Alpha 6 Thread

[tribalbeat]

It may be some ways off, but let's get an Alpha Six suggestions thread. Try to keep these to really minor suggestions for the short run instead of things like adding new units. I for one, would like to see at least a rudimentary tech tree. (e.g. A player needs to have a farmstead before they can begin making farms.)

[frapell]

Yes, +1 to some initial techs.

I would also love to have, a nice wall building system

[Mythos_Ruler]

Yes, +1 to some initial techs.

I would also love to have, a nice wall building system

There are basically 2 ways we can do walls. One is the standard "drag-click" system we're all familiar with from Age of Kings, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires 3, etc. You basically click an end point, then drag, then shift-click all the points and corners along the wall where you want. You can even "snap" the wall you are dragging out to the end point of another wall. We should definitely have this.

The second is to have a "curtail wall" system, which is basically a ring around your Civic Centre at a fixed distance. I like this very much, because we can then have "directional" walls with the fortifications facing outward. With the click-drag method the walls need to be double-sided. With the curtain wall, you can have a button in the Civ Centre UI that you click and it automatically places all the foundations for you. You can then task a bunch of units to the curtain wall ring of foundations. We can even make it more realistic by making the curtain wall take a long time to build. Click a curtain wall foundation and you can click a button in the UI that summons all idle workers to the wall to build it (like the Titan Gate in AOM).

We would just make things like trees and mines "snap" to one side or the other of the ring so that you aren't building a wall over your resources.

My ideal would be to have both systems. The "curtain wall" method for city walls (which face outward), and the click-drag method for Roman siege walls (remodeled to be two-sided).

[plumo]

I prefer drag and drop for multiple reasons. for example : with curtain wall you dont use natural formations like forests, heights and rivers to your strategic advantage. also more realistic looking and more customizable so you can fit as many buildings within your walls as you want.

[General Octavian]

Both would be nice

[tribalbeat]

I prefer drag and drop for multiple reasons. for example : with curtain wall you dont use natural formations like forests, heights and rivers to your strategic advantage. also more realistic looking and more customizable so you can fit as many buildings within your walls as you want.

I would have to agree. The curtain wall system just doesn't seem like it would be very useful. The click and drag method just is the most user friendly, and strategic approach.

[TheArchive]

I vote for both.

However, would it be possible to make the wall 'snake'? Like you select wall, then perhaps you could select if you want curtain or straight, and then the wall follows where you drag the mouse (or something like that). That way there could be circular walls that don't have to be around just the civic center.

We can even make it more realistic by making the curtain wall take a long time to build.

Just my opinion, but I suggest only doing that if it is stronger than a regular wall. If it is exactly the same in everything but shape, then making it cost more doesn't make much sense.

[gudo]

For what it's worth, I like the current wall system. If you use the keys to rotate the building instead of the mouse, you can do really precise formations. As an added bonus, you also get to use directional walls like the Celt walls. I wouldn't mind if the system has to go though. If it did, I would prefer a drag n drop style wall system.

[Ykkrosh]

With the click-drag method the walls need to be double-sided.

I'm not sure they necessarily do - if the game picked a default sidedness depending on orientation (maybe the side nearest to the nearest civ center is considered the inside) when you place the first wall segment, maybe with some control to override it (press space to flip or something), then any future connected segments go the same way round, would that be sufficient?

[Pureon]

A flip command would be sufficient imo.

I wouldn't mind seeing both options available, however like most here I have a preference for the standard "drag-click" system as it's more strategic.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well, I figured we'd go for simplicity and make the drag-click walls double sided. But if we can make them one-sided with some kind of orientation command, that's cool.

Looks like my curtain walls idea is universally panned. The whole idea was to force the player to make realistic self-contained cities, rather than making all kinds of odd shapes with their walls. I've played AOK and AOM and people's walls were generally pretty ugly.

[Arthur_D]

people's walls were generally pretty ugly.

Like on Facebook. *ducks*

[TheArchive]

Well, I figured we'd go for simplicity and make the drag-click walls double sided. But if we can make them one-sided with some kind of orientation command, that's cool.

Looks like my curtain walls idea is universally panned. The whole idea was to force the player to make realistic self-contained cities, rather than making all kinds of odd shapes with their walls. I've played AOK and AOM and people's walls were generally pretty ugly.

I'm all for the curtain idea. Like I said in an earlier post, however, try not to make it cost more or take more time if it has no benefits over a regular wall. If it takes a long time to build but isn't better than a regular wall, then I don't see anyone using it.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

BFME 1 (not BFME 2) had predefined settlements where you constructed circular castles or smaller outposts, and the system worked nicely. I think the city wall idea could work well with predefined settlements in our game. That would give us some control over the areas around the city (settlement) because the circular walls could be preplanned into the design of the scenario or random map script. For game modes without settlements, drag and drop is likely superior.

[SMST]

Also in favor Mythos' Wall idea. I would opt for two different kinds of fortifications. One low cost, lower HP, but freely placeable (like Pallisades in AoK, only a bit more worth the money) and one to be built after Mythos' concept. (stone city walls) I always found it quite strange that you could build a full-fledged wall EVERYWHERE in RTSes, while in reality, big stone walls would not just be littered around the countryside, but only around cities or fortesses (btw, if this idea is going to be implemented, I also think that fortesses should have a (much smaller) wall radius). The Chinese Wall really is the only example of a "stand-alone" big stone fortification in the style of 0 A.D.'s walls that I know of.

Also, if the wall radius equals with the aura of a Civ Centre (which I assume it does, and if not, it should ), then this is another good way of telling the player where his city starts and where it ends.

Edited May 30, 2011 by SMST

[Alpha of the Eagles]

I agree with SMST, protective stone walls should really make use of the curtain idea you had, Mythos, while the player could build palisade fortifications of his own design in his territories to make enemy incursions slightly more difficult.

[El_Zorro_Loco]

I like the idea of the curtain walls, but what if the players city expands? The click-n-drag system is way more flexible in this case as players might want to protect their territory as well as expanding it. Concerning the size of the curtain walls, I don't think it's a good idea to be bound on the civ. centers aura, but giving the possibility to choose the center and radius of the wall would be a compromise bewtween freedom of the players and realism.

About Atlas: A basic search feature for entities/actors would be nice, nothing advanced but searching for names like "tree" "bush" or "rock" would be a handy thing.

Edited May 30, 2011 by El_Zorro_Loco

[Yihka]

I like both idea's: The click and drag and the curtain one.

I like the idea that you can only make curtain stone walls. I think you should be able to pick between sizes depending on the researches and/or the bigness of your city assuming it grows the more buildings you build near it similar to the way Rise of Nations implemented it.

So in the end, you would be able to pick 3 sizes where the last 2 are locked until your city is big enough. Small medium and large. Also, you would be able to build them all 3! That should not be a problem. I also wish to suggest that you should also have the freedom to make this curtain square shaped, not just like a circle. Or you can pick that yourself or it is limited to your civilization. I for one like the square shaped walls more but I don't mind destroying those circle shaped ones. xP

About the drag and drop. Yes, this should be weaker walls until the fact you have done some late-tier upgrades. Still, they should be WAY more expensive than those you build around your city and never able to become as strong.

Castles... What are we going to do about the castles? I would suggest a similar system for the city. Their walls would be superior in comparison with the city walls. The only downside would be less space and redius than a city?

Apart from all that I would love to see tech trees and such. Do this and that to unlock this and that.

[tinoesroho]

Well, I figured we'd go for simplicity and make the drag-click walls double sided. But if we can make them one-sided with some kind of orientation command, that's cool.

Looks like my curtain walls idea is universally panned. The whole idea was to force the player to make realistic self-contained cities, rather than making all kinds of odd shapes with their walls. I've played AOK and AOM and people's walls were generally pretty ugly.

Personally, I like the curtain wall idea.

[emperor77]

I quite like your idea as well Mythos_Ruler. I've never played a game with such a system before, so it would be quite interesting to see it in game.

[Alpha of the Eagles]

An idea struck me concerning the curtain walls: many cities had several walls protecting them (Jerusalem, Rome) with sort of a fortress inside the walls. How about we recreate that, by making the first curtain wall avaible in "Age 2" (or whatever it's called ), and then later you unlock another, much more costly, outer wall as you advance technologically. Theoretically, this could unravel a world of new possibilities concerning bonuses and siege mods (imagine Babylonians, they could be given the ability to build a special, third wall).

I am, however, uncertain of what to do about the Celts. Since I support an implention of both types of walls, I would suggest giving the pallisades a more appropriate look for the Celts (walls made of uncut rock), but I am uncertain if they should recieve the curtain walls, since I can't recall them ever having such traditions. To my knowledge, they favoured other elements of defense, especially natural ones. If they have other bonuses, they could certainly be powerful, even without these city-walls.

[satchitb]

I'd like to suggest an alternate system. In Age of Empires, you could only have two end points at a time, meaning, you placed a wall point and dragged to another point, and that was that. How about, we implement a system where you can place any number of wall points with Shift or Ctrl or whatever, and have the system automatically connects consecutive wall points? This will be far quicker and easier than Age of Empires. Of course, this could encounter problems like stretching walls across water, terrain and other obstacles, but the player should use them intelligently.

[Sebovzeoueb]

Yes, +1 to some initial techs.

I would also love to have, a nice wall building system

This.

[IS_NormanDuck]

An idea on walls: walls may be very strong, fast and cheap to build so that they would be built in most games by players. Only, they would need manteinance since they would automatically lose HPs until they would be repaired. Walls may be repaired automatically by workers assigned to that work. An attacking army would find weak points of walls and exploit them.

Also, undefended walls (without near defensive units ) would be climbed by enemy units ^^

Edited June 3, 2011 by IS_NormanDuck

[chaosislife]

If the walls are climbable then the enemy will just climb them every time regardless of whether they're defended. Kinda defeats the purpose. I think the first thing to figure out is a snap-to placement feature for all the buildings including the wall pieces. Then I could have buildings that are lined up evenly. Even without a good drag and click method that would make the present walls actually worthwhile. Right now it's too time consuming to orient them so that they look right without having one wall piece that looks connected to the other from one angle but is actually very far off from another angle. If we get the snap-to in place tho we should probably have the wall towers have 8 sides to snap to so you can easily build at angles.