Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[martin]

I'm afarid I must admit to not reading all the suggestions - so I apologise if this is an old idea.

I really hate it when, in games, someone gets shot, takes 50 damage and carries on as usual. I would prefer it if you take an arrow and, say, there is a 20% chance of hitting the body - which kills you, or a 10% chance of hitting either arm - which disables any weapons or shields on that arm etc. SO rather than units being AOK or dead you'd have men limping around with one leg - which means that they cannot run so fast, and one arm - which means that theyhave no shield and take damage from swords much more quickly etc.

[Radagast]

I really like the first-person camera view idea. In fact, the designers might go so far as to make a minigame inside the RTS and have the unit that you "are" be under the player's direct control. That would be fun!

[Aeros]

If you have one arm or one leg hacked off I don't think there would be much chance of you still hoping around on the battlefield with full armor and still being able to give a fight... although that would make a nice monty python sequence :-p

About arrows, we were speculating on an idea that a unit being hit with a volley will have arrows stuck in their shield or body, but the feasibility of that feature is not yet detirmined.

[Caesar]

Will there be options for differant archer attacks like aiming (takes longer but is more accurate) and firing in volleys (less accurate but quicker)?

[golthos]

Hi I am new to this stuff but i am a big ancient history buff and i liked playing RTS games such as Aoe AoK and so on. I am also an avid RPG fan both the digital kind and the pen and pencil kind.

As much as i liked them I have always found those Ensemble Studio games very limitting in some way.

I always felt the people at ES could have made more of their games potential

I see that with this game their seems some hope I really like what I see what is being done for 0AD at this site. I like many of the features being put into this game such as experience for units and day and night and better terrain.

Years ago I played another RTS similar to Aoe (cant remember the name and it wasn't one of those Sims games either) but its wasnt nearly as good in the graphics (the graphics sucked and you couldnt do awesome battles like in any of the ES games because you couldnt produce armies with units as flexible as those games) or in the overall game play but it had some really great features that i found very appealling. I think if any of these features were incorporated into 0 AD it would be great and it would outshine the ES games greatly. And all of the stuf i describe below all happened in real time.

1. In this game you started out with a villager and a basic structure just as in AoE except that you would have a village name and a small designated area of land instead of a free for all terrain to claim as yours otherwiseyou progressed in a similar fashion as AoE

The villagers were used as a resource just like wood and stuff. Each villager could later be "trained" to become warriors of certain types as certain kinds of structures were built. Each warrior could later be trained to become a leader and one of the leaders wil become a king

Each fort or castle was then founded by some leader and only leaders can recruit warriors

Each time your king was killed the next ranking leader will then become king

The game was over when one player was unable to produce any kings because there were no more villagers or no more resources for villagers to produce anything

A clincher in recruiting the villagers was that if you tried to recruit too many of them to become soldiers the villagers of that village would rebel against you and you had to kill a few of them to stop the rebellion.

But the villagers were not only used to produce warriors they were also used to produce specialised craftsmen such as smiths masons alchemists and spies(spies were cool because they would appear as a villager or warrior from the other player but to you the unit would appear as it should with your colors). Each was produced and trained through building certain kinds structures.

2. Another thing this game had was that there was weather and time

Because it used some sort of clock making buildings and collecting resources matter more.

It was a way of measuring your efficiency.

3. Each building took a different amount of time to build but here is the clincher there was also weather and each building had a weakness of some kind to certain natural disasters such as earthquakes and lightning that would come as time passed

So it became important to build and train units as fast and efficiently as possible. to prevent damage to builidngs it was neccesary for villagers to periodically maintain them or fix them thereby using up more resources over time. Also if enough time pased without maintanence certain structures would just crumble away.

4. Another thing this game did was when you wanted to create a new town or village it was treated as a colony of the original village and in order to do so you needed a certain minimum amount of villagers in order to claim an area of land to start that new village other wise all structures and villagers would part of the original village or town. Each area had to cleared in order to colonise. The moment it was founded it would be given a name. Later if the village was phyiscally close enough it could merge with another village.

