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Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, is happy to announce the re-release of 0 A.D. Alpha 25 “Yaunā”, the twenty-fifth alpha version of 0 A.D., a free, open-source real-time strategy game of ancient warfare. This version is a maintenance release. Gameplay remains untouched and both versions of Alpha 25 remain multiplayer-compatible. We strongly advise you however to upgrade to benefit of the following fixes: Ranked matches did not longer grant points in the lobby. Mod installation no longer require restart. Mod installation no longer prints errors when installing mods by double-clicking Mod installation now overwrites the existing mods to allow for easier updates. Fishes are now easier to spot on lowest settings with the addition of seagulls. The team wishes to apologize for the inconvenience and hopes you will be enjoying your time playing 0 A.D: Empires Ascendant.

I liked how catapult splash dmg prevented snowballing.

Any help in that area is welcome @vladislavbelov didn't have enough time in A25. @wraitiihad some patches. https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1923 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1924 That has some issues with macOS and its sdk https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3185 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4225 I'd like to help with that. Seemed a bit annoying with premake https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1338 A lot of maintainers are annoyed that. I personally hate cmake gui but if it can be done transparently why not. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1104 I tried with meson but never got a working executable... And a lot of features we used were missing.

Some time passed and I thought I post an update on the status, haven't given up just got sidetracked: Fixed the user.cfg issue mentioned earlier but found one with replays (can't rewind to start of line). Fixed spidermonkey for mingw64-runtime >= 9.0.0 Found out where the debug info got lost. Premake has a very hidden feature to add -s to the linker options unless you explicitly enable debugging within the premake script! Got fed up with premake enough to write a cmake script. Can even package mods . Probably only works for Linux right now. Most of wdbg restored. Missing stackwalker might not be easily fixable due to dwarf vs pdb? Anyway low priority. wseh might be doable as mingw 64 bit unlike 32 bit actually uses seh, have to investigate further. collada only used during caching/building mods (lack of nvtt prevented me from even trying) and so I only noticed during cmake porting that some more work might be needed than originally thought. To conclude, a 64 bit port seems quite doable, the issues I ran into are mostly due to using mingw instead of msvc. Next steps: use cmake with mingw try building atlas find out what's wrong with replays Current wishlist for A26: Drop nvtt for something else rather earlier than later, not gonna fix it, I have no clue what an appropriate replacement could be. Seems to be not that much work once you know the replacement and are somewhat familiar with texture conversion in 0ad. Only use <thread> instead of pthread and win threads. 80% of the work seems updating mongoose. use std:filesystem instead of custom implementation and sometimes boost. Use a proper pyrogenesis.exe.manifest instead of those code and linker tricks which seem to tell windows to run in win98 compat mode. Might fix some issues users see currently.

I thought _you_ were going to make the diff?

@Freagarach @wraitii @Angen know better than me. I suspect it's this code https://github1s.com/0ad/0ad/blob/HEAD/binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/components/UnitAI.js#L2668-L2669

75 wood houses let you micro better. For example, with Mauryas with low res you can build 1 granery (+100 wood for food gathering upgrade) + 1 house. This is just on starting resources. Allows you to research stuff earlier. Even better, with Mauryas you can build a storage point with food and decrease travel distance. With Rome, for 300 wood you have a choice with 1 granery + ( 1 house OR gathering upgrade). You are waiting for the resources to do the other thing. But it's really only for low res games.

Based on the games I've played, sword cav feels OP. They're able to run around so much that they never have to take a bad fight and can quickly find good fights. They can quickly collapse onto units and then can quickly escape when enemy reinforcements arrive. And if you ignore them, they can wreck your city. Your points are well taken, but I've seem some pretty absurd KDs wracked up by using sword cav. I'm not saying it's a must-fix right now--we need some time to adjust to the meta. But many games seem to come down to who made the most CS sword cav and who made the most champ melee cav. While this problem is obviously relevant in mid-game rushes, it is also relevant in late game when players mostly leave their bases to attack. In these late stage games, a relatively small group of cav can decimate an enemy's eco. Because this wasn't the case in previous alphas, I assume it has something to do with a25, the most obvious possible culprit being unit pushing.

