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That's entirely dependent on what type of game you are playing/making. I do agree that it's most likely not a good idea for an AoE-like RTS though.

@DarcReaver: please mind your tone a little bit, will you? @Lion.Kanzen: if the only change would be to remove the CS concept than it would indeed be even more a AoK clone. However, combined with the other changes mentioned in this thread I think it plays quite differently

Hahahaha, always answer the same. is because the realism of the epoch. Only needs some extra stuff and you can convert your peasants in soldiers. Mostly of people that are new , are confused the first time. But with the time, the concept work from early, and in late phase you can mix soldiers with champions. Few soldiers are working. you can't expect all soldiers were medieval or modern full service professional with a commander in the battalion marching to the war. Confess you want a classic game with few personal preferences. for example if they removed SC this game becomes more to be a AOK clone. We can have a mode where soldiers only fights. why not? You still angry? Why don't search a conciliation by both sides?

Something that Danny and my ideas share is tying technological progress to physical structures on the map that can be destroyed and thus the technological progress lost. This seems like an avenue worth exploring whether pro-phase or anti-phase.

This discussion highlights everything that is bad about phases. Look at the posts endorsing phases, they are all about ways to restrict the player, and arbitrary ways to categorize things into phases. I understand that this is a game and things have to be simplified, and I appreciate the efforts of people to try and improve upon existing ideas (this is in fact more important than new ideas!), but I really think phases/epoch/ages have always been a dead duck in RTS games. A city/civilisation is something that evolves gradually, it does not jump from one age to the next, there is no reason why we cannot have this authentic feeling, there is no real reason to limit the game to distinct phases other than to emulate games that came before. I edited this part out because I went on a rant about how phases make no sense and seem to be completely detached from the game world, but I have deleted that and instead I will try to provide some alternative ideas. Knowledge as a Resource I want technology to be something tangible in the world, not a flowchart disconnected from the rest of the game. I will start by describing a basic settlement and how knowledge is accrued and used by primitive cultures. Each working citizen will accrue a trickle of knowledge while they work (this simulates the natural tendency to innovate and find more efficient ways to complete tasks). For every working citizen, the science score of the civilisation is increased by a small amount; the science score affects the rate at which knowledge is acquired over time. Advanced buildings and units require knowledge to build, however, knowledge is not spent like other resources, but also unlike other resources it must be maintained. The population itself is the basic and most vital store of knowledge, if your population collapses then your technology will disappear along with it! Libraries (as separate buildings or contained within other buildings, e.g. Universities) greatly bolster the civilisation's knowledge base. Buildings such as the Temple, Library, University and Observatory* are places that provide huge boosts to the science score and thus the rate of knowledge acquisition. So knowledge is not a static resource, it is not something that can be simply piled up but can change greatly depending on these factors of population size, libraries and science score. (For the more mathematically-minded amongst us I have attached an image of an equation that produces the desired relationship.) What this means in terms of gameplay is that knowledge (and thus technology) are bound to tangible objects and people that must be protected. * The effectiveness of the observatory depends on its elevation, being more effective on higher ground, like in real life. Technology Buffs & Building Upgrades Technologies like efficiency boosts would either be unlocked automatically past a certain knowledge threshold, or require a new building to be constructed (which would be unlocked by passing a knowledge threshold). You would not pay to unlock technologies as before; all technologies must be linked to either a specific building or the overall knowledge score (and ultimately the population of course). So technologies would be fluid just like knowledge. My thoughts on building upgrades is that they should be very limited if existing at all. Why? From both an aesthetic and gameplay point of view it seems a bit of a spoiler to simply click on a building and upgrade it. Instead, what is far more natural is to build new buildings alongside the old, or to demolish the old to make way for the new. In real-life cities, the mixture of architecture styles tells you something about the history of the city. I would love this to be a part of 0AD, being able to see how a city has evolved over time; you could look at a city and maybe you will see a clear divide between the old city and the new city as it has expanded over time, or perhaps the outskirts are littered with ruins from an ancient war or perhaps the ruins are simply old buildings that were demolished to reclaim building materials. I am getting carried away with this idea that would require tonnes of new art! Should Other Resources Be Volatile? I think so, yes. So you have 10 000 stone? What if I need stone, why can I not raid your base and steal your stone? Why can I not burn down your granaries so that your people starve? Resources are what most wars are fought over so why is this not the case in 0AD? I think I will have to learn this level of programming because I always have these grand ideas and then I sit around and wait and hope that somebody else makes them!

Messina

I don't get this ant size unit argument at all, formations are an integral piece of the puzzle that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet. Formations aren't fully implemented so units stay in formation during battle. 0 A.D. harkens back to the CnC and AoE/AoM way of doing things, with the twist of historically accurate citizen-soldiers and formations add into the mix. Healing may need some work, but the temple and healer dynamic is sound. Perhaps you are right about the training times being too fast, and things like making farms require farmsteads are good ideas, but other than that I just don't see most of the problems you see.

