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I'm loving a18 so far! Thanks for all the work you guy did to make it happen. What I like: -Buildings are harder to kill. This means to have to actualy plan your assault on towns, and makes the game about strategy, rather than just speed. A well designed and defended town once again useful! -Formations are back, and I love the defensive pikemen. They look great in the fancy tight formations. -Spear cav are more effective against archers. Really helps balance them out. I've had success sending 10-15 champion cav against large groups of archers. -It does feel more balanced now, with spam being easier to counter. If someone spams spears, I make ranged cav and kill them all. If they spam archers, I make spear cav and mow them down. If they spam sword cav, I make pikes and kill them all. I always likes this dynamic in a16, and its great to see it somewhat back. What could be improved: -Rams and elephants are tough to kill. Maybe have them stop moving when attacked by hand to hand units? I had some luck using pikes to stop elephants from reaching buildings, since they seem to stop tier target from moving. -Archer spamming is still prevalent. Maybe make spear/sword cav even more effective against them? -Buildings are maybe too tough to kill in age 2. Maybe make CC and barracks strong, while making houses and storehouse weak? I like the idea of a tough to kill CC, but it would be nice to be able to raid and kill storehouses and the like. -I think the bolt shooters need a redo. They just don't work well in the game. They were really weak in a16, and now they are so cranked up its werid. They are just too slow and expensive with the pace of the game. Have you thought about having a much shorter deploy time and faster fire rate? They are supposed to kill units, but with the 5 second deploy and 5 second fire rate, they just cant keep up. By the time they get setup, the target is long gone. Is this why the bolt moves a million miles an hour? I've only played about 10 games so far, but I'm really enjoying this one more than a17. I know everyone seems to hate counters, but I think its great when every unit has a strength as a weakness. My idea of fun balance is not that every unit is equal in a 20 vs 20 battle, but more 10 cav killing 20 archers, and then those 10 cav getting killed by 6 pikemen. And then those 6 pikemen get killed by 20 archers. Its not always about having numbers, but having the right units as the right time. I really like the circular wheel of counters.

Yeah I know what you mean. I don't usually triangulate until I export it to the game in case there is the need to change anything in the mesh. Running anim:

I figured i'd make a high poly version to bake the texture

Neat

Skin wobbling around would be excessive IMO, there needs to be a bone for each part that we want skin wobbly parts and I think there's no need for such detail in a RTS. I've added more weight to the head, animated the mouth, flapping ears (not too much since they don't have inner geometry), and fixed the tail movement. There's some stretching in the lower part of the chest that I couldn't get rid of due to the mesh topology, but it shouldn't be a problem from the game's camera perspective.

Is for Imperial Romans(80 AD-280 AD), not for our Punic war based republican Romans

But remember that licenses are your responsibility (as mod maker). If you use mix any art from 0 A.D. with other art, that other art has to be released under CC-BY-SA too. So you probably need permission for that.

This thread is for collecting feedback on Alpha 18 Release balance and gameplay. I will try to update this post with the most common/prominent/verified responses. Approved for SVN: Ranged unit damage nerf (lesser nerf for skirmishers). Landed in r16759.Mauryan Champion Swordsman damage nerf. Landed in r16760.Decrease Crush Armor for female citizens. Landed in r16757.Decrease HP of female citizens. Landed in r16757.Decrease peacock HP. Landed in r16757.Reduce phasing costs and phasing time. Landed in r16758.Increase fortress cost and build time. Landed in r16760.Nerf garrisoned ships. Landed in r16776.Buff Melee cavalry (most likely HP) Landed in r16775.Ideas for Discussion: Nerf Archer walkspeed.Decrease overall game time.Decreasing female citizen train timeCatapults: Underpowered or overpowered?Buff sword cavalry damage against buildingsNumerical balance between female citizens and citizen soldiersA separate thread will be created in due time (for tidiness) for feedback on the SVN balance.

Never know what future holds.

This is a known bug and #3119 basically covers it, normal and parallax are broken.

It doesn't all need to happen at once though, there is probably enough work for Atlas to last a year, but it should make it to SVN too One idea is to preview the heightmap textures before applying them. Not to preview the actual terrain, only the texture, to know which one is being selected if the names aren't clear.

For Empires Ascendants is some off, but not for second part

I like them too. I just think that farms should'ne be exactly rectangular but have rounded corners (maybe even iregular not symmetrical in all corners).

I definitely agree on this. Factor 8 sounds good. Related post (and topc in general): http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17809#entry278244 (Not sure the wording is appropriate as well as the numbers) While we're at it: - It would be nice to remove all hardcoded unit parameters from RMGEN and have the engine give those parameters to RMGEN at start - namely: CELL_SIZE (4, size of a terrain tile in meters) HEIGHT_UNITS_PER_METRE (732, How many height units fit into a meter) MAX_HEIGHT_RANGE (0xFFFF / HEIGHT_UNITS_PER_METRE ~= 90, maximum heigt values in meters - used in RMGEN - supported by the engine - using the range 0 to 0xFFFF). Better just to take the 0xFFFF IMO. All to be found in binaries/data/mods/public/maps/random/rmgen/library.js

V2

How do you feel having the Song/Reform 1 wonder be Su Song's Clock Tower instead? To me it feels more 'significant'. And its probably better if we don't have both wonders be pagodas!

I'm back !

Hmm, I don't see problem with the height thing, maybe clarify? Length--Just have min and max length. About boats, ancient bridge were not the big bridge of today. Only small watercraft would fit beneath them, certainly not warships! So, the bridge could block boat movement and be perfect realistic.

Technically, they are and they do, with planes and other flying things The answer is simply to have a separate "pathfinder" for such cases (walking on entities, be they bridges, walls, or other things). The hardest part would be combining them so units can transition between the different pathfinders, but it would be extremely cool. On a related note, I think we'll end up with multiple pathfinders anyway, I'm quite skeptical that one alone can handle infantry, cavalry, vehicles, and boats in a reasonable manner, but we'll see. Building bridges would be tough as well, making them adjust to different heights and lengths.

Nice work I think the heightmap texture should be selected in the main "new map" dialog, not after you select "Apply". Apply should be consistent in simply creating the new map. Also, are the player settings necessary for empty and heightmap? (I can't think of why someone would set them there) These are just UI issues, I have ideas for other features and changes, but I don't think we should try to do everything at once.

Contrary to Michael's view, I think they actually look better than our current farms, not worse.

0 A.D. has a tool to import models from spring: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/browser/ps/trunk/source/tools/springimport https://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23811

It's the called "black marble wall" found in several important carth structures of the era which represented high status and wealth. Nah, just kidding, thanks for pointing it out av93. Thankfully its an easy fix, I'll take a look at it when I get home

Minor improvement: the engine now supports more types of PNGs including grayscale and indexed color, this can reduce our texture size in SVN. For example, ptol_struct_spec.png saved as grayscale would be 1.57MB instead of 2.47MB (it would be a waste to only commit this conversion though, so I don't recommend it, but for future modifications we might as well). It shouldn't make any difference for the releases since we convert all the textures to DDS anyway, but it's nicer for modders to not have to worry about what kind of PNG the game accepts

Show template names of selected objects. Love this feature!!

I think there should be a blood on off switch.

Hooray I got it to glow, it looks like postproc = true was the culprit. Thank you very much for helping me figure that out: