Prodigal Son

Do you remember the funny messages the AI sent on various occasions in Age Of Mythology. I'm starting to implement some similar to them in my wc3 mod and thought they might be an interesting and easy to add feature for 0 AD as well. Sorry if it is already be planned, but it hasn't come to my attention. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, it was messages like "May I offer my surrender?", "I will crush your little city blah blah blah" accordingly on events like game start, heavy loses on either side, when close to defeat etc. It made the AI feel much more alive. I've found a lists of AOM and AOK taunts, but can't seem to find the ones I was looking for, and I don't have AOM installed. Does anybody know where to spot them?

Every 5 seconds seems too little, but something similar could be used. In my wc3 mod I have slaves with degenerating health, and at some low health point they rebel. Then each rebelled slave caused (removed for now) rebellion to other slaves nearby with just one hit. It was funny to see your entire mining or lumbering team go neutral hostile (gaia equivalent) in 2 seconds and attack anything in sight, I might re-add this. If by any chance it's implemented this way in 0 AD, it combos nice with healers. A preacher healing/oppressing/whatever your slowly dying slaves makes for a more effective gather team than normal workers.

Kinda hard to balance the game this way. Who would have 30 footmen over 30 elephants? If the design direction goes this way it would be better to relate it with limits per unit type, reflecting historical numbers of units each civ had and the needed balance. But if the issue is Persians being weak, I'd rather buff them in other ways. They relied mostly on numbers and even immortals weren't that heavy.

Slaves could be bought at the market instead of being trained and be a percentage of killed ("captured") units from a global pool, or only the enemies killed by each player or team. Or they could just have a fixed limit, increaseable by techs. They would make the rank techs more viable. Some civs (seleucids only?) have some unrankable citizen soldiers trained only from the CC. This could work for all civs I guess together with your idea for buffing either them or slaves according to each civ. But it could also be an overkill with similar versions of the same units. Mercenaries indeed could work this way. They could use some more differentiation besides resource costs, and they're soldiers, not workers (with some exceptions like those granted land for service).

I've lost to a Macedonian player exploiting the syntagma bug, even if I had a better econ and massed counter-units, are you sure your defeat wasn't due to it? (no clue if it's fixed in the branch though, haven't played it).

Nice iNcog, in fact that's almost exactly how I balance my wc3 mod. I also agree that this discussion gets confusing/pointless since at points we talk for balance hotfixes while at others for a revamped combat system. Three different resources for a unit might indeed be harsh in practice, so even if it makes sense the cost reduction tech way might be better. It can also simulate the increased cost effectiveness of roman swordsmen and the choice to follow up for other civs which reformed their infantry. Romans could even get a slightly stronger or cheaper version of this tech The aura for the ram might be better that it attacking human soldiers, if no pushing can be implemented.

Swordsmen wood cost could easily be justified as part of their shield materials. Cavalry should be given different roles, some being skirmishers/raiders/anti-ranged while others heavy shock cavalry that can cost effectively break most non-spear troops, not all of them being harassers. And besides the realism aspect of it, I agree that very easy to mass preachers isn't a good idea, so half or something of their cost being metal sounds good. Rams ramming units indeed sounds bad, perhaps if a pushing mechanic is easy to implement to have them slowly make their way through enemy units? It could also work for war elephants and to a lesser extend cavalry or even heavy infantry, pushing back the enemy formation.

I think spearmen do both pierce and hack. Also changing their bonus damage multiplier against cavalry could make it enough anyway, coupled with increasing hack armor would make cavalry stronger against swordmen and other melee troops but still weak against spears (if that's what's intended). I haven't played A16 much because I got annoyed by people using all forms of exploits in it, but before that ranged troops seemed too strong even vs cavalry so I'm not sure about making them weaker vs pierce (could be the lack of the ability to attack moving targets for melee troops though). Besides than I'm in favour of even tougher but costlier cavalry compared to foot units, much like in reality, as it's something that is balancable. Most ancient armies had ratios of 1:10 or even less cavalry to infantry due to cost/lack of horses, more training required etc. So a 50% tougher, 50% costlier cavalryman compared to infantryman isn't that accurate. Healers could cost half metal/half food. Priests have to cost metal(;p) and wood or stone wouldn't make much sense. Not sure about the other two. This guide might be helpful (especially its parts about balancing and unit roles), even if more warcraft/startcraft gameplay styled.

I remember something like the combat system you describe from a discussion with Mythos and I'm definitely for it. It can be refreshing, accurate and balanced if it turns out good, and besides total war which is partly a different genre I think no game has done this right. However if it takes too much time to come along, a simple balance fix could work for the next alpha or two.

