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Hello, I have been working on adding range visualizations, starting with auras (ticket #4349). The code is currently on Phabricator (D238), but right now the patch needs to be refactored in order to make the range visualization code more generic. This will be done partly by moving some of the new C++ in the patch to a new Javascript component (RangeVisualization). I wrote up an extensive summary on Phabricator, but basically the patch allows adding a unique line texture, texture mask, and line thickness to the JSON files of range auras, which will be rendered when entities are selected (like the selection overlays). If none of these are specified in the aura's JSON, then defaults will be used (the default line texture being the one used for building selection overlays). The patch also adds a config option to allow disabling the rendering of aura ranges, and also a hotkey to toggle the option in-game. If an entity has more than one range aura, then all of them will be rendered, which raises some questions on how to handle auras that have the same range (currently, this is only an issue for one hero unit). Right now, there is a bug in the rendering code for selection overlays (#1368), which use SOverlayQuad, that causes them to clip through terrain, and so this limits the visualization texture to a simple line. "Fancy textures" that use SOverlayQuad (like those demoed in Delenda Est) cannot be used for now, but they can certainly be used for range visualizations once the terrain-clipping bug is fixed. There was some discussion on this bug, and visual ranges in general, here: Here are some screenshots for auras, though they are rough, as the patch is still in progress. This next screenshot is an example of a unique line texture for the aura of a hero unit (a spiral). Eventually, range visualizations can be given to defensive buildings like defense towers to show their ranges - there is another trac ticket for this. Also, it might be nice to show range visualizations in placement previews. There are still some design decisions that need to be made regarding range visualizations, and I have been discussing this with some of the developers. One in particular is the possibility to give civilizations their own unique textures (this would require a lot of new art). Also, there are a lot of possibilities when it comes to hotkeys, as there could be a hotkey that toggles the persistent rendering of the range of certain units - regardless of the config option (for example).

So, which aspect did you read and understand? I posted multiple times why your "suggestion" or whatever it's called is crap and has nothing to do with the game itself. If you fail to understand that it's not my problem.

Oh yeah but you haven't presented and reason why my argument is not valid. As Saladin said in Stronghold and I quote "Your mind is limited you're not fit to command an army".

Guess what. We give AI a +1000% resource and build speed modifier on high difficulties and you'll not even be able to beat a single computer. Battalions have nothing todo with the AI at all, not how it's building units, engaging the player, playing in general. It neither has to do with "strategical activity". And towards the argument "Squad leader can ...". Ancient time combat worked differently and is not comparable with this kind of "commando operation" at all. And this also has nothing to do with the AI either. But furthermore, and more importantly: So... just stop it.

@DarcReaver statement fits again for your answer. Exploiting a bug does not relate to the design gameplay, which in fact, it is still in design, not implemented, you can't even consider that the same bug will show up nor that it will affect playability as you will not be able to predict the outcome, my question is why is it more important for you to remark a bug in another game? Plus, implementing battalions will likely need to rework on the AI behavior and many other stuff. You just can't consider that implementing it will leave the other stuff the same way as it is.

There are valid arguments against battalions, but I wouldn't use bugs in other games that implement battalions as reasons against including battalions. As far as pop cap and battalions are concerned, I think it would be relatively trivial to just assign a pop value to a battalion as a whole so that the pop space is taken even when the battalion is not at full strength.

So, you're saying that exploiting a programming exploit is good and should be possible for 0 ad aswell to beat the AI? Wtf... Ever considered that beating the AI behavior has NOTHING to do with battalions, pop cap and other stuff? This statement is just beyond me to be honest...

So? doing this in a remotely competitive game - be it against (multiple) hard computers or against a "real" player will lead to a defeat while you're trying to accomplish that. It's just a random exploit of coding weaknesses under unreal condititions and serves no purpose at all except for showing "it's possible to overcome the pop limit of the game". In case you didn't notice : It's certainly not intended. I have no idea why on 0 ad there should be something like this be considered to be put in "on purpose". This is so irrelevant in terms of game mechanics that I don't even know why you bring up such a random thing tbh.