5. Commerce was also a big thing in this game when you built markets you could have traders,camels and mules that you could send off to other markets in other villlages and even other countires (other players territories that were not at war with you) to exchange for materials for money and this could all be automated and you could use way points to develope trade routes. Each market gets its goods from the village buy placing links to different structures that manufacture or store materials like precious stone, wood, precious metals( gold, silver) and food. The money produced from this trade could be used to purchase mercenaries from taverns after they were built. Also this money could be used to trade back for resources you didnt have from other countries or towns by using the trade from the markets.

The playing structure was something like this you find a resource you build a mine or refinery you would link this structure to a town center, storage faciltiy, or manufacturing structure in a particular city, town, village then you wold link this structure to a particular market or markets and designate how much material would go to each market The market loads each "vehicle" or trader that then goes on a designated trade route to another market. Each trader or "vehicle" has a load limit. These trade routes are subject to ambush and robbery by men or beast.

All these things give good reasons to start a war and good reasons to have good diplomacy. It allows for more dynamic strategy

Additionally I would like to see things like Volcanoes that erupt after a time and this area could be the most resource rich for instance creating an incentive to stay nearby and good places to locate temples because of the gods inside them

I would also like to see a game in which the buildings such as Wonders also served to produce income because it would attract vilagers or money somehow form outside the kingdom and also keep the morale up

preventing rebellions and such.

well these are my thoughts i know they lengthy but I believe they are good ideas

[golthos]

I am sorry if this post is extremely long. Still pending more edits.

It is my fault because I screwed up earlier and had to put all my posts together into one long read.

As a result I probably won’t be making to many posts on account of most of my thoughts and opinions are already here.

Future posts should be less cumbersome.

Anyway read on and enjoy.

I hope you guys can give me good feedback on what I have written here and I hope its mostly positive.

TOPICS

I. UNIT TASKS

II. ARTILLERY CREWS

III. AMMUNITION

IV. CAPTURING UNITS

V. POLITICS

VI. ROADS

VII. LIVESTOCK

VIII. HORSES

IX. SCOUTS AND SPIES

X. TERRAIN

XI. ECONOMICS

XII.

I. UNITS TASKS:

I can't stand it when a unit is assigned a task and when the task is completed it just stands there idle and waiting to get killed.

I would like to assign a secondary task that the unit can default to when the primary task assigned is completed or fails to complete.

II. ARTILLERY CREW:

I always found it annoying looking at artillery in AoE and AoK be created and move about as if they were robots on the field

Here are two ways to possibly resolve this:

1. I think at the very least when creating artillery units that its animation includes a visible crew that operates and defends it. Because of this, each artillery piece with crew counts as that many people from the population.

When attacked whenever the amount of damage points a normal soldier could take is received by the artillery piece a crew member "dies" and the artillery unit is inoperable because their is not enough crew to operate it.

If the numbers of “crew units” remaining are still enough to keep it operable then you should reduce the rate of fire the artillery piece can make and the speed by which the unit moves across terrain will also be reduced.

This "crew unit" can be replaced by giving a command to one of your soldiers in the same way you might command a unit to enter a battering ram.

2. When creating artillery units that they are treated as movable building units just as if they were a mobile house. They can only be moved and operated by assigning a minimum number of soldiers to operate it by using a follow or defend command. When these men are attacked treat the same as above in regards to damage, rate of fire, and movement.

In addition, if assigned more than a necessary crew the extra units can automatically replace the missing crew. These additional units don’t necessarily have to follow the artillery unit. Any soldier can be assigned a secondary task if his primary task is completed or not possible. (as suggested above in my suggestion to assigning units tasks)

III. AMMUNITION FOR ARCHERS, JAVELIN MEN, AND ARTILLERY UNITS:

Archers, Javelin men, and Artillery units should be allowed to run out of ammunition

Here are a few ideas on how that ammunition can be replenished on the battlefield:

1. Javelins and arrows that don’t hit any targets can be reused if they are picked up off the ground.

Something that could make this effect more interesting is that units might prefer to pick up their own used arrow or javelin if encountered otherwise they would use any that are found.

