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if your opponent has 20 units when he attacks you and you only have 5 units to defend, then that means that your build is unsafe. you should be using a build that has more units out to defend when his attack hits. You have defender's advantage to work with as well, since your units have no distance to travel once they're finished being trained. We also have the border mechanic in 0 AD, which prevents people from building forward bases too early in the game; this acts as a secondary defensive mechanism. On top of that, soldiers which are trained for defense can be tasked to gathering resources*, so you don't even lose out on economy if you make defensive units. If, on top of all the defense mechanisms I just talked about, you also have very strong buildings (CCs and towers), then a match of 0 AD quickly becomes a match of "who can take the map with CCs the fastest", which isn't actually very fun. It's the primary reason I don't play the game as much as I did when I discovered it. 0 AD as of right now is all about taking the map with buildings that are much more cost-efficient than actual units. It's not very interesting no matter how you look at it. That said, units being vulnerable even when they are garrisoned in buildings is a mechanic that helps alleviate that problem. A few more nerfs to CCs and towers and the game's design will become quite sound. *I actually have an issue with the fact that the unit rank upgrade is now gone. before, it meant that if you wanted units which were strong in combat, you had to sacrifice your economy. so if you wanted to rush, you would get the upgrade asap, if you wanted to play defensively and economically heavy, it made sense to wait until you could safely support a house boom or caravan boom before getting that upgrade. now, that line is kind of gone and i'm not sure if that's good or not, since it makes defensive, economic play the "best", on paper anyway. well, this would take play testing on my part to confirm, just wanted to throw this thought out there.

@dvangennip No you don't get it, the idea behind ranged units using a melee attack is that when ranged units are in melee, they're terrible. The idea is that a ranged unit which is at range is doing great. It deals damage without putting itself in harms way. However, when that unit is caught in a melee fight, it doesn't use its ranged attack anymore (since units attack the closest unit to themselves unless they're ordered to do otherwise, afaik). Instead, it uses its much weaker melee attack. This detail means that players have to pay attention to keep their ranged units out of harm's way while looking for opportunities to engage ranged units in melee fights. It serves as a way to reward proper positional play. Age of Empires 3 pulled this off quite well, then again melee units weren't the strongest in the game, unless we're talking about heavy cavalry. Aoe3 was primarily dominated by ranged units anyway (which is historically accurate anyway). http://i.imgur.com/jb7oMHV.png Of course, you can do the same thing by playing on hack armor and hitpoints. The whole idea behind playing with animations is to make the game more immersive / cute / realistic, however as it's been said before, it's not a priority, merely wishful thinking. I don't think it should be technically hard to implement, it would however represent a large volume of work.

I'm aware that pretty much everything needs hours of coding behind. There's no pressure really, we're all just day-dreaming a bit.

it should definitely be done automatically!

It's funny that fallen soldiers give food as loot. Reassure me, people in 0 AD aren't cannibals are they?!

This was actually done in Age of Empires 3, where ranged units in melee range would hit things with their weapons instead of shooting them. Musketeers had muskets with bayonets on them, so they did quite well in melee. In the other hand, skirmishers armed with rifles were forced to hit things with their rifles when caught in melee, which was obviously ineffective. It was not only cute, but it was also realistic and it balanced out ranged units caught in melee fights. I mentioned this before in another thread, however I'll say it again. All infantry and cavalry units which were attacking buildings did so by torching the building, NOT by using their weapon. This was also more realistic and it looked better. Even melee units had a ranged attack for siege which was simulated by throwing the torch. Very nice overall. If these kinds of animations could be included in 0 AD, I would love it. It should be doable without too much technical difficulties as far as I know, however it would represent some tedious work. So I agree with you,DMDonahue. However, that is one task that needs to be looked among many, many more.

It should be difficult at all to implement that kind of dependency. Admittedly, I can't code a program to solve simple math problems, but I don't think it should be that hard to implement at all. We already have aging which is an upgrade that depends on the amount of buildings that you have. The biggest difficulty by far is making a web that intuitively makes sense and doesn't complicate things too much. There are other things to consider as well. Imagine I want a certain set of upgrades or a certain set of buildings. Will there be several possible paths to obtain that certain set, or will those paths limit the options I have early game. In traditional RTS, like Starcraft for instance, you have a kind of funnel. Rather than explaining it, I'll upload a paint image. http://i.imgur.com/C5PPymB.png Essentially, in starcraft you have a large amount of possible early game openings, then you'll go for a certain mid-game position which is more or less the same regardless of what you opened with (there are exceptions of course). my question is whether or not a tech web as opposed to a tech tree will reduce the amount of possible early game builds? it's a question that I think can only be answered when considering very precise elements.