Resource & economy System revised This concept only covers economic features of civs. Military will be covered in a separate topic to keep this thing small. Some aspects of economy of course affect military as you’ll see later, but this is not the main argument at the moment. Military design and economic design will be tweaked to fit each other for every civ type. At first: I’d suggest to pair civilizations into groups (i.e. Hellenic Civs, Nordic civs, Indian/African civs and so on). I’ve covered Gauls, Britons, Iberians, Spartans, Athenians and Seleucids so far as more-or-less specific layouts. This again is not a 100% finished layout with every detail covered. Instead it's a general guideline to differ civs from each other and allow to create unique game play patterns for each of them. More than they currently are. The other civs will come later as I need to create something unique for them aswell. I’ll expand this concept for them in the next update(s). A .pdf is attached to be bottom of this post. (edit: I rewrote some parts because they contained some spelling errors. Should be more readable now) I. General thoughts on resources Every strategy game requires resources. The resources have to fit the game and players should have a choice whether collecting which resource is more important to them (strategic diversity). Each resource needs to fulfil a certain “role” that gathering it accomplishes it. To prevent “overburdening” the game with resources there has to be a flow in the game to naturally lead players towards gathering new resources (i.e. a progression from resource A into resource A+B into resource B etc.). Resources that already are gathered by players may not become redundant (because it’s replaced by another resource). If this is done well the economy management doesn’t become boring or unhealthy for the game and allows interesting, different types of playstyles where players decide how they are going to prioritize their gathering and army setups. Citizen/cavalry gatherers removed Yes I know this is a drastic change from the current concept. Yes, it will require reworking parts of the game. However, this is also the opportunity to improve the overall gameplay quality. Advantages of Citizen Soldiers/gatherers: - Usage of military units when not in combat - Especially cavalry can gather far away by hunting - Easy transition from economy to fighting Disadvantages of Citizen soldiers/gatherers: - No distinction between economic and military units (an integral part of every RTS) - Since many gatherers can be active at the same time (economic + every military) gathering rates have to be poor to avoid “economy explosions” which means that the resource income increases exponentially with each additional soldier - Players loose resources when attacking, short math example: o Soldier collects 0.5 food per second, 30 soldiers work as gatherers which means 15 food/second income (or 900 food/minute). Now if the 30 soldiers move to the enemy the player will lose 900 food every minute from his soldiers not gathering. Provided that the enemy has a similar army/economy that means that he’ll be ahead with 900 food for each minute he can gather (which would be equal to ~10 or more soldiers). o The attacking player needs to destroy more than 900 units worth of food every minute to get an advantage from his attack. If he can’t do that his attack actually weakens the Attacker instead of the Attacked -> unbalanced by design o Fixes: soldiers move at unrealistic ultra high speed (less time to get to the enemy) or lowering the gathering rates. The issue is the same still, attacking player initially has a large disadvantage - There is no progress from weakest -> strongest unit. Instead the players already start at a high level and then only progress in very small steps towards higher tech levels - Citizen soldiers discourage capturing as they are efficient at protecting the base early on, rendering capture rather useless - To get citizens back to work is a very fiddly task and annoying compared to regular economic units Overall it’s better to adjust gathering to specialized units for each civ type instead of giving every civ the ability for soldier gathering. This makes civs more diverse (-> more gameplay depth). One (poor) game mechanic lost for a massive gain in playability is more than worth it. Building layout (general) 1. Civic Centers are buildable from the start. City influence radius reduced. Can train a weak “militia type” unit and slingers. Slingers can be used to help hunting and Militias are weak units that can be used to harass and defend. Both units hard counter each other (slinger > militia, but in close combat militia beats slinger because of much lower hitpoints) 2. Storehouses, Sitobolon structures buildable in neutral territory 3. Farms require neutral territory, affected by gathering duration (fertility) – fields initially generate resources very slowly, but the rate increases the longer it is harvested by gatherers. When the gathering stops the field fertility decreases. To-do: Generate map areas in which farms are more productive (a possible map control element) 4. Military structures are postponed to City Phase, units are split up and not available all at once – either by per-building upgrades (only coding required, could be a workaround) or by splitting up the buildings into classes – Barracks, Stable, Archery range type classes (requires artworks), depending on civ type. Gatherer Limits: Food: 2/4 (for small/large food sources) Wood: 3 (for all trees) Stone, Iron, Silver: 3/5 (like food) Food – basic resource. Used for training units, upgrades (military), melee infantry & slingers, City advancing Wood basic resource. Used for military training (support/ranged units, ships). Used for economic upgrades, use for low tier buildings Stone – resource that constructs high tier buildings and expansions (civic centers, barracks, temples, gymnasion etc.) Iron - basic military resource, all basic melee military units require metal (swordsmen, pikes and cavalry). Silver - advanced military resource - is important for military improvement techs and used for training superiors, elite units. Slow to gather. Population - instead of being only connected to houses, population is influenced by city size (village - town - metropolis). Required to train units (obviously) Population cap (thoughts) Houses are hardcapped at ~10 houses per city. Depending on city level they can provide 10-20-30 population each. Alternatively: Military requires no population and is only depending on the food that is available from gatherers. Gatherers require population from houses and are hard capped per city. In a logical sense, soldiers that are at war do not sleep in houses, so it's rather strange that they take up pop from the city houses. Instead, armies rely on being supplied with food, water, weapons etc. from their home cities. This concept could be further elaborated, as I think it would fit the city Advance system. Alternatively, each city grants a fixed amount of population. Houses then are scrapped. I'd keep houses for the sake of being authentic though. houses belong into cities. Upgrade System Phase advancing: Food and Stone Economic upgrades: Lumber and Iron Military unit unlocks: Food/Lumber & Iron (ranged and melee units) Military unit type upgrades: Food and Silver Blacksmith “System“ Blacksmiths automatically reduce army Iron costs and increase the training speed for Sword wielding units. It can further research Metallurgy type techs that allow faster training, and allow further, cheaper unit production. Upgrades are not tied to City Phases anymore. Concept: Blacksmith generates “experience ranks” over time which allows more advanced upgrades to be researched. Corrals Can garrison captured herdables to provide food over time. Idea taken from the "intended" version of 0AD which isn't finalized yet. Gameplay reasoning There should be a transition from one type of resource to others, similar to this: food -> wood -> metal -> stone/silver. Players are not overly confused with gathering many resources from the start. As the game progresses the economy complexity increases. Early civic center expansion allows to take additional gathering spots and economic advances. Gatherers training times can be increased since it's possible to train them in multiple buildings. Since gathering spots are limited there has to be economic expansion to fit all gatherers to the spots. Phase advances that require stone - this way, players automatically need to gather a resource that will be more important in city phase, i.e. to build Phase II buildings. Military unit upgrades (like “advanced training” or unlocking certain units) create a resource transition towards Silver. II. Hellenic Factions (Sparta, Athen, Seleucids) Economic concept: Hellenes are defensive civs, and thus have bonuses for foraging berries and decent farming. Gathering rates are comparably high, so they can exhaust their own resources more quickly. Slaves are free gatherers that can be trained, have a hardcap that can be increased with City Phases and Slavery Techs. Athen speciality: silver mines last 20% longer Sparta speciality: slaves have 10% faster gathering rates, hoplites 15% faster, start at veteran rank Seleucid speciality: farming rate +50% (rate at which farming productivity increases) Gatherer types: Women (50 food, 1 pop) Gather rates: food Hunt : 1.25 herdables : 1.25 berries : 1.50 grain : 0.80 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.6 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.4 rubble stones: 0.8 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.3 ambient iron: 0.6 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.2 Slaves (no cost, no pop. Have a hardcap) Gather rates: food Hunt : 1.4 herdables : 1.25 berries : 1.00 grain : 1.00 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.8 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.8 rubble stones: 1.2 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.6 ambient iron: 1.2 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.4 A second type of gatherer that excels at mining. There are 2 options for them to be limited: either they automatically start to loose health if there are too many at one place, or they are simply hardcapped by default. It would be interesting to utilize capturing features to increase the maximum slave count. I.e. for 5 wounded/killed soldiers on the battlefield the number of slaves trainable increases by 1. So, by slaying enemy units the economic power rises for Hellenic civs. Due to the amount of gatherers per resource spot, having hundreds of slaves isn’t profitable as there is a need for more gathering spots to collect resources from. Buildings: Economic: wood only Military: wood and stone Civic: stone and food Iron: none Silver: none III. “Alpine” Civilizations (Iberians, Gauls, Britons) Economic concept: Opposed to Hellenes civs “nordic” civs rely more on hunting. They are mainly offensive civs to start with. Their buildings do not require much stone (if at all) but are less sturdy. Gathering rates are lower for farming and mining stone. The treadmill can be used to increase farming at a later civ stage to bring them on par with other civ’s lategame food economy. Early huntables creates power spikes because they can advance quickly and field armies in a shorter period of time. Also, this allows more spreading and early expansion. While Hellenes need to consider how many cities they can supply and defend, the Nordic civs can play a rather mobile earlygame with rushes and lots of interaction with gaia. Civ special advantages: villagers and Hunters receive weapon upgrades from the Blacksmith. Iberian speciality: Start with additional metal, soldiers have 20% bonus speed, iron gathering +15% Gauls speciality: +50% bonus damage against animals, units that are hunting have higher accuracy Cavalry +20% faster Britons speciality: Gathering from herdables +50%, herdables in stables provide more food Villager (50 food, 1 pop) Gather rates: food Hunt : 1.5 herdables : 1.5 berries : 1.0 grain : 0.60 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.7 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.2 rubble stones: 0.6 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.4 ambient iron: 0.8 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.2 Villagers are both male and female. They can utilize spears or bows for hunting. Melee defense with knifes/swords. Hunter (80 food, 40 wood, 1 pop) Gather rates: food Hunt : 2.5 herdables : 2.25 berries : 1.50 grain : 0.80 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.6 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.4 rubble stones: 0.8 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.3 ambient iron: 0.6 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.2 Hunters are mounted gatherers that can move swiftly around. They attack with spears and with upgrades/veterancy level they perform as a skilled mounted skirmisher unit. They can harass from the start, but due to a low attack rate with miss chance they are not that good to hit moving gatherers. As they kill animals their rank increases and they become more effective at raiding enemy economic units. Buildings: Economic: wood only Military: wood only Civic: wood and food (!) Iron: none Silver: none edit: removed-Special building : Corrals IV. Map control elements The game should be dynamic. Players should have options for economic expansion and there should be fluent progress on the whole map, with increasing intensity towards mid and lategame. Many current RTS games revolve around a central “base” from which all major actions are taken. Units trained, teching accomplished, resources gathered etc. Outposts or second bases have less priority because the risk – reward ratio (hard to defend, little benefits in return) is high. For 0 AD I’d like to propose a concept of “fluent expansion”. Since this game features unique aspects – city borders, city phases and a default capturing system for every military unit it would be beneficial to actually concentrate on these aspects. To further emphasize the city progression and the construction of an empire, it’s important to have interaction with the map. Constructing outposts – new cities – that can supply the Capital city to grow in prosperity and power should be a vital part for the course of the game. However, to avoid common issues from other RTS – economic expansion is punished hard by early rushes. Since eco management is pretty basic in many games, not punishing early economic expansion would lead to massive unitspam and create war of attrition, so it’s not desirable. Sort of basic and not very unique. Every game does that. 0 AD features a detailed economy, and so the early focus should actually be economic expansion. Only very basic military available that allows players to focus on where to expand, which positions are worth to create new cities etc. And then, as the game progresses, players can start gathering armies and start fighting. Many players enjoy “no rush” gametypes in which they can actually “build up” before the fighting starts – so rushing, even though it’s common in many RTS, is not the prime and sole option to solve games. By delaying military there is the option for players to satisfy their desire to “build” and then allows a fluent progression into fighting the enemy. How to achieve? 1. Allow military to interact with the map instead with the enemy only. By providing neutral targets that can be captured (like neutral Villages, cities, mercenary posts, slave posts, markets etc.) that can provide military and economic bonuses on a long term by increasing the player’s influence. 2. Allow military to attack positions apart from the main city. By providing multiple possible targets the strategical aspect becomes important – where to attack with how many units, fake attacks to disrupt the player, parallel harassment with multiple small armies which rewards multitasking, etc. 3. Distribution of map resources and hardcapping gatherers to force expansions. If players are forced to explore the map and expand to gain more resources it’s important to know and anticipate where and when the enemy is likely to expand. Game experience and strategical “what if” thinking and decision making is fun and rewarding. Ideas: Easiest: captureable herdables that can be used for food. Slave posts: automatically unlock the option to build slaves in cities for a silver cost. Mercenary post: train map type specific military units that provide additional tactical options in army compositions, instant and at a higher cost. Neutral cities: a small settlement or city with gatherable resources nearby, like a small gaul village, protected by some soldiers and has a couple of houses, maybe some farms. Can either be captured (expansion) or burned down to get immediate resource boost (food, iron, wood) Temples: neutral buildings that generate silver, or allow to train special types of support units that otherwise would only be available to certain civs (similar to a merc camp for non-combat units) Mines: generate iron indefinitely and work similar to farms How the actual implementation and which bonuses are provided is a secondary task. As long as the neutral building creates the urge for players to explore and expand it’s all fine. I’m open for additional ideas for neutral buildings for sure. 0ad Resource1.1.pdf

