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Dang, why is random civ so complicated? perhaps it should just be..... fully random?

A meat shield is efficient Doesn't mean the people in it are not treated like trash. Crossbowmen were peasants given a crossbow. So cheap and expendable. Crossbow taking down buildings sounds terrible...

Fight the tyranny of the Archbishop as the Adrestian Empire or defend the "Holy Church" as the Knights of Seiros! Journey across Fodlan and take part in some of Fire Emblem's most iconic battles, but this time in an RTS format. As rumors of war begin to formulate in the surrounding villages due to the tensions between the Church of Seiros and the Empire, the Archbishop, Lady Rhea, forms an army in secret just in case the rumors become fact, what happens next is something entirely different than what she had expected and it all began with three students being chased in the woods by bandits... Release Date: TBD An Empire in the Making (View Original Post) The Adrestian Empire is located at the south end of Fodlan bosting the famous Black Eagle house to represent them at Garreg Mach Monastery which lies at the center of Fodlan. It is said that the founding of the Adrestian Empire was aided by Lady Seiros when they helped her defeat Nemesis (The King of Liberation). The "Crest of Seiros" runs through their family bloodline as a gift from the goddess for lending their strength to Lady Seiros. The Black Eagle house was named after the traditionally black armor of the Adrestian knights and the twin-headed eagle on the Empire's coat of arms. The Black Eagles' attendants this year are as follows: Edelgard (The only child left of House Hresvelg and the only heir to the throne of the Adrestian Empire), Hubert (House Vestra), Bernadetta (Only daughter of House Varley), Ferdinand (House Aegir, in line to become the next Prime Minister of the Empire), Capar (One of the sons of House Bergliez), Linhardt (House Hevring), Petra (House Macneary and in line for the throne of Brigid), Dorothea (The only commoner in Black Eagle). Help Wanted: If anyone wishes to help in the development of this mod we will be grateful to hear from you on our Discord Server. We are currently in the need of a 3d modeler, music help, and some artists. If you wish to help in any other way then you are always welcome on our team. Thank you. Fire Emblem: Three Wars Reddit Fire Emblem: Three Wars Discord Server Fire Emblem: Three Wars Mod DB Page

lol for me none han. If the Han civ design was intended to be "trash cs, OP economy, OP champions, OP cs cavalry" then the economic advantages and units need to be changed, because that is not a good design. To be honest, the Han don't need an anti-cavalry ranged unit or a mobile crush unit. They already have great siege in late game and extremely powerful options in general from p1 to p3. The main thing to consider is that their citizen soldier units are bad, they should be as good as normal civs units. Citizen solider crossbows are both redundant (between cavalry and infantry) and bad, so it feels like Han are swamped with this terrible unit that people will avoid making. That is a great tragedy. Can you copy the patch link?

Did a few 2v2s and 3v3s, tried han, merc cav, ptols, cav speed in general cav acceleration is fine in my opinion, might be worse during lag Occasional lag spikes after mouse action, it seemed a variety of actions can trigger this lag spike Han CS infantry seem to be pretty bad (I suggest turning the CS infantry xbow into a "Chu Ko Nu" unit like from Aoe2, with slinger range, bad accuracy, and dps of skirmisher with high repeat rate and longer prepare time). Otherwise there are too many redundant types of crossbow for han, excluding the champion crossbow which at first seems very op. Sword cav in p1 are powerful, but it seems skirm cav might be ok vs them Han farms are too fast. I know there has already been a .6 to .5 change of their rate, but I suggest giving them identical farming rate to basic civs (including 5 woman on farm). I think small area farms are a fantastic buff for food eco security by themsleves. I think the merc changes are probably not enough, but I will wait for more testing to be sure. Maybe HP value increases of ranking up cav can be changed to be same as infantry. Replays: In one replay with 2v3, you can see merc cav from kush, iberian cav rush, and han champ crossbow In another replay with 2v2 you can see ptolemies and Han p1 swordcav rush In another replay with 3v3 you can see old civs but plenty of cav and firecav gameplay. metadata.json commands.txt metadata.json commands.txt metadata.json commands.txt

KpitenBobZy quit a rated game. commands.txt metadata.json

As I played the campaign, I truly enjoy 0ad's single-player experience. The use of trigger scripts always makes the missions exciting and a real struggle to complete, but all the more rewarding when you actually win them. Favourite single-player mod to date.

I think this represents the core problem of the balancing team.

https://play0ad.com/summary-of-attendance-at-the-stunfest-2022/

because units overlap with eachother, so 4 may almost look like one.

Millet Porridge (小米粥） (not people porridge, not to be confused with 'bir millet iki devlet ...' )

I suppose you can create your own game mode for that

As I can farmsteads and storehouses. (With the Han.)

I think this largely agreed to.

It loses to any cavalry even plain javelin cavalry loses handily to spearmen despite costing 35 metal like skiritai spearcav can kill them very easily. So the main concern is its speed yes, I think @real_tabasco_sauce could tone it down a bit so that its easier to catch and trap them, but overall the unit is much more balanced than a p1 gimmick.

xbow issues: infantry CS have 45 range cav CS 50 have range cav champ have 55 range the cav champs are way stronger than mace xbows and they are also on a horse, the infantry are really weak, and the same is true for the CS cavalry crossbows. In general, the vision for a crossbow unit is very inconsistent not only across the Han but also across civs. The range stats for xbows should be unified for sure (if any difference is to be had, the cavalry Xbows should be less accrurate). However, If the infantry CS should have a different role (ie. skirm or sling range, higher dps by perhaps repeat time/damage buff), then maybe they should get a new name. If they don't get a new name, then maybe this could simply become the distinction between champ and CS crossbows. This distinction would have to be clarified in game i imagine. To be honest: i think we shouldn't have "trash" units, but thats my opinion.

Two more Han related things. 1. As the Ministers can enter all (?) buildings, I really would like all buildings to be able to set rally points. I always send my units into a specific direction from a building, but with farmsteads and storehouses I can't do that. Would it help if I considered that additional micro which would go against the design document? 2. If I'm not mistaken the civs have different chances to be selected when playing with a random civ; do we have a table somewhere showing those probabilities, and where do the Han range? I think ~half the games I started with random civ in this version was with Han, that would be quite a high percentage.

Do note that techs and auras are in JSON files and in another folder @Freagarach is trying to get rid of that IIRC Also custom stats on the host are not an option due to the fact that all the players must have them.

Sure my point is that the easy workaround is a mod.io mod that you download through the mod downloader and update when you need to to match other players You can have four balancing mods with different gameplay and ask people to download them.

XML files are precached as XMB, and they need to come in a mod preferably in a zip for bandwith. You cannot add new files while the game is running too, only edit existing ones. Exception being maps when generated in atlas, because we force the reloading. You also need to restart the game to load a mod, and you need a mod.json

No the issue here is security. The only mods you should be able to download are mods from mod.io. Yeah I'm setupping gitlab.wildfiregames.com. Currently looking at migrating trac there. However there are 1680 accounts (I have to create gitlab users to match) there and I need to downgrade to Gitlab 11 for the migration script to work.

Some games allow you to to download maps from the multiplayer screen. If mods could be applied like this, just like a "use map settings", then I think mods could take off a lot better. One problem with this could be the size. This problem could be alleviated, maybe, by including more community art that is not yet in the main game but could be referenced by mods and therefore wouldn't require downloading. Some kind of check for identical files would speed things up. I have tons of other ideas for decreasing things like file sizes and numbers, like even using the new "mixin" feature for templates.

Yeah, I tire of these discussions. You guys figure it out.

I agree with this concept, I think a single player and multiplayer mode would also provide a healthy competition between the mods which gives people the chance to evaluate the differences. Yes you can just download another mod in the mods screen , but I think that when you start a multiplayer game, having a checked default "multiplayer mode" would be very helpful, because then everyone knows this is a mode designed specifically for competitive play.

From my understanding there are Jewish people who actually take both sides of the debate so I don't actually see how it is necessarily antisemitic to take any particular position. Apparently the Jewish scholar Arthur Koestler argued for khazars being Jewish because he wanted to actually dismantle antisemitic attitudes which drew a continuity between Biblical Hebrews and the modern Jews.

I think keeping the ice houses like this is the best alternative at the moment. Yes it will be necessary for a good amount of people to test both patches. I'm looking to improve the Persian architecture technology and maybe add one more unique technology, any suggestions guys?

Or collision circles really need to be increased... and if that requires reducing unit counts so the engine will remain performant then so be it. What is the point of having 800 units on screen if you cannot clearly see a single one of them because they all congeal into a single undifferentiable blob of human neutronium?

I updated the current civs and random maps present in the mod, then I will look closely at bugs that may have gone unnoticed and after that I will start adding more civ, I believe I will start with the Thebans because they are easy to adapt and finish.

European antisemitism. There are people who accuse the Jews of being Khazars.

First I will "fix" the Zapotecs and Xiongnu in the Terra Magna repository using preferably their mods with unitary civs, after that I will add the other civs. Anyone who has time and wants to help, even playing games and checking technologies and bonuses, I'm terrible at it. Duileoga and I are creating a new line of tecs for the Mayans and a lot can be used with the Zapotecs. Much of the delay will be mine in finding the time to apply them.

people seem very eager to discuss hypothetical balance changes and debate what to do, but not so eager to discuss the balance of actual changes. i have had 2 balancing advisor feedback on this (quite significant) change for hyrcanian cavalry: I made a mod and a patch, but still very little feedback from balancing people.

Realistically, I think those would help with pure balance efforts, but: We aren't giving commit access to balancers on SVN, and it's unlikely that the switch to git would help much on its own (not even mentioning that git is rather complex to use). Giving access to just the balance data requires splitting the 0 A.D. mod from the public mod, & then actually using svn or git for it. All of this is work. Stan has plans for a gitlab migration, but progress is slow for lack of time. Splitting the 0 A.D. and public mod is also work and will lead to interesting problems of synchronisation and things like that. It's entirely possible that it will actually make development slower overall. --- The only real option I see now is to make an official copy of the relevant parts of the public mod after A26, and then let players modify that mod while distributing it. But only assume A26 compatibility. Then nearing the end of the A26 cycle, look where that mod is, and bring back the relevant changes. This of course assumes that the engine hasn't changed substantially in-between, which may or may not be a fair bet.

An idea: make unit stats adjustable during game setup, and all players use the stats stored on the host's computer. This resolves all of the balancing issues on the forum, no need to trouble the developers and players can decide the stats of units for balance. There will be no more balancing conundrum.

Anyone is free to give their time to set this up. It's just writing. No one in the currently active dev team or forum members at large seems to be up for it, unfortunately. I think the problem is actually that balance should be more accessible to the developers. We don't really know what we need to do at any given time because few of us actually have the time (or indeed the motivation) to play the game. I don't think a direction is 'needed', nor do I think this project is likely to die soon. There are several active & semi-active developers, and we have renewed somewhat regular releases compared to years past. People care, and so long as one person cares, the project isn't dead. Now to discuss some finer points There is one thing that must be understood: there is no 'deciding' what people do in 0 A.D. You literally cannot force them to do something else. Even if there was a 'decider', their decision power with regards to the 'majority of work' is zero. The 'balance' problem isn't that we don't have a decider, it's that we have no-one actually working on it. Stan is currently working a potential GitHub migration. I think he doesn't have enough time for it though. Help there would likely be much appreciated. But you should expect to be doing most of the effort in reaching out & getting told what to do. I think it would be a great way to help the project if you're up for it, but it's not going to be easy. - 0 A.D. used to have a 'decision maker' to a large extent on gameplay decisions. They day he left was one of those 'almost killed the project' days. Yet it endured. No solutions are risk-free, and no solutions are perfect. But a hard reality, that I cannot stress enough, is that someone taking their time and effort to get anything actually committed is worth more than any endless discussion on the forums.

Hmm, interesting points from everyone who's chimed in I think. I think the real question now is, where do we go from here? Personally, given the feedback and notes from everyone in this topic/thread, I'm thinking the following: We need an easy way to communicate things that have been completed, and/or progress on the project; since not all of it is apparent. Balance, somehow, needs to be more accessible to the communty; and changes to balance need to be added to the primary 0ad repo, not a fork. Some level of direction is needed; I'm probably out of the loop, and way off base with this, but it seems that the project is kind-of just "going" ... but not necessarily towards a specific destination. We REALLY somehow need to improve morale in the community ... honestly these posts seem to be quite a downer. We have to get over this rut and move forward with a positive outlook. The community, and internal view of the project very much dictates external impressions; at least in my opinion it does to some degree. If anyone has any adjustments/additions to that list ... please make mention and number them accordingly. Of course, if one of my numbered items there, seems invalid, we can just delete it and consider it not a priority. So now ... I have a proposal! The proposal is ... If you post a problem, post a solution. If you don't have a solution, state how you imagine things would be if the problem was solved; as that would at least give us a destination, but not how to get there. So to practice what I preach ... here's some possible solutions to the points above: Further breakdown project milestones/versions (for example A27) into subprojects. There are a couple options here ... we could have an overarching goal for the milestone (for example, "Refactor rendering to remove nvtt and make way for vulkan support"; completely guessing here lol). Then during A27, the majority of work would be on that. Another option could be to have subprojects for the milestone; for example, Art could have a goal, Balance could have a goal, etc, etc. Then once they're all complete, A{n} is complete. Another possibly better option could be to have alternating milestone focus. So for example, in the case of A27. Maybe A27.0 could be focused on getting balance stuff in (maybe it's only a 1 or 2 week sprint). Then after that A27.1 would focus on non-balance related things. This would give time for the devs to do what they want, while also dedicating some time to balance issues. With solution 1 there ... there are some things that could help this. Alternativelty, if balance is just mostly xml configurations ... there could be some functionality added (idk if it's already there), to allow people to merge balance configurations. So for example, have a balance menu in-game where they could select the xml to load settings from. Then optionally, have an in-game balance vote (for example after a SP or MP game), on what the players thought of the balance. This would give some real feedback on each balance configuration, and differences/implications could be drawn when comparing concrete versions of the settings. It would give balance people and programmers a better technical understanding of what setting influences balance the most, or at least is the most controversial. Direction can come with the solution in point 1. Honestly ... my thought is that having a stream if tickets isn't the best solution for projects goal-wise. It doesn't give a clear outlook of progress (in my opinion). Having smaller goals would give a better sense of completion. Seeing those goals accumulate will give a better sense of success. One idea here would be to adopt something with some kind of project-based progress bars. The visual feedback of it is amazing in my mind. For example, there's this https://github.com/opf/openproject With it you can do progress bars like these: Of course, this is just an example, there's probably other software out there that does the same. Maybe gitlab does this? (just checked, it does, here's a screenshot) Ultimately, if we can have something like this on the homepage, that could be cool too! It could be a point-of-interest for anyone looking at the project ... if they're interested in helping, having current workings, or areas of real need posted publicly would be a benefit; and I think would draw in more people. Part of increasing morale is not to focus on the problems, or negatives, but solutions. That's part of the proposal above, and what I'm trying to do in posting these ideas. I REALLY want to see this project succeed and grow. Part of making that happen is being the change I want to see. So ... that was a bit of a brain dump lol. Thoughts? @Stan`I know (or at least it seems) much of the management side of things is on your shoulders. I'd be happy to help with project management where needed. I'd even go through the trouble of building a project management solution for the team if it's needed (I've honestly wanted to for a while lol ... but never had a specific target in mind); but that might be extreme. On a side note ... personally, I've worked for a few companies in the past years (not boasting or anything, don't take it that way ... I'm just using it as my reference of experience) ... all of which had some critical issues with project management. Unfortunately in my position(s) at the time ... I wasn't able to do much to change the management practices for the better. Here ... I'm starting with throwing out some ideas; if people like it, good, if not ... then we can adjust/delete/create/adapt as needed. To some degree, yes. Too much openness is bad, especially when no-one is declared the final decision maker. This is true in many cases. One that comes to mind (I've been watching a lot of Gordon Ramsay lately lol), is in businesses like hotels, restaurants. With a group of "owners", if there's no-one who has a final say, decisions rot. Part of what Ramsay does is instill a position of power in a single person ... that changes the entire organization, and how it runs as a whole. Maybe having a elected "official" would help the project. Alternatively ... we could also adopt a voting system of sorts, where solutions are presented, and voted on with a deadline within the community. Of course, there's a ton of ways about this. We could also make the project configurable by default. So like ... at any point if there's something that's a core concern, or clear divide in the community ... make a checkbox for it ... then we get BOTH those sides remaining interested, while also satisfying their personal needs/opinions. As always ... everyone please post ideas/feedback, thanks for reading my rambles!

I can't fix that. As they said below, blaming a department for somethings that is other department task isn't the way, this is fine for social media average comment section, Already here in the forum you can already see that not all of us do the same task, so you can see how a game is developed. But if you try to contribute to that change....you can: Invite people, share the game, pressure the team(little) no like this, I have been patiently pressing for years. The only thing is that the ideas stagnate, I keep them. I save for laters, not only my personal ideas. Sometimes I open tickets without abusing. That reminds me to open those tickets. And bring out those ideas and discussions.

A good community manager is something we've been lacking indeed.

Most of those changes are not visible to end users regardless of how badly they were needed. Gamesetup rewrites, renderer refactorings and SM upgrades don't mean much to anyone who don't follow development closely. Only a subset of changes are userfacing and of those only the very best or the very worst get noticed, and you won't bother posting about how good something is compared to when something is bad. From an outsider looking in, it would seem that rarely anything gets changed and half of those changes that do happen are straight up disasters. Not that development is currently going on at breakneck speed. There were efforts to properly communicate actual progress on a monthly basis quite recently as well, but that's a story for another time.

that makes totally sense actually. at the present rate though, the game will be finished in half a century, in fact it probably won't unless there is some kind of spur. the game is progressing so slow that it's practically stuck: major mechanics, like capturing and deleting buildings, even though they're considered to be brocken, are not being touched for years. I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game, and that the best way to do that is to have more people contribute to and test the gameplay trough a faster release cycle, in the form of a recommended mod for multiplayer, that gets automatically downloaded in some way. it shouldn't be hard to make up a simple and secure way to make this work. what do you think it would be a good solution?

An option with respect to that is letting people download mods from mod.io, not the host, but fetch the list of mods from the host. It's essentially the same thing but you don't need to trust the host so much. That feature I think we only miss for lack of trying. --- Now with that being said: I think one thing that gets forgotten in this discussion a little is that the project is still given as an alpha. The snail pace is sort of OK. It's actually less idle now than 3 years ago, for example. Should it 'die' in number of players, well it can just be rebooted later with a different visions since the objectors will have moved on. This is a different ballpark entirely to commercial endeavours, which must succeed. We can fail time and time again and it doesn't really matter.

Hackers are targeting everything. There are some groups specialized in massive attacks against specific targets but most hackers are alone and independant, looking for easy targets to keep them busy, to learn new tricks and to earn a bit of fame. Sadly, security is mandatory everywhere and people thinking otherwise are naive.

In general I would agree, but the DDOSers have lived to tell a different story. You also wouldn't know what you download. e.g. a modified small balancing mod could contain nasty JS code that does things it shouldn't. This is actually why we have mod signatures on mod.io. It's not fool proof, but we check all the mods submitted there. I believe it's the reason other than "Nobody coded it" why we don't have automatic download.

@Sevda had a good concrete-suggestion on another thread: Make it easier to play mods by automatically syncing with the host when joining a modded multiplayer game. Their post implies a host-client simulation architecture that I assume would require completely redesigning the net code (so that is unlikely to happen), but could not the same effect be achieved by just having the players' clients automatically download and install the mod files from the host? (Subject to all parties' affirmative consent obviously.) For very large mods like DE this installation method would take a long time, but for small balance changes it ought to be pretty snappy. From a casual user's perspective this would make playing modded multiplayer content more like having custom map rules. It would allow more people to very easily experiment with new gameplay innovations, without effectively forking the project into two separate versions with the attendant doubling of the code-maintenance workload, as discussed previously. Maybe there are some valid cybersecurity arguments why one would not want to support a feature like that, but this might be a case this requires soberly considering a tradeoff. 0AD is niche entertainment software with an active user base of a few thousands maybe, it's not exactly a prime target for black hats to exploit. Maybe at worst someone with a grudge might think use this nefariously against specific objects of their ire. On the other side of the scale, I think the discussion on this and other threads demonstrate a pervasive consensus that this project is stuck in a creative crisis... Badly stuck. There are too many objectors coming out of the woodwork any time someone suggests serious design or organizational reforms that might let 0AD get un-mired from its dubiously balanced, half-finished state. The only other option you have is to start removing barriers to independent creatives to realize their own visions of the game's future, and then hope that a new consensus organically coalesces around one of these offerings so that it can become the new roadmap for 0AD:EA proper. link to the other thread:

Both Vali and I (and possibly some others) have created some mods to change the flow of the game, But it is difficult to convince players to try these modification. Even if you get players to play the mod, then it did not have a lasting effect: It still takes considerable effort to find players to join a game with modded settings. 95% of the players in the lobby are unlikely to try any mods. Vali and I have tried to pushed to try some lobby games with mods, but both of us had trouble to find enough people that wanted to try something different. As long as that mentality doesn´t change offering lobby players the option to download a mod won´t result in anything. I uploaded a mod on mod.io that allows you to research tier 2 forge upgrades in phase 2. Since it is on mod.io, it is super easy to install and can be done when you go to setting>mod selection>download mods in the game menu. As easy as that. No need to go to the forum, download the correct file and unpack it in the right folder. However I failed to get more than a few responses on the mod. In the end I think it is a bad thing: we don´t know if something is an improvement or not and we don´t get any experiences about what changes would improve the dynamic of the game. If you want the lobby to try changes to the game as @wraitii suggested, then I would say that you would need to create a ¨(semi) progressive mod¨ for A26 that features changes and make it the standard. Then players that do nothing use and test the new changes. Then also give players the option to use a conservative mod that allows people to play A26 in a way that is closer to A25. I think even some minor changes to technologies and templates could improve the flow of the game significantly.

I feel like that is the point of that discussion... I mean I listed there all I tried... Maybe I'm missing the point ? How about having custom techs that get applied on match start ? That doesn't really scale on cross platform. Some Debian and Ubuntu still have Alpha23 0ad packaging badges - Repology Plus as you pointed out nobody wants to use mods, so even if we had an experimental empires ascendant mod on mod.io decoupled from the game nobody would use it. Not to mention some changes like C++ ones cannot be decoupled. I don't see a perfect solution. The autoupdated thing is usually frowned upon in the linux world too, with the exception of some distros. @vv221 @Locynaeh

Sorry, but it sounds hard. Changes to the pathfinder made cavalry very strong, so engine changes would affect both mods. Also, we'd need to maintain both mods, two times the work and duplication.

I think it would be arcade mode vs simulation/realistic mode.(kind LARP).

I propose a solution to this problem: separate multiplayer mode and singleplayer mode. We can allow 2 main mods instead of 1: 0ad-relaxed and 0ad-hardcore. For people who want to enjoy relaxed games, good graphics and new features, they can activate the 0ad-relaxed mod. This should also be the default option as it is friendly to newcomers. Within this, the developers can add whatever cool features they want and no-one will ever complain! The developers should commit all of their new features to this mod. This will prevent lobby players who complain about balancing issues from hindering the development of the game. For hardcore lobby players who want stagnant features for balance, they should activate 0ad-hardcore mod, which focuses much more on balancing at the cost of new features and art. Within this, I would recommend implementing Feldmap, vividcolours and autociv by default (I cannot play without these nowadays). We can even have different pathfinders and AIs within this! Changes should not be made to 0ad-hardcore unless there is a concensus across the competitive playerbase. This would also eliminate the problem of inexperienced players ruining TGs: they are unlikely to know how to activate mods nor would they actively try to, so there is a natural filter for hosts. By the time someone is willing to activate the mod and use it regularly, they are likely qualified for TGs. The two mods should be updated separately each alpha. Furthermore, we can make mods to fix imbalances and convince other players to install our mods. Again, this removes inexperienced players from pro games without hurting their feelings. @Stan` Does my idea sound reasonable? After playing this game for 2 years as both AI player and lobby player, I think splitting the 2 groups is the easiest solution. It is certainly acheivable from a technical point of view.

i will post separately, because for some reason comands and metadata can be attached only separately and different ones get mixed up sometimes. 1st one: metadata.json commands.txt second one: metadata.json commands.txt third one: metadata.json commands.txt fourth one: metadata.json commands.txt

Thanks for the games, @vinme! BTW, I organized and zipped your replays, so that anyone can just unpack it into the replay folder and go. 2022-05-04-vinme.zip