SMST

Patriarchal Age is too obscure even for me, sorry. Not sure about the "Imperial/Conquest Age". Maybe this specific age would be called differently for each faction, which would in this case be "Hellenistic Age". What do you all think about the faction merging? Would it make gameplay too inconsistent/complicated? If so, what are everyone's ideas for a pre-modern/modern evolvement of this Mediterranean faction?

Plans for the Mediterraean Faction so far: Stone Age: Generic early Mediterranean cultures. | V Bronze Age: Mycaenean/Minoan culture. Chariots and first appearance of armor. | V Iron Age: You can choose a subfaction here (Greece/Rome) Greece: Dark Age/Geometric Greece. Chariots and first cavalry units side by side. Early hoplites. Rome: Early Republic. Strong Etruscan influences. Designed in a way that it could resemble any early Italian culture | V Classical Age: Greece: Classical Poleis. Hoplites in their prime. Disappearance of Chariots. (replaced by skirmishing cavalry) Rome: Late Republic. Polybian army. (hastati/principes/triarii - basic/advanced/elite) | V "Imperial Age" (this needs a better name) Greece: Hellenistic Armies. Phalangites&hetairoi cavalry. Rome: Early Empire. Classic Marian Legionnaires. Auxila infantry&cavalry. | V Dark Age: The subfactions merge again into a common Late Rome/Early Byzantine style. | V Medieval Age: High Byzantine Era. "Greek fire" ships. Cataphracts. | V Renaissance Age: Late Byzantine. Increasing importance of mercenaries. First gunpowder units. After that, the Mediterranean faction either merges into the Western and the Mid-Eastern faction (dependant of the player's choice) or evolves into a seperate Russian faction (which is justified historically since Russia saw itself as heir of the Byzantinian Empire, but would be a bit hard to justify gameplay-wise since the Russians are not really known for high-quality infantry)

Definitly a Dark Age, you're right. I am not so sure about the fifth age for the Ancient Era. In fact, your "Imperial Age" IS my Classical Age (Marian Romans and everything), but remember that the Ages are about stages of development, not neccessarily chronological. So, the Classical/Imperial Age would contain Marian Romans, Hellenistic Macedonians and Saitic Egyptians, even though they are seperated from each other by some 300 years or so. This, however, is only true for my first faction draft. For the second, I might just be able to put it in a chronological order, if you have no Problems with Roman legionnaries evolving out of Phalangites and Hoplites, that is. Edit: I also thought about an seperate Age for WWI. (which is now included in the Industrial Age)

Well, that works good for Byzantium, but not so good for any modern Mediterranean faction. (which would be pretty much like the Western ones) I could go for an "What if..." scenario, in which the Byzantines were never defeated and evolved into a modern Nation, but I don't like that too much. Alternatively, they could evolve after Renaissance Age into either Western or Middle Eastern. (the player would be able to choose) Yeah, and Sumerians, Hittites, Kassites, Aramaeans, Gutaeans, Elamites, Medes and Phoenicians. Didn't bother to list them all. I thought that the player would choose sub-factions when he enters the Iron Age. These would provide him with special units, bonusses and technologies. Much like 0 A.D. Customizing a culture sounds pretty good. I could see this done via chossing government forms or religions/ideologies. A choice-based tech tree like the one planned for 0 A.D. is also a must.

Hey-ho. I had some alternative thoughts about factions lately - instead of covering one specific nation, region or ethnicity, they could cover broader "cultures", which would allow for 1) reducing the amount of factions, thus reducing the amount of work needed, and 2) more individuality of the factions itself, perhaps with subfactions in 0 A.D. manner representing single "nations". Western They would start off als rather generic barbarians (Celts, Germanians, Dacians, the like), then evolve into Feudal Europan Kingdoms, then pre-modern and finally modern Western Nations. They would be edged towards the late game with tanks, aircraft etc. and rely mostly on average warband/peasant units with a few elite units (knights and the like), however, they would also be the first faction to fully adopt gunpowder. Probably conquest and economical bonusses. Mediterranean They would resemble Classical Greeks/Romans in the earlier ages, Byzantines in the Middle Ages. I have no idea yet how they would evolve in the modern ages. Core of their army should be heavy infantry, ranged troops and cavalry secondary. Good naval capabilities. Probably science bonusses. Mid-Eastern Obvious, I think - Persians/Assyrians/Babylonians in early ages, Arabs/Seljuks/Ottomans in the middle, modern middle east in the modern ages. Weaker infantry, but good ranged and superb cavalry units. Bonussed in trade and science, maybe. Far-Eastern China, Japan, Korea and the like. Maybe, just because there is a huge difference between the first and the latter ones, just China for now. Slogan: "Mass over materials". Cheap units, both economical and military, but indiviually rather weak as compared to other factions. Population and economic bonusses. African Supra-saharan Africa - I don't know if that term actually exists, but definitly not Zulus, but more Sudanese, Ethiopian and Egyptian. Good cavalry and traders. Lightly armored, but very mobile infantry. Steppe Nomads, like Scythians, Huns and Mongols. Cavalry based (almost no infantry). Highly mobile. Perhaps mobile buildings in the earlier ages. ---- What do you think? Less and more generic, but more diverse factions or more, not-so-diverse, but more authentic factions? Numbers for comparison, the idea described above has 6 factions, whereas the older version has 10 of them. In addition, the newest idea has a culturally broader scope, while the original concept is pretty much limited to the nations around the Mediterranean and Europe.