Map: Unknown U-shaped land Players: (bbleft, Emperior, nigel87, Boudica) vs (Grugnas, equlizer, caesar_salad, TurboBurger) Summary: A typical trading / rushing game, but the metal supplies finally didn't turn out to be critical for the victory. I'm uploading mostly to allow analyzing the game crash at the very end of the game. commands.txt

Replays are saved in separate directories for each release so you can still watch the old ones. That hadn't been implemented for savegames at the time and they are all stacked a bit messily all into the same directory. They are not deleted, can still be loaded with older versions of the game and the loading screen informs you whether it is compatible or not. You can install multiple versions of the game if you install it to different directories. Only the user configuration is shared across versions and is sometimes not entirely compatible.

It's probably enough to just do like what I said and make civic centers upgradeable on a per civic center/per province basis. That way your starting city is usually your biggest and baddest, while the outlying ones are smaller, less populated, more econ-focused or military focused based on what you need, etc.

"pop hack" ? Are you serious? That's not related to the "gameplay". It's related to performance. And sloppy programming. To use BFME as example - it uses C&C Generals SAGE engine. Generals had no pop cap and so it suffered from bad performance in team games. Since BFME used a heavily modified engine version and had stuff like "global weather effects", Aura particle FX and whatnot, there was Pop cap used to reduce bad performance in team games. And tbh if you would've done this in a real game your castle is destryed even before you finished to reach your maximum pop cap. This is irrelevant to a point where I say that the same is easily done by adding a higher pop cap limit. Or even a "no popcap" mode that will simply crash with an engine error when too many units are on the field.

Option to show no range effect ring? lol

@balduin You're right, I will be going through the posts again to number them soon. I posted an example of horse harness remains from the royal cemeteries here Yes, women could rise to the highest position of power in Kush: Amanitore, Amanirenas, Amanishakheto, Shanakdakhete, Nawidemak, Amanikhatashan, Maleqorobar and Lakhideamani. They were called by the title "Kandake", or queen of Kush. Most of the rulers of Kush have been men though. About scale armor, I'm pretty sure it was worn by anybody able to afford it (for themselves or their retinues). As Kush was quite wealthy and advanced, they were able to import, as well as probably produce it. They were introduced to the technology from around 1650 BCE onwards, when their Hyksos allies invaded and occupied Egypt as the 15th dynasty, and introduced many new military technologies to the Nile Valley, including scale armor. Scale armor would have been worn by royals and nobles able to afford it (Heroes and champion units). Egyptian contact with the Middle East influenced the development of the New Kingdom army in many ways. The 25th Kushite dynasty ruled all of Egypt, and laid a very strong foundation for the Napatan as well as the Meroitic period. During the 25th dynasty, Kushite pharaoh's had unlimited access to everything produced in Egypt and Canaan as well, and these influences diffused in to Sudan, attested in many different ways (architecture, luxury imports, new technologies, artistic and religious influences). I believe we can safely assume New Kingdom Egyptian military systems laid the foundation for the formal army setup of ancient Kush (the 25th dynasty was essentially an Egyptian [-styled] dynasty, ruled by Kushites, modeled on the New Kingdom). Therefore I will share a number of images relating to the New Kingdom Egyptian military, in order to contextualize the the 25th dynasty's military heritage, and influence on later periods of Kush. These images can be used to some extent as a source of inspiration for Kushite units. All the images are from "109 Osprey Men-At-Arms Series: Ancient Armies of the Middle East" "Bronze scales from a 14th century [BC] body armour, found in the palace of Amenhotep III in Thebes. Clearly visible are the holes through which the scales were sewn on to a leather or thickly padded fabric coat, the way the scales were fitted to each other, and the central spine which gave greater strength without increasing weight" Egyptian scale armor, reminiscent of some examples from Kushite reliefs. New Kingdom armor piercing battle axe, identical to the some of the axes used by Kushites. New Kingdom Egyptian army, based on wall paintings at Thebes. New Kingdom Egyptian army, 18th dynasty. New Kingdom Egyptian phalanx, based on wall paintings at Thebes. New Kingdom Egyptian princes driving a chariot, probably identical to the ones produced and exported from Kush. @Zophim This image of bound captives is particularly interesting (some of them wearing helmets)… Thanks! Lastly, another New Kingdom depiction of "Kushites and Nubians"