It seems all it takes is to play a different map than the one and only mainland with low size. Valid reason for blocking expansion is the distance between civ centers and possibly high cost. Also people do expand by means of planting structures at the border, some times house chains to cross half the map. Also some snowballing is needed or the game won't ever end. Me think snowballing isn't excessive in 0ad.

I believe you are a better player than me, yet I can't agree to that in its absoluteness. If you don't advance the enemy/enemies will bite you in your behind or elsewhere; to advance you need special buildings, advancing will automatically expand your territory. A lot of games I watched, for example on the popular Mainland, included the intermediate goals of reaching resources like woodlines or minerals, and/or gaining a strategic position.

The biggest problem with 0a.d is that you can easily reach your population limit without having to do anything. No need to expand territory, no special buildings, nothing, all the resources you need are in your reach. I think making the territory something more valuable would be interesting, also future additions of camps to ally, treasures among others, can make this snowball diminish.

That's just a vscode browser online. It's convenient to me Point was just showing the line.

Han themed: Zhang of Han https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emperor_Zhang_of_Han Zhang Qian https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Qian Chinese themed: Zen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen Zhuge Liang https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuge_Liang Zhuangzi https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuangzi Zouyu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zouyu Zhurong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhurong Zhulong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhulong_(mythology) Zhūquè https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermilion_Bird Greek themed: Zeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeus Zephyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anemoi#Zephyrus Persian themed: Zoroaster/ Zarathustra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster

Plans yes, what will happen may vary, as they were supposed to be included in A24 (had to fix the innacuracies, didn't make it in time), A25 with the fixes didn't get there in time, so who knows

that's more or less the opposite of what I do: - biggest possible batches for eco, split among all production buildings I got. - also batch production for military, unless destined to a fight that's already ongoing, in that case single unit spam.

Yep, that seems to be off.

@Stan`

i try to select a Siege Tower by editing the user.cfg file. i saw inside that hotkey.autociv.session.entity.by.class.select.Siege = "Alt+V" and this is working to select all Siege. My modification also selects all Siege but should select only Tower. hotkey.autociv.session.entity.by.class.select.(Siege&!Ram&!Catapult) = "Alt+T" (my first try was: hotkey.autociv.session.entity.by.class.select.(Siege&Tower) = "Alt+T"

Probably because is defined in the templates that they always flee (as they can't attack)

5 pop house is only significant in early game. You can build a farmstead and a storehouse, then get your first house up immediately. For 150 wood houses if there are no trees near your cc then you need to wait for you wood choppers to build first storehouse, chop 50 wood, then force up your first big house. This hurts your efficiency. Ptolemies don't have this problem, they can spam and keep building. However, in late game, 5 pop houses need designated house builders, which is not really efficient anymore. It is very easy to get pop capped and you are forced to use smaller batches. Also they take up too much space, which is not good for small maps. This is the main weakness of Ptolemies. Therefore, I recommend researching the home manor tech in town phase if you have 5 pop house. Carthaginians apartments are very handy in town phase.

my problem. i just tried to select maybe too much. now i could select them. there is maybe a max number for selecteing

I am not sure if maths say otherwise, you will note that the build time of 10-pop house is smaller than the build time of 2 5-pop houses, this compensates at least partially for the other advantages you can get with 5-pop houses

@Yekaterina iber houses are a little large despite being 5 pop, and the walls make it a bit cluttered too so sometimes 10pop houses are easier

let's not forget that sword cav was relatively OP in A24 too. it's just that cavalry wasn't nearly as effective as it is now. I think that comes from unit pushing and better turn times, and faster game turns pace. You can see, for instance, that sword cav not only has better pierce armor than axe cav, but even wins in a direct fight against it. also spear cav is UP and already was (not drammatically, but yet, they would deserve a little buff).

