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Let's Fight 0 A.D. is an open-source RTS game (https://play0ad.com/) Let's Fight is a 0 A.D. gameplay balance mod for Alpha 24 (Xšayāršā) Motivation Currently the meta of Alpha 24 is skewed towards turtling via walls, towers, and forts. This problem is exacerbated by the advantage that archers, units that already have high range, have over other ranged units. This mod aims to provide gameplay that is more rewarding for aggressive players and roughly equalize the strength of civilizations to allow for a greater variety of strategies. In particular, there is an emphasis on encouraging players to utilize different strategies depending on the civilization and situation of the game. Several balance changes in this mod were based on discussions in the "Gameplay Discussion" and "Balancing Discussions" sub-forums. Installation Drag and drop the pyromod file over the 0ad start icon or open the pyromod file with pyrogenesis.exe The mod will be downloaded and you will be taken to the "Mod Selection" page (if not, then click "Settings" -> "Mod Selection") Click on the "letsfight" mod in the "Available Mods" and click "Enable" in the bottom left Click "Save Configuration" in the bottom right Click "Start Mods" in the bottom right If you have an older version, go to your local mods folder (https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameDataPaths) and delete all other versions of the mod before downloading a different version If you're still having trouble, see https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Modding_Guide#Howtoinstallmods Updates Thanks to the 0ad community for their feedback. Some people have had questions about the changes or wondered about the justifications. The reasoning behind each change is placed in brackets behind each bullet point. v0.2.3 Gave auras to Chandragupta Maurya and Agis III Buffs to auras of Pericles, Arakamani, and Alexander III Increase damage of melee infantry and cavalry [Thanks @borg] Decrease armor of pikeman [Thanks @borg] Increase crush damage of catapults [Thanks @maroder] Fixed fortress, civic centre, and military colony minimum distance [Thanks @Nescio] Limit of 1 fortress and 10 towers for each civic centre [Thanks @Nescio] Group armor of buildings based on economic, civic and military, and defensive classes [Thanks @Nescio] New stable technology for Britons to increase vision range of war dogs Buff to team bonus of Britons All Changes Thoughts, Comments, Suggestions? Discuss! I've tested this mod against the AI, but the best results are from real players. Try some games with other players and then let me know what changes you liked and disliked. Feel free to make other suggestions that you would like to see in this mod after testing it out. letsfight_v0.2.2.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.1.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.pyromod letsfight_v0.1.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.3.pyromod

Hello all, Okay, I'm struggling a little here - I don't want to come across as argumentative, or belittle anyones efforts in the project - but reading through the replies - I think we're talking in really crossed purposes here and could end up going around in circles. In general, I've held the belief that 0AD as a project does not communicate effectively with it's wider audience or wider potential audience. I'm not talking technical, not in any way. I'm talking about the weekly/monthly type of comms and announcements that a project could be expected to put out in short, understandable, digestible form, across the mainstream social platforms - if for no other reason than to make it clear that the project still has a pulse. I'm talking about engaging with people you wouldn't otherwise engage with, maximising your reach - getting fresh eyeballs on the game. People who may not actually care one jot about the finer technical detail. What is it, what does it do, why should I play it, is the project heading in an upward trajectory, whats the latest? And quite importantly, the next iteration of the game is scheduled at this time, and these are some of the new things you'll be able to do. Maybe you'd class it as 'filler?' Just noise to throw out into the echo chamber the fill the gaps when otherwise there isn't much to report?. Well, like it or loathe it - it works, it reaches people and they engage back. I keep seeing the same comments - either 'why have I never heard of this game before' or 'I used to play this a while back, but I thought the project was long dead, not heard anything about it in years.' Usually after they've accidentally discovered a random piece of third party content for the game. No amount of claiming that those people weren't looking in the places that suit you will change the fact you aren't reaching a huge swath of your potential target audience. You are not putting information in the right form, in the right places in the right way, at the right time, with the correct frequency. Your forum posts, wikis, lists and announcements do not and will never reach them using that approach. You're persisting with a 1990's approach to communication! And the bits of social media that do happen are so rare, there are endangered species of animals with greater presence and visibility! In response to the claim that PR isn't a priority because the game isn't finished. It's a bit late for that, you're 24 alphas into the project, the genie is out of the bottle and you can't tell me that as a project you don't want as many people playing the game as possible? I'm assuming returning it to a closed alpha comprising of nothing but 'power users' is firmly not in the future plans? (or have I missed an 'announcement' about it!) With regards to the actual launch of A24 - okay, I get that after the difficult dev cycle, I can understand you were nervous that you might launch it and then suddenly discover a game-killing bug and have to backtrack. That would have looked a bit bad, but with hindsight, look - the game still works, testimony to the devs and their skills - would it have been as much of a mess and PR disaster as something like Cyberpunk 2077? A free, niche open source game - come off it! It would have had as much detrimental impact as a fart in deep space and you'd have patched it within a week. Would it really have hurt to announce it properly? And on a more general basis - would it really hurt to talk to people on a more ongoing, general basis? I think one person could do that for you giving up on average a couple of hours a week. How much more dev time happens per week? It's a drop in the ocean in comparison and should be a no brainer for the potential benefits it could bring. I'm at a loss as to how you can't see that. I spend more time editing my videos than that (cue someone shouting that I should spend longer doing that and less time writing this!) Cards on the table then - would you like me to do it in an official capacity? Do you want me to prove to you by a clear discernible set of metrics that developing a proper communication strategy and putting it into action to engage your community in a modern, professional and inclusive way works? I'd love to give it a go.

