More Factions Please!

[sauerkrautpie]

Hi to everyone! I have ideas about, new and real factions in history for 0 AD game. 0 A.D is very good game, but faction cultures very like each other, so it going to be boring (i don't know you, i talk for myself) 

I think, we must see diffrent cultures, other from Barbaric, Helenistic or Successor. Example, you can add Nabateans for Arabic, Schytians for Hordic culture. Open for discuss, i wait other faction ideas. 

 

[Skhorn]

It is not planned to add more factions/civs to the main game.

Although there are mods which include more factions and there are tons of post suggestin more factions, like the ones you said.

Checkout this subforum https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/forum/18-game-modification/ it may give you an idea

[Lion.Kanzen]

The only faction that will be added are related to a second part where the main theme is the Germanic Invasions to the Roman Empire.

 

[sauerkrautpie]

On 2/24/2017 at 8:48 PM, Lion.Kanzen said:

The only faction that will be added are related to a second part where the main theme is the Germanic Invasions to the Roman Empire.

 

Game's timeline is -500 to 1 AD and, there is some major and diffrent factions, related with Roman Empire. Im sure game is going to be very wonderful with this factions.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Real time line is 500bC -500 AD so if you substracts that is 0. So that's the point of call the game 0 A.D.

Yes, but there are around some mods that bring other civs of same timeframe. Like Kushites, Zapotecs and Han Dynasty from China.

 

[Desophaeus]

To be honest, adding Sucessors while having the 3 separate Greek factions and then announce that "we are not open to further additions" is poor taste. I would call it very poor taste especially when it's barely a large difference between those 5 factions altogether except for "which is more powerful or effective" etc, so forth...

My point to the devs: I understand that it's not ideal to continually add more and yet more thereby overcomplicating the inevitable task of rebalancing all of the factions at some point.

What should have been done was that the Greek-like factions should have been streamlined into one or two factions to make room for a better idea of diverse factions. The Gaul faction should have been removed from the game (since we have the superior Britons which could stand in for the Celts as a whole with some modifications).

Edit: One way to maintain the minor variances among the Greeks/Sucessors... IIRC the Seleucids had an interesting choice in the barracks when I recently had tested out in a quick skirmish, but I remember something along the lines of picking either maintain their native military development or to adopt Roman reforms. It gave the player either a strong Inf/weak cav or vice versa.

This would work out for the streamling quite well... when picking to play as the Greek (or more accurately the Hellenic/Hellenistic) the player would've a chance of picking from mutually exclusive options that would've worked as "go as Occidental or Oriental, etc... even Land or Naval". There can be some rationalization for making a mutually exclusive choice.

The Celts would be easier to give two options to develop into Britons or Gauls, but it's possible to have 3 to 4 (or maybe 5 but doubtful) paths for the Hellenic/Hellenistic faction.

I apologize if my idea seems to be not expressed well, but it's a more viable way of reflecting the diversity in the Ancient times.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Desophaeus

[sphyrth]

In a related note, could we have a standard term here?
The manual uses the term faction, so that's what I adopted. But the game uses the term civilization, which hearkens back to its origin.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Desophaeus said:

To be honest, adding Sucessors while having the 3 separate Greek factions and then announce that "we are not open to further additions" is poor taste. I would call it very poor taste especially when it's barely a large difference between those 5 factions altogether except for "which is more powerful or effective" etc, so forth...

 

The team can have whatever faction they want...

 

2 hours ago, Desophaeus said:

What should have been done was that the Greek-like factions should have been streamlined into one or two factions to make room for a better idea of diverse factions. The Gaul faction should have been removed from the game (since we have the superior Britons which could stand in for the Celts as a whole with some modifications).

 

Nope.

 

2 hours ago, Desophaeus said:

I apologize if my idea seems to be not expressed well, but it's a more viable way of reflecting the diversity in the Ancient times.

Not sure how you can come to the conclusion that removing civs can reflect more diversity.

 

2 hours ago, Desophaeus said:

The Celts would be easier to give two options to develop into Britons or Gauls, but it's possible to have 3 to 4 (or maybe 5 but doubtful) paths for the Hellenic/Hellenistic faction.

 

Having individual civs, instead of "paths" allows for showing more uniqueness right from the start of the match. Easy example is Macedonians and Spartans and Athenians, who are much different from the start of the game, at least as different from each other as they are from non-Greek civs. With "paths" you lose this. With mods like Delenda Est, this is magnified even more.

 

Also, chill out. Mods like Delenda Est and Terra Magna are adding many civs, like Han Chinese, Kushite Africans, and possibly Nabataean Arabs and Scythian Nomads. Some minor talk have been said about including some of these with the game as a proof-of-concept for modding. Game is in alpha, need I remind everyone.

Edited February 27, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Zeta1127]

We already tried the multiple paths route. Originally the Athenians, Spartans, and Macedonians were one faction, the Hellenes, which had the choice between the Greek city-states (which also included a bit of the Thebans, in addition to the Athenians and Spartans) and the Macedonians, while the Britons and Gauls were one faction, the Celts. Eventually it was decided to divide the Hellenes and Celts into several more distinctive factions, which eventually led to the decision to add the Mauryans and the Successor States.

[Desophaeus]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The team can have whatever faction they want...

 

Nope.

 

Not sure how you can come to the conclusion that removing civs can reflect more diversity.

 

Having individual civs, instead of "paths" allows for showing more uniqueness right from the start of the match. Easy example is Macedonians and Spartans and Athenians, who are much different from the start of the game, at least as different from each other as they are from non-Greek civs. With "paths" you lose this. With mods like Delenda Est, this is magnified even more.

 

Also, chill out. Mods like Delenda Est and Terra Magna are adding many civs, like Han Chinese, Kushite Africans, and possibly Nabataean Arabs and Scythian Nomads. Some minor talk have been said about including some of these with the game as a proof-of-concept for modding. Game is in alpha, need I remind everyone.

Very well... if it goes down to this... let's do it.

 

1 & 2. Weak rebuttal. Get something legitimate to shove into your next post please. The onus is on you because I already explained what I consider as poor taste, but you have nothing substantial to counter that. Having 1,800 posts in your name doesn't mean anything to me. To make a counter-point, you need to use an actual point in response to my point.

 

3. You might want to reread my post in its fullness. Or better yet, reread the second quote you used from my post. The rationale the devs used for closing off suggestions for additional factions suggests that a certain upper limit of how many factions they would like to see in the game has been reached, and it will not be exceeded (presumably). To introduce a higher level of diversity without raising the limit would then require some of the current factions to be sacrificed. I had hoped that my oringial post would've been enough to make that point sufficiently clear. Your response made it obvious that I was sorely mistaken.

 

4a. Don't you think that having an overlap between the Greek civs (in both stats and appearances) would weaken the uniqueness, making it a bit silly to claim that the Greeks are different from each other just much as the non-Greeks? So to wit, the actual answer is that there IS a degree of lesser uniqueness among the Greeks as opposed to the rest of the factions. You can argue about the magnitude, but not the existence of the variance.

The lesser uniqueness (or slightly lesser if you must insist) makes the Greeks a logical target to streamline into a smaller number of distinct factions in order to set aside enough room for a more unique faction from a different background to enter the game as a de jure official faction (not just a modded-in faction).

 

4b. If a mod adds even more factions while keeping the original ones, the uniqueness becomes even more blurry with or without paths, period. Your point is what? Mine is that sacrifices are necessary to optimize.

 

5. "Chill out?" Try making your rebuttals less inane and certainly less flat-out rejection "because I say so and I'm such an important member of this forum". It sounds that way to me and in truth, weak counters in a debate is insulting me. On a different footing, I don't mind someone disagreeing if he has a good proper case to make.

[feneur]

To me the main reason why we're keeping all these Hellenistic factions is to not throw away the work that's already been done. I personally would probably have preferred to have fewer Hellenistic factions, and perhaps add one or two others, but it's not really the matter what I or anyone else think personally. What matters is what makes sense for the game, and from a development point of view. To me it's hard to argue for adding more factions as it's a lot of work even maintaining the ones we have and make sure they are as interesting to play as they can, and will be as balanced as they can be. I still don't think it's a good way to go to remove factions we already have though. Both because that would mean that the work put into them would have been wasted, and because we have said that the game will include these civilizations. Sure sometimes you have to change things, and remove things, even though you have said they will be included, but to remove something just to add something else instead doesn't seem like a good way to go.

 

While I sometimes do use the word civilizations as well I prefer factions as the word civilization has some problematic connotations, i.e. is a group of people more or less civilized, or for that matter how do you define exactly what group of people is a civilization. A faction is simply a group that's been set apart as a unified group for this game, so it doesn't carry the same problems.

[Desophaeus]

1 hour ago, feneur said:

but to remove something just to add something else instead doesn't seem like a good way to go.

The inverse applies as well: to keep something just because one doesn't want to add something doesn't seems like a good way to go.

It's like holding onto a cookie inside a jar and not willing to let it go even though the hand is having a hard time getting out the jar's opening.

I am aware of two problems that a developer typically will face during a project's lifetime. Feature creep and lock-in.

 

Eliminating extraneous features during the development process is essential to avoid feature creep which could easily spell doom for a product to fail becoming something above mediocre.

Lock-in is the inverse danger of being inflexible with an old feature that tends to plague people who are successful in avoiding feature creep.

If someone says that it's possible for the two to hit a developer in the same project, I agree with the possibility.

I however view one side as being too inflexible and other as being too flexible for the sake of the project's quality output. So I consider them as being the relative opposites to each other. Those two problems are twin sides of the same coin in the sense of dealing with a feature.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Desophaeus

[sphyrth]

Inflexibility is just the temporary solution while the game is in Alpha. It's the team's firm decision not to add any faction until the game reaches Beta phase.

But as have mentioned, part of the team is actually preparing for that day (which hopefully is coming soon) by creating mods that present other factions:
Rise of the East for Han Dynasty China
Milleniun AD for some Medieval factions
Delenda Est which I only know for the late Republican Romans
And recently Terra Magna for the Mesoamericans

The argument "instead of diversifying already-existing factions, why not just add a completely different one" is interesting to me if I got it correctly. Team back then didn't have much manpower to create enough diversity (especially in the art department) among factions. And by the looks of things (since we have these number of mods) the art guys can do that.

The only question is "When will the game be in Beta?"

[Lion.Kanzen]

@sphyrth Terra Magna merged RotE and Mesoamerican mod( Lordgood version) and this include Kushites.

[niektb]

@Desophaeus: I don't think that the inverse you mention applies

[feneur]

3 hours ago, Desophaeus said:

It's like holding onto a cookie inside a jar and not willing to let it go even though the hand is having a hard time getting out the jar's opening.

I would say it's more like a café keeping a type of cookie on the menu, even if it's similar to other cookies, and even though shelf space etc limits the number of different types of cookies. Is it a good idea or a bad idea? I'd say it depends on whether or not enough people like having access to that type of cookie. And the same applies to the factions in the game, do enough people like to have that variety in the Hellenistic factions? And is it possible for them to be different enough to make them interesting to play? I don't know, but as far as I can tell people do appreciate the variety they add to the Hellenes.

 

1 hour ago, sphyrth said:

Inflexibility is just the temporary solution while the game is in Alpha. It's the team's firm decision not to add any faction until the game reaches Beta phase.

If anything it's the opposite I'd say, it's during the Alpha phase we can afford to be flexible. That said I would say that it is (i.e. at the moment, and depending on the people in the team and current opinions) the team's decision not to add any more factions for part one at all. But as with everything else it could change at a later date.

