suggestions Thread for posting suggestions for Alpha 27.

[Gurken Khan]

I think buildings should show the owner's flag, not the builder's. (Who'd want to fly the enemy's banner after they captured a building from them?)

[Stan`]

20 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

I think buildings should show the owner's flag, not the builder's. (Who'd want to fly the enemy's banner after they captured a building from them?)

Sadly not supported.

[Gurken Khan]

7 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Sadly not supported.

Booooooooooooooooooohhhhhhh!

Last time I suggested it you said it would be the artists task.

Maybe @wowgetoffyourcellphone has an idea?

[Stan`]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

Booooooooooooooooooohhhhhhh!

Last time I suggested it you said it would be the artists task.

Maybe @wowgetoffyourcellphone has an idea?

Needs programming.

[Gurken Khan]

40 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Needs programming.

Yeah, I understand. I'll just bring it up ~every other year.

[Tyrannosaurus]

So are there plans to introduce any new civilizations in Alpha 27? I know 26 is going to add the Han Dynasty.

I think a Germanic or Mesoamerican civilization would be welcome, personally.

[Stan`]

Hard to say.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

14 hours ago, Tyrannosaurus said:

So are there plans to introduce any new civilizations in Alpha 27? I know 26 is going to add the Han Dynasty.

I think a Germanic or Mesoamerican civilization would be welcome, personally.

There are no definitive plans to add any other civs. Though, if there was popular demand for a civ, I'm sure the team would be willing to entertain it. That's how the Mauryas, Kushites, and Han were all added. None of those 3 were in any of the original plans, and now I can't imagine the game without them. 

My opinion on adding the Germanics is positive, but they might be reserved for a later "sequel" along with Imperial Romans, Dacians, Huns, and Sasanians. Mesoamericans seem out of scope for the game. They could make a nice later expansion or "official mod" down the road though. 

As far as for this current iteration of the game, what intrigues me the most is the possibility of shaking things up with nomadic civs: Scythians and Xiongnu (and Parthians as a hybrid civ).

Edited August 18, 2022 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 15/08/2022 at 2:02 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Naval overhaul, including but not limited to:

• scale down all ships
• differentiate ships into different classes (transport, scout, warship, siege, special (e.g. fireship))
• decrease dock build time
• debate adding turret points for garrison

Scaling down the ships is 100% necessary to making water combat viable. 

Having 1 warship line is my current thought on the matter, with upgrades from Light (default) to Medium, to Heavy. Most civs get the upgrade to Medium, but only a few get the Heavy upgrade (the current "Quinquireme" civs). About needing "scout" and "transport" ship classes, I'd balk at that, and maybe just allow the Trade ship from phase 1.

23 hours ago, Mordred said:

We really need formations for ships so that they don't bunch up like logs.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

This 100% needs done. Pethaps a pseudo formation that just spaces out ships by default, but isn't shown in the UI. I'm thinking such a formation would help with land units as well.

 

[Darkcity]

Do you know? For people who are playing 0ad since many alphas, 0AD indirectly gives many new civics and remove few civics each alpha due to rebalacing.

[Stan`]

55 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

This 100% needs done. Pethaps a pseudo formation that just spaces out ships by default, but isn't shown in the UI. I'm thinking such a formation would help with land units as well.

Currently I believe the issue is that ships use buildingAI not UnitAI so they cannot have formations. And for land units, since a few commands like attack move are broken it's not possible.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

Currently I believe the issue is that ships use buildingAI not UnitAI so they cannot have formations. And for land units, since a few commands like attack move are broken it's not possible.

Some change to how they fight would also be welcome as part of a larger naval overhaul. I am not a fan of how they behave like siege towers/towers.

[Stan`]

19 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Some change to how they fight would also be welcome as part of a larger naval overhaul. I am not a fan of how they behave like siege towers/towers.

They act the same because they are the same ^^

[Gurken Khan]

27 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I am not a fan of how they behave like siege towers/towers.

Reminds me: I'm not a fan of how towers behave. Specifically I would like to be able to chose targets. If, for example, some soldiers attack my towers I would like to prioritize them, and not have the towers distribute their shots among all available targets like houses or what have you.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

26 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Reminds me: I'm not a fan of how towers behave. Specifically I would like to be able to chose targets. If, for example, some soldiers attack my towers I would like to prioritize them, and not have the towers distribute their shots among all available targets like houses or what have you.

Right, I think that towers (and ships and siege towers) can default to "random" firing behavior, but if the player manually targets it, then the tower (et al.) should fire all its arrows at the target until it is dead. Then it can go back to random firing.

[Akira Kurosawa]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Scaling down the ships is 100% necessary to making water combat viable. 

Doesn't that mean they'll be unbelievably small? It will be a shame if they stop looking like their natural size and look like toy boats.

[chrstgtr]

19 minutes ago, Mordred said:

Doesn't that mean they'll be unbelievably small? It will be a shame if they stop looking like their natural size and look like toy boats.

Naturally sized as the width of the Red Sea and height of tallest walls!
 

Measurements really mean nothing in the game and everything just looks however is most pleasing to the eye. 

Edited August 18, 2022 by chrstgtr

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

Reminds me: I'm not a fan of how towers behave. Specifically I would like to be able to chose targets. If, for example, some soldiers attack my towers I would like to prioritize them, and not have the towers distribute their shots among all available targets like houses or what have you.

