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Obvious improvement.

My experience in testing City Building and Morale mod, yes they are. RangeQuery are surprisingly taxing on performance. The larger the range the more processing it takes. I do not recommend making any change to auras for this, at least if it involves affecting gatherers. Gatherers can move in and out of aura range, triggering range update every single time, taxing performance along the way. Doubling the gather capacity and reduce gather rates are a good option, also I think having slower movement when carrying resource should work. The technology to increase gather capacity should also increase unit movement while carrying resource. You can also change the animation i.e. from carrying a block of metal ingot to perhaps pushing a cart like traders do. Going Age of Empires III way of eliminating dropsites entirely, I personally don't think this is suitable for 0 A.D.. It eliminates dropsite placement strategy. Another, perhaps more extreme solution, is to go Rise of Nation route. Dropsite has aura that automatically 'gathers' from all relevant resources within dropsite's range, i.e. trickles from resources within aura. Garrison more workers to increase the gather rate. It uses aura, yes, but since resources don't move, should not be too taxing on performance.

After SVN update: catapults are shooting snowballs

Thanks. Bit of slip up with overhaul with @wowgetoffyourcellphone will fix it in the coming days

But why? How does that get in the way? I consider it a good addition.

Yea. As I was thinking about it I was wondering whether it would be more a fun mechanic or just an economic frustration. Also, I am thinking that someone could re-inforce their income by bartering for metal to make traders, thereby increasing their revenue. If players have 50-60 CS on wood, then they could float wood, and continually barter wood to keep metal super expensive, and then earn a ludicrous amount of metal from only 10-15 traders which they could use to buy a lot of mercenaries. @chrstgtr thanks for the feedback.

I'm fine with the way trading works now. It reflects demand insofar as players actually use it--less desired resources fetch a low trade-in value, high desired resources fetch a high trade-in value, less desired resources demand a low purchase price, and high desired resources demand a high purchase price. I'm also fine with the way traders work now--they are a long-term investment that is very expensive on the front end but ultimately very efficient at generating resources. I would like to see the speed tech comeback as there doesn't seem to be any good reason to take away player choice, but that is another matter.

A couple other considerations: Maybe the relationship should be a more simple LINEAR relationship: if wood is maxed out in the barter-market, wood trades for 5x as much value as the default amount and the other resources are all 1/5 of their original rates. This sounds extreme, but its intended purpose is to make people weigh the benefits/problems of: floating resources, bartering excessively, and what units they should make from their trade revenue. It will also make it harder to manage a full-trade economy. This will also introduce a risk/saftey spectrum to trading, do you want to spread out your trade income across 2-3 resources or go all-in for a particular resource because it is valuable at the moment. Another cool feature that would limit/complicate this mechanic could be if traders can only react to a change in the trade resource choices once they reach the next market, because they can't just drop their current stock. If a player changed their resources based upon a sudden change in barter values, then it is possible it could change by the time the trader is able to pick up the next round of stock at destination/origin market. If a trader is in transit, then the values of what they carry still apply, so the traders could lose some value of what they carry even if the value was high when they picked up their stock at the last market. The goal of these changes would be to revolutionize the way trading is done in 0ad, going from a boring extreme-late-game mechanic to a a variable economic strategy with risk and reward beyond the cost of traders unit training costs. I could even see trade being chosen at earlier times in some games if players anticipate extreme barter rates that can happen as people gear up for the big P3 fights. @Dizaka@Player of 0AD@Palaiogos @chrstgtr@ValihrAnt What do you think of the idea? To me it seems possible and potentially a really fun gameplay mechanic. Also this is a good way to make trading less of a guaranteed way of getting metal since otherwise it would be too easy to spam mercenaries from trade (in a24 mercenaries are the cheapest unit to get from trade).

Hello everyone! I had an idea that would be easy to implement and might make traders a more interesting and less predictable economic unit to use. At a given point in the game, the resources available for barter in the market have different values. Most often metal is by far the most valuable, but this appears set to become less extreme in a25. In alpha 23 traders were not even considered in 95% of games due to the fast paced gameplay and need to be ready for fighting at all times. In a24 barter rates immediately slam to value metal, further disadvantaging people without metal mines. This seeks to bridge the gap and make market gameplay a big improvement on both. If traders got more resources for each pass when they were trading for the most valuable resource, this would (maybe) make some economic sense because traders would want to take more value on each trip and this would be found in the most scarce resource. For example's sake (the values can be changed) a trader gets 100 of each resource when barter rates are equal 100:82. This is the default setup when no one has bartered, I call it the equilibrium rates. If someone barters all their resources for metal, the value of metal goes way up and now each resource is 100:1 with metal (maximum disturbance), this means the trader will get 100% more metal than before. Ideally, each addition of disturbance past equilibrium rates has a smaller and smaller affect on the traders. This is so that the effect is both tangible on small to medium price fluctuations, and not insanely profitable for large price deviations. The relationship would be proportional to a curve like the example attached where the x axis is a measure of barter price disturbance for a scarce resource and y axis is profitability of the scarce resource in barter trade. I chose the curve as an example just to show the behavior Im looking for. Possible benefits of the mechanic: sometimes rewards for the risk of putting metal into traders around 15 minutes instead of upgrades or champions or siege grants flexibility in strategies requires some micromanagement/ at least paying attention to prices. lessens the problem of certain resources being overvalued. I remember some civ has a trade advantage, this could be a little trick that they are good at. Serves to counterbalance barter rates and allow them to reach equilibrium sooner. Makes market decisions much more complicated. Do I barter everything to get traders so I can use the good trade rates I created? No, because you wont have a short term army and someone with excess metal may use the barter rates you created to trade their metal for other resources to mount a huge short term attack against you. I think this mechanic would be super dope. I don't see any downsides to it that can not be eliminated by adjusting relationship values. I feel this will make trade economy less hands off and more interactive and skill based. I am excited to hear what you guys think!

Well @BreakfastBurrito_007 I am nowhere near as skilled as you are . I click up at 10 minutes then go into city at minute 13, takes me 10=15 seconds to build elephant stable then another 40 seconds to train an elephant. Meanwhile I have Seleucus Nikator in the cc. So probably ready at around between 14-15. Then it takes me almost a minute to march to the enemy. Of course this assumes I am not being rushed or trying to rush anyone else. I have been trying to improve my boom. Thanks to inspirations from other good players my boom speed is faster than what it used to be by 1 -2 minutes.

I like the a24 way: (Except I'd prefer the pop count in one line.)

@Player of 0AD check this out. I nerfed the Macedonian bonus to 15% and it comes with the rest of the Thorfinn mod, which at the same time contains some other changes. I hope you like it. https://github.com/Yekaterina999/Thorfinn-balancing-mod-new

Standardisation is not a lazy, stale approach. That said, I'm not against some units having better economic purpose within the framework of citizen soldiers or other units. Rather, the point should be that merely because one unit is faster should not mean that it is inherently better at collecting resources. When making one unit more efficient, there should be intentionality behind that design choice, and at times a military advantage should not translate into better economic advantage. Simply speaking, by streamlining resource collection, the game can be easily changed to accommodate the intentions of the designer rather than translating into a system where one simple change can have have massive unintended effects. The point of the matter is that this that even if it does eliminate some emergent strategies that occurred because of unit speeds, these can be still reintroduced, and I believe in the opening post I pointed out a number of ways in which depth could be used for the system I proposed. Undoubtedly other viable alternatives can offer similar if not more interesting approaches.

In A25 units push each other and they march in a dense crowd. I like that. However you can take out more units with a lithobolos or oxybeles now

Well this should be better thanks to @wraitii's unit pushing.

