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As a basic principle, I think it would be good if basic defenses used in P1 looses efficiency as the game progresses. In a23, increase in units HP when phasing up helped to fulfill this purpose. All units were buffed with the change in phases but towers weren't, so they be less effective at killing units. I agree. For palisades, the application of this principle I mentioned was, and still is missing. Palisades are often misused currently since they shouldn't be useful to block sieges but mostly be useful in early game. The idea of a tech available in p2/p3 to allow fast destruction of palisades seems good. A tech that could allow units to destroy extremely fast palisades in late game would work well, especially against palisades spam. So if someone used palisades in early game, he has to replace them by walls to have defenses in late game. Walls are barely used currently. Some players build palisades around them to solve that problem. In a24 (slower training time of units, no hp increase when phasing up), there is a very weak timing in multiplayers (smaller distance to the enemy) when you transition from P1 to P2. You spent a lot of resources and lose some training time from your cc to phase up so a player P1 is often stronger than a player that just reached P2. I have tried a few all-in with 4 to 6 barracks while P1 when the enemy reached P2, they seem currently quite strong. You start fighting with a population lead and usually, the enemy is unable to replace units dying fast enough even if he receives extra resources because he will lack production buildings. If on top of that you remove towers usage when they are upgraded, this weakness is even reinforced. I might limit cc's additional arrows to 10 maximum instead of 20 but keep a garrison capacity of 20. This would not change much the cc's role in early game but it would reduce its defensive usage in late game.

Made them bigger and added a decal.

Because @Freagarach is not into competitive gameplay, at all. And sadly what makes sense for competitive gameplay doesn't always make sense for the other players.

For blocking projectiles: Well, one can still shoot over walls and palisades if one wants to. Main point is to prevent units from freely walking into the settlement/town and to give defenders some time to react. But yes, would be nice, its just performance nightmare

And please note that making projectiles always land (i.e. making them cruise missiles) can be considered terrible gameplay downsides as well. (_At least_ by me and other people I play with.)

The reason to spam palisades is to ruin pathfinders and limit movement of the enemy and make rams spend eternity taking them down. The power in palisades is not health of the barrier, that much I can say for sure. In a23 people had no extra time to sit and build defenses anyway, the game was much more dynamic. Usually only a few strings of walls. Only exception being the roman siege spam, which was a rare tactic and even rarer to succeed. @Dizaka surely you can explain this you are an expert in palisades

Looking at images of such palisade walls, I get the impression that it would not take many strikes from a ram to take them down. Also, wood has leasst strength in shear with respect to the grain. This is the situation of 0ad palisades. If there are no horizontal stabilizers to keep the vertical logs in position then 2 things happen: the absence of one log allows surrounding logs to move more, creating more instability the impact of a ram is not distributed, meaning only one or two pieces of wood takes the whole load of the ram strike. This is enough to justify halving the crush armor of palisades, A ram should probably be able to breach it in 2 strikes. This discussion of historical accuracy and engineering limitations is pretty pointless for these palisades as they are just art-pieces for a game mechanism. We should free ourselves from this thinking, and let us make the palisade walls perform a logical, fun, and varied function in 0ad based off of a gameplay point of view. lets ask these questions: How much do we want small fragments of un-destroyed palisades to just sit and clutter the map and cause bad pathfinding? How effective should spamming multiple layers of palisades be in multiplying the strength of the overall barricade? How does it affect gameplay movement, fluidity, and decisions? I think the answers to these questions can be found in area damage, cost, and build time.

I tested Dakara's & Yekaterina's proposal in my sandbox. My findings: Javelinist attack to 32 P, speed 2.000, range 20 -- Good changes IMO. Slower attack means units no longer look like they are having seizures! 32 attack hits like a truck, but doesn't seem game breaking. 20 base range might be a little short. It definitely underlines the idea that these guys are not just off-brand archers, which is good. Less good is that they almost feel like weird melee-infantry with such short range. 25 may be a better compromise number. 25 +5 range per rank would sweeten the deal IMO. Javelinist HP to 75 -- Way overpowered! 75 HP javs annihilate archers, and every other unit type I tested them against. That's way too much meat. If the intent is to make javelins tanky, without massively changing their role, I'd suggest a different idea... Javelinist armor to 5 H, 2 P (which is +4 H, +1 P compared to their current) -- I think this is much more in line with the visual depiction of their gear. Those small light shields would not be so great against projectiles, but they would be excellent for parrying sword and spear strikes. I think the balance effect is better too. In combination with Dakara's changes, these javelinists have a strong anti-melee flavor, both as a tank for other ranged units and as a DPS source in themselves. This seems to have been the intent with their base stats as well, but now it is accentuated. And against archers they still lose by a respectable margin, which I think is right.