It would be nice to link the name to the new content. So either something describing the new gamemode (relics / catafalques) or the new art would be ideal, if we find something that would fit remotely.

The AIs produce more champs on phase 3 with more merchants. I played 1v2 very hard(Carthage and Macedonia vs me Athenian) and their massive armies and champs keep on coming. The AI forward build some offensive towers and forts too. As long as you allow them to trade their champ units will keep on coming. But you have to encite them to go to where your bulk of forces are so that massive battles can occur. Easy to defend with more healers. I try to choose enemies that produce only range siege because they can move better that get stuck sometimes when they use Rams. I enjoy really!

In the interest of transparency, the Wildfire Games team would like to report on the finances of the project as of 2017-03-31. Until 2016-12, 0 A.D. had funds in three places: Funds earmarked for the project and held in trust by US-based non-profit organization Software in the Public Interest, Inc. (hereafter "SPI"); A PayPal account under the name of former project leader, Jason Bishop (Wijitmaker). This account was a legacy of the time before we became affiliated with SPI; An account on Flattr, a Sweden-based microdonation provider. SPI Earmark for 0 A.D. As of 2017-01-01, the 0 A.D. earmark is USD 29,528.35 (Source: SPI Treasurer's Report). Other Accounts In our "legacy" PayPal account, we had USD 366.30 on 2016-11-30. This sum was consolidated with the SPI earmark in December 2016 and is probably reflected in the account balance mentioned above. We will not be using this account anymore and we have duly removed the references to it from the donation page. On Flattr, we have EUR 842.14 available, which are approximately USD 900. We have removed the references to Flattr account from the donation page and we intend to consolidate these funds with the SPI earmark in the near future. Total In total, we have approximately 30,428.35 USD. Concluding Remarks The 0 A.D. project finances are managed by the Treasury Committee: Erik (“feneur”), Adarash ("MishFTW") and Aviv (“Jeru”). We welcome your comments and suggestions in this thread.

I forgot to mention that, of course that resources should be needed for that. A given % depending on the units needed to fill the battalion

Here we can see why we don't want to add the hack but need proper terrain adaptation: We have the same problem with selection rings in 0ad:

The Terra Magna error is fixed

At least for my part, I want to have something released that not only has a bunch of bugfixes but is notably different from the predecessor and makes players happy when seeing the new features. There are still some proposals for this release which have to be polished and some critical bugfixes which might take also one or the other week to fixup. Agreeing with the others, it's done when it's done. Hoping it will be rather something in summer than in winter. Could post some screenshots, but that would just spoil. Last release was november and someone said on christmas evening that the 'game is the perfect christmas gift', which is exactly how I want our players to feel and therefore willing to let em wait to accomplish that.

I'd say: This year.

Thanks for answers and kind words, everyone. More animations. Attack animation: - Rather long (3 seconds). Actual attack happens around 51st frame. - A half of the body is immobile during the animation. I tried to add subtle movements to it but it looked bad. Idle_01 animation (a video file because of its length, let me know if it doesn't work): - As I mentioned above, this one is quite long. Death animation: - Probably it won't be noticeable in the game. I'm not sure about this death animation. To be honest I don't have any good ideas for it. Do we need run animation? It will look like a faster version of walk maybe with a more suitable head movement. It would be great to get at least 2 animations for attack, idle, and death. I'm going to try another idle animation with a different resting pose. Feel free to leave your feedback or ideas.

