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When designing civs (or redesigning them), I think the focus should not just be on balance, but to make each civ "Favorite Worthy." What I mean is, each civ should have aspects that make it unique, fun, and cool enough to make stand out and make it worthy of vying for the community's "favorite" civ. In a "tier list" ideally it should be a struggle to decide which civ should be knocked down to a 'C'. They should all be clustered at B, A, and S. Some ideas: General Remove champion "unlock" techs and move them back to Fortress unless otherwise stated. Move Heroes to Civic Center unless otherwise stated. All Citizen-Soldiers types in every civ have Rank Promotion technologies up to Advanced. Exceptions 1 type of Citizen-Soldier per civ will have an additional promotion tech up to Elite. 1 type of Citizen-Soldier per civ will have no promotion techs. Unless otherwise stated, all civs retain their current bonuses and technologies. Athenians Retool the "Delian League" team bonus. All allies can train the Delian Marine from their Dock. -20% build time for all Ships and Boats. -20% research time for all Dock Technologies. "Painted Stoa" structure (build limit: 1), which grants the "Greek Architecture" aura (Buildings +20% health). Remove the "Greek Architecture" bonus from all other Greek civs. Heroes trained instantly at the Prytaneion (not Civic Center). Gymnaseion Replaces the Barracks Larger footprint and +20% greater health. Slightly more expensive. Trains "Hoplite" Citizen-Infantry and Champion Infantry "City Guard." Archery Range available to train Athenian Militia Slinger, Cretan Mercenary Archer, and Thracian Peltast. "Scythian Archer" Champion Infantry trained at the Fortress. Britons Chariots Available from Town Phase, after researching unlocking tech. When "killed", the Javelineer rider jumps off and continues to battle (until he too is killed) Slightly underpowered in Town Phase, but has a City Phase upgrade "Reinforced Undercarriage" which makes them extra stronk. Add Infantry Swordsman to the citizen soldier roster, available in Town Phase. Reimplement the Population Bonus special for their buildings, but at +1 population, instead of the old +2. Carthaginians Embassies "unlock" ethnic mercenaries at the Barracks, Stable, and Range. War Elephants have a "Tower" upgrade, which adds a Howdah prop to them. Cothon Shipyard shoots arrows. A fourth hero can be "Xanthippus of Sparta", who specifically boosts mercenaries. A 3rd champion, available at the Fortress: "Veteran African Infantry", a champion swordsman with a mix of Carthaginian and Roman equipment. "Sacred Band" champions still trained at the Temple. Gauls Give them a cheap Infantry Archer, "Gallic Hunter," available in Town Phase. Add Infantry Swordsman to the citizen soldier roster, available in Village Phase. Carnyx Trumpeter should have a "Horn Blow" special ability that temporarily improves attack of nearby Gallic troops. This is automatically done every 2 minutes in battle, but can be manually activated by the player every 1 minute. Iberians Keep the free starting walls, but remove the free gates (just have openings; the player can close them with fresh walls and gates if they wish). Allow the Monument to be built anywhere, even in enemy territory. "Burning Pitch" technology allows players to toggle javelin-throwing units between regular (anti-infantry) and burning (anti-structure) javelins. "Horse Country" tech at the Corral, for another -10% cavalry training time. Champion Infantry and Champion Cavalry can swap between Sword and Javelin. Kushites Give them a free Sanga Cattle at the start of the match. A new "Extensive Husbandry" tech at the Corral makes training animals faster. "Iron Smelting" tech makes Forges and Forge Technologies a lot cheaper and faster. "Iron Exports" makes bartering for Metal at the Market more profitable. Macedonians Barracks New "Royal Barracks" upgrade for individual Barracks in the City Phase. +50% Health to the upgraded Barracks. Can train Elite Phalangites and Champion Hypaspists. Stables New "Royal Stables" upgrade for individual Stables in City Phase. +50% Health to the upgraded Stable. Can train Elite Thessalian Cavalry and Champion Companion Cavalry. A 4th hero "General Craterus" boosts Phalangites specifically. "Naval Arms Race" technology unlocks the "Hexeres" heavy warship for the Macedonians. Mauryas Remove Population Cap civ bonus, but... Citizen-Infantry. Bonus: 0.5 population cost Bonus: -50% train time Bonus: -25% resource cost Penalty: -50% gathering rate Penalty: -50% health Penalty: -25% attack Worker Elephant can construct buildings again. Maiden Guards can swap from bow to sword. Mauryas receive a free Palace at the beginning of the match. The hero Chanakya can be trained in tandem with the other heroes (he doesn't count toward the "hero" training limit) 4th Maurya hero "Bindusara." Persians Keep Population Cap civ bonus. Organic units start out with -15% health and -10% train time. Receive a free "Yakchal" Ice House at the start of the match for a +5% health bonus to units. Build up to 4 more Ice Houses for additional +5% health boosts for each one built. They get more expensive for each one built. Ptolemies "Syncretism" special technology in Town Phase. Allows Priests the ability to build the "Isis Statue" and "Serapis Statue." Isis Statue Short-range Aura: Nearby Gatherers +20% gather rates Serapis Statue Long-range Aura: Nearby Units +10% health "Lighthouse of Alexandria" is a 2nd Wonder Player can still only choose to build 1 Wonder, but the Lighthouse can be built on the shore and gives a large vision range. "Temple of Edfu" would be the option to build on a non-water map. Romans An extra big House available in City Phase called the Insula ("Tenement Building") Population Bonus: 20 (plus house pop techs) Triarius trained at Elite rank (no promotion techs necessary). 2nd Team Bonus "Socii Allies" Allied Soldiers +10% attack within range of a Roman Civic Center or Army Camp. Seleucids Very much the same as they are now, except... Given back their Library. Spartans Team bonus now applies to all Melee Infantry (not just Spear Infantry). "Sysition" replaces the Barracks. "Hoplite" Citizen-Soldier, Champion Infantry "Spartiates," and Spartan Heroes all trained here. The "Helot Practice Range" Archery Range class building Trains Helot Skirmisher and Helot Slinger "Helot Emancipation" technology unlocks the ability for Helot units to upgrade individually to Light Hoplites. New "Helot" support units Cannot construct buildings, but... +25% resource gathering ability over Female Citizens. Can be captured by other players

