chrstgtr

Meh. I am not a fan of scripts that automate the game as it provides an unfair advantage. The advantage here is de minimis, but I just dislike the concept. There was a player a few alphas ago who had a script that did all eco for him (made women, built storehouses, houses, built farms, directed units to all res, barracks, etc.). So all he did was micro rushes against players that were trying to do eco and defend rush at the same time.

Couldn't you just copy the BuildingAI file and change it to ShipSiegeAI and make your modifications there? I would think it would be an easy split process.

what's this?

This seems like a good item for the community mod for the reasons you and I state above. (I think ships and siege towers are fine to go straight to phab--everyone seems to want those changes, but maybe testing would be helpful since it is a code change and bugs sometimes pop up).

Notwithstanding what I said above, I think it would be nice if towers and other defensive buildings had a preference for closer units. It doesn't make sense how towers are just as likely to randomly shoot arrows at faraway, hard to hit moving units as they are to shoot arrows at units trying to capture the tower/other defensive buildings. I wouldn't want it to be as simply as "targeting the closest unit" but I would like something where towers are like 3x as likely to target units within 10m than targets 50m away. But such a system gets complicated fast and I don't think we have code for that.

I think I would like what you describe for something like siege towers/ships. (This has also irked me for sometime) Don't think I would want for buildings, though. It would make towers effectively the same as CCs and forts sue to unit “overkill.” Also possibly OP in small to medium sized fights because a unit would die at whatever the rate of fire would be, which would make towers very consequential (I.e., early game rushes could easily be stopped with a 100w investment). I kind of like how buildings can have little effect to suddenly killing an entire army at once. I think it adds more macro tactics and is one of the reasons why advancing armies don’t easily snowball after killing their first base (I.e., it is common that an army dies fighting the second CC it tries to take down because the units are already low health). This is personal preference, though relatedly, I think your two examples are positive. Towers weakening entire armies make countering much easier since a bigger, lower health army might be weaker than a smaller full health army. Likewise, towers create a two variable calculation instead of one, based only on unit numbers. Towers being more effective when close to each other also encourages more strategic builds

Yeah, there are a bunch of variations in what we could do. We could do just mercs like you suggest. Could do all military. Could do just eco buildings. Could do all buildings.

I always thought overriding this for a civ bonus would be fun and unique.

Ah, i see. But to be honest, eco/building auras aren't very useful when you get hero in late game Edit: to be useful they would have to have a big enough of an impact that a player will go out of their way to phase super quickly. I imagine that would be way, way more than the 10% you have listed.

These types of heroes never get used. Would want it to be way, way better than this. Other would be fine to me. Also like @real_tabasco_sauce’s suggestion

Still can

There is a animal pop limit so it’s usefulness is limited and similar to ice houses. I’m not worried about it

Or any other civ for skirm champ. I don't care which--it was a fun unit and the game is worse without it.

You can select where you want turn rates. I don’t find it terrible now. But I’m generally not a fan. On ships, it makes sense, though. With rams there are definitely times where you just see rams constantly turning instead of moving

Turn rates refer to the time it takes for a unit to turn (like you’re describing in the second paragraph). So when a unit is facing north to move south there is like .1 seconds where turns around in place before it begins to walk south. When there are a lot of obstacles (I.e., units) blocking the way of a ram then the ram has to turn frequently in order to move. All those turns add up to a lot of time. Also, moving units means pathfinding is constantly recalculating and rerouting, which, again, leads to more turns and time where the rams aren’t actually moving. I’m not a fan of turn rates, but some developers apparently really, really care about them. The current state is much, much more playable then it used to be (turn rates were introduced in a24 and made the game much less fun, imo, whereas now turn rates are mostly and annoyance, imo)

I think it’s been a problem for awhile. Part of the problem is also turn rates. We tried to change turn rates for community mod, but I think it was voted down

They used to have but we’re removed from a23–>a24. I think another civ (Persia?) also used to have a champ skirm too that was removed at the same time. But yes, I would like a champ skirm inf unit in the game again

Fair. Thanks. I guess it would still apply to civs like Xiongnu, though, so maybe that’s the more apt comparison. I guess a civ like Syracuse truly is easier. But more Greek civs just sounds so boring Edit: sorry to derail the thread--I was just curious about a reappearing theme re the timeframe that I didn't understand.

Ah, I thought you meant for 0AD. But yeah, 0AD always could use more helping hands. Isn't this all true for any new civs? I get the concerns--they are very valid--but how are these relevant to timeframe restriction? A new Syracuse civ seems to pose the same issues above that a new American civ would. Or am I missing something?

Yeah, I get why the initial decision was made, but I agree with you that a bright line rule may not make sense, especially now/in the future. It also seems like that initial incubation phase may have already passed (or, at a minimum, will eventually pass). Can't that work be transferred over to EA? I thought they all run on the same engines.

Interesting--thanks for clarifying. Do you know why it is intended as a separate game? It seems like a logical extension to just expand the date range so you can have a larger number of civs play against each other. Not saying we're there yet, I just don't understand what seems to be a permanent arbitrary cutoff. At some point it seems like EA will stall because new interesting civs become less interesting (see discussion in other thread on why additional greek fractions are unappealing). Yet, EA will never truly be finished. And, starting a new game from scratch will be tough to get initial buy-in (why play with 4 civs when you can play with 16+ in EA, why split the player base, etc.).

Where does this come from? I’ve seen people say this a few times, but I don’t know what supports this proposition. As others have pointed out, that timeline isn’t strictly followed. The about page on the website also identifies the timeframe as 500BC to 500AD: https://play0ad.com/game-info/project-overview/. (Personally, date ranges seem arbitrary until you start introducing gunpowder, but I’m more curious where this date framework comes from)

You're missing my point. It's a game, not a simulation. And, your statement that you want American civs cannot exist if you believe the above.

Yeah, I want both. All I'm saying is that I'm not keen on the logic that would always exclude American civs

That's my point--excluding American civs for "historical" reasons is silly These two statements can't coexist. Until you start adding American civ then no new American civ will ever have any real historical connections during 0ad's timeframe. Besides, it's a game. It's not a historical simulation. Sparta and Athens both existed at the same time and did interact with each other. We don't need the game to perfectly replay every one of their interactions. If the outcome was already determined then it wouldn't be a game.