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A problem with this approach is that the "strength" depend on various factors and most of them are not raising linear at all. E.g. the number of units (simplifying things to "each side has only one type of unit" and also the same number of units (production costs are the same), one side melee, the other side ranged): - Let's say one of the melee units wins against the ranged unit BUT... - At a certain amount of units on both sides a "phase transition" will happen ... when no melee unit is fast enough to reach the ranged units at all. (This only happens if the size of units is small enough to fit enough ranged units within an area of their range so that they deal more damage per time than the melee units can "carry" health towards them) So even this (rather simple) example already depend on: Units range, size, speed, damage per time and health...and is non-linear. (Not even considering armor/damage type, bonus vs., Stance/formation bonuses, stamina, ...) So IMO in the end so many parameters have to be considered that calculating an exponential (or polynomial) fit for each unit type vs. each other in a "balancing test map" (capped at a sane limit) would be simpler (could then be stored in a matrix and used by the AI). (This could then also be used for balancing though I'd find "balancing by usage statistics" from actual multiplayer games would suit that purpose better)

Hi and welcome to the forum I'm not sure to what extend campaigns (other than a tutorial) is planned for the first part of the game (500BC-1BC, a second part is panned after release in the timeframe from 1AD-500AD). However, having a campaign (or at least multiple maps that play like a campaign) is very welcome. If it will be part of the official release in the end depends on many things but that shouldn't discourage you EDIT: I think you need some reputation (minimum number of like 5 posts I think) to upload files but you can always add links to the files here in the forum. You have to "Use Full Editor" to get an upload option. Have a nice stay.

The .json files are just text files. Notepad++ works perfectly for me. Maybe you just used a wrong syntax? Not sure if which text encoding 0 A.D. supports. I'm using ANSI and that works fine (just to mention another potentially reason things break I could think of).

What about an additional single color alpha blending for units effected by an aura (different colors for different aurae)? Hotkeys for the max range rings should toggle IMO. I think stamina would indeed be of much value for the game (e.g. for melee charging and/or stamina share as a realistic bonus for formations).

.The "deathmatch feeling" comes from several things IMO: - Civil Soldiers can gather (even gather some resources best, especially wood). So building an economic basis and training an army is the same at the early age. Possible solution: Make woman better and citizen soldiers worse at gathering wood. That would also make woman better (ATM I only use them for farming/foraging) - There is no real possibility for defense early on other than soldiers. Possible solution: Add defensive structures to the starting age (AFAIK palisades can be build now right away). This also should include weaker, low range high view range towers (I never used the scout tower so not sure if it works for defensive purpose early on). - Games are often decided before City Age is reached by all players. This is not bad in general but means that e.g. champion units are much less used in average. Possible solution: Make Champion units stronger (already as is AFAIK) and make sure siege weapons in the last age can out-range defenses or take quite some punch I agree that late techs can be expensive (especially military/trade/intelligence techs). Also they could have quite some impact but shouldn't entirely break the balance between civs (I'd still like a late expensive tech that uncovers the entire map). I also like a more complex tech tree (or "techweb"). It shouldn't be to complex though to allow new players not find themselves completely lost (Afaik thats also planned anyways). IMO we are going in the right direction over all. Lets see what extensive play testing will bring.

Resources (like today money) have no direct value on their own. The values are defined in each individuals mind. Resources have an indirect value in a society in which most individuals share about the same set of values (especially resources/money) so one can give things that have a direct value an indirect value (e.g the price). In a game of warfare like 0 A.D. the highest direct value is the capability to fight. Resources don't grant that but can be used to get it. So it's like: Gather resources (generate indirect value), train/build/research (convert indirect to direct value specifically the strength to fight). Resources are mainly that successful in human history because many direct value items are not likely to last long (especially food). So it does only make sense to generate overproduction to a limited extent. After that (to generate further safety of supply) other longer lasting items have to be considered (that's where resources for later production and money come into play). In short: Having many resources in a real-time strategy is bad because they don't have any direct value on their own - it's only a potential one. So using your resources in the most efficient way and ASAP is the winning "strategy" - not saving them. And I have to strongly disagree that this mindset comes from Starcraft. IMO it's very sad and the other way around in the present days: - PPL have widely lost their self-confidence/sense for own values and fuse into society with the given "values" - "Value" and "price" got nearly indistinguishable by that - That way "value" can be generated by simply adding new "values" to the mindset - without the originally needed individual and direct value - The "health" of an economy is now (more or less) defined by it's over all net worth and it's rate of growth (though actually no real value has to be produced for that "growth") (That doesn't mean that no actual "values" can be added to an economy these days - but it's not needed to increase the net worth of an economy - and that's quite sad, misleading and can be - and IMO is - misused) - On the other hand things that are actually valued alot by many PPL (like e.g. the access to knowledge like in Wikipedia) add very little (if anything at all) to the net worth of an economy (and so is vastly underestimated by economically oriented PPL) In Short: In realtime strategy games the relationship between resources (prize) and strength to fight (value) is roughly conserved (though in a very simplified way). It's our everyday life in an economically oriented society that obfuscates the relation. It's like changing an inequation to an equation: The outcome is simply wrong Edit.: And by the way, I agree with your repeat production queue idea!

