Hi folks noob here

[Wesley]

Hi I love what you're doing with the game. When I last looked it was just a dream. Sad to see we have lost Mr Wood. Cancer is a pest. 
I'm not a programmer can't see the code well, dyslexia, but I know how things work and can do some art. 

I have a few questions and ideas. To expand out from the mediterranean and eurasia we run into three problems.
1. Most civilizations end up out of synch time wise. I presume that's being ignored. Or are the devs intent in staying purely historical. 

2. Many civilisations never got out of the stone age. A few never got past the village stage and some not get even into the village age. AoE handled that OK by only having two such civs with restrictions.

I thought of a few ways. In essence a different pathway to the Eurasian pathway castles and cities.
Some appeared In AoE in various forms.

 
Nomadism. Structures demolished by the owning player add a percentage back to the pool. With tentage technology adding to the size of the percentage recovered. Mongols, Amerindian, Pacific peoples, Australians, some Africans.

Sacred places: These serve the training functions of advanced buildings but have little armor and defensive capacity. Upgradeable. 
Hidden places: These serve some of the training functions of advanced buildings but have Stealth rather than Armor.  Can be placed in other wise blocked locations. I.E. forest or rocks. Upgradeable.
First contact: When researched this grants some mixed technology units. Zolo's with guns. 
Stone weapons: Some weapons require more stone and no metals. Units with this technology may be inferior but can train other units on a cool down without a building. That balances the tech a bit and creates primitive hordes. 
Stolen weapons: Like an AoE conversion but de-spawns the 'priest' unit. May be with the unit spawned having a different name to the foe defeated.  Those Zolo's with guns again. 
Canoes. Boats with no sail. Slow with a charge stealth boarding action option. Can be moved over land. 

3. Some civilisations had a huge influence but via trading, religion, and education but not military expansion. The Jews never fit well into AoE because they are only a military power in the biblical era and now. I can see a few ways to make a jewish civ with merchant and medical buffs and a few creative units. [I'm not jewish though. ]

I will need art specifications so I can help with some art. 

P.S. Can the game detect snow verses grassed surfaces? For Skis, Sleds and sleighs. 

Edited March 11, 2017 by Wesley

[GunChleoc]

Welcome to the forums

I'm not an artist, but there are some guides linked on this page: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/

[Wesley]

Just played my first few games. Got owned on my own and decided to team up with the AI but once we had a lot of units I found the lag is real. wow. Where is the lag reduction thread. I has Ideas. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

Welcome. There many discuss. About this matter.

You can found performance tickets here.

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GamePerformance

http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17274

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

About nomads

About Celtic sacred places.

Quote

3. Some civilisations had a huge influence but via trading, religion, and education but not military expansion. The Jews never fit well into AoE because they are only a military power in the biblical era and now. I can see a few ways to make a jewish civ with merchant and medical buffs and a few creative units. [I'm not jewish though. ]

The time frame of 0 A.D is around 500 B.C -1 BC and 500 A.D( second part)

The Israelites were powerful military. They conquer Cannanites. 

Quote

Stone weapons: Some weapons require more stone and no metals. Units with this technology may be inferior but can train other units on a cool down without a building. That balances the tech a bit and creates primitive hordes. 

The slingers uses stone, but they aren't primitives, they can go in formations and defeat a companion of Seleucids Cataphracts. 

 

 

Quote

Many civilisations never got out of the stone age. A few never got past the village stage and some not get even into the village age. AoE handled that OK by only having two such civs with restrictions.

The game isn't panned those civilization with poor developenmt ( those aren't out a some kind of primitive stage, like hunter stage).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer

we can add mini factions instead full faction.

[Wesley]

10 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

Welcome. There many discuss. About this matter.

You can found performance tickets here.

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GamePerformance

http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17274

 

Great. I just checked and upgraded drivers and will try again and see if that helps. I'm either at the low end of the video card specks or off the bottom. Upgrade pending pay packet. It looks like the old trade cart spam problem from AoE and the AI on both sides is spamming ant lines of units. When units are in formations are they still all pathing independently or is the formation a single unit or new unit pathing wise?
Wont put in a notice until I'm sure it's not just me. 
I'm also playing britain's verses the indian faction and it's not a great match if you're a rusty turtle. 

