Feldfeld

Your additional hunt was compensated by his additional berry patch. And the position of your hunt relative to your starting berry near CC is irrelevant because it is worth it to build a farmstead at a hunt location anyway. If you don't the hunt food collection will be way slower. It's a tradeoff but it's never bad to build a farmstead anyway. All features of my berry patch / hunt generation are something I wanted. Resource diversity while being balanced at the end. The only thing I didn't balance about food are the straggler berry tree. Imbalances with this could happen although rare and it is rarely relevant.

The last match has been played, we can now start the 2nd round! Standings are here as always: https://challonge.com/sv36zmko/standings But first I have an announcement: the new version of feldmap (0.2.1) has been signed! It is now available on mod.io. This new version drops the quite imbalanced Nubia biome, so now we can drop the previous convoluted biome rules, and back to simply a random biome setting. Note: if you previously installed feldmap manually and wish to update through mod.io, I recommend you first delete the mod to avoid bad surprises. __________________________________________________ Round 2 matches: @ValihrAnt vs @Edwarf @Feldfeld vs @LetswaveaBook @Player of 0AD vs @Dakara @MarcusAureliu#s vs @Philip the Swaggerless @borg- vs @chocapoca @rm -rf vs @BeTe @alre vs @seeh The deadline for this round is Wednesday 23, 23:59 UTC. If all matches are finished sooner we could try to get closer to the original schedule but that's not a priority. Please try to organize your match as soon as possible using forum private messaging! Beware of timezone differences. Please message me personally if your opponent doesn't answer you after 2-3 days. EDIT: I see there is a new Community Mod version released, please update and use it for this round!

I talked to them already

I gave a final deadline extension for this Wednesday! So you will know your next opponent Wednesday evening at latest.

The deadline has passed and one match has not been played so I am looking to give a deadline extension.

If he couldn't connect to your original game yet without changing anything could connect to your new game, it looks like at the very least he didn't have the community mod.

Small note, you didn't play with Community mod. It's fine but don't forget next weeks!

No, I meant that slingers have lower range but higher pierce damage than archers in their template, and skirmishers have lower range but higher pierce damage than slingers. Edit: In other words, if you are using skirmishers unit it's probably wise to have more melee infantry in your army than if you were using archers

Meat shield is important too. Personally something close to 2:1 - 3:1 for ranged should be good. There is probably a wide range of working ratio, especially if you can afford to retreat if your meatshield is done but the enemy is still going good. I'd argue that the closer your ranged units is to the skirmisher line (low range high damage), the closer you will be to a 1:1 ratio. Meanwhile archers can afford to have a more imbalanced ratio. Mixing the type of ranged units can also be good btw.

Not enough spearmen, it doesn't matter that your units do more damage if the enemy can just attack your ranged units with much fewer overkill.

That is not hard to verify, each building has a set build time, so you can start a building with one unit and check that the announced build time is consistent with the tooltip. Personally I think it's fine not to show unimportant stats like acceleration or prepare time. You can easily have a feeling for it. I never checked prepare time of units and play by feeling, and, for acceleration I barely felt an effect from last alpha (though it's probably due to me being inactive before). For precision however, I think it's quite important, also this stat can dynamically change from promotion and technologies.

Well, technically, there are large battles, but there are also small skirmishes which could be very important early game. The game should be balanced such that a good player wouldn't need to rely/ be forced to be in a position where randomness decides the game. AoE2 has imperfect accuracy early game, and even monk RNG which is definitely questionable and can decide some games but in the end it stays because only rarely it makes a difference (for example map RNG would be just as if not more important). I'd say we need to tune this so accuracy RNG doesn't have too much impact in fights, and small skirmishes should be predictable up to a reasonably good level for a good player (they are currently, I don't know if/how it would change with reduced rate of fire).

I think the "Stand Ground" (not sure if this exact name, can't check game now) will have your units ignore tower fire, but it might not be convenient for fighting afterward so be careful.

I made a similar suggestion here: except I intended for it to be a straight nerf to ranged units + a rebalance of a few other units. If I make a merge request with that i'll do some experimentation myself to avoid starting with huge imbalances. If you want to lengthen repeat times and minimize effect on balance, from my understanding this would result in even higher damage for ranged units to keep DPS. Personally not fond of such high damage values though it could always be tried.

Feldfeld vs 011235813 Feldfeld vs 011235813.zip

The second edition of 0 A.D. Friendly Tournament Series has started! Here is the list of players: ValihrAnt (2345) Feldfeld (2201) borg- (2169) weirdJokes (1913) Edwarf (1861) LetswaveaBook (1815) Dakara (1778) PhiliptheSwaggerless (1642) 011235813 (1598) MarcAurel (1547) alre (1500) chocapoca (1493) seeh (1150) Bete (1108) ________________________________ The tournament has a swiss format. You can follow the tournament in challonge https://challonge.com/sv36zmko We have the pairings for the first round: @ValihrAnt vs @Philip the Swaggerless @Feldfeld vs @rm -rf @borg- vs @MarcusAureliu#s @Player of 0AD vs @alre @Edwarf vs @chocapoca @LetswaveaBook vs @seeh @Dakara vs @BeTe ________________________________ The deadline for the first round is Sunday 13, 23:59 UTC Please try to organize your match as soon as possible using forum private messaging! Beware of timezone differences. Once the match is over, please announce the result in this thread (possibly hiding it in spoiler) and provide the replay. Please message me personally if your opponent doesn't answer you after 2-3 days. You will find the precise game settings in the first post of the thread. Verify them before readying up in the lobby.

