Nescio

Proper edge to edge or distance to circle around the obstruction? And heal (as in healer), territory influence, and vision ranges? Since only the middle part of gates is passable, I'd say centre to centre makes more sense for gate detection range.

Better, thanks: It's good enough for me now. Others may disagree, though.

Actually I meant: With the old phase numerals: It looks like this in game:

The second one I like best. They look a bit thin in game, though: Could you also make one of the farming_training.png, to see how it looks on the yellowish grain?

When running `perl checkrefs.pl --check-map-xml`, I'm getting the following errors:

Fine by me too (though I dislike that cyan colour a bit). The important thing is how it looks in game (easy to test once there is an icon).

Camel troops (as opposed to transport camels) used by the Seleucids are attested on one occassion, the Battle of Magnesia in 189 BC. They were Arab auxiliaries (and not that effective either) and described because of their unusualness. Replacing Seleucid cavalry with camels is not really representative. On the other hand, I don't know of any occassion where the Ptolemies fielded camel troops, yet they are a starting unit in game.

It's tedious, but safe. Blurriness shouldn't cause problems when scaling down. And yes, I'm aware the game (and many other applications) doesn't handle svg.

Isn't png lossless? The phase icons are 256×256, the gather icons 128×128, so a quadrant would be 64×64. So cutting the I, II, III out, giving them a transparent background, scaling them down by a factor 4, and putting them on top of the gather icons should work: I've been using this mod for experimenting with things, and while the svg numerals may look nice in a forum post, they haven't been tried and tested in game, so I'd be more comfortable with sticking with the existing phase numerals.

Thanks. It's been a while since I last worked on my 0abc mod; writing patches for the svn development version got in the way . As for kerning, as much as is necessary to make VIII square. Regarding the gather technology icons, how it's done here can serve as an example for the public version. However, I don't recommend including them as is, it's better to just use the I, II, III from the village, town, and city phase icons, if possible, for visual consistency.

In principle anyone can propose changes to the game and upload differentials to https://code.wildfiregames.com/ As for mercenary costs, they have been changed recently: https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24635 Britons and Gauls still have a 20% discount on structure building time, which is a great economic bonus, especially in the early game. Gauls have received +10% cavalry melee attack damage, an extra grain gather technology in the town phase, and a new structure in the city phase, the assembly, where they can train their heroes and a new carnyx-trumpeter, which has a local aura, lowering enemy attack damage. They did in A23 and still do in A24. So I'm not sure what you're referring to. In 0 A.D. camels are just cavalry, always have been. I've actually proposed separating camels ( https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2900 ) as well as chariots ( https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2965 ) from cavalry; the main objection seems to be they would no longer benefit from cavalry technologies. For what's worth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_racing writes: Camels can run at speeds up to 65 km/h (18 m/s; 40 mph) in short sprints and they can maintain a speed of 40 km/h (11 m/s; 25 mph) for an hour. Whereas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_gait#Gallop writes horses can maintain their top speed of 40 to 50 km/h for only a few kilometres i.e. a few minutes at most. If we trust Wikipedia on this, then camels should realistically be much faster than horses. 0 A.D. is a historically-inspired fantasy game, though, and gameplay trumps realism.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3397

Thank you for pointing this out! Animal stats are a mess and have been for years. They really need a critical look and more reasonable numbers. Most maps have few of them, so it's not really a problem in most games, but it can be on some, as you experienced. How about simply halving their health and attack damage for now?

Indeed. You're right, taken out of context the phrase “doesn't make much sense” has no value. There ought to be an explanation why. If an argument is unconvincing, it shouldn't be accepted. While sun-dried mud-bricks were used for walls, they still need roofs, doors, furniture, and firewood. In this particular case, @Sundiata (and others) complained about free houses on the forums more than once (this thread is one example), I wrote a differential, @borg- reviewed it and requested changes, I updated the patch, @borg- accepted it, and @Freagarach committed it, as rP24590.

