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Sneak Peek of 0 A.D. Alpha 25 A provisional date of June 2021 has been proposed for the ‘Feature Freeze’ – the point at which new features for the upcoming Alpha version of 0 A.D. stop being added and the development team focus solidly on bugfixes. This is not the release date. The feature freeze is one of the precursors to release, with the specific launch date to follow. You can find more information here. First Impressions of Alpha 25 Be sure to tune into the Tom0AD live stream on YouTube on Friday 7th May 2021 at 9pm CET to see a preview of the latest development version of Alpha 25 in action. The broadcast will feature Tom and fellow YouTubers, Alistair Findlay, and Jim Cogan (0AD Newbie Rush) putting the dev version through its paces live on air. And there will also be a live Q&A session with 0 A.D. Developer, Stan`. New Features Following closely on the heels of Alpha 24, this latest iteration of 0 A.D. will look to further build on functionality and further expand the existing feature set while also fixing existing bugs. With a shorter planned gap between alpha releases this time around, most of the proposed additions are subtle and geared toward small improvements in the current and future player experience rather than headline features. But there are a few notable things to look out for. Single Player Campaign Support: The ability for 0 A.D modders to create their own single player campaigns will be added. Alpha 25 will only include the base functionality for this with full campaigns scheduled to be added in later iterations. Improved Multiplayer Responsiveness A technical improvement that players may ‘feel’ rather than see, this is another progressive improvement step to smoothing out multiplayer gameplay and enhancing unit pathfinding. Before commands in multiplayer were processed twice per second, now five times like in single player. Ongoing Balancing Changes Numerous changes to balance of the game by way of micro adjustments to various civilisations, buildings, and units. For a full list of all proposed features/changes visit the Alpha 25 Wiki page. Get Involved! Your Chance to Name the New Alpha Every new iteration of 0 A.D. gets a name, and this is your chance to contribute your suggestions. The Alpha 25 Name Suggestions thread on the 0 A.D. Community Forum has been open since January 2021, but there is still time to vote for your favourite and put forward your own suggestions. 0 A.D. release names start with the letter of the alphabet that corresponds to the release version. Alpha 22 was Venustas, Alpha 23 was Ken Wood, Alpha 24 was Xšayāršā, and Alpha 25 will start with a ‘Y’. Check out the thread here.

I'll say it quite simply. All melee units should counter rams. Making spears, swords, pikes, and other types of weapons have dramatically different stats in terms of their efficiency of taking down rams is frankly rubbish. There should not be an elaborate meta built around who can dismantle the most simplistic siege weaponry.

I just bought a Raspberry Pi 400 and found this game on the "Recommended Software" list, and I thought it was really good. It made me happy and nostalgic for the early games of the 90's, 2000's that I played on my mom's computer, like Age of Empires. The build I was playing was from 2019 so I figured I could download a newer one from here, and here I am, expressing my gratitude towards the team for making this really special gem. I hope it comes to fruition and that the hard work pays off, and I just wanted to let you know that at least you made one person happy today :D Greetings from Mexico.

@gameboy What do you think of this solution? D3911 (1/May/21)

good for the official page and social media .

TBH I think we went a bit too far on A23 with regards to anti-dancing. But I also don't think microing against javelineers or archers is a particularly good gameplay mechanic. That being said, a simpler variant of Hyperion's idea would be randomly changing to target other units close by. That might be enough to make hero-dancing less interesting. ---- On the topic at hand, I don't really mind lowering train rates a bit. My problem with 0 A.D. is mostly that economy grows exponentially, which makes it real tricky after the 15th minute, but well, it's a high skill ceiling. I would also be OK with higher turn rates, since I had originally proposed those anyways. If the player feedback is good, this seems like a go for A25. ---- I'm OK with reducing archer speed compared to jab for balance, but I think at some point we'll need to rethink these entirely. We haven't been able to _really_ balance archer (inf or cav) ever, and we probably need to give most civs a long-range and short-range option (or at least a long-range one). The advantage is just too high. I also really dislike how little damage spearmen deal to spearmen, and how tanky spearmen are in general, but that's another debate. ---- Edit -> Somewhat on topic, but I'm wondering if 0 A.D. standard starts shouldn't have _more_ units/buildings, kind of like the AOE2DE "Empire wars" mode. Since we're fast-paced anyways, maybe we should just cut the crap entirely.

