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Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of “0 A.D. Alpha 20 Timosthenes”, the twentieth Alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source game of ancient warfare. This Alpha features 10 new maps, core functionality for a cinematic in-game camera, the ability to share dropsites with your allies, and more! The skirmish map “Golden Island”, new in Alpha 20 Easy Download and Install Download and installation instructions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. 0 A.D. is free of charge and always will be. Although you might find some people selling copies of 0 A.D., either over the internet or on physical media, you will always have the option to download 0 A.D. completely gratis, directly from the developers. Moreover, you can redistribute the game and modify it freely as long as you abide by the GPL. You can even use parts of the art and sound for your own projects as long as you abide by CC BY-SA. No “freemium” model, no in-game advertising, no catch. New Gameplay Features in This Release New Random Maps: “Ambush”, “Empire“, “Flood”, “Frontier“, “Hell’s Pass“, “Island Stronghold“, “Lions Den” and “Stronghold“. New Skirmish maps: A 4-player skirmish map named “Forest Battle” and a 2-player skirmish map named “Golden Island“. Use allied drop sites: After researching a technology you can use your ally’s storehouses, farmsteads, docks, CCs, but not Mauryan elephants, to drop off resources your units have gathered. The ally needs to allow it for each drop site, so it can’t be used to “steal” all the resources in the area. Murder Holes: Research a technology to let towers attack units standing underneath the tower. New technologies for fishing: Research technologies to improve the gathering efficiency of your ships. Loot resources that killed enemies carried: Now you will automatically get the resources that were carried by units killed by your armies, in other words: kill wood workers to get wood, farmers to get food, etc. This is in addition to the normal loot you get when killing units. The “Ambush” random map added in Alpha 20 Graphics and User Interface Improvements to game options menu: New graphics quality setting, which allows you to easily change the quality of graphics from within the game (previously you had to use config files), as well as some cleanups and bug fixes. Higher quality graphical effects enabled by default on higher-end computers. If your computer should be able to handle higher quality graphical effects they are now enabled by default. You can of course change to a lower setting manually if you want to improve performance or prefer not to use them for some other reason. Idle worker button is now disabled when there are no idle workers, so you don’t have to press it just to check whether or not you have any idle workers. Credits screen: Check out who contributed to the game, everyone from managers to programmers, from artists to donators, from translators to composers. We have tried to include everyone, but many have contributed over the years, so if you have contributed but don’t see your name in the list please let us know. New trees and variations: There has been new models and textures for the acacia tree, Aleppo pine, oaks, dead oaks, generic dead trees. Plenty of improvements for observer mode and replays: Among other things you can now watch the match from the perspective of a player, see the Summary screen during the match, and now the fog of war is shown in observer mode. Matches also support up to 16 observers now. More information about players in a multiplayer match: Show who lags or has a network timeout. New Seleucid barracks: Under the Hood Cinematic camera for rendering cut scenes: The ground-work has been done to make it possible to control the camera for cut scenes. There is still some work needed to make it easy to use (for now camera paths has to be set by entering coordinates), but it’s a solid foundation to build on for the future. Plus many smaller changes, for a list of all the interesting ones, please read through the changelog. Getting Support Please see the “Get Support” page on our website to find ways to get help from the active and friendly 0 A.D. community. We are well aware there is some room for improvement in 0 A.D. Some known issues are: Lag, visual glitches or textures not loaded, missing animations and more. When you provide feedback, we would ask you to focus on some of the other points that could be improved. Thanks. Please Contribute! We are seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. Programmers are especially welcome and can get started immediately. Interested? Log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers. Also, you are invited to register on our forums and start participating! Why “Timosthenes”? We name our releases according to development status (“Alpha” or “Beta”), successive release number (1, 2, 3, …) and a word relating to the ancient world, in alphabetical order (“Argonaut” for A, “Bellerophon” for B, …). “Timosthenes” relates to 0 A.D. as it is the name of an Ancient Greek cartographer, and this release adds a lot of new maps. For the next alpha, we welcome fan suggestions for words relating to the ancient world beginning with the letter U. Keep it original and related to the time frame portrayed in 0 A.D. (appx. 500 BC – 1 BC)!

