BreakfastBurrito_007

It is currently possible to overcome the ranged units' preference for close targets, but it requires concentration, fast clicks, and good micro. This was the main reason behind the attempts in the past months to make an attack-ground or area-attack mechanic for ranged units (or maybe just archers if it seems right to do so balance wise).

I was thinking to just increase their accuracy a bit since that would make them better at sniping other ranged units like they are currently most used for. If archers already have a bunch of accuracy (I thought we nerfed it from a24 and gave back a little in the form of an upgrade), then this wont help as much. When archers get rank 3, I believe they don't get extra damage (correct me if I am wrong). So SaidRdz has been able to win TGs by spamming pike+ archers as kush and leveling up his archers. He targets enemy ranged units and as they rank up, it seems to be more effective. Another solution might be to reduce rank-up xp with archers.

hmm, so the main conclusion is that the famous 6 woman start is maybe not the best? I saw @berhudar's start for ptol and use that now, but I have not done 2 batches of 3 at start with other civs. I have been using autoqueue when my focus is elsewhere or where I would find myself making small batches repetitively. I guess the new general agreement is that 1 by 1 is better unless you are floating res because of it. For example, from berries and hunt you can have high food income, but only one cc to make them from, so I have observed even the people who use autoqueue the most will make batches of sizes 3 to 10 during that period. If you make women to reduce excess food, then batches are better, but if you are making women to fix a wood shortage, then 1 by 1 is better. Am I understanding this correctly?

You could still micro the archers to hit the slingers/javs if you see it coming. If you outnumber the slingers/javelin you could option (dumb Mac key=Alt) click to kill them very quickly. This is a skill that is not very hard to master but requires some focus.

Archer rushed work great if it is a border battle over a wood line. Now you should certainly scout to make sure they are not making cav, but if you stay close to your border the speed difference won’t be a big issue.

Archers can be great units, but it takes some serious skill to unlock their potential compared to skirmishers or slingers. I would like to see archers stay a bit slower than skirms and slings but 1.5 m/s is a bit too big of a gap.

@borg- @real_tabasco_sauce , @Sevda brought up a good point about them easily taking out a cc. I would say 40 would be necessary to easily take out the cc. However, there is more to the situation. My main worry about having axe cav in p1 is that it would make 2v1 in p1 a game-ending scenario. Mauryans doing skirmcav and persians doing axecav against another player who does not have any hunt would be totally unfair. In order for a player to help their teammate against this in p1, they need cavalry, because infantry will be late and cav will raid around them and eventually kill cc. if the unit costed more like in @real_tabasco_sauce's mod, then it would at least require eco to mass up, so it would not be possible to quickly spam them out of cc and end the game in less than 5 minutes, with the help of a jav cav civ in 2v1. @borg-There is absolutely no way axecav could go in p1 and be as cheap as they are now (not even considering increased crush that has been proposed). Having an overpowered gimmick in p1 followed by the unit being useless afterward is frankly not good game design.

@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.

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.