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Do chariots really have to be that fat? Feels like many QoM (Quality of Misery) measures over time, en masse since RC2. Some trees or houses and my heroine isn't where she's supposed to half the time; here she's stuck on a citizen. It's agonizing to frequently watch my champions take the scenic route around a mountain or something...

I think both of you have good points.  And of course, I'm going to encourage you the take a look at historical patch.  We have tried addressing this a little.  As there are now "serf" units which can still fight but not as well as CS, but are better at gathering res.  Then you have the merc type units that can build and fight, but not gather.  And of course you have the champion, elite fighters who cant gather or build.   I like the historical accuracy of the citizen soldier, and the more i read and learn about the different civilizations I agree its an important aspect of 0ad that makes it unique!

Its been talked about before, but citizen soldiers are quite fundamental to 0ad. There's a big discussion here:  Citizen soldiers allow for big battles that distinguish 0ad from aoe2, and they are quite historically accurate which is something 0ad strives to achieve. That being said, they contribute to snowballing, and mainly contribute to the "booming = turtling" phenomenon. I would like to not abandon citizen soldiers entirely, as it makes 0ad unique, but we can increase the importance of non-soldier gatherers by changing gather rates and/or by introducing a new "laborer" unit.

We all know that current citizen-soldiers can work and build buildings, as well as fight. This has been a major turn off for many people who came from Age of Empires and similar games. Instead of regurgitating all that's been said in the past, I'll just post a link to a comment that described it best: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32993448 So, I'll propose a system that's already present in some mods for the game, with a few caveats. The major changes would include the following. 1) Citizen-soldiers are no longer citizens. They are basic soldiers that can't gather any resource, but can still build some military buildings. Rationale is that this separates the responsibilities between your fighting units and economic units. This is a key trait that has defined RTS genre from the beginning. 2) Women are replaced by a "Citizen" unit that is randomly assigned a gender when created. These citizens are your economic units. They can gather resources, build all buildings, repair, etc. They don't have different gather rates, the difference is cosmetic. They cost only 50 food, so you don't waste wood on building any gatherers in the early game. Obviously, this requires a new model for male citizens. 3) Common soldiers can only be trained at the Barracks, Stables or Archery Ranges. Soldiers will not be able to build Civic Centers, nor should they be trainable from the Civic Centers. Some mercenary units that cost Metal could be made as an exception to this rule. 4) Common soldiers can still gain ranks as normal. No change is required here. Players can choose to train cheaper, more expendable units, or spend more resources for champions. I don't want to sound divisive, but the current model is very off-putting for someone who just wants to sit down and play a fun game. Different gather rates for females and male citizen-soldiers are the core of this issue. Why keep this feature and needlessly complicate the player's decision making in the early game? The player should gain options as he/she advances through the phases, builds up their town, researches upgrades. Not immediately at the start. Not to mention the balance considerations, the needless code that went into implementing a very questionable design decision. Even from the historical standpoint. Thank you for reading all this. If not, here's a TL:DR: Citizen-soldiers are an outdated concept, that has needlessly complicated the gameplay of this very promising RTS game for so long. The player must have a clear decision-tree at the start of each game, and gain options as he/she advances through the phases. The player shouldn't be punished for making gatherers (the wood cost). There should be a clear distinction between economic and military units. A new "Citizen" unit could replace the female worker, with a new male model added for each civilization. Citizen-soldiers could become just basic, expendable troops.

@cephalotus, then you haven't played the African Savanna map yet. The random and constant animal attacks were so annoying that I had to quit the game. Aggressive animals should be rare. Even in the wilds, the lions don't attack without a good cause.

I have something that might be a radical idea. Get rid of the capture system all together. It needlessly complicates the game. Just balance out the buildings so they are less susceptible to non-siege units, especially pierce damage. The game should be fun, first and foremost. Capturing building is not fun, it's a chore and another thing that needs to be coded/balanced against. The only exception could be neutral buildings that don't belong to a player at the start of a game. For buildings that become outside of a player's territory influence, make them rapidly lose hit points and burn down unless the player reclaims the territory.