IMO the cost of technologies has to be balanced against the cost of units and buildings. If technologies are to expensive and/or take to long games will lean towards "reach the unit cap ASAP and overrun the enemy". (Instead of upgrading to City Phase you could alternatively build 40 skirmishers for example) The cost of upgrading everything should cost about as much as building 2x unit cap cheap combat units (as a rough guideline so about 2*250*100 ~= 50000 resources) The main thing driving research is the satisfaction of basic needs so Food should be the resource needed most in the research tree. (That's why the neolithic revolution had such a big impact on social and technological development)

I really think those suggestions are best put into the game (if wanted) as techs. In the end "gods" are psychological/sociological ideas that got widely spread and so influenced people. Since this is still the case adding specific gods will likely generate controversy about this matter so I would avoid them. Since we dropped "exclusive or techs" (AFAIK entirely, so you can upgrade all techs, not have to decide between two, I like this very much) re-adding that by choosing a "god" would IMO also go against the path of the general game design we seam to lean towards. I congratulate anyone seeing no problems with specific gods but I believe many would consider this blasphemy.

Hi juanjo, Welcome. This game has the aim of being historically accurate. Since gods are only mentioned in stories rather than physically appearing they had an impact on society (and that's in the game in form of temples and priests) but never physically appeared and/or directly intervened. So they will not get part of the original game. However, you are free to build a mod including gods.

Sorry

@wowgetoffyourcellphone: And this could not be the distance fog or something else that's meant to be?

EDIT: I was at r16253 when this all happened (so maybe fixed)! Not sure if those are related. I'm at r16256 and build a storehouse on uneven terrain. It seamed to be completely build and the unit AI send the builders to harvest wood that in fact could be delivered to the storehouse in question. However, the storehouse had 1 hitpoint and no upgrades showed up when selecting it. I attacked an enemy CC that was not finished yet but my javlin units dealt no damage to it. Same when attacking a defense tower. I placed a CC with 10 workers and they started constructing. They where attacked and killed so I send ~50 javelin infantry to kill the enemy units around and send them to finish the CC. However, even after several insane move actions of them they never started to actually build it any further. I'm not sure what is causing all this but IMO ATM the game is in an unplayable state. The unit AI is entirely broken: - Collectors don't divide to collect from other resources of the same type right next to the resource targeted and, if many unit are selected, block each other so nothing gets done. - Collectors stop at storehouses while resources of the same type as send to collect are just 2 meters away (so for me for no reason at all). This happened with the storehouse above. - If many units are selected and send to an incomplete building they never start building it (see the CC above). - If many units are send to build several buildings in a queue (e.g. houses) some go to the next building (likely because blocked by other builders) while some just seam to drop the entire queue (maybe because the couldn't reach any foundation). - The unit AI doesn't recognize if a target isn't reachable in all cases (like harvesting from a tree within a forest - it just should send the unit to the reachable resource of that type closest to the targeted resource IMO).

Yes, scenarios and skirmish maps use starting entities placed by the map designer. Random maps (in most cases) use the starting entities as defined in the civ .jason.

Likely you are right and I just noticed it later (most of the time I'm working with Atlas - playing is quite lagy on my laptop). Sorry for the late answer and the confusion

Erik Feneur it is - not everyone know all names, WhiteTreePaladin

...yet another argument for shared libraries for simulation and RMGen IMO. I agree. An RMGen patch for this is in progress - maybe that could help for the in-game wall placement as well as for AI wall placement, not sure.

