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Although this alone won't be enough. V1.4 did a lot of this, btw.

Price increases for lvl-4 are usually a good and 'safe' idea to balance. They rely heavily on hurry production and especially when cities aren't on city-levels, hurrying becomes more difficult.
Another effect is that the AI will benefit from this.

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This is the intra-racial diversity. One of the reasons the Reaper should not have Pass Wall

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This is what Lennart (TS director) says as well and it makes a lot of sense. It would allow other units to be valuable in a supportive role. Unfortunately, these measures aren't as popular, as feedback indicated when making v1.4... Try suggesting 'Cold Weakness' on Red Dragon, or 'Holy Weakness' for Reaper.

Another idea I had is to reduce the rates of growth in villages, towns and cities. This will also affect rushing structures and units and it makes that mid-game phase larger.

V1.5 should not become Dwiggs, imo, but a little more variety than the lvl4 dominance would be a good thing in online games. Once the emphasis is more on lvl3's, level2 and 1 unit will remain more valuable as well. Not to mention that there are a lot more lvl3's (more variety) than there are lvl4's.

[This message has been edited by swolte (edited 11-20-2006 @ 08:09 PM).]

By the way, is it possible to make the Dragon Hatchling become an adult dragon with your alignment ? Gold for the good, and Black for the evil. With neutral both are fine for them so we should give only two, otherwise neutral may have disadvantage since other neutral dragons are relatively weaker than Gold and Black Dragon.

Multiple Races
Not in the sense of adding a new race to the game (though the possibility of how Hatifnat did it should be explored since the timelines for this patch is longer), but in terms of adding racial groups of placable units.

Races such as Minotaurs, Nagas, Ogres, Giants, Trolls and Undead should have multiple units right from lvl1 to lvl4 so that racial groups/lands can be simulated by mapmakers. Simiarly, heroes should also be present for these races (with appropriate graphics) to lend more authenticity to these racial groups.
Right now, we have the forest tribals (hardishai et al), the Lizards, the Northerlings and the Red Humans (IMHO, the latter two have so much similarity to the vanilla Humans that they can only be represented as a different faction than as a race itself) and the Dragons (drakes included) but I think that more racial groups will give more options to the mapmaker.

This will, IMO, give a good boost to mapmaking since new racial lands can be simulated with credibility and new stories that deviate from the traditional races can be easily written and implemented.

I will post specifics after thinking this through a bit, but feedback is welcome.

[This message has been edited by swolte (edited 11-21-2006 @ 11:37 AM).]

Don't know if someone mentioned it yet, since this thread have 15pages already (which is scary):

Adding usable abilities for Pioneers: This feature makes AI build them and even found a lot of new cities (I tested this many times). This would make AI more competitive for single player games, especially Random Maps. Abilities could match race, such as trap for Nomads, Self-Destruct for Goblins, Fire Crossbow (3/3) for Dwarves, and so on.

Pioneers Humanoid units rather than Siege Machines: Could be interesting, since they are more likely people moving INSIDE a machine to settle a new city than a machine per se
This also means they could be bought when a wizard is defeated and has them walking around. Not sure if Seduce and etc would make sense though, maybe Willpower is needed.

Water Ships with Attack value: in this thread http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=33,5016,0,allstephenmcginn35 said by doing this AI started building naval armies, this could be considered and tested.

---

Artist, Sorcerer, Monk and AoW Series fan
Proud citizen of BRASIL \o/ |o/ \o| \o/ |o| /o/ \o/
Blog with some art
www.the-battlefield.com ex-member with fond memories:Battlefield Player of the year 2003;Battlefield Winner of 4 Tourneys;Battlefield Winner of AoW league 2004
Proud owner of an AoW SM poster signed by Devs!
Please try the fantastic BNW Mod made by my friend Kirky Picardo! The best AoW:SM Mod!

[This message has been edited by Merkraad (edited 11-21-2006 @ 09:28 AM).]

i mean they shouldn't be just in the editor...but standard also to be found in each race unit setup by playing just with the RMG.

its an easy thing, just needs balancing.

But those maps should have less content similar like an average RMG setting, just better balanced and arranged.

previously all those maps add too much content, too many and too strong indies on the map, so its a pain to play these online, and main reasion why everyone plays rmg maps there. another one is the surprise factor, but knowing aow1 online too, which had good maps that wasn't so much the problem, but those aow1 maps were not all overloaded with too much content either, wich is more suited to SP and PBEM, where you have more time and do all AI battles in TC.

i also think the aow1 music should be added. Lords of Magic Music files wouldn't hurt too, just an suggestion that was also done in the past for 1.4. I for one, listen to fully customized songs anyways. :-)

[This message has been edited by DarkMystery (edited 11-22-2006 @ 11:40 AM).]

But using units (and music) from other games is risky because of copyright issues.

-have the option to choose AI wizards instead of only having the option for random wizards for random maps

-when generating random map, be able to designate more water terrain!

first suggestion is the most important, last one would be nice too

However, our programmers are cooking up some cool ideas, so there might be more options.

-- Human Pioneers --
Great idea. You can already see this in various mods. We thought about this in terms of having them racial, but when you remove the 'standard' pioneer image (the cows, etc), it doesn't become instantly recognizable what a pioneer is...

