Nescio

Because armour is a power exponential law, differences in armour levels are more consequential then they might seem. Take, for example, the house; the tooltip shows us: Armour: 20 hack (88%), 30 pierce (96%), 3 crush (27%), which although true is somewhat misleading. The difference in hack and pierce is 10 levels, between hack and crush 17 levels, and between pierce and crush 27 levels. Another way of phrasing this is that 1 crush damage is equivalent to 6 hack damage or 17.2 pierce damage. I doubt many people would have guessed this from the current tooltip, so maybe we should have a tooltip that displays armour-health equivalents (i.e. the total amount of attack damage it can take).

That has been committed by @elexis earlier this week (rP23399).

Carthage and Persia already have trade gain bonuses, and rightly so. Maybe a discount on farm field costs? Or a small food discount on technologies? Perhaps a discount on domestic animals then? @borg-, @Stockfish, @ValihrAnt, and others.

Perhaps another way to try to explain it is by looking at the attack rate. Most people will agree an attack with 60 damage per hit and a reload time of 4 seconds is equivalent to 15 damage per second. Stating that reducing the reload time by a factor x is equivalent to increasing the damage by a factor 1/x ought to be uncontroversial; e.g. -10% reload time has the same effect as +11.1% damage. Armour and health function in much the same way as attack time and damage. A reduction in time means an increase in total damage; likewise a reduction in damage per hit means an increase in damage (hits) it can take; e.g. +1 armour (i.e. -10% damage taken) has the same effect as +11.1% health (i.e. damage it can take in total).

Or maybe all ships and land traders −20% training time. I was about to suggest a discount on temple technologies, but the Mauryas already have that. Any other things the Britons were known for? All I can think of right now is that Carthage imported tin from Cornwall and surroundings, but that's an accident of geography. How about a resource discount on blacksmith technologies then instead? @Sundiata, any historically inspired suggestions for an alternative?

Currently 0 A.D. has the following team bonuses: Athenians: Allied Warships −25% construction time. Britons: Allied Healers −20% resource costs. Carthaginians: Allied Markets +10% international trade bonus. Gauls: Allied Structures −20% technology research time. Iberians: Allied Citizen Javelinists −10% resource costs. Kushites: Allied Elephants −20% resource costs and training time. Macedonians: Allies +20% barter sell prices. Mauryas: Allied Temples −50% resource costs and building time; Temple technologies −50% resource costs and research time. Persians: Allied Land Traders +15% trade gain. Ptolemies: Allies +1.0 food trickle rate. Romans: Allied Citizen Infantry −10% training time. Seleucids: Allied Civil Centers −20% resource costs. Spartans: Allied Citizen Infantry Spearmen +10% health. As you can see not all team bonuses are equally good. The Macedonian bonus is simply great; the Iberian, Ptolemaic, and Roman bonuses can be quite useful in early game, the Persian later on, the Seleucid on large maps. The Briton bonus seems rather limited (who trains healers?), the Athenian is only useful on water maps, the Kushite only for civs that can train elephants (a minority). Maybe some team bonuses ought to be replaced. Other thoughts or suggestions?

A24 is the development version; if you want it, see https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions (Because it contains the entire revision history and everything, it's quite large, currently approaching 30 GB.)

An unit with 50 health and 0 armour would take 52 damage, i.e. -2 health left, thus killed in one hit. An unit with 50 health and 1 armour would take 0.9×50=46.8 damage, i.e. 3.2 health left, thus surviving the first hit. An unit with 50/0.9=55.555 health and 0 armour would take 52 damage, i.e. 3.555 health left, same result as above.

Why are those things there in the first place? Wouldn't it be better to disable them all? Or at least hide them for everyone except those users who explicitly opt in?

Yes, I'm aware I'm repeating myself, though it's still true. There is nothing wrong with being private per se. And no, there is nothing wrong with forking either, it's one of the beauties of open source development. You can do whatever you like, it's completely up to you. For the rest of the world, though, the only thing that matters is what's published.

The most important difference is that your fork isn't public.

(cleared)

Amphitheatres are more something of imperial times; the one in Pompeii is one of the oldest we know of, dated to the 1st C BC.

