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The discussion is starting to get REALLY interesting now!

Noted! tomorrow i will have a new monitor from warranty so i will do more adjustments tomorrow my eyes burning since im using a 32 inch tv as secondary monitor while i wait. For the rest of the decal's any advice? if no objection so far i will start with the sandstone for persian empire and for the mauryas i have in mind some mossy/mud spart like decal.

For the wall one, I'd feather the edges a bit more and add some randomness to the edge shape.

@CheckTester, I'm quite confused about your proposal. Let's imagine the case where a ship with a garrison of 30 boards an ungarrisoned ship. According to what I understand, successful boarding happens in 5 seconds, the captured ship suffers HP loss, and the attacker loses just 2-4 units? Always? What if the defender ship also had a garrison of 30? What does “almost over” mean? What does “soften” mean? That the garrison is vulnerable to ranged attacks? If the defender has more defenders, damage doubles where? On the attacker ship? Where is the fight even happening? It is unclear to me what happens with garrisons depending on which ship sinks. Seems like complicated ship combat where the parameters are the garrisons. I don’t think it’s realistic for ships to take this much damage from boarding, this is mixing a couple of different things: either you ram a ship to sink it, or you ram (shear) the oars, to slow it down for boarding (and hurt the rowers, decreasing the number of defenders). You don’t want to ram a ship, breach its hull, and then board it, because the boarders risk going down with the ship. In fact, after breaching, the ramming ship has to move backward, to avoid getting stuck and going down also. That’s why ships getting so much damage that sink during boarding would have been quite rare, many measures were taken to avoid such suicide. What did happen is that ramming ships could get damaged (something simple that could actually be added to the game, considering they do a lot of damage anyway), but not really during boarding. I would rework your mechanism like this: if attacker ship has N garrisoned units, defender ship has M garrisoned units, defender base HP is H and present HP X, then final surviving units that get split on both ships are F=N-(M+k)(X/H), where k is a parameter to set, and is how many attackers are killed if the defender ship has no garrison and full HP (just doing the trivial math, F=N-(0+k)(H/H)=N-k => k=N-F, attackers minus final survivors, that is, killed attackers). So k can be any coherent formula, from 2 to 4 as you said (the formula would give more survivors if the defending ship is damaged), or preferably something depending on the number of attackers and with how many the defending crew can handle, C, thus a simple formula could be C(C/N) (with this, crew resistance becomes inefficient when overwhelmed), that is, with C=5, 5 attackers get all killed (5(5/5)=5), and then goes down until from 17 attackers only one gets killed (5(5/17)=1.47), rounding up, and not taking yet into account defending garrison and ship HP, the final formula is of course F=N-(M+C^2/N)(X/H), which as a complete example, N=20 attackers against a ship with 100% HP that can handle C=10 attackers would mean F=15 survivors, that must be split in 2 ships, but if the defending ship is damaged first down to 50%, then there will be 18 survivors, and if the defending ship had a garrison of M=5, then these numbers would have been 10 and 15 survivors, respectively. If M=15 there are 0 survivors. If M=20, F=-5, which could mean 5 survived from the defender’s garrison (one has to be careful with extreme numbers, N=1 gives F=-24, when it should cap at -20, but I made the formula intuitively and fast). Furthermore, if it’s deemed that the defending garrison should have even more advantage, a defense factor D greater than 1 can be added, and if it’s deemed that ship damage should have a greater softening effect, a softening factor S greater than 1 can be added, resulting in F=N-(DM+C^2/N)(X/H)^S. In any case, both this and what you propose (or at least what you said) have a big problem anyway: blindness on how strong units actually are. That’s why I think “virtual combat” is necessary. Now, I think you misunderstand the “base garrison” idea. It does take into account boarding not being no-risk, high-reward. To do ship damage is recommended to reduce it (I’m mixing ramming and shearing because the game doesn’t differentiate them, but it’s not the same as truly mixing them during boarding, that’s why it’s more realistic). It precisely avoids being able to “capture an enemy trireme for free just by having 10 hoplites”, since the hoplites have to fight the base garrison first, and then both their survivors and the attackers base garrison has to be split, greatly preventing snowballing. Garrisons should be vulnerable to ranged fire. If the existing system doesn’t include some form of virtual combat, then nothing reasonable can be done, because having a garrison of 30 workers would be the same as 30 champions. If it’s included, then base garrison is a trivial thing to add, and the same mechanism could be used for capturing buildings. The only worry would be that the AI would need to be taught all this stuff, which is something that has come to my attention a couple of times lately, and it’s indeed not a minor issue.

