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Hello everyone, For the purposes of helping me review patches for Alpha 24 (coming soon!), I made a quick mod to get an easy "macro" view of templates and try a few things out. My intention is that this mod should be compatible with most other mods, not just 0 A.D. itself, even most total conversion mods. I'm releasing it publicly, it'll soon be on mod.IO and it's on GitHub: https://github.com/wraitii/balance_test_mod See the wiki over there for some more documentation. I'll probably keep adding a few more features until I'm happy, and intend to maintain this somewhat since we don't really have a better tool. Here's a screenshot of the "good stuff":

If we look at the way that the game was originally designed, most techs were meant to be paired, having the player choose between the two with different benefits. Earlier alphas incorporated that, but the results were a bit mixed, leaving the current gamestate without that mechanic. My take is that there should be choices provided that they are meaningful ones and play to different possibilities during the timeframe in which they were represented. With Rome it might be a matter of trying to consider the demands of the plebeians over the senatorial elite. Carthage might be a matter of relying on foreign mercenaries or locals for its military.

Rome Total War features them, and that game is known as an objectively historically accurate source.

The ones of you who have a close eye on the recent commits and patches in the queue will have noticed that there are efforts being made to further differentiate the current civs either by unique bonuses and/or buildings. I am assuming that I am not the only one seeing great potential for Spartans in that direction, especially since the removal of their pop penality leaves room for new things. I think it is time to share my ideas from a mod draft made several years ago, but never finished/published. See the following description and proposals as an inspiration for new/alternative/enhanced Spartan gameplay. The core idea is to really push the Spartan trademarks: the absolute crème de la crème regarding quality, especially in the defensive part, at the cost of reduced quantity and a lot of time and resources spent to bring their warriors to perfection. In lategame they should be near unstoppable - only the infamous man spam train should do the job - being among the strongest civs, preferably the strongest alone. A Spartiate phalanx (even more so with Leonidas) should feel like an immovable object similar to Carthaginian walls. Their offensive should be very slow, but deadly (cf. Teutonic knights in AoE II). They will fight like a beast to defend their home territory and shine the most in team games where they can occupy and block strategic positions. However, they should be especially vulnerable in early game / village phase and below average in mid game / town phase (careful, detailed and well-targeted balancing may be needed) in order to compensate for their incredible late game potential. They are characterized by the following unique features: tech "The Agoge": waaay more impactful than now - Spartiates cost around 2 times the resources of regular champions (including 2 population), optionally only one of them can be trained per house - they should be able to 1v2 regular champions, and with all other bonuses described below even 1v3 should be possible (at least under some circumstances) -> reduced quantity, better overall quality, slightly more cost efficient than other champions tech "Hippagretae": these were the guys electing the ~300 best Spartiates called Hippeis - Spartiates can upgrade to stronger Hippeis after collecting some XP (killing 2-3 enemies) (like citizen soldiers from basic -> advanced rank) - optionally Hippeis can further upgrade to some kind of semi-hero after collecting a huge amount of XP (killing 7 or 10 enemies), but that may be over the top (like citizen soldiers from advanced -> elite rank) -> better overall quality CC aura "Wall of Men": some Greek author used this term to explain why Sparta didn't need walls - +2 resistance for Spartiates in a 80 range around CCs - alternatively more concentrated: +4 resistance in a 30 range around CCs -> better defensive quality Leonidas hero aura "Thermopylae": replacing current offensive aura by a purely defensive one - +2 resistance and -10% speed for spearmen in his formation - alternatively +3 resistance and -15% speed for Spartiates in his formation -> better defensive quality better represent the role of Spartan women and Helote slaves - Helote slaves as most efficient gatherers (use slave actor from Athenians) - Spartan women have less than mediocre gather rates themselves, but a gather boost aura for Helotes (being their mistress) - Spartan women have a basic combat ability, suitable for creating an emergency home defence against citizen soldiers (but not against champions) and they are able to build all buildings including military ones -> more complex economy, slow development, but higher potential (for the huge amount of resources needed for unique techs and champions) -> slightly better defensive quality I hope you find at least some of these ideas inspiring and suitable as a basis for more patches to come! Feedback and further ideas welcome Best regards, Palaxin

Player.prototype.Deserialize = function(state) { for (let prop in state) this[prop] = state[prop]; }; You need to add this to your player.js file

@wowgetoffyourcellphone: you need to update your Player.js overwrite, you have no "Deserialize" function and it throws an exception now. Edit: your save games are also broken because of the same issue btw

Hm, this should be fixed since https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24675. The solution is to remove the "unused" in your config file and set them to = ""

@wowgetoffyourcellphone This problem was reported in #5927 and supposed to be fixed with Changeset 24675. Are you running the latest SVN?

Thanks, for the hint. I knew only the command to cycle through "Production", "Units" and "Tech" by pressing Shift+space. I found the unit panel to be particularly helpful, allowing you to quickly see which specific soldiers your opponent chose to deploy.

In DE* the Spartan Hoplite gets an "Olympic Champion" upgrade, max of 2, as body guards to the king. Supposedly 2 Olympic champions would flank the king at the front right of the Spartan Phalanx. The Olympic Champions get laurel wreaths on their helmets and the Dodona pattern on their shield. They get extra health and attack, making them an Uber champion, but not quite heroes, similar to the "Silver Shields" upgrade for Macedonian Hypaspists in DE*. *I say this a lot because most things I would suggest I would have already put into my mod, so the mod becomes an easy example in discussions like these. If inclined, folks can go straight to the mod and test out exactly what I am suggesting.

Thanks for the mod and the help. Fantastic! Now I can finally be pro and beat Boudicca! I love late game, so I'm psyched to micro all the time with auto production on. General mod question: Is there a way to raise an alert for only selected women?

I haven't spoken to @badosuabout his spec mod for a few weeks - but the upper left section is the bit I really appreciate in terms of displaying clear visuals for the viewer in replays, and ease of reading for me when I'm doing commentary. I still use the FGOD overlay but it's much harder to read. The production section - in the version I have, is still a WIP. I believe Badosu has plans for a much more integrated GUI replacement idea with a lot more matching visuals. The aim of it has always been to show the data of what each players are doing at a given time. You can easily see their build orders and see who is ramping up production, or who is falling behind, etc. From a commentators perspective, it's pretty useful. I find it really handy from a training perspective as well - you can properly analyse what a really good player is doing - where they are finding or utilising time better than an opponent.

I'm fond of the idea and I'm really happy @badosu went for it but I'm not really fond of the visuals (it looks like a debug /cheating console to me) Also can it be turned off ?

My first map :p Fall Of Constantinople.pmp Fall Of Constantinople.xml

version 0.17.11 Added: Gamesetup: /randomCivs excludeCiv1FullName excludeCiv2FullName ... Session: Hotkey option for group selection filter .by.group.groupNumber|none