Thalatta

Pants? Look at those boots, that design looks so modern I'm sure I can go out and buy them in the next hour. I think one has to be way more careful with AI, not the first dubious thing I've seen around lately.

Those things don't have to be related, since one doesn't even have to move the XP slider if one doesn't want to, and just use some default. Exactly the same as what happens with batch training size, there's a default in Game Options, but it can be modified in-game, which can have its uses. It's only adding the possibility to do what I previously described. Same as above. By "replace" I mean enhance, not remove. The wounded unit health in Game Options would be the default, which one could modify in-game if wanted, since one might want to control what amount of units to actually select, and not so much what % of HP should they have (which could be useless in certain situations). Nothing is being removed.

It could be different to the point of changing the outcome of the next battle, for example: if he needs half his CS to fight, and the other half to collect resources, and they are all of the same rank, but have different experience, then choosing the half with more experience to fight would be the better option, expecting a higher proportion to rank up during the next battle. It's a detail, but in theory having sliders to filter those with HP, experience, etc, higher or lower than the chosen value from a selection could be a thing (I know there's the "injured" selection, but this could replace that, being clearer and more flexibly customisable).

Flags are anachronical in plenty of situations given the time period, but I wonder up to where historical accuracy is wanted. It’s interesting that one can see if fortifications are garrisoned, but not if ships are… which is usually the exact opposite of reality.

It would be nice if there was some indicator on how much they like you or not (Sins of a Solar Empire had this for example). This could influence not only diplomacy and aggression, but also the market, which right now is a copy of AoE and I'd totally change for something more interesting.

I really like that UI concept: the minimap on the extreme left, actions on the extreme right, and unit cards in the middle, not subject to a panel that would inevitably end with lots of dead space most of the time. Now I remember that, in 0 A.D., having all buildable structures always on view just because someone who could build them was selected seemed weird to me, unnecessarily too much. Maybe there should be a Common Structures and a Unique Structures build buttons, like it is in many games. This would also make the use of (eventual?) hotkeys more streamlined. While some here complain about reducing the size of trees and ships, they are even bigger in that game, which looks better to me (although some transparency effect might be lacking). I like the irrigation being part of the fields (which in 0 A.D. seems the blandest of all structures, almost as it would be better off by being spawned by Farmsteads instead). The personalisation of warriors and seeing them training during production is quite interesting, as is showing how ships are built, and how troops are shown on them and on elephants. And still, "most critics felt the game was unoriginal, bringing nothing new to the genre", which seems a really hard thing to do, impossible to reach if constrained by that "people don't want to learn new build orders" .

You are not considering Field overlapping?

Is it? I can remember proper tunnels one could make only in Earth 2150, and an underground level in Heroes of Might and Magic… but then barely anything else, the Zerg tunnels in StarCraft, which I don’t think 0 A.D. should aim for (to avoid a teleporting effect).

I guess you didn't understand what I said in the first place, which was: no unit should be so OP as to have some gentlemen's agreement not to produce it, and when there's a misunderstanding regarding that, to have people whining about it, as it happened recently. So, if you say "champ cav is nonsensically fast", "naked fana has capture speed of a champ despite not having any of the drawbacks of a regular champ", and what you now added, I'd assume you agree with those complaining that they are OP, so I was agreeing that they should be nerfed, at least to the point of no ban needed to even be considered.

I realise that not all champion cavalry are cataphracts. Normal cavalry could be weaker to ranged attacks, and chariots could be slower, as a way to properly nerf champion cavalry.

