Leaderboard

A number of changes in a24 have contributed to alter significantly the status of stone within the game. While in a23 it was an important resources for all civilizations, in a24, some civilizations might simply buy their way out of stone collection. The role of stone is a complex question since it relates to many balance changes. Starting with some extreme example to illustrate the question: Mauryas can go to P3 and get all military upgrades except will-to-fight for only 750 stones. The player might decide then to add some optional 200 for a palace, 300 for a temple or 200 for an elephant stable or skip them all and go for a fast push with rams instead. Gauls might even need less stones since outside of will-to-fight and defensive structures, only slingers might be useful to spend stones. As a reference point, upgrading stones gathering rates costs currently: 200Wood+100metal / 400Wood+200 metal / 600Wood+300metal. Simply using the resources you would have used to upgrade stones gathering rates to buy stones seems therefore like a good strategy, since it could be sufficient to cover stones needs and avoid the time spent on gathering the resource. Changes that have contributed to reduce stone needs between a23 and a24: - The last wood/metal/stone upgrades stone cost was replaced by a metal cost (150 stones for each) - Stone cost has been removed from military upgrades (1000 stones in total for both melee and range infantry upgrades) - Fortress cost went from 1000 stones to 600 stones and most civilization required a fortress to get their hero/sieges in a23 - Barrack stone cost is set to a standard value of 100 for most civilization instead of 150 or 200 for some civilization Tickets that would affect the current issue: - D307: cheaper economic cost of technologies : 200wood+100metal / 300wood+150metal / 400wood+200 metal - D3680: Remove stone cost from will-to-fight I see 3 critical points for the role of stones: - Limited supply of stones: For some civilization, stone is a rare resource with a limited supply (Ptolemies, Athens…) while for other civilization it doesn’t have more value than wood. Removing stones usages benefits to civilizations with citizen-soldiers with stone cost. The problem of missing stones for these civilizations was however eased by switching to a system in which military upgrades applies to both infantry and cavalry. It allowed for an easier transition from slingers to cavalry/camels (even if it still requires stones to build stables); - Reinforce(create?) a negative correlation between the value of stones and the value of metal: With the change in fortress cost, the reduction of stones alternative usages also reduces significantly the cost of turtling. With too much stones available, there is no limiting factors to the production of fortress and towers. As a consequence of the multiplication of defensive buildings, it also increases the need for metal to build sieges leaving less available to play champions or mercenaries. In a24, it is frequent to see players using about twice more sieges; - Excess stone availability gives an advantage to civilization with range advantages: Since not all civilization have long range units (archers, catapults, bolts…), too much turtling makes some civilization really unpleasant to play in late game. Attacking a players with multiples fortresses/towers and archers that can shoot and retreat as needed to kill the enemy is far from being pleasant when a civilization has a range disadvantage. In a23, the value of stones in team games was usually correlated to the value of metal up until relatively late into the game. Stones would be always gathered and either used or sold for metal at a relatively good price. In a24, its value starts falling relatively fast once p3 timing is passed. In a23, the lack of stones had the advantage of being limiting factor to the spam of the best unit in the game. In a24, the overproduction of stones is extremely unpleasant since it raises new questions such as how to balance towers/fortress. Through my description of this problem, I would like to question indirectly some of the arguments that are motivating changes. For example, if you interpret the lack of metal within the game as being the result of expensive upgrades among others, the current values of D307 can make sense. If instead you interpret the excess supply of stones and too many defensive structures as an important factor behind the lack of metal, then D307 might in fact make the problem worst since instead of buying stones through the market or simply skipping stones gathering upgrades, it might makes sense to gather them and build 5/6 fortresses to force the enemy to waste metal on sieges. Comments on my description of the question?

Don't forget that some elephants wear armor, but even without it, i would say an elephants hide is way thicker than a dogs.

Quite the opposite. It wouldn't hurt to be able to play a strong civ against a strong opponent and a weak civ against a weak opponent. Would make finding a game worth playing easier. Simple, require mirror civ for rated games. At least make it an option.

