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I like having multiple actor variations for the Royal Kurgan. Good idea. Ideally, I would agree with you. But I think with some civilizations, cultures, factions, that it's more difficult to pick a specific structure (see: Cimbri). So, picking a type of structure is okay, in my mind, especially if it's one of that culture's iconic structures. Kurgans definitely fit that bill! I like @Grautvornix's suggestion of having multiple actor variations.

And that's perfectly fine, Normal should indeed mean an experienced RTS player crushing the game after a couple of weeks. Easy should be for RTS casuals, Very Easy for RTS beginners, and Extremely Easy could be basically what Sandbox is (removing the name Sandbox just to be more consistent with nomenclature). One would then have Hard, Very Hard and Extremely Hard, ideally quite separated between them, for something actually challenging (Petra stupidity allowing). On these levels, unit upgrades should indeed happen, but it seems for some reason it's somehow hard to code. In any case, I have not seen a 1v7 on Very Hard yet, after all overwhelming numbers can sometimes make for plain stupidity.

Well, a big part of "war" and "strategies" is logistics, and defending supply lines gives a depth beyond smashing against towers and fortresses. Funnily enough yesterday I was thinking about dropsites having a resource count and maximum capacity. You would indeed need to think how to automatise stuff to reduce micro as much as possible. For more economic buildings, just go more realistic: a mine could be built on some mineral resources (like in Rise of Nations), what you extract is ores, then a smelter or foundry would give you the metals, which can be sent to the blacksmith, or others. Maybe that's too much, but games like Caesar III work like that. For example, the idea was that wood can be stored in some warehouse, from there it can be sent to construction, or exported, or if you build a woodshop it can make furniture, which can be exported for more money, or sent to the market, which your population acquires, again maybe a bit too much, but that's the idea. Check that game maybe.

@Thalatta, while I somewhat agree with you, the truth is that the AI has some serious flaws, and games against it start to feel samey after a while. Case in point is the 1v3 game that @ittihat_ve_terakki has shared. The AI is just plain stupid, doesn't upgrade its units and wastes them frequently on useless attacks. Only after reaching the City phase, the attacks start to become huge. Any experienced RTS player that sticks with the game for a couple of weeks will be able to crush Medium Petra.

Exactly. I've actually thought about all this the other way around: I wanted to introduce "upgradeable" Achievements (which I enjoyed in games from Kingdom Rush to Sins of a Solar Empire), and at the same time I came across difficulty levels and PvP focus comments, so it all fell into place. I think from combining all these problems and views, a nice solution that makes everyone (or most) happy can be achieved.

Thanks for the comprehensive answer! @Thalatta Indeed, there are many different playing styles - from competitive MP to relaxed SP (my favourire as an elderly guy). My intention was to start a discussion on naming the various playing levels and referring to them in a way that does not discourage people from trying out the game. Probably too much concerns as everyone should be able to find out that there is an easier setting if a game is too difficult as a beginner when set to "medium", same as there are means to make it more difficult (increased diffulty setting, more adversaries, higher speed, less resources etc.). Just, when initially "opening the box" default setting should be such that people can apprecviate the beauty of the game and its historicaly-appealing gameplay while challenges increase slowly.

