Philip the Swaggerless

It's true, it is open source and I am not a dev. So it is easy for me to complain about the poor performance in team games, even though I myself cannot put in the work to fix it. Nevertheless, I have been asking myself recently: should I really be playing a game this laggy in 2024? Time out of one's day is lost in games where actual time is significantly longer (2x, for example) than game time. WAY more than the unit rebalances or new units, I look forward to performance improvements like Vulcan. I also heard a27 will bring a way for the host to check if a player is causing lag due too just having a slow computer. So the host can choose not let that player in 4v4 games for example. That is annoying. Probably what you are running into is the fact that a maximum of 200 units can be selected at a time. 2 things can help mitigate this now: Hold alt while dragging the mouse to select military units only. Holding alt + y while dragging the mouse to select will select NON-military units only. Or, Play games with a lower pop limit. A bit of self critique: Some of the performance issues can be mitigated by choosing different options. We DON'T HAVE to play 4v4 200 pop team games. I think 3v3 is pretty interesting, actually. We can play lower pop limit games (albeit this effects the defensive structure vs unit balance). Just because we have the freedom to choose grander options doesn't mean that it's the best choice.

I like this idea best. Just as long as you don't have to change weapons it for 6 seconds (upgrade implementation) like a persian immortal xD. Right click = attack based on distance to enemy Ctrl right click = forced melee attack I like this idea second best. @wowgetoffyourcellphone Of the suggested options in this thread or elsewhere that you are aware of, which ones are currently (or easily) implementable? Maybe once we know these we could vote on what people like?

Hard disagree. Make packing or mobility better, then. In team games it is useful to make traders if you are pocket to get the diaspora tech alone. But traders have long needed a revamp. Even in maps with low resources, you can always get a lot of food, which means you can make cavalry, which means traders are not safe. Also, most maps start with 5k metal so if you have merc cav they will also make traders a complete waste.

Why a switch time at all? Who ever asked for that? If any, shouldn't be anymore than 4 seconds! They are too weak to use as spearmen and it is too cumbersome switch back and forth between them. Too make them less cumbersome to use, it would also be good to choose which unit to produce them by as default. Maybe the easiest way would just be to add an archer unit to the production building and Cyrus.

It seems the overall damage output of buildings was not reduced, is this correct? I thought part of the change to structures targeting units is that the overall damage would be reduced to compensate for the fact that it would be reducing the army much quicker by eliminating individual units faster. I think that would be good, because it can diminish the power of sitting under cc fire in the early game, but also reduce the turtling power of late game. Instead, it seems much more difficult to besiege a player and knock them out of the game.

The Hoplite tradition tech of sparta decreases training time for all Hoplites, including champions, by 20% I believe. So there ends up not being much difference in train time. They are still the best spear infantry champion.

Carth are very strong if you use the infantry mercs

Previously they only had the chariots. I believe the team is working on making the chariot have extra features. Some of the ideas were making the scythes coming out of the wheels do damage and/or making it so the soldier on top can jump off of it.

What is unrealistic is that you can instantly delete all of the buildings with the press of a button, as if by modern explosive demolitions. You don't have to have men walk to them and set fire to them.

One of the most satisfying experiences I've had in a game is taking someone's CC, and then their superior army cames back to reclaim it, and then I deleted their whole city. xD Of course I acknowledge this is unrealistic. @alre Does auto demolishing mean pressing the delete key to destroy the selected building(s), or are you talking about how the AI deletes its buildings before you can claim them?

Maybe like @Vanthasaid, the Macedonian siege tower could be enhanced. Longer build time, more cost, but it also shoots a bolt or 2. We could limit the number that can be built at one time, like the juggernaut ships.

Wait, what? I think just make the pikemen (and siege?) faster. I think the siege would be a good place to differentiate them. Currently, they have a hero that boosts siege damage/range, and a team bonus that makes siege get produced faster. So they have buffs, but they don't have anything actually unique about the siege itself. In previous alphas they were the only civ that could make an Arsenal. All other civs had to produce siege from the fortress. But everyone has an arsenal now.

