Some suggestions

[NoMolester]

Updated content in blue.

Hello, i'm NoMolester, i have been following the game since like a lot of time ago. This is my first time actually participating in the community.

I had some suggestions but i didn´t want to post them because i thought that might be they weren't plausible or they were not going to be taken in account. But then i thought, well, i don´t loose anything by posting my ideas the worst thing that could happen is for other people to disagree or even make my ideas better.

Citizen soldiers:

I like the idea that citicens cant turn into soldiers. Its realistic and helps to improve the gameplay (a mixture that is often very dificcult to achieve). What i don´t like is the way this is implemented. My suggestions to solve this are:

-To have a button called "Call to arms" that changes the citicen into soldier and , when the unit is in soldier mode, to change the button to "Go back to work". When you cklick this button, a sort of status bar will apear over the unit, when the bar reaches 100% (like in 2 or 3 secs max) the citicen will become a soldier and viceversa. This is more realistic than an almost nude citicen that suddenly disappears and appears a fighting soldier on its place and when you walk it, it goes back magically to being a citicen; not only does it look akward but it is also unrealistic. You could even have a tech that makes the "changing process" quicker (like from 4 secs to 2 secs). When the citicen is "changin clothes" to soldier, he is vulnerable to attack and can´t move and viceversa. This is good for gameplay because you'll have to be pendient of your citicens and ready to select them and call them to arms instead of just knowing that they can defend themselves without you.

An example: Rise of Nations' militias.

-To have a building that arms-disarms citicens. You create a soldier, when you want it to be a citicen, you right-click the special building (lets say barracks and fortress ); the soldier goes to the building and changes to citicen (perhaps yo could make an animation making the unit enter the building and after 2 secs going out as a citicen). If he's alredy a citizen he changes into his respective military unit that was defined when you created it. If you choose to "make the unit enter the buiding" for a few secs instead of automatically convert the unit, if the building is destroyed while having soldiers "changing clothes" then the soldiers die too. This is good for gameplay because if you don't have that building near your colony you won't be able to rapidly respond to an attack and the attackers could make surprise attacks destroying first this special building(s) and screwing you up.

An example: American Conquest (not exactly but similar).

-When the button "Call to arms" of the unit is pressed, that unit goes to the nearest military building and arms himslef (the same happens with "Go back to work"). There would be a new building called "Armory", it would be cheap and its only function would be to be a place where your soldiers can change clothes from civ to mil and viceversa; this in case there are not fortresses, town centers or barracks near by and you don't want to waste that much resources building one to have your citicens ready for battle in that part of the map. The military buildings would have a "Call to arms" and a "Back to work" button too, these buttons will affect all citicens near the buinding (the "Call to arms-Back to work" button of the units will only affect that unit). You could transfer all the military technologies to the armory to make it more useful.

Why this should be implemented: I have been thinking and i came to the conclusion that this is the more efficient-realistic-historically accurate-gameplay friendly way to solve the citizen-soldier problem.

Seasons:

To have seasons, if you are playing desert maps, when it is summer all units that are not in the city's range or near a fortress will have, for example, their defence lowered.

If you are playing mediterranean maps, when its winter all units that are not in the city's range or near a fortress will have, lets say, their atack speed lowered.

You could have units react differently to extreme winters or summers; for example, make heavy units in desert summers take 20% more damage plus the effects that all the units recieve, or perhaps camels do not recieve the desert summer penalty, cavarly may lower their velocity in mediterranean winters, and so on.

Perhaps seasons might affect other things like having +10% food from farms in spring and +10% wood from trees in autumn.

There has to be a n indicator of the station and if there is some kind of penalty for certain units. Perhaps a small circle icon somwhere in the screen showing, with a drawing, the current season and some smaller rectangular icons showing wall the penalties they give to which units and when you pass the mouse over it explains you all the stuff.

A season might last about 8 minutes. having half an hour to complete a cicle of seasons.

An example: Rome total war.