I would have to disagree with this statement, because i dont feel like you necessarily have to chose one of them. Something can both be (re)balanced and bring differentiation. Also the pool of people who play this game casually is likely larger than the people that play competitively (as in trying to high on the leaderboards).

I don't really have an answer to any of these questions. All I know is that an RTS like 0 A.D. is a complex system, and this looks like it could have a lot of subtle impacts, and I'm not convinced it would actually make the game more _fun_, or even more interesting to play. I'm just not very involved in gameplay at the moment (well, really, since forever), because I'm currently more interested by engine changes (including e.g. pushing, though I recognise it has gameplay impacts). I think the 0 A.D. gameplay is kind of coincidental, and we should mostly focus on improving what we have rather than changing it, because we don't have a very good plan on where to go if we were to do that, but we do have players that enjoy the gameplay right now.

Summary: stone was an essential resource in a23 but in a24 with only 1000 units of stone you are already set for the whole game which means now the game has 4 resources but one is basically unused.

Possibly there could be a case for some factions that are more 'civilised' using more stone in their structures; one of the Settlers games did a similar thing with one being more stone dependant, another being wood dependant, and the last being a bit of a balance of the two. It wouldn't change the inherent issue (if we call it one), but it would be a somewhat thematic way of differentiating one civilisation from another; it being worthwhile is another question.

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that I have not given up learning to understand how this all works. It just takes ... I just started from scratch again and will check throughout this week where this will lead me to. master@HP-PC MINGW64 ~/Documents/0AD $ git clone https://github.com/0ad/0ad.git 0ad Cloning into '0ad'... remote: Enumerating objects: 515144, done. remote: Counting objects: 100% (9649/9649), done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2861/2861), done. remote: Total 515144 (delta 7998), reused 7894 (delta 6777), pack-reused 505495 Receiving objects: 100% (515144/515144), 4.99 GiB | 12.30 MiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (402690/402690), done. Updating files: 100% (35939/35939), done. Thanks for your patience!

It's @Langbart's mod, he's done all the work for it. I've mentioned people are asking about it, but not sure if he'll be up for releasing it officially. Hope he does, cos it's well cool

I'd prefer we introduce more differentiating factors between civs rather than making them all more uniform. All civs already feel too similar. As it stands, it feels like there are 2 or 3 civs right now that are dressed differently to make the whole roster

It seems to me that we could just make all civilisations use stone for their buildings.

I have doubts about directional attacks so long as then engine doesn't really care about rotation for units (and it doesn't, for the most part). That being said, perhaps I'm a bit pessimistic on this. I won't lie, I'll finish that sentence with "and it works very well for them". ---- Realistically, I don't think we'll get to directional damage in A25, and I am unconvinced (and have been for years) by talks of more advanced formation combat and such. 0 A.D. has a fundamental economic aspect and any fight system will suffer from the 'continuous reinforcement' effect, which is _completely_ unrealistic and breaks down any comparison with history or indeed games like Total War. And I personally don't particularly care to try and change it. I like Age of Empires a lot. Making retreating harder will simply make the fights even more snow-bally than they already are, and I fear that's not a great direction to go in right now.

I agree there too, I mentioned that I am not sure I wanted to see them used more simply because I am not sure they fit this thread. Wonders aren't really used frequently simply because if you can win with it, you might have won without it in most cases. This part refers more to the thread mentioned by maroder. I don't think changing the function of the wonders should make it more used by itself. I also agree that currently they are useful as tiebreaker. I would add there that they should make sense as an instrument to punish turtling. If you notice that the enemy invest a lot of resources into defenses, then making a wonder should make sense as a strategy to punish someone sitting back. If there wasn't the issue with slingers civilization, I would have suggested to rise the importance of stone in their cost from that perspective to force a decision between getting multiple fort/towers and building a wonder.