I'd suggest something slightly different (not something new, just better justification). Keep spearmen and swordsmen different, and just give spearmen to every civ in village phase along with melee cav. Romans actually have a pretty good justification for starting with spearmen. Since the Marian reforms are implemented now and they aren't simply the 2nd Punic War Romans anymore, you can include earlier fighting styles as well. Like Roman "Hoplites" from before the manipular system, or early Principes/Hastati with spears (they switched to swords around the 1st Punic War I think, and even Hasta means spear if I recall right). Or rank 1 Triarii could represent Roman Hoplites since they would mostly be the middle to high class citizens anyway. Or a "pre-rank" of Triarii being the hoplites, then being replaced by Triarii upon reaching town phase. This system might also need balance by giving all civs only skirmishers (or only archers) and the same with spear/sword cavalry, since those units have different roles and might break balance as well.

Warcraft 3 has a powerful map editor, and while it's not open source, mods and custom maps (which work as stand-alone mods) are very common and certainly not banned and posted on forums all around the net. 0 AD will eventually get better than wc3, at least for my taste, but since my time and experience aren't endless, I prefer working with something more stable for now.

If anyone is interested and has a Warcraft III installation, my project is ready for some playtesting.

Thanks guys for one more great release!

I'm from Athens, Greece, which means I'm at gmt +2/+3 I believe, depending on the time of year (with the changes applied to save electricity). My nickname comes from the Bad Religion song of the same name, not directly from the bible. I've always been lazy/weak at finding good short names, such as usernames and song titles, while on the other hand I've got no issues writing long texts or several songs a day.

Nice one! Actually I've noticed something similar in the 0AD facebook in the meanwhile.

I mean it even has "Date of announcement, 1st April 2014", who could miss that even if lazy with remembering the date and not estranged by the content. Anyway I'm thinking too much I guess:p

I used the corral and cavalry to gather from the sheep trained there for a while in multiplayer, in combination with a rather small number of farms. It was extremely effective after some point in the game, having a huge food income (that constantly booms when you start being able to train bigger and bigger batches of sheep) gathered by just 2-3 cavalrymen. It needed too much attention though, especially in the early to mid game and I couldn't cope so well against most decent players, so soon I reverted back to the lazy ways of only farming. But in long games that you're not under heavy pressure, it should become increasingly superior over farming. As the Mauryans I was able to support huge numbers of food-draining elephants with this strategy while having a bigger army and more spare workers for the needed metal as well. Have in mind that it's function will change though, I believe to something like a steady source of food from each sheep garrisoned in the corral, rather than killing the sheep and gathering from them and it will get balanced afterwards. Edit: Just noticed Lion already mentioned this.

Nice work, would love those in game as well. No clue on why any comment would be needing moderation though, like it isn't obvious:)

I had in mind plant oil (like olive oil, there's plenty of it around the Mediterranean), however never did any research on what they really used this way. Water wouldn't be that effective though compared to any kind of oil.

How about a Boiling Oil tech? It could work for towers and forts like in Age of Mythology (attacking enemies within melee/closer than minimum range) and it could also give an attack to gates, vs enemy units meleeing the gate or passing through if it's open.

Something like mini-civs was in the works (or at least in the plans), no clue of mercenaries will replace it as something simpler or both will work together someday.

Comments in Red.

That's not true. There were regions were mercenaries gathered awaiting to be hired, for example Cape Tainaron in ancient Greece, (south of Sparta). I actually proposed instant hiring, not training:)

I believe this way it's even simpler than capturing. Just click and hire. You don't even have to wait for capturing or go to an isolated building to set a training queue and wait for the units to come little by little, nor you have to guard it from attacks, it's just available to whoever sends a unit there. Only programming-wise it might be a little more complex.

I think something like the WC III system is great for mercenaries. The structure is invulnerable, non-capturable, you just need nearby units to activate the hiring (it's like a neutral shop where you can instantly purchase units). Makes sense since mercenaries go where the gold is, they don't have an owner. (If we want more realism we could make it destroyable, so one player could choose to purge the mercenary camp, but attacking it would mean the available units inside spawning as gaia to fight him). Then on hiring, again WC III style, each unit has a different replenishment rate, number of maximum availability in the camp, and even a starting delay (so you can't hire elephants to rush within the second minute of the game), depending on the units strength. So it works like, once the starting delay time of a unit has passed, the first unit of that type is available for you to hire it. Then, when it's replenishment time has passed, the unit is available for hiring again, but only in numbers up to it's maximum availability, no matter how much time has passed. Warcraft has max available numbers from 1 to 3 for each mercenary, but it has a pop cap of 100, so we could have something like triple that number. Another idea that came to mind, if mercenary camps are implemented, is moving several mercenary factional units to it and replace them with with some native unit in the civ's rooster. For example, Macedon has several unused cavalry units that that could replace the Thessalians if we move them to the mercenary camp, and Thessalians fought for other factions as well anyway.