some ideas & some questions

[jonnyreb]

okay so, we know some things about the differnt fractions we can play , and some of their war units.

fraction specials besides military units:

will there there be any differnce in game play between fractions besides war units and building looks? i think each fraction should have a differnt way in witch they build or gather resorces ... or maybe each have their own building that other fractions wont have anything like ( something off the top of my head would be like a royal guard tent or something for persians that trains immortals and other units that are elite like them.... or a merchant tent )

ages & commands

another idea would be okay i dont know about 2 many rts games besides aom and aot but i can see pretty much from screenshots and most rts this will have differnt ages right? like iron and bronze ages or soemthing like that... i dont know if other rts you get a special power like a god power in aomtt but it would be kool if you could get some kinda of power or something with each new age and it could be something historical... like lets say you going into third of 4 ages... and your celts ..it could be a command like heroic charge or cav. flank ... where some units are summoned into the game to do something

and you could click some where for say 40 horse men to come charging through... maybe the units go away latter... or if you were greek or roman you could use like sige the city command or something and like sige units appear not far from where you clicked and rain down rocks or something onto the city for a mintue or something..... agian just ideas... so instead of god powers maybe special commands .. some other command ideas are...

ambush - trap where you can see a outline or something and when a enemy walks by uints will appear and

kill the enemy....

assassinate - target a enemy to have a assassin show up and kill the enemy unit -could be persian and

could be a starting game command maybe useable more then once

war hounds - summons a pack of roman war dogs or celt dogs to attack a enemy

guerilla attacks - maybe like 6 Iberian horsemen show up on the right side of the place you clicked maybe a

big circle thing outlining attack zone ...anyway like 6 horsemen run by and attack a few units or

some buildings ... then as soon as they fade away 6 more come in form a differnt path and

attack and maybe like 4 or 5 of these attacks on the area

theres so many more things that could be used as a command that could fit in with each fraction

online play and update:

okay i was wondering ... if this is gunna be open sorce and modder friendly .... like problems with aom mods ...cant play online unless other person has it to. so how to slove this?

I think that sence many mods will probley come out...pick the best add on or fraction addiction or maybe even some other update or mod.... and either use a auto patching program so people just have to hit update each month... or put them all in a file for people to put in game....

that way each month the game gets bigger and better .... new civ.s and new tuants or new textures monthly maybe it could grow like second life does user added content, but a group of people checking it for the top most fairness to the game with balance and nothing second hand compared to the rest of the game

ONLINE PLAY:

i was wondering how do you plan on setting up the online interface.

what features do you hope on adding

like a chat room .... abiltiy to pick from differnt game types ... death match supremacy , conquest , lighting, player made maps .... will there be a stat system with the online play if so there should be a clan stat system to seeing as allmost every game out there has clans.

just some ideas and questions

when was the last time a idea or question hurt someone forget that last part lol i can think of many MANY times they hurt some body! ...(i.e. " hey i got an idea for a nuclear bomb!" "what happend to the tapes of the water boarding?...hey! hey!! where you taking me!?! hey stop no!!!! *gulp*gulp*" lol

[Ltap]

For the first part, I think what you mean is "factions", and you are talking about Unique Buildings. Since there are so few civs, I think that this might be a good idea, it would make picking a civilization a task you'd have to think about and consider for their various bonuses, and it would increase the replay value a lot.

About the things such as ambush - I think that these would be good ideas as specialized abilities for certain civs. For instance, could you see the Romans ambushing anybody? It'd be a good bonus for the Celts, especially when the Romans and Hellenes will probably be OP (just an educated guess, I know absolutely nothing about the actual game). Guerilla attacks sound good for raiding early in the game to weaken enemies early on, however this would probably be OP with cavalry, it would mean they do tons of damage and make the enemy spend all their money on troops to try and defend themselves.

I thought about what you said and this is my idea. These things would be researchable Unique Techs that make certain abilities available, most of them tactical formations:

Celts get Ambush. Historical reasoning is that since the celts usually knew their terrain very well and knew how to move silently they could ambush their enemies easily. The actual bonus would be to make the troops invisible until they start to attack, at which point they become visible. If this is too OP, it might be a good idea to make it only able to happen in forested areas.

The Carthaginians would get Natural Harbour (referring to the natural harbour in Carthage). Their ships are build and repaired faster.

The Hellenes would get Soldiers of Sparta, making all their units faster and stronger. If this is too OP, maybe just limiting it to infantry would be best.

Iberians get the Raiding Party ability. This would be something akin to the Patrol or Guard abilities in AoE. You simply select the raiders, click Raid, and then select the area they are raiding. They will go to the area and fight any enemies in their area, however, they will target non-military units as well as trying to raze buildings. After 15 seconds, they retreat back to where they were before they started the raid.

Persians get Massed Infantry, that allow their infantry to be created in batches of 5 and to also be created faster.

Finally, the Romans get Roman Discipline. This battle formation means that a certain block of infantry stick together in a block despite what is around (except for terrain). That way, your legionaries won't immediately run around and bump into each other trying to get at the enemy soldiers, they'll stay in an orderly formation and only fight or the soldier in front of them dies.

Some of these might be hard to implement, especially the Roman Discipline one, but most commercial games go for eyecandy and graphics instead of solid gameplay values such as formations. I've always been a fan of RTS being more tactical and less strategic, so instead of just having a game where you throw your mob of troops at the enemy mob of troops and hope that you can overwhelm them with superior numbers or better upgrades gets boring very fast.