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First I would like to offer the disclaimer that an emphasis on balance is not a bad thing. It helps to maintain a thriving community, and the community is integral to an open source topic. That said, many design decisions that have changed the game on an integral level were done so with balance in mind, not an end vision. Again, this is not bad either, but ultimately it means that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design. Ultimately a problem I see with the game from this standpoint is that the factions are fairly bland. Yes, there are restrictions to what units are available, but at the end of the day a Persian spearman has the same statline most other factions. Many great proposals have been done to flesh them out better. I would particularly mention wowgetoffyourcellphone's and my own, but I'm sure that there are plenty of others. Despite often a great amount of thought being put into them and at least some of the community having positive opinions on the alterations, to my knowledge little if anything gets done. This is ultimately motivated by the fact that these would throw the balance in flux. While this is exasperating to people who would like change, the points behind these conservatives are valid. The multiplayer community might suffer. That said, I think that there is a reasonable compromise that 0 AD can and should take to help diversify factions and gameplay for the longterm without ruining the competitive scene. One by one factions could experience overhauls with key things in mind: How would their economy function differently from other ones? Are there any ways to reward strategic building placement? Are there any glaring inaccuracies in the design? What are current strategies used in the competitive scene, and how could these be expanded upon? These new iterations of the factions would initially be an option until all factions have experienced an overhaul, allowing for players to freely choose between the current, more balanced faction designs and the more experimental ones. Then, the team could in theory even turn around and continue the cycle of overhauls.

Here it is: https://hyiltiz.github.io/0ad-unit-analysis/ It shows 3 tables: - a table for all template units that shows the specs of a generic unit, e.g. a Cav Archer; - a table for Civ specific changes from the generic template unit; - a table for unit availability for all generic template units for each of the Civs Let me know if you have any specific ideas for improvements, preferably at #0ad-dev but I might check back here too. PRs are very welcome too! Story I wanted to work on something like this, and @Stan pointed out to me in #0ad that there is already a script in the repo at ./source/tools/templatesanalyzer/unitTables.py. Unfortunately, the script hasn't been updated substantly since 2014 and the script simply threw an error when I tried to run on the latest version of the game (A26, more specifically, the trunk r26182). I forked the directory so I can keep my commits small and with a specific theme to facilitate merge and auditing, as well as to publish it in Github so anyone can view it online without having to deal with SVN, HTML, JS, Python etc. As such, note that the majority of the program logic, design and program is NOT my own; it is based on previous work of fatherbush, Itms, scythetwir, wraitii and others(?). I will be trying to getting this merged into 0ad main repo soon. The idea of Mixins (like unit tags, e.g. hoplites who can use Phalanx formation) were introduced since this script was originally written, and currently I have not found a good way to represent them as part of the table, except just listing these Mixin tags as a list in a separate column. But that would be barely useful, so Mixin types are omitted at the moment.

Since I don't see a specific promotion subforum I'm posting here, let me know if I need to move this post somewhere else. To promote 0AD, BAR and any other Open Source RTS game there's some initiative from BAR to organize a bi or triathlon with BAR and 0AD as participants. We had a lot of success in the past with this format, one can find a previous iteration here: https://www.beyondallreason.info/news/rts-triathlon-bar-pa-faf-coming-this-saturday-5th-of-june From BAR side we can contribute with streamers, promotional material and effort, we are wondering if there would be any intent from 0AD to participate? I'd love to see top tier players from both games duking it out on each others main games. Let me know what you guys think.

An escalation xD

Hello The file Damage.js is not in the release version. This file removed 5 years ago Probably installed old mods? Try run with default mods: 0ad '-conf=mod.enabledmods:mod public' or check $PATH (probably old binary file) $ 0ad -version Pyrogenesis 0.0.25

I remain the opinion that the only way to content all groups is this (or anyways, the idea of 'splitting our civs into balancing groups that are internally balanced but externally not so much') You make the balancing problem much easier, which lets you make much larger roster changes because you don't have to make sure that Kushites won't be OP against Romans or something, and that lets you have some actual gameplay variety both between and within groups. I think people have made the other points already.

It seems to me that most people would agree with an experiment on a self-hosted gitlab instance. It seems mostly consensual to not store large binaries, including windows libs, in the repo (not the main repo anyways). I think it'd be great to start experimenting with the above setup. Steps I see: Having a script to copy the svn history over to git. I don't think this is vital to get 100% right for the experiment because we can still do the other steps. Creating scripts to handle binaries automatically, at the very least on Windows. Vital on windows, probably good on other platforms too. This includes "storing them somewhere" Once removed, we can see how heavy the repo is, and the make a decision on LFS, IMO. Set up some CI/CD with this. The existing jenkins script will need to be reworked. That's already quite a bit of work. IMO we need this to work well Set up ticketing & issues & stuff like that. Test out the workflow. Have a script to download Phabricator metadata (issues, comments) & ideally port-them over to Gitlab. I would prefer to port 100% of the data, but not necessarily keep 100% of the "formatting". If the inline comments aren't inlined properly on gitlab, it's perhaps OK. Again, for experimenting this can be refined later. If the above steps all work, then we already have a mirror that works, and we can refine the steps for an actual migration. I can offer help with these steps.

Huh. A very interesting candidate. His main feat was to storm the Roman siege walls one night, break through with his small party, steal some Roman horses, and then tour Central Iberia asking for help for the Numantines under siege. After every town he visited refused to help, he broke back into Numantia to eventually commit suicide when the defense became hopeless. An interesting character indeed. More "hero" than "famous leader" like most of the others in the game.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucenus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesarus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautalus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olyndicus https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retógenes_el_Caraunio (it is in Spanish but it is really a valid candidate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanginus Chalbus of the Tartesii:

I imagine in the years following a conquest there would be some sort of inflation as the old moneyed interests are liquidated. A period when that happens and before reconsolidation into the new economic power structure.

AAAAAaaahh!! makes sense!! I was doing the opposite, thinking it needed some data as stereo. Nice!! thanks so much! Gotta try and see if it works!

Some screens from the current build: https://github.com/stereotipo/millenniumad

I think the main issue with that, was that it was originally only going to give you different heroes and champions, and that was it. If it were to be designed today, I think the choice would be at the beginning. Leaving it until City Phase makes the "Hellenes" for example feel very generic, until you pick "Macedonians" in City phase and get Pikeman and Spear Cav champions. You lose out on all the Macedonian flavor in the early phases. No Thessalians. No Hypaspist champions. No Thracians. No unique architectural elements. No unique techs (until the very end). It wasn't a bad idea for its time, but we know so much more now about how these factions were unique (specifically militarily, when talking about the Greek civs). The original design had no Seleucids and their awesome War Elephants. The original design had no Ptolemaic Egyptians with their awesome architecture and mix of ethnicities. I could see something where you choose your "Civilization" in game setup. So, "Greeks" for example or "Successor States" or "Romans" or "Celts" or "Nomads", and then when the match starts you get a popup where you choose the "Faction" from that Civilization. So, Greeks -> Athenians, Spartans, Thebans. Successor States -> Macedonians, Seleucids, Ptolemies. Romans -> Republic, Principate, Dominate. Celts -> Gauls, Britons, Celtiberians. Nomads -> Scythians, Xiongnu, Huns. That way, your enemies know what Civilization you chose, but not which Faction until they scout you.

The story of Seleucus is in my list of screenplay ideas. Han Chinese are a very large and extremely influential civilization. Scythians and Xiongnu are civilizations that span the breadth of Asia and link East with West. They'd also add all-new gameplay possibilities. Honestly, Scythians and Xiongnu would probably be refreshing to a lot of people (even if hard to balance; but again, there's no rule to state you'd have to allow them in your rated multiplayer matches [we can can include a Random/Settle Civilizations option that excludes nomads, see:DE]; also, we could surprise ourselves and actually balance them fairly well, we don't know yet). That's fine. I just think 1 or more new civs are eventually going to be added. You'll probably enjoy them even if they don't fit your theme*. * Civs like Zapotecs and Maya and Olmecs (Mesoamericans, essentially) don't fit at all, we can agree on that. I still would like to see them as some kind of "official expansion" or mod in the download section eventually (perhaps as part of an Alpha release; a kind of "content" pack released in parallel).

Mauryas ended who? Kushites what? Spartans are largely a backwater, insular city state, but they're included because they are famous and fun and add diversity. Mauryas included because they are awesome and add diversity, but had zero contact with Rome. Kushites had a few minor border wars with Rome, but are included to add fun and diversity to the civ roster. Han could be included because "If the Chinese and Romans ever fought, who would win?!?!" is a super common what-if scenario people talk about. Plus they add diversity to the roster and the opportunity for new gameplay.

Indeed! If volunteer developers enjoy building new civs instead of doing other things, more power to them!

Indeed. A24 had more than double the changes than a more "regular" alpha, precisely because it had more than double the development period. Imagine the outcry some of the current players would have over the changes from Alpha to Alpha in the early days. lol. Each Alpha adding a slew of new features, new bugs, random stats changes, and entirely new civs! The horror.

Hence, this thread. I think part of Alistair's point in his rant video is that each Alpha will have a "flavor," based on the changing balance, changing meta, changing features, no matter what, and that's fine as long as new stuff is added and the game's design moves forward. Also, for "Balancers", isn't it fun to balance new things? Sure, you don't want an Alpha to come along and throw everything into complete chaos, but new civs and features to balance should be welcomed by someone who enjoys balancing these things, right?

I have played 0 AD since mid A23. And I personally feel that there has been to much focus on balance and not enough on actual game improvement. Specifically I am referring to things that make civilizations feel and play uniquely. A24 was a net loss of Civ features for something that already felt like a full fledged game with differentiated civs, it just needed a little balancing to ranged siege and slingers and it would be fine. Then further differentiation of civs could have been done to flesh things out. A25 while nice is still just A24, now with a skirmisher meta, extra blacksmith goodies and better pathfinding. I really hope A26 returns some of the sparkle from A23.

Question for discussion: Why should the "Balance Team" have any say in what features get added to the game? Isn't it their duty to balance the features the team decide to add? That's not to say Balance team members can't participate in gameplay feature discussions. But those are two different roles. You can't come into a gameplay feature discussion and then derail it with constant balance concerns. You have to go into a feature discussion with a mind toward expanding the game's features in good faith. My latest discussions on Phabricator have had a few mentions of balance, but all-in-all have been a fruitful discussion about making the gameplay feature work. The exact statistics can always be decided later through gameplay experience and with input from Balancers. Again, Features and Balance are linked in the end, but they are 2 different things. You add the former, then try to do the latter. If it can't be balanced, then the feature can be removed, but you can't know a feature's balance until it's tried.

@LetswaveaBook I'm happy to hear that you are open to new ideas, but there are some forum members who (from what I know and experienced) have a very what I would call "conservative" view of what changes should be made and what not. There have been things said like "if you want to change something put it in a mod, but please leave the main game alone" or the very liberal use of the confused smiley on every new idea and proposal. Which are very legitimate opinions, so no hard feelings, but that's doesn't create the feeling that changes are welcome.

You give an extra load on the lobby, because you have to download stuff, and all the clients of the game needs to keep pinging it to know if there are updates. It's possible that it would introduce some security flaw where the person(s) currently having fun ddosing players (and sometimes it seems the server) might inject other fancy stuff. While assuming we have recurrent updates, a mod with team verification on modio with manual download seems much more secure and requires much less infrastructure. Secondary attacks, attack ground, mixed gender citizen soldiers, scouts... probably a lot more. I believe @Freagarach was working on something that could allow directional damage. And because I'm a jolly mood, the hans

Sorry, that feels like a no-true-scotsman fallacy to me. Yes, everyone wants both balance and new features, but the important distinction is which one you prefer when you can't have both. It seems like this community ends up picking balance over features every time. Perhaps a more useful framing of the problem is that the project's consensus view of what constitutes balance is too narrow for its own good. It's not enough that every strategy has a viable counter; that counter must be tuned to an exacting level of minimal surplus efficiency to preserve the soft counter character of the game. Moreover, you have to do this with consideration to every single civilization in the game. If a new feature makes any one of the game's dozen civilizations grossly over or underpowered then it is automatically not fit for purpose. And forget about trying to deliberately change the nature of any particular strategy or counter relationship, or majorly adjust the unit roster available to any civilization. The community has certain expectations about how things are supposed to look in 0 AD. The problem is, when combining all those constraints the only valid solution is gridlock. With counter margins so finely tuned, every single tiny simulation or stat difference triggers a cascade of unacceptable changes that must be fastidiously counteracted every patch, eating up development energy. Meanwhile, anyone trying to contribute new features has to run a gauntlet of predicting and adjusting for every balance implication across every combination of civs. It is simply not possible to innovate successfully in such an environment. To get out of this rut, this community needs to accept that 1. it is worth breaking things to add features, and 2. that a more bold, rough-strokes approach to balance and counter design will cause less balance problems while the game is in heavy development. Otherwise I think 0AD should accept that its game design has fully matured to its natural conclusion, and slap a beta number on the next update.

Yes, this is the kind of mindset that would be great for every balancer to have, would even go as far as calling it a must-have.

If you look at the forum history, the people who were loudest about the a24 being imbalanced were the same people who said a24 was bland and uniform louder than anyone else and they did so from the very start. If anything, it was the casual players who received a24 best, but that also came to pass and I am not here trying to point fingers. And if you look at the ongoing conversations in the balancing community, most concern how we can (re)introduce aspects of the game that lost in a24 or have never been developed. For example, look at the threads @wowgetoffyourcellphone posted where he and I had several productive conversations that hopefully will materialize into new, balanced features that will make everyone happy. Saying "people who care about balance make the game boring" is wrong and unproductive. People who care about balance can also care about it being interesting, fun, and dynamic. People who care about balance simply want new features to be balanced in addition to being new.

I will be picky here. It does not mean that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design, it only resulted in that many of 0 AD's design choices are near sighted and balanced =/= good design. This wasn't doomed to happen, but it did. I don't think the size of the team is the problem. The main problem is that balance advisors rarely make a differential, or concretely suggest one. Hmmm.... Do you have evidence for that? What is probably closer to the truth is that Balancing team=more imbalances. In my view most inballances that are in A25 are either introduced by the balance changes or they were present in A24 and nobody cared about them. It would have been easy to make a mod that gives players 2 metal mines o mainland, but the balancing team did not push such a mod forward. If such a mod were there, then a number of inbalances would have been solved before we went to A25, but here we are. If you took a look at the scenario editor in A24, you would have seen that skirmishers are good for something, but nobody in A24 could imagine that they were useful. What this community needs is a mentality of complain about it & fix it. It is better to continuously have balance mods being tested rather than having only changes every alpha. If people complain about Roman/Iberian champion cavalry, they are childish. Because if they were smart and really bothered they would make a mod with better balance, nothing is stopping them to mod 0AD. Blaming anyone but the balancing team for imbalances is hypocrite. I like the coral-idea though and I think new features should be not judged on balance. When new things are inbalanced, the balancing team should solve that while keeping the feature intact.

That is true, but imbalances are a natural part of the process, so it is unavoidable in some ways. The biggest issue, in my opinion, isn't that the game can become imbalanced, but that once it does, patches and fixes will only roll out 6-8months later. I'm somewhat aware of the hurdles of changing compiled code, but still can't understand why smaller changes (like numerical tweaks in the template .xml files) can't be updated more regularly, especially since theses changes can be easily modded. This way we wouldn't be so afraid of imbalances, since they could be fixed after a few weeks of discussion.

Personally the house walling concept is something I dislike; they take away the idea of using other structures for defence like... walls. I think that a soft way of punishing that sort of tactic would be to allow a town phase technology that allows infantry to set buildings on fire. If they are too close together, the fire would spread, but I digress. Walling with buildings is nothing new to RTS games. What we want to think about is ways of providing more nuance. Another thing blacksmith adjacency could do is award experience to units trained from nearby barracks. Honestly there are so many cool, thematic synergies that have remained unexplored that could add some much needed spice to the economic/base building side of the game.

I agree on this plan for reworking civs one by one, this is my vision as well. I think all these good intentions could get into the game easier if there was a shorter term balancing calendar of the game, independent on the engine upgrades and the main releases.

This is the worst kind of mindset for a balancer to have imo. And i'd still say that A23 balance was superior and the civs were more unique.

Lol. This is why we can't have nice things.

May I say that, while there certainly is a conservative faction within the multiplayer community, it doesn't represent all of it. Liking to play against peers doesn't involve disliking the game to change. Balance is important for MP, buy one may disagree on how to pursue it.

I feel like you missed something when reading the first post. How would that fix the point that the factions are just kind of bland and lack unique features?