Quick meta-input: It's largely true that we haven't changed gameplay significantly since forever. The main cause of this is that not a great deal of people on the team actually play the game, and the few that do seem largely content with the breakneck speed and the current mechanics. There is a metagame, and it's a relatively simple one since it's rather poorly balanced on the whole. Furthermore, many devs feel that changing something now is useless since we're still in Alpha. Now this is something on which I could complain at length, but it's there. Personally, I believe we're a little too hung up on Age of Empires - and my personal preference would be for a complete switch to a production/consumption system over the "one shot" AoE like system of gathering resources. Each unit would consume some resources, each unit would produce some, and houses would give you manpower instead of raising the pop cap (which would then be soft-capped). On the whole it'd make eco more interesting. I also generally agree that the game goes way too fast in the early stages and that units are inherently too cheap, but that is definitely a matter of personal preference - and many would argue that AoE 2 goes way too slow. We've also had weird effects at play, such as the big unit speed and very large vision ranges, making our maps feel extremely small. Relatedly, our counters are crap - that's because we have far too few units per civilisations, and made some braindead decisions such as the pierce/hack attack we chose. But to go back to my first point: even perfect mods won't be played much, since the team doesn't play much, and that means that imperfect mods (such as my trade changes) have basically 0 chance of convincing anybody.

After reading this discussion I feel compelled to give my honest opinion on this topic, too. I can at least partly understand @DarcReaver and others getting in rage mode after trying to provide valuable input for the dev team regarding gameplay enhancements, only to get no to insignificant feedback and/or to observe the game heading towards a foreseeable future that is so wayyyyy below the true potential of the game. The usual answer - "we are all volunteers and if you want to change something then work on it" - does not address the problem properly since (at least from my experience and my observations) you will only waste lots of time trying to implement bigger changes, e.g. by means of a mod. AFAIK @wowgetoffyourcellphone has spent countless hours for the DE mod with tons of new features, techs, ... - and got some icons committed so far (correct me if I'm wrong). @wraitii has proposed a new market mechanism long time ago, received predominantly good feedback, provided a patch, ... And 15 months later no one remembers about it. I have the impression no one tries or dares to really touch/experiment with gameplay because "it would make XYZ complicated" and "AFAIK this already has been discussed 7 years ago ..." etc. (exaggerating a bit). Actually as soon as a ticket receives the "design" (= gameplay) keyword it's doomed into oblivion. It seems to me that the dev team is not well-rounded enough and especially is not covering certain tasks/roles/characters. We first of all lack a leader with the big picture in mind, a vision, a plan to follow, and who can take quick decisions or at least quickly comes to an agreement with some core devs. This is just my observation and no personal critique - @Itms is certainly a valuable dev, but I only associate programming issues with his name. As @DarcReaver said, we need a clear, recognizable gameplay concept that allows and forces a player to choose between a large variety of different strategies. Factions need to have stronger gameplay characteristics. A basic ruleset for military strengths, weaknesses and counters. A basic ruleset is such a necessary thing. It's defining the game like a constitution is defining a state. If we don't address these things the game will remain more a historic accurate simulation but will not be playable for long, at least not for a great majority of players. And a big number of players will help us all, since it will attract more devs/contributors addressing our lack of manpower. Similar to @DarcReaver suggestions, here are some sample rules that could be combined to a ruleset: RULE: The higher the value of a unit/building/tech, the higher its cost. (currently this is not true for population) example: Civilians require 1 pop, infantry units require 2 pop, cavalry units require 3 pop, elephants require 4 pop, heros require 5 pop, ... RULE: The higher the value/complexity of a unit/building/tech, the more diverse its cost. example 1: basic units cost 1 resource (food), citizen soldiers 2 resources (food and wood/metal), champions 3 resources (food, wood and metal), ... example 2: village phase techs usually 1 resource, town phase techs usually 2 resources, city phase techs usually 3 resources, ... RULE: The higher the value of a unit/building/tech, the more rare the needed resources are ... RULE: There are three classes of buildings/units/strategies/factions. Each class is strong against another class and weak against yet another class. Alternatively: There are five classes of buildings/units. Each class is strong against two other classes and weak against two further classes. Or each class is strong against another class, weak against yet another class and about as strong as two further classes. example 1: (melee) cavalry beats ranged (cavalry/infantry), ranged (cavalry/infantry) beats (melee) infantry, (melee) infantry beats (melee) cavalry example 2: buildings beat soldiers, soldiers beat siege, siege beats buildings example 3: booming beats turtling, turtling beats rushing, rushing beats booming example 4: swordman beats pikeman (1v1), pikeman beats spearman (formation), spearman beats swordman (formation). pikeman beats swordman (formation), swordman beats spearman (1v1), spearman beats pikeman (1v1). RULE: The stronger a faction can potentially be (in terms of tech upgrades, units, bonuses, ...), the slower its development example: early game faction, mid game faction, late game faction These are illustrative examples that could help to achieve a red line in gameplay. But it is important to formulate such rules, make tickets for their implementation, etc.