[Lion.Kanzen]

the formations are messing the game and is planned to rewrite the code for them.

many aspect of the game in this moment are under review to be changed.

 

I was rusty turtle before 0 A.D is hard use that tactic because the defensive building are some expensive but they are very strong specially the walls , you can garrison unit in each segment ( wall set and turret).

[Wesley]

11 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

About nomads
Yep I can help there. Archaeology in my degree, I've studied such things, and I'm trained as a human ecologist so I know how a real mill works and what the germanic tribes ate before the romans taught them to grow wheat.  

About Celtic sacred places.
 

Built one. It looks good but I'm out of metal so I can't use it. lol. The catch is there are no metal artifacts at the real one. lol. Do you know about the wood henge nearby? 

The time frame of 0 A.D is around 500 B.C -1 BC and 500 A.D( second part)

The Israelites were powerful military. They conquer Cannanites. 
Yes but King solomon also raised a big fleet of ships at one point. They never conquered any one but had trading outposts as far as india and britain well before 1BC. That's my idea. Special merchants. I can also think of a few ways to do post 70 AD in the second part.  

The slingers uses stone, but they aren't primitives, they can go in formations and defeat a companion of Seleucids Cataphracts. 

I have not yet tried out the formations yet.
I have a copy of Scientific American with a report on sling technology. Lead sling shot is an option for the era. One battle field in the middle east had two tons of hand cast perfect shot scattered across it. The study showed the sligs ruled open country and arrows ruled the woods.  

 

The game isn't panned those civilization with poor developenmt ( those aren't out a some kind of primitive stage, like hunter stage).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer
Actually the Amerindian were hunter farmers and some of the Australian Aborigines also were hunter farmers in some places but in the Australian case very little study was done on the plants they "Farmed".  It's only now being understood that kangaroo grass, the bush onion and the northern yam were bred species. In Africa we have hunter herdsman culture. Equivalent of the steppes. 
There is a theory that most truly stone age populations post 1 AD were either refugee populations: Most of east Africa was more advanced before the coming of islam.  
Or people that got geographically unlucky; In Australia, where I live, there are huge ore deposits but no wood nearby so there was nothing to forge the metals with. A resource co location problem. in Australia also we see the Aborigines undefeated in forest battles but always beaten in open country. They were conquered by the axe, deforestation though many became loggers. The majority just settled as farmers. Racial persecution came later. 

The real question is remoteness from eurasia. And its near fantasy. Mod perhaps. 

we can add mini factions instead full faction.

Yep that would be my preference but we would need something to anchor it to. 

Having trouble figuring out the formatting here? mmm. 

 

Edited March 12, 2017 by Wesley

[Lion.Kanzen]

But you  can fill a document design( or proposed faction have these requerimients) to have a full faction and even discussed which after beta add to game, for now Nomads do hard interaction with the rest and some Hellenized states or semi-hellenized, like Thracians... or like Illyrians like other Factions that serves as clientelar  Kingdoms.

I don't see much developed mostly of Amerindian we only have consideration with Zapotecs and Mayans. North American...are hard by now. So we are exploring Africa ( minifactions) Berebers, Numidians , Kushites and Garamantes.same with Ocenians people. Th same way we are developenmt a mod for Han dynasty.

with Germans we split them for second part.( I'm not sure about this).

we have mod made by some Devs, one of them is Aristeia the mod that are set before 0 A.D and mostly centered in Middle East and Homeric/Arcaic Greece.

[Wesley]

Slow down I'm still reading DarcReaver's guidlines. Nice. lol. 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Performance has had noticeable increase since the past 2-3 alpha release. It's getting better. Pathfinding and AI is still bottleneck.

[Wesley]

10 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

But you  can fill a document design( or proposed faction have these requirements) to have a full faction and even discussed which after beta add to game, for now Nomads do hard interaction with the rest and some Hellenized states or semi-hellenized, like Thracians... or like Illyrians like other Factions that serves as clientelar  Kingdoms.

Is there a document design template?

I don't see much developed mostly of Amerindian we only have consideration with Zapotecs and Mayans. North American...are hard by now. So we are exploring Africa ( minifactions) Berebers, Numidians , Kushites and Garamantes.same with Oceanians people. The same way we are developement a mod for Han dynasty.

