Civ "Pers" -> "Achae"

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I propose we change the "Persians" in the game to "Achaemenids" to differentiate from other Persian empires (one of the likely civs for 'Empires Besieged' would be the Sasanians, another Persian empire). This would entail a lot of changes under the hood, but mainly to just XML files and some jsons, file name changes, etc. I could take care of the pull request for it. Just trying to gauge from the group if anyone would have any objections. 

 

This is in the Development forum due to it requiring a large Pull Request to change it (again, a PR I'm willing to personally take responsibility for). 

[Deicide4u]

I voted for, but does this mean the game is pivoting away from including "Civilizations" to including "Empires"?

For example, we had Hellenic civilization before, but it was split into nation-states and later Greek "empires". 

Edited April 18 by Deicide4u

[Thalatta]

Well, since there's Han and Mauryans and not just Chinese and Indians, it seems to me this has been the path the game has been taking for a while, whenever possible (for Britons, Germans and Iberians is a bit more complicated but maybe at some point enough information will be gathered to instead have at least a couple of representative tribes from each). Sasanians and Parthians, also Persian empires, for sure will make an appearance at some point in the base game, so a change from Persians to Achaemenids seems a necessity.

[Genava55]

I don't think this is a problem to have various designs, and I believe the proposal of @wowgetoffyourcellphone is justified. We need to have a flexible concept, sometimes we'll want to represent a people or a civilization from a specific period, sometimes a nation, sometimes an empire, and sometimes a dynasty. We just need to be clear about it and explain it well in the civ's design.

Edit: And it’s really good to finally start thinking about what comes next. I felt like this 'Empires Besieged' expansion was constantly being put off until tomorrow, and that people were refusing to give it any thought. It’s clear that not thinking about it creates problems for the expansion’s design, and that we really need to lay the groundwork now, despite the lack of leadership. 

Edited April 18 by Genava55

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

13 hours ago, Genava55 said:

Edit: And it’s really good to finally start thinking about what comes next. I felt like this 'Empires Besieged' expansion was constantly being put off until tomorrow, and that people were refusing to give it any thought. It’s clear that not thinking about it creates problems for the expansion’s design, and that we really need to lay the groundwork now, despite the lack of leadership. 

@Stan` and I have actually started a repo for Empires Besieged here: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/empires_besieged. 

The last change was 11 months ago, but I'm working on things in DE (Guptas and Sasanians; a big thank you to @Duileoga and @Lopess) which will directly translate to EB at some point in the future.

So, whether EB becomes it's own "game" or an "era" or an "expansion" or a "release" is up for debate. I personally advocate for a "0 A.D. Eras" concept, where players can swap between eras (Empires Ascendant, Empires Besieged, Masters of Bronze, Millennium AD) and only play those civs, or choose to play with all civs available at once. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The gigantic pull request:

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/8881

[Genava55]

On 19/04/2026 at 2:23 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

@Stan` and I have actually started a repo for Empires Besieged here: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/empires_besieged. 

I know, I saw it. And it is really a great idea you had.

On 19/04/2026 at 2:23 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

So, whether EB becomes it's own "game" or an "era" or an "expansion" or a "release" is up for debate. I personally advocate for a "0 A.D. Eras" concept, where players can swap between eras (Empires Ascendant, Empires Besieged, Masters of Bronze, Millennium AD) and only play those civs, or choose to play with all civs available at once. 

The idea is good. You are pointing out the issue about the Persians, but we could have the same issue with other civs no? Romans and Germans notably.

[Stan`]

For germans, I was wondering if we could explore the inverse of what the game used to do with with the "hellenes" faction. That is choosing a civ being Cimbri and others and phase 1 is specific with maybe some bonii techs and phase2 and 3 (and 4 for de) are common for civs that eventually unified.

[Genava55]

2 hours ago, Stan` said:

For germans, I was wondering if we could explore the inverse of what the game used to do with with the "hellenes" faction. That is choosing a civ being Cimbri and others and phase 1 is specific with maybe some bonii techs and phase2 and 3 (and 4 for de) are common for civs that eventually unified.

I proposed something similar with coalitions:

Personnally I would prefer something enabling the possibility to have unique units, techs and buildings through the tribes chosen. 

Coalitions are how historically the "barbarians" and the small nations were able to defeat massive empires. 

[Emacz]

39 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

I proposed something similar with coalitions:

Personnally I would prefer something enabling the possibility to have unique units, techs and buildings through the tribes chosen. 

Coalitions are how historically the "barbarians" and the small nations were able to defeat massive empires. 

thanks to you we have celtic coalition buildings in CWA  and if you give us some more ideas (Ill ready your post) we could include more!

