WhiteTreePaladin

This seems like a really interesting idea. I'm going to play a bit with the dropsite turned off on the civil center and see how it goes. I'm also going to make resource gathering buildings not require resources to build; instead they will only take time (like the Ptolemaic buildings).

Actually, that's pretty much what I do (at least for the stronger buildings). I tear them down until the garrisoned units are forced to evacuate, then quickly claim, repair, and garrison my own units inside. I guess the difference would be determining which player to give the structure to if multiple players are repairing it at once.

That's what I do; mix a few in and hope for the best. I don't have a strong feeling about the feature either way. I actually like the auras for heroes because line of sight to a hero should change a units perspective (increased courage, etc.). I don't think it is too gimmicky. It isn't a feature that was in AoK though, so some won't like it for that reason. That said, I wish the aura was always visible when in effect so I can easily see what units are affected without having to select or highlight them. It's a similar issue with building HP. I like the new destruction textures that give me a rough idea of multiple building's damage levels simultaneously at a glance. Changing walk speed might be adequate. Seems a little weird to have a shuffle speed and a walk speed. The just tempts the player to select a tree near the enemy base to make slow units walk there faster. We could always have infantry speed upgrades provided later in the game.

Farm expiration has never been fun for me and is actually is one of my biggest gripes with AoK. AoK:TC was a little better with its farm queues, but even that resulted in repeated top-offs. AoE3 avoided the issue by using infinite farms like we currently have. I feel that if a field was paid for with wood and build time, then having it sit unused is an extremely obvious and adequate penalty. I don't see the need to introduce a variable rate which has the singular purpose to punish the player for leaving a farm unattended. Resource gathering in AoE3 does not have units shuffling back and forth like AoK. Our game didn't either at first. I remember us asking Philip to add it in. In hindsight, I don't think resource shuffling is a great idea; it complicates gameplay and hurts performance. However, it is so charming that I would still miss it if it were removed. For me, farm expiration adds a significant annoyance without any of the charm. I actually don't really like the female aura either because I have to space out the female citizens so that all the other gathering units are covered by the aura. This requires repeated micro-management during placement of gatherers for both new resource locations and for repositioning units that have roamed (wood cutters, etc.) It's rather a pain, so I mostly don't fool with it, but the best players will be required to bother with mundane details like that. Corrals properly paired with cavalry can collect ridiculous amounts of food quickly. I did it once - it requires a lot of planning; I imagine a more experienced player could really get the timing of the training and the positioning of the cavalry right. It was so much effort that it was not fun for me at all. I think the issue would be much more apparent if we used the computer player to optimize that strategy. Just some personal opinions. Other people have different experiences.

I do think location of farms would be much simpler to keep track of and more fun for players. Rates are not visual. I have enough issue keeping track of the difference in gathering rates between citizen soldiers and civilians. Then there are the techs that increase the gather rates. Honestly, a variable rate doesn't sound like much fun. It's not terrible, but it's fairly mediocre. I don't really see what it offers for the complexity that it adds. I'd much rather choose a respectable spot to place a farm using some visual aid to help choose the location (e.g. an efficiency percentage displayed when hovering to place the farm, etc.) This adds a visual element rather than forcing the player to keep track of all the abstract information in their head.

Structures get easier to capture as their HP falls. Every building (even fortresses) are easy if you weaken them to the point where the garrisoned units are automatically kicked out. [Edit] By the way, is there an easier way to multi-quote and preserve the timestamp / username on the quote?

I like this. One issue I have with capturing civil centers currently is that the houses, markets, etc. are all destroyed before they have time to convert. Stronger buildings like towers and fortresses last long enough for me to claim them. I think we should fix it so that those other structures have time to convert. (Or we could just automatically convert buildings under the influence of the civil center.) I personally think building conversion is a feature as important as the citizen solider concept. I do think it would be nice to have a mode (gui button or hotkey) that can be set to quickly change the default action between capturing and attacking.

I don't think we need to remove berries, but we don't have to place them at the starting point on every map. We could increase their gather rate and they could serve as a food "treasure" with a non-zero gather rate. The fruit trees might be worth removing as I always get those mixed up with regular trees.

I really like both of those ideas. Especially the auto phasing based on building count. It never really made sense to spend resources to advance in phase. Going from a village to a town should just be based on how many or what kind of structures that you have. I think it was just a holdover of the ages from AoK. The blacksmith levels sound very interesting.