Nowadays I tend to play a giant random map with a world population setting of 600 and five players, myself and four very hard Petras, each in a different team (though not locked), and a last man standing conquest victory condition. I'm not interested in multiplayer and dislike 1 vs 1 matches, because those are primarily about who's fastest, while I like developing a bit more slowly and building a nice base, with city walls etc. That said, building a strong economy is still key. When I was new to 0 A.D., I started with playing random maps of a team of one Petra + me vs one Petra, or a team of two Petras + me vs a team of two Petras; later it became two Petras + me vs a team of three Petras or even one Petra + me vs two Petras vs another team of two Petras, and I began raising their difficulty settings. Having AI players fighting each other gave me the opportunity to gradually get used to the game and figure out what works and what didn't at my own pace.

Guilty as charged . It's a valid concern and you're certainly not the only who dislikes this. Since I wrote the majority of gameplay patches, you can blame me. My focus is primarily on improving consistency and addressing things that don't make much sense, and also on more clearly separating structure functions (e.g. barracks is for infantry, stable for cavalry, arsenal for siege engines, fortress for territorial defence, and houses for population) and differentiating units (e.g. axemen and swordsmen are separated from swordsmen templates). As a consequence civs became more similar, yes, which is unfortunate. The aim is to get to a cleaner and somewhat more balanced state, from which it's much easier to add new content. I certainly do hope 0 A.D.'s civilizations will be further diversified in the next release. Having said that, allow me to cherry-pick a few commits that did make civs less similar: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2534 / https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP23793 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2862 / https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP23823 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2843 / https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP24422 And highlight some patches proposed today, waiting for feedback: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3320 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3328 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3329 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3330

Yes, Heuneburg was a very important Celtic city on the Upper Danube, not that far from what's now Switzerland. Official web site: http://www.heuneburg.de/ I'm most interested in its city walls, sun-dried mud-brick is highly unusual north of the Alps, to the best of my knowledge.

As of today, rams are available to all factions. Because a frequent (and just) complaint is that civilizations are too similar in 0 A.D., I wrote another patch: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3319

For the public version, probably very little in practice, but we don't know what other mods do. Point taken. To be clear, I'm not arguing we should revert to the old situation, I'm merely pointing out the new situation isn't unproblematic either. My point is technologies, auras, cheats are different things and I question whether treating them all the same is really the best possible situation. And attack range, capture points, damage resistance, movement speed etc. I gave structure health as an example because that's where I first stumbled upon the difference, but it's also relevant for tower attacks (there are several technologies for that) or artillery (which is still capturable). Well, I'm not a programmer and don't have a solution, but I'm concerned about the new situation and disagree with you here on this. Having to maintain dozens of xml templates instead of just one json file is a lot more work. Very few modify the development version, others may not even be aware their mod files are applied differently than they were used to. Moreover, the new situation how information in the civilization overview is loaded (committed a few days ago by @s0600204) is an extra reason in favour of having separate files for civ bonuses, rather than hiding them in templates (e.g. cart dock, market, merchant ship).

