Feldfeld

Did you install an older version ? Currently the game is in alpha 22.

I think he thought of a way to make archers automatically target skirmishers if triggered by some actions. Obviously it is not viable to do it manually, and it becomes even worse when there are large numbers involved.

If i recall well, a22 SVN games were mostly played before the important balance changes. (for me, I didn't play any after,but i can't be sure for other people)

A simple accuracy nerf for both skirmisher cavalry AND archer cavalry (we shouldn't forget them) can be enough, or we could try some more complex changes suggested by others. I think that with enough testing we can make sure that one unit can't be OP in next alpha. Actually, before alpha 22 was released it was warned that with current balancing skirmisher cavalry would be OP. And, i don't remember why, but i didn't even test it on SVN with other people (i just played a bit in singleplayer SVN before stating skirmisher cavalry would be OP). I don't know if other people tried it in SVN with other people, but I think that with more testing this alpha could be better balanced. And i actually think that people are overestimating rushing power. Against borg, i may have the best hunt in the world, i would still be unable to hit his wood even if he almost haven't made any cav. The best i could achieve is make his farming women garrison (which is quite good, but is it enough ?). The reason is that he can train more soldiers on wood, with britons, because slingers are cheap in early game (otherwise it may be impossible to counter cavalry raid atm). I don't really see the point of forbidding cav in multiplayer games, sometimes i happen to play without training cav even if it is allowed, and still get excellent results. So i think nerf should be slight. Also, not to mention, cavalry is weaker in some more closed map than mainland (which is almost played everytime). If there is water between teams, you can boom without cav and then try an infantry army composition. In nomad, both raiding with cav or booming without are very viable strategies, i'd call them quite balanced on this map. Generally, a CC is built close to wood so you can garrison wood gatherer, which reduces raids strength.

Games of this series were all unrated and played since 2 days ago. You can find here comeback, nice raids and excellent defense, traps, and some unique strategies, but also some balance abusing and map advantage dictating 1 or 2 games win (i suggest to skip game 1, the least interesting one). Overall, it might show that the balance is not as broken as some people say. Feldfeld vs borg- series.7z

As the game currently is, when you micro an army against another, for melee units (i'll only speak about melee units here), you will always want to micro it so that you have more units that deal hit, and that your opponent has less units that deal hits. With current formations, it is not worth it to fight in formation because while you limit your units by imposing them a specific place to stay in, ennemy army is free, and especially, ennemy can micro it so he enters a bigger mass of unit in a specific place of your formation and, that way, he'll have more units fighting than yours so the fight will be better for him. That way, locked formations is no good. If however, locked formations can be in a way that ennemy units can go in your formation due to pathfinding (i mean that they can't get past your first line of units), and that the distance between your units in formation is minimal, then thereotically (it's the way i see it), the fight should be better for you. Few units will be fighting against few at a time but you'll have more than you opponent. But formations that can't be broken is not realistic, and this is where charging could be interesting. I'm not sure that it is possible to make locked formations like the way i described however.

and If you want examples of interesting strategical games in 0ad i'll eventually give some replay. As for unit composition, it is only 1 type of strategy and 0ad could have it with natural/hard counters. But in the end we can always show videos of a boring game of 0ad or a boring game of aeo2 this doesnt show nothing. As it is now a live discussion i just say that i am out of it for today lol.

I could very well give an AoE2 video of a pro player beating another pro player with a rush (let's say, scout rush ? feodal rush ?) on arabia map, and I could very well give an AoE2 video of a team game where a pocket player comes with paladin and spam it.

For both 0ad and AoE2, very inexperienced players will just try to build a city, an army, and fight, while trying somehow to use the advantage the maps and civ give. I think it's irrelevant to compare like this, this doesnt show how gameplay is different between new players in 0ad and new players in aoe2. As for your AoE2 video, i cant watch it for now but at first sight seems like a match in an exotic map. As i said in an earlier post, in 0ad too you can do different strategies that are very special to some map (example : migration).