 

Edited April 20 by Emacz

[Thalatta]

2 hours ago, Genava55 said:

I proposed something similar with coalitions

So, when talking about Germans, the idea seems to be to control a coalition, and one chooses which tribes join it, unlocking different units, buildings, techs, heroes, whatever. I like this, since it would save a lot of headaches regarding what tribes to ignore from them, not to end with lots of civs that look similar (same with Britons and Iberians). I would add that maybe for these factions the “starting tribe” could be selected beforehand (or as a free pop-up choice at the very beginning), not to start with some unspecified tribe. If one in particular is needed for some campaign, this initial selection would be locked, and their name set accordingly (if that’s possible). Regarding the Greeks, it seems a bit more problematic because they are quite fleshed out already (since we know way more details about them), whole leagues would be too heterogeneous. If the problem to solve is that certain scenarios need to consider city-states that are not included in the game, then there could be a generic Greek template for them (I guess the original one is still around).

Maybe a bit unrelated but somehow connected on how to prepare certain things for the future: some time ago I’ve read about the “Grand Vision” (adding lots of epochs and factions to the game), which has the issue of how to deal with factions that didn’t exist in certain epochs. Some have mentioned they don’t want to have civilizations separated into eras, others that don’t want Mycenaean Greece vs Byzantine Late Empire. I think a solution is to have a faction epoch graph that would make factions available if they had come into existence by the starting epoch chosen. It doesn’t make sense to start at 400 B.C. with the Seleucids, one would have to choose the Macedonians (or maybe the Persians, that’s why it’s not a tree but a directed acyclic graph), and at the appropriate epoch, given the choice to stay Macedonian or switch to Seleucids or Ptolemies. If Macedonians are chosen, later on there’s the Roman conquest, so one would need to switch to them. If alternative history could be an option, one could choose to stay Macedonian (this doesn’t mean everything goes, Ptolemies in 400 B.C. is not alternative history, but nonsense), but then one would need to make up the characteristics of this faction from a parallel universe. Anyway, although the switch could be done between scenarios, doing it in the middle of a scenario would show that the game can handle these historical changes seamlessly with a gameplay feature. This could be a solution regarding what I mentioned in https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/143241-thoughts-on-the-spartans/?do=findComment&comment=750127 about trying to be historically accurate with techs: "Persians and Seleucids would have almost completely different techs, since one completely preceded the other chronologically".

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

7 hours ago, Genava55 said:

The idea is good. You are pointing out the issue about the Persians, but we could have the same issue with other civs no? Romans and Germans notably.

Yep, I agree. We can cross that road when we get to it.  

 

6 hours ago, Stan` said:

For germans, I was wondering if we could explore the inverse of what the game used to do with with the "hellenes" faction. That is choosing a civ being Cimbri and others and phase 1 is specific with maybe some bonii techs and phase2 and 3 (and 4 for de) are common for civs that eventually unified.

Imagine AOMR's minor god choice mechanic, but with Germanics choosing the tribes to add to their confederation in each subsequent phase. This could be specific to the Germanics or we can extend it to any civ where it makes sense. 

[Thalatta]

31 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Imagine AOMR's minor god choice mechanic, but with Germanics choosing the tribes to add to their confederation in each subsequent phase. This could be specific to the Germanics or we can extend it to any civ where it makes sense.

Extended to wherever it makes sense would save headaches. Regarding tribal confederations, it would be nice if the choice tree corresponds to probable historical alliances, usually driven by geographical proximity or customs, resulting in a less heterogeneous and more specialised confederation.

[Thalatta]

Given that Thebes would complete the list of hegemonic Hellenic factions at the time of the game (which starts with Athens and Sparta, and ends with Macedon, although there’s Epirus but it was not the same), I was wondering what’s the plan for the future of the Greeks. To take as much as possible into account without introducing more similar factions, what about having Leagues? They would be similar to @Genava55’s idea of Coalitions (for the Germans, which should be extended to Britons, Gauls and Iberians), but the difference is, while all tribes in a Coalition would be treated similarly (I proposed an initial tribe selection to start grounded on something, but that would make no difference on primary buildings, techs, etc), in a League one truly controls said faction (which already are quite fleshed out), and League choices would give (very limited) access to other “minor” Hellenic factions (there could be choices for the “major” ones as well, one could play Athens and have Thebes as part of the League for example). One has to be careful not to bloat a faction though, but the problem to solve is not to have more similar playable factions, while not leaving out certain factions from the game (and maybe the generic Greek template could still be used for stand alone minor factions when needed, which could also form their League).

Edited Tuesday at 14:29 by Thalatta
"Maybe eventually" I should have said, since it's a mod right now.

[Deicide4u]

2 hours ago, Thalatta said:

what’s the plan for the future of the Greeks. To take as much as possible into account without introducing more similar factions, what about having Leagues?

I am just for adding Thebes as a faction and calling it a day for the Greeks, honestly.

