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It sure would be nice if multiple units could be queued up at a production facility without having to pay the unit cost until the unit actually starts being produced. Other RTS games such as Starcraft allow this. It would eliminate a lot of unnecessary clicks, especially when it comes to sheep. This would free players to pay more attention to controlling units in battle, which is more interesting anyway.

Yes there are ... "Everybody can rush. Everybody can build armies and fight. No faction really specializes in any of that" For the rush, the factions that specialize in that in early game are roman and macedonian, because spear cavalry are available right are the start of the game, and they kill women way faster than skirmisher cavalry (though they lose to them if they fight at equal numbers). Especially romans since their starting cav are also spear cav, when macedonian starts with skirmisher cav. "Everybody can build armies and fight" Yes, but what would do a faction that can't build armies and can't figth ? ... That being said, i'll give an other example of differences among civilizations. Currently, I think that late game is dominated by macedonian and spartans because their spear champions are really strong. So we now have champion fights dominated by these civilizations... I can give other examples if needed. "For example, even with their walls the Iberians can still be raided almost as easily as any other faction" Hmm, I doubt that because i think that the iberians, if they want security, should go out and take their wood only when they have a good enough mass of citizen soldiers to counter cav, but i never tried it myself. The walls mainly defend their food income from raids. Also, an other difference in fations : iberians actually have the strongest defense structures in the game (not considering carthage's walls because walls are forbidden in good games...). The Mauryan worker elephant : Currently, in early game, yes, they are used to saving wood because of mobile dropsite, and build houses.Though, later in the game they start to require more micro, and are hence only used to gather ressources out of a player's territory. In late game, not only they need micro to be used effectively, but they take also 1 pop that can be precious in low pop games (150, though becoming 165 for mauryans due to their bonuses).So i think they currently give an advantage, and i forgot to speak about hunting using the worker elephant. Carthage's Embassies : It is true that they are currently not used a lot, but they will likely be in next alpha due to buff of mercenaries, it will encourages people to use mrecenaries and it will likely be a good argument for carthage. It is also true that the community can't see good player's games/playing due to lack of both replays/videos. Maybe i'll try to remediate that myself but it is some investment...

The Kingdom of Kush : Unit : Meroitic Axeman 0 A.D.-Dedicated art by Sundiata The second, in a series of illustrations depicting Kushite military units as accurate as possible, depicts a Meroitic axeman, with an armor-piercing battle-axe, an elephant- rhino- or hippo- hide round shield, layered cotton around his torso for basic protection and a linnen or cotton loincloth. A pretty basic unit packing a heavy punch. Low armor, but having a bonus against other armored units because of his armor piercing axe, and a speed bonus as well. As with the previous unit, I have drawn this unit with a bald head, but they might as well have had a short hair cut, or even a modest afro. A common hairdo for men seems to be about a cm long, ochre red-dyed kinky hair. Kushite axe-men used a variety of battle axes, beginning with the bronze epsilon axe, then the Egyptian armor piercing axe and finally their own design of iron armor piercing axe, as the one found at Soba (which is also the one I used as a reference). Meroitic Axe-man, by Malcolm Kwadwo Kwarte Quartey (Sundiata) [licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0] [I'm not sure why, but the image seems to be over-saturated, as it is portrayed here, but when clicked on shows the original saturation I uploaded it with]

We don't have the capability for one unit to have two attacks. I experimented with friendly fire in Ponies Ascendant, it only solidified infantry into a stand-by support role, though it did encourage smarter placement of ranged units, especially slingers. Slingers couldnt hit the broad side of a barn.

I always try to take advantage of unique things, like the Mauryan Worker Elephant and the Carthaginian Embassies and Colonization unique tech. I pretty much exclusively use the Mauryan Worker Elephant, after an initial Farmstead and Storehouse for research, especially for woodcutting, though I often forget about the assist with constructing buildings. I always try to not build more than five Houses before I research Colonization, so I can take full advantage of the technology for building Houses and Temples.