We had around 25 people work on Eastern Front in the past 5 years, of many which were modelers, animators, coders and 2d artists. I know how much work is required to made new models and I dont question the quality of the work. That's why I put the 3d art on the positive list. Just for some references we're using on Eastern Front: Eastern Front Mode ingame and renders Just feel free to browse through the pages and see for yourself. There are hundreds of assets created, tanks, missiles, grenades, at guns, infantry units, buildings, special effects, sounds etc. about the last paragraph you posted, I was clearly exaggerating and joking, hence the "lol" at the end of the paragraph. Of course it's clear that history shouldn't go that far. But this shows the discrepancy between "historically accurate" and a game. A game is a game, and compromises have to be made in order to get a playable game that doesn't feel like a sciFi abomination. edit to clear this up: I respect the vision of having an "authentic historical game". But putting a bunch of historically accurately modeled units and buildings together doesn't make it a game. It's a "authentic historical model/art showcase". You can look at the art and be happy, and that's about it. Like an interactive screensaver. About the other stuff: Yes, the game grows by contributions. But look at it this way: In order to contribute something that can be used you have to have some sort of recipe of which you can cross out stuff that has been done already and stuff that still needs to be done. There has been progress in many areas, I noticed the smoother animations of soldiers, some new ambience music, and finally non buggy path finding and a fix to the lag which made earlier versions unplayable. But in terms of gameplay there is NO progress whatsoever. The uints still are all in the HQ, there is no resource distribution, every unit costs lumber and food although it clearly shouldn't. There is no teching present, nothing. In over a year. Nobody added gameplay related stuff to the design document, no gameplay patterns were created. Nothing. That's why I wrote that you made a nice little interactive museum. A game works like this: You create an enviroment (for example Ancient times, Space, medieval, fantasy or whatever setting you like) then you create a certain "ruleset" for your game to play in. I.e. large scale battles, real time or turn based, micro focused with high hitpoint units and low army sizes, and other options then you go ahead and build your art assets for the game. The ruleset is then tweaked and polished throughout the early stages of the game development, things that work are kept in and others are removed. After a certain time you get something that could be called a prototype game and then you can go further to tweak it as you wish. 0 ad has no _working_ ruleset, not since a few days, but since its very start. That's the key issue. And this is not getting fixed. IN YEARS. And the further issue is that there is noone who cares about this. The devs, like Lion.kanzen clearly stated their ignorance and incompetence in this matter numerous times aswell as their inability to actually make a game, not an art showcase. Instead they go ahead and say "let others fix our game for us, we don't care about it".

