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Hey all, Yesterday I successfully played my first multiplayer game through the lobby, which was fantastic. Had a great time, so big thanks to everyone that helped get it running! I did, however, run into one problem. I tried setting up multiplayer games with my brother multiple times on this alpha and the last one with no success, until yesterday when a very helpful person in the lobby told me how to set up port forwarding. As a non-coder, a casual gamer, and not that tech-savvy of a person I've never had to use or even heard of port-forwarding before. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to experience this problem, especially as the audience for 0 AD grows. A lot of us casual gamers enjoy playing but really have no idea how to troubleshoot. The article on how to set up a multiplayer game was helpful, but I do have two more suggestions. 1. Is there a way to make the "disconnect-- unknown error" messages a little more clear? Or to give a list of possible common problems so somebody like me can have some idea where to start? 2. Perhaps the WFGbot in the lobby could have a default chat saying something like "make sure your port forwarding and firewall are set up to play 0 AD, more information available here" and link to the article on multiplayer games? Once again, thanks so much! I just want to make sure that the multiplayer community has a chance to really thrive and that new players aren't turned off instantly by being unable to connect.

So back to first one. Don't know if cropping like this is good Happy New Year

While testing the Alarm from CC I ended up having most of my support units just standing outside CC when it was full. Not really taking cover from attack. So I thought that units – at least support units – should be able to garrison also inside houses. That would be just logical since houses are supposed to be the structures where people live. Just adding <GarrisonHolder> to template_structure_civic_house.xml does the trick. Now in case of alarm from CC support units will seek cover also from nearby houses. Houses could also be used for slow recovery in case of injuries, going home to heal works slowly. To have fighting units inside houses would be a way to hide them from attacking units and would allow structuring of the city in a way that makes "honeypots" for attackers only to find themselves surrounded. That would mean attacker needing to read the city structure and put more emphasis on houses. In IRC there was an opinion to have houses only for support units, so here is now three different patches: house_as_garrison.patch: Every civ could garrison 3 units in a house, both support units and infantry fighting units. Houses would have healing effect of 0.2. house_as_garrison_v2: Like previous, but civs with PopulationBonus 10 could garrison 6 units in a house. house_as_garrison_onlysupport.patch: Like v2 but only support units could be garrisoned and no healing effects. house_as_garrison_onlysupport_healing.patch: Like previous, but healing effect of 0.2. Feedback and discussion would be appreciated. house_as_garrison_onlysupport_healing.patch house_as_garrison_onlysupport.patch house_as_garrison_v2.patch house_as_garrison.patch

It may be good to include a way to indicate a new version is available, plus give the user the ability to directly go to the website (download page). This can be put somewhere in the main menu, I suppose. Releases are not that frequent to become really cumbersome to go to the website each time. An actual updater is way more difficult and prone to errors. Fiddling with svn/git is not an option for regular users due to the need for having svn/git installed first, and having to do the compilation second (which is error prone). Plus, the svn version requires quite a bit more disk space (±550 Mb for the regular OS X dmg package, my svn checkout is closer to 7 Gb). As for what could be in A16: I assume the updated GUI will see a further rollout, although it's not mentioned so far in this thread?

To the point. Pikes get in the game a good bonus VS cavalry, which is nice an accurate, but it bugs me the fact that VS swordmen they are totally useless. If you have, lets say, 50 pikemen and 30 romans appear on that spot you are totally @#$%ed when, actually, romans found it really difficult to beat those factions that used pikes (Macedon) So... why not implement a pike phalanx feature? Like... if a pikeman has another pikeman right by his side they get a defense protection vs melee attacks. That way they could last long against enemy swordmen and hold them back, until their lines are finally broken. 1 pikeman alone can't do a thing against a roman infantryman, but a good formation of pikes should destroy any enemy while they remain in their phalanx formation. Hoplite phalanx and shield wall: If the feature mentioned before gets implemented it would be nice to also implement some variations. The hoplites are another unit that I find too weak vs enemy swordman. I know swordmen are suposed to beat hoplites, but they should resist a bit longer. If they are next to each other they could get a little melee defense bonus (much lighter bonus than the one for pikes, because pikes are far superior) but also some extra bonus on defense against enemy arrows. On the other hand some swordman units like the ones from the romans or the silver shields could have the shield wall feature, which is basicly the same as the hoplite phalanx, just that with even less melee defense bonus). This way pikes could last longuer against any enemy infantry and, in big groups, beat enemy swordmen, though they would still be weak against arrows and other missiles. And in the mean time, both hoplites and trained swordmen could resist arrows better if they maintain a good formation and would also make all great battles last a big longer. This 3 minifeatures would also help hellenic and roman infantry look more capable against barbarian ones, and at the same time making gauls, indians and iberians more usefull in skirmishes rather than in face to face large combats.

Yeppers, read the other 10 or so threads and discussion on formations. It'll be implemented one day.

