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Hey everyone, I am creating this thread to discuss the balancing from a "meta" perspective in hopes to improve the current situation. Please refrain from discussing "actual" balancing in this thread. As some of you may know, it has been a priority of mine for the past three years to find a way to provide a good experience for players, whether they are on the competitive side or not. For the 24th Alpha I created a Personal Mail (PM) with a few individuals, in order to try to create a team-like cohesion. While the 24th Alpha was a game changer in a lot of ways, and a painful experience, I do believe that it was the most productive in terms of actual patches and changes. People played by the rules by proposing, creating, and accepting patches (I insist on the last part because without formal acceptance there is no liability). I also tried to leverage a documentation team to update the design document. The job was too hard, and it died quickly and in silence. The original design was somewhat different from what the current game is today. There would have been much less civilizations, and instead your empire would have switched from a generic civilization to a more specific one (e.g greek -> macedon -> seleucid). Then another era came, where everything changed. Meanwhile, I was not happy about doing things in the shadows. This whole project is a community effort, and the contributors of today are the ones that might carry the flame when I am gone. So after a few internal discussions we came up with the balancing subforum, where everyone could see what was going on behind the curtains but only a selected few could interract, and anyone could ask me for a seat at the table, with some relevant experience. It came with little titles that hoped would boost morale. However... It did not go as I(we) planned. It created an even bigger split in the community, resulted in a huge variety of threads which is good, but which led nowhere as none of the idea was accepted enough to be implemented. And even the ideas who did get implemented did not make it. While the Personal Mail (PM) did go off track from time to times, it had the advantage of notifying people everytime someone posted (I do not think many people use that forum feature for threads) and I think the discussion was more focused, people pinging each other for patch reviews etc... There was also an attempt to use the chat on Phabricator which also sends emails for each messages, but it quickly vanished after the 24th Alpha. The 25th Alpha got some welcomed changes, at a much slower rate, and I think it fixed a lot of the quirks Alpha 24 introduced. But we're not quite there yet, and I know a few people are hurt about the current state of the game. I'm not a fan of the current balancing forums, and I'd like to merge them again with the rest of the game discussions, or at least to open them, since there seem to be no point in having them closed anymore. So I'm asking everyone, what can we (as in Wildfire Games) do, to get more contributions about balancing, to make A26 a success. We have some very nasty release blockers, and that leaves time for a bit more balancing patches. Best regards, Stan

https://play0ad.com/0-a-d-empires-ascendant-alpha-26-feature-freeze-update/

Hello everyone! I hereby present a 0 A.D. mod aimed at evaluating the rating of players. Official mod page on GitLab here. Introduction Before diving into the description, let me introduce the problem this mod aims to solve. In 0 A.D., the ELO system is used to rank players in the lobby. This is good; but is it representative of the players' skills? As you know, the rating system in 0 A.D. only takes into account 1v1 rated games. Team games do not contribute to the ELO score of a player, as well as 1v1 unrated games. Also, the scoring system only takes into account the outcome of a game (victory/defeat) and not the "performance" during the game. Can we do better? This mod uses statistics. It extracts data from all the replays of games you (the mod user) have played. So, if you have played 20 games (1v1s, team games, other..) with a player in the lobby whose name is (for example) strangeJokes, the mod will assign a rating to strangeJokes based on the 20 games you've played with them. The rating system The functioning of the rating system is described in detail at the official mod page on GitLab, but in short what it does is: it considers the average performance of the player during the entire game (and not only at game's end). the rating assigned to a player is a percentage: for example, a player with a rating of 5.00 performs a 5% better than other players on average, while a player with a rating of -5.00 performs a 5% worse than other players on average. you can customize the rating system by giving more importance to military, economy, exploration or other factors to the aim of calculating ratings. Keep in mind that this mod is based on statistics; data are taken from your (the mod user) replays. Statistics might not be fully representative of reality; therefore, a player's rating could be inaccurate, especially if you have played few games with that player. The more you play with a player, the more accurate the rating of that player is. Mod installation Explanatory pictures The main page: it lists all players with their rating and the number of games you have played with them. The Options > Score Weights page: where you can customize the rating system based on the factors you consider more important. The Options > Match Filters page: where you can select the games relevant for the rating calculation (for example, you might want to ignore games with duration less that 5 minutes). Contribute The public repository is at this page. Everybody is very welcome to contribute, suggest, fork or simply give feedback. Have fun! LocalRatings-v0.25.3.zip

