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Here's an idea. If you guys don't like what I proposed here, then make your own thread for others to rip your proposals apart. Sound good? Meanwhile, none of our proposals will get implemented. Actually, from what I hear the closest thing that'll come to fruition will be: Same darn game as it is now, but you can lock soldiers into a formation if you want to and disband them at will. There you go. I predicted the future.

I think the key feature I liked most from the battalion system is the ability treat the battalion as a super unit. This means selecting a group of units by a single left click and having a visible way to distinguish groups without having to actually select the group. This was accomplished by having the selection ring continuously change shape. Essentially, the outer edges of the individual selection rings would be connected together and all the inner portions of the selection rings would not be rendered. Banner units were also used to make the battalions stand out for easy selection and targeting. It's fine if the group can be disbanded to individual units for those that want that.

Until the spamming has stopped or we have found a way to stop it. It might take a week if the person responsible for it stops mistreating other players, but if not it might take months or years.

If a car is made for a pool, shouldn't it be a boat?

I didn't want to denigrate your work, inventing things to implement probably requires more creativity and effort than simply changing something exists. I am just a player looking for news on going stuff which is always interesting discussion. F.e. the idea proposed by an user few pages ago is interesting (allowing an outpost to have territory influence in order to have strategic gathering points), but if you consider mauryan elephant workers designed by someone, it would just kill mauryan peculiarity (if the elephant won't grant territory influence too ). Indeed promoting an expansion-wise direction could finally depose the annoying self trading strategy (70k metal in 1:30h of game with 54 traders in a FFA game). The mercenary camp is an amazing feature to add. Did you ever play Popolous the beginning? there were savages strolling aroud the map able to be civilized with a sorcery or with priests who used to convert units. Taking spark from that, strolling gaia women could be captured and enslaved. Slaves could lose efficiency over time instead of losing hp which probably would be out of control.

The idea here is is that you automatically get the needed manning units when buying such a structure or mechanical unit. F.e. when you buy a fishing boat, it automatically gets equipped with one fisher, as otherwise it isn't useful. The same with a fortress, when you construct one, it gets equipped with something that represents the minimum amount of personnel to man it. This is to avoid unneeded micro managing, as realistically, fortresses that aren't manned at all should be immediately capturable, ships that aren't manned can't move or do anything else. How would you even man a ship that gets spawned in front of a dock? This is a clear case where gameplay aspects need to get preference over realism. And it's a consistent deviation from reality throughout the game. So I don't see a problem at all.

Nope. The UI is a mess, units are not apparently easy to differ in regular fights. Formations are already implemented, but they just create more micromamagement for adding/removing units from them. The variable size of formactions even creates problems with grouping and spacing out armies on most maps (forests are in the way and mess up the unit positioning with Formations > 20 soldiers). On top of that individual unit micro doesn't do anything because units can't be healed efficiently and die too quickly. Just adding a couple of techs/working on the tech tree won't do much.

In the game settings, you can set the victory condition to "conquest buildings". Then you'll only have to destroy all buildings to win. The regular "conquest" settings only defeats a player when there's no theoretical possibility to win anymore. So as long as there's a unit available that can either construct buildings or attack something, it's still possible to win, and the game isn't finished. It is indeed true that the AI will never surrender explicitly, and act a bit like an annoying player.

@MayQueen hard to understand what you mean. @Lion.Kanzen I think I'm going to try the Iberians on Tuscan Acropolis. I'm curious how the walls would look like. If it covers all the edges which I doubt would be great otherwise I have to delete it then rebuild. My favorite spot of this map is on the lower left which I could preserve more pine trees, etc. The Iberian opponent I had only built two lines of walls but not on the edges. The passages way down too had very deep spots on two passage places which make it hard to build a nice flat gates. By far the best buildings I had seen were the Ptolomies, they're beautiful though Ibearean houses are the greatest! Oh it's the Maurians having elephant dropsites.

Darc, I just don't see the problems you see. Formations, and the full implementation of naval combat, will solve a lot of the problems. Perhaps some tweaks to the tech tree to address the progression problems are also needed, but other than that I think formations, naval combat, and a somewhat more rigged tech tree are all 0 A.D. really needs.

I tryied to creat an account but gives me an error. I search on the forum the same issue and saw something about creating multiple accounts but I made noone :\

What is the point of this topic? It sounds like spam from a quick look, but I doubt that you would have registered and participated in the forums just to eventually post something that doesn't apply to most people visiting the forums. So I am confused

Registrations are currently disabled due to spamming. Please wait a bit.

Which leads us right back to my original application as gameplay developer Without one there won't be progress just like we anticipated. Great stuff.

