Alekusu

Much better !

These are excellent news Scythe! In the Ideas for discussion I'd really like to talk about adding a damage boost to buildings for sword cav too. Edit: thanks for adding Scythe What cav did you use Giotto? Spear or Sword? Sword is the counter to catapults. Rams are countered by Champions dealing Hack damage. However, not all civ have access to champions with hack damage. Therefore there are two points of view imo: - Rams cannot be countered by all civ so it's OP - The civ choice becomes a strategic decision and when you play against a civ with rams, choose a civ with hack damage champions or choose a civ with slingers phase 1 or 2 and play very agressive so your enemy doesn't go to phase 3. Or play yourself with a civ with rams. I prefer the second point because I beleive that with 12 unique factions we can't have 100% of the matchup balanced, we'll have strong and bad points for each civ and the choice of the civilisation should be a strategic decision.

OP against what Auron? Against rush ? that's why we want to make women weaker. Mario is probably the best active player right now on 0AD btw About sword cav... Try to sneak 50 sword cav against me or Mario, if you succeed I'll agree with you.

In Alpha 18 you can't destroy a CC with 50 sword cav (non champions unit of course) except if your opponent is AFK Mario suggestion is even faster than 8 seconds for women

Hey guys, It might seems very early for suggestions but actually I already played a lot Alpha 18 (or SVN before release), all my suggestions are based on real games and not just testing 10 units A vs 10 units B. And because these are not trivial suggestions, I thought the sooner the better. Ranged units: Ranged units are dealing too much damage and are the core of every army in Alpha 18. The core of an army should be melee infantry for more realism. Therefore I suggest a diminution of damage for all the ranged units. (Maybe not for skirmisher) Archers (infantry or cavalry): Archers shouldn’t outrange towers and CC. Even if I know that they do only a few damage to buildings, I can assure you that in game, these outreaching archers are too strong. Mauryans Sword Infantry Champions: These guys are just OP ^^, both damage and armor are too high. Sword cavalry: In Alpha 17, they dealt too much damage on building, on Alpha 18, they don’t do enough. Flanking an unprotected village/city with sword cavalry should be part of the gameplay. In Alpha 17, even with a good defense you couldn’t deal with a good sword cavalry harass but on Alpha 18, we have no way to flank cities (sneaky elephants are not working, I tried ). It is also realistic to have an unprotected village destroyed by a cavalry attack. However we need to find a balance, if a city is well protected, these sword cavalry should get wrecked fast (so probably a very weak pierce armor should do the trick). In Alpha 18, expansion became very important, that mean that you soon have two cities to protect. But because sword cavalry are not a threat, you can go all the game with an unprotected main city and be fine. In this current “metagame” where expansions are the key, adding the possibility to flank the main city would be awesome for the gameplay. Mario’s suggestion: We kind of disagree on that point but I’ll explain his suggestion: #Sword cav should be like slingers, they should have a bonus to buildings but still be able to deal with units and therefore should have a good pierce armor.# So we both agree on the fact that sword cav should deal damage to building but we disagree on the armor (I suggest a low pierce armor) So I’m gonna try to explain why I don’t agree with my buddy Mario. Let’s take an example, your enemy expands middle map, invest his stone in towers near his expand leaving his main base not protected with towers. You decide to harass his main base with 15 sword cavalry and found a dropsite with a few houses around with 15 women gathering wood. This is an unprotected area, your sword cav should be able to kill the women + the dropsite + the houses around if no reaction from your opponent. For this Mario and I agree I think. Now, same situation but your enemy didn’t use all his stone to protect his expand but also put a tower with archers inside near the dropsite, and 3 spearman gathering wood with the women. This is, imo a well-protected area against harass. So if sword cavalry have low pierce armor they get wrecked by the tower and this is good imo. If they have a good pierce armor, they can out micro the spearman, take down the tower (I still consider that sword cav have decent damage vs buildings) and still be OK I think the thing is, Mario wants Sword cav to be able to kill archers on the ground, I want sword cav to be killed by a tower and because towers and archers on the ground deals the same kind of damage, we can’t have both. It’s up to you Scythe Spear cavalry: Imo, Sword cavalry should be the “city flanking” unit. Spear cavalry however should be the “army flanking” unit. After diminution of ranged damage, they might become OK. If not I think the 3.5s rate of attack is too slow. The Spear cav should have a good pierce armor. Melee Infantry: A “charge” feature in order to chase ranged units would be awesome. Catapult: They should deal more damage or have a better armour. Fortress: The limit should be 3 or 5 (Basically, one for offense, one for expanding territory, one for defense). With this, the positioning becomes really important. This is a very personal opinion though. About Rushing win vs booming win vs turtling win vs rushing: Awesome job there Scythe Mario’s suggestion: We could push this further by having women training time lowered but weaker women; then countering booming with a rush would be really efficient but letting someone booming without any harass would make you fall behind quickly. The gameplay in Alpha 18 is really really good but I think we can improve it by having a core of armies made of melee infantry, ranged units who will support the core, a way to flank an unprotected city (with sword cavalry) and a good flanking unit during battle (spear cavalry). Sorry for the long post, Thanks for reading, Alex

I agree but that will depends on the map, therefore we would have some civ stronger/weaker on particular maps and this make civ more unique. Choosing the civ after deciding the map should be both a pleasure (a civ you like to play) and a strategic decision.