Robust discussion is not necessary controversy. Don't feel bad. Even my post is just opinion. All have opinion.

Alfred the Great - Visual actor

I think in every RTS game there are three strategies (or at least 6 subways): turtle, Rush, and boom. As long as all factions can do these three strategies, balanced, it can be a good game that might be competitive.

Using houses and other buildings to create barriers is an accepted strategy. They aren't nearly as powerful as walls because they can be quickly captured and destroyed by champions. They also have no gate so they block allied units as well as enemy units.

Good job. I hope we get more contributors soon.

At last found the issue, this is major bug as w/o swap the game crashes when you try to save it, sometimes it crashes when playing on very detailed map for some time. Playing on low-end is not recommended I believe but as your fan base is getting bigger and bigger by everyday this should get fixed in new build. Looking forward to some stable release as this is top-notch RTS for tux users. :fingers crossed:

Just because suggestions are offered doesn't mean that people think that there can't be another issue, just that there can be more than one thing to think about. Also, I don't think anyone of the people who have replied in this thread have English as their first language, so things are most likely not expressed as well as they should and it can be easy to misunderstand. You might think of something else, but in this thread there isn't anything that's clearly mocking, so please give others the benefit of the doubt and assume it's with good intent they've posted their suggestions

Thanks for your interest! Here is the first candidate for Millennium A.D. 20: https://www.dropbox.com/s/s9fdaxnufpri1qt/millenniumad_rc1.zip?dl=0 Install Instructions: 1. Unzip the download but leave the inner archive intact. 2. Place the unzipped folder into /binaries/data/mods. You'll see another folder there called 'public'. 3. Launch the game and enable the mod in Options>Mod Selection. Press 'Start Mods'. 4. Enjoy the mod!

Which PPA are you using? And in either case it might take a little while before it's available.

@roofridder: now you have some more symmetrical maps out of the box in the main A20 release

To be really accurate the biggest change would have to be food. Food would be a resource continually consumed by all units, instead of just buying a unit for a fixed amount of food. If your food production is interrupted and you run out of food reserves your units would begin to starve, suffering lower stats and losing HP until they die. 95% of people around 0 A.D. were farmers so this is really important. Why was the starvation method of siege effective? Because the defenders needed very large fields to get food for themselves, and they couldn't afford to build and defend walls around that large area. This was an essential part of military strategy. Fields should be huge, covering large areas of the map, and hard to defend. Corrals would require large fields too (sheep have to graze).

I've committed a bunch of new units icons to reflect the new unit textures:

@Zeta1127 : There is a wall aura (currently: +3 armour of each type is the bonus)

This is a thread for summarizing balance changes in a20. I'll start: Fixed a bug so "battlefield medicine" now only works on idle units. This weakens massed champions significantly. If you have 50 damaged champions attacking an enemy base, they would be healing 25 damage per second in a19. With 12 pierce armor, it's the rough equivalent of the opponent having 4.5 extra garrison arrows. Your champs also don't heal while walking from base to base now. The Mauryan Pillar of Ashoka now grants a trade bonus. Fishing upgrades Fields have less hack armor Shared dropsites Promoted units have more capture attack Palisade walls are much less expensive, faster to build, and less durable. Stone walls are somewhat more expensive, slower to build, and less durable. Wall turrets do half as much damage. That list is based on me skimming the change log and I could well have missed something. What other balance changes are worth mentioning?

elexis already made a changelog for balance changes prior to the release of A20: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha20_Timosthenes?version=3#GameplayBalancing

Hastein - Visual actor

It works well and is very fast. And is up about 99.99999% of the time.

Is very little to be a planned feature for now. But the ticket to balance this, is already open. And is based in this feedback topic.

