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How about differentiating camels from cavalry? A proposal: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3735

hello friends, I have made a mod to play battles with 0ad. No need to focus on economy, just choose your preferred unit types and start playin battles. characteristics: 1. No unit can gather resources and build any buildings. 2. Female units can only build Civil Center and Palisade walls.(only one Civil Center at a time) 3. All units and blacksmith research are available from Civil Center. 4. Units produce instantly. 5. Technologies research time also Zero. e.g : ai does not works so multiplayer is only option. have fun and make suggestions. Mod Name : BattleMod. Mod File : attached. Installation : just download, unzip and put it in the mods folder. battlemod.zip

I apologize if my comment on the other thread stating this sounded toxic, but you cannot disregard that this is the reality at the moment. I also don't want to make absurd changes for no reason, I stated why I would like to see these changes and I tried to argument why they seem appropriate to me for a game which main feature is that it is open-source and closely based on history compared to other RTS. An alpha version does mean that there probably will be changes, which will change the current meta. Which is hopefully for the better and if not, then the next version should try and fix that.

I would like to debunk an argument which I heard here and bothers me greatly. It is the argument of ¨The game is still in alpha.¨ To me this argument has some toxic value implying that we can make absurd changes and not bother on whether it benefits the game. As the game is in development, changes will naturally occur. However argument shown before does not give a license to (extraordinary) changes. I would advocate: Extraordinary conclusions require extraordinary evidence, or applied to here extraordinary changes require extraordinarily strong arguments.

If we're making an historical game about building cities and fighting wars, then building farms in the middle of town doesn't make "gameplay" sense anymore than than having triremes fire cruise missiles, even though that might be "better gameplay" to some people. Good. The game is still in heavy development. I know you're a good player and you like the way things are in the game, but frankly this game's past and future development is measured in decades. The developers need to build a game for the future, not for how some people liked it in one of its past alphas. You're just going to have to adapt to change.

But it does. It makes gameplay sense because it will be very hard to defend fields that are away far from the cc in the early game (and possibly late game)e. This change will entirely change the meta. Frankly, it doesn't take a long read of the forums to realize that big changes like this aren't always appreciated or that big changes like this don't actually improve the gameplay. There isn't anything stopping you from building fields away from the CC if you so desire.

WIP - "Holzfäller" at work ...

It's actually because the dev team doesn't want to hear whinging from a loud vocal minority. The vast majority of players would adapt just fine. I would think you'd want to learn new build orders and strategies based on a changing meta and evolving gameplay, but apparently not. "Fortune favors the Mundane."

I don´t have any experience on earlier alphas that is worth mentioning, so I will not go into history. First of all, we need to consider the worker elephant is a great asset at the start and is a kick starter. I think a setup like 0ad shares similarities of the exponential growth. If one player need 95 seconds to double his population and the other 100, that might not seem to be a lot but after 1000 seconds the economies will differ by a factor of 1.6 Also it is the full packages that Maurya got, a great eco with the worker elephant, good archers, the ability to build elephant stables in p2, strong swordsmen and +10% pop cap. In previous alphas they had similar bonuses, but the other strong civs dropped a lot. On the same time the environment shifted hugely in favour of Mauryas as suddenly archers and elephants used to be a burden on a civ and now these units are a great asset. Also the meta became more defensive which meant that players are more likely to take advantage of the 10% higher pop cap .

My point is that no one actually knows how this will change things. But we do know that it can change gameplay a lot. It will be harder to protect fields. It will slow down gameplay a lot because you will now need to build a farmstand on the outskirts. Sentry towers and palisades won't be great at protecting fields at the start because those take res and time (which you will already be short on) and have their own deficiencies (i.e. a sentry tower can be quickly captured if men aren't closeby to engage in the fight; palisades can't stop archers' arrows) In short, it forces a radical change to gameplay to fix what is essentially an aesthetic problem. If players really want their cities to look "real" then they can still build their fields on the outskirts. There are also smaller, more incremental changes that can be made to encourage more spread out farmlands that don't entirely disrupt the current meta (i.e. Vali's suggestion of reducing the number of farmers). But changing the entire gameplay meta to fix a small problem like this doesn't feel wise.

