Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[Wijitmaker]

Do you have a comment about what you have seen so far in the game? Would you like to see some changes?

If you have some constructive criticism, please post it here!

We can't guarentee that we can make the changes; but, if your point is a valid one... we just might.

[Argalius]

I think we haven't seen that much to say something. What have we seen, 2-3 screenshots. So if you would release some more screenies I think we could say better things to change.

[ZeZar]

Agree with Argi

Though there is one VERY annyiong thing ... UNITS ON WALLS!! I kind of dream of a game doing this well, and i hoped 0ad would be the first. But later on, as far as i know, you chancelled it WHY ??

Also, check the clan MP thing, there are some suggestions conserning Multiplayer lobby, ladders and so on

Nice thread btw Jason

[fyhuang]

Going with some stuff I read on the site about formations being more useful, unit speed should probably be more useful as well. Instead of just having speed to travel from one side of the map to the other, speed should also be used to dodge attacks (or call it agility, or whatever) or something. Also you may want to have unit AI that can be set to on/off/partial. On being advanced AI where you don't have to micro-manage, partial being standard RTS stuff, and off being for those who have memorized every hotkey there is and want to micro-manage everything. Anyways, I'll give you more as I come up with them .

[Aeros]

I'll go ahead and let you guys know that there should be some new screenshots by the end of this month

[deaconwar]

How do you guys guys think being able to use smilys in the game would affect it.

or being able to use smilys in the chat room

[phantom_rider2]

Diplomacy should be more then just "Ally, Neutral, or Enemy."

Maybe involve trading units as well as resources and maybe even territories, etc (like what I read about EE2, it has about everything as a possible trade).

[Aeros]

Diplomacy should be more then just "Ally, Neutral, or Enemy."

Could you elaborate? What other modes could you have besides ally, neutral and enemy.

[phantom_rider2]

I meant you should be able to do more things then just set your diplomatic stance, and tribute a few resources

[Mythos_Ruler]

I do have to say, the prospect of tributing units and territories is intriguing.

[ZeZar]

The giving away unit thing is really working great in Empires, thought its not used much at all. I have played Empires A LOT (Not much anymore though) and i have used it maybe 5 times ...

[Argalius]

Maybe trading should be more important. Not that you just walk to something walk back and you have gold, no you should for example trade wood for food, food for gold and the otherway. This would be much realistic.

[fyhuang]

Great idea Argalius, you could, on Random Maps (if there are teams), not give every player an equal balance of resources, and force them to trade in order to get the resources they need.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Argalius - that trading idea is most likely going to be implemented, I believe. To find out for sure, you'll have to DL the game when it comes out.

[Argalius]

And I will download it for sure

[Tahattus]

Amazing project. It really makes me cry. But yesterday i discovered that Mythos Ruler is a robot, so i don't have to worry about his superior AI.

--- Tahattian Ideas... ---

1) Weather: Maybe only in scenarios, you must put rain, snow...

o> Rpg Maker 2003 has an interesting weather. You can choose "light", "medium" or "strong" rain and snow. Also, instead of an object, "rain" is an effect that is "frozen" on the screen (let me see if you can understand): The rain follows the camera instead of rain everywhere; this is not that good at scenario design, but rain is rain and it'll reduce the lag.

2) Do not name units "swordsman", "archer", "cavalry boy" please! Search for their real names, like toxotes.

3) Your game seems to be almost exacly as AOK. You must create more new things. I liked the season idea. I hope that it'll affect farms, won't it?

4) Don't forget the statues, columns, shrines... those useless things are really useful.

5) fishing please... let the villies fish....

6) Some buildings are really big. There's no need to be "real sized" (I also mean 99% the original size... uh)

7) The rocks are amazing, but some trees seems to be made of plastic.

8) Sky. Put the sky option like Warcraft 3: It has an enormous number of skies, I think it's 20.

9) Caves! Enable the player to design caves.

10) What are the resources you can gather? Still the same, gold, wood and food?

11) Please, don't make a game like this:

o> "Skirmishers are good against toxotes, roman archers, roman cavalry, celt cavalry, infantry but THEY'RE NOT GOOD against celt archers, roman infantry..."

/\ Aok sucked because that's too hard! Aom was much simple: "Good against archers and cavalry".

I hope you've liked it.

12) And please... forget about this:

"Player 3: If you don't give me 10000000 of each resouce I'll go there and kill everyone..."

/\ Like that stupid AI on Aok.

[Aeros]

1) Yes, we have weather and it'll apear durring games (sometimes - based on the RMS if it allows it) usually durring a change to a season.