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Manual_Settings

What I do is include the following lines in my local.cfg, so that the "find idle worker" key is g (instead of the default comma) and the "select idle units" drag select key is v instead of i: [hotkey.selection] idleonly = "V" idleworker = "G" That way I can press them both with my left hand, while my right hand stays on the mouse.

Beautiful!

Simple: play multiplayer. When you see someone who plays like a king with a higher economy score and more champions than everyone else, go to Replays (from the first screen: Tools & Options: Replays) and study what order they built things and harvested resources. Then, build things in that order yourself. A good player should be able to get to age III from low resources by around 12 minutes, with over 100 population, and then immediately research champions at the barracks (provided they have a civ compatible with that) and start producing them. It's not very difficult to learn a build order that will achieve this. Here is an example of a Briton build order, assuming a 200 population cap, chickens, and berries. Make 5 women (shift-click at your civic center, or CC, to make them) Use your first 4 women to make a farmstead by the berries, assuming you have berries. Have them get berries asap. Put your cavalry skirmisher on chickens, assuming you have chickens. With your 4 men, build a storehouse by the nearest big forest, and set them on chopping. Use your dog to explore (hold down shift and click repeatedly on the minimap to give him a path to explore, you want to explore the edge of your base first and then concentric circles out from there). Set a rally point on wood by the storehouse so that the first 5 women you made in step 1 will go there Queue up some more women one at a time as long as you have food. When the farmstead finishes, research Wicker Baskets (berry upgrade) and make sure the women who built the farmstead go to berries and not chickens. This will put you at about 0 wood from low resources. As soon as you have 75 wood again, have one of your woodcutters start making a house. You will want to constantly be making 1 house at all times, to keep up with your CC production. So, when this builder finishes, you immediately have him make another house, and so on until age III. You can queue up multiple houses at once by shift-clicking, however note that this uses up the wood for future houses immediately so you can't use it for anything else. Keep making women and putting them on wood until you're at maybe 22-25 population, then start having new women build fields. Fields should be placed as close to your CC or farmstead as possible. Five women go on a field. You'll probably end up with like 6-8 fields before it's time for age II. When you have wood to spare (that means you don't need any wood to immediately make houses or fields), research the first farming upgrade at the farmstead. When the berries run out, the 4 berry women make a field. When you have wood to spare, research the first woodcutting upgrade at the storehouse. When the cavalry skirmisher runs out of chickens, he can go help the dog explore. Produce women 5 at a time whenever you have enough food. It's faster. When you have enough wood, make a barracks. If you seem to have enough farms and wood you can switch your CC to producing men instead of women, and put them on stone and metal. Build a storehouse at the stone and metal. If you seem to have more food than you need but not enough wood, make women and put them on wood. If your woodcutters are too far from the wood, make another storehouse closer to the wood. You probably want another storehouse for woodcutters in a completely different stand of trees, anyway. At some point around when the barracks finishes, you should have enough food and wood for age II, and somewhere around 50-70 population. There's no reason to rush going to age II. Don't interrupt your production of workers just to save up for age II. The barracks should produce skirmishers that can either go on stone/metal or on wood, depending on which you need more. With the barracks and CC both producing units, you may need more than one worker making houses to keep up. When you reach age II, you may have too much food. If so, you can take 5 or 10 women off of farming and put them on woodcutting instead. When you reach age II, your first priority is a market, which you can make with a bunch of women. The market should be placed near the back of your base, on the side farther from your allies so that you can get a long trade route. When the market finishes, immediately trade any excess food for some stone and