Exceptions to reuse might be:

A. Roman pila on account of their tips were designed to bend or fall off after use,

B. arrows that get stuck in any shields,

C. arrows that hit hard surfaces such as stone or trees,

D. anything that hits water

2. Use of the enemy's arrows, javelins, or artillery ammunition.

In the case of artillery rounds reuse of their ammunition can be represented by the capture of opponent’s artillery and as long as the ammunition is compatible with yours you can use it. For instance smaller catapult ammunition could probably be reused in a larger catapult.

Ammunition might represented by a pile of stones or a box of stones next to the artillery piece that moves with the artillery piece and artillery crew.

3. All ammunition for units that are in a fortification might automatically be in greater quantity due to the fact that such a building represents a storage for such ammunition. So that units in the field can enter a fortification to replenish their ammunition.

4. A field army could replenish ammunition by accessing a stockpile from a building designated to be a stockpile such as a fortification or town center or to any of the structures that produce archer’s javelin men and artillery units.

The way these buildings would be designated is by creating a link between this building and a raw material refinery such as a mill, mason, or smithy or this building can be linked directly to a mine (as in the case of collecting stone balls for catapults).

Through this link you can designate a certain amount of material to go to this stockpile and you can assign the rate at which this material is sent.

A unit or wagon then can be given a command to collect ammunition from this stockpile and bring it to a rally point thereby forming a supply train and route. At this rally point troops would come to resupply their ammo. Or this unit can go to each individual unit to resupply them in a similar fashion that AoE priests healed troops.

The cost of resupply should be half or less what it takes to create a unit.

Of course if the stockpile building is nearby any unit should be able to go there to resupply itself.

5. Another way field artillery might be able to resupply itself is through access or establishment of a nearby stone quarry. Soldiers can be sent to mine these quarries and bring the contents directly to the artillery or to a rally point.

6. When stockpiles run out ammunition these can be replenished by removing stone or any needed material from any building. This process naturally weakens any of the buildings being used this way until they are destroyed. All the consequences of such structure weakening and losses are to be normally applied.

The way this can be done is that building or fortification made of the appropriate materials is linked to a designated stockpile and then watch people take it apart.

For instance if it takes 100 wood to build a house then lets say half of that wood is available to use for arrow stock pile before the structure is destroyed and depleted this house is linked to the stockpile and 50 wood is transferred there. Then lets half the cost of what it takes to create an archer would the cost to resupply one single archer with a full quiver of arrows.

This assumes that archers require both wood and money to make.

These methods would make it easier for whoever has more supplies to fight off someone with limited supplies.

These allow for interesting logistics and ambushes of field army supplies

These suggestions along with some others I mention here help create realistic and exciting sieges

IV. CAPTURING UNITS:

I always found the ability of priests in AoE to be able to convert your units and turn them against you kind of cheesy. But you can fix this if instead of turning units against you that you instead use this ability to capture and imprison or enslave units.

This ability can be applied when a pair or more "teamed" units attack an individual enemy unit. They can be given a command to capture and the unit will become subdued unless it manages to get away.

Commanders when in the field can have the ability to "influence" a surrender of a besieged structure or community. This causes the besieged enemy units to leave their post and become a prisoner of any designated capture team. Those most "influenced" by the surrender will be any peasants or villagers and then lower ranking soldiers and so on up the ranks.

Another factor for surrendering is if the besieged is suffering rapid loss of units and supplies. A trigger can be created that if there are a certain percentage of losses due to artillery or due loss of stockpiles that susceptibility to surrender begins to occur in random amounts.

The captured unit is then brought off to:

A. a designated way point at which point their has to be a guard

B. the soldiers bring the prisoner to a prison or a coral

C. bring them to a wagon to be carted off to designated prison or dungeon at a specified time or by specific quantity of prisoners

Enslaved prisoners can act as additional laborers to work farms and mines. These slaves work slower, produce less, and can die after a period of time. These prisoners will always try to escape.

The good thing about the enslavement strategy is that it allows you to expand your work force without adding to your population.

The bad thing about it is that it’s only a short term strategy and because these units can perish it allows your opponent to continue to generate new units.

Capturing can allow for additional diplomacy such as ransoming as well as create scenarios such as prison breaks.

When the prisoner are in their assigned prison they can be very idle but then start to act up when one of their own kind is nearby this helps when it comes to prison breaks. Prisoners might behave more aggressively to escape and might more difficult to put down.