With the help of furun 0ad and furub ubuntu fr, I got to delete the line in local.cfg: Room = "arena21"; Default MUC room to join I then tried to join lobby and visibly it works, Thank you all

If the line is in local.cfg or user.cfg remove it instead of changing it.

"I don't think you can put x application on the SSD and y application on magnetic disk in Linux" Yes, you can You can even install them in the default location, move them wherever you want (accessible to your PC that is ofc. ^^) and soft-link to where it was installed (Doesn't work that well for network sources though). So even if the installation process doesn't support installing on drive x/y one can easily change the locations of program data without much risk of breaking anything.

Not quite, I would like to see seasons because the seasons played a huge role in warfare in ancient times. There are a whole load of ideas for seasons but that would be appropriate to discuss in a separate thread.

4 resources - AOE II ripoff city phases - AOE II ripoff Blacksmith/technology system - AOE II ripoff "counter" system - AOE II ripoff Combined with a @#$% game pace. But yeah, using a squad based system is a ripoff... So what? IT's not about whether the system was used by another game at point X in the past. It's about creating a concept, using various tools to make the whole game itself unique. Currently 0 ad has what absolutely, unique and OUTSTANDING gameplay element? Ah yea, soldiers can gather resources.. wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow So units can do the most boring task in the game to not be idle. Impressive.

You can clearly see following facts: a ) color BLUE units are not color RED's units b ) units from BLUE are clearly not the same as RED c ) there are units with huge axes/hammers/logs that obviously attack close range, while BLUE's units seem to have rifles or something similar And no, my examples are not based on good micro. And you're still not understanding the difference. If you don't use formations is obviusly you don't. You can do that in 0 A.D to form units but you are using the examples at your own convenience.

You can clearly see following facts: a ) color BLUE units are not color RED's units b ) units from BLUE are clearly not the same as RED c ) there are units with huge axes/hammers/logs that obviously attack close range, while BLUE's units seem to have rifles or something similar And no, my examples are not based on good micro. And you're still not understanding the difference. Once more: Compared to this: Edit @ the picture - so, there are ~ 200 dead cavarly bodies and long bows + some priests. Even if I have not zoomed in I can see it easily. So nope, no disorder really. If you put in a battalion, you'll at least have a much easier option to select units of a certain type at once. This already makes the UI much cleaner to use and creates order. Then it does not matter that much that unit's are harder to differentiate from each other.