I decided to upload these 2 replays because some people asked me on the lobby and because I think they can be useful for many players. Uploading these replays is NOT a way to say "Hey look, I am better than @ValihrAnt or @Feldfeld: 1) they are players way stronger than me 2) when I will have a replay of a game in which I lose against these two gods and I play decently, I will upload that too surely!. Nevetheless, these games are two exceptions in which we both played really well and that I think can teach many things to many people Jofursloft vs Feldfeld.zip Jofursloft vs Valihrant.zip

It is true that CS cavalry can be stopped fairly easily by spearmen, and if you expect a late-game cavalry raid, you can build well sealed walls and palisades to stop them, but this requires a lot of planning to do in advance and a lot of economic loss if doing it too late. It does take a lot more effort and skill to counter cavalry raiding than it does to do the raiding, so training 10-15 consular bodyguards is an easy way to gain an advantage over an otherwise better player. A defending player needs to either see it coming, or have 30+ spearmen fight your cav while building walls/palisades, which is more effort and economic loss than it takes to train 10-15 consular bodyguards and run around someones base. I will take your advice to use stone walls though.

Do pallisades really need a big change? The way I see it is that pallisades are there to buy you some time and if you want to really protect an area you build the proper city walls. There could be an upgrade to increase the hack armor of buildings to deal with late game melee units. Maybe it's just me but rather than sword cavalry being op, I'd say it's players not knowing how to counter them. 1) It is getting better now but players don't seem to realise that spearmen counter cavalry. So many people just don't make spearmen and then are surprised how a unit that's pretty much intended to counter ranged inf actually does well against ranged inf. 2) Not adapting to the situation. After the 2nd raid on farm economy you should probably start thinking about how to protect it. 3) Blacksmith upgrades or civ bonuses. Most often the cavalry player will have made significant investment into blacksmith upgrades and will do the rush with Gauls or Carthaginians who have stronger sword cav. The defending player hasn't made any such investment making the cav seem stronger than they really are. 4) Cavalry require more investment than infantry. The defending player should easily outnumber the cavalry as the attacking player has to also keep investing into eco. This game against Jofursloft demonstrated these points really well. We were even before going into P2, but he quickly pulled ahead in population due to not needing to set up extra farms and stables. He further walled off his farm economy before I could get even a single raid in and prioritised strong unit production making it impossible for me to find any significant damage. After pulling ahead in population he just got a strong push going and there's nothing I can do as investing into cavalry just set me too far back. It does also partly come off to how insane the woodlines in most biomes are where you can have 20k+ wood in a single forest and can get well into the late game before needing to start gathering wood elsewhere. It also kills the importance of map control which hurts aggression.

many people, and myself included would put iber at the top 1-3 civs. But then, I like iber since a23. Iber, in addition to having very useful firecav champs, also have the cheapest and strongest infantry swords champion available in the game, once you train the hero Indibil.

I would say just cavalry .25x , as infantry rushes are much rarer and easier to prevent. Also we don't want to see them being spammed up too much. Although I do think that we can give ram counter to them, since I feel they should go down in 2 hits from an un-upgraded ram. I am not terribly concerned about wall spam, since palisades to prevent raiding are more about sealing off places, slowing down the cav so that local spear production can catch up with them. In a24 walls were sometimes spammed in haphazard ways just to mess with the pathfinding and allow towers and forts and archers to kill most armies stuck in the "maze". Because of unit movement improvements, I think having a sealed wall is necessary. I agree with @chrstgtr that we need to see a careful nerf of CS-swordcav, and perhaps a little buff of CS-spearcav. On champion side, I think armor nerfs for both, but a bigger one for consular bodyguards.

I guess it could require town phase yeah.