I am not a multiplayer player, so I reserve myself not to comment much on this area, but I always feel that things keep going and coming back, I remember people complaining about how much the ram was OP and how unreal a working siege device was. kind of like a modern battle tank. This was changed to alpha 24, which is different now so that it doesn't become an inconvenience again?

I've often thought the game could have an "Empires Ascendant" mode, which is what the game is now with territories, citizen-soldiers, etc. This is the mode that is standard for the game and the mode that's used in official campaigns and what is used for ranking in multiplayer. But.... there could also be a "classic" mode where the game plays more like an old-school RTS akin to Age of Empires or Command & Conquer. Building on my "Two Gender Citizens" mod (here: I was thinking of creating such a "Classic Mode" mod for Alpha 24. Specs: Citizen-Soldier concept removed. There is now a "classic" Citizen/Peasant unit for gathering and building, and Soldiers for fighting, with no overlap of roles. Include the Two-Gendered Citizens mod so that the new Peasants/Citizens have male and female forms. No territory restrictions or bonuses. Borders completely removed. Place all Champions back into the Fortress. Rename Metal to Gold. Adjust icons and terminology to match. Make Catafalques more like "Relics" from Age of Empires 2. Capture one, place it into the Temple to get a trickle of Gold. Heroes removed as trainable units (but still remain in Atlas for scenarios and campaigns). Adjust costs and stats to be similar to Age of Empires 2. Archery Range unlocked for all civs. 4 phases, call the 4th Phase Empire Phase. Remove automatic ranking and introduce unit Upgrades (light, medium, heavy). Create an upgrade progression for ships, like in AOE1 (light, medium, heavy). Make Gold the trading and resource, like in AOE2 and AOM. 1 gatherer per farm; adjust farming rate to compensate. Capturing removed, except with specific circumstances (Catafalque Relics, for example). Anything else, guys? ========================================================== MOD IS NOW PLAYABLE. COMPATIBLE WITH ALPHA 24. https://github.com/JustusAvramenko/0-A.D.-Classic-Mode Still a work in progress. Please report bugs and suggest balancing and gameplay ideas.

A sneak peak of the next update. What it shows: Units will switch to melee attacks on walls (because ammo is valuable). Aesthetically weapons will be sheathed/unsheated when switched (no animation). Units have ammo bars (pink) Military structures & forge have a re-arm aura, some buildings have a large aura, most buildings have a small aura. This aura will only work if you have at least one forge Showing the re-arm aura in action (+ icon) What it doesnt show but does work already If the current target is to close they will automatically switch to melee attacks If there is a champion counterpart of that unit type for that civ, soldiers will have a 4th rank. When reached, they turn into champions (without status effect attacks) Units will be rebalanced according to their visuals ingame. I will work with a point system for this. Example - movement speed: Base speed will be something like 18 for infantry units and will be reduced with the armor they wear as following: Material Cloth: none Leather: -0.75 Chainmail/iron: -1.5 Shield: small -1, large -2 Eligible Parts: Helmet, chest, arms (as one), legs (as one), shield I will also work with the same point system for attack speed / ressistance (but different numbers). Primary melee units will probably receive an health bonus (as is). This means units will be rebalanced per civ differently, and even more specifically, per rank. (read more on github - planned features) 2021-03-27 17-09-27.mp4

I think the hp bonus was a good tool to depreciate the value of towers/civic centers. A phase 1 tower would loose effectiveness in killing enemy units in the late game if it was not upgraded or replaced by a fort. This mechanics made a lot of sense to me. It probably also contributed to reduce the advantage of archers. If units have more hp, they might cover more distance before being killed by units with a range advantage. Changing unit speed might be a way to address the issue, but I also remember people worrying about the economic impact that a change like this might have. Thanks a lot for the mod, this can finally be carefully tested. Turtling is also encouraged by the fact that archers are a good counter to catapults/bolts. These sieges can now be easily sniped from archers standing next to defensive buildings. Skirmishers civilization are now at a huge disadvantage in their usage of catapults/bolts. The capture/low vulnerability to arrow choice of a 23 made much more sense than the current one to me. Roman catapults could effectively destroy buildings or at least force the defender to send melee outside the range of defensive buildings. I would also introduce a minimum distance between forts and civic centers since when the two buildings are next to each other they because very difficult to take down.

