alpha123

See the list of known problems and this topic for progress.

I don't like that for 3 reasons: 1) It puts very little emphasis on micro in the game, 2) It would make it almost impossible for less than ~100 ranged units to take out ~50 melee units in formation, since the damage would effectively be distributed among melee units, which have fairly high health and armor, especially if they got an armor bonus from formations, 3) It makes attacking from the flank less effective: ~20 ranged units should be able to do significant damage (kill 10 or so units) if they attack a formation from the flank, since they will have lower armor there. But if the damage is distributed, they might not be able to kill many at all, just damage a lot of units a little bit.

I believe most of the modelling and animation is done in Blender, but I think the reason the originals aren't released is simply because the art repo is HUGE. 0 A.D. already uses Collada, so you can probably just use those. I think the originals are also licensed under CC-BY-SA, in which case you could get them if the Collada ones are insufficient.

I'm OK if the animation doesn't play until the end of a battle, but the units should get their stat bonus in the middle of the battle; they should definitely not have to wait until afterwards. I'm in favor of it playing in battle, but being more of a little fist pump than the current thing. Ideally half a second or less.

(Continuing discussion from http://www.wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17185&st=60#entry267877) That's terrible for multiplayer. Unless you don't want random maps to be played in multiplayer (only the yet-to-be-implemented skirmish maps), there NEEDS to be resource balance for all players. As for different maps having more or less of specific resources, yes, that's fine (there could be a high wood but low stone map) as long as the resources are equal for all players. It can't be too extreme though, or else certain maps start to heavily favor certain civs: in your example, that map would be much better as the Gauls than as the Romans.

It's intended. I don't particularly like that feature either. The promotion animation should be a lot shorter, and UnitAI shouldn't target units currently being promoted.

Yes, I think that would help, as would adding a few 5000 stone/metal mines periodically, instead of just 1000 ones. Ensuring that there's a high point with lots of wood near every player would be nice. Scattered other high points could serve as places to fight for expansions. It would be very nice if every/almost every map had similar fish/berry numbers to Belgian Uplands and Deep Forest, especially if regenerative berries were implemented (speaking of which, that could work for fish too). I think that would really help with the current food source problems. If that and infinite farms with diminishing returns make it into Alpha 14, it would be a good gameplay enhancement.

That's pretty much 0 A.D as well. Our civs are very similar. It won't be particularly hard to balance. Regarding the topic: I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, yes, the current system doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This is one of the reasons I'd prefer an alternative combat system. On the other had, it makes some sense if you look at HP as simply "the unit isn't dead yet" instead of how much damage it has taken so far. All units are equally alive/undamaged, just the more you fire at one the more likely it is to die (this is simulated by the HP going down until it reaches 0). I'm really not sure how this would contribute to gameplay, but I'm against it for the time being (I don't think it would be good for gameplay but I can't really put my finger on why -- probably unnecessary complexity).

As long as you release the source under a GPL license, there's nothing legally or ethically wrong with selling it. If/when I get a Windows 8 device I'd probably even buy it, especially with some kind of touch screen support.

True, that one does have enough fruit and almost enough fish. The problem is that map is awful for multiplayer. Terrible resource distribution (some people get stuck with very little wood while others get a ton; metal and stone are poorly placed), no real mines just little piles everywhere (and again, these are poorly distributed), too many little pools of water that make building unnecessarily difficult, bad spawning positions... I've played multiplayer games on Belgian Uplands. It just doesn't work. As I understand it's a pretty experimental map however, so that's excusable. If all those problems (particularly resource distribution) were fixed, Belgian Uplands would be a great map.

Performance isn't an issue so much as my crummy Intel integrated graphics card.

Hm. I could record some gameplay footage for this. Pureon suggested that I might also do the voiceover; I'd be OK with that I guess. I don't have a particularly good microphone (or particularly good voice ) though. Maybe if somebody would write some kind of script I could do it. But anyway, just some regular multiplayer gaming footage? I'd be happy to make some, although I don't usually run the game with full graphics settings so it wouldn't be as pretty as the game actually is.

I agree 100%. Maps need more animals, more fruit, and a lot more fish. The nice thing about moving farms away from CCs is that it makes farms a little more costly to build and defend. Especially since they are far and away the best food source currently, this will help with balancing them out a bit. I know you haven't played in a while, but thanks to the 1000f 1000w town phase change, there's a fair amount of fighting in village phase. I'd still be OK with a barracks in village though, especially if town phase units are either stronger or there are a lot more tech options (or both), thus providing an incentive to get to town phase (and delay the other person from town phase).

I've noticed it in formations now too. I've never seen it happen in Alpha 13 though, so I think we're OK in that respect. Glad sbte fixed it (he's the guy responsible for a lot of recent performance improvements; I don't know if he's on the forums).

I forgot how awesome that game was. I think I'll try to record it, so maybe we can get a non-accelerated version.

IMO, cavalry need to be faster even when not charging. Most cav are only 1 speed faster than Macedonian skirmishers, for example, and 1.5 faster than Celtic skirms. It takes a while for them to catch light units, which definitely isn't realistic (a horse, even when not charging, can catch a person on foot pretty easily).

