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I thought about rebellion considering the Carthaginian Mercenary Wars, but wanted to keep it simple for now, maybe the basic ideas has to first be tested. And that should happen if you run out of metal while the contract is on. Bribery would be interesting, but troops under Hannibal should cost a fortune for example. I forgot to say that the cooldown countdown should start after the battalion returns to their closest camp (called Embassy in the game now I remember, but sounds too formal for me, Iberian Camp would be nicer for the context), otherwise they might be instantly available after the contract is finished, which is not the idea. They need to replenish, rest, spend their hard earned money...

Sounds inteersting - we might also consider that - if you stop paying your mercs - they may turn hostile against you, join your adversary or at least revert to gaia "raiders"? The bribery mechanics could also be used to convert mercs to the other side. Not sure if this turns out to be too complex micro-managing for gameplay.

second try vs AIx4.. Good luck trying to recognize the building fast! And yeah, interesting Wonder ...

I wonder if completely changing the mercenary system can be considered, right now not much differentiates them from regular units, making them boring. I know they are cheaper in general, expensive with metal, and more experienced, but the Carthaginians seem just overcrowded with similar options, which doesn't make them interesting enough. I think mercenaries should aim at being used by those who have the metal but not the kind of unit, population or time to put in place an army. I don’t know if any of the following can even be done (or if it breaks gameplay somehow): I would make mercenary camps produce units in fixed battalions, fast, with a cooldown, and counting for less population, maybe half. Besides one having to pay a certain amount to hire them, they would charge per certain amount of time as long as they are hired. One can cancel this contract any time, after which they would automatically return to the closest camp of the same type (building a disposable raft if needed, I guess, or they could just vanish on some shore if too much extra art is required for now). The cooldown is always a base time plus a time that depends on their losses, to imagine they have to replenish their forces and avoid spamming them if they are getting destroyed, which would be annoying for the other player. This way one should strategically alternate between all camps, like the Carthaginians should. The only variables needed are size of battalion, population cost per mercenary, metal upfront and rate, and base plus penalty cooldowns, which need to be decided for balance, and maybe modified with techs and auras (considering Hannibal was an inspiring figure for regulars and mercenaries alike).

@Thalatta Your ideas about groups, formations, and battalions are very interesting. It’s true that in their current state they’re quite buggy and there’s too much overlap between them. I support your view that these features should be able to coexist as independently as possible, while also being versatile enough to let each player choose their preferred playstyle. Beyond the different possible ways to solve it, the diagnosis is very clear, and the general direction of the solution you propose is quite clear as well — it’s been a valuable contribution. There are currently some improvements in progress regarding formation behavior. I think that in the future, something along the lines of what you propose could end up being adopted. If a suggestion is well received, there is consensus among the development team, and there is time available to work on it, then it can be incorporated. Creating a dedicated post for a specific feature you want to propose is also a good idea. The more detailed it is, the better. You can include diagrams or mockups to make communication with other community members easier and, essentially, to build the necessary consensus. It’s also possible to contribute directly to the 0 A.D. repository either by writing new code or by reporting issues you encounter in the game: However, it’s important to keep in mind that submitting a Pull Request does not necessarily mean the code will be merged. It also takes time to get to know the right people and to become familiar with the dynamics of the community. Cheers.

seriously whose idea was it to make it into a wonder hahaha it is just pure troll lmao

Which? There were many AI's in the past. I'd like to not make another one.

So if you destroy it does it turn back into a completed army camp again?

To install: download the .zip file. Place it in your mods folder (on Linux: ~/.local/share/0ad/mods/, on Mac: ~/Library/Application\ Support/0ad/mods/, and on Windows: ~\Documents\My Games\0ad\mods\), then unzip it. Turn on the game, go into mod selection, enable EasyAI. Go to the match setup screen, click on the bar that says PetraBot (up next to the civ and color selection stuff), and select EasyAI.

Well, maybe for my last proposal that would have made sense, but before that I posted a list of 20 suggestions, I don't think 20 new threads would have been productive . I'd leave a new thread for a bigger suggestion requiring more discussion, but what do I know. I can take the opportunity to ask: I really don't know how things work for suggestions to actually be taken into account, some of my suggestions were well received, but that's about it, I don't know what is actually done after that.

Just tried R28. Germans very OP civ, I love It!