I don't see any need for this. There is already an incentive to build more local drop sites to limit shuttling distance. Likewise, you can just research basket techs to carry more res. I also don't see why it unit speed matters--if a player makes all of one unit type then that unit type should be rushable. A properly built eco will address all the problems you describe, and if a player doesn't do it then they will have a worse eco. To me, all this does is necessarily take out strategy in what units are trained, what buildings are built, and what techs are researched.

now booming is easier. -Auto queuing. -The Outposts returned

What exactly is "it's"? More specifically... Comprehend what your alluding to... Exactly. 95% of the bartering choices performed during competitive multiplayer games consist of exchanging the surplus food/wood > shortage stone/metal. So the 'selling' advantage provides benefits to the respective allies? Should be more like 20% > 25% given how the markets are manipulated in such manners as they are now. Glitchy in which context? Diminishing marginal utility? "Exploit it" - This implies a negative connotation when this bonus is MEANT to be exploited for that very reason. If anything 20 > 25% / 20 > 30% because it is not as though every 5 seconds players are bartering 100/500xyz down to 1xyz which would ultimately just render the bonus itself pointless.

I like the soliferrum one a lot, even though the icons and details, as they said, I don't know how it goes. and for marathon you can use the original design used in the olympics ?

Okay! At some point I've got to stop playing with different stat values on my own and share this darn thing! This mod contains support for a deterministic damage model, via accuracy overrides and distance based exponential damage falloff. It also adds support for directional armor/resistance values. The included unit templates demonstrate the grammar for these features. (I think they also strike an interesting new balance between unit roles... but I'm biased obviously.) Let me know your thoughts. damage_mechanics_mod.zip

Eurasian Steppe

If economic parity is adopted as a permanent fixture of the balance design, then yes, adding this feature to the code base would be a good investment of effort. However, my expectation is that this will only be a temporary condition. I'm hopeful (perhaps delusional is the better word) that in another 12 months or so--around release 28 or 29--the core archetypes and balance philosophy will have been refined to the point that they are broadly accepted as finalized. At that point balance discussion can productively move on to civ balancing and economic diversification. And then the skirmishers and the slingers can finally get their speed buffs (with compensatory eco and combat nerfs as necessary) and all will be well with the world again. Of course, besides my insane optimism about the 0AD's future development rate, this plan assumes that finding our desired role definitions for skirms and slingers is not predicated on them having some mobility advantages over archers. I think this is the heart of your concern... and you may very well be right. However I am not yet convinced enough to invest into a major coding project over it.

You're not wrong there! https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTimeStrategy/ Got 0AD added to the related communities and on their list of recommended games, naturally at the top

that is why it would be good to make a hybrid between the old and the new.

In the long term, what about a "resource hotkey" which toggles between normal view mode and a "resource view mode" where resources are highlighted? That would combine both realism and visibility...

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

Thanks, but please do not copy AOM and AOE; we can make much better models than them.

2021-05-21_0006.zip In this replay the horse killed the dear without taking anything back. There are also times when units don't respond to my orders, especially for garrison and repair. I hope those are caused by my misclicks, but the horse standing next to dead deer is a big problem.

Of course they have different gathering rates. But that isn't a bad thing. It introduces different dynamics into the game. It introduces choice. It introduces strategy. Let players build more storehouses. Or research techs. Or just make different units that are quicker gathers. Or make units that counter quicker gathers, so you can try to rush the other player that is going for boom. What you propose eliminates all of the aforementioned choice and strategy. One of the main lessons to be learned from a23-->a24 is that making everything the same and uniform is a stale, lazy way to balance and is actively disliked by players. What we have now isn't broken. Let's not try to fix what already works.

I think increasing metal availability and adding more uses for stone will help the barter system be a a little less frustrating in a25. In particular in 4v4s. A while ago I had an idea for a system that would make the most bartered-for resource at the market also be the most profitable resource to trade for with traders. The idea is to make trading a less hands-off process and reward players who are looking out for resource values, potentially adjusting their unit composition based upon what resource is most profitable for their traders. Since currently traders get all resources at the same rate, mercenaries are the cheapest unit if ur whole eco is traders. If this is implemented, and resources are brought within reason in terms of availability and relative value, then traders would bring a much less predictable income stream. I think this would also prevent the market barter rates from stagnating and it would tie trade income to real-time player actions. I think it is also nice for the people who take interest in historical accuracy and realism. Traders have/had a limited capacity to carry stuff, so to carry the most value with them, they would take whatever resource was most scarce. Also traders don't and didn't always have the same profits each time they traded. If you are more interested in this mechanic you can come to that thread and make a comment :D. I would welcome some feedback on my idea.

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!