Based on how good it looks, I think it's worth it. I don't think we'll have that many cobras on a single map for it to be an issue anyway. The peacock has a similar animation with its tail feathers. The new animations look great.

That should not be possible if there is no AI assigned. Did you set every AI player to unassigned? Also, when changing the map settings (number of players, etc.) I've noticed that the AI difficultly is often reset to medium; it's best to set the AI difficultly after choosing all other settings, or to just double check right before starting a match. (I'm not sure which options reset the AI difficulty when changed.) That will be an uneventful match as the AI will not build or train anything. They will only fight back with the nine or so starting units if you get too close. It's good for city-building though.

How is that possible? I'm genuinely curious.

The default attack action for regular units is capturing structures. However, holding down the CTRL key while right-clicking on an enemy building (the mouse cursor will change to a weapon) will allow regular units to destroy buildings.

Alpha 21 wasn't released until this year. Looks like the point releases of the Ubuntu long-term releases provide more than just security updates (although I would have thought you would have needed 14.04.4 to reach this past spring.)

Oh, nice. Didn't know you could do that.

As far as I am aware, there are no prepackaged installers for Linux versions. If you install 0 A.D. from Ubuntu's package manager, you will get the 0 A.D. release that was current at that time. If you are using 16.04, I would guess that you would probably get Alpha 19, but you would have to check it to make sure. If you really want to get a certain version of 0 A.D. on a current version of Ubuntu, then you will need to checkout source code at the desired revision and compile the code. If you have not done this before, then it will probably take a bit of research. Here are the instructions for how to build 0 A.D.: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions It will default to the latest changes when you first get the code, so you will have to manually change your revision to Alpha 18. I don't know which revision that is, but someone here can find that out for you if you succeed in getting the code checked out. As a side note, Moddb provides links to older versions of 0 A.D. for Windows and Mac here: http://www.moddb.com/games/0-ad/downloads/

Ah, I was just going to mention that it would look good as the upgraded model after the research, but it looks like that's what you have already planned.

I like the new backgrounds. We had a similar complaint with the Ptolemaic structures, but I like those too. Looking forward to more in the future.

(Not really related to the Seleucid units, but just wanted to mention the 2D stairs on the Seleucid civil center.)

I had completely forgotten about relics and also didn't know that they were ever officially planned as part of part 1. I think they would add a lot of fun and could easily be turned off like treasures. Capturing and holding all relics could be added as a victory condition as well. (I think AoK had that.)

Perhaps we should make selections similar to the ingame selections where you can see what you have selected and adjust it accordingly. I know we list the selected entities currently, but there is no way to interact with the selection. Or perhaps we need to keep the selection mode the way it is now, but offer a GUI option for actor or entity selection mode.

I guess ideally you'd be able to click on them without holding Alt? I don't know if there is some reason why they are not selectable currently.

Siege units work quite well against fortresses. Rams are probably the easiest to use. Make sure to fully upgrade them for the best effect. If you are using regular units to take a fortress, you might want to hold the CTRL key down when you right-click to attack a fortress. This will change the mouse cursor to a sword instead of the two crossed flags and allow you to attack the fortress instead of trying to capture it. Because of the difficulty of capturing a fortress full of units, destroying it is often a good option. There are some special units that have a higher then normal crush damage and are particularly effect when used against structures. Here are a few: melee war elephants, stone slingers, and the Mauryan club champion. However, there are some tricks to make capturing buildings much easier. First, capture attack is not the same as regular attack. Champion units usual have around 5 capture attack regardless of type class (archer, cavalry, etc.) while the regular soldiers usually only have a capture attack of 2. Many heroes add 2 extra capture attack for nearby units (noted in the tooltip when you first train them), so choose a hero that offers this and keep the hero nearby the soldiers trying to capture the building. Buildings are a lot easier to capture when they have been damaged, so you can weaken the structure first, and then try to capture it. If that is taking too long, then further weaken it and try to capture it again.

The Alt key should probably be more obvious. Someone might guess to try the delete key, but guessing Alt to select actors is much less likely.

Yeah, adblockers do prevent that. I didn't notice it either. As Erik said, not having any control of the content is the part that would be concerning.