First of all: Thank you for taking part in the discussion. I see people voting for the option to keep things as they are now, but no one who has a strong disagreement to this proposal has cared enough to say what exactly it is that bothers them about this. Regarding your concerns: Yes, when looking at any of the options on their own, they would lead to fields that are very hard to defend, but that is not how this needs to end up in the next alpha. At the moment most players maybe build one or two sentry towers in phase one and palisades are mostly used to obstruct siege in phase three. One option to balance the proposed changes would be follow up patches that make these structures actually useful for defense in phase one (which is their original purpose afaik). So make sentry towers cheaper and palisades strong against a p1 rush, but weak as soon as the other player is phased up. My attempt at balancing is here (not as a proposal, only as food for thoughts): https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/38007-increased-realism-mod-and-random-unrealistic-changes My point is that there are lot of options to include this change without having to cripple the gameplay. If it would help this discussion I can also propose a list of other possible things that can be used to balance this, but that seems like it can lead off-topic very quick. On a side note: I actually thought that the fact that these changes reward aggressive play and rushing (maybe even with infantry) would be a positive thing?

We (Me @OmriLahav and @Samulis) Have something coming. Stay tuned.

I think it looks pretty great.

So I've been quiet since the first release, but I have been working on the next version. Updating to version 0.24 is going nicely, albeit slowly since I'm also adding new stuff. That said, I have a question: is there a way to have a unit gradually gain xp by itself, the same way that certain units gradually regenerate HP?

Thank you @Stan` for help fixing the problem. THEBANS ARE NOW ON MOD.IO AWAITING APPROVAL https://0ad.mod.io/theban-greeks

My original idea with 'Cultures' is that each 'Culture' came with a set of features or bonuses, and that a civ could be a "member" of more than one culture. So, Seleucids could be of the "Greek" culture (Theatron structure and "Hellenization" aura, plus a set of armor techs in the Forge and spearman bonuses) and the "Persian" or "Eastern" culture (a trading bonus and cavalry bonuses). It would show that cultures can and do meld. Carthage would have a "North African" culture (North African War Elephants) and a "Semitic" culture (Mercenary and Naval bonuses), each culture bestowing a set of techs, auras, buildings, or bonuses. A civ with only one culture would then be allowed 1 or more unique bonuses to that civ.

I'd think then it would be better to load up a list with check boxes so you can check (or uncheck if checked is the default) which biomes you want.

a macabre idea is in my mind, that they (Elephants) end up turning into food, in other words: huntable for enemy troops, I mean for the enemy is feasible get food if this units is outside of territory like if was a wild animal and turn it into a source of food.

Instead of trying to cripple the maury ele we could also add equally unique units for each civs so they have more variation. I'm sure the 0ad historians would have some interesting ideas, then the balance team could integrate them to the unit composition of each civ.

The Spartans Above: King Leonidas and his "Battle Frenzy" upgrade Above: General Brasidas (left), Admiral Lysander (right) Above: Unused hero Agis III (left), Cleomenes III (right) Note: I might add Agesilaus as a 5th selectable hero and use the left-hand portrait Above: Queen Gorgo (left), Spartan Female Citizen (right) Above: Priest-Healer (left), Helots/Slaves (right)

Download to test: https://github.com/JustusAvramenko/theban_greeks Ready for testing! Works with Alpha 24. Adds the Theban civilization to the game as a playable faction. They include 3 new heroes, 2 champions, custom actors, a fix for the plumed Boeotian helmet, 2 special technologies, a team bonus, and more! Will release on Mod.io in 2 weeks or sooner if all the bugs are ironed out!