I do however think that it is a good idea to be very strict with changing things on this level, especially since we are getting close to Beta. If we remove factions people are going to get disappointed, work that has already been put into them will be wasted, and since all limits are at least somewhat arbitrary there is some merit to staying with the ones we already have decided upon. Otherwise where do we draw the line?

There has been plenty of arguments as to why the Iberians should be split up into at least two factions if not more. At the very least the author of Delenda Est has argued for adding another Hellenistic faction: the Thebans, and I do recall someone else arguing for having some other Hellenistic factions as well.

There are plenty of other factions which could be added, of them it's probably the Scythians which are the most interesting imho. It is impossible to make a perfect decision though (there will always be someone who is disappointed, and arguments as to why you should have made a different decision), so the question is where do you draw the line and say "these are the factions we are going to include". I think it's better to have the focus gained from not having to consider the question again, and again, even if it does mean that we might be missing out on some interesting factions.

[fatherbushido]

@feneur: one should pin that answer as it's probably the most asked question ;-)

[Zeta1127]

I have been arguing for the Thebans too, in order to round out the Greek-Persian Wars and the Peloponnesian War for the campaigns in the future, and the Epirotes, especially Pyrrhus of Epirus, were too prominent not to include, and it looks like the Scythians will also be included in Delenda Est eventually, so porting them from Delenda Est was all too necessary for me.

[Desophaeus]

5 hours ago, niektb said:

@Desophaeus: I don't think that the inverse you mention applies

*sigh* Spilting hairs now? It applies.

Here's an extreme case of where the inverse actually has more practical application than the orignal statement would have:

Have you heard of a VHS tape? Seen one? Held one in your hands? It's obsolete, and it died a very ugly death. Very few people refused to switch to DVDs in favour of keeping to VHS granted, we could keep both. But the question is, is it a good idea? Not anymore. A dual DVD/VHS is less optimal than a pure DVD player. It doesn't even sell that well as a product. And who wants to hold 500 VHS tapes and 800 DVDs when one could hold 2,300 DVDs on the same amount of shelving instead? A person with a quite different set of priorities.

That personal choice is perfectly fine to exercise, but we're discussing a product to "sell". I don't like to see a product with so much potential to end up being mediocre and forgettable just because a diehard minor fanbase refused to give up something in exchange for a better diverse cast to pick from.

If it's solely an indie game that you're not planning to distribute more than 25 copies for a circle of friends to enjoy. It's not necessarily a waste of such potential because it never had much to start with as an objective in the first place.

 

"I would say it's more like a café keeping a type of cookie on the menu, even if it's similar to other cookies, and even though shelf space etc limits the number of different types of cookies. Is it a good idea or a bad idea? I'd say it depends on whether or not enough people like having access to that type of cookie. And the same applies to the factions in the game, do enough people like to have that variety in the Hellenistic factions? And is it possible for them to be different enough to make them interesting to play?"

 @feneur, I concede to your point. Your analogy of a cafe with cookies and its corresponding analysis is absolutely spot-on! 

I felt that the mild diversity of the Greeks were a waste that could have gone to adding something Chinese with radically different characteristics, strengths, weaknesses. Or even a Viking faction that would serve better than Athenians as a naval-based faction with strong harassment ability. (Although, off the top of my head, I would say Phoenicians would be a more suited civilization in fitting the time period while the Norse/Danish should be set aside for the sequel instead).

The Greeks could serve as the "chimera" factions with multiple pathways. Wouldn't that serve as an interesting faction to consider? (Probably hellish to balance out in the gameplay, I'm afraid), but do you see why I feel like this question of whether to uphaul the factions or not should be answered with an yes?

Edited February 27, 2017 by Desophaeus

[niektb]

Hey, man! Relax a bit, it sounds like you're a bit heated up  there's absolutely no need for that 

25 minutes ago, Desophaeus said:

The Greeks could serve as the "chimera" factions with multiple pathways. Wouldn't that serve as an interesting faction to consider? (Probably hellish to balance out in the gameplay, I'm afraid), but do you see why I feel like this question of whether to uphaul the factions or not should be answered with an yes?