Wonders aren't used frequently. But it is helpful as a tiebreaker for those long games that otherwise never seem to end. My point is that right now there are a lot of games that last very long and yet still no one builds wonders. I see no reason to make a building that doesn't serve a purpose. Or to delete any building that does (or used to) have a purpose. Instead costs, usefulness, and research times should be adjusted. Agree on your last point that the research aspect provides an unfair advantage for what should otherwise be a "final upgrade" building.

As long as we don't support terrain height changes or nav meshes we won't be able to have buildable bridges. There is a wooden texture you can use to make bridges along with the corresponding wood actors in the editor. We could also have special actors that could go on top like bridge gates or something.

Hello! Would you think it possible (and beneficial?) to provide some way to tell mumble/murmur the players' positions? There are mumble plugins for many games, so the players can judge each other's position on the game field when talking via mumble (using stereo speakers or headsets). This is certainly of a very low prio (if not even not worth to further pursue), so please regard this just as a "brainstorming"/idea.

Balance test mod? It's @ binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/ Champion archer for example: binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_unit_champion_infantry_archer.xml spread would be their accuracy.

This makes sense but then come the question associated with slingers. It makes the question more complicated since Athens or Ptolemies often run out of stones if the game last too long. Maybe going in the direction suggested by chrstgtr, it could be possible to use civilization differentiation and some specific buildings to make some adjustments. D3680 in the list if I copied it correctly this time... I do like the question of the role of the fortress too but I don't have any interesting idea on this specific topic.

already added, the latrine and a resistant door. precarious_CC.blend

Without tooling you'd have a hard time extracting the stats from templates. However there is a mod by wratii which makes what you want available in-game, just can't remember the name of the mod ...

I have a feeling that public.zip is the one you are looking for

I think that this feature in moderation could add some nuance to the game. In general ranged units probably could have little directionality to their armour by virtue of them rarely wearing much. Instead it could be focussed on melee infantry, making things such as flanking them a relevant way of countering them. A way I could see this particularly working well would be that a simple kiting manoeuvre would be suboptimal since the ranged unit would basically just strike in the direction with the most resistance. Instead it would be a matter of surrounding the force to hit their vulnerable sides.

Make elephants have the same armour and speed as dogs?

Hi @Stan` and @Lion.Kanzen - sorry, doing multiple things at once atm! If you message me what you want announced I can work that into the posting going out shortly. If it's something ongoing them can certainly timetable for further posts as well

Ok. How about 1 pierce, 1 hack, 1 crush ?

Knowing that this is getting somewhat OT here, please allow me adding a link to a nice and free tool to create keyboard templates: https://isometricland.net/keyboard/keyboard.php I have not checked if it allows creating one's own layout for e.g. 0 A.D., but this should not be too difficult, I assume. Currently there are already many pre-built layouts for games and more, and for different languages, incl. ANSI, ISO etc. Maybe some of you find this inspiring - see random example: EDIT - check also GitHub for this: https://github.com/mjhorvath/Video-Game-Keyboard-Diagrams Erm, maybe such a keyboard layout could be created from 0 A.D.? Sorry, I am again dreaming too far, I assume...

I don't think there is a point to this discussion for the game, that's why this is in the off-topic section.

Perhaps we can give Iberians and Celts a champion slinger unit: crush attack: 15 pierce: 2 HP: 120 (like any other ranged champion) Cost: 100 food, 100 stone, 10 wood.

Who created this problem in Alpha 24 by disrupting the build requirements for stone? I have been modding for two years now. Would be nice to see some effective use of y'all's time. Instead of these mindless changes just for the sake of someone's ego and to pad their commit history. Would be nice ...

Yes, I completely agree with you. It makes sense to remember a certain position of 2 linked keys as [ and ], even if in German they are ü and + (and have thus nothing in common). When playing 0 A.D., though, these 2 keys (to stay with this example) are side-by-side and should be easy to remember. And last but not least can every user change the default setting to her/his liking anyway. PS: Do you - or anybody else - know of a nice tool (Windows, Linux, or even Android) to create a keyboard template? I.e. a template that shows the actual keys (a bit larger maybe for better readability) on one's keyboard and the default or customised meaning for the game? I know that this gets OT here and that there might be not enough place to put meaningful text on such a template, but I vaguely remember that some pro software suits (for gfx and sfx, I believe) had such available. If this is too OT here, I might search myself of course.