This topic is for suggesting the creation of custom in-game menus that better suit each civilization, as well as improved unit/building thumbnails and mini-map. I've created two examples of this:

In this analysis I will list out the strengths and weaknesses of each civilisation (based on my opinion). Each strength and weakness will be weighed and given a score. Each civ will have a total score for both Mainland and navy. However, this is only theoretical and things will vary in actual battles; with an appropriate strategy and adequate skills the lowest scoring civ has a significant chance of defeating the highest scoring civ. Skill and strategy matter more than which civ you play as! The weightings are based on my personal preference and I am open to suggestions. I am not taking team bonus into account yet. Civilisation Total score (Mainland) Naval strength Athens 1.5 3 Britons 2.5 1 Carthage 5.5 4 Gaul 2.5 1 Iberia (Lusitano) 3.5 2.5 Kush 5.5 1 Maurya 6 1 Macedon 2 1 Persia (Achaemenids) 4 2.5 Ptolemies (Egypt) 4 4 Romans (Generic) 2 3 Seleucid 4.5 3 Spartan 1 1 Mauryans: Strengths: Worker elephant helps with boom (+2) Archer civ - spam infantry archers and spearmen to protect the archers. There is also a champion archer (maiden guard). By the way ‘Visha Kanya’ means poison girl, they were not soldiers but more assassins or espionage agents. (+2) Asian elephants and archer elephant - new strategy. (+2) Sword cav + champion sword-woman = good defence against siege (+2) Weaknesses: Poor quality houses - need designated house builders and worker elephants can no longer build. (-0.5) Difficult to manage for new players - need to manoeuvre worker elephant. (-1) Rubbish heroes (-0.5) Kushites Strengths: Free Priest - can be used for scouting and healing wounded units in a rush - makes them better at rushing and better at defending against rushes. (+1.5) Quite fast boom (+0.5) Mercenary camps can be built in neutral territory - allows for sneaky strategies and diversification of army composition (+2) Temple guards (champ swordmen) can be trained from temples - allows for spamming (+1) Assyrian rams (does more damage than other rams) (+0.5) Diverse infantry (+1) Weaknesses: African war elephant (+0.5) Require a lot of metal if going for mercenaries or champ spam. (-1.5) Not sure why there is a mercenary javelin camel that has the exact same combat stats as a regular javelin cav (0) Achaemenid Persians: Strengths Kurush is a very good hero who can train immortals - use immortals as front line attack (+1) Asian elephants (+1) Diverse cavalry: Parthian archer cavalry combined with sword cav is strong. Also has 2 champion cavs. (+2.5) Assyrian rams - more damage (+0.5) Triremes can train marine cavalry (+1.5 navy) Weaknesses: Slow boom, vulnerable in early game (-1) Carthage: Strengths: Still a very good naval force (+3 naval) Good variety of siege: lithobolos, oxybeles, rams, elephant (+2) Diverse army from embassies (now you can build 3 of them!). (+1.5) Sacred band is very powerful (+1) Strong wall (+0.5) Spam archers and spears then outflank with melee cav. (+1) Weaknesses: African elephant (+0.5) Needs metal for mercenaries (-2) Slow boom (-1) Ptolemies: Strengths: Cheap buildings - saves wood - faster boom. Compared to A23 they are more durable and can be built faster. (+3) Extremely fast boom with slings and house spam (+1) Archer camels + pikes in syntagma formation is strong once in substantial numbers. This does not require any metal! (+1) Pikemen boosted by hero. Pikemen also rush resistant. (+1) Diverse mercenary available (+1) Diverse siege (+1) Overpowered in naval maps: lighthouse, Tessarakonteres, quinqueremes (+3 naval) Weakness: African elephants (+0.5) Pikemen and mass camels are slow to manoeuvre. (-1) Need designated house builders - slightly reduces workforce in early stage (-1) Anti-ram depends on elephant and mercenaries (-1.5) Dependency on mining (-1) Seleucids: Strengths: Asian heavily armoured war elephants with Seleucus Nikator (elephant champ) (+2) Decent siege (+0.5) Strong melee spam (+1) Mercenary swordsman runs faster than average (+0.5) Navy is still above average (+1.5 naval) Rapid expansion (+1) Strong cavalry: cataphract, Dahae horse archer, archer chariot (+1.5) Weaknesses: Mercenary archer + swords can only be trained from colony (-2) Note that Seleucids need a lot of food. Iberians: Strengths: Very strong defence, needless to say (+3) Strong melee infantry (+1) Fire javelin cav is strong against siege and buildings (+1.5) Fire ship is extremely irritating to opponents (+1.5 naval) Weakness: Slow boom (-1) No long range units - weak against archers protected by fort or pikes in field combat (-1) Athens: Strengths: Decent siege (+1) Sword cav brutality (+0.5) Scythian archers = 2 regular archers combined. Also gym allows champion spam (+1) Significant naval bonuses (+2 naval) Weakness: Requires a lot of mining - soldiers are working on mines instead of fighting (-1) Britons: Strengths: Celtic brutality. Sword cav + spam slings/spears (+1.5) Buildings cost only wood - saves stone (+1) Free war dog (+1) Weaknesses: Lack of diversity (-0.5) Removed bonus - slower boom Poor quality buildings (-0.5) Gauls: Same as Britons except no free war dog Naked fanatics not very useful because requires phase 2 Macedon: Full range of siege (+1) Champion crossbowmen are cheap, mobile options waiting to be developed Now has sword champ - has anti siege Companion cavalry and champion spears are decent (+1) Weaknesses: Mercenary Siege workshop does not stand out Romans: Still good siege options (+1) Hit and run cav (consular bodyguards effectively counter archers) (+1) Nerfed entrenched camp but can still sneak attack (+0.5) Good at defending Superior rams (+0.5) Navy is still strong (+2 navy) Weakness: No long range units (-1) Spartan: Strength: Strong infantry, especially hoplites and Skiritai (+3) Weakness: Weak cavalry (-0.5) Extreme reliance on metal (-1) No long range unit, but can counter with spearmen meat shield and champion hoplite (-0.5)