Walls:

In this game walls are amazing, they are huge and look cool. They're big enough to have units above them. In fact, why not adding wall sieging gameplay? What about this:

That you can buid doors (not gates) in one side of the wall, doors allow foot units to go into the wall's roof. Only foot units can go there.Units in the wall's roof gain, lets say, +2 vision, +2 range and +25% defense against arrows. You just click the wall's roof and the foot unit will automatically go to the nearest door and when it reaches the door (you can put a small animation opening the door to show the unit is entering and not just staying next to the door) they appear on the wall (like, they dont have to walk upstairs but get transported automatically there once they enter the door). You could also make walls under 25% lhealth be partially destroyed and make units unable to walk on its roof making an unpassable section of the wall, so if you want to go to cross that part you'll have to exit the wall and enter again after the broken part from the floor. Doors can be built in both sides of the wall to give it flexibility. Doors can be used by any faction.

You could add siege towers and ladders that will act as doors too (you could make animations of the soldiers going up). They can be used by any faction to access the wall's roof too once they are put correctly in against the wall the 4 units that control it will stay covered bellow or next to the ladder/siege tower. You can attack them and destroy them and , if they´re yours, you can deattach them from the walls and move them elsewere. If a ladder or tower is destroyed while having soldiers going up, all the soldiers that were going up die. Siege towers could be like the siege rams in Aok: AoC, they could have a certain numbre of units inside it and when they reach the walls they all apear at once in the roof and start attacking. This could be automatically or via "unload" button (the unload pointer would be automatically placed on the roof of the wall once the tower is in the correct position). Siege towers could have a balista too. This can be a tech or something that improves the "siege tower" to "fortified siege tower" or something.

Make rams that can attack only gates.

This is optional but you could make that in order for gates to be opened you have to have a unit on the roof of the wall near the gate.

If a wall section reaches less than 25% HP while having units above it, the units will die. If you repair the wall, when it reaches 25% health, it will become passable again. You could make walls with less than 25% HP dhave a different skin, like, without the roof and half ruined.

You'll have to make walls roofs passable and make the code for the doors, i don´t think it's impossible, i´m a programer too.

An example: Rome total war.

Graphics:

-To have ruins. When a building is destroyed, a generic (same ruin for same size/similar building) or personalized (a ruin for each building) ruin appears instead of the building, if the ruin is in someone's territory, it will vanish after a while (lets say 5 mins), if the ruin is in no man's land, the ruin will stay there forever or until the land becomes someone's territory. There could be "ruin stages". Lets say two stages: the first stage would be a recently burned ruin perhaps still smoking with broken furniture, wood structures and rubbish; the secons stage would be the same ruin but instead of the rubbish, burnings, wood, and furniture it would be an old time ruine with plants growing in the last standing walls and bushes where the floor used to be. I suppose it will take a looong time to create every single personalized ruin with its two stages each. You could implement generic ruins for certain similar sized/shaped buildings. You can build on top of ruins with no penalty at all, the ruin will simply dissapear.

An example: American conquest.

-To have roads around the buildings. When you build a building the land next to it (5m from the building, for example.) changes its shape to some sort of road. this will give you city a more urban look and the odd looking road terrain at starting pointwill be unnecessary. When you are in village stage, it could be dirt road, when you advance to town age or city age, you could change the buildings surrounding terrain from dirt road to paved road.

An example: Cossaks.

-To have village buildings. It looks odd when you look at the magnificent roman or cartaginian Forum at the beggining and its like in the middle of nowhere in the jungle. I suggest to use village style models for houses and civic centres in the village era and when you reach the city era change them to city style models. The same with temples and barracks. Like this:

Village: Village house, village civic centre, duck.

Town: Town temple, town barracks (houses, docks and Civic Centres remain the same skin).

City: City house, city civic centre, city barracks, city temple, city dock.

The rest of the buildings are generic enough to fit in every stage and need no extra skins.

An example: Age of Empires.

-Change units (inf and cab) animations when attacking buildings. Instead of attacking them with their swords, make them throw torches against the building. It would look more realistic.

Buildings:

-Make infantry able to capture buildings. They retain their skin but they become their new player counterpart. If the building has no counterpart in the new player (unique buildings) it is useless. If you implement the village buildings idea, when you change era the building is changed to your skin (except unique buildings).

