Technical overview for requested features

These are some thoughts for a feature rich mode. Don’t worry, there will be a vanilla mode without all that fancy stuff just feeling as good as this famous 20-years-old game. So every fancy feature changing the gameplay drastically could be also disabled by users.

Explanations:

1. ITEM: A description of the item

2. COMPLEXITY: subjective evaluation for the complexity of the implementation

3. AFFECTED ENGINE PARTS: core engine modules that needs to be worked on, e.g. renderer, API, converter

4. IMPLEMENTATION STATUS: links to pull requests or dependencies

5. MILESTONE: Which milestone this feature will appear in

Type	Task No.	Item	Comp	Aff. Engine	Imp. Status	Mile
GAIA	G1	Dynamic change of weather, seasons, day and night. Influence on terrain & line of sight (LOS). could be influenced by players with monk/myth unit.
GAIA	G2	Wooden buildings and other flammable material can be lit, fire spreads around your city. fire departments (new building) to extinguish fires or villagers need to put out a fire of with water from a well (new building)
GAIA	G3	Wild animals can steal food from your farms and food resources
GAIA	G4	Wolves form pack and act together, wander the map, circle around towns, get hungry and seek food (deer, villagers, wild boar, bear, etc.).
GAIA	G5	Renewable resources such as trees and animals that repopulate. Forest regeneration or seeding.
GAIA	G6	Buildings in later ages cost stone with possibility of deep mining stone. villagers can dig/mine natural resources.
GAIA	G7	Better fauna (Tapir, Tiger, ...). Improved animal colours
GAIA AI	GI1	Fish migrate and replenish.
GAIA AI	GI2	Mercenaries could be hired on behalf of the player
Gameplay	GM1	Roads on commonly traveled areas allow faster travel. Pathfinding would let the units stay on the road. Appearance and quality depends on traffic (matted grass, dirt path, etc.). Neutral to all players. Turns soft/regular terrains into roads, requires stone, does not work on irregular terrains; grants movement speed to all allied units + passive vision (like a foundation spots units walking over them).
Gameplay	GM2	Bridges for connections between islands. Blocks ships, allows land units to walk on. Terraforming. Wooden and stone bridges with different hp.
Gameplay	GM3	Canals: creates empty, shallow and navigatable water.
Gameplay	GM4	Single units can hide/bunk in the forest, only visible to a certain type of unit. Garrison function with no symbol, you can lose your units if you don't remember them.
Gameplay	GM5	New Unit: spies (can burn down your city), lame your production
Gameplay	GM6	New Unit: monk ship on water to convert ships
Gameplay	GM7	New Unit: transport waggon on land to slowly transport ships over land
Gameplay	GM8	Villagers need sleep at night, die at work (New Building: Caffeine industry)
Gameplay	GM9	GAIA and terrain interaction, e.g. flock of bird rises up from tree when tree is felled or many people approach, hearable sound indicator, players hear and see birds when someone comes to their woodline at home. Triggered rocks falling of cliffs.
Gameplay	GM10	Relics have special abilities (AOM), bonuses for attack and range. Generated randomly. Maybe also rolling relics with ranged attributes to bring into battle.
Gameplay	GM11	Bring Kings/Queens into battle for special abilities within some tiles radius.
Gameplay	GM12	Building produces in loop (AOM) as long as resources and pop space are available. Useful for unit prudction and farms in mill. Indicator over buildings or somewhere in the GUI for loop production. Toggle reseeding on/off.
Gameplay	GM13	Mills can produce sheep, cows, turkeys
Gameplay	GM14	"Conversion is enabled by researching Faith. Before, monks can only carry relics and heal units.
Gameplay	GM15	Buildings can be deconstructed to recover materials, slower than destroying. Leave a salvage pile behind. Salvage diminishes over time. Salvage can be collected by villagers at a higher rate than other resources.
Gameplay	GM16	Buildings can be captured when damaged to 20% or less. Player who repairs over 20% owns the building. New units can be produced out of this captured building from 50% on.