Faster pikemen. From Wikipedia: "All of the armor and weaponry a phalangite would carry totaled about 40 pounds, which was close to 10 pounds less than the weight of Greek hoplite equipment.[1]" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_phalanx

@real_tabasco_sauce I am a little confused. Did you mean "pop is 160/1600 = 10%"? And is the 80% boost an arbitrary number or is it based on the game pop/world pop cap? In a 4v4, a rusher may have better stats than the 1-2 people they rushed for much of the game, but the other 5-6 players likely have better stats for the majority of the gametime. It is a likely scenario that the longer the game goes, the better the score for the non-rushers (at least on the winning team). Can the population percentage boost account for this in a way that we think correctly reflects effectiveness of the rusher? Also, as the losing team's population diminishes, the winning team's kills will become increasingly more valuable in the score relative to when most players have full pop. Such a boost would be beyond what is intended. I apologize if this is all obvious, but I submit that: One of the reasons early kills are effective is because the person that loses a unit loses that unit's economic and military productivity for the rest of the game's duration. So the value of that kill continues to increase the longer the game goes on. (Or to be more precise, until that player reaches their pop cap, or whichever comes first). I don't think that ratings that don't consider time of kill compared with game duration (or time until the affected player's pop cap is reached) can capture the value of rushes. Since this mod is based on averaging scores of different frames, it may not be well suited for this. Is that right @Mentula? Actually, if we consider the value of the kill in terms of the productivity it denies the other player, there may even be a rough way to consider military and economic score as different aspects of a single dimension. Admittedly, this method would not account for the value of rushes which do not kill units but which cause a lot of idle time for the target of the rush.

COLOR Feedback: The grey is VERY hard to see on the mini-map. The silhouettes are also sneaky when in the trees.

@Sodaliteby the way, are you referring to technologies only or structures? The are scenarios and skirmish maps where you begin with a city full of structures.

@real_tabasco_sauce I am not bothered by the clutter. I have 2 main thoughts: It will be interesting to explore the options and come up with new plans. It will add to the learning curve, and potentially increase the gap between experts on non-experts. More broadly, this is an overall buff for soldiers. Even more so than at present, time and resources will be invested in soldiers rather than defensive & civil structures and technologies, and trade. Umm, just one beef. Who asked for tankier swordcav? They already feel like Medieval Knights with Iron Plate Armor who time traveled into antiquity!

I just remembered that there is a pretty critical AI problem with soldiers on walls. Namely, melee soldiers who are aggroed by them will continuously walk toward them, unable to reach them, and die. Melee units ought to never attempt to attack units mounted on walls. Probably best for them to ignore wall-mounted units if they have either an order or other targets are available, or flee if there are no alternate targets and no orders given.

I don't build stone walls, not because they are weak, but because I devote my workers and resources to making an army, military production buildings, and getting blacksmith upgrades. If you wall off your town that is nice, but you generally cannot wall off a safe space for woodcutters. If you are stuck behind your walls with an inferior army, your opponent can continue to outgrow you, take map control, and attack you when you venture out. I think there is a case for making walls when your opponent is using cav armies and I'm interested in exploring that.

I agree. Awhile back I was working on a Team Bonuses mod that required actions for teammates to receive team bonuses, rather than the innate buffs we have now. A lot of that involved new civic units and structures. I came to the conclusion that all that coordination and added micromanagement would likely end up losing to people who, instead of making said units and structures, make extra cavalry javelineers and raid you.

In your opinion, do any of the urban civilized civs of this game feel adequately civilized to you?

I personally like the time restriction to keep the feel of the time. It's already strange enough that if you play Romans vs Gaul or Britons you do not get to pick Julius Caesar. If at the start of the game you chose between 2 or 3 eras, and then could only choose civs of that era, that would be cool. However, I'm sure that would be a lot of work, especially as alpha updates go on.

I laughed before I even caught the acronym.

This was one of his existing auras, not a new one. Having done some tests, it is slightly more effective against CCs than the Roman hero (Scipio) that gives plus 2 capture attack to all units. I agree it is obscure in that the regeneration rate stat is not even visible. This never bothered me much though, I just knew it meant he was good at capturing things. Honestly, I like the uniqueness of it. The idea, I assume, is that since Alexander captured so much territory in such a short amount of time he should be really good at capturing CC's. I agree with this. The advantage of the Roman hero is that he also captures non cc buildings very quickly, whereas Alexander doesn't have any special effect on them. In adding the new Alexander auras I was trying not to go too crazy and make him too strong. Depending on how strong he is in practice, I could be open to supporting one of the below adjustments: Remove current CC Aura, and add capture attack bonus equal to our greater than the Roman Hero's (+2). It could be added to his new Rapid Conquest Aura. Or, Change current capture regeneration rate debuff Aura to effect all buildings, not just CC.

What is this file? Is this the match?