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The Spartans Above: King Leonidas and his "Battle Frenzy" upgrade Above: General Brasidas (left), Admiral Lysander (right) Above: Unused hero Agis III (left), Cleomenes III (right) Note: I might add Agesilaus as a 5th selectable hero and use the left-hand portrait Above: Queen Gorgo (left), Spartan Female Citizen (right) Above: Priest-Healer (left), Helots/Slaves (right)

Hello all! i've made this topic to show some cuirasses i've done once when i had proper internet connection but didn't had a chance to post it. This are textures (cuirasses) done procedurally with blender. So we can have them with normal and specular maps included in any possible color whitout too much effort. Some are recreations of actual textures with specular, normal map. While others are new additions following a few references i could get. Everything was done using Blender and some meshes and procedural materials. Scratches could be included in case is needed but every texture ingame of cuirasses didn't had a single scratch so i guess not. In the current state, i could upload every texture seen in the screenshots if its necessary or if it has a good visual quality to be introduced, and post here the alpha layers. Texture Preview: Ingame screenshots:

The ones of you who have a close eye on the recent commits and patches in the queue will have noticed that there are efforts being made to further differentiate the current civs either by unique bonuses and/or buildings. I am assuming that I am not the only one seeing great potential for Spartans in that direction, especially since the removal of their pop penality leaves room for new things. I think it is time to share my ideas from a mod draft made several years ago, but never finished/published. See the following description and proposals as an inspiration for new/alternative/enhanced Spartan gameplay. The core idea is to really push the Spartan trademarks: the absolute crème de la crème regarding quality, especially in the defensive part, at the cost of reduced quantity and a lot of time and resources spent to bring their warriors to perfection. In lategame they should be near unstoppable - only the infamous man spam train should do the job - being among the strongest civs, preferably the strongest alone. A Spartiate phalanx (even more so with Leonidas) should feel like an immovable object similar to Carthaginian walls. Their offensive should be very slow, but deadly (cf. Teutonic knights in AoE II). They will fight like a beast to defend their home territory and shine the most in team games where they can occupy and block strategic positions. However, they should be especially vulnerable in early game / village phase and below average in mid game / town phase (careful, detailed and well-targeted balancing may be needed) in order to compensate for their incredible late game potential. They are characterized by the following unique features: tech "The Agoge": waaay more impactful than now - Spartiates cost around 2 times the resources of regular champions (including 2 population), optionally only one of them can be trained per house - they should be able to 1v2 regular champions, and with all other bonuses described below even 1v3 should be possible (at least under some circumstances) -> reduced quantity, better overall quality, slightly more cost efficient than other champions tech "Hippagretae": these were the guys electing the ~300 best Spartiates called Hippeis - Spartiates can upgrade to stronger Hippeis after collecting some XP (killing 2-3 enemies) (like citizen soldiers from basic -> advanced rank) - optionally Hippeis can further upgrade to some kind of semi-hero after collecting a huge amount of XP (killing 7 or 10 enemies), but that may be over the top (like citizen soldiers from advanced -> elite rank) -> better overall quality CC aura "Wall of Men": some Greek author used this term to explain why Sparta didn't need walls - +2 resistance for Spartiates in a 80 range around CCs - alternatively more concentrated: +4 resistance in a 30 range around CCs -> better defensive quality Leonidas hero aura "Thermopylae": replacing current offensive aura by a purely defensive one - +2 resistance and -10% speed for spearmen in his formation - alternatively +3 resistance and -15% speed for Spartiates in his formation -> better defensive quality better represent the role of Spartan women and Helote slaves - Helote slaves as most efficient gatherers (use slave actor from Athenians) - Spartan women have less than mediocre gather rates themselves, but a gather boost aura for Helotes (being their mistress) - Spartan women have a basic combat ability, suitable for creating an emergency home defence against citizen soldiers (but not against champions) and they are able to build all buildings including military ones -> more complex economy, slow development, but higher potential (for the huge amount of resources needed for unique techs and champions) -> slightly better defensive quality I hope you find at least some of these ideas inspiring and suitable as a basis for more patches to come! Feedback and further ideas welcome Best regards, Palaxin

Moved to its own topic for start the peltast shield Update.

Just made a corinthian helmet or at least something similar to give some love for the old 2010 helmets of the spartan units: