Possible Ideas

[edwardlongshank]

OK i would like to start of by making the point that i am not completely familiar with every aspect of o ad so some of the ideas i suggest may already be planned or perhaps have already been suggested and decided against. I would also like to make another point that these ideas have not had any testing or a whole lot of thought put in to them in terms of how feasible they are. I would like to say that if any of my ideas contradict or in some way undermine the aim and objectives of the o ad team let it be known that it is not my intention to do so and i apologize in advance if any of my ideas do appear to be of that nature. My ideas have been based on my knowledge of rts games, my small knowledge of history and my imagination so if any of the comments/statements i have made are incorrect please let me know. Just to warn you i have not had a chance to fully edit this post yet as i ran out of time while writing it and posted it so that i did not risk loosing what i had written, i will edit it as soon as i can. If you don't want to read the reasoning behind my ideas just go to the bottom of the page and the summary will pretty much tell you most of what i am suggesting.

Ok so my first idea is , drum role.........

Cavalry - The first issue i have with cavalry is that they *cost* or *take* more population than non cavalry units. I assume this is because the horse also counts as being part of the *population* however from what i gather the *population* on o ad is simply any unit that requires infrastructure (housing). Housing may represent more than just a roof over peoples or *units* head although i don't think that on o ad it does. If this is the case then cavalry should not be considered to be part of the *population* as they do not require the same type of *housing* as peoples or *non cavalry units*. Correct me if i am wrong but i don't think that the majority of people slept with their livestock under the same roof until the dark/middle ages or before the period that o ad covers, well not the Romans at least. Horses also require vast amounts of land to have enough food, something that people do not, the land that horses require may already be represented by *farms* in o ad however if so i don't think that is an accurate representation of the type of land and space that horses actually require because farmland ( land that can be used to produce a significant amount of food )is nearly always fully taken advantage of to produce food for people while larger less fertile amounts of land that cant or wont be utilized to produce food for humans are used to support horses. In simple terms farms that feed humans are mostly different to farms that feed horses.

I may be completely wrong about cavalry units *costing* extra population because of the horse its self, it may be that it takes more population because there's just a person needed other than the rider to look after the horse. In either case i think that there should be a separate population for people and horses for reasons already said above. I think that the amount of horses a player is allowed to have should be determined by the amount of territory that he controls and some territories of the same size should perhaps be able to provide a greater population than others. By that i mean maps that are located in Greece should not be able to support as many cavalry due to most of the region being mountainas, rocky and barren as maps located in more fertile regions. I think that cavalry units should still obviously require some human population cost which will likely be greater than the cost of non cavalry units. Some areas on a map should be able to support a greater horse population than others while perhaps also being less rich in resources like wood or stone. In simple terms the player can decide if he wants to expand into an area which will give him a a greater population of horses or more wood/stone/metal.

The same type of thing could be applied to farming, some lands increase the productivity of any farms constructed in that area while other lands slow down the rate of farming. One obvious issue is how can you make it easy for players to tell which land areas are the best to farm on or expand to increase horse population. A landmark man made or natural could maybe be put in the area which you can select to show the outline of the area, similar to the territory outline, the difference being that this outline only appears when you select the landmark. The landmark could be the remains of a abandoned/destroyed town or a group of lush green vegetation, it does not really matter to much as long as it stands out. Ok that's a general outline of my cavalry population idea, i will elaborate more on it later. I am joking, i know i have probably already gone into wayyyyyy to much depth for my idea at this point in time and i apologize if i bored you to death!

Ok so a few other ideas i have for cavalry.

I think cavalry should have the ability to Charge and by that i mean Run at a very fast pace in a disorderly fashion for a short period of time with the intention of colliding with or dispersing the enemy and causing a great amount of damage in a very short time frame. I am not sure if this type of thing can be accomplished but i think just about everyone is in favor of it, aside from perhaps the people who would have to do actually do all the programming work to make it possible and i would not blame them for hating me for even suggesting such a gigantic task. I don't actually have any idea what sort of work would be involved in making it possible but i think it could really take the game to a whole new level.

