First impressions, ideas, a few bugs

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

the only one that comes to mind is the mameluke.

what about janissaries?

[wraitii]

There is actually the concept of "settlement sites", that are represented by wells. Only there you will be able to build new Civic Centres.

Oh, right, I forgot about that. It's not an Idea I love, but I can see why it's practical.

As for the "near water", it was more of the "not in the middle of nowhere" Idea. Water is really important, but may be a lot of micromanagement.

Of course, I think it would be just great to have a true water management.

[SMST]

What about both being way off 0 A.D.'s timeframe?

And there is a Greek Slave Unit already in the game.

Edit:

Oh, right, I forgot about that. It's not an Idea I love, but I can see why it's practical.

As for the "near water", it was more of the "not in the middle of nowhere" Idea. Water is really important, but may be a lot of micromanagement.

Of course, I think it would be just great to have a true water management.

Well, I think water distribution is way off for an RTS game. It is more of a City Builder feature - Caesar III comes in my mind.

Edited November 20, 2010 by SMST

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

What about both being way off 0 A.D.'s timeframe?

I couldn't agree more.

[wraitii]

Edit:

Well, I think water distribution is way off for an RTS game. It is more of a City Builder feature - Caesar III comes in my mind.

True that. But primary management might be a fun thing to have, such as only building farms near water holes or stuff like that.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

But primary management might be a fun thing to have, such as only building farms near water holes or stuff like that.

That would be limiting. Why don't you have it where you can dig irrigational canals?

[Aldandil]

If people got free slave units, it would make sense (at least in terms of flavor) for them to have the same civilian functions as regular soldiers, but without any soldier functions. But as a unit such a slave might be kind of crappy. I guess it would be similar to a free female citizen, but I don't know if it would be worth it. For one thing, if the civilization you captured them from steals them back, would that mean they become soldiers for their faction of origin again?

I think that Greeks used Scythian slaves for their archer/police units, but since there is no Scythian civilization in the game, doing anything special with that wouldn't make any sense.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I think that Greeks used Scythian slaves for their archer/police units, but since there is no Scythian civilization in the game, doing anything special with that wouldn't make any sense.

Why not? There isn't a Thracian civ in the game, yet the Greeks have Thracian Peltasts.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I was wondering if the Persians have the ability to train camel warriors and elephants. It doesn't mention them in the wiki/trac.

[SMST]

Camel warriors are going to be the Persian cavalry javelinists. War elephants are skipped from the regular unit line for accuracy reasons, but are included as editor units.

According to a quite reliable source.

Edited November 21, 2010 by SMST

[Mythos_Ruler]

Actually, we're leaving out Camel units for the Persians and instead giving that class (Cavalry Javelinist) to the Medians. You are right about Elephants though. However, we'll still include both elephant and camel units in Atlas.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Where is the Median civilization?

Edited November 21, 2010 by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

[Mythos_Ruler]

Medians are a part of the Persian Empire.

[Aldandil]

Why not? There isn't a Thracian civ in the game, yet the Greeks have Thracian Peltasts.

Having them as a regular unit trained by the Greek civ would work. What I mean (I didn't explain myself adequately) is that Scythian archer slaves couldn't be used for what oshron had in mind: since there is no Scythian civ to capture slaves from, it wouldn't make sense to have Scythian archers be a special unit that can only be trained from capturing slaves from other players. They'd have to be just a regular unit, training-wise.

[Mythos_Ruler]

They could be a special "slave" or "mercenary" unit trainable from the Market. There could be a global pool of slaves/mercs available to all players. The more players buy, the more expensive they get. Deleting your units (to free up pop) doesn't kill them, but adds them to the global slave/merc pool (you get a small amount of their non-food costs back). Likewise, 10% of all kills adds units to the global pool.

[SMST]

I totally support the idea of merc units trainable from Markets. They would only use Metal (Gold) as their training costs and be aviable in a short time, but they don't benefit from upgrades or territoral/cultural bonusses. However, they could be used by some civs to bolster their weak spots a bit:

Greeks: Mercenary Scythian Archer/Mercenary Thessalian Cavalry (Cav Spearman)

Persians: Mercenary Greek Hoplite (but they didn't use them around your timeframe, I think)

Celts: Belgae Warrior/Gaesatae (both were known to fight as mercenaries for other Gallic tribes)

Romans: Don't really know, they already have their allied units as their super units

Carthage: They obviously have already a lot of mercs in their regular tropp tree.

@Mythos: Sorry, the camel riders as javelinists are the last thing that I've heard from you about them.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Well, the way I figure it could work is by installing mercenary camps in the land. You can pay mercenaries to make them join you; however, they will not gather resources and will not be controlled after "x" amount of fighting. Once they are near there completion of service, a flare could appear on the map telling you that your mercenary needs his pay in "x" number of seconds or he will rejoin his mercenary camp. If there are casualties, then the mercenaries at that camp will eventually replenish. You maybe could also have those kinds of mercenaries for training.

[plumo]

Im in favour of neutral settlements like in Age of empires III.

[joystner]

I took a look on the game once more and think, that fields could be larger or with custom size, also with random crops (if not selectable ). Oh, and please make fields to be built with no wood required or at least very minor amount. I know that it seems to be balance issue generator (exploit), but can by avoided by making its production a bit harder (longer) and setting its prize much lower.

[Aldandil]

To me it makes the most sense for the fields to always be grain since barley, wheat, and the like were the staples of the whole area covered by the game.

[oshron]

it could perhaps be that there are variant appearances for fields for each civilization depending on what their historical crops were, even if that produce isnt actually a staple food like grain or barley. say, grapes for wine? or olives? perhaps some fields could visually resemble orchards?

[Aldandil]

Other plants (such as grapevines and tree crops) that played smaller parts in the diets are already being added as eye candy.

[oshron]

while that is cool and is great for scenario design, don't you think it would also be cool and rather accurate to include some fields that have such crops and products appear as legitimate fields? so then you could maybe see a roman vineyard while marching your celts past an ally's town?

[Aldandil]

Well, I see your point, if eye-candy isn't available in random map multiplayer games. But to be accurate it would have to be randomized with the probabilities set so that the majority of fields are grain. And each civ would have to get their own list of crops and probabilities.

[oshron]

pretty much, yeah