Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[feneur]

i agree. customizeable hotkeys are a must, in my opinion. it'll help macromanagement immensely if you can just press Tab, for example, and find an idle worker

Just out of curiosity, what is it about the Tab key that makes it more suitable for finding idle workers than the period key? The only real reason why we've chosen the latter is that it's the common one from the AoE games, at least if I recall correctly.

While we still have to implement a GUI for changing hotkeys, you can change hotkeys in the settings files, see: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Manual_Settings#KeyboardShortcuts

[oshron]

Just out of curiosity, what is it about the Tab key that makes it more suitable for finding idle workers than the period key? The only real reason why we've chosen the latter is that it's the common one from the AoE games, at least if I recall correctly.

While we still have to implement a GUI for changing hotkeys, you can change hotkeys in the settings files, see: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Manual_Settings#KeyboardShortcuts

i actually wasn't aware hotkeys had been added and didn't know that the period key was used to find idle workers i used Tab in example since that's what i was familiar with via Empire Earth and i think Age of Mythology as well--just makin' a point

[fnatikk50]

Played 20-30 games and the game is amazing, even Amazing with uppercase A. It has so much to offer even in alpha stage, more than games for 60$. There are few suggestions I think would be good:
1) editing some graphics options, quality of textures
2) hotkeys for choosing all military units, or all working military units, something like ctrl+z in cossacks
3) alert system for all working military units going to fight enemy
By the way, are civilization traits working? It seems Egyptians dont have farming things like in traits description.

[av93]

By the way, are civilization traits working? It seems Egyptians dont have farming things like in traits description.

Only some of them. For example, Egyptians don't have the farming techs but have a lot of free buildings

The team it's more focused on developping code than balance and design. Probably when the game reach Beta design will change significantly.

[svott]

2) all military units: Alt + "Selecting Rectangle"; all NOT-working units: i + "Selecting Rectangle"; all working units: ?

3) I agree And go back to the same work after finishing fight

Edited December 31, 2015 by svott

[Lion.Kanzen]

2-) 3-) is planned I called call to the arms

Edited December 31, 2015 by Lion.Kanzen

[fnatikk50]

Another one:
1) conquer of territories - when my territory and enemy territory encounter they shouldnt capture buildings on it, just keep frontline and move only if I send units to capture enemy buildings, I mean I built tower and started to build walls then suddenly this territory became an island because enemy got his town center with ridiculous half-map capture and tower is his now, or it is special mechanics I dont know.

2) nerf siege weaponry, variants: lower attack and movement speed; limit; siege weapons can only be attached to formations of infantry, of course after formations will be implemented. 7 battering rams I captured just destroyed all enemy hard roman base easily, few hits on buildings with pretty big movement speed ruins balance.

3) does bot use resource system or it has unlimited supplies? Also kinda weird when trying to attack, it was medium macedonian, he suddenly got infinite amount of infantry attacking my group from everywhere, they just came and came until my 50-70 men were destroyed.

[Alekusu]

2) I don't think siege are OP in this alpha. It is so easy to capture. if you were able to capture 7 rams without any resistance, it is normal that you destroy your enemy base, not OP.

3) At what timing did you have 50/70 men? Against AI, try to follow the following rule: 100 pop at 8min, 130 pop at 10min, 200 pop at 15min then do champions. Trust me you won't lose again vs medium AI with this population.

[wackyserious]

Ability system is a planned feature right? I hope it will be added to the current workload and be included in the next alpha release. It can buff the current gameplay, specially at this period, where some of the long time players have started to become less contented with the game. During the past months, most of the topics that were discussed here was about, how to tweak the current gameplay, whether economically or gameplay combat mechanics..

I'm thinking of something similar to the ability system of Battle Realms and Warcraft (as what was also suggested in trac), units from both games became special because of the associated ability on them. Aside from counters, units can also be useful because of their ability.

Some examples,

-Auto-cast upon enemy detection or manual shield/defend ability (this is where the armor bonus becomes active) Battle ready animation should still be different from defend animation. (i.e. battle ready anim. is more like a taunting anim.)

