badosu

Schweinezerg (Romans) - MarcAurel (Spartans) Uknown Land Normal Desert biome. A pretty interesting generation where players start with a lot of extra food and minerals, separated by a River which has major impact in map control. metadata.json commands.txt

chrstgtr vs SaidRdz on Mainland Small Alpine biome I also made some commentary, hope you enjoy it! metadata.json commands.txt

I made a video casting this match. Full quality will be available after youtube finishes processing. There were a few mistakes in analysis, the casting flow and the audio from 0ad was not correctly processed to the video, but I am satisfied for my first attempt. It's a pretty fun match to watch. Hope you enjoy it!

That was a pretty good match, thanks @sphyrth!

Valihrant (Seleucids) vs Stockfish (Romans) A short and interesting match on Ratumacos. metadata.json commands.txt

I think Continent Medium is a superior map in arguably any aspect to Mainland Small, except if you want to avoid naval invasions, but that's a feature for me. Other good choices: - Ratumacos Small - Rivers Small - Guadalquivir River Small - Latium Small - Flood Medium (a very challenging format) In the current meta, maps with defensive positions are not well received since they are hard to break, but Pyrenean Sierra Small seems great too.

Discuss and suggest settings that improve gameplay in general. Better zoom and scroll speed (tks @ValihrAnt): view.scroll.speed = "200" view.zoom.default = "200" Performance and contrast (only 1st setting requires autociv): autociv.session.graphics.corpses.max = "0" showsky = "false" shadows = "false" particles = "false" postproc = "false" watereffects = "false" Place to check further settings and defaults (I found no documentation for scroll and zoom): https://github.com/0ad/0ad/blob/master/binaries/data/config/default.cfg

chrstgtr (romans) vs Rauls (brits) Map: Mainland tropical small An exciting match, very balanced until mid to end. metadata.json commands.txt

badosu (brits) vs Schweinezwerg (brits) Map: Mainland small An interesting match where, if not balanced, one player was a bit behind at times, but waiting for the right moment and forcing a base trade paid off commands.txt metadata.json

Thanks for the correction @faction02, I fixed the numbers. I agree with the questioning regarding the relative value of each res type and having mil vs eco, this is assuming not heavily harassed. With regard to the bonus impact, I assume that the computations are performed in floating point values instead of integers, the +0.1 for example would be just for display, but would require confirmation.

I'd put USD$ 50 for the prize pool on a well executed tournament.

Ask for JC IP, Multiplayer -> Join Game, put IP, gg. Or search google for 'whatsmyip', send to JC, Multiplayer -> Host Game, wait for join.

I noticed some good players don't make upgrades in good timing even when unharassed so I thought about discussing what would be the ideal ones. These are my raw calculations, it might be different depending on conditions (excess resources or being attacked). Also, not taking account ptols particularities. Starting the discussion with P1: wood and food are the ones you'll want to take, unless playing with slingers and taking stone, great hunt or extra berries, but the basics apply: If you have 30 gatherers, 15% bonus equals to having additional 4.5 workers, which assuming a mix of women and men (2 men, 2.5 women) equals 225 food, 200 100 wood. For their first gathering run, these workers would have brought you 45 resources. So for an investment of 250 resources, offloading the recruitment buildings (since you don't need to queue as much), you would get a 130 resources payback. Taking into consideration a generous 10% tax for walk time (if wood, food negligible) about 100 resources payback. Considering that the upgrade compounds with the scale (you get more benefit with more workers) I would put this as a ceiling when you would want to get the upgrade, having 30 workers gathering that particular resource. It could be argued that if you are not making mercenaries, you could even write off the metal cost, but I digress. This is assuming also that the upgrade happens instantaneously, otherwise we could take into consideration using 250 resources to build 2 men and a women or 5 women (if you could balance wood for food) which on their first run would bring about 20-50 resources (taking into consideration queue time). Even with these factors into consideration taking the upgrade seems to be a positive return. So in raw terms, between 40-60 pop in P1 would be the ideal timing to get both upgrades, food and wood. Stone and metal does not seem to be good upgrades to take in P1, unless unbalanced food for stone, but one could argue that taking cav could be a better option in some cases, if slinger/merc civ and having more than 10 men on stone/metal could also be worth it. Basket upgrade (5+ res cap per gatherer) seems to be a worthy upgrade for P1 only in maps with sparse wood, timing could be 100+ pop and only if a lot of excess resources since it's a costlier upgrade, calculations for the return on investment are tricky for this one. This first post is just about P1, but it's worthy to mention that if you are not taking P3 upgrades for wood and food as soon as possible and you are not planning a decisive timing attack in 1v1 or having to defend an all in, you are in heavy disadvantage (assuming a balanced matchup). One must take into consideration that having a higher rate of gathering means less men required to mine resources which can be in the front lines, defending while managing eco, or building fort/expand. This is not as relevant in P1 but for P3 the scale is too high to ignore.

