Palaxin

Yggdrasil if there was something Norse related which I do not expect... EDIT: since it's a tree we may also use it if a substantial amount of new flora was added

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholo_(subculture) probably this ^

I agree... 0 A.D. has been quite economic with visually representing game mechanics. Which is understandable given the voluntary nature and limited manpower of the project. Imagine we would have a distinct building set for each phase for each civ (AoE style), that would be an insane amount of work for the very few people capable of doing it in the required quality. However, a lot of effort has been put into visual details regarding historical accuracy (which has been a claimed goal of this project). Many units have several actors representing them (with several shield types, helmet types, clothing, ...). This is great from the historical perspective, but not from a gameplay perspective. Units are far more difficult to identify on a quick glance than in other games because of this variety and because of the details. Their role is not always clear and in some cases the amount of extra information is more overwhelming than helpful. Obviously there is a tradeoff. But I think there is still room for improvement. I'd prefer a truly visual representation of unit stats without any text but icons instead. Use a minimal amount of numbers (if any) and prefer something like color shades (green - healthy, red - near death) or a bar split into a discrete amount of segments where you can only derive approximate values. An extensive description of the exact values (if still desired) belongs to an extra page which is not visible during normal gameplay. Of course, representing the stats in the animations, with particles etc. would be very nice, but I have not seen much effort made into that direction (rather into depicting historically accurate details). So I don't expect big changes here... This just reminds me of League of Legends. I began to play it at the end of Season 2 (2012), there was a good amount of champions, of items. It was exciting to play around with conventional and ridiculous strategies. People were trying different things and had completely different approaches to the game. Most importantly, the had FUN. There was no perfect balance, but a new player could still find his way around after some games. There were quite some numbers, but the majority of them was easy to understand and could give you a rough feeling of strengths and weaknesses as well as the playstyle. There was already a competitive eSports scene, but it was not that present to the normal player. However, more and more champions were added and each one had to be "interesting", so their abilites got more special, had more possible interactions. However, they were more difficult to master - presumably because the growing competitive scene needed something more interesting - and especially more difficult to understand. Read https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Aphelios as an example. Now there are more than 150 champions and for many of them you have to read several pages just to know their basic abilities. Then, actually, you have to continue with item builds, analyze different matchups, synergies, counters, know the metagame and their role... it gets endless and it changes with every patch (and actually that is wanted because even the professional players never get the possibility to find out the "perfect" strategy). I got annoyed by the game (and I know others as well) because it felt that the original, simple and clear playstyle which you could still see in some older champions was not wanted anymore by the game developer and the competitive scene. Older champions got updates and often were changed completely to "match" the new champions. The gameplay feeling of the early days is completely gone. Everything is optimized, maximized, polished, analyzed, broadcasted, streamed, ... Every streamer is praising himself how "broken" some champion is with whatever new "OP build"... see https://www.youtube.com/user/SirhcEz/videos as an example. (from "Why LoL brings out the worst in people with a "competitive" personality type", https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/ajoire/why_lol_brings_out_the_worst_in_people_with_a/) It feels like competitiveness has reached every niche of the game. I have gotten tired of it. Sorry, I hope this was not too much negativity. I just wanted to illustrate what 0 A.D. could learn from the mistakes of other games... I still like 0 A.D. but it experiences the changes observable in other games to some degree, too. Still it is possible for everyone to propose changes and to engange in their implementation and that is very valuable. Have a good day!

Your mod is the first thing I want to try out when testing 0 A.D. in practice again. Unfortunately if I try something new, I do it thoroughly, and right now I see too many conflicts with my time allocation. I think if you can upgrade only 2 champs, they should receive a special bonus besides plain stats and visuals. E.g. inspiration or fear auras etc. Otherwise they will just survive with the hero and fight a bit longer than the rest in case of a lost battle (similar to Agis who is quite useless). These Olympic champions / bodyguards would be tier III champions in my systems, tier I being Spartiate and tier II being Hippeis. I agree with impactful choices. Probably have one choice for every phase advance (and a bonus choice when finishing a wonder) which potentially affects multiple units and/or technologies.

@Nescio provides the Spartans with a champion hoplite as a starting unit in D3412. A good first step! I think a good middle ground could be: 1 free champion in village phase (see patch above) champion training in town phase with regular champion stats heavy upgrade technologies and auras in city phase If that would make them too strong, they should be tweaked at other places, e.g. economy, Skiritai, ... Exactly what I had in mind. Spartan hoplites feel good but not overpowered really. E.g. Macedonians have a similar strong infantry unit. If they could 1v2 other champions, they would feel so, even if they actually were not from an overall perspetive (keeping costs, train time, unit restrictions, late availability, low speed, ... in mind). These kind of choices were cool if they were a much more integral part of the game (cf. Age of Mythology God choices), so not restricted to Spartans, but available to any civ in some way.