The way it's planned right now, there will be different intensities so it won't just be the same rain all the time, there could be drizzle, or a huge storm, it's all adjustable. There's also a few more weather types planned other than the ones you said

2)Each unit will have a unique name, along with a title of what class the unit is.

So it would be something like

Neyzedar Madi (Spearman)

______John Smith________

That's an example for the Persian Spearman unit, and ofcourse we won't be using "John Smith" as his name, I just can't think of any persian names off the top of my head right now.

3)No, It's not Read the FAQ.

6) The Building to Unit scale is about 0.66 to 1 (if 1 to 1 is realistic real world scale) So buildings are 2/3rds as big as they would be if they were proportionate to units on the map.

8) We will have a sky in the game for the purpose of scenarios and the campaign - otherwise you won't be seeing any sky in normal random map games.

9) Caves are a planned object for the editor, whether they'll make it in depends on if we'll have enough time to put them in. If not, don't worry. There'll be lots of regular "Community Bonus Packs" that'll add extra things to the game, like more editor-only units, new random maps, a new campaign, etc.

10) Food, Wood, Ore, Stone. Visually, Ore represents Gold, Copper, Tin, Iron... infact any type of metallic substance used by ancient civilizations to manufacture things. In the game, some ore might look like copper, some ore might look like gold, but there'll be no difference in how it'll be used in the game since it's all ore.

*There's also different methods planned for gathering ore, not just mining it from the ground (I think, but this is subject to change probably)

[Tahattus]

13) Buildings will attack with boiling oil or murderer holes?

PS: If "boiling oil" at least make it boil yellow and flaming red. aom's seems to be a "pepper shower".

Ore: Ugh name. Wouldnt "gold" be better? In aok and aom gold represents all the metal in the game.

14) Do not try to make the game as real as possible. Remember that reality sometimes sucks. I hope you dont create a limit of arrows an archer can carry...

15) I think that the name of the units would be better this way:

---------John Smith-------

------Neyzedar Madi-----

--------Spearman------

[Aeros]

We're not Age of Empires, thus we don't have to make minerals be represented by gold. And why represent something when you could just use the real thing?

Ore best represents mineral usage for a civilization as it's a loose term, thus we'll stick with it.

14) The game is historically acurate, not realistic. No RTS game is realistic. Eitherway our goal is to create a fun game, not "Extreme Roman Army and Civilization Manager Deluxe"

[Mythos_Ruler]

LOL

[fyhuang]

Oh, I recently just bought Empire Earth, expecting it to be good... well, imagine my surprise at being forced to create 'Macemen' and 'Stone throwers'. I really don't care if they have hard-to-remember names, but really! Also the learning campaign is good and easy, but the real campaign is at least 500% harder. Gradual difficulty levels (and also adjustable difficulty levels!), please.

Oh, and a couple more ideas:

1. It would be nice to 'macromanage'. You tell your builders ('villagers' is a fine name) to focus on, say, Military, or Economics and they accordingly build by themselves, concentrating on Barracks or Farms or whatever. Let the AI take care of the gruesome details. Of course, for veteran RTSers, you must include the option to micromanage as well .

2. Somewhat related to the previous one - many RTS games take a long time to complete - sometimes exceeding 2 hours. Now, for the people who have time to play games all day, that's fine, but I'm pretty busy, so you really must have an option to save multiplayer games, and also maybe an option, pre-game, to start out with a nicely built base. Nothing really advanced, just have, say a couple levels of pre-build ('Basic economy', 'Simple kingdom', 'World power'), with according pre-built buildings (Town center, some farms; Farms, barracks, some research; Barracks, archery range, stable, some more research, maybe a small expansion).

3. In the spirit of the game Galactic Civilizations, make small updates (patch-style) to add new content to the game. New campaigns don't have to come in expansion packs. 5 MB upgrades to the game, with some new campaigns and stuff, would be great. Considering this, you have to make your map format pretty effecient. Or use ZIPs. Either one works, the second's easier...

4. Don't parametricize (sp?) everything. Example: Infantry - 15 Attack, 12 Armor, 23% damage reduction. Damage reduction = Defense * whatever. Damage = Attack * damage reduction. That gets boring and too AD&D-ish. Make the units less effective as their hitpoints go down. The player shouldn't have to see all this (control panel: Attack: 15 - (23% of 15 for damage reduction) - (15% of 15 for damage) + (10% of 15 for bonuses) is not good).

5. Make mines (resource locations, ...) fairly abundant. For example, WarCraft III uses gold mines. They each have a fair amount of gold, but there aren't many. StarCraft uses mineral deposits. In maps, they are clustered, but you can make single ones or small clusters on your own maps. Also, don't be like Empire Earth and give lots of resource locations, each one having 500000 gold/stone/iron/etc. Farms should run out like AoK, and like the exp. they should be automatically rebuilt. Of course, the rebuilding should cost 90% of the initial cost or something. There is no such thing as a free lunch .