The problem is that Very Easy and Easy should indeed be for kids, elders, and anyone who is in it for history, graphics, whatever, but just doesn't want to get rushed in 10 or 15 mins. Sandbox is not the solution because apparently not much happens, and some time ago someone said “the jump between Sandbox and Very Easy is too big”. So, it does seem that an extra easy level is needed, combined with that Normal shouldn’t be "for players having reached some intermediate playing level", or "about the level a somewhat competent player can beat consistently after 1-3 tries". Competent for 0 A.D. then? And measured by whom? Normal is not this in RTS, there's always certain implied equivalence between games, and this is a known issue, it has been brought up, I remember someone saying that it's the early attacks that get the newbies. And, again, the game states "the default AI level is quite challenging for new players", something I've never seen in any game before, a completely artificial situation, one shifts labels and no such thing happens, no clarification needed, there shouldn't be one in the first place. I don't understand the need to tell people that never had any problem in Normal/Medium in other RTS to stay in Easy or Very Easy until they git gud, and leave without a reasonable challenge those who might be below that level. Normal is so not normal that training times are around 3 times faster when compared to basic units and techs from StarCraft 2 in Brutal, which is ludicrous. I don't think most people wanting to explore the game in general would find that enjoyable. I think I’ve said it already: default options should be friendly for beginners, the vast majority of which will be more (or only) interested in SP. This paragraph might seem a bit offtopic, but I’ll connect everything with the difficulty levels. As known, this game caters too much to PvP: clickiness, rushes and tryharding have priority over strategy, tactics, and city-building. When someone complains, they have been told they want “a certain game experience that this project doesn't cater to”. There are many problems with that if the idea is to grow the game. Over 90% of gamers care only about SP (AoE numbers, similar for most). On the AoE forum, someone asks “why do developers struggle to design good RTS?”, and someone gives 7 points: half baked single player campaign, missing skirmish mode, missing editor tools, cliche soundtrack, making only multiplayer focused game, blatantly copying other games in genre and cheating AI. For 0 A.D., I think the MP issue is among the most blatant ones (not to mention the lack of a proper campaign, but I think other things should be fixed before that). It cannot be that if some tech is not optimal for MP then there are proposals to remove it. As someone said, they are there for SP, and that’s not a minor thing, at all. Just ignore the icon. Or better, propose how to make it interesting also for MP. Of course, there’ll be people saying “these changes are not part of the proposal and style that 0 A.D. seeks”, which doesn’t tend to be true if one actually reads the 0 A.D. Vision Document. Coming back to difficulty levels, maybe the AI is hard to code, but, as mentioned, people don’t like cheating AI (or advantages). I wonder if those gathering rate and trade gain modifications can be removed (except maybe on the hardest levels, if needed for a challenge), and the AI to be about when to attack, army sizes, defenses, and how efficiently other things are handled (techs, eco, etc). If Easy is the usual Medium, then that should be Normal, Very Easy should be Easy, and the apparent gap with Sandbox could be filled with a new Very Easy, and maybe another Extremely Easy, since the now nameless hardest level could acquire an Extremely Hard label. Maybe research, training and building rates should be independent speed options, and could be labelled as Normal 4x or 3x present times, some name for a possible 2x, and a Competitive 1x present times, to be used in PvP as it stands now. Regarding the speed of the game in general, I think barely slower would be more attractive to most, for example a Normal game speed of 0.8x the present one, making a Competitive 1.25x the present 1x, and 2.5x would be the present 2x Insane. To simplify things, “Presets” could be used, the "Normal" one selecting all Normal options, and the same with “Competitive”. All this not only makes the game more palatable for new players that will try things with default Normal settings, but also doesn’t change absolutely anything as things stand now if the Competitive Preset is selected. Besides, I think there's a way to incentivise people to play with Competitive Presets, with the hope that then they’ll have a go at MP (having more players in general should increase the ones going for MP anyway), and that is with Achievements. They are fun and addictive to get, and are good content for SP, giving objectives to be achieved in many possible ways. Maybe accounts or profiles would need to be introduced, so under a given one all played games would count for the Achievements. Each Achievement would be some nice icon, which would get decorated with background wings and lightning bolts (I have an idea to model them on some Roman scutum emblems) if obtained for harder difficulties and speed combinations, respectively, possibly handled with different Presets.

@Emacz You are right - I only play SP (both vanilla and Wow's Delenda Est). I have to admit, I never tried your mod so far, but it is on my must-do-next list. Love to try it out and will be happy to let you know my feedback. As for all modders - thank you for taking this effort to introduce so many useful features/try out adaptations of the game mechanics. This is definitiely advancing the game!