Dancing was mostly done by abusing patrolling or with high hp units. Obviously you could still dance with any unit but that wasn't too frequently seen. Patrol dancing is now impossible due to set wait times, so what could be tried is having citizen soldiers with none to very little rotation times, then champions, heroes, siege, elephants with current rotation times. Basically rely on the much more frequent use of melee units to hide the issue. In regards to the phase up bonus helping cavalry, it could be just a set amount of hp, say +10hp for all citizen units. Alternatively, infantry and cavalry can just have different bonus values, say 10% for cavalry vs 20% for infantry.

Because everyone who might ever want to play 0AD is a developer, right? Because there isn't a whole world of people with perfectly valid lives who have absolutely zero interest in development? I'm reading your words and all I'm hearing is 'it's okay that we don't know how to effectively communicate and what's more, it doesn't really matter.' You must know I'm never going to agree with that? @Stan` - I do like the Dave Mustane/Metallica reference, and as always - you balance yours words very eloquently. The hastily cut trailer thing, apologies, that's not a slight on you or it. We actually spoke right before you made the trailer, and it was clear that A24 would be dropping 'soon.' We did indeed talk at some length, certainly about what I could personally do to help things regarding the community of content creators around 0AD. It was clear at that time that you had a million pressures bearing down on all directions and it was clear that it was an an almost impossible and often thankless task. And you do deserve all the credit and appreciation for your work. Many could not get close to the effort you put in. What I did not expect, was to wake up one morning shortly after and find A24 had suddenly dropped in the way it did. And if anyone else suggests I should have been looking at this thread, or that channel, or this specific mailing list, lets break it down to the simplest bare fact. Was there a clear official announcement, in advance, to the wider 0AD audience and the wider world, not just a small number of minority comms channels, that 0AD 24 would be released on that day? I have to ask, with all the talk about time and motivation being a resource, compared to all the hard work that went into making the game, how much additional time and motivation would it have taken to let the people who play the game, and those just beyond who might be about to discover the game for the first time, know that this thing was going to drop on this given day? And this is on the back of 0AD's commitment to community engagement and communication being questioned throughout the development period numerous times. As @wowgetoffyourcellphonehas pointed out - you went and did the exact same thing again! And @Alar1k - I've already explained the use of AOE4 as an example. To think I'm comparing them on a level playing field is false, all I pointed out was that the largest spiritual ancestor of 0AD has a major new release coming out, after quite a few years of delay, and that the launch of A24 could have been a major PR opportunity to pick up a wealth of new players looking for something in the interim with a tiny amount of co-ordination. Who knows, they might actually appreciate that it's a good game and stick around! Audiences crossover, in fact that is how I discovered 0AD. They may not be looking in the places you want, but new players are always looking. And yes, 0AD is an interdisciplinary art project that is a collaboration between different artists (IT, historians, graphic designers, translators, writers and so on and so on...) - this additional depth is great and is a key to the uniqueness of the project - and it should be celebrated - but does that mean you should discriminate against the people who want to treat it just as a game? I've got a feeling they lie in the vast majority, and probably feel somewhat marginalized and probably a bit put out by that comment. There's nothing capitalistic in the approach I advocated. Nailing your message to the freely available and most publicly viewed walls in advance of something happening is the oldest, proven strategy for gaining attention known to humanity. Do you really need examples to understand that releasing a trailer and announcing a launch date BEFORE the actual release date in a co-ordinated fashion is good strategic sense? Yes, a AAA studio will have a whole team dedicated to blanket advertising. The small scale open source equivalent is one person, armed with a small amount of said time and motivation, a computer, an internet connection, the keys to the official social media and the understanding that this process actually matters and that no project is above it if they want new people to discover them. If you really want to see an example, check out out every thriving open source project you've ever heard of with a large user base. Which bits of this explanation are not constructive? (and don't just say, 'that last bit!') I do think 0AD needs that dedicated person - a volunteer, or small committee of volunteers, to give 0AD an effective PR mouthpiece that it has been lacking. Those people can't be too entrenched in the dev side of things because they can't have the justification of having too many technical 0AD commitments for not doing the role properly. I think finding those people would be a hell of a lot easier than finding replacement coders, artists, designers, historians, et al, within the community.

In A24 sieges are still far to strong from a realism point of view, but to frail from gameplay perspective. Obviously you can't have both. As for the mod, I like that it has a more or less coherent direction and not "there are some nobs we haven't touched in a while, so we surly need to do some tweaking".