6. Garrisoning units is nice, but don't allow too much of that. For example, AoK let you put villagers in town centers. Unless you are the fastest AoK player in history, don't expect to rush a base within the first 5-10 minutes and win. WarCraft and StarCraft had pretty HP-fortified town centers, but they couldn't attack or anything. Rushes here were effective. Another game that I have, Star Trek: Armada, had starbases which could only be brought down by 4-5 of the main attacking unit (i.e. Battlecruisers, ...), because they could attack and did tons of damage. Rushes were still a strategy, but very ineffective.

7. Make some powerful units! AoK was a large-army game - you had many small units and amassed a large army. Not that that's bad, but you can put gods or something and you can summon gods during battle to do tons of damage or something. I am a defensive player, but I don't like sitting there for 1/2 an hour waiting for my army to form, when I know I have already won.

8. Relating to the first one (sorry!), the AI should be able to create villagers (or a less useful worker unit) when needed (i.e. you are running low on gold (in relation to the other resources), the AI should build some units to mine gold). Also to make bases look cooler, you can make lesser worker units and have them go around carrying water or food or something. On the same note, some kind of automatic water carrier and food carrier should carry stuff to the houses. If a house doesn't get food/water for _ time, it becomes 'abandoned'. This way, choking a base's supply lines is a viable strategy, and so even if the player has another resource mine somewhere else, they can't get them to the houses at that base, and it dies off.

Well, sorry for the long list, but I feel inspired today .

[CrazyThumbs]

I think if you attack someone from the side or the back of their army it should do more damage then attacking from the front, so you could ambush someone's army with weaker units and still win.

And I like fyhuang's idea of the less hitpoints a unit has the less its attack is.

[Aeros]

@fyuang

1) Anyone who plays an RTS competativly vs casually knows that micromanagement is key to winning. All the expert players are online are considered experts because of speed; how quickly they build villagers, how quickly they form a plan of attack and how quickly they get their villagers to act on that. For example, lets say you need extra ore (we're talking in 0AD terms now ) to build a seige weapon for an attack. You want to get that army out of your gates as soon as possible, some people would build 2 more citizen soldiers (male villagers) and task them on ore, while the expert player would take 2 villagers off food which he has a surplas of, puts those 2 villagers on ore and then creates 2 villagers to go back on food to cover for the loss. The result is that he'll get the ore he wants much quicker.

So, considering the thousands of adaptive ways people have to tackle a situation in an RTS, an AI won't be able to handle that, not in your wildest dreams. It'll be more anoying then helpful, let alone borring if villagers automatically tasked themselves on stuff to do.

However, assigning villagers a default "task criteria" might not be a bad idea - we'll investigate that in testing. What I mean is you might have one villager's class be food gatherer, while another would be a builder. If the villager that's a food gatherer ever goes idle, he will look for a food-gathering related task to do. We'll see if this'll be a benefit or hinderance durring testing.

2) We're aiming for the average game length in 0ad to be 30 minutes to 1 hour. However, since we'll be having many different game types (12 total), there will be game types that can addapt to the time you have availible so you can end up having fun no matter what. Don't want to spend 30 minutes building an empire? Fine, jump right into combat in city already made for you.

Stuff like that won't be so uncommon to see in 0AD

3) Regular content and "bonus packs", whether they are original or community made, are planned after the release of the game - managed and downloadable through the game's pre-loader screen (the install screen).

4) I doubt anything will ever become that complicated in 0AD, don't worry

8) Actually, this gives me an interesting idea. What if we had a sort of "demand meter" that would show how much demand there is for a resource based on the ammount of it you spend durring a given time interval. Whether this will be usefull or fit with the type of gameplay in 0AD will be investigated durring testing.

You see, us designers have our own ideas too, we're all waiting too to test them and see if they work or improve the direction of the game.

[Surt]

hmm....i have a small idea.

Marines.

A pretty standard infantry, but with a high cost, cause he's created on ships.

When created he garrisons on the ship, and you have a number of slots for like 10-15 marines. You can unload him close to the shoreline.

It would be a great unit for naval invasions, and a great surprice tactic, but he would be expensive and medium strong to balance it out.

I got the inspiration from reading some Osprey books about that era, and they depicted some marines from sparta, and persia, so i'm sure it wouldn't be so hard creating their looks

I can find some scans anyways

[fyhuang]

@CheeZy

Well, my idea was so that if you were in the middle of a battle and one of your farms suddenly runs out (like in AoK), you won't have to go back and re-plant it (like in TC). Although you probably already thought of that .