Gameplay	GM17	Attack/defense bonuses for some unit formations. Dependent on minimum amount of units in this formation. New marching formation with speed bonus but defense malus. Cavalry flanking.
Gameplay	GM18	Researches only affect newly produced units. Old ones need to be manually upgraded/retrained at production building.
Gameplay	GM19	Scale wonder cost to max pop, number of players and available resources.
Gameplay	GM20	A new 5th "free trade" age where allies share resources and give each other massive battles.
Gameplay	GM21	New unit: Lance Cavalry, run over units in defending formations
Gameplay	GM22	Researches can be globally and locally applied. e.g. upgrade just units garrisoned in the barracks for less research cost; e.g. you need 3 pikemen for the battle now, but you don't want to produce them in the future in masses (see GM18)
Gameplay	GM23	Units can level up by gaining experience doing what they normally do, fighting in battle against their counter unit will give more XP against that unit style. Villagers chopping a Forest Nothing map might be a real pro at chopping trees at the end of the game e.g. one experienced villager could be as productive as three unexperienced villagers in the end of the game.
Gameplay	GM24	Queue for technology researches.
Gameplay	GM25	Farms cannot be placed on desert ground.
Gameplay	GM26	Improved water battles.
Gameplay	GM27	Percentage based armor system similar to AoEO and AoM. Will need to rebalance whole gameplay.
Gameplay	GM28	Entirely rebalance milita line. Main gold unit similar to knights/archers. Instead of a counter unit currently.
Gameplay	GM29	Nerf the range on towers early and make them scale much better into the late game.
Gameplay	GM30	Unit queuing doesn't block resources. Resources are taken in account, when the unit is actually starting to be produced.
Gameplay	GM31	Make denying upgrades more easy, like in SC2. Often players will destroy buildings to cancel an upgrade in progress and gain the upgrade advantage. Maybe in a special mod with less hp for buildings.
Gameplay	GM32	Possibility to put archers/ranged units on a wall/castle to get elevation bonus.
Gameplay	GM33	Quickwalling: first XX% (variable percentage) of a foundation is walkable, setting for e.g. tournaments
Gameplay	GM34	Mesoamerican civilizations (already the most novel civs in the game) may have a unique tech tree. Possibility for a unique tech tree in API.
Gameplay	GM35	Controlled forest fires: Allows the player (technology researched at the university in the castle age) to destroy forests to create more space; this goes much faster/efficient than chopping, but obviously at the expense of the lumber and generates regular terrain.
Gameplay	GM36	Give siege rams an upgrade that prevents unit production while it's attacking a building. (5-second debuff that refreshes each attack).
Gameplay	GM37	Bigger maps, map sizes between giant and ludicrous
Gameplay	GM38	Foundation: turns regular terrain into solid terrain, requires stone, turns irregular terrain into regular terrain.
Gameplay	GM39	Different terrain types, take a look into gameplay.md for more explanations
Gameplay	GM40	Be able to temporarily toggle the map to remove terrain and show building footprints for walling without gaps.
Gameplay	GM41	Make rams push units away
Gameplay	GM42	Raise the amount of ressources that can be sold with hotkeys at the market (forest nothing)
Gameplay	GM43	A special flag that raises on a building that is researching a technology, much like the garrison flag. (see GR10)
Unit AI	UAI1	Improved grouping. Double click on a grouped unit in group formation selects same group not all units of same kind. Allow more than 10 groups. More intelligent assigning of units to existing groups. Subgroup selections. New unit to group takes same stance as the whole group. Multi-group functionality.
Unit AI	UAI2	Designated unit pings its position periodically.
Unit AI	UAI3	Deselect certain units quickly from a selection by right clicking their portrait.
Unit AI	UAI4	Better waypoints (AOM-style) - able to queue tasks for units, especially villagers.
Unit AI	UAI5	More intelligent units.