metal, whichever you have less of. Hopefully you were first to market - britons are fast - so you can get good prices. Research the metal mining upgrade, the second woodcutting upgrade and the second farming upgrade, whenever you have enough wood. You might get the metal mining upgrade during age I if you have enough wood. Make the other buildings you need for age III, with several workers on each. I usually put down a defense tower, a blacksmith, and a temple. Sometimes I skip the temple in favor of a second defense tower. Make at least one more barracks, maybe two. By the time your buildings finish, between trading and mining, you should have at least 750 metal and 750 stone. If not, just trade for it at the market and go to age III. If there's another metal mine within your territory, now's a fine time to build a storehouse and start putting some men on it. Keep your barracks producing and putting skirmishers on mining or woodcutting. You'll probably reach age III somewhere between 11-12 minutes if you've been alert about not letting your workers stay idle, building houses ahead of time, and keeping up constant production from your CC and barracks. In age III, research champions at a barracks. Trade for the 500 metal you need if you don't already have it. If you have extra food, keep producing women 5 at a time at the CC. Maybe stop making women and skirmishers when you're at around 120 population. You might want to pull some women off of woodcutting and put them back on farming at this point. You might need a few more fields as well. A rotary mill and the third farming upgrade will help your food production, because you'll soon need a lot of food for champions as well as metal. When you've finished researching champions, start making brythonic longswordsmen 5 at a time. Rally them all to a single place so you can more easily manage them. When you have 1000 stone, pull your stone miners and maybe some woodcutters and make a fortress near your CC. As soon as the fortress finishes, make Boudicca and put her with the champions. With 30 champions and Boudicca at around 14-15 minutes, it's time to think about who you want to kill! For extra backup you can send some skirmishers out with them, although I usually don't. Don't take a fight you think you will lose, if retreat is an option. Use ctrl-q-click to tell your army to kill units but not buildings. Once the enemy units are dead, your priority target is an enemy CC. Ctrl-click on it to attack, then when it gets to low health, regular click on it to capture. If there are metal mines out on the map, you might choose to build a second CC by them with like 20 skirmishers. You will probably be attacked but if you can get 5000 metal out of them, it's worth it. If you're feeling secure about the number of champions you have, or if you just have the resources to spare, it's time to research upgrades for your champions (infantry attack, and infantry armor) at the blacksmith. This costs a lot of wood and metal so it's best to have several dozen champions first. Also, "battlefield medicine" at the temple is important. If your metal mines are running low (before they have actually run out), stop making champions and just be defensive while you make traders. Set the trade setting 100% for metal and rally the traders to the market or dock that's farthest away, while still being somewhat protected against enemy raids. You can trade from one side of your base to another if you have to. You want to shoot for like 30 traders, maybe more if the game goes on for a long time. Protect your trade routes with towers, fortresses, and troops. If you're running into the supply cap, you can delete some of your workers to make room for more champions and traders. I usually delete women woodcutters preferentially. If the supply cap is low, such as 150, then it would be better to use corrals instead of farming. You'd have to use a whole different build for that, though. It's much more difficult to get a good corral start than a good farming start, and they require more attention throughout the game to keep making sheep. If you are low on metal and well below max supply, but have thousands of food and wood, you can mass produce cavalry skirmishers. They're nowhere near as strong as champion swordsmen and will die in an eyeblink to arrows, but they can serve as backup to your main force. They are mobile and can help defend against enemies raiding your base with cavalry. You can garrison them in ships or buildings to produce more arrows. They can also be used for scouting and killing enemy traders. If you later acquire enough metal for champions you can just suicide or delete them.