Many contents of this mod overlap Nescio's one, and I think this is a very good sign: it's fine patching. I also like the proposals about macedonian arsenal. What I don't like is your take on ranged units. Admittedly, it's a delicate matter, because every new alpha, it comes out that ranged units are unbalanced. The problem, in my opinion, is that some day it was decided that all ranged units are one of these three kinds (archers, slingers, skirmishers) and that they must have different ranges to differentiate them, however, the slingers having shorter range that archers is not supported by historical evidence, and skirmishers being faster and able to effectively chase archers definitely doesn't go in the sense of historical plausibility. It is totally in the sense of rock-paper-scissors mechanic to have skirmishers weak against archers, and we should not allow skirmishers to be effectively used in the same way as archers or slingers, instead we should try to find a different tactical fold where skirmishers are better versed. My proposal is simply to make skirmishers cheaper. They could even be the cheapest soldier unit for all civilizations, the male counterpart of woman villagers: no armor and only equipped with self crafted shield and weapons. Another idea is the one of having soldiers hidden in the bushes, and skirmishers could have some advantage in that kind of usage. Another change still could be to give skirmishers a limited number of javelins, after which they would fight hand to hand. Ideally, I imagine them best used in support of heavier infantry, that should not cost the same as them, but more. Skirmisher spam should hardly be a good idea, that would be anti-historical. Also, all ranged citizien soldiers should have equal speed. Maybe champion archers or such could be made slower, as they are more heavily armoured.

Actually, that has already been implemented: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/25135 Furthermore, wall towers can no longer shoot arrows in A25. I've also written a somewhat similar mod for A24 about two weeks ago; more feedback is appreciated: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37312-balancing-defensive-structures-test-mod/ Yes, I fully agree, this had quite a large impact. I don't know what would be appropiate rotation values, a lot more experimenting and testing by competitive players is needed for that; feel free to write a patch.

In regards to turtling being the meta, I'd say it comes down to rotation times and reduced cavalry move speed. The rotation times severely slowed down wood gather rates while farming is mostly unaffected. This means that players are more incentivized to train more early soldiers and less women as they aren't as efficient in wood gathering and fewer are needed for farming. With slower cavalry move speed that plays into woodlines being near impossible to raid and farms being very hard to raid, due to there being less farmers and thus them being able to hide in the CC and other buildings. Additionally, rotation times hurt the attacker more than the defender. Engagements always happen in points of interest. For the early game that would be near woodlines. As a defending player I fight as far to the back as I can and with all my units grouped. The attacker though has to have his back units slowly traverse through the forest or around my buildings, while I can have all my soldiers fighting. Oh, and I just remembered that another thing playing into towers and other defensive buildings seeming much stronger, is that units no longer gain a hp bonus from phasing up. If I recall correctly it was +20% per phase so that means units currently have about one third less hp in the City phase.

It could be possible to do building upgrades in Empires Ascendant, but just for Civic Centers so there's a visual indicator of the phase. That would reduce the workload, while still including the feature in the game.

