[How search specific technologies?]

Next alpha will have a technology tree that will show you all of the buildings, units, and tech of each civilisation.

[Some ideas relating to unit decommissioning]

"It also is a sensitive issue that would be more offensive to people"

It was a sensitive issue to 1 guy on the forum.

[[FIXED] Cannot build in fog of war?]

No, this is not wanted behaviour at all, don't worry! Sorry for the inconvenience, I will fix that asap.

Replying to some opinions above, the current system (once the bug is fixed) can lead to some weirdness, see ticket #2710.

Thank Nicolas. I didn't think it was intentional behavior. I don't know what the other guys were on about.

About ticket, yeah that was a (very small) exploit with the foundations. Only really useful to see if enemy was building a cc in a particular spot.

[Some ideas relating to unit decommissioning]

Sounds unnecessary. What is the big difference between deleting them and 'decommission' them? They still leave the game. Also, where are thease people going? Up in smoke, poof like magic trick?

[[FIXED] Cannot build in fog of war?]

I have explored this area that is why the black map is lifted. The behavior is new. I could build in the fow before, but now I cannnot. Why I ask if bug or intention. If intentional, it now means extra micromanagement to have to move a unit to the area first, even if I had already explored it... almost no other RTS require this, for good reason.

[[FIXED] Cannot build in fog of war?]

Cannot build in fog of war? Is bug>?

[Suggestion Ideas from Sighvatr]

Maybe try something tlike this:

In something like this you have many paths you can take, but player can restart or branch off new paths whenever they want to. I don't think there need to be fewer tech but they just need to be made to be more interesting and whcih ones to choose should require more thoughts on the players part. With something like this you start on a path. If it is not working for you thwn you can try a new path but time and resoucrs is wasted, so there is inherent risk of targeted (narrow path) approach. You can try broad approach, but it takes longer to get the higher quality techs. Another idea to go along with this is to have techs that depends upon different biomes or maps. This alters the webs a little bit adding a little bit of variety.

I like the idea that some buildings can act like a tech. This is done in my mod with aura. For instance, Temple of Vesta for Roma gives a boost to nearby building (right now the aura and tech effects are limiting, so I await the day when features are worked on again).

I have adjusted my mod to include the new wooden defense towers in Phase 1, but I go one step further than this by adding a Stone Towers tech in Phase II to upgrade them back to full stength Defense Towers. Swaps the actors from wooden tower to stone tower (but the building preview and fogging ghost remains wooden tower, a bug).

If you add a IV Phase and move all of the big tech to that, and move civic center expansions to Phase III, you then have a Phase II that includes an element of city building and defenses. Build a long city wall or use that stone to fast Phase III and use the stone for civic centers expansions? Add a real usage for Wonders and make 1 Wonder prerequisite for Phase IV. Go Phase IV and now you have uber techs for siege and elephants, fire arrows, and all that stuff,

[Alpha 18 Balancing Branch]

Problem is, Most of your suggestions is where we had most of our problems last time. Too many overlapping counters. Swordsmen and archers are good example.

The counter circle NEEDS to be a circle, you can't have units countering each other, it just results in broken gameplay, and weird balance issues.

Generally it should be ranged>infantry>Cavalry>ranged

With little variations inbetween.

It won't work, there's too many different civs and differering units for differing civs, so factions with poor spearmen will get rekt by civs with great cavalry, so on so forth. Soft counters is the only way to make so many different factions balanced, hard counters work in games like starcraft (which, don't do it, because there's too many different units to have a great circle of balance)

You are wrong, because 0 A.D. balance was just fine until the skirmishers and Javelin Cavalry became unbalanced. And then the balancer threw out the whole scheme instead of adjusting the stats of those two units. Some will say that the Swordsman was overpower for Romans because they were buuld from Civic Center, but then why did not try just moving it to Barracks and put spearman at Civic Center instead? Some units have good archers? Move them from CC to barracks. In fact, move all soldiers to barracks except spear infantry (so all civs start with the same basic citizen soldier). Not difficult decisions. The overlapping counters scheme that was design by the wfg founders was brilliant design that had vision, something current designer seem to lack. Whwere is the well thought design document for this "balance" branch? What is the design philosophy?