Some recent TGs have led me to re-evaluate some civs. Most people think that archers are OP, therefore they tend to choose archer civs. This makes anything which can effectively counter archers also very strong (by reverse psychology). Pikemen + skirmisher can counter archers. 60 pikemen vs 60 archers: all archers die and 35 pikemen survive. 30 pikemen + 30 skirmishers vs 60 archers: all skirmishers survive, 13 pikemen survive. Siege towers wipe out archers Hence, civs with access to siege towers and pikemen are also strong civs. These are: Ptolemies, Seleucids, Macedonians, Kushites. Ptolemies and Kushites rely on mercenary skirmishers but Kushites can replace the infantry role with cavalry and Ptolemies can use slingers or camels instead. Since Kushites also have access to archers this can catch the enemy out by surprise, in addition, Kushites have the potential of playing many surprising strategies, which makes them particularly strong and versatile. Ptolemies are very easy to boom with and the eco advantage is not negligible, therefore they should be a top tier civ as well. Macedonians are not weak be any means because they also have siege towers and the Rhomphaiaphoros for anti-siege. Just because the siege workshop isn't unique anymore doesn't make Macedon any weaker. Due to the high proportion of siege weapons the Macedonians have low food demand, which means being able to delete more farming women and making more soldiers in late game. (6 fields is enough for Macedon whereas Ptolemies need more than 11). Macedonians can also pull out unexpected strategies which is also devastating to the enemy. Their pikemen can quite easily counter Mauryan archers and skirmishers can take down incoming elephants. Seleucids can combine archer cavalry, siege towers and elephants in a deadly attack. Use siege tower to take out enemy archers/skirmishers, archer cavalry to snipe melee units and defend your towers, then crush the buildings with Asian elephants boosted by Seleucus Nikator. Romans: consular bodyguards OP. They are also able to defend against any attacks.

I agree. The problem with Mauryans is having both strong eco and strong military capacity. If we nerf either one of the two aspects then it would be balanced.

So with all of this, I would say that a middle ground is possible. People like turtling; it's a staple of the RTS genre, and if people want to farm in the safety of their protective shell, perhaps they should not be overly penalised for doing so. That said, I would still say there should be ways to encourage people to use other areas due to increased output at the risk of being raided in those areas. In addition, there could be a few benefits to realistic urban planning around the Civic Centre. This all could help encourage better map control and more thought with building placement; all to say, I think that there is a compromise to this whole matter that is not too extreme.

