By PF2K on Jul 20, 2019 at 1:54 PM
  1. PF2K

    PF2K Lead Developer
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    Header_-_Week_9.png
    Hello there Celeste players! We are back with another Roman reveal blog.

    As we develop the Romans, each week we will be revealing the Romans to you building by building, unit by unit, and technology by technology. We are not just showing you what the Romans will be, but showing you how we are building them, who is building them, and also why we are building them the way that we are. This week, we will be revealing the Age 2 Wall and Merchant Transport, as well as showing the model for the Centurion, which we discussed in detail last week.

    Age II Walls
    ===========
    Week_9_-_Age2_Wall_Closeup.png
    As discussed in more detail in our Building Design Blog, the Wall is one of the 13 Common Buildings that every Age of Empires Online civilization shares. The Babylonian Age 1 Clay Wall, which costs much less but has fewer hit points, is the only Improved Wall in the game, and there are no Advanced or Unique versions. So hypothetically, there’s still room for a special Wall.

    In the game files, however, we did not find any evidence that the original Devs intended to feature Roman Walls in their tech tree. Therefore, we rather quickly agreed to have the Roman Walls remain a Common Building that behaves identically to all the other Walls in the game. Accordingly, the Romans will use the same Age 1 Wall model as all other Civs and will then have their own unique models for Ages 2, 3, and 4 (though we do not expect the Age 4 wall to be available in their tech tree).

    However, we quickly realized that the available concept art for the Roman Walls would not work. Can you spot the problem?

    Week_9_-_Carthage_Walls.png

    The original Devs reassigned the Roman Walls to the Legion of Carthage. They are almost a perfect facsimile.

    So PF2K, Happy Smurf and Chaos designed something new. To do so, they first designed the Age 4 Wall. Then, once we agreed on its final design, they scaled the design down to create the Age 3 Wall and then the Age 2 Wall.

    Here is how the Age 2 Roman Walls look next to their equivalents from other civilizations:

    Week_9_-_Wall_Lineup.png
    To give you a better look at the visual unity of Roman buildings, here is a few of their buildings next to the newly revealed Age 2 Walls:

    Week_9_-_Wooden_Buildings_Lineup.png
    In the picture you can see the Guard Tower, Auxilia Camp, Castellum and Watch Post buildings.

    Merchant Transport
    ==================

    Week_9_-_Merchant_Closeup1.png
    Just like Common Buildings, every civilization in AoEO shares the same Common Units. There are four Common Units: Villagers, Caravans, Fishing Boats, and Merchant Transport Ships. These units can have small statistical differences in different Civs (the Egyptian villager trains slower, for instance). But otherwise, they are identical across all of the Civs.

    Therefore, it would be groundbreaking for the Romans to not have a Merchant Transport. However, while we ultimately are giving them one, they almost didn’t make it. The Roman Dock has been a vexing problem for us, and to finalize it, we needed to reconcile a lot of conflicting information.

    Week_9_-_Merchant_Closeup2.png
    In some places in the game files, the Merchant Transport was conspicuously missing. For instance, we have what appears to be a full set of unit icons, but none for the Merchant Transport icon.

    However, it appears in other places in the game files and we have concept art for it. The full roster of Ships fluctuates in the record, and in some places includes up to six different Ships (a Fishing Boat, a Merchant Transport, a Basic Warship, a Small Warship used for Scouting, a Large Warship, and a Very Large Warship.)

    Since no civ has more than five ships, we were very skeptical about giving the Romans six.

    Historically, Rome has a very strange naval history. Our Romans aim for the Roman Republic to mid-Imperial era (perhaps 500 BCE to 300 CE) with more emphasis on the classic late Republic/early Imperial era (150 BCE to 150 CE). Until around 260 BCE, the Romans sometimes had no navy and other times had a terrible one. Starting in the Punic Wars (about 260 BCE), they copied Carthage’s navy, but even then it was subpar. However, eventually the Romans dominated both the land and the waters of the Mediterranean, so history could be interpreted any number of ways.