I think only ramming ships should be able to board, and should have a harder time with faster ships, needing to ram them a bit beforehand. Then, a defending “base garrison” would need to also be overcome in “virtual combat”. This base garrison could be depleted by ramming, making the target ship incur a speed (and maybe attack) penalty. After capture, the base garrison from the attacking ship (never involved in boarding actions) should be automatically distributed among both ships. Base garrisons could slowly replenish at sea, fast at ports. All this easily removes the necessity of having to garrison everything, while making things realistic by keeping boarding fairly common (as it was) but preventing snowballing from opportunistically hoarding ships. Better explained: It would be annoying to have good ships get captured by hit and run tactics from slower ships with a small crew and when not even engaged in combat (which happened mostly with sails lowered, but I guess the game simplifies this and that’s why the ramming ship has them like that). This is the Fortress capture problem at sea (which these ideas also try to solve). Boarding should then be done only by ramming ships, the one representing close combat. They should have a “Grappling Hooks” button that would work when really close, but the target ship should have a chance to get away depending on its speed relative to the attacker’s ship. Ramming was done not just to sink ships, but also to slow or stop them by shearing their oars (which would injure or kill the oarsmen). Only then using grappling hooks for boarding would be feasible. The corvus could prevent the target ship from getting away, but it wasn’t just “way more efficient at boarding”, it was necessary because the first Roman ships were slow compared to the Carthaginians’, after a couple of battles their ships improved and they ditched the corvus (which apparently made ships unstable), so it shouldn't be seen as a technology that improved things from then on but as a short lived early necessity. I’d change needing “4 or more garrisoned troops” and instead give every ship a “base garrison”, taken into account for the defenders when in virtual combat. This would be just a few parameters regarding how many they are, their attack, and defense (and loot, which I’d reserve for a successful boarding, but maybe that’s extra code and not how the game works). The number of troops needed to take an ungarrisoned ship would then depend on the ship itself (would be annoying having to garrison the biggest ships because of small ships with 4 archers lurking about). I feel units like cavalry or elephants shouldn’t count in any of this. An attacker can choose to disengage the grappling hooks if things are going south, which would also automatically happen if the defenders repel the attack (leaving the attacking ship only with its untouched base garrison). Most oarsmen were skilled armed free men, who were killed or taken prisoner, not generally made row a captured ship (which is very complicated, they had to be willing and motivated). This is why I disagree with “the first ship will receive part of the second ship's garrison”, it's not rooted in reality, and it's too snowbally. If the boarding is successful, the base garrison from the defending ship could be considered killed (or sold to slavery considering loot, etc), and the one from the attacking ship would need to be split (maybe in proportion to capacity). A depleted base garrison should give speed penalties to the ship. After all, captured ships had to be scuttled or were slow after battles for being poorly manned. The base garrison could replenish slowly, fast if close to a port. All this makes keeping ships harder than just boarding and capturing, allowing for more strategic decisions and preventing disproportionate gains. When everyone is killed in the target ship, one would take control of it and, while still hooked, one should be able to choose if to keep it or scuttle it (and maybe if just abandon it). For now I'm not proposing any base garrison manual redistribution not to complicate things. I’d make ships suffer damage mostly from ramming only, I feel ships are too weak to arrows in this game, they should be more like rams, while arrows should mostly affect their garrisoned troops, and the base garrison should be affected mostly by ramming (oar shearing and hull breaching). I would add this mechanism on everything, siege engines and buildings. Fortresses would have a decent base garrison with a bigger defense bonus than on a ship. They wouldn’t count as population, they’re just a “resistance to be taken” parameter (which is going to be implemented one way or another anyway, better to rename things realistically for immersion and intuition, all this is a bunch of parameters only), and a “speed (and maybe base arrow rate) penalty” if depleted, for things to work nicely on ships to take faster ones. Big ships is one of the things that are good about this game, no need to try to be just another RTS clone. A few words about realism: what I said before greatly simplifies reality, even when much was written. The only difference from the original proposal is the few parameters to characterise a base garrison, whose quantity would influence the speed of ships and be reduced by being rammed (if just being damaged can be considered for now that’s ok), and that faster ships could get away from the grappling hooks (Edit: and removing the arbitrary troop quantity requirement to be able to board, one might try capturing a small ship with 4 soldiers, but a big one would be suicide). If one would want more realism, ramming should be done on the sides (made difficult when ships are formed side by side), and shearing should be done with an angle from the front (diekplous), or back after going around (periplous), but I know this is too much detail for a game like this (although the more is taken into account the better for tactics).

Hi everyone, I'm asking for help here in the group because I'm having a lot of trouble creating animations for my objects. This is greatly delaying my project. The tutorial I found here seems outdated for the current version of Blender, and the videos I find online about bones and animation don't seem to work correctly with the game. I would appreciate it if you could suggest a video tutorial or a simpler, more functional explanation of how to animate correctly for the game and export correctly.

You can't change the past where amatuers are just having fun, it was their choice to comment it here instead of making a new thread. You can however go ahead and make your own thread with specific feature as long its relevant and not repeatable and that your interested to see it fruition. Then again do you think most people bother skimming past page 10(200) of the many threads? Counterproductive yes, but this is not a job, its a hobby.

Guys, am I the only one who thinks that suggestions for improvements and refinements to such a diverse game should have been posted in separate threads a long time ago, rather than in one kilometer-long one with... 173 pages! In my opinion, this is completely counterproductive!

