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In team games AI behaves funny too. I usually play up to 5 Very Hard AI's, without set teams, which often actually seems easier than one on one, but it's also more interesting because of all the manoeuvring, and switching alliances Some unsatisfactory AI behavior observations: Repeatedly attempting to build structures within range of enemy ranged structures like towers. The AI should be more aware of enemy teritory and unit movement (anticipation/responsiveness). AI shouldn’t request and never launch attacks against an enemy whilst already being invaded by another enemy. AI should focus on the enemy nearby, rather than getting killed crossing an enemy’s teritory trying to attack another enemy at the other end of the map. The AI should never send civilian units through enemy teritory and keep them out of range of towers (unless they become cut off through teritory loss), choosing to send them around with waypoints instead. Traders shouldn't pass close to enemy territory either. The AI can react excessively to a small threat, but also takes too long to respond adequately to massive invasions, often still having a bunch of military units on eco (or just standing around for too long) when being attacked by an overwhelming force. AI armies attack in long drawn out spaghetti lines. It's often enough to have a group of archers hold ground on the path of an advancing AI to successfully pick them all off one by one. They should move and arrive en mass, the fasted units reducing their speed to keep pace with the slowest units when advancing towards an enemy territory, so they arrive as a single large group, not one by one. Allied AI's don't coordinate their attacks well, often taking turns sending armies, instead of arriving at the enemy base at more or less the same time. AI doesn't build walls. AI doesn't understand how to cut it's losses. Repeatedly attacking fortifications like garrisoned towers on their border, with a numerically insignificant number of troops, often after being fired upon, instead of just moving its forces out of range. It can easily waste several hundred units like that in long matches. One aspect in which I think the AI is overpowered is their all seeing eye, especially if you weren't aware that the AI can actually see EVERYTHING... There's no hiding... Even if it's never been to a certain area of the map, it has no problem making a B-line for whatever enemy settlement is located there.

Ranged units are currently designed in an ahistorical manner, encouraging players to field forces that are almost entirely ranged. In part, this is due to a number of issues. 1. Ranged units are accurate and typically faster than their melee counterparts, encouraging players to kite with them. This makes players micro their ranged units much like in starcraft. Since 0 A.D. does not wish to have this kind of gameplay, this should be addressed. 2. The proportion of ranged to melee units is historically inaccurate to my understanding. While I think that there should be the possibility of using skirmishing armies, these should have a proper place in the game based on historically informed unit compositions. Here is a general analysis of army compositions during 0 A.D.’s timeframe. An article from wikipedia argues that Alexander the Great used 31,000 heavy infantry, 9,000 light infantry (ranged), and 7,000 cavalry in the battle of Gaugamela . The opposing Persian side had only 1,500 archers in an army that numbered between 52,000 and 120,000. These statistics are not extremely unusual, but they would be in the case of 0 A.D. Here are a few suggestions to address these problems. 1. Ranged units should be much more inaccurate, having the ability to hit targets they did not aim for, making it also possible to have friendly fire. In most cases with at least firearms, it has been common for soldiers to not even aim at a specific target in battle situations. Assuming that this was also the case before gunpowder, the game should attempt to emulate this. Missile trajectories should arc more, and accuracy should dramatically fall off as the distance increases between them and their targets. Highly experienced and champion units could perhaps do better, but these things should at least affect them in part. 2. Most heavy units, especially those with shields, which do a fantastic job of deflecting things like arrows, should be much more resistant to ranged attacks than they currently are. If directional armour is introduced, I think that the idea of them taking more damage from flanking missile attacks would be a nice option, yet for the most part, shields should play a much larger role in calculating defence against ranged attacks. These are just a few options for addressing what I find to be a problem, and I'd be open to suggestions.

Deforestation is quite a normal thing in ancient times: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4004530?seq=7#metadata_info_tab_contents Even the region of the actual France was less covered by the forests at the time of the Gauls than these days. If you are interested in forestry management: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimal_rotation_age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing Some species can be used in coppicing management, others not.

You were not quite good enough yet when you first started posting, but your talent was very obvious to me, and your diligence had you improving very fast! I guess we should have told you that more often.