Just want to say, we appreciate you, Stan. Lots of toxicity has been around the last 18 months or so and it’s easy to forget about good people like you.

By that logic only a football commentator who'd won the ballon d'or as a player themselves should have the right to commentate on football! Who you trying to kid, dude It's a game, it's about entertaining and enhancing the viewing spectacle for spectators, calling the action as it happens, adding a little extra dimension to it. For me, it's never been about teaching people to emulate what they're watching - its about watching a game for the enjoyment of watching the game and giving a human presence and voice to the action.

When I get famous, I would want to get creditted for the phrase: ¨Technology only seems like magic to those who are ignorant of how technology works.¨ The only thing in my way is that I need to design the next equivalent of ´flappy bird´.

Missed the last presentation about 0 A.D. with a focus on how to contribute ? Fear not for it's now available online: https://t.co/NwcJbyh9Nv

Hello everyone, We're happy to release the first M1 Mac Testing version of 0 A.D. Alpha 25b We provide this in the hope of finding and squashing bugs efficiently. It may however contain bugs. If you choose to test, please keep that in mind. EDIT: Since the bundle is not signed on certain macOS version you might need to unlock the app. You can do so by running the following command. xattr -cr /Applications/0\ A.D..app Download Link Things you may want to test (non-exhaustive) Launch a random game Launch a skirmish. Connect to the lobby Play on the lobby with someone Launch Atlas and try things out there Open Unit tests demo (To see if there any breakage in displaying entity's) (It's in scenarios) Enable feedback and see if it works (Main menu) Video Connect to and use mod.io Test replaying new games Test Screenshots (F2) Test Big Screenshots (Maj+F2) Test hotkeys Test ranked games Test Saving and loading a game. Test Quickload/Quicksave (Optional) Upload the feedback files (See see wiki:GameDataPaths) What to do if I see a weird red line ? Make sure to enable GLSL in the game options. What to do if I have an Out Of Sync? You should go in your logs folder (see wiki:GameDataPaths), find the replay (commands.txt at least), the mainlog/interestinglog and find the OOS dump folder. Zip all these files and upload them here. Ideally, you should coordinate with the OOS players so that they upload their own OOS dump, so we can compare them. What to do if I have an error or notice something weird? Post your commands.txt (replay) and the interestinglog.html file from your folder. You can also reply to this thread. What to do if the game crashes Update your crashlog.dmp and crashlog.txt see wiki:GameDataPaths

Hello 0 A.D. friends! Many times I find myself in the situation of having many units under production from several buildings and I want to clear ALL the production queues simultaneously. This can happen for many reasons: maybe I want to get back some resources that had been allocated to units production; or maybe I suddenly need to change type of units being produced if I see that the game steers from the direction I expect. As far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), there is no explicit hotkey that allows to clear all production queues simultaneously. It is also very annoying to clear production queues by clicking on icons one by one, especially when you have many buildings producing or many units being produced. So, I made a mod for this. The ResetQueue mod (official repository at this page) allows to bind a hotkey for clearing production queues of selected buildings. The default hotkey provided from this mod is Shift+Esc. This can be changed from the Settings > Hotkeys menu. I find this feature very useful and I often use it in game. I hope this feature will be present in a future version of the game. What do you think? Installation Contribute The public repository is at this page. Everybody is very welcome to contribute, suggest, fork or simply give feedback. Have fun! ResetQueue-v0.25.1.zip