Ok last one of my ideas for today,

I think cavalry should have different speeds and *energy levels*, for example if your trying to raid ( kill enemy villagers ) while avoiding/escaping the enemy's main forces then you want your cavalry to be moving at a very fast speed, on the other hand if your marching your army to the enemy then you may want your cavalry to stick by your other units and so you don't really need your cavalry to be moving very fast at all, if your being pursued by the enemy and your attempting to retreat then you really want your units to be going as fast as possible and a short burst of speed is likely all that's needed to avoid a massacre. If you are using your cavalry to scout then you don't want them moving at full speed because they wont be able to get a good look at everything and will soon run out of energy as scouting is a often a big task. Sorry let me go back a step.

I think that that obviously there should be a direct correlation between the cavalry speed and energy levels, the faster the cavalry move - the more energy they use, the less energy they have - the slower they are able to go. The cavalry should be able to regain energy that they lose from running when they are stationary and regain energy levels even faster when they are within the players own territory. When scouting the cavalry LOS ( Line of sight ) should be relative to the speed that they are moving at - the faster they move the smaller there LOS.

Ok for those of you who have niether the time or interest in reading the arguments behind my ideas hears a summary that will will basically just tell you what my ideas are.

Separate population for people and horses

Population of horses restricted by amount of territory controlled

Some Maps have ability to support larger horse population than others

Some areas of a map can support greater population of horses than other areas,

These areas are marked by a landmark in combination with a temporary outline similar to that of a territory outline

Cavalry have the ability to Charge

Cavalry have energy levels and different speed options

Cavalry use up more energy when going faster

Cavalry regain energy when resting

Cavalry have greater LOS (Line of sight) When moving slower

Ok thanks for reading, Please tell me what you think of my ideas and be completely honest.

Sorry for the poor spelling/grammar/punctuation, it does not come easy to me.

Edited September 24, 2011 by edwardlongshank

[General Octavian]

Large...wall...of...text. Please space out paragraphs and make neater

[tinoesroho]

Eh. I think most of the suggestions have been planned for Alpha N.

Me thinks separating horse and people pop would drive casual players nuts, but tying cavalry limit to the territory size ain't a bad idea.

[General Octavian]

I agree with what tino said! I quite like that idea of tying cavalry limit to territory size.

[edwardlongshank]

Yer sorry i am not aware of all the stuff that has been planned for the future so its likely a lot of what i propose has already been thought of by someone else. I do not think it would make it to much more difficult for intermediate players having the people and horse and pop separated as although it is an extra resource it does not require nearly as much management compared to other resources like food. The resource could just be a single number that decreases/increases with territory size. Alternatively it could be made slightly more complex like having the maximum cavalry pop limit determined by territory size but also have the amount of available cavalry for use to be determined by breeding factors, such as having the number of available horses increase slowly over time and having the rate of this increase determined by how many trained horses there are - more trained horses = more offspring = more trained horses. I only suggest this because unlike the Cane Toads in my back yard 1 horse cant breed 50 more horses over night obviously. Having the territory size determine the maximum amount of cavalry would also obviously increase the importance of controlling territory which could perhaps force players to be more aggressive. I hate it when players turtle for very long time.

All viewers please read the stuff below, the stuff above in this post is not as important.

Guys i have some more ideas but i want to wait and see what the majority of people think of my ideas so far before i go and suggest a load more of them. Put simply i don't want to make myself look like a fool by suggesting a whole bunch of ideas that very few people are interested in hearing about. SO if more people could please tell me what they think of my ideas that would be great. I want to know if they are good, boring, bad or terrible. No fence sitting!

Edited September 26, 2011 by edwardlongshank

[quantumstate]

I would be interested in your ideas. One thing I might suggest is to take a glance through the design document and making a quick search of the forums before typing up your ideas. This will save you the work of writing out ideas that are already planned and will make it more interesting for the rest of us since we will be reading new ideas .

Horses requiring land is an interesting idea, and would be pretty easy to implement. One question is what happens when I lose territory, do my horses start dying? (I don't think that would be good, I would just block training). I think slow breeding times would be annoying. 0 AD isn't realistic in that way, people don't breed like rabbits either yet they spawn rapidly. It would penalise a strong economy player by limiting their build rate (this is my favourite play style so I have vested interests ). I still am unsure about the merits of horses requiring land, it requires more thought, at the moment I am swayed in favour of the idea.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Likely we won't have a separate pops for horses and men. I've toyed with similar ideas, but I don't think it fits with 0 A.D.

Planned:

-- Cavalry (and infantry) Charge capability, with stamina.

-- Cavalry "Trample" effect.

-- Flanking bonuses for attacks.

[edwardlongshank]

Yes thanks quantum, i will defiantly give the design document a read and try to provide mostly new ideas. I will probably also talk about ideas already suggested by other people if i like the idea but think it needs a few tweaks or if i feel the idea has not been presented as well as it possibly could be to give it the best chance of being accepted. I am not saying that my ideas are better than anyone elses, in fact given that i am a fairly new o ad member id say i can be sure my ideas are not the best but i like to give my opinion none the less.

[edwardlongshank]

MORE IDEAS

Ok i read the design document and a few things greatly concern me.

I think that forcing players to gradually unlock different aspects of the game would be really annoying if it means players who have played the game longer have greater advantages in multilayer games. Time spent playing the game already gives players enough of an advantage with out them having the ability to access things which newer players cant. If your only talking about campaigns and other things that do not effect the competitive games then i have no problem with it. I think saying that having players gradually unlock different things will encourage players to keep playing is incorrect. In fact for me its the complete opposite, i want to be able to compete with all other players right away and lose because of their skill, not because they have access to more upgrades/Armour/buildings than i do. That is just an example by the way, i don't actually know what features will be granted/restricted to players based on *achievements* which will probably be less about skill and more about how much time the player has spent playing.

Age of empires online is exactly what i am talking about. They claim the game is free but in reality there are 2 available ways to pay for it. You can either use your credit card or use up hours of your day doing repetitive, uninteresting, unchallenging *quests*. Every player must either pay or waste time doing the quests to be on equal footing in the 1v1/2v2 pvp settings. The quests are probable not so bad if your 8 years old but i think the reason for this is that 8 year olds are more likely to keep nagging their parents for money every time they discover after doing the quest that the reward you get after completion is only usable to players who pay with money. I say with money because this game no matter how you look at it is not free, it was made purely for the purposes of profit and not only that, its also a very poor rts game. Takes a long time to discover just how poor it is because it takes weeks just to unlock all the features so you can have an even game. Oh and when i say *even game* i mean a game where skill factors into who wins by a small amount, money always remains the predominant factor for who wins. A player who is playing for free must have a lot more skill than an opponent who is paying and has all the benefits that come with that.

So what i am basically saying is that o ad is a free to play game so why have features being restricted unless your target audience is 8 year olds who need to need to have a reward system to encourage them to keep playing.

Ok my other big problem is that it sais the outcome will be effected by decisions, not chance.

A. This is to some degree impossible to achieve in an rts game as having so many variables means that chance will allways play a part

B. Why would you want to attempt to completely abolish chance as a factor in determining the outcome of games, every historian knows that most of history was greatly effected by chance. The ancient Greeks understood the concept of chance. Although chance should not play a big part in the interest of keeping the game competitive i think chance keeps things slightly more interesting. With out chance it makes it very boring to play against players of a greater ability than yourself as the outcome will most likely always be the same. Some players tend to have a hard time coping with loosing to players that they believe have a lower ability than themselves, i do not think players such as these should be accommodated to as they really need to just grow up.

