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The key concept it's Historically based (imho). And well, although modding it's easy, having a powerful balanced main distribution it's a key of success, I think. I just threw a lot of suggestions, and some of you, more. We can agree that having a strategy superior, making the other sub-optimal (not a real option), is not fun. One unit shouldn't decide the game.

However, 0 A.D. is about achieving historical authenticity. A Spartan player massing shock cavalry and overrunning the enemy should raise eyebrows. Not impossible, but difficult to pull of. I agree that slavish adherence to historical accuracy is detrimental to gameplay. But realism can give guidance to gameplay. Else, why is the game based on history anyway? Might as well make a fantasy game if historicity is ignored.

Historically: Cavalry archers and javelinists were used for harrassing the enemy with their projectiles in hit-and-run attacks (skirmishing) (Alexander's cavalry javelinists and archers repeatedly massacred the Indian chariots and cavalry swordsmen; not the other way around) (As a counter to cavalry archers the Iranian peoples (Scythians etc) developed cataphracts; however, infantry archers proved time and again to be the most effective counter vs horse archers.) Cavalry javelin-, spear-, and swordsmen were (light cavalry) used for scouting, raiding, foraging, as messengers, for chasing away enemy skirmishers on flat terrain, and for hunting down and killing fleeing opponents Lancers and cataphracts were shock troops (heavy cavalry): they acted as the hammer which crushed the enemy on the anvil (the heavy infantry phalanx); however, no suicidal frontal charges, of course There is evidence that mounted infantry (soldiers who rode on horseback to the battle but dismounted before actually starting to fight) predates and coexisted for centuries with true cavalry in Greece (mounted hoplites) and Italy (Roman cavalry swordsmen often fought on foot, possibly always) In the Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman worlds, horses were kept at manors and villas outside the cities, because horses were difficult and expensive to keep and required pastures. In Imperial Rome (AD, beyond the scope of this game) some cavalry was part of the Praetorians, but they were quartered in barracks and forts just beyond the city limits. Horses were really expensive; in the Roman Republic horsemen had to provide their own mount but citizens were refunded by the state if their horse was killed in action. In Classical Greece, where amateur hoplites were the most prestigious, the rich fought on foot and paid poorer classes to ride on the horses owned by them (the elite) and serve as cavalry. Armies with more than 10% cavalry were really exceptional The bulk of the massive Persian armies consisted of mere infantry as well For tribal peoples (e.g. Celts, Illyrians, Thracians, Scythians, Lybians/Numidians, etc) who didn't live in cities nor were organized in states, the situation was different; warbands could consist entirely of cavalry, and horse ownership was more prevalent. However, 0 A.D. is *not* about achieving historic realism

You mean accuracy or minimum distance? IMHO, the MinDistance of the towers in Public mod is too far. Kind of restrictive. I think it was made that way to prevent the seriously annoying Tower Creep strategy, but you can fix that by making sure the tower's territory effect is smaller than its MinDistance. Also, the sentry tower/defense tower distinction in the game really bothers me, but that's a different discussion. I agree with this. Units need roles, and arrow/javelin/sling units' role shouldn't be anti-building. +1 Nah, I think Spear Cavalry historically are the "heavy cavalry" of the age, meaning they are the stock cavalry unit, tougher than others, higher attack, more armor, making them best for charging large numbers of ranged units or attacking enemy infantry from behind or taking punishment from nearby towers. I think conceptually, swords>spears, so the Sword Cav should be the anti-cav cav. Just my opinion. Do the same for the ranged infantry too. Only have spear infantry and women at the CC so all civs start the match on equal footing. Things get more diverse after building the barracks. I don't understand the adherence to the idea that the CC must have a bunch of trainable military units there. Build orders can be changed. It's an alpha. Why has no one brought up the notion of increasing training times? Age of Kings regularly has train times close to 20 seconds for some units. I am well-aware that 0 A.D. is not AOK, something I've been trying to wriggle into the zeitgeist myself, but it's just an example. I do like the idea of stables though. Helps remove the "7 different units trained at the barracks" syndrome. I'd think you would be interested in the challenge! Or an "Horse Stables" add-on for the barracks, i.e. "upgrade", akin to Starcraft. Can also be achieved more cheaply, as far as manpower, with a tech.

