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Currently the Scythian Archer's SpecificName is just a word for word translation into Greek: Toxótēs (archer) Skythikós (Scythian) I have done a lot of research about the Scythian Archers for the encyclopedia and I couldn't find any sources backing up this name (if you search it on Google, literally all results will be related to 0ad) And yes, I am aware that for most units the SpecificName is just a direct word by word translation of the Generic name. But if there is another name backed up by historical evidence, why not use that one? That's why I suggest to rename them to Speusinioi (that's plural, singular is Speusinos?). The Scythian archers are in several pieces of ancient Greek literature called Speusinioi, named after a certain Speusinos or Speusis, the person who allegedly established the Scythian Archer force in Athens.

One of the main features of 0ad that serves to make civs often play very similarly is that many units are totally equal for some civs. Another issue is how simple many unit roles are (think meatshield/sniper meta). Unit specific upgrades is an attempt to differentiate unit roles and create some situational upgrade clicking as opposed to "must get" like the current military upgrades are. Unit specific upgrades could also help create more specific roles for units, depending on the situation. Considering civ balance and civ playstyles, some civs might not get all the unit specific upgrades for each of their units. This would make them maybe not "unique techs", but certainly "non-universal" techs. Consider that in Aoe2 there are many similar units (people who like games to be "cool" don't like this, hence aoe4). Japanese get every tech that is available for cav archers, meanwhile a couple other civs have access to less techs but have specific bonuses regarding cav archers. This creates differentiation in when and how cav archers are best used for that civilization. I'm not saying that we should be Aoe2, but I am saying that this is a very effective way to make "the same" units play very differently. To give an example from earlier, someone mentioned "longer pikes" (one of the unit specific upgrades). It seems like it won't have much gameplay effect, but the crucial aspect is that is has greater effect in certain situations (ie chokepoints, getting hits on cav). This is really fun compared to the plain old +armor, +damage techs.

! From one of the meme disussions in off-topic.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/6873

I was more addressing the eco change proposal. But thanks for the feedback. Always good to have input. -------------- With respect to the actual forum thread topic, I would like to encourage others to try to come up with ideas that aren't just techs. Techs that modify an already existing template are a little gimmicky and lazy. Most techs also put us in a "race to push all the buttons." I would also say that the most interesting civ differentiators aren't techs. They are the inherent civ bonuses/features like Iber's walls, Iber's skirm discount, Athens' phrasing bonus, Mace's automatic tech research times, etc. These are differentiators that create really unique strategies and build orders, and are not just a "race to push all the tech buttons"

Some years back I received a great A2 poster from the 0ad community leader on a local Linux Weeks event when I had an information desk next to the one from 0ad. I have had many FSFE information desks since using this poster as part of my material. After so many years it has become worn out and I wonder if I can get a new poster to replace my old one. I didn't find any such thing on the 0ad web page yet. So I wonder if any of you around here do have a hint for me where I could get one. I am a graphic designer and could create my own, but I would prefer to use an official poster if there is one. I have attached an image of the poster I still use.

Indeed, techs that effect other things like reach (range), acceleration (maybe a ship rowing tech), Counters (maybe steel arrows for a bonus vs. Elephants), or unlock things like extra ranks or make promotions easier to attain ("tradition" techs) are far more interesting.

Yeah. Those are great but mostly limited to p3. Differentiation should be more than tech trees and one of two unique OP units for each civ. We're running out of our ability to differentiation through unique units too as more and more civs get their own unique units (Romans got their own last alpha, same with Persia, etc.)

I think it could be used, perhaps as a tech pair similar to the seleucids. But for the time being, I think we want to see how the current changes play out.

Bro I'm so confused

So then @krt0143, what would you like done about rams? I have seen a lot of comments but no succinct suggestions. I proposed something I thought you would be interested in earlier, but maybe you didn't see it.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5008

Didn't say it was, what I meant is that as long as I don't throw a tantrum because my favorite feature isn't implemented yet, I think it is okay to talk about things "which would be nice to have, eventually, if possible, etc.". Call it brainstorming. After all nobody can think of everything himself. Didn't try elephants yet, but I'd be tempted to agree: A charging elephant must be very efficient -- and quite terrifying too: Elephants should have a (short range!) enemy malus aura, especially against civilizations not used to beasts this size. Imagine people without TV or books, for whom the biggest animal existing is a horse, suddenly seeing an elephant! Must be a traumatic event... Sure, but also very different, because the priorities are very different: It's not about being fair to both players, it's exclusively about giving the human player an interesting challenge. ("Difficult" if you can't manage "interesting", but that's really just the last resort choice.) One could say the requirements are contradictory, and it wouldn't be totally wrong. The challenge is finding a good compromise... I too think gameplay is more important (but I think you got that by now... ).

