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Hi, I'll try this out of curiosity. Thanks. Now the YAMG for A-23 is on Github. No new features but a full upgrade. The fractal painters expect an Area in their paint() method and mesa and depression painters provide a Vector2D array, instead of point array. The Cell object inherits now from Vector2D and can be used in rmgen where a Vector2D is required. Of course, the placer and the utilities which rely on this Cell array can't be used without creating a g_TOMap Cell objects first. AnEgyptianOasis is still a work in progress. It works nicely and don't lack features, but some details need to be fixed, particularly players starting resources. I have quickly copy/pasted some code somewhere and this code fails at time for some reasons. Have fun !

Eh, high contrast/saturation colors are objectively bad. The bright yellow on top of gaul buildings is bad, the ridiculously bright green grasses on a lot of map textures are bad, etc. When people mention that mainland is ugly now, that's what they mean by it. Also more distinction between gaul and brits would be cool. I think somewhat brighter colors work well for brits but not so much for gauls.

Sure. Territory in 0ad is pretty cool, although I think eco buildings should be untied from it. The fact that you can't spam towers in the enemy base is probably better than in aok. Tower rushes were super lame in that game. The fact that you can hunt with cav rather than having to herd animals to your CC is definitely an improvement. Herding was freaking lame. Relics were also lame. 0ad's barter system is definitely an improvement over aok. There are lots of things we do better. There are a few important things that we do worse though. 0ad's buildings are virtually unkillable until city, which is lame. Towers were fairly strong in aok but they could be killed by a mob of infantry. Walls of houses are also freaking lame. Citizen soldiers are a disaster that ties eco to combat units and makes unit choices heavily eco bound. The fact that the vast majority of combat units come from the barracks for most civs is also bad because it means there are fewer meaningful decisions, and this is compounded by citizen soldiers since civs that have, say, a separate building for producing infantry and cav are extra limited by the eco limitations of cav. It also limits combat in the early game since any use of combat units for actual combat sacrifices eco. Rushes tend to be limited to top players because of this. Basically unless your rush is really, really effective in suppressing your enemy's eco it's practically suicide and most people aren't willing to take such a high risk. It's also a major nerf to mercs, which I don't think are even as strong relatively as aok's t2 units. The fact that women don't add arrows to CCs, towers, etc, is also lame. If you accidentally garrison them in an arrow-shooting building they're worse than useless since they prevent units that do add arrows from garrisoning. The fact that fortresses can't be built in neutral is also lame, since unlike towers forward fortresses were a very interesting and useful strategic move in late game aok. AOK had stronger unit counters. It mattered a whole lot more what units you decided to build. In 0ad it feels a whole lot like spamming random units (or just spamming everything except maybe pikemen) is the way to go. I don't necessarily like the unit counter arrangements in aok entirely, but in general it was more interesting than what we have. We don't have any riot units. AOK had tactical catapults (mangonel, onager) that were only mediocre vs buildings but which could splat enemy armies into mashed potatoes. They were also very vulnerable to being killed, which made for interesting exchanges. No, cowardice is refusing to compare your game to a similar game which you know to be better. Just because it was a good game does not mean that it can't be improved upon, and if you aren't willing to address the weaknesses of your own game then you will never improve upon them, either. What you've said is like saying "oh I shouldn't bother learning to play piano beyond chopsticks because mozart was so great that I'll never be as good as him". If everyone took that attitude there would be no musicians, no artists, and no great games in the first place. Why make aok when chess is obviously such a great game?

Still that's how the game has been working since Mythos left. I agree it's not always for the best, but the game isn't that bad ^^

The only change that I would make in relation to the rams, would be to reduce a little your shield against ranged units, you need lots of shots to be able to cause a small damage. Another alternative is a tech I proposed some time ago, "flaming arrows", where archers get significant damage against contructions and siege units. We could also do a similar tech for defensive constructions, where they could also cause extra damage against siege units.

