xfs

Carthaginians Samnite Skirmisher, Macedonians Heavy Skirmisher, Persians Cardaces Skirmisher are champ javelinists. Looks like they are removed from the game.

I doubt your testing method is scientific. For example, I just did a test of 20 city guards vs 20 immortals (same stats). City guards won by small margin. The ultimate source of data is in-game "Display selection state" where it shows unit stats. The reason nobody uses Ptolemies is because right now everyone uses champ only strategy and Ptolemies don't have good champs, not because its base units are bad. Champ spear cavs have very big differences than other champ cavs, so I don't what you mean by this. Iberian champ cavs are in a weird place. They are very weak for anti-units because units all have very high crush armor. They are also very weak for anti-building because they have low pierce armor (generally worse than elephants for anti-building). They are also weak for scouting because they are not fast enough, and with low armor.

Persians' champions are not "really nice". It is the same spear champions as other civs. But indeed, the low champion production capacity is unbalanced. Ptolemies free houses are penalized by long build time and high cost of barracks, so this is fair. I do use Ptolemies. My army composition is archer cavs and pikemen. This composition is strong in that pikemen are the toughest non-champion tank units in the game and they are prioritized by UnitAI thus protect archer cavs, and archer cavs are a decent DPS with steady output and easily micromanaged. This composition is very effective in defense. Give it a few catapults and it can slowly grind out any fortifications. I managed K/D ratio of 2 during a 1v3 non-champion game using this (lost 450, killed 875). However, this totally does not work against champs, but that is a problem of champs, not the army composition. I don't think champ spear cavs need a buff. Their role doesn't seem to be DPS or tank. They are most effective in scouting, macro, surprise capture, and trade route raiding because of their fastest speed and decent armor. I do think elephants die too fast right now, not sure if it is because of attack prioritization in UnitAt or not enough armor.

@Alekusu do you have replays with Aol_Wonox, aka Benz, aka IdiAmin, aka superd? He does good rush while managing econ equally well.

The secret sause sauce is to build units in 10-batch or 15-batch.

Silver Shield Pike's armor is irrelevant and formation buff will not help with that. Their extremely slow walk speed and low attack make them useless on a macro level. They cannot defend against anything. The enemies simply go around and they will not be able to catch up.

This may be unpopular among Britons players, but for the sake of diversity in strategy, I believe the champion units right now can use some balancing. Right now there is a dominant strategy, that is to use Britons and build sword champions spam. Britons' economy is quite advantageous for quick mass producing of champions starting in mid-game 15 minutes, and in late game once the market trade route is set up, the macro advantage is almost unstoppable. There are several factors that contribute to this optimization situation, and can be considered for potential balancing measures. Sword champions can be trained in barracks, and Britons' barracks are very cheap (300 wood, no stone) for mass training champions. Other civilizations can only train champions from fortresses or champion buildings, with severely limited production capacity. Possible balancing measure: increase the training time for champions from barracks.Swords champions have questionable unit roles. They have deus ex machina level stats, with highest attack, highest armor, highest capture power, fastest walking speed among melee infantry. They are the best at everything and tactically superior to any combinations of other units of equal costs, and they are extremely strategically maneuverable because of their fast walk speed. There is almost no point in making any other units. If the unit roles are properly designed, they should have weaknesses. What is the weakness of sword champions? The consequence of a single unit beating an army composition is greatly reduced diversity in economical and tactical strategy.To discourage creating an army of only champions and balance against the combat effectiveness of champions, a potential balancing measure is to make champion units cost two population.Melee champions should not be both the most combat effective and the most maneuverable at the same time. Their combat effectiveness should cost their maneuverability. This is also realistic, because heavier armor and weapon should make champion infantry move slower than their non-champions counterparts (while they should indeed move a lot faster if under-armored, e.g. Naked Fanatic, or Maiden Guard?). This principle is also represented in the weaker stats of champion cavalries because they have much better maneuverability.Melee champions should have a primary unit role of anti-infantry, not anti-building. Right now a bunch of sword champions can hack down a fortress without significant loss, which is not quite realistic. They should either be more vulnerable to defensive buildings' pierce damage with the same attack strength, or defensive buildings should have higher hack armor. Spear champions have half the attack being pierce damage therefore a lot less effective against buildings. If somehow sword champions are considered to be justifiably more effective against buildings, they should at least gain a weakness compared to spear champions.Finally, is the capture power of champions too high? 5 or 7 if boosted by hero, compared to 2 of normal units. This makes defense towers totally useless. 3, or 4 for champions seems more appropriate. But if champions gain vulnerability in other areas (slower, or lower pierce armor), this advantage may still be appropriate to their unit roles.