On random maps you either get closed walls or defense towers (not wall towers) Defense towers have higher range and grand 5 population limit for Iberians (So they are not really weaker than walls). Defense towers can't be connected by walls (at least not in-game, so that's not a bug). If you get walls or towers (or something else) is the decision of the random map designer. If you get defense towers "only" there might be not enough space for walls on the map (e.g. tiny/small maps) or you start on some kind of island (e.g. the "Snowflake Searocks" map). As far as I can see there is always a good reason if you don't get walls as Iberian civ bonus on random maps. Not sure about skirmish or scenario maps (I mentioned that the walls might cause some trouble back when skirmish maps where added but didn't look into that lately). An issue could be the compatibility of random map wall placement and in-game wall placement. If a wall part is destroyed you might not be able to rebuild it in-game (not sure). (That is one reason - besides code duplication - that I asked for shared functions)

Yes, I'm quite sure the way most archers before the time heavy armors got widely spread (not sure when exactly) used this method. I would assume though that more organized groups like (like roman legions, not sure if they had archers) and civilizations used to heavier armors may have switched to a more "static" archer behavior and instead of focusing on fast/agile archery focused more on long range/full draw archery and covering the archers by melee troops if the enemy gets to close. This is just what I'd assume though.

Very nice job This might also get to be a part of the (AFAIK planned) detailed civilization description. If clicking a unit/building a more depth stat frame would show up e.g. below the techtree. (Though I'd prefer a table with all units/buildings) IMO scrollbars should be available for all GUI objects that could make use of it, yes. That could enable us to get rid of several (though likely not all) cases of "things not fitting on the screen" and would be much more sane then several other proposals I've seen so far.

The second problem (mouse cursor offset) seams to be the same as described in: http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19369 That topic includes a temporary solution - though this doesn't fix the issues source.

IMO it's not up to a game to change society and we should focus on a sane system do determine the players gameplay capabilities rather than his social skills. To get rid of occurrences where PPL feel insulted by others a mute function (don't show a specific players messages including map pings) should be enough (this could be per game or permanently) but should not include any change of which games are shown (in the end it's a disadvantage for the player that feels insulted because he has less games to choose from while it should be a disadvantage for the insulting player). Additionally what happens if an unwanted player enters the game the insulted person is in? (The insulted person could be kicked but that's a disadvantage to the wrong person again. or the unwanted person could not see any game a person is in that used the function but this can/will be "misused" so that's even worse.) Insulting, however, should IMO not have any impact on the gameplay. Voting systems don't work since PPL playing one style tend to blame PPL playing another style independent of the play styles efficiency (similar for talking style). I'm not sure if banning is the way to go though for now (with sane moderators) it seams like a valid solution though this will get time consuming the more PPL play this game (and likely the sanity of moderators will vanish with more moderators required to handle this). What PPL like or don't like is in general not objective so we should not focus to much on this IMO. PPL should learn to get along with other PPL and just masking them will not get the PPL together but divide them further IMO. (And if a AIs start taunting I'd like to have the mute function also work for AIs!)

Patch added: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/2942 The reason for the wrong units is likely that the barracks are Athenian and the AI builds from them (I like that they can, BTW!). The starting units and CC where correct (But the walls and the buildings beside the CC wasn't).

This massage should only apply to the walls (and buildings but the CC), not the units and the CC. I'm on it. Thanks for reporting!

At Alpha 17 it did work fine, Could you give me any hint which revisions I should look for (between A17 and r15998) and which revision A17 was? It might be something with the resolution. My screen resolution is 1280x800 (and maybe the game resolution is set to 1280x768 for some reason and the monitor doesn't switch correctly or something). So how can I manually set the resolution and how to tell what resolution the game is running in? EDIT: Adding to local.cfg: xres = "1280" yres = "768" fixes the issue (ofc. it's still not my monitors resolution!). So it might be a specific problem with my monitors resolution (1280x800 at least that's what my drivers tell me as well as several full screen applications). Minimal resolution also works fine (1024x768). Sometimes with 1280x800 the bottom part of the mainscreen is "wrapped" to the otherwise unused space at the top of the screen (e.g. the report buttons) and the "wrapped" part then flickers. In the other cases with the same resolution, however, I can't see any missing parts (the report buttons are present at the bottom of the screen). I am not able to deterministically enforce one of those two behaviors.

In the latest SVN the actual point of interaction of the cursor is shifted to the bottom by a fixed space compared to the visual curser. I also have black, unused space at the top of the screen that may be the same space. This happens in the main menus as well as in the game (where also moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen does not make the view scroll downwards as intended). Sadly the screenshots neither contain the black space nor the cursor to show the issue. Information: Revision: 15998 Operating System: Windows Vista 64 Home (Longhorn) fully updated System Info: system_info.txt