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Loading Screen Tips.


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I'm looking to make another batch of loading screen "tips" that load randomly whenever you launch a match.

My problem is that I am "too close" to the game (I know it like the back of my hand) and may not know what would be a good useful tip for players and what wouldn't.

So, it would be helpful if you guys could list some tips that you think would be useful for new and intermediate players.

Current tips:

  1. Roman Army Camps
  2. Barracks
  3. Carthaginian Sacred Band
  4. Catapults
  5. Celtic War Barge
  6. Civic Centers
  7. (Carthaginian) Embassies
  8. Fishing
  9. Fortress
  10. Gathering
  11. Outpost
  12. Palisades
  13. Persian Architecture
  14. Pezhetairos
  15. Quinquereme
  16. Savanna Biome
  17. Defense Towers
  18. Spartiates
  19. Stoa
  20. Storehouses
  21. Formation: Syntagma
  22. Temples
  23. Trireme
  24. Variato
  25. Whales

New suggested tips (from this thread and on IRC):

  1. Blacksmiths
  2. Settlement Phases
  3. Citizen-Soldiers vs. Champions
  4. Armor Levels (percentages)
  5. Mauryan Worker Elephant
  6. Garrisoning Defensive Structures (adds more arrows)
  7. Roman Siege Walls
  8. Stone/City Walls/Gates.
  9. Carthaginian Wall Bonus (stronger walls)
  10. Hellenic Theatron "Hellenization" Special
  11. The Spartan City Phase population penalty
  12. Idle Worker Button
  13. Battering Rams (garrisonable, repairable, etc.)
  14. Territories
  15. A Balanced Army
  16. Female Citizens vs. Citizen-Soldiers (Females are better at food gathering, C-S better at mining,
  17. Building Capturing
  18. Capturing (Converting) Livestock
  19. Capturing (Converting) Women
  20. Forward Building
  21. Defenses and "Turtling"
  22. Trading Over Land
  23. Trading Over Sea (e.g., Merchant Ships can gather aquatic treasures)
  24. Treasures
  25. Relics (if and when we have them)
  26. Roman Siege Walls
  27. The Corral (and tasking livestock and captured animals to it for a bonus)
  28. Iberian Revered Monument (when its aura is implemented)
  29. Carthaginian Naval Shipyard
  30. Hero Auras (when they are implemented)
  31. Faction: Athenians
  32. Faction: Britons
  33. Faction: Carthaginians
  34. Faction: Gauls
  35. Faction: Iberians
  36. Faction: Macedonians
  37. Faction: Mauryans
  38. Faction: Persians
  39. Faction: Ptolemies
  40. Faction: Romans
  41. Faction: Seleucids
  42. Faction: Spartans
  43. Running and Charging
  44. Formation: Phalanx
  45. Formation: Wedge
  46. Formation: Testudo
  47. Shift Key (multi-select, multi-select, multi-waypoint, etc.)
  48. Batch Training
  49. Docks
  50. Hunting and Cavalry
  51. Foraging (Berry Bushes, Fruit Trees)
  52. Farming
  53. Wonders (when they are all implemented)

I made a ticket for Loading Screen enhancements here:

http://trac.wildfire...com/ticket/2087

  • In single player, allow the player to cycle through the available tips, with arrow buttons (left and right).

  • When map is done loading, "I'm Ready!" button appears at the bottom of the screen to go into the game.

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Good suggestions.

  1. Settlement Phases
  2. Citizen-Soldiers (vs. Champions)
  3. Armor Levels (percentages)
  4. Garrisoning Defensive Structures (adds more arrows)
  5. Roman Siege Walls
  6. Stone/City Walls/Gates.
  7. Carthaginian Wall Bonus (stronger walls)
  8. Hellenic Theatron "Hellenization" Special
  9. The Spartan City Phase population penalty
  10. Idle Worker Button

What else?

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All question and sugesstion, the suggestion topic have the more relevant, that are same in each alpha. Ai water development, explain when are the releases final, beta etc.

