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This is some university research project related to hidden transmission of textual data via multiplayer sessions of RTS games (0 A.D. is used as an example). There is a link to a related github repo in the video description and it in turn contains a link to the related paper: Games Without Frontiers: Investigating Video Games as a Covert Channel

He needs to ally with you too.

This game is incredible guys I host everyday, and for some reason I stomp everybody. This game is wonderful. There's an intelligence to it, whether intentional or not, but I'm not intelligent enough to explain it. It's not a re-hash of rtses, it's an advancment into the future with new ideas that make rtses better. Considering this game was made by volunteers and people not being paid, this game is an achievement. The people who have contributed the most to this game, and especially those who have been here since the beginning, I commend you on your perseverance and determination. I don't know if you don't feel like it's payed off yet, but I going to tell you it has.

Hi guys, with this post, I try to share my ideas on how to improve the game strategic aspects. The 0ad player set of skills, requires now macro and tactical control. Simply, get the biggest army , get the metal of the map (wich leads to another problem, spawning points advantages, being very high in random maps. On the next post x)), get the best position in the engagements. Strategy isn't involved. If you have doubt about this, ask yourself these questions: Do you ever ask yourself what's your opponent thinking of doing?(or, what is he thinking you're thinking he's thinking? And so on, look for metagame http://it.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=metagame )How important is scouting?(is it important at all?)Personally , I think scouting is only important to keep control of enemy troops movements (tactical tool), and strategies viable are very few and don’t counter each other well , booming reigns supreme (boom son, and hope your opponent boomed less than you). /------------------------------------------------------------------/ Ok, now a bit of explanation. As 0ad is now, rushing → booming → turtling → rushing doesn't work. (→ means “beats”) Booming and turtling are too similar, and rushing is not a viable option. (In the spoiler I try to explain why). In a few word, a good defender who boomed ,beats an as good rusher, so rushing doesn't counter booming. I underlined “good defender” because is not an easy task what he has, he needs to have enemy cavs under control, have wood workers spread the most he can ,and be very concentrated because just missing the cav approaching to your wood workers and not retreating them in time, means the blitz will be deadly, and you lose those wood workers. On the other hand, the attacker can only rely on opponent's mistakes to get the advantage out of the rush. To fix this, it's imo essential to lower cc firepower and/or range, I suppose it was increased from a16 to a17 to make things easier for defender against skirm cav rush, in addition to actually nerfing skirm cav, a bit of a over-nerf to rushing imo. Other fixes to try delineate better rushing booming and turtling could be differentiating citizens and citizen/soldiers more. Lowering females health (they have same armor and health as ranged units in age1), so that they die fast, in addition they flee once hit ,so is very frustrating trying to kill them with less than 20 rangeds. And their recruit time: make the time bonus for batches of women bigger, so that if someone commits to booming (which revolves around doing big batches of women) he gets a decisive advantage on someone who plays safe and does the most men and the least amount of women possible.Doing this few changes, would improve the game strategical aspect, and encourage scouting. What you get from the current balance ,are long and boring heavily macro oriented games, without the possibility of early aggressions. /------------------------------------------------------------------/ But here is the more meaty idea, ( which might work in synergy with the above or be an alternative) what I'm suggesting aims to make strategy and metagames the core of 0ad ,without the need of changing units balance, but instead with a small change in the structures balance. CC producing soldiers slower (or not at all) than how a barrack does : this way ,coming in with fewer skirm cav before enemy has a barrack would be a viable option, and most important ,it would incentive scouting, going for a rush would require an early barrack, so once you scout it, you have an idea of whats in your enemy's mind, and given your mindgame intuition, you might be right...or maybe you're being bluffed...maybe you should scout more...but this would mean sacrifice your macro...( an early barrack,given its cost ,would also mean that you cant have a fast housing for big early groups of women, and therefore you aren't going to boom).All this, might require lowering men wood cost. Needs testing. This minor tweak would imo improve the game experience a lot , more strategies, more build orders (now all BO look the same! Rushing, booming, turtling: barrack pops at 6 minutes if you haven't got extra berries or fauna, and houses ,houses ,houses), more scouting. Keep in mind , many of the ideas I explained come from comparing 0ad to other most famous Rts ,mostly starcraft2. Ok , I hope I could explain myself. If something is unclear, I 'll be happy to explain, and if you like what you read, I have many other little concepts to beef up and sharpen the ideas above, but the post is already too long....so maybe a part 2 if you like. Mario.

Seriously, Apple is so frustrating sometimes. I know snow leopard is 6 years old, but from what I understand it still has a fairly large user base. I don't want to upgrade because of certain software and because I've heard different reports about problems upgrading with bootcamp. Oh well, I can still play this wonderful game on my windows partition. Thanks for the replies.

I would love to see a PUSH Animation for siege engines, But i dont understand that " to mutch micro" comments. I mean common when you build a siege engine it would deploy with engineer units already connected to the object. And yes when they are killed you need to men it again but so what you got a army with you "Sending only a catupult is just dump"D" And it would add another layer of realism and gamplay. You can add a total different play style to the game with a simple feature like that and new tactics to commit when encountering siege engines / or use. And that for the little more micro sometimes "only if the units are killed" i dont see the problem its a game about micro-managing and the new layers of gameplay it can add i only see the good but others always see the bad if it would add a little more management for units Stuff like that sould be added even if it would only be for visuals.

@Wolflance: Hey dude noticed you updated the unit roster again. So the nest of bees got removed coz it was cart mounted, that's cool. But IMO don't remove handheld rocket launchers alltogether. If you go to chapter 126 of Wubei Zhi you get an illustration of men with handheld rocket launchers called "Fire Dragon Arrows" (火龍箭). Ming Rocket Launcher infantry are so iconic and awesome we have to include it!