Ideas about animals, physical strength, food supplies and surrender

[Ake]

0 A.D. is a very beautiful game. In this game, we can see great beautiful scenery of plains, mountains and deserts. There are various animals. Some animals are not finished yet, and their walk is only simple moving of a static image. Perhaps the game can add more animals, such as monkeys, baboons, apes and various kinds of birds. Through watching disturbed birds or other animals, it will be helpful to find the actions of enemy.

The physical strength of people are changeable. Their move can be set as "walk" and "run". If they run, it may take less time to arrive at the destination, but their physical strength will be drained very much. They have to have a rest. If they fight hastily, they will be at a serious disadvantage.

People need food supplies. They farm, and food is stored in granaries. They regularly get food from granaries, and the stored food is accordingly decreased. If granaries are burnt, they will be in hunger. Hunger will seriously reduce people's physical strength, and they will die if they are in hunger for a long time. An army also need food supplies. If an army's food supplies are cut off or all food are burnt, armymen are not able to fight for a long time. Hunger will defeat and destroy the army.

Citizens and armymen can surrender to the enemy. They have to follow and assist the enemy. But they also can rebel and attack the enemy. A surrendered faction may make a comeback.

The above contents are just ideas. What do you think about these ideas?

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I think that the food idea is great to have, but it is extremely doubtful to have it be implemented. Let us only pray that some person will make a mod for that. I would say that having citizens and soldiers surrender should only be available if a player resigns.

[Sighvatr]

Good ideas. May just completely change how people play the game. But I've already never seen as many ambient life as any other game I've played. Even if the tigers look like hovering orange blob meshes.

Had you ever played American Conquest? It is a cheap Age of Empires like game for $10 and they allow you to have thousands of troops. Your entire population depends and consumes your food in that game. If you run out of food, I think there is a time limit before everybody begins to die one at a time. Also in order to create troops in that game, you have to create a villager to garrison inside of the military building before you can create the specific troop.

The only problem to this suggestion though is that IF your ideas were implemented into this game, it would be more of a nuisiance then something I could point out and say "cool". The threat of hunger is an obstacle to having a large army, and it would mean donating a hundred of your population into farming. Then if somebody decides to crush your granary, all of your 10,000 food would be dissapear and everybody would start starving?

If you have an army that needs to run to the enemy in order to help support your ally in trouble, they have to rest before continuing? Then what would be the point in having a run option then?

The only reason why American Conquest has hunger in their game is because they can balance it out with an unlimited population and consume unlimited farms.

I think your ideas are cool, but you gotta balance gameplay too.

Edited June 3, 2012 by Sighvatr

[Sef]

I like your idea of the wildlife reacting to what the player is doing. Things like flocks of birds leaving the forest that's being cut down and carnivores sniffing around hunted animals. Would give you a way to read what your enemy is doing or expanding without getting to close.

[Zeta1127]

I am pretty sure more animals are planned, and animals reacting to units is a nice touch.

The food supplies is nice idea, quite similar to the Stronghold series by Firefly Studios, but Wildfire Games won't do it, because 0 A.D. isn't a sim, its about ancient warfare.

[historic_bruno]

The physical strength of people are changeable. Their move can be set as "walk" and "run". If they run, it may take less time to arrive at the destination, but their physical strength will be drained very much. They have to have a rest. If they fight hastily, they will be at a serious disadvantage.

"Stamina", we will probably have that once we implement running

[Ake]

Had you ever played American Conquest? It is a cheap Age of Empires like game for $10 and they allow you to have thousands of troops. Your entire population depends and consumes your food in that game. If you run out of food, I think there is a time limit before everybody begins to die one at a time. Also in order to create troops in that game, you have to create a villager to garrison inside of the military building before you can create the specific troop.

The only problem to this suggestion though is that IF your ideas were implemented into this game, it would be more of a nuisiance then something I could point out and say "cool". The threat of hunger is an obstacle to having a large army, and it would mean donating a hundred of your population into farming. Then if somebody decides to crush your granary, all of your 10,000 food would be dissapear and everybody would start starving?

I had never played American Conquest.

About food supplies, Caesar III may be a good sample. A granary has a limited capacity, and the action of destorying a granary is only destory the food in this granary. Of course, we can have a better idea: the food in a granary can be seized, and destorying is not the only way.

Romance of the Three Kingdoms has the concept of food supply. If an army consumes all food, its will lose soldiers and morale, and finally the army disappears if they can't seize food from the enemy.

If people can't get food from granaries, they have to eat animals and wild fruits.

Additionally, water supply can be implemented, too. They can get water from rivers, wells or springs.

In Sudden Strike, an army needs the supply of ammunition. If the army has no ammunition, weapons are useless.

If you have an army that needs to run to the enemy in order to help support your ally in trouble, they have to rest before continuing? Then what would be the point in having a run option then?

As real life, people have different consumption of physical strength when they have different actions. There can be several options: "slow walk", "fast walk", "slow run", "fast run".

[Ake]

I am pretty sure more animals are planned, and animals reacting to units is a nice touch.

The food supplies is nice idea, quite similar to the Stronghold series by Firefly Studios, but Wildfire Games won't do it, because 0 A.D. isn't a sim, its about ancient warfare.

0 A.D. shows a vivid world to players, and it is developed with strict research about ancient civilizations. It can be regarded as a simulation game of ancient warfare. The game may implement some good ideas of management simulation games.

[Ake]

"Stamina", we will probably have that once we implement running

It sounds very good.

If stamina was drained to 0, then the unit would not run or charge (except to run to catch up to a formation move command).

Without the exception, a formation can't be organized well if soldiers are very tired, and it is more like real battles.

In the game, will the status of low stamina weaken fighting ability?

[Sighvatr]

As real life, people have different consumption of physical strength when they have different actions. There can be several options: "slow walk", "fast walk", "slow run", "fast run".

Well duh?

But the ideas I'm seeing in your posts would suit more to a sim game/civlization game than an RTS. I don't think 0 A.D. is built to play for a very large time consumption into the game. But I may be mistaken, and I could eat my words.

For example, it only takes about a minute or less for a unit to travel across an entire map.

If we implement and balance stamina and rest. It would only take 10-15 seconds till your army is exhausted as well as your army would have temporary minuses to their statistics. If statistics are affected using the run option.. Then what is the point of implementing it in the first place?

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a turn-based game, and is easy to implement and balance the food supply obstacle. Applying something like that to an Age of Empires like RTS game is something I've never heard of before, and I imagine it would take some somebody very ambitious to do the imense amount of thinking and coding for it.

Another example- It seems as if you want to add in an Army Management Phase to the game. Meaning that it is to fit somewhere between the phases of collecting resources, building, upgrading, buying troops, and then attacking with your troops. The problem I see with this is that you want to add in the realism of consequence into this game. Because of having to manage your army over time, it would seem as if people would only have the time to build one huge army to sweep people with. If your army gets killed off, it would take some time to create another large army and manage it before you can attack again. Do realize that this factor would pose a very difficult thing to do when attacking another person's city if played late into the game.

Caesar 3 is a strict city-building game and is very time-consuming. If you add in granaries to the game- such as if you destroy the Town Centre which has been where all of my food has been going to- it will not be very difficult to destroy, and I will not be surprised if players surround their Town Centres, Food Stockadges, Docks, Mills, and other such receiving centers with heavy amounts of walls, towers, and forts.

[Veridagorin]

Celtic Kings Rage of War is a rts game that i played had food consumption well implemented basically you couldn't build buildings villages produced food and cities produced gold and trained soldiers researched techs soldiers consumed food all the resources were local not universal.

i don't think that localizing some resources would work in 0 ad if you also have universal resources

[historic_bruno]

Without the exception, a formation can't be organized well if soldiers are very tired, and it is more like real battles.

In the game, will the status of low stamina weaken fighting ability?

Maybe not for Part 1, since stamina is not even essential for Part 1, but running and charging are essential. So we might end up with stamina only affecting movement speed, then extending it later if that's something we want to do.

[The Crooked Philosopher]

If there's a surrender option, then all military unit should have morale bar and other minor feature, but was it necessary?

In my opinion, it would be unnecessary to add a surrender option into 0 AD because player should have full control on the units not the units decide player's move.

Surrender should be a script option not in custom battle.

[Sighvatr]

There certainly needs a resign button. I don't like killing every villager off from the face of the Earth. But I'm in comfort knowing it will come soon.

[wrod]

i like the idea about surrendering like if 1 soldier is surrounded by 10 (unless if its an elephant or chariot) they could be taken as prisoners or maybe they just run away and they can be ransomed off if they are heroes (except certain ones like Leonidas because he was heavily outnumbered and still fought on)

[majapahit]

I hope there are more options with the environment, such as trees grows on certain part of the maps, or heroes can burn the forest, rolling some stones from higher location, dragging large stone block closer to base to reduce the distance for gatherers, river can go dry, disasters like sandstorms, etc

And some meteor drops in the center of the map (or other part of the map) leaves a pile of gold or stone in the center of a crater

Change the paradigm from just building strong units or massive army to also considering the environmental condition for determining strategy

Edited June 7, 2012 by majapahit

[cromero13]

I think the food supply idea would limit some aspects of the game (as previously mentioned with the storage facility being destroyed), like having that food supply limit the amount of units you can have.

But the animals and other aspects of the environment would create a much more realistic experience when playing the game. Birds flying away when troops are storming their way, or having the already-present animals move more realistically.

And as a comment, the first time I saw the elephants move in-game, I thought it was funny how they just float/drag themselves around without moving their feet.

[The Crooked Philosopher]

i like the idea about surrendering like if 1 soldier is surrounded by 10 (unless if its an elephant or chariot) they could be taken as prisoners or maybe they just run away and they can be ransomed off if they are heroes (except certain ones like Leonidas because he was heavily outnumbered and still fought on)

I strongly disagree with the idea of surrender, if we have surrender option then rout and desertion will become another option for military unit. Warhammer 40000 Dawn of War have implement rout in the game but no surrender option, if the game have surrender option then it will certainly involved a lot of micromanagement and there would trouble for player to manage the POW.

[Sighvatr]

It would be very annoying and tremendously irritating to watch your troops surrender. Routing may seem a better option if it was one or the other, but I think it has the potential to be just as annoying.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Agreed. I did not mind seeing my troops have to kill every last bloody soldier they ran into.

[Mumie]

I think food supply is symbolized by 'population'. Thats why you need houses etc...