causative

Ancient war bows were about the same range as slings (150 meters). I think the difference is more in the amount of training required and the amount of damage dealt by projectiles. An arrow is heavier and sharper than a sling bullet so the arrow should do more damage. Bows are also more accurate than slings. Bows require more training, a good military archer needs to train from childhood to be able to draw and shoot a heavy bow, so I think they should be limited to civilizations with a strong archery tradition. Also an archer can't carry as much ammunition as a slinger. I'd also expect the bow fire rate to be superior to a sling, though I don't recall reading this. It's a simpler, shorter motion to nock and shoot an arrow than to load a sling bullet and whirl it around.

Kushites should get catapults or rams, not only to deal with siege towers, but also because it's very difficult to assault a fortified position with only elephants. If the enemy has 50 skirmishers, the elephants will die before they manage to kill anything, and if he also has garrisoned towers and a fort, you can't send in your own citizen-soldiers to kill the skirmishers at an effective k/d.

It doesn't make historical sense for a ram to have to unpack. They were built on the site of a siege, not transported in a packed form, and once built they could roll around on their own without unpacking. Same for siege towers. Better to make rams unable to attack biological units, and do something else for siege towers.

Sure, but retreating with a siege tower while shooting arrows is not historically accurate. Siege towers were never used like that. They could do more damage to compensate, or have stronger defenses closer to an actual defense tower. Perhaps siege towers could have a secondary battering ram attack added. That would be closer to their real use. It's possible in theory for Kushites to use skirmisher cavalry to block the tower while using spearmen to kill it... if you have overwhelming numbers and the enemy has no units on the ground to stop you. I've seen blocking the tower with troops to work sometimes, but it's usually not going to lead to an efficient trade of units.

I agree! The skirmisher thing is actually less of an issue in a23. It would have been more of a weakness if we were playing "no-cav" rules like in a22, but now that everybody is using cavalry again, Kushites can defend themselves with skirmisher cavalry. I also don't think every civ needs to be able to spam skirmishers. Archer-only civs add a little flavor . Especially now that archers are buffed a little in their walk speed. So I don't think a Kushite skirmisher change is needed. Just FYI, there are two things making the merc javelinist less desirable than a normal javelinist. One challenge is that since they aren't available until age II and require a building that you can't build in age I, you can't spam them to form your army initially, which puts you at a disadvantage in early engagements or in an initial age III push. Also, if you don't have extra metal mines then you don't have the metal to spare to build up a large mercenary force. Chasing siege towers with clubmen or champion infantry swordsmen/axemen is a tricky proposition. If your opponent has good micro, the towers can just retreat and usually not die, while killing everything that was chasing them. 4+ garrisoned siege towers are almost invincible if the opponent has no catapults, rams, or sword cavalry. Once this was demonstrated a few months ago in a22, many players banned siege towers from their infantry-only a22 games. Chasing siege towers with rams is a partial solution that often lets you take down a tower or two and chase all the towers away from the area temporarily, but the towers can kill the rams eventually as they retreat, and this doesn't work if the enemy with the siege towers also has good anti-ram such as sword cavalry. It could be seen that this ability to run away with siege towers while slaughtering infantry chasing them, is not historically accurate. Siege towers historically would be rolled up to city walls and used to attack the walls with rams or as a covered ladder to allow troops onto the battlements. Siege towers were also much slower than an infantry walking pace and wouldn't have been able to run away. So perhaps a rework of siege towers is needed. It would be annoying to make them much slower since they're already fairly slow, like other siege. Perhaps they could lose their ability to shoot arrows while moving.

Kushites lack sword cavalry, catapults, and rams. This leaves them almost defenseless against enemy siege towers or bolt shooters. The best they can do is chase the towers with elephants (or build up towers of their own - but this takes too long, and if the enemy also has catapults it is not viable). Elephants, however, are not very effective against siege towers and can be killed easily by any massed troops. For anti-siege, I think Kushites should be given at least one of sword cavalry, catapults, and rams. Preferably catapults; I think every civ should at least get catapults or rams. Elephants alone are really not a good option for killing structures since they can be killed so easily by ranged units. Overall, I'd say Kushites are a weak civ, considering they also lack normal-price skirmisher infantry. They're like Carthage in that respect. Also, the fact they train champions from temples is like Carthage. However, Carthage has catapults and bolt shooters. Also Carthage has sword cavalry mercenaries. Considering that Carthage is widely considered the weakest civ in a22, and Kushites have mostly disadvantages compared to Carthage, I think it's fair to say Kushites are the weakest current civ. Kushites could instead be compared to Mauryans, the other civ that lacks infantry skirmishers and siege. Mauryans have sword cavalry and a much more powerful economy boost in the form of worker elephants. (Kushite pyramids barely even count as an economy boost, considering their expense, the fact they aren't available until age II, and the small bonus they give). Mauryan barracks cost only wood, a significant advantage on most maps.