1. Runs on Windows, Linux, BSD, MacOS - anyone can play it. 2. Open source, free, no pay to win 3. 2D - doesn't cause motion sickness; very comfortable to play with. 4. A game that combines intelligence, reaction time, control skills and interpersonal skills. 5. You can engage in a long conversation with real humans and I found that many players are like minded to me (STEM) 6. Amazing graphics (before you apply my mod) 7. Almost endless content, many different ways to play, a huge variety of maps and gamemodes. 8. If I find an imperfection, I can make a mod to fix it by myself, unlike other games that prevent you from enjoying it. 9. Very supportive forum

1v1 weirdJokes v lorenz11

I think moving (most) heroes to the CC would integrate them a little bit more into the game. I know it's a simple change, moving them from the fortress to the CC, but I'm thinking about the psychology of the player, seeing the Hero there in the training panel from the outset, instead of 15 mins later when they build a fortress. Honestly, I'd really push for something along the lines of DE's hero choices, but I know that's too radical (!!!) for the current crop of stakeholders. You almost need a whole new set of players and developers in order to propose significant improvements, because all of the current stakeholders are so wed to the status quo. Don't say I'm wrong, when even simple changes are controversial.

Hi everyone, just came to share these pictures with you all about the 0 AD Empires at War, Rise of Rome campaign. I have been working on this Gigantic map for this campaign. The Campaign is made for a solo player, but it can be set for up to 8 players if your PC have the power to push so many units at the same time. My PC can do up to 3 active Al so far, Plus the Gaia player. In this campaign, you play as Rome, and have to defeat all faction and conquer the Whole map. You will have to fight Gauls, Carthaginians, Samnites, Greeks, Spartans, Ptolomeans, Seleucids, Macedonians, Britons, North African mercenaries and Pirates, Capture Catafalques, Cities, Ports and Towns to expand your empire and conquest the Ancient Mediterranean, Southern Europe, Anatolia, Palestine and North Africa. The Map is gigantic, so expect a lot of hours of play, many Epic battles and skirmishes. The enemies you will encounter are not easy to defeat as many may believe at first, so a lot of Strategy for battle hardened players will be a most in order to defeat them. So far, the Tests I have been running are working fine, no error so far. Making all these Factions and units to behave as closely as possible to their own Historical situations 0 AD stile, have been a Challenge for me, so to keep the campaign balanced as well. But is something I did with a lot of Love and passion for this game. I do really admire and love the design and the hard work so many of you, game designers, had put to make this open source Universe possible. My respect and admiration is with you all for such an outstanding job. I will be publishing the campaign soon, here at the Forum, for you all to download and add to your collection of maps, scenarios and campaigns. Here are some pictures I want to share. Thank you all for your time and attention.

I would say that before any more major balancing is done, we should develop an updated design document. A25 has a few issues, such as Iberian firecav, but overall it's pretty well balanced, and there aren't any game-breaking flaws in it. Given this, I think that balancing should keep to fixing major issues, not working on civ differentiation or anything else. Before any of that, we need to agree on a design document. Without a cohesive plan for how the game should play, balancing decisions will tend to pull the game in opposing directions, making balancing ineffective or even counterproductive. To create a design document, I think that one or more proposals need to be submitted to the forum on how the game should play in general. For example, it could specify general roles for civilisations and unit classes. After this has been discussed and approved by a vote, then documents for specific civilisations can be created and approved by the same process. Once a complete design document has been created, balancing could resume, with the document as a goal. Until then, it would be limited to fixing major issues, not deciding any gameplay roles. Once balancing resumes, I think that there are two rules which would make it more effective. First, all members of the balancing team should be required to have the SVN version installed. Currently, I think that the current development version has made some major changes, such as acceleration and the Han Chinese, which could cause balancing issues in the next alpha, but which haven't attracted much attention, mostly because very few people play the development version. Second, if anyone wants to make a change to the game, a forum topic should only be opened after a patch has been submitted on phabricator. As it is, there are lots of balancing discussions, but I don't think they've resulted in any changes, mainly because no one creates any patches for them. If the consensus on the forum moved against the changes, the patch could be updated or abandoned, while if the forum approved, the patch could be committed. This could be much more effective than the current model.