It's not really about fighting. To put it simply, ideas evolve more quickly and more efficiently when they are being discussed. Discussion is very important for any idea to go forwards. It's one of the reasons that Socrates never wrote down anything and all his lessons were done verbally. He believed that it was the only way to truly teach. I for one think that he's not far from the truth. I actually kind of like your idea, I think it's very interesting however since it's such a new concept (I can't think of another RTS that does this), a lot of thought will have to go into it if it's ever going to be implemented. I still like the idea, for example: Hoplites are armed with round shields named Hoplons. We can imagine a "Hoplon" upgrade which would be the development of these hoplon shields. There would two prerequisites to getting this upgrade though, one of them would be named "leather working". "leather working" allows for hoplons to be upgraded, however it also allows for "leather armor" to be researched. So the upgrade "leather working" is a prerequisite to getting two different upgrades. The second prerequisite needed to research hoplons would be "levy infantry", which is upgrade that reduces infantry training time. You need both of those prerequisites to research the "hoplons" upgrade. You could make different webs for different civilizations. I actually think it's a pretty neat idea, but one that will take a lot of time and effort to implement, not to mention balance.

As far as I know, you can garrison troops in a tower and they will use that tower to attack other units (more range, protection, etc).

just make units? if your opponent is making units to rush you, you should be making units to defend. you also have defender's advantage to work with, so mathematically you should be perfectly fine with weaker CCs, unless your build is very greedy for double rush in 2v2, well, have your team mate rush your own base to defend and make sure you scout the rush coming.

Just nerf civic centers so that they can't defend areas by themselves. Make them require military presence to defend an area. They can be a defensive boost which allows less units to hold off more units but it shouldn't hold off hordes and hordes of units like I noticed it would do in the past. Same with towers. I think they were nerfed (units in buildings being vulnerable is already a good nerf in itself; and an interesting one); but yeah, you get the idea. Are animations hard to code? It would be nice that units have different animations for when they're attacking buildings. aesthetically speaking this was one of aoe3's strong points (shameless self plug of a friend of mine). http://youtu.be/bHwVwimEuys?t=12m58s

well units which cost metal are more important than static defense as far as i know. you're looking to trade units in an rts, generally speaking, so the more cost-efficient it is to produce a said unit, the better. static defense isn't really >meant< to be spammed. i understand your point, its' just that i don't think that pairing those two techs is useful at all. it just has too many negative aspects to it compared to the positive things you get with unpaired techs. this goes for storehouse and blacksmith techs however i'm sure that there are some other upgrades which would pair up nicely. though those should be a few niche upgrades, not every upgrade in the game

oh so civic center rushing is still a thing. ):

The thing is, once you've chosen "wrongly", you won't make that "wrong" decision anymore in subsequent games. So getting the stone gathering tech for example is a tech that won't ever be researched, since it's the "wrong" tech to get. Again, this is a simple example, but it goes to show how pairing techs is counter-productive. Once people figure out which techs are better, the "lesser" techs will be generally ignored. At that point, you might as well remove them from the game. That's why I like that they aren't paired anymore. Furthermore, imagine that I want to play a stylistic, economy-based game. To do so, I'm going to get as many economic upgrades as I can. If I can get 4 economic upgrades, my defensive, eco-heavy play will be stronger, since I got more eco upgrades. If I can only get 2 out of 4 upgrades, then I can't really play an eco-heavy strategy. If I can only get 2 out of 4 economic upgrades, then it becomes difficult for me to obtain an edge using economic upgrades and defensive play. Stylistic play becomes nerfed since everyone is forced to use more or less the same tools. That just doesn't sit right in an RTS game.