You might even be able to win a game just by capturing prisoners because of population limitations because the prisoners will still count as a member of your population

Some civilizations might be immune to capture like Carthage maybe. They might fight to the death. Players might also designate certain civilizations as to never be captured.

You should be able to kill off any of your units that are captured or surrendered to your enemy in order to prevent population lockout.

V. POLITICS:

I always found the "Ally, Neutral, Enemy" modes in other games frustratingly over simplified

First off it seems to create inflexible modes between the Players and AI and between Players and Players.

It seems more like an all or nothing situation.

I think instead a player should be allowed more flexible options that can allow trade between players but still have certain areas or resources on each others terrain off limits.

If another player tries to destroy a particular structure or intrudes in a certain area it does not have to cause an all out war.

You should be able to select a given amount of tiles and designate this area as off limits or a shared area.

The units can be given different modes such as only defend without having all your forces automatically kill every unit that belongs to the violating player. This way trade and certain exchanges don't have to stop.

Perhaps you can have diplomacy rules like War, Hostile Ally, Trade Partner, and Full Ally

This allows for more strategic alliances.

Since you have actual unique ethnic character names you can end up with a scenario in which peace hinges on whether an ally gives up an officer or hero to be imprisoned or executed by you for performing raids on your territory.

VI. ROADS:

I feel that the roads were very cosmetic in AoE and Aok.

There was no advantage of having roads in those games aside from making the ground blend better with the buildings

In reality paved roads (and many unpaved ones too that went through difficult terrain) were a construction that set Romans apart from the rest of their world

The advantages of roads are:

1. it makes it easier and faster in getting from one point to another. Troops in large numbers, wagons, and horses move quicker over roads. Of course that advantage is true for the enemy as well.

2. They make a good reference point, meaning that you were no longer lost in a wilderness once you were on a road.

3. Paved roads are less susceptible to weather like dirt roads that would become muddy and disappear completely in short time

4. You can use the ability to build roads to be a requirement to advance between phases such as a Roman camp to a town or city

Dirt roads shouldn't be totally cosmetic either.

A dirt road just like paved roads should be constructed. The cool thing about constructing dirt roads is that they take no resources to build. It only means your changing one kind of terrain into another resulting in a clearing.

This kind of terrain clearing might affect farm animals in the sense that there is now less grazing land which perhaps over time affects how long the livestock live.

The ability to make dirt roads (and only the ability to make dirt roads) can also be used to create a special clearing for battlefields so that horses and chariots have a terrain advantage as the Persians often did when they battled with Greek forces

Because of the disadvantages due to weather and time there would be an incentive to build paved roads over dirt roads.

And because over time (time effects would be like over growth with vegetation) and weather (like sand storms in desert climates)dirt roads can disappear it requires that soldiers periodically have to maintain them in the same way farmers need to maintain crops.

Perhaps a roman soldier in the game should be able to build roads using stone resources collected for paved roads and when it comes to making dirt roads only time is lost

Of course now that space can no longer be used for other things like grazing, buildings, and farms. This leads to the player to consider carefully about when and where to build roads

VII. LIVESTOCK:

I always found it odd in other games that the only way to gain more livestock was by finding them in the "wild.”

Farmers who have livestock should be able to grow more over time.

Of course the livestock should be factored into the population limit. If there are too many livestock then a player has to:

1. Kill off some for food,

2. Trade some to an ally,

3. Allow some wolf or lion to come kill their livestock.

A helpful feature would be to automatically kill off livestock at a specific rate or when the livestock population gets in the way of creating more units the necessary amount of livestock are slaughtered.

A way to automatically kill off livestock is if you build a slaughterhouse or designate some such structure to function as one.

Some ways to grow livestock are:

1. To find or steal a ram, bull, Billy (which could be an uncommon unit)

2. When you build a coral.

Slaughtering livestock is not the only way to maintain them.

As I suggested earlier if you have grazing terrain each terrain tile should only be able to support a certain amount of livestock.

When that livestock such as sheep or cows deplete all the terrain resources they will die over time.

This limits the number of livestock one can have on their land. This kind of depletion also creates incentive to use other peoples grazing land causing conflicts to occur.

Perhaps there can be an agreement between parties to allow each others livestock to graze on their land.