I don't want to get into the weeds here as I think I have already said my piece here, so the last thing I will is this: Just because a game is in alpha doesn't mean all of its pieces can or should be up for reconsideration all the time. If that was true then the game will never exit its alpha phase because everything will always be considered in flux and changes will always be getting made. It also means that we shouldn't revist things that have already been considered in the past unless there is good reason to do so (i.e. some other new feature has fundamentally changed the way the game relates to the subject that we are considering changing. For example, slingers were too strong in a21, so cav was made stronger in a22. But cav was too strong in a22 so cav was nerfed in a23 and slingers again became too strong. etc.). Fundamentally changing the way a city looks has apparently been considered several times throughout the years, but no action was taken. This indicates a choice that we are ok with the current arrangement. Additionally, this isn't like it is some feature that just hasn't been implemented yet--it has always been around but hasn't been changed. Nor has some new feature had an external effect on the way cities are built. Revisiting the same topics over and over again only distracts from the projections completion. And, saying the game is in "alpha" doesn't automatically justify changes.

To be honest if Maurya is still a weak civ then no one would complain about the worker elephant. The problem is Maurya is too OP with access to both Asian elephant, rams and sword cavalry. If we can strengthen other civs in terms of eco and remove the population bonus then that would be balanced. I remember back in A23 Valihrant only ranked Maurya as a mediocre civ, and I agreed with him.

cool!

Providing some screenshots.

Many Many Thanks to: Freagarach Langbart Stan

Indeed. I wonder if the complaints about the worker eles are off base, as you indicate. The "real solution" may be a slight nerf of archers and adding in some new unique benefits for other civs.

Queen Gorgo, now trainable if you choose Leonidas as your hero. She has a number of "homeland" benefits and can only be trained once (as opposed to 5 times for your selected hero).

I kind of agree. A couple goats and sheep could easily replace chickens and be better for gameplay. I was thinking chickens could be cosmetic anyway, or perhaps a "Chicken Coop" tech at the Corral could spawn a number of free chickens.

This regardless of any other points is something that should be seriously considered. I could see another alternative be to have chickens be replaced with something like sheep provided that the food count be the same.

This feels like something that is a very small problem because gameplay diverges from historical reality, which already occurs in a ton of other places in the game. A lot of people don't even care about this "problem." Meanwhile, the change could potentially have huge gameplay consequences. I honestly don't think the game needs to be totally faithful to history insomuch as it should be inspired by history. For that reason, I prefer to keep the current setup.

How about we improve the biome instead, bruh?

The problem with that one is that it is designed for HD+ resolutions. At least Gomez's design fits our ridiculously small 1024 min resolution. @Sebastián Gómez I tweaked it a bit:

savanna biom is the worst, let's just not use it.

The good thing about starting with a mod first is that mods are insanely easy for people to try out and test your work. A mod directory is pretty easy to set up too. Just a thought. I really like your initial concepts.

I meant it was introduced in Age of Mythology, and then abandoned by the Age franchise.

or/and set same civ for all

For the record, the worker elephant was actually considered not that great in A23 and made cheaper and trained more quickly in A24, but also easier to kill to compensate; see https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2852

Let's neuter Maury (worker elephant) like Romans were neutered (catapults/encampments). Better yet. Delete all civs and copy/paste Britons and rename all units with unique names. This way no civ has a unique advntage over another - in the name of balance. If anything, @wowgetoffyourcellphone has a more reasonable suggestion.

Not really a fan of the feature either, i get the "reduce micro" mentality (although i dont support it), but i feel like there should be limits. This is just another way of dumbing down gameplay. Multiplayer is about skills and organizing/micro is a part of that when it comes to RTS. However, since manual batch training is still considerably better im not really against it personally, but only if the tool is available to everyone in the base game and the autotraining is not able to autotrain batches of units, only singles. I still like the effort you put in though.

weirdJokes has proposed that I increase the score of Romans and Spartans: Romans are well rounded and easy to play. Their sword infantry and consular bodyguards are also very effective. Spartan Skiritai are now able to gather resources and attack has increased slightly, so they should get credit on that. What do you think?