Why? healing can be better much better. But CS is bad concept? I don't think so, you can prove that. this worst example, the units are unrecognizable for me. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads/monthly_2017_04/orc.jpg.be3ea65cd6839a0f9c7e07f5c01c5b7a.jpg Your examples are only based in good micro, I can do same disorder in AoE2 . if that thing even be a battalion I haven't idea which units are they.

Once more. Every game you mentioned had a distinction between unit types. Each unit is easily. 0 ad doesnt have it. Citizen Soldiers concept sucks @#$%. Healing is useless, yes. And apart from that your statements make it pretty clear that you don't have a clue tbh. Compare this to: To this Units are easy to notice, contrasts are in between the unit types, and the models differ from each other enough to create an overview. This is the main reason why lots of RTS do not use "authentic" unit skins by default.

Coloring.

Which location is that btw?

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.

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.

Yes they commerce with that, Dacians for example change slaves and resources with Romans when Domicianus was emperor in order to bribe them to don't sake Moesia. Yes I never ear or know about slavery into the Iberian society. but The Empires was his engine of do mostly of things not only economic. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

I've been playing a few games with dropsite removed from the civil center. I had to modify several things in the AI. (I didn't realize farmsteads are only partially treated as dropsites.) Also, I added a minimum range for farms. This made the AI create farms in a radius around the civil center. I was hoping that computer player would clump them around drop sites, but it appears to place them around the center even when resources cannot be dropped off there. I think the minimum range idea has some real potential, I like the effect of the minimum distance for farms even more then removing the dropsite from the civil center. It creates cities that actually look and function like cities should. The surrounding farmlands look great too. They look even better when grouped around the farmsteads. You have to spread out more to place the farms and you don't end up with city streets that need mowing... If someone knows an easy way to get the AI to place farms around the farmsteads, it would be appreciated. I ultimately ended up adding food dropsite to the storehouse to make the AI competitive because the AI wasn't building farms near the farmsteads.

I hate hate hate hate committees. It's the reason I do not offer to work for or with the wfg team. IMHO, I don't care what analogues the Civic Center has with Age of Empires buildings. We are way beyond Age of Empire here. I want to make clear distinctions for buildings and units. It's why I want to alter the citizen-soldier concept. It's why I want to remove soldiers from the Civic Center and refocus them onto the Barracks and Merc Camps. It's a big reason I want to split the Civic Center from the Dropsites. In a zero resources at start match, first 2 dropsites can be free or something. Place them wisely.

Ha I'm probably the only one here with degree that includes agriculture and I can't make up my mind. So many good arguments on both sides. While no ones suggesting it; Adding finite farms to one civilisation however may make them unplayable. If we're going to differentiate civilisations, making the farm graphics look different visually may suffice. The paddy fields in the Han mod.

My idea is to make the fields an option. Like in the options or multiplayer menu it says, "Infintely Regenerating Fields, or Fields that every X amount of harvests, you have to replant.

the end result is the same, be forced into annoying micromanagement, or fall behind.

it rewards micromanagement, which would mean competitive players wouldn't build slow fields and new players would be forced to do so as well to stay on par. Which would mean slow fields would be redundant outside of campaigns and casual single player games. it'd be a no from me

Yes better that is. Just one last sentence: There are many great game concepts that can define a game and make it outstanding - there are games that combine RTS with Trading Card Aspects, RTS with roleplaying aspects like Spellforce, Warcraft, there are games that combine Tactics with RTS (like Warhammer/CoH franchise), there are classical RTS style games that allow unit massive onslaughts of hundreds of units (CnC, AoE) and games about single units (Dota and League are considered RTS aswell, for example). There are battle simulators like Total War, there are round based games that work like chess, there is stuff like Minecraft or games in space where the game levels are 3d, not 2d. Games in which you construct cities, jails, tycoons, pizza empires, Dictatorships in the Carribean. And many more. All are unique and special and have an own flavor. And which game definining core feature is included in 0 AD to make it stand out? Soldiers can gather resources. I mean - C'mon, really?

As it should be, right? I mean, what is the use of raiding the enemy's isolated gathering spots if they can just immediately retrain any of the gatherers I kill from the nearby storehouse? Look, resource gathering away from your centers of power should be possible in the game, in this we agree. But we disagree in that you seem to think that it should be without risk or easy to do. IMHO, we should make it a high risk/high reward situation to have a resourcing operation outside the player's territory.

