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As an attempt to rerail the thread a little, and also cuz suggested by Stanislas69, here again the changelog of the balancing branch, so its easier to discuss certain points and have an overview (I added a little, sure I forgot something, may scythe check this ?): Changelog - Differences from SVN--------------------------------Units- Cavalry have been made weaker to pierce damage, but more resilient against hack.- Rams can now attack all units. In compensation, all organic units get a default of 3 Crush armor.- Ballistas and Onager have a much longer range and vision.- Ballistas deal much more damage.- Healers now cost only food since metal is quite rare.- Elephants now are significantly stronger but more expensive.- The basic formations have been disabled for the time being (with a surprising performance benefit).- Female Citizens train much faster.- Elite Iberian Skirmishers have been nerfed.- All units attack faster.- Slingers deal both crush and pierce damage.- All hard bonuses have been taken out.- Swordsmen cost less metal, but cost a little wood.- Seleucides have ranged infantry in phase1- Walkspeed for all units increased- Gathering capacities decreased because of new techs, starts now with 10 - Mauryan spearman now cost 50food/50wood instead of 50food/40woodStructures- All structures are now weaker against crush and hack damage.- Civic Centers have a better garrison multiplier in an attempt to combat 2v1 rushes. (arrow rate increased from 3arrows/s to 5 arrows/s, also arrow range +50%)- Walls and Wall Towers take significantly longer to build. (Walls 10-30 seconds, walltowers 120s)- Significantly nerfed the Roman Entrenched Army Camp.- Farms have increased HP and more armor against hack and pierce attacks.Technologies- Some technologies have been made expensive (wip)- Some pair technologies have been unpaired.- Added a powerful tech to the wonder. (increases pop max +50, costs 1000 wood/stone/metal)- Phasing now increases health to all citizen soldiers.

Yes, though a resignation should be noticed ofc. (And I'm honored you reserved a place for me in one of your lists)

Attributes just make the stats blurry because e.g. if (as in your example) "strength" grants "hitpoints", "strength" is meaningless and so we should use hitpoints... Heroes that are hard to kill and also can kill themselves are extremely unrealistic BTW in general. Historical "heroes" are made of luck, non-combat skills (like commanding armies, impressive speeches, political assertiveness, convincing argumentation, ..) and "historical", social or political glorification during and/or after their lifetime (In general they where not stronger, sturdier, more agile, just maybe more determined/clever/egocentric/ignorant or had other better than average - but not necessarily the best - mental/psychological abilities but in the first place they had luck to have their abilities and opinions fitting social reality at the given time enabling them to have a big impact back on it).

I don't know if it's realisable, but I have two ideas to improve atlas to make smoother and more realistic maps. (1) Layer system At first the bedrock(s) and soils should be defined. Multiple bedrocks could be possible if it's composed of different sediments. Like the soils, their appearence can be restricted to specific heights.Add the biome with basic textures: grass, shrub, plants, sand, forestfloor, cliffs and roads. (first layer)Implement the second layer. This could be to remove 25%, 50% and 75% of the first layer, so that the soil (dirt, clay) or the rock appear or to add 25%, 50% or 75% of snow or gravel/stones to the first layer. This way the transition between the main textures would be smoother. For example adding gravel and stones below a cliff, slope texturing with a percentage of rock/cliff or giving the map a touch of snow without changing the whole map.(2) Biome ageing Instead of having many different textures it would be easier to melt them down to basic textures. For example the temperate biome: dense grass, thin grass, grass herbal, grass clovers, grass mossy, grass plants, plants.Implement an ageing status (like "sky set"), for the temperate biome this could be: spring, early summer, late summer, autumn, winter no snow, winter medium snow, winter much snow. In spring the grass would be fresh and green, some parts might be flooded or wet. In spring and early summer some flowers might be added to the textures. In early summer the grass is taller and darker. In late summer the grass dries and in autumn it browns and deciduous trees change colour. In autumn and winter the layersystem of point 1 could be usefull to reveal mud/dirt and add snow. The ageing could also occure depending the isohypses.Other biomes could work similarly. Like dry season, early wet season (short grass) and late wet season (tall grass) for the subtropics (India, Sahel, south China, Mesoamerica) and steppe (+winter). Or spring, early s., late s., autumn and winter (rainy) for the mediterranean.I think these ideas could improve the random map creation and make life easier for manual map designing. What do you think?

It´s all in the zip Northern Highlands.zip

Yes, auras are what heroes should be good for IMO and all of the auras I see here are reasonable (might need some balancing but that's for the beta stage). And making heroes sturdy sounds reasonable to me to "simulate" they where well guarded and enable them to actually make use of their aura. (Attack power should be normal though IMO. Just by being sturdier they're allready stronger in combat than any other unit)

Reminds me of how I use to crouch with shooter game (Pressing the Left-ctrl with my handpalm instead of a finger)

Every time I play another RTS who hasn't WASD keys to move around I instantly hate the game (for the first few minutes). It really gives a speedup to me. I think however that camera rotating is less important. (And shouldn't actually be placed so near to such important hotkeys)

zzippy I don't play so you can have a nearly full rise of the east mod, a millenium ad mod, and an aristeia mod. I'll leave now

I can see why some people wouldn't like these changes, and I'm not going to say they're good. What I am going to say however, is that on paper they look all right. However skirm-cav vs deer needs to be fixed. I think people need to play a lot of games on the current build and see how things go from there. the meta-game has, for sure, been thrown upside down. so it's pretty normal for old strats to not work anymore.

training maps with tutorial Ai and barbarians at the Gates mode can be good idea for practice, the problem is create defenses in little time and expand the economy like rush player some maps is hard crate army and gatherers in same time.

"thx, didn't know how the spread changes turn out. I wondered what less than 1 changes mean. Having no cavalry units in village phase looks okay to me. Perhaps make them all depend on a cavalry tech, which itself is auto-researched when town-phase is reached. (or make all cavalry depend on the town phase if that's prefered). You will find a solution." If there arent any cavalry at the first age, and if cavalry id only available at age2, it finally aims to kill the rush on 0ad. Rushing without cavalry is not a rush, or at least a really bad rush, infantry just walks too slowly... By the way, a RTS game where you cant rush, is in my opinion a bad RTS game. The fact you cant prevent or disturb the evolution of your opponent economy is huge mistake, cause rush is , to be short, the most important strategy in RTS game.

A brutal fortress in a beautifully made map, Mediterranean Cove:

They were moved temporarily to a git branch to avoid merge conflicts, but they will not be removed forever. So it's ok to keep discussing about these balancing changes