I can stop saying it. And watch people trying to do stuff in vain and lose hope and motivation, like I nearly lost mine last year of ever getting inside the team one day because I wasn't good enough. I don't want to give hope or say I will do something without being able to commit to it. And to commit it. So I could pledge to merge Terra_Magna for A24. But If I don't or I fail to fix it, all I will have is failure, and broken game, or failure and nothing that has been done. The Kushites were made an exception, for one big reason. The research behind them. Not saying that mods don't have proper backup. I would be stabbing Ayakashi, Wolflance if I said that for Rise of the East. No. But you inspired people with your research, Lordgood started making new models, and everyone started to get hyped again. But I can't promise anyone that because he puts his heart, his soul and his blood inside a civ, that it will be included. I just can't. Saying we won't include any Civ is a good way to make people moderate their expectations. Look at it from a manpower perspective. In the last 6 years we had at most 3 artists active in the team. So three people who could take decisions, and get them done, who like every one of us had lives and other things to do. They couldn't keep up with it and nobody has the right to force them to. We recruited new artists now, so it might be better, but I can't promise anything. So here is what I could say: Do your research, make an awesome thread (Keep it organized... please) that make people wonder about a whole civilization nobody's really heard off, gather interest, show us that you are dead serious about it, and we will see if we can make your dream come true. Does that sound more realistic ? I can't really say. But I believe there is something far more important. Stop thinking that mods are any less valuable than the game, that's simply NOT true. Remember, we are ALL modders. Some of us have a badge, some do not but at the end of day we are all here for only one goal, to make the game better, and more to our liking. If you fear you can't do this alone, make a modding group. The council of modders is still there, you are stronger united. It's fine if the public mod is less popular than Delenda Est or any other mod, because in the end, they play the same game they play 0AD. and they have fun, and that's all that really matters.

I'm here now, I was at vacation I'll try to answer to all messages, sorry for delay.

I didn't start the sketching stage. All I have is a folder with references I gathered for the face, clothing, equipment, etc. @dMAthena I'm not sure if this has any use to you now (16 days later), but I uploaded my references to a drive folder: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1adnPsz_q9tOD8c9z-rqUmr-aBBjiT67X

It's sad to know Europe and USA was all forests at one time. Where I live in Bergen/ Norway is a whole forest that was never touched,and when I get off work I go into that forest and daydream,read or play OAD

To be honest it would be fun to have different experimental AI's. Maybe somebody wants to play around with machine learning to develop a self-evolving AI.

I did not realize that people have such an experience. I did grew up wanting to add or remove things to a game and I played a lot of mods. However, I am not what @Sundiata categorizes as "real gamer". I actually find the term "real gamer" divisive. I do not think it is necessary to split people into groups just because one group experienced mods previously to playing 0 A.D. In additions, having mods is just a natural evolution for an open source game. There is no technical or legal limitation, which prevents people from modifying the game. Quite the opposite, 0 A. D. encourages you to contribute. Furthermore, people mentioned that most civilizations in the Terra Magna mod are in a good spot to be included into the main game especially the Han Chinese. As much as I like playing the Han Chinese, they were and still are not in a spot to be included into the main game. For example, the Han Chinese did not have heroes or champion units, when I first started playing them. Today they have heroes and champion units. The Han are very different from other civilizations in 0 A. D. I would like to see the differences further worked out, without becoming a "super" civilization. I think it will take more time to balance them further against other civilizations. The Zapotecs and Xiongnu need more research. I mean I am impressed with the rapid development of both they are very playable today. Kudos for the great work, I mean both civilizations were added in roughly a year. However, they are not complete. Do I want to see the Han Chinese long term in the game. Yes, I would love to see them included in the game at some point. On the other hand, enabling them today is already easy. I mean go to the mod section, download them, activate the mod and start playing. Furthermore, I think in the long run there should be the possibility for mods to use only the engine and exclude the 0 A.D. default mod entirely. This would be helpful for mods such as Millennium A.D., which is not really a mod. In the long run it should be it's own game with it's own mods, but use the same Pyrogenesis game engine as 0 A.D.

If you really want a insane Al I would like the name Inhumane Al we could record the gameplay of the top 10 players and use that like having some resources boost and attack boost to these Al 's might do the work.

When trying to figure out suitable upkeep (negative resource trickle) rates in my mod, I decided that one second represents a day, so 30 seconds would be a month, 6 minutes about a year, and 1 hour a decade. I don't pretend it's a perfect approximation, but given that wars in Antiquity could last for a single season but also continue on and off for decades, it works acceptably for me.

Hi, Play with the gather of the map is the best choice. As for me, menage ressources of map give fascinating aspect.