Indeed, as @nwtour wrote, the hotkeys will be translated in A25. Just to hopefully clarify what's going on: the default hotkeys refer to a QWERTY layout, but the game 'converts' that to your local layout in the in-game hotkey editor. So as you can see, it shows [ and ] as being 'ü' and 'Plus' for you (which hopefully are the right keys). The reason for that is that hotkeys tend to be about the position of the keys on the keyboard, and not really about the actual letter, and it's better if the default hotkeys are the same, position-wise, for everyone. To give a simple example, the camera hotkeys are "AWSD", which works well on QWERTY, but on AZERTY it's completely wrong if you use the actual letters and not the letter positions. So that's why we do the latter.

Great post. I think one of the underlying issues is that techs have become almost singularly dependent on wood/metal. With respect to D3703 (i think you have the wrong ticket number for D307), I think it makes sense when paired with D3704. The % increase/res will go back to something closer to a23 (although still no where close to where it was), which provided more benefit to researching these techs. I agree, this ticket still isn't perfect, though. In my opinion, I would like to see food/stone involved in tech costs. Food/stone requirements in tech costs would invite more choice and allow players to focus their ecos in more than just two areas like the current alpha requires (current alpha is essentially just "get as much wood/metal as possible and then spend it where you want").

I think we agree. My point is wonders should be more useful than they currently are (which is not useful unless eco is zero difficulty and you can wait several minutes to see any benefit, if at all). The delay for any benefit is unnecessarily long. But that does not mean that these buildings buildings (which are almost by definition rare in their excellence) should be built in most games.

EDIT: found it. I have to find which file to edit. EDIT2: Looks someone was faster than I was. However, I'll try to find some unfinished work.

Totally forgot about that one. And there are so many nice ideas implemented: Attack and Armour: Dealing of damage is directional | Shield size defines how much damage unit blocks from front Mercenaries: need to pay them else they turn to gaia Rams: need to be garrisoned to be able to attack | can be captured But anyway, my concern with directional armor (that is equal for all units) and unit speed is that slower units will be much more affected by this change. Retreating with cav would mean you can get out fine, but retreating with ptol pikemen would kill them. This can make sense, but it can also get op very quick or would require other balancing changes.

I'm not sure how @ChronA implemented it, but I remember from @Angen's old Survival mod that it was quite simple. It uses angle difference between two units rotation and decide a tolerance/threshold value on which is considered side and back. You can check in this part of code. I adapted a part of this in my Morale mod. Not sure about speed because IIRC unit stopped moving first before attacking, so I haven't implement charging yet. All in all, I think this mechanism could help discourage retreating and kiting.

Sure, why would you want to remove it? Sure, why not? When starting a random "Alpine Valley" map, I get some errors. I used the Github "theban_greeks" version. The issue is resolved via theban_greeks-master/simulation/data/civs/theb.json

1. Do you think I should keep Outposts capturable? I've removed capturing CCs. 2. Do you think I should throw Theban Greeks into the mod as a nice little bonus?

@Stan` good move to be in their balancing stream maybe i can ping a balancing team here