Hm. I like that mechanic. You've convinced me. As long as the fleeing problem is solved, I think formation breaks should remove the defensive secondary attack.

Either way it's unnecessarily complicated. If you want to make ranged units scared when not in formation, they should probably just flee really far when attacked, instead of trying to use their ranged weapon.

That would be fine too. When would their pilum "reload"? Or I guess it doesn't need to, since it would sort of automatically reload as soon as it's far away enough to use the pilum. OK, this shouldn't be too difficult. I don't like the formation idea though. IMO it's unnecessarily complicated, also if they defend out of formation the units won't try to run all over the map chasing each other, like they do now. So it would work a bit like a siege tower with a melee attack (and without having to garrison to get the ranged one)? The arrows would just kind of target anything nearby, while the main attack works normally. This might be possible currently. This doesn't need turrets to be implemented, but it needs turrets to look good. That was my initial thought, but I wasn't really sure how to handle reloading then. Mythos's idea of making it all range based solves that pretty nicely though. I think you're confusing secondary attacks and initial attacks. Secondary attacks are for units that wield multiple weapons, like Maiden Guards, Immortals, or the Iberian champion cavalry. Initial attacks are pretty much what you're describing. There will be no regeneration rate though. Take Roman swordsmen as the example: if they're far enough away, they'll throw a pilum then attack with their swords. When they're far enough away again, they'll be able to use another pilum.

I'm going to implement alternate attacks, that is units which have more than one attack. e.g. Mauryan Maiden Guards are both swordsmen and archers; currently we have two units for that but they should be merged into one. There are a few other examples as well. Here's my current design: Basic case: primary/secondary attacks (e.g. Maiden Guard)Right clicking a target uses the primary attack - this is how it is currently; you can't use secondary attacks at all. Alt-right clicking a target uses the secondary attack. Clicking a button in the GUI or using a hotkey toggles between the two, so clicking the button and then right clicking would use the secondary attack. [*]Advanced case: initial/primary attacks (e.g. Roman swordsmen, which throw a javelin before they attack with swords) Alt-right clicking a target uses the initial attack. After the maximum number of initial attacks is used, UnitAI switches to attacking with the primary attack. Right clicking a target uses the primary attack. The primary attack must be used at least once (maybe more) before the initial attack can be used again. I like this proposal (naturally... I came up with it ) but I'd like all your feedback on how this should work, especially initial/primary attacks (I'm still trying to sort this out; primary/secondary attacks are pretty well thought out).

Will do. Ah, I didn't know quantumstate was doing it. I'd say wait for him to show up again. That sounds like the best way to do it IMO. It will help with the general underpoweredness of elephants too (they're pretty big so they'll trample a lot, all the time). That would be pretty cool. Definitely wait for quantumstate to get back in that case.

Well, I haven't seen quantum for a while, but he would probably win just by raw skill even if his civ was severely underpowered and the opponent's grossly overpowered. xP But yeah, please visit #0ad and play a few games, THEN judge balance. You might have to wait a little bit to find a game, but it probably won't take too long. Especially on weekends people play pretty frequently. EDIT: It will take a lot of tweaking. Of course we don't think the game is perfectly balanced right now! What we think is it's not bad right now, and it's possible to do with as many civs as we have. Oh, and currently there are definitely good players who play different civs. We did have a pro player who hung around for a while (TheMista) who didn't seem to think we'll have trouble with balancing this many civs. I'll take his opinion over yours, I think. He did show us that dogs were very overpowered, but we corrected that and afterwards he didn't seem to think anything was particularly messed up.

Now play the regular mode and mass 50 elephants. (I managed to get 40 once, but that was a very bizarre and exceptional circumstance, which is certainly OK. Also my opponents didn't have anything to counter them.) For goodness sake, quit judging balance from single player deathmatches! That really doesn't work, OK? I dare you to come play a REAL game sometime.

There's not much left to be done for exponential armor, all that remains is tweaking unit stats to make sense with it. I would like to add alternate attacks to the alpha 14 list. Currently units are only able to use a ranged attack OR a melee attack, not both. For example, Mauryan Maiden Guards are both archers and swordsmen. This would probably also encompass things like Roman swordsmen throwing a few javelins before engaging the enemy with swords. I'm interested in working on this, but if you feel like the other features on the list are more important I'll handle those. Running/charging looks interesting, I don't know if that's dependent on the new pathfinder. I will take a look at that if you feel alternate attacks can wait. Is trample damage an aura? Does it only happen when charging? Does it only happen for horse when charging and elephants all the time?

While Carthage is a bit OP right now compared to most other civs, largely because they have almost every unit, pretty much all the top players agree elephants are underpowered. It's true, grab a handful of skirmishers and eles go down easily. I hope to see you on #0ad sometime soon, maybe we can play a few games. EDIT: Also, pretty much nobody plays deathmatches, so we really have no idea how balance works out in those. Naturally stronger units would appear overpowered, since you don't have to worry about cost. Try playing the regular mode. AegisBot on Very Hard is actually a pretty decent opponent.