According to @Zeta1127 that was already tried:

[Desophaeus]

1 hour ago, niektb said:

Hey, man! Relax a bit, it sounds like you're a bit heated up  there's absolutely no need for that 

According to @Zeta1127 that was already tried:

I suppose I do sound harsh in my rebuttal to your remark. It seems to be an unnecessary sidetrack into spilting hairs, so I brought up an extreme example to reflect on your logic as a comparable reasoning.

 

As for Zeta's comment...

But that was before the team was maxed out on number of factions and they were looking to diversify them somehow in whatever methodology, right? At that time, it was ideal to separate the Greeks to allow them to diverge into distinctive factions because there was sufficient spacing left on the shelf at that time, from the sound of it.

I would say that has changed now when the team says, more or less, "No, we are not open to further suggestions, we're full on factions as it is." It cuts out the opportunity to improve upon the overall diversity.

That's quite a different situation from when the Greeks were a singular faction or when the Celts weren't spilt into Britons and Gauls.

Honestly, the Ptolemies, Athenians, and Seleucids are rather poor excuses for factions. Short of a drastic rework, it seems awkward to try to improve those Greeks without making them too similar to the rest of the factions in 0 AD. There has to be something radically different from the typical Hellenistic setup available to meet the need to diversify those supplemental factions without weakening them or muddle their distinctiveness, I don't know.

At least Ptolemies and Seleucids do have their own signature identity while Athenians are there simply because they were famous but sitting there pretty useless in the game with walls and boats.

It feels like a crying shame to waste five slots on the Greeks but not bothering with truly unique factions such as Chinese (which probably was a horse beaten to death, reincarnated and beaten to death one time too many in this forum) or even Aztecs/Mayans some sort of Mesoamericans that likes to capture enemy workers/warriors to sacrifice for their gods (perhaps a strong combat bonus energizing the hunters or a bonus to the whole civilization?)

 

Between posts, I looked at the factions, I remember now that we do have Carthage which is more or less later-era Phoenicians anyhow. I think that Phoenician idea is already filled out fine by them. *facepalm at myself*

Edited February 27, 2017 by Desophaeus
spacing for clarity

[Lion.Kanzen]

Are you said you want Hellenes in a single faction?

I can't imagine back to that. In that way about faction we are following Total War series. There room for another Greek but not now. And still starts bother in this moment without others cultural factions.

2- I don't see a Campaing map(grand Campaing) where another different from Indoerupeann where participating in.

 

[Zeta1127]

All of the Hellenes factions are needed in order to properly do the campaigns in Part 2: Empires Besieged, and actually the Thebans and Epirotes will probably be needed too, in order to capture all of the major conflicts in the Greco-Roman world.

Also, proper naval combat will really help flesh out the Athenians, Ptolemies, and Seleucids.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Zeta1127

[Desophaeus]

52 minutes ago, Zeta1127 said:

All of the Hellenes factions are needed in order to properly do the campaigns in Part 2: Empires Besieged, and actually the Thebans and Epirotes will probably be needed too, in order to capture all of the major conflicts in the Greco-Roman world.

Also, proper naval combat will really help flesh out the Athenians, Ptolemies, and Seleucids.

All of this talk about campaigns and their need for more factions, you guys are forgetting about the map settings.

Campaigns doesn't require the devs team inserting an additional faction. It's plausible that a map could have a pre-existing Greek faction tweaked to suit the specific scenario for a battle, and then another instance of the same Greek tweaked in a different way to reflect on the differing city-states for a different player/AI slot to occupy.

Adding Thebans wouldn't help the mix of factions we have now.

Edited February 27, 2017 by Desophaeus
minor grammar fix

[Zeta1127]

The Thebans have their own unique thing, the Pyrobolos or Fire Raiser. Also, the dynamic between the formations, especially the Phalanx, with its caveats for the various city-states, the Syntagma, and the Testudo, will go a long way toward adding diversity to the various Hellenic factions and combat in general.