Servo

A22 on Mac

I will try with some Roman, Celtic and Gaul units later. I’m not sure too if they are headless behind taller organic units or resources(wood).

The bot is not that hard to beat even to the hardest. I haven’t seen options to set it aggressive, defensive etc. I recommend training on water maps with treasures. And slow down the speed during combat so you can micro your units until you become proficient and quicker. The AI is not collecting water map treasure. The AI is not good in combat and their movements are easy to predict. Some strategy: 1. Raid with cavalry and keep doing it constantly. Do it very early so they can’t do their economy faster. 2. Defense. A defense tower and an outpost with garrison is mostly their target when they attack. They will try to capture any structure that they come across through their path. So forward build a defense tower(garrison one combat unit) besides an outpost(garrison a unit)and a house(garrison one or two women) when they attack. Then you can attack them while they are trying to capture it. The AI will constantly try to capture these structures at all costs. 3. Head on. Counter the AI units. Their first attack will come when they are about to age. I think between 40-50 population they will age up(Hardest AI) and will attack with more or less 25 units. The hardest attack with 4 to 6 cavalry, and around 10 range infantry and 10 melee infantry. Once you beat the attack with minimal loses you will be ahead. You can age up too and build a market and temple(near combat zone). Build more defense towers through possible attack routes but make sure they are within range of each other so they can shoot the attacker’s. When they age up to phase 3 make sure to have more unit counters. Melee units (including women)on siege weapons and soft units. For this Alpha 22 use more skirmisher cavalry. Ten or more of them can neutralize even the hardest AI. Just keep raiding, heal, more cavalry and raid.

This one nice map if the CC is/are in Acropolis and the human player can be in the left side too.

For a SP game I wish we could have more maps with CCs are on bigger Acropolis, Tuscan Acropolis size is fine. I mostly play against 3 Hardest AIs on 300 pop if the lag allows and looking for good maps. One best map is Cycladic Archipelago but CC be in Acropolis with very nice random fauna and faura. Instead of having hills on the edges I think it’s best CC situated in the Acropolis. One scenario to happen also is if the human player can be situated in the middle island and being ganged up by the sorrounding AIs. Gaia units can even spawn from time to time but not in a very large scale as in Danubius and Gallic fields. Too flat/plains below the Acropolis is not too nice too. BtW since walls are being discussed here I noticed that when the terrain is not too flat the wall turrets can sometimes become lower than the wall and not looking really good.

I’m going to try you mod again. Though I switched to vanilla because I need the AI to behave militarily. BTW have you ever thought about making your mod as close to real in terms of combat? I know devs would not really go this far due to tight works or less manpower. 1. Damage on soldiers to be having significant effect for example below 50% HP can’t move anymore nor can gather resources. Ranged units can easily kill or disable enemy with 1 or 2 hits though projectiles can be dodged and nerf the accuracy on moving targets. Melee combat can be just fine (as ease) if they are really fighting each other but if the target is not defending a 1 or 2 hits can either kill or disable the target. Units with shields should have a stance to to deflect projectiles. 2. Food (consumed)and silver (wages) should trickle down depending on the number of units available. This will discourage deleting women to produce more combat units. Taxation or any form of activity to increase silver can be imposed too to increase treasury. 3. Day and night cycle to halt resource gathering or production and even give a player a little break(maybe 1 minute after every 10 minutes of play and discuss(team games) strategy. This game is really the closest to become more realistic.

Holy cow it works! Thanks to this feature!

@user1 is it possible to control two or more AIs then revert back? Recontrol again and can do the process all over again at any moment?

I know it’s going to be confusing on MP having eye candies but I hope these will be in the vanilla coz AI in mods doesn’t behave almost the same as. We need to have eye candy trees, animals, water, huts, fences, small communities and/or anything that won’t make the game so dull when every gatherable resources are gone when playing SP for infinite time/hours. Or maybe allow the eye candy to be built or placed by the player. Or even allow players to plant trees and shrubs or even moat. Any structures or natural resources that are present should be in place. If we can’t have this I think the gameplay should allow some structures or even resources to be built or placed on neutral territory that turns to Gaia slowly. One thing I noticed is that AI does not destroy Gaia structures. In this case it’s possible that if you build houses/huts etc as well as plant trees/shrubs that turns to Gaia afterwards will be left alone. But to make the Gaia structures look good they should not only be white. But if you seal off a resource/s they attempt to gather it at all cost.

I hope the Seleucid elite horse archer can be redone too. That shield behind doesn’t look good IMO. The head is quite big too. The second rank looks really nice that I always hesitate to get it promoted. The same horse archer that Wow’s Gaia in his map on DE.

The straps of the bottom right soldier looks nicer than all imo as others might look like feminine.