@Genava55 I opened a PR with the following names as AI usernames for Germanic civ based on writings by Livy, Plurach, Cassius Dio and Tacitus Arminius - Cheruscan leader mentioned by Cassius Dio & Tacitus Maroboduus - King of the Marcomanni mentioned by Plutarch Thusnelda - sister of Arminius mentioned by Tacitus Veleda - priestess of the Bructi tribe mentioned by Tacitus Segestes - Cherusci leader , father of Arminius mentioned by Tacitus Catti - Chatti leader, mentioned by Livy Cunnius - Suebi leader mentioned by Tacitus Vannius - Suebi leader mentioned by Tacitus Cniva - Suebi leader mentioned by Tacitus Could I get your feedback on historical appropriateness for each of these & spelling ?

It's great that you're enjoying 0 A.D., but someone already asked this question and all answers are there. Please use the search function next time.

Nice game by the way. I enjoy this more than Age of Empires crap 4 lol.

when you host the game in the browser for play from office? thanks

Yes, the default AI is researching them way too late, around minute 30 or so. I've noticed that it doesn't have a lot of problems with reaching high population, but around minute 20, it just keeps sending tiny raids with siege. While annoying, they do very little damage unless the player is not careful. I know it eventually starts sending huge waves, but even those are not dangerous as it sends all units in a straight line. Unless you let all of their units reach your base (which is unlikely), you can kill them as they're approaching. If the AI can start using formations again while moving its troops (it did in earlier versions), it'll be much more powerful. You can set the AI to use default Box (or Closed Line) formation while moving a certain amounts of combat units. Then, when enemy units are in sight, order the AI to disperse the formation and attack. Enemy moved back? Start using the formation movement again, to stop abuses. If you can implement just these two things (earlier Forge upgrades and formation movement), you'll make the AI much stronger. EDIT: Example replay below. In its first wave, Petra sent 60 swordsmen, 20 of which were killed before the others had a chance to reach me. Had Petra knew what formations were, I would've been in trouble as she out-boomed me. Spart_VS_Rome.zip