The proposed concept raises a couple of questions. To avoid a large post monster I'll post the questions below: Question 1: Why should batch production be delayed by a required tech into a later phase? I don't see how it's such a strong asset that it's not possible to make it a default feature for the game. It's much more effective to train multiple units with a single click and thus allows concentration on other parts of the game. Individual micro = tedious, unnecessary micro. I mean - what's the point? In AoE you can use villagers to lure boars to your CC, that's pretty much the only point where I say that a single unit has rewarding micro. Everything else is not. Single knight vs. single Xbow? Or single Pikeman against a single archer? looks pretty ridiculous and isn't worth microing. That's something I learnt from playing AoE II in multiplayer. I don't see any point where single unit micro is rewarding in 0ad. If you know situations - please, I'm eagerly awaiting examples. Edit: Another reason why single units are not desirable in 0 ad: units die quickly and are cheap to replace, thus the individual micro has a low reward potential. compare this to a game like warcraft III : each unit is costly and has high hitpoints and low damage, that way the fights are long and there are many options to withdraw a unit to avoid damage and turn it back into the fight. It's a core mechanic and works well. Because the individual micro is very rewarding, and killing an enemy unit requires planning and skill. In 0ad it's the other way around, and thus it's counter intuitive. Question/statement 2: Why is founding additional bases delayed into a later phase of the game? because of the territory system and having store houses etc. are buildable in neutral territory in your concept I sort of question this move. It would certainly be better to allow city creation from the start while nerfing the stats of civic centers or to provide an early alternative to create economic outposts that can supply themselves with workers. (Note: A solution could be to allow gatherer production in store houses/farmsteads) Opinion 3: the idea to force fields outside the main land is a good one and should be followed in general, so I support it. Question 4: if farms already serve as an unlimited source of food, why is it necessary to create another option to gather unlimited food in phase II? Wouldn't it be better/easier to just delay farms into the second town phase and adjust the performance accordingly? One thing I like is the option of unloading cattle for a quick food surplus, though. Question 5: Why is the blacksmith delayed so much into the 3rd phase? The Blacksmith contains integral upgrades for the army and thus shouldn't be a lategame building. Blacksmith technologies are meant to make the player's army to scale against other units. By delaying the blacksmith further you're reducing the reason to produce early military units, which leads to the question why advanced military in general is allowed in the first phase. Edit: actually, this further emphasize to simply use military to gather resources - if a player can't make his army more efficient at raiding there's even less point in attacking because every minute of progress looses him resources (see below) and at the same time reduces the chance of having a successful attack (more time left - more buildings, more military buildings, more defenses). Question 6: how do reduced gathering capabilities fix the citizen Soldier concept? It still remains the same issue as it was. Every unit needs to keep gathering resources to gain economic advantage, and as soon as the army is rallied and attacks, the player starts loosing resources from not collecting. Since you provided some values in your concept I'll give you some math: Army size: 30 citizen soldiers. 15 collect wood, 15 collect metal. Gathering rate : 0.4 res/second Gathering rate for wood: 15x0.4 = 6 wood/second (or 60 wood per minute) which is equal to 10 women (rate 0.6) collecting wood = 500 food (!!) worth of economy units. Gathering rate for metal: 15x0.4 = 6 metal/second (or 60 metal per minute) which is equal to 20 women (rate 0.3) collecting metal = 1000 food(!!) worth of economy units. In total you have 1500 food worth of units collecting resources. Now you put those units to attack the enemy. And as soon as you start marching towards him you loose 1500 (!!!!) food worth of economic units. While the enemy (providing his army is just as big as yours and gathers with them) still has 1500 food or 30 additional gatherers working for him. Even if he has to relocate a couple of gatherers away from your army it's still likely that he has 700 or more food economy than you have. The longer your army is in his base the larger the enemies' advantage becomes from gathering as long as he can keep your army at bay. Since he has barracks nearby and can produce counter units from his economy your initial attack advantage becomes less and less. Or even worse - his own citizen soldiers fight back, and since he can field counter units he can fight your army more efficiently. Thus, attacking with citizen soldiers is ineffective. I hope this actually finally clears up why citizen soldiers are a bad concept. statement 7: I agree with the population concept. It is logical that larger cities have larger populations. I disagree with the fertility ritual though. This upgrade is nonsense from a gameplay perspective. While it's logical that you can produce women from houses it's simply bad. Edit: the reason why it's bad is simple: the intended structure of the game is to secure map areas and profit from the resources in the territory. There is no point in booming more and more economic units in your base area without expansion. It would be much better to allow the founding and creation of cities earlier to allow economic expansions instead. Because that way, players can expand the amount of gatherers where they are needed instead of having to let them travel around the map unprotected (once again - manspam train). In short: More bases = less risky to gather outside (gatherers can be protected and replaced without travel time) = more reason for early expanson = more life/action on the map = less locust harvesting =more opportunities to raid enemy economies = more action for military = no need to have them gather resources Statement 8: Comment on the stat suggestion for citizen soldiers/champions but they seem to be reasonable. Statement 9: I find it rather interesting that you analyze problems within the design in the last paragraph, but your presented solutions will not have the desired effect as they do not change conceptual problems. Fixing stats will certainly improve the overall playability, but if the design is bad, the stats will only make it mediocre instead of bad. The changes simply don't dig deep enough to fix the causes, they only fix symptoms. My 2 cents (as usual. I sometimes ask myself whether I have too much time on my hands to actually write these amounts of texts again and again)...

Those points brought up are more drastic solutions how to solve trading as an issue. Like you said, there are other games which use the approach of "self-supplying" resources. Not only Total Annihilation, but also games like CnC Generals (Black Markets, Supply drop zones, hackers) or even AoM (Hephaistos armoury building that creates trickles of resources or Egypt Favour statues) use this. My personal opinion stays - AoE II trading is a weak mechanic and imo it shouldn't be used as a reference - keep in mind that the game is almost 18 years old. Some concepts are timeless, but others are simply outdated. I'd also support a "deep mining" or "forestry" concept. The unfortunate thing is that this would result in new artwork to be required, and new scripts to make it work. To provide an example of actual way of implementation: The last economy tech for stone/metal unlocks the respective "deep mining" structure. The structure can be garrisoned with gatherers and then trickles in respective resources. Maybe something like 50% of a regular mine shaft. To keep the "map control" concept of mines, those structures can only be placed on or directly next to existing metal/stone mine. As a workaround, gathering those surface mines only goes down to 1 resource so the spot stays intact. @Palaxin I think the City phases should not be over-emphasized. I'd rather go with a dynamic that allows management of multiple cities/settlements with a dynamic population increase than forcing everything into advancing the city. I know AoE and AoM do that but I think 0 AD should follow a custom concept. Edit oh nvm, I actually misread your suggestion. Upgrade levels should be tied to city phases of course. Also I agree that the topics should be split up more. Afterall I initially created this thread to create a first basic layout that is to be made more specific. The amount of discussion in here shows how many topics actually are not thought out well and require a rework/adjustment. I'll try to split up the topics into different branches - when I'm done I'll create the according threads in here. Actually, as a suggestion I think there should be a gameplay development sub forum in which matters like this can be discussed. The main threads (i.e. resource gathering, city progress, military) should then be stickied.

OK this is where I jump in because I commented on this problem and Lion.Kanzen sent me here. I've been reading this all day. I officially hate Dyslexia. Trading is in AoE so it's here but it's function to eliminate getting stuck when your last metal mine dies or the last tree falls and you're hemmed in by enemies or allies. Much of the lag is those dang traders. It's also there but less of a problem with trading ships because their pathing is easier. Big empty water. We know this because there are some people playing AoE on special challenge maps where trading is the only way to get resources past the first dozen trees. On these maps they have very few other units. They are gauntlet challenge maps. They're on youtube but I can't find them right now. So how do we kill the late game conga line of traders? Remember the distance function is there so you can intercept and raid their trade lines and he yours but if you have the enemy bottled up so he can't do that, your conga line dances along until the game grinds to a halt. 1. Deep mining. Make a renewable mine that gets a small trickle of Stone, Iron or Silver or perhaps all three. Total Annihilation does this but it's too early game. Favors turtling up with your resources. Perhaps have it only productive on neutral ground or far away from other buildings. Limit the number. 2. Forestry. Add a late game forester that plants trees, like Settlers, so your trees don't run low but also make it so he can't plant them close to any other structure. Again to shut down turtling but still allow some if you're trapped. 3. Coppiced trees. Planted trees that are late game and never run out. The real world solution to the 10th century fuel crisis in much of Europe. Same limits as Forester. 4. Trade escorts. A tech to increase the capacity, armor value of the carts and raise their pop cost forcing the player to have half as many but doubling their efficiency. Repeatable in two or three tiers. Thus upgrading rather than spamming is the solution. Pro Fewer carts = less lag. Con: You lose more if they are blocked or destroyed. 5. Expanded handicrafts. Add techs that convert stone to jewelry = silver. Fine metal crafting: iron + silver to more iron. 6. Smuggling units. Units that convert food to iron or silver While they are in neutral or enemy territory. 7. Loot. When a unit levels up a small amount of iron and silver is added to your pool. I'm an all of the above kind of guy. Try all seven with low level yield so the player has choices and so the dev team can play with nerfs and bonuses to each in different civilizations.