Los edificios aún no tienen decoración porque todavía sigo con la investigación sobre utensilios , armas y otros materiales históricamente y estéticamente correctos (con sus colores y formas correctos) Disculpe las molestias*

Okay, so it would be over my dead body. I have an idea that might work, without much extra work.

I wouldn't mind if you just put a single blueberry there to represent a patch of berries. A model of blueberry I will make one in Gimp so you know what I mean I really wouldn't mind it looking like this, because it is easy to see, which is the most important thing!

Feel free to adapt the tutorials, make more. I'll see what we can do, but no promises AOM AOE 0 A.D.: Empire Ascendant

My opinions after testing out git version of A25 on 12/5/2021: 1. Very good graphics improvement, very sharp and well optimised indeed. 2. Please change the model of the berries. They are still difficult to spot amongst the green background. If the artists @Stan` @Lion.Kanzen can make berries mostly blue or red then that would be much easier to see. 3. Would be great to see some more campaigns added. 4. Tutorial could be more helpful if there is a cavalry unit involved, and if we start with a noob-friendly civ like Britons or Romans. Spartans are OK I guess but Syssiton and Skiritai commandos might confuse some nubs, and they are hard to master.

Note that you can do exactly the same with stone walls. I've seen some crazy wall design over the years That's no so hard. Just edit binaries\data\mods\public\simulation\templates\template_structure_defensive_palisade.xml and add: <DeathDamage> <Shape>Circular</Shape> <Range>30</Range> <FriendlyFire>true</FriendlyFire> <Damage> <Crush>600</Crush> </Damage> </DeathDamage> Note this will damage everything around it. (units, buildings etc.)

One could try adding area damage to rams, to see how that affects mass palisades.

They're main use should be blocking projectiles imo. Same goes for stone walls, but because stone walls are higher they should also block cata projectiles. Currently this doesn't work but hopefully in the future. As a secondary feature; yes, they should be exactly that:

Personally I prefer having some spread. Consider projectile mass, drag coefficient, kinetic energy of projectile at launch point... Arrows are lighter, so they fly faster but also experienced more air resistance. Stones have smaller kinetic energy but large mass + not really affected by air resistance.

.antipalisade.zip This is the mod: Melee infantry have 5x hard counter against palisade Champions have 10x hard counter Rams have 5x hard counter (can knock out palisade in one hit if you researched the crush upgrade) Test it and see if any other changes are wanted

Hello, i test the mod tonigh . Maybe we have to nerf a little unit big range like arrow and slingers for balance.

Right. IMHO foundations should be invisible to other players until the owning player starts building it.

Could foundations be made invisible to other players? I always liked that approach better.

This mod incorporates structure tree changes proposed by our historian @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded: 1. Athenians can build gym since phase 2 and train champions from it, complemented by a marathon tech to speed up champions. 2. Spartans can build Military Mess Hall in phase 2 and train the champion spearman from it. 3. Macedonians can build siege workshop in phase 2 then train siege tower and crossbow from it 4. Macedonians have access to Hetairos Companion Cavalry since phase 2. 5. Sparta and Rome get new allied slinger unit. 6. Athenians can train phase 2 champions from gym and after unlocking Iphicratean reform, marines can also be trained from the gym. 7. Romans can train Socii Slingers and Socii javelin cavalry from the new Socii Auxiliary camp, available since town phase. 8. Iberians get an unique Soliferreum elite champion javelineer unit. Newest update: compatible with A25 Git link: https://github.com/Yekaterina999/Thorfinn-Balancing-mod thorfinn.zip

@Lion.Kanzen Thank you for finding and showing me that patch, it is great to see the discussion behind the change. I think most players agree that the ranged/melee balance is much improved this alpha, but that ranged/ranged balance is much worse. I also don't think the turtleing issue can totally solved without reducing archer walk speed, but many more people will agree with me on the other argument for speeds: skirmisher>slinger>archer. That being the inability of every kind of infantry to outmaneuver archers.

I have a post for you...

That's actually the problem. The cost-utility is low. That is, the utility of palisades is so great, because of their low cost, that it's frustrating when allies don't build them and get overwhelmed. The problem summarized: Weak players fail to utilize palisades while strong players overuse them as they know their utility. Also, palisades are "short" between the "towers." I think they should be longer and the "towers" farther apart thereby if one "wall" is killed more units can fit through. Palisades decide games, tbh.

Because unless javelinists are good for something, no one will ever make 40 skirmishers, and thus whether 30 spear cav can beat them or not will be irrelevant.

What about we make a compromise here: 1. Use the pink fruit trees as the starting berries resource 2. Use sheep instead of chickens because they are bigger.

Hi, give Skirmisher infantry and cavalry +5m range for rank 2 and +10m (from base value) range for rank 3.

