Feldfeld

I can suggest Gergovia for the gauls, which was i think the main city of the Arverni, the tribe that could unify a good part of the gaul tribes against Rome. It was also the place of a prestigious victory of that confederation against rome (so you could maybe find more references). But since i only know a few about history, what i say is potentially false and i wait for someone to suggest a better city or correct what i said.

I confirm this and think that almost everything written is correct, however it seems to me that you posted it in the wrong forum. EDIT : didn't see the "tutorials & guides" subforum, but still, it seems to be tutorials and guides to modify the game itself, not gameplay guides, which belong i think to "gameplay discussion" forum.

Cavalry rushes can be balanced though. Now from what i saw in a22 changes, currently it may be skirmisher cav that is better than spear cav even early game. Still, interesting proposal in original post, but the way he described it would make for sure cavalry rushes, or even cavalry in general useless.

Some 1v1s I played yesterday. Feldfeld (sele) vs WarriorSpartan (Ptols).7z Civs were chosen randomly. As they were imba, i offered a re and he declined, not much to say on this game. Feldfeld (ibers) vs WarriorSpartan (persia).7z A mistake ended the game quite fast. PhyZic (brit) vs Feldfeld (sparta).7z This game shows one more time how one unit rules a21's middlegame. It will be balanced on a22. PhyZic (mace) vs Feldfeld (gauls).7z By far the most interesting game of the series. PhyZic (rome) vs Feldfeld (gauls).7z Some rushes. Note that, about the maps, in my second game against PhyZic, he had hunt advantage. In the 3rd game, i had berry advantage. You may want to download all the games in a pack : pack.7z

If ennemy is forced to hide in CC you've won the game.

If you want elexis, I am ok to play in multiplayer maps that don't have few chokepoints easily wallable, for example mainland, with stone wall allowed, and actually use the wall, to see if their ban is only a tradition that is not relevant in a21. It can be a good test. it would too be interesting to know if we should ban putting multiple layers of wall. Consider, too, that it can be interesting for a player to wall a building, that is of course unrealistic. With walls allowed, you can for example circle with walls a 2nd CC if you don't want to spend the stone and the time to circle the area, which you would do later. They would still be very vulnerable against slingers in a21, and likely ranged siege (catapults) in a22. But it would "add" them HP against rams for example, and prevent capture, for not much of stone added. This example and multiple layers of walls can be considered abusing, so you should discuss allowing it or not.

Decided to record the game ... I might reveal some secrets i have Without commentaries due to no mic though, and in the videos there are little sound issues.

Walls aren't allowed for the reasons wowgetoffyourcellphone said. When causative said they are (a) a waste of resources, and (b) easy to walk around, it is only true for age 1 where it takes some time to close fully the wall, so at this age it is some investment. But after that, walls protect very effectively from both raids and full scale attacks, in a way that they would bring games into full trading very long games, because very hard to break, and i think there are some way to mass wall tower in an area, that fires a lot of arrows that make it even more difficult to break. Also, you could add multi layers of walls.

Hi, When I installed NVIDIA GeForce experience in order to record the game, and i updated my drivers, some weeks ago, i got almost the same error you described in last post I think you have the same issue since you record videos too. Note that it doesn't prevent me to play the game, i can push "continue", and it runs the game and i can play multiplayer too. I hope this information can be useful.

Yes, not enough information but i still trust that, following the "better than nothing" logic : sometimes, i see games setup where a player say that currently the game is not balanced, the host says "suggest changes" but none are suggested. The ranking system would maybe suggest a balancing. sometimes, the host, and the players, don't all know each others. Maybe, by checking the rating system, we can see who's the closest known player to the unknown one to have an estimation that i would call somewhat decent, because the issue here would be how the ranking is made. It would give a relative strength value that i think is used by most of people to balance. I would call that better than nothing. So here what i don't agree about is this sentence : sometimes, a help, even if it still doesn't give a perfect balance, is helpful and good to take, or at least that's what i think, from my experience in the game.

You're right, i expressed badly... What i mean is that currently, it is a ranking, not a rating (and i made the mistake many times already in the thread). Currently teams are balanced considering relative players strength, so they don't use probabilities. I guess a way to try to balance a game with this ranking is to put on a team, the best ranked player with the 4th, the 5th and the 8th (following the logic of "the first beat the 2nd, but the 3rd beat the 4th etc) but of course players can be same strength and that messes up a bit the balance. I'm simply not sure we can use probabilities with a ranking only and not a rating. Though causative in a post tried to rate players from 0 to 5 considering their ranking so i don't really know.

Even though i don't have an especially good level in statistics or mathematics, i'll try to answer this considering the idea of causative ... first thing i want to clarify is that (if i understood well) is that a "win" or a "loss" is not the actual outcome of the multiplayer game, but a comparison of arbitrary selected statistics of the game (with good weight for killed units). This sole fact means that anyway the goal was from beggining to give an estimation and not predict a probability of winning a multiplayer game. So i think that causative explained his system better that i would have done with my english ... so what's measured is actually a serie of 1v1s in a multiplayer games. If you play a 4v4 game you actually play 3 games, between your allies. As this was not criticized i wanted to make sure it's clarified... 1. So as i said i am not good in statistics but from how i see it : supposing the arbitrary selected score of a game used to compare players are good (though we know it's not the case), then this "multiplayer" rating is similar to the current 1v1 rating of the game : if statistics laws applies to multiplayer rating, it also applies to the 1v1 rating system of this game, so that would mean the 1v1 official system is as bad as this multiplayer system. So knowing that, the issue of this multiplayer system is how score describe a multiplayer game which we, i think, all acknowledge is not 100% accurate, score for example doesn't measure how good a strategy is unless it rewards more kills etc... 2. Already talked about that in a post in the thread, even if i don't speak well, but still, how i see it : indeed, games are supposed to be balanced, but since it's not the outcome (win/loss) of the entire multiplayer game that is measured, i think that we should take other conclusions of this. We have players of different strength in a team. It is supposed to be balanced at the start : that mean players already use more or less relative estimations of a player's strength, in a way that better players play with weaker players. If the game's score agreed with the human estimation of a player's strength, it simply gives a human help to multiplayer rating estimation. 3. i still think another conclusion should be taken. You emphasized the fact that players in a multiplayer games may play in different conditions each game (and i think it is more about fighting a player in the opposing team who is stronger than the one your ally fights) but i would say that with more and more games this fact tends to disappear. 4. Well, for the "smurf" term i guess everyone has its own meaning, though for the troll one : the guy hannibal called a troll was actually the guy who caused a huge disruption, who was the cause of closing registrations. I don't think this term will be used again anytime soon. EDIT : by the way Feldfeld = Attila2 well, i play chess and in chess too we see upsets : i already beat a player rated 400 over me and drew one rated 450 over me. It doesn't need 1000 games to be accurate. In 0a.d., if a player doesn't want to win i think the it will be seen in the score. But generally as far as i'm concerned in multiplayer games players try to win. And yes, it seems elo system doesn't work in 0a.d. since causative noticed that fide rating doesn't work here for reasons described in first post.

Full of smurfs and banned people, yes, but best ranked ones are known i think. There are also smurfs that aren't kicked from 1v1 rankings too, furthermore 1v1 ranking is unrealistic in some way, too, since people that play more 1v1s will tend to have better ratings (without considering their actual level). A lot of players deserve being better ranked in 1v1s but they didn't play enough, so top 100 not only is full of inactive people (hence unrealistic considering their level is now not known), but with active players that remain low ranked because of lack of games. This multiplayer is unrealistic too indeed because sometimes stats aren't enough to assess one's help to the team, and because teams are already supposed to be balanced in pre-game balancing, that means that it is done in a way so that better players are seeded with weaker ones. One of the consequence is that some players are already supposed to be in top of their team from the beggining and won't face best players of opposing team. So from the lot of games i played, i was almost never in borg's team and hence almost never faced him (only when i started 0ad and one recent game i think). But i still think that in general this ranking tend to guess well reality, will be better if we remove known smurfs.

sent replays

Fanatic rushes can be very deadly. If you look away for 10 seconds you might find a lot of your women/cavalry dead. Here I provide in the pack 3 replays where I used them successfully. 1 of the replays is a 1v1 against ffm, the others are team games. fana rush.7z

