Some suggested improvements

[DonSkallon]

Here I suggest some improvements I think would add to the realism & atmosphere of the game.


-Language spoken by your people.
I noticed there really are only 2 vocal responses of units to your commands.
"Bastbolleban!!"(sounding like that anyway) if you order them to attack enemy units or buildings and
"Crafto" if you order them to do manual labor. "Crafto" seems Latin or Greek for "work".
It would be realistic and compelling if each Civilisation's people spoke it's own language:

-Macedonians, Athenians, Spartans & Seleucids would speek ancient Greek dialects.
-Achaemenid Persians would speak ancient Persian
-Gauls & Brittons would speak Celtic dialects.
-Romans would speak Latin
-Carthaginians would speak a Phoenician dialect, possibly mixed with Berber words.
-Mauryans would speak an ancient Indian language.
And so on...

Also it would be cool if your units could say more than just "work" and "attack". Maybe

draw inspiration from AoE: "Lumber" when you order them to cut trees, "Mine" when you
order them to mine ore or stone, "attack" when you order them to attack enemy units &
"destroy" when you order them to attack enemy buildings.

-Ability to build paved roads and squares.
Building roads could be usefull strategicly, allowing troops to move faster. It would be nice if you
could make compressed earth or woodchip paths in the first age. In the second age these roads

could be auto-upgraded into stone roads, at the cost of stone, allowing for troops to move even faster.
Using the roadbuilding tool, which could be similair to the wall-building tool, you should be able to

make paved squares as well.

If this roadbuilding tool is allowed to build in shallow coastal waters as well, it could be used to build extensive

docks around your initial dock-building. In age I dirt/woodchip paths would turn into wooden piers as they are
built over shallow waters. As the dirt paths upgrade to paved stone roads in age II, the wooden piers would
upgrade to stone piers as well.

-Ambush ability.

Allow all footsoldiers to hide in forrested areas. 6 soldiers every square meters of forrest or so.
If the enemy has a favorite route through a certain forrest on their way to attack your city, you
could send an army of footsoldiers into that forrest and order them to hide in it and lay in ambush

for the next wave of enemies to pass through. Now men will chop trees for wood if you right-click

on a tree, so men could perhaps hide behind the tree/bush if you left-clicked on that tree/bush.


-More variety in the music.

Adding more soundtracks in the audio-loop of each Civilisation's music playlist would defenitely

improve the atmosphere of the game. Perhaps each of the Hellenistic civilisations could have
a few extra songs added, unique only to their culture(Seleucid, Macedonian, Athenian, Spartan)
Brittons and Gauls could each have a few songs, unique only to their respective cultures added too.

Also I noticed the war-drums soundtrack played when you are at war is one and the same track for
each civilisation. Perhaps this war-themesong could also be unique for each civilisation too.

Edited April 8, 2015 by DonSkallon

[niektb]

[...]

-Binding number keys to selected units.

It would be really handy, strategically, if you could select an army of say, 40 men, and then bind "1" on the keypad

to it. Perhaps by pressing Ctrl + 1 when they are selected. Then if you press 1, you immediately reselect that particulair

army of men. This way you could easily toggle between 10 different armies and more quickly order them around.

This would make large battles and sieges much more organised and strategic to fight. Could work the same for fleets

in sea battles.

[...]

Try to press Ctrl + 1. It already works!

[DonSkallon]

Oh wow. So much I don't know about this game yet Good to know.

[Lion.Kanzen]

We will focus in the audio but not for now. There are other voices in project, but aren't added yet

-Language spoken by your people.

I noticed there really are only 2 vocal responses of units to your commands.

"Bastbolleban!!"(sounding like that anyway) if you order them to attack enemy units or buildings and

"Crafto" if you order them to do manual labor. "Crafto" seems Latin or Greek for "work".

It would be realistic and compelling if each Civilisation's people spoke it's own language:

-Macedonians, Athenians, Spartans & Seleucids would speek ancient Greek dialects.

-Achaemenid Persians would speak ancient Persian

-Gauls & Brittons would speak Celtic dialects.

-Romans would speak Latin

-Carthaginians would speak a Phoenician dialect, possibly mixed with Berber words.

-Mauryans would speak an ancient Indian language.

And so on...

Here you can find more info.

http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=449&hl=voice

Edited April 8, 2015 by Lion.Kanzen

[sanderd17]

Here I suggest some improvements I think would add to the realism & atmosphere of the game.

-Language spoken by your people.

I noticed there really are only 2 vocal responses of units to your commands.

"Bastbolleban!!"(sounding like that anyway) if you order them to attack enemy units or buildings and

"Crafto" if you order them to do manual labor. "Crafto" seems Latin or Greek for "work".

It would be realistic and compelling if each Civilisation's people spoke it's own language:

-Macedonians, Athenians, Spartans & Seleucids would speek ancient Greek dialects.

-Achaemenid Persians would speak ancient Persian

-Gauls & Brittons would speak Celtic dialects.

-Romans would speak Latin

-Carthaginians would speak a Phoenician dialect, possibly mixed with Berber words.

-Mauryans would speak an ancient Indian language.

And so on...