Historically, archers and skirmishers would harass the opposing army before the main fight, and switch to a melee weapon once the armies met. This was because of two reasons: first, friendly fire was a thing. You didn't want your archers shooting into a battle if they'd be hitting your own men. Second, they had limited ammunition. A peltast would only carry a small number of javelins, such as three, which they would throw before the battle proper began. In this game (and in many other strategy games) ranged units have a completely different role. Two groups of melee units (champions typically) will engage, and the ranged units stand behind their melee units and shoot towards the backs of their own allies as they are engaged in combat. Mysteriously, their shots always avoid the backs of their allies, and only hit the enemy. This makes zero sense and is not historically accurate. Here's a more realistic mechanic. Friendly fire exists. Ranged units (including fortifications) will pick a different target or refuse to shoot if it would hit their own allies. If they accidentally hit their allies, it does damage. There would be no friendly fire at very close ranges, so that you can have a few rows deep of ranged units that can shoot past each other at the enemy. Ranged units have limited ammunition. Peltasts have 3 javelins, archers have maybe 10 arrows, and slingers can have 50 stones. Cavalry can carry extra ammunition compared to infantry. When a ranged unit is out of ammunition, it will pull out a dagger and fight weakly in melee, or automatically flee. Ammunition regenerates very slowly over time, or rapidly if the unit is garrisoned. In compensation for these limitations, ranged units (except fortifications) do more damage.

Okay, myself included, I see a lot of threads talking about units, balancing, and gameplay mechanics. But I think that we as a community (and the devs) need to think about is what type of game do we want. Do we want a popular game? One that exploded into relative popularity, and has a decent chance of the creation of a competitive, and maybe even professional scene? Or are we looking for the hidden gem of gaming? One that isnt the most well known game, and if it is, there isnt, if at all, a large competitive scene. Just a casual game for those that love history and gaming. This needs to be decided before the engine is finished, because the two options have very different mechanics and balancing. Our current setup is the latter of the two choices. To get a really competitive game (look at anything Blizzard has made) the factions need a VERY different feels for each faction. The Carthaginians need not only a different roster or strategy from the Romans, they need to feel and play different. No two factions should be able to play in quite the same way as each other. Look at Starcraft and Warcraft as examples. Its virtually impossible to play the Protoss the same way as the Zerg. This is something that needs to be decided.

Try disabling all graphics settings, especially GLSL. Do other 3D apps work flawlessly? If I had to guess, I'd assume it's the graphics driver. What graphics card is installed?

Build towers

Nope

It seems you are trying to play Rome Total War.

It saves a hash of the password that is used to log in. That way, your password is never stored on your computer and is never send over the Internet. If someone grabs the password hash in some way (f.e. via malware on your computer, or via listening on an unprotected connection), the only thing they can do is using that password hash to log in to the lobby. They cannot reconstruct the original password, so in case you reuse your password for other services, they won't be able to impersonate you there. Services that are able to tell you what your password is are inherently insecure (as opposed to services that can give you a new random password on request). We currently don't offer a way to reset a password (which will probably get implemented some time), but at least we're secure.

I recently watched Incog's games though I guess he was playing some rookie (IMO). He was emphasizing efficiency though there were idle units but his game is quite fluid with so much raiding thereby neutralizing his opponent very early. He does not depend on champions or waiting for the champions to be available. I think it's very interesting to have him play with the best like as others mentioned Borg. It will be very attractive to viewers. A game that has full of actions.

To find those missing crash files the start menu item for 0 AD has an item to open proper folder they are in. Enjoy the Choice

Here's another aspect I'm going to jab at: There are no real significant differences among the factions. Everybody can rush. Everybody can build armies and fight. No faction really specializes in any of that. For example, even with their walls the Iberians can still be raided almost as easily as any other faction. The Mauryan Worker Elephant? I don't see a lot of players using the advantage of "faster builder" and the "saving wood because for the Mobile Dropsite". Carthage's Embassies, Faster CC Build and Stronger Walls? I don't see them having practical advantages. Now I've become a bitter old whiner again. My fallback argument is always "It's still in Alpha."