Keyboard tips, like shift +comma or "." I see your comment in some videos that are make by the fans.

Sctually the farms infinite vs sheep herding.

New or planned features, every alpha the players ask for same things, even me when was noob I did.

Campanig , game modes and all buttons thst are not avaible explain why don't are avaible yet.

The fans always ask for more gameplay, Ai bugs thst are knew.

How works the team, are divided in departments art and programming etc.

Many fans thinks this game is like a AAA franchise, so they ask for Final product, not for alpha or beta. (They asking in my Spanish 0 A.D )

Finally the important talk about hardware , optimization and give quick tips to get more performance.

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Today all know how works but is good. I mean RoN and later games try to implement that.

Garrison bonus for each structure.

Paper , scissor , rock scheme. Even EE give a documents to explain that, if someone want too se it I'll put the link.

http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=15271&st=300#entry270825

This video explain how a new user try to win but is too hard for him. But is not, he don't now how try to use defense structures.

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Current tips, with the description :

ROMAN ARMY CAMP

- Build anywhere on the map, even in enemy territory.

- Loses Health when in neutral or enemy territory.

- Construct siege weapons and train citizen-soldiers.

- Slowly Heal up to 40 garrisoned units.

- Good for building a secret base behind enemy lines or to consolidate gains within enemy territory.

BARRACKS

- Trains all citizen-soldiers.

- Research military technologies to augment your armies.

- Build multiple barracks to train masses of citizen-soldiers quickly.

- Build a barracks in a forward base in order to supply your assault with fresh troops.

CARTHAGINIAN SACRED BAND

- Champion Infantry for Carthage.

- Like all pikemen, they are cavalry killers.

- When in formation they are very tough from the front, even against infantry.

- Vulnerable to flank and rear attacks.

CATAPULTS

- Ranged siege engines that are good against buildings.

- May upgrade to flaming projectiles for extra effectiveness against buildings and units.

- Expensive and slow.

- Pack up into carts for movement, and unpack into stationary engines for attack!

CELTIC WAR BARGE

- A medium "trireme"-class warship.

- The only ship of its kind.

- Cannot ram, like other triremes, but has greater health and armour.

- Can transport up to 40 units across the waters.

CIVILISATION CENTRES

- The "foundation" of your new colony.

- Claim large tracts of territory.

- Can be built in friendly and neutral territory.

- Train Female Citizens and Citizen-Soldiers.

EMBASSIES

- Special "Barracks" available to the Carthage faction.

- Train mercenaries from each of the ethnically-themed embassies.

- Mercenary "citizen-soldiers" have their normal Food cost converted to Metal cost.

FISHING

- Fish the seas for a bountiful harvest.

- Fishing boats carry a large amount of Food per trip.

- Garrison a Support Unit aboard to double the Fishing Boat's gathering rate.

- Careful! Fish are not an infinite resource!

FORTRESS

- The Fortress is usually each faction's strongest building.

- Trains Champion Units, Heroes, and Siege Weapons.

- Gives a population boost.

- Can garrison many units for a strong defense.

- Cost is between 650 Stone and 800 Stone.

RESOURCE GATHERING

- Use Citizen-Soldiers and Female Citizens to gather resources.

- Female Citizens are bonused with Farming and Foraging.

- Citizen-Soldiers are bonused with Mining.

- The higher the level of Citizen-Soldier (Advanced, Elite), the better he fights, but the less efficient he is at gathering.

OUTPOSTS

- Build in neutral territory for a large scouting range.

- Cheap, at 80 Wood.

- They construct quickly, but are weak.

- Lose health while in Neutral territory, but are repairable.

PALISADE WALLS

- A quick, cheap wooden wall available to all factions.

- Most factions have access to them in Village Phase.

- Attackable by enemy soldiers, unlike City Walls, which are only attackable by siege weapons.

PERSIAN ARCHITECTURE

- Almost all Persian buildings have +25% additional Health.

- Persians also have access to a great number of structural & defensive technologies.

PEZHETAIROS

- The Infantry Spearman for the Macedonians.