One could argue that structures must include food costs then. I agree that minimizing micro is a valid point here, but I think 0 A.D. is missing some details that may or may not affect gameplay but create a UNIQUE ATMOSPHERE, e.g. something like children (Stronghold) and structures with animated workers (Settlers).

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?40230-Faction-preview-No-5-Thebes Iberian. https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caetra

I really enjoyed BFME but i never liked the autorefilling battalion system. Imo allowing a player to merge different battalions would have been much better, this never happened obviously because of the battallion Rank system. Anyway in BFME units die like fly there and a continuos refill of your lanes is needed and battalions are convenient, and as far as i recall this isn't in 0AD current design nor in the design you proposed (i recall you proposed to increase the battles duration). Making selection groups let you to micromanage different units. As you said, it is a feature of the game; matter of fact i can select more buildings or soldiers using SPACE + 1-9 (alt + 1-9 by default) and eventually click ont the icon of the type of units i want to micromanage in the middle panel. f.e In the screenshot you posted, you can simply click on the slingers icon displayed on the middle panel to move all the slingers of the previous selection. None forces you to look for your units in the battle mess and double click them in order to give an order. This is one of my fav rts: this is not purely combat oriented but you can notice how the units are managed. the units are trained one by one and automatically merged into a big battalion, btw having pure control on them by reducing or increasing the battalion size (there isn't a drag and drop selection area). The difference is on the versatility of disrupting and reforming battalions, even of different size and, in the case of 0AD the formation adopted and the type of soldiers within it. The main differences are: 1) if you notice, skirmishers always get a half moon shape deployment when they attack because their range is very limited. The effect is reduced as the attack range increases, still avoids idle units in the backlines. 2) a single formation can be disrupted, resized and modified with different units. You could simply select a type of soldier, put them in a different formation shape and bind any battalion to a different hotkey 3) the micromanage you fear, which is even unnecessary as i already showed you by using selection groups, would just replaced by a PLACEMENT micromanagement, basically you have to give different rally points to any battallion which would be unnecessary if ranged and melee units could simply be part of the same battallion. Using a metaphore, Ubuntu and Macos have totally different philosophies. While the first has an open source philosophy, the latter is an extremely closed system despite they both are based on a UNIX system. I can't have Ubuntu and pretend to have a Macos despite they are both based on the same system. A simple introduction of a "lock formation" button is the nearest form of battalion you could obtain without going to drastically change the whole concept. Improve instead of rewrite something that won't have substancial differences but different philosophies.

I propose this replay of a 1v1 (Tiber7 vs Cesar) for 2 reasons : It may interest new players (even if we both didn't play at our true level and both made quite big mistakes) ... Again, another really critical pathfinder issue... decided the game which was evenly matched before it happened. The game was interesting and tough. Btw that pathfinder issue, I think, stole the victory to the player who suffered from it. I don't tell you anything more to avoid spoiling you the game. commands.txt

A mechanic present is that siege can be captured. But the time to overtake them is simply too long. Fixing this should help.

It would be very interesting if siege weapons are manned by foot soldiers. Siege rams should be operated by a minimum number of units and allowed to be garrisoned. If units garrisoned are ranged units it should be able to fire in range automatically when there's enemy. It should be able to mechanically kill a unit/units by rolling over them. AIs make a lot of them and it's sometimes annoying. Ranged siege units should be manned and dock units too. A warship without ranged unit/units garrisoned shouldn't be able to fire in range. It should be capturable too like towers. Speaking of towers, outposts and forts structures like these shouldn't attack in range if no range unit is manning them and any range attack should correspond as to what type of range unit is inside. Not even having its LOS activated if not garrisoned. Structures have no eyes so there's no sense to have LOS if they don't have the ability to see. Maybe off Topic; Any structure that operates should be manned like market, temple, smelter, Barracks, special buildings etc etc. Stockpile and utility carts should be built to transport resources to the stockpile. How I wish there's weapon production... before units can be trained. darn a Stronghold like 0AD should be awesome. I know these can't be done but wishing to come across this mechanics.

Sword units. Sword units are strong against Siege Weapons. You might be surprised but even Women can take them down.