Here are some tips for managing your army effectively. These mostly assume you have an army of infantry champions. Use ctrl+q+click to make your army attack units only and ignore buildings. Almost always, you want to kill units before buildings. If you go straight for the buildings while enemy champs are around, your champs will get slaughtered while they are attacking the building. If there are enemy civilian-soldiers around, they can repair the building, or garrison in buildings, or just attack your units. So kill the units first. Another way to look at this is how much economic damage your army can do per second. Buildings are extremely durable and don't cost that much per hit point. Units, especially workers, are very fragile compared to buildings and cost a lot more resources per hit point. So it hurts the enemy more per second to be killing workers instead of damaging buildings. Your army has a tendency to narrow into a single file line when walking long distances. Don't send your army into a tough battle in a single file line, because the front part of the line will be badly outnumbered. There are several techniques for avoiding this. When your line almost reaches the enemy, select some troops from the front part of the line, and tell them to move backwards and a bit sideways while the rest of the line keeps moving forwards. Do this repeatedly until the line looks more like a loose clump. (If units have moved too far backwards, tell them to move forwards again to stay in the clump). Then select your whole clumped-up army and tell them to attack (ctrl+q+click). Another way to get your army to arrive at the enemy at once instead of single-file is to tell your army to walk far to the side of the enemy. Then when your whole single-file line is halfway past the enemy, have them all change direction 90 degrees and walk at the enemy. This way they will all arrive at once. This works if the enemy is stationary and your army isn't too big. Some expert players, such as The_Company aka nobody___, use box formations to get their units clumped up. I personally don't do this since formations sometimes make it hard to disengage from a fight. When in combat, always use ctrl-q-click again every few seconds. This will make your army select new targets. If you don't do this, some of your units will just be walking around aimlessly trying to reach specific enemy units that are blocked by other units. Doing this makes those aimless units stop walking and just hit the closest enemy. This makes a big difference. Don't garrison champions or women if a fight is happening! Garrison citizen-soldiers. Champions do a lot more damage ungarrisoned. A common mistake is for the enemy to capture a CC or fortress with 40 champions, and then immediately garrison 20 champions in the fortress even though enemy forces are around. Don't do this! If you do, the 20 champions outside the fortress may now be outnumbered by the enemy forces and can be killed. The reason not to garrison women is just that they don't shoot arrows. If there is more than enough garrison space for your citizen-soldiers, it's OK to garrison the women. Sometimes an exception to this is garrisoning a damaged champ army in temples. Only garrison in temples during a fight if you can garrison your whole army without leaving any outside to be slaughtered. This forces the enemy to capture the temples, and then you can ungarrison your whole army - now partially healed - to keep fighting. Never take a straight-up fight that you think you're going to lose, if you can avoid it. If you have 20 champions and the enemy has 40, your 20 units will be killed while only killing 5 or 10 of the enemy. It's not cost-effective. Only take an engagement that you think you are going to win, unless there's no other choice (e.g. you can't run). In the middle of a fight, you might notice a few of your units that are isolated and outnumbered by more of the enemy, even if you outnumber the enemy in general. In this case, you can select the isolated units and just have them walk around. If the enemy isn't paying attention, his units will spend the fight just chasing the isolated units instead of dealing damage. If your heroes buff your troops, make sure they don't get damaged. Keep them away from the main fight. If the enemy targets them, have your hero just run around near the fight so they can keep giving the buff and the enemy has to chase them. Targeting the enemy hero specifically can be effective if they are strong like Boudicca or Philip of Macedon, and it's a large battle. But don't chase the hero too far if they retreat. If the enemy is sending in a superior force to destroy your base, there are things you can do to make it a lot harder for him. Immediately garrison towers and your CC/fortress with citizen-soldiers. You should have several towers surrounding your CC, and you want to garrison all of them. If you do this, then when the enemy takes your CC he won't take your base! Your garrisoned towers will hold the territory and the enemy won't be able to delete your other buildings or convert them to Gaia until he takes the towers too. Also, of course, garrisoning towers/CC increases arrow count and makes them more difficult to capture. You want to avoid engaging his army with your champions for as long as you can (because we're assuming he has more champs so you would lose any straight-up fight). Jockey for position - if a small part of his army is in reach of yours, you can attack and outnumber just that part. If he sends more of his army into that fight, back away. The longer he spends in your base jockeying for position, the more he's being shot by arrows. If he is attacking or capturing buildings while you still have champions near, attack him. He's made a big mistake and these are basically free kills. Back away if he stops attacking the building - don't take a fight where you're outnumbered. Keep women away from the enemy champs, but if he starts to attack your CC (or fortress) you want the women to repair it. Try to put the women on the opposite side of the building from the enemy. It's better to garrison citizen-soldiers than use them to fight, but if you do have more cit-soldiers than garrison space, use them to fight. Don't let the enemy champs touch them though, unless the cit-soldiers are melee units! When attacking an enemy CC or fortress, you want to let your units walk without attacking around to the other side of the CC/fort. (This assumes there are no enemy units nearby except women, perhaps because you killed them). Your single-file line of units will encircle the CC/fort, and then you can have them all start attacking at once. (Ctrl-click to damage below 50%, then regular click to capture). This is usually faster than just telling them all to attack the front of the CC/fort, because it reduces the amount of time your units spend milling about trying to find an open spot on the CC to attack. If women or cit-soldiers start repairing, use only a few of your nearest champs to kill them while the rest keep attacking the CC. If enemy champs arrive, you have to fight the champs with your whole army or run away, unless the CC is already almost captured. Romans and Spartans both have strong swordsmen cit-soldiers and pike champions. This is a good combination, particularly for Spartans. Send in the swordsmen first with the pikes right behind them. The swordsmen will make up the front row and deal damage and take hits. (Romans should have their hero around to give the swordsmen +5 attack). The champs will make up the back row and deal damage. So you have 2 rows of attacking units, and your champs aren't getting damaged. It's cheaper to let the enemy damage your Skiritai or Roman swordsmen than your champs. Build temples on the side of your territory nearest the enemy base, or close to where the combat is happening. At least 2 temples is good for any given combat area, ideally protected by towers/fortress/CC. If you're getting damaged or starting to lose a fight, and retreat is an option, then retreat and garrison in the temples. Healing your champions helps you maintain a high kill/death ratio.