Gaming in Mainland China is mainly dominated by mobile phones, however, there is still a significant number of PC gamers out there, due to the widespread high quality yet affordable computer hardware. In terms of software, Tencent and Netease are the most popular game producers, alongside Steam for most PC players. The most popular PC games at the moment are League of Legends, PUBG and Timi. AoE is also very well known, so 0AD stands a chance. The biggest problem with gaming in China is being manipulated into paying at some stage. Most are free to download but the difficult skyrockets after some time if you refuse to pay. So a no pay-to-win game would be extremely popular. There is definitely demand for new PC games, mainly from the age range 18-22. Children of younger age are controlled by parents and people don't have time for games when they start their professional career. The funny thing about most Chinese games is that a time limit is imposed: each person can only play for a certain quota of time per day (often around 2 hours), and this quota changes for different age groups. Most online games require real identity which is inconvenient. Anonymity in 0AD would be attractive and it would be allowed. Open source games do not have to adhere to strict rules; as long as there is no adult content 0AD will be permitted. MMORPG and MOBA games like League of Legends are very popular, but there are very few RTS games like 0AD. Therefore 0AD could be the first of its kind and would be easier to spread than AoE due to being completely free and easy to download. The hard bit is to get publicity. The trailer is here on BiliBili: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1D84y1F7qN @mysticjim If you can let me transport the 2 most exciting videos on your channel that would be great. I see someone has already transported one of Tom 0AD's video there. That one has 250 views. I have around 30 0AD related videos and some of them reached above 200 views as well.

@nwtour was kind enough and fixing missing translations recently such as https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3889

well the best person to ask this is @wraitii since he did most of the refactoring , btw those are code names shown through gui more likely hardcoded too.

Looking at other games, that can definitely work out well as a design choice, but only if it is supported by other aspects of the balance plan. And without huge stat revisions I don't think 0 AD is likely to qualify. Units here are too immobile relative to the rate at which they kill each other to pull off massive force reorientations in the heat of battle, but also not immobile enough to be effectively locked into any compromising position they land in. If one player divides their forces to form a hammer and anvil, the opponent will just destroy the anvil with their superior force before the hammer can get into place. Moreover the game's economy & map size is such that continuous reinforcement is pretty common. That means the opponent's rear is almost never entirely unguarded, and you more likely to force a 90 degree pivot than actually encircle the enemy. This is certainly what we see in AoE2. If you want to have encirclements work in 0 AD, there are a few ways to go about it. One would be to massively slow the time to kill by boosting armor and hp, or lowering attack damage. this would encourage reactive maneuvering. Or you could speed up the time to kill and harden counter-strength into the one-hit-kill territory for advantageous unit matchups. That would incentivize ambushes. Either way you'll probably want to give a big buff to cavalry movement speed, while slightly nerfing infantry movement speed. You would also need to slow down unit production so player will stop parade-marching reinforcements, and nerf static defense a bit. Otherwise no one would ever commit to a fight on open ground. An alternative perspective: maybe this should be paired with some compensatory mechanical revisions that would buff chasing. Running charges and directional armor come to mind.

Bit late psoting today! But here is some more Sunday 4v4 action, and check out the NROC mod, it's getting better every week ( massive thanks to @Langbart for his outstanding efforts with this!)

Have finally gotten into the 0AD Twitter account (thank you, Stan!) and retweeted to TeamYoutube. I've linked them to the website and the wikipedia page (apparently having a wikipedia page used to be an essential requirement) - we'll see what happens next. I'm wondering if it's the lack of updates on the Wikipedia page that may be the problem? It says it's not been updated in a while, although the correct Alpha version is listed, but evidently this is such a minor update as to not count as an update at all.

Hey hello! I was browsing around the many ideas flowing and I've found this. I just wanted to bring it up, because I think it offers some interesting points to spicen up the diplomatic game I think diplomacy is usually neglected but maybe there's potential for some interesting variations in the gameplay if expanded a bit more .. why not? Definitely not the priority at the moment but I think is worth considering .. what do you guys think?

The terrain grid is technically 2.5D, not 3D.

I hate it when that happens

I'm a little skeptical. I've heard the claim before. Even saying that it would destroy the Amazon. A hyperbole assumption if you ask me, considering that the Amazon didn't just disappear the last time the Sahara was green (though it was smaller). About the plankton, some studies have shown that global plankton populations have already dropped by more than 40% since 1950, while others note rapid plankton growth in the North Atlantic, both phenomenon directly tied to global CO2 levels. A greening of the Sahara could significantly reduce global CO2 levels, cooling the climate, and rather lead to the stabilisation of plankton levels. The dust also mostly comes from a specific place in the Sahara (Bodélé Depression), so, if we just leave that place a desert, we should be ok. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_African_climate_cycles (of course, human activity is making things way worse than it needs to be)

