Alpha of the Eagles

I'm not quite sure I understood you, but I agree on pathfinder taking priority. Hence posting this in the ideas section. My point is: two athenian players should be able to field formations slightly different, as to cater their way of playing. A rusher would like a faster, harder to flank phalanx, even if it has weaker stopping power than another phalanx. People playing defencivly would rather sacrifice mobility for strength. I'm kinda drawing this from the Theban reforms that enabled them to reign supreme on the battlefield until someone one-upped them. I have other ideas as well, but in the end I might just mod them in when the game reaches a more stable phase.

I thought of something regarding formations: What if there were techs that did minor changes to them? like phalanxes. You get two trees, where one makes it wider, faster and harder to flank, while the other makes it deeper, slower, gives a slight attack buff, but it becomes easier to flank.

Once building conversion is implemented, would it be possible to have a sort of King of the Hill where you have to hold a special building for a set amount of time (shrine, statue, palace or similar)?

I would totally love being able to raid the other players supply depot (like a hostile market trade, with high risk of loss) just to make them protect it better. But making advanced rules for where which faction should do combat would be simply game breaking to the general public. Making eastern troops loose less stamina than others in desert enviroments is a good idea in my mind, but the moment you start removing health for no appareant reason, people will be frustrated. We should have more subtle differences in performances with regards to enviroment to influence the player, not force him/her.

Is it metric? I'm Norwegian. No, seriously, what I meant was that a 'simple' scenario is entirely different from a users perspective and a programmers. But, I reckon they probably have a solution in mind already.

I think in Aoe2, when the gate is 'closed,' it seems as though it loads a model that blocks the path for the units. I don't think the programming would be hard, relatively speaking, but as I'm incapable of doing it myself, I probably should weigh my words carefully.

Do it simple like Aoe. Opens for friendlies, but during a retreat it can be locked to prevent enemies from entering. Could be convertable, but in that case, not while it's in lockdown.

Huns were Asian.

Using walls to create small passages for confronting infantries -> Hellgate/-ing Usually works when playing with people more concerned with their village than microing troops, and gives their army a waypoint to somewhere near enemy lines with poor scouting. Usually coupled witha a savage tower defence and lots of archers. I do this with siege tanks in StarCraft when playing against some of my frends who I know forgets to use attack-move from time to time.

Ranged units with melee attacks are feasible. Just have a look at AoE3. Most Western riflemen have melee attacks with different bonuses (strelets vs. infantry, musketmen carry bayonets and has a bonus against cavalry, skirmishers have poor melee, but longer range than other riflemen). At least the Immortals should have this.

Sighvatr: I would have used Ekdromoi or melee cavalry to chase his archers around. Micromanage-intensitive, but usually efficient. Also, bring healers. Lots of lots of healers.

In Settlers 3, spies would do recon, but were exposed when enemy soldiers approached them. They could only steal resources and return with them, looking like the ordinary worker class. In Settlers 4, a saboteur unit was introduced, who carried a pickaxe, and looked like a worker with a pickaxe for the opposing players. My experience is that you recognize spies fairly quick with some experience. Either the unit behaves strangely (non-AI movement), or comes seemingly out of nowhere. My only opinion in this matter is that it should not be neccessary to have a spy to expose other spies. They should be disguised in the color of the territory they reside in, so that player yellow won't expose the red spy in blue territory (because he sees it as yellow). It should be gaian in neutral territory and perhaps some tribes (Celts, Iberians) should become invisible moving close to trees or bushes (while others become invisible standing still in the forest, revealed if enemies come to close). Perhaps defensive spies should be required to expose the identity of who sent it (you'll never know who sent it unless you have a couple yourself, but you can still kill them manually). Spies should be garrisonable for this purpose.

My bad, I made an inaccurate statement. I'm well aware the ruling class was not Persian indeed, they were a nomadic people from the Mongolian steppes. But the people were the same which the Achamenids had ruled, and the Seleucid ones after them. Persian. The Sassanid was the first true Persian line of kings since the Achamenids (which were half-Mede if I recall correctly).

The Parthians (Persians) had infantry, but not elite like the Romans, and thus coulnd't compete toe to toe. The Sassanids spent time traning elite infantry later on. Also, much of this "Parthians-only-had-cavalry" comes from the battle of Carrhae. But using this one battle as weight for an argument is like saying that on account of the battle of Thermopylae, we can assume the Greeks only used hoplites.

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/657 Would it be possible to add a layer to the UI where you can toggle a button and show all merchant paths, rallypoints and paths for the gatherers in different color? Would be helpful for strategic placement of buildings.

That campaign mode gameplay, would it be implented as a sort of multiplayer too? Where you can seamlessly zoom between battlefields and give orders and then go back to the main screen and give other orders? 'Cause that would've been so badass and a completely new way of playing grand-scope RTS multiplayer (in addition to the AoE style, pitched-sandbox-games).

Make the current "Hellenes" into another city-state, like Theban or Corinth. They were pretty prominent.

This. Especially when it comes to phalanxes of units, the Romans didn't expect to win the melee head-on on even ground, thus they started throwing spears before the charge to throw the phalanx into disarray. Also, they employed flanking heavily.

I don't know what you've done to deserve such fair treatment, but I usually get my @#$% handed to myself by anywhere from 200-300 Sparabara with tons of backup.

I understand. Other things are priorities of course. As I said, it's not a real problem, just a convenience matter. Also, I came over a slight bug, where the Persian "rams" overlap their physical space. Imagine my surprise when qBot seemingly came with one ram, just to split up into 5-7 rams! This should probably be sorted out somewhere before/during beta.

I encountered an annoyance, but not a problem when playing LAN with my friends: the client cannot choose his own race. Could this be implemented in the next Alpha?

Unfortunately, you are still wrong. Farming was the main food and income source for all of our represented factions, and should thus be the most important in-game as well. Hunting is more appropiate for nomad factions, but their main food source was often household livestock, such as cattle or sheep. Also, I don't see how farming in this timeframe was any less sophisticated, as they both had technology to transport water upwards and access to and knowledge of fertilizers, to some extent.

Imperator? Come on, there are dozens of names beside Imperium, that definitly would be awesome. As I see it, imperium is commonly understood because the word has survived into the english language, but there must be dozens of options if the purpose was to educate people. However, if you set release to three months ahead, you release it on "Ides of March."

Regarding farms, how about making differences for different factions, somewhat aligned to their historical use? Example: - Greek farms have a large amount of food and medium gather rate, but can only be worked by one farmer (individualism). - Farms in Persia can be worked by several gatherers with a lower gathering rate (state property), but a mediocre amount of food before reseed. The farms could also be balanced in cost to outweigh this, but it would emphasise that the player needs to build up farms over some time before they actually get useful, and resort to corrals and hunting/fishing early. (I am sort of making this suggestion to counter the strategies of AoK/C, where farms would be built as early as possible in vast numbers, and remain the prime food source forever. Not that it's bad in any way, I just think 0 AD needs to be different).

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but regarding infantry 'converting' buildings instead of destroying them: - What if you need a hero unit to convert an enemy Civic Centre or Castle - If you right click on of these buildings with an ordinary soldier, he will loot one random type of resource for his maximum capasity and then beeline home to drop off? This would open up for more tactical possibilities if an early attack (before city walls) proves disfavourable, and a retreat must be made.