For a few days now I've had the issue that some old topics appear under my Unread Content, and they don't go away even after reading them. It started with one, then two, and more and more random ones appeared until now it's sitting at 22. I thought it could be some cookie issue, but I cleaned everything now and nothing changed:

Cataphracts should be slower than horse archers. They are a counter, but not a mindless one, tactics must be used, like pinning them down beforehand, or coming from different sides, and should be quite effective in combination with faster and lighter melee cavalry. When collisions are improved hopefully all this would work better. This is the "base garrison" idea, proposed for siege engines, ships, and buildings (particularly fortifications). They'd justify their autonomous workings, look better, provide a default garrison, act as capture points, and avoid constant switching since their efficiency should depend on its numbers and would need time to regenerate. Look it up with the Search tool. The "base garrison" would also limit the constant capture of ships, since after the enemy base crew is killed, the mostly untouched crew of the attacker (rowers) would be divided between ships (as it was in reality).

I've proposed to update them to mud-brick walls (for relevant civs), but stone walls would also do, I wonder why this is not already the case. I think this should be the default mechanism, no tech needed (unless there's some strong historical reason). Some have proposed some timer for the engine to be useful after capture, but I don't see this as too different from a longer capture time. Ideally, the default operators should be killed before the engine can be captured, and a mechanism of how to replace them implemented, to fulfil the "timer" role more realistically and separately from the capture itself, and avoid constant switching. This is basically the "base garrison" idea I've proposed before (although I've argued that capture points wouldn't even be needed in that case, to simplify things).

I totally agree, but there are some issues that maybe need some more thought: -"Spear 111 hp for some civ but 100 for other, no sense": I don't see a problem with this, it could be some civ equipment characteristic. Maybe it would be nice to specify why exactly. -"cata too much hp", "catas too op": it has been said that the whole siege stuff is messed up, and that engines were capturable at some point. I've argued that civs should be able to capture/use them after building the Arsenal. -"héroe OP": it has been argued that the unit represents the whole retinue, which would be composed of the most elite warriors (most units would actually represent a bunch of them). -"champ cav is nonsensically fast", "naked fana has capture speed of a champ despite not having any of the drawbacks of a regular champ": it doesn't seem ideal to have units banned from games (and people whining about if they are being produced or not). Can't champion cavalry be more expensive, and naked fanatics have less resistance, for example? Or whatever that doesn't give an unfair advantage, without making things bland. Personally I don't care about unbalanced factions, but plenty of people here are too obsessed with MP, so there's that. -"palisades are useless,but when spammed are somewhat annoying": I'm not a fan of the "territory" stuff, but given that's there, I don't get why palisades can be built outside of it, doesn't this just enhance spamming? It doesn't make much sense to build palisades in the middle of nowhere, considering that they needed maintenance (the wood would rot). On the other hand, making them a bit stronger but weaker against siege would make them useful in the early game and not annoying later. Maybe civs that have weak siege should have other advantages, like fire units, if even. Also, Towers should be able to be built just besides Palisades (while pressing CTRL), Walls don't have this problem. Ideally, but more radically (and needing new animations), Palisades and Walls should be strong but not very useful if not supported: some units could be able to slowly climb over them, but have extremely reduced resistance when doing so, making Palisades and Walls quite useful when combined with Towers or ranged units.

And sidebars or overflow arrows? Which could be hidden but work by scrolling. But I have the feeling these are avoided, even when they could help reduce space used.

All true! I don't know why at least one of those possibilities didn't work for me before, and I can't even reproduce the message I was getting... What about having 3 columns showing all possible slots always, with the non-functional for the given selection being greyed out? After all, that's what happens with the other actions (the construction panel). This would also show the player all that is possible. The possibility I like less is not showing buttons for actions that can be performed, it's not about knowing the hotkeys, it's about clearly showing new players what can be done. I think it's good to have the option to hide certain things. Well it had mostly vanilla in mind, and the row ordering criteria I defined was quite generic (mostly economic, civic, military, and special), but yes, those new classes would be needed for it to work.

