Civilians with female voices

[Atrik]

On 01/03/2026 at 1:45 PM, Atrik said:

On 01/03/2026 at 1:18 PM, guerringuerrin said:

RIght now, the have same voices as citizen-soldier and thats creates confusion

Agreed, I personally couldn't adapt, as sound feedbacks are so important. Knowing if something spawning, dying, or sometimes added to selection etc can be crucial.

Here is a small mod to make all civilians have the sounds of the previously females citizens.

CiviliansFemaleVoices.zip

 

If you would also prefer with the actors changed to all females (for consistency for example) here is one that does that.

CiviliansFemaleVoicesAndActor.zip

Edited Tuesday at 09:42 by Atrik

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Or you could adapt and not give up after only a week.

[Atrik]

15 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Or you could adapt and not give up after only a week.

It's not like just a change of having to remap some habbits, it's loss of information. Visually I could very well adapt, to new civilians models, no problem. But losing the sounds differentiation between them and CSs is a small regression in UX.

[guerringuerrin]

16 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Or you could adapt and not give up after only a week.

 

Gendered-citizens are a great addition. I’m glad they were incorporated into the game. However, since they currently use the same response and spawn audio as Citizen-soldiers, an important feedback element has been lost.

Audio feedback is very important—sometimes players don’t even look at the screen to see what they selected, and this is only possible thanks to the audio. The same applies when spawning units: right now, there’s no way to tell by listening whether the unit being spawned is a soldier or a citizen.

I was thinking that we could edit the audio to give them male voices. Here’s a very rough example I put together. Please don’t take it seriously—it’s a very rough, low-quality sample, included only for illustration. I also believe there are some voice clips that aren’t currently used but are available.

That said, I don’t want to take this lightly. In my humble opinion, artistic curation is very important, and audio falls within that scope. A consistent solution requires approaching this carefully and responsibly, so as not to undermine the work of other developers and artists.

[Fabius]

I play the game on silent so this is not an issue for me. I do find it interesting using voice lines to make a distinction between units rather than visual though

 

[AlexHerbert]

Lol... I'd like to have Han in Chinese. And I think the mod I am missing now is ResetSeed 

Edited Monday at 15:04 by AlexHerbert

[Player of 0AD]

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. Everything from Delenda Est should just stay in that mod (Germanics, for example). There is a reason why >99% of online players play vanilla instead of Delenda Est.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 minute ago, Player of 0AD said:

Germanics

this was not from DE

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Yeah audio feedback from actions is important. It would be awesome to have some additional work done in this area, something to distinguish a male citizen from a soldier.

[guerringuerrin]

22 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change.

Could you explain why is a bad change?

Edited Monday at 14:52 by guerringuerrin
adjust quote

[AlexHerbert]

Maybe he’s just upset the villagers now have healthy relationships. Now they’re literally holding hands with “some other guy.” Devastating.

 

Edited Monday at 15:58 by AlexHerbert
Edited for language

[DesertRose]

59 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

Could you explain why is a bad change?

From a gameplay perspective it's useless clutter that reduces clarity.

Like decorative "trees" around your CC that you can't harvest.

[guerringuerrin]

4 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

From a gameplay perspective it's useless clutter that reduces clarity.

So you're saying the AoE franchise is full of clutterness then

Edited Monday at 15:55 by guerringuerrin
adjust quote, again

[ShadowOfHassen]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Yeah audio feedback from actions is important. It would be awesome to have some additional work done in this area, something to distinguish a male citizen from a soldier.

I wonder if we could just get another male voice actor saying the lines, and then get the guy citizens say the new guy lines and the girl citizens say the girl lines we already have.

[DesertRose]

 

8 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

So you saying aoe2 is full of clutterness then

Yes, which is why two of the most popular mods for clarity, small trees mod and idle villager pointer, is now in-build in the game itself, and why the most popular mods either remove clutter or improve the UI.

Edited Monday at 16:01 by DesertRose

[guerringuerrin]

2 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

Yes, which is why two of the most popular mods for clarity, small trees mod and idle villager pointer, is now in-build in the game itself, and why the most popular mods either remove clutter or improve the UI.

Just to be clear, idle villager pointer adds a pointer in the top of every idle villager, it doesnt convert male villagers into women. I agree having the same voice sound of military units ads clutter. But I don't see why having a male model, totally different from the military models, adds clutterness too

[DesertRose]

It comes down to how you interpret " "Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. "

• Gendered Civilians is bad, period

or

• Implementing Gendered Civilians in an unfinished state (no dedicated male voice for civilians) is bad

 

I was thinking of making a mod that completely reverts the gendered civilians change, but I found that playing with this mod gives enough sensual feedback regarding which unit I have selected that I don't feel the need anymore.

 

Edited Monday at 16:15 by DesertRose

[guerringuerrin]

1 minute ago, DesertRose said:

It comes down to how you interpret " "Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. "

• Gendered Civilians is bad, period

or

• Implementing Gendered Civilians in an unfinished state (no dedicated male voice for civilians) is bad

I was thinking of making a mod that completely reverts the gendered civilians change, but I found that playing with this mod gives enough sensual feedback regarding which unit I have selected that I don't feel the need anymore.

That’s why it’s important to clarify what we mean when giving opinions about specific topics. Saying “it’s useless clutter that reduces clarity” is not specific enough about what the actual issue is: the models themselves, or the lack of distinct voices?
Since we were discussing this:

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. 