Nice, I thought the info for this mod was missing some structure. (Maybe I should set up something similiar for ARCHÉ, too.)

I totally support the idea of merc units trainable from Markets. They would only use Metal (Gold) as their training costs and be aviable in a short time, but they don't benefit from upgrades or territoral/cultural bonusses. However, they could be used by some civs to bolster their weak spots a bit: Greeks: Mercenary Scythian Archer/Mercenary Thessalian Cavalry (Cav Spearman) Persians: Mercenary Greek Hoplite (but they didn't use them around your timeframe, I think) Celts: Belgae Warrior/Gaesatae (both were known to fight as mercenaries for other Gallic tribes) Romans: Don't really know, they already have their allied units as their super units Carthage: They obviously have already a lot of mercs in their regular tropp tree. @Mythos: Sorry, the camel riders as javelinists are the last thing that I've heard from you about them.

Camel warriors are going to be the Persian cavalry javelinists. War elephants are skipped from the regular unit line for accuracy reasons, but are included as editor units. According to a quite reliable source.

What about both being way off 0 A.D.'s timeframe? And there is a Greek Slave Unit already in the game. Edit: Well, I think water distribution is way off for an RTS game. It is more of a City Builder feature - Caesar III comes in my mind.

There is actually the concept of "settlement sites", that are represented by wells. Only there you will be able to build new Civic Centres.

Gah. Before anyone has to use Babelfish or any of the other net translators: Almin said that Germany due to his federal structure has different school systems in every federal state, and thus different subjects taught in every state. @Almin: No offense, but I really think it should be understandable by everyone what we are talking about. Which state are you from, anyway? (Mine should be obvious from my profile^^) And if this is too much of off-topic by now, say something.^^

Well, Germany has three main branches of school and about a dozen sub-types each.

Cheats are neccessary to playtest effectively.

Hm? In what way is this related to cheats? And I thought you guys wanted to have a more complex tech tree?

We will have "abstract" boarding of ships, though? Like bringing the Ship close to the other, maybe a plank stretching out connecting the both and then capture the enemy ship. (depending on the troops in the enemy's ship, maybe on a loyalty rating like for buildings as well) I second plumo's suggestion. One basic arrow, + 1 arrow and + appropriate attack for every unit garrisoned inside. And I think units should be on decks of ships/battlements of structures just as an indicator of units being garrisoned.

Hm. The units that were on the Greek pentekonter in previous versions have been removed lately. Maybe for that reason. Though I'd love to see some units, and 0 A.D. game design is supposed to have real firing units visible on the decks in the final game as well.

I apologize. Though there has no been real hint that you are a girl. There is no mention of it in Caesars description which is cited in the DD of 0 A.D. Reading it, I came across this: Though the sails are great right now, the older sails were closer to that description. It would be a shame to lose those great emblems, though.

Latin and English. Both are compulsory subjects at my school. The third language to be chosen was either French, Spanish or Ancient Greek. And since I am the philology/philosophy/history guy, I chose Greek.

I second Aldandil. (Amd I think I just spelled his nick correctly for the first time.)

Huh, I chose Ancient Greek instead of French as my third foreign language.^^

Gaaa. Red = player color?

Sounds a lot like Gothic II, where you couldn't swim too far away from the shore, else a monster would be attacking. No, seriously. I don't think something like this is needed in a RTS game.

Well, I thought about contributing to the German translation as well. But as feneur said, the game text is not final, and there is no such "language file" yet that translation would be as handy as the developers plan it to be. P.S. Willkommen im Forum.

You may consider that for your soldiers attacking an enemy formation as well. It is kind of weird if your troops concentrate all on the same enemy as it is the case in all present RTS that I know about.

A small concern regarding the double-clicking system: Double-clicking on an Elite Hoplite lets me control all Elite Hoplites on the screen. Double-clicking on an Advanced Hoplite lets me control all Advanced Hoplites on the screen. But what if I want "all Hoplites"?