Let's stick to the slinger rush example. If I'm going to rush someone with slingers, it means that I'm going to invest all of my early game resources into getting out the largest possible amount of slingers for a certain, early, timing. Let's say I make a build so that I can get out 30 slingers at 8 minutes into the game. yet, if I get the stone gathering upgrade, I can get an extra batch in, say 35 slingers at 8 minutes. If getting the +15% stone gathering upgrade means that I can't get the +15% metal gathering upgrade, it means that if I want to use my build to slinger rush, I'm going to penalize my metal income throughout the game. In the long run, that means that my opponent will have an advantage over me, since generally speaking metal is a more important resource than stone. Yes, gathering upgrades are tiered, so I'll still have some research done for metal. My opponent will still have a 15% bonus in metal income compared to me. So, by choosing to slinger rush, I am choosing to penalize myself. This means that in theory, I will probably not want to slinger rush, I'll just stick to something else that is more efficient, i.e. I'll rush with units that cost wood instead of stone. Now, imagine that I can get the +15% stone gathering upgrade but later on I can still research the +15% metal gathering upgrade. This means that I am able to execute my slinger rush without penalizing myself in the later stages of the game. Unlocking techs from being paired means that everyone has more flexibility. That in turn means that you have bigger variety of possible strategies. A slinger rush is a strategy that revolves around using the slinger, which is a fairly unique unit, to gain an early military advantage which the rusher will attempt to turn into an advantage in the game. The rusher will seek to find an edge over his opponent thanks to slingers. A player won't rush to get an edge early game, if he's going to lose that edge because he choose the overall inferior tech. Pairing technologies essentially means that players are going to prefer to use strategies that involve using the overall better or more useful tech. So that just means that players will have less "good" techs to work with and it means that we will find a lower amount of strategies.

It's a discussion / suggestion thread about one particular topic: how do civilizations become unique from one another? Indeed, this topic has been brought up in other threads but as you see in Prodigal son's thread, that is a very vast thread which encompasses a lot of aspects of 0 AD. I wanted to have a discussion thread only about how we make civilizations unique from one another; this is already quite a large topic in itself. I think some civilization bonuses are out of place and need a rework. I named the Iberian and Ptolemaic civilizations but I'm sure there are others as well that could do well with some brainstorming. Also, would people be against vastly different tech trees? One of the things about 0 AD is that every civilization has the almost exact same tech tree, everything is unlocked through the different phases. There's no such thing as needed to get a blacksmith shop to get a castle or anything. No prerequisites are needed, you just need to age. Would it be bad to modify the tech tree so that it's different? This is a very big change I'm proposing but it's one I think is worth considering to make civilizations quite different from one another. hard to say. as of right now, it feels like the game plays out the same regardless of which civilization you're playing. that's just a bit off, imo

ah thanks for that link niektb that should do it, will try it out

Well, with the release of A17 with all the juicy improvements we got (I still can't get over how much has been done by the amazing developers we have for 0 AD), people are playing on Alpha 17 but it also means that Alpha 18 is now under development. The time is ripe to discuss civilizations in a bit more detail, I believe. There are a couple of things that we have to make civilizations different from one another. - Civilization bonuses - Different tech trees - Different / unique buildings - Different / unique units - Different / unique upgrades So I've opened this thread to discuss these aspects with each other. In particular, some civilizations have interesting civilization bonuses that allow for stylistic play (e.g. Roman soldiers have 10% armor when fighting in Roman territory, which allows for strong defensive play). Other civilizations have strange bonuses (Iberians starting with walls). You also have unique units; should Triarii infantry be different from other spear men? Should we increase their stats and cost a bit, to reflect their rigorous yet expensive training and equipment? Could we make Persian units cost much less and have weaker stats? This is also a thread were history can provide us with interesting food for thought. Upgrades and passive civilization bonuses should be different so as to allow for a larger variety of strategies. If I feel like playing a defensive, economy-oriented strategy, I can choose Romans since their units are stronger when fighting in friendly territory for example. I think that making civilizations more unique is a pretty big thing. As of right now, I'm pretty sure that I could use more or less the same build for almost every civilization in every game. There also civilization bonuses which I feel aren't interesting or just plain bad. I don't think that free houses for Ptolemies is a good bonus, nor do I think that Iberians should start with walls either. You could make Ptolemaic (spelling?) houses cost a bit less and build faster for example. This would reduce the time that units spend building houses instead of gathering resources. It would also make Ptolemies an excellent civilization to house boom with, since they can get a lot of houses quickly. As for Iberians starting with walls, well, I don't have much to say. It makes aggressive play very difficult early on and later in the game that bonus is useless. I don't like it too much. Not sure what a good, interesting, historical replacement might be. So, that's why we discuss these things. : P

I actually think that siege engines which require soldiers to move and operate is a very cute idea. However, as others have pointed out, you would have to make them so they don't occupy population slots. In a way, they would almost be mobile buildings. It makes siege engines in 0 AD a bit more unique, unlike other games like Age of Empires for example. There are some good ideas in the OP, however I agree with what niektb said. Simple, yet well-made, game design should be the priority. Perhaps I should be better off asking in another thread, however I'm going to ask here. What happened to the upgrades to make citizen soldiers into regular soldiers? They only go up in rank when they fight now? That's a big development. Or did that upgrade go to another building?

It would be the best thing ever for testing builds, that's for sure.

How exactly do you apply a patch to an SVN build? I tried to mess around with that some time ago, however I never managed to get it working with hithub (in part due to other things I had to do irl).