As for the 10,000 Arabs in the Seleucid army at Raphia, those were volunteers from local tribes, wishing to show their support to the then victorious Antiochus III (Polybius V.71): Greek: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+5.71&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0233 translation: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+5.71&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234 And after the battle, those same Arab tribes lost no time in renewing their allegiance to Ptolemy IV (Polybius V.86): Greek: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+5.86&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0233 translation: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+5.86&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234 Antiochus III finally acquired Coele Syria in 195 BC, but at the Battle of Magnesia the only Arabs were some camel archers. Exactly: urbanized and Hellenized. Depictions of gods and kings are not necessarily representative. The question is how ordinary Arabs would have fought. Given their performance at Raphia (Polybius V.85), it seems they were lightly armed, nimble, and avoided melee. Also, the Nabatean Kingdom was independent of both the Ptolemies and the Seleucids.

See the history entries of the (old) design document pages for the Ptolemies and Seleucids. Not exactly my idea: Keeping with the design approach that a civilisation should be represented at a specific time in history, the Republican (pre-imperial) Roman civilisation is set in the Polybian period of the Roman Republic, during the Second Punic War (218-201 BC). [Romans] Although I'm not opposed per se to using things from earlier or later times to fill in the gaps, I do urge caution when extrapolating between centuries. Everyone is biased, I'm certainly no exception. Do correct me whenever I claim things that are untrue. Polybius is our most important source for the Hellenistic period (and an eyewitness for some events); Diodorus Siculus, Livy, Plutarch, Arrian, and others were also important but lived later. You're right, it is not exactly true. Ptolemy I took Egyptians with him to the Battle of Gaza in 312 BC, some of whom took care of ammunition and the baggage, others were armed and ready to fight (Diod. 19.80.4). Ptolemy II is known to have invited the sons of Egyptian nobles to join his royal guard and it's probable other (Hellenized) Egyptian individuals joined Greek units during the reigns of Ptolemy I-IV. However, the emergency Egyptian contigent raised for the Battle of Raphia in 217 BC was a first. Those 20,000 Egyptians meant the Ptolemaic phalanx was about 50% larger than the Seleucid's, winning the battle for Ptolemy IV. Polybius (V.107.1-3) is clear about the consequences: Greek: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+5.107&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0233 translation: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plb.+5.107&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234 During the so-called Great Revolt of the Egyptians, the Ptolemies lost control of Upper Egypt for two decades (206-186) and at the Battle of Panium in 200 BC against the Seleucids, the Ptolemaic phalanx (this time without an Egyptian contigent) was annihilated, marking the end of the Ptolemaic Kingdom as a great power, necessating military reforms and triggering further Egyptianization, as well as dependence on Rome. So yes, one could say Raphia was the first and last time the Ptolemies fielded an explicitly Egyptian phalanx. The word μάχιμος means fit for battle, warlike, a fighting man (from μάχη battle, combat; from μάχομαι to fight). Herodotus uses the term to describe a warrior caste in the (pre-Persian) Egyptian Kingdom. The term also appears in Ptolemaic times, but equating the two is problematic, as is the conclusion that Ptolemaic machimoi were automatically native Egyptians. For a more detailed discussion, see Christelle Fischer-Bovet (2013). EGYPTIAN WARRIORS: THE MACHIMOI OF HERODOTUS AND THE PTOLEMAIC ARMY. The Classical Quarterly, 63, pp 209­-236 doi:10.1017/S000983881200064X.

Would it make it easier if we'd say that health and armour together result in “survivability”? Or phrase it as time = health / damage?

It's quite simple. That each armour level means a 10% damage reduction (i.e. a 0.9^x power exponential law) is clear from: A23: simulation/components/Armour.js 53 A24: simulation/helpers/Attacking.js 103 Now health is fundamentally the amount of damage that can be taken. Therefore reducing the damage taken by a factor z is equivalent to increasing the health by a factor 1/z = z^-1. (If every hit inflicts only half the damage, then it'll take twice as long to kill the unit; if the damage per hit remains unchanged but the unit's health is doubled, then it'll also take twice as long to kill the unit.) One additional armour level means ×0.9 (i.e. -10%) damage, which is equivalent to 1/0.9 = 1.11111, i.e. +11.1% health. The tooltip, however, displays not the percentage of damage taken, but the percentage of damage resisted, hence (1 - 0.9^x) × 100%, which is merely another way of stating the same thing. The reason 0 A.D. has both armour and health, is because there are different damage types, and entities can have different armour levels for each type. Nonetheless, all auras and technologies currently in game affect all armour levels equally (which is not mandatory), therefore those are basically equivalent to health increases. I'd personally prefer +4 armour levels over +50% health, though, since higher maximum health means the unit takes longer to heal or regenerate.