Formations haven't been implemented yet, but the existing ones do give a decent range of tactical options plus, pike units can strike two units deep, given they have a longer melee range but of course in this alpha stage, the best thing to do is to have a varied army. back your syntagma with priests and archers for the time being

Xanthipus* Overpower tech?

If we felt particularly crazy, we could use square root tables to eliminate the computational load at the expense of memory.

Unfortunately no. We're actually still working to get some of RedFox's work during his limited work prior to the fundraiser added to the game. Since the fundraiser wasn't quite as successful as we hoped it's going to be hard to find a developer who could work for only about a six month period yet integrate into the team and maintain their work in the future. Fortunately, open-source volunteer development is coming along pretty well with incremental performance improvements being worked on. Sorry I don't have better news.

I was thinking more of a limited time for each game (i.e. 60 minutes, 120 minutes). When a user tried to join while a game was in progress, he would get a message notifying him that the game is already in progress and perhaps giving him an option to join at the next time junction. Just an idea.

No, it's not AoE (at least not vanilla) Furthermore I prefer the first handcart. Also the wooden part of the roof looks to flat. You should try to tilt it slightly and use a rougher texture.

Yo estoy hasta arriba con mis videos y no puedo prometer nada, pero me ofrezco a doblar todo lo que queráis. Si queréis hacer un tutorial podéis pasarme algo que querráis que lea y os hago la voz en off. Luego lo montáis y asi tenéis narrador para los videos oficiales. En eso no tardo mucho y se me da muy bien.

Now that the game is better optimised I'll continue making more and more gameplay, but mostly only in 1 VS 1. Never with more than 4 players. Now the game is pretty much playable and 'lagless' in 1 VS 1', but it needs further optimisation for it to be totally playable with more than 3 players on the map. Please dev team, make this your priority.

i'm using blender, I will test "decimate". thx for the tips

If you're using Blender, you can use the "Decimate" modifier to automatically remove triangles without affecting your mesh shape too much.

Btw, the other problem is that moving siege towers aren't attackable (units keep chasing them without attacking). But this should be fixed in a few days.

Note that we aren't at version 15, but at version 0.0.15 for now. Or to omit all the zeros, "Alpha 15".

that very good idea, like VLC in early versions.

OK, thanks for the pointer, here are my two cents: I agree that some of the sounds are a little too modern (especially that high synth-bell-like sound). It can be nice to have one, easily recognizable melody for it, and just have it played on different instruments for the different civs. Personally, I like that you used a percussion swell before the melody, makes it stand out. Pausing the music may be a little intrusive in terms of continuity, but the music can certainly be dimmed for the duration of the sound, for emphasis. If you like, send me the percussion swell you made and I'll record a nice, uniform melody on it with the instruments I used in the score: The Spanish guitar for Iberia, the treble / bass tin whistles for Gaul / Celtica, the bouzouki for the Athenian factions, the mandolin for the Romans, the duduk for Carthage, the fretless guitar for the Mauryans, the oud for Egypt and the Saaz for Persia. Then for phase 2 reach I can orchestrate the melody, or add a second percussion swell on the end of the effect, or maybe record some other gratifying sound, like chimes or a harp glissando. On another note, I do agree with Michael - cheering would be a great addition to these SFX Omri EDIT: I just now saw that LAVS did send a message to me asking for my opinion, I just didn't get the notification and failed to notice it until now... Sorry.

Personally I'm against to get more Hellenistic civs. Are too much. And we can't have any far Asian or from other continents. But I know I can wait beyond to "empires besieged".

Newcivs: if you clean and build the workspaces every time, you are losing a lot of time. Such a script isn't wanted, because the required steps depend on the actual changes. Most of the time, a make will do.

I don't think a SVN can work for normal user as Updater, if you noticed the SVN are no more stable than a release. But we can do more stable updates and less periodically than a SVN and more than a release.

Some major points behind this whole debate: -animals in 0 A.D. fit three roles: be food source, be small nuisances to villagers so you have to worry about them, be decorative. -most sharks don't attack stuff just like that. The two main exceptions are bull sharks, which tend to attack in shallow water, and pelagic shark (such as the whitetip) which are very opportunistic predators because of food scarcity. -we do not have amphibious units. Sharks, even large great whites, can hardly sink vessels. There are recorded cases, but it's oustandingly rare, and extremely unlikely, particularly given the size of our ships. Therefore, sharks don't have melee attacks because that would be unrealistic. If we ever have amphibious units, it is a possibility that we'll add melee attacks to sharks. We'll see. However, for example, it might be good to have pelagic sharks and coastal sharks, the latter attacking only if amphibious units get in high seas. This would be a relatively realistic way of telling the player "units can't just swim forever". About lions and such: those don't really attack humans either, but could if they feel threatened and so on. For the purpose of the game and fitting point 2, they probably should.