Hello there and welcome to my thread! What this thread addresses: General concepts of real-time strategy games. Who this thread is designed for: Novice and amateur players. Civilizations, heroes, economies, military power-houses and team play (a preface) Civilizations Each civilization provides it's own set of modifiers that will affect: How you play, how your opponent plays and how your allies play (in team-games). Civilization modifiers come in a few flavors: Passively occurring (provided to allies or self) Actively occurring (a unit or structure) When you are playing a particular map or map style: You should select a civilization that best suits both your game play style preferences and the map or map type itself. This is also affected when you are in a team play game (as your selected civilization might provide modifiers for your allies or the civilizations you and your ally choose to use are synergetic in relation to their units, special units, production times, cost, etc). Heroes The hero you choose to use should reflect your currently chosen strategy. A hero is not just another unit, but is very special and serves a special purpose. Some heroes are designed to act as an anti-unit to many other units of a given type (EG: A hero might deal the equivalent of 15 units of the same type). Some heroes are designed to increase production of a particular type of unit or structure or a generalization of a given field of type of structures. The hero you choose to use in a game might be intentionally brief; you can only ever spawn a hero once and your strategy should take that into account. Economies In order to better comprehend what an economy is in relation to a real-time strategy game: You need to have a basic understanding of mathematical concepts (from arithmetic to algebra). If you would like to become a better player: A basic comprehension of the fields of discrete mathematics and pre-calculus would be an immense help in forming better strategies, counter-strategies and other predictively pre-computed concepts that might mutate real-time during game-play (EG: You saw an opponent do something for the first time and have never contemplated that set of actions before). Military power-house 0AD is the type of real-time strategy game that does not have a strong division between military units and non-military (economical) units; the line is blurred with few exceptions. You cannot support a strong military without an equally strong economical income of some form (ally proceeds, merchant vessels, self-sufficient production or temporary capitulation from an opponent (as vassals do not exist in this game). Team play 0AD supports team-play, but it has a high emphasis on independent play or lacking inter-co-dependent play (few synergies that place a high correlation between two civilizations being stuck together cohesively in every match); the inability of creating structures on an allies cultural borders also hinders team play, but promotes independently supported team efforts (primarily in the forms of: Direct military and economical support). A team of two novices would be no match for a team of two semi-professional players. Civilizations There are no magical silver bullets for a civilization to play; each has their own unique strengths and weaknesses in both solo and team play matches. You should take the time to review every civilizations unique traits. I will forego listing an enumerated description of all the data related to civilizations and instead suggest that you look at them in the Civilization Overview tab in game. Team play: Water maps The Athenians have an immediate advantage at first glance over other civilizations. Their team bonus is -25% construction time for Warships. When a player in a team match or solo match is playing as the Athenians: Each Pentoconter cost 11.25 seconds to construct (as opposed to 15 seconds). That means: 10 Pentoconters cost 112.5 seconds. If the opponent(s) do not use the Athenians: They would require 150 seconds for the same set of units. This difference might sound inconsequential initially, until you factor in distance over time and the average military control over an area with that set of units. The total damage and the total health of all units summed can be distributive properties over a given surface area; you can factor in reaction time (the distance over time average of each individual unit; the closer they are clustered together: The lower the average cost to move across the surface from point A to point B). Team play: Land maps The Gauls have a powerful modifier. Their team bonus is -15% research time and -15% cost for all technologies of the Forge structure. The Forge allows you to increase the effectiveness per unit (which is a multiplier) by means of decreasing the amount of damage taken and increasing the amount of damage dealt per attack. The -15% seconds