Hi, I'm not dead! I guess it could be described as an anti-cheat system by some definitions, but I would refrain from calling it an anti-cheat because such a system would be easily thwarted by recompiling the game. Someone who really wanted to hide the use of mods would easily do so; this system would be a convenience feature to ensure that casual players don't accidentally break the rules. A real anti-cheat system would necessarily be a nonfree component bolted onto 0 A.D., because it would rely on obscurity to do its job effectively, which is to make it more challenging for players to hide modifications to their game client. I wouldn't support such an anti-cheat, because it goes against the values of free software. The system I am proposing is just a simple client-side check, done at the engine level, to ensure that the player does not join games with mod settings that are incompatible with the client (such as using ProGUI in a non-ProGUI game, or even using a mod that adds new game mechanics in a lobby that doesn't use the mod, to prevent OOS). As a security feature, this would be a joke. That's why I'm not calling it a security feature, but rather a convenience feature, because it makes it easier for those using the vanilla engine to comply with mod rules. It prevents accidental violation by someone who may be new to the lobby or unfamiliar with the different rules, but it does not prevent intentional violation, since this would always require nothing more than downloading a different EXE off the Internet. Great! Then don't change anything. One of the greatest aspects about free software is that people have the freedom to form their own communities around software. I've had a tone of urgency, as if the whole project will be wasted if we don't fix this one issue, but that actually isn't really true. Even if 0 A.D. started releasing every Beta version and beyond with a nonfree license (and to be clear, I don't think this is likely to happen), Wildfire Games will never have the power to take away Alpha 27 from those who already have it. If this community came to the conclusion that we can't afford to release the soruce code, or else cheaters will be unstoppable, that won't stop me (or anyone) from taking the work that's already done, and spin it in a different direction. If the whole lobby were oppressed by rules telling you what mods you are allowed to use, I can start my own lobby where such rules don't apply. What I'm trying to say is that we don't have to argue about whether or not GUI mods should be allowed, or what exactly constitutes cheating, as long as people are empowered to make that call for themselves, regardless of what other people think. As much as I value software freedom, and reject nonfree software, I will say that one of the best things about technological freedom is that it enables a more diverse and inclusive Internet. Nonfree social media has a habit of forcing everyone into one box, one way of using their technology. But in a free software world, anything goes, and people with the most disparate means of interacting with technology and the Internet can more easily coexist with each other. Part of this is understanding that people are going to vary in their undertanding of the very concept of freedom, and not letting this affect how you exercise your freedom. This means that a free-as-in-freedom lobby may very well have some players who don't want other players to use any mods when playing with them. I can't change the ways of these people, nor should I have to, and they also can't force me to adopt their rules in my own matches. We can all coexist peacefully, despite our very different viewpoints, and I think this is technological freedom at its best. So, if this is the current state of the multiplayer lobby, then no changes are necessary. But if the lobby does force all players in one particular direction, this still won't stop players from starting their own lobby with their own rules. This is because freedom is not something that is given to us; it is something inherent in our being, and Wildfire games cannot take it away from us, even if they never wrote another line of free code again. 0 A.D. as more than the multiplayer mode It looks like the thread verges off from there, and now everyone is discussing the size of our community: player retention rates, proportions of lobby regulars to the (possibly) thousands of players who play privately and never interacted with the community, and a few others. I want to make it clear that this is a totally different discussion than before, but I don't want to shut it down; I do think this is worth discussing here. I think it's important to note that 0 A.D. is definitely more than a multiplayer RTS experience. Even if the network code is never fixed, and every match has at least one cheater, the game, as a whole, would not be a complete failure. People who are dissatisfied with the multiplayer experience will still find ways to have fun in 0 A.D., whether that means playing singleplayer campaings, or setting up LAN parties with trusted friends. I wholeheartedly agree that Beta 1 should definitely have most of the work done in the area of singleplayer, as this is where we are lacking the most. Practically the only thing there is to do in singleplayer is bash my head against a very dumb A.I., which is fun for a while, for a new player, but lacks replayability once a player has mastered the basic mechanics of the game. I agree with all of this. I really think we should address the information leak problem by designing the network code so that the game doesn't have to sync with all players. This is a gaping hole in the network protocol, and should be treated as such. I believe that this is possible, and it would totally fix all information cheating, leaving only ProGUI and similar mod users to complain about. I don't see how this wouldn't be a massive win for the multiplayer side of 0 A.D.. But at the same time, we also need to keep in mind that the lobby, and the multiplayer modes, are just one part of our great game, and we shouldn't get so hyper-focused on a flaw there, that we miss out on opportunities to improve the project more broadly.