Please correct me if I'm wrong. Rams are balanced in PvP, assuming equal skill for both Ps. Rams are not balanced in SP, which is PvAI. That may mean one of two things, IMHO: PvAI needs a different balance PvAI is of unequal skill In the first post, the P in PvAI thought the rams are too strong, due to being overwhelmed by them. Then the P learned how to counter rams. In the later posts, the AI "thinks" the rams are too strong, due to being overwhelmed by them. Doesn't that point to the AI not being able to cope with being attacked by rams? (I'm not saying that the use of rams can't be changed to achieve a different balance.) Sadly, agreed.

Having enjoyed the game a lot, I recently thought that I would look to jump in and start helping by picking up some issues and seeing if I could fix them. 0-AD is a fantastic game, and the amount of work that has gone into it is amazing. However, there are a few friction points that may not be obvious to those that have been working with the project for a while. Personally I cannot wait until decisions around git hosting and development workflow changes (many of which are impacted by work associated with this thread) are implemented. Some thoughts about the current process and the suggested changes from someone new to the project: Having read through this thread, I understand the requirement to self host. Gitea or https://forgejo.org are great alternatives, but there has to be a realisation that to attract and enable new developers the Github model is the "normal" workflow for your target future developers (me included). Any deviation will become a point of friction. And one more point to make on this...if GitHub were to disappear or become onerous from licensing point of view, due to its size and ubiquity transferring to another service would most likely be both automated and trivial for the services that are not already interoperable such as git (ie issue tracking, pages, CI etc). This, from my point of view, makes it a negligible and easily mitigated risk. The current approach (SVN, patch files on issues, trac etc) is such a _massive_ issue to attract and enable new developers. Many developers have _never_ used svn. They have spent their entire careers using Git and Github, PRs are normal, branching and forks are "the only way". I am originally from the rcs/cvs generation and have spent a lot of years as a build engineer, and it was jarring to have to find and download a bunch of patch files attached to Trac issues and apply them in an attempt to even build the code. PRs, a consistent git-based branching mechanism, issues alongside the code (not Trac) and frequent merges/CI builds would make things significantly simpler. git-lfs, from my experience, can solve a bunch of the issues with large files. It is mainstream, can be self hosted, and is seriously mature now. It really can be a significant part of the solution. The build process is problematic. If you can build it in CI, it should be possible to replicate locally...and ideally CI is a _very_ slim shim around default developer workflow. Jenkins is a great choice, but it would be awesome if developers could model a build environment on the CI process really easily. It should be (almost) as simple as checkout and run single file. Moving this front and centre to development process would again simplify the onboarding process. I have been trying to build 0-ad on multiple OSs (mainly Mac) for the best part of a week, and still hitting issues that require patches or workarounds. Really keen on seeing the project become much more accessible to other developers, and happy to help where I can!

Your question made me wonder, and I've tried it in a quick test scenario: Indeed, while a group of first age units will form a consistent melee/archer formation, a group of champion units (Kushites have both melee and archer champions) will not properly sort melee and archers, just like in my example above. In other words, "Close Order" doesn't work with champions, even standard ones. So, it's a bug?

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests/29 new version uses repeat time to nerf ranged units damage. This is in the interest of performance and so that the same number of units may 1 shot an enemy.

I'd like to test this as would a number of people. I think @wraitii and @Stan` are either on vacation or have some more pressing matters. They have been the ones to release new community mod versions in the past. @s0600204 do you think you could release a version 5 of the community mod? This would help us test a few a27 patches as well as the proposed melee rebalance.

I have two technologies for pikes within 'unit specific upgrades' one is longer pikes and the other is buttspike for increased cavalry counter.

I believe simply changing the range won't have a big impact on the game, maybe just in pike vs pike scenarios... one should test it. I'd say let's have melee rebalance first. btw I don't get why we are all stuck waiting for a27, instead of pushing forward the community mod.

The recent performance improvements are worth a year's wait easily

AoM campaign was gorgeus. AoE3 campaign looks a lot like AoM, AoE4 campaign looks very silly.

I think it will take top players to work with AI programmers to make worthy AIs. That, or top players becoming AI programmers.