Wondering how many frames per hour UE5 might give for our average hardware

The core issue is that for the most part, team members are people working on features, because people that care about balancing & gameplay are players, and players like to play. And people just don't have the time to play and work on the game. Ergo the team are feature-builders, and there is real vision for gameplay. Add to that that amongst the team, we have severe disagreements on how the game should play. There is deadlock there to a large extent. Then nothing really changes. The problem with the 'incremental changes' approach that we tried to take is that everything can be scrutinised, and it kind of precludes changing the 'long-term vision'. I think it worked well to locally balance the gameplay, but it has lead to increased uniformity and has not really made the gameplay more interesting. Another way is the 'split & regroup' approach, that was tried with balancing mods or to an extent wow's Delenda Est. That has the benefit that it can leverage a benevolent dictator and realise a vision. If there are enough players / traction, it could be considered for merging back as the 'main' 0 A.D. mod. But it might need us to provide more support to help good mods gain traction, and it would probably benefit from a split between more 'engine' files and more '0ad-specific' stuff. --- Finally, 'balancing' is trivial. Just make all civilisations have identical gameplay. That's not particularly interesting, but it would work. The question is generally not how to 'balance' but what game to make.

based on SC lost temple.

For me, it's simply the best game I have ever played (with Dungeon Siege a close second). Being a huge fan of AOE2, this blew me away. Tbh, I was a little disappointed with AOE3, so this filled the gap nicely. Great graphics, gameplay and all for free plus on Linux. Have been playing 0AD for a while now. Huge thank you to Wildfiregames, devs and all those involved with 0AD. Probably the best open source game on Linux.

0 A.D take the history in your hands! The first time I played Age of Empires I fell in love, but with 0 A.D I got married. ------ now to the point --------- As it is already in the final stage of development, there is Alpha. There is no room for anything new. continuing the series of wishes for the next Alpha. I wish: More technologies for early and second phase. more cultural and religious background.(Bonus in stats and HP, XP). More units. new sub classes. ( Differentiate units with little armor and with a lot of armor) More maps. New modes. More differentiated factions. More strategies. More AI development.

Kakutstha made a new youtube video

0 A.D. in Print (19/Jul/05) web.archive.org

The only other thing I really have to say is that a lot of people (too many in my opinion) see problems in the the current game and want to create their own ‘perfect’ game from scratch. But everyone has a different idea of perfect and everyone can’t have their own perfect game that everyone plays. At some point, someone will be unhappy. We have what we have and unless you want to be like Wow and create your own game from new cloth then revisions can’t forget everything and become something brand new. Change will be gradual and frustrating because it isn’t anyone’s perfect game. But it’s also worth noting that there is wide consensus that this slow gradual change is an improvement from where we came. It’s not ‘perfect’ but let’s appreciate that it is ‘better’

To add gameplay changes you have to be able to take scathing criticism. Hell, to change a cursor brings the hounds of Hades. So, you have to be "that guy" who will be willing to ignore a lot of the criticism because you can't please everyone.

Resistance is futile

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

i searched for motivation postings. why player love this game like so: site:https://wildfiregames.com what makes the game so special - motivation so i think maybe interesting to start this post. what i personally really much love is: i could try modify it self ( We chose to release the art of 0 A.D. under CC BY-SA to allow people to mod the game ..(2010, https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Studies/0_A.D.) meet people all over the world works in linux (and many other OS) i love hotkeys instead of mouse movements => i love autoCiv <3 and love modify it (of course other great mods: boonGui,kateAutoCiv,feldmap, .... but autoCiv ist the most important for me) and yes i love strategies very much more then shut and run thinks. sometimes i feel a bit uncomfortable that's it being a some kind of war game. and yes i don't like decrease pop self (we often do it if we are in popMax) BTW some motivation you could also find here: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/18475-where-are-you-from/

Ballon d'Or = Gold ball trophy, as @sarcoma said. It's a soccer trophy. ballon d' = the butchering of "Ballon d'Or" by someone with less than 1600 points in their understanding of soccer as well as the French language.