Unit AI	UAI6	Emergency evacuation points.
Unit AI	UAI7	Dynamic hardlocking on target units when attacking.
Unit AI	UAI8	Aggressive stance for monks (auto-convert). Auto-flee stance. Non-coward stance for villagers. Allow selecting the default stance in production buildings.
Unit AI	UAI9	Set rally point on moving units.
Unit AI	UAI10	Better attack move.
Unit AI	UAI11	Option to allow a unit to auto-explore the map. Can be deactivated in the lobby options.
Pathing	PA1	Groups can move as group or on command each with its own movement speed.
Pathing	PA2	Auto-resolution of blocking situations
Pathing	PA3	Individual path searching cost for tiles. Allow users to manually mark parts of the map as more expensive/No-go areas. e.g. firing range of castles.
Pathing	PA4	Allow setting any number of waypoints (basically an extension of the 'patrol' mechanic)
Pathing	PA5	Formations and movement when attacking.
Multiplayer	MP1	Finegraded options in Lobby-Settings (e.g. formations, allow/disallow functions). Vanilla mode to have them good ol' feelings. Disallow also units and buildings, e.g. bombardtower, walls, etc.
Multiplayer	MP2	Boosts/handicaps such as resource multipliers for players
Multiplayer	MP3	Forced no-rush (time limit or score limit until attacks are possible)
Multiplayer	MP4	Official accounts on servers for everyone. PGP-Support for network of trust. Built-in multiplayer mode that is so good that it unifies the community.
Multiplayer	MP5	Good matchmaking and skill-/experience points-algorithm. Ranked mode for multiplayer.
Multiplayer	MP6	Better team interaction. Work/resource sharing. Temporary unit control of groups for allies. Resource and unit sharing when defeated or drop. Alternatively if a player drops all of their units move to an ally and that ally's population cap changes. Cannot work when diplomacy is enabled.
Multiplayer	MP7	Tournament drafts, files, settings, replays are stored in a container. Host sets up the game, shares important (players) part of the container, game lobby allows no changes.
Multiplayer	MP8	Simple and fast qualifying for tournaments.
Multiplayer	MP9	Connection through in-game server browser/direct IP and connection through a browser-based protocol. Combination of dedicated servers, P2P and LAN multiplayer.
Multiplayer	MP10	In-game, lag-free, high-quality voice-communication between teams, same for casters.
Multiplayer	MP11	Figure out how to measure map control of someone and give a value for it. Show it in casting and spectating multiplayer games.
Multiplayer	MP12	More then eight player slots for multiplayer games (planned up to 40)
Multiplayer	MP13	More balance changes regularly. Mechanism to make changes globally easier. Update mechanisms. Balance crew. Meta adjustments.
Multiplayer	MP14	Opt-in spectating: You can join a multiplayer even if it already started. Doesn't take a player slot.
Multiplayer	MP15	Multiplayer mods looking for smurfs, trolls, racists to ban them.
Multiplayer	MP16	Game modes, See gameplay.md
UI	UI1	Organizers can manage the whole tournament in the openage interface within their accounts. Drafting, (Time-)Planning, Invitations, Promo, Hosting.
UI	UI2	Multiplayer submenu should give you relevant information about most viewed live games and caster channels, upcoming tournaments, upcoming qualifier rounds.
UI	UI3	Spectator layer for public watching. Lock to casters viewpoints or freely move camera. Chat with spectators and mark points of interests (POI) on the map. No sync needed. Spectator dashboard.
UI	UI4	Casters interface: Picture-in-picture mode and replay function (command for making a clip and queue it). Pinging on minimap. Marking POI. Casters views need to be synced. Show casters current camera positions on minimap. See which units are visible to players without FOG. Second window for casting preferences and overviews. Caster dashboard.
UI	UI5	APM should be derivable for interfaces and also be show in the GUI.
UI	UI6	Customizable hotkeys for everything. But good hotkeys from the beginning.
UI	UI7	Help spotting units which are target of a conversion. Highlight monk and unit.
