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Hello, I'm working a bit on reviewing formation code in hope to make them at least useable. Before trying to implement changes I'd like to know how formations should work. From my point of view formations are linked to stances and can be divided in two groups: pre-battle formations and in-battle formations. Pre-battle formations are used to set up a battle. Like moving melee on front line, support on back-line and cavalery on flanks, everyone arriving at the same time before going to the real mess. When close if aggressive, attacking or defensive units will leave formation to run in battle, if hold ground, they will wait in line for incoming ennemies. These are most of the formations, including travel-column formation. In-battle formation are advanced military manuvres to keep formation while fighting, like phalanx. Attackers will always keep formation and fight from it. The tight formation allows multiple melee rows to fight at once. and advance like a bulldozer (or crushing wall to be more antic-friendly). Civil tasks ignore formation. No point to lose time to rearrange to go cutting some trees, building, repairing and so. Women can't go in formation, workers would have the same behaviour. There is also some code to handle picking targets in formations (that is attacking a formation instead of a precise unit). That is attack order should distribute target more or less randomly for more efficiency (pick the guy in front of you for example), less running to target while being assaulted from everywhere. An other thing making formations usefull requires reviewing units speed and range to require some time to prepare your assault/defense for a line not to be flanked in 2 seconds. We set a few units, maybe 200 units for big battle, where there were line of thousands of men. So in short: - Ignore formations for civil tasks - Most formations are used to place units more effectively before running a battle, take advantage upon unprepared units (macro-strategy) - Some formations are kept while fighting, maximizing effect Watch this for pre-battle and in-battle fromations (warning, very violent video) https://youtu.be/jYchCMe5btI?t=9m53s

Hi, A few of us have started playing 0AD in work (As we are only allowed to play open source games this was ideal!), durning our lunch our. The most we've had on at once was 5 people all with there own army in a 5 way fight. The game ran pritty good, the biggest problem we found was that there was a noticable lag delay in telling units where to go but no one crashed, had any problems etc etc. Keep up to good work, and if there is anything you want us to try out specific for you and give you feedback please let me know. Unforuntatley I am not a coader so will not be able to help in that sence. Thanks Joe.

I am all for ships being garrisonable like walls! Boarding actions and ramming would be fantastic too (but you know, one thing at a time). I really do hope there is a full naval overhaul to accomodate those features because it would be sweet. Currently the naval combat doesn't really stand out.

Yes Ben I have 3 free PCI slots, two PCI Express ×16 and one PCI Express ×4, I see. Must I burn my computer Ben?

Maybe post this too on the Social Media?

Maybe organizing series of SVN multiplayer games as done occasionally in the past could help? Could be done in groups which would frequently gather for games according to timezone/player availability and reporting observations after each session.

Yes, that sysstem would work well enough, and would fit with the capture concept from 0 AD that you want to enforce.

I'm new to this game, but I would love to see a map based on multiple countries/beginning of the South American people.

Triremes did serve as troop transport, but their capacity was not appropriate to their size and they almost always carried only their marines as extras, due to all those rowers and the thin design. Large expeditions would need real transport ships or huge numbers of warships. My suggestion mixing all the ideas above is: Village Phase: Fishing Boat - just fishing, no combat, no point in micro-ing a very small transported size for those. Merchant/Transport Ship - Can trade or ferry units, upgrades for more transport capacity on a following phase. Bireme Class Warship - Can ram like all warships and board or skirmish depending on crew (or maybe civ dependent crew and role). Can land her starting marines, which makes space for loading extra units. Same with loses. Small crew, say 10 units, landing them could work for an early game raid. Town Phase: Trireme Class Warship - Same with Bireme, but bigger, faster, with a larger crew. Alternatively, Biremes could be boarding ships and Triremes missile ships, or the opposite, but none of the two seems historically correct. City Phase: Quinquireme Class Warship - Possibly less agile than the other warships, with the additional option for artillery crew, or perhaps by default an artillery ship. *I think ramming and boarding were scrapped as features, I hope I'm wrong though. Especially boarding and ship capturing would be very interesting.

Fun fact 10 years ago 0 A.D. originally had only these civs: Celts Hellenes Iberians Romans Persians Carthaginians Two of the civs "branched" into sub-civs (celts - britons, gauls & hellens - sparta & athens). But, this was intended to happen during the game as a strategic choice - not something you decide and set in stone before the game even started. The choice would have shown itself during one of the town/city upgrade phases, and would have affected the hero choices, special structures, and late game technologies. I'm not saying the existing method is bad, just that I personally like the concept better (more strategy, easier to balance) than having dozens of civs that are slightly different from each other to choose from at the start. But... it is no longer my decision to make and hasn't been for years. I'm just throwing the idea back on the table