If Iberians and Germans are too much of an umbrella factions, we can separate them sometime in the future, as well.

Edited Tuesday at 16:03 by Deicide4u
Added Germans

[Thalatta]

17 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

I am just for adding Thebes as a faction and calling it a day for the Greeks, honestly.

Yes, it's kind of my position, Leagues would be just added to the 4 existing factions (and the "template" one). What I had in my mind is to have some weird extra with every new League choice (which would become more and more expensive), for example, by choosing the Corinthians, one could build the Dioklos somewhere to move ships overland (although it was built maybe a century before the start of the game, but would actually mean one can use their Dioklos):

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Renaming the civ is fine, just be sure to really hunt down every last “pers”.

I see some discussion again of coalitions, or the idea of selecting specifications with each phase, but I maintain the position that these are awkward for gameplay. Myself and others have a lot of comments on this in the “coalitions” discussion @Genava55 linked.

[Outis]

30 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

just be sure to really hunt down every last “pers”.

said the Macedonian officer after Gaugamela

[Thalatta]

1 hour ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I see some discussion again of coalitions, or the idea of selecting specifications with each phase, but I maintain the position that these are awkward for gameplay. Myself and others have a lot of comments on this in the “coalitions” discussion @Genava55 linked.

Yeah, maybe I should have continued the discussion there, but it slowly re-emerged here after that link. What you criticise is not what I’ve proposed, since nothing would be “completely different after a single phase-up”. Regarding Coalitions, I proposed a choice tree of more alike tribes, to avoid what you say and to enhance the strategies being chosen from the start (with some flexibility, while keeping the main characteristics of either Britons, Gauls, Germans and Iberians, it’s just choosing details of exactly what to have, among the possibilities each civ would have). Regarding Leagues, the original civs (Athens, Sparta, Macedonia, and hopefully in the future, Thebes) would set the main strategy, and then some advanced Treasury building could give choices of who would join the League, giving the player some quirky thing (like what I said about Corinth) that, again, shouldn’t change the general strategy of the civ actually being played. To make it even easier for the adversary to prepare, there could be a message stating “X joined Y’s Coalition/League”, and while a very few tribes in a Coalition are necessary, more than that or even a small League should be cost prohibitive for competitive MP, I see it more as SP content, and to solve the “which tribe to choose” and “which Hellenes to ignore” problems.

Edited yesterday at 15:26 by Thalatta

[Genava55]

16 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Renaming the civ is fine, just be sure to really hunt down every last “pers”.

I see some discussion again of coalitions, or the idea of selecting specifications with each phase, but I maintain the position that these are awkward for gameplay. Myself and others have a lot of comments on this in the “coalitions” discussion @Genava55 linked.

What is your solution for the Germans in the case of Empires Besieged as a mod?

[Sturm]

It makes sense historically, but it creates a bit of a usability headache. What the game actually represents is the Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great and expanded by Darius I, so calling them “Achaemenids” is definitely more precise and avoids mixing them up with later Persian empires. The problem is that 0 A.D. is still a game, not a history textbook, and “Persians” is instantly recognizable while “Achaemenids” sounds like something you have to Google mid-match.

There is also a consistency issue. If we start going down the hyper-accurate route, then why stop there? Should we also rename everyone else into their specific dynasties and political phases? That way lies madness (and a very confusing UI). So replacing “Persians” outright feels like overcorrecting. Keeping “Persians” as the main label and using “Achaemenid” in descriptions or lore text hits a much nicer balance between being correct and being playable.

[Deicide4u]

@Sturm, I agree in principle.

But, the game should eventually have an expansion pack, and it will be hard to distinguish the Persian factions if they all are called Persians.

It would be good to educate people on various Persian empires throughout the history. If they didn't know, then they will learn while playing the game.

After all, the most I've learned on medieval history was not in school, but as a teenager playing Age of Empires 2.

Edited 2 hours ago by Deicide4u

[Genava55]

That's why it's important to pull our heads out of the sand.

On 18/04/2026 at 12:35 PM, Genava55 said:

Edit: And it’s really good to finally start thinking about what comes next. I felt like this 'Empires Besieged' expansion was constantly being put off until tomorrow, and that people were refusing to give it any thought. It’s clear that not thinking about it creates problems for the expansion’s design, and that we really need to lay the groundwork now, despite the lack of leadership. 

[Emacz]

 "the game should eventually have an expansion pack"

Classical warfare AEA is an expansion pack of sorts

[Emacz]

32 minutes ago, Genava55 said:

That's why it's important to pull our heads out of the sand.

Ive been trying to get others to do this as well, I'm am super active thinking about all these ideas and tryign to implement them.  But honestly I get a little overwhelmed at times and it can be discouraging when 95% of it is talk, but then when it comes times to actually try it, play around with it people are silent.