- Uses 'Syntagma' formation for high pierce attack and high armour, but slow move speed.

QUINQUEREME

- The heaviest warship available. The beast of the seas.

- Garrison up to 50 units for tons of firepower, including ballistas and scorpions.

- Has a ramming attack that sinks enemy ships in one hit.

- Only available to Rome and Carthage.

SAVANNA BIOME

- Generally flat, with a few watering holes and rocky outcrops.

- Chock full of herd animals for plentiful hunting.

- Rich in all types of mining.

- Wood tends to be sparse, but consists of high-yield Baobab trees.

DEFENSE TOWERS

- Free-standing towers good for defending large areas of countryside.

- They usually cost 100 Wood and 100 Stone. Iberian Defense Towers cost 300 Stone (because they're stronger).

- Has a ranged attack that increases for each garrisoned unit.

SPARTIATES

- Strongest infantry unit in the game.

- Champion Infantry available to the Spartans faction.

- Long train time, but high armor and attack.

- Use the 'Phalanx' formation for extra armor bonuses.

STOA

- A special starting structure for the Hellenes.

- Grants +10 Population.

- Only enabled in some game modes.

- Can be found in the Atlas editor for custom scenarios.

STOREHOUSES

- A cheap dropsite for non-food resources (wood, stone, metal).

- Research technologies to improve the gathering capabilities of your citizens.

SYNTAGMA FORMATION

- A formation for 'pikeman' style infantry.

- Formation is slow and cumbersome.

- Nearly invulnerable from the front.

- Vulnerable to attacks from the rear.

TEMPLES

- Town Phase structure required to upgrade to the City Phase.

- Recruit Healers to heal your troops on the battlefield.

- Research healing, religious devotion, and cultural technologies.

- Its "aura" heals nearby units.

- Garrison damaged units inside for quicker healing.

TRIREME

- The Medium Warship.

- Available to the Romans, Carthaginians, Hellenic factions, and Persians.

- Good for transporting or fighting.

- Garrison a catapult aboard for a long-range siege attack.

- Capable of a devastating ship-to-ship ramming attack that must recharge between each use.

VARIATO

- Iberian hero of the Lusitani tribe.

- At least 7 campaigns against the Romans during the 'Lusitani Wars' from 147 to 139 B.C.

- Fast moving and can switch between sword and flaming javelin.

- His "aura" is the "Tactica Guerilla" that allows nearby Iberian units to ambush their opponents.

WHALES

- An oceanic resource.

- 2000 Food.

- Gatherable by Fishing Boats after the whale is killed.

- Roam around the oceans of the game and flee when attacked.

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Thank you Oimat, now we some criticism with these.

Are very old for actuall alpha and the balancing matter.

For example the new technologies, even defensive, many player don't know how defends a colony.

Hunt now is more easy now we can see the animals in a not LOS range because the fog of war.

Explain the biomas or update.

Introduce Atlas as editor.

Give more social media to give some feedback,

That why I was do some time ago a Pool or survey. And later know what are needed to improved.

The formations, how works, and when are great to initiate a skirmish o defensive movement.

Attack movement is new.

Hero button is new.

Including mauryan elephant worker. Very similar to experience to AoM with ox cart.

And pop max capacity bonus.

And spartan less pop capacity.

Thank you Oimat, now we some criticism with these.

Are very old for actuall alpha and the balancing matter.

For example the new technologies, even defensive, many player don't know how defends a colony.

Hunt now is more easy now we can see the animals in a not LOS range because the fog of war.

Explain the biomas or update.

Introduce Atlas as editor.

Give more social media to give some feedback,

That why I was do some time ago a Pool or survey. And later know what are needed to improved.

The formations, how works, and when are great to initiate a skirmish o defensive movement.

Attack movement is new.

Hero button is new.

Including mauryan elephant worker. Very similar to experience to AoM with ox cart.

And pop max capacity bonus.

And spartan less pop capacity.

Units that a trained by other units. Like some heroes can train elite soldiers.

Other ask about post Marian reform Romans, that are in atlas, or some other good troop in atlas, they asked how unlocks.

