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Generally agree that trading can be improved, especially on the fact that a market shouldnt have "infinite stock". Killing citizen soldiers, however, is a complex issue and trading flaws arent the only or primary reason for this: those who dont trade would kill them too to make more champions instead. Garrisoning idea in itself looks interesting, but the useless citizens problem should be considered in the first place in other aspects which are offtopic.

I think the game is already quite universal and you are going to overcomplicate it with two modes. Currently MP is indeed mostly about micromanagement and competition but the reason is not that competitive people 'took over' it; just citybuilder people face two technical issues: lag on bigger maps no possibility to save an mp gameAfaiu these issues will be solved in the near future and i believe that after this MP will become diverse in a natural way (those who prefer quick fun won't join 2-players games on giant maps, and vice versa).

Probably voluntary destruction of a building should take some time. Ranged inf units normally have less armor and arent optimal choice for capturing since they die easier from buildings which have arrow attack. For buildings left unprotected, imo, a unit type shouldnt make much difference. That said, presentation of capture ability in form of Capture Attack parameter seems quite artificial to me. Unlike other parameters in the game, it hasn't a clear real world 'prototype'. Maybe it would be better to calculate it from attack parameters. (Cause, doesn't a capture ability mostly depend on a level of threat a unit can pose?)

@iNcog: Generally, i try to restrain myself from stats discussions and wait for the balancing plan to be available. While it is not yet, everyone argues based on his own assumptions about intended roles of units, and this is mostly in vain. But since i have mentioned ranged vs melee thing already, my thoughts are the following: Generally, i agree that melee now got the support role, which may be the result of longer ranges for ranged and melee made not effective vs buildingsLong ranges are in theory balanced by less damage and less health. This is a complex change, i think that only after the release and many MP games we will see if this is balanced in practice. Still 72m archer range looks scary to me With wider vision ranges, it is upsetting when melee run to auto-attack, making themselves vulnerable, and you just dont notice thisWould be nice if melee were more effective against wooden buildings (smth in between a17 and current svn stats). Since there is no capturing feature yet, damage used to be a good 'metaphor' for it and bring some dynamic.@Pithawk (some random thoughts on skirm cav) From the unit balance perspective: As of now, skirm inf indeed has weaker stats than skirm cav in svn and is likely to lose vs them. (I personally have no strong opinion on if this should be kept or not.) Archer and slinger inf has at least the advantage of range.If you don't want to give a symmetric answer, you also might want to use newly available wooden towers.Cav indeed has to be microed to keep the range/speed advantage. So before stats adjustments, later game should also be taken into account, when there is less microing possibilities and cav is more likely to die from spears/pikes.From the strategy perspective: You are not necessarily supposed to kill all rusher's cav to turn the situation in your favour.If to change cav stats looking only at what Tango does, we may end up in a17 situation where rush barely exists. This is like to complain that wesono expands too fast.To sum up, i think that some adjustment to skirm cav/skirm inf balance can be considered, but with caution.

@iNcog: are you talking about a17 or svn when you say that ranged are superior vs melee? I would agree with you to some extent for both cases, still it is important for further discussion.

I agree with you that the deathmatch feeling has to do with the fact that citizen soldiers can gather (and generally, with other points you have stated). Benifits in one resource type can be 'converted' to benefits in another one quite easily by training gatherers that cost first type of resource. But because of this i'm also afraid that the proposed solution will have undesired consequences: we'll get better wood gatherers that cost only food and train faster, so again, more resources and more possibilities for the same time. With the last version the situation with resources has developed from 'in 0AD, you normally don't severely lack any kind of resource' to 'you have lots of everything, a dead army is np just train another'. I am convinced that this is caused by techs changes which give higher gathering speeds eventually. So it would be good to try to lower techs' effects first (increasing cost of units/buildings will have the same effect just with some multiplier, and the default pop cap, which people hurry to reach, obviously has to stay the same).

Sure, here's some clarification: 1) i didn't suggest a method to make tech choices more risky 2) i warned against cost increase + reward increase as it doesn't add risk but makes the game 'faster' and more deathmatch-style 3) to slower the pace, i suggested the following: for example, currently we have 3 techs for stone mining: Servants +15%, Serfs +15%, Slaves +50%. We could have 1 or 2 techs instead of 3, or lower coeffs for them to, say, 10%, 10% and 35% (just an example). In the latter case, costs should be lowered accordingly, so that it doesn't become totally useless to research. However before considering this it is better to observe for a while how a18 will be played. People are expected to train more champions now so maybe this will balance things a bit. Though the deathmatch feeling appears earlier than in City phase.

I agree with you that technologies choices should provoke strategical thinking. However cost increase and reward increase seems not to be a solution. This is what was done in a17 (cost increase; + techs for each resources available in each phase with comparable coefficients --> reward increase). This sounded good in theory but in practice this is exactly what contributes to the race feel. See what happens: after a player manages to research a couple of resource techs he will use theirs benefits to research another ones. Eventually there is just more stuff built/trained/gathered for the same time span. So, to slower the pace (if there is such a goal), i'd suggest, on the contrary, lowering coeffs/decreasing the number of upgrades, maybe combined with some cost decrease. To make it risky... not sure yet what could be done.

Indeed nice to see wooden towers available, this can make phase I gameplay more interesting (if powerful enough early attacks are possible too). Btw they have class 'Town' for some reason, allowing to phase to III with 4 wooden towers and enough resources, intended or bug? Romans who can't build palisade walls still can build these towers, looks a bit inconsistent. Cavalry has insane vision range now, can't see a reason for this. (Edit: to phase to III, not to II)

Another note about stats screen: at Units tab, Mauryan worker elephants and archer elephants are only included in Total column, probably should be counted also in Worker and Cavalry categories, respectively.

The patch does the same thing but i tried to make it more consistent in terms of coding.

I think this is early to do fine tuning for ranged vs melee before formations are back (if this is planned for the next version). Currently, if a group of melee is to approach a group of ranged from far away, a melee group strings out and can't attack 'simultaneously' while ranged can. This problem is more visible with bigger numbers of troops and larger distances, so may be irrelevant to the situation described in the original post. However my point is that weakening ranged now may result in op melee after formations are brought back.

Doesn't happen with building for now; and gathering can be quickfixed within the mod by changing the line 5070 in UnitAI.js : if (!Engine.QueryInterface(this.entity, IID_ResourceGatherer)) to if (!Engine.QueryInterface(this.entity, IID_ResourceGatherer) && !this.IsFormationController()) Also attaching a bit extended patch for svn here UnitAI.js.patch * Most units which are not able to gather will still walk to a nearest dropsite after reaching a resource rally point, as before 15812 revision.

@niektb: saw nothing new in that table, and again, i don't think this change would significantly alter the results; on the contrary, i believe that spear cav would do as well as sword cav in your test with all other things being equal. Just accurate conditions is what makes a test a test, leaving less room for speculations.

Well this was my first guess but later i noticed Incog's post about sword cav and thought you replied to him. Anyway then, i guess Peregrino told about (Roman) spear cav which has somewhat different stats. Not that i think it would alter testing results very much, but for the sake of integrity.