Perhaps it results in a strategy not maintain your own livestock but to instead just steal other players livestock just like the Celts Germans, and Huns did.

Regarding stealing livestock maybe any unit can steal livestock not just farmers but maybe the more advanced civilizations require farmers or peasants to manage them such as Rome or Carthage.

VIII. HORSES:

A portion of the price to create Horse warriors should be requiring Horses as a livestock resource in the same way you need a certain amount of money to train these warriors. The livestock suggestions above should be a guideline to be applied when it comes to the management of horses.

Horses like other livestock are not only found in the wild but also be stolen from the fields and stables of other peoples. Just like other Livestock horses will require Stallions to grow more to supply the cavalry.

People who can farm might be able to provide food supplies for the horses more readily than civilizations that depend on the horses grazing.

The cavalry garrison can include a stable to stockpile horses.

Civilizations like the Celts, Germans, and Huns might be skilled at horse stealing. This might allow them to steal from a Roman or Greek stable or coral.

Perhaps certain civilizations can also be able to kill and knock off only the riders from their horses and later steal them.

If warriors are allowed to live when they lose their horse in battle will have to return to their Cavalry garrison to get a new horse.

THE ECONOMICS OF BUILDINGS:

Each civ already has different structures and so each will have diff abilities when it comes to morale for the civ and economics for the civ

Buildings of certain types should be able to generate a certain amount of revenue such as temples markets and arenas

There should be trade system in the game between cities and civilizations this can be accomplished by designing building units that are dependent on each other and having

it could go something like this:

1. You have a raw resource such as wood you then would construct a lumber yard-

2. This structure could then be linked to a city center or to a market to store the goods

3. A market would be able to load pack animals, wagons, boats, and traders with a certain amount of a

4. Material based on their load bearing capacity-

5. Then these traders and pack animals can go to different markets and trade for money

6. And then the trader returns to unload the money and pick up a new load

the player should be able to assign the type and amount of items to supply the market and the player should be able to choose which markets to supply in his own territory - the player should then be able to establish a trade route using way points - these units can attacked and maybe even robbed

I think gates should allow allies through them but they must come through at a price

I think wonders should promote tourism to a city and be part of a network economy of different villages and towns to the city -

Tourism can come in the form of the availability of more mercenaries to recruit and more villagers that are generated from the AI

These will be neutral people from the countryside that later can be recruited

They don’t have to be countrymen - the cool thing is they can each carry money to contribute to temples and city gates and to markets which they trade between cities especially since they are neutral characters

SCOUTS AND SPIES:

Units that are functioning as scouts should always have a limited capability to gather information.

A scout should only be able to get information from the periphery of an enemy's position without getting caught.

This is because scouts she can be easily recognizable when seen. At most scouts should only be able to hide behind objects.

When standing still behind large enough and qualified objects (qualified can be indicated by the object flashing a certain color when a scout comes close enough to an object) the scout is invisible to the "enemy."

The scout should only be able to see when it’s behind some kind of bush, wooden fence, or high ground.

A scout should be easily spotted when near a tower due to the fact the tower is high ground and can see over many objects and in that case lose any invisibility the scout would normally have.

Just about any military unit should be able to become a scout by simply giving it a command similar to the way it can be commanded to guard or patrol.

Spies on other hand are different. They should not look like soldiers. They might appear as merchants or villagers. Of course the advantage of a spy over a scout is that a spy can walk about the "enemy" unnoticed.

The disadvantage is that they are easy to kill (because slow, no armor, and limited weapon like a knife) and very expensive.

Here are a few suggestions on how to recruit spies:

1. If a civilization has a Market, a tavern, or another some such public gathering place it is from here that a spy can be recruited.

2. A captured prisoner that is of low rank may be converted into a spy after which this spy is now subject to population cap limits (an enemy may wonder if the prisoner is dead or may have turned coat if all of a sudden his population has gone down)

3. A "foreigner unit" that comes to your town or city as a merchant or to pay homage to a temple can be recruited.

I don't think that what these units see should automatically be known to the player until the scout or spy returns to an assigned rally point or sends a dove with messages. Sending the dove would be the quickest way to send information

Prior to such action, all things seen by these units are invisible to the player with the exception of the raw terrain so that the unit can be manipulated to travel and hide. Of course the unit can be killed or captured prior to completing such actions. The dove can be killed with arrow fire prior to leaving the view screen.