UI	UI8	Better after-game analysis. Normal mode with the basic information. Advanced mode with a massive amount of statistical infos and easy to read diagrams for smallest things. Population graphs AOE3-style at the end of a match. Show number of villager kills and lost resources (villagers carrying resources), maybe even in-game (caster- and spectator mode).
UI	UI9	Copy and paste for building structures, e.g. select mill and the farms around it, copy and paste the foundations of them somewhere else. Same for production lines. (Factorio-style)
UI	UI10	Show research and production status in the top right corner to easier follow your running researches.
UI	UI11	Show how many villagers are working on each ressource (like in AOM, 100 Gold / 4 [Villager-Symbol] --> 100 Gold in the bank and 4 vills working to mine gold).
UI	UI12	Add resource gain per minute data next to the original resources. It would be something like food: 537 (+68). make it switchable with amount of vills working at all the resource spots. (see UI11)
UI	UI13	Hotkeys for technology researches and upgrades for units
UI	UI14	All these things in here should be switchable-on/off in the options.
UI	UI15	MP-GUI: game-browser in list-style but with HDs lobby filtering, amount of players? search bar for game names. better filters for games.
UI	UI16	Save Camera positions: Ctrl+F1 to create a camera location hotkey similar to how you create control groups. Whenever you press the key it moves your screen to the exact location you created it. Also for spectating and casters.
UI	UI17	Looking for a SC2-Interface in AOE-style? UI-Modding should be made easy.
UI	UI18	Tooltips should be improved to properly showcase all the hidden information and bonuses for players who don't want to deeply research every facet of the game by themselves.
UI	UI19	Host of lobby to ban civilizations, give handicaps
UI	UI20	Idle villager button change colour when a villager goes idle
AI	AI1	Handle units more intelligent.
AI	AI2	Don't build in hazardous areas. Send military to clear out.
AI	AI3	Better and more intelligent building placements, e.g. build more gates to prevent lock-ins. Better castle placement. Better market placements for trade in the late game.
AI	AI4	Military units shouldn't fight in castle arrow fire.
AI	AI5	Units marching react and don't just go away.
AI	AI6	AI lames you (as the Barbarian AI). Understands how to do economic damage to your base. Adopts more to the current playing meta and also randomly choses to use older metas.
AI	AI7	AI can deliver villagers with transportships to other islands.
Graphics	GR1	Zooming in and out with different settings: middle of screen, where mouse points, to selected units.
Graphics	GR2	Units throw torches to put buildings on fire instead of fighting against them with their swords. Villagers have different attack animations depending on where they were working before attacking units/buildings, e.g. farms -> hay fork, lumberjacks -> axe, stone or gold -> pickaxe.
Graphics	GR3	Animations for construction and destruction of buildings.
Graphics	GR4	Unique military and economic unit skins for each different region. Knights from Europe shouldn't look like the ones from Japan, but should be similar enough to tell they are both knights. At least 4 regions for unit graphics.
Graphics	GR5	Beautiful weather effects (see G1)
Graphics	GR6	Campaign cutscenes
Graphics	GR7	Some graphical optimisations for competitive play by design, e.g. small trees, alignment grid, fish outlines, short walls, etc., other option: to redesign everything that the problems why those mods exists are fixed. e.g. make the look behind walls better by design -> no short walls needed.
Graphics	GR8	Resource spots change size based on the amount of resource they have left.
Graphics	GR9	Sync ram attack animation with the actual attack.
Graphics	GR10	A special flag that raises on a building that is researching a technology, much like the garrison flag. (see GM44)
Sound	SO1	Options to change the volume of special game sounds (e.g. attack bell, farm depleted, units produced). In late game this sounds can get really annoying.
Campaign	CP1	Co-Op Campaigns
Localisation	LC1	Placeholder
Modding	MD1	Placeholder