balduin

@Stan` looks better. You communicate a clear actionable message with the download link. The Facebook and Twitter logos in the bottom are too much. Generally, Facebook has a few posts this year, Twitter has a few more. In my opinion they do not tell you more information compared to the website. Here are some suggestions regarding the texts: 1. A Free and Open Source Game of Ancient Warfare 2. Download and play the Game Play0ad.com/Download 3. 0 A.D. is a free, open source, historical real time strategy game developed by Wildfire Games, a global group of volunteers. In addition, maybe @Sundiata has some recommendation regarding the texts.

@Stan` The website should be more prominent. I would replace the Twitter and Facebook stuff and put the website on the place instead. The website and download link are the places people should go to check the game out. The download section is the place you get the game.

@Stan` would it be possible to have this gif capturing tool in 0 A.D. I think it is an useful feature.

I do agree 100% with @Sundiata's post: Regarding the elephants. They should have a mahout on the back. I think this is doable. Right now, the Mauryan worker elephant just does everything by itself, that looks strange. @Sundiata mentioned that elephants currently act as "with a sense of agency". To put this in a different perspective, I assume if an elephant would walk around on its own, the elephant would probably do what an elephant does for most of the day: eat grass. The elephant certainly would not help building or do other work for humans. There should simply be a human on the back (mahout) of every elephant, unless it is a wild elephant belonging to Gaia (the map) eating grass.. --- In regards to fields. As an intermediate step. How about fields only cost gold and the moment they are build they already are done building and have a health of 100%. This way, no unit would have to build a farm. Instead fields start as empty patch of plugged land. Then crops slowly grow in four steps: earth is ploughed, young green plants are appearing, they turn green/yellow and finally the wheat is fully developed. You can only harvest if the animation is completed. Workers just do what they do right now. If no worker is working for x amount of time on the field they go back to being brown ploughed earth. --- As for the future of farming. In Unknown Horizons you build a farm. The farm has a certain radius in which you can place fields. The fields cost only money (that could be gold in 0 A.D.) and are build instantly. Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader do something similar, with the difference that you build a farm, which has fields already attached to it. A farmer then goes and starts working on the field. Maybe we could do something similar. One idea would be to have a farm building which already comes with fields attached (every worker has one field). The current field has a capacity for 5 workers. In the future a standard farm would have space for 5 fields. Instead of placing the worker into the field we add the worker into the farm. The farm is then responsible for managing the worker and field animation (state of the field). As long as the worker, works the worker starts ploughing the field, seeding, waiting (grops need time to grow), harvesting, bringing the harvest to the civic center and then repeat it. As I said every worker just works on it's own field. If only one worker works the productivity would be 20%, the more workers work the more the farm productivity goes up. 2 workers 40%, 3 workers 60% etc. In case, the worker is killed or abandons the field, the field will stay the same and after x amount of time just go back to being a brown patch of land. Fields could be smaller in the future so that a farm does not take too much space. Currently fields are huge. We could also have farms with less fields and more fields depending on the civilization. Another advantage would be that if the fields belong to a farm. Enemy units just have to capture the farm building. Currently, units always attack the fields, which is annoying. In the future it would be enough to destroy or capture the farm. Furthermore, implementing a feature where farms can only be build on fertile land would be nice. It is pretty unrealistic to place farms anywhere in a desert and expect wheat to grow just fine.

Yes, a mahout on the back of the elephant would me a good idea.

I think that solves the problem.

Do you have any hypotheses based on the landscape? I am still astonished by the fact that reenactors have an elephant.

The Vulkan standard is the way to go. Explain, please.

I personally, would rather like to have the core game and three core factions and stay under 5GB, than having a huge game. The reason for that is mostly technical. Seeing how there is a discussion going on about ARM 64 bit support. ARM 64 bit development boards have sometimes only 8 GB storage space available. Fitting an Operating System + 0 A.D. in such limited space is difficult. ARM 64 bit support means that 0 A.D. could run on tablets, low powered notebooks and phones. The cool thing about libre software games is, we can do what is technically possible and support whatever device and instruction set architecture we want. We are not limited by some artificial limitation as many other proprietary games are. Imagine, I can play 0 A.D. on macOS, Windows, Unix and Linux. Linux can run on Intel/AMD, ARM, Power, RISC-V and many other CPU architectures. So, wherever I can run Linux I should be able to run 0 A.D. In addition, it makes is easier to test the game engine, if I do not have to download 25 factions requiring 50 GB of storage space. One to three factions would be enough, just for testing purposes. Furthermore, I would like to see Pyrogenesis, the game engine, being able to provide the bare functionalities. So that in the future mods like Millenium A.D. can be their own "game". At least for the view of the user their own game. From a technical perspective their should be one engine and then different mods. If you want to create a game you just bundle the engine + mod. The mod bundled with the engine, will be the primary mod and active by default. As you can see I am very exited about the game, but for entirely different reasons. In my view most faction in 0 A.D. are similar, but still different enough to have the desire to explore each faction. This is something I like very much and should stay this way. I would even like to see a some factions with more difference to others. I share this opinion. On top of it I would like to see weather simulation and other improvements to the feel of the game. Maybe, having fire effects. Another area I would like to see improved is naval battle. 0 A.D. is like AoE not very exiting or even realistic when it comes to maritime warfare. I would like to see that improved. As for factions in general. I would like to see the process of: 1. Create a mod with the faction or factions you want to add. 2. Make it available via mod downloader, so that a larger audience can play it. 3. Improve it, based on the feedback from players. 4. Propose it to the 0 A.D. creators (devs, artists etc.) for inclusion, if they think the factions add value and are ready they should be added. If the factions are not ready, let them mature by repeating step 2 - 4. We should improve the formation feature. 0 A.D. is developed in a semi-rolling release fashion. 0 A.D. can remove or alter features. Aoe2 and other games are developed by game studios and are released at a certain date. They make money by selling it and that is the end of the development. Except for a few fixes.