Thank you for the link, an interesting comparison I have also been thinking that it would be nice to have Spartan hoplites right from the start, however, that will make balancing much more difficult (at least if you want them to be these uber champs I have been describing...) On the other hand, one could argue that they are so expensive that you would completely cripple your economy if you trained more than a handful of them before reaching city phase. Regarding cavalry and Skiritae I have no strong opinion at this point. I would tinker with the other units once I have the feeling that the Spartiates has found its place and is more or less balanced. I actually remember that I also thought of a fear aura for the advanced ranks of the champion. Completely forgot about it! I also experimented with a very short ranged aura that would basically allow them to provide their direct neighbors in a phalanx formation with additional resistances, essentially making them in phalanx much tougher than in loose combat. My impression is that on the forums we are talking a lot and that is fine as long as we do not expect others to realize our ideas. I'm not saying that you won't inspire any action, but I think in general it's more productive to create a working patch or mod, so others can test your ideas with a relatively small amount of effort. I have to remind myself of that when I write, otherwise I tend to get frustrated.

The ones of you who have a close eye on the recent commits and patches in the queue will have noticed that there are efforts being made to further differentiate the current civs either by unique bonuses and/or buildings. I am assuming that I am not the only one seeing great potential for Spartans in that direction, especially since the removal of their pop penality leaves room for new things. I think it is time to share my ideas from a mod draft made several years ago, but never finished/published. See the following description and proposals as an inspiration for new/alternative/enhanced Spartan gameplay. The core idea is to really push the Spartan trademarks: the absolute crème de la crème regarding quality, especially in the defensive part, at the cost of reduced quantity and a lot of time and resources spent to bring their warriors to perfection. In lategame they should be near unstoppable - only the infamous man spam train should do the job - being among the strongest civs, preferably the strongest alone. A Spartiate phalanx (even more so with Leonidas) should feel like an immovable object similar to Carthaginian walls. Their offensive should be very slow, but deadly (cf. Teutonic knights in AoE II). They will fight like a beast to defend their home territory and shine the most in team games where they can occupy and block strategic positions. However, they should be especially vulnerable in early game / village phase and below average in mid game / town phase (careful, detailed and well-targeted balancing may be needed) in order to compensate for their incredible late game potential. They are characterized by the following unique features: tech "The Agoge": waaay more impactful than now - Spartiates cost around 2 times the resources of regular champions (including 2 population), optionally only one of them can be trained per house - they should be able to 1v2 regular champions, and with all other bonuses described below even 1v3 should be possible (at least under some circumstances) -> reduced quantity, better overall quality, slightly more cost efficient than other champions tech "Hippagretae": these were the guys electing the ~300 best Spartiates called Hippeis - Spartiates can upgrade to stronger Hippeis after collecting some XP (killing 2-3 enemies) (like citizen soldiers from basic -> advanced rank) - optionally Hippeis can further upgrade to some kind of semi-hero after collecting a huge amount of XP (killing 7 or 10 enemies), but that may be over the top (like citizen soldiers from advanced -> elite rank) -> better overall quality CC aura "Wall of Men": some Greek author used this term to explain why Sparta didn't need walls - +2 resistance for Spartiates in a 80 range around CCs - alternatively more concentrated: +4 resistance in a 30 range around CCs -> better defensive quality Leonidas hero aura "Thermopylae": replacing current offensive aura by a purely defensive one - +2 resistance and -10% speed for spearmen in his formation - alternatively +3 resistance and -15% speed for Spartiates in his formation -> better defensive quality better represent the role of Spartan women and Helote slaves - Helote slaves as most efficient gatherers (use slave actor from Athenians) - Spartan women have less than mediocre gather rates themselves, but a gather boost aura for Helotes (being their mistress) - Spartan women have a basic combat ability, suitable for creating an emergency home defence against citizen soldiers (but not against champions) and they are able to build all buildings including military ones -> more complex economy, slow development, but higher potential (for the huge amount of resources needed for unique techs and champions) -> slightly better defensive quality I hope you find at least some of these ideas inspiring and suitable as a basis for more patches to come! Feedback and further ideas welcome Best regards, Palaxin

I'm thinking about it for A24. No promises though, since there are several exams waiting in the coming weeks. It may be better however to include more difficulties in the vanilla version, since a "very very easy" AI would be interesting primarily for beginners which might not be aware of the presence of such a mod. In general I dislike differentiating AI difficulty simply by tweaking gather/building rates instead of strategic/tactical decisions, i.e. a harder AI shouldn't be harder because of quantity in the first place, but because of intelligence. However that's a huge project on its own, certainly not within my possibilities.