Anyway since these ideas contradict the design document they must all be new ideas (i hope).

Please give me some feedback on my ideas, both positive and negative feedback is welcome.

[feneur]

Not sure where you saw us saying something about forcing players to play to unlock things, but on the other hand the Design Document (DD) is in need of being updated (and it's planned to be updated before Alpha 8 actually) so perhaps it says something like that somewhere. It's definitely not our intention to dumb down the game, so apart from the phases (similar to ages in AoK etc) unlocking new buildings in each new phase there shouldn't be any such restrictions. Of course, as you say, for campaigns it could be another matter.

Taking a look at the DD I see what you're talking about, it is a bit unclear, but from the context it's implied that the unlocking is of new strategies and new ideas on how to overcome obstacles and survive certain attacks etc. So no dumbing down is intended. We will look thoroughly at the DD in the coming weeks though so this should be clearer eventually.

[edwardlongshank]

Ok this is my next idea

I think o ad and all rts games for that matter should have some sort of a time measurement. By that i mean have one minute of a game = 1 year, that is just an example not what it should actually be. Hopefully all the tasks on o ad such as building houses/barracks, training men, building ships and so on would be able to be given a roughly accurate time in which it takes to do the task and have this fit in with the time line or w.e you want to call it. For example if one minute = 1 year then it may take 30 seconds (6 months) or so to construct a house with a team of 5 builders. I don't actually know how long it took to construct houses in the ancient world so obviously some research would have to be done. Another example would be if it took a year to train a certain soldier then that soldier would take 60 seconds to train. I don't think this would significantly add to the game play but it would make the game more realistic and with some research a lot more accurate. Obviously its very unlikely that it would be possible to have units moving and performing actions like wood chopping to fit into the time line so there may have to be some exceptions. You could however go as far as having the time it takes to chop down a tree fit into the time line but that's probably going a little to far.

Ok next Idea, and i have probably already mentioned this idea in other threads but ill put it in here anyway. Just to warn you i am inventing new uses for words so hopefully i wont confuse everyone to much.

I think to make the game more realistic the game should incorporate *ghosts*. When i say ghosts i am talking about units that you can see but can not be interacted with, selected, moved, controlled, I don't mean actual dead people. These units would be made so that a player can clearly tell them apart from actual units. The ghosts could include children, the elderly, the poor, slaves, women and more. There purpose would differ on what they are, slaves might be carrying building materials from storage to the buildings that the player is constructing, children might be playing in the streets, the poor might be begging outside buildings, the women might be praying outside religious buildings. I think this would add more historical depth as its exposing players to a lot more of the ancient cities. The enemy would not be able to attack the ghosts either, but the ghosts may run into buildings or somehow disappear when the enemy approaches. There might be economic upgrades that can improve the speed/ quantity of ghosts like for example an upgrade which increases the speed of construction of buildings may add some more ghosts carrying materials.

ok next idea

I think that the population of people should be expanded on from what it currently is. I don't mean have a larger population, i mean have it slightly more complex. I think there needs to be one human population resource controlled by a range of things. I think there should be 3 categories of population - *available population*, *working population* and *maximum population*.

Available population would represent mainly children and unemployed people who are available for training (being put to work). This is not the same as *idle workers*. The available population should be divided up into 2 numbers. For example 96/120. The first number represents the number of children/unemployed people who are ready to be trained and the second number represents the amount of people who can be housed. The first number will gradually increase over time and the rate of this increase will be determined by how large the *working population* is. The second number will be determined by how many vacant houses the player has. Both numbers can exceed each other for example you could have 100/70 so the player can only train 70 more units, however if he builds more houses then he will instantly gain the ability to train 30 more units + the original 70. On the other hand if a player has 100/200 then it will take a long time for all the houses to be filled.

