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_Any_ game can only keep me interested for about a day, subsequently I start tearing it apart and tinkering with it. The latter still keeps me entertained in 0 A.D..

I agree that the addition of some high quality scripted campaigns will be a great boon to 0 AD's value propositions. However, I must point out that in the RTS space, single player scripted (ie campaign) content has only a weak relationship to long term playability. For a lot of serious RTS players, a campaign is only something they might try for a few days (or hours) to get a taste of gameplay. Others might beat all the campaign content over the course of a few weeks then never touch it again. I think it is a only a small minority who find enjoyment in replaying campaign content repeatedly for the duration of their engagement. So let's not lose focus on the real reason Bad Player raised this (IMO very legitimate) complaint: 0 AD has a shallow core gameplay loop. There needs to be more diversity between civilizations. There needs to be more diversity between units. The game needs to have some mechanics-based hard counter cycles so that not every battle is decided by marginal differences in unit numbers or strength that are mostly attributable to the snowballing of minor decisions and tactical blunders from 10 minutes ago. Otherwise the game is too easily "solved" and most players will lose interest almost as soon as they have a taste of mastery (e.g. within 6 months). As for why some people might stick around longer: I would posit the main reasons are they become invested in the drama of the game's development. In some ways I think the evolution of 0 AD's metagame and design philosophy is a much more interesting strategic sandbox than the game itself. Others might be fanatic devotees of FOSS and have literally nothing better they can stomach to play.

We have a new Youtuber (who is also already a top 150 player btw) - @the-x alias Björn Bär! Covering for example a match with borg-, the highest rated player of the world at the time of that match! And there are more videos of high class matches.

In SVN version of the game, units don't move at full speed right after they are told to, but take a brief acceleration time to get to full speed. If told to turn, they start moving after the turn with a speed that is slower when the turn is sharper. Effectively, this is the same thing as having slower unit turn rates. I think it looks better though, and I'm not sure about how this may have a better effect on how ranged units correct throwing direction (but it looks promising). What puzzles me, is that A24 turn times were unpopular and have been corrected in A25 for that reason. However, they are coming back now with another name, also I'm not sure, but they feel even slower than in A24 to me. The motive for the change, apparently, is to avoid dancing, but I never saw anyone complaining about dancing lately. Maybe, now that unit acceleration has been introduced in the engine, turn rate and acceleration stats can be tweaked as to make turns overall not slower than they are now, which is what the community has been asking before.

That Weirdjokes is a complete amateur, couldn't tell the difference between a Ptolomie and a Seleucid. Or was it a Kushite?

hmm, this and the unit acceleration seem to be two large gameplay features very much worth testing to make sure they are great for A26. @real_tabasco_sauce and I can try the SVN maybe this weekend.

There was a big debate and disagreement between @wraitii and @bb_ over this. Which in turn ends up being a Single Player versus Multiplayer debate. Or an A23 vs all (wink Player of 0AD) https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3523 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3179 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3274 So far I see no way to conciliate the two.

Macedonia 45 - Nightmare (323 BC) Alexander is in trouble. His skin is burning up, head is raging with internal fire and strife. As he lay dying, in his mind there is one final battle to be fought. The landscape is desolate, covered in fire and ash. The sea is red and full of blood. All his enemies have gathered against him -- from the Spartan rebels, to the city of Tyre, and all the way to India. His only allies are the people who greeted him like a living God -- the land of Egypt. Will he prevail? Only you will find out. AI Settings: Player 8 (Doom Guard) should be set to Sandbox. For the rest of the players use a difficulty of your choice. For casual game play, set your Ally to Hard or Very Hard and your Enemies to a combination of Easy and Medium difficulties. You can also gift units to your ally. Simply move them to the little palisade pen and they will switch ownership. Your ally may also gift units to you as well.

Quote from Björn Bär: WeirdJokes in blue, he got an crazy rating of 1757.

I thought it would be easier, but I see the problems now. Maybe if audio chat was added to 0AD one day, something like this could be made easier, already avaible for the observers of a commented game.

Not gonna lie, I'm having fun! ehehehe Some concepts for basic Russian buildings

Very helpful indeed! The Atlas import function is far from perfect, and I really wanted to be able to "sculpt" my own heightmaps in GIMP and import them without loosing any quality. My initial idea was to experiment with symmetrical heightmaps, and maps where mountains/hills are not used as obstacles, but as tactical features. I have found a more straightforward way to to the second part: heightmap import. With a small command line utility able to copy binary code from one file to the other. I will complete my post when I have time. Of course, creating handmade heightmaps might seem a bit daunting. However, I'm more of a graphic guy, and that was the easy part for me ;-) I have developed some nice and accessible methods to build them with GIMP, and will share these in another post in the coming weeks.

Hello. Yeah, I actually wondered if that's what you meant after I'd done the reply - I guess I'm so used to people asking why I don't live stream I was a bit on autopilot! My bad It's an interesting concept, actually. Essentially you'd need to be able to hear mine and Weirdjokes audio feed live. We're currently using Mumble for verbal communication. Now, I'm a complete noob with this software, but I can see it being possible - although I think we'd have to ensure that everyone else on the channel could hear Weirdjokes and I, but was muted - so as not to be an impromptu addition to the recording! I think the only issue is potentially the players might be able to tune in as well and gain a bit of an unfair advantage. I know there is the risk of this when live streaming, but there is usually a significant delay in the broadcast, but here - the audio would be almost in real time. @Player of 0AD - any thoughts on this?

I don't know if the intentions behind this comment are legit or just for trolling, but I think there's a degree of truth in these observations. I think 0ad overall is a pretty solid game (and is still incredible that such a game is still around!) but yeah, it as some limits. I think one of the limits is a bit of predictability in the gameplay and lack of flexibility for crazy strategies, like sometimes you can see in AOE 2 online games. I think there are a few threads that could potentially tackle this issue. Like this one: I think that breaking the status-quo by differentiating more the civilizations can help a lot to keep the game fresh and unpredictable, even after a lot of matches. I'm talking as a complete noob. I guess that for competitive players less differences would be better to ensure a fair match. But I think that shuffling the cards a bit could still make some difference without compromising too much the balance. In that thread there was the example of Scythian as a good example of nomadic civilization that can make the game fun and unpredictable with a set of special bonus and weaknesses that keep that civilization reasonably balanced with others more "canon". If you have some specific ideas on how to improve the gameplay I would suggest to participate in the discussion with constructive feedback, so the game can slowly adapt to new changes and ideas

Players should not start with 5,000 Stone and 5,000 Metal right next to their Civic Center. I understand that not all maps have that setup, but since mainland is the primary map that people play this should be implemented for mainland maps. And most maps :p. Here is why I think the change should happen: For a fair amount of games, 5,000 may be all the metal and stone a player needs for the entire game. That is too simple. Civilizations that use slingers or mercenaries (I'm looking at you, Ptolemies and Carthaginians) have the bonus of having their resource gatherers be protected by the Civic Center. This gives 2 advantages: Miners are protected from early raids Farmers are more easily protected from early raids since you can just garrison the miners in the Civic Center and then ungarrison them toward the enemy. Instead, there should be 1 small stone mine and 1 small metal mine having no more than 500 of each resource, similar to how there are a few straggler trees near the CC at the beginning of a game. Then on the outside of their starting territory should be larger mines, similar to how there are large forests for wood. The challenge of this layout would be increased difficulty of protecting farmers from raids for all civs throughout phase 2. It would favor players raiding food economy. But there are defensive structures and building-layout strategies that can be used to mitigate the danger. (Maybe cost and/or build time of palisade walls could be adjusted to support this change?) This would also make scouting important so know if your opponent is leaving their farmers vulnerable in order to boom or build military faster. Thank you for reading!

in simple words the unit endures more hits from the counter unit before it dies.

Right!! This was a very cool concept! I can definitely try out some proposals. In case DM me if you have already a couple of ideas that you just wanted to visualize

@Radiotraining this if I could use your help as I need a lot of variants.

That is the meaning of a soft counter system! I think some flaws are just inherent to an soft counter system and the citizen soldier system, but on other points these systems have their charms. These two systems might have their strengths and flaws, but I think we need to stick with what makes 0ad stand out. Which is off course these two systems.

@bad playerWhat is interesting to me about AOE4 is that it does not have any ranged units, they just have melee units that can follow a ranged animation to attack a target with 100% accuracy (basically spears with very long poles and a time delay). I don't think people realize what a downgrade this is from having at least some type of trajectory or accuracy system in the game. As for wether or not your should buy it, I would say the safest thing to to is wait 3-4 months and see if the game has a good, strong playerbase.

@alreI noticed this change as well but I have not tested it out. Thank you for bringing up the topic and starting the conversation. I had envisioned the change to help differentiate cavalry from infantry, as well as improve balance between the two. Compare swordsmen and cavalry swordsmen, and we realize that cav swords are just fast, strong, swordsmen. Adding differences in movement behavior is the main way to distinguish cavalry from infantry, and I feel if the unit acceleration values are done right then at the end of the day we would have cavalry that have quite noticeable acceleration while infantry are harder to notice. I predict the following results if unit acceleration is less noticeable for infantry and quite pronounced for cavalry: cavalry rushes in the early game will be harder palisades will be more effective against cavalry even if they have the same time to kill when attacked by cavalry (cavalry will have to stop) cavalry taking a bad fight will be more punished (I hope this would extend to cavalry champions) cavalry micromanagement in battle will be less easy A key remaining question to do with acceleration values is how to assign them to the different weapon classes, such as spear, pike, archer, sling? or should these values be strictly determined by whether or not the unit is riding a horse? @alre did you find the acceleration rates too slow when you tried them?

now it is in off-topic subforum, have a nice day

It is good that there are always different people. Different people give different solutions. It would be good if you could help us with some concepts.

ahahaha I'm actually having a lot of fun tbh! maybe I'm the weird one ahahaha

Related = \ = 0 A.D Another thing would be for you to suggest mechanics. Here you are talking about another game. And from the multiplayer of another game.

...but why did you call me Philip..? I am not Philip, and I won vs him easily in the past, so this is an insult to me

(@Langbart did a video in that thread. ) I think your best shot is at https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha25 / https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha26. E.g. for the next version there is the possibility to also push items in the production queue to the front. And skimming the hotkey page, I guess. But yes, one has to dig a little (which is too much, I know).

If you use discord then the admin can ban whoever is talking over you

Maybe the market which has produced the trader is already the origin market? Right clicking on the origin market deactivates its status as origin then, I guess. Trade is not too relevant but it would be nice if one could set with shift+click a second ralley point for a market, so its traders begin automatically to trade between two other markets.

I'm having trouble doing the correct clicks with the merchants as well. I'm now using the highest possible concentration when doing it and I pay attention to the tooltip at my cursor. I sometimes have to redo it but mostly the problem is solved for me.

Flares are used all the time in tgs, only allies can see them. I think freagerach made a tutorial for the send to head of queue feature but i don't think it's widely used. Attack-move and manual formations are probably used only by the most experienced.

We should take a cue from some other games and have a few different types of flares. I think they'd be more useful then.

thanks! actually, I think I explained myself poorly: I only meant the audio commentary. You could broadcast them live and we could listen to it while in the game watching the match. To me it sounds like a real step up for the experience of spectating a game, and I would enjoy it a lot. You can make the video for youtube after the editing. I don't know if this is good for you, but I hope you like the idea.

I agree Thanks for finishing my work! Suggestion for polishing the map with some hand editing in Atlas: make texture distribution more natural less sand in Brittany, north western France, Poland and Balkan more sand in northern Africa / Sahara replace full snow in the Atlas mountains with rocky/snowy mixture (there are no real glaciers in the Atlas mountains like in the Alps) break up repetitive texture patterns by replacing uniform texture areas with a combination of 2-3 different textures Atlas mountains plains of Spain, middle and eastern Europe adjust shoreline at some critical areas according to real world maps: eradicate lakes in northern Africa and in Brittany a bit more land in northern Italy (Venice area) / make north western Adriatic Sea a bit smaller a bit more land in eastern Brittany some fine tuning of the western and northern French coast, and Belgium/Netherlands/Germany coastline add more flora and fauna apart from the woods maybe add treasures and/or special objects like stone quarries (the new ones features in Delenda Est)

Hello dude (well played earlier, btw ) So with the 'live' games, the main reason I do it this way is purely so I can have the guest (in the case of these last few games, @Player of 0AD) on the show seeing the action at the same time as I do the commentary and we're able to interact, etc. I appreciate there is an immediacy with live streaming - but I've always deliberately avoided it. There is literally so much that can go wrong when you are 100% live. And the content I produce, I do invest a little time in it as a production - there is a bit of editing and thumbnails and stuff. The two games we recorded today will shortly be edited for broadcast on YT - hopefully you won't have to wait too long, I'm thinking of releasing those midweek. I've not completely ruled out doing live streams, but I'm really struggling for time at the moment. And I'd have to be confident I've got the streaming settings perfect and actually set up some graphics in OBS Studio to make it look a bit professional.

Me gusta el centro cívico, pero prefiero un domo más grande.

here Nani expanded the minimap.

Making a nice looking map preferably using the best art assets with JavaScript Triggers. And tell an enjoyable story. Then send us the xml js and pmp files fix the potential bugs

I think the story of Seleucus has the advantage in that he interacted with the macedonian, the ptolemies, the persian (after the achaemenids had been defeated), the galatian gauls and the mauryas.

@user1 My lobby username: Beaugoux Offeding player: marishkakul marishkakul host the game and quite when it was obvious he was losing. commands.txt

What I think could increase the playability for 0ad single players is to add campaigns, which can also give some nice stories about history. Like the rise of Seleucid the first would make a good story.

I discovered 0AD in 2015. I started playing multiplayer in 2017. I'm still here, not getting bored of it :)) (0AD is the only game I play)

A new map loosely based on chess. Created by @Jammyjamjamman and idea and help creating from @andy5995 . 1v1 map, where both players start with (the same set of) 16 units. Players must kill all of their enemy's units to win. Available in community maps 2 .

the whole point of mainland map is that there is no sea. that's why it's called mainland.

@Stan` which is the standard for an in-game image, especially something the size of the storehouse.

Small typo there. Allow me to show how it could be rewritten: "I think Sparta without Spartans is weird, and it is also unique to have only one champion unit and let it be available early." Jokes aside, I don't see non-citizens as a champion being a good candidate despite the mechanics you proposed being interesting. Those individuals seemed to be rather rare. Xenophon probably only was able to get such an education for his children due to his personal friendship with Agesilaus. To me the skiritae unit virtually occupies the second champion slot despite being a citizen soldier. There are definite problems with its current state (why is it so slow?) that I think would make it not just a beefy legionnaire. Removing champions in fact might be a good way of improving diversity. Rome for instance, had horrendous cavalry compared to that of Carthage, leading to much of Hannibal's success, yet in game their consular bodyguards are considered first rate. I would strongly advise removing it to better establish Rome as a predominantly infantry and siege based civilisation. Why does the bodyguard exist? Because the commandments of game design dictated that all civilisations should only have two available champions at the time.

(As of https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP25958 one can also push an item to the front of the production queue. E.g. you're phasing but are rushed and need some units NOW, just use the hotkey and add them, which pauses the phasing.)

AoE I style map