Why should this be implemented: I'm not sure if this is a good idea, it may not fit to the game but it will add realism. In the ancient times (and in all times) defeated cities were rarely destroyed to the groound, instead, they just killed most of their occupants and destroyed some buildings; the rest of the city survived and kept going with a new master. Razing the enemy town to the ground it's very unrealistic althought its more accomodated for the game's mechanics (almost all RTSG work like that, destroying the enemi civ instead of conquering it). Rise of Nations is a good example of thinking out of the normal paradigm, and it was a success (taking cities, remember?).

An example: Rise of nations, Empire earth 2.

-When you attack a building, it has certain possibility of catching on fire. If you are using a catapult, for example, it has more probability of catching fire. When they catch fire their life starts diminishing even if they are not under attack. You just have to repair them (lets say at least 10 secs of repairing with 1 unit, 8 secs with 2 units, etc.) to kill the fire. If they are not repaired they will burn to 0 HP.

Why should this be implemented: I think this idea fits the game vincest daughter pornery well. When you are attacking a town the enemy does not have time to repair their buildings because they are occupied fighting or hidding. This will make very important to destroy all the remaining the raiders so you can repair your burning buildings quickly and safely adding more pressure to the defending player. A good strategy could be to just burn all the buildings and keep the units fighting untill their buildings are destroyed. You could create special units or habilities that increment the possibility of catching fire, like adding to the catapult a button that changes the throwable rocks to oil barrels that have less siege power but increment the possibility of catching fire.

An example: Empire earth.

-Adding stance buttons for buildings (passive, agressive, defensive, etc). When a unit is created from this building, they start with that stance and not with the agressive default stance. Is a very simple suggestion and very helpful in terms of lessering the number of unnecesary clicks.

Why this should be implemented: How many times do you have to change the stance of the newly born units? Each time a new unit is born (Unless you want them to be agresive). That way you would only click in the barracks the stance you want your next row of soldiers to be, and they will be born with that stance.

An example: Rise of Nations.

We could make ruins more useful:

-Perhaps the ruins can have a small number of stone/wood and when you mine them or build above them they dissapear. Of course a ruin will never have more resources than the original building (if the ruin is from a 50 stone house, the ruin will have only 20 stone).

-Perhaps when you build over a ruin you may have a 15% discount of the price ofthat building ("using the ruin as basement for the new building").

Females:

-Enslaving females. When a female is in the line of sight of an enemy military unit and there is no allied or own military unit in her LOS, it is captured by the enemy player. It can be the line of sight of the enemy unit or when the enemy unit is immediately next to the female (its about to attack), if this is the case, archers couldn't convert females because they would attack them from affar.

So we have two options:

1) No allied/own military units in female's LOS and menemy military unit in female LOS ==> Female converted

2) No allied/own military units in female's LOS and menemy military unit immediatly next to the female ==> Female converted

Why this should be implemented: Another good idea to promote raidings as an alternative way to win besides the classical frontal attack with siege weapons.

An example: American conquest.

Web page:

-Update it , is very outdated. I readed somewhere that you were going to improved, never happened.

Scenario editor:

-ZOMBIES!! Make some zombie units, about 5 or 6 models and skins. Make them slow (about 80% the speed of a foot man), big LOS so they can detect your units easily, nedium-high melee attack and lots of HP. You may make the unit that is killed by a zombie to become a zombie too (and change its player color to the zombie's player color).

Question: What happened with stamina? I thought it was a good idea but then there is no more stamina at all

Question: What about the "Graphics " section suggestions, are you going to implement permanent and/or temporal ruins? Are you planning to add roads next to buildings like in cossaks? or are you not?

Ok, well i had like 11 suggestions but for some reason y can only remember three, when i remember the rest i will edit this post and bump it. I hope you like it, and perhaps something useful can be extracted from this post.

Edited December 4, 2012 by NoMolester

[feneur]

Seasons and units on walls have been cut from the first release of 0 A.D. They are complicated to implement, and at least seasons aren't adding as much to the gameplay as they cost in development time. Units on walls would take a lot of work to get good, so while it might be possible to implement a lesser version we'd rather wait and implement something that works great.

