Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[Komenos]

Good point about the walls. I disagree with infantry though... unless they were specially equipped with axes or something. People prob spam walls because they are weak to begin with. Well an easy counter to that would be some sort of ban on drawing up walls that thick. Some sort of code that prevents walls to be built like that... though I dont know how to prevent the player from building the wall further back. My only solution then may be the cost of the wall. Perhaps give it an upkeep as well which seems realistic. And/or build limit which is unhistorical but... could prevent spam. Or perhaps have a procurable resource on the map that allows the construction or increase limit or walls.

[julius1]

I don't think there's any solution to stop people from spamming walls. But raising the price on them seems like it might work. I think the walls should not only cost a significant amount of resources but should also take longer to build. i think you should have a choice between simple wooden walls and stone walls. Wooden walls will be easier and quicker to build while stone walls are more expensive and take longer (i mean way longer) to build. That way when you break through a wall the player can't just rebuild them in the middle of the siege. i hate busting through walls in AoE3 just to see a player rebuild them 5 lines deep in less than 1min.

[oshron]

there could perhaps be different animations to make infantry attacking walls look more plausible. perhaps they take up shovels and try to undermine it? walls and other buildings, i think, should have extremely high inherent armor against citizen-soldiers, though. as an example, in age of mythology, armor was calculated in percentages and units and buildings with 99% armor in a certain category (in AOM, attacks were classified as "hack", "ranged", and "crush") COULD be hurt by units with those types of attacks, but they did barely any damage. for instance, human units in that game usually had 99% crush armor, meaning that they couldnt really be killed by siege, while siege had 99% ranged armor, so you couldnt pick them off with archers

[julius1]

that sounds like a good idea. It's annoying when siege units are picked of by archers.unless they have an upgrade that gives them fire arrows..

[Komenos]

Even more annoying than that was armies of siege or armies of archers in AoE. Buildings should definitely be immune to archers... and perhaps if infantry will be given the ability to break down walls at least make the shovel a optional upgrade, not like every soldier went to war with shovels.

[oshron]

perhaps there could be some special aspect added to buildings: "stone" or "wood", referring to how vulnerable they would be to certain attacks. alternatively, some units could be specifically designated as being powerful against certain buildings, the ones that use mostly wood, because those units use fire (in whatever case that would be)

[Alpha of the Eagles]

How about a distinction between wooden and stone walls, that makes wooden walls destroyable by fire (torches or flaming arrows) while stone walls are only destructible to siege equipment. Wooden walls cost wood and are relatively quick to build, while stone walls takes long time to build and consume stone which of there isn't an unlimited amount.

[bill2505]

i prefer wals to be strong .hight cost and upkeep. wooden walls can be dammaged only with seige equipment

[Komenos]

I like Alphas suggestion. There should be some distinction between wooden and stone walls and it cant just be cost. Because when your left with two options everyone picks stone. Wooden walls have to be strong too otherwise they are useless.

[oshron]

the advantage of wooden walls would be that you can build them much, MUCH faster than stone ones

[Mythos_Ruler]

If there would be wooden palisades, they could be cheap (costing only wood, of course), and come with no towers or defenses of any kind, just a simple wooden gate.

It is interesting to note that at one point wooden walls, ala AOK, were planned but scrapped for time.

[Alpha of the Eagles]

Taken from the design document for the Celts:

Note: From my research, the Celts didn’t have specific structures that performed a specific function.

Typically the structure was joined with a house (such as a blacksmith, market, or barn).

But, because we are going to have to take some historical liberties, we will have to ‘make up’ some structures to fit the template of the game.

Would it be possible to make a completely different kind of gameplay to the Celts? So that you build the house, then extend the building into the desired function. Like add-ons in StarCraft. It's all about gameplay flavour, and just get the feeling that you're really playing a different kind of faction.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Of course that would be "possible" and really not that difficult to do, but seeing as how this is our first game we don't want to break too much new ground.

[oshron]

couldnt you possibly make it so that the celts simply cant build houses and their other buildings support population instead?

but maybe you could save that for an expansion pack

[Alpha of the Eagles]

Of course that would be "possible" and really not that difficult to do, but seeing as how this is our first game we don't want to break too much new ground.