Currently traders trained from markets can be set on custom trade router (to avoid enemies), but once trained it is impossible to set a custom route. Training traders from the market then setting them between CCs will make trade routes take fastest way, hence maybe into enemy territory. This is illlogical as you should be able to tell the traders to "go this way or you will be killed".

The issue with hard caps in general is that it's basically stating "we know it's broken, but we avoid fixing the mechanic by limiting players instead." It's a much better idea to limit trading mechanics by adjusting the trade concept itself rather than applying hard caps. like said before a mechanic that trading as a "resource" can be depleted if overused it better. Also it's logical. A small market can only support a couple of traders at once and then it's full. If you want to trade more you have to improve market size. I'd go with the "markets produce resources over time and deplete with each caravan" concept, since it's more logical and applies a similar effect as hard caps without limiting the player. But overall applying a map control concept for markets make the whole trading mechanic more unique and dynamic instead of being a simple copy paste from Age of Empires (especially considering that trading in AoE II is something I'd consider such a great mechanic that it absolutely should be copied in the first place).

I think you should take a step back first: Question 1: why is trade necessary? Answer: because resources are finite and certain units and techs require those resource(s) Question 2: What is the core mechanic of trading? summary: - trade replaces one resource with another with a trading ration (i.e. 100 food = 20 metal, or 100 stone = 200 wood etc.) - trade takes population which replaces gatherers to gain said resource - trading route length / amount of traders = profit from trading - players need trade to aquire resources that deplete over time Issues: - trading is unbalanced (resources are created out of nowhere) - no trading hardcap (except for population), so the more caravans the more free resources - trading looks weird (many cramped units in a line, another example of the "manspam train" that I refer to in my civ critic thread) - trading causes pathing issues / performance issues Now, the way I see it the intended mechanism is heavily inspired by AoE II. However, even there trading is a pretty stupid mechanic since 1v1 games turn into "trash unit wars" because single players cannot trade. The most broken version is AoM where players trade with their own town centers. For example Egypt civs lategame strategy is to spam caravans and then spam massive amounts of mercenaries to fight enemy units. while its sort of funny to see huge amounts of camels carrying gold around the map it's pretty dull from a gameplay perspective. Anyways. I'll just throw in an entirely different idea, as I think no matter how you implement trading, those caravans will always look odd. How about this: We have 3 options: Option 1: Each map contains "trading Centers". Depending on the map I'd suggest between 2 - 8 (0.5-1 per player), those are played at a decent range away from the player starting locations. They can be destroyed but they can be rebuilt for a infinite resource (or rebuild automatically after a certain time). If destroyed they offer the destroying player some silver resources as a bonus. Trading centers can be captured. after capturing they produce a chosen resource in certain time frames (i.e. income of 50 stone/minute). Or they automatically trade a resource i.e. trade food and get silver/iron/stone in return.. This way, trading centers would be a combat place, as players need to gain control of them for lategame units. Players who have control over trading have the control over lategame tech units and thus they have an advantage. If other players cannot take hold of trading centers, they can instead to a sneak attack on those Traders to interrupt the enemy resource income, thus create an option for a comeback. Option 2: markets still are buildable by players, but to profit from trading they have to establish "Trading Routes". A trading route must be between 2 different civic centers (so players can trade among themselves aswell). Each city can support 1 market (or 2). Market has a resource : coins. it automatically increases by a set ratio to 100 over time (rate and maximum can be increased with market techs). Each resource is worth a different amount of coins. 100 food cost 5 coins, 100 metal cost 50 coins (just to give an example). If a caravan comes by and trades a good the coins reduce. If the coins of the market become 0 the trading stops until it has refilled enough to buy a resource from it. This way, caravans are limited by the amount of coins generated by the market, thus there no longer is a manspam train to get the highest profit from the market trading. Plus, there are options to customize the own trading even if there's a 1v1 situation (in which trading is impossible atm). Issue that I see with this is that it's pretty complicated to code compared to the other options while not offering a unique different approach to trading, but I think it would work aswell. Option 3: Markets are simply constructed buildings with a limit and work like the favor generation from AoM: after buildign them, assign citizens and the markets start producing Iron/silver at a slower rate than mining them. Straightforward and no manspamtrain aswell. from my personal view I find option 1 most appealing since it's dynamic and promotes fighting positions on the map, just like mining spots do.

I'll have a look, first thing is to ask "what should trade accomplish and why is it necessary in the game". From my observation it was most likely put in "because Age of Empires has trade aswell" without further questioning it. Thus there are problems with it. another example of gameplay in action.

As a general sidenote: I'll rework parts of the sheet to apply a couple of updates that might suit the concept and/or are more unique and interesting. Many points that have been brought up in this thread by various members seem to be interesting and could be worked in. I'll see what I can do and will update this thread. Couldn't agree more. RTS = war fighting with economy management, not the other way around. That's city building games.

I think this adds uneeded complexity and houses with higher pop is good enough for addressing repetitive interactions. If women should have a bigger role, I think it should be in a different way. I like the proposal. Even there are some things that I was initially against (splitting iron resource) but you made some good points about the reason behind adding it.

I took some time and read through the threads, there are some interesting points being brought up, and most interestingly they seem to cover with my own views even though I did not know about the topics being discussed before. One thing I disagree about is the dynamic line of sight taking too much performance. Warcraft III, released back in 2002, 15 years ago, already had this mechanic that buildings, cliffs and trees limited the sight range of units. This is more a matter of efficient coding than a real obstacle. Of course you need someone who can code this efficiently. But there we're back to the kickstarter option. To get into the post: -Call to Arms: the tradeoff is that you're loosing resources while fighting with units that could normally gather resources instead. I actually think this is enough of a tradeoff already. but your suggetion might be an alternative. Although I think that a permanent upgrade system a la AoM norse gatherer -> ulfsark is a way to circumvent the issue as a whole. - Women: my initial thought was that women serve as a cheap support unit, yes. Applying indirect economic bonuses like pop cap or training speed are actually interesting aspects that improve the role differences between male and female gatherers. After putting some more thought in this it might be necessary to let women farm/collect food and harvest wood, aswell as providing indirect eco bonuses. This way there is a tradeoff between a male civilization setup and a mixed economy with weaker defense but therefor better cost efficiency. This should be discussed more in detail in the future. - About the Metal: well, I just thought of AoE for names. Their resource is called Gold aswell, so I thought Silver and Iron would fit. Silver coins were used as currency in ancient times and most weapons are made out of iron. But regardless of names, the idea behind the split up is to make a difference between a "teching" resource and a "production" resource. Depending on your strategy you need either one of these first, and if your enemy scouts that you're harvesting Iron in the beginning he could anticipate that you're planning an early attack. Mining Silver on the other hand means that the player is planning to tech up, so an early attack is worth the effort to disrupt the economy and delay the teching. Similar to how in Age of Empires players scout for early gold mining which means either fast castle strategies or a Men at Arms rush. - territories: yes, they need more thoughts to be put in a useful game feature instead of just being there. Ideas like forcing farms outside the city create map control concepts which I like. As a sidenote, the first Battle for Middle Earth had a map control element where players could create farms/eco buildings outside their main base (the mainbase had a slot system of max. 8 buildings). Those outer settlements produced resources at a more efficient ratio than eco buildings in the main base, so they were raided and contested all the time. Stronghold Crusader, like you mentioned in your topic about Metal resources earlier, also uses this concept. This would make territories certainly a more potent gameplay feature. Me gusta. Edit: one more thought about territories: I general I like the concept that players cannot build anywhere by default. I personally dislike that it's possible in Age of Empires to create a bunch of barracks next to an enemy base and then rush the city from behind out of nowhere, with soldiers that are magically teleported in the middle of enemy borderlands. So, this feature is not bad by itself, and there should be put some thought in it to keep it.

