Yeah, disclaimer on all my posts that I'm thinking more game mechanics than historical accuracy.

I really like the idea of slaves *doing* something, it was actually one of the first disappointments with this game that the only things you could effectively *do* with slaves is stock the mines, carry food or build walls....

I wish there was a way to largely automate the "they die in the mines" system, as that's largely in place and wouldn't require alot of new coding. What about "Slave Caravan" unit (or unit behavior when you put in the more complicated unit AI) that when activated travels around your road network picking up slaves sitting in cities and dropping off enough to replenish to 40, then continuing along hitting all mines and all cities (that are connected). If that system were in place I would leave most slaves in my cities for pickup but still keep a few groups for packing food, etc.

Incidentally, really enjoying how engaged you are with the community - Nice to see a coder on the boards.

Incidentally, really enjoying how engaged you are with the community - Nice to see a coder on the boards.

Beauty of indie developers, Rob and the rest of the team are indeed very friendly, and a lot of your suggestions will eventually seem themselves in the game if it's a really good point, so always keep em coming as really take all the feedback into consideration.

I too, wouldn't mind the idea of Slaves replenishing population as it does give them another purpose, and probably easy to do from a coding standpoint as well.

I was watching some Hegemony videos on youtube; old Skrapion ones. And I suddenly got an idea in relation to slaves.

What if there were hubs around the world. Sort of like how mines are, and slaves or workers could work in/around them. Like what if there were areas of workable forests, or like a lumberjack hut you could build to send workers or slaves to, and these hubs produce a little gold. Maybe like 10 gold per 20 workers, or 5 gold per 20 slaves.

There could be different types of hubs like lumberjack's huts, fisherman's huts, maybe use farms like this too. This way there'd be a further use for slaves. The reason I think it shouldn't turn too much of a profit is just so that it won't imbalance too much stuff.

Unless there was some other sort of resource or benefit that could be gained by these hubs. Not sure exactly what though. Maybe for every 20 slaves working a farm you get a 1% increase in food production. I don't know, just an idea.

I have another side question though. On an older video of Hegemony there seems to be some sort of villa system, where you have to assign a villa to generals. To the best of my knowledge this has been removed in Gold. Currently there are just ruins where the villas use to be. Are there any plans involving the ruins in the future? Or will these villa's be reworked or revamped?

@Vince - I'm obviously not a dev, but I can probably address your idea on slaves based on Rick's previous response, which is that it's too much work to institute all those new buildings with new behaviors, etc.

Additionally, adding more structures that generate gold would require a re-adjustment of the gold system (either prices on everything up or production from mines aggressively down) to keep things balanced.

Re: Villas - Is that what those ruins used to be?

I agree on both your points that adding new art such as buldings is unlikely to impossible, and that earning more gold would throw the balance of the game off. But I wish there were some other simple way to involve slaves just a little more. I'm gonna play the game for awhile now and think about it more and see if any brilliant ideas come to mind.

Re: Villas - Is that what those ruins used to be?

In the non Gold Version those ruins were Villas that you had to capture/build/hook to a supply line. They would generate a small income and allow you to "Recruit" a new general and make it there home.

THey took that out, which I think was a good call in Gold. But the ruins are still there.

not to hijack the thread, but is it possible in Gold to get new generals in sandbox mode? In my Paeonian game, I have 3 generals, but as my empire expands, i could use some more. thanks! :)

loving hegemony gold so far :-)

had a few crashes, to be expected at this stage. love all the new factions in sandbox mode.

I got to say, I am happy that any idea I have asked about is actually being addressed even if its not in the way I want. I would like a new unit type because historically they would be considered a new unit type. One of the most famous nicknames for them would be cannon fodder. But I see why it would be easier and will be happy for them to be able to be pulled into recruits. It also seems that the game will still be pretty balanced even with that kind of upgrade.

Was wondering though, is there a way to have it so that troops inside cities that don't have walls automatically exit out of the city when hostile land forces get within a certain range? Or have a button that decides the range before troops exit to defend?

I have a question and a little feedback.

My question is about the glow that occurs when mousing over certain objects such as units and buildings. I was wondering if there was any way of toggling it off. It's more nitpicking than anything, but it's kind of annoying when I'm watching a battle and my units are glowing because my mouse is over them. And it's difficult to reposition my mouse to a different position when my units take up most of the screen because I have it zoomed in. I mean I like the nice lighting effects on units from the 'sun' and everything but when there's a glow I can't enjoy these effects the same way.
So maybe there's something in a config file somewhere I can edit to toggle this effect off? Or maybe this can be added as a toggle in the options in the future, unless it's too much of a hassle to incorporate.

My feedback is in regards to unit defense. I was wondering if an option could be added where when you select your unit there would be a new button in the corner that reads something like 'Defend Area' or 'Attack Enemies in Area.' Upon clicking this button a large or fair-sized circle would appear around the cursor, then you can click onto the ground to place the circle. Your men would then attack any enemies that entered the circle.
I think this would be very helpful for defending your lands, because currently your infantry will just stand by as the enemy walks right past them and captures one of your towns. Or worse yet I've had it where an enemy group of javelin men were throwing javelins at a group of my phalangites, I didn't notice this happening because I was involved in another battle, so I lost that unit and the javelin men were able to take the town that those phalangites were supposed to be protecting.

Thanks for any response or even just for reading,
Vince

edit: After reading the forums more thoroughly I came across Rob mentioning the possible addition of attack/defend/passive type of commands for player units. If I had known they were working on that I probably wouldn't have posted my feedback about the whole 'defend area' thing. This is the second time I've posted a question which has been already answered, so sorry about that. People are sure posting a lot on the forums lately, it seems to me the activity here is constantly increasing. All I have to say is: Thank God for Steam.

I am still wondering about the glowing units thing though.

Would it be possible to create an option to sell the slaves? As in permanent income boost like accomplishing certain objectives in the campaigns, or when you disband a real unit and recoup their value? It's true that over a decent amount of playing time you rack up huge numbers of slaves, but perhaps it could be implemented in a way that didn't unbalance gold too much. It would be extra spoils for the victor, and they are slaves after all. Also, being able to boost a city's recruitment pool, I think, could be useful, but maybe not in your home cities, at least not as the Spartans.

And this obviously could never happen, even more obviously than my other ideas, but what if slaves could be linked to the number of triremes you could float? Many city-states's galleys were still manned by citizens, but sometimes you just need more people on those oars. Also, and this parts pretty impossible, what if you needed a certain number of tall trees just to build the masts for your galley? (One per mast, that is.) Athens' need for tall timber was one of the factors that made Amphipolis and Pieria so valuable to them and made Macedonia so complicated for them. Of course you'd need some new kind of forestry building, and we won't be seeing those in this game. I hope the crazier part of this post didn't detract from the earlier part.

I just started a new game on Gold beta 8 with a fresh install. But I've run across a new bug. Every short while a new message appears saying "The following units that were based in are now homeless" It says it exactly like that, it doesn't say which units or which city and it displays this message about every 20-60 seconds. I've checked the unit list and it says all my units have a home city. It's been doing this since the beginning of the campaign, which is the Philip campaign by the way. I'm not sure if I need to send in a save game or not, since it happened on my first try I'm not sure if that means it's a fairly common occurance.

edit: Ok after awhile it's stopped happening. I guess something caused it to go into spasm for awhile but it's good now.