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After several discussions over the years, I think there is a broad recognition that ships are in need of improvement. I've synthesized some ideas here, but be warned: not everyone will be happy and by no means do I think this is the "perfect" naval system for an ancient-themed game, just something that may be interesting, fun, workable, intuitive, implementable, and not too historically problematic. The main thing I would like to see is to differentiate ships along roles or classes and get away from the "multi-role" ship idea, where all you do is build bigger and better versions of this same multi-role ship. While the multi-role ship is historically accurate, it's problematic for gameplay (for myriad reasons that have been chewed over a dozen times). Better to go with the "historical authenticity" principle that gives us more leeway to develop classes of ships dedicated to their roles. So, let's discuss some ship roles or abilities and come up with classes of ships to approximate these roles and abilities without making things overly complicated. Some roles and abilities of ancient warships: Arrow Platforms Troop Transporting (I think this is one thing all ships can do: there doesn't need to be a dedicated ship for this) Artillery Platforms Boarding Ramming Scouting With the above in mind, let's come up with classes of ships to depict these actions. Note that garrisoning units aboard have different (small) effects based on ship class. When garrisoned, you don't see anything appear on the deck. Ship models are small than they are currently in the game for pathfinding reasons, so would look strange with giants standing on the deck. Scout Ship Role: Scouting, Gathering Treasures Attack: None Garrison: 5 Garrison Effect: +5% capture resistance per 5 units. Has no attack and is basically an arrow-less Light Warship (can even use the same base model, minus oars, just a sail or vice versa) Can only train 1 at a time, but is super cheap (perhaps free?) so can be rebuilt very easily. Can be used to land a small scouting party, maybe good for scenarios too. Arrow Ship/Light Warship Role: Arrow Shooter; harrasser Attack: Arrows x3 (unit AI), Arrows x1 (building AI) Garrison: 10 Garrison Effect: 1 extra (unit AI) Arrow per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units This is your bireme, your liburna, your hemiolia, your pentekonter, your pirate ship. Very good against Merchant Ships (perhaps with an attack bonus) and Melee ships (Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships) due to having no minimum range. Countered decisively by Artillery Ships. Ramming Ship Role: One-Hit kill ramming attack. Attack: Melee Ram, Arrows x1 (building AI) Garrison: 20 Garrison Effect: +5% speed per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units This is your famous Trireme. Athenians get a special technology for these ships. Its primary role is to sink enemy ships with a melee attack, which has has to recharge. They are tough ships, but are vulnerable to Arrow Ships during the approach due to their paltry 1 arrow defensive ranged attack, and Boarding Ships if their ram attack did not sink the boarding ship in one strike. Due to recharging nature of their melee attack, these ships require the most APM/micromanagement and are often naturally suicidal if not microed effectively. Very Good against Artillery Ships and other Ramming Ships. Boarding Ship Role: Capturing enemy ships and docks Attack: Freezing capture attack with a Boarding Ramp for Roman civs (a bonus) or grappling hooks for other civs; Arrows x1 (building AI) Garrison: 20 Garrison Effect: +5% capture attack per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units This represents the boarding actions common in naval battles. Romans have the Corvus technology which boosts their Boarding Ships. These will look similar to the Ramming Ship, but with a ramp for the Roman version and some other identifier for the other civs. Can counter Ramming Ships if they are not destroyed in the enemy's first strike and are good against Artillery Ships if used en masse. Can capture enemy Docks as well. Vulnerable to attack from other ships while it's attempting to capture the target ship. Artillery Ship Role: Long Range siege attacks Attack: Artillery Bolt x2; Catapult Rock (Upgrade); Unit AI Garrison: 30 Garrison Effect: +5% firing rate per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units Your Quinqueremes and other Polyremes. They come with a siege weapon on the foredeck. These are used for long range bombardment of massed enemy naval formations or shore structures such as docks, towers, and other buildings. Due to their slow firing rate, they are very vulnerable to faster ships such as Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships. They absolutely massacre Arrow Ships.

Dwellings typically depend on the availability of water. A good location is one that has good and sufficient water supplies. Should we therefore possibly add a kind of water supply concept ? How would that work: - CC could get a population bonus of a few percent if there is a river/lake next to them. For this we would need adding a "water source" tag in the code to designate a lake as supply source, and add an associated aura (this may however turn out to be complex as these are new objects and they are irregularly shaped). build a wells (that has a water supply aura next to the CC. - production system for crops now including water as a new aura or resource? How could that work? again, either build your fields next to a river or lake, or build a well next to your fiield. Cannot build more than, say, 4 fields per well. Rice would need more water, of course. Just an idea.

Honestly looks really good for your first map. My first looked quite @#$% in comparison. Good job.

