not intentionally at least :\

Hummel, that title you shared - I suspect you already have an idea to go with it in your mind?


I always liked thinking of names for games, though I also have the habit of hating whatever I come up with shortly after.
Err, I hope that's not too unusual.

There is actually a lot stuff going on in my mind regarding this title. Currently I'm still working on bringing the concept scene I've posted some time ago in the "what are you working on"-thread from 2d to 3d. Much more work than I expected.
Took me already a month to create just the fundamentals of the 3d-tile technology.

what I don't really know currently is what era to choose for a historical strategy game. there are so many good games available from medieval and ancient times, covering nearly all the most interesting and well-known times (I think users like to play in an era they like and know a bit). I like when turn based building and management is combined with turn-based or real-time battles/sieges.

another difficult aspect is the scale of the game: deal with management of a town/castle, or a few of them, with limited army size, what is easier to present as a battle, or deal with empire building where huge armies are fighting, but in this case a downscaling factor of 100 could be disappointing (600 units represent 60000 real soldiers). currently I cannot handle effectively more than 1000-1200 units in real-time (most of them should be infantry for easier/faster control), and turn based battles are getting unpopular.

what I thought of, and not covered well, are the very early empires (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Hittite empire) and city states (Sumerian, Phoenician, Greek), and the early medieval times (Germanic kingdoms, Byzantine, the Caliphate). the less discovered eras have the advantage of freedom in several game aspects, without converting it into a fantasy game.

so, any idea welcome

Maybe you could implement Spartans in your game as there's a sequel to 300 coming out soon and this could create additional interest in your RTS.

once I thought about it, but I think I'll be ready later, and I see little strategy in the defence of the Thermopulae close, it would be rather a multiplayer slasher game

yes , but if you look at age of empires from 1 up to 3 they pretty much tried to cover most of those eras and empires , the most exciting for me was 3 with all those canons and old rifles with little smoke puffs rising up everywhere they shot and the battle cries and victory cries , so well done but it fell a little short for me when you look at some of the maps you feel like the maps are scaled down way to much and then theres the common trs problem the tank charge or in this case the cannon charge , difficult to find balance between unit strentghs but i must say i am a dear fan of rts and i find the modern era just as exciting , the only thing is it is truly difficult to keep the gameplay away from a click speed competition and a tank rush , some may wonder wheres the strategy really ? id like to see more strategy

I do not want to make something like Age of Empires, I plan a different system. I played a lot AoE2 and AoMythology, but fighting against skirmishing units one by one was annoying for me. in other games it was solved in a better way, by using only groups of fighting units. basically it is a very difficult genre, it would be very complicated to make a smart AI adopting to the ever changing environment and plan unit creation and movements effectively in real time, especially on one huge map. I build my map system to be able to manage real time changes, but I know alone it would be a too hard task to implement a great game play, so I will somehow combine it with turn based elements, by separating building, development and diplomacy from battles, like in Total War games, and by using more map levels.
the selection of the era will depend heavily on my interest I think and on how I can represent the actual military technology. the easiest is infantry, I mainly deal with it, and have a lot of optimization ideas, but presenting nice tight formations behaving intelligently is not too easy. cavalry is a bit more difficult, but I also have a prototype system of it, by simulating movements using acceleration/deceleration and limiting turn radius by the pathfinder. slow siege equipment are also not a big problem. but fast vehicles (like chariots and tanks) are what I want to avoid if possible. imo they would be very performance costy thus would decrease max. unit quantity a lot, and would require an effective unit type priority system to move away low priority units from they ideal path that is sometimes covered by other own units. so what are the most undesirable from the point of view of development are large fast units and huge crowd armies. and I will need later to deal with ships too (what is simply omitted from some games).

sounds intresting , sivan tell me you also played aoe3 (they also did ships), the reason why i talk about ao3 is that through the aoe series this was the closest to a good rts they ever got , its alive with so much more atmosphere where normaly a rts lacks in atmosphere ,hope i spelled the word correct ...
and the era was so well done ,even pc opponents taunt you and they dont give up easily , i hate rts like warcraft itts a bunch of crap . coh was cool but not what it should be .. yes a difficult genre and it would be nice to see some diffrent ideas done on it .. enjoy it and good luck

yeah luck is the thing very needed
I played only a few times AoE3, its graphics and gameplay was okay, I just did not know what to do with the home city, because I prefer to play freely like in earlier episodes. maybe I'll try it again, but I have really no time for playing...