Hey av, Put 10 soldiers on stone, you'll be able to make slingers 5 by 5 non stop from a barrack. It is actually much more easy in terms of macro with athenians and britons because for stone you don't need to remake the dropsites (for wood you have to remake dropsite because the forest disappear fast). With a good build order you can develop a ranged citizen soldiers economy, no problem. Same for metal. You just need to find a good balance. On maps where there is not a lot of wood, athenians and britons are the best. Alex

I agree about the harassing role of the sword cav. Spear cav though, should be the "army flanking" unit. A well-timed charge with spear cav into a bunch of archers should destroy them. With this we would have two really different roles for these units and therefore each civ will have to adapt more to their unit available

Do you know the game Battle for Middle earth ? An RTS based on LOTR. They made a Helm's deep map that was considered very accurate by the community. Just type BFME helm's deep map for picture on google.

I think in the movie, the river is small and there is a part of this river "underground". When the mine explodes, it reveals the underground river so it looks large but only after explosion. For your scenario I think just a smaller river is good.

One small thing just based on the picture, the river seems very large no?

Big fan of gauls and LOTR here. It looks awesome ^^

congrats on new release !

take your time guys, it's gonna be awesome anyway

Slingers do well against buildings, not skirmishers. The idea I think is to have skirmisher for harass (not harassing the building), archer as an army support (but now they are actually doing a bit too much so they are not really a support but the main) and slingers for raids against towers/houses/barracks EDIT: When I say "the idea" I speak for myself

Hum Incog I think we should do it step by step no ? Firstly reduce damage, if it's not enough maybe HP too but after tests. If we modify too many parameters every time, the balance will take a while..

Yeah I like it too Edit: We could use a series of CTRL + letter + right click for these "policies" I see 3 "policies" for now: - focus on women - focus on army - focus on building If we do more I'm scared we'll take too much from the micro management during battles. (like focus only on range, or melee shouldn't be a "policy" but micro skill of the player)

The CTRL+Q right click could be used for that no ? Instead of just attacking units (no building) could be use to attack units (no building AND no woman)

Ok, as I said we didn't try in real game, actually all games we did together with Mario were balanced (1 v 1 on both a17 and SVN) so the game is already playable and enjoyable imo. PS: Mario 3 - 3 Alekusu (or italian pasta 3 - 3 french cheese)

Scythe, honestly speaking we did some test with Mario, infantry melee being too slow it's really hard to fight against these archers... And the fact that they outreach towers and CC make archers good for both offensive and defensive (imo skirmishers should be good for offense/harass but archers more for defensive style) We didn't try in a real game yet but the range + rate of fire of these archers make them very easy to micro (compared to skirmisher actually) I think the solution is the charging feature for melee infantry when attacking range. So I don't know if making these archers weaker now will help because once the charge will be available (in the next alpha ? ) we'll need to rebalance again.

Welcome !

Ok, this week get ready for some gauls vs mauryans I want to see this ^^

So against an archer civ on phase 1, maybe the best is to defend on phase 1 and wait for some cav phase 2 to flank the archers no ? (instead of inf melee + range battles, try melee cav + inf range) Against melee cav, the long range of archers can become a disadvantage (far from the melee) I think. if this is possible it's actually very interesting (strategically, having good points and bad points on different phase for every civ is excellent I think) If melee cav get wrecked by archer then definitely they are OP. I don't disagree with you Mario, just trying to find a way to counter archer before saying they are OP.

@Simon, I'm sorry but seems we'll have a lot to change for a18 (which is a good thing actually, much more interesting imo) Lot's of new strategies coming imo, I'll upload some new videos when a18 will be official.

That's why I think on a game like 0 A.D. making scenario for testing (like putting just 10 units vs 10 units) aren't really enough to understand the balance of this complex game. We need real games that takes economy, strategy, and military into account in order to see if the game as a whole is balance (we can do the scenario testing to adjust after) It's like for the cavalry skirmisher. If you go for skirm cav, you have less troops than an enemy going full infantry so again making a test 10 units vs 10 units doesn't prove that ingame it's unbalanced