteria puts a broader audience at a similar level, by allowing more creativity and less mechanicality. This is not a problem just with this game, this is a known problem for many games, even chess has this problem, and that’s why variants like Chess960 have been created. That doesn’t mean that variant is not competitive, and having people answering “learn the game mechanics” to people that question the status quo is misleading. I completely understand that for many here the second criteria might not look as fun or challenging, although I think this is a preconception rooted on habit, but I would instead ask myself which criteria would make the game grow more (if that's even intended).

These rants were hilarious to read. I never used auto-queue in other games, but once I started using in 0 AD, I liked it, and now I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from. But this attitude of “this is the only right way, look at this picture and implement it” is going to go nowhere. I disagree that these automation things are letting “the game play for you”, it would be a poor game if clicking on portraits is such a big part of it, I think better if it concentrates its complexity in other aspects, but maybe since tactics is not a big thing yet that’s how players find the fun. I think AoE2’s auto-scout resembles more letting the game play for you. I guess I used it back then, but I haven’t missed it in 0 AD. So, it’s all a matter of balance, it’s not about what’s better or worse, just different kinds of games are being proposed, and as someone said, “if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere”. Many arguments are being made on the basis of competitive clickiness, but it’s wrong to think that’s the only right way to play a game, and even an online game could be challenging and fun with less clickiness and more thinking. It’s just a choice, but I think many more people prefer the latter, the impression here of course will be the opposite because of a biased selection: online-players are actually a minority, they just seem overrepresented online for obvious reasons.