Congrats @Stockfish, thanks @HMS-Surprise and all involved!

If Han civilization gets in, I agree with Xianyang since it highlights the addition. Otherwise, Xenophon, by a high margin. He's one of the most important historical sources we have for the period comprehended in 0ad.

I agree with @sphyrth, while ranking is kinda broken at the moment it's still a reasonable measure if a player is decent or not, while not a guarantee that a 1400- user is nub it is that a 1400+ player is not 'cosmic'. Another reason is that for tournaments and other limited roster events it's the official way to get in, e.g. I got only second bracket games for all SPG weeks (which means I had to play Valihrant and borg-in my first game) even after going from low 1400s to high 1500s. While I would certainly not have won later brackets I would have enjoyed being able to get there. It helps with TGs where even if a host does not know you, he can see that you're not a cosmic. Cosmic players are unreliable, they quit games out of the blue or as soon as are rushed, they provide nothing more than a light deterrent for the opposing team in the best case scenario. In 1v1s they are more likely to quit rated games. Even if you are a good player, if others don't know you, you'll be put in the same category as above. After I got 1450+ I noticed that the rate of 1v1 quitters has decreased dramatically. My recommendation is that even if you don't care about ranking or 1v1, getting out of the 1400- will benefit you a lot. This does not mean you need to be one of those 'rating farmers', players who stay online all the time fishing for 100+ rating difference players to crush and which claim to have 'skills only' but chicken out at any slight challenge. If you're a good enough player, can boom when necessary (p3 200 pop in 14- min) while also knowing how to not panic and throw units away when rushed or even perhaps scouting and rushing yourself, 1500-1700 would be the range where I'd expect to see you. That said, unfortunately this is the range where you find most inconsistency in player skills per rating, very good players in the low 1500s and borderline decent players at 1600+. Also an interesting thing I noticed is that when I actually started caring about rating for SPG I started noticing more subtle details of gameplay that would give me an edge, had to learn how handle more competitive players and strategies for which I was unprepared before, and got a better insight on game sense. The rating also keeps me accountable, I care for it, but not as a number to be optimized but rather as a symbol of what it means: do I multitask, rush, scout, boom, know more different civs and strategies as other players in the same range? If not, look for good players in that range and play them, learn what is missing and get better, it's fine to get a lower rating if it means you're evolving.

So, basically you agree with me? Another aspect is that is easier to balance resources as well, if you're strapped for wood, make more slingers; if for stone, make spearmen. At the same time stone closeness to base means it's easier to secure and you have more men near farms early on, the fixed position means less resources and time spent building storehouses.

They cost stone, for which starting resources help, they also have high range and damage, also part being crush. To counter them make spearmen for meat shield.

I play this week

Nice one, keep it up!

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Borg, let us know if you plan releasing something this weekend for playtesting, or if we can help in any other way.

Sign me up for this week

It seems Javelin cav was mostly used by Iberians, Numidians and Celtics to taunt or soften the front lines, I am not sure there's a mention of this particular interaction.

I am thinking of a more practical, both in logic and micro intensive, sense. I would imagine that to be a very hard mechanic to fit in the game, especially with a mod.