Alpha of the Eagles

The goal of a rush isn't to defeat the opponent, but to ensure his defeat in a matter of short time. A raid that steals women or kills gathering units is often enough, if you keep a constant pressure.

Do not laught at the power of fanatics. They were extremely ferocius in combat, defeating both Romans and Seleucid Greeks. However, internal fighting while at war with the Romans proved to be one of their poorer ideas. I shiver at the thought of hordes of Zealots.

I've been thinking the exact same for quite a while.

Helvetii. The Germano-Celtic (people seem to disagree over this) tribe the Romans pwned, but went down in a heroic, last stand.

Gorgon

On a side note, in regards of an earlier post by Mythos, I wanted to just share a thought on how to differentiate mercenaries from normal units, how about: 1. They cost only gold (relatively cheap recruitment, but gold heavy) 2. You pay upkeep (per "x" game cycle, somewhere around 5 minute cycles (perhaps determined from the point of origin)) 3. If they attain experience (which they should since mercenaries were often professional soldiers), the upkeep should increase. Upkeep could be really low, but in numbers it would discourage the player from throwing them in the fray, and to rather use Libyans as meatshields (since they were expendable). Again, this is just an idea of how to make their gameplay a bit different (depending on a steady gold income from trade and raids in addition to mining) since too often in strategy games, factions are different only in a few unique unit, spells and description. Oh, and I remember, gold isn't a resource, but could use metal in stead or something (you should really add gold ).

This was kind of what I meant, but they should not attain highest level possible. Just a sort of macromanaging possibility making them a bit better warriors (for offensive players), but poorer at harvesting. They cannot go toe-to-toe with a veteran and win however. Just takes shorter time to attain veteran status, or something along those lines.

Arenas! Suggestion: Romans should be better at it, but with chance of losing a bit health in addition of stamina for training.

Idea: make it like in Age of Kings: archers aren't 100% accurate, but can be improved with research? Also, I bet it will be implemented some kind of making things harder to hit as they move, which can also be improved by research.

Btw, how about just making walls costly? I imagine building a wall was a huge investment back in the days, but in most RTS (*cough*AoE*cough*) walls are über-cheap.

How about a certain amount of time where the new player can't be rushed, his workers build much faster (not gathering though) and he recieves an amount of starting troops in a 10:1 ratio to the largest player on the map (i.e. he has 300 soldiers, he lands 30 soldiers). Perhaps a certain amount of resources as well (depending on how far the game has progressed). The game should end after a pre-set amount of time (like 5-10 hours), and if a ladder system is implented, the player with highest score should win the game (bonus points for longest survival).

I think the argument is if there's gonna be melee units and siege tower battles on walls. Garrisoning archers in walls so they can fire will probably be implemented (if my memory serves me right, this was sort of semi-decided in an earlier thread).

It would be fun as an extremely costly and dangerous unit for late, late game. It could easily be used by enemies to lure the opponent in friendly fire, making it a bit hard to use, but extremely fun if you get it right.

The Greeks invented flamethrowers. That way they kept the Turks at bay for ages.

That will probably be balanced, I hope (after all, this is the alpha-stage). Because that is the development-teams approach on being unique. This causes the player to having to adapt to other strategies. You can still raid, but you have to evaluate when and how in a different manner, since not only will you tie down your own gatherers, but your enemy will defend himself valiantly. It will also make it easier for the other players to distrupt these forward bases. Remember, it's not enough to make a forward barracks and spawn two or three units in this game, since the defender will have more soldiers than that. I agree completely with you on this one, at least on some of the smaller buildings. However, this is (as said) the alpha-stage, and is likely to change.

Unoccupied forts lose HP over time to 1 HP or something?

I think the keyword for replenishment of trees and animals should be slowly.

An idea struck me concerning the curtain walls: many cities had several walls protecting them (Jerusalem, Rome) with sort of a fortress inside the walls. How about we recreate that, by making the first curtain wall avaible in "Age 2" (or whatever it's called ), and then later you unlock another, much more costly, outer wall as you advance technologically. Theoretically, this could unravel a world of new possibilities concerning bonuses and siege mods (imagine Babylonians, they could be given the ability to build a special, third wall). I am, however, uncertain of what to do about the Celts. Since I support an implention of both types of walls, I would suggest giving the pallisades a more appropriate look for the Celts (walls made of uncut rock), but I am uncertain if they should recieve the curtain walls, since I can't recall them ever having such traditions. To my knowledge, they favoured other elements of defense, especially natural ones. If they have other bonuses, they could certainly be powerful, even without these city-walls.

I agree with SMST, protective stone walls should really make use of the curtain idea you had, Mythos, while the player could build palisade fortifications of his own design in his territories to make enemy incursions slightly more difficult.

Wouldn't it be best if you could watch all simultaneously?

Oh dear. Pro tip: if there's a pig named Napoleon there, make sausage a.s.a.p.

Then you have the Age og Kings system, just that you don't have to bother reseeding it manually. So like, a lazy version of it.

I agree. I think that system gives you exactly what you need: an investment that pays back in food (with research, greater reward and faster gathering) with some micromanagment (select guy, right click the empty field; it's not much to do like in original AoE). But, how about a compromise? You can only build farms in an area around the mill (research will expand this area)? Also, the gathering should initially be very slow, with research neccessary to increase the gathering rate. Oh, and a unique tech could be irrigation which would allow for building a farm in arid or barren areas.

On the other hand, playing against a Spartan would impossible then. Having a professional army @#$%-whooped by a bunch of women would be balance-breaking, however much realistic it may be. I think you should go with Pureon's idea: they run to nearest garrisonable building to shoot arrows. Btw, on the trail of shooting arrows from buildings, something has always bothered me: why does every game have the garrison shoot arrows at those troops standing right next to the building. I suggest something like Settlers 4 where they drop boulders on those closest, or something else where they poke a spear through a window or something. But my favorite would be if there were alternate animations, that gives the impression of a rag-tag defense, not an 100 % organized armament.

Could we use it like the shrines in Age of Empires I?