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Will they be implemented into the first release once such features are available to the second?

[feneur]

Will they be implemented into the first release once such features are available to the second?

Why? The second release will contain all the things from the first (only better ), so there should really not be any point in playing the first release once the second is out (There's of course always the risk that you will not like some of the changes in the second release, in which case you might want to keep playing the first. We'll probably make it possible to turn at least some of the features though, so generally there shouldn't be any reason at all to use the old release once the next is out ).

[AuroN2]

i do agree that soldiers should drop their arms when they start gathering resources, this would double the effectiveness of raiding, and be funny to watch soldiers scrambling to drop the wood they just gathered, swearing, sprinting to the spear they dropped 10k away, and turning around to get killed by a guy already armed to the teeth.

[NoMolester]

Hello, I have updated my suggestions thread. The new content is in blue at the top of the thread. I might have more suggestions in the future, when i do, i will edit the head post blueing the new part and bump the thread so all my suggestions will be in the head post and not scattered thorugh the thread.

Here is the updated part:

-When the button "Call to arms" of the unit is pressed, that unit goes to the nearest military building and arms himslef (the same happens with "Go back to work"). There would be a new building called "Armory", it would be cheap and its only function would be to be a place where your soldiers can change clothes from civ to mil and viceversa; this in case there are not fortresses, town centers or barracks near by and you don't want to waste that much resources building one to have your citicens ready for battle in that part of the map. The military buildings would have a "Call to arms" and a "Back to work" button too, these buttons will affect all citicens near the buinding (the "Call to arms-Back to work" button of the units will only affect that unit). You could transfer all the military technologies to the armory to make it more useful.

Why this should be implemented: I have been thinking and i came to the conclusion that this is the more efficient-realistic-historically accurate-gameplay friendly way to solve the citizen-soldier problem.

Graphics:

-To have ruins. When a building is destroyed, a generic (same ruin for same size/similar building) or personalized (a ruin for each building) ruin appears instead of the building, if the ruin is in someone's territory, it will vanish after a while (lets say 5 mins), if the ruin is in no man's land, the ruin will stay there forever or until the land becomes someone's territory. There could be "ruin stages". Lets say two stages: the first stage would be a recently burned ruin perhaps still smoking with broken furniture, wood structures and rubbish; the secons stage would be the same ruin but instead of the rubbish, burnings, wood, and furniture it would be an old time ruine with plants growing in the last standing walls and bushes where the floor used to be. I suppose it will take a looong time to create every single personalized ruin with its two stages each. You could implement generic ruins for certain similar sized/shaped buildings. You can build on top of ruins with no penalty at all, the ruin will simply dissapear.

An example: American conquest.

-To have roads around the buildings. When you build a building the land next to it (5m from the building, for example.) changes its shape to some sort of road. this will give you city a more urban look and the odd looking road terrain at starting pointwill be unnecessary. When you are in village stage, it could be dirt road, when you advance to town age or city age, you could change the buildings surrounding terrain from dirt road to paved road.

An example: Cossaks.

-To have village buildings. It looks odd when you look at the magnificent roman or cartaginian Forum at the beggining and its like in the middle of nowhere in the jungle. I suggest to use village style models for houses and civic centres in the village era and when you reach the city era change them to city style models. The same with temples and barracks. Like this:

Village: Village house, village civic centre, duck.

Town: Town temple, town barracks (houses, docks and Civic Centres remain the same skin).

City: City house, city civic centre, city barracks, city temple, city dock.

The rest of the buildings are generic enough to fit in every stage and need no extra skins.

An example: Age of Empires.

-Change units (inf and cab) animations when attacking buildings. Instead of attacking them with their swords, make them throw torches against the building. It would look more realistic.

Buildings:

-Make infantry able to capture buildings. They retain their skin but they become their new player counterpart. If the building has no counterpart in the new player (unique buildings) it is useless. If you implement the village buildings idea, when you change era the building is changed to your skin (except unique buildings).

