Comments

Awesome!

 

Great post! Waiting for Romans

 

I’m still laughing at his answer to 12. He had said something very different to me earlier as far as future content.

 

Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant.. thank you for this blog, I had a blast reading it. So cool to get such insight.. <3

 

Thank you very much for the interview. It was very interesting to read. I wonder what this guys is doing right now. As I expected, its all about money making. I am so glad that you guys in CELESTE project are not all money driven to make the game better. Its truly a piece of Art, you guys are doing an amazing job

 

Thank you very much for your time and support to this incredible project, Mr. Paul Flores!

I find your insights on maintaining the fantasy and unique identity of each civilization/faction as very spot on. I'm a modder myself in other titles, such as Total War series and this constantly comes up to my mind. I've finished my Crimean Khanate Expansion mod adding the Crimean Khanate playable and with custom units, models, textures, horses, equipment, bows, arrows, and so on. However, once I realized that I could expand the map by converting Wasteland regions into Full Regions, I'm now working on adding the Kazakh, Kalmyk, and Khivan Khanates to both the map and with unique units, models, textures, rigs. Basically, my idea was to port EU4 (Europa Universalis 4) units into Total War Empire and Total War Napoleon titles. I've learned the entire pipeline, so I don't just re-texture that's it, I actually port the entire military unit model of the soldier, complete with helmets, weapons, shields, bows, and I re-rig this model to the bones of the variant mesh used by ETW and NTW. It's a slow, painstaking process but worth it! Yet, the issue I'm running into now is that I over-engineered the Crimean Khanate with all the "fantasy" and "unique" goodies leaving little to the three other Khanates. So now, I'm paring down very much similar to what sounds you've gone through with regards to the Persians (no War Elephants, less chariots, I believe there is a scythed chariot via an Advisor but that's it) and the Celts being good at siege (that's more of a Romans thing, I'm glad the Celeste designers highlighted Romans as more siege plus engineer with Millaria construction [I'd love to see some kind of road building by Engineers but Millaria comes close to that]). I dub this project of mine The Last Khanates mod for Empire and Napoleon Total War, in similar vein as the Last Khans expansion for the Age of Empires 2 DE with the Cumans, Tatars, Bulgarians, and Lithuanians.

I second Mr. Paul Flores suggestion to make copy-civs such as Nubians (there are already Nubian units and buildings/art in game, just make them a separate civ but sharing a lot with Egyptians), same with Assyrians as off-shoots of Babylonians, Carthaginians as offshoots of Roman+Phoenician/Egypt).

Lastly but not least, I'm really really really hoping that Project Celeste undertakes creating a truly NOMADIC civilization, the Scythians. Once I'm freed up after I finish I finish my The Last Khanates mod for Empire/Napoleon Total War, I'm ready, willing to learn the modelling/texturing/rigging/animating workflow pipeline of AOEO and hoping to contribute.

Empires Apart with the Mongols really nailed down what I see as nomadic civilization in an RTS game. I have a gut instinct feeling that the Age of Empires 4 would probably steal most of the thunder and ideas from Empires Apart for the Mongol civilization. Here check out the description of the Mongols in Empires Apart: https://empiresapart.gamepedia.com/Mongols

Already, when I saw Babylonians getting the Ox Cart as a mobile storehouse, that's exactly what I was thinking AOEO needs for a NOMADIC civilization. I still find it very odd that Babylonians who were city and wall builders are so nomadic and with units like Lancer (I think it fits better with nomadic than Babylonians). Shield-bearer REALLY fits Babylonians in my mind. Imho, Babylonians are more of an infantry rather than cavalry civilization. Persians more archer civilization, but I have my own historical biases. I'd rather see Babylonians get extra Palisade walls or an extra mini-Fort/Castle kinda like the Bulgarians got with Krepost' than see them as a cavalry civ. Just my 2 cents.