Siege engines are kind of a pain to use, and most of that is their poor pathing, which is a result of their large bounding box. They have trouble fitting through areas that normal units can fit fine, and as a result will often randomly turn around and go the opposite direction from what you want. Imagine siege engines appear the same size they do now, but have a small bounding box, similar to chariots or other cavalry. That way you could just send them in with the rest of your units and they would find targets by themselves. The case against doing this is that it would look somewhat less realistic - but we don't consider that a problem for chariots or cavalry, so I think we'd just get used to it.

English longbowmen used both swords and hatchets to defend themselves during the Hundred Years War when the French came close enough. In at least one case, they'd prepared their position with sharpened stakes and used the mallets they'd used to embed them to good effect against the enemy.

Why not have battalions for troops/soldiers and then individuals special units, like the spies (would be silly to have battalions of spies anyway), scout, etc. Battalions does not mean that there cannot be individual unit types.

But I want dark Templar unit as a spy or Ghost unit like an Assasin to kill a hero a later run away... EE 2 and RoN have spies and was fun. Yeah I like battalion system but not like Praetorians, that is boring, I like have single units to do things. The fans wants a battalion system but have the chance to toggle/switch between mass troop and individuals.

Suppose you could do that efficiently. For example, instead of checking that the exact line of fire is clear for each archer, instead for each enemy unit check whether there are friendly units within a radius of 10 meters, and set a flag on the unit that exempts them from ranged targeting if there are. Then, have friendly fire only apply within 10 meters of the target. This way, you don't have to check each enemy unit for each archer; you check the enemy unit once, and that tells whether he can be targeted by any archer. Limited ammunition is similar to Mana in a game like Starcraft II. Starcraft II is far more micro-intensive in combat than 0AD and that's seen as a positive factor; it allows for more interesting and diverse battles, and a greater influence of player skill on the outcome. If ammo regenerates slowly over time there doesn't have to be much shuttling. Also, if the ranged units flee by themselves when out of ammo, that reduces what the player must do.