Which, stated like that and without further explanation, seems to refer to the introduction of the change itself rather than to any specific aspect of it. I’m clarifying this because this topic has been discussed in the game over the past few days, and from the arguments I’ve been reading, some people seem to be rejecting the very idea of having male citizen models.

1 minute ago, DesertRose said:

I was thinking of making a mod that completely reverts the gendered civilians change, but I found that playing with this mod gives enough sensual feedback regarding which unit I have selected that I don't feel the need anymore.

I guess now is clear you meant the audio feedback

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

54 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

 

Yes, which is why two of the most popular mods for clarity, small trees mod and idle villager pointer, is now in-build in the game itself, and why the most popular mods either remove clutter or improve the UI.

Absolutely hate the small trees mod. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

So, here's where being game developers and designers matters. It's where we who make the game make decisions based on a vision for the game. Every change we make angers some players, delights others, and has zero impact on others. We can't (and won't) swing back and forth after only a couple weeks of play. The time to make your voice heard was months ago. We've had several release candidates and the pull request is 9 months old and was committed to the repo 6 months ago. As far as I'm concerned, the feature is staying, and the only things I personally will entertain are ideas on how to improve it (and I'd wager many of the other developers would agree).

 

PS: The feature is only incidentally related to DE. 

[guerringuerrin]

6 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

So, here's where being game developers and designers matters. It's where we who make the game make decisions based on a vision for the game. Every change we make angers some players, delights others, and has zero impact on others. We can't (and won't) swing back and forth after only a couple weeks of play. The time to make your voice heard was months ago. We've had several release candidates and the pull request is 9 months old and was committed to the repo 6 months ago. As far as I'm concerned, the feature is staying, and the only things I personally will entertain are ideas on how to improve it (and I'd wager many of the other developers would agree).

 

PS: The feature is only incidentally related to DE. 

You’re absolutely right about this. There were several months available to test the different release candidates. In fact, the times I personally tested the RCs, I welcomed the inclusion of this PR, yet I didn’t notice this (important) detail at all. It was only after playing the final version of 0 A.D. R28 repeatedly that I realized this lack of feedback was causing confusion.

At least on my part, I take some self-criticism for not giving the testing phase the importance it deserved. There are a few other issues that could have been avoided if we had dedicated the necessary time and commitment to properly testing the RCs as we should have.

[Perzival12]

7 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. Everything from Delenda Est should just stay in that mod (Germanics, for example). There is a reason why >99% of online players play vanilla instead of Delenda Est.

Delenda est is actually way better than vanilla.
EDIT: Though not as good as Hyrule Conquest: Revival, if I do say so myself (I do).

Edited Monday at 21:57 by Perzival12
shameless self promotion.

[ittihat_ve_terakki]

On 2/3/2026 at 5:29 PM, Player of 0AD said:

"Gendered Civilians" is a very bad change. 

You can tell this isn’t a positive improvement from the fact that everyone will continue to call this new farmer unit “women.” This change adds absolutely nothing to the game in terms of gameplay. The justifications being offered are “historical accuracy” and “realism.” If that’s the case, then we should also add mechanics like sleep, rest, parents having children, a full day–night cycle and redesign the entire game from scratch. We should also reconsider how a “hero” can survive after being hit by 50 arrows.

I’d also like to address the following points:

1. Male soldiers were already able to farm. They were simply less efficient at it. (Likewise, women could work in mines and gather stone and metal, just less efficiently.) So the farmer role already included men, making men farmers is not a new update. The only real effect of this change is that it effectively removes “women” from the game.

2. If we’re talking about historical accuracy and realism, let’s look at population numbers. Imagine we have a village with 300 population. If 250 are soldiers and 50 are “farmers,” and even if only half of those farmers are women, does that mean there are only 25 women in a population of 300? When farmers were exclusively women, at least the number of women was higher. Where are the women who are supposed to make up half of the population? 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Wildfire Games sincerely apologizes for any inconvenience R28 may have caused to your life. 

[guerringuerrin]

@ittihat_ve_terakki 

I can truly understand that people consider the lack of appropriate audio feedback to be a problem. From a gameplay perspective, it’s reasonable to see that as an issue, and something should be done about it. But...

39 minutes ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

You can tell this isn’t a positive improvement from the fact that everyone will continue to call this new farmer unit “women.”

This is merely your assumption. I’ve already seen many people adopt the term “Civilian” without any issue. Historically, agriculture was a task carried out by the whole of civil society—within families or communities. I think this change aims to represent that. 

 

39 minutes ago, ittihat_ve_terakki said:

The justifications being offered are “historical accuracy” and “realism.” If that’s the case, then we should also add mechanics like sleep, rest, parents having children, a full day–night cycle and redesign the entire game from scratch. We should also reconsider how a “hero” can survive after being hit by 50 arrows.

And what you’re saying here is nonsense. You’re taking the historical accuracy argument to an extreme. It doesn’t even make sense to debate it. If you want to keep playing without your comfort being challenged, the favor has already been done for you — enjoy.
Honestly, what exactly is the problem? I’m genuinely struck by the reaction of some people, who I’m really seems to be motivated far more by ideological concerns than anything else. I’ve read comments in the lobby claiming this is part of a “woke agenda” (absurd argument) and that we should add r4pes to the game to be historically accurate....
Seriously, is having male models working on farms as civilians really that upsetting? It’s kind of funny.

Edited Tuesday at 21:49 by guerringuerrin