I'd like to see some more details on something that's not Athenians and see how you'd make it work. Overall I agree with your analysis of the troubles with 0 A.D., but I don't think you provide answers to all of it (e.g. territories don't really seem that much more useful in your proposal). Women seem like they'd be less useful on the whole and their presence becomes questionable imo. I'd suggest perhaps women are the population providers instead of houses or something. Gathering bataillons just seem like a PITA, too. I could actually like endurance as a gameplay feature provided running is only useful in a very specific "short-range outmanoeuvre to get a flanking bonus" case, which will be tricky to get right. Additionally, directionality with units with no turn radius and no concepts of "engagement" is a relatively dodgy thing. We could add those, but that has larger consequences on combat which you haven't gone into.

Part III: Military: After I received the additional information that the current in place pathfinding mostly revolves around single units and still uses workaround solutions I’m creating as some kind of foreword: The suggestions about battalions are not set as a requirement for the game, instead it would be possible to simply create multiple units with one click. Instead of creating one entity per training cycle the game simply creates like 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 entities at once that can be grouped by the player and immediately use a desired formation as a temporary solution. With increased training times for units in general, this will also make the random “one slinger army against 2 peltastes” engagements less of an issue. It simply looks odd. No civilization would engage another civ with a single soldier. There’s a meme about Age of Empires on the net. While being quite sarcastic this sums up certain aspects that feel weird for a “historical” game about large kingdoms and societies: : Anyways, back on track: General concept: Units have normalized speed, the better armoured a unit is the slower it moves. Edit: after some notices from Tiber7 this is not always the case, so take this point as "situational" at best. However, the armour level applies to the endurance system. Units have an additional stat, “endurance”, which affects speed and combat performance, similar to the endurance system employed by Total War games. Endurance allows units to run or charge until they’re exhausted. Exhausted troops fight less efficient and will require to rest to regain back their endurance. The factor how fast a unit can be exhausted is based on two things: 1) the armament, i.e. lightly armoured Peltasts can run longer distances than Pikemen or Hoplites and 2) the experience level a unit has. Veteran troops can march and fight much more efficient than rookie soldiers that have been freshly trained. This makes preserving soldiers with experience rewarding for the player and allows tactical decisions to engage unprepared enemies while risking that own troops might get exhausted while approaching them instead of a slow moving army that allows the enemy to prepare for battle. Additional stat that is also based on endurance: mounted units have the ability to trample other units with a charge. Units that are able to charge are chariots, light and heavy cavalry and elephants. Those units are intended to cause chaos in enemy formations. Being able to trample allows them to counter units that are isolated or not properly protected. The intention is to make battles more interesting and allow plays by smart usage of cavalry charges to turn the tide of battle. Units are made more durable. As a workaround I’d go ahead and simply increase the hitpoints significantly, or add a random integer that varies attack damage. I.e. damage for archers ranging between 10-20, and damage of spears 25-40 (Or something similar, these are just examples). Units have different stats for “frontal” defense and “rear” defense. Soldiers engaging other soldiers frontally have a chance to “deflect” or “block” attacks off. The more experienced a soldier is thee better he can block off attacks. Soldiers with shields have a greater frontal defense against missiles like stones, arrows and spears. A picture illustrating the matter: units have an armour penetration value, which allows them to ignore enemy unit’s armour to deal full damage. As an example: melee spears have a lower base damage but have a comparably high chance to pierce through armour, making them the choice of action to deal with heavy melee units. Archer arrows have a lower chance to damage heavily armoured targets. Missiles like stones from slingers have a low chance to penetrate armour but deal high damage per missile. As I’m not 100% aware of how the current damage system works there might only be minor tweaks necessary to employ the necessary stats to make this system work. Varying accuracy for ranged weapons – archers, slingers, peltasts and siege weapons have accuracy values that decrease over the range they’re shooting. Accuracy increases with veterancy levels. From my observations this is already implemented. certain units gain combat bonuses when in or nearby forests, for example against arrows. Or they become invisible to the enemy to allow surprise attacks. This also creates more tactical depth to fights. units get a dynamic line of sight that is influenced by buildings and other obstacles in their way. This way scouting becomes more important to identify threats aswell as increasing the tactical value of surprise attacks “out of nowhere” military unit costs are normalized. There needs to be a consistent system to provide a usage of different resources to balance out different types of units and gathering strategies. How exactly the values are setup and which military unit takes which resource is up to a later stage. I’d strongly suggest that food and metal should play the larger role. Military population costs are based on their size. A regular soldier costs one population point, while a Chariot or cavalry unit requires 2 pop. Elephants and siege would cost 3 pop. Just to state some numbers. In general: the more powerful a unit is the more popcap it uses. This makes accomplishing large forces of elite units harder, and promotes using different types of troops together. Reasoning: read the design document “Fastest click wins - In many RTS games, it isn't the player with the most intelligence or the best strategy that wins, it's the player who A] knows the proper order of actions and B] carries them out the fastest. People that practice a general procedure that is usually rewarding and know keyboard shortcuts should be slightly advantaged, and they will still be required; but, the if the opponent recognises their 'cookie cutter' gameplay, they should easily be able to outwit them by identifying and countering the unoriginal/over-used tactics with an effective counteractive strategy. Single path to victory - It seems to be a trend that games cater to a specific strategy that is frequently used to attain a victory. That could be rushing, turtling, booming, etc. We recognise these are valid ways to win a game, but we will attempt to not favour one over another. Players should be able to successfully use (and adapt/change) any strategy to achieve a victory. Sneaky Tricks - Many games overlook some aspects of gameplay that are unintentionally (by the game designers) used to a player's advantage. Through many hours of gameplay testing, we need to identify and eliminate these tricks. Repetition - If you find yourself doing the same action over and over without thought, then we need to either eliminate or automate such an action. Linear repetitious procedures are meaningless and boring. “ scout towers can be constructed by military units and create a city border, which allows forward bases and forward gathering. Military layout for Atheneans Strategeion: Trained units - Hoplites Athenae, slow but well armoured soldiers with a bonus damage to cavalry units. Low initial damage and attackspeed, but profit from various upgrades that are present in other buildings. - Psilos, fast, lightly armoured, ranged slingers with high missile damage, but low accuracy and armour penetration. Mostly useful to counter other lightly armoured units, but comparably cheap and fast to train. Range 30m - Peltastes Thrax (require Blacksmith), ranged spearthrowers. Medium speed, slow rate of fire (once every 3 or so seconds), high damage, armour piercing spears with a range of ~20 meters. Rookie troops have a chance to miss their spears. - Prodromoi (requires Epaulos): light spear cavalry, changed to melee instead of throwing spears. The spear throw instead becomes an ability. Due to having spears, their armour penetration is high, making them a good counter to other cavalry units. Due to them being lightly armoured it’s important to use their mobility to avoid unnecessary damage. The thrown spear allows to deal with approaching enemies by weakening their hitpoints beforehand. Limen: Trained units - Fishing boats and transport ships which serve as troop carriers and allow capturing ships. - Medium combat ship that is unlocked in Phase II (TBD) Gymnasion: Trained units - Epilektos, well armoured, slow Pikemen with high armour armour penetration, especially against cavalry. Can form several special formations which allow to deal their damage. - Hippei, fast moving medium cavalry with powerful charge, have high attack damage with swords. Their hitpoints are lower than other cavalry units, thus they’re required to use flanking to cause the most damage without taking too much damage. Hellenic Stoa: Trained units - Threophoros: medium speed, better armoured than Peltastes Thrax, high damage spears with high armour piercing value and decent defense against melee attacks. - Toxotes Skythikos: Archer with good rate of fire and range, can fire flaming arrows to lower enemie’s endurance. Cheap to build and maintain, but low hitpoints, making them vulnerable to cavalry, Range 40m - Rhomphaiaphoros: medium speed, well armoured with high damaging sword attack, have great endurance. Epistoklisma: trained units - Oxybeles, slow moving, long range ballista that shoots bolts in enemy unit formations. It’s a supportive weapon that lowers enemy unit’s endurance/formation bonuses as they create chaos where they hit, range 60m - Lithobolos, long range siege weapon that deals high damage to buildings but has to be deployed/undeployed to be used and moved around. Can also fire flaming missiles to either ignite enemy cities or unit formations. By default rather inaccurate, it profits from technologies which increase its accuracy. Siege engineers etc., range 100m Limen Megalos: trained units - TBD, as I don’t know enough about sea fighting yet and the sea fighting does not seem finished in general yet. Most likely ships like Triremes and siege ships to terrorize the sea. Athen had a scary fleet afterall. Heroes: The hero system is changed: Only one hero is available at a time. Each hero provides unique bonuses to the Athenean army. When a hero dies another one can be trained. Heroes get special abilities that allow them to influence the course of the battle. - Themistokles, focus on navy efficiency and bonuses to soldiers defending territory. - Perikles, grants economic bonuses like faster building, faster army training speed and cheaper buildings. - Iphikrates, grants general combat bonuses to formations of soldiers. In case the "Silver-Iron" Split would be done Heroes could cost Silver as a unique resource. Alternatively they purely cost metal. The gameplay vision/desired results in a nutshell: The aim of the proposed gameplay concept is to create a transition of a small civilization that skirmishes its way to an empire. Economy management is shifted from individual micro of lots and lots of gatherers into a system that allows a limited amount of economy units do all the necessary tasks. Bollecting the correct resources for the planned strategy (rushing/booming/teching) and the buildorder become more important. Managing armies and gatherers creates a feeling that the player controls a part of an empire instead of a bunch of villagers and soldiers that battle for a random region. Training various types armies, upgrading them and sending them into micro intensive, tactical battles create excitement for the involved players and random based variances in the battle system allow variety in outcomes of who wins and who does not. The usage of ambushes, flanks and pinpoint harassment allows comebacks for players who fell behind. There no longer is a need to apply a huge economy and then mass units from dozens of military buildings to simply overrun the enemy. The game follows an organized structure that allows predicting enemie’s plans by scouting carefully and intercepting them by smart usage of information.

