Grugnas

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the dancing strategy is effective because the units, once they killed the primary target, they focus the most near enemy. A player can hold shift and click on the units he'd like to attack next (you know, attack queue). Did anyone else ever used this "counter strategy? But it feels like it is easier to dance than to counter dance. Perhaps having the unit's next target as the enemy near to the previously targeted unit and not the most near enemy would partially solve the issue as it would require an equal amount of attention to the fight from both sides.

With Master Volume I mean the master volume fader in game in a situation like that:

walls?

I'm playing on Mac osx and audio is still audible even if Master Audio is set to 0.0. Today I ran the game in windowed mode and observed few games while surfing on the web and noticed that, sometimes (I didn't get exactly how), the action volume is audible even if the master audio is set to 0.0. Once on foreground, I got errors related to audio files:

I didn't play many skirmish maps, while there are some really nice random maps like Phoenician Levant, Syria, Persian Highlands in which 1 player basically always spawn with a not considerable amount of wood within his territory limits.

Many maps need a balance in terms of amount of resources a player has access to and at which phases he would have access to (without taking into account the territory expansion generated by structures on the territory borders) and for how many players they are optimized for. There are maps in which some players have no access to wood at all in an 8 players session.

The DPS ( damage per second) is different than the damage itself. Higher distance means higher chance to miss the hit thus lower DPS than the same type of attack on lower distance. You can having different DPS based on the distance, but the amount of damage dealt by a single hit is equal at any distance or altitude.

distance or altitude don't influence the damage amount

Sorry if I have been not so clear but I didn't mean to say that formations are mostly used to dodge projectiles but I meant that, just like out running units, toggling formations is only useful for escaping from enemies and get your units out of enemy range without being damaged, which isn't (and perhaps shouldn't be) the reason why someone toggle a formation. Formations are supposed to give combat advantage and disrupted when retiring, not the contrary. (yeah maybe I amgoing too deep into micromanaging) the unit increased movement speed is not a formation advantage but a conseguence of its "preparation" and this is reasonably realistic. Formations don't provide any click reduction into managing own units, matter of fact a player can select more units by double click on it( in the case he wants to select the same type of unit on the screen) or by dragging the the mouse and select more units. While in my opinion citizen soldiers shouldn't be battallion-only manageable because they also play a key role into the player economy growrth (obviously), Champions are trained units and perhaps not of much use when in few numbers thus the ideal candidate for battallion management from a balance POV. (training 1 champion at time is useless and training a batch of only 5 champions isn't really a big deal) Formations could act as battallions anyway if the units toggled in it are all selected whenever a single unit whitin it is clicked (basically like assigning a group selection to the units in formation in an hidden way to the UI and removing the group selection when disrupting the formation). The only limitation would be about the battalion experience itself, unless someone wouldn't impose the limit of not being able to disrupt the battallion once it is toggled. But I don't think that someone would like to see his units not being able to gather anymore just because under attack of a bunch of troops.

I don't really understand that conseguence, but let's look at them objectively. F.i. there was some code fore stamina, then the whole concept was abbandoned and removed. I am not saying to completely remove the formations concept from the game but to look at their impact on the game, despite they are a feature wanted by players and devs aswell. Soldiers on formation cause lag, and that ruins the gaming experience and perhaps induces people to cry about lag. Often soldiers in formation don't attack and that creates frustration especially in dynamic games. F.i. spear cavalry is supposed to outrun ranged cavalry but trust me, I can provide a replay in which camels outrun by A LOT spear cavalry because camels enter into running state in order to reach the right place in the formation. Not mentioning the fact that running units can dodge most of the javelins thrown at them (which may be even interesting), reason why people constantly keep to set and disrupt formations; but that is 1) boring and annoyingly clicky. 2) not realistic. I didn't go in depth, pheraps there are only few formations broken and the less problematic one may stay. Some formations could be removed and annunce their implementation in future releases in order to get things more bug proof and keep interest on the game. I can't imagine a trailer with an annunce saying "improved formations", while saying "new added formations" would be more catchy. It isn't a commercial game tho.

imho formations could be temporarly hidden from the UI as they predominantly cause lag, bugs and balance issues.

Siege towers are really strong when massed but they require all the soldiers in them and they are very expensive. Also, in that game you observed, I researched all the technologies which affect sieges and used Demetrius hero who boosts siege units.

The main problem with Bowmen starting civs is that any civ starting with skirmishers has the advantage of having strong economy and attack power. Skirmishers high movement speed give them the title of best economy-friendly units. They grant fast expanding, fast resources delivery, fast raids. Usually players reach 60/70 population before phasing up, and 35% of that population is made of skirmishers if available at beginning, which can choose the time and the place for a battle. Swordsmen are effective against rams only if massed (20 sec each to train vs 30 sec each to train), as they are the first target of any ranged unit.