The *working population* will be the amount of units that have been trained and can perform tasks. The maximum size of this population will be determined by how much *available population* there is ( - 1 from both available population numbers to train 1 unit). In addition to the expenses of *training* the working population i think that the player should constantly have to support (feed and pay) the working population. The resources should be taken directly from the players stockpile (resource level) with out the player having to do this manually. If the player runs out of stock piled resources the working population should gradually weaken (lower hit points/attack) and if the player is unable to replenish his resources then the workers should begin to either convert back to available population in which case they would disappear or alternatively the workers could just die of. The player must have the ability to *retire workers* to reduce the amount of resources being depleted. Once a worker is retired he no longer costs resources or population. Maybe players should be given a small reward for retiring players so that players are less inclined to *suicide* unwanted units into the enemy. If a player just temporarily cant afford to feed and pay some of his workers then he could have the option to *dismiss* some of his workers to convert them back to the *available population*. In addition to paying and feeding the workers some soldiers who use things like arrows should use up stockpiled wood in battle.

The maximum population will limit the working population just like it is at the moment. The population resource as a whole could look something like this.

50/90 & 80/200

Obviously the numbers would be varying constantly. My reason for suggesting these ideas is because i think having population controlled by houses alone is very unrealistic so this is my attempt to introduce a few of the other factors of human population into the equation.

Ok thats all for now, tell me what you think of my ideas.

[Badmadblacksad]

don t have time to read everything, sorry. But I read your idea about having a slowly-regenerating pool of "population available for training" in addition to the current population limit defined by the number of houses. I think it s a great idea. In fact I had the same, thanks for writing it. It would prevent the game to have the same drawback than AOK had, where winning a battle could sometimes be more a matter of having a great economy and a continuous production of units rather than real strategy (where a player take care of its units).

If people agree, it would be nice to add to the todo list

[Mythos_Ruler]

Personally, I'm not too comfortable with straying from the traditional training method for units. I possibly do not understand the concept though. Let me break it down as how I see it:

1. You get a steady stream of (free?) peons. This stream comes faster or slower depending on the number of houses you build, up to a population cap.

Q. Where do these peons show up? From the houses or the Civ Centre?

2. You then can make these peons either gather resources like good little slaves where they can be modified further to be experts at different kinds of gathering, or manually task them to a Barracks (or other military structure), garrison them inside, and then train them as a soldier type.

Q. Why force the player to manually move these peons to a Barracks, then train them? Why not stick with the "steady stream" idea but base it on number of barracks, stables, etc.? You could possibly adjust up or down the rate of training depending on the amount of resources you have and population cap.

Big concerns: This destroys the established citizen-soldier concept that's already implemented in the game in a consistent and intuitive manner, replacing it with something new. We need a compelling reason to completely revamp our citizen-soldier concept when it already works very well and has been a core concept of the game design since the start of development. I think it's fine to explore these ideas, like how I proposed a new combat paradigm a while ago, but I think we're starting to err on the side of "Let's get to 0 A.D. 1.0 before we start mucking with core gameplay concepts." I'm also leery of moving peons around and being forced to task them to different buildings to modify them. I could see this working with a battalion system like in Battle for Middle Earth II. In that game, soldiers were not individual units, but rather a part of a small battalion of troops. Essentially, 18 soldiers would constitute 1 whole entity. If we had something like that, then I could see doing something like this because at most you only have a few dozen entities to worry about. But I can't see doing it with 300 entities--I think it would be unmanageable and tedious. But... if someone were to make a mod I would definitely try it out with an open mind, and if it worked well, then we could consider implementing it into the game. Point is, I think if we were to make such a huge change, then there would need to a proof of concept to assuage my personal concerns. Others may have other points of view though.

[feneur]

I think to make the game more realistic the game should incorporate *ghosts*. When i say ghosts i am talking about units that you can see but can not be interacted with, selected, moved, controlled, I don't mean actual dead people. These units would be made so that a player can clearly tell them apart from actual units. The ghosts could include children, the elderly, the poor, slaves, women and more. There purpose would differ on what they are, slaves might be carrying building materials from storage to the buildings that the player is constructing, children might be playing in the streets, the poor might be begging outside buildings, the women might be praying outside religious buildings. I think this would add more historical depth as its exposing players to a lot more of the ancient cities. The enemy would not be able to attack the ghosts either, but the ghosts may run into buildings or somehow disappear when the enemy approaches. There might be economic upgrades that can improve the speed/ quantity of ghosts like for example an upgrade which increases the speed of construction of buildings may add some more ghosts carrying materials.

That just sounds like it would make the game run slower without adding something I'm afraid. Also, it has more of a purpose in a citybuilding game where you don't control things as directly as in the kind of RTS that 0 A.D. is. I'm not saying one couldn't have it in an RTS, just that I don't see its value. Sounds like just visual effects to me. I believe there were some units like this in Rise and Fall, but to me they were just annoying. I guess that depends on personal taste though But in either case I don't think we'll add something like this as it would add more units and thus more work for the engine, especially if they're moving around (pathfinding is already one of the more costly parts, adding almost the double amount of units would not make that any better).

I think that the population of people should be expanded on from what it currently is. I don't mean have a larger population, i mean have it slightly more complex. I think there needs to be one human population resource controlled by a range of things. I think there should be 3 categories of population - *available population*, *working population* and *maximum population*.

Available population would represent mainly children and unemployed people who are available for training (being put to work). This is not the same as *idle workers*. The available population should be divided up into 2 numbers. For example 96/120. The first number represents the number of children/unemployed people who are ready to be trained and the second number represents the amount of people who can be housed. The first number will gradually increase over time and the rate of this increase will be determined by how large the *working population* is. The second number will be determined by how many vacant houses the player has. Both numbers can exceed each other for example you could have 100/70 so the player can only train 70 more units, however if he builds more houses then he will instantly gain the ability to train 30 more units + the original 70. On the other hand if a player has 100/200 then it will take a long time for all the houses to be filled.

The *working population* will be the amount of units that have been trained and can perform tasks. The maximum size of this population will be determined by how much *available population* there is ( - 1 from both available population numbers to train 1 unit). In addition to the expenses of *training* the working population i think that the player should constantly have to support (feed and pay) the working population. The resources should be taken directly from the players stockpile (resource level) with out the player having to do this manually. If the player runs out of stock piled resources the working population should gradually weaken (lower hit points/attack) and if the player is unable to replenish his resources then the workers should begin to either convert back to available population in which case they would disappear or alternatively the workers could just die of. The player must have the ability to *retire workers* to reduce the amount of resources being depleted. Once a worker is retired he no longer costs resources or population. Maybe players should be given a small reward for retiring players so that players are less inclined to *suicide* unwanted units into the enemy. If a player just temporarily cant afford to feed and pay some of his workers then he could have the option to *dismiss* some of his workers to convert them back to the *available population*. In addition to paying and feeding the workers some soldiers who use things like arrows should use up stockpiled wood in battle.

The maximum population will limit the working population just like it is at the moment. The population resource as a whole could look something like this.

50/90 & 80/200

Obviously the numbers would be varying constantly. My reason for suggesting these ideas is because i think having population controlled by houses alone is very unrealistic so this is my attempt to introduce a few of the other factors of human population into the equation.

Again, this sounds more like a citybuilder game than an RTS to me. Also, the point of 0 A.D. is not to create a 100% realistic simulation of ancient life. The goal is to create a fun game that is based on history, not a simulation that sacrifices fun for realism.

But I read your idea about having a slowly-regenerating pool of "population available for training" in addition to the current population limit defined by the number of houses. I think it s a great idea. In fact I had the same, thanks for writing it. It would prevent the game to have the same drawback than AOK had, where winning a battle could sometimes be more a matter of having a great economy and a continuous production of units rather than real strategy (where a player take care of its units).