I like the cloud shadows on the ground.

Why stable can be an attachment of barrack. in SC series you can attach some minibuilding to main building.

I'm having no luck at all with resources, I guess for the time being I'll go back to what I'm proficient with. I got the hero units and their abilities done: Some details on the heroes and their abilities: I should have a demo out sometime in the next week or so, so stay tuned.

Give less slot to infantry and more to cavalry. ------- imagine if we don't want the historical background. very funny for mods concepts as cheat units. The Balloom was suggested for some.

Try out Vox Populi mod for balance and suggest (link in signature) You might not agree with a corral tech but I think thats the most logical option available to us now Sword cavalry counters spear cavalry which counters skirm cavalry slightly, in turn skirmisher cavalry do well vs. sword cavalry. Played a few games with others using this mod and indeed we were back to proper infantry + a few cavalry battles, not massed cavalry (although some tried)

Well, I don't disagree with you. Personally I think removing cavalry from civil centres is a good idea (as is increasing their population requirement to two slots). However, I don't really care whether or not this is changed in the main distribution, because it's very easy to modify the game to suit my own tastes (and significantly less time consuming than participating in these balance discussions. Oops!)

The Kingdom of Kush: New Kingdom Egyptian depictions of Kushites As I said before, I have a collection of large reference posts to make. I'm desperately trying to round off my research, but every time I try to get out, it pulls me back in I'm just fact checking and arranging everything according to subject. It's a lot, so brace yourself! I will begin this new series of reference posts with a modest collection of New Kingdom Egyptian depictions of Kushites. These predate 0AD's timeframe by more than 500 years, but, you might have noticed a staggering level of cultural continuity in the Southern Nile Valley, one that is visible when comparing Meroitic reliefs to Napatan and even earlier New Kingdom examples. This continuity will be clarified more elaborately in future posts. It makes these references useful, especially in regard to the color palette and designs used in various Kushite attires.

If a tower has multiple arrows, then it may make sense that some are fired at random targets, but I think at least one of the arrows should be fired at the player's desired target. Either that, or all the arrows fired at the intended target. Either way, yeah, the current building arrow behavior could use some looking into. Because right now, they feel like a "Tower Defense" game. lol

I still can't get it. It is also true that concpetually spear > cavalry ( see spearman). If you take medieval tournaments as example, the first weapon used by horsemen was the lance because it had longer range thus easier to hit a rider than a sword which requires a closer distance. Plus the lance could let the opponent fall from the horse. While sword is easier to handle and slash infantry units, also it doesn't break as easy as a lance or a spear.

Indeed ranged units have to do some damage but the point is that in a brawl multiple ranged units can hit the same target while melee units are more likely to focus random targets, and that's already a great advantage for ranged units. Indeed skirmish cavalry should yes be strong against melee but let them breath a bit (accuracy ). Most of the civs in the game have spear champion cavalry while 4 only have citizen soldier swordsmen and 1 only has champion sword cavalry. Checking the current melee cavalry stats, swordsmen have the highest dps vs infantry than spear cavalry. Thus with a simple bonus against cavalry, spear cavalry would be a counter to javelin and sword cavalry, while sword cavalry would be good especially against ranged units.

@Lion.KanzenI only wanted to say that Xiognu and Scythians are horsemen from the beginning. Other civ's need to build infrastructure to maintain a (quality) cavalry force, because they're not nomads. That explains that... @LordGood admit it, you secretly kind of feel like doing it, don't you I know it's a lot of work, and I don't expect it to be done, or anything. It's just something that always bothered me about 0AD. Plus I'm a sucker for ancient architecture. I always want to see more buildings and more diversity and realism. As far as siege, I'm fine with having them in the fortress. Seems logical enough to me. I think archers and melee-infantry can easily train from the same facilities, so no problems there. Riding an animal weighing up to one ton into battle just requires a little more effort than clicking a button on a readily provided CC.

Testing the helmets with the delenda est texures with a little colour changes and edits

jeez well, that's a fair amount of work should totally add all of the original AoE buildings too. archery ranges siege workshops champion academys wee

Yes. They could definitely have stables or a horse dedicated building/yurt/coral or whatever, my point was just that they don't necessarily need it to train horses, because they were basically born on horse-back. They're the only factions that start out with cavalry.