YES ,PLEASE

Hyrcannian cav stats: base swordcav stats: dps: 6.9h 0.27 to 0.8 crush depending on the unit dps: 8.6666h armor: 3 hack, 2 pierce armor: 3 hack, 4 pierce all else is the same ^it is clear that hyrcannian cav are garbage and currently only fulfill the role of a hilarious troll CC snipe, which usually does not work. They are also good antiram, so thats the only reason players use these. Instead, further differentiate them from swords and let them stand out as a unique unit. How about these unit stats for hyrcannian cav? elite rank cost: 100f 40w 35m 17.7 hack every 1.5 sec, increase crush to 3 (net crush dps will be reduced to 1.5 from 3 due to repeat reduction, so its not a bs CC sniper). I think they should have a little more prepare time than swordcav. 17.7 comes from swordcav dps * 1.364 (skiri buff vs normal swords) * 1.5 sec, the new attack rate. armor is unified with swordcav 3.0H and 3.0P (from 3 hack 2 pierce) compared to CS swordcav at 3.0H and 4.0 pierce. Mainly, instead of armor (compared to skiritai), speed goes up to 20 from 18. HP would be the same as any rank 3 swordcav (276 hp) In essence, this is a rank 3 swordcav where instead of the armor increase of 2 p and 2h, it gets speed, and where the repeat time is slower (because its an axe) If you think this sounds OP, consider that they would still have very low armor compared to rank 3 swords which have 5h, 6p. If people dislike this idea, then at least give them more dps than swordcav to account for their weakness.

Come on guys. Siege is rather weak currently

More of a meme idea: Tux in a schythed chartiot pulled by one or more zebras or unicorns. Can be summoned by the code: Cutting edge tech for nerds. Maybe the models of pony ascendant could be of any use.

I was thinking further into the idea of an Age of Mythology mod for 0 A.D. Such a mod would entail quite a bit of work, obviously, in the form of Myth Unit models, animations, and scripting God Powers. "Favor" as a resource would be pretty simple to implement (nearly identical to Delenda Est's "Glory" resource), and many of the regular human and hero units can be reskins of units already in the game. Choosing "Minor Gods" already has a proof of concept in Delenda Est's "Hero Selection" feature. All of that is true. But I was thinking further into the mythological aspect after playing the latest Hyrule Conquest release and hit upon having two types of civs in such mod: Human and Magical. Human civs are obvious, but the Magical civs would 100% be mythologically based. Amazons Centaurs Draugar Djin Dryads at al. Just brainstorming here.

What if ships had no firepower other than their turreted ranged units and an anti-ship ram for some ram ships and a catapult for quineremes? What if there was a "board enemy ship" feature for ships when adjacent? What if ships had capture points and could be boarded and captured? Feature request: When you select a number of boats and soldiers, click a button to have all soldiers evenly divide themselves and garrison (or turret) onto the boats. Also a button to have the soldiers evenly repair all the boats. I would like ships to have 3 ways to combat other ships: -having turreted soldiers/catapults/balisatas -ramming -capturing/boarding. But this can probably not be achieved by a simple changes in parameters.

As mentioned at https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/77438-looking-back-on-the-balancing-strategy/, a new design document is required. This is my proposal for a design document. If the community approves of this, it could be adopted and design documents could be revised for the civilisations. This is a design for the general gameplay, not for any civilisations. Most elements will remain the same, I've only mentioned elements that could change or which need to be clearly defined. All features which require mechanics not yet added to the game are highlighted in red.

@Stan` This is really well done presentation. Excellent travail.