Yes there are ... "Everybody can rush. Everybody can build armies and fight. No faction really specializes in any of that" For the rush, the factions that specialize in that in early game are roman and macedonian, because spear cavalry are available right are the start of the game, and they kill women way faster than skirmisher cavalry (though they lose to them if they fight at equal numbers). Especially romans since their starting cav are also spear cav, when macedonian starts with skirmisher cav. "Everybody can build armies and fight" Yes, but what would do a faction that can't build armies and can't figth ? ... That being said, i'll give an other example of differences among civilizations. Currently, I think that late game is dominated by macedonian and spartans because their spear champions are really strong. So we now have champion fights dominated by these civilizations... I can give other examples if needed. "For example, even with their walls the Iberians can still be raided almost as easily as any other faction" Hmm, I doubt that because i think that the iberians, if they want security, should go out and take their wood only when they have a good enough mass of citizen soldiers to counter cav, but i never tried it myself. The walls mainly defend their food income from raids. Also, an other difference in fations : iberians actually have the strongest defense structures in the game (not considering carthage's walls because walls are forbidden in good games...). The Mauryan worker elephant : Currently, in early game, yes, they are used to saving wood because of mobile dropsite, and build houses.Though, later in the game they start to require more micro, and are hence only used to gather ressources out of a player's territory. In late game, not only they need micro to be used effectively, but they take also 1 pop that can be precious in low pop games (150, though becoming 165 for mauryans due to their bonuses).So i think they currently give an advantage, and i forgot to speak about hunting using the worker elephant. Carthage's Embassies : It is true that they are currently not used a lot, but they will likely be in next alpha due to buff of mercenaries, it will encourages people to use mrecenaries and it will likely be a good argument for carthage. It is also true that the community can't see good player's games/playing due to lack of both replays/videos. Maybe i'll try to remediate that myself but it is some investment...

It is also important to have a good army composition, and in team game you better be coordinated with your allies. Currently, some very random maps impose to improvise and find a good strategy to win.

Here i give replay material Feldfeld(gauls) vs borg-(macedonians) Another (try to) boom against a spear cav rush. It was very close until the end where citizen soldiers battles decided the game. Now maybe Grugnas understands how i could beat JeanClaude's roman spear cav rush with gauls. Feldfeld (gauls) vs borg (mace).7z

So I post the replays as promised. Notice that 3 replays out of 6 are actually about sword cav rush. This should be surprising, because there are even more spent ressources committed only to make some sword cav. Indeed, you have to spend 500 food and 500 wood to get to phase 2 before 4 min, which is an huge investment at this time of the game. Furthermore, you have to add an additionnal 300 wood in order to get the barrack up before 5 min. Just to be able to train some sword cav. But the rush still works. Here we go : 3v3 game (focus = Feldfeld-Hannibal).7z I start with this game that shows the main purpose of cav rush : denying food income. (I take the example of my rush vs hannibal barca, but there were another cav raids that i didn't choose to focus on) The attack was not defended well, and for minutes of game my opponent couldn't make food. Feldfeld vs JeanClaude (Rome).7z A game about spear cav rush. I think JC did well his rush and was better at approximately 3 min of game. I think that going to the animals in the center was a mistake, and that he should have kept raiding me the same way I did in the first game shown. He then would have got a better economy than me. women hard boom (not advised) Feldfeld vs borg.7z Another sword cav rush. I tried pure boom, but I shouldn't have made this much women and got punished (I didn't expect sword cav rush, it was the first time i saw it in the game if i recall well). But keep in mind that between 2 strategies of pure boom, 1 making more women early, and the second making more men in case of a rush, the first i described (more women early) will have better eco later. Feldfeld vs defenderbenny naked fana rush.7z Naked fanatics rush, first time i saw that as well. You need to sacrifice huge eco just in order to train these fanatics (early phasing + many workers on metal, almost no food production). But this strategy works still very well. 4v4 endless raids, + promoted cav very strong.7z Rush with sword cav, then i kept the pressure all the game. At the end : huge eco damage, also my sword cav got promoted and became very strong, and had no issues fighting foot soldiers later. Notice that in team game, you can rush someone, the defender makes decisions to defend the rush, then you can simply switch and raid someone else, and later return on the first ennemy. 4v4 spear cav rush especially wang_wei.7z This game is similar to the last game i described, this time i focus on wang_wei that rushed early with spear cav then kept the pressures and raided more and more. You might want to download all the replays in 1 file instead of 6 : pack.7z note : Also, it is a bit naive to think that you can replace your losses with the tech to make women from houses. This tech is very expensive at 6 min of game and i don't think it is affordable, and even more, you need to have food to make women, and food is the ressources raided. By 6 min, you don't need that much buildings to make units anyway, economy is not developped enough.

