BreakfastBurrito_007

@borg- would the axe cav be trainable in p1 just from the cc like the other non-champ units? The way they have been balanced under @real_tabasco_sauce's patch makes it not super problematic to have them in p1, because at best we would see a few of these units as raiders that would have to run from most military units in p1 when outnumbered. I like the unit that has come out of @real_tabasco_sauce's mod and I feel it is useful for more than just one thing despite having the obvious weakness of reduced pierce armor and hp limited to 160.

I think this could be a valuable capability to have to be honest. I could see many other buildings or even defensive structures where you could change the "mode" for different purposes.

@borg- these are all fantasic ideas imo. I am a bit confused about the garden thing tho. Would that be a new building?

yoooooo! I am so excited for this, I will be sure to pester people on lobby to get big stress tests/ balance tests going.

I heard that in a26, units will be able to less able to overlap and become more like an incompressible fluid. Is this true? if this is true, it has great implications for palisade walling to stop cav raids: the combination of acceleration for cavalry and less compressibility for units will mean that even if melee cavalry can break palisades very quickly (as they can in a25), it might be easier to catch them going through the hole they create. +I am hoping that cavalry acceleration and the formation smoothness changes that are slated for a26 can be tuned to perfection during testing and we can avoid a catastrophe like a24.

Well, in english, "shiddy" technically is a swearword so the profanity filter is working in that case. In my vernacular its perfectly ok to say those kind of words in an informal setting, but I am not sure if the fancy brits would agree.

I understand if you are playing vs cav, but if its infantry versus infantry you can usually retreat unless you get trapped. Also I see many players are able to fight huge battles and keep their pop at 200 (myself not included). They do this by keeping strong economies through the game, making large numbers of barracks and / or stables, keeping their army in a good location for reinforcements. If a player is constantly sending re-inforcements forward, then they can just retreat the main army until it grows larger than their enemies' one. ,

Cool! I tried out the mod and the unit seems useful, formidable, but also counterable in a variety of ways! I think this would be a nice change for hyrcanian cavalry.

I think some features would be very helpful. a time limiter option that uses replays from past month or year finding a recommended/default parameter valuation that best represents skill in 0ad, if players discuss skill levels, it would be helpful to have a default system to measure against. Right now rushes are undervalued, so I would recommend adding time-value to the parameters rather than using the values at the end of the game. I appreciate the work done for the mod and I am talking to other players to get them to check it out. I think with some refinement and some accuracy improvement (for default/recommended values) we could see this become an in-game feature in a future alpha.

that’s an incredible demonstration of how OP merc cav are. I look forward to a26 rc testing to see if we have a better balance for them. My guess is merc Javs ok but merc swordcav still quite op.

that’s an incredible demonstration of how OP merc cav are. I look forward to a26 rc testing to see if we have a better balance for them. My guess is merc Javs ok but merc swordcav still quite op.

@LetswaveaBook, @vinme @chrstgtr,do you guys have any thoughts on doubling the wall turret-garrison space from 8 to 16? I think it might be more useful in general than 8. @chrstgtr I observed that walls and palisades make up a mostly futile defense against merc swordcav, and I don’t want merc cav in the future to be a non-viable strategy. I tried thinking of ways to change walls/palisades from being annoying delayers like you said into active defense measures that would help players defend against merc cav which would still be powerful but there would be more options to withstand them.

Well played @seeh we are very proud of you!

translator must have failed there, sorry. "alt" would be used for everything but mac. I am not sure what it is on a chinese keyboard.

Another thing you can do is press "alt" or "option" if you have a mac, while clicking to attack. What this does is tell the soldiers to attack rather than capture the target. In multiplayer we like this option because there are times where it is faster to capture a building and times where it is faster to destroy it.

@Fabiusthe idea is that they are better suited for protecting against the most potent threats that usually can’t be countered by ones own infantry CS: these are merc cav, champ cav, and to a lesser extent regular cavalry. Even with -500 hp, I think it would be easier to defend walls due to the extra garrison space on top. In a24 we found that slowing down the pace at which an average attack could destroy an enemy (rotation times, archer damage, building damage) resulted in very static gameplay that made it impossible to advance. If the changes above had that effect they would be tossed out for sure.

I think this would just lead to frustration since you can't always decide whether units go into forests. It also does not have the level of control that the wall improvements I outlined could offer. It is also worth noting that forests are already slower for units to travel through and this means that cavalry caught in them will take more losses as they try to escape defenders or approach a target.

merc cav are OP in a25 and I predict they will still be OP in a26, just less so. I don't think the merc-rush strategy should become weak, I just think there should be more options to counter it besides 1: rush before enemy makes mercs 2: make your own cav both of which are situational and are not always useful to protect against merc cav. I think the solution comes down to walls, we need to improve walls ease of placement so that they are used not to irritatingly slow down the game, but to be placed skillfully in anticipation of harassment. The suggestions here are not to make walls/palisades stronger overall, but to allow them to better fill their purpose. increase ease of placement of stone walls/palisades. This could be done by tolerating some overlap of structures or resources. Since stone walls can't be placed out of territory, perhaps they could be built through forests deleting the trees upon wall completion. decreasing hp of stone walls by around 500-1000. The changes would probably make stone walls more common, and the hp decrease is to prevent this from slowing down gameplay giving melee cavalry .5x counter versus palisades. This gives a defending player more time to bring in infantry, but does not make palisades stronger versus infantry and rams; units that don't have the same raiding capability that palisades are intended to protect against. increase turret positions of stone walls to 16. This is a more practical amount that might make a difference in a battle. tell me what you think please.

@Yekaterina 0ad has a good community and is not pay to win. I would not consider it time wasted in my book.

good observation. That probably goes for any RTS game that uses resources.

^The booming=turtling discussion from like a year ago. Mercenaries have been a step in the right direction in this regard but have produced some OP units (merc cav) I think the simplest and most effective way to proceed with decoupling economic boom from military buildup is to add a male unarmed unit that gathers faster than CS infantry. Ideally it would cost like 75 or 80 food (or maybe like 35 metal as a "purchase"), become available in p2, and have the following gather rates: food: 1, wood: 1, metal: .75, stone: .75. Starting hp 50, also affected by loom. Since the unit would be pretty powerful, perhaps it should only come from CC at 2x train time of woman. Unit could be called slave, or villager if we think this is immoral to have in the game (historically there were slaves for sure). The point is that the fastest boom will not involve citizen soldiers, but will be incredibly risky. Also, it will mean that Citizen soldiers are better used for fighting in more scenarios, which would break some inhibitions for early attacks for non-cav units, as well as breaking the couple between military loss and economic loss for infantry.

between autoqueue and manual batch training, the main thing is to do whatever it takes to keep your resource counts low. I like the options right now and I don’t think I will commit to either. In my opinion, the ease of autoqueue and the mental space it frees up is the most important aspect of it

I think african eles make more sense since they are closer to rome. But I think it would be cooler if there was capability to train african or asian eles depending on the civ that the stables are captured from.

I have done and always seek to do this against Carthage. I usually want my own cav first which is hard to get, but this is due to those mercs being op. Playing and winning the game is highly situational and the best moves are not often planned long in advance.

I have to agree with @Sevda on this one about capturing ele stables. IMO being limited to 7-8 is either a gimmick, or has no effect because most games people only ever get about 7-8 eles anyway. eles from captured ele stable might change the way romans attack and put their siege camps. imagine you put a siege camp next to enemy ele stable and keep ele stable captured long enough to make Roman eles. I think this would be a fine mechanic. Perhaps not always being relevant, but it would certainly be a potentially powerful option for romans.