-Temporary invulnerability (for for frenzied fighters like naked warriors and berserkers)

-Critical strike and stun bonus with downed or stunned animation (Makes combat even better, charge attacks may cause an enemy unit to fall down or become disoriented, also works well with animals like wolves or dogs

-More unit conditions like, disease infected or burning or affected with cowardice (Just like in Warcraft where, an UI indicator displays a certain spell or condition which affects the unit)

-Throwing weapons with a certain cool down period

-Active ability battle cry (Can stack with passive attack/defense bonus)

Edited January 4, 2016 by wackyserious

[Phalanx]

How about hiding the faction of an opponent in the diplomacy menu until you discover the opponent. Rise of Nations did this, and it made putting computer on random fun, and scouting actually usefull, because you have to know who your opponent is before creating a suitable build.

[av93]

Would be useful to show in the main lobby room if along wiht number of players, map, etc. if the game is able to join observers.

[Phalanx]

Are the devs working on naval stuff?

Edited January 18, 2016 by SeleucidKing

[Heron]

[EDIT: now I saw http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10848]

Hey there! Alpha 19 is the first alpha which is playable on my Notebook, that's wonderful!

Here is my suggestion: call me a wimp but I hate it to kill all the enemy's females especially in the last minutes of the game. For me, it doesn't feel right to search the whole map for the last two women and kill them or to kill all the females working at a field during an invasion. I'd much more like to conquer women You could implement it the same way as capturing a siege weapon. I think it's quite fair since a female has no chance to kill a soldier anyway and it's also quite realistic (you may think of the The Rape of the Sabine Women). Maybe the default action should be to kill, because if you are playing against several enemies, you might end up with lots of women who fill up your population limit and you had to kill them yourself (which is even more disgusting). Another possibility would be not to count captured units to the _total_ population limit - you have to build houses, though.

-----------------

Thinking further, capturing could be possible for all units, not just females. As I totally hated the priests in AOE, I'm not sure if this idea is a good one, but think of the following:

If a few (say, less than 5) units are clearly outnumbered, they defect to the enemy. With this (realistic) default action, you could implement a lot of extra features, for example:

- develop "oath of allegiance" (rather costly): units fight to death

- develop "find_a_good_name" (cheaper): units flee instead of defecting. You can develop one of both options only.

- units fighting side by side with a hero fight until they fall

- units in a formation resist a longer time

- civilisations can be made more unique (may also be used to balance them): one civilisation simply resist longer, another cannot develop the oath of allegiance, ...

- or even: having more females in the city make their husbands resist longer. They could even fight a little harder to protect their family, which would encourage the player to create more females.

The advantages of this proposal are increased realism, less stupid slaughtering in the end phase and the possibility of profiting of special units of the enemy. As opposed to the AOE priest approach, you cannot "steal" arbitrary units standing behind city walls, for example. Instead, only in a few situations during a game it will be possible to capture units, either if the enemy is incautious enough to have lonesome units or at a point when an enemy is already virtually defeated. Having the player to think twice before he starts a suicide mission is -in my eyes- a good thing, too. It enforces a somewhat more strategic warfare. If someone hates the feature, he may develop the oath of allegiance.

What do you think?

Edited January 19, 2016 by Heron

[av93]

Capturing females is featured on design document. But a lot of things have change and some others wouldn't be in the final game.

IMHo I don't like this kind of micro.

[wackyserious]

Morale points for each unit, so that you won't have to kill outnumbered units. (A "switch default to" capture or attack button would be nice to have together with this suggested feature)

Ex. I will put my cavalry units to capture mode, so that they can capture outnumbered/routed infantry while my infantry units handle the fighting

Support unit = Very low morale points

Basic rank = Low morale points

Advanced rank = Moderate morale points

Elite rank = High morale points

Champion = Very high morale points

1.) Captured units will only retain its armor/texture and will lose props like weapons, helmets, etc.

2.) Captured citizen_soldiers will lose its capability to attack and will be converted to a support unit (More like slave-worker prisoners)

3.) All captured units will have very low morale, so that capturing them back would be easy (upon recapture, they will return to their original state, with props returned together with the capability to attack)

4.) Captured units will not cost you population points, you can collect prisoners and use them to boost your economy, but "They will be terrible at everything", from building to resource gathering, etc.

Edited January 20, 2016 by wackyserious

[Heron]

@av93 I'm not familiar with the terminology, but I interpret "micro" as "I have to think about lots of very minor steps", is that right? But how does this apply to my suggestion? Maybe I just don't see the full picture, but if implemented as above you aren't forced to do anything special. Maybe you shouldn't send single units into the enemy's territory, but you don't want to that anyway. If only cavalry can capture, capturing will be a quite rare event, especially if the enemy still has some defence towers which would most likely kill your units before they could be captured. Concerning formations/heros/females: these would require micro actions (as I interpret it), but they already do so.