Hello @DanW58, if you feel comfortable digging in a game file, you could also mod the AI difficulty in binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/helpers/InitGame.js, line 47 (AI gather rate) and line 48 (build and train time). The second entry in the square brackets defines the very easy AI. Dirty solution: unzip your binaries/data/mods/public folder on your computer, edit the file and zip the folder with the edited file again Elegant solution: create a mod that changes AI difficulties, distributable as .pyromod or downloadable on mod.io (the wiki pages modding guide and mod layout can be helpful here)

@Prodigal Son@Itms@Stan` Are there any news on this? I don't know about your internal plans (though I would like to ) so thought it would be a good idea to encourage you tackling this before entering Beta, otherwise I fear there won't be a major reform to overall gameplay of 0 A.D. ever. Just referring to the post of feneur when announcing the switch at the project leader position, because already at that time it seemed Beta is on the horizon - however I have the impression that I'm not the only person who prefers the necessary overhauls before going forward...

Ok, I can understand your reasoning, though I think depicting differences would still make it more interesting. Vanilla 0 A.D. just seems quite plain to me regarding unit variety (at least compared to AoE II with 35 civs with special units, unique techs etc. or AoM with a lot of choices through primary and secondary gods). The factions could profit a lot from fleshing out more differences, but that's another topic. In the context of this thread I assumed equalizing the stats of women and men was proposed in order to address sexism which is not the best way IMO. Simply because women and men are not the same in every aspect on average, especially when it comes to some hard, measurable facts (and I would count work output in measurable units as one - of course depending on the kind of work). The question of sexism is a question of how they are seen, treated and what rights they have, and I think that is something extremely difficult to depict in an RTS with its limited scope and complexity. The problem is that 0 A.D. focuses almost exclusively on areas that were men's domain in the depicted timeframe and as already discussed we get conflicts with historic accuracy if we would derive from that... So depicting men and women in an ideal state (and what that is, is still somewhat subjective I'd say) would result in a non-historic, sci-fiction or fantasy game - which inherently carries a flavour of utopia since the world is imperfect... I would appreciate these proposals though as far as proven historic knowledge allows us to do and integration into the game concept as a whole would make sense.

Good change and thank you for the patch! Apart from what you already mentioned, it also introduced unnecessary micro (which should be shifted to other areas IMO). Disagree. Similar to many animal species, humans do have a sexual dimorphism, e.g. by nature men have a larger muscle mass on average (advantageous adaptation for hunting I guess) whereas women have a higher percentage of body fat on average (advantageous adaptation for pregnancy I guess). Depending on the activity/work, this dimorphism should translate into different work rates in some areas where the differences matter, e.g. where you have to use heavy tools or carry heavy load (lumbering, probably mining, but not gathering berries). At least this sounds reasonable and actually not offending to me. If you are looking for confirmation, compare the performances of women and men at the Olympic games. Regarding Age of Empires II, I think 0 A.D. was born because of the opportunity to make things different from it, not to mimic it...

I would love to see Alpha 24 themed around Asia/Chinese as well with the inclusion of the Hans (even if it took 1 year from now to the release). I have no strong opinion on specific names though...

terrain grid, I suppose Yeah its mainly for aesthetics and also efficient use of building space to a small degree. Furthermore it feels more satisfying / less tiring trying to build houses with same distance to one another or in a certain pattern (more important for single player use or map creation than for multiplayer)

Would be nice though to have snap-to-grid building placement in the options... (has been proposed/discussed before, I don't remember the reason why this is undesirable and still don't see it, at least as an option it wouldn't hurt anybody)

I know from Terasology that they applied several years in a row before they were accepted the first time, and after that they were every year IIRC. Sounds a bit like a hidden queue for newcomers. But persistence will pay off probably...

Today a trac user called "Mike William" replaced the contents of the wiki start page with spam. I restored the contents but I can't delete the attached file (special permission required?). Please correct! Thanks

@Prodigal Son your application makes me write my first post after 8 months... One of the best things I've read on this forums so far, giving me new hope for the future of this game... I wish you and the team the best (may they accept your offer!)... Hopefully gameplay will no longer limit the true potential of 0 A.D.!

Sorry for posting this so early... And sorry @sphyrth for stealing this idea from your April Fool's post. But I think there really is only one choice: Alpha 23 Wololo We certainly know that the term "wololo" isn't complete bullshit. And by adding a new cheat unit we could easily justify that name. Typing "wololooo" should spawn a super monk that will convert all enemies very fast by wololo-ing them. What do you think?

I think something like this would fit best with the original logo style: tm-logo.svg

One could argue that structures must include food costs then. I agree that minimizing micro is a valid point here, but I think 0 A.D. is missing some details that may or may not affect gameplay but create a UNIQUE ATMOSPHERE, e.g. something like children (Stronghold) and structures with animated workers (Settlers).

+1 for Wololo Alpha!

They could be also interesting in other game modes once relic bonuses/auras have been added.

I could imagine @DarcReaver and @wowgetoffyourcellphone unifying their efforts in creating a coherent design document...?