ValihrAnt

I uploaded some replays I had of the current community mod version to https://replay-pallas.wildfiregames.ovh/LobbyUserDetails/1. Just searching for a player name doesn't seem to work very well, but by navigating to their profile can see all replays that include the player.

Valihrant vs weirdJokes ValihrAnt_vs_weirdJokes.zip

ValihrAnt vs MarcAurel ValihrAnt_vs_MarcAurel.zip

Valihrant vs Edwarf ValihrAntvsEdwarf.zip

ValihrAnt vs PhilipTheSwaggerless ValihrantVsPhilipTheSwaggerless.zip

Valihrant vs Feldfeld valihrantvsfeldfeld.zip Edit: I play the next one too @Feldfeld

ValihrAnt vs Dakara valihrant vs dakara.zip

Valihrant vs thephilosopher Valihrant vs thephilosopher.zip

Return of the Feldfeld? I'd be glad to participate in this. - Interested for the following schedules: Weekly, Lightning European afternoon (13 GMT)- BO1 or BO3?: BO3

1) When hovering outside of home territory with a building selected, which is not meant to be built in neutral, receive errors. ERROR: Parameter without value at pos 74 'House cannot be built in [object Object] territory. Valid territories: own' ERROR: Invalid tag 'object' at 75 in 'House cannot be built in [object Object] territory. Valid territories: own' 2) When trying to autocomplete in a match lobby get errors. In game and in main lobby works fine. 3) When hosting without STUN get warnings and others can't join. I consistently host games in a25 lobby without STUN without problems. 2) and 3) shown in the interestinglog.html interestinglog.html

Personally not a fan of the acceleration, nor was I a fan of the rotation times. It simply makes the unit movement feel and look clunky. I'd much rather the AoE4 approach of homing projectiles to eliminate dancing, but retain smooth movement.

Gameplay mod altering Civic Center & Military Colony cost and territory range. I feel like the currently exorbitant cost of CCs and their vast territory completely negates any interesting gameplay elements the territory mechanic can bring and only ends up with it being a negative. Players have all resources they could ever want in reach and the vast price of CCs makes securing new territory needless or trying to squeeze your opponent out of resources almost impossible. The mod also includes some economy bonus ideas, which already have patches made and are more detailed in: The territory changes will be made into a patch if after some test games the changes are liked. Territory: Reduce Territory influence gain from 30% to 25% in P2 and from 50% to 25% in P3 Reduce Civic Center cost to 350 Wood + 300 Stone Reduce Colony cost to 200 Wood + 200 Stone and no metal Increase Mil Col Territory Radius to 95 Meters from 80 Meters. Eco: Kush Pyramid eco bonus (Available in P1, cost from 300Stone + 100Metal to 150Stone, Range from 60m to 50m Sele Farming eco bonus (+15% farming speed in 20m radius of farmstead Mace Storehouse eco bonus (Instant research time) Rome pop bonus (Eco and Military structures give +2 pop space, like the old briton and gaul bonus) Athen research time bonus (15% faster tech research) TerritoryMod.pyromod TerritoryMod.zip

ValihrAnt vs Berhudar ValihrAnt vs Berhudar.zip

ValihrAnt vs WeirdJokes ValihrAnt vs WeirdJokes.zip

Clicked to 100 right around minute 7 and then had everyone trained 7:27. I didn't take any extra hunt as I think it's really rng dependant to have that. This is pretty much the exact build I use when there is no extra food, except I'd have added an additional farm and the 2nd barrack a bit later with the last few soldiers going to the mines. Vali100popChallenge.zip

@ValihrAnt May I suggest you try another civ and another map? Miletus Peninsula, Gallic Highlands, and Saharan Oases skirmish maps are the ones I worked the most on, so are probably the best. I was thinking about trying out a nomadic civ, so these suggestion are really useful.

Ah darn. Then it makes it sort of pointless until endgame to be built. The beauty of the pyramids being built in p2 is b/c they count towards p3 and help resource gathering. If they only help w/ resource gathering they're likely to be built later on, instead of earlier - especially with the build time. I don't see why them not counting for P3 will lead to them being built later. It's true that this bonus requires investment and some time to pay off, which is why I don't want to increase the cost of the pyramid more. I can talk you through my experience with this bonus a bit. In no extra food starts it makes the most sense to place the Pyramid for farms, with extra berries for wood. I found it best to build the pyramid with a single unit quite early on (pre 20 pop) and as the pyramid is completed to send 1 or 2 units to stone, to later afford a 2nd pyramid. The effects of the bonus really become noticeable at around minute 7 when you can suddenly afford so much more than normally. The extra resource influx really sets them up for a strong late game and going Phase 3 with plenty of spare resources for whatever the heart pleases.