^New minimap in DE provided by @Langbart^ I wish we could have civ-specific UI textures. I would make the minimap background different for each civ. @Freagarach Beauty shot of the Temple of Edfu:

Some good idea here... just thought I'd point out as an answer to the original question: Targeting the nearest enemy maximizes damage for ranged units because there is less chance of them missing closer targets due to projectile spread and travel time. It is also protective, because for a ranged units focusing on the closes6t units makes it more likely that they will kill melee opponents that are in a position to do damage before they can do too much of it. And for melee, attacking the nearest unit reduces the chance that they will become stuck getting ravaged by the enemy while trying to reach a target that is out of range or behind an obstruction.

Sprites are xml objects that reference textures, or part of textures. There are a few files called sprites.xml listing such images in the gui folder. poleis was another civ that might have been planned in the past, thebans too, although they are in DE now. hellenes was the civ emblem used for all greek civs before they were splitted. Initially your tech changes would affect your buildings and the heroes you'd get. Mauryas are another civ.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4271

I didn't invest much time in it because of the initial removal of the rice field from the feature list but maybe I could manage to fit the puddles shape better with rice.

Very nice. Well, basically look at anything I post on the screenshot thread.

well it's mostly me insisting and I can tell you that I like to look at nice things. The new wall textures from @m7600 look nice and are historically accurate, so win-win. The rice paddies may be a bit more on the eye candy side, but I would say that's artistic freedom. Also: this design is adaptive to the ground, i.e. it still looks good if you build on uneven terrain. ___________________________ @wowgetoffyourcellphone This is the best I can make it look.

"Normal" yeah. That is due to binaries which are only visible/downloadable when logged in, IIRC we're not sure why it happens, but it usually can't hurt.

I like the visions for the civs, to give them all some unique mechanics. I am particularly interested in this in the shorter term however: I like this idea, and I feel these upgrades should be more expensive than regular blacksmith upgrades especially the one for elite rank (assuming its the same as "veteran" rank). Perhaps the "elite" upgrade would be more expensive, and add a 10 metal cost to the unit.

Total War, and every other game, also use elephants as anti-siege, though typically as gate breakers rather than smashing stone walls. Could they be shifted to that?

I don't know about specifics of each bonus but I agree with the idea in general. You can't keep every Civ balanced but giving them truly distinct flavor is totally doable and trying to keep the unbalanced civs at like 2-3.

I think that shooting the closest unit is something related to a kind of survival instinct for the human being. A unit shoots the nearest enemy because it is seen as the biggest threat at the moment. When a unit is not forced to do something in 0ad it will stick to the last order you gave him. When this order is gone, it will take his own "initiative". For example, when a unit definitely cuts a tree it will move to the nearest tree near him: you didn't gave him that order, he deliberately decides to cut the closest tree because it is the one that requires less effort in distance terms. What I'm saying is that if you give a specific order to a unit that unit will go against his own nature and do even things that will bring him to death or suicide. If you don't the unit will try to preserve himself (which ultimately is eliminating the biggest threat). A 0ad unit doesn't reasonate for the long term good in a battle, but for the short term one (his own life instant by instant). In addition, I will copy and paste some reflections I already did under the thread "Magnetic pikemen". I think that this feature would lower the original importance of melee units, which is in fact creating a shield for the shots of the enemy ranged units unless they don't actually reach an enemy unit (at that point their main purpose is: kill). Whouldn't letting ranged unit decide what unit shoot by default lead to armies composed by only ranged units? And as I already suggested, I think that a solution to this "problem" could be a simple shortcut: when you press that shortcut while having selected a group of units (archers as shown in the image below) the game allows you to select a zone (the zone should obviously have a maximum size), which is represented by the red area in the image (in which there are the enemy slingers). Then your archers will target first all the enemy units who are in the area (in this case the slingers). Then when the area is cleaned up they will return to focus of the nearest unit available. Obviously the opponent is able to move his slingers out of the zone in order to protect them, so I think that this shortcut could bring to a new nice micro skill.

yes, a ship that magically has wind always coming from its back will indeed bend to the outside when turning, for what it's worth. but anyway, I love the U turn movement, tell me more about it! what do you think about applying it to other entities too, like rams, chariots, formations, cavalry?