Under optimal conditions, a corral takes 250 food to produce 5 sheep of 500 food in 81 seconds (3.1 food/s). Cavalry meat gathering speed is 5. Under optimal conditions, a farm with 5 women outputs 5*0.5*(1+0.15+0.15+0.25)=3.875 food/second. The problem with corrals and cavs is once the sheep are all finished before the next batch is out, all cavs become idle and will not proceed gathering the next batch of sheep.

Please provide a replay that shows 130 Romans pop at 10min (while doing this early soldier making).

Okay, and? I was not saying it is hard to have 11 soldiers at 5min. It was an attempt to match Celtic civs' economy at 10min. If you make soldiers early on for defense, the economy obviously suffers, and is more worse off in the long run than Celtic civs. What happens if I make defensive soldiers but you continue booming with women? There will be a bigger economy disparity at 10min. To solve this, obviously one must scout. And one must keep scouting to find out possible discrepancy in military strength and sign of rush. In the meantime the economy must go on without wasting a single second, and bifurcate the build order depending on what the opponent does. Multitasking all these is not easy. Scouting in 0AD takes sharp eyes, as the units are really tiny and obscured. And counting them at a glance is even harder. And now your build order is not fixed, instead it depends on the opponent and unluckily for Hellenic civs, you may not have enough wood to at times to make the decision. A simple answer may be just git gud, but I might as well not have time to play.

The reason I lost is when Alekusu rushed at 5 minutes with 11 soldiers, I have not made any soldiers. So there was a big tactical disparity. The reason I have not made any soldiers at 5 minutes is that Hellenic civs have slower economy. Their houses are slower to build than Celtic civs (60 seconds vs 24 seconds). This makes the economy of Hellenic civs inherently slower, with lots of time wasted on production waiting on houses, or houses waiting on wood. In an attempt to match the economy of Gauls, I had to save wood for houses only in the first 5 minutes, and made women only.

I think it is probably not hard to put the production queue on top of the building. But artistically, you probably want some special effects to represent production, e.g. smoke going up, or people going in and out. Unit AI does not have a problem with looking for the next trees. Mines though, yes, but it only needs a few times of managing. You can just use it as a regular builder. Defense towers are quite weak right now, though. More nerfing would not help. Healers have no AOE, and take up population count. I think they are far less useful than temples, if not totally useless. Run is used as a hack for units to quickly go into position in a formation. It would only make sense after stamina is implemented. You can also use i-left drag to select idle workers. But really, the GUI should show numbers of how many workers are gathering what, and how many are idling, and then you know to look for them. You can use Ctrl-q-right click to move attack units only.

Using archer cavalries against RCF Diamond (top 5 player, Gauls). Diamond has better economy than most of the Britons champ spam users and were able to defeat them. First game, a Romans player and Seleucids (me) with no economy against Diamond and a Britons player with massive economy advantage. Two more games, a Britons player (using champ spam) and Ptolemies (me) against Diamond and a noob. Discussion: Basically, archer cavs are a quite good DPS (9.8) if protected by high armor infantry, which takes the aggro. Among non-champions, pikemen have the highest armor. Egyptian pikemen under hero aura have almost the same HP and the same armor as champ swordsmen, and no other non-champions are even near. So I was testing this army composition against champ spam. The critical weakness is pikemen walk half the speed than champs, making it useless for macro and sometimes totally ignored. Also, champ swordsmen run too fast, so purely archer cavs can't win a micro battle against champs. Javelin cavs are not a good DPS even though they have the highest raw number (22.4, higher than champ swordsmen). Their short range makes them die fast and run around a lot before actually starting to attack. archer-cavs-against-rcf-diamond.zip

Not really off topic though, because "I think you can start from uploading them into this topic. If there will be a significant amount of posts, they can be split/moved into a subforum."

Swords cav has 2 capture points so that's not a great advantage in capturing. Besides, the point of swords champions is their massive armor to allow them to ignore everything else until finishing the capture.