This is actually a pretty good idea, I am all for it, maybe not for all buildings, but for civic centres, fortresses and defence towers that would be awesome.

I made such a slow-delete feature here (as a mod): But so far didn't get any feedback on it. There are of course different ways to implement it: stop at 50% CP or not, make it possible to stop the destruction, how slow should the destruction be, ... But it would also be possible f.e. to require 90% CP, then players will be less eager to delete their structure. And thanks to things like territory regeneration, it shouldn't be a problem to let a building reach 90% when it's not under attack. So if some want to test it (in single or multiplayer), go ahead.

The only problem I could see is players being able to destroy buildings with a single click, maybe there should be some delay even some extra when it's a captured building.

If capturing wasn't the default action, I would like it a lot more, since I am pretty certain capturing just allows you to use a structure as if it was your structure, instead of letting you train the other civilization's units.

I think a burning mechanism similar to the one in Stronghold Crusader would be a nice addition to the game. Fire (causing damage over time) should spread between wooden structures placed closely together. As a consequence, you would have to be much more careful when planning your city...

It's realistic to be able to capture faster than destroy. Which takes longer, using a sword to knock a house flat, or using a sword to evict the current occupants? Completely destroying a house (or castle, or tower, or any other building) using just swords or pikes actually makes no sense and was never done in medieval combat. In my opinion, capturing should even be much faster than it is now, so that it can be used effectively by normal units and not just champions.

I have experiment a lot with Delenda Est (local copy), by making it so only 1 arrow come from towers, fortress, etc. and only other arrows come from propped garrison units. For instance, you cannot pack a bunch of soldier into Fortress and get 20 arrows and soldiers stay safely inside Fortress. No, those unit who are archer show up outside on battlements and then they shoot at attacker. Arrow shooters are vulnerable to counterattack and as more defender archers die, fewr arrows for defense. Fortress become strong defense point, but does not have offensiveness without vulnerable archer on top. I have made so only archer or other infantry ranged garrison show up on battlement: This can be done easily for Wall turrets too. Only a few of the turret need redesigned for propped unit

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

I think everyone, specially the developers want more people to play this game. Think about it, they spend countless hours on making this game, why would they want only a few people to play it. As for a competitive scene, yes diversity does help a lot but I think the developers are focusing on other things at the moment, furthermore it is not necessary for having a competitive scene, in fact, neither is it necessary for the game to be out of alpha for a competitive scene to exist. What a competitive scene does is attract the vast amount competitive people that like to train in a game, join a team, and play against others. This is why games such as CS:GO thrives, imagine if the only way to play CS:GO was against bots, not many people would play it. This is why I agree with you about the game being balanced, an unbalanced game cannot be competitive. However overall, the developers have done a fantastic job in balancing the game throughout the making of the game, the mechanics, the values, basically the system is very balanced. You can have a 6 player game, all with a different civilisations and you wouldn't know they exact outcome as skill overcomes what each civilisation is. This is partially due to the civilisations being pretty similar, some having the slight edge over others for small features (for example mauryans have an elephant which is great for a fast economy). Nonetheless, overall, the developers have done a magnificent job on making a balanced system. Here are my small opinions on some small changes that I would like to see in the game in the future: A larger diversity between champion units, and a smaller diversity between citizen-soldiers. A larger diversity of upgrades (relevant to historical accuracy of the civilisation at hand). Setting a minimum distance between wall turrets, more on that topic in this thread (I however do not agree with causative, as I think that the screenshot of the base that he provided as an example can be beaten with strategy). Naval movement (I have a passionate hatred for the boats) As for the historical aspect of the game, its the best part! There is no need to choose between a historical game or a popular game, why can't it be both? I also want to take this opportunity for thanking the developers for all the work and time spent in making the game what is it now, keep it up guys!