But this whole thread is pointless, because there are balance shattering gameplay feature still not in the game yet. I will go ahead and leave you now to argue over the balance of a 60% completed game.

[The game should have more ages and technologies]

I think that instead of adding more civilizations would have to do more aged and new technologies. there are few so I can see

If you have the SVN version of game, PM me and I'll send you the link to my mod that add more techs and ages.

[Alpha 18 Name Suggestions]

The development team has decided in January 2013, and rightly so, that the most important was solving the performance issues.

Most important performance issue is pathfinding. Has been for a long time, since "January 2013" and before that date. Nothing come close. And Even after January 2013 many gameplay addition happen, so your arbitrary dismissing of my concern is foolish. If performance issue is #1 priority why no fix to pathfinding and why such big focus on poorly balancing the game? Big focus on balancing a game without many of its gameplay features yet committed. Says there is no stomach for adding more feature since are "balancing" game as it is, without new features. Why would you balance a game without its features implemented? No features coming is why. Meanwhile #1 performance priority is unfixed. And alphas are released with no discerned planned feature set.

Rubico would be a good alpha name.

[Alpha 18 Balancing Branch]

I think that if people want to have a constructive discussion about these things, we must first define the roles of each and every unit. As in, what role do we want the units to have.

Are melee infantry units supposed to backbone of an army, with ranged units getting a support role? Or do we want the ranged units to be the backbone?

Similarly, Cavalry units should act as mobile shock troops, however are they supposed to be too expensive to be used as units by themselves?

Playing on unit cost is something which can be done as well to balance out units, it's important to remember that.

I wouldn't mind going back to units which only cost two resources, by the way.

(edit, why are foot companions so slow in the current build? )

All of this was already thought about and decided, but then it was throw away in last alpha instead of tweaked. Because javalin cavalry were OP 2 alphas ago did not make the whole counter scheme bad. 10 years of thought and energy into this problem was discard because of why? Never answered.

[Alpha 18 Balancing Branch]

This comes down to numbers and design, however getting rid of most multipliers (except for spear infantry against Cavalry) is, imo, a step in the right direction.

I disagree a lot, but respectfully. There really is no reason to train a archer cav over a javelin cav. The players will find the best cost-benefit ratio and just spam those units and ignore the others. Roles are muddy and unclear. I also disagree that ranged units should alwats hit target. If you don't like ancient combat concepts then why play ancient combat game.

[Let 0 A.D one RTS game that takes those of African descent seriously.]

One idea would be that Kushites advace phases by building bigger and bigger pyramid tomb.

[Tech/Structure Tree Visualisation]

Everything works now. Thank you for very good effort.

[Tech/Structure Tree Visualisation]

*chuckles* Yeah, looks like the phase list is out of order.

There's a bit of code that works out the order of phases. Needless to say, it had a bug. It should now be fixed. Third time's the charm?

I wouldn't count this as an outlier - this bug would have popped up sooner or later.

Edit: I don't know why the phase icons down the side are missing. Thoughts, leper?

Workas great now. Everything is in right place. Last thing is that the icons on the left are still purple. Error is this:

ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/textures/ui/session/portraits/null"

[Let 0 A.D one RTS game that takes those of African descent seriously.]

[Tech/Structure Tree Visualisation]

@wowgetoffyourcellphone: Typo, should be fixed. Try again?

It's getting closer! I see that some things are in the wrong order and for some reason has missing icons on the left.

For instance, in this shot you see in the Civic Center that the III and IV phase techs are in the wrong row. Also, buildings on bottom row should be in row above them (City Phase row).

