Pacing in 0 A.D.

[macemen]

On 7/5/2018 at 3:34 PM, Sundiata said:

About phases, it would be ideal if they have a more clear visual distinction between them. Villages in village phase should feel villagey, towns like towns and cities should feel like bustling centers of culture and civilization. It would require a lot of work from the artists, I know. But it would be an awesome visual reward for phasing. Just as "important" in my opinion is that Civic Centers need to phase up individually, as was originally intended if I'm not mistaken. So, if you create new settlements around the map, they will start out as villages, even if you're "capital" is in city phase. This way you don't end up building city structures in the middle of nowhere (perhaps some military structures could be an exception). Strong core, weak countryside is intuitively stimulated. The strategic importance of you're "capital city" increases. Village phase CC's would cost significantly less, lower the threshold to expansion, but are also weaker and easier to capture. There is the tactical aspect, assessing an enemy's strength, as you can now easily discern what phase an enemy settlement is on, from the style of buildings.

This would also have other desirable side effects. Players in the most cases would strive to capture these settlements intact to extract the invested resources, instead of just raising everything to the ground with a bunch of rams. It would give a whole new meaning to walls, towers and garrison, as it would be very costly to loose settlement to a raiding party.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 7/5/2018 at 8:34 AM, Sundiata said:

About phases, it would be ideal if they have a more clear visual distinction between them. Villages in village phase should feel villagey, towns like towns and cities should feel like bustling centers of culture and civilization. It would require a lot of work from the artists, I know. But it would be an awesome visual reward for phasing. Just as "important" in my opinion is that Civic Centers need to phase up individually, as was originally intended if I'm not mistaken. So, if you create new settlements around the map, they will start out as villages, even if you're "capital" is in city phase. This way you don't end up building city structures in the middle of nowhere (perhaps some military structures could be an exception). Strong core, weak countryside is intuitively stimulated. The strategic importance of you're "capital city" increases. Village phase CC's would cost significantly less, lower the threshold to expansion, but are also weaker and easier to capture. There is the tactical aspect, assessing an enemy's strength, as you can now easily discern what phase an enemy settlement is on, from the style of buildings.    

I like this, and it's not far from some of the ideas I have proposed in the past. Each CC should have its own territory that doesn't morph together like they do now. They start out as small villages and only "village" structures can be built within their territory. Upgrade each CC independently so you can build Town, then City structures within their territories. A Village CC would have a gathering bonus around it, while it loses this bonus as it's upgraded and perhaps different bonuses kick in. Now you have real provinces that are somewhat unique from each other, for instance, a couple of Village provinces where you do a lot of your farming and mining, etc, while owning a couple of Town provinces which may have a trading benefit and can build barracks and wooden towers nearby. Your City province allows the building of stone walls and fortresses. While your Capital province can grant some uber bonuses and unlock some unique structures, essentially more "Wonders" that give unique benefits. 

 

Now you're truly building an empire instead of some weird urban sprawl that makes no historical sense.  

 

The 3 major starting conditions would be nomad (of course), classic (start with 1 village center and some units), and empire (where each player has multiple village centers already congruently scattered around so that each player already has an empire of provinces and most of the map is already claimed by the players).

Edited August 3, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

A Village Center looks rural and rustic. Can have some haystacks, a fire pit in the middle or a well, and a rustic-looking town hall or rural approximation of the look of the current Civic Centers. These are not "stone aged" town centers or anything like that (no giant mammoth tusks for ornamentation), they are era-appropriate, but rustic and rural.

A Town Center looks more built up, perhaps a little more mercantile. Walls are sturdier. Structural elements are taller.

A City Center looks much like a lot of the Civic Centers we already have.

[macemen]

18 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I like this, and it's not far from some of the ideas I have proposed in the past. Each CC should have its own territory that doesn't morph together like they do now. They start out as small villages and only "village" structures can be built within their territory. Upgrade each CC independently so you can build Town, then City structures within their territories. A Village CC would have a gathering bonus around it, while it loses this bonus as it's upgraded and perhaps different bonuses kick in. Now you have real provinces that are somewhat unique from each other, for instance, a couple of Village provinces where you do a lot of your farming and mining, etc, while owning a couple of Town provinces which may have a trading benefit and can build barracks and wooden towers nearby. Your City province allows the building of stone walls and fortresses. While your Capital province can grant some uber bonuses and unlock some unique structures, essentially more "Wonders" that give unique benefits. 