I don't think the two options you are proposing are mutually excluding. I think you can have both. In the way I see things, the popularity of a game, and even the fact it might be attractive for some hardcore gamer and the competitive scene is not necessary an objective, and can be a passive consequence. If the game is very good made with attention and passion, and fun to play it will naturally attract many people. Moreover, if the game is polyvalent enough (I'll explain how in a second point), it can be satisfying for history lovers as well as hardcore competitive gamers. What is happening with the recent posts of the clan of gamers if the demonstration of this : as you said, the current dev setup is your latter description "Just a casual game for those that love history and gaming", still the game is fun to play in multiplayer and it already attract many hardcore gamers, they see the game as a competitive platform. So the game already provide the both options. In my opinion you can have both option, and polyvalence by acting on maps and scenarios too. Surely, the factions are of prime importance. But you can design a wonderful RTS with a realistic and sourced history background, develop nice historical campaigns and story modes, satisfying people looking for your option #2 (whose I belong actually). But beside of this, you can provide nice multiplayer maps, and make in sort these map are challenging for multiplayer competition. And even if only a few factions are interesting in the competition (maybe some factions have a bigger impact on the historical side than on any multiplayer playing side), people will only use a few factions for the competition and will have fun this way. Like for the "no wall" rule for multiplayer gamers. Competitive players can set up some more restrictive rules to turn the game in something more competitive (option #1), it won't change its main, current value. I think this game can satisfy both kind of players. Even if I am player #2 type, I am glad many hardcore gamers like to play this game too. It could be inspiring in term of strategies for me, to help me to simply beat the AI. And maybe they could push the game to its limits, then helping devs to finely tune the factions with subtle balancing, without fully destroying the gameplay. But if there are some balancing choices to make that could exclude type #1 or type #2 players, surely the core devs and main historical contributors would have to choose. Then there are more chances that option 2 (current, as you said) would overlay option 1. But still, I don't think it won't exclude hardcore gamers. I believe in the "middle way", and I am sure that the game will naturally take it . Don't worry, I'm sure everyone will be pleased.

If catapult range was increased to maybe 100 meters, so that you have space to put soldiers and walls in front of the catapult out of range of the enemy fortress, then attacking a fortress without champions would be workable for those civilizations that have catapults. However, not all civilizations have catapults. Battering rams have enough pierce armor as they are - they don't die to arrows. It's the citizen-soldiers trying to protect them that would die to arrows. Rams need champs to protect them.

That screenshot is ridiculous #3811 specifically tries to deal with all the things that make walls OP.

Funny enough I posted in a similar thread talking about how walls are pretty balanced. And although my main stance on the matter has not really changed when concerning one wall vs an army, there is a "hidden method" which really makes them OP. The method takes advantage of the fact that you can spam wall turrets extremely close to each other, and since the defence tower upgrades affect the wall turrets, it is extremely OP. Here is a screenshot of the first match where I had ever used that technique, i had been rushed pretty early in the game, and I couldn't be bothered to build up again, so i decided to try out something which I had theorised previously (I had used it in a small scale before) both of my teammates had to go, so it was a 3v1 situation, the game lasted hours, I made 2 of the enemies rq since they had lost so many troops, one eventually beat me by using catapults, since I was basically AFK and could not be bothered to build units. Notice the number of champions killed in the third screenshot. I do not use this method anymore as it is simply over powered, and if you actually produce units you are unbeatable. However one of my friends uses it a lot and has perfected it pretty well, and it annoys people XD. So yeah in my opinion a the walls themselves are not over powered, its just the fact that you can spam them. Devs, please fix.

I thought the same, that have a name, is like razing buildings concept from Rise of Nations http://riseofnations.wikia.com/wiki/Razing_buildings

Well that's my most efficient tactic too beat the AI, because Petra continuously kicks my a** since its upgrade from Aegis I was more thinking about a kind of destruction "cooldown time" (ie. can't destroy a recently captured building until a few minutes) to balance this problem, but what you suggest is even more realistic : no explosives in 500 BC.. So after a capture, it should take some time before destroying it. Amazing idea (even if I'll need to switch to a lower difficulty mode to beat Petra.. ).