I understand that. It could probably be saved for some more nomadic/tribal nation that's included in the expansion pack (a germanic tribe for example). It was just a thought, because this is something you rarely see in a game. I also thought about the possibility of transforming these extensions into another extension which would save you some resources in contrast to building from scratch.

[Mythos_Ruler]

I understand that. It could probably be saved for some more nomadic/tribal nation that's included in the expansion pack (a germanic tribe for example). It was just a thought, because this is something you rarely see in a game. I also thought about the possibility of transforming these extensions into another extension which would save you some resources in contrast to building from scratch.

We actually have lots of cool ideas floating around like this for Part II. I think the Part II discussion if we manage to get to that point will be very fun indeed! For instance, buildings for the Huns that pack up into carts and unpack elsewhere.

[DGMurdockIII]

here is a video that that very well describes the The mechanics of a "post-Marian reform" Roman legion at war http://www.garyb.0catch.com/march1/march_intro.html

here is a video that shows Soldiers Of Rome - [113 BC - 117 AD] that could be usefull to the project

Edited March 12, 2011 by DGMurdockIII

[SpeedIsWin]

I would like to see a deathmatch mode those are always fun,and settings like fast speed and starting in the top age,I am a Age of Empires The Age of Kings & Age of Empires The Conquerors FAN! and i think this game

has a lot of similarities to those games, and i think if you do those things i mentioned the game will be a huge hit! You will get Aoe fans all over and others who are RTS fans.

[Quacker]

This has probably been suggested or thought of, but in case:

I was able to slaughter a baby elephant and harvest it's innards while mommy just watched and grazed. She shoulda kicked my A when I even looked at her baby the wrong way.

[Jeru]

Nah. That one was a spoiled brat anyway.

[Quacker]

True. Its brother did come over and help me harvest.

[General Octavian]

It has probably been suggested already but wth... barbarian civilizations should be able to scale walls while non barbarian (more civilized) hafta make ladders?

[Mythos_Ruler]

Celts and Germans aren't Orcs and Goblins, my friend. If anything, barbarian civs would have simple ladders and hand rams, while civilized factions would get siege towers, undermines, and catapults of various kinds.

[oshron]

an idea just occurred to me about how ships could work. to get this idea across, i need to give you an example first: in Empire Earth 2, some siege weapons such as field guns had to automatically pack and unpack themselves in order to move, kind of like how trebuchets did in AOK. however, they did all this automatically in EE2: a field gun moves into position, unpacks itself, and then begins firing, and stays that way until its commanded to move again, at which point it automatically packs itself up again

i was thinking just a few minutes ago that maybe this is how ships could work in terms of attacking: when they are commanded to attack, they move into position and, depending on how they attack, they have more or less delay time as they "unpack". an example here is with a trireme in which the ship stops and then a bunch of archers climb out of the ship's hold and start firing arrows. these archers would be the rowing crew that makes the ship move, not only justifying why they are already on the ship but why the ship cant move while it attacks (unless, of course, there's some special civilization bonus for that). though they would be unseen, units that are legitimately garrisoned onto the ship will give bonuses to how much damage the rowers do. this would also potentially solve the problem of how units on ships would be represented. it may take away from realism a bit, but i think its a much better method than just having the arrows or boulders magically come from the ship's hull as it attacks. depending on what the ship actually is for each civilization, it could potentially have more or less delay time. suppose, for instance, that a particular civ's Heavy Warship unit is a catapult ship and, as part of its graphic design, it already has a catapult mounted on its deck that is being manned by two guys, so they can immediately fire a boulder but, understandably, have some recharge time before they can attack again

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

In the wiki/trac, it says that soldiers gain experience simply by existing. I for the most part, disagree with this. Besides being unrealistic, it could in some ways become somewhat annoying since the advanced soldiers are not as good at overall resource gathering than basic soldiers. I recommend that you have units gain experience in several different ways besides fighting. One way they could gain experience without fighting is patrolling and acting as a sentinel by being garrisoned in towers and other watching points. I don't think that this kind of stuff should give a really good rate of experience, but at perhaps one experience a second. The other way that soldiers could gain experience without fighting is perhaps by standing within the aura of a barracks. While standing in that aura, perhaps they could do different things like march, do attack animations, etc,... This would be the preferred way to have soldiers gain experience without fighting I think.