Stuff like this needs to be the core of the actual game first. The developers have to have a vision of the game, how it should be played and build it accordingly. Leaving everything to modders or total conversions does not help. Of course opinions differ, but if someone of the dev team would set up a line for the gameplay there would be no reason to create mods to fix the game for them. I don't even care if its a system similar to mine, but it should _WORK_. And in the current alpha it's more than obvious that the dev game version does NOT work. And the worst thing: I came here over a year ago (!) and there has been ZERO, ZERO !!! progress in the game design department. It's almost the same when I left at alpha 18 or 19. that's the real problem. They don't care. They even created a "balancing" sub forum that states "Hey look our game is awesome that we don't need to improve the game design. Just help us fix the stats and it's awesome!" which is utterly bulls***. There is so much great art and potential in this game and they're not even remotely using it to make something great out of it. Of course it's a difference if you're an Indie developer compared to the great lords of games like microsoft or Blizzard. But that's no excuse to get your own stuff to work properly. Hence my rambling.

Hello there, to make a quick introduction to you: I'm Darc Reaver, leading gameplay developer on Company of Heroes: Eastern Front, and part of the development team "Archaic Entertainment". I've played RTS throughout the last 15 years, and played a fair share of, I'd say... 20000 games or more. I've played many different titles, starting with games like Settlers, Age of Empires, Warcraft 3, Company of Heroes, Battle for Middle Earth franchise and of course Command and Conquer. I've yet to know about 0 AD, and recently got my hands on it. I've played some games already (roughly 20-something or so), and overall I find the game very appealing. However, as a new player, I've noticed some things that sort of need quite some getting used to, and I've been asking myself if those things are intended. There's a tl;dr section at the bottom of this post, as it's pretty long. Point 1: Ressource progression As far as I've noticed so far, playing mainly greek and mace factions, the progression of ressources is a bit iffy. Lumber seems to be the main resource throughout age 1 and 2, as every unit needs huge amounts of lumber, aswell as all buildings apart from Temples and Forts needing lumber, too. On top of that most technologies also require huge amounts of lumber. In 0 AD you pretty much only need lumber and food for everything throughout age 1 and 2. And then suddenly you need 1000 metal and 1000 stone to progress to Age 3. Which feels a bit weird, as you need to stockpile resources that you don't need anyways in age 2. It would be better to make the progression to t3 more of a tradeoff between getting more military and teching up to more powerful units. Also, Age 2 might use different amounts of resources to progress. Like 600 Food 300 Stone. This isn't necessarily bad, however, in my opinion, the resource distribution among technologies, buildings and units should vary more. Let me give you a quick example: - in CoH, you use manpower to train units, fuel to tech up and train vehicles, and ammunition for abilities and weapon upgrades. - in Age you use Gold and Food for most units, or Gold and lumber, or Lumber and food to train military units. In 0 AD I don't see this resource distribution being used that much. Instead, most units require the same amount of resources. Pretty much you need to apply a certain "task" to each resource, like I stated above. From what I've seen the basic layout looks like this: - food is needed for some eco, upgrades and soldiers - wood is needed for pretty much everything - metal is needed for some techs and advanced units, but only in small amounts. - stone is needed for fortresses, towers and aging up As someone can see, the resource usage is spread out a lot, and I think it might be worth it to readjust the system. To give an example - Food is most important early on, required for almost anything. Training villies, military units (melee), teching up - lumber is needed for constructing basic structures, and requirement for ranged units like archers, siege weapons, upgrades that have to do with arrows/missiles - metal is needed for military upgrades, all kinds of swordmen units, teching advanced techs that improve your citizen economy etc. - stone is needed for defensive structures and teching advanced buildings/progressing in Age, (partly combined with lumber) I know that this principle doesn't look that much different, but minor adjustments like these will affect the resourcing massively. Also, it streamlines the learning curve. Players think then "Ok, I need metal for melee military, food for building units. Lumber and stone are needed for everything that has to do with my city" Imo, metal should be given a bigger role in military unit production. The reason is easy: it gives more room for city progression, teching and also more variety in your starting game. Metal could be harder to mine, and take more time. This way, it also becomes more important to stockpile metals early on for age 2 and age 3 military units and upgrades. If you make normal Age 1 infantry cost food + metal instead of food + lumber, it's overall more interesting in early build orders. If you're committing to a rush, you could be scouted, as you only need metal if you want to make military early on. This creates more importance for scouting your enemy. I