Moved

Very promising! Needs more decoratives (stones, grass, bush, reeds actors), the path might or might become a bit larger, maybe some random patches for the areas. For the final touch, the balancing will be relevant, there should be mines here and there, not too many, not too few. Some animals and berries and you can call that top 10%-20% of the maps that people did so far. Edit: But that is the recipe that every map uses. The final touch per map is going through the entire list of actors and regular entities in the atlas actor viewer and see if there are some kinda unique ones. (For instance the well on danubius or the kushite statues on JB)

I should spend less time on my phone. Having color codenamed releases would be nice though

We can make a poll.

Not really. I think we better should either make capturing more useful or just disable it for this unit/building. For catapults and bolts for example, I'd lower their capture regen rate, so that they can be captured by around 8 units. gameplay-wise this means players need to protect their catapults better with normal units and that someone can't smash down an army with only catapults. That's seems like a more desirable gameplay for me.

I think the main reason people play mainland is because it's an open map that isn't wood deficient. Build order doesn't really differ that much on heavily choked maps, but scouting is much more difficult. This is something I found out playing on the alpine map and the ardennes map that I made. People still do play on other maps like frontier, just not as often because it's easier just to set mainland for the above mentioned reasons, and since everyone is familiar with it. That's also why I've tried to make my maps super pretty, to lure people into playing them.

I think the map receiving the most hate when being the result of random choice is "Snowflake Searocks". But I find that map quite entertaining sometimes... The maps I find least valuable are all those "mainland with bumps" maps that mostly differ only in texture/biome.

Who will use Sutton Hoo helmet? Based on this version: Ingame after some corrections:

Who will get this weapon and why ? What will be his purpose on the civilization ? How they should shoot if the weapon is called repeating crossbow but 0 A.D only has 1 animation type for ranged attacks and reloading.

Apparently the acceptance bug on modio was fixed.

The bug that allows (and proposes you incidentally) to go live should be fixed now, according to the devs. Please let us know if the bug continues to appear after now.

That was done then slightly broken. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/22406-capture-buildings-using-siege-tower/&tab=comments#comment-331698

Updated changelog Terra Magna 0.23 Changelog · Replace 3D corn with 2D corn (Niektb) · logo updated (Lion.kanzen) · New skirmish map Tarim Basin (wowgetoffyourcellphone) · Maintenance updates and fixes since last release (leper) (s0600204) (elexis) (Niektb) (stanislas69) Han Chinese · Han Chinese new wonder (stanislas69) · Han Chinese Gold Bixie (stanislas69) · Han Chinese New blacksmith (stanislas69) · Add new helmets (stanislas69) · Implement some of Delenda Est's changes to the Chinese (Niektb) · Han Chinese new anims for the siege tower (stanislas69) · Han Chinese Cavalry crossbow animations (Alexandermb) · Han Chinese added Crossbow (Alexandermb) · Han Chinese update animations and mesh for the gate add back the flags (stanislas69) · Han Chinese new RotE unit textures and unit actor tweaks (wackyserious) · The player can now garrison 9 ministers inside the government center, to reflect the historical 9 ministers of the han dynasty. (stanislas69) · Add a new portrait for Minister (stanislas69) · Add animated oars to chin ship tower (Alexandermb) · Rename special civ ships for Petra AI (Alexandermb) · Chin champion cavalry (Alexandermb) Xiongnu · Implementation of Xiongnu Faction (template, actor, aura, buildings, animations and other files) (Alexandermb) · Added sheep training bonus for Xiongnu and fix for City phase requirements (Alexandermb) · Xiongnu emblem (Lion.kanzen) (stanislas69) (Sundiata) · New Xiongnu advanced unit textures (wackyserious) · Add technologies to the Xiongnu (wackyserious) · New Xiongnu elite unit texture (wackyserious) · Horse breeding tech for the Xiongnu (wackyserious) · Add trader and make the market inherit from market class(udeved) · Ram & champion cavalry tooltip (Alexandermb) Zapotec · Implementation of Zapotec Faction (template, actor, aura, buildings, animations and other files) (Lordgood) (Niektb) (stanislas69) · Showcase map for the Zapotecs (Cloud People scenario) (Niektb) · Zapotecs Units and flora (Lordgood) · Zapotec Structures (Lordgood) · Zapotec main menu background (Lordgood) · Soundtrack for Zapotecs (Lordgood) (Niektb) · New ram for Zapotecs (stanislas69) · Update Healers for Zapotecs (stanislas69) · Update Traders for Zapotecs (stanislas69) · Remove cavalry techs for Zapotecs (stanislas69) Specific Zapotec names of buildings (Lion.kanzen) Terra Magna 0.23 changelog.rtf