The spy/scout units will be able to defend themselves but it would be like fighting the invisible. You just can't see what he is fighting unless the message has been delivered.

These actions of going to a rally point or to send out a dove can be automatically triggered by reaching a set of listed goals given to the unit.

These goal triggers would be set through a menu that is similar to victory conditions in other games.

1. When a particular type/s of unit or building is seen

2. When attacked

3. After reaching a way point

4. After killing/destroying a certain unit/building

5. After reaching high ground (such as being on a higher elevation)

6. upon reaching a barrier (such as walls, water, and cliffs)

A few ways to spot spies:

1. He is seen killing someone or destroying a building

2. You see doves being let loose (this also applies to scouts)

3. You can't recruit a "foreigner unit" to become a spy

Time Terrain and weather

how about having flexible time in the game such as when civs are building things time speeds up a bit to represent the time it takes to build and time speeds up when there are battles occurring and instead of just regular weather like rain and snow how about earthquakes and volcanoes and iced rivers

Weather could be used to deteriorate buildings over time meaning a civ would have constantly repair or rebuild using resources

Hot desert climates might have powerful sand storms from time to time the natives might have an advantage while invaders will have a disadvantage as far as coping with it -- perhaps non-native units move slower or cant use archers or artillery during the storm or these units might miss more often

The same things can be considered for rain and snow and for different terrains

Chariots and horses should be at a huge disadvantage in rocky and mountainous terrain and horses can get spooked by thunder and lightning but natives might be immune to these things

As far as volcanoes are concerned there could be an unknown or a known volcano like Mt. Vesuvius and people would settle near them because of the valuable resources they provide such a rich ores and gems

temples and shrines would be best built near them too because of the rich mineral baths and gaseous vents such as existed in the oracle of Delphi but if an earthquake every now then might damage or destroy weak buildings something that is tolerable and easy to repair and replace and maybe on a special scenario or trigger it can erupt

icy rivers would be great too if u have heavy objects like elephants or horses crossing there might be spots that might break this can change the course of a battle and reverse or even the odds

Terrain:

Having terrain that can replenish itself over time such as grass animals fish and small trees

These areas would regrow as long as nothing builds on them and as long as that part of the land is not completely used up so for as long as there is enough of something left it will grow back.

Of course this wouldn’t apply to things like ores and stones

how about allowing engineer build booby traps for their fortifications like ditches pit traps and spike traps

fires should be easier to set during the dry seasons in certain kinds of terrain this can pose a danger to any side as well as an advantage for instance if there is dry grass fields then any flaming arrows can set off a runaway fire in the tiles that contain these grasses and injuring anyone or thing in it at the same time it cane make clearing an area much easier and quick and take away any advantage of concealment by any opponent in

that area as well burn down structures that would harbor enemies

Crossing Water:

Units that enter and cross water will be at a disadvantage to attack even if they are on horseback for these reasons:

Movement is slower

Moving water prevents aiming

Units moving through water without a boat or raft should usually be allowed only in cases of shallow, slow, or still bodies of water.

Moats maybe crossed by soldiers that can float across with inflated bladders like Assyrian soldiers used to do when they want to cross a moat which was too deep even for horses

Many of my suggestions when applied in variation can easily and fairly represent the differences of population sizes and resources available to the various Civilizations 0A.D.

Edited February 12, 2006 by golthos

[golthos]

something i have noticed in all the screen shots is that everything seems so stiff-

maybe if the animators can blurr objects that move such as javelins and arrows and the swinging arms of the warriors-

maybe even blur the legs of horses and legs of wariors as they run this might create a fast motion look and feel even in a screenshot

[martin]

just a quick suggestion - AIs that negotiate -> I hate games where you send the AI 1000000000wood and it says "hah, your pettty offerings will not wave my determination to crush you empire" despite the fact he only has two villagers and a house left.

[Aeros]

Haha, true martin there are alot of things AIs can improve on, I'd like to see the same for 0 A.D.

