XVIII century mod

[Abadu]

Well guys, you probably know me from my contributions to the research of both "Colonial AD" and "For Honor and Glory" mods. This time however, I have a more audacious project: To make a total conversion mod for 0 AD, set in the XVIII century. Some of the game fundamental concepts, such as the idea of citizen-soldiers (which is good for a game set in the classical era;not so good to represent the professional armies of the modern era), but according to 0 AD team, the engine can be easily modified, so I don't think this will be a huge problem.My idea,at least for now,is to make the mod kind of a cross between the age of empires series and the cossacks series, but with more focus on tactics and formations (After all,warfare in this age was often determined by one general's abily to outmaneuver his opponent's lines).As for the nations,my idea is to begin with only 7 countries and latter expand this number with patches. Those 7 would be the main powers of this era, Great Brittain, France, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain and Sweden. With these, we would be able to recreate most of the great battles of the century, from Poltava to Rossbach, and experiment the armies of the great generals of the time, such as Karl XII and Frederich the Great. Is anybody interested on the idea?

[SMST]

If you want to disable the citizen soldier concept and have villager units, it is no problem at all. This is even possible at the current state of development, I tried it.

[Ykkrosh]

Yep, all you really need to do is find the right entity template file and delete the "ResourceGatherer" and "Builder" elements and then the unit won't be able to gather resources or build . More complex gameplay changes are likely to need modifications of the gameplay scripts, but the engine is designed to be flexible and makes that fairly easy.

[blablahead]

Citizen soldiers could also work as militia or conscripts. This sounds interesting, good luck!

I may be getting ahead of myself here, but for the future expansions, I think that the Ottomans and maybe the USA should be added. During this period, the Ottomans were fighting against the Austrians and Russians mainly for influence in the Balkans. At the beginning of the 18th century, the Empire had stagnated but towards the end of the century, Selim III had begun reforming the military to make it more modern and "European".

[Abadu]

Well folks, I have been thinking about the design of this "mod", and here are some ideas I'd like to share. First of all, I would like to focus less on economic micro-management and more on the battlefield. In order to reach this, I think it would be interesting to make the mod somewhat like "Warhammer 40.000", that is, with the economy depending on combat. The easiest way to do this (like in Warhammer) would be to have choke points , which would somehow contribute to the players economy. Mines, for example, would be those choke points, and holding them would be the best way to generate mineral resources. Another way to focus more on the military would be to have farms and plantations as the most profittable (and probably only effective) way to generate food (and maybe gold), and to have a limit of hose per civic center. This would force the player to capture other civic centers (there would be some neutral ones around the map, similar to "Cossacks II") in order to expand his economy. Finally, in order to increase the focus on combat, we could also have a few rare resources spots around the map (Like in "Rise of nations"), and instead of being gatherable, holding them would give some bonus to the player, encouraging the player to fight for the control of those. What do you think?

As for the factions, my plan is to have to ottomans in at some point. They would probably be the most unique faction in the mod. As for the USA, my original plan was to have "ages" for the civilizations to advance, corresponding to the early, mid and late century (the units and technology would evolve along those phases too). Since the US only appeared aroun the later part of the century, w would have to give them british units at the early century, and It would be kind weird to put those units against the units of the british nation, I think. Despite that, I think we would easil include the USA in a scenario, campaign or historical battle

[SMST]

Well, I do not like that "focus-only-on-battle"-philosophy too much, because I think it is just too straight-minded. But that is just my opinion ...

[Abadu]

My idea is not to make the mod all based on the combat, but to not let the combats of the game be decided by how fast can you build barracks and click to produce more men. In my opinion, while the economy should help the player to get the upper hand in a combat, it's should be decided by the player's tactics, and not by how fast can he produce soldiers and assign villagers to resources (One thing I hate on some RTS is how sometimes you have to, in the middle of a fight, come back to your town center to micro-manage your economy, because it's the real winning factor).

My idea is to have a smaller need of economic micro-management than in many "conventional" RTS's, and to have some important economic aspects also dependant on the military (like the "capturable civic centers" generating gold, which would also be usefull to represent taxes, which are the main source of income of any government). Do you get the idea?

[SMST]

Got it. I agree in what you say that you shouldn't have to go back to base every ten minutes to tend after your economy, but to establish it once and then let it work almost automatically. But I think not that combat should determine your economy, first, because the philosophy as itself is questionable (I do NOT intend ANY offense by saying that), second, because it makes the game feeling somewhat un-organic in my opinion. I don't want to conquer the mine, I want to conquer the territory (or something) around the mine and then send my workers to start mining - I actually like to do such things because it makes me feel more involved. But after I established the mine, I expect it to work without any other interfering by me (respective the player) unless it is under attack or something, so that I can focus on my technology or my troops. I think that is a point where we both agree.

I also agree that tactics and not speed should win a game, but "tactics" should not refer to military tactics alone in my opinion. Why don't you put some economic pressure on the enemy. Your rare ressource idea seems to be pretty interesting in that. My idea concerning these goes like this: You took control of a rare ressource (say, saltpeter) which enables you to build a certain line of troops. ("unlocks" the technology rather than needed to actually spend it - the actual unit will cost you food or metal or whatever basic ressources you want to have) Now, your enemy does not have control over that ressource and now you may tease him a bit ... offer an alliance where you grant him share of that ressource (which means he gets the bonus as well as you), but in return he has to pay you some tax of his own gathered ressources, has to hand a territory over to you, or something else. Since he is dependant of that ressource, he will most probably agree (if you don't make ridiculous demands or if he has a military force roughly strong enough to capture the ressource from you or if he just hates you too much) and you took a opponent out of the game without need of military tactics, but dipolomatic movements and economic pressure. This system, of course, only works if there actually is a more sophisticated diplomatic system (like EE2) than "ally-neutral-hostile".