I'm confused by Greek houses...

[Hemachandra]

As far as I know, the Greeks of the classical era already built houses of five per block. In addition, they were already two-story, which cannot be said when looking at the houses of the Greeks in 0 A.D. Isn't historical accuracy the main design feature of this game?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

It's because you have to fit the idea into little 3x3 blocks 

Edited October 8, 2023 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Hemachandra]

22 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It's because you have to fit the idea into little 3x3 blocks 

Do you mean 3x3 size of the house floor? It seems to me that such unification will historically seem unfair. Why don't the developers, knowing that different nations had different house layouts, make the houses in the game more diverse, keeping the dimensions only within the nation? This more honest approach, it seems to me, will be more conducive to immersing the player in the atmosphere of antiquity. A two-story Greek house with an area of 1/6 or 1/4 of the area of the city center would look more harmonious. In this case, it is not necessary to remove the old 3x3 model, but simply add a new type of houses by analogy with two-story Carthage houses. After all, as far as I know, the classical period for Greece during the time of Pericles was the most luxurious.

Edited October 9, 2023 by Hemachandra

[alre]

I doubt a two story house would be more representative than 1-story houses, how common were they?

At the moment only Carthage has 2-story houses, by virtue of phoenicians apparently being the first to employ them.

[Hemachandra]

10 hours ago, alre said:

I doubt a two story house would be more representative than 1-story houses, how common were they?

At the moment only Carthage has 2-story houses, by virtue of phoenicians apparently being the first to employ them.

A book about the buildings of the ancient world writes that two-story houses of the Greeks were quite common in the classical era. And in the Hellenistic period they were completely abound in luxury.

The houses of Olynthus were taken as the basis for the classical Greek plan. As you can see, there are two floors here.

Spoiler

The “House of the Trident” from Delos was taken as the basis for the Hellenistic Greek plan.

Spoiler

A set of quotes from the book translated via Google from "Lecture 3. ARCHITECTURE OF ANCIENT GREECE OF THE CLASSICAL PERIOD", part "Residential buildings of the classical period".

Quote

All living rooms on two floors are open with their door and window openings to the south, the general line of blocking the rooms is parallel to the long side of the block, having a latitudinal direction, which made it possible to turn five houses of the block into one house. The Greeks considered this the main sign of the beauty of urban development. Connecting such buildings into rectangular blocks required standardization of houses and the entire street network. Therefore, when starting design work, the city planner had to first find the most rational plan for a single residential building, which at the same time turned into a residential section or cell (apartment).
A courtyard was usually located somewhat to the south of the middle of the house (often it was directly adjacent to the southern wall, the living quarters were located from the north and were open to the south). In front of the living rooms there was a room (pastada, portico) that often extended the entire width of the house - a covered passage separated from the courtyard by pillars. In many cases, a covered passage was arranged on two, three or even four sides of the courtyard, which in this case turned into a peristyle. The peristyle type of residential building, apparently, received full development later, in the Hellenistic era.

The expansion of the passage, located on the northern side of the courtyard, corresponded to the peculiarities of the climatic conditions of Greece. In summer, when the sun was high, the portico protected the living quarters from overheating, and in winter, when low rays of the sun penetrated the portico, it turned into a reservoir of heated air. Due to the absence of windows in the external
walls, the layout of houses did not depend on the organization of neighborhoods. Only the structure of the entrance changed, in some cases it led directly to the courtyard, and in others it was equipped with a corridor. The southern facade of residential premises usually had a shady canopy - pastada. Sometimes a canopy closed all sides of the courtyard, forming a peristyle. In summer, the portico protected the premises from sunlight and overheating, and in winter it turned into a natural reservoir of air heated by the sun. Heating of the premises was carried out using a hearth with a chimney. There were also running water, sewerage, and bathrooms. The floor was decorated with a mosaic of pebbles or marble chips.