That's what happens now, they get expelled from the structure, or killed if there is no valid space where the units can be placed. But killing shouldn't happen often on land, but it would happen if ships could be captured in plain sea, and also happens when ships are sunk. In any case, as the game is now, the units never convert to the enemy. Now about the thread in general In my original patch, I even disabled attacking buildings for units. I found it very unrealistic that a few units would just be able to destroy a structure like they do. But anyway, players can now chose to either capture or attack, and the choice ultimately depends on the defence of your opponent. If he garrisons his important structures, it will probably be easier to destroy them, otherwise, capturing would give you more advantage. So it is a strategically important choice you need to make, and we're making a strategy game after all. I do understand that there are some problems with it, and there are some nice suggestions offered here (I particularly like the aura to protect siege engines). But I'm not very good at balancing the micro game, so I won't (f.e.) make a decision on what buildings should be capturable. Though I do still have something l don't like about capturing: That's when players use the capture-and-delete tactic. They don't want to take over the base, but they want to deal economical damage to the opponent. And because the opponent can't defend all buildings, first capturing the undefended buildings, and deleting them when you own them becomes faster than destroying them through the attack command. Another problem with delete is when players delete their buildings just before they lose control over it. Removing the "delete" option isn't possible either. When you've gathered all trees or mines in an area, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to delete that storehouse, and use the space to build something else. Certainly in dense maps this is often necessary. So my choice is now leaning towards a "slow delete" or "deconstruction" model. Where the player can choose to delete any building he owns (even if he lost almost all his capture points), but where it takes time to delete the structure. Adding yet another unit command to "deconstruct" buildings sounded like it was very bloated (another hotkey taken, other units occupied with certain tasks you don't want, ...). So I opted to keep the delete button, but just make it slower. In the mod below, when you press delete, a timer will start that will continuously take health from the structure, until it's destroyed. But if the structure gets captured or reconverts to the territory owner, the timer stops. It's still very early and unbalanced, but it should give you an idea. I think that this will make the capture vs. attack choice even more strategically, and I hope you like this change. To install the mod, unpack it in your mods directory ( http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameDataPaths ), so you have the path mods/structureDestroy/... And then enable the mod in the game by going to "Tools & Options"->"Mod Selector" (don't forget to save your changes). structureDestroy.zip

I love the capturing system, it makes the game much more strategic, fun, and even realistic in a way. I love stuffs like Persian can have an upgrade that boost by +25% the capturing time. It makes bigger strategic differences and choices for factions. Having capture option by default is not a problem for me. Surely, some balancing could make more people happy, but it is not at all confusing for me. I disagree: no buildings should be immune to capture. But some should be harder to capture. Eg. a barracks is supposed to be generating units.. So when fully garrisoned, it should be much more hard to capture (so longer than the destroying time). But tower should still be captured easily. It is a mandatory in the A19 strategy, in my opinion. Also, I think when a building become captured, the garnison shouldn't be captured too, but moved out from the building.

We're making some progress. On further consideration, I think Lion.Kanzen is correct that fortresses in particular need to be able to be captured (though it should be difficult). There may be less important buildings which can only be destroyed, not captured. But in keeping with historical accuracy, there should be significant downsides to capturing. The best case in point is the civ center. A civ center is theoretically much more than just blocks and mortar. It represents population, heritage, pride, culture, ideas, patriotism, industry, literature... Simply waltzing your soldiers in and militarily capturing the center shouldn't make it effectively yours. In real life, the native population would only tolerate the conquerors while there was overwhelming force present. At the slightest chance the population would rebel, trying to throw off the oppressors. Or if rebellion was untenable, they would work at greatly reduced productions rates so as not to "help" the "enemy". Military occupation (think Paris in WWII) ≠ adding a fully productive civ center. So in terms of game mechanics, perhaps buildings should "remember" who their original owner is, and always be at risk of reverting to the original owner if 1) original owner troops are nearby or 2) conquering troops are not garrisoned in the building in sufficient numbers. Even while the building has not reverted to original ownership, it should work at reduced speed (i.e., train units at half speed) or more interestingly, occasionally produce units that owe allegiance (belong) to the original owner instead of the conquering oppressor. In these or other ways, the conquered civ center should be a bit of a thorn in the side of its conquerors. However, the longer the new conquerors maintain control of the civ center, the more the memory of the former owner fades and the more it becomes fully "yours". So the "thorn in the side" characteristics decline with time until they finally vanish altogether and the civ center is just like one you built yourself. Adding these historical elements will give more nuance to capturing and thus more diversity to the strategy of the game. For the game to be strategically interesting, there should never just be one right answer. The player should have to decide wisely whether he/she will 1) capture a civ center, devote a bunch of troops to the garrison, endure the reprisals of the local population, and hope to hold on to the center for long enough for it to be useful, or 2) just destroy it and not have to deal with it, but also not get a civ center out of the deal. Similar dynamics might be applied to other buildings, but perhaps to a lesser scale. Fortresses, for example, are mostly block and mortar, and so capturing one is much more strategically advantageous than capturing a civ center. And a fortress has less "memory" of its former owner.