Top players in a22 and earlier very rarely used the second level of bell to garrison soldiers, because they could control the soldiers more effectively by selecting them (alt + drag the mouse to select only soldiers) and giving them orders. When the soldiers need to garrison, it's better to handle that manually (select the soldiers, hold down ctrl, right click on the building to garrison into). If you did that using the bell, many of the soldiers wouldn't even be able to garrison because the women would garrison first and take up all the space.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/5175#no3

Where was that fixed? Perhaps it got reverted, because it is still an issue in a23.

The original issue mentioned in the thread where catapults will unpack at will to attack units or buildings, is a straight-up bug in a23. It makes it impossible to tell a catapult to stop unpacking when in range of the enemy, as after it cancels unpacking it will immediately begin unpacking again before you can give it another order. The only workaround is to set the catapult to passive stance.

Why?

That also depends on stance. Units should just have defensive stance by default.

I believe it already does something like this. Units only berserk against anything that comes within vision range, if they are on aggressive or violent stance. The aggro range for defensive stance is shorter.

They still do triple damage against cavalry. (Note that the phalanx was vulnerable to flanking by cavalry, though invulnerable to a frontal attack)

This is not to slight or diminish hoplites because when they died in melee, it was other hoplites killing them! Comparatively, the (large numbers of) enemy skirmishers did not inflict heavy casualties; most casualties occurred during the melee push, once the lines of hoplites met. In-game for this to happen, the hoplites can't take forever killing each other. The melee battle should not last so long that the ranged attackers have time to kill the hoplites.

Heavy infantry includes citizen-soldier hoplites, and they were historically heavily armored enough that they could mostly shrug off projectiles of skirmishers, archers, and slingers. Most damage to heavy infantry was dealt during a melee clash with the enemy heavy infantry. Melee infantry should get a lot more pierce armor, and lower hack armor so they die quickly in melee but slowly to ranged.

EDIT: This and the reply to it were found in another topic, but on the advice of @Nescio has been included here as to keep the discussion in the same place. ENDEDIT I would prefer if the counter system made more historical sense. Arbitrarily giving javelin cavalry high pierce armor makes no sense; they're unarmored light cavalry. They should have neither high pierce armor nor high hack armor. Additionally, javelin cavalry were never a counter to infantry skirmishers. They were apparently used against heavy (melee) infantry using their speed to avoid being caught, as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin#Iberia My understanding of realistic historical counters goes like this. Heavy infantry: heavily armored, with swords, spears, or pikes, and carrying a large shield. Also may carry some javelins to throw just before engaging the enemy in melee. The elite core of any ancient force. Very resistant to missile attacks of any kind. You would not see a contingent of heavy infantry fully destroyed by skirmishers; skirmishers, slingers, and archers were there only to soften up the heavy infantry a bit and disrupt their formation before the melee clash. In game: high pierce armor. Directional armor: the shield protects them from the front, but from the sides and back they are not as protected. This naturally shows how the skirmishers can disrupt the heavy infantry formation without killing it outright. The skirmishers attack the heavy infantry from the side, which makes them turn to face the skirmishers, which leaves them more vulnerable to the main attack from the front. Very expensive. Greek city-states could field 3x as many ranged units as hoplites (heavy infantry). Light infantry javelin throwers: unarmored, medium range, good damage due to weight of projectile, used to harass heavy infantry. Out of the fight after throwing their three to five javelins. Cheap; most men were able to equip themselves this way. A force would not be composed entirely of javelin throwers. They would be an extra to the main force of heavy infantry. in game: little armor Limited ammunition that regenerates over time. Slingers and archers: historically they have about the *same range* (150 meters). They are both just as fast-moving as the javelin throwers. Served the same role of softening up heavy infantry formations as infantry javelin throwers did. Carry more ammunition, but it does less damage. Light ranged cavalry: the same role of softening up heavy infantry as the other ranged infantry units. They're just better at it because of their speed, which prevents the heavy infantry from catching them. Also more expensive. Not armored. Cavalry are simply larger than a human on foot. All cavalry should have a larger obstruction size. This means that you can't pack a lot of cavalry into a small area. This in turn means that a large group of light ranged cavalry should be countered by a large group of archers or slingers, who can pack more damage per second into a given area. Ranged cavalry can also take an accuracy and damage penalty compared to ranged infantry, considering the difficulty of shooting from horseback. Heavy melee cavalry: shock troops used to flank a heavy infantry formation and break it up, so that your own heavy infantry formation can come in and kill the disorganized enemy. Also used to wreck ranged infantry. High armor Countered by pikemen OK against spearmen Very, very expensive Bolt shooters and catapults Doesn't care about infantry armor at all. It hits you, you die. Vulnerable to capture and melee attacks. (More vulnerable than current units are; I'd say as soon as the enemy reaches the bolt shooter, it should be out of action. How is the catapult crew going to shoot the weapon while the enemy is right there slicing at them?) The best way to ensure the historical mix of heavy and light infantry is by making the heavy melee infantry just better in almost every fight than the light ranged infantry, which is historically accurate, but giving the heavy infantry a low gather rate or no gather rate. This makes some historical sense. The working-class could not afford the armor of heavy infantry. Cavalry too should not gather.

They might actually be easier to mass in a23 because the main practical counter to mass cavalry archers in a22, is mass cavalry skirmishers, and cavalry skirmishers have the accuracy nerf. Armor is a percentage decrease in damage, 10% per point. 100 hp with 8 pierce armor is the same as 100 / (.9)^8 = 232 hp with 0 pierce armor.

I think mass cavalry archers might still be OP in a23. The HP and cost nerfs are significant but once you have 100 horse archers or camels I think you can still kill anything else. Except maybe mass spear cavalry. Or of course siege towers/bolt shooters/rams.

Those rules are only for rated 1v1. 2v2 games are not rated so there is no rule against leaving.

It would be nice if there were different varieties of rams. From just a bare small tree trunk you can make in age II for 100 wood, to a huge armored ram with a turret. I think that rams should be captured more often than they are destroyed. If you have superior force in an area, you can slaughter the occupants of the ram and take it for yourself. If you haven't done that, it's extremely difficult to destroy the ram, and if you have done it, why destroy what is now yours?

This was because, in a siege, the entrenched enemy normally had no business on the ground at all. The safety of the walls was too great an advantage to sacrifice. I don't think this detracts from the tank motif. Certainly, modern-day tanks are used to provide covering fire at fortified enemies, as well as to use their main guns to break the fortifications, just as a ram can do. The fact remains that a battering ram was an enormous structure, difficult to dismantle. Its main weapon was a tree trunk that could be up to 30 yards long. It should not be fragile. Enemies countered rams by throwing boulders at them, trying (and often failing) to burn them, entangling their wheels with chains, pouring water on the ground in front of them to mire them, digging under them, trying to grab and lift them with hooks suspended from the walls. They used this variety of tactics because simply wrecking the ram by hand was no easy task. Running out and just hacking a ram apart with swords and axes was not a tactic I have read about. If you think tanks should be so vulnerable to this tactic, where was it used?

In fact, rams were used against people. That's because the distinction between "siege ram" and "siege tower" was not always a clear one. The Assyrian siege ram 3d model that the Persians use in 0ad, for example, is based on this historical ram. The image shows an elevated platform, above the ram itself, whose purpose was for a few guys to stand on and shoot arrows from, while being protected against return fire. Very much like a tank. I recently read about how the Huns used a dozen such rams with protected archers on top to capture a town. It's not true that oil and fire could easily destroy covered rams. The rams would be covered in wet animal skins to prevent it from catching fire and prevent oil or boiling water from penetrating to the people inside.

A ram should take much longer to kill than infantry, because in real life, it takes just a second to stab a soldier in the face, and probably at least half an hour for a dozen men to thoroughly dismantle an undefended ram. Rams should "feel" substantial and imposing to the player. They were not historically glass cannons at all. They were the ancient equivalent of tanks, serving not only to damage the gates and walls but also to render its garrison invulnerable against arrows and boulders thrown down on it as it advances.

They should not attack biological units, only structures and other siege. They weren't fragile. Covered siege rams weighed multiple tons and were covered in armor, with dozens of men inside to move and protect them. They would be extremely difficult to destroy outright. You can't just chop up a massive tree trunk or its heavy wooden frame with swords in the middle of a battle. If you've ever tried to cut down even a small tree with an axe - it takes a few minutes! But it barely takes a second for the enemy to stab and kill you while you're doing that. The most vulnerable thing about a covered ram would be the ropes to suspend the ram, but if you just run up and cut the ropes and run away, the ram itself is not destroyed and can be easily repaired. A ram can be compared to a ship - both are large, mobile, wooden structures very difficult to take down during a melee. Capturing is a different story. Rams should be capturable. Speed - rams in-game are already unwieldy due to their size which makes it hard to get them where they need to go, especially if units are in the way. I don't see a need to reduce their speed further. From a realism perspective they could be slower, but from a game balance perspective it's not necessary.