@Stan` Maybe something like this but prettier? what is that?

Hi For Skirmish : More armor against arrow and agility (they run more fast than archers and heavy infantery). Make it harass unit with big dammage but lower speed attack rate. Attack and run. Easy killed by cavalery and useful against infantery melee. Balanced against archers because they have low range and armor good against arrow. Now : attack 16 speed 1.25 = 12 DPS range 30 Change : attack 32 speed 2 = 16 DPS range 20 if we change skirmish like that, all civ need to have possibility to have big range unit so archers or slingers except sparta because courageous civ with skiritai lol ! And all civ can make skirmish. Archers/Slingers without shield must have 0 armor. Trash support unit. They did good dammage at unit without armor and shield -> So natural counter of archers and slingers and all unit without shield. Not to mention their ability to keep ennemies away thank to their range. They are not hard counter cavalery but they did dammage where orther units without range don't do dammage. I would to insist that unprotected archers/slingers sould be demolished in melee as no armor and difficult to shot at very low range. Is already the case with spear cav but i want also with all melee infantery. So like orther thread say we have a lot of possibilty to nerf archers: ----------- For a slight differentiation of civilizations, civ with archers with shield like Carthage. Can have benetif from a little overall armor, and reduce their range from 5. For orther civ, skirmish without shield gain +5 range and +2 move speed compare to classic skirmish. Skirmish cav sound good already if we take into account a potential nerf for archers (whatever the form proposed: nerf of other THREAD : dammage, range, precision, dammage by range, precision by range, etc. ). Archers cav good with the same nerf selected as archers infantery Champion : more health, armor and attack thank to quality equipment. archers champ +5 range ? Delete maurya/kush/parisnas tech which up range for balance

(LetswaveaBook and Yekaterina with the ninja!) Yeah, after some thought, I guess you are right. Just put a binary override onto the collision test of MissileHit() in DelayedDamage.js. Best practice would probably be to add an "always hit" tag to ranged weapons that would control this behavior. That way, if for instance someone wanted to make a Myth style total conversion using the game assets, they would have an easy time re-enabling projectile simulation. I don't think updating the visualizations is really necessary. Individual projectiles are hard to see anyway, and clear misses should be pretty rare if projectile speeds are fast enough. It would be much weirder to see arrows bending to track their targets.

Yes, familiar with most of those - looking to retweet and share a few on the Social media platforms shortly, especially that last one - I've had contact with him in the context of my Youtube channel, he's really sound guy and is pretty taken with 0AD.

Another idea to mitigate people abusing palisades for path finder would be to prevent people stacking them, like tower. For instance, it would still be possible to circle your base with palissade but not possible to stack 2/3 palissades walls next to each other. Not sure if I am super clear

I think it is a very good idea to increase the damage of melee infantry and siege weapos for palisades ,but.... What about elephants then? Many people build very elongated palisades to protect defensive towers or fortresses (in line with what was said about them being used as an equivalent to defensive stone walls) and it should be noted that while arrows from those buildings hardly affect rams, catapults and siege towers, they do affect elephants. If those siege weapons have a plus for defeating palisades, so should elephants. I do this thinking of a civilization like the Maurians, which I think and from what I have seen relies especially on elephants for siege, since it has elephantry since P2 and cannot build the siege workshop until P3. I know it's an OP civilization right now, but be careful that the new balance improvements don't render it practically useless as it was in A23.

I have an idea: add a P3 tech in the siege workshop which gives rams/siege weapons hard counter against palisades. Or I can even add it by default. Units shouldn't be able to hack down palisades easily because palisades are still quite thick and strong compared to human arms.

[Usual disclaimer that 'WFG' is not a thing and this is just a bunch of people giving some of their free time] We don't have particular plans to address this, mostly because the people currently active are mostly devs who work on other things. That being said, we are stretched rather thin in terms of lobby moderators. It would make sense to have more, but as usual things aren't so simple, because giving moderator power to people implies trusting them, which implies knowing them somewhat.

I think if this is done, then upgrading should be a little faster.