I have created a ticket to develop this feature: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/8696

Ok! Then I'll have a go at expanding point 19. I found it annoying that by default battalions would be automatically defined when selecting units, would override groups, and it’s not that obvious that you can disband a battalion and get those groups back just by breaking formation. If the “Battalion-style formations” is disabled I’m not sure how you can make battalions yet. If it’s enabled (default), and I have in Group 1 10 spearmen and in Group 2 10 archers, and grab 10 spearmen and 5 archers, that becomes a battalion, then pressing 1 would select the battalion and pressing 2 would select all units. And you cannot select multiple battalions because they become one big mass where groups don’t work anymore. The groups shown on the left of the screen become quite useless. Thus, selections, formations, groups and batallions interfere too much with each other. What I thought is, with that option disabled, battalions (whose purpose should be only to select all units in it by selecting one, and not mess up anything else) could be defined with ctrl+alt+number and selected with alt+number. Selections with the cursor would in no way be able to change any definition. Formations could visually appear on the left as a box surrounding group icons, and a label on the side with their number (right-clicking on it would disband the battalion), which would make intuitive how the whole thing works. If multiple battalions are defined, the same group icon could appear on multiple boxes (if a group is split into battalions). Ungrouped units in a battalion wouldn’t have a number on their “group” icons (needed to show them as part of a battalion). The flags would show up for battalions only. Then for example, one could define archers in group 1, and define them into 3 battalions. One can select the group with 1, or each battalion with alt+1, alt+2, alt+3, and set either the whole group or each battalion into different formations. Or one could even press 1 and then alt+formation, and all units are selected, but each battalion has its own formation (all the same in this way). This behaviour is like Total War. But one could do more things, like invert things and have one battalion with 3 groups in it, to which one can give different orders, for example each group shooting at a different target, or even move, without breaking up the battalion. All with the player not being compelled to do anything, selections not forcing anything, all is optional. One could seamlessly play like AoE, like TW, or like something new. Finally, it would be nice if 2 digit numbers were allowed, one might want to have group 1 with battalions 11, 12, 13, and group 2 with battalions 21 and 22 for example, to remember things easily. Ctrl ctrl and ctrl+alt alt could do something, like defining a group and a battalion respectively, using the lowest number available, or giving a time window to enter the number, all considering that ctrl+alt+number can become uncomfortable with one hand and the rightmost keyboard numbers. Also, to make some things more visual and easier, group icons could be dragged into battalion boxes, or the other way around (less intuitive, but should also work). I hope all this makes sense. Edit: and thinking about what @guerringuerrin said, clicking on the left on a group portrait in a formation box could select the units of that group in that battalion, double clicking it could select the units of that group onscreen, and alt clicking it could select all units of that group.

I totally agree with you, double click on the idle worker icon to select all units make total sense and its much more intuitive. And yes, offscreen modifier is very useful! You can also use it to select all your buildings of the same type. That's because I forgot i had enabled this mod which makes your minimap bigger and also adds unit stats next to the unit portraits which are very useful. Is the second message, posted by @Atrik Of course, any idea you’d like to share is welcome, and I encourage you to do so. Naturally, many ideas don’t get implemented due to a lack of consensus or a lack of availability to work on them. I’m not a developer, but it’s worth pointing out that often ideas can’t be carried out simply because there isn’t enough time or enough volunteers who can dedicate themselves to them

Hi @guerringuerrin, thanks for your answers! Tab indeed hides status bars, but still hiding only full bars would be missing, which would be my preferred setting. I see that alt + idle unit works, just not as intuitive as double clicking it I'd say (Edit: maybe double clicking could select all idle units onscreen). In your screenshot that button and the send flare appear together, while in my game send flare is on the upper left of the minimap, which I think looks better, not sure if that will change. I wasn't aware of the use of alt as offscreen modifier, I wonder if it would be too confusing to propose ctrl+alt+number to define battalions? I can explain an idea of how to make selections, formations, groups and battalions not totally mess up each other, and be completely functional at all times.

Hey, @Thalatta! Thanks for sharing your suggestions here. I think some of them are very nice to have and I hope some day it will. I just wanted to share some answers about some of your suggestions that might help you. 2) if you mean select all of the idle workers you can achieve that by using the Include offscreen modifier hotkey (alt by default) and the Select next idle worker hotkey which i think by default is " . " but you can check it our on the hotkeys window. Mind that if you alt+double click, it will select all same untis including offscreen. To get the idle ones you need to use this hotkey combination. EDIT: Just checked. You can also alt+click this icon: 7) There is a Toggle status bar hotkey that covers the first part of this suggestions. I think is Tab by default. 8) You can achieve some of this with the next release of autociv mod. Also in the next release will be a Bird's Eye camera which set a top-down camera view. very nice to place buildings and develop your base layout. 15) Capture has been recalibrated for the next release and will be more difficult to achieve.

@Perzival12 > ...Maybe AresBot... Basaltum (the hardest rock) ? > ...but I need to know what should be changed? Is it still too strong? Or maybe it is too weak? Let me know any changes you think about it... To check the Pebble AI bot strength, could you please let us know how to install and use it and which version of 0 A.D. is compatible for this ?

I like Pebble AI, it matches the comparitive weakness that Pebble has compared to Petra. I'll release the next version under that name, but I need to know what should be changed? Is it still too strong? Or maybe it is too weak? Let me know any changes you think about it, but keep in mind it is for novice players, and a HardAI (Maybe AresBot) is on it's way.

These are all great ideas, I definently agree that these should be implemented (at least the first 7).

drink yakult, fix your gut!