You can even go even further and penalize (maybe severely) resource gathering in cities. This would have, compound with your suggestions, several beneficial consequences.

• Settlement development would not be about mindlessly upgrading everything to the highest possible level.
• Farming and lumber-jacking, etc. would move to the peripheries which would suddenly become valuable or even vital resource gathering sites as opposed cheap, throw-away and redundant expansion colonies.
• Trade would get a whole new meaning.

Edited August 3, 2018 by macemen

[coworotel]

On 8/2/2018 at 7:48 AM, macemen said:

half-naked Celtic spearman is just as skilled as your hoplites or Triarii

naked fanatic would be a good candidate for zerg style trash unit: weak but very cheap and fast.

Edited August 3, 2018 by coworotel

[Sundiata]

2 hours ago, macemen said:

This would also have other desirable side effects. Players in the most cases would strive to capture these settlements intact to extract the invested resources, instead of just raising everything to the ground with a bunch of rams. It would give a whole new meaning to walls, towers and garrison, as it would be very costly to loose settlement to a raiding party.

 

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I like this, and it's not far from some of the ideas I have proposed in the past. Each CC should have its own territory that doesn't morph together like they do now. They start out as small villages and only "village" structures can be built within their territory. Upgrade each CC independently so you can build Town, then City structures within their territories. A Village CC would have a gathering bonus around it, while it loses this bonus as it's upgraded and perhaps different bonuses kick in. Now you have real provinces that are somewhat unique from each other, for instance, a couple of Village provinces where you do a lot of your farming and mining, etc, while owning a couple of Town provinces which may have a trading benefit and can build barracks and wooden towers nearby. Your City province allows the building of stone walls and fortresses. While your Capital province can grant some uber bonuses and unlock some unique structures, essentially more "Wonders" that give unique benefits. 

 

Now you're truly building an empire instead of some weird urban sprawl that makes no historical sense.  

 

The 3 major starting conditions would be nomad (of course), classic (start with 1 village center and some units), and empire (where each player has multiple village centers already congruently scattered around so that each player already has an empire of provinces and most of the map is already claimed by the players).

 

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

A Village Center looks rural and rustic. Can have some haystacks, a fire pit in the middle or a well, and a rustic-looking town hall or rural approximation of the look of the current Civic Centers. These are not "stone aged" town centers or anything like that (no giant mammoth tusks for ornamentation), they are era-appropriate, but rustic and rural.

A Town Center looks more built up, perhaps a little more mercantile. Walls are sturdier. Structural elements are taller.

A City Center looks much like a lot of the Civic Centers we already have.

 

2 hours ago, macemen said:

You can even go even further and penalize (maybe severely) resource gathering in cities. This would have, compound with your suggestions, several beneficial consequences.

• Settlement development would not be about mindlessly upgrading everything to the highest possible level.
• Farming and lumber-jacking, etc. would move to the peripheries which would suddenly become valuable or even vital resource gathering sites as opposed cheap, throw-away and redundant expansion colonies.
• Trade would get a whole new meaning.

 

All of that! Literally everything... @0AD_development_team:

 

8 minutes ago, coworotel said:

naked fanatic would be a good candidate for zerg style trash unit: weak but very cheap and fast.

But I'm pretty sure they weren't trash though  They were pretty feared.. They were also a popular mercenary unit in demand across the Celtic world and even beyond. I don't think they were that cheap. Admittedly, armor wasn't their strength, but they inspired terror, and you know, they were fanatical, which always makes for good fighters  In times of existential threats to the tribe, Celts sometimes equipped large masses of peasants with a spear and shield (literally peasant levies), which are weak, but cheap and fast.  

[Rolf Dew]

I agree with Sundiata, the naked fanatics appears do have been a very inspiring/terrifing unit. They seem to have intimadated enemy units by their very boldness and crazy behavior by not wearing armor and their screaming and shouting.

[macemen]

Another idea: instead of having a global population limit, limit the amount of houses that a given settlement can have in a given phase. So village phase settlements could only support a handful of houses, towns would support more and cities a lot more. Upgrading between phases would require the house limit to be reached (maybe not fully?). To avoid spamming settlements to increase the limits they could have a minimum required distance between them, much like CC's already do. This could cause the population to scale nicely with map sizes as small maps would simply not have enough space for more than 1-2 settlements.

[Hannibal_Barca]

How about civilizations with small houses?

[macemen]

1 hour ago, Hannibal_Barca said:

How about civilizations with small houses?

They could have different limits or could be balanced in some other way.