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-ancient-genomes-decline-scythians.html Ancient genomes trace the origin and decline of the Scythians Generally thought of as fierce horse warriors, the Scythians were a multitude of Iron Age cultures who ruled the Eurasian steppe, playing a major role in Eurasian history. A new study published in Science Advances analyzes genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals spanning the Central Asian Steppe from the first millennia BCE and CE. The results reveal new insights into the genetic events associated with the origins, development and decline of the steppe's legendary Scythians. Because of their interactions and conflicts with the major contemporaneous civilizations of Eurasia, the Scythians enjoy a legendary status in historiography and popular culture. The Scythians had major influences on the cultures of their powerful neighbors, spreading new technologies such as saddles and other improvements for horse riding. The ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Chinese empires all left a multitude of sources describing, from their perspectives, the customs and practices of the feared horse warriors that came from the interior lands of Eurasia. Still, despite evidence from external sources, little is known about Scythian history. Without a written language or direct sources, the language or languages they spoke, where they came from and the extent to which the various cultures spread across such a huge area were in fact related to one another, remain unclear. The Iron Age transition and the formation of the genetic profile of the Scythians A new study published in Science Advances by an international team of geneticists, anthropologists and archeologists lead by scientists from the Archaeogenetics Department of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, helps illuminate the history of the Scythians with 111 ancient genomes from key Scythian and non-Scythian archaeological cultures of the Central Asian steppe. The results of this study reveal that substantial genetic turnovers were associated with the decline of the long-lasting Bronze Age sedentary groups and the rise of Scythian nomad cultures in the Iron Age. Their findings show that, following the relatively homogenous ancestry of the late Bronze Age herders, at the turn of the first millennium BCE, influxes from the east, west and south into the steppe formed new admixed gene pools. The diverse peoples of the Central Asian Steppe The study goes even further, identifying at least two main sources of origin for the nomadic Iron Age groups. An eastern source likely originated from populations in the Altai Mountains that, during the course of the Iron Age, spread west and south, admixing as they moved. These genetic results match with the timing and locations found in the archeological record and suggest an expansion of populations from the Altai area, where the earliest Scythian burials are found, connecting different renowned cultures such as the Saka, the Tasmola and the Pazyryk found in southern, central and eastern Kazakhstan respectively. Surprisingly, the groups located in the western Ural Mountains descend from a second separate, but simultaneous source. Contrary to the eastern case, this western gene pool, characteristic of the early Sauromatian-Sarmatian cultures, remained largely consistent through the westward spread of the Sarmatian cultures from the Urals into the Pontic-Caspian steppe. The decline of the Scythian cultures associated with new genetic turnovers The study also covers the transition period after the Iron Age, revealing new genetic turnovers and admixture events. These events intensified at the turn of the first millennium CE, concurrent with the decline and then disappearance of the Scythian cultures in the Central Steppe. In this case, the new far eastern Eurasian influx is plausibly associated with the spread of the nomad empires of the Eastern steppe in the first centuries CE, such as the Xiongnu and Xianbei confederations, as well as minor influxes from Iranian sources likely linked to the expansion of Persian-related civilization from the south. Although many of the open questions on the history of the Scythians cannot be solved by ancient DNA alone, this study demonstrates how much the populations of Eurasia have changed and intermixed through time. Future studies should continue to explore the dynamics of these trans-Eurasian connections by covering different periods and geographic regions, revealing the history of connections between west, central and east Eurasia in the remote past and their genetic legacy in present day Eurasian populations. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/13/eabe4414

Raffut1969 is ultra nub. He's that high in ranking only because he's leaving always when he's losing/is at lost position.

Hello. First off, this isn't an Alpha 24 bashing, I think everyone has had their say on the actual aspects of the game they like or don't like, myself included. I think getting A24 out into world was an achievement in of itself, and the technical discussions will be ongoing, so no mention of that here, other than a final pat on the back from me to all who made it possible. What I'd like to talk about, somewhat after the event in terms of the A24 release, but perhaps relevant given the pending release of Age of Empires 4, and the recent announcements made about it. So, to frame this historically, in Sept last year, when it was becoming clear that A24 wouldn't be released in 2020 as originally hoped - there were a lot of negative criticisms being thrown around, and in among a thread on the subject I posted this; from Now, as we all know, the approach I suggest wasn't adopted, Alpha 24 got dropped, in my opinion, somewhat unceremoniously on the population on what felt like something of a whim, catching a lot of people out with the suddenness of it's appearance. PR was limited to a few hinting messages the week before advising that a release date would be given soon, followed by the actual release (no actual pre-announement), accompanied by a hastily cut together trailer on youtube and social media announcements that the game was out. And that was it, any sense of build up to the release was completely sacrificed, as was any ability to frame the context of the release or pre-empt any of the criticism (fair or otherwise) that followed about the game itself. In strategic PR and community engagement terms, I personally believe it was a massively missed opportunity. Not least because the game that 0AD effectively spawned forth from, is also about to release it's much delayed fourth iteration. It also was slated for 2020 release, but probably hit the buffers last due to the Covid situation. There has also been fan criticism about lack of information as to when it would finally appear, but lo and behold, this has dropped; Now, you can bet, with actual money at stake, this game will be hyped to the ultimate degree and that PR campaign will not be cheap, but come the release there will be a massive buzz around it. My point here is, A24 was ready first. By a considerable margin. And the approach I advocated could have been done on a zero budget. As it was, just by virtue of the reach 0AD has and the established player base, it did make a ripple when it was released, but it was in my opinion a fraction of what could have been achieved with just a small amount of strategic planning. The hype that was generated is rapidly dying down, and this will be completely drowned out now by the noise created by the release of it's bigger, commercial cousin. In short, an opportunity to really boost the fanbase of this great, free game that is available now and to get in before the release of it's major competitor, has been entirely lost. Now, I'm not saying this is the end of 0AD, I'm certain things will continue as they pretty much always have, but this was an opportunity to truly boost the community and player base in a really meaningful way. How many new players, new potential developers, new modders, new everything, could it have attracted to the community? And it was an obvious opportunity from as far back as Sept last year. In the following 8 or so months, all it would have required was a monthly bit of social media engagement, setting a date - even if it wasn't clear that A24 was going to be ready until the last minute, it wouldn't have hurt to have given it an extra fortnight for pre-promotional hype, and a pre-release trailer. The community would have done the rest and a proper sense of excitement could have been generated and spread far and wide. In short, to give a footballing analogy, it was an open goal, missed from two yards out! I know this will split opinion a bit, and yes, I know this is a volunteer project - we are all aware and thankful to those that actually make the game possible. In my quoted post I addressed turning what on the face of it looked like a disappointing delay into a triumphant release. It was the kind of situation that a small indie game in the 21st century, in the most competitive landscape there has ever been, could not afford to miss. I'd love to know why it had to go down the way it did?