Some features of a NOMADIC civilization such as Scythians that I'd LOVE to see in AOEO:
- Villager drop off 30% of their wood gathering as food, resulting in a wood-focused economy when natural food supplies run out
- Buildings and siege units are built out of [UNIQUE BUILDING: perhaps War Host] which unpacks into buildings for free and can repack at will, allowing for a high amount of mobility.
- [UNIQUE BUILDING aka War Host] costs a single population each which disappears when the unit is packed up
- Town Center can be packed up and transported across the map when resources in starting position run out
- All buildings produce a small amount of population, NOT just houses
- Houses are Yurts or Gers and can double up as Outposts with good visibility range or as herdables container
- No walls
- Only Cavalry units, no Infantry units of any kind; only through specific Advisors perhaps, that's it
- Cavalry units with bonus against infantry
- Cavalry units with higher armor
- Cavalry units with bonus against spearmen
- Cavalry with malus against Camels. Camel troops hurt cavalry more.
- No Farms
- Instead of Farms, Pastures: herded by a Shepherd as infinite but slow Food resource
- Hunting bonus food
- Can't forage berries
- Instead, placing Pastures near Berries increases yield, perhaps?
- Also Pastures can train Herdables like Sheep, Horses, Camels for food, cost Wood or Gold. THis is fast Food needed in a pinch, for example
- Market just like any Scythian/Nomadic civ building can pack up and move around, no need to rebuild it
- Instead of Castle as a building, it's a [Horde] of Cavalry Archers in an animation loop of the Cantabrian/Central Asian circle, just running when not under attack, but firing animation when under attack. Long time ago, I tried to make this work for AOE2HD... now I'll try to get to that in AOE2DE for Cumans for example.
- Shaman priest who provides evasion and anti-snare for the cavalry troops
- Unique building that provides increased speed of the units in its vicinity... aka creep from Starcraft II. Wait, upon further inspection, Millaria built by Engineers is the same thing, huh? hmmm might need to rethink this one then... perhaps Roman Millaria only increases speed of Infantry and Archers, foot soldiers? While the Scythian unique building only increases speed of Cavalry not Infantry/Archers or foot units? Compromise? Or just keep brainstorming something more unique and fitting?
- Access to Bactrian or Two-Humped camels of their own. So far in-game AOEO I don't think there are any Two-Humped Camels. Actually in the The Last Khanates mod for ETW/NTW, I have obtained/paid for Bactrian/Two-Humped camel model and have made it into a new mount with its own weight and parameters. Working on this right now. Even have an armored version with chainmail. So Cataphract Camels essentially
TLDR: Bactrian Camel Riders and Cataphract Bactrian Camel Rider units
- Horse Cart or Bactrian Camel Caravan as a mobile storehouse
- Wanderlust ability on Scouts and Villagers: If they stop and are idle, their vision grows to 2x the vision of the normal villager or scout... this is to simulate that they take in the surroundings and are good trackers
- Bloodlust ability on ALL military units: Increases their damage and attack speed as long as they continue to kill enemies. Or vice versa. If they kill X number of enemies in Y amount of time in Z radius, then they can earn an activatable Bloodlust that increases their damage and attack speed for A amount for B seconds. Kinda like Total War: Warhammer 2's battle mechanics for Greenskins and the Dark Elves, you know what I'm talking about?
- SCYTHIAN/Nomadic economy is weak but simple: their main resources are wood and gold for their cavalry archers and siege weapons, with a bit of food for their melee cavalry.
- Temple as Kurgan field
- Altai metalworking and gold-gathering rates are higher than other civs. Scythian Golden Man and many excavations show that they were rich in gold and loved to adorn their noble armors in gold. Altai mountains provided one of the earliest instances of iron-working, stirrups (odd that Norse get it), and prodiguous gold-mining
- Effectively operate on only three resources. Stone needed for upgrades for blacksmith, and that's it

I just went bullet by bullet point from the Mongols description from Empires Apart game. I LOVE civ designing like this. I hope that I'll soon have the time to dedicate to this pet project.

Best regards! Cheers!

Again thank you very much for such an informative and enjoyable article, Mr. Paul Flores and the stalwart Project Celeste! Can't wait to try out the Romans when they're released this year hopefully!

 

@TuranianGhazi thanks for your input and enthusiasm! Your proposed Scythian civ for AoEO sounds an awful lot like the Mongols in Empires Apart, right?

