Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[feneur]

Having both extended foundations and flattening sounds like the best option to me, that way neither has to be too extreme

[Mythos_Ruler]

Having both extended foundations and flattening sounds like the best option to me, that way neither has to be too extreme

You're not gonna flatten the side of a hill only 90% when building your house, you're gonna go all the way.

[feneur]

You're not gonna flatten the side of a hill only 90% when building your house, you're gonna go all the way.

You're not going to build on the side of a hill =) (Or actually if you do you're probably going to use terraces rather than demolishing the entire hill just to fit in your building )

Seriously though, I think that we shouldn't do full flattening even in the cases where you should be able to build, but more than a little flattening is needed. Mostly because it would look strange with well defined "pits" for the buildings and then the slope continues as before around it. But also since most buildings at least to some extent represent a multitude of individual buildings. But overall I do definitely agree that "full flattening" would be best, I just think there are cases when that would look worse than the alternatives. Preferably most maps should contain enough flat buildable areas for the problem to be minor.

[Mythos_Ruler]

Or actually if you do you're probably going to use terraces rather than demolishing the entire hill just to fit in your building

Terraces are flat, nay?

[feneur]

Terraces are flat, nay?

Individual pieces are flat yeah, but as a whole several terraces aren't =) But that's not too important I'd say, the important thing is how it works in-game. I guess it depends a bit on what kind of building it is as well. For something bigger like a civic center flattening definitely seems like a better option (possibly with fairly strict limits for how big the terrain height difference can be to avoid the "square pit" scenario), and for smaller things like towers extended foundations/the model going slightly into the ground sounds like a better option.

[MishFTW]

As long as my buildings look stable before qBot destroys them

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

Well, maybe the buildings can be sideways if need be.

[KayEhn]

I suggest that, when saying 'control all units', you can control what they build as well, so you can make them have more population and be more like a real player. Just a quick one.

[L'ethu]

Some unit like chariots/scythe chariots should have special option that grants them the ability to charge home against a large group of infantry and caused death and mayhem during the charge. That should give chariot a more practical purpose instead of a mobile missile platform.  

Edited January 30, 2012 by L'ethu

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

One suggestion I would give is that when you make a Civic Centre, a name of a city correlating to culture who built this is shown when you select this Civic Centre.

[oshron]

kinda like in Empire Earth 2, then

speaking of naming stuff, will the player be able to rename units in the editor for the purposes of design? for example, maybe renaming the Alexander the Great hero so that he's called Agamemnon for a Trojan War scenario?

[Pedro Falcão]

Individual pieces are flat yeah, but as a whole several terraces aren't =) But that's not too important I'd say, the important thing is how it works in-game. I guess it depends a bit on what kind of building it is as well. For something bigger like a civic center flattening definitely seems like a better option (possibly with fairly strict limits for how big the terrain height difference can be to avoid the "square pit" scenario), and for smaller things like towers extended foundations/the model going slightly into the ground sounds like a better option.

I say flat & foundations. Flat for the higher ground (considering from the center of the building) and foundations for the lower ground. The problem is that when the hill is flattened, the discrepance between two tiles reaches ridiculous values. The solution for this is to add a wall (fashioned alike the building) separating the flattened ground and the original hill ground. After all, we feel bad for both seeing those incredible terrain curves and those too high foundations.

[MishFTW]

Another crazy idea: roads. It would be pretty sweet to build roads. For example, the Romans could build roads between several civ centers for easier military transport. But I guess its better suited for campaigns (especially for Rome)

[oshron]

i would definitely recommend including buildable roads for all civilizations (except for any that didnt use them) as well as including something which was suggested a long time ago: to make it so that informal roads could appear over heavily-traf@#$%ed terrain, such as caravan paths. it would not only be a nice detail of realism, but could also give opposing players hints as to where their enemy's caravans are

[hhyloc]

Yes, roads would be a nice feature to have, both "formal" (can be built) and "unformal" ones (created by frequent travels). And giving bonus to movement speed.

[Gen.Kenobi]

I never understood the actual use of roads in an RTS game (it's not SimCity afterall )... Indeed they speeded up the units a bit in EEII, but, really... Not very usefull

[Pedro Falcão]

Caravan roads are featured in rise of nations just for aesthetic purposes, save for handing over the caravans' postions. In RoN, only buildings and caravan can create roads, though (and automatically, manual road building is impossible). It would be nice to have roads featured in 0 AD, even cooler to have speed bonus from them.