From a user-perspective, it might not be that feasible to do this. More thoughts?

-- Naval Units --
This would be great and there are some ideas although (as posted in that thread) some concerns as well. As far as I know there aren't many test-results (yet).

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Hmmm, not sure if this really needs to be shipped with the patch (think patchsize...)

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Do you really think that people will use these maps? I think the idea is pretty cool, but I am a bit skeptic. I remember when I was working at TS play-testing those maps to death on LAN only to never see them used in Gamespy. I think the RMG is simply too appealing to online games... Is it worth investing the effort.

I am getting the impression from all the suggestions that some want 'something else' with the RMG. More variety! Almost an 'unoffical' mod that is much more radical and adds units and such.

Then again, isn't that already happening? It's the Age of the Mod in online gaming! V1.5 will be more complete in terms of extra units and will allow more new races to be formed for modders.

-- Songs --
Perhaps a couple, but do we really need to ship this with the patch (again: size)? For the campaign we are doing some, I think.
Of course, some good old AoW1-tunes!

[This message has been edited by swolte (edited 11-22-2006 @ 08:55 PM).]

Quoted from Swolte:

Actually in my post I meant Pioneers as Humanoid *Unit Type* in the Editor, not changing the image of them. Of course changing the image or color, and abilities to match race could be good (Forestry for Elves, Mountaineering for Dwarves etc).

Also usable abilities so AI build them and found cities like I said in previous post

I'm gonna throw an idea here too... how about

Machines with alignment: I always thought it was weird for an evil race to conquer a Dwarf city and make Steam Tanks - it is Dwarven and probably so is the crew making the tank work (unless it is really a remote control tank ). What about giving alignment to machines? Or maybe only special ones such as Steam Tank? Forceship?

---

Artist, Sorcerer, Monk and AoW Series fan
Proud citizen of BRASIL \o/ |o/ \o| \o/ |o| /o/ \o/
Blog with some art
www.the-battlefield.com ex-member with fond memories:Battlefield Player of the year 2003;Battlefield Winner of 4 Tourneys;Battlefield Winner of AoW league 2004
Proud owner of an AoW SM poster signed by Devs!
Please try the fantastic BNW Mod made by my friend Kirky Picardo! The best AoW:SM Mod!

[This message has been edited by Merkraad (edited 11-25-2006 @ 10:31 AM).]

Lizard-race will have to be a resource switch thing. Of course, I think that most people would want to see these (really) back!

Quoted from bam65:

I never saw a 'Control machine' Ability so they are run only by whom makes them. Well, perhaps the Goblins that took the Dwarven city enslaved the Steam Tank dwarven crew... but what you call illogical is also illogical, lol. The game is an abstraction. The machines in AoW ARE remote controlled Some Civ unit images of siege weapons have humanoids activating the machine... now THAT is logical

About pioneers, are they machines too? Why do they take population to be created? So an Engineer sabotages living people? hard to believe he destroys one wheel and all aboard die in a 'car crash' accident but least that's my opinion.

At least those crazy ideas aside, think with care about racial abilities for pioneers, including usable ones so AI build them and make cities

Someone? Made a Mod with Lizard as 16th race right? How is that possible? So 1.5 would have an alternate version with Lizard replacing Draconians?

---

Artist, Sorcerer, Monk and AoW Series fan
Proud citizen of BRASIL \o/ |o/ \o| \o/ |o| /o/ \o/
Blog with some art
www.the-battlefield.com ex-member with fond memories:Battlefield Player of the year 2003;Battlefield Winner of 4 Tourneys;Battlefield Winner of AoW league 2004
Proud owner of an AoW SM poster signed by Devs!
Please try the fantastic BNW Mod made by my friend Kirky Picardo! The best AoW:SM Mod!

[This message has been edited by Merkraad (edited 11-25-2006 @ 01:41 PM).]

[This message has been edited by bam65 (edited 11-25-2006 @ 02:13 PM).]

The Cavalier-idea was taken from Dwiggs-mod and modified a bit by PawelS. Structure by KD.

[This message has been edited by swolte (edited 11-26-2006 @ 00:05 AM).]

[This message has been edited by Jaaz_prince (edited 11-26-2006 @ 01:11 PM).]

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[This message has been edited by hatifnat (edited 11-26-2006 @ 05:02 PM).]

What v1.5 might might offer is a utility that will make modding a lot easier and elaborate. Instead of just the resources, you can allocate everything, including the language files. Perhaps even campaign files...
TB and PawelS will be working on that idea.

PawelS had an idea for a 'race switcher'. This means that if the patch-team designs races, they can easily be switched with existing ones. For example, if you want to play a (random) map with Demons instead of Shadow Demons, or Lizards instead of Draconians, or Nomads instead of Beastmen, then that is all possible. Of course, when playing online, people will need to have the same settings. There are some limitations, however.
Same goes for mapmakers! The city graphics and language files will be adjusted accordingly. It does mean that the upatch-team will work on creating city graphics and become even busier.

Anyway, this is in a conceptual phase so it might not even fly. Please refrain from speculating too much!