In designing the Romans, we identified a ton of design patterns that control AoEO civ design -- essentially unspoken design rules that leave room for civs to be unique while constraining those unique features in various ways to keep every civ feeling part of a unified game. I encourage you to read our design blogs on Buildings, Units, and Techs. Right now, many of your ideas in your post for an AoEO civ would push your civ do not reconcile with those rules.

For instance, every civ in AoEO has Farms, Walls, Infantry, and most buildings are essentially identical to those of other civs, save for perhaps three or four unique buildings.

So if we were to make a civ like that, we would run a huge risk of making a civ that felt out of place in the game. After 2+ years of development, it would be a real kick in the gut to us to hear that we broke the game.

For sure, we would face a huge challenge designing a nomadic civ like the Huns/Scythians that was both in keeping with the AoEO design rules but also felt faithful to the historical people. Honestly, I am skeptical that we would want to attempt a civ like this at this point -- it would arguably be too risky to pull off. But we enjoy challenges, too, so they are on the table.

Thanks again!

 

P.S. Here are links to the design blogs:

https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/design-blog-1-building-design-theory.4073/

https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/design-blog-2-unit-design-theory.4154/

https://forums.projectceleste.com/threads/design-blog-3-tech-design-theory.4527/

These rules are not unbreakable, and we will break them here and there if we continue. But the burden would be on the the person wanting to break them to demonstrate that we should. Otherwise, we'd run a huge risk of the game going bonkers.

 

Thanks Andy for your thoughtful and thorough comments! Yes, I'm reading and lapping up deliciously the dense reading material! I for one so far wholeheartedly agree with the Romans civ design from the hints and especially the Tech Design article. I especially like the progressive Techs towards Citizenship and Roma Invicta for officers resistant against conversion and defending fellow Roman troops from enemy Priests! That's exactly how I would approach it too and it's very very unique compared to all other present civs. Gosh, I CAN NOT wait to try out the Romans!

Yet to play Devil's advocate, in your own words: "So all the Roman system simply acknowledges the open secret that Archery Ranges and Stables in AoEO don’t always train whom they pretend to train."

I guess I'm adopting the Starcraft, Empires Apart, Age4, and A Year of Rain design philosophies of making factions as disparate as possible. Terrans play very differently from the Protoss or Zerg, as everybody knows. I'd argue that the Greeks in AOEO are like the Protoss. I'd argue that mobility of the Terrans was something very different and new from the classic Humans of Warcraft 2 or 3 beforehand. And then Zerg being the most different with the hatchery, lair, and hive and all units coming from another unit, with buildings as just unlocks. Though, I wouldn't mind a civ in AOEO following that design of the Zerg or elements of such a design. I dunno, I'm more for flavorful play rather than competitive play. I do realize that especially for pvp, maintaining the title's "skeleton structure rules" is paramount. Yet again, playing Devil's Advocate, Age of Empires civs were always criticized for being too similar and there's lately an uproar of adding more civs to AOE2DE with Sicilians and Burgundians (when there are already Italians and Franks around, respectively, so the idea of umbrella civs goes out the window). However, I do try to approach my Centaur race in Warcraft 3 Reforged mod and my Crimean, Kazakh, Kalmyk, and Khivan Khanate factions in ETW in a more balanced stretch, not completely a wild stretch as the design choices for the Starcraft II Commanders. They're still largely Zerg, but their foci are changed just enough to be different but still unmistakably Zerg, for example like with Abathur, Zagara and so on. Therefore, I think I get where you're coming from Andy. So, I think that it's possible and a welcome challenge to design a nomadic civlization for AOEO.

Just let me finish my ETW mods and get acquainted with modding AOEO units/models, and I'll get started. At the very worst, it'll be a nice scenario for people to download and eventually lead to a compromised but palatable nomadic civilization in AOEO.

Thanks again for your time, efforts, cogent response with spot-on pointers! Cheers!

PS: You mentioned Huns. That too would make sense, but since Scythians are already represented in-game with the Scythian Mounted Archer available to Persians through the Advisor, I thought Scythians would make more sense in the Antiquity period of Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians. Yet, I'd argue that Celts, Norse, and now Romans push the AOEO time range wider, allowing for Huns instead. Also, Scythians may be a more palatable civ with walls, farms, infantry because many Scythian tribes were semi-nomadic and established actual towns like Tanais and Aktau. In contrast, Huns did not establish cities or trade networks. Hunnic descendants like the Magyars, Skezelys did but not the Huns themselves.