DE an 0abc have good farm system which could limit food production. My issue of the game is that it’s so easy to produce armies. The reason is easy to gather resources too. Pros even abuse building 2-3 dropsites on stone and metals. Then once resources are available they build multiple barracks and spam units like crazy. If 0ad started as trying to clone AoE the mechanics should have been maintained except that soldiers can gather. Soldiers can be trained only on military structures. Instead of training military units from CC it could have been specialist or skilled workers. This way the military unit production is more delayed. If soldiers are not allowed to gather they can be disbanded to become regular workers. Sorry to hijack your thread man. I just hope they will include the kushites in the next Alpha. The structures are really nice and one having the best size proportions. If there are eye candy grass, trees etc the base will not become very dul looking. The units are awesome too!

I wish I could build a base like that in 0Ad. I don’t care if houses and buildings are big and units are like ants as long as the sizes are real.

I’m sure lots of good players (pro) should help with svn test. But there were so many testing, analysis and mods that really are good basis in balancing. I second Gugnas opinion on not really nerfing the skirm cavs which was my point to b4 that you don’t need to fix or change something that’s working very well. Hannibal Barca tweaked the melee cavalry on his mod and to me just fine countering the skirm cavs. User1 fixed the wild animal lure. There are more on DE, monkey wrench and 0abc mods that are really worth considering too! I’ve been playing all 4 mods heavily before on single player and imo are really good mods for MP. The only problem is on SP in which the AI behaves less interesting. i recently tried vanilla A22 on SP and to my surprise the AI is really really good and challenging than A21. Their invasion force is really massive! If the melee cavs have good animation with rate at between 1 to 2 seconds I won’t go back to playing MP for awhile. I set my game on Gallic fields (I hope this map is much bigger)which is really a nice map and Gaia units spamming. AI massed more than a hundred units with around 50 regular cavs, more than 50 citizen soldiers, more or less 20 each foot and mounted champs and 4-5 rams and hero. 3 players and pops at almost 300 each and the game is still fine. The game was pretty except the melee cavalry attack rate at 3 seconds and the Gaia unit promotion which upgraded the abilities but the HP diminished from 200 to 140. If this AI behavior is present on mods like Vox, 0abc, DE etc the game is going to be really nice on SP. My little review of the game: 1. Single player is fine but needs better animation and pathfinding . SP doesn’t need balancing as more AI and hardest opponent is the name of the game. 2. Multiplayer is ok but easy unit spam is killing the game.

Rushing/raiding kills the game. Putting ceasefire won’t change as players can still mass cavalries in few minutes(not much good player will like long minutes ceasefire ). Most of the newer players or majority plays with cavalry coz they haven’t known the strategy. No cavalry is rendering spear infantry not very useful and takes a long and boring process before clashes begin especially if map is large and above. Right now cheating is possible if no specs. Nomad is better setup but once you start late and locations are not team friendly the game can end sooner and unbalanced resources. Skirmish maps playable in nomad might improve the balance. Most players are used to low resources settings right now as they are accustomed to but don’t want to try a cavalry game with very low resources that seems bettter. Its good to have more infantry battles but we can’t neglect the essence of cavalry in the game. Wars are fought with cavalries. The only problem is a consensus to limit its production early on.

IMO their easy production is making it OP. Nerfing a better performing unit is unproductive. Except that it is firing at any angles I have no complains at all. Idk how Hannibal Barca, Nescio and Wow did but they work really well and tweaking the melee cavs a bit made it much better.

Rushing (neutralizing an opponent) is strategic but no depth and could end the game soonest whether team or individual games. Raiding (in lesser numbers) is much more better as it does not cripple the player totally. There’s been lots of talks about this (cav rush) already and so many ideas presented.

Ceasefire won’t help the game especially on highly competitive players who really wants strategic gameplay. Ceasefire if fine for fun games only.

Felfield once said the game without cavalry is really boring. I started playing no cavs game too but production of cavalry to gain advantage is not guaranteed unless specs are present. In case you trained some but told to delete will take a toll on your game early but would benefit if the deletion is delayed. Btw if there is option to toggle cav off on no cavs game should be nice to avoid wrong move and cheating. Also is there an option on next alpha for the hardest AI to sub a player who left? In some RTS games once a player drops there’s an option to convert a player who left to AI or the game into diplomacy.

Some game mechanics: 1. Farms can be built only or any farms can be occupied if a farmstead is built. 2. Wood can be gathered only if there is a wood camp built. 3. Metals and stones can be gathered only if there is a mine camp. This would limit early military unit spam early on... Any thoughts?!

Fourth resource is really good to the game, upkeep costs too!

Why is there a horse crown(half round segment) btw? Maybe off topic... if actors die or buildings destroyed would they become an obstruction up to certain time? Just like hogs from corral they are obstruction until consumed.

Alt +shift+w works ctrl+ numbers works But I’m using Corsair keyboard.

Ops yeah it’s a donkey.

I played the kushites on Vox and noticed the merchants cart is being dragged by the merchant...when the speed was upgraded. It seems that the cart walk is only proportional to the merchant walk in default pace.