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Crossroads (4) A forest map with numerous road junctions. The woodlands are rich in natural resources and is suitable for foraging and hunting. This map was created using the technique that I discussed at, Map overview (Reduced fog level in the map overview screenshot to help visualize the whole map) Screenshots Thanks to niektb, crossroads.zip

Hi there! So I take part in this texturing, here is my WIP for now: You can see on the left the texture in its HD version and a 3d preview of it. The 3 screenshots on the right are the final size texture. Now I have to blend the different images and balance the color and darkness of it!

There is an old interview with Jonathan Waller (quantumstate) on aigamedev: http://aigamedev.com/open/interview/ai-in-0ad/ . It's almost 4 years old and describes qBot, which is no longer maintained, but Petra (the current 0 A.D. bot) is based on AegisBot which was based on qBot and the general AI architecture should be (mostly?) the same (in particular the AI architecture schema from the article: http://aigamedev.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/5/files/2012/05/Schema.png seems corresponding to what Georg said in the post above).

I'm thinking similar to SeleucidKing: I love that early game microing of AoE2 where you would lure that boar with a villager directly under your CC to get that fast food source. I love the fact that 3-5 early invading knights can cause serious trouble. Or a single onager shot can decide the tide of a whole battle. In contrast, in 0 A.D. (at least in the current meta) you just produce units, gather, produce more units until you hit pop cap and flood the enemy territory with countless champions. For me, 0 A.D. feels a bit like an industrial unit production... Of course gameplay can and will change for the better, but I think the early game is defined by micro work - otherwise you have that boring non-stop batch (or battalion) unit production and you loose connection to your individual units. That said I like the early game micro things of AoE2 AND the more macro focused features (like batch training, infinite field supply or maybe battalions in the future) of 0 A.D. BUT ONLY FOR THE LATE GAME where it makes managing your unit masses more convenient. But you should start really simple with VERY few units and make the best with them. For me it is fun if you have the feeling that your settlement is growing out of nothing into a big empire. The GROWTH. You have to start small (thus micro) and finish big (macro)... That's how I see things here.

What about unlocking battalions either in a tech or with a phase upgrade? E.g. you start in village phase with few units where micro work grants significant benefits and is still not too annoying. When you hit town phase or city phase at the latest, your population has grown to a point where single units really do not matter any more. Thus battalions make sense here... I would still advocate battalion dissolution as in some cases it wouldn't make that much sense to send a troop of soldiers e.g. scouting Edit: what about this three-step model: village phase - no battalions town phase - simple battalions without musicians, officers, ... and only some standard formations available city phase - battalions can be upgraded with musicians, officers, heroes... and special formations like Testudo become available

For many devs, (not all) Sarmatians will be a single faction for second part and their role in late Roman Empire. but as said Feneur nothing is written in stone yet.

cmpAIInterface (simulation/components/AIInterface.js) (which in turn uses cmpAIProxy), which is then passed as the state to the shared AI components (so ai/common-api/shared.js).

Just wanted to point out that at least some of the images in the first post would also work nicely with a few terrain textures and less props. Keep up the good work!

Something that is interesting, is that the Roman skirmishers have the exact same damage output as the Britons due to the fact that their hero does the exact same, they have the same upgrades and the same base attack, HP and armour. However the Romans are not nearly as used as much as Britons. Furthermore, the Mauryan "Maiden Guards" and the Iberian "Champion Swordsman" are stronger because of the upgrade "steel working" which boosts their attack to 20.1 hack, instead of the Britons which have 18.1 hack. However the Iberians fall back as their heroes currently do not have any effects, and I am not sure just how good the healer hero that the Mauryans have when comparing to the Britons and the Romans. Even still, the winners are still the Spartans, they are indeed the strongest champ due to the Agoge upgrade, that extra 50HP seems to actually give the champs a HUGE advantage over the Britons, test over test, making it as even as possible, Spartans win every time. EDIT: regarding the problem on the imbalance between swordsmen and cavalry, it all depends on the way you play, I know some pros which know how to use cavalry champs really effectively. To put it very simply, cavalry is used as a hit and run unit. Its perfect when the enemies army is in the middle or busy, and you can just run into their main civ, past everything, capture something, destroy it, fall back, regain health, and repeat. This way you slowly chip away on the enemies economy without loosing almost any resources, for example, going for the traders and disrupting the trading line is EXTREMELY annoying, and if pulled off correctly, it's very effective. Note, this works well with around 20-30 of them, to make sure that they can push in and fall back as quickly as possible, this gives you space and time to build more sword champs while you distract and set back your enemy. What would be nice is to see a bit of variation between cavalry as they are all pretty much the same, and there are no special upgrades for them (only special cavalry are the Iberian, the Roman and the Seleucid ones). Iberian being the best, due to that crazy crush damage output.