Beautiful! I already love the old version - will try the new on tonight! Thanks for your effort, well done!

map-rheinland.pyromod New version of the map. It has been created using Delanda Est (github dev version) and A27. Changes: A lot of adjustments. Balanced choke points and resources, remade the forests to not look dull, added mercenary camps, added artifacts etc., added info to the description. For some reason, when trying to load the map without DE, none of the map objects can be loaded. So i have added it as a dependency for now (although only the Scenario version is supposed to require DE)

well, alpha 27 works now. In the list of dependencies for linux, the "python" package was not available anymore, I had to replace it by "python-is-python3" instead. All good after that. Not sure if the webpage with the build instruction should be modified Now i need to go back up the thread and get delenda-est working Edit: all good now, delenda-est 27 is installed, I'll try it later

That's because of the way normal maps are computed. They deform the light. No light no deformation

I see an effect of the normal map in Atlas only when there is direct light on the texture, not in the shadows. Why is that?

sorry, false alert, I get an error message now for missing specTex in the actor file. Seems like shader effect 5.03 was not enough, but with maximum 10 it works. thanks, I will keep it both in mind

Remade some parts of the map, did some adjustments regarding the paths through swamps and choke points, added 3 AI players and had some good fun with Delanda Est on singleplayer Still more work to do here...

Wildfire Games would like to thank to all the members of this awesome community and thank you for the continued support and patience. To continue spreading the word about 0 A.D. we designed this best wishes card, you can find the XCF template at the bottom for printing. zeroad-best-wishes_03.zip

what I did as start is making a resource of water and splited it to two: well water (but it includes river water etc) groundwater for well water I made templates for wells and invisible templates that's meant to be placed on lakes and rivers (because this is the easiest way to distinguish between salt water and drinkable water without hardcoding and breaking maps) for groundwater I also made an invisible template that would serve as resource. action/reaction auras can be used to make the plants and wells reduce the groundwater while these plants and wells get benefits from it. the problem is if you want some quantity limitation for groundwater you have to use scripting instead of auras.

This. Saying fishing has no purpose is completely wrong. Fishing requires an upfront, risky investment that pays off handsomely when done well. Heavy fishing maps are also vulnerable to ship attacks late, which can’t be defended without also making ships. If you try to out boom a fishing player with a lot of berries/farms, you will lose 100% of the time against a good player. Making fishing infinite won’t make fishing more viable—it will make farms/berries useless.

Technically there is no issue with that. The only challenge is finding someone willing to model the advanced houses and making new icons and finding people editing the xml files, testing and pushing the patch.

Because the project is inspired by AoE. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adStory The concept has been chosen a very long time ago: Alpha 10 (2012) Alpha 5 (2011):

The problem in 0ad is that these attacks have either no stakes or too high stakes (destroy the player, or at least the player's economy). There is very little occasions to have a battle for a clear but secondary stake (like controlling a strategic point). Also, when they're strong enough to be a threat but not to kill you, what make them unfun is that the resource they actually deplete is the player's attention/concentration, much more than the Civ's army or economy.

If you mean "myth" you may be right, but if you want historical accuracy they should have the strongest melee formation, not unit.

Disabling the delete function when there are enemies in a certain radius/distance is a good suggestion, I like that too, I think Stronghold had that feature. Scorched-Earth strategies were done before hostile forces enter the area to deprive them of the resources in the area, not the other way around when a hostile force have already conquered the place.

Agree. This bothered me too, especially when I plant a farmstead in the middle of sand dunes and build thriving farms... But it is vital, as you said yourself. What I'm saying is that if you introduce water, of all things, you'd have to use it to its full extent. Else just add another symbolic stylized resource ("fertilizer" or some such). Not water, water is special. You need to go all (or at least most of) the way, because some time later people are bound to start asking why things don't far enough.

Well, I believe 0AD is a bit of both - a civilization management and combat simulation. Personally, I would not mind if there were a few more economic aspects. My point was that , currently, the desert maps featuring an oasis use that feature only as a kind of eye candy and road block. For these maps , I believe water as a resource might add an interesting strategical aspect to the game. Just I would not take it that far as you suggested. I would not recommend making the economy completely dependable on water (although it always was and still is) but use water sources as a kind of slight boost for certain functions (crops, stable, CC). Please note that while we do need food in the game we do not transport it to the troops for surveial either, so water transport. Just my twocents...

I like games where first (or major) attacks happen in minutes 5-11. Otherwise it feels like everyone is polishing their swords for the whole game … boring to me.

Removing bartering seems too crass of a disadvantage to me.

Hi all! We have some news for sparta for the next alpha, like champions available in Village Phase, champions can promote to olimpic champion, technologies like increased movement speed for champions, new unit, among other things. Some things we are still working on and adding.

@borg- has a very awesome differentiating Sparta patch that was committed a bit ago. This makes it far from ‘plain’ https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4736 this addresses a lot of your concerns. Among the other changes, Champ hoplites are available in p1 owing to the huge cultural importance of the spartiates. They will still have mobility issues but this is just a weakness of the civ.

I like the idea for the "bonus for fields". Plants need water to grow. I don't see the direct relation to the "more population in CC". People might be less busy carrying water so they can participate in economy or military.

Detail as intricate as this would be hard to integrate in a 256x256 px texture, in 512 px maybe this is possible with good results