decreases the research time by an amazing 6 seconds for the Side Arms (+15% melee damage) upgrade down from 40 seconds (-6) and reduces the cost from: 200 food and 100 metal to 170 (-30) food and 85 (-15) metal. In early game when a player attacks another player: Every multipler adds up to the attacker's advantage. With every successive battle fought: The player has altered the game's timeline for the defender. Every unit has an associated cost: Time to build the unit lost, the resources expended in building that lost unit, the resources and time spent collecting the resources for that lost unit and the resources spent constructing the unit(s) that collected the resources for the lost unit (which can be nullified if the lost unit collected the resources themself (EG: paid for themselves; but this implies a cost: That unit has spent time gathering resources as opposed to exploring the map or performing another task)). Heroes Heroes are used to tip the scales of the game in your favor, but not by a lot. How you use them will determine how effective your military strategy is and every battle they might play a role in. There are far too many heroes for me to list every one, but you should definitely glean over the list of them and their various modifiers. The Athenians' hero Themistocles has a surprisingly powerful set of modifiers: -30% batch training time and +50% movement speed of the ship he is garrisoned in. This means to batch build 10 Marines would cost less than 10 seconds! When garrisoned inside of a ship: He converts the ship into an effective mobile Barracks (which is not constrained by cultural borders). He could be perched off shore of an enemy's base in the fog of war allowing for a proxy attack or kept in a puddle near your own base or traverse the seas rapidly and harass the opponent's economy. His other modifier is to reduce the cost of metal used for constructing ships by an amazing 50% (-50) metal for an Athenian Trieme as well as -20% (-3.8 seconds) construction time for any ship. To build 10 Athenian Triemes with Themistocles garrisoned would have a reduced cost of 500 metal and 38 seconds. The raw cost is 1,000 metal (-500 garrisoned) and 190 (-152) seconds. If you were to batch build with Themistocles garrisoned then the cost of time is reduced to ~76 seconds (~1 minute : 10 Triemes). As a general unit: He has 1,000 health and a very high 22 Hack damage with a very high 72% Hack, 72% Pierce and 93% Crush reduction in damages. It would require ~533 attacks from Mauryas Longbowman to kill the hero unit. If a player had 100 Longbowman: That would take 6 attacks over the course of 6 seconds to kill only the hero unit. Economies In order to support a strong military: You require an equally strong economy. Without the supplies (food, wood, stone, metal and population capacity): You are unable to sustain a military force. To better understand how you acquire a strong economy: You need to understand more of mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, discrete mathematics and pre-calculus; although just arithmetic and pre-algebra will suffice). The naïve way of playing a video game is to behave as a young child: Perform random actions and hope for the best! As we grow older: We begin to understand more of how the mechanics of things work; High level concepts such as what "cause-and-effect" are. These generalized concepts can be translated into playing video games and they fit quite well. Those who understand them and apply them will play better and learn faster as a direct result. Let's examine the mechanics of 0AD and how the economy functions within this complex machine (video game). Villagers are a special type of unit: They have a higher gathering rate for food (source: Berries and Farms) than other units in the game (+50%). Fishing boats also collect food (source: Fish) at a higher rate than other units in the game (nearly twice as fast (+80%) as a Villager unit). These two units specialize in the collection of the food resource. Other military units collect wood, stone and metal faster and gather food (source: Animals) at the same rate. Expressing these ideas using mathematics is much more concise. Generalizations are what humans do best! So let's generalize and reason with the information we have to work with! Let's abbreviate "gathering rate" with GR. A GR defines the quantity collected over the duration of a single second. 1.80GR = 1.80 of a resource per second. Fishing boat - Fish - 1.80 GR Villager - Berries/Farms - 1.00 GR Military units - Animals - 1.00 GR These are the primary sources of income of the food resource from producable units. Without delving further: Let's examine what associative cost there are. The cost per Fishing boat is: 50 wood, 15 seconds and 1 population. The cost to collect 50 wood using a single Villager is 100 seconds (50 wood / 0.50 GR); this is excluding commute time and the associated cost of the Villager. To construct 5 Fishing boats would cost a single Villager: 500 seconds + commute time + associated cost of the unit itself. 