I articulated myself badly there. What I mean is that in my opinion there's no good reason to limit the amount of barracks or really any building for that matter. I believe that spam is something that should be part of the game and used as part of a strategy if the player deems it the correct approach. Say one player tries to rush up to the City phase with low investment in military, the other player recognizes that and spams out military to try and overwhelm the other.

Well it seems that once again Intel had a driver bug :/ and that somehow we fixed it, and they fixed it on their end...

Yeah, that is the unavoidable side effect of citizen soldiers. Though, I really don't see why them having a gather rate debuff would make the barracks a risky investment. Where else are you going to put the resources? If they're trained at an advanced rank that would hurt early aggression too as units trained from the CC would have to face off against some units that are a rank higher and thus stronger. I can't speak for SC2 but keep in mind that AoE2 is played at 1.7 speed. Best comparison in AoE2 to the current boominess of 0 A.D. would be an Arena or Black Forest game as those are most generally boomfests and the lategame action starts a bit before or on minute 30, 30/1.7=17.5 minutes real life. Compared to 0 A.D. where the big late game figts break out a bit before or on min 15. I don't think the pace difference is that big especially if we consider how slow the Dark Age in Aoe2 is. There's no reason to cap barracks. The best solution is to offer military options and have players slow themselves and others by utilising them. Of course easier said than done, but that's what I believe is the best approach to be worked towards to over time. Players trying to remain in P1 and hold on just by sheer numbers is an approach that should be atleast semi viable in my opinion. Keep in mind that it gets hard to reach resources if you stay in P1 for long.

Not necessarily, in that there is no gameplay impact. You can put any word as Class without touching Identity.js and there would be no problem. The ones in the schema are just guidelines on which classes are already in use in base game, therefore have impacts. It is recommended to add the new class you made into Identity.js, so other people who'd like to understand the mod or want to fork/pull request can know if certain words have been used as a class name without having to check on every template file.

Note it was made faster by wraitii to prevent dancing.

Returning to the old train times is something that has been requested by quite a few people. Rotation times have also been unsatisfactory for some and the ranged infantry move speed equalization has been reverted, but not as extreme as it used to be. This mod is here to test out these changes, see if players would really prefer these changes and also avoid surprises in case of backtracking, because as a24 showcased there can be many unexpected side effects. The rotation times are only changed for citizen soldiers, so champions, heroes and siege still take a while to rotate. The train time increase in a24 was to reduce spam. In my opinion, it only increased spam as the meta went from 1 early barrack to 2/3. Equalizing ranged infantry move speed worked to make archers unpunishable because if they were caught out of position or overextended they couldn't be punished. Changes: Citizen soldier train times back to A23 values. Rotation times for citizen soldiers lowered. Archers 0.6 lower move speed, skirmishers 0.6 higher move speed. Archers 0.5 extra spread. New version: messed with rotation times slightly, gave archers the 0.5 extra spread they have on the release version to see how it fares in combination with them moving slower. RotationTrainTimes.zip

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

i downloaded it this afternoon and playd a couple of matches with it, i really liked the upgraded mercs from the get go , makes them distinct and usefull , exactly what should set them apart from citizens . Cavalry having a buff to their health is nice although i would see certain spear cav having their damage increased such as the companions for makedon but maybe it would make more sense to buff the spear cav of civs that don't have any other melee cav as the sucessor states to make their cav a bit more all rounder . As for the counters , well age of myhtolofy seemed to it pretty wel especially with the greek ones wich i have put the link bellow : http://aom.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=11,16332,0,all

I am going to make these platforms.

Seems like a really ambitious project. It would be cool to see how it looks on release.

Move-attack micro wasn't a thing even in a23 when there was instant unit movement. Fights in 0 A.D. come down mostly to positioning. In my changes I only adjust the rotation times of citizen soldiers. Heroes and champions with their current rotation times are completely useless at trying to dance, that's been wiped out. I feel like that's already the case for us. There are rare strategies that start with instant military and many of the rushes are at the enemies base quite quickly.

We need this type of content in multiple languages. Not at all obviously.

We have to remove Citizen soldiers from early phase 1 , I mean to start with the economic and only leave villagers and scouts, Perhaps the first units need an upgrade to become Citizen soldiers. Start with weak militias, pure trash units.

Nice to see this kind of news again

C'mon, it's got to be Starfish all the way!

so i use now: diplomacy with Ctrl+< (think about: give out, move resources to your partners out) hotkey.session.gui.diplomacy.toggle = "Ctrl+SYM_100" and (as before): hotkey.autociv.session.entity.by.class.select.(Market|MilitaryColony) = "Ctrl+M"

That line doesn't make any sense, if the line says by.class.select. it means class and only class no some random keys.

So you are asking that arrows are slower, so you can micromanage soldiers away from them, but you also want unit-AI to be robust to dancing. How exactly? I must say I'm skeptic.

In simulation/components/identity.js, the schema outlines the classes and visible classes. They include gigantic lists of possible classes. In a mod which adds new classes to its entities, is it necessary to mod the identity.js schema to include the new classes?

Let's be clear, you want dancing back, that's what you call microing battles? Dancing is not the solution, and it's not dancing that made a23 more fun than a24. Quite the opposite. I think there microing already has its right role in the game, and should be particularly useful only in limited occasions, like with javelin cav and siege. This is not the issue and all the proposals you are talking about, at least in my mind, have noting to do with extending micro importance in battles. By the way, using micro and fortifications, battles can already be won by inferior forces. I'm quite a "military player", and I do it all the time.

I have a plan to change these into JSOn files to add some more detail, such as a description, but as Stan said, it's just a helper atm.

That's why I made my material

A gaming story which some might find interesting, though perhaps not directly relevant: About a decade I got involved in the alpha and beta of an indie RTS called Achron. The game was based around a time travel mechanic similar to 5d chess. We quickly discovered it had a similar problem to what you guys have. It turned out there was no opportunity cost to rushing, because if an attack didn't work out perfectly you could go back in time, cancel the attack, and order the soldiers back to guard your base. We had Rushing=Turtling, and there was no way of disentangling them without removing the game's defining mechanic. It made for weird games with 30+ minutes of posturing but very little combat or tech progression. In consultation with the devs, we decided it could be fix it by reducing the cost of resource gatherers (to buff booming), removing defensive chokes around bases (to nerf the turtling), and playing on much larger maps (to nerf the rushing). The game release and for about a month it seemed good. Then the meta shifted with the influx of new skilled players. The new meta was naked booming. It turned out that some of the late game air units scaled super well, because with the time manipulation it was impossible to pin them down in a bad fight and score kills. Therefore whoever got to them first could just fly into the enemy's base and win. So we tired addressing the problem with map changes but to no avail. The inflection region where a map went from completely boom favored to completely rush favored was too small for our map makers to ever identify. The problem was only solved much later when the devs finally patched the gatherer cost higher again AND the remaining player base adopted a gentlemen's agreement that effectively banned playing mass air strategies. The moral I took away is that you should make sure you understand the source and nature of a problem before trying to fix it. We thought the problem was that time manipulation made it possible to simultaneously attack and defend without any tradeoffs. The real problem was that time manipulation can make war so precise and deadly that there is no point in fighting unless you are prepared with an unbeatable killing blow. The game only became fun again once we stopped worrying about the rush-boom balance and stated focusing on systematically removing unbeatable killing blows. So I ask what is 0 AD's real problem? Is it really the combat-ready gatherers blurring the lines between Boom and Turtle? Is it a diversity-vacuum afflicting unit-role interactions and utility? Perhaps it's even clinging to closely to the example of a venerated ancestor, without considering how outdated circumstances, luck, and survivorship bias figured into its successes. I really don't have any sure answers to that one.

Personally I would prefer 0AD to bravely forge its own distinct path. There is a lot the Age-of games do poorly with both history and gameplay that I hope this project can improve on. But Ensemble's games are still great games, and I want to be able to say the same for 0AD, even if it means just aping its most obvious point of inspiration. Better to make a great game by copying another great game (where applicable) than to make a mediocre game by refusing to. In point of fact, if I remember my RTS history rightly, Blizzard did not invent the mature RTS formula, nor did they do most of the legwork in perfecting it, but they are a highly visible point of reference when discussing it. I believe that is an important distinction. It's not that everyone is copy Blizzard because they are popular; Blizzard and everyone else are all copying a common zeitgeist because they recognize its wisdom. Anyway that is largely tangential, because I am not saying you should copy every aspect of SC2's design or anything like that! I am specifically talking only about the rush-boom-turtle counter cycle. Context sir! Context!

I think p2 rams could be a legitimate mechanic to help enable the possibility of overcoming a tower rush or resource denial, that usually does not get addressed until p3. Important balancing considerations should be to make it nearly impossible to kill a main cc using p2 rams, and very challenging to push deeper into enemy territory where a greater variety of units, even ranged ones could take them out fairly easily. P2 rams could be a ~200 wood ~100 metal option for certain civs (mace would be a good option), that has roughly the following reference metric: ~20 skirmishers can kill one before it kills a barracks. I don't know if you have ever played a 4v4 in 0ad, but frequently map control in the small space between 2 opposing edge players is extremely important. It can provide a low idle time deterrent from attack, it can stop or deter building rushes, it means that if u are about to be attacked you can most often continue gathering wood. A ram with enough capability to threaten these buildings could be of great strategic value depending on the value of the target (for example: tower denying metal), a player needs to decide if it is worth it to kill this tower in p2 or to race on to p3. The player wielding p2 rams also needs to consider how important that tower is to the enemy (is it pre-garrisoned?) (are there palisades around it?) (did your enemy move troops just to defend it?). P2 champs could be fun options for p2 attacks, but I feel that if p2 rams are put in, then no civ should be able to access p2 rams and these p2 champs at the same time. I totally understand being opposed to p2 rams, but saying that ram units in p2 would have no utility to a player's map control or economy does sound right to me.

This. But there should also be some incentive to rush in P1. Everyone making all women at the start isn’t good.

and be another clone of AOE?

That reminds me one of my favourite Bushism: "Keep good relations with the Grecians."—Quoted in the Economist, June 12, 1999.

@alre If we put rams in p2 (maybe just for some civs, perhaps a well needed buff for mace) then we would definitely need to give all civs some swords unless the ram counters change. In AoE any unit in a significant quantity can destroy early rams before they can take any type of key building, but the threat is still there. In 0ad it can be frustrating to be caught in a situation where even 100 skirms can not kill a single ram before it takes out a barracks or cc. Perhaps instead of making p2 rams super weak in attack (not that they should do as much dmg as p3 rams) they can be made more susceptible to a greater variety of units. Perhaps the general level of balance would be that 30 skirmishers can kill one p2 ram before it takes out a barracks by itself. If we add both these p2 rams and p2 champs to the game, they should not both be accessible to the same civs (Garrison naked fanatics in p2 rams? XD)

Dude, I'm running out of outlandish superlatives to use in my titles! I'm having to delve into the perfectly, linguistically correct - but slightly risque sounding ones now!!!

For the 45th consecutive Sunday! It's Newbie Rush time! Premiere about to start!

The 300/300/300/300 starting resources used to be quite useful to differentiate gameplay: - It allowed Britons to go for an early slingers rush. It was also enjoyed by beginners since they could get their first 10 soldiers faster for a safe start; - Ptolemies could go for faster boom thanks to stones available for the barrack which needed 200 stones and mercenary costing metal. During the a22 -"No cav" period, that was often used as a substitute for rush, you could send your woodcutters away for a relatively long time without slowing much your economy since Ptolemies could keep growing without much wood; - I heard about a time when going for swordmen attack in early game using the roman bonus of faster soldiers training time, the starting stones for faster barrack and the starting metal to finance part of the swordmen was a strategy; - In a23, the starting stones allowed Persia to get the stable costing 300 stones at game start. With some hunts available it was possible to reach pop 100 with 20 cavalry to harass without being slowing down with respect to a player booming without cavalry; - In a23, with some extra berries, Seleucids could have boom comparable to faster civilization since with 300 woods and their starting 300 stones, they could get 2 barracks; As a player, I like each of these specificities of the different civilization, and I would prefer to see more of them rather than less of them, even if they might be difficult to balance. That being said, I guess there must have been some discussions about starting resources in the past since I remember a mod adjusting starting resources for each civilization. I would guess because many of these strategies were seen as too strong. That makes sense since other civilizations do not have comparable strategies, and depending on how the question is interpreted, one might want to remove these strategies but he could also add some for the other civilizations and try to work on balancing them. I guess a number of people who enjoy 0ad for the uniqueness of each civilization would also enjoy this part to survive.