"(note that this is only regular army movement. Now imagine another player or even 2-3 with their units clashing into yours. HF trying to get an overview and apply micro to assign unit counters)" You are starting to convince me. What I usually do in those cases is to group my army by unit types with ctrl + number. It's impossible to micromanage each unit, so it doesn't differ too much on having battalions. "If you insist on using a 20 year old, outdated system I can't help you. Especially since you already state yourself that you want to avoid unnecessary complexity." This isn't useful. We also use programming languages which have 20 year old and there is no problem with that. Lots of recent games have not battalions, or is Starcraft 2 a 20 year old game? or is it Supreme Commander? About unnecessary complexity is what makes me concerned about battalions. It would simplify some parts of the combat but it is not all necessarily good. Pros of individual units: You can micromanaging to kill more powerful enemies You can dodge projectiles easier You can do better use of your units (divide them to gather different resources or construct) You can micromanage to obstaculize your enemies movement. The game is prepared to work this way already. In general, you have more control about your resources (train just the units you need, use just the units you need for each task...) Doubts about Battalions: What will happen with my formation when I try to harass some women in the woods (e_e)? Will I have a full battalion of scouting cavalry? It won't make them slower if faces obstacles like trees? As many soldiers are "workers" I wouldn't be able to split them in different tasks. So "manpower" will be wasted (not a doubt, I think it's a con) Women will be grouped also? Merchants? The formation will be rigid as a rectangle? Could I customize the formation? They will adapt to the circumstances? (for example to surrounding an overwhelmed enemy unit) I think battalions may work but many things have to be redesigned.

I absolutely agree with that part. I don't see the point of veterancy in most of my 0ad games (although I didn't play too much). Don't take me wrong, I like the concept of veterancy but for my game which is spaming spearmen and so, it's useless. I don't care for a single soldier, also I find micromanagement hard for keeping they alive. Selecting hurt units after a battle one by one, send them back, heal them and returning them to the front in most cases doesn't worth the effort and time for me. But I'm concerned of turning into a battalion system. Maybe it's because I don't have much experience with battalions except for Total War and I really think 0ad may be a great game with or without battalions. But I have AoE gameplay very linked to a splitted units system and battalions make me wonder how it will work mixed up with many other functionalities (veterancy, replacement of deads, gathering resources). I just don't see that system in the currently 0ad. I don't say battalion system is bad for 0ad, I'm just not convinced (just an opinion)

I still can't see any advantage of a battalion system over a single units with formations system. Isn't just simpler, and even useful, to indroduce a "lock" button on the middle panel allowing the player to maneuver the whole formation by clicking on an unit within formation and eventually disrupt it and rearrange troops by "unlocking" them? Battalion system is just a limit intended to obtain a massacre-like effect and imo its not very versatile, you couldn't even merge different rank battalions. What you propose is to use a battalion system and, on the other hand, remove the population limit deriving by units death in it. Are the different rank battalions intended to be merged? if so, how are the troops within it arranged? And, if the xp is shared between all the units (thing that i may agree only on loot exp), will the lower rank units be deployed in the backlane and benefit from the more experienced units in frontlane or will they be deployed in the frontline for an easy death? Supposing that you will decide for a single unit combats, a kind of "duel" between units within formations resulting in a big brawl, I guess that in case of a cavalry group that outflank and goes for the ranged units, the player is not allowed to move some spearmen from the on going combat and cover the ranged units in the backline because they act as a batallion and, by conseguence, as a single unit.

Some excediste canbrelese and normalize the health drink some teas like mint and other and you see how the body naturally responds to their natural way.

I definitely agree that we need some kind of system like that, but it's actually tricky to do correctly… Perhaps we could show which existing building the new building would be connected-with when you place a foundation?

Most classic maps indeed have more starting resources than resources in "hunting distance". The new maps by _kali in alpha 20 and 21 have much more animals in hunting distance. Hunting them can be invested into a cavalry rush. Some maps like volcanic lands don't have any food on the map and the gameplay is about 4-5min slower due to that. Not sure if there is a right or wrong in there, having diverse maps means less repetition and more thinking / player adaptation.

Any suggestions on improvements are welcome (3 or 4 of them have already popped up after the commit, it was mostly committed to prevent endless rebases and rereviews of the same code). Core spy functionality with some heated arguments was added in https://code.wildfiregames.com/D117 Focusing on the spy after a succesful bribe was added in https://code.wildfiregames.com/D169 Testing code to prevent devs from adding hidden bugs is proposed in https://code.wildfiregames.com/D170 Keeping the diplomacy window opened after a successful bribe proposed in https://code.wildfiregames.com/D171 Some code cleanup following the commit https://code.wildfiregames.com/D172 Displaying the cost in the tooltip of the button https://code.wildfiregames.com/D173 I personally want to see a spy function for the wonder / hero in wonder victory / regicide gamemode, if the gamesetup option doesn't prohibit spies. Lobby players, including some devs are skeptical whether the price is too high and whether it should be restricted to traders, but the feature is still useful in some situations and it should be really expensive as we don't want it be used frequently. Summary screen extension proposed in #4498