Why should this be implemented: I'm not sure if this is a good idea, it may not fit to the game but it will add realism. In the ancient times (and in all times) defeated cities were rarely destroyed to the groound, instead, they just killed most of their occupants and destroyed some buildings; the rest of the city survived and kept going with a new master. Razing the enemy town to the ground it's very unrealistic althought its more accomodated for the game's mechanics (almost all RTSG work like that, destroying the enemi civ instead of conquering it). Rise of Nations is a good example of thinking out of the normal paradigm, and it was a success (taking cities, remember?).

An example: Rise of nations, Empire earth 2.

-When you attack a building, it has certain possibility of catching on fire. If you are using a catapult, for example, it has more probability of catching fire. When they catch fire their life starts diminishing even if they are not under attack. You just have to repair them (lets say at least 10 secs of repairing with 1 unit, 8 secs with 2 units, etc.) to kill the fire. If they are not repaired they will burn to 0 HP.

Why should this be implemented: I think this idea fits the game vincest daughter pornery well. When you are attacking a town the enemy does not have time to repair their buildings because they are occupied fighting or hidding. This will make very important to destroy all the remaining the raiders so you can repair your burning buildings quickly and safely adding more pressure to the defending player. A good strategy could be to just burn all the buildings and keep the units fighting untill their buildings are destroyed. You could create special units or habilities that increment the possibility of catching fire, like adding to the catapult a button that changes the throwable rocks to oil barrels that have less siege power but increment the possibility of catching fire.

An example: Empire earth.

Females:

-Enslaving females. When a female is in the line of sight of an enemy military unit and there is no allied or own military unit in her LOS, it is captured by the enemy player. It can be the line of sight of the enemy unit or when the enemy unit is immediately next to the female (its about to attack), if this is the case, archers couldn't convert females because they would attack them from affar.

So we have two options:

1) No allied/own military units in female's LOS and menemy military unit in female LOS ==> Female converted

2) No allied/own military units in female's LOS and menemy military unit immediatly next to the female ==> Female converted

Why this should be implemented: Another good idea to promote raidings as an alternative way to win besides the classical frontal attack with siege weapons.

An example: American conquest.

Question: What happened with stamina? I thought it was a good idea but then there is no more stamina at all

Edited November 13, 2012 by NoMolester

[quantumstate]

Have you seen our planned feature list? Many of your suggestions are on there (capturing units and buildings, stamina). These are things which nobody has had time to implement yet.

[quantumstate]

Pin in this forum that in a Topic.

Done.

[NoMolester]

Sorry, i'm new in the forum.

Is glad to see that many of my suggestions are already planned.

I hadn't seen that post. I thought that my only repeated suggestion was the "back to work" button and the convertable females.

I have a suggestion that hasn't been suggested yet (I hope so) and is very useful:

-Adding stance buttons for buildings (passive, agressive, defensive, etc). When a unit is created from this building, they start with that stance and not with the agressive default stance. Is a very simple suggestion and very helpful in terms of lessering the number of unnecesary clicks.

Why this should be implemented: How many times do you have to change the stance of the newly born units? Each time a new unit is born (Unless you want them to be agresive). That way you would only click in the barracks the stance you want your next row of soldiers to be, and they will be born with that stance.

An example: Rise of Nations.

What about the "Graphics " section suggestions, are you going to implement permanent and/or temporal ruins? Are you planning to add roads next to buildings like in cossaks? or are you not?

We could make ruins more useful:

-Perhaps the ruins can have a small number of stone/wood and when you mine them or build above them they dissapear. Of course a ruin will never have more resources than the original building (if the ruin is from a 50 stone house, the ruin will have only 20 stone).

-Perhaps when you build over a ruin you may have a 15% discount of the price ofthat building ("using the ruin as basement for the new building").

[quantumstate]

-Adding stance buttons for buildings (passive, agressive, defensive, etc). When a unit is created from this building, they start with that stance and not with the agressive default stance. Is a very simple suggestion and very helpful in terms of lessering the number of unnecesary clicks.

Why this should be implemented: How many times do you have to change the stance of the newly born units? Each time a new unit is born (Unless you want them to be agresive). That way you would only click in the barracks the stance you want your next row of soldiers to be, and they will be born with that stance.