Well, game designers must, you know, design the experience of the game. It's not a sandbox game after all; there must be restrictions to define the gameplay. There is something to be said for a "standard" start for everybody (with some minor exceptions, which are designed and balanced against of course). Having said that, I'm not against allowing the game host to dictate starting resource amounts, but I can already think of scenarios where a host who likes to play a stone heavy civ giving himself an unfair advantage by weighing starting resources in his favor (else everyone else would have to choose the same stone heavy civ in order to remain competitive). Perhaps rated matches would require a standard resource start, while non-rated matches would unlock the host's ability to determine.

Hello again everyone! I had an idea today to improve the "archery tradition" tech available to some archer civs. I think it should return to being a tradeoff tech like in alpha 23 but with some changes. 0 resource cost and instant research: a decision kinda like the seleucid champion infantry research add a drawback and a bonus with an overall effect depending on the situation in game (not necessarily a buff or nerf tech) The idea is to make archers with archery tradition beat other archers like in a24 by a significant (not OP) margin, but increase the vulnerability of them such that more units or buildings are needed to protect them from melee cavalry or melee inf. potential combinations of improvements and drawbacks: +10 meters range BUT establish minimum range (5 meters) where the archer would go to attack units further away. +10 meters BUT reduce HP (a little) +10 meters +15% damage BUT reduce HP(a little) reduce pierce and hack armor (a little) I think that if archers were nerfed in a25 to a reasonable level, then this upgrade could give some options to civs that would usually get archers, like mauryans. If a maur player is against a cavalry civ, or a civ with no archers, it is smart for that maur player to choose regular archers. But if the maur player is against regular archers, such as carthage, then it is smart for maur player to get archery tradition. But if a25 makes mercenaries balanced and effective (but still more expensive), then the carthage player could pull a surprise by investing time and res into merc shops and merc uprgades and mercs and showing up with mercenary sword cav. Balance considerations: getting this tech would have no repercussions like less training time from cc or resource cost (like a24) hence it should not be allowed until p3. Archer cavalry maybe should not be affected by the change, depending on the combination of buff and nerf chosen by the developers for the upgrade. I posted this here because there are many good ideas for a25 here and because I could find no other channels related to a25 that were open to public contribution.

https://awbw.amarriner.com/ It is based on a turn based game called advance wars.It´s nice game-mode if you like strategically planning every move and the moral is not to play live. So you take your turn, leave the site and you come back to see a few hours or a day later what your opponent has done.

My reaction when my soldier attacks a field instead of doing something meaningful:

Even though in dutch, arguably one of the biggest tech/game reviewing website we have here (for like more advanced users) spotted the update (the previous updates too) and highlighted the changes and gave a bit of a backstory on what 0 A.D. is. https://tweakers.net/downloads/54838/0-a-punt-d-alpha-24.html

PLease help me.

Well the more pressing problem is what to do with spear cav. Even companions get mowed down instantly, and for factions like Rome and the Seleucids, where cavalry was a major part of their army (maybe not the largest part of their army, but they relied heavily on it) spears need to be able to last longer. Possibly more armour like what was suggested above. I mean, at least for the Seleucids, it was the reason they won the few battles that they won. I believe a battle that Antiochus the III fought was widely regarded as a treatise on how to use cav, and was studied by nations for years until cav came out of favor. But yeah, either a charge bonus (which would be nice for all unit types) or increased armour would be nice.

Well, my humble opinion is that melee cav should be anti ranged infantry. Sword cav could overall better while spear cav won't be so useful against buildings, other cav, trade, but better against ranged infantry. Maybe they need both better armour against pierce. Tomorrow I would make some test, but seems that aren't cost-effective against ranged infantry. Killing rams and trade seems a very little role to a unit that I think that should have more presence in the battlefield.