Classical era houses were in many cases two stories high. In Athens at the end of the 6th century. BC e. laws were passed prohibiting second floors from overhanging the street.
The premises were formed around a courtyard (a traditional feature for the residential architecture of slave societies). From the courtyard one could get into the rooms on the first floor.
with an earthen floor and wooden stairs leading to the second floor. The layout of the second floor probably followed the same principles as the layout of the first: the largest rooms were located on the north side of the courtyard (often the entire floor was exhausted by this). They opened onto a veranda, which served as a covering for the lower portico and communicated
connected to the courtyard by means of an open staircase, the lower steps of which were usually made of stone:
“I considered it necessary to show... the principle of the structure of the house. There are no stucco decorations in it... but the rooms are built precisely in such a way as to be as comfortable as possible containers for the objects that would be in them, so that each room itself invited what suited it... The bedroom, located in a safe place, invited the most expensive bedspreads and household items, dry parts of the building - bread, cool parts - wine, light - work and things that require light... The decoration of living rooms... is that they should be They were cool and warm in winter. And the whole house as a whole... the facade is open to the south, so it is quite clear that in winter it is well lit by the sun, and in summer - in the shade... The women's half is separated from the men's by a door with a bolt, so that it cannot be taken out of the house, which should not be done, and that servants should not produce children without our knowledge: good servants after birth children for the most part become more devoted, bad ones, having entered into marriage relationships, get more convenience to cheat ... "(Xenophon, 9, 2-5).
Often rich houses consisted of 2-3 connected buildings. One of them was intended for receiving guests and visitors, the second was for an open courtyard (peristyle), the third is for family and servants.

Olvia. Peristyle courtyard of the house with altar.

Spoiler

 

Edited October 10, 2023 by Hemachandra

[Hemachandra]

On 09/10/2023 at 7:58 PM, alre said:

At the moment only Carthage has 2-story houses, by virtue of phoenicians apparently being the first to employ them.

On 08/10/2023 at 6:54 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

It's because you have to fit the idea into little 3x3 blocks 

If the developers are interested in this idea and the books from which I quoted, then here is a link to the books (note, it is in Russian, but I think Google translator will handle it):

In this volume you will find a description of the architecture of the Middle East, China and India.

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Евгений_Поляков_Архитектура_Древнего_мира_Том_1_Ар?id=Ki1uDwAAQBAJ

In this volume you will find a description of the architecture of European antiquity and Hellenism.

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Евгений_Поляков_Архитектура_Древнего_мира_Том_2_Ар?id=MC1uDwAAQBAJ

Still, I hope the developers will someday decide to diversify residential buildings.

Edited October 11, 2023 by Hemachandra

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I very much appreciate the enthusiasm. Are there other areas that you think need improving? 

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think another challenge is that the height of buildings can make it a bit visually harder to help distinguish things while clicking quickly through the base. 

[Hemachandra]

11 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I very much appreciate the enthusiasm. Are there other areas that you think need improving? 

I think something needs to be done with the elite units. It's not normal for a bunch of elite units to literally demolish or instantly capture buildings. They should either be weakened, making them barely stronger than normal units, or the buildings and the buildings' resistance to capture should be significantly strengthened. A bunch of unkillable elite units make siege weapons useless - this is bad.

I would also like to see the number of vacant places for collecting resources as a multiple of 5. And starting with 5 women, one scout, 5 ranged warriors and 5 melee fighters will be much better.

There is a question about the presence of walls in Sparta. If I'm right, then the walls in Sparta appeared after its defeat by Macedonia, and before that Sparta did not have any walls. Maybe the developers should remove all types of walls from Sparta for historical accuracy?

I also saw that the Chinese placed two or more storey models of clay houses in their tombs. I think it would be nice for many nations to add two types of houses - a poor one-story house and a rich large two-story house, for example, in the city era. As you have already seen, there was no shortage of two-story houses in classical Athens. To be honest, I think all the Greek nations did not disdain two-story houses, neither the Spartans, nor the Macedonians, nor the Seleucids, nor the Ptolemies.

