Dizaka

Big problem with automation. Either: (1) Automate things IG to simplify it (e.g., sniping feature rather than a plugin, basic eco management, initial start "moves", etc) (2) Detect and ban cheats

@RangerK I think SaidRdz is much better than me, sniper, rauls or chrgster. Once he gets going on Maury he is unstoppable with those sword. VERY few, if any, players can contain that army. Because it is slash you can't even contain him with mass siege towers. You'll notice in both games he was singled out in early phases otherwise you don't really stand a chance. Check Rauls attacking him in 2nd game and in first Geriatrix. In the first game it was a matter of keeping Rauls/SaidRdz contained with just 2 players for some time. In the second game it was a matter of keeping SaidRdz / spartan contained. Geriatrix did a great job setting that up and placing a CC defensively so that eco of pocket wasn't impacted. In the second game Rauls did a great job attacking SaidRdz allowing the han cav to pop in the south at an important fork in the road. It was just a matter of time before they'd push through, though. Goal was always for other side to push through first and to buy time on whatever side SaidRdz is. Palalaigos is awesome.

The issue with ballista tower wall hubs is the concentration of arrows. I believe in one of the alphas arrows from wall hubs were removed as players started placing wall hub towers and deleting walls for the purpose of free arrows. (Note: I love the idea of ballista towers)

OH. Meaning that if a wall is "owned" by Player A then Player A units behind the wall would received dampened damage from Player B, who is attacking Player A units through Player A walls. That's an extremely interesting mechanic! @real_tabasco_sauce @BreakfastBurrito_007 @wowgetoffyourcellphone

Agree and disagree at the same time. If defenders should be damaging their own walls I think walls should have more HP. I understand the simulation aspect of it towards realism but there's also KISS, to keep the simulation simple. With ranged units hitting own buildings it may be impossible to shoot with archers from behind a CC and archers/ranged units may need more dmg upgrades. Currently, we are at the stage of "it takes 10-20 arrows to kill a unit" not "1-2 arrows" which would be more realistic.

Yes, lol. No idea why I wrote that and corrected. TY.

I don't know whether that is true (never itnended to compete with commercial platforms). However, the game competes extremely well with commercial platforms thanks to volunteers like @Stan`, @vladislavbelov, @wowgetoffyourcellphone and others who have been contributing to this project for any length of time.

I actually have a different viewpoint. I think walls are under-rated, especially for multiplayer games. What I have figured out, especially with palisades, that if are an archer civ going vs Sparta (or some other sword-heavy civ or cav-heavy civ) you use walls not in a blocking-way. Instead, the purpose of walls is to make it possible to reach your army (so that you're engaged) but making a retreat difficult (so that the enemy is forced to commit on mistakes). The goal of palisades (and walls) seems to be more about making targets hard to reach without making them impossible to reach (e.g., iberian wall circle around CC). With archers, xbows, archer cav (maybe skrim, but not really. You want range as defender.), and elephant archers walls work the best. Even more so with persians and mauryans who have a range bonus. Walls allow you to wait for the attack and then do a counter attack. Best walls seem to be 5-8 unit segments with houses inbetween. Units can travel through these (the holes) but it breaks formations, makes your units hard to reach, and makes it extremely difficult for the enemy to retreat. TLDR: For me, walls are about creating obstacles that slow down the advance and the retreat so that I can get as many arrows as possible into enemy units. I've learned there's no reason to block troop movements. If you block troop movements players attack other positions that aren't as fortified. I use walls to basically "set a trap." Again, I use walls a lot. Especially if rushed in the 8-12 minute timeframe. By the time the enemy gets to my base, especially if I believe they are competent, I will have a defensive perimiter established. More then likely it will be disconnected and irregular walls to let the enemy through but increase travel distance and force 1by1 lines of units rather than allowing for large formations from the enemy. Double check your shortcuts and clicks. Walls need to be attackable by units, imo.

@Stan`it's been said repeatedly but I'll be repetitive - THANK YOU. THANK YOU for contributions you've made to 0AD and Wildfire Games.