Furthermore, 0 A.D.'s Ptolemaic and Seleucid unit rosters are evidently based on the Battle of Raphia as described in Polybius book V, which is understandable, because it was a significant battle, the description is detailed, and Polybius is considered a reliable author, but also problematic, because that fight was unusual in many aspects. E.g. it was the only time the Ptolemies used Egyptian troops and the only time the Seleucids fielded a large body of Arabs, so having the Egyptian pikeman and Arab skirmisher as basic starter units for these factions is not really representative.

Actually I'm not sure the Arabs (including the Nabateans) wore body armour, helmets, or shields.

Personally I've not experienced problems with running 0 A.D. on Linux (currently running four instances of A24 with AI players at 20× speed in the background while writing this; fps is probably horrible, but I'm not watching). I've never tried the game on Windows, so I can't comment on that. I suppose it boils down to what you're used to. For me, the “user-friendly” graphical approach of Apple and Microsoft tend to be more time-consuming and less understandable; besides, it limits what you can do. Things are a lot easier on Linux, where you can do about everything with a text editor and a command-line terminal. (I also think using LaTeX is faster and easier than Microsoft Word/LibreOffice Writer and Microsoft PowerPoint/LibreOffice Impress, so I probably belong to a small minority.) You could consider installing Windows and Linux distributions on the same machine (multi-booting). One thing I noticed is that pyrogenesis only uses one processor core, (which one shifts), but always at 100%.

Out of curiosity, which Linux distribution do you use?

Don't get fooled by the numbers displayed in the tooltip. Each armour level reduces damage taken by 10% (i.e. ×0.9). Going from level 1 to 2 is just as effective as going from level 41 to 42. It's not linear, it's exponential, (0.9^x): +1 level is equivalent to 0.9^-1 = +11.1% health +2 levels is equivalent to 0.9^-2 = +23.5% health +3 levels is equivalent to 0.9^-3 = +37.2% health +4 levels is equivalent to 0.9^-4 = +52.4% health +5 levels is equivalent to 0.9^-5 = +69.4% health etc. [EDIT] For future reference: armour level , damage taken , health equivalent x , 0.9^x , 1 / (0.9^x) 0 , 1.000000 , 100% 1 , 0.900000 , 111% 2 , 0.810000 , 123% 3 , 0.729000 , 137% 4 , 0.656100 , 152% 5 , 0.590490 , 169% 6 , 0.531441 , 188% 7 , 0.478297 , 209% 8 , 0.430467 , 232% 9 , 0.387420 , 258% 10 , 0.348678 , 287% 11 , 0.313811 , 319% 12 , 0.282430 , 354% 13 , 0.254187 , 393% 14 , 0.228768 , 437% 15 , 0.205891 , 486% 16 , 0.185302 , 540% 17 , 0.166772 , 600% 18 , 0.150095 , 666% 19 , 0.135085 , 740% 20 , 0.121577 , 823% 21 , 0.109419 , 914% 22 , 0.098477 , 1015% 23 , 0.088629 , 1128% 24 , 0.079766 , 1254% 25 , 0.071790 , 1393% 26 , 0.064611 , 1548% 27 , 0.058150 , 1720% 28 , 0.052335 , 1911% 29 , 0.047101 , 2123% 30 , 0.042391 , 2359% 31 , 0.038152 , 2621% 32 , 0.034337 , 2912% 33 , 0.030903 , 3236% 34 , 0.027813 , 3595% 35 , 0.025032 , 3995% 36 , 0.022528 , 4439% 37 , 0.020276 , 4932% 38 , 0.018248 , 5480% 39 , 0.016423 , 6089% 40 , 0.014781 , 6765% 41 , 0.013303 , 7517% 42 , 0.011973 , 8352% 43 , 0.010775 , 9281% 44 , 0.009698 , 10312% 45 , 0.008728 , 11457% 46 , 0.007855 , 12730% 47 , 0.007070 , 14145% 48 , 0.006363 , 15717% 49 , 0.005726 , 17463% 50 , 0.005154 , 19403%

Not as far as I know. Feel free to compile one. It's possible I occassionally misnumbered questions, though.

Basically the same issue I had: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/27433-unable-to-launch-updated-development-version/

25000 (The table is a bit misleading, though, since development on A24 started only about a year ago (26 December 2018), after the rerelease of A23.)