Well yes, you have a COUPLE of options. However, this isn't nearly comparable to a "real" Age of Empires 2, a Starcraft game or any other game that is played by a larger community in competition. Also see this, as I'm trying to explain my point: Well, i'd like to see why it isn't nearly comparable to a "real" age of empires 2. AoE2 has some kind of rushes : tower rush, dark rush, feodal rush, but 0ad too (cav rush, fanatic rush, that can come at different phase). And for AoE, build order is strictly defined with few changes that can come in actual game unlike 0ad. for AoE2 gaining map control by building castle is comparable to building CC, then protect a ressource by towering or building fortress near it. also, one way to expanding to gain a ressource in 0ad is to build many buildings to gain territory. And in imperial Age, it is about spamming the right mix of units.

I'm okay with the strategical choices you said for the start of the game, this is about it. However, there is more of it middle and late game. I'll give a few examples here : In 1v1, p2 you can choose to early expand to grab territory (ressource monopolizing). This is useful in very late game if you need metal or if ennemy starts to be out of wood. However, its disadvantage is that for quite some time your opponent will have a batter economy and more population, so it could be bad. Another one (used by borg only as far as i know ...) is to advance p2 then p3 quickly while it is actually a rushing game and that the player doing so wont be able to spam lategame unit for quite some time. One explanation i found was the HP bonus for fighting units, another one i read was that it was about bluffing (opponent may wonder if the player has actually a good eco ...), or it could be to be able to build siege unit quickly. About 4v4 : more players so more possibility, some i can remember is (for open map like mainland) : take the center quickly for the ressources, and being able to strike an ennemy from all sides (an army take time to walk after all !). You can invest into trade, you can try to raid trade. Early 4v4 game, pocket players (those who are close to ally only) may decide to rush in order to help their nearby ally against his direct opponent. Or not to do so and boom for late game. This is not even considering what strategies other maps can offer. Also, this talk was about conquest mode. In FFA, for some reasons, there are a lot of ways of playing...

So for you it isnt enough that : - There are strategies available at the start of the game, and you need to think about choosing the most appropriate - Once you have chosen one, you need to think about how to do it, because its execution changes every game. Because, my point last post was that your booming strategy could be countered by another strategy (rush) or by this strategy being done better. Also, the other strategies i said in the other post (for example ressource monopolizing or other i don't know) are still valid and all could be used as an example to answer your post. I mean that spamming units is not all and that it can be countered by better strategy depending on game which mean that all of these remain valid overall in the game. And build order is one of the things that make your strategy better. (after all you can't effectively do a strategy if you don't build units from CC do you ?) All my talk about build order showed that there is not only 1 way to do a strategy. And sorry for not knowing what does the word "teching" mean. So in the end did you refute my words when i say that there are strategies available ? And that you need to think about them ?

No. If you do so you will lose. Either you get a disadvantage before p3 due to a rush, that may end the game sooner, either later because as you didn't think about your build order (that must be improvised right in the game) you got behind at economy and are at a disadvantage. If you have 50k res in bank, yes tech are no brainer. Otherwise you have to choose between them (which one to do first always has an importance).