So who cast the magic spell to grow them that fast you are completely ignoring the internal time line of the game most single player games represent at most two seasons of a year ie: Six months Enjoy the Choice

I sympathize with the "manpower" aspect, but civs like the Han, Zaps, and Xions are already largely complete.

They can make it to where when you cut down the trees there is a chance you can get a sprout that you can use to replant some trees.

Is more easy if work together similar to a Factory, for example Sundiata makes the base to the icons outlines for me is easy take and give life with Vectorial and Photo editing program. thats how we make Xiongnu and Kushites emblems. I have previous experience from New Kingdom Egypt I use same technique. some times i asked renders by Alexander our 3D artist I can take photos to make textures or references. i can help Wacky or give some review. Sundiata can research more organized than me and make some conceptual art.(units) Stanislas is 3D but he can be coder too so he can make good maintenance for us. Asterix same he can organized our issues even can take some design documents. make to make a civ is very or highly recommended make a design document. The secret of art department was that. many of us tried to keep our minds open to learn many things.

Maturing trees. Where the new spawns would be tree saplings and these saplings would auto research a maturity tech which is set to, let us say 10 minutes. Saplings provide minimal wood, while moderately aged trees provide decent amount of wood, on the other hand, fully mature trees provide large amounts of wood and are capable of spawning new trees in its vicinity.

Mesoamerican is the correct term for Mayans, Zapotecs, Olmecs. etc etc- Soth America is from Colombia to Argentina and Chile. in the case of cultures from east South America they are Andeneans. for make a civilization or faction in 0 AD means have 3 heroes, 1 Wonder, some variety of units, specific names, in other words; a design document for them. I take Carthaginians civ document we haven't a empty design(civ) document yet. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Civ%3A_Carthaginians

Use only women to gather food Build storehouses or farms near to the resources, and not randomly in the space Use only the cavs for hunt and chicken Train the units in larger groups Don't make suicide attacks at beginning with few units (this would be ok only for Aggressive Al) Go slower to P2 (they usually go at minute 4, that is too early) Don't trade in all maps with a low profit Make more upgrades faster Attack in late game with siege units near to the attacking army Have a more compact city Build fort when they get to P3 (they wait too much to built it) I stop here, if not I make an infinite list of things... Idk if it's possible, but it would be good for the Al to copy (at least at the beginning) the build order of a good player (6 women... etc). I mean to give him default strategies used from good players, like build order, attack strat, army composition, eco balance. Obv the Al is not human and it can't compete with experienced players, but it would be interesting to have a pro Al. To make an example in chess there are some times of Al, like Stockfish (not the 0ad player xd) that can beat even the most experienced players. It's a different game, I know, but it would be and interesting challenge. If you want to teach me a bit of it, I will be happy to work on it

In fact I'm not contesting that we have to increase the strength of every type of Al. Casual players must have the right to play with easy Al and to get fun with them. I'm contesting the fact that a Very Hard Al is not enough for its name. the difference between the levels of Al has to be increased, and A Very hard Al I think should has the level of at least a 1300 player. Surely that for a experienced player they are easy anyway, but it would be interesting to create a competitive Al brain (competitive for 1300-1400 players). Anyway, I perfectly know that is difficult to create one.

I guess not. Can you open an issue on GitHub ?

Interesting; I'm especially curious as to where that number of "only 1,500 archers" comes from. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaugamela#Size_of_Persian_army "the main weapon of the Achaemenid army historically was the bow and arrow, and javelin." And according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparabara "nine rows of archers would be protected by one row of shield-bearers." However, we all know Wikipedia is not a reliable source. The most important of Alexander's biographers is Arrian. Gaugamela is described in book III. He also provides numbers for the Persian army: Arrian doesn't break the numbers down into heavy (melee) and light (ranged). And yes, Arrian wrote five centuries post factum and modern scholarship tend to view his round numbers as exaggarations and poetic licence. An example of a battle where the light troops are listed separately from heavy infantry is Herodotus' description of the Greek army at Plataea: There were seven helots per Spartan; the Greek army as a whole had about twice as many light troops as hoplites (69500:38700). Perhaps the army was somewhat smaller than the numbers given by Herodotus, but there is no real reason to doubt his troop ratios. Anyway, "a general analysis of army compositions" based on a single number from Wikipedia does not exactly convince me. Nor does calling it "not extremely unusual" help.