This is some very interesting stuff right here. I would like to try this out for myself if possible. I've been messing around in single player a bit and indeed, large movements of units continue to be a thorn in the side of the game. I get ~110 fps in game throughout the game but as soon as units need to move you get freezes, the time it takes for the engine to calculate everything. I'm still unable to code anything. I still have a question though. Would it be possible to find a way to rewrite pathfinding code so that it's well-threaded? e.g. it will scale off more than one CPU core. This is what I get after playing a single player skirmish: http://i.imgur.com/0I5eoBs.png I'm not sure how it would be possible though. I'm guessing that every unit would have to recalculate its path using the exact same equation or something? The only thing that changes for each unit's equation are the variables of the problem. Would that be well-threaded or something? Or perhaps task the thread for long-range path-finding to one core and then the other thread for short-range path-finding to another core. Everyone has at least two cores on their CPU. I understand it's difficult to make a task scale off more than one core obviously. However, shouldn't it be possible? I actually have no idea what I'm talking about but maybe we can start a discussion or something, idk. Pathfinding and multiplayer lag are the two biggest issues with 0 AD which are, imo, the issues that need to be looked at the first. I understand that obviously, these are probably the most difficult problems to tackle. This is why I'd like to try out / discuss ickylevel's pathfinding solution. I understand there are certain rules that need to be followed, given that this is an open-source project (i.e. a continuity that everyone needs to follow). However maybe those rules should be tweaked to be more lenient. Personally, with formations gone, units have interesting movement. I actually feel they're more realistic now, especially the way cavalry moves around the map. The way they clump up when they arrive at their destination is less than realistic though, I don't think that's a big issue though.

The decision you're describing is the kind that's made before the game even starts. Once you start realizing that a decision is bad (e.g. getting stone upgrade instead of metal upgrade for an early game rush, when metal is a more important resource), you just won't make it anymore.

Replay value in an RTS is arguably limitless; a meta-game will always evolve if the RTS is well-designed (I believe that 0 AD's design is quite sound) given that strategies evolve as players adapt to them. Imagine I come up with a "Rush A". Since the game is well designed, "Rush A" has a counter named "Safe Play B". So if I scout someone who is going for "Rush A" and I am able to successfully pull of "Safe Play B" (in terms of my build order and my execution), then I have a counter to "Rush A". The thing is that "Safe Play B" also has a counter. If everyone is going "Rush A" then that rush is going to be very strong until everyone starts using "Safe Play B" to counter it. At that point, it will be possible to develop "Greedy Opening C" to counter "Safe Play B". The thing with "Greedy Opening C" is that either loses to "Rush A" or it perhaps loses to "Rush D" which is a different rush from "Rush A" but it remains a rush. This is over-simplified but hopefully the point comes across. If the game is balanced and well designed, this is a way that the meta-game may evolve. You'll notice that you won't ever see the development of "Greedy Opening C" if "Rush A" hadn't brought up "Safe Play B". There is your replay value. A successful RTS player will have strong game knowledge (he scouts and he knows about strategies A, B, C and D), strong execution (he will be able to execute any of those strategies). The truly best players are the one who will develop the new strategies. So what does this have to do with un-paired techs? It's quite simple: if you have access to a large variety of tools in the form of upgrades (Blacksmith upgrades, Storehouse upgrades), you have more tools to work with to develop strategies. If you pair upgrades like it was done before A17, you limit the different strategies that people can use or invent. See the slinger rush example I talked about earlier in the thread. There will be no reason for me to attempt a slinger rush supplemented with the stone gathering upgrade if I'm going to penalize myself down the line by not being able to obtain the metal gathering upgrade. Yes, it's a "choice" to research the stone gathering upgrade. However that "choice" is fairly one-dimensional: if you choose to use a build that will hamper your strength down the line, it means that build is limited to being an all-in instead of a rush or pressure build, so your transition is weaker. If people figure out how to hold off slinger rushes, then the slinger rush becomes obsolete since it has no transition. Again, it's a very simple example, but you get the gist of it.

I invite you to read through all the posts in this thread. Just in case you don't: realize that time is also a resource in an RTS game. You are required to specialize in certain techs even if you can research them all: you don't have time to research them all unless the match goes to the late game. Specialization is there even if techs aren't paired up. You actually have more specialization since you can make the choice to get a lot of tech early on (to the detriment of your economy or your military spending, meaning you have to play defensive) or you can choose not to invest into a lot of tech to get a quick military lead (meaning you have more units -> you use those units to try to get a lead by doing damage).