Wesley

If you're going to produce locked battalions from the barracks etc to reduce lag then embedding a priest, Archer or champion in the battalion is possible. For a basic battalions take your spear men (Or what ever) into blender clone them 10 times in two rows of five. Run the animation to check they look right. No clipping allowed. Add some loiter changes to one of the clones to add interest. Add a single hit box/ bounding box and center of rotation. Export as a new unit. Add a single damage bar. If it falls to 10% have that group unit despawn and spawn 3 or four lone spearmen. Who knows? They may still win. (Who are we kidding!) For a mixed unit of melee/ ranged formations. Clone a row of guys with shields or pikes and a row of guys with ranged weapons behind them. Off set them so they are not shooting their shield bearer in the back of the head. Add the bounding box, hit box etc. For a self healing unit add a priest to the back row and require the temple as the prerequisite for the formation. When destroyed the priest is one of the surviving single units. I can think of a few other formation combinations but you get the idea. Instead of players and AI spamming an ant train of hundreds of single units it's ten compound units (same total cost) with more hits and damage or number of attacks. Some being elites with healers in them. For facing add a second hit box offset to the rear so melee units attacking from the front don't "reach it" and make that immune to ranged weapons. A flanking melee unit will be in hit box to hit box contact with the back box and that triggers extra damage and other responses. I.e. The battalion might take extra damage. and spawn three or four individual units fighting for their lives in the back. ==================================================== Remember I can't see or read code so while I can see how to do it I can't code it. Don't all shoot me at once.

If you're going to produce locked battalions from the barracks etc to reduce lag then embedding a priest in the battalion is possible. For a basic battalions take your spear men (Or what ever) into blender clone them 10 times in two rows of five. Run the animation to check they look right. No clipping allowed. Add a single hit box/ bounding box and center of rotation. Export as a new unit. Add a single damage bar. If it falls to 10% have that group unit despawn and spawn 3 or four lone spearmen. (Who knows? They may still win. Who are we kidding!) For a mixed unit of melee/ ranged formations. Clone a row of guys with shields and a row of guys with ranged weapons behind them. Off set them so they are not shooting their shield bearer in the back of the head. Add the bounding box, hit box etc. For a self healing unit add a priest to the back row and require the temple as the prerequisite for the formation. When destroyed the priest is one of the surviving single units. I can think of a few other formation combinations but you get the idea. Instead if players spamming an ant train of hundreds of single units it's ten compound units (same total cost) with some being elites with healers in them. I've reposted this with the heading battalion as a separate topic.

Combine that Kynapse AI solution with some grouped units and a solution for the trade wagon conga line problem and we have a game.

I still have that one somewhere. mmm maybe not. Clearly there are too many games with that name.

These maps are the ones I mentioned in the trade discussion. They have trading on one protected island and battles on another and in some cases it's clearly only the trade carts that can be producing lag.

Nice list. Pre Roman Germans are interesting but not much different from the Celts. The Romans interacted with the danish predecessors of the vikings. But vikings are definitely post 500 AD. Not that there can be much difference in that time period from Germanic and Celt. A dragon boat and Saga Hall would suffice. Fixed the typos. lol.

One catch with trading is that you have got to make it possible for the AI in a game to do. Something that works for a player but not for the AI breaks the game. If I remember correctly AoE2 did/ allowed trader spam because it was the only way for the AI to get income late because the AI was worse at finding and securing remote mineable resources than a human player. I forget where I read that though.

True, the only iron deposits that re-generates is bog iron and sea bed geothermal smokers. Bog iron is water flowing through iron deposits yielding iron rich rusty colored mud where it comes to the surface. It was the main source of iron for Roman miners. Easy to find and mine, mud, but it took years to regenerate. We know how to mine the seabed resources but the UN disallows it at the moment.

There are three ways I've seen this done. 1. It just regenerates steadily but can be over mined exhausting it. 2. If the ore unit is not being actively mined it regenerates at a slightly faster rate than 1. Regeneration stops if your mining it. 3. An active upgrade in the relevant building costs resources and re sets mines to full, half full or quarter full. But this requires a spent mine art work if the mine is played out.