Then i'll just develop for the 2 first points that are, i believe the main points that really are influenced by gameplay design. and . I believe that proper balancing solve the 2nd point, where all these strategies(that are examples for "conquest" type of games) can be balanced, i can also add another example which is ressource monopolizing strategy. I've seen effective uses of all these strategies, and if one can be better than another it's due to balancing (and if it is really needed i can show how simply balancing can fix that). For the 1st point, it's a bit more complicated but i'll show how 0ad managed to fulfill this point quite successfully. I saw some people say "do best build order that does best strategy and win". But to me this is false for 0AD and i'll explain why : Currently, there is no best build order and it is impossible to find a build order that you can apply to each game and expect it to be good. Why ? There is 2 to 3 reasons that work together. The first one is training time of unit along with batch training and citizen soldiers. The 2nd is ressource disposition at start of a game. Your starting ressources influence a lot how you will create units and that will create imbalances really early in the game. The reason behind this is that, to compare with Age of Empires games, 0 A.D's economic units weigh less overall but are in more numbers, train faster, and due to batch training, unlike AoE, you can train as much units as your ressources can afford, instead of 1 villager by 1. So if you have more ressources, you'll be able to grow your population quicker. And it is so true that simply the distance between the woodline you're taking and the CC can make a difference, so just imagine what additional berries or hunt can do. Why is it important ? Because having these advantages is good, but not knowing how to use them will lead to nothing. If you don't adapt with which units you will do or which technologies you will research, you will end up with useless unspent ressource that add up in your bank which is not good. Not to mention that the strategies you will decide to do will be influenced by these facts. What conclusion should we take of this ? It is that it is impossible to apply "brainless build order" and that it is useless to be fast clicking if you don't know the proper thing to do. 3rd reason is about guessing what your opponent will do. If you know that your opponent will rush but you wont rush yourself, you'll for example prefer making citizen soldier which result in more "imbalances" early game. So that mean that fastest click clearly is far than being enough in order to win a game. I'll also finish this argument by saying, as an example that currently online, nobody is ever pretending to know a "best build order" (nobody is even speaking about that, never), and that in most recent games between some of the best player in 0ad (borg and me), the strategies and build order we used were always different.

And i'd like to know for which points.

About the proposition of splitting singleplayer/online game style, i see few issues there. I think mods could handle much more efficiently single player desires. - Can the devs keep up 2 games at a time while they seem to struggle with only one ? - If some features are officially implemented in singleplayer but not in multiplayer, it would raise some issues are people would be constantly asking for one or an other feature in singleplayer to be in multiplayer too. Also, it would be quite disrupting for players that decide to go play online after having played offline. I believe that most of online players started by playing offline before.

As i said in last post, I still think we can defend cavalry rush without using cavalry. As we both went for rush in last game, it seems obvious that cavalry will be fought with cavalry, and with the very weak and unprotected eco that goes with the rush, winning cavalry fight is crucial.

As we both went for cavalry rush, it seems logical to me that the winner of the cav fights win the game. I keep believing that if one of us went for foot citizen soldiers, he could defend. It's true though that it is a bit more difficult with non hellenic civ. And as servo said, rabbits are still not tamable, and i'm pretty sure that when we don't give them orders, they go where they want.

I've tried this mod with Hannibal_Barca and Grugnas in particular. I played 2 games and took gauls in both to test skirm cav rush and fanatic rush. For now i believe that both are balanced. To be sure of that, more testing is needed of course. As for skirm cav rush : I played against grugnas in a team game and we both did skirm cav rush, the winner of the cav fights won the game. That made Grugnas believe that this mod changed nothing but i don't think so : we both had excellent hunt (ideal conditions to rush) and cav is trained later. This fact makes me believe that it is possible to defend a rush by having enough foot citizen soldiers on wood. About fanatics : I succesfully used them in a team game, making people suspect it's op but : - I think that a fanatic rush is very hard to do correctly and i would be interested in seeing someone else achieving and winning with a fanatic rush in this mod. - I grabbed lots of metal this game ( I used 22k metal in 40 min of gametime) that allowed me to train them even late game which would be impossible in almost every game. A fanatic remain expensive on metal ! These facts make me thinking that fanatics aren't op in is mod, needs more testing of course. In future games i think i'll try some other civ and defend a rush myself.

My point, when speaking with mapkoc, was that i think that with the accuracy rework, archers reach more moving target, so it would buff archers. So i suspected that your graphs were without moving targets, thus underestimating the changes for archers from a21 to a22, and this is why archers would be better than what the graphs shows (in addition of their strength when massed that we already knew). I'm pretty sure that you would find a difference between a21's and a22's archers if you made graphs on moving targets and it would seem difficult to me to balance with these graphs only. But the fact that archers are better against moving targets compared with a21 might only be my own feel and maybe it needs confirmation.

