461 replies to this topic

[Gfire]

I believe those, sort of seam parts on sails (probably have an official name idk,) go horizontally on actual ships. Less strain on them that way.

Although, a lot of pictures of Triremes actually show a grid pattern on the sails.

[Taralom]

That's something that can be postponed until a later point. It is only a small detail.
edit: refering to the Lambda sign on shields

Say, apparently, spartans where some sort of secret police as well. This was called the Krypteia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypteia
I was reading that article and thought 'hm, that could prove for some interesting game-play'. I envisioned a cheap upgrade that improved spartans' base stats, but without it, they would grant a tiny (stackable?) bonus to economy. The reason behind this would be helots working harder when Spartans where observing them. It might prove a tiny upgrade to the Spartan economy, which should be generally bad in my opinion.

Edited by Taralom, 05 November 2010 - 03:24 PM.

[JUS_SAURON]

I was reading this topic and have a few Ideas Codewise about Technologies

The basic Farming Trees as BFME2 :

Upgrade the Harvest amount - Fuel the fires

Upgrade the Harvest time - Done by upgrading the commandset of the Lumbermill to build
' Faster Workers ' - Speed of movement and HarvestPreparationTime

I even have a SYSTEM where a Tree grow into a forest if needed

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Stone Repair Workers - Can repair only Stone Buildings

Wood Repair Workers - Can repair only Wood Buildings

Specialist Repair Workers - Can repair Stone and Wood Buildings

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Age based Buildings / Units -

Initial age - The porter is allowed only Wooden buildings - Wooden Walls - Spears : must be upgraded to Stone Age

Stone - Use of Stone allowed - Buildings types are stronger / Stone Walls allowed : Elite unit : stone thrower

Bronze - Units get Bronze swords / Shields : Elite unit : Sword Fighter

Iron Age - Units get Iron swords / Shields / Armour - Stronger : Elite unit : Knight

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Allowed Technologies

: Hunting / Fire / Masonry / Farming / Blacksmith / Woodworking / Fishing / Healing,Medicine / Siege

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Ring system :

Replace the ring with an 'Arc' Religious Relic

you get a Priest or a sorcerer

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Fishing : Code impementation : MAYBE

The fishing boats are like Workers hunting for trees

The model of one tree ifs replaced with a fish or group of fishes
and has a locomotor which allows it to float ...not too sure

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Hunting :

The Creeps lairs spawn Bears / Dear etc. any unit can kill them

Only a special Hunter unit can kill then and gain BOUNTY

This unit then has upgrades for faster Kills / More bounty etc

The lairs cannot be attacked .. only the slaves

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the draft power could be used with other units

Edited by JUS_SAURON, 05 November 2010 - 04:13 PM.

[mike_]

Everything looks awesome! I'm digging those Hoplites, as well as the Linothorax, Mathijs.

Well, I've been doing some more research, and I've got some ideas for Athens. Historically, Athens' Hoplites were the middle-class men of the city - they had no state-funded military (until much later anyway, and then it was just the navy), so warriors had to pay for their own equipment. This could be represented in gameplay as the Athenien hordes possibly being smaller/more expensive than the Spartan ones, but having higher defensive values as a tradeoff.

Since fishing boats have been brought up - maybe if fishing itself couldn't be implemented (a la Age of Empires, see below for a crackpot theory), an upgrade could be purchased at Harbours built on the map to allow them to produce a trickle of resources representing fishing activity.

Now for an idea: would it be possible to create schools of fish (shown as bubbles of water on the surface, whatever) with a large amount of health points and are only attackable by fishing boats? And when they take damage, something similar to Eomer's "Outlaw" power could give the player 'attacking' them resources as their health drops? This could introduce a very cool kind of economy where the player could risk overfishing and and destroying the schools, losing that resource, or they could choose to fish elsewhere while it replenished itself. This would also make naval warfare even more important, as the player would need to defend his fishing vessels against enemy raiders or their own fishermen.


EDIT: Also, about triremes: would it be possible for them to get an upgrade of, say, "Marines", that allows them to do melee damage to them in additon to the ram attack? Or would a ram even be possible? Regardless, I don't think that literal firefights should be the only way that they can harm one another.

Anyway, I'll write up an actual tech tree and try to post it this weekend - probably Sunday. I've got a LONG ASS bus ride tomorrow with a very intelligent friend, so I should be able to get something together.

Edited by mike_, 05 November 2010 - 04:16 PM.

[Gfire]

Great idea about the fishing.

So as far as resource collection, I think Fishing, Farming and Wood Harvesting would be great. Farms could act like BFME2 farms, but like I was saying they would have 10 levels. And you could upgrade their level at a cost, so it takes some time to regain that cost in resources earned, so it's an investment. Trees could be somewhat like BFME2 trees but also with the leveling system, and I think that fish system would be perfect. (Unlike the trees, they wouldn't have to return loads which would make raiding them with warships even more effective.)

And then farms and lumber mills could decrease the cost of certain types perhaps... That system did work better when you had to make more choices with the build plots in BFME1, but it still works I guess. As long as they are plenty expensive so you can't just spam them. They shouldn't be worth buying just for the decrease in cost, they need to increase you're income significantly to pay for themselves effectively.