OK this is where I jump in because I commented on this problem and Lion.Kanzen sent me here. I've been reading this all day. I officially hate Dyslexia. Trading is in AoE so it's here but it's function to eliminate getting stuck when your last metal mine dies or the last tree falls and you're hemmed in by enemies or allies. Much of the lag is those dang traders. It's also there but less of a problem with trading ships because their pathing is easier. Big empty water. We know this because there are some people playing AoE on special challenge maps where trading is the only way to get resources past the first dozen trees. On these maps they have very few other units. They are gauntlet challenge maps. They're on youtube but I can't find them right now. So how do we kill the late game conga line of traders? Remember the distance function is there so you can intercept and raid their trade lines and he yours but if you have the enemy bottled up so he can't do that, your conga line dances along until the game grinds to a halt. 1. Deep mining. Make a renewable mine that gets a small trickle of Stone, Iron or Silver or perhaps all three. Total Annihilation does this but it's too early game. Favors turtling up with your resources. Perhaps have it only productive on neutral ground or far away from other buildings. Limit the number. 2. Forestry. Add a late game forester that plants trees, like Settlers, so your trees don't run low but also make it so he can't plant them close to any other structure. Again to shut down turtling but still allow some if you're trapped. 3. Coppiced trees. Planted trees that are late game and never run out. The real world solution to the 10th century fuel crisis in much of Europe. Same limits as Forester. 4. Trade escorts. A tech to increase the capacity, armor value of the carts and raise their pop cost forcing the player to have half as many but doubling their efficiency. Repeatable in two or three tiers. Thus upgrading rather than spamming is the solution. Pro Fewer carts = less lag. Con: You lose more if they are blocked or destroyed. 5. Expanded handicrafts. Add techs that convert stone to jewelry = silver. Fine metal crafting: iron + silver to more iron. 6. Smuggling units. Units that convert food to iron or silver While they are in neutral or enemy territory. 7. Loot. When a unit levels up a small amount of iron and silver is added to your pool. I'm an all of the above kind of guy. Try all seven with low level yield so the player has choices and so the dev team can play with nerfs and bonuses to each in different civilizations.

Wow reading for hours and I'm only at the bottom of page 1!

Slow down I'm still reading DarcReaver's guidlines. Nice. lol.

Great. I just checked and upgraded drivers and will try again and see if that helps. I'm either at the low end of the video card specks or off the bottom. Upgrade pending pay packet. It looks like the old trade cart spam problem from AoE and the AI on both sides is spamming ant lines of units. When units are in formations are they still all pathing independently or is the formation a single unit or new unit pathing wise? Wont put in a notice until I'm sure it's not just me. I'm also playing britain's verses the indian faction and it's not a great match if you're a rusty turtle.

Just played my first few games. Got owned on my own and decided to team up with the AI but once we had a lot of units I found the lag is real. wow. Where is the lag reduction thread. I has Ideas.

Hi I love what you're doing with the game. When I last looked it was just a dream. Sad to see we have lost Mr Wood. Cancer is a pest. I'm not a programmer can't see the code well, dyslexia, but I know how things work and can do some art. I have a few questions and ideas. To expand out from the mediterranean and eurasia we run into three problems. 1. Most civilizations end up out of synch time wise. I presume that's being ignored. Or are the devs intent in staying purely historical. 2. Many civilisations never got out of the stone age. A few never got past the village stage and some not get even into the village age. AoE handled that OK by only having two such civs with restrictions. I thought of a few ways. In essence a different pathway to the Eurasian pathway castles and cities. Some appeared In AoE in various forms. Nomadism. Structures demolished by the owning player add a percentage back to the pool. With tentage technology adding to the size of the percentage recovered. Mongols, Amerindian, Pacific peoples, Australians, some Africans. Sacred places: These serve the training functions of advanced buildings but have little armor and defensive capacity. Upgradeable. Hidden places: These serve some of the training functions of advanced buildings but have Stealth rather than Armor. Can be placed in other wise blocked locations. I.E. forest or rocks. Upgradeable. First contact: When researched this grants some mixed technology units. Zolo's with guns. Stone weapons: Some weapons require more stone and no metals. Units with this technology may be inferior but can train other units on a cool down without a building. That balances the tech a bit and creates primitive hordes. Stolen weapons: Like an AoE conversion but de-spawns the 'priest' unit. May be with the unit spawned having a different name to the foe defeated. Those Zolo's with guns again. Canoes. Boats with no sail. Slow with a charge stealth boarding action option. Can be moved over land. 3. Some civilisations had a huge influence but via trading, religion, and education but not military expansion. The Jews never fit well into AoE because they are only a military power in the biblical era and now. I can see a few ways to make a jewish civ with merchant and medical buffs and a few creative units. [I'm not jewish though. ] I will need art specifications so I can help with some art. P.S. Can the game detect snow verses grassed surfaces? For Skis, Sleds and sleighs.