Hey, Just switched from A23 to A24, I was just wondering why the icons on the GUI are so small, like the icons for building and training units. Is there a way to resize these bigger so that they are more like A23? Thanks.

@wraitii Today, I tested the latest SVN25136. After I played the game for more than half an hour, the game suddenly lags and freezes. There was no such problem before. Then there is no response from the game. commands.txt

First of all, thanks @wraitiiand @Stan`for your explanations, as someone who is relatively new to the forum I had no idea how difficult the release process was. Which is part of the problem. Forums are great to exchange opinions and discuss stuff, but they are very inefficient in transporting information, as all important stuff gets inevitably buried under other posts. Therefore there is no way for someone who is new, as to ask again. I second @mysticjimopinion and would like to illustrate it by using myself as an example: I first discovered 0ad maybe three years ago because it was listed on some website as "cool free game". I tried it out and lost to the easy AI, then put it aside for a few weeks, tried it again and got crushed again. This continued for a year until I finally googled "how to play 0ad" and found one of Tom0ad's videos where he explains basic strategy. This video has done an incredible job at making the game more interesting for me (I never played other RTS before). And the only reason I am now here on the forums, is that I wanted to know when a new alpha would come out and after checking the homepage for several months and there were no updates, I finally began to read in the forum. It is hard to keep people engaged, but the only way to keep them interested in the game is to reach out to them, again and again and again. 0ad is certainly not missing people who work hard on it, but the communication how hard the work is and what progress is done. From my understanding open source lives from the people who want to contribute to it, but why should they, if they don't know how great the game is or if they never heard about it. It not about "hyping" and making false claims, its about communicating the actual progress and catching peoples attention. I want my comments here not to bee seen as "attacks" on the communication strategy the team had so far, I mean the project is still around and people are playing it, therefore it is not a failed strategy, but I do believe the engagement of new and old audiences should have a higher priority when we want more people to play it.

I believe if you press TAB you can toggle the health bar on/off. I'm uncertain if buildings can be turned off.

The idea is to keep the tech just for cartage to diversify the civ, rank 3 ofc.

You are right, skirmishers are kind of garbage in this alpha, but of course you are gonna lose them all if you send them to fight archers! Archers are like the scissors of skirmishers paper, while it's melee units that skirmishers are best against. This is intuitive enough, I believe. Skirmishers should be buffed a bit, but they should not be balanced with archers. Better still, skirmishers could be cheaper, as I proposed, and this would have major economic consequences of course, that would help differentiating the civs. Making skirmishers faster would have economical consequences as well, but less evident and more sneaky, that's why they got slowed. About archers kyting other units, hitting and retreating, I think that's an advantage that long range units will always have. It's an actual, documented tactic of course, and I think it's something RTS games should have. The problem is that the meta is now too oriented towards attrition warfare, that favorites archers.

There is a bias, in that just because _you_ didn't see announcements doesn't mean there weren't. We posted some things on Facebook and Instagram - admittedly, if I recall, quite shortly before the release. The 'name thread' was closed a couple weeks earlier. On the forums there were also posts about 'release candidates', quite regularly. We didn't share those on social media, I believe, because we feared users might think they are the actual alpha, and then run into bugs, and drop off the map. So there were a few things. There wasn't an "announcement", so to speak, but we can't possibly reach everyone - even with the official announcement. Consider also that we pushed the release a lot in the latest days, because we discovered new bugs. Any date we picked might be pushed back. To feel safe about the release, we could only announce it at _most_ 3-4 days in advance, which just isn't enough time. If we announced a date 15 days in the future, we'd have to stall development even further, after already a solid month where not much happened. It gets annoying. For A25, we strive to maintain Alpha25 on the wiki up to date, too, which is probably more relevant.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Now, to address comments and questions with my line of thought and reasoning: @BreakfastBurrito_007 Thanks! That would be awesome. @ValihrAnt the rotation times indeed slow down economy, but since they were implemented to prevent dancing (something that had many complaints), I'm not sure how to best compensate for this. I think it's a great idea to try lowering rotation times though and testing it out. Higher cavalry move speed was not something that I considered though so I'll definitely try it out. Thanks! I also liked the hp bonus per phase up, but it admittedly came with the issue of buffing cavalry too much. Since cavalry had a higher base hp, the bonus affected them more than infantry, which resulted in some abusive cavalry strategies. I'm not too sure how to deal with this. Perhaps further reducing tower damage? Btw, awesome YouTube videos! I watched you to learn how to get better. @faction02 the minimum distance between forts and ccs is a great idea. Something for me to try out. Thanks for the suggestion! @Nescio indeed there are a lot of fun and interesting patches already committed into A25. Thanks for that! There are a lot that I like and may put into this mod. My intent with this was to have gameplay changes in an easy-to-use and download mod in A24 so that players could play test change more easily since generally most players I know don't know how to deal with version control to test the latest build of 0ad. The primary goal of this mod is actually for my personal use since I feel that there are too few viable strategies in high-rated multiplayer team games. Thanks for your hard work! @Lopess and @alre there is a conflict between realism and gameplay. On one hand these values are sometimes unrealistic (why would an archer who only carries arrows be slower than a javelineer who carries a bunch of heavier spears? the answer is, they probably wouldn't) but on the other hand you may need to tweak values to allow for balanced gameplay (for example, it is possible for archers to kite skirmishers using formations since they have the same move speed, resulting in the skirmisher army taking significant losses before even getting in range to attack. I've seen high rated players do this and basically win battles with minimal losses despite the archer army having 1 or 2 less military technologies researched). @Lopess Regarding rams hitting fields and organics, the field issue was just so that they could be removed quickly since they block structures (eg: a cc) from being placed. A common strategy is to place a cc on top of an enemy's destroyed cc to take territory. Sometimes fields get in the way though (since generally players put fields around ccs) so rams were just a quick way to make space for that. The reason for being able to hit units/organics is because I noticed even in lower-rated games there is the tactic of body-blocking (body-blocking is the technique of using the collision size of your own units to prevent the movement of enemy units) rams using units, which results in the ram getting stuck and not being able to do anything. What did people find OP about rams? It might be possible to have them do less damage against organic units like how spears do more damage to cavalry, but I'm hesitant to do that since there's not much of a hard counter system in 0ad other than the spear vs cav matchup. Thanks for the feedback! @alre Regarding unit speed unification, it makes sense in real life but results in the abusable mechanic I mentioned before. Reduced unit costs is an interesting idea, but it has a significant secondary effect on economy. The boom of skirmisher civilizations would be significantly higher than that of others, leading to a rippling/snowball effect in terms of economic and military technologies as well as siege capabilities. A common strategy in A23 was to have an Iberian ally and take a skirmisher civilization for this reason, as it resulted in a much faster boom, leading to earlier research of technologies due to free resources, earlier phasing up, earlier construction of siege engines, etc. The swapping of melee to ranged and back was implemented in the Terra Magna mod I believe. It was really cool. I'm not sure how the balance would work though. Do you want them to become spearmen? Not sure how to do limited number of projectiles though. Thanks for the feedback! @hyperion Thanks! That's the dilemma - realism vs gameplay. Since this is a gameplay balance mod I will err towards gameplay.

Hi Yet again another player quit before losing the game, username is @Swapnil @user1 Regards commands.txt metadata.json

Seriously, anyone with just a tad of experience of how the development process / open source works had a relatively easy time to follow. As one of the external viewers myself, the release felt like there was a lack of experience with the process which isn't surprising given the circumstances, nonetheless there were no real blunders. As for PR / communication, there is a certain obligation. The easiest way to take care of that would be a mailing list wfg-releases. Besides the canonical release announcements there is a need to properly communicate the end of merge window as early as possible. Everything else is extra and you guys did clearly more than required. @mysticjim , portraying your enthusiasm longterm as you currently do I think is worth more than hyping a release. If you want there is https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha25 which shows roughly the release date (start of July) and what is already confirmed to be part of the changes. About the claim that "social media work" would reduce complaints, well most of what I saw was healthy and what went beyond you won't be able to curb anyway and there is no need either.

Hello @letsplay0ad, These changes seem very well thought out and should make the gameplay a little more dynamic and less stabilized. Ideally, as players test the mod we could decide what parts are really good (candidate changes for a25) or what values could be tweaked. It would be awesome to see a25 take this direction. Nice work!

They are the old mycenaean of the aristeia made by the Lordgood, I just created them the simulation files for the alpha 24.