There is a small change in the rules. I have seen quite a lot of evidence of the wood generation in Nubia biome being sometimes very imbalanced, with some games where a player starts with no forest in his territory. Game 3 of previous edition between me and Valihrant was restarted because of this reason. As of right now I don't have the time to program a proper balanced wood generation. As such, I submitted a new version of feldmap removing this biome to mod.io, but I do not expect it to be signed before the start of the tournament, which means it won't be available for download. So for now, we stick in the current version of feldmap, I do not want to confuse players with having to manual download, so manual download is not available. Instead, there are new rules for biome selection: - the biome for the matches should be random - if it turns out "Nubia" is chosen, one player may call a restart (please do so before one minute of gametime) - if a game was restarted because of this reason, one player may force to select "Temperate" biome for next game. If you are not sure if a biome is "Nubia", you can pause the game and check the "Objectives" window, the biome is written in there. __________________________________________ On another note, we have enough players to have a swiss system. I will still host it on challonge as it looks like it handles it just fine. If you don't know how the swiss system works, you may research it on the internet. I set the first tiebreaker to be the Median-Bucholz, and the next tiebreaker to be wins against tied opponents. https://kb.challonge.com/en/article/rank-and-tie-break-statistics-1p5f7y4/ Players will be seeded using their ratings. You may see a preview of the tournament here: https://challonge.com/sv36zmko/standings of course, registrations are still open. Here I did the seedings from memory but when registrations close I will check players ratings and make final seedings. If the number of participants is odd, one player will receive a Bye (free win) each round. Normally it's the player lowest in standings that didn't receive a Bye who gets it. Unfortunately, challonge doesn't offer a column indicating player elo in the standings as far as I know. You may tell me if you want to see the ratings right next to player nickname (like we see in a game lobby in 0 A.D.). If someone wants to make a custom template for 0 A.D. swiss tournaments they may contact me.

Bien reçu mon cher There is no missing player but there is no limit to the number of players, so i'll happily register you

Yeah 3 is not enough, I was hesitating between 4 and 5, with a preference to 5.

As the first round of my tournament starts next Monday, it could be nice if the proposals that received support could be merged like @real_tabasco_sauce said: since they are not going to change anyway and we should target regular enough releases imo @wraitii Also I still am interesting in having merging rights in the gitlab repo, I could make an account if that is accepted (though it would be not be relevant in current situation since I want a release xd)

About chicken rushes in team games, I agree that in the case of one team having an imbalanced line-up like 1800 + 1300s, if the all-in is well executed it could be possible to slow down the 1800 at the price of slowing down even more a lower rated player and therefore winning the game. However, the chicken rush is not the only way to do it, for example a 2v1 rush could do it well and is not new. I have not seen enough TGs to see if it is a problem. One all-in strategy was done against me this alpha but it was using ranged inf CS not cav, and was unsuccessful. It is tricky because if the defender gets even a 20 pop advantage early on against his adversary that can easily snowball to victory without the pocket's situation being relevant. If the chicken rush really is a problem in TGs, then a 2min or 3min ceasefire could do the trick. Also having teammates sending resources could help a lot, as you could safely build your forces without being slow down too much.

I will also add that, for now I don't really see a point in doing a (significant enough) cavalry nerf. At the end of the day, infantry is still hugely useful in 1v1 and in team games as well, a transition to cavalry if not well timed can just lead to being overrun by infantry. For the current state I only see a small damage nerf to skirm cav to be interesting. I'd consider the gameplay of mostly ranged infantry CS to be worse. There is not even an attempt in transitioning away from a unit we make from the beginning of the game. Instead of fine tuning stuff like this, I'd be more interested in some more radical changes, such as for example straight up halving the attack rate of all ranged units (so reducing their DPS by that much), accompanied by a melee cav nerf. That could rehabilate melee infantry and maybe champions as well. Experiment, bring new units to the light, try to reach a new balance.

For now I'm claiming to be able to deal with it without preparation, only by scouting and adapting. I would take the issue more seriously if I needed to alter my build just because of the possibility of a rush, but right now it's not the case. That said I still didn't play a lot this alpha so if anyone wants to challenge me and try to prove me wrong i'd be happy to play some 1v1s so we have more data about this strategy. Only problem is I'm not very active in lobby

Else perhaps lower rated players could take some reference on how to beat the chicken strategy. From my experience, the best way on how to play against it is scouting it, then if there are more cav coming than you can fight, just take all woodcutters back to the CC to take straggler trees. You should have still a way better eco than your opponent so then you can build numbers of men who can fight, and go out when ready. Counterattacking can also be effective in that situation although it requires some technique.

I have not seen evidence of cav domination in 1v1s. My first 3 games against ValihrAnt this alpha were victories from me after he committed to making more cavalry than me, resulting in myself having eco advantage. I played 3 games against vinme where he was trying to make a point about hunt biomes supposedly forcing games to be about making more and more cav, only for me to win by making (way) fewer cav and focusing on defense. Of all 1v1s I played this alpha, I only ever lost once to an opponent making a lot of cav early on, and that only was because I was taken by surprise from my own mistake.