PPS: My only gripe with Auxila Camp is that Balearic Slingers were relatively few in number (though renowned) as opposed to Etruscan Slingers or other Etruscan units. Or perhaps you guys will treat the Etruscans as like Badari/Nubians in the Egyptian campaign with own units/skins but not included in the Romans civ/already assimilated. Likewise with Cretan bowmen (they were again very renowned/popular) but they're only coming from one island, meanwhile over the entirety of the Roman history, it was Gallic or Germanic hunters/marksmen that Rome recruited. I just find lack of any Germanic units in Rome's roster as appalling a bit. Lastly, Gallic horseman yes in the first half of Rome but towards the second half of Roman history, it were more Illyrian/Epirus/Sarmatian cavalry. There is even a Sarmatian hypothesis behind the Knights of the Round Table of England as Sarmatian auxiliary cavalry led by a Roman general who later became King Arthur. Round table is Turkic "dastarkhan" when in Roman or most Europe times it were square or rectangular tables only. Sir Lancelot is just a nickname for a rider who liked to lance a lot. I could go on and on. Actually, Clive Owen was in 2004 film Arthur that explored this. They showed that would-be Knights taken from the Sarmatian village of yurts! TLDR: I totally get that Balearic, Cretan, and Gallic were more popular/renowned, but imho instead Etruscan, Germanic, and Sarmatian would make more sense, in my view due to pooling from a larger population and area, than just a couple of islands and a peninsula.

 

An interesting read. I’m not a fan of the notion of clone civs; it detracts from one of the unique selling points of AoEO, in the form of unique Civs that play and act differently from each other, as well as would dilute the most amazing things this development team has brought to it which is a 100% commitment to do something incredible if you do anything at all. Clone Civs would feel like cheaply done filler, although I suppose with unique art they could pass muster.

I frequently finding myself wishing I could pay you guys for your work, because you’re honestly more professional and work with more integrity than a lot of other games I spend money on, but, that’s the curse of copyright.

Mentioning using pop culture to zero in on the historical fantasy is really neat, and a little vindicating. I recall getting into a debate with someone on these very forums a while back where they argued that pop culture should have little bearing on Civ design, so it’s a little gratifying to read that it was part of the original design philosophy for these Civs.

Also; “As we prepare to launch the Romans”. Who/what/where/when? I can’t wait. I’m gonna explode. I’m not so naive or obnoxious as to be asking for an actual launch window, I’m just expressing how exciting this is. We’re getting close.

As always, thanks for your work team.

 

@TuranianGhazi, I think you may enjoy plowing through the other 37 Roman blogs. It’d be fairly long reading, but we cover some similar ground with our decisions to use different units.

At any rate, we followed Paul’s lead and adopted the Balearic Slinger, Cretan Bowman, and Gallic Horseman in the Auxilia Camp directly from his original blueprints. We cut his Numidian Horseman for a few reasons.

We are adding the Etruscans as a non-playable faction akin to the Badari, Numidians, and Sea People in the original game.

I love to read everyone’s thoughts so if you read any of the earlier Roman blogs, don’t be shy commenting in them, even if they are many months old. I’ve come into a volunteer project like this with a sense of duty to all other fans to make certain any new content we add is as good as the original stuff. They set the bar quite high.

 

@Fraxure022We likely won’t announce a firm Romans release date until a few days before. I know that’s super weird in gaming to not have announced release dates, but it’s also super weird in gaming to have totally free large scale releases from volunteers. We really want to get the Romans into your hands the moment they are ready, and our development process doesn’t include deadlines or demands like that on our team members. We enjoy inverting the video game industry.

That all being said, we hope to release as soon as the vocals are completed and we have a week or so to touch up the campaign.

 

My comments weren’t really intended as “release is upon us”, mostly just that “look y’all, we’re getting closer”. I know y’all will release it when it’s ready, and you don’t typically do release dates, and I’m cool with that. I’m just saying that between the recent streams and this post, it’s finally starting to look like reality. I’ve waited quite a while for this, I can wait a bit longer.

 

Yeah for sure. We are hoping for early 2021 sometime after January.