[Argalius]

I was wondering, will there be post-release support/additions. So lets say, after the game's release you think it's finally time to add some normal maps to the game for the terrain and water (you know I'm a supporter of this ) then that would be possible? Or maybe new units/civs/maps? What can we expect with the usual balancing patches?

Oh yeah, I alsmost forgot. Will there be animated textures? AoE3 uses a xml file where they store the information of the textures like this:

<open>
<texture 1></texture 1>
<texture 2></texture 2>
<texture 3></texture 3>
<texture 4></texture 4>
<texture 5></texture 5>
<close>

It looks really nice when this is done with normal maps on water.

Edited March 2, 2006 by Argalius

[mista_maggoo]

ok,iv got some sugestions for 0ad ,first off i think there should be bigger advantages to micro managing in hectic battles to make it more interactive .so your not just watching them kill eachother.also how is multiplayer?aom stressed team work with godpower combos and team strats suporting each other like a rush and a fast heroik boom.also i think you should setup strats.by that i mean if you do this you get this which which all suports itself making a certain strategy ideal for the path you took.but dont make it linear make the other path just as strategic potentionaly.o and has any body seen gladiator?well i think a civ should have those giant catupults that hearl the flaming bomb things.those would be awesome!

[Paal_101]

Onagers? The Romans have them, although none of the catapults will be equipped with flaming projectiles, since that is pure Hollywood. 120 pound rocks, yes

[Caesar]

Siege Weapons and Fire, eh?

Interestingly enough, there is evidence that the Spartans used some sort of early flamethrower in the Peloponnesian War, possibly a precursor of Greek Fire.

As for the Romans, it does not seem inprobable that at some time or another a Roman soldier decided to cover the projectile stone in a flammable substance and set it alight before launching it at the wall of an enemy town. But in the opening scenes of Gladiator, I think that had that battle actualy taken place, the Romans probably would have seen that firing a flaming projectile while in a forest would have been a bad idea- obviously the trees would have caught fire in an area where the Romans would have to charge into, and the smoke would have made seeing the enemy difficult

EDIT: I found an animation of an onager

CLICKY!

Edited March 12, 2006 by Caesar

[Mythos_Ruler]

That Gladiator battle was preposterous in too many ways. But to be honest, I never thought about the fact that the trees would have caught fire.

[mista_maggoo]

that battle was awesom! its like mideavel napalm .that could be realy cool ingame. allso making smoke in the woods could have givin a strategic advantage because the archers could have fired in and thos scandanavians or whatever they were wouldnt no they were coming.that whole movie was tight.

[Belisarivs]

That battle was pretty ahistorical. Romans were usually outnumbered, so if they would break ranks, like in that film, they would loose advantage they had in equipment (gladius - deadlly weapon in pressure of battle, but in personal 1 to 1 combat ot was bad, because it was too short to swing with) and they were trained to hold ranks. It was expected, that every soldier can fully fight for 15 mins, after that time fighting line was replaced by another and rested. BTW, in Gladiator I didn't see any Roman to throw Pillum.

[Caesar]

its like mideavel napalm .that could be realy cool ingame

Are you reffering to Greek Fire? That was invented around 670AD by the Byzantines and has no historical context in 0ad- although like I mentioned above the Spartans might have used an early type of Greek Fire during the Peloponesian War.

allso making smoke in the woods could have givin a strategic advantage because the archers could have fired in and thos scandanavians or whatever they were wouldnt no they were coming

1. They were Germans.

2. Fire, especialy in a forest, can quickly get out of hand and pose a threat to the Romans.

3. The Germans could have used the smoke to their own advantage by using it as a smokescreen for their tactics.

Also, like Belisarivs said, the Romans didnt often break ranks, not forgetting that Maximus Decimus as a general probably wouldnt have fought in the front lines.

[mista_maggoo]

not greek fire .they had these pots of flamible liquid that looked like oil cus it was black if i remember corectly.they hurled the huge pots from catapults and the pots shattered and made a huge flaming explosian(which was cool).And about the trees thing with th smoke...the romans were in a open feild the '"germans" were in the trees..so the Romans were far away from the trees rite?well setting the forest on fire had some good effects it made it harder for the "germans" to retreat because they would be retreating into fire.also it killed a bunch of the "Germans" causing the forest fire affect in aom.If the romans had to retreat they had open land to do it in i think.also besides none of you would like seing those in the game?maybe it could be a last "phase" upgrade to catupults that alowed them to do more damage to units,maybe alot more,and area damage to units or whatever.I was just trying to give sugestions for 0ad because i would like to help.but it would be a conveineant unit upgrade or whatever. evan if they didnt realy use them you should consider it.