That is indeed great if the initial civilisations are random. However, if the players chose their civilisations then you can simply remember who picked what. I like this idea, it will help with specs' discussions and analysis.

what can be is to hide their name and faction until you discover them on the map.

I'm no longer really active in this forum, but I do check it out occasionally from time to time. It's sad to see that we are still in a deadlock of balancing debate. I agree with this statement. To elaborate my argument: In Civilizations section of the design document, currently we have historical overview and then it jumps straight to detailed description of units/buildings, some even do away with overview altogether. What I suggest is the overview of what the player expect when they select certain civilization. What differentiate it from other civilizations. Add some historical based justification as necessary. Something like Rise of Nations, but less technical and more abstraction: e.g. Athenian: They gather silver faster (because Laureion mines), they research faster (because philosophy). Romans: They have strong infantry (because Legions), they expand faster (because Roman empire). Mauryan: They have mobile gathering (because ?), strong archer (because longbows). etc. Avoid exact numbers and percentage, focus on general advantages/disadvantages or strengths/weaknesses of each civs. Only after these established, we can then go to units/structure/bonus description. For each description, there must be a reference to this overview. The finalized design document should be able to answer questions like: why certain unit have certain stats/why does this civ have certain bonuses on the other hand, why this civ doesn't have that unit or structure what is the difference of gameplay between civ A & civ B I'd like to rush/turtle, which civs are suitable for me why does this unit too weak/strong etc. After that, the balancing discussion can continue. Refer to design document established above before making any changes. When proposing any changes, ensure that it doesn't break any of the established design first before we talk about the relation with other civs. I understand that we are not making this design document from scratch, as we already have the game, so cheating i.e make the design based on the finished game is alright. What I want to stress is that we need to make sure that people know the general intended design of each civ. When people suggest changes, there must be some degree of bias (favorite civs, preferred playstyle, favorite RTS games beside 0AD, etc) and I hope the established design document could be considered before proposing something.

basically it is an advertisement, a tv spot about the game, Mayorcete has a wide audience in spanish. He noted that 0 AD deserves all the support for the intense love that the developers put into the game. He says that 0 AD is a worthy game on a par with Age of Empires. AoE 2 fanboys jumped in a debate in the comments. Mayorcete has been fighting with the AoE2 community , because AoE IV.

I just watched this video about why aoe2 is more popular than aoe3 and one reason discussed is the worse unit motion in aoe3 particular through a snare effect. Not sure if it is the same as you had in mind but something to consider. @5:40

Gold ball trophy. You are just too bitter and rude. The bulk of 0ad players enjoy mysticjim's broadcasts, even when he misses several details.

Buenos días o tardes; -Aspecto remodelado para las unidades lencas siguiendo la referencia de @Lion.Kanzen; Unidades lencas (Arquero) Fase 3; (Vista general) (Lancero) fase 3 ; (vista general) Textura rostros lencas fase 3; 1- 2- 3- 4- Disculpen las molestias*

In an August 2021 interview with The Sunday Times, Sanger objected to Wikipedia's description of alternative medicines, such as homeopathy, as "pseudoscience". He believed such a definition lacked true neutrality. Sanger also claimed that "If you don't kowtow to the right people, you won't even be allowed to participate." Of Wikipedia as a whole, he said: "I advise against using it, even to conscientious students." Lol

Everything is underrated when @Player of 0AD plays it. @Player of 0AD what is worst civ in your opinion then?

Maybe adding an extra property to the resource *.json file (e.g. adding "zeroResourceStart" to the silver.json file) and then check for that property when the game calls "SetResourceCounts". Diff: SetResourceCounts - zeroResourceStart property

You can't do it through the interface, however you should be able to garrison them by running the simulation, then saving the map while it's still running

This could be good, but I think k/d ratio is better off as a standalone statistic. In the value ratio I suggested, the player who only lost 100 units would have a higher value ratio because the 100 units likely cost less. I think it is perfectly acceptable to win even with a low KD.