Not really a fan of the Roman Republic = Red, part of the mini realism actor files mod that I'm currently working with. No new texture files, I just tweaked the actor file texture materials. Dyed and undyed tunics, plus, painted and plain leather covered scutum (Sacrificing player_color, playing Republican Romans vs. Republican Romans would be a total mess ) Note: My Mordor faction mod won't be out for quite some time, I'm sorry, I haven't worked on any contents for the Mordor faction mod (Planned release date was last December but I wasn't able to allocate time to work on it.

Alright, Thematic byzantine is your best bet. First, I should let you know that it wasn't called Byzantium, it was called the Βασιλεία Τοη Ρωμαίων (Basileia Toh Rhomaion) or the "Soverignity of the Romans." Let's look at some Thematic Roman units: Barracks Units: Village Phase: Ακριται (Akritai) - The Akritai were the descendants of the Late Roman Limitanei. They were professional soldiers whose purpose was to defend the borders of the Empire, but were given lands to maintain called Εκονομικαι (Ekonomikai). These men could be armored or unarmored, and were usually equipped with a medium or large ovoid shield, a spear, and javelins. Like the Republican Roman units, they should gain armor as they gain experience. A Κλιβανίων or Lamellar cuirass would suffice. http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/7061/acritaefinalrs0.jpg Ακοντισται (Javilenmen) - Akontistai were the descendants of the Roman Lanciarii that were stationed in the back of a Legion. Although the legion was no longer used, the Akritai still carried on this practice in order to make them more versatile to face a wider variety of foes. They have a bundle of javelins and a small or medium shield. Like the Republican Roman units, they should gain armor as they gain experience. A gambeson would suffice. http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/8333/18542551.png http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/6199/52439774.png Ιπποακριται (Hippoakritai) - These men are the same as the Akritai, but mounted. They were professional soldiers, and given lands to tend like the Akritai, but were more like screening cavalry than lance and bow cavalry. They were armed with a set of javelins, and a lance (κοντός or kontos), and a smaller cavalry shield. http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/3485/13a.png http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/927/13bv.png Town Phase Σκουτατοι (Skoutatoi) - The Skoutatoi were the descendants of the Late Roman Comitatenses, and were the standard line infantry of the Empire. They carried a large ovoid or kite shield and were either spearmen or swordsmen (for gameplay purposes I'd make the Akritai Spearmen and the Skoutatoi swordsmen). They were armored, professional soldiers, and did not tend lands like the Akritai. http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/2263/26942752.png http://img84.imageshack.us/img84/7572/34770726.png http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/1808/14a.png Τοξοται (Archers) - These men are archers. Skoutatoi also had units of Akontistai, as a development of the late Roman practice, and archers as well. The Roman government also had several laws in place that stated cities were required to keep a garrison of Toxotae at all times. These men were armed with Turkish composite bows, although not nearly of the same quality as the ones that took 10 years to make. They also sometimes had a small shield. Like the Republican Roman units, they should gain armor as they gain experience. A gambeson would suffice. http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/9894/cburtoxotai.png http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/4566/35547533.png Κουρσορσες (Koursorses) - The Koursorses were lance-and-bow cavalry, equipped with a long lance called a Kontos and an Asymmetric horse bow. The Koursorses operated in tandem with the Defensorses, rushing out to attack and then retreating into the Δεφενσορσες (Defensorses) which the pursuing enemy would slam into, in a tactic modelled after the Alans (Ossetians). http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/9558/0013k.png http://www.twcenter.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=178552&d=1314215548 http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9454/0011gq.png Fortress Units: Βαρανγιοι (Varangioi) - The Varangioi were the Varangian Guard, who were recruited from the Kieven Rus and later the Anglo-Saxons of England, many of whom fled to the Roman Empire after the Norman conquest of 1066. Not all Varangioi were in the Varangian Guard, many operated as professional soldiers who fought in the front line. Varangians had a full maile-hauberk, a one or two-handed bearded axe, and a large kite shield. http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/6116/varangianguardfinalch6.jpg http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/52/varangianguardug1finaluo7.jpg Οπτιματοι (Optimatoi) - The Optimatoi were the elite cataphract corps stationed in the Thema Optimaton, the modern day provinces of Yalova/Kocaeli/Sakarya in Turkey. They were heavily armored versions of Καταφρακτοι (Kataphraktoi) called Κλιβανοφοροι (Klivanophoroi). The difference was that Kataphraktoi did not have an armored horse, while Klivanophoroi did, albeit both terms were interchangable. These men would have a partially or completely armored horse, and were armored head-to-toe in chainmail. They had a twohanded Kontos and a small shield affixed to their forearm. http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2159/scholariifinal1ry3.jpg http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/6936/scholariifinal2qc7.jpg http://img365.imageshack.us/img365/29/athanatoifinalik0.jpg Images taken from the Complete Byzantine Unit Roster Project. They have a few errors, but are a darn good start. These images are just ideas for units, and not to be copied.