[mista_maggoo]

o yeah,and the burning trees with all the smok would make it imposible for the Germans to see all the arows coming down at them and they would catch them off guard. and would probably cause them to charge to the Romans which would happen any way,except now they would be less organised and have less units. It was also funny when the German guy came out of the woods and screamed"utapootahuga!"and then thrue some roman guys head on the gro,und

[mista_maggoo]

because its easier,simpler,and you could use minerals for makin @#$% but you dont make units out of ore if you had ore you could use it for buidings onl or sumthin.but gold is money or curency.

disregard that^ i dont know why it posted it here

[Paal_101]

Those are good suggestions There are a couple of things you should know though:

We are going to deploy siege engines in the game as they were used in historical battles, against buildings in fixed engagements. Large stone throwers such as ballista, onagers, lithobolos, and the like were used exclusively against static targets. They were time consuming to construct and disassemble. Admittedly they did come in premade parts but their weight also made them difficult to reaim during a fast paced infantry confrontation. And it was not particularly good for your cause if previously ill-equipped barbarians suddenly came into possession of a half-dozen full assembled siege engines which could suddenly be turned on your own towns because there was no time to pack them up. Even so the rate of fire on the stone throwers was far too slow to be of much use in disrupting an infantry charge.

Bolt throwers like the scorpio and chieroballistra were used in some limited fashion by the Romans in field engagements, but the ones used in particular were usually on the smaller end of the size scale, sort of like a ancient version of a modern squad heavy machine gun like a Browning M-2 or an DShK. Yet the evidence still seems to point towards the fact that bolt throwers (large and small) were more restricted to being anti-personnel weapons used in sieges and as defensive weapons in camps and fortresses.

Above all historical accuracy is what we are going for. It is very possible that siege engines can be used as an anti-personnel weapon in 0 AD during field battles, particularly the bolt throwers, but expect them to be used 90% of the time smashing buildings to dust.

[mista_maggoo]

wo,i didnt know you were going that far for historical acuracy.darn.I thought everything was going to have the rite name,look like it did,and do what it did .But you may be going a lil too far.Dont get me wrong I like acuracybut i thoght a seige weaqpon was going to be like it was in Aom and crap.so there is times when you can and times when you cant use seige in this game?darn.that sucks.but still it could still be a tech rite?but maybe have a similer effect as burning pitch?just give more crush damage instead of peirce damage.The only problem is if the explosians sucked it would ruin it...i still think the seige weapons should be closer to balista and stuff fronm aom. except they are operated clearly by humans..thanks for actualy comenting on what i sead because i do whant to help 0ad

[Mythos_Ruler]

Well... we'll probably balance siege engines so that when a catapult throws a rock and it hits a unit it'll kill that unit. However, due to firing rates, unpack times, and accuracy, you'll be more successful using siege against static targets like buildings. Look at our siege engines like the Trebuchet in AOK. An individual unit dies instantly from a Trebuchet shot... however, you wouldn't normally use a Trebuchet against oncoming enemy hordes, would you? Same with our siege engines - they'll be very much like this.

[mista_maggoo]

thats cool,will you be able to move them or will they have to remain stationary the whole time?will there be tech for faster rate of fire?not because it might be good against units but the rof and reload times seem very long.

[Mythos_Ruler]

You're on the right track now. Most(if not all) siege engines will pack and unpack, like an AOK Trebuchet. This is how siege engines worked in ancient times - they were either carted to place and then reassembled, or fabricated completely on-site with materials from the surrounding area. Our game will most likely use the cart option. About techs for firing rates and packing rates, it is very likely the Romans could have techs like those. The Romans in our game will be a good all-around civ, but will have a focus on siegecraft (like how Persians will be the cavalry civ, the Celts the offense civ, the Iberians the guerilla warfare civ, etc.)