Hi its me again (As you know I have been working at battalion mod. It is sad to said but I might to break something I cannot fix now and have no idea what and at what point I broke it. Anyway here we are.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ git: https://github.com/SlavomirSlovenkai/Survival basic overview: https://github.com/SlavomirSlovenkai/Survival/blob/master/Research.xlsx Basics: Every living entity (sure, there are some exceptions) consumes some kind of food. If it cannot consume, hp is lowered. If can consume, will be healed. It does not have to eat from every type of food (visible in tooltip), just one. (Cavalry is exception as grain is must for horse). No formations No promotion No healing by healers and temples No expand of territory with phase or other bonuses Low resource capacity for units Soldiers gets experiences (except champions) 4 Types of soldiers (Light, Medium, Heavy, Champion) Attack and Armour: Dealing of damage is directional Shield size defines how much damage unit blocks from front Friendly fire for all units Attacks consume energy, if unit is low on energy, will fight terrible Soldiers can be trained to get experiences in barracks, ranges by garrisoning inside. Citizens: can build any type of building work unit limited per house and cc pays you coins Slaves : can be bought from civic centre cannot attack (even slaughter) cannot place foundations are limited per citizen does not have to eat Soldiers: limited per barracks Cavalry: limited per stables Ranged: limited ammo (will refill after all used) Mercenaries: do not eat hire them with coins need to pay them else they turn to gaia Rams: cannot destroy by attack provides radius of protection from arrows need to be garrisoned to be able to attack can be captured Healer -> Priest: Provides auras for faster work and better fighting (based on priest category) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FUN PART BEGINS----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Research points: You need them for most of the research. You can get them by collection resources (repeated action) , training some units first time, building some buildings first time and so on. Feed your pigs: If you do not slaughter pig and you will feed it, it will grow over time and will provide additional resources. When will be ready to slaughter, small meat icon appears over it. (need to hover or select) Berries: If you collect all berries, they will grow back after some time ( so it is not good to collect all bushes at once else your workers will be idle and do not collect automatically when they regrow) Fields: Fields starts with growing session and applies for them the same as for berries. You can shorter regrowing time and you can double resources you get from them with research. Metal and Stone: Techs for these resources have been merged. You can research Shaft mining and after you exhaust mines and quarries (the 50k ones) there will spawn additional resource. Wagons: You can research and construct wagon with horse. Then you specify resource with upgrade (can change any time for free). Units will drop resources into it and when full, wagon goes to dropsite and then back to last position. Trade and Barter: Too many resources so that is moved to dialog window ( just in case you wonder why market is empty ) Damage is deadly Mainly from ranged attacks and animals AnimalAI Collective behaviour based on https://trac.wildfiregames.com/attachment/ticket/1724/collectiveBehavior-v4.diff Enlarged vision for wolfs Animals will run when they are going to attack UnitAI Collective behaviour for passive units to flee Animations and Art Horse update from a24 Units will hold tools their are going to use Combat / relax animation variants for soldiers Ranged units will not display ammo when they have none Ranged units will hold daggers when no ammo or only melee allowed Displaying real attack range of buildings even when in preview Buildings Grouped by category Will take resources only if actually build (Queue stalled message if not enough resources) Will give resources back when demolished Fortress Territory root Trees Lowers vision and walkspeed ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------IMPORTANT NOTES--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Only Athenians AI broken -> so none Every victory condition has survival script (you loose if you have 0 citizens) Maps Some maps might give errors when you try to play I left them so you can play multiplayer. SURVIVAL SCENARIO I have created single player Scenario map with scripted enemy to attack in waves. Cool thing it is actually player not gaia so victory condition applies Your can stop attacks if you manage to destroy its fortress. ( Has one ) Then to win you need to kill citizens of that player. (They are in city and countryside. Some are garrisoned inside CCs, because currently has no active defence reaction.) // Side note: Took me 3h to finish that map (to win) Have fun, enjoy report.