Amerindians listed are pre metal except gold but that is true for for North Americans too. I would Go with elements from Inuit, Iroquoi indians, Mississippians and Pueblo. With kennels, travois dog for all four and dog sleds for the northern Inuit, Iroquoi.  Metals were known to the inuit, Asteroid steel.  Most buildings were wood or clay/ turf. The mississippians built monument mounds and traded with mexico. No mill. Note the Siberians are almost identical in technology mix to northern Amerindians. But not empire builders. 

Nice to see the Garamantes but we will need giant eland drawn chariots. That was their draft animal. The Garamantes also had boats and dock in the middle of the Sahara! Archaeologists have no idea how. The lakes are gone now. 

 
Germans we split them for second part.( I'm not sure about this).

we have mod made by some Devs, one of them is Aristeia the mod that are set before 0 A.D and mostly centered in Middle East and Homeric/Arcaic Greece.

Nice list. Pre Roman Germans are interesting but not much different from the Celts. The Romans interacted with the danish predecessors of the vikings. But vikings are definitely post 500 AD. Not that there can be much difference in that time period from Germanic and Celt.  A dragon boat and Saga Hall would suffice.  

Fixed the typos. lol.

 

Edited March 12, 2017 by Wesley

[Wesley]

Thinking about Steppe nations, most think of mongols but we have the Hittites (Anatolian Steppes in Turkey) some think they are the ancestors of the mongols anyway because of Archaeological and linguistic clues. No help from grave goods because they cremated the dead. The locust hordes of the bible. 
Scythian: Ukraine mostly. Scythian Archer is already in the game. Expand that out with a few variants. Mounted hunter, Young riders, with the Scythian Archer as is.
Eastern Tribes: The asian Steppe nations. Xiongnu etc. Yurts, Mounted women. To go against the Han mini-mod. 
I would have them essentially the one civilisation with a few heros from the era, the Bible has several names that help with the hittites. Wikipedia has a few more. 

Note: the silk road was created by the Han Chinese as the marched on Rome! They got as far as Teran in Iran before deciding the steppe tribes raiding their supply chain was more of a threat than Rome which was in the middle of a civil war at the time. So they turned back home. There was also trade and diplomacy:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Roman_relations#

There were also Greek colonies in Khujand, Tajikistan  Dayuan = Yuan = ionian = greek. Post Alexandrian colonies. Where China got it's part Arabian horse stock.  They conquered the Dayuan for a mere 1000 horses!
 
I can think of a few new units; Light siege units are what's needed. 

Fire horse. A mount with a rider and big looking load. In contact with a building: The pile of wood is unloaded against the building the unit rides away and the fire lit in the pile flares up and does a large amount of anti-building damage. Two simple models. The unit resets on a timer. Less armor than other siege equipment.

Light trebuchet: A pack horse unit with far less damage than a trebuchet. But useful against structures. Tiny model.

Mobile forge. This is the blacksmith but can pack up and move like a trebuchet. Pure eye candy. 

I'm working through the links above so I can get into the art and model making.

  

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by Wesley

[Wesley]

OK looking back at this its clear that most of the work I suggested now been done in the Xiongnu and Kush mods. Very nice. 
I'll see what models I can make for hunting variants and some modelling for moving out into the wider world.

Maybe a few animals for practice.
What's needed in animals? I read llama, turkey, some where. Half tempted to do a Capybara for fun. South American hunt/ decoration fauna. 
Bison/ Wisent is probably needed. For steppe tribes. And Amerindians if we ever try that. 
Kangaroos and wombats because I'm an Aussy. Diprotodon because I'm a weird aussy.  Yes its extinct but we do have a dragon I noticed.
One of the elephants in the game are almost extinct. 

Edited February 16, 2019 by Wesley

[Wesley]

Where's the instructions on putting prop point on things that don't have prop points?
I found one page with some general instructions but the pictures are all broken links.  https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/ArtDesignDocument 
And clearly all the vital information is in those pictures. 

 

[Stan`]

You need to import the models in a 3D package like blender, then add empty objects such as plain axes. After that you need to parent those objects to the main one. Those empty objects should either be named prop_whatever or prop-whatever. Then you can reexport the objects.

[Wesley]

Is there a specific version of Subversion needed? 

 

[Stan`]

Nope.