I think this would help solve the issue where certain units die extremely quickly and other units die more slowly, like archers vs swordcavalry. Its ok that these differences exist, but it would allow a player to pick off low hp swordcav or spearcav in a rush which would be way more effective than the current distributed damage. It would also mean that players could not mitigate the damage of towers by massing up enough units to dilute it.

Edited August 18, 2022 by BreakfastBurrito_007

[Akira Kurosawa]

34 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Measurements really mean nothing in the game and everything just looks however is most pleasing to the eye. 

Measurements really mean nothing if this game is called Civilization. Or if this game is a cartoony two-dimensional grotesque. Or if you intend to push Starcraft out of eSports. Then you definitely need approximately the same proportions of all moving units as in Lego Duplo. But, usually, large strong ships are balanced by their large area of vulnerabilities. Moreover, here is a non-target system. Unlike the Age of Homing Projectiles IV.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Mordred

[chrstgtr]

25 minutes ago, Mordred said:

you definitely need approximately the same proportions of all moving units as in Lego Duplo. But, usually, large strong ships are balanced by their large area of vulnerabilities. Moreover, here is a non-target system. Unlike the Age of Homing Projectiles IV.

 

Or you can just decrease their health/armor. You can introduce vulnerabilities a bunch of ways. 

My point is that ships don't have a "natural size" as you originally suggested because the scale of the game isn't truly "natural" (and nor should it be--I don't want to zoom in and out x1000 to see my units on the Mediterranean map or wait several days for them to walk across it). 

[Akira Kurosawa]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

My point is that ships don't have a "natural size" as you originally suggested because the scale of the game isn't truly "natural" (and nor should it be--I don't want to zoom in and out x1000 to see my units on the Mediterranean map or wait several days for them to walk across it). 

I think it's great to use a specific ship type for a specific map type. No one lets ocean liners through narrow rivers. No one swims across the ocean on a catamaran. The fact that the ships do not fit into one puddle is not a reason to cut them off, but a reason to change the strategy to lighter boats.

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Or you can just decrease their health/armor. You can introduce vulnerabilities a bunch of ways. 

Or you can just change the class of ships that are more suitable, and not make a laughingstock out of the trireme. Of course, if the current models are exaggerated compared to the originals, then only then should they be scaled up.

Spoiler

 

P. S.

Isn't the Mediterranean a template that simply arranges land and water in a similar Mediterranean way? Why scale what is normal? Just generate a map of the Mediterranean on a smaller scale.

Edited August 18, 2022 by Mordred

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Or you can just decrease their health/armor. You can introduce vulnerabilities a bunch of ways. 

My point is that ships don't have a "natural size" as you originally suggested because the scale of the game isn't truly "natural" (and nor should it be--I don't want to zoom in and out x1000 to see my units on the Mediterranean map or wait several days for them to walk across it). 

Agreed. We need to think about gameplay when it comes to sizing things. There are limits to "realistic sizes." The game can't have battles of 80,000 men at a time. That's a fact. We also can't have 50,000x50,000 tile maps, which would be more realistic, yeah? The game simply can't do it (and the gameplay would need to be changed to accommodate these new realities if the game could do it). Realistic-sized ships just don't fit the limitations of the engine and the peculiarities of the gameplay very well. Ships are large in real life, but 2x the size of a dock?  No, better to shrink the ship sizes to something like this:

 

Light Warship = Size of the current Greek/Roman "bireme." One sail.

Medium Warship = Same size and footprint of the Light Warship, just fancier and bulkier. Main sail + foresail.

Heavy Warship = A slightly larger footprint, about the size of the current Greek/Roman trireme in-game. Heavy warship comes with a catapult attached. 

[Akira Kurosawa]

Regarding units: is it possible to add a signal for their appearance?

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited August 18, 2022 by Mordred

[Gurken Khan]

42 minutes ago, Mordred said:

Regarding units: is it possible to add a signal for their appearance?

Sounds are already played when units spawn from their production building.

[chrstgtr]

3 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Agreed. We need to think about gameplay when it comes to sizing things. There are limits to "realistic sizes." The game can't have battles of 80,000 men at a time. That's a fact. We also can't have 50,000x50,000 tile maps, which would be more realistic, yeah? The game simply can't do it (and the gameplay would need to be changed to accommodate these new realities if the game could do it). Realistic-sized ships just don't fit the limitations of the engine and the peculiarities of the gameplay very well. Ships are large in real life, but 2x the size of a dock?  No, better to shrink the ship sizes to something like this:

 Light Warship = Size of the current Greek/Roman "bireme." One sail.

Medium Warship = Same size and footprint of the Light Warship, just fancier and bulkier. Main sail + foresail.

Heavy Warship = A slightly larger footprint, about the size of the current Greek/Roman trireme in-game. Heavy warship comes with a catapult attached. 

Yeah, what I am saying really shouldn't be controversial...I recall someone calculating the stats for men and they were like 15 feet tall and walked miles as fast as Usain Bolt could run 100M. The simply game isn't to scale. 

A game by nature isn't supposed to be an exact recreation. 

It's hard to tell how those ships scale without other units providing context, but by themselves they look good to me. 

Edited August 18, 2022 by chrstgtr