I offered to post them but it was called """"" off-topic """"". Anyway, when i will have enough free-time, i'll gather the replays then post them.

But did you read my answer ? 1- You're actually the first who derailed completely the thread, you could make a new one to say there is no point in balance testing. 2- You first said that booming like a madman is the one and only strategy and that it is because of this citizens system so we have to change it, changing the gameplay I answered to that by saying that it is possible to balance with the current gameplay, so it is supposed to refute your point. Still you completely avoid my point and say that it is off-topic. I'll need explanation on that. So the conclusion of my point would be that the gameplay is good as it is. That's why i'm not answering off-topic.

Apart from that there is no point in discussing the "overpoweredness" of some horses in a game stage like this. But I'll try that myself when I should bother playing 0ad again. I'm pretty sure however, that there is no point in cavalry harassment early on if pretty much every civ has basic spearmen in their town hall as basic resource gatherers. About cavalry harassment : First of all, spearmen can kill cavalry, but only if the attacker isn't paying enough attention. By microing well, the player can keep his cav alive. And yes, there is actually a point in cavalry harassment. If citizens soldiers that gather wood are massed enough, it is not worth it to attack them with cav. But cavalry can still kill women gathering food. Cavalry can prevent food production and without food, you can't make soldiers/women anymore. Also, to me, there is a point in discussing the "overpoweredness" of some horses in a game stage like this. You said earlier that booming is clearly the strategy to go. My example was about spear cav : I said it was overpowered, but actually it is only in raiding, in killing women, in preventing that food income. It loses actually if it fights at equal numbers against other types of cavalry. So assuming that following this strategy (spear cav rush) is overpowered : it makes that better than booming. It means that in a game between players of same strength, the player spear cav rushing will win more than the other one booming : can't we simply conclude that it IS possible to balance the game with that citizens soldiers system ? That it will really be possible to make this game unique with that ? The least we could say is that at this current stage, we can balance the game in a way that there is no obvious strategy to follow. In this thread : it seems that game is being close to beta and that balancing takes sense. I have no experience about game making, etc so i won't be sure about what i'm going to say. If we consider that the citizens soldiers system is a good aspect of this game, thus the only issue should be balancing. If the game can be balanced, then we can go on with citizens soldiers. From what i have shown just before, assuming spear cav rush is overpowered, the game can in some way be balanced. So it is relevant to discuss about that (overpowered strats) in order to know if yes or no, the game can be balanced. Not sure i explained well my point, i am now waiting for answers. EDIT : I forgot to mention, but i can, if needed bring replays about successful cav rushes (that prevented food production, captured buildings to destroy it)

Yes, but rushing is also used very often. borg (the best player) often uses sword cav rush for exemple. In 1v1 and in team games, early cav rush is used, and not only that, but the roman spear cav rush is considered overpowered by many players. So from my experience in lobby, booming is not the one and only strategy, and in each game we play, we don't know for sure what will happen in early game.

What ? Sorry I have read almost nothing in the thread, but I want to say one thing, and it is that booming is clearly NOT the ultimate strategy to go with. Rushing can be very efficient and it is used very often. I don't know if that subject has been discussed already but if not i want explanations.

Pikemen definitely need a buff. I made some 1v1 tests on svn ( with a hack attack of 1 and a pierce attack of 3 ) and here are the results : Spear infantry wins against pike ( and have 37 hp left out of 100) skirm infantry wins (14hp/50) slinger wins (4/50) skirm cav wins (16/120) sword cav loses (pike got promoted and have 15/120 hp) spear cav loses (pike got promoted and have 37/120 hp) didn't try archer nor sword infantry. For ranged units, they started to fire before pikes could reach them. So clearly, even if pikes, with their slow pace, can reach ennemy units, they don't deal much damage : spear infantry still destroy them, and even ranged infantry units can win when pikes are in melee with them ... (on the other hand, in 1v1, if spear attack skirm infantry for example spear will win convincingly) Not only that, even if pikes naturally win against sword and spear cav ... they still lose against skirm cav ! What an useless unit, but anyway it can't possibly reach cav.. So the only advantage pikes can claim is tanking fire ... But even with less armour, spear infantry do that job very well too, as they also deal relevant damages. And finally, pike infantry champs aren't used in pro games for obvious reasons.