In theory, building a second farm would be more cost effective than leveling one up, but of course you have to think about how far spread you are making your economy, it will be difficult to protect. On the other hand if you lose a higher-level farm it is quite costly. Also, once you have 6 farms or whatever the maximum is you can't decrease the cost anymore and at that point it might be best to start leveling you're buildings. But you can also level them by leaving them alone so long-term having more is better.

It's quite a dynamic economic system, there's a lot to think about without it being overly complicated.


Edit: Oh, and as far as I go, I'd love to work on the 2d art for the mod. It's a rather dull job (probably based on screenshots not reference photos, that's what I would prefer,) but it's one of my strong-points and I'd like to contribute to the visuals in some way. (My modeling and texturing certainly doesn't stack up to the work you guys are doing.)

[Kwen]

Since fishing boats have been brought up - maybe if fishing itself couldn't be implemented (a la Age of Empires, see below for a crackpot theory), an upgrade could be purchased at Harbours built on the map to allow them to produce a trickle of resources representing fishing activity.

Now for an idea: would it be possible to create schools of fish (shown as bubbles of water on the surface, whatever) with a large amount of health points and are only attackable by fishing boats? And when they take damage, something similar to Eomer's "Outlaw" power could give the player 'attacking' them resources as their health drops? This could introduce a very cool kind of economy where the player could risk overfishing and and destroying the schools, losing that resource, or they could choose to fish elsewhere while it replenished itself. This would also make naval warfare even more important, as the player would need to defend his fishing vessels against enemy raiders or their own fishermen.

Like creeps, that wander. That's brilliant! It should work, theoretically..

[Taralom]

But then I have to ask you, do you want a second age of empires, or a mod for the BFME series?

[Mathijs]

I (and I think this goes for the others) want a mod based on the Peloponnesian Wars for BFME2 that may borrow some ideas and concepts from other games to freshen up the BFME2 gameplay.

Does that confuse you?

Edited by Matias, 05 November 2010 - 06:00 PM.

[Kwen]

Right, some of the elements will be similar, because well.. AoE is a standard RTS and we're going for standard RTS strategies, undoubtedly they will overlap.

[mike_]

I concur with Mathijs. I think that using elements from other games and sources (such as Age of Empires, yes) would work excellently with BFME. This way we would have a dynamic economic system as well as a unique, infantry-based combat system.

Something about the various methods of resource collection - would the big three (Agriculture, Foresting, and Fishing) bring discounts to certain types of units? For example, Agriculture and Fishing could lower unit costs the more collectors you have tasked to them, while Foresting would lower building costs.

As an aside, maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to refit the Gondor Stonemason from BFME1 for use in this mod as another resource-producer? It could offer building improvements as well as lower costs for buildings like Foresting, making the four main ways of collecting resources equal (two for two, I mean). Or would that overcomplicate things?

[Gfire]

The stonemason might work. If you have farms and stonemasons sharing the terrain then you will have to make choices with is always a good thing.

[Lauri]

Maybe..

Still, I'd like there to be differences between the factions, so Spartans have fewer choices than Athens.
Say that Sparta can have max 10 resource buildings. They would bring in more resources than 10 Athen ones, but Athens can have 15, which would net them the same gain.
This way, Sparta are more fragile, while Athens have more to lose (well they do.. )

[Gfire]

That would make Athens spread more thing though, and thus more fragile than Sparta I think.

Perhaps the stoneworker could only be for Athens and not Sparta?

[mike_]

Maybe, as a tradeoff, Sparta couldn't recruit its own fishing boats but would have to use a summon power instead? That said, I like your idea of limiting the total number of resource-gathering buildings for both factions.

[Gfire]

I don't think there should be a limit, I just think they should cost enough that building them too far out across the map can be risky. The only limit would be the amount you're opponent lets you get, which will encourage combat. A player might lose by turtling and not keeping map vision and control, and the economy of the other player will grow too strong.

[Nertea]

I ignored this thread for a good while because at first it seemed like naught but an AoE clone. It has progressed a bit though, so... good work.

You guys really need to unify your ideas though. Don't make a tech tree. They're pretty useless unless you're actually making a game which is based around prerequisite technologies, which you're not. Write some kind of design document that lays out the goals of the mod and the concepts you're using for the two sides so you can see how the different components synergize. That just makes it easier to maintain design unity, because there are a whole lot of conflicting ideas floating around this thread.

[mike_]

Thanks for the input, Nert!

[Taralom]

Does that confuse you?

Not at all, I just find it weird to take up fishing in the middle of a battlefield. Contested waters are no place to start your fishing business.
Plus, I just wanted to put in that you should try to keep it BFME minded, not Age of Empires, with fishing, villagers, etc.

[Kwen]

We need to do something soon(ish), pretty quickly we're going to have a very hard time finding our own ideas in this topic. 10 pages and counting.. We need some organization.

[mike_]

Why not? Greek warfare was not a continuous campaign like what was found in later times - it was long periods of tense peace punctuated by brief, extremely brutal bouts of combat between the opposing factions. Natural resources were difficult to come by, and the soldiers that used them needed a ton of support from the citizens of their city-states in maintaining the military to protect them. I don't see the problem in forcing the player to micromanage his economy, other than them getting bored... in which case they should launch a raid


EDIT: I'm going through it now, Kwen, and collecting the goals and ideas brought up throughout into a design document.

Edited by mike_, 05 November 2010 - 06:49 PM.