maroder

Indeed. But it could be combined with one of the other ideas, which is why I included it in the poll.

Version 3 with tweaked values out.

Try changing (first copying) the template under 0 A.D. alpha\binaries\data\mods\public\public\simulation\templates\template_structure_defensive_tower_stone.xml <BuildTime>150</BuildTime> to <BuildTime>200</BuildTime>

Keep in mind that not everybody plays multiplayer Personally I would also be happy if the skills to be good at micro would be replaced by the skill to deploy different macro strategies and to plan ahead. Which is of course only possible if there are enough interesting macro strategies to choose from.

Since most people seem to prefer one or both of the DE solutions: I could, if it is ok with @wowgetoffyourcellphone , try to make a patch that brings those things from DE to the base game. But as I have no experience with map creation, the patch would only include the farmland actors and auras, but no maps that use them, which would make the patch kind of hard to test. So this should be probably done by someone else. Meanwhile, here would be the patches for the minimum distance, a positive aura, and one gatherer per field, if you want to have a look at it: minimum-distance.patch positive-aura.patch one-gatherer-per-field.patch I used git format-patch to create these, so I hope they work.

nice. good to hear

Is something like this planned (long-term wise) ? It seems like a lot of work to edit all actor files and include a burning variant, especially if the all use the same fire/smoke effects. Also if a mod wanted to introduce a new status effect or you want to change the particles, you would have to repeat the process of editing all files.

No problem, as I said I just found the idea of the mechanic interesting and wanted to try out how it would fit in the game. Maybe @azayrahmad will come up with a better use for the mechanic Regarding your thoughts on panic in battle: I would say this is highly depending on the nature of the animal. Horses would certainly not attack. Elephants on the other hand might want to flee also, but if they see no way out (middle of the battle) the will try and defend themselves. For humans I would say it is dependent on what is on the line. If you are fighting to defend your city you may consider coming back, even if you were scared the first time. And for the combination of human and horse: the horseman can get the horse back under control relative quickly (if he doesn't fall of). Which may not prevent the horse from getting scared again. But yes, I will try out the current version of the mod and maybe introduce more of a group behavior for the cavalry.

I'm not sure about the licensing stuff, do you mind using CC BY 4.0 models? If not it should be relatively easy to make the following into a nice model: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/lamassu-fb3d891226f1434d806cfc678c4c588a

@azayrahmad thanks for the article. That is a more detailed description than on wikipedia nice. I'm looking forward to it

@alre you convinced me. Version 2 is out with the following features: The fear aura affects all enemy units who are not used to the presence of the elephant. Means it affects all basic rank units (cav & infantry). When the elephants are too hurt, they can fall into rage and attack your own units. The aura works not on all individuals, only on a random subset. @Sturm I made it work The aura no longer changes the stance to passive. It forces the units to flee, but they will come back and try to attack again. @wowgetoffyourcellphone I updated the video, so you can have a look. Hope it is more realistic now.

@alre That's why I said this mod just improves the realism (a little bit). I don't claim that this is the historic ground-truth. It is just an interesting mechanic that I thought would be fun to use in this case. @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded already implemented It only affect basic rank cavalry. The idea is that the horses habituate to the presence of the elephants after some time and are not scared anymore.

Hard to forget something you have never known I like the idea, but I think it would would makes more sense the other way round. The elephants are scary all the time, but you have the ability to push thorough that for a limited amount of time.

please no. Other elephant techs, yes why not.

if you want, you can extend that thought more. While I agree with you, i'm not sure what you mean.

It would improve the realism But yes gameplay wise it is a buff for elephants. What would be your idea to balance that? I think it could be interesting to have a hard counter of the cavalry vs the elephants. Similar to the counter of spearman vs cavalry. So if you manage to keep your cavalry alive and let them reach a higher rank, you have an effective weapon against the elephants.

This is a nice idea, I am not sure how easy it is to implement this. You could of course use a random subset of the affected units, but the aura gets updated all the time, so you will likely hit every unