Children?

[Ramus Crudelis]

Hi y'all,

I would like to ask you a question...if it's a (historically) correct game, there must be children too, I mean, have you ever seen a civilisation without any children?

Dear admins and enthousiasts on this forum: Children, I repeat, Children. That is all.

Ramus Crudelis

edit: I am not a pedophile

Edited January 20, 2008 by Ramus Crudelis

[feneur]

While we strive for historical correctness we do also take gameplay into consideration, and despite not being a part of the team at the time the design was decided upon I think I can find enough reason why not to include children.

What role would they play? Units can't be added just because they improve the correctness, in that case we should include old people, and sick people, and every other detail. One can imagine a different kind of game, where the player has to take care of an entire civilisation and thus has to deal with such factors too. This game is not that kind of game though As can be read in the FAQ on the site we're aiming more for the warfare part of Real Time Strategy than economy etc, to go as far as including children etc would make it more of a City Building game or similar, which while that may appeal to some people it's not what we intend with this game.

Another factor of this game is that it will be very moddable though, so it should be possible for someone with the right skills to change the game in such a way (to just include children one would merely have to know some modelling/texturin/animating, but to change the general gameplay some programming skills would also be needed.)

[Argalius]

Would be kind of brute to finish off children in the game...

[Ramus Crudelis]

okay, now I understand

[Mythos_Ruler]

edit: I am not a pedophile

lol... I just found this part funny.

Anywho, Argalius and Erik enunciated why having children in the game would be a bad idea. Imagine a game where you regularly have to slaughter children - not really that fun, IMHO. Plus you have to figure out a use for them in the game. What purpose would they serve? Among other issues. I imagine the gameplay would have to be decidedly different than the direction we want.

[Ramus Crudelis]

Well yeah I know, no purpose, though in the Ancient Cretan civilisation under king Minos children worked as slaves. It's where the Ancient Greek word 'o pais' (= the child, the slave, the worker) derived from.

As far as for killing all those children, I'm kinda @#$%ed up so I don't care personally, like killing a child is much different from killing a woman.

[den404]

I think he means like, If you build houses ( For max population ) there would be additional NPC character like children and women, as the soldiers are the house man's.

So it would be very realistic

My english stinks....

[Tilanus Commodor]

Well yeah I know, no purpose, though in the Ancient Cretan civilisation under king Minos children worked as slaves. It's where the Ancient Greek word 'o pais' (= the child, the slave, the worker) derived from.

As far as for killing all those children, I'm kinda @#$%ed up so I don't care personally, like killing a child is much different from killing a woman.

You got a good point. I agree to that.

Nevertheless feneur is also right, you'd need to give them a role and just giving Hellenes children is also weird .. somehow, it'll look like Romans, Celts and Persians had no children. Another possibility would be children as non-destroyable ambient, but if you include that, the game needs more of it to be still authentic and that's a lot of work, tho I'd love it.

If they'd be part of active happening, I'd give them a basic role in view of unit production. They get older and when they reached a certain age you can recruit them or let them work. That'd give the unit production also a passive aspect. But that's not all, you still need more for that to get it working. Population Growth and all factors which influence it and this would give the game of course another character. Reminds me somehow of the Total War Series where the mood and situation of your people in towns played an important role. I've no idea what the current unit training system is, but I admit that changing it to this what I said would be pretty much work.

Nevertheless I'd really like to see more ambient activity, more passive events. That'd give the whole game a pretty unique character without changing the active systems, cause besides the possibility to show your knowledge of realism in the ancient times, it's a cool gameplay feature which is not existent in many games with that theme.

Edited January 30, 2008 by Tilanus Commodor

[FirePowa8]

I don't want to see kids in gameplay, but I wouldn't mind a children as campaign units - eyecandy* or otherwise.

*I, too, am not a paedophile.

Edited February 4, 2008 by FirePowa8

[ZeZar]

Whats up with all the pedophiles?

Children does not have anything to do in a game imo, mostly because RTS games in most cases equals war. And war is no place for children. Also, for a RTS game that already struggles towards making most out of little (thinking about extra models and old computers here) these things are not useful and only take up space.

And if you want children that bad (not trying to accuse you of anything ) you could always make a children-mod. However, THAT would be pedophile! So please don't.

[Tilanus Commodor]

It's not pedophile (I'm not Peter File! ^^) having children in wars. It's real and I dunno how many people would say that wars are pedophile. War are never 'phile', never friend of anyone, everyone gets killed.

I'd only like them to be in as passive, ambient undestroyable units.

[Historicity]

Yes - just one more item to add to the to do list for WFG staff!

[ZeZar]

@Tilanus: I am pretty sure the pedophile thing was for fun :=)

But children has nothing to do in a RTS _game_ imo, just makes a complicated game more complicated, and when it gets TOO complicated, most gamers loose interest.

[Apomonomenos]

Children would be a good idea . Instead of training Villagers, units can come to the town or have families and apply for jobs (or drafted in some factions), and whenever a town is captured, children won't remember it (if very small) or will have very low remembrance of it and will be taken to your town as your civilians. Also, when you click on the Civilization Centre (which was misspelled on http://www.wildfiregames.com/0ad/page.php?p=11303) it'll show ratio of housed citizens to homeless civilians to see how much more houses are needed to be built. Children can go to a Philosophy Academy or a school (I don't know what it was called, but I do know in Classical Aged Greece Most boys were taught by one of their friend's fathers as a home school, and that women weren't schooled because back then they were expected to care for children) and get skilled in a certain skill (farming, fishing, hunting, mining, etc.) and be tasked to it. The game Glory of the Roman Empire is a good game to learn about it, because they have most of what I mentioned (they did have a Philosophy Academy, but it would only generate gold , and it they only enemies were barbarians and all they would do is burn houses and kill soldiers, leaving the citizens to walk back to another town peacefully. )

[feneur]

Well, if you'd read the comments on that page you'd seen that it's not misspelled at all. It's just spelled the British way.

[Apomonomenos]

Ok, thx for spelling that out

[Justinian]

I'd only like them to be in as passive, ambient undestroyable units.

Why undestroyable.

Can't we all just agree that one of the victory conditions should be killing off the enemies next generation! (jk)

Still I think it would be good to have children and passive women in the game. If we had morale I'd suggest making them "rout" everytime enemy troops come anywhere near them. Even if they were invulnerable.

For the record, a ) my name is not Peter File

b ) I do not like little children. in any capacity.

Edited April 8, 2008 by Scipii_Alemanus

[Apomonomenos]

Well, maybe not women but defenetly children.