Also it would be cool if your units could say more than just "work" and "attack". Maybe

draw inspiration from AoE: "Lumber" when you order them to cut trees, "Mine" when you

order them to mine ore or stone, "attack" when you order them to attack enemy units &

"destroy" when you order them to attack enemy buildings.

This is planned: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Audio_Voice_List

However, it's hard to achieve. Since ancient civs didn't own very good audio recording tools. We'll always need to guess the pronunciation.

For some civs, we don't even have many written sources.

Next to actually learning the pronunciation, the one doing the recording should also have access to some sort of semi-professional audio studio, and should have a good vioce. And on top of that, since not all soldiers should have the same voice (and females should have a different voice for sure), we need many recordings from different people.

-Ability to build paved roads and squares.

Building roads could be usefull strategicly, allowing troops to move faster. It would be nice if you

could make compressed earth or woodchip paths in the first age. In the second age these roads

could be auto-upgraded into stone roads, at the cost of stone, allowing for troops to move even faster.

Using the roadbuilding tool, which could be similair to the wall-building tool, you should be able to

make paved squares as well.

If this roadbuilding tool is allowed to build in shallow coastal waters as well, it could be used to build extensive

docks around your initial dock-building. In age I dirt/woodchip paths would turn into wooden piers as they are

built over shallow waters. As the dirt paths upgrade to paved stone roads in age II, the wooden piers would

upgrade to stone piers as well.

This has been requested many times. But it would complicate the pathfinder a lot.

And you might know that we already have issues with the pathfinder (lag, inconsistencies, ...).

So don't expect this feature in the next few years, even if it's one we dream of too.

-Ambush ability.

Allow all footsoldiers to hide in forrested areas. 6 soldiers every square meters of forrest or so.

If the enemy has a favorite route through a certain forrest on their way to attack your city, you

could send an army of footsoldiers into that forrest and order them to hide in it and lay in ambush

for the next wave of enemies to pass through. Now men will chop trees for wood if you right-click

on a tree, so men could perhaps hide behind the tree/bush if you left-clicked on that tree/bush.

Too complicated for the main game IMO. Also too much micro. Maybe mods that focus more on single units could implement this.

-More variety in the music.

Adding more soundtracks in the audio-loop of each Civilisation's music playlist would defenitely

improve the atmosphere of the game. Perhaps each of the Hellenistic civilisations could have

a few extra songs added, unique only to their culture(Seleucid, Macedonian, Athenian, Spartan)

Brittons and Gauls could each have a few songs, unique only to their respective cultures added too.

Also I noticed the war-drums soundtrack played when you are at war is one and the same track for

each civilisation. Perhaps this war-themesong could also be unique for each civilisation too.

Remember that we're volunteers. Writing and producing music takes a lot of time. We're happy that Omri does such a good job at writing music.

He manages to make a few new music pieces per year. There currently are already 32 pieces recorded.

[Gheryon]

one way to implement road i think it could be treat like it was the editor. it can be a button somewhere, that it allows you to draw on the terrain like you were in the editor, it could only be a visual change on terrain. if it works, then it could be added to buldings to draw auttomatically a road to the closest buildings in a x range too.

[Loki1950]

one way to implement road i think it could be treat like it was the editor. it can be a button somewhere, that it allows you to draw on the terrain like you were in the editor, it could only be a visual change on terrain. if it works, then it could be added to buldings to draw auttomatically a road to the closest buildings in a x range too.

It still needs the pathfinder to understand that their is a road on the map till the pathfinder is mature enough this is not possible.

Enjoy the Choice

[Stan`]

Radagast made it possible though. See the modding section

[sanderd17]

Yes, the old pathfinder could use priorities in terrain (thus could prefer roads). However, it had many problems. Like being generally slow, and also the many inconsistencies between the short and long range pathfinder.

So we opted for a redesign that should make the pathfinder simpler and faster. For that, priorities and roads were abandoned.

This article explains the new implemented optimizations in a rather easy way: http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-speed-up-a-pathfinding-with-the-jump-point-search-algorithm--gamedev-5818 . It also explains why roads are hard, but not impossible, but I would prefer to first get a working version in game, and only add roads afterwards (when someone wants to work on that).

[Gheryon]

but what does the pathfinder and why its so important to roads? my propose its intended only for players to use, not IA

[Loki1950]

but what does the pathfinder and why its so important to roads? my propose its intended only for players to use, not IA

The pathfinder does what it's name suggests it finds a path between where a unit is and where you clicked on the map as where you what it to go it is used for all unit movement so it has to know what a road is and the AI also needs it so it can move the civ that it controls.

Enjoy the Choice

[Gheryon]

The pathfinder does what it's name suggests it finds a path between where a unit is and where you clicked on the map as where you what it to go it is used for all unit movement so it has to know what a road is and the AI also needs it so it can move the civ that it controls.

Enjoy the Choice

but what i said doesnt need a pathfinder, its only to be used by the player not the IA, its only paint the terrain ingame instead the editor, without add any bonus, only visual

[niektb]

Ah, you mean the same thing as Empires: Dawn of the Modern World does? Even then you're going to need a pathfinder (since you need to know the path from one building to another) The problems mentioned above do not apply though