And we no longer have the problem of ele civs often being completely unable to push with pointless stalemates. https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3350 would argue that the library being completely unique to Ptolemies increases differentiation. I didn't actually realize the lighthouse was changed, it's effectively now an outpost on steroids. The value can probably be changed to suit the bigger maps, but the idea is certainly an improvement over it being banned on every naval game. And they got a new unique tech that affects their champion cav The worker ele? Don't see how it being nerfed reduces diversity, although iirc I saw a patch returning its old behaviour. That's true, I forgot about this. Would like the P2 champs to come back as they were a really cool trait and the new tech doesn't make up for it. Is simply being able to build a siege workshop the kind of uniqueness we want though? Its such a basic building that I think it's far better if every civ gets a siege workshop and mace get a unique tech for their siege, on top of the crossbow produced from the siege workshop. I far prefer the diversity of a25 to a23. Just compare the types of units and strategies we see now, it is no longer an infantry spam fest and there are also cavalry and champions involved now.

Ah, ok. So there was some misunderstanding then on my part too. From what I know and have seen, the lack of diversity doesn't have any greater reason than noone simply going out of their way to implement it or lead the implementation of it. I just recently started making some patches with the goal of implementing economy bonuses for civs and a problem that I encountered is that there isn't any design plan for how different/assymetrical the civs should be, what should be their playstyle (or should civs not be nudged into any playstyle), about how many bonuses, unique technologies for each civ should be targeted.

A24 was less diverse than A23, but the idea that A25 is less diverse than A23 is mostly wrong. I guess the idea comes from the fact that nonexistant bonuses were removed from the history page, https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2720. The only actual existant bonus which was removed is the Gaul and Briton population bonus, https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2950. It's also true that every civ getting a stable removed the uniqueness of the Persian stable, but I think that's an acceptable casualty for better gameplay. From A23 to A25 most civs have gained actually existing bonuses, only exception being the Britons who haven't yet gotten anything. The gameplay is far more diverse than it was in A23, which was just infantry spam with an occasionaly early rush. The Carthaginians might not have gained any direct bonuses, but they've also gained the most identity with the mercenary changes. I also don't get from where the notion that the competitive community is pushing for the game to lose civ diversity and how the competitive players are the reason that not enough civ differentiation is done. If there's no one there to make patches nothing will happen.

@borg- actually playing? @DerekO do the games remain bo3 as they become higher stakes? So semi-finals and finals still played as bo3? Is the predicted date based on 1 round every week?

Do pallisades really need a big change? The way I see it is that pallisades are there to buy you some time and if you want to really protect an area you build the proper city walls. There could be an upgrade to increase the hack armor of buildings to deal with late game melee units. Maybe it's just me but rather than sword cavalry being op, I'd say it's players not knowing how to counter them. 1) It is getting better now but players don't seem to realise that spearmen counter cavalry. So many people just don't make spearmen and then are surprised how a unit that's pretty much intended to counter ranged inf actually does well against ranged inf. 2) Not adapting to the situation. After the 2nd raid on farm economy you should probably start thinking about how to protect it. 3) Blacksmith upgrades or civ bonuses. Most often the cavalry player will have made significant investment into blacksmith upgrades and will do the rush with Gauls or Carthaginians who have stronger sword cav. The defending player hasn't made any such investment making the cav seem stronger than they really are. 4) Cavalry require more investment than infantry. The defending player should easily outnumber the cavalry as the attacking player has to also keep investing into eco. This game against Jofursloft demonstrated these points really well. We were even before going into P2, but he quickly pulled ahead in population due to not needing to set up extra farms and stables. He further walled off his farm economy before I could get even a single raid in and prioritised strong unit production making it impossible for me to find any significant damage. After pulling ahead in population he just got a strong push going and there's nothing I can do as investing into cavalry just set me too far back. It does also partly come off to how insane the woodlines in most biomes are where you can have 20k+ wood in a single forest and can get well into the late game before needing to start gathering wood elsewhere. It also kills the importance of map control which hurts aggression.

This is an innovative new feature too, right? Atleast I don't remember seeing something like this in any other RTS game I've played. It's really cool and definitely something to play around with.

lol. how comes than than camels are broken again, and archers are in a worse position than in A23? Camels are nowhere near to their strength in A23. They now have lower move speed, less range and less accuracy. So javelin cavalry can actually catch them now and towers can actually range them, that's quite a big difference. To make it even worse, they can't harass food without being ranged by the CC anymore too. And the same thing about archers. How can you say that they are worse than in A23 when just about everything is better for them now? Their lowered range and accuracy are remedied by technologies and otherwise they've got more damage, more speed, skirmishers being slower and no phase up bonuses which gave extra time for opposing units with greater dps to close the distance. As I said, I'd be more worried about them still being by far the strongest ranged infantry unit.

Are they really overcorrected? The only change for damage output is an increase in spread which can be canceled out by a blacksmith technology. Some of the archers civs also have a tech for extra range. Looking at this it seems quite clear that archers are still in a very strong position. I only did some tests now without upgrades to quickly verify that my numbers are similar and if data with upgrades is true then I'd rather think that archers deserve a further nerf rather than a buff. Also keep in mind that archers can easily provoke a fight and then never engage by simply running back to defensive buildings. In defensive situations in general they are far superior to other ranged units due to their range advantage and thus being able to fight from far behind a fort or CC. P.S. You can't have archers with equal movement speed to units with lesser range. That's how you get the a23 camel archers. It wasn't a disaster for a24 because the major turn times made it impossible to hit and run, and only meant that overextending with archers was impossible to punish.