There was a healer balancing overhaul last Alpha by causative: r18280 Reduce upgraded and promoted healer range and make healers smarter (#3932) Healing range was kept short as it appeared like magic to the reviewer (I don't care much, many auras are magical too) Area healing could be done with an aura, but that would be dirty. A cleaner solution would be more involved and I don't see anyone being incentivized to rewrite much code to implement that. Making healers cheaper or heal faster can be proposed if you can show me some replay or mathmatical equatoin showing that they are currently useless. (I don't believe they are useless as in fact they add many health points, but perhaps could become more useful, dunno)

Latin-based languages are easy enough for English-speakers to read or translate... I'd much rather have a clear first language to translate myself than unsure English. but I can't speak for everyone on that matter. yo se un poco de espanol, pero no mucho. no comprendo siempre que dices, pero comprendo suficiente. y si no, tengo Google Translate. We would appreciate the effort for a translation if you want the team to take action though

@MrShiney don't worry we'll fix it whatever it is. I realize I forgot to ask: What version of the game are you using ? I attached two files that might or might not help. The direct connect is in case you do not have access to the lobby, ie, school firewall. 0 A.D. Lan Tutorial.pdf 0 A.D. Direct Connect.pdf

I think it would be better if there was a dedicated campaign mode where there was taxes, and all of that city management stuff, then on the actual RTS map there should be the regular RTS functions. In other words it would be like the BFME 1 and BFME 2 campaign maps. Also, if you don't like the idea then maybe there should be a happiness system like in Stronghold 2. More taxes means less happiness, which in turn makes soldiers fight worse (because we can't have peasants leaving the castle in this game). The happiness is the rate in which soldiers fight. More happiness means that soldiers get stat bonuses and buffs.

Well, this contains the main reason why I don't like this idea so much: More attention for higher outcome. There are enough excessively micromanagement dependent RTS games out there. I'd like 0 A.D. to be more the "convinient" type of RTS where the more boring/repititive tasks are automated, not so much the "hasty" kind where the faster clicking player wins (Being faster still helps ofc., it's a large army RTS in the end).

Just for the record, farms were finite prior to Alpha 14 and many players found it a bother to have to replace them (and the indication that the farms had run out was usually that they couldn't train any more units due to lack of food - trust me, that was not a good feeling to have :P).

I'd like to point out I suggested that in my opening post. I completely agree that it would be an interesting experiment.

IMO the main issue is that your settlement growing isn't represented by well by a research. It would make more sense if the phase functionality were instead attached to upgrading the city center building itself (i.e. Village Hall -> City Hall -> Palace).