Make a stable for each faction.? @LordGood @stanislas69

Sorry once again for spamming the idea, but 0AD needs dedicated stables for training cavalry! This is the only realistic and logical solution. People training a mass of cavalry-men in the first 5-10min is ridiculous. A weak scout cav for scouting/hunting/herding is the only cav unit that should be recruitable from the CC, at best... Large cavalry engagements should be the cherry on the icing of the cake, after building up a strong infantry, and not be spammed like some cheap infantry skirmishers. Most/all of the civs are infantry heavy anyway! Are there no horsemen on this forum to weigh in? I grew up riding horses and therefore understand the requirements of maintaining even just a few horses. They're high-maintenance! Breeding horses, training horses, training riders, and equipping horse and rider are tremendous investments, very difficult to accomplish without dedicated infrastructure. Stables are a great idea for a new structure for each civ, which is nice to brag about in future alpha releases. It's new content that will attract new players. Stables are a staple of every serious historic RTS. Stables...

Thanks very much for the discord link. I'll make sure to join that and give all you guys a heads up when I stream! I haven't been able to these past couple of days, been quite busy at work (the store flooded :D) and had a couple of nights of birthday parties (ie, to drunk to stream :P). My next stream should be... tuesday. which is the 19th! Looking forward to getting some more games of 0AD in! On the plus side I'll be doing some commentaries on some of the replays I have stored over the next few days.

Most of your points have been taken in consideration in my balance mod Monkey Wrench. Matter of fact i proposed a cavalry hp nerf in order to let buildings be more effective against cavalry, especially skirmish cav (spear cav can be hit by spearmen) without the need of a bonus against cavalry. Despite the realism, sentry towers are weak against a bunch of skirmish cavalry which shouldn't destroy any building. Buildings should be basically immune to any kind of pierce damage. Having a general reduction of ranged units Max Attack Range and scaling their accuracy would also make them more vulnerable to melee attacks (perhaps ranged units should also deal slightly less damage). Indeed skirmishers deal more damage than melee units, but they should be easy to kill with no protection. Spear cavalry should basically have a role as cavalry counter ( hard hit while in movement and higher attack range than a sword cav).

I think these suggestions are only quickly thought up ideas with no solid conception nor set direction behind them

Increasing crush damage makes them better vs. buildings. Currently they are already just fine. Basically quote all you want but I don't think this is a rational idea to buff slingers, archers or skirmishers. Cavalry can be balanced without making other units OP.

You only think of cavalry here, if you do these changes then A23 will be about archers and slingers. Remember that slinger crush had to be nerfed? Now you are asking for them to be buffed? Cavalry can be handled in more proper ways, but this is not one of them.

I don't think that the ranged cav problem should be solved like this. For balance, check out the Vox Populi Mod or the Monkey Wrench Mod Cavalry contributes to the fun of a game. You got problems with it? Try to adjust values or even requirements but don't remove it from the Civic Centre.

Actually the idea is good, it would also increase building capture points. Perhaps one of the purpose of buildings attachments in Sc2 is to unlock more units or to train more units at once trained from that building, another is to research specific technologies in the attached module without being enqueued in the main structure production queue because it is treated like a separate entity. Indeed more civ specific or unti specific technologies available from that module would be nice to emphasize phase 2 from phase 3.

I like how the blood oozes out of the dead bodies. Nice touch.

The guides I have finished are for the Total War version of the game, not this version. I'll have guides for the first two factions when I release a demo on 0AD

The problem is the extra space. But you got about what I'm talking about. Wee only adding to current barrack a stable to acces to horses. we don't need design for each civ a stable even in mods.

Right-click reseeding of farms confirmed. Nice objectives in the top-right screen. The barracks looks a little out-of-place, they're very shining.

Updated animations a bit so they look less goofy. @elexis Zip contains ready to play files (Zebu Template, 2 Idle, Death, Walk) @wowgetoffyourcellphone if you want to add them to DE feel free to do so. Blend contains source files. Zebu13.blend zebu.zip

Did you read the thread? The point was that there were a few exceptions. If/when I give the Athenians a once-over I'll add/keep ionic columns where they're appropriate. I wasn't making the case that they shouldn't get Ionic columns