Yes, I'm aware. And I know it's only a tech demo, but 50 units taking >1 min to kill 1 unit... That's just not enough blood per second to quench my thirst.

Slings could kill horses or men in armor with a good shot. Of course full plate might provide more safety than leather. A major value of slings was herding elephants. Like when they break in total war and run amok. Similarly if HP in 0AD represents morale and not life points then slings could easily break elephants even if they couldn't kill them without a lucky headshot.

I'm not a native English speaker. When reading "Good at: Building and Dying", I wonder if this is not a bit cynic.

Yeah, just a bit of dark humor.

'rome'! :p

Well it uses JS and it's much easier to do it there. Just like it was for victory conditions It's not impossible but it's tricky

How gamesetup does it then? Atlas can just create dropdown in the same way no?

I can become gaia by being rushed and then resigning. Also a mean thing to do is move a bunch of cav into ur allies farms to then resign. It basically just ruins a TG and people will be upset with you.

In the past it did affect fullscreen mode as well. It doesn't work with the current type of fullscreen but it might in the future so we kept it. E.G it might work again with https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4106 There might be a check for user: out of memory. as for the existing civs it's a bit harder since they can change with mods, so you'd have to look for all possible civs before.

Took me a bit, but I finally found a list of the civs and their abbreviations: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/ArtFileNamingConventions#Civilizationnames (Don't know if one is supposed to find that easier somewhere else...)

We don't accept pull requests at this time, so you'll have to upload it to Phabricator like a normal patch.

Yes the syntax is wrong it's actually C:\Dev\0 A.D. alpha\binaries\system\pyrogenesis.exe" -xres=1024 -yres=768 -quickstart -autostart="random/aegean_sea" -autostart-civ=1:rome

My favorite episode is where - oh, I don't actually have a favorite episode of that kind. But if the slings and the projectiles are known I guess it doesn't take too much speculation to measure their range and velocity. And if it actually becomes comparable to a .45 it is easy to imagine they actually do damage, and of course make the beast uncontrollable. Yeah, and if the linked source above is correct (Scipio, Caesar...) then it's also historically correct.

I think it would be nice to have the selected biom being reflected in the map preview.

Eg you tell archers to block a mountain path with a wall of arrows.

According to https://www.wayoflife.org/reports/the_power_of_the_ancient_sling.html the projectile could reach or even exceed 100 m/s. (It says 'catch'.)

It's possible. They were actually removed in A25 by @wraitii See the discussion here https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP25789

@Ceres 'Attacking an area (of ground) to apply splash damage', I believe.

seems more like a joke.

It's a bit tricky because it depends on the map's supported biomes.

I agree, this makes the otherwise nice function to quickly create a map barely usable.

@andy5995 You are right, of course. And thanks for making this!

Hyrule Conquest has it, so it is definitely possible.

I really hate the champion unlock techs. I feel like they're completely unnecessary, or cost too much/take too long to research as you indicate.

See e.g. https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4250. Do note I meant it to be configurable in the match settings; it is unwise (also impossible, IIRC) to use config values in the simulation, imagine the person you are playing with has different values!

I would love to see the full glory of the game then sometime, for I already like it now.

@FreagarachI usually don't play solo... me and Jammy sometimes play vs 3 or 4 VH bots or 5 med bots. But that means we can't play any skirmish maps; there are no 2v4 or 2v5 skirmish maps in the default 0ad distribution. Also, sometimes we play with 1 or 2 other people, in which case 4 or 5 VH bots doesn't make for a challenging game. And then there's the point @Ceresmade @CeresI don't think it's off-topic when when a thread about a mod develops into a discussion about implementing the mod into the main code base.

I had that thought as well and was about to test it in DE.

You mean that the AI will close itself up behind a fence you initially created around it, without being able (thinking about) building gates to leave that area? That's really hilarious!

The problem on some older PCs is that the game lags when playing with too many AIs, though. But that's getting a bit OT here, sorry.

Not exactly what you're looking for, but I've done some cool experiments:

I think the mace houses look sad: While the barracks look like one amazed dude and a stoned one.

I've played 9 games of medium mainland or continent 4 vs 4 against Norse, Anglo Saxons, Carol. and Byzantines with ptolemies, mauryas,and Persians as allies to my Romans (I really like to win). There were zero crashes or error messages. The AIs were pretty matched to each other with no civs noticeably dominant. If anything weird happens in future games I will let you know.