@winnerswithoutlosers the Sahara is expanding rapidly. The idea of the Great Green Wall is to prevent the expansion. @soshanko Do you know why the Desertification process started?

There is actually a project called the Great Green Wall, which tries to stop the desertification of the Sahara by planting trees. The amazing thing is, it seems to work. At least in the countries with the political will, for example Senegal.

@Nescio Try to use Inkscape and make a black border around your yellow Roman numerals. I think the fancy shadow effect does not look that create scaled down to 128x128, 64x64 or 32x32. You can create the black border in Inkscape and export the image to PNG from within Inkscape.

@influxlondon Can I ask why you decided to switch from Windows (PC) to macOS? Did you switch for personal or professional reasons?

@pAris There is no 5 in your list and 4 would be: "Or its worse when units chop down individual trees". For workers it does not matter if they chop individual trees or forest groves. I do not think it is needed, but it could bring some benefits. As @wowgetoffyourcellphone pointed out, he developed it for Delenda Est. The mod he develops. Feel free to play it and test out if it does affect the game play in a way you don't think is beneficiary.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone I like the way your implementation work. In my opinion, this belongs into the main game. I also think the forest groves would improve the path finding performance. Especially, on maps with a lot of forest. Maybe one could even implement, that a group of forest groves becomes a "Large Forest", but you would still harvest only from forest groves. Meaning, only if you chop half of the forest grove, you can not hide units in the forest groves. However, you can still hide units in the "Large Forest". A "Large Forest" would mostly be a large obstacle in the eyes of the path finding algorithm. Therefore, it should be easier to run the algorithm. In any case, the Forest Groves make it easy to implement wood as a renewable resource, hide units and potentially improve the performance of the path finding algorithm. I would like to see those implemented in the main game.

*Here is the link to the patch: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3177 Camouflaging would be awesome. The video game Praetorians implemented a camouflaging feature. It was not possible for all units to go into dense forests. Original source: https://images.igdb.com/igdb/image/upload/t_original/qxhgr964p2krv7qbfniz.jpg For example, horse units where not able to go into a dense forest. Expect for a Germanic champion unit, which was able to attack even in forests. Praetorians also implemented scout units with a dog. The scout units where able to send there dog into the forest. This way you where able to see what enemy units hide in the forest. The nice thing was, you could not kill the dog. However, the dog was running back the moment they encountered enemy units. Basically, you where only able to see a glance of the units as long as the dog was in the forest. In addition, the dog was only able to walk a certain distance. This was implemented by reducing the stamina of the scout unit. The stamina only recharged when the dog was back with the scout. To eliminate the dog you had to kill the scout unit. Then both died.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone that is a good solution. In my opinion, this should be implemented in the main game.

How?

@influxlondon what operating system do you use? - Windows - macOS - GNU/Linux Update: Sorry, just looked at the log you posted and saw this:

I am not quite understanding what you mean by "kite" the enemy. Can you explain how this work in more detail?

I opened this topic mostly to first hear other peoples opinion on this matter. Let's see what other's think of "excluding" factions from the main game.

Adding makes sense in the beginning of the development, because at the beginning you only have a small amount of not complete factions. Now, it would be nice to have all factions from the main game "excluded" in the view by default. The option to add the factions from the main game could still be there.

As of 0 A.D. 23 "Ken Wood" all factions are visible after starting a mod. However, mods like Aristeia play in a different timeline. Meaning, the factions are different or at the very least have different technology trees. It would be nice to at least be able to filter the list of factions you can select from down to only the factions available in Aristeia. The mod itself is well enough developed to be playable. Therefore, the factions from the main game are not necessary any more. I would love to be able to disable all factions from the main game and only see the factions from Aristeia.

The Assyrians can train Scythian horse archers. The Scythian horse archer are champion units. The Scythian horse archer shoot only when forward facing. However, as far as I know the Scythian horse archer where able to shoot backwards: http://www.warriorsfortheworkingday.com/ScythianHorseman.htm I am not really sure historically, if they where able to shoot backwards. Maybe, somebody else can find historical sources regarding the matter.

Yes, if you think only about the production. However, if you have a difficult to attack position. For example a fortress city on top a hill. In those cases, the enemy can attack you with many of units and still loose all troops. You at the same time loose only non or only a few units. In such a scenario, one can profit much more from the regeneration of renewable resources.