More Unique Civs: What can we do?

[Perzival12]

So, after playing for a few months now (almost a year), and through my work on Hyrule Conquest and experience playing games such as Halo Wars and Warcraft, I've been thinking: the civilizations in 0 A.D. aren't really that unique. Most civilizations are statistically and gameplay wise almost the exact same, with differences between them being almost purely aesthetic, both in names and actual art. While I know we can't get the races as varied as in a fantasy RTS (with flying races, aliens, monsters, magic, etc.) I feel like the varying ways each race operated in history is not used almost at all. So, using my knowledge of history I've composed a small list of things that could be changed to the few races I actively know about:

Athenians: Strong navy & walls, more techs

Britains: Faster units and stronger/more dogs

Gauls: Fiercer units (more damage and RoF)

Germans: Mobile dropsites and houses

Romans: Defensive units (more resistance) and formation focused

Spartans: Offensive units (more damage & health)

This list is incomplete, I ask everyone who reads this to post some thoughts about the other civs and I'll edit this list to fit those ideas.

[Grautvornix]

You are certainly right - there could be more civ character diversity. However, balancing appears to be a MAJOR task and I remember loooong and excited discussions and changes back and forth to arrive at the current more or less stable state.

Possibly, with your modding experience, do you think you could generate a few  of your proposed test changes and let players look at the resulting balances?

[Perzival12]

3 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

Possibly, with your modding experience, do you think you could generate a few  of your proposed test changes and let players look at the resulting balances?

For sure, I’ll make a short mod and post it here showing off some of my balancing ideas as soon as I have time.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, Perzival12 said:

the civilizations in 0 A.D. aren't really that unique

They are much more unique now than they used to be, the exception being maybe in A23 and before.

Some civilization have more unit variety, others have stronger upgrades for fewer units. Analogies being Kushites for the variety and Spartans for stronger, but fewer unit types.  Balance is a hard thing to master, so this game tries to offload uniqueness onto civ-specific upgrades and bonuses.

If you think civilizations are mostly the same in 0 A.D., then you must believe that civilizations in AoE2 are almost identical.

[Perzival12]

2 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

If you think civilizations are mostly the same in 0 A.D., then you must believe that civilizations in AoE2 are almost identical.

I’ve never played AoE, so I wouldn’t know…

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

A curiosity of this discussion is that all of the above traits for each civ are already addressed by bonuses/techs/heros ect in game. Surely there are others where mechanics can be adjusted or added.

I think its important to distinguish between real gameplay uniqueness and perceived uniqueness. Example of real uniqueness: skirm cavalry for carthage has extra move speed, while skirm cavalry for iberians has reduced cost. The base unit is the same but the bonuses applied to it are not equal or similar.

0ad does a good job of not chasing cosmetic uniqueness. I look at aoe4 as an example for cosmetic uniqueness. At a surface level all the civs have dramatically different units, building types, bonuses, and even unique economic units. This creates a problem where there are almost no basic units in play, and no basic civ setup. As a result everything for every civ is unique, and so the uniqueness loses its value as the respective bonuses and unit strengths must be co-equal. When civilization balance is taken into account in aoe4 every civ must have a "unique" way of doing the same thing, for example every civ in aoe4 has some way of generating indefinite gold through various "unique"  implementations. There is more diversity of strategy per civ for 53 civs in aoe2 than there is for 10 or so civs in aoe4. In 0ad and aoe2, the civs are asymmetrically balanced such that a civ's strongsuit can not be exactly matched by another civ and in order to accomplish this there must be a baseline roster and build order that civilizations share.

[Emacz]

5 hours ago, Perzival12 said:

So, after playing for a few months now (almost a year), and through my work on Hyrule Conquest and experience playing games such as Halo Wars and Warcraft, I've been thinking: the civilizations in 0 A.D. aren't really that unique. Most civilizations are statistically and gameplay wise almost the exact same, with differences between them being almost purely aesthetic, both in names and actual art. While I know we can't get the races as varied as in a fantasy RTS (with flying races, aliens, monsters, magic, etc.) I feel like the varying ways each race operated in history is not used almost at all. So, using my knowledge of history I've composed a small list of things that could be changed to the few races I actively know about:

Athenians: Strong navy & walls, more techs

Britains: Faster units and stronger/more dogs

Gauls: Fiercer units (more damage and RoF)

Germans: Mobile dropsites and houses

Romans: Defensive units (more resistance) and formation focused

Spartans: Offensive units (more damage & health)

This list is incomplete, I ask everyone who reads this to post some thoughts about the other civs and I'll edit this list to fit those ideas.

We have added more diversity and complexity in our version of an "Expansion" Classical Warfare AEA!  That's one of the reasons the project was started.

@Grautvornix I wasnt able to edit and add in your quote as well  But there is already a mod (plenty actually) out there that add variety and complexity.

Edited 11 hours ago by Emacz

[Grautvornix]

@Emacz that's great and much appreciated, of course!

My point was that if @Perzival12 has some good ideas it might be useful to test them individually in a small mod (possibly even limited to only 2 or 3 civs at the beginning) to acquire a feeling for the suggested changes.

Alternatively it might be useful to join forces and work on the same mod?