An example: Rise of Nations.

Our GUI already has quite a lot of buttons, I wonder if adding this might be too much. What do you think about having a game setting that applies to all buildings?

What about the "Graphics " section suggestions, are you going to implement permanent and/or temporal ruins? Are you planning to add roads next to buildings like in cossaks? or are you not?

There is now rubble in the svn version of the game. This is a purely graphical effect. When you kill units are destroy buildings currently there is loot gained, this is not obvious though. One suggestion has been to block further construction for a time period where the rubble is.

Roads are unlikely.

[NoMolester]

I don't think it has too many buttons, in fact, i think is very minimalist, something that all should RTS should have (minimalist GUI) but i'm just one dood, you should ask more people to see if they think the GUI is already too buttoned.

Look at the RoN GUI, it has buttons all over tha place and anoying pop up messages everywhere. Look at the disgusting EE3 GUI. This one is pretty minimalist.

I don't think that a button in options or settings would do the job. Because you want them to be born with a different stance deppending on your current war plans that vary many times in just one skirmish. It would be equally inefficient to have to go to settings every time you want a new army appear with a specific stance. It can be just one button that changes its image according to the current stance instead of the five buttons. It can be next to the rally point button.

Rubble shouldn't block construction. Its unrealistica and doesn't help when you are trying to re-build quick. It wouldn't enhance gameplay but make it more annoing.

Edited November 14, 2012 by NoMolester

[NoMolester]

Web page:

-Update it , is very outdated. I readed somewhere that you were going to improved, never happened.

[feneur]

Web page:

-Update it , is very outdated. I readed somewhere that you were going to improved, never happened.

It, as well as everything else we do is worked on when we have time as we do this in our free time Don't worry though, the new web site should be done before Christmas

[Lion.Kanzen]

It, as well as everything else we do is worked on when we have time as we do this in our free time Don't worry though, the new web site should be done before Christmas

great News

[NoMolester]

Scenario editor:

-ZOMBIES!! Make some zombie units, about 5 or 6 models and skins. Make them slow (about 80% the speed of a foot man), big LOS so they can detect your units easily, nedium-high melee attack and lots of HP. You may make the unit that is killed by a zombie to become a zombie too (and change its player color to the zombie's player color).

[Lion.Kanzen]

Scenario editor:

-ZOMBIES!! Make some zombie units, about 5 or 6 models and skins. Make them slow (about 80% the speed of a foot man), big LOS so they can detect your units easily, nedium-high melee attack and lots of HP. You may make the unit that is killed by a zombie to become a zombie too (and change its player color to the zombie's player color).

could be more real if they are Riots than zombies?

[NoMolester]

what? i didn't understand. >.<

what riots

[Lion.Kanzen]

what? i didn't understand. >.<

what riots

the rebels are like a Zombies, a mob very angy can be dangerous like a zombie wave.

think about a Rebelion like Spartacus and Servile Wars. unrest grows like Rebelion of Jews in 70 AD.

[NoMolester]

Well, they could make them too, with stones and sticks and sickles.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Well, they could make them too, with stones and sticks and sickles.

where are the point to make zombies? are you talking about Cheeats mode?

[NoMolester]

But just for scenario design. Through my life in the aok and EE communities i have seen planty of zombie scenarios in all ages, from stone to future age. Is a popular theme and it only needs one unit (with 4 or 5 skins) to please all that people that likes to make z scenarios.

[Lion.Kanzen]

its mod in mod its not problem. may be special unloked mod. like Zombie secret mode in some shoters

[NoMolester]

It would be an Atlas-only unit for scenario design not available in the normal game like the elvens hip hidden in Atlas.

[NoMolester]

Did you see? did you see? they made a new website JUST because i suggested it. I'm important :3

I think i'll (try to) do the zombie mod myself is just adding one unit with almost no ia.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Did you see? did you see? they made a new website JUST because i suggested it. I'm important :3

I think i'll (try to) do the zombie mod myself is just adding one unit with almost no ia.

they want to make a new site before 2011