know that some age 1 units require food and metal already (like hastati), but they still also need wood. As the game progresses (I'm referring to age 2 mostly), metal should become more and more important. Techs should require more and more metal, and stronger military units should require a combo of lumber + metal, or food + metal. This makes fighting for metal depots on the map more important. Not every unit should require metal, but quite a few. Same with techs. Right now you need almost no metal apart from teching to age 3. Example: basic hoplites cost 50g 20m instead of 50g50l. Peltasts cost 20f 60w (so you need to harvest more different resources, but you save food for aging up). Cavalry could cost 60f 40m instead of food and lumber. quick edit: Another option could be that barracks are required to build advanced military (cavalry and peltasts) in your town center. There could be an upgrade to make units trained from the town center to match barracks build speed available once you've built it. Point 2: fighting system Right now, the game fighting is quite nice, although Archers seem to the weapon of choice to build, as they have huge range, and deal a lot of damage. Cavalry seems to be lacking, so the counters are weak. Imo, this isn't too much of an issue, tho. What I think is a bigger problem is that pretty much all units can harvest resources. While it's cool to have citizen soldiers who can do both (very unique idea), this has 2 consequences: First, the person who's playing aggressively early on risks A LOT. If you're rushing your enemy, you're giving away 2 resources. One resource is resource collection time. Your units are running to the enemy and not harvesting resources. Your opponent gets an economic lead this way, because his units are collecting resources. And even if you reach your enemy, it's hard to fight him, as he'll also have citizen soldiers to defend his city. So, you as a rusher, are sacrificing economy and your enemy has more resources and has most likely as many soldiers as you have. Overall, rushing seems to be very inefficient this way. A solution to this would be that wounded units collect slower compared to full health units. Penalty of maybe 50% less efficent once they have lost hitpoints. But, to counter this, units would be able to regenerate health slowly. If you garrison them in the Town Center they heal faster - pretty much you reduce the dependancy on healing upgrades, and also, this rewards unit preservation. You could even go ahead and give certain civs bonuses to healing to mark them as defensive-boom oriented civs. Also, I think that Archers shouldn't be able to harvest resources (or only at a VERY slow rate compared to other units). Archers seem to be very strong in this game, and there should be a drawback to this (apart from costs). If someone spams archers, he's "punished" by having a weaker economy compared to someone who's playing with other infantry units. Also, military units trained in the Town Center should take significantly longer to train compared to barracks so getting military buildings earlier is more important. Also, this helps with being able to rush. This also makes sense in the counter system: Archers > Infantry > Cavalry > Archers - both archers and their counter cannot harvest resources. If cavalry counters archers, and archers can harvest while cavalry cannot, this makes archers way more population efficient as they're both economy unit, harassing unit and main military unit. The 2nd consequence of this is that you get huge ressource spikes - every soldier multiplies as military unit and as a villager. So, lategame you'll have huge amounts of workers, who can also defend themselves easily, making eco raids with units like cavalry hard, especailly since quite a few citizen workers are spearmen. Like said before, not necessarily a bad thing, but this makes Archers even stronger. Because they are the only units that can outrange your military workers and harass economies without taking damage in return. Add fortresses and towers and you get a pretty static fighting front - build a Fortress, rush archers forward, kill some eco, then build another fort and so on. Since siege is required to tear down buildings, this makes advances hard. Point 3: Buildings Easier access to siege, or making regular infantry better at fighting buildings (maybe through upgrades) would seem to be the way to go from my point of view. Even if there is infantry that tears down buildings quite well, it's still hard to advance without siege. Maybe, some infantry units could also have access to upgrades that help with building damage. Dwarves in BFME got an upgrade named "siege hammers" which made them deal lots of damage to buildings, but removing their ability to fight regular units. Maybe something related to flares or fire could do the trick for units in 0 AD. Also, building costs and times should be adjusted. Constructing buildings faster, and being able to tear them down faster leads to a more fluid gameplay, with more back and forth. Making buildings cost more stone compared to lumber makes economic choices and upgrades more important. tl;dr: Harassment should be made more viable, and resource distribution should be balanced out to give a more streamlined game. I suggest taking the time to read through the full post though. So far, thanks for reading, and I'm hoping for some answers. Greetings DarcReaver

While you do have a point - water maps usually contain fish as food source. By reducing farm land on the isles you pretty much force fighting for the sea to maintaining food flow.