@Atrik considering your four points, and using the Construction Panel layout I proposed long ago, I end up with this, which has the same height as your panels, and the additional width is less than the width of a small button:

1) Yes, I realised I might be occupying too much horizontal space, but instead width can be reduced and height increased, after all I proposed this redistribution of the construction panel some time ago: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/143192-construction-panel-layout/ 2) I'm not sure what you mean by this, but some panels could be reordered. 3) Yes, I realised that and I almost swapped the 2nd and 3rd panel because of it. In any case, actions are divided in what structures to build, and the rest, which seemed a bit different to me. 4) Yes, I thought about the single selection case, but considered that the username could be placed somewhere else, like in the upper panel. After all, why does that appear for single selection, but not for multiple selection? That doesn't make much sense to me. I proposed plenty of things in my preceding posts: first said "maybe "stations" would be a better word", that "a more generic "Occupy" button could be used, which could also act as a Capture button", and later said that, in case one wants "to have structures that can be both garrisoned and posted (this should be the term, instead of "turreted"), the Occupy Turret button could be renamed to Post", and that "Capture could still be achieved with the Garrison and/or Post buttons". Since on the latest layouts there seems to be plenty of space for extra buttons, that last thing doesn't seem necessary (could still be an option). In conclusion, right now the simplest thing would be to rename "Occupy Turret" to "Post", or "Take Post", and to change its description from "Order the selected units to occupy a turret point" to "Order the selected units to take a post", and with the present icon I think things would be clearer. Or "Order the selected units to take a post on the battlements", if all these external points are going to be behind parapets with crenellations.

It seems to me that those buttons are placed on a panel dedicated to something else… What about something like this instead? (I also changed their ordering to something a bit more thematic): There would still be the issue I mentioned that many turret points have nothing to do with turrets, which was confusing me from the beginning.

OK! Something I'd like to add, because maybe there's a case (or plan), to have structures that can be both garrisoned and posted (this should be the term, instead of "turreted"), the Occupy Turret button could be renamed to Post (in contraposition of Garrison, for external vs internal discrimination, and ignoring for now a more radical possibility of rearranging units from the structure itself). Capture could still be achieved with the Garrison and/or Post buttons on enemy structures, and if in the future (or some mod) units will be able to capture fortifications by storming gates or ramparts, this distinction would already be supported.

It seems to me that not having a button for something as important as Capture is bad design, a manual should not be needed, nor should newbies be expected to read it, for something like that. A place for a button can be made. Ok, that's confusing as hell. That Wall Turret icon appears beside the Gate in the Structure Tree, but not in-game, it's not something that can be built/upgraded, but that appears automatically. Then, the Turret button doesn't work on a Wall Turret, but on the Wall itself (nice to see that units can appear in its walkway!). It says "current turrets 16/16", but that has nothing to do with turrets, the gaps in the battlement are called crenels, although since there are 2 people per crenel, maybe "stations" would be a better word. It seems to me that this button is unnecessary, the garrison button should have this function when applied to Walls, after all it's really confusing that to man the Wall that button must be used, but to man the Wall Towers the Garrison button must be used. Maybe a more generic "Occupy" button could be used, which could also act as a Capture button if an enemy building is selected, with the description "Order the selected units to garrison a building, staff a station, crew a unit, board a ship, or capture a structure." There's no need for different buttons if the functions are similar and, if I'm not wrong, there's no overlap between them.

Well, actually, it would be nice that, if the terrain is clicked, units would go there after dropping resources, but instead, if the button is used nothing happens, and if the hotkey is used, the message "some unit(s) can't go back to work" appears, and nothing happens.

@Nicolaus_von_Kues where are those images from? Things you are testing? I really like many ideas there.

Jesus Fricking Christ... you are totally right. Just tested it and it works perfectly. In part it's our fault for not reading the tooltip, but it's not intuitive to give it such a simple name which, I think, in most games means something else, more so when most people talk about "Call to Arms" (the button should be called like that). Btw, what does Occupy Turret do? The tooltip is not clear enough, and I can't find any specific info. Maybe I just haven't come across "turret points". Also, as per one of my previous suggestions, a "Capture" button should be added.

Where? I see only six buttons: Self-Destruct, Abort, Attack, Garrison, Occupy Turret (which I don't know yet what it does) and Repair.