Theme Switching

[neobaron]

Weapons were provided by the individual, not the city. Unless of course it was an elite guard, but those were battle deciding groups and never were large.

Then again, even the most elite Spartan units had their shields plated and then the city provided paint to apply the red letter that denoted a spartan fighter, as well as their red cloak.

---

A Velite is a roman specific skirmisher.

the greeks called them Theuroporai or something like that.

How about just calling it a "Light infantry" unit? Doing some misc. research I have come to find that most soldiers carried with them at least 2 throwing javelins to throw before entering battle, but not all could do it...

So Light Infantry, Ranged, Heavy Infantry, Naval Forces...

I could do the troop types per race if youre serious about that.

---

Back to the first point... disbanding an army or a group of soldiers would have been silly, and even moreso to sell their weapons to a potential enemy when cities changed hands through battle quite often.

I say we decrease the market as much as possible if removing it would be totally unacceptable to some people here... It just doesnt seem rational to me to "hide" and number of men in any place except in the field, and even then only so many should go...

--------------------------------------------------

Ive just had an idea!

How about we create an "expedition" function which would allow one to send out a portion of their army to a region for revenue/scouting benefits, but still force the player to pay for the army, and at the same time make one wait for the army to reach its destination and be recalled?

Economic colonies were often formed with contingents of soldiers from the pelloponese and its not too farfetched to imagine other nations doing the same thing.

[The Beatles]

I agree that the Market, for various reasons, must be decreased. But to go entirely? Tradition aside, it's actually useful to many players. But then would you also take out the Bazaar sell?

The Expedition would be similar to the market, but wouldn't actually mean troop loss while still bringing in revenue?

I'm serious about the race-specific army names thing, but really only as long as the names were reasonably pronounceable. However, not all civs had naval troops, right?

[neobaron]

All that I listed had navies ;-)

Whatever Volky-poo wants to add might complicate things but we can always improvise if need-be.

---

Well of course there would be some kind of loss... the natives werent always ready to give up their land.

Thats not for me to decide though, some colonies and expeditions turned out better than others.

Perhaps some kind of player decided risk level which would be calculated in terms of probability of success or failure to find out how much is gained/lost?

Im not a coder... just a history nerd xD

[The Beatles]

Ah, didn't know the Gallic had navies.

So yes, if you can manage the race-specific troop names, that would rock! I'm sure at least some can be shared across them, too. And we are sticking to Anglicized words, right?

Could some of you chaps also address the questions on buildings and spells on the previous page? Thanks!

[edit] In response to your edit -- could the Expeditionary force thing be a mostly repainted Market? I.e. player sends out a certain number of troops, which don't factor into his attack but need to support upkeep, and many are lost/defect/retire, but those that return bring in money? That could be the Bazaar, a different model maybe but a similar thing in effect.

[neobaron]

Roight... the difference is the actual concept that you could lose mroe than expected, and also the wait to retrieve troops.

One does not simply make millions of men appear... they have to be called up/recalled.

[The Beatles]

Right: delay sounds reasonable, and when you say lose more than expected: we can just adjust the maximum sell amount to reflect a reasonable loss from an expedition, right?

[Urran Voh]

What period in history are we going into again? I can look up race specific troop names.

[The Beatles]

Pre-Roman, with the races that Neo brought up in the other topic, and which are in the spreadsheet linked in the first post of this topic.

[Ruddertail]

Expeditionary forces sound cool. The idea of them going off to loot an area and sending back the results could be used to instead of the bazzar. Would it be instantanious, or delayed? A delay would be more historical and more realistic, but it's hard to work into a turn-based game. Probably why very few were worked into the original promi.

Orchards ---> Either way is good. If we wanted to get really fancy, we could go into the agriculture of each group... nah, better just pick one and stick with it.

Camps --> Barracks sounds good.
Barracks --> Smithies
Tents --> How about Towns? Houses that housed 100 people always seemed a bit rediculous, if we're going for accuracy. A small town, on the other hand, would house about 100 laborors...

[The Beatles]

We could easily change the agricultural building depending on the civ. FAF was planned to be very flexible.

[edit] Town... but on one acre? 100 workers/slaves (and I think slaves is more historically accurate) on an acre needs tents, I think.

[Devari]

Camps -> Barracks sounds confusing, considering one would normally associate barracks with troop production in a game.

[The Beatles]

Not so, Barracks are mostly used to house troops. Camps are used to equip and train recruits.

[Devari]

Ah, yes, but in most games Barracks are considered troop producers. Which is why I raise the point.

[Ruddertail]

Er, why not on one acre? I don't think the plot of a little village back then would have been more then an acre or so... just a few buildings clumped together. But tents work too.

Why slaves? It doesn't seem to make much sense for the entire population of a kingdom to be slaves.

The bad side to having each group have their own agriculteral building is confusion, and people having to say "Build 60% agricultural building", instead of "Build 60% Farms".

[The Beatles]

True about the entire population thing, but from what I understand slaves did most of the non-military work. Then again slaves couldn't be taxed or have an income.

True on that, although that might be ameliorated by just good naming. For example, it's not nearly so silly to say "Mass light infantry".