wowgetoffyourcellphone

This mod should be folded into the main game.

Need a fox cap and those pointy Scythian-style caps too. A simple modeling task I'd think.

Great for battalions (especially for depicting squadron leaders, flank guards and the like). HINT HINT HINT HINT

Funnily enough, the original sarissa length was about the length of the current hoplite spears (and the hoplite spears were shorter too). 4 sizes is okay, since weapons in general are pretty low poly and use no transparency, though for gameplay visual purposes it would look kind of odd to have 10 meters of spear sticking through target units, which is why the original sarissa was so short. We need the "pinning" factor in the game that Rome Total War had with its pike units. In that game, enemy soldiers would get "hung up" on the heads of the pikes and would have to work their way down the shafts in order to reach their enemies, which was the main function of the Macedonian-style phalanx (the anvil). This would be difficult to do in 0 a.d. and look weird without hard formation combat (another plug for battalions). Not disagreeing, just adding some thoughts. Minor disagreement though would be that we don't need 100% accurate pike lengths. You have a penchant for insisting on these kinds of things, which is okay and thought provoking, but in the abstract it is a game where "fortresses" are about the size of a house and for gameplay purposes a cliff is about 10 meters tall. However, more lengths does appeal to me so we can depict "early" and "late" phalanxes.

Where dat video at @mysticjim?

For playability, you have to compromise realism on the map. But you can hide those compromises if you're a good mapper.

Thanks I hate it.

DE uses 1 pop for civilians, 2 pop for infantry, and 3 pop for cavalry as an example. I don't think ranged units are OP in DE so I haven't increased their train time, but if we're using EA's stats then increasing their train time could do the trick.

Do what DE does. Make trees passable.

Indeed. If we want to depict what combat looked like, melee infantry should be about 70% of each player's force, 20% cavalry, 10% ranged infantry. The percentages fluctuate a from faction to faction, but those are generally accurate numbers (I'msure someone will correct me). The Macedonian player should be making hundreds of phalangites instead of whatever ranged unit is OP this alpha.

"Battalion" is shorthand here for a group of units. We could have used the term "platoon" or "file" or something closer to an accurate number of men, but what they represent are essentially battalions within an army (the game's scale is representative, not simulation; authenticity, not accuracy). We're talking about something like 18 (cavalry)-24 (infantry) soldiers per "battalion" (not counting officers and bannermen) and perhaps max 30 such possible units per player (typically between 15-25). Call it 10 pop cost per battalion (1 large house), 1 pop cost per support/civilian unit. This has been achieved by other (much older) games, including the variation bit. In fact, I think because of 0 A.D.'s actor variation it's kind of imperative that they be grouped into battalions for visual verification reasons.

You mean I don't have to maintain UnitAI.js anymore??? Oh... I forgot edit cheering length too. lol

Right. I think as long as the engine supports hard battalions and other tactical features, it's okay for Empires Ascendant to go with a softer approach. The major mods can experiment with hard battalions, etc. and offer other approaches as long as the engine support is there.

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded When I say I believe battalions are the way to go, it's to be able to depict things like this. It is very difficult to depict the nuance of "maneuverable" Roman swordsmen vs. "immovable object" Macedonian phalangites using the game's current mosh pit combat. With mosh pit combat you have to use unintuitive things like attack bonuses and auras and even then it is unsatisfactory in visually depicting what the combat would be like. Without battalions you can't even have the concept of "flanks" let alone the battle lines and complex maneuvers which defined the era.

I don't know. Just a hunch. Vodka punch.

These kinds of complexities would be better served by battalions.

If it helps, I have recently solved the issue by reducing the health of all buildings by half and then implementing an auto researching tech that doubles health back to normal. After this, AI units no longer get stuck in repair state. Perhaps this can help pinpoint the source of the problem.

Yeah, and you could even have a 2 or 3 second delay as the archer swaps out his bow for his dagger (with a short swapping animation). I think there could be 2 types of auto weapons swapping. "Initial" or "aggressive" switching would be like Roman Hastatus who throws a pilum or javelin before closing with his melee weapon. This initial attack would need a minimum range, else they would forgo the volley and just close to melee. The archer weapon switching with be very much the opposite. Maybe call it "defensive" switching. Could genericize it and define primary and secondary attacks and then tweak the min and max ranges to suit.

While I've always wanted to see Hastati do this in the game, adding civs is pretty much an art task rather than a programming task. Having said that, they haven't added a new civ in 3 years either.

I haven't tried playing it much via multiplayer yet. Others have though, so maybe someone can send you some replays. I'm focusing a lot lately on getting the new Hero system completed (and keeping the mod compatible with all latest dev changes).

Aristides the Just now added to the Athenian hero selection (Socrates is now a separate type of hero that can be trained after researching Philosophia at the Stoa).

DE does a couple things to try to mitigate some of the game's problems. For instance trees do not block construction and do not block pathfinding. There might be a small performance improvement from that (I haven't benchmarked it, if someone would like to). But for the most part the mod will have the same performance issues that the base game has.

I felt that the meta of 0 a.d. could be improved and I wanted to do it on my own accelerated timeline rather than join the team directly and have to compromise the vision. Empires Ascendant is a good game, but I wanted to make it better by pushing the engine and seeing what I could do. Honestly, it's almost exclusively a personal passion project. But I have enlisted the help of many others when I've found my own limited talents lacking! Models, textures, and coding help from a few names you may recognize: @Stan` @wackyserious @Freagarach @Alexandermb @Enrique and anyone who's worked on Terra Magna and Millennium AD, as DE borrows some artwork from those mods. It came about as a way to make Wonders more integral to the game and to add more progression to a match. Gameplay wise the goal was to make the game both more tactical and more strategic. With the addition of mercenary camps and better map design, map control becomes more strategic, while the implementation of hard unit counters and other combat tweaks and changes makes the game more tactical. Probably not. The development of Empires Ascendant just isn't heading in that kind of direction as far as gameplay changes or improvements. The emphasis over the past years has been on balancing what is already there rather than implementing any interesting features. The current development version of the mod is fully compatible with the development version of 0 a.d., so that with a couple weeks if A24's launch the A24 version of Delenda Est will drop. The development version of DE is here: https://github.com/JustusAvramenko/delenda_est A fun little feature that probably wouldn't be used much, but when it is should provide amusement to all the players. Lol

I forgot to mention the mod is adding Germans too: Suebians in A24 and Goths for A25. Dev version of the mod (works with dev version of 0 ad) is here: https://github.com/JustusAvramenko/delenda_est

Cool, thanks! The idea is to give players a little more time to set up the layout of their town, scout the map for resources and mercenary camps, and determine a strategy for that map and opponent. Also, a citizen/slave dichotomy (though much simplified from reality) made a lot of historical sense. The development version adds 2 nomadic civs as well: Scythians and Xiongnu. They have no territory bonuses or restrictions, but their structures are pretty much made of paper mache. Huns are in the works as another nomadic civ, and Zapotecs are in, but I won't make them selectable yet until a Mayan civ can be added. The Imperial Romans are pretty fun. Thanks, that was one of the goals of the mod. Though I am sure some imbalances can be found, or some unintended exploits. The mod is definitely still a wip.