Hi, The subject of mercenaries is complex but brings an undeniable charm to combat and resource management. Proposal: Differentiate between mercenaries and citizen-soldiers. This disturbs me personally but I think these proposals can give them their expected differentiation -> An identity. Players who use it want to do battle with their opponents, either by quickly supporting an ongoing fight or by massing a beautiful, powerful army. A lot of buff and debuff ! Buff : 1-training time 2 seconds, almost instant. It is already an invaluable force. 2-No rank system, the unit is already experienced in combat. The technology for the mercenary rank is to be removed.We avoid having mercenaries who are almost stronger than a champion and we do without unnecessary rank management. 3-Stats generally higher than citizen-soldiers and lower than champions. Current rank 2 equivalent. 4-A loot bonus of 10% (it's slight but to reward the good use of these mercenaries and to affirm the difference between citizens and mercenaries. Warning, 10% of 1 ressource = ? = care. Debuff : 5-No harvest, no construction, always the possibility of repairing. 6-A low cost of food and a high cost of metal. The current cost +5 METAL and 10 for CAV provided the METAL ISSUE is solved. If players get into the habit of mining 2 metal with less wood or food harvester. So with mercenary strategy is a little different economy. METAL ISSUE : I have already spoken about it in another subject. Badosu work for more balance map, more number of METAL spot, but i like really random for avoid the system of build order like age of empire. It my opinion. But all agree for more METAL spot on map i think. Maybe we can have 2 options in lobby for random map: LOW METAL MAP AND METAL MAP NORMAL (like now+more metal spot on map). But also a new technology which increases the efficiency of the collection -> With a mine of 1000 we can collect 2000 metal with a tech in the warehouse. This means that the speed is not increased but that in the long term we will have more Metal. Others more original bulk idea: 7-This is not my delirium but I submit it to the debate, we can also imagine that the mercenaries would be recruited for a limited period, for example 5 minutes, increased to 7 in the presence of tech or heroes and would be overpowered (like champions but at the cost of a mercenaries), you get the idea? 8-Mercenary units can be given to allies. This is not a big buff or debuff but it can have a strategic aspect in team play. 11-The recruited units don't pop into the building but come from the edges of the maps ... (yeah I know it's crazy ...), both a buff and a debuff, it depends on the situation. Allows you to rush more easily for example. But who choose the position clock ?? 12-Recruitment is different. not one unit at a time but in groups of 10. A single group of the same type of unit of living mercenaries can be recruited at a time. It would only cost resources and training time of 20 seconds. Advantage: Does not cost population, units do not sleep in your houses. 12bis- We can see further with proposition 12. In this group there is an additional unit, a kind of mercernary half-hero. 500 HP which brings a military aura 20 yards around it. Increase the cost of Metal +150 compared to proposal 12. 12bis-bis Siege group made up of several soldiers (around 10) and 1 powerful siege weapon. A group quickly ready for attack with a metal cost. 13- Mercenary same cost as now but they have all upgrade because they have own gear.All uprage do not apply to them. So if you rush METAL ECO you don't need blackmisth upgrade. Really strong.

I like @Grapjas idea of showing the vision of multiple units (I suggest 5) at the same time (with all units included, not only traders). There could be some preference for units moving towards your positions. Instead of increased cost for each use I would suggest a count down - it takes some time to get useful information from the other side. The count down could either be between the bribes or (may be better) it could even take some time to get the intel ready (you pay now and after 30 seconds you get a one minute window to use the vision). Moreover, it IHMO better corresponds to the rest of the game, technologies take time to investigate, citizens take time to train.

Sentry towers and palisades should be valid option to turtle in P1 but should be very weak as soon as the enemy has phased up. Maybe a P2 tech like "fire arrows" would be nice, which is especially an anti palisade / sentry tower tech.

Does profanity lose its power when certain letters are replaced with similar symbols? This is an extremely hard problem to solve. And let's face it, Nazi rhetoric is way worse than 90% of words you can say no matter how clean the language is. First of all profanity isn't that big of a deal. Secondly separate profanity from slurs. Then try to police that. Much larger platforms and communities have had to resort to good old fashioned human intervention to do so.

Perhaps we can create a filter for new usernames and game names: Compare the name to a blacklist of offensive vocabulary If blacklisted vocabulary is in the name then ban. This way direct profanity as shown above will be eliminated.

they should create their own lists.

la escala del edificio central es algo como esto. algo asi vendria siendo

I don't see how extending it to all support units is a nerf, when before all you'd be able to see is the position of some trade routes and whatever the trader happened to be walking by. At least if you extend it to all support units you could see the position of his key mining operation or something to that effect (in DE, bribery is possible for all Support units and Citizen Soldiers). You can use bribery multiple times as long as you can afford it and get multiple bribed units feeding you vision. It's not supposed to be some big game changing effect. Just possibly give you some actionable intel. If the first bribe doesn't give you much, bribe again. Maybe it's currently too expensive for that, and cost needs looked at in conjunction.

.....idiot anyways, WFG can you comment with a generic "we're working on this" or preferably just do something about it?

I sort of agree, as alluded to when I referred to the WFG Bot in the lobby as "over-zealous," but here we don't even need to open the can of worms of "What is profanity?" and I actually made the mistake of bringing this up. Regardless of the WFG Bot's policies and set of policed words, I think the behavior I'm highlighting needs to be prevented—again, regardless of and independent to what is considered "profanity." It's beyond that.

@user1 can be something done about it?