I'm nobody relevant in this community and also I don't know if this thread is still in use, but I would like to say a few things. First I don't think 0 A.D. completely lacks a distinctive feature. Just go online and you will see an active community of players everyday. Whenever there is a match involving some of the top players there are 4, 5, 8 people watching (I know that is nothing compared to AoE2 online standards, but hey... this is an open source game in alpha stage, no advertisement, etc.). There are people cheating in MP games to avoid losing rank. All this for me shows how the game is a success already. Besides, it is, as far as I know, the best open source game out there in any genre - if that is not success, to be the best in your field, I don't know what is. It is a bit pointless to make comparisons to multi-million dollar titles, unless they are constructive. I have been playing everyday for a month or so. The game is very enjoyable as it is, and I wouldn't be shocked if it was released as 1.0 already. It is certainly better than most open source games at 1.0. The commonly repeated line that it is a weaker AoE 2 clone is false. Just because it is difficult to summarize in one sentence what 0 A.D. is about doesn't mean it doesn't have its qualities. First, it is possibly one of the most accurate historically. Second, it comes to fill a gap in the open source gaming community: a good RTS game. What is the other alternative? I have only seen Mega Glest, and I think 0 A.D. is light-years ahead. Third, the replay feature and observer mode are really nice, and the ease to mod, with the guarantee that it can always be improved, definitely leaves many AAA RTSs behind. I love AoE2, but single player with that AI just sucks, and there is no hope of anything better, unless in 100 years MS decides to release the code. I don't think balance mods are a waste of time now. Some experienced players have volunteered to contribute this, and it makes the game massively better for now - just enough to keep the fanbase slowly growing. Now, after reading this thread and other ones for the whole day, and building on what others have pointed out - both suggestions and issues with the game - I list here some suggestions, taking into account that 0 A.D. is heavily AoE2 inspired and that straying too much from that should rather be a fork of the project than a change, after all this is alpha 23 already - I assume radical changes are off the table. For example, I think batallions would better fit in a fork of the game than in some next alpha, since probably would require months or years to implement, and would completely change it from an AoE style to a Total War style. Anyway, some suggestions (hopefully easy to add to the game): Markets: I like the idea of trading between CCs because it is realistic: you won't have caravans walking inside the city but between them. It should be required that there is a market in the CC area. About trading being OP, I think it could just be reduced the gain (just balance). CC area: connected to the previous point, CC area of influence should be reduced. This would make the CC look like a city center, with all city stuff close to it. In fact, with this we could just use trading between markets as it is, and make the markets limited to one per CC (or not, but prohibiting trade between markets in the same CC area). Farms: what prevents a poor peasant from having a farm in the center of Athens? I would say the price of land (?). So what if we make building farms in CC territory of influence cost, say, additional 100 metal. That would encourage building farms far from CC. The reduced CC area of influence also helps with this. Endurance: I like this idea. If soldiers are not in own territory after some time they could start slowly losing health. At some point they have to come back home - this could be circumvented with Military camps and outposts for example, where they could rest in an advanced position. Women, population and unit recruiting: One interesting dynamic that game could have is nobody is born in a village without women. Killing all women should make your enemy unable to increase his pop. Maybe women could also be capturable, solving this problem for a only-male horde of nomads. Also, people are not born in City centers, but in houses. Houses could train women and citizen soldiers, but only if there is a couple (male, female) in a certain range (or tied to that house, or in the CC territory to which this house belongs). To avoid increasing even more the spamming of units, training time could be drastically increased, since now we would have tens of houses making units. CC would only serve as provider of territory and universal dropsite. Training villagers from houses would also stimulate building houses near worksites, which I assume is realistic (villages of miners, lumberjacks, etc...). Barracks: this is more radical but I was thinking if we should not limit training of units only to houses, and for training military we had to garrison civilians in barracks. Or, less radical, citizen soldiers could start weaker than now, and be garrisoned in barracks to gain experience - and lose gathering abilities. Blacksmith: similarly, citizen soldiers could be garrisoned in blacksmiths to simulate that they are working there. Each worker might provide a cost bonus for military units. (maybe this would be too micro intensive, another alternative would be resource "weapon", or simply ignore this item). CC Territory again: should be reduced (as said before), and represent only the territory of the urban area. So any military or dropsite building should be not only allowed but also cheaper out of the territory (cost additional metal in the territory). Normal buildings in the territory would be civilian buildings: houses, temple, market, blacksmith... This modification would conflict with ideas like the military colony. Maybe it could just be allowed to be built out of own territory, but without territory influence. Building dropsites out of territory and houses as a way to train workers more easily would be common. Maybe houses out of territory could be of a cheaper kind and provide less pop (representing houses of poor workers instead of richer urban citizens). Destruction of buildings: I think the possibility of one-click building destruction is wasting a lot of potential of the game, given the capture mechanics. Buildings cannot be destroyed by swordsmen, unless they are made of wood maybe. So they should only be vulnerable to siege. I don't know how demolition worked in antiquity, but I would just not allow deleting buildings. The worse is when 5 horses rush to your base, capture a house and destroy it. No way 5 knights can put down a stone house. Palisades should also be vulnerable only to siege and maybe hack (I don't know how realistic it is to destroy a palisade with swords, but it is certainly not possible with arrows). Wall of houses: setting a minimum distance between any building should be enough to avoid this. This and the previous observation should make palisades and walls in general more useful. Of course these are just suggestions and I would be glad to hear what you all think. At some point I would also like to collaborate to the game development, but I would have to either take a good look at the code first or learn how to make 3D models (are Blender models compatible with 0 A.D.?). For now I limit myself to playing a lot and suggesting one or two ideas from time to time.

Of course. But you know me... I always like to dream big Me dreaming some more: Another thing is that a lot of the micromanagement is tied up in the "economy". Tasking individual units to do this and that. Especially with regard to tree cutting and tasking and often re-tasking a specific number of women to specific fields, and even construction. I have a radical idea that I've always kind of wanted to see in 0AD that would focus the micro on battle, and economy would be more of a macro thing. I've suggested it before in some capacity, and will probably trie to work the idea out a little further in the future, to be able to explain it well enough (not that its so difficult to understand, I just need to find the right wording). Anyway here's an early draft: The economy and civilian aspects of 0AD feel very stale. Mind you this is not unique to 0AD, but a problem of Classic RTS games in general. They never truly feel immersive, where other similar gaming genres have achieved an incredible feelings of immersion, especially city/town builders and economy or civilization management games, but those games always lack in combat. One of the problems in Classic RTS is that economy and civilian life feels very unrealistic, almost dead. For example having to tell individuals (civilians) what to do all the time. If not, they just stand there... 0AD is not a simulator, and probably never will be, and that's fine... But it doesn't mean we can't attempt to "simulate" certain aspects of the game, especially with regard to economy (and even construction). Basically what I'm getting at is higher level of automation for the sake of a more realistic economy and civilian life. In many building/strategy games, you simply have a (pop-up) panel with all your building options... Want to build something? Just click the the icon of what you want to build, place it, and done. Available workers will now autonomously go to the site and start construction. Building many things at once and can't wait for a particular structure to finish? Prioritize the building project(s) you deem most important (perhaps with levels of priority for maximum control). Or build more construction guilds to increase the amount of builders available. There is a civilian population (men, women, children), which could grow dynamically based on how many houses and necessary resources you have available (mainly food, but availability of other products could influence population growth/stratification as well), supplemented by immigration. This civilian population could be "simulated", controlled by an AI. You decide what to build, and where to build it, and the AI automatically assigns builders, and after its construction is complete, the AI assigns available workers, who become part of a running animation in the structure they work in (sometimes no more than entering and "turning on the light", or having some smoke coming from a chimney). The amount of available workers is determined by your civilian population minus employed people. Its from this same surplus of civilians that you recruit fighters (who would still be controlled manually, and could still be tasked to build fortifications/infrastructure or clear forests manually, like before, but not mine or farm, or build civilian structures). With this kind of system, civilian and economic aspects of the game could be greatly expanded and diversified, while removing unnecessary/unpleasant micro. You could even have simple production chains, which are always awesome in games like this. Managing brainless individuals is replaced with managing a living economy, with automated individuals going about their daily tasks. Finite resources become "semi-infinate", and the output of economic structures is determined by the amount of workers, tech, radius, level... Not by how smoothly individuals may or may not pass obstruction boxes. You'd have an income and an expenditure, determined by a host of easy to understand/intuitive factors, easily managed and adjusted with an economic pop-up pannel, with all the info you need to know and the option to adjust/finetune things to your liking. Apart from the construction and economy pop-up panels, you'd have a third military pop-up panel as well, for everything relating to military (formations, battalion/army setup, recruitment, overview of all units/battalions/armies, military tech). Forests regenerate over time, wood being harvested through lumber camps (sustainable slow income). Tasking your army to clear a forest will clear it for good (unsustainable, rapid income). Metal(s) are typically mined from realistic looking mines, usually in a hill/mountain-side away from your original CC (continuous income). Smaller alluvial deposits could offer one time metal income, much like it is now, not too far from your original CC, but not too close either. Stone comes from realistic looking stone quarries (same story as metals). We could have things like brick makers, as bricks were the primary construction material for most civs in-game. Various civilian and administrative structures specific per civ, could increase things like population growth, motivation for workers (increased outputs), or generate glory that makes your soldiers fight harder. I'm thinking about things like taverns, markets (with which civilians interact), shrines, statues, bath-houses, courthouses, and many other potential civ-specific structures. You wouldn't just be developing the economy and military of your chosen civilization, but also its culture. Basically, what I'd love to see is 0AD in its current state, with a rich blend of civilization management games like the classic Caesar and Pharaoh, and the modern Anno series, Banished and Life is Feudal: Forest Village, mixed in with combat simulator elements similar to the Total War series. None of these simulation aspects should be as complex or difficult to understand as they are in dedicated management games, they should be more simple/arcade-like, so you can focus most attention on building, recruiting and fighting, with a semi-autonomous, living economy in the background. I know, I'm insane, but that's what a lot of people are really waiting for, and 0AD/pyrogenesis seems like a platform that has the potential to evolve in this direction. Economy wise, I'm thinking of something similar, but more simplified/arcady than than Banished and Life is Feudal: Forest Village: Even a game called Ostriv is doing some interesting things with regard to production chains and economy managment:

This topic is sponsored by: Counters must come back

Well, I don't know. Cossacks could easily handle tens of thousands of units without noticeable lag on an ordinary pc in 2001.

I want to make this map for later release as trigger defend the city from norse raiders scenario, so i've made 1 of the 3 churches. Map: Church:

36€ until the 29th, but yeah, one needs to consider what one is willing to spend. I'm "having" to force myself not to buy many new games since I haven't played a lot of the ones I have bought already. The trouble with all the deals all the time =) "I better take advantage of this, I know I want to play it eventually, and it is a good deal"... =)

Hi ! Some ideas about OAD design (excuse me if off-topic): - Food. I think units should eat, or in other words, consume continuously some food (and maybe wood and metal when mechanical). This would limit rather naturally soldiers number, because one should produce regularly enough food to sustain them, idle or not (and some, like cavs and heroes should eat more than ordinary soldiers of course). Even if population limit is removed, available terrain for fields is limited. If food is missing, units starve or fly to enemy. This would force players to maintain a serious productive background, not only during the development phase. - Population Population grow could be automatic: regularly, some new citizen units, female and male, are added in the houses (ratio of existing houses and/or women, I don't know). Then they can be set by the player directly to some productive occupation, or sent to buildings to become soldiers, healers and so on (it would be really training then and not creating people from nothing). This would lead to exponential population grow. Yes. And the player should quickly face the problem to find room to settle them, enroll them in the army, set them to emigrate or even sell them as slaves. Just my two cents...

Variation for the sake of variation seems to me a bad idea. Horse-back riding was the forte of the Iranian peoples (Persians, Scythians, Bactrians, etc.). If anybody should use cavalry, certainly they. What I would recommend (and actually have implemented in my 0abc mod some months ago) is: remove cavalry from centres and barracks enable stables for all factions in the village phase give cavalry a population cost of 2 Limiting cavalry in the village phase would be a contradiction of history. Horses were kept on the countryside, near manors and villages, certainly not in the cities. Semi-nomadic peoples living in nothing larger than villages were cavalry heavy; city-states often lacked cavalry; cavalry to infantry ratio in the armies of large kingdoms seldom exceeded 1:10. Gameplay-wise, people should not be unnecessarily restricted, they should have a choice. Do I build a barracks to train infantry? Do I build a stables to train cavalry for some early raiding, hunting, and exploring? Or do I neglect my military and rush to the next phase, hoping I won't be attacked early on?

On the mail texture, I think there should be a layer of padding underneath. I don't know of any historical artwork where mail is directly touching the skin. Also, leather armor shouldn't be too common. I feel like that may be rare historically since layers of clothing is as equally or even more effective while being much cheaper than leather.

Sounds cool. Similar to my Run Amok feature for War Elephants. IMHO you shouldn't be able to switch back. Should have to commit to the decision and work them to death. lol

Hmm maybe it could be implemented in this way: slaves in normal mode have a better rates working, but you can use the upgrade component to overwork and exhaust them (losing health but better stats). It could be changed again. Something like your mauryan champ weapon swapping feature. Something like chaos workers in dow1.

Yes I saw how you want to implement the slaves but still it will be quite hard to manage once ingame. Having to remember to put your workers to idle isn't easy (the opposite is already quite hard for beginners eheh) In your mind, would the slave/citizen gameplay should be for all factions? I think if we can have factions with and without slaves mechanism it would help differentiate the faction's playstyle better. And that way people can choose what gameplay they like (like if you don't like to mass units, just don't play zerg)

There are an example why is bad idea have only battalion without individual role. min 4:39. You don't need a battalion for do simple task like that.

Limiting the number of units one can produce of a specific type is a bad choice. Units should have particular roles that make them able to be defeated by specific tactics or unit compositions. For instance, horse archers could be good at hit-and-run, but when fighting the more cost-effective foot missile soldiers, though they may win in some brief engagements, the cost would strain an opponents eco. Also, foot archers could have good range and decent damage, yet due to line of sight restrictions, they could not fight to their full potential without other units doing recon.

The most likely outcome, to me, right now, is that we'll ultimately support 3 things: -individual units -individual units walking more or less in formation (like in Age of Empires 2) -actual bataillons for warfare, treated as a single unit, but possibly composed of several underneath.

-- for balance : 1) Citizen soldiers can should either be in economic mode or weaponized mode. In economic mode they can gather or build, but if immediately are forced into combat they are limited to melee nd slightly better than a Spartan woman at fighting. To change to weaponized mode, where they have their full combat strength, they must first vist a house or city center and drop anything they are carrying (wood, food etc). This simulates them 'arming up', or if they carry nothing then they can simply visit a house to 'arm up'. 2) Citizen soldiers in economic mode should move 10% faster than their weaponized counterpart 3) In weaponized mode, citizen soldiers have a 'food bar' which slowly decreases when away from the aura of house, civ center, barracks. When the food bar drops to zero the citizen soldier reverts to economic mode and must visit a house / civ center to reenter weaponized mode. Being within the aura of a friendly caravan shiould also reset the food bar. 4) City centers should no longer fire arrows. Instead, the city center should provide an armor bonus to all freindly units in its aura. In this way the village level can also see invasion (currently it is insane to attack a civ center at the village phase, which is highly unihistoric)

To quote myself:

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