The funny thing is that the game seems to be meant to be played very fast in the current build (so very arcade style compared to "slow" Age of Empires 2 for example)- you can start off with all types of main units - skirms, pikes/swords and some sort of cavalry. Your units are trained very fast, and resource collection is also pretty fast.Even tho you can train all those units from the start and have this super collection rate on your villagers, this doesn't have much effect on rushing at all. The combination of not being able to expand, having cheap, disposable workers everywhere, having citizens for countering rushes, buildings being so tough simply kills the dynamics. The game plays out incredibly slow because booming is so strong and you can't rush properly because there is no real way to pressure your opponent. If some villies die - who cares? food is unlimited after minute 3 with farms, and a villager is trained in less than 10 secs. Also you have men for defending. On top of that, there is no early map competition or even option for economic spreading with forward bases etc, which also slows down the overall resource progress (mining stone/metal/food in the center of the map). That's most likely why most people get farming economy so fast - I think that shouldn't be available from the start. Unlimited food should be for later ages. The feature of herding animals by yourself is actually a much more unique concept. I love the idea that you can either raise your own goats or go out hunting somewhere in another part of the map - with a higher reward. A very nice tradeoff mechanic. Right now you build some fields after harvesting berries and your food eco is done. Yuck, boooooring. I'd really like to try out the new capture system. But I even with it I think there has to be quite some brainpower invested into the early game to improve the game flow. Edit: don't get me wrong on this matter tho. I mostly refer to rushing because it simply seems to be completely ineffective in this game. I don't have problems with slower paced games - I don't necessarily need PvP action from minute 1. But I still think that someone who dedicates his early economy for warfare should be rewarded if he does it well. Right now it seems like booming is simply superior.

My answers directly in blue as idk how to split quotes in this forum software. I actually don't get why people talk about balance in this game all the time. There can't be a real balance until the core game is finished and set in stone. That's what I've been trying to say with the last posts I've written in here. And unless that is done you cannot finish it as there will be always stuff to change which leads to another overhaul. Idk, but I think people have often the wrong impression what "balance" really is or how it is achieved, and what the requirements for balance are. Also, I really hate how people always come up with realism. Seriously. If someone wants realism go play a war sim game like Rome or some other Total War game, which gets pretty close to realism. RTS is not about realism. It's about interesting gameplay. Choosing a strategy building counter units and countering your opponents strategy and units. Having many strategic options for comebacks and surprising your opponent. About a working counter system. Also, how is having a game with 200-300 intended pop cap realistic in terms of warfare? Ancient larger cities usually had thousands of citizens alone, on top of armies consisting of thousands of men stationed everywhere. Edit: Don't get me wrong, it's good to have realism to a certain amount - it adds up logical points to the game. E.g. Spears being good against cavalry units, or Skirmishers having high damage on their javelins against enemy infantry and stuff like that. Additional features like flanking attacks and so on also create more depth and tactical options ingame. Optical, historical accuracy for buildings and units is also important for the game's atmosphere. And I certainly appreciate stuff like that. What I don't appreciate is what I call "overburdening features" or "unnecessary realism". Game features should be interesting, intuitive, rewarding and overall, most importantly, FUN. If they aren't, they're not worth integrating into the game. And whoever executes his strategies, tactics faster/better and/or surprises his opponent wins. That's RTS. Everything else is not RTS. It's called Real-Time-Strategy for a reason. Time is one of the most important resources in this game type.