As far as I know, the wealth of the “poor” Ptolemaic houses was so great that not every rich man in Greece could afford to furnish a house like the houses of the Greeks of Egypt. That's what it says in the book Зелинский Ф.Ф. - История античной культуры (Modus vivendi) - 1995 (Zelinsky F.F. - History of ancient culture (Modus vivendi) - 1995).

Quotes from a book about Hellenistic period:

(The book itself and its text, if anyone is interested: http://az.lib.ru/z/zelinskij_f_f/text_0020.shtml I don't know if it's complete or not.)

Quote

However, Hellenistic kings still dressed in Hellenic style; They were distinguished by a white braid around the hair, an ancient symbol of victory (diadema), and “royal purple.” The clothes of the court, both men's and women's, were of a Hellenic cut; luxury was found only in the quality of fabrics. Asian cotton (“fine linen”) began to compete with wool and flax; the island of Kos, the favorite of Ptolemy II, opened the production of local silk and distributed “transparent” Kos fabrics everywhere; and from the 2nd century BC, thanks to the development of trade routes, real Chinese silk fabrics (SeYica) appeared on European markets. The same luxury appeared in the furnishings of the house (below, § 9), and in the utensils, and everywhere. The park becomes part of the palace: Alexandria famous for its Paneion (that is, “grove of Pan”), Antioch - his Daphne. The nobles follow this example - and the garden becomes part of every wealthy home. This in itself is a useful innovation, as it leads to the improvement of the entire city; but, imagining the general picture of the wealth of this era in comparison with previous ones, we have to admit that if differences in wealth have always existed, now these differences are put on display: times when “the house of Pericles was no different from the house of any citizen” (above, with . 131), have become a thing of the past forever.

Perhaps the greatest revolution was produced by the victories of Alexander the Great in economic terms. On the one hand, immeasurable royal wealth accumulated over centuries fell into the hands of the conqueror, which he generously distributed to his associates and in general to everyone who provided services to him, thereby creating - directly and even more indirectly - a class of rich people, in comparison with whom the most wealthy the people of Greece proper seemed poor. On the other hand, the same conquests put at the disposal of Greek enterprise a whole network of beautiful royal treasures that covered the entire Persian state to the borders of India and the fabulous seas.

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I think another challenge is that the height of buildings can make it a bit visually harder to help distinguish things while clicking quickly through the base. 

Isn't it possible to do it like in The Sims, so that pressing a button removes the roofs, the next press removes the walls, leaving only the foundations of the building?

Spoiler

 

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by Hemachandra

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, Hemachandra said:

A bunch of unkillable elite units make siege weapons useless - this is bad.

Well the balance here, especially for siege is that you will have a lot of units nearby to defend rams and catapults. That being said, a current problem I have noticed for the last couple of alphas is that melee units are very highly armored and that ranged units do much more damage than melee units. So its not just the elite units that are 'unkillable' its really more about the ranged vs melee balance.

to address this, I have a patch and a merge request in the community mod (https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26), which may eventually be accessible in the mod downloader for testing.

[alre]

3 hours ago, Hemachandra said:

I think something needs to be done with the elite units. It's not normal for a bunch of elite units to literally demolish or instantly capture buildings. They should either be weakened, making them barely stronger than normal units, or the buildings and the buildings' resistance to capture should be significantly strengthened. A bunch of unkillable elite units make siege weapons useless - this is bad.

I also think that conquering ability of champions is an issue and should be nerfed. it's not very realistic either.

siege engines however, are far from necessary in 0ad, regardless of the type of units you are using, and that's more like a feature of the game I think.

[ChronA]

11 hours ago, Hemachandra said:

I think something needs to be done with the elite units. It's not normal for a bunch of elite units to literally demolish or instantly capture buildings.