To an extent. However, having too much of a micro creates a huge barrier of entry for new players to be competitive. Do we want to discourage or encourage new players? I think if something can be automated for an unfair advantage it should be considered for a feature included in the game - especially if it can be "silent" and not take away from the experience. Clicking like a madman, imho, takes away from the experience.

Sort of agreed here. A bad "all in" (and even a rush) can have massive consequences in the end game. It's actually hard to rush and eco boost at the same time (especially with wrong civ selection for the phase you attack in). Many times it is easier to ignore a rush and counter near base as long as you don't go all women. I've found the best way, when selecting civs, to address this is to pick civs that have advantages in the phase you want to attack in. Early p1/p2? Pick Maury because of worker elephants ability to access hunt for your cav. Hans, if you get lucky with hunt RNG, can be deadly with sword cav. If you are going vs Rome/Iber you likely won if you have a lot of hunt. Know that Romans/Iberians have no counter to melee cav in P1 (no spearmen). Rome/Mace/Hans can really wipe them out in p1 with mass cav. Any civs (e.g., Mace/Seleucids) with pikemen (and only skrimishers - no access to archers/slingers) are vulnerable to skrimisher cav who can outmaneuver them Any civs (e.g., Mace/Seleucids/Gauls/Romans/) without archers/slingers are vulnerable to Ptol Camels in P1 Mid/Late p2? Civs with no archers/slingers/melee spear cav are vulnerable to Kush Camels. Very vulnerable. Pick Gauls as the sword cav have an innate damage bonus. P2 sword cav can dominate nicely. Pick Maury/Pers/Hans as you get extra pop so that means its an innate damage bonus with mass cav. Late p2/early p3? Pick Maury, p2 ele stables make it possible to trample through players if support is a good player immediately upon hitting p3 Pick Kush/Athens/Cartha/Maury if you want instant p3 champs like with maury p2 ele stables (Athens can build champ building in p2 and count towards p3. Same with Kush and Carth temples.) Pick Mace/Sele for Skrim/Pikeman combo Pick Mace for amazing siege dmg (siege hero, will to fight, siege damage, omfg) Pick Ptol if you want to do quick phasing and get a siege tower up in 11 min (possible/doable, almost instantly kills a player) Late p3? Pick Carth/Persia/Gauls/Maury/Han/Romans/Sele if you are in the long cav game. Don't pick a ram civ. Go with a ranged siege civ. Rams in late game are hard. Maury/Iberian sword bonus in late phase is amazing. Iberian champ sword are great. Kush R3 instant priests are great too. Only valuable priest is a R3 priest. Anything else sucks. Agreed. Interestingly, I've seen few players take advantage of the environment. Very FEW players, for example, will build on the side of mountains using mountains to create choke points and funnel enemy armies. Some players do it. Some good players fall for it. Some good players actually wont' fall for it and walk around it. This is a big one that bothers me. Which is why I hate the *micro* in the game (alt+attack for ranged units). It is tiring and shouldn't exist IMO.

Yes, thank you!

@Mentula THANK YOU!

@Mentula This is awesome. Just a question (without looking through your code which would probably provide me with an answer to this question and if so sorry for time-wasting) how do you obtain the stat data? Do you do a headless replay and collect the stats? Do you just do a replay and use the stats collected? Curious and it would help me if you'd share this information, if possible.

Is it possible to do headless replays? If so, what terminology/language should I look for in the codebase?

Them merc cav felt the end of the balance stick!

I like games where first (or major) attacks happen in minutes 5-11. Otherwise it feels like everyone is polishing their swords for the whole game … boring to me.

Overkill is definitely a thing with crossbows. More so with champion crossbow from mace. It's not really automating sniping. It's modifying the current targeting/attack mechanic to the one being most utilized/favored by players. It's similar to changing game stats. Additionally, I do not believe melee are useless. Watch how fast regular sword mow through the current tank/archer meta. A good maury player (and iberian) can cause a lot of havock. Additionally, a good Gaul player can silence the ranged meta by flanking. Edit: On another note, sniping became more popular/useful with introduction of Han, a crosssbow ranged civ.