This was some suggestion to incorporate art , concept with gameplay.

iFJ6mtl.jpg

Edited by Lion.Kanzen
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In my opinion anything keyboard-shortcutted could be made a tip. And a lot of little play tips. Currently imo our tips are a little descriptive, not really insightful. There's a lot of stuffs that is obvious if you just give a look at the GUI.

For example, the catapult one:

CATAPULTS

- Ranged siege engines that are good against buildings. < Thanks Capt'n Obvious

- May upgrade to flaming projectiles for extra effectiveness against buildings and units. < Where?

- Expensive and slow. < A little obvious too, you can see that in the GUI

- Pack up into carts for movement, and unpack into stationary engines for attack! < Well, duh. I mean you really can't do otherwise.

In my opinion this tip is not really interesting. Now as far as I know we don't really have fancy stuffs for catapults, like being able to attack a given ground zone to kill trees or something. But if we had, that would be an interesting tip. What might be worth putting for example is stuff like "can't be garrisoned in X" or things like that, that are not obvious.

Another example:

BARRACKS

- Trains all citizen-soldiers. < True. But they also train champions if unlocked at the fortress. Which is slightly more interesting.

- Research military technologies to augment your armies. < Not completely true with the blacksmith.

- Build multiple barracks to train masses of citizen-soldiers quickly. < A good tip even if it's kind of obvious, but the phrasing could be better imo (the sentence feels hard to read for me).

- Build a barracks in a forward base in order to supply your assault with fresh troops. < Good tip.

For the barracks, what could be added? Right now, perhaps stuffs like "Build one early on to be able to train citizen-soldiers while you phase up".

But frankly those two tips aren't really all that useful. They're stuff you can just guess and that the GUI tells you, a basic tutorial would deal with this info really well. The last two tips for the barracks would fit better a "Having a strong army" tip.

Now stuffs that aren't obvious, like "citizen-soldier vs champion" or the "garrisoning for more arrows" are well deserving of a tip. I'd add experience (and in particular how citizen-soldiers lose gathering efficiency as they experience), unit groups, perhaps a few general concepts like "Territory battle", some strategy explanations (rushing, booming, turtling, whatever), perhaps some specific information about technologies (for example recently I've learned that in the Iron Axe vs Wheelbarrow pair, you were probably better off with Wheelbarrow unless you always made sure to have small resource returning times for your workers.) Perhaps some specific tips for some maps. Perhaps a few gameplay points that aren't immediately obvious (swordsmen make better siege units than archers or pikemen, cavalry swordsmen will kill support units faster). We also need a tip that explains the difference between females and citizen-soldiers.

We could even throw a few build-orders here and there. Real tips, you know.

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I probably haven't seen all tips and maybe the ones I'm suggesting are already implemented.

This suggestions are based on mistakes I've seen in videos of people playing:

- Farms: You can put up to 5 workers on each farm (lots of people use only one like AOE)

- Selecting multiples with Shift and constructing multiples with shift is also missing in several gameplay videos

- Cavalry is better at hunting, use you starting cav unit to hunt for starting food boost.

- Double clicking an unit selects all units of that kind on-screen

- Citizen soldiers can build more building types than females (military ones)

- Docks can be used as a dropsite for any resource.

- You can garrison units in rams and repair them too.

- How to use batch training and its benefits

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I probably haven't seen all tips and maybe the ones I'm suggesting are already implemented.

This suggestions are based on mistakes I've seen in videos of people playing:

- Farms: You can put up to 5 workers on each farm (lots of people use only one like AOE)

- Selecting multiples with Shift and constructing multiples with shift is also missing in several gameplay videos

- Cavalry is better at hunting, use you starting cav unit to hunt for starting food boost.

- Double clicking an unit selects all units of that kind on-screen

- Citizen soldiers can build more building types than females (military ones)

- Docks can be used as a dropsite for any resource.

- You can garrison units in rams and repair them too.

- How to use batch training and its benefits

Good suggestions, Enrique. I will add them to the list.
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