@s0600204 did the switch to a24 so except scenario maps it should be ready, however I don't have actually time to do anything except main 0ad right now

We welcome any pull requests. @Lopess@Angen

Yes, please! I too have wanted such an option for a long time. I don't know how difficult it is to make it an option, though. Maybe something for one of the visibility mods (@badosu, @ffm2, @Langbart, @nani)? Doing it by default is quite easy, actually; it's already done for heroes. I've written a mod for A24 that does that for all units (including animals) and also for fruit, because fruit can be quite hard to see on some terrains. Here's the mod: overlays.zip How it looks in game:

Classic counters. limited resource farm starting units only citizen and scout. Scout available to the stable. Citizens can hunt (range attack) AoM heroes tier ( you know not OP) Slinger bonus vs tower (yes that idea again but more balanced with the numbers of 0AD unit limits.) No XP for soldiers. Transport ship

Perfect!

In my opinion it is necessary to have at least two volunteers with free access to social networks, publishing at least weekly with announcements of news for the new alpha and events in the communities / mods launched or under development etc. The important thing is to demonstrate that the game is alive and moving forward. I believe that on youtube we are well represented, maybe the official youtube account can be used more than just for announcements of new alphas, maybe something similar to what exists in the elenda est, short videos about news and new civilizations.

@user1

It runs ( ... out of memory) on pi pi has Vulkan support https://www.cnx-software.com/2020/12/04/mesa-20-3-released-with-raspberry-pi-4-v3dk-driver-panfrost-bifrost-support/ opengl 2 is like 15 years old. Text isn't readable on 4k, so in my book close enough to unplayable, but yeah still better than the pi example I linked above Well, there is indeed an undocumented/inaccessible gui.scale parameter which sort of works good enough but 99% of potential users will have dropped the game at that point. Also rtx isn't relevant here as this is about the gui, the viewport is plenty good enough if we ignore some old ugly maps.

Not in our case, we still have a lot of users with small displays (1366x768). You're talking more about aliasing and similar stuff. Pixel perfect in our case is more about how an image fits onto a display. Also shifting and scaling affects how GPU renders it.

I have roughly... A first sketch for the Spartans! - may be a bit overloaded, just to show some possibilities/ideas...

Go ahead. You have a design in mind?

Oh, young people. Not old people like me. *runs and cries*

I tested it, it seems to work very well. Great job!

Preliminary results for our statistics: 800x600: 0.31% 1024x768: 0.88% 1280x720: 2.28% 1280x800: 2.11% 1280x1024: 1.80% 1360x768: 1.49% 1366x768: 21.68% 1440x900: 4.52% 1536x864: 4.43% 1600x900: 5.05% 1680x1050: 2.68% 1792x1120: 0.39% 1920x1080: 37.87% 1920x1200: 1.67% 2048x1152: 0.44% 2560x1080: 0.79% 2560x1440: 5.70% 3440x1440: 0.92% 3840x2160: 1.40% Other: 2.15%

#1 Why "should" 0 A.D. work on a laptop clearly not built for gaming? Probably a Chromebook or something similar. #2 1366 pixels wide is clearly more than your proposed 960. 1366 pixel width is wider than the current 1024 pixels the GUI is crammed into. I would happily design a UI to fit 1366 pixels. I propose we make that our new min resolution.

Scaling 960 by a factor 2 or 4 works fine, whereas scaling 1920 by 0.5 or 3840 by 0.25 does not; images are not the problem, text is. Try it yourself. Keep in mind new laptops with a resolution of 1366×768 are still being produced and sold. 0 A.D. should work on those too.

I use 1920 X 1080. The steam survey shows 2/3 users use this resolution and no other resolution gets into double figures of % usage. The buttons are too small for the resolution that the vast majority of people use. They don't even fit in with the size of other parts of the UI, which haven't changed in size.

I see the a24 server full now. It is normal, every alpha has adaptation complaints. Anyway this is not a dispute between a23 and a24, you can continue playing a23 without problems if you didn't like a24. But in no way will we stop the development of the gameplay and stop in time with a23, as I said before, this is in constant development and some descriptions had to be taken to fix many things that were wrong.

No, there isn't, the gui scale scales the entire interface. As for why the icons are smaller than they used to be, this was necessary because some civs have more structures than could be displayed with the old 3×8=24 icons in the right selection panel (and it also improves mod support). People manage to find play0ad.com and download the game from there, so if they encounter problems, that would be a place to start looking. Actually there is a patch for that: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3037 However, for other questions a FAQ is still useful, e.g.: Why is 0 A.D. still an alpha? When will be the next release? Where do the screenshots go? Yes, proper font rendering (e.g. with pango) would be great to have. It would also remove the need to bundle Chinese etc. in separate mods.

Better yet, an in-game Option.

Rebuilt on an island after the sack by Nebuchadnezzar's army, Tyre flourished as the prime Phoenician city-state, ruling the waves, and setting up colonies as far as North Africa. Alexander's armies laid siege in 332 BCE by connecting the island to the mainland via an earthen causeway so that his army and siege towers could reach the rich treasuries within the palaces and temple complexes throughout the city.