I'll give 6 replays that were played in the start of a22. Enjoy ! 2v3 skirm cav in hunt map.7z 2v3 : Feldfeld, merlin1 vs Pretension (JC), Chronical, echotangoecho. Map : African plains This game, a bit imbalanced shows the strentg of skirm cav when massed in such a hunt map. 3v3 Arctic summer trade map.7z 3v3 : Feldfeld, Emperior, kjager vs Pretension (JC), Grugnas, Chronical. Map : Arctic summer Seems like Arctic summer is confirmed as a tradespam map, as there is few wood. If i recall well, there is wood treasure at the start, but this time treasures were disabled. 4v4 skirm cav in hunt map, and leaving.7z 4v4 : Feldfeld, merlin1, Uran238cz, realNoobNoob vs Grugnas, kjager, yunk2, Pretension (JC). Map : African plains Shows once more the importance of skirm cav in this map (and the weakness of spear cav civs in early and middle game in such maps). The game ended after some ppl leaved, and couldn't be replaced (is that possible with the use of STUN to host ? Or i just gave wrong ip ?). So don't be surprised with a major suicide, and a resignation that seems at first sight not justified. 2v2 ele stealing.7z 2v2 : Emperior, Feldfeld vs Dizaka, Emperior. Map : Mainland With the accuracy rework, elephants are easier to hunt. They were even called "food treasures that follow you home". It becomes important to try to steal as much as possible. Elephants are crucial and decide the games they're in. 3v3 strength of skirmisher cavalry.7z 3v3 : reek (ragnar), temple, mapkoc vs ITRELLES1, chrstgr, Feldfeld. Map : Frontier This replay shows the strength (OPness ?) of skirmisher cav rush in hunt map. If they're massed enough early game, what can stop them ? 3v3 army composition.7z 3v3 : reek (ragnar), mapkoc, chrstgr vs Feldfeld, _jr_, ITRELLES1. Map : Frontier I called this replay like this, because i think that gauls have a very weak late game army composition, and that now they're one of the weakest civs. As always, you can download all replays in a pack : pack.7z. This post may not respect the rules of the subforum, but i would find it pretty boring to create a thread for each replays i want to post, so i made it like this. I won't do it again if i'm asked not to.

Either you played a map where this building is disabled (i only know a map "belgian uplands" or something like that), or it is a bug triggered in game setting. If i recall well, if you select this map where the building is disabled, then choose another map, the lighthouse will remain disabled even if it shouldn't. Maybe a dev will confirm, not sure of what i said.

Actually, being a spectator makes cheating easy currently. You can find all these informations easily by seeing the stats of the game and of all the players. The suggestion made here would make it easier to have these informations (constantly refreshed and without needing to go to another screen, you would see it while seeing the game). The spectator also has strategic informations (what the other player is doing, what army does he make etc).

I don't have a good argument against that, but main city or the most representative should've worked for any given faction too. In some of the articles i found on wikipedia, in a few of them i saw something like: The capital of "xxxxxx" kingdom/empire was "xxxxxx" I was just saying that about the confederation of tribes, but a particular tribe, or a civilisation can i think have a capital.

I remained silent using "main city" term because i don't really know if the term "capital" really has a meaning in that particular time with a confederation. About Alesia, yes it was the place of the decisive gaul defeat (my french mind may tend to remember gaul victories only after all ) but the city itself, from what i saw in quick wikipedia research ( https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandubiens in french) seemed to be the capital of the mandubii, which didn't seem to be part of the most important gaulish tribes. Soldiers from different tribes gathered here under the command of Vercingetorix to fight, do we know more about the city ? Didn't it end up being important only for being the place of the decisive defeat which lead the confederation to lose the war ? (But i remind i only know history very approximately)