@wackyserious I see two issues. First, the gap between Champions and basic rank units grows even wider. (Also, I don't think it's fair to say a farmer had a lower moral than a champion soldier.) Second, binding the state of a unit to the current owner requires some extra storage/logic. However, this might be not too problematic.

[auron2401]

In simple terms, micro is all the small things you will do.
Like moving your units, attacking specific units, Moving your farmers so they are closer to a specific building to increase food output, etc. So yes, the small things in life.
Adversely Macro is basically grand strategy, technology, buildings etc.

Anyway.

If we're going to have a morale system, i would like it to be a very subtle thing.
It should be modeled by group situation, not individual situation. So if they are mortally wounded, they won't care, but if all their friends die?

Example: you have 100 units in formation, only, say, 20 will actually live long enough to surrender, if they are freshly trained. 15 veterans, 10 elites, and 5 champions.
Math that out how you will, but i think that would be best.

But it would naturally be more complicated, Elephants were used to maximum effect as a scaring tool, not a fighting tool. Most men are willing to fight a fair fight, but be crushed underfoot by a big beast? Not cool.

Edited January 21, 2016 by auron2401

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

wackyseriousness: I can see morale onlty to work with a battalion style game, because: 1.) Battalions reduce number of entity needed for management, and 2.) See number 1.

With individual soldier as entities, we have 300 unit to manage now. With battalion (I'm strong in support of battaluon, this is well-known), this reduce down to maybe 20 or 25. Now you can add thing like morale and directional attack and cool stuff like this. The imagination run wild, but must be temper with a clear vision. Maybe you agree.

[Phalanx]

How about a building that you can task soldiers on to slowly generate exp.  A training arena or something.

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, SeleucidKing said:

How about a building that you can task soldiers on to slowly generate exp.  A training arena or something.

Not bad idea but need art intervention.( arena)

[Phalanx]

2 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Not bad idea but need art intervention.( arena)

 

Ugh.  That does appear to be a common problem, n'est pas?

[Loki1950]

Or adding an other function to existing buildings  depending on culture barracks or armory could have the purpose of ongoing training.

Enjoy the Choice

 

 

[wackyserious]

(Given that cutting though the ground is possible, like how quarries are planned to look like, dug deep)

Generic name: Ditch

Specific name: Faction specific

Phase: Town phase

Construction Cost: Food (Labor) - high food cost

• Takes time to build one (Like walls)
• Infantry can walk though (like farms) but are slowed down
• Can only be destroyed (dug) by infantry
• Impassable to siege equipment (Because battering rams suck and I don't like them, haha)

Common Iron age defensive construction, both Romans and Celts built them together with their walls (It might be nice to make siege warfare more interesting in 0AD)

[Palaxin]

Add a hotkey to select all wounded units with their current hp under a certain threshold (relative to their max hp).
This will reduce micro work e.g. to garrison wounded soldiers in the temple or command them to retreat during a battle.
I can't find something similar here.

Would be even nicer with combinations like:

KEY+1: select all units below 10% hp
KEY+2: ... 20% hp
...
KEY+9: ... 90% hp
KEY+0: ... 100% hp

KEY+F1: select all units with 10% hp and above
...
KEY+F9: ... 90% hp and above
KEY+F10: ... 100% hp

 

Another hotkey could modify the right click move order. All selected units carrying a resource will first drop it at the nearest possible building and then move to the location. Units carrying nothing will just directly go to the target location.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Palaxin

[Palaiogos]

On July 21, 2015 at 1:47 AM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I suggested this same idea. Name could be: Prestige, Glory, Honor; pick one.

Kill enemy unit: +10 Glory

Research tech: +10 Glory

Find a relic and place it in a temple: +1 Glory/sec

Build a Temple: +100 Glory each

Kill enemy hero: +500 Glory

Capture enemy Civic Center: +500 Glory

Build a Wonder: +1000 Glory

Spend Glory on:

Heroes

Champions

Special Techs

Non-Special techs like: Promotion Techs

Leveling up your Hero

You mean like Stronghold 2 with every time your citizens are happy, it gives you a crown? And you lose crowns if your people aren't happy?