    From a gameplay perspective, though, in order to keep the Romans balanced we can’t just casually give it a giant armada. To give the Romans six Ships would necessitate sacrificing at least one or two of their land units (and, as we will discuss more in our forthcoming Unit Design Blog, their land unit roster was already too large and required us to make a few very difficult roster decisions). To cut even more units just to give the Romans a crazy navy would have been awful.

    So for several reasons we were tempted to cut the Merchant Transport and assign its duties to a different boat, perhaps that Small Warship used for Scouting.

    But ultimately, we could not find a way to make that work without feeling like we were needlessly creating a unit that tries to be two different units but ends up missing both targets and being neither. Meanwhile, since no other civ has ever deviated from one of the four Common Units, such a groundbreaking move should be reserved for the perfect situation and not done frivolously. So the Roman Merchant Transport lives another day and makes it onto the Tech Tree. In a few weeks, we will explain how we solved the Roman naval dilemma. But for now, here is the Merchant Transport Ship.

    And now let's take a look at it next to its cousins from other civilizations, shall we?

    Week_9_-_Merchant_Lineup1.png

    Week_9_-_Merchant_Lineup2.png

    Centurion's 3D Model
    ====================
    Week_9_-_Centurion_Closeup.png
    Meanwhile, PF2K and Chaos have finished the Centurion model. As you can see, we are using a large body for the Centurion, similar to that of the Norse Berseker. In the picture above you can see the Centurion in full Legendary gear.

    Below you can see the Centurion next to a Berserker and in the next picture, next to a group of Legionaries (who are wearing Epic gear).

    Week_9_-_Centurion_vs_Zerk.png
    We also wanted to create a Centurion that was both similar in costume to the Legionary but also obviously superior.

    Week_9_-_LegionariesAndCenturion.png
    Thank you for reading, and we will see you all next week!

    Project Celeste Development Team

    What do you think about this week's blog? What would you like to see next? Let us know in the comments below!

    ========
    Missed the Roman Civilization's announcement? Find out about it HERE.

    Project Celeste is completely free and always will be. However, we gladly accept donations for our overhead costs, which are larger than we have budgeted. If you want to support us, you can do so HERE.

    Read every Romans related blog HERE.

    Tell your friends! Join our Discord HERE.
    ========
     
    #1 PF2K, Jul 20, 2019 at 1:54 PM
    Last edited: Sep 14, 2019
  2. Loading...


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What Unit/Building would you like to see next? The top 2 will be featured in next week's blog!

  1. Villager

    12 vote(s)
    17.9%
  2. Armory

    3 vote(s)
    4.5%
  3. Siege Workshop

    5 vote(s)
    7.5%
  4. Age III Town Center

    9 vote(s)
    13.4%
  5. Age III Walls

    8 vote(s)
    11.9%
  6. Battering Ram

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  7. Spearman

    18 vote(s)
    26.9%
  8. The Roman Tech Building (similar to Academy, Bard Hall, etc.)

    25 vote(s)
    37.3%
  9. Cretan Bowman

    24 vote(s)
    35.8%
  10. Other (mention in the comments section below)

    2 vote(s)
    3.0%
Multiple votes are allowed.

Comments

Discussion in 'Romans' started by PF2K, Jul 20, 2019.

    1. FFNEZ

      FFNEZ Woad Raider

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      is there a historical possibility to add a fishing boat that you can promote to a transport/super fishing boat?.also good job for the centurion work
       
    2. Andy P XIII

      Andy P XIII Moderator
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      There’s certainly nothing stopping us from creating that kind of unit, but what you are describing (combining two Common Units to form a single hybrid unit) would be completely different than anything presently in the game, so we would almost certainly require some very strong reason to do so based on both history and a convincing improvement to gameplay.
       
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    3. TheSpaniard

      TheSpaniard Berserker

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      PF2K, well done on the merchant transport! Looks slick.

      Centurion also looks great with the legendary gear! I'm curious to see without the legendary gear, too... I'm kinda weird in that, a lot of times, I kinda like the ungeared look of units the best, except maybe for a legendary weapon thrown in (e.g. woads, hoplites).

      Also, regarding the walls: ever since they released Alliance Wars in the original game, I always felt like Carthage had borrowed very heavily from, if not stolen, abandoned Roman plans and designs. Those walls were especially suspicious!

      As always, well done. Keep up the excellence and thanks for making a great game even greater!
       
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    4. Dacio

      Dacio Long Swordsman

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      QUESTION. Are translations being made to Spanish, French, German and Italian for when the new content comes out?
       
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    5. Andy P XIII

      Andy P XIII Moderator
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      Si!

      We will have translations in Spanish, French, German. We won't have Italian, though.
       
      #25 Andy P XIII, Jul 22, 2019 at 5:06 PM
      Last edited: Jul 22, 2019
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    6. FinishedBlock21

      FinishedBlock21 Hippikon

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      I'd like to see the priest and/ or temple.
       
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    7. Kenji03

      Kenji03 Berserker

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      Loving these weekly updates, keep up the good work!

      Also, do remember you CAN skip a week -- it is better to be good and late, then rushed and terrible
       
      MatrixSoft and Andy P XIII like this.
    8. Andy P XIII

      Andy P XIII Moderator
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      Thanks, Kenji. Though we usually use the weekly blog as motivation to finish the units. But even if we got behind, we still have a warchest of finished assets in the tank we could always pull out each Saturday no matter what.
       
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    9. Kenji03

      Kenji03 Berserker

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      At the very least, the quest strings will be translated. I know this from something PF2K replied to me
       
    10. MatrixSoft

      MatrixSoft Champion

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      I am working on the translation of the game to Portuguese Brazil, if possible you can send me the texts in English, so I can work on the translation of the new content, but if not I will do the translation after the release, just as I am already doing with the released content
       
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    11. Kenji03

      Kenji03 Berserker

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      Might want to send this as a message directly to Andy P XIII or PF2K
       
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    12. Robcore

      Robcore Spearman

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      Nice stuff, Centurion looks nice except for the sword? He holds it like a spear and actually you made the handle so long that it could be used with 4 hands. Something went wrong there?

      A gladius was a single handed sword.

      The rest of the "new" stuff looks super nice, tho I hope romans will get an Age 3 stone wall model as well.
       
    13. Andy P XIII

      Andy P XIII Moderator
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      He holds his gladius in one hand? We used existing concept art for its design, too, so maybe it's the art style creeping in?
       
    14. Robcore

      Robcore Spearman

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      Yes he does, yeah maybe it is the art style. But for sure it looks way too long and more like a greek xyphos in terms of form. But sure I can understand that the game uses the overall weapon models from the items there are. I just hope if you gonna make roman vanity gear you try to make it as acurate as possible.
       
    15. Ardeshir

      Ardeshir Immortal

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      So you be sayin...

      FISHING BOAT ARCHONS!?!?!?!?!

      Nah in all seriousness, love your work! Anxious to see the 7 civ meta and the Roman themed PvE content!

      And on another note, with future units/civs post Romans, a unit like starcraft's archons that are made by combining two lower tier units to make them is a cool concept, but I think it would be most fitting on a temple tech/priest unit (that either becomes a better priest to rival other late game priest units, or a mythical unit?), or a unique non-cavalry unit (from it's own production facility like immortals?) that mounts up when combined, on a future civ.
       
    16. Alzerus

      Alzerus Champion

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      This all looks great. The Centurions look fantastic and the wall look great. It's amazing when you actually look at the different walls, how very different they all are, I knew they all differ but wow, you guys have made walls look sexy.

      Can I ask one question? Why is it that only the Norse Transport is filled with trade items and the rest are all empty?

      Can you fill the Roman Transports with Wine, wine is very important to the people and Romans were instrumental in bringing wine to the world. The people deserve wine and I'm sure the Senate would approve :)
      Could also be implemented via the Market/Caravans to the troops for extra energy - Wine for thought. Sorry for late reply/post but been away.
       
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