BreakfastBurrito_007

There is a level difference here that causes some disagreements in what the “meta” is and what is possible to do in 0ad. For example trading is far from the best way to get champions in team games, currently only feasible on select maps and optimal on just the wolf map I think. Of course trading is great on huge timescales or when metal mines are gone, but it’s rare for higher level games to even reach that state. Adding a male economic in no way forces the game to be like aoe2. I’d also like to mention that while many units are shared between civs in aoe2 the civ context and uniqueness always apply to those units so saying that every civ feels the same is a very surface level observation. If the gameplay design is thoughtful, a male eco unit can have its own role and different use cases in different situations, rather than acting simply as a villager from aoe2.

When I was originally advocating to implement unit acceleration I was suggesting it only for cav. It seems people wanted it for infantry as well so here we are. @Seleucids of course any nerf to cav speed would need to be proportional and take the full gameplay result into consideration, so forgetting to update archer and firecav move speed would be an obvious mistake rather than something inevitable.

There is a limit when it comes to balancing units civ to civ. It is entirely fine that some civs champions counter another’s. What matters is the overall power of the civ. There will always be bad matchups bad maps for a given civ and that is a mark of good civ differentiation.

Well the main way units gain experience is by having a successful fight, using healers, or moving wounded units to the back of the group. I think it is a desirable outcome that units generally take a long time to rank up by garrisoning, but it would be nice to show the mean rank of the units on the corresponding icon of the unit garrison stack within the barracks.

@TheCJ you get to the core of the problem. If others are confused be sure to read up on the booming=turtling discussion to see what causes the main issues with the CS system. For cavalry the citizen soldier eco/fighting balance seems to be pretty good when we look at the early game when hunt is available. The same can be done with infantry, its just more difficult. I believe we can absolutely still maintain a citizen soldier system with CS infantry being useful for eco, fighting, and building while introducing a male economic unit. The balance of the male eco unit versus citizen soldiers would be tailored to make the choice of whether to eco or fight with CS a less obvious one. Yes it will make the eco situation of the game more complicated as there will be more ways to boom, but the potential depth of strategy would be very worth it.

People would argue whether or not seleucids have the best champ cav. Not me, I think they are the best but only with the hero alive. Seleucids also do not have a cheap melee cav option, so in a way they need their champ cav to be good. I agree champ cav in general needs to be nerfed of course but I disagree that seleucids unique bonuses are problematic.

I really appreciate this mod! It is especially helpful when users don’t disclose what mods they use, often trying to avoid having any discussion about rules. There have been many players already surprised to find out that they have been playing on an uneven field for months.

There are also players who don't boom as well but do a good job of winning the first fight in p3, but this is more rare. I think the very fact that we put so much effort into this discussion shows how effective this time to reach 100 pop, or ecu score is as a predictor of a person's 0ad ability. Basically the game boils down to booming or preventing someone from booming, which leads us to the "booming=turtling" thread which highlights the gameplay disadvantages of the citizen soldier system. I'd wonder if this predictor (time to reach 100 pop) would be less effective if there was a male eco unit in the game.

Zapotecs

Idk if you know about it, but triple clicking the hero portrait on the top left will select the hero and take your screen to it. Usually I do a decent job keeping track of my hero and if I notice the portrait blinking when I don't expect it I go and correct my mistake. That being said this is still an amazing mod, a very good quality of life feature.

Also depends on how many more you expect them to make. Some players will make 12 or even less and then stop there and some will continue to make them. If you don't have enough cav to stop them or deter them you may still be able to look at their base and spot stables or extra hunts they may yet take. Another option not previously mentioned is to make a new wood storehouse behind your barracks, so that the camels need to approach your barracks to range your woodline. If the camel player ever has to look at his eco, then you may have a chance to jump through the barracks and kill some camels. Iberians are pretty limited vs camel rush but one of the few nice aspects is that if you have wood against the edge of the map there's only 2 approaches for camels to hit the woodline, so this makes a big difference for iberians' case.

In my opinion the biggest hindrance for walls being effective for their intended use (apart from annoying wall spam that turtle players do) is ease of placement and sealing. Snapping to/from buildings and obstructions such as cliffs would be awesome but I recognize its a complicated thing to accomplish. There have been games where I was able to get a lot of value out of palisade walls, trapping cav in my base or stopping raids, but usually the amount of attention and planning required is as prohibitively expensive as their cost and build time. Real tabasco's comm mod changes for palisades and walls should be a good step in the right direction, and hopefully we get enough comm mod games to make sure of that.

Ah yes this I agree with. Sniping is quite undesirable, I'm not in defense of it I'm just against the game working entirely through buttons using optimized automatic behavior. In my personal opinion automated things are ok so long as they are outperformed by manual human control, and unit behavior falls into this category.

How much faster compared to infantry do cavalry need to be to have a significant mobility advantage? Do they still have a mobility advantage if they are say 1.5x faster instead of 2x? would that result in less cavalry balance problems? Also about the automatic targeting preferences, do we want to control the game entirely through menu systems and functions? or should we accept some imperfection of automated systems (like basic unit behavior) so that players can develop skills to outmicro others and win battles?

It doesn't take any multiplayer or even 0ad experience to understand that automating a signification portion of the game provides an unfair advantage. I wouldn't go hounding grapjas to "verify" if his level is high enough to critique your mod, anyone of any level can do so just like anyone can see through your self-serving argumentation and your dishonest downplaying of the advantages you get from progui.