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[Solinx: Related idea: Field Engineers]

I think, if you want to, you can destruct anything.

Have a cliff you want to turn into death from above? Chisel away the rock and send it flying! Destroying any unsuspecting units, along with buildings, dridges, or tunnels that the rock happens to land on.

Have a chasm you can’t cross? Build a bridge or find a plank. See someone crossing a Bridge? Destroy it with them on it by pushing it off with a large, long stick.

Want to make a tree into a trap or battering ram? Hack away! (That is another idea I had, more on this soon).

Want to build trenches for your units? Hey, you need a shovel! Oh yeah, get those from trees. They would give arrow defense, and in combination with shields you become invulnerable to them (This eliminates the problem of arrow spammers: They can’t be used as turn offense, because they can’t kill entire armies without going melee.)

More ideas will be added soon.

Solinx: Related idea: Field Engineers

Not those pansy builders that make walls, buildings and roads! Ones that make useful mechanics on the battlefield.

“Oh man, it’d be really nice if I could set a trap here…” You can! Call over a field carpenter, and set him to work.

Need a crude ram? He can hack a tree into one!

With a lot of time and a few experienced carpenters, they could even create a makeshift raft. It’s risky floating on a cheap raft made by someone who lives to cut corners, but hey, you get what you pay for.

Pitfalls with spikes on the bottom, swinging logs, nets, bear traps, leg nooses, deadfalls (increases food production for hunters), and guillotines, just to name a few traps.

Thoughts?

Solinx: Merged two related topics

You describe things that have been on the wishing list of more than one, and have been asked for more than once too. It always came down to what the engine and the PC could handle. For us the same will count. It will be attempted, but we can't say it will all be included, as like with commercial games, there are boundries we can't change.

Solinx

you guys are surely making it complicated. but we'll see. by the time the engine is done we'll probably have mainstream quad-core CPU's

I like stationary siege weapons and bridges, but I'm not so certain about levels of complexity.

One thing I'd like to try to go for is to have a completely automated worker system, where you don't need to worry about keeping your workers on the job or optimizing the economy; you just give the orders and the AI will send and replace workers to get them done.  You still have to manage yourself (if you over-extend your work above how many workers you have, you'll run into problems), but you won't need to pay attention to workers at all.

Yes, like when a worker dies, and you don't know about it, and you go for half an hour, and are about to win, and all you need is one catapult, and you look up after you get a resource error and see you have no lumber?

Anyone else had that happen before?

How about you have a worker number and sub worker numbers like this is an interface example:

Automated Worker system
Total workers: 113 -The total of workers you have, including ones that are not assigned to the automation system
Worker cap: 100  -The amount of workers you want maintained
Current workers: 73/100 -how many of your cap that are alive (If this is less than the max, the AI will try to buy back units, given it has enough assigned funds)
-Building materials: 30 - The following four are what the units are assigned to.
-Food: 15
-Stone: 7
-Special resource: 21
-Idle: 0 -If you want to move one unit from one category to another, you have to make one idle, then use that idle unit on another category.

I was thinking even more automated than that, even, where you don't need to break down their tasks.  Workers will be built up to the maximum you can support, and automatically sent to complete jobs.  You can mark a specific structure blueprint or resource extraction site as high priority for the AI, but otherwise it will just send workers where they're needed, and replace them as they're needed.

I do't think that should be forced. I know the idea of cutting workers out completely seems like a good idea, but I've seen it done and it  never works out.

I think that should be an option, but I like to pick where my units go.

I like the complete automation, such as Darvin suggest, as complete as possible. But at the same time, I would want to be able to have complete control about the workers when I want.

It can be combined. Just make the automation default, and allow players to overrule the automated proces and direct their workers as in standard RTS games.

Solinx

yep, with a switch button, like BFME's auto abilities

Hmm, well, BFME's auto abilities... do you mean the stances?

Solinx

no, when you right-click on a power (e.g. wizard blast or wounding arrow), the heroes automatically use them

Ahh, yes, you had me confused because it looked like you used it as an example for the switch button

You meant to have a switch button for this game, which I agree with

Solinx

I was intending for your economy to be based off of structures.  Worker related structures would build and replace workers and assign them the most appropriate jobs within the economy.  I want to see HUGE sprawling bases that are entire cities.  To accomplish this, I'd like to see a lot of buildings act as "hubs" while houses sprawl around them automatically in a natural formation following whatever roads you lay down.  I'd like players to build a real city - and when the time comes, invade one as well.

maybe we could make it so that your city automatically fills up with civilians, and when civilians get killed it reduces the morale of your troops (or maybe there will be less recruits to draft/train?)

For resource buildings I'm thinking of the Cossacks resource idea. I's a building you garrison with workers to increase your output.

Basically that's what this would do. You would hire units through your citadel or whatever, and when you do they go to a holding, where you would assign it to what you want it to do. UNLESS you have it on auto, and they would automatically assign themselves.

You could still see the animation for lumberers walking out to the trees, but they wouldn't be controllable, eliminating micromanagement problems. And then if one gets killed, it automatically gets retrained.

And you could assign workers as builders, and you'd have a build system like Red alert. The workers would still walk to the building and build it, it would just be all automated.

Ever play Settlers 3? That is exactly what I mean.

(You can get a demo for Settlers 4, which is basically the same, but slightly differant. If you need screen shots I can get you some).

but they wouldn't be controllable, eliminating micromanagement problems.

ok, but then there should be some kind of retreat button (like the town bell in Age of Empires) when danger approaches them