Clearing fortified buildings of defenders is specifically one of the situations where elite, specialist units disproportionately excel. When police need to storm a building they don't send in whoever happened to show up for work that day. They send in the SWAT team. They are the ones with the special knowledge and team cohesion you need. In ancient times the gear was different but the dynamic was still pretty similar I think.

So in terms of game design it might be an iffy choice to give champions a capture bonus, but it does seem very authentic to history, at least conceptually. Maybe an extra caveat to that is ancient armies aren't structured like RTS armies, so how reasonable all this seems depends on how you imagine units in the game are abstracting features of ancient warfare. In ancient times looting was a major part of military logistics and economics. So while storming actions would have been entrusted to specialists, it is also true that almost every company of war fighters would have had some of these specialists mixed in with the normal troops. The troops themselves would have made sure of that, even if it meant hiring extra fighters out of their own pockets.  In that sense it is probably true that an "army of champions" should not be substantially better at capturing than a normal army of citizen soldiers.

Edited October 13, 2023 by ChronA

[Hemachandra]

A few more quotes about houses of the Hellenistic period:

House of the Trident (Fig. 4.11, a), the construction of which dates back to the 2nd century. BC e., is an example of a small house with rich interior decoration. A wide hallway-hallway leads from the street to the peristyle courtyard. To the right of the entrance was the room of the gatekeeper slave. To the left of the entrance there was a shop with a utility room, opening onto the street with a wide doorway. The marble peristyle of the House of the Trident stands out among other rooms for its richness of decoration: large mosaics of the pool (impluvium), main portico, etc. were interpreted as ornamental multi-color compositions. In the northeast corner, next to the main hall, there was a room open to the south - an exedra. The premises of the house also included a room for slaves and a kitchen with a portable fireplace. The walls of the main rooms of the house were covered with stucco and painted with frescoes depicting architectural elements of interior decoration: masonry squares, corbels, cornices, and ornamental decorations.

The House of Masks, (https://maps.app.goo.gl/6Dz1BoxeSZFYawPWA) dating back to the same time, can serve as an example of a house occupying an entire block (about 39x45 m) (Fig. 4.11, b). The building has two peristyles and a large number of varied rooms, some with beautiful mosaic floors and frescoed walls. The most characteristic architectural and compositional feature of the Hellenistic dwelling is the isolation of its interior space from the street. All means of architectural expressiveness and all the riches of decorative decoration were concentrated in the interior, mainly in the compositional center of the home - the peristyle courtyard. The interior architecture of a Hellenistic residential building is distinguished by great sophistication and grace. A combination of rooms of various shapes, decorations and colors, a courtyard flooded with light, surrounded by shady colonnades and decorated with small fountains, greenery, flowers, sculptures, multi-color fresco paintings and mosaics - all this made the architecture of the residential building especially close to people, beautiful, comfortable and cozy. The street facades of the houses had no windows and were blank smooth some walls without architectural or decorative decorations. Only the entrance portal was framed by a modest casing with pilasters and an entablature. In late Hellenistic times the entrance to the house was sometimes decorated with a portico.

Spoiler

 

Edited October 14, 2023 by Hemachandra

[Genava55]

Athens

Spartans

Macedonians

Ptolemies

Seleucids

Romans

[Hemachandra]

35 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

Athens

Spartans

Macedonians

Ptolemies

Seleucids

Romans

They are similar to what the book describes and depicts, but very distantly... If there is a second floor here, then compared to the rest of the buildings, the proportions here are extremely strange. Personally, I got the impression that almost all the houses are one-story. Why did you decide to compact the variety of house shapes into a 3x3 box? This seems to be not another Age of Empires...

The game has round plans for the Britons, and a huge temple for the Kushites, which should, in theory, free the developers from the obligation to make absolutely all building sizes identical to each other between nations. As for me, the varied layout of buildings, kept identical only within one nation, and not between all, is quite consistent with historicism. For example, one nation will have longer houses, others will have wider ones, and still others will have entire mansions with parks. Naturally, mansions will cost more than the huts of the Celts.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Hemachandra

[Genava55]

17 minutes ago, Hemachandra said:

Why did you decide to compact the variety of house shapes into a 3x3 box? This seems to be not another Age of Empires...

Because the project is inspired by AoE.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adStory

The concept has been chosen a very long time ago:

Alpha 10 (2012)

Alpha 5 (2011):

 

[Hemachandra]

16 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

Because the project is inspired by AoE.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adStory

The concept has been chosen a very long time ago:

Alpha 10 (2012)

Alpha 5 (2011):

 

But is it possible to add “advanced” dwellings, opening at later stages, to existing houses? For some reason, no one was bothered by the addition of the temple of Apademak to the Kushites, but with its dimensions it is not always possible to build it somewhere... In addition, the sources of information I cited prove the presence of two-story houses of various shapes not only in Carthage. And since this is clearly not the last update of the game, I hope to see more development of the civil architecture in the game.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Hemachandra

[Genava55]

2 minutes ago, Hemachandra said:

But is it possible to add “advanced” dwellings, opening at later stages, to existing houses?

Technically there is no issue with that.

The only challenge is finding someone willing to model the advanced houses and making new icons and finding people editing the xml files, testing and pushing the patch.

[Hemachandra]

11 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

pushing the patch.

I think pushing historically correct patches shouldn't be a problem. Although...

[ShadowOfHassen]

I agree the houses aren't 100% percent historically accurate, but I believe they're historically accurate enough.  Yes, Greek houses were probably bigger in scale, but this is a video game and there are other liberties taken with all the other buildings (there's no such thing as a civic center, and Sparta really should have Helots and no Trading.)

Gameplay wise, I think it'd just clutter things up. Why two houses? There's simply no benefit beyond a civ's special power. If someone wants to add more cosmetic ones, that's great, but I'd hesitate giving the civilizations a wide variety of buildings for skirmishes.

For places, however, where history and gameplay are at odds, we're working on an encyclopedia to clear it up.

 

[Hemachandra]

5 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

and Sparta really should have Helots and no Trading.)

It would be great if helots worked for the Spartans, the cities would not have walls and trade (Sparta could trade between its own markets and only with other Spartans on the map, so concerns can be mitigated here.) It seems to me that this would be an excellent testing ground for developers in terms of creating the first “asymmetrical” nation with its own unique gameplay. Perhaps in the next alphas you will want to return to this?

5 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Gameplay wise, I think it'd just clutter things up.

If you are so afraid of confusion, then from a gameplay point of view, the developers should then completely “copy” the layout of the cities of the original Ages of Empires 1 and 2, where all the buildings in all nations are exactly the same. There is no prytaneum, no sissitia, no monument of glory. The establishment of a second rich type of houses will cause “confusion” no more than these unique buildings. I think all fears in this regard are unfounded, especially since luxury villas are planned to be made in the later stages of the game, which will significantly save players time on building a bunch of separate small houses, instead building one large historically accurate house from the classical or Hellenistic era. The same applies to the Roman insula. For example, the temples of the Persians look more like cubes than the rectangles of the Greeks. Is this bad for gameplay?

5 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Why two houses? There's simply no benefit beyond a civ's special power.

Two types of houses, because the first "classic" 3x3 house will be available in the village stage, and the second type of houses - rich city villas or simply houses of the rich - are open in later eras.

In addition, due to the lack of roads in the game, I think the developers should give city buildings an aura that simulates the presence of roads - units standing near houses could have an increase in movement speed.

Edited October 15, 2023 by Hemachandra

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

We can eventually have bigger or more luxurious versions of houses for the civs, but as far as gameplay goes having 2 different houses isn't very cool or interesting unless it's something special like the Carth houses. I can envision having Insulae for a hypothetical Roman Empire civ in the future. 

[Hemachandra]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

We can eventually have bigger or more luxurious versions of houses for the civs, but as far as gameplay goes having 2 different houses isn't very cool or interesting unless it's something special like the Carth houses. I can envision having Insulae for a hypothetical Roman Empire civ in the future. 

If the availability of insula does not correspond to the current time period, perhaps there are other options for expanding Roman Republican houses?

I see that some time periods overlap and the Ptolemaic dynasty is presented in the game at the same time as Macedonia, although Alexander the Great should have been dead by then. Maybe the developers should embody the imperial period of Rome in the form of an era of city development, which could solve the problems with the insula? In the end, the faction does not indicate at all what period the Romans belong to.

Anyway, here's what I could find about 4th-3rd century Roman residential buildings. BC e:

Quote

Typical for the home of a wealthy patriarchal family IV century BC e. There was an atrium house with an axial plan in Etruria, Latium and Campania. The best example of such a house is the House of the Surgeon in Pompeii. The walls of this house are made of rubble and clay. Compacted earth floors and clay plastered walls give an idea of the primitive, harsh life of the 4th century. BC BC: “According to Cato, the ancients dined in the atrium, and their lunch consisted of two courses... There they kept money... There was also a kitchen; hence the name atrium, because it was ater (black) from the smoke. Others claim that Atria was an Etruscan city in which the houses had extensive vestibules; having adopted them, the Romans gave them name atriums (atria)..." (Servius, Commentary on the Aeneid, I, 726).

 

Quote

The original Roman house was symmetrical, and its outer walls were almost blank. The high, narrow slits served only for ventilation. The simple facade features an entrance covered with a wooden beam. The Roman writer and scientist Varro mentioned patriarchal houses of this type in his satire “Rising Early.” In it, he painted a picture of the ideal past of the Roman Republic: “Young people make their own beds, which seem soft after work. The house is not a remarkable structure at all, but an architect could study symmetry from it ... "Axial symmetry is a favorite technique
not only Roman, but also Etruscan architects, who widely used it in the layout of cities, residential buildings, temples and burials. This scheme became typical for most residential buildings not only in Pompeii, but also in other cities of the Roman Republic. The roof design deserves special mention: “The slopes of the roof of the Italian house are not directed outward, but towards the central rectangular hole, which is made above the atrium. Through this hole - the compluvium - rainwater flowed into the pool located underneath in the center of the atrium - the impluvium. Water was directed along the sloping bottom of the impluvium
into a tank installed under the floor. The atrium with a hole in the roof was a light well for all the rooms surrounding it, which, as a rule, had no windows...” [36, p. 102]. The depiction of houses on Etruscan urns of that time indicates the possibility of draining water to the outer walls ("rain atrium") (Fig. 6.6).

Do you agree that the houses of the early republic are not very similar to those presented in the game?

21 hours ago, Genava55 said:

Romans

Edited October 15, 2023 by Hemachandra

[Hemachandra]

Residential buildings of the 2nd–1st centuries. BC e. (estates, villas)

Quote

City manor-type houses and country villas began to be built everywhere, providing shelter not only for the owners, but also for a large staff of servants, clients and slaves. Such residential complexes occupied quite large areas. They still retained the atrium, but the “Etruscan” tablinum became a passage room leading to the peristyle (a courtyard surrounded by a colonnade along the perimeter). The peristyle became a tribute to “Greek” fashion, which penetrated into the rich houses of the Romans along with Greek architects. The most characteristic was the atrium-peristyle house. In Pompeii, the best of these houses date back to the 2nd century. BC e. Some of them occupied an entire block, taking over the sites of many atrium houses that were being demolished or rebuilt (Fig. 6.16). The most famous of them are the houses of Faun (Fig. 6.17), Vettii, Pansa, Silver Wedding and Lucretius Fronto.

[alre]

I think houses in the game look better than the reconstruction and that's an artistic license. artists who make the buildings models are always trying to give a visually rich representation of them, which is not quite the same as four walls with a roof that shows a small opening... a house of that kind would have a porch and items in the inside that our artists will rather depict in the outside.