@Grautvornix I forget you mostly/only play SP? You have tried our version of the game though right? Its already has some changes to game play, maybe not quite as extreme as what we are currently discussing... but units are slower, there are more variations in gather capabilities you have some civs with females and then they also have serfs, or civs with civilians which gather better than CS! You have your CS, some civs have slaves. Ranges/dmgs/health have been modified a bit... of course I love it and want more people to try it out and let us know what they like and don't like. But some are too hesitant based on a lot of the differences with the base game.

Thanks - but it really is a conversion of gameplay and will require a lot of effort. (nevertheless, as you can tell from my enthusiasm - I firmly believe this could be a fascinating change (needless to say that I loved playing settlers in the past... )

That sounds good Grautvornix

What we are discussing is a considerable change in gameplay, but I believe it coud be a quite interesting feature to stimulate more complex strategies than "just" booming or turtling. Frankly, the name "storehouse" somehow implies that goods are stored there. When the storage capacity is exceeded, no further goods can be accepted. Processing of goods (to invest into new buildings, techs or train units) can acutally only be done from your civ's "accoun"t (the to status bar on the screeen). Goods can be added onyl if they are delivered to a CC or fortress. If we store stuff in storehouses, capturing should provide the stored goods to the new owner. If you destroy them, you get the standard loot only. Just, storing goods in a storehouse is great - but you need to retrieve them and add them to your civ's account. this is true both for your own storehouses and the ones captured, i.e. in any case you would need to send some transport to forward the goods to your nearest CC or fortress - and protect them from attacks. Traders could be used for that initially, but later on we can introduce specialized transport modes: civilians/slaves, donkeys/oxen, horse carts depending on the phase. Attacking the transporters would yield the transported goods to your account (very much like traders currently).

we do have some civs that can do stuff like that based on what we have learned so far about them.

I think you only get loot if you destroy it, I don't know though. What if you had a metal trickle from your units, maybe 1 metal per unit per 10 seconds, it could be like taxes

well right now you when you capture a building you get "loot" right? its determined in the file storehouses give you X loot, farmsteads Y loot... base game has farmstead and storehouse as both 20 wood as loot. To play around with the idea on CWA we changed farmstead to 75 food and storehouses to 25 metal 25 stone 25 wood....

Hello, nice man. I like this mod. There is an issue in the 12.1 update, simulation\templates\template_player.xml or simulation/templates/template_player.xml is causing statistics not to show after match because FemaleCitizen was replaced with Civilian in 28.0 and some counter.js file got explosive. I just copied the xml from the mod, added Civilian to the UnitClasses tag and it seems to show the stats just fine now. Hope that helps Take cool

And you will want to guard you dropsites. What happens if a dropsite gets destroyed, is there just treasure there? Would markets store the resources that you get from trading, or would it auto go the the civic?

@Emacz YES! I do like it. It changes quite some characteristics of the game though. need to watch economy much more closely (and will create possibly more calls for automation )

Hahha I like it, although Ironically one of the ideas behind this project was to speed up eco a little to put more of a focus on the "war" and "strategies" I also feel like if capturing a storehouse with say 500 wood in it, may give more people incentive to try different strategies and take more risks early on? So its not just boom for 10 minutes, max popuulation and attack.

Yes. Maybe we need to focus a little more on economy, any ideas how we could do that?

That is a great idea! Reminds me a bit of the settlers game (settlers 1, 2 or 3) where you needed to organize transport of goods (and further processing) in addition to just mining/harvesting/collecting them. Puts also a bit more focus on the economy than warfare.

The test version would take a couple of years!

sure you can start playing around with it and we can have a test version to work on it!

@Deicide4u your are right, an this was really not an important suggestion. The issue seems to be (according to some messages I've seen over the years in this forum) that newbies for this game overestimate their capability (like - exaggerated - "Easy is for kids, I have played many RTS already and will manage a serious challenge") an then don't like the game as the AI is perceived too hard. I agree that one should learn to play first. The game - while it should be challenging - should be fun as well for newcomers.

If you are ok if it takes a couple of years, I could code it