[Gen.Kenobi]

I think the main issue would be blending the roads well with the maps, so it don't look out-placed or uggly - like in EEII, in RON they were made in a quite good way, however their gameplay and maps were quite different from what we have now at 0ad...

[Guest afeder]

Also, if there is a speed bonus, how would formations be handled? If one side of the formation is on the road and the other side is off, would one side just sprint off with the other falling behind, thus breaking the formation?

That being said, a band of Romans marching in formation on a road to reach the enemy fast would be pretty cool.

[Pedro Falcão]

In real life, the romans preferred to use the roads to travel, the army in a long straight line for everyone to have a spot on the road.

[oshron]

well depending on what civ built the roads, presumably they could be designed differently. unfortunately, i dont know much about what roads way back then looked like or if there was any real difference between them. do we even know what iron age roads looked like?

maybe the player could start out only being able to build dirt roads which they cant upgrade individually, but later be able to upgrade so that new roads are more professional looking ones like stone and tile

Edited February 3, 2012 by oshron

[oshron]

Also, if there is a speed bonus, how would formations be handled? If one side of the formation is on the road and the other side is off, would one side just sprint off with the other falling behind, thus breaking the formation?

That being said, a band of Romans marching in formation on a road to reach the enemy fast would be pretty cool.

theoretically, wouldnt a formation or other group of soldiers only move as fast as their slowest member? thats how it was in AOM, for instance, so if a group of hoplites had a siege tower with them, they would be slowed down dramatically

that being the case, maybe there could be a hotkey option or button going with all units that can go into formations called "Loose" which means that they would break formation and just move as fast as they can of their own accord. if any of you have ever played the first Empire Earth game, every unit in that game moves like that, which admittedly can be troublesome if your fewer but faster cavalry arrive to the battle sooner and they arent equipped as well as your slower infantry are to fight approaching soldiers. however, if youre just trying to get from Point A to Point B, then traveling loose would be better

[MishFTW]

I was just going for it because it would look nice with the Romans

And the trade bonuses and speed increases count, I guess.

[Pedro Falcão]

Forgetting the roads, i thought about Queues of orders and pre-orders. The idea between them is quite simple: about the queues (featured both in Starcraft 2 and Rise of Nations), the player can select a unit and give it a sequence of commands to be done in the exact same order by holding shift button while giving the orders; About the pre-orders, i didn't see it in any game, but i thought it would be nice to program a set of orders to various units to be executed at the same time.

For example, a player wants two armies to attack at the same time, but from two different sides, so the player can "shift + (the button of pre-orders) + click" to program the first army to do something and, still holding the pre-orders' button, program the set of orders for the other army (the same way as the first) and then release the pre-orders button to start the sets of orders for both armies.

Since the queues are already featured in games and they don't seem to harm the playability, the "pre-orders" (just delaying the set of orders) won't cause much harm to it too, while adding the possibility of more strategies (specially if/when the bonuses of attacking by behind are implemented).

[feneur]

Forgetting the roads, i thought about Queues of orders and pre-orders. The idea between them is quite simple: about the queues (featured both in Starcraft 2 and Rise of Nations), the player can select a unit and give it a sequence of commands to be done in the exact same order by holding shift button while giving the orders; About the pre-orders, i didn't see it in any game, but i thought it would be nice to program a set of orders to various units to be executed at the same time.

For example, a player wants two armies to attack at the same time, but from two different sides, so the player can "shift + (the button of pre-orders) + click" to program the first army to do something and, still holding the pre-orders' button, program the set of orders for the other army (the same way as the first) and then release the pre-orders button to start the sets of orders for both armies.

Since the queues are already featured in games and they don't seem to harm the playability, the "pre-orders" (just delaying the set of orders) won't cause much harm to it too, while adding the possibility of more strategies (specially if/when the bonuses of attacking by behind are implemented).

Order queues already exists, and have for quite a while now. There are issues with groups and order queues though, but for individual units it works fine.

As for the pre-orders, not sure about how easy it would be to implement just that, but at least for single-player gameplay it should be possible to make you able to give orders while the game is paused, which is more or less the same, except you don't need to remember some keyboard combinations other than the "Pause" button =) That doesn't apply to multiplayer though, so there something like what you suggest can definitely be relevant