Is there something I can do with my mod that I can fix so you don't have to keep editing your code for outlier? Or do you want to keep tweaking code to try and fix as many case as possible?

[Tech/Structure Tree Visualisation]

Where is in the game?

Learn to play.

[Let 0 A.D one RTS game that takes those of African descent seriously.]

which units?

We can assume they used spearmen and archer like all other civ? But do we know if they had good cavalry or not. Did they use war elephant?

[Tech/Structure Tree Visualisation]

@wgoyc: Does https://github.com/s0600204/0ad-structree-mod/tree/A18-delenda solve your problems? (If you download and install it as a mod)

Actually, the svn version shows more. That one doesn't show anything.

ERROR: JavaScript error: gui/structree/helper.js line 77 TypeError: path.lastIndexOf is not a function depath@gui/structree/helper.js:77:2 unravelPhases@gui/structree/load.js:326:1 selectCiv@gui/structree/structree.js:119:2 __eventhandler256 (selectionchange)@civSelection selectionchange:0:1 init@gui/structree/structree.js:34:2 __eventhandler227 (press)@menuStrucTreeButton press:2:8

ERROR: GUI page 'page_structree.xml': Failed to call init() function

[Let 0 A.D one RTS game that takes those of African descent seriously.]

Kushites would be good civ. Had 2 wars with Rome. Very unique. Problem is it is difficult to come up with some units. I can imagine a special map for them: The Sudd.

[Tech/Structure Tree Visualisation]

Hmm... you're trying to do something (in fact two somethings) that the techs in the core game don't. I think I know where my code's going wrong.

The tech require both techs there, so it is unlocked in Town Phase but also requires the other one.

[Tech/Structure Tree Visualisation]

Nice. Great to see you still working on it. I remove the phase tech pair and things look better, except now that it is angry that some techs supposedly don't have a "specific phase."

WARNING: gather_lumbering_bowsaw doesn't have a specific phase set (structures/athen_storehouse)

WARNING: gather_capacity_wheelbarrow doesn't have a specific phase set (structures/athen_storehouse)

WARNING: special_storehouse doesn't have a specific phase set (structures/athen_storehouse)

WARNING: gather_draft_animals doesn't have a specific phase set (structures/athen_corral)

WARNING: siege_torsion_springs doesn't have a specific phase set (structures/athen_fortress)

WARNING: siege_flaming_munitions doesn't have a specific phase set (structures/athen_fortress)

WARNING: JavaScript warning: gui/structree/draw.js line 28 reference to undefined property g_CivData[g_SelectedCiv].buildList[pha]

ERROR: JavaScript error: gui/structree/draw.js line 28 TypeError: g_CivData[g_SelectedCiv].buildList[pha] is undefined draw@gui/structree/draw.js:28:12 selectCiv@gui/structree/structree.js:249:2 __eventhandler36 (selectionchange)@civSelection selectionchange:0:1 init@gui/structree/structree.js:34:2 __eventhandler7 (press)@menuStrucTreeButton press:2:8

ERROR: GUI page 'page_structree.xml': Failed to call init() function

ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/textures/ui/session/portraits/null"

Problem is, the techs do have a phase set, as seen in the tech's code:

"requirements": {"all": [{"tech": "phase_town"}, {"tech": "training_animals_husbandry"}]},

I am guessing the structree does not like "all" and "any" and things like this? Good work so far.

[Alpha 18 Name Suggestions]

Well, there are some new features added... (Nomad mode, techology tree, start with the Seleucid artwork etc.)

These are minor feature. No big gameplay features for months (a year maybe?). Gameplay is most important. Those other things are nice though.

[Alpha 18 Balancing Branch]

Unit vision should be:

Infantry 50 meters

Cavalry 60 meters

Large vision range makes maps smaller (too small). Large vision also make unit auto-attack to very great range, messing up army control. You can make Cavalry have greater vision with a tech or an auto-scout feature or something like this.