Hmm, making it more important for users to take care of their units is of course a vital point, but I think there are other ways to do that without lessening the role of economy. 0 A.D. is not just a wargame after all, it's got the economic part as well and you need to be a master of both to win. If we want to punish players who don't take care of their units it's probably much easier to put a limit on unit creation buildings and unit creation speed than introducing a lot of new concepts and new code to do the same thing. Not saying it couldn't work, but if nothing else, when thinking about changing the entire concept of the game like this it should be a part of the initial design.

That said, the beauty of 0 A.D. being an open source game is that if you care enough about one of these ideas, but we won't implement it, you can try and develop a version of the game that does include said idea. If it's good/popular enough it might be included in the main game, if not you've at least have tried

[edwardlongshank]

Awesome you got it badmadblack! Hopefully we can get some more people on board.

Ok mythos sorry i think i did a poor job of explaining my idea, ill try to explain it a little better

The steady stream of peons are not actually real units, so in simple terms they don't really exist. There really just a number that controls how many units you can train. The peons are converted into real units when you train them at the barracks or city center exactly like it is at the moment. So when i want to turn a peon into a hoplite i just click the barracks and click train hoplite, its the same with every other unit. The stream of peons increases/decreases depending on the amount of actual soldiers/workers that have already been trained. The number of Peons must be matched with enough houses to support the peons before the peons can be trained as units. You can have more houses than is required for the peons but this may not increase the rate of peon growth. You can also have the opposite, you can have more peons than is needed to fill all the houses. Ok i did not add this before, maybe if there's a shortage of houses the peon growth slows a little but does not come to a stop. So you need 1 person + part of a house ( somewhere around 5 or 10 units per house like it is at the moment) to then be able to train a unit, you train a unit the exact same way as it is done at the moment. I may be wrong but i don't think this at all increases micro intensity from what it already is. The idea is that it prevents a player from almost loosing there entire population then completely repopulating in a matter of seconds unless the player has a lot of *available population* that was not in use which is not possible if the player was near max pop before he lost his army. Mercenaries might be exempt from this idea because they did not require permanent housing and were often from foreign places so there numbers are more to do with wealth than population. The maximum population should be *available population* + * working population* but the available population should have its cap set a little higher than the working population so that its not impossible for players to come back from very heavy unit losses. The number of barracks could become an extra requirement for training workers/ soldiers but i think it would have to be separate from houses as most people would not want to spend their entire lives living in a barracks and the houses are needed to raise children.

To answer you feneur i agree it is mainly for visual affect but i think it would make it slightly more realistic and the path finding might not have to be as difficult because you could make it so they are not obstructed by actual units hence the term ghosts. They could become annoying but if there's only a few of them at any one time and it is made so that its very easy to distinguish them from actual units i don't think it would be to bad. It would probably be best to wait till a later version comes out to add them though since there not essential and some players would probably want the option to be able to turn them of.

I am not trying to suggest that the game should be 100% accurate as that is an impossibility although i think that there is plenty of room to make the game more accurate and some of the ways i suggest to do this would also ensure that that the game is set apart from all other ancient rts games. I don't think my ideas would sacrifice the fun for the majority of future o ad players and i think the population idea will add game depth just as badmad said.

Sorry i reject the idea that i am lessening the role of economy in the game. Adding complexity to the population resource does not detract from the other resources in my opinion. Even if the *available population* idea did lesson the role of economy it would be balanced by my idea of having to pay and feed soldiers constantly in addition to the training process.

[ZeZar]

Wow, would take forever to read all that.

I did read most of the first post however, and though I don't like the seperate pop idea, i did like the charge idea. As long as its made automaticly (or optional to make it automatic). Could do it like Battle for Middle Earth, works really well. It is .. overpowered though So be careful ...

[edwardlongshank]

So are there any others keen on any of my ideas beside the ones that were already planned before i suggested them? I invite any willing programmers to create a trial version of any of my ideas, in particular the ones relating to the population and i will be available to provide more information on my ideas if anybody is interested in hearing about them.