As you probably know A24 has been in development for over two years and thousands of revisions have been committed. Rumour has it it is nearing completion, which is great! Numerous things have been improved and releasing for a wider audience is certainly welcome. However, some mechanics are fundamentally different in A24 than they were in A23. Things I'm most concerned about: Firstly, the way technology modifications are applied. Technologies (and civ bonuses) are supposed to be permanent, auras (and team bonuses) temporary. In A23 the order in which modifications were applied (@fatherbushido) was: template values technology replaces technology multiplications technology additions aura replaces aura multiplications aura additions In A24 this is changed to (@wraitii, please correct me if I'm mistaken): template values technology and aura replaces technology and aura multiplications technology and aura additions To me, the old order made a lot more sense than the new. Moreover, things are fundamentally different for captured entities (as spotted by @Freagarach). As you may know, civic centres have 3000 health by default; brit and gaul structures have −20% wood cost, build time, and health; athen, mace, spart structures have +10% health. In A23, if you're playing athen and capture a brit centre, it still has 2400 health when it's your brit centre. In A24, on the other hand, a brit centre has 2400 health before it's captured, but 3300 health after it's captured by athen—and vice versa: an athen centre captured by brit immediately jumps from 3300 health to 2400. This is really counterintuitive. Modifications ought to depend on the entity's civ, not the owner's civ. When an entity's ownership changes, it should keep the values it had before. Now I was told the A23 code was buggy and it's no longer possible to revert to it. That may be true, but the current situation is not satisfactory either. Secondly, range computations have changed too. In A23, all ranges were computed from the entity's centre. Because structures have much higher footprints than soldiers, this meant archers could easily hit structures with the same attack range, without those able to shoot back, which was certainly undesirable. To address that, attack and aura ranges are now calculated from the circle around the entity's obstruction (i.e. increased by the obstruction radius). However, territory influence and vision ranges are still calculated from the centre, which means a centre's attack range of 70 actually extends beyond its vision of 90. Furthermore, structures tend to have footprints slightly larger than their obstruction sizes. Because footprints can be circular but obstructions are always rectangular, this means that for rectangular structures the obstruction radius is smaller than the footprint radius (as it should be), but for circular structures (e.g. brit fortress), the obstruction radius is in practice larger than its footprint radius, which is wrong, and means higher minimum and maximum ranges. Moreover, auras affect all relevant entities, so what matters is the area covered, not merely the distance (unlike attacks). The new calculation method (from the obstruction radius instead of the centre) means that a small difference in the obstruction size can easily result in a difference in free aura area much larger than the total obstruction size. Again, these are the things I'm most concerned about. Other people may see different things. If you spot something else in the development version that seems fundamentally wrong (compared to A23), please post here too.

@Angen wrote a patch to allow changing it from within the game: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3037 It probably could use @bb_'s graphics options clean up: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3034 And some small gui patches I wrote and would appreciate feedback on: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2247 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2568 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2985 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3268 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3295 https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3311

Did you run cd 0ad/build/workspaces/gcc/ make clean cd .. sh clean-workspaces.sh before rebuilding? It's the same repository, 0 A.D. is cross-platform, he should just follow https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions#OSX If you intend to play the development version (A24) with other players, it's very important to double-check everyone is at exactly the same revision/commit, to avoid going out of sync; the git mirrors are some hours behind the svn.

@nifa, just checking, you know there is a “detailed tooltips” setting (under game options), don't you? Isn't this fixed in the svn development version? I have fond memories of Cossacks! In my opinion more people should give it a try, and look less at Age of Empires. The left selection panel also hosts formations and stances, as well as barter (when a market is selected). Feel free to ignore what we currently have, I'd welcome a completely new interface designed from scratch. However, keep in mind it should work for 1024×768 and 1280×720 screens as well.

You can do a grep -r Bonuses in simulation/templates/ Pikemen have an attack bonus vs cavalry too. Furthermore, there is Alexander the Great, which has a 1.2× counter vs heroes (which doesn't really make sense, in my opinion). Anyway, that's a different discussion.

Where exactly didn't it work for you? No objections here. That's not always the most efficient approach. Try to think critically and figure out what's really going on. For instance, one could have a look at damage-per-second values: basic infantry spearman: (3 h, 2.5 p, 0 c) / 1 s = 3 h/s + 2.5 p/s basic infantry swordsman: (5.5 h, 0 p, 0 c) / 0.75 s = 7.333 h/s ram: (0 h, 0 p, 150 c) / 1.5 s = 100 c/s stone-thrower: (0 h, 10 p, 100 c) / 7 s = 1.429 p/s + 14.286 c/s Basically, swordsmen are nearly 2.5× as effective vs rams and structures as spearmen are, and rams destroy rams and structures 7× as fast as stone-throwers do. It's hardly surprising civs that have both have a clear advantage over those that don't. One thing that's changed is that rams can no longer attack humans, another is that all civs can train at least one swordsman (or axeman) in A24 (which wasn't yet the case in A23). Furthermore, there's a patch to enable rams for all civs (D2815) and a proposal to make artillery more effective (D2494). Whether that will be enough is something ample play-testing can show.