Real life. That’s the argument generally given about the 0ad - it’s not a fantasy simulation but as close to real life as plausible. Realism and historical accuracy is an important element of 0AD. Sniping is a fantasy feature and a fantasy “micro” skill. There never exists one person who controls everyone to target 1 person to give an overkill problem. That’s unrealistic and something out of a fantasy. Sniping and hero strafing are end user solutions to the same problem - the “intricacies” of the targeting system. Basically, the limitation of dev resources. Targeting needs rework in a way @Atrik suggests to allow for better balancing of melee vs ranged.

I mean, there's a way to implement this without it being an issue. It can be default behavior situation. It could also be taken even further to prioritize ranged over melee units. I don't even believe it needs to be something like the 'h' key. Rather, the 'h' key could reset the behavior as it resets the current default behavior. There's ways to implement it to make it opaque to the regular user. More advanced users could do their own sniping behavior with keys/shortcuts however they want. @Atrik I'm sorry, but there is no "skill" in mashing keys nor a "skill gap" in mashing keys. It's like saying to make mashed potatoes you need skill. No, you just need half a brain to mash a potato well. There is no "skill" by randomly selecting individual units to target. Additionally, it is unrealistic for a "top commander" to be telling individual units who they should be targeting. Extremely unrealistic and I believe 0ad wants to be more of a RL simulation - I believe that's why catapults no longer do the massive AOE damage.

Honestly, I think "damage balancing" / autosniping should be a game feature. Overkill creates problems in the big balance scheme of things. Currently, in RL you have small groups of soldiers with their own leadership who coordinate so that same targets on the same battlefield aren't chosen. It wasn't and isn't the responsibility of the supreme commander to choose your targets. Even in early Rome armies were split into smaller more manageable groups. Look at modern battlefield stuff you see coming out of Ukraine. Russia does extreme overkill - not really a good strategy. Why can't there be a formation or a hotkey to manage attacked targets? Why can't 5 units only attack 1 target from each side? (e.g., make it similar to the "production" setting?) Why do we have the unrealistic expectation that the "supreme commander" (player) somehow has some kind of magical micro that makes one better than the other on the battlefield. The current "micro" is a poor emulation of IRL and turns new players away. Also, it's a big enough issue that impacts balance. As long as units don't target others as efficiently as possible then the learning curve for this game will be extreme and result in turning new players away. @BreakfastBurrito_007 @real_tabasco_sauce @Atrik @roscany @alre

There will always be players who are ahead on the automation curve. There is no reason why 0AD vanilla shouldn't include automation. I think @Atrik is onto something. The playing field should be evened out. The game should be about getting more people interested in it. People aren't going to be interested in this game if the curve is too high and current players have a huge advantage - by knowing which plugins to use. Why not make sniping a multiplayer option on game start? If the game has it on, great. If not, not bad. @BreakfastBurrito_007 @real_tabasco_sauce @roscany @alre This game has already things that can't be automated. For example, you can't automate the way you build out your "village" based on natural barriers. Placement of buildings is extremely important in this game, especially if you can waste the time and resources of non-ranged siege civs. To me, sniping is the same as using a hero to lure all the damage of ranged units and get hit for de minimis sums. Except in the opposite direction. Hero strafing, sniping, carthage merc cav, etc., are all in the same boat from my point of view.

I have an idea. I think I've been proposing it for a year: P2 Siege Camps that count towards P3 like the maurya elephants stables do for elephants. That is all, IMO. @BreakfastBurrito_007

It still crashes with TLS for multiplayer selected. TLS disabled has no crash. See below:

When changing "Menu" -> "Game Session" -> "Batch training size" to 1 (or any number) and clicking "Save" then "Close." On clicking "Close" you get an error message saying you have unsaved changes, even though the literal click beforehand was "Save". However, changes are saved when ignoring the warning prompt. EDIT: This only happens once a multiplayer game has started. Does not happen off the main screen.