I like take towers and barracks too. but can be a system common in city warfare or siege defenses , can destroy your all building hurting the enemy, yes a trap. burning the enemies. In rise of nations you can order to destroy a building when start lose loyality, but the process take time. So is a run against the takers before they perform at 100% the capture.

I found that just capturing the CC works best, because realistically,in real life, once you capture a building in an enemy's town, then leave it without leaving troops behind, you effectively lose it. Just capture the CC, and the entire town collapses (I think that needs to be changed. Conversion not destruction). And I generally dont use seige for the above mentions. If you do, protect then with an exclusive group of infantry.

In general, I agree with Hitman, but the issue is broader than just what he mentioned. Here are some aspects that need balancing: Roman entrenched army camp defects immediately in enemy territory, as I noted in another thread. Garrisoned buildings can still be captured, as noted by Hitman here. Buildings are easier to capture than destroy, and capture is the default option. So what often happens is I send a contingent of soldiers to destroy a building, but my other nearby soldiers (whom I haven't explicitly tasked) decide to capture it, and inevitably I end up capturing an almost dead building that I didn't want in the first place. Why, you ask, would I not want a captured building? Because once you capture it and move on, it will very often revert to enemy control by virtue of territory, or else be recaptured by enemy troops. So you end up with a see-saw of building ownership that does no one any good. I often delete buildings that I capture "by accident" just so they won't fall back into enemy hands. But there shouldn't be a need for silly hacks like that. The see-saw is worse with siege weapons. Even with a large ground army to protect the siege weapons, it only takes a small handful of enemy soldiers to sneak through and capture your siege weapons. I've played a couple of games where it was almost impossible to prevent. So the best way to deal with the situation is to recapture your own siege weapons, and so on ad nauseam. But the whole situation is absurd. Since capturing is the default action, it leads to some highly improbable situations from a realistic/historic perspective. I just finished a game in the Gallic Fields where the gaia Roman soldiers captured one of my towers instead of fighting my nearby soldiers (which is fine, if that's what they choose). My nearby soldiers, then, instead of attacking the Romans, went and stood shoulder to shoulder with them trying to recapture the tower. But they were quite evenly matched, so they all just stood there for quite a long time, shoulder to shoulder. They could have been enjoying a nice spot of tea, or maybe singing Christmas carols together. In real life, someone would have realized the absurdity of it all, swung a sword at their neighbor, and ended it. I fully realize that all of this is simply a matter of balancing out a very new feature. And it is a valuable feature, no doubt. Some scale-back in A20 and beyond will bring capturing to it's full potential. Ideas to consider: Make capturing slower than destroying Make attacking (not capturing) the default option Limit capturing abilities to only certain types of units Make certain types of buildings (cc, fortress) immune to capture Make garrisoned units resist capture even more strongly than they do currently. Develop techs that prevent/retard capture Especially for siege weapons, make it so that nearby friendly soldiers provide an "aura" of resistance to capture. Ie., if a siege weapon is alone, it is easy to capture, but if it is close to its army, it is very difficult to capture. Thanks to all who take these rough brainstorms and do the hard work of polishing them into something useful!