causative

Note that attackers didn't necessarily need to damage the walls to capture the city. Surrounding the enemy and starving them out was a popular strategy. In some sieges, a traitor would open the gates for the attackers. Siege ladders and siege towers were used to put troops directly on top of the walls without needing to damage them. Huge siege ramps, made out of dirt, sloping up to the top of the wall, were another strategy.

What I might do is look at some text in the GUI that appears over the item, then run a recursive grep for that text in the source tree that I have checked out from svn. I find the following bash function useful. function codegrep () { find ${2:-.} -regex '.*\.cpp\|.*\.h\|.*\.hpp\|.*\.js' -exec grep "${1}" '{}' + } You can also look in xml files for menus and stuff (just add |.*\.xml to the regex), though that will take a lot longer. And if you know the ancestor directory, such as source/ for cpp or binaries/data/mods/public for javascript and xml, that will also speed it up a lot.

Range queries can be heavily optimized. Do the target filtering in C++ not in JS. Use a quadtree instead of a fixed grid so that you can more quickly find the closest unit without having to iterate over all the units in a grid cell. Don't generate the entire list of units in range and then filter afterwards. Instead, filter as you iterate over the units, and return as soon as you have a matching one. My own computer is too slow with the current turn lengths. A large battle becomes almost unplayable as it drops to 2 FPS and the camera stops scrolling properly.

There would still be significant overkill, especially with archers, because at any time there are only a handful of the "most forward" enemy units. Might be an especially large overkill with archers because all the archers stand in roughly the same spot so they would all have similar or the same "closest" units. Perfect sniping wouldn't be 1 unit attacking 1 unit, but maybe 5 attacking 1, depending on the average turns to kill. It is better to kill 50% of the enemy army while leaving the rest untouched, than to damage the whole enemy army by 50%. So you do want to focus on a subset of units, while not focusing so much that overkill is excessive.

That's only part of what sniping does. The other part is that you distribute your fire over a big portion of the enemy army, instead of wasting tons of damage on overkill of one unit at a time.

@hyperion As long as it is a faithful representation of an authentic Roman fasces, there is no problem. Again, the current minimap logo is much closer to this flag of Italian fascism than to any authentic Roman fasces artifact. In the link you most recently posted (here) there are some apparently authentic Roman fasces, though we can't be quite sure because it is a modern reproduction rather than an ancient original. Anyway, those fasces could be distinguished from various Italian symbols by the shape of the blade. The similar Italian ones curve up around the animal head, where the authentic ones have a straighter axe head. They could also be distinguished by the size of the eagle head; the Roman ones have a larger eagle head than the Italian ones. By faithfully reproducing these differences it can be made clear that it is a Roman fasces and not an Italian one.

You may have missed my earlier post with the pictures. The current minimap icon is a close match to the flag of Italian fascism (different from what you linked) based on details of the axe (the diamond-shaped spike, the broad head, the square boss joining the two). The Canton of St. Gallen formed in modern times (1803) so its coat of arms may be modern as well. It would be better to base the art directly on an original Roman artifact.

I want to say I don't have an objection to using a fasces as a Roman symbol - I'm not one to censor history because it offends modern sensibilities. But, if there is to be a fasces, it had better be very clearly based on a real Roman fasces, and not based on the flag of the Italian fascists. For example, if it had two opposing long and skinny axe blades at the top (instead of a wide axe blade and a diamond-shaped spike), like the rusted Roman fasces above, that would be sufficient to identify it as a Roman one and not an Italian one.

I see there are minimap icons now that show on unexplored areas of the minimap. The Roman minimap icon is a fasces: The fasces is an authentic symbol of ancient Rome, but extraordinary care is needed, because it is also a symbol of modern Italian fascism. Does this accurately depict an authentic Roman fasces and not a modern Italian fasces? It is necessary to find an authentic archaeological Roman fasces that matches the picture. I have doubts. The style of axe is nearly identical to the axe on the flag of Italian fascism. The axe head projects out of the top of the bundle, and it has the same shape of curved blade on the right, the same type of diamond-shaped spike on the left, and a square center-piece. Doing some google searches, I haven't been able to locate an authentic archaeological Roman fasces with those precise features on the axe. Therefore, unless such an example can be found, this minimap art is representative of specifically Italian fascism and needs to be changed. For comparison, here are some authentic Roman fasces:

Breaks it how? I don't see any problem with attack-move when binding capture and attack-move to Ctrl. Ah, it's not attack-move that's the problem, it's garrison. You can't garrison in a structure without full capture points if you bind capture and garrison to the same key. https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4908

Or you can use this mod I just made to restore the old behavior where you press the attack key to attack a building, and otherwise capture it by default. oldcapturebehavior.zip

You can put "capture = Ctrl" in your local.cfg under hotkey.session, and delete "attack = Ctrl" there. Then you can capture by pressing Ctrl instead of c.

Disable the formation. Or you could go to Options -> Game Session and turn the "Battalion-style formations" option off.

Looks like their crush damage was cut to a quarter of its original value, in exchange for splash damage? So they aren't like rams at all anymore. Anyway, for fighting infantry, it's pointless to pit them against 75 spearmen because that's not the army composition players actually use. Try instead a realistic army, say 80 archers and 20 spearmen vs 80 archers and 3-4 elephants (similar total cost, though in fact the elephants are more costly because metal is more valuable than wood).