The idea of reusing building capture logic for ships is excellent, but I believe it needs one critical addition: both ships should take hull damage during the boarding process. Otherwise, boarding becomes a no-risk, high-reward action that undermines naval warfare. Why it's important Historically, boarding was a brutal melee that damaged the ships themselves (broken oars, rails, rigging). In gameplay terms: if you can capture an enemy trireme for free just by having 10 hoplites on a transport, why bother building warships? Proposed mechanics (simple and implementable) Ongoing damage: During boarding, both ships lose a small percentage of HP per second. Damage rate depends on: Ratio of garrison military strength (fiercer fighting = more damage). Ship type (warships are tougher, transports are fragile). Technologies (e.g., "Grappling Hooks" could reduce damage for the attacker). Final penalty for captured ship: After a successful boarding, the captured ship suffers an additional HP loss (e.g., 15–20% of its current HP), representing the final deck struggle. Attacker also pays a price: The attacker's ship takes damage over time and loses some of its garrison (e.g., 2–4 units killed). Half of the surviving attacker's garrison (rounded up) transfers to the captured ship; the rest remain on the original ship. This is in addition to the unit transfer already discussed. Defender's garrison is entirely eliminated (killed or captured). Risk of sinking: If a ship's HP reaches zero during boarding, it sinks and the boarding is interrupted (or the surviving ship wins if the fight was almost over). Why this improves the game Balance: Boarding becomes a costly operation, not a free alternative to destruction. Tactical depth: You can soften a ship with ranged attacks, then board to capture it with fewer losses. Realism: Reflects ancient naval tactics (ram, then board). Interesting choices: Do you risk your transport full of elite infantry to capture an enemy flagship? Prevents snowballing: The captured ship starts with very low HP and requires repairs, making it vulnerable to immediate counter-attack. Example numbers for testing Base damage: 2% of max HP per second to each ship. Damage multiplier: (defender_strength + 1) / (attacker_strength + 1), clamped to [0.5, 2.0]. (If defender has twice as many soldiers, damage doubles.) Captured ship extra damage: –15% of its current HP after capture. Minimum boarding time: 5 seconds (prevents instant capture). Attacker garrison losses on success: 2–4 random units + half of the survivors move to the captured ship. Visual feedback Initially, simple effects would suffice: sounds of fighting, smoke/blood particles. Later, ship entanglement visuals (ropes or a boarding ramp) would be great. It would be nice if the ship's texture became more damaged. Regarding the "base garrison" idea from @Thalatta – I see its value for reducing micro, but my proposal works with the existing garrison system. Perhaps both could be combined in the future. I encourage everyone interested to share their thoughts. If there is support, I can help with testing and refining the numbers. Thanks for considering!

Yes, I was thinking, people build enough dropsites anyway to get fast access to resources, there's no point adding rules to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. But I think some simple addition to make new territory a bit more relevant is in order, after all, besides making other CCs more city-like, it has been mentioned in the past that there are not many reasons for expansion, that fields around CCs are unsightly and inaccurate, and even that CCs could be specialised. Maybe just adding a gap around the CC where no resources or structures can be located could tackle some things. I’m not sure how to easily make relevant building houses somewhere else though, and one has to be careful with snowballing.

The game is complicated enough as is. Let's just keep it simple, people. Improve what we can, but let's not add feature bloat. EDIT: For context, if we implement both of these, then that will break a lot of existing stuff, mainly involving the AI. And now you need to fix things that were working fine for decades.

Dirt decal to different wallset:

Civil centre:

Each iteration looks so much better

Theater also fixed:

Done!:

Yes, need to make a spherical+noise gradient to make the same fade out on the radius.

Maybe make it a bit more granular (some stones are fully opaque on the radius and some fully transparent) to mask the pure circular alpha mask?

Gradient to keep the last cobblestone and fade out:

thats what i did, but the shaders are mixed continously, texture is to decide wether is dirt or cobblestone, another to make the dust above the edges to blend seamsly with the cobblestone and the gradient is to give the fade out effect in the dust at the end so it blend with the enviroment. More complex but allows the render to capture the image whitout baking but just a single 15 secs rendering.

Why not just create a black/white texture with texture paint and use it as a mask? Seems way easier to me. If you want to combine more than two textures, use an RGB image as a texture mask.

I've made a vertex paint to be able to decide were it would be dirt (shader b) or cobblestone (shader a) then connected the fac output to the fac input of mix shader. Also a gradient at the corners so the dirt would fade out to blend with the enviroment but keeping the last cobblestone so it wound cut at the end. But for round ones is a bit more tricky to do, need to experiment with spherical gradient.

Well, but the number of units will be arbitrary. I think it's ok for people to decide if they want to chase units, or to do it with last CC standing. I thought about an intermediate possibility: if all CCs are taken, units lose HP, unless they are close to a Hero or garrisoned (maybe just on certain buildings).

Are you sure that it's just the order of the props in the actor file which defines which is above? I had the same problem with my olive mill and changing the actor file didn't solve the issue, it just appeared different each time. I think instead of or additionally to blending out at the edges, you should cut along the gaps between stones. You could avoid the triangle stones at the edge of round decals for example. Also I think you should scale the tiles down, they are too dominant imo. To easily edit it I strongly recommend using masks in the material node shader if you're not doing so already.