5 Fishing boats collect 9 food per second (1.80 GR * 5 units) and hold a sum of 50 food (10 capacity * 5 units). Let's construct a strategy, but use math as our guide. We will want to have an economy that is strong enough to support the production of a military of a specific set of units that should be produced every 10 seconds. We will be playing as the Persian civilization. We must first assess what we are attempting to achieve (that is: An objective). We want to produce exactly 1 Sogdian Archer every 10 seconds. We must first determine how many resources this unit cost then decide what is the best way to obtain those resources. The Sogdian Archer has an associated cost of 50 food, 50 wood, 10 seconds and 1 population. We can break this problem down by examining our options. Let's assume we have exactly 50 food, 50 wood and 10 population capacity (available). Let's also assume we have 4 Villagers to work with. Let's ignore everything except for the raw cost of resources and time for right now. We'll get to the other factors afterward. A single Villager can collect 50 wood in 100 seconds; 4 Villagers can collect 50 wood in 25 seconds. What does this mean? We can sustain producing 1 Sogdian Archer every 15 seconds (25 seconds to collect the wood; 10 seconds to produce a Sogdian Archer (which allows enough time to collect 20 out of the 50 wood required for another Sogdian Archer, which requires an additional 15 seconds before you can produce another Sogdian Archer). This sustainability is only possible from the game state of having an initial 50 wood to begin with. Let's assume you have: 10 Villagers (0.50 wood GR = 5 wood per second). You could sustain the production of 1 Sogdian Archer per 10 seconds with a surplus of 50 wood by the time the next Sogdian Archer is produced (1 Sogdian Archer, 2 Sogdian Archer batch queued is a possible out come that will last one cycle (consuming the surplus of 50 wood)). This equation is ignoring a few important variables: The distance over time (the commute of collecting the wood), the food resource and the population capacity count. This also ignores that the distance over time variable is volatile (is modified; though the out-come might be negative, neutral or positive and has an associated set of cost in order to only reduce the variable modifier state (negative, neutral positive); that is to say: Building a new structure, creating a new unit or moving another unit all have their own associative cost). Let's solve the food resource part of the equation. We are trying to sustain the production of 1 Sogdian Archer per 10 seconds. The requirements: 50 wood per 10 seconds 50 food per 10 seconds Increased population capacity per 10 Sogdian Archers produced (1 House = 10 population capacity) Let's describe how much food a single Villager can collect. The GR is 1.00 (1 food per 1 second). We would then need an equal ratioed amount of Villagers (food gatherers) to collect food as we had previously with wood. We would need a sum of 15 Villagers to sustain 1 Sogdian Archer per 10 seconds (until 100 seconds have elapsed; at which point we need 1 additional House produced for the population capacity resource). This means you could sustain 2 Sogdian Archers per 10 seconds with 30 Villagers (20 Villagers collecting wood and 10 Villagers collecting food). Let's try to factor in the cost of the population capacity limit and the requirement of constructing a single House every 100 seconds (+10 Sogdian Archers). You would need to collect an additional +3 wood per second (+150 wood) to maintain the additional cost of a House (150 wood) with the cost of 50 seconds (6 Villagers collect 150 wood in 50 seconds) to construct the House (+50 seconds) factored in (to prevent the halted production of the Sogdian Archers). To increase your wood collection rate by +3 wood per second you would need an additional 6 Villagers for a sum of 36 Villagers. A simple way to break this problem down is to use arithmetic: 6 Villagers collect 3 wood per second over the span of 50 seconds (50% of our population capacity) which allows us 50 seconds to construct a House (which has a time cost of 50 seconds to construct). This allows the other 20 Villagers who are collecting wood to maintain the ratio of wood to Sogdian Archer to equal 0 every 10 seconds and the remaining 10 Villagers to collect food to equal 0 every 10 seconds). You are not limited to using strictly Villagers in this math problem. You can mix-and-match other units, buildings, team bonuses, heroes and more to solve the formula. I will edit this post at a later date and time and expand on it some more.

Add this mod to mod list for linux. This install sucks.