I personally think that it would be really hard to play a 0ad game if you have to pay attention also to the friendly fire of your own units. This shold be supplemented mostly for siege weapons, like catapults or bolt shooters. Maybe a friendly fire idea for ranged unit should be implemented only between the ranged units of the same team (for exampe your ally can fail a shot). Friendly fire between your own units would be a total chaos

I agree with Thorfinn. Total War struggles with the issue, but it is one of the finest battle simulators ever created... 0AD would do good to attempt battle mechanics more akin to the Total War series (battalions & directional stuff). Not a blanket copy, but a simplified arcade version (Total War Arena-ish). It might be challenging, but considering the many thousands of units in TW-games as opposed to the few hundred in 0AD, it might end up being "easier" to implement in 0AD. It would also help 0AD move away from the AoE/starcraft type microing of individual units, into microing platoons, battalions and armies, at least for most combat.

@Genava55, just to clarify my point a little: Han Chinese, as well as Kushites from Sudan, as well as Iron Age Britons made use of chariots for war. This is absolutely not a coincidence. No such thing ever existed in the Americas. War-Elephants were used in India, Britain and Sudan. Again, not a coincidence. Elephants are unknown to the Americas. Cavalry is used by literally every civ in-game. Horses didn't even exist in the Americas. Between c. 1000 BC and 400 BC, literally every civ in-game (or their predecessors) switched to iron/steel as a primary material for making weapons and tools. Iron doesn't seem to have been known in the Americas. Every single civ in-game is connected through military conflict with at least 2 other civs (some a lot more). No civilization in the Americas ever fought a war with any of the civs in-game. All the civs in-game were connected through a vast ancient network of trade-routes, and literary as well as archaeological evidence suggests that most of these civs were fully aware of the existence of most of the other civs, even if they never went to war with them. None of the civs in-game were even remotely aware that the Americas even existed. The main technical problem is that balancing strictly no-cav stone-age civilizations with the existing civs is impossible without throwing out any semblance of historical accuracy in game-play. To clarify further, I love New World civilizations and I hope every major civ of the Americas is developed for 0AD at some point. My concern is that including them in the main-game is simply not possible without messing everything up. Unless people aren't bothered with massively underpowered civs. I'm not saying they were technologically inferior or something. Simply the lack of horses, iron and advanced siege-engines or elephants (on top of mediocre "navies", if that) makes them unbalanceable by definition. The complete lack of interconnectedness is also something I just wouldn't be able to get past (in the main-game). Having New World civs as a standard "expansion" or a "built in mod", included but separate would be my preference. Not including the Chinese is a mistake, plain and simple. Of course adding the Scythians (and Greco-Bactrians) would do a lot to further increase interconnectedness, and of course I'm aware that this wouldn't be a small job, at all. I don't "expect" it to happen over the next alpha, although with a planned release date of 2022 for alpha 24, who knows what might happen.. @stanislas69 You're a hero, for so many reasons. You've done so much and we thank you! Nobody will demand anything from you. We're just a bunch of dreamers. These talks are all purely theoretical, and most of us know this. But if one day Wildfire Games is suddenly magically over-staffed, at least we'd already have a good idea of which direction we'd want future civ-development for the main-game to go.

I split this topic as best as I could sorry if some posts are missing. To get on this topic. The inclusion of mod civilizations have been discussed over the years to some extent and ended up in heated discussions and sometimes bloodbaths as well as general incomprehension. To be truly honest I didn't think the Kushites would make it into the game. The discussion about it in the staff forums is kinda big considering the number of people actually in the team. Including a civ in a mod is easy. Just dump everything inside a git repository. Fix it along and voilà. Including it into the game is a bit trickier because we have to make sure everything is in order that the documentation is correct that there are no copyright violations and that the overall thing is playable, balanced, and does not throw weird errors. Including two or three civs at once would be a daunting task I do not wish to do right now. Could also include one civilization you might say. Fair enough, but what about the people that wanted the other one to be included. Thanks to our programmers combined efforts we have now a good mod support into the game. You want more civs ? Make mods universally recognized such as delenda Est milleniumad terra magna etc. Just want to improve the existing ones, join the modders team. Want your mod to rely on a another one with civs ? We've got the technology it's called mod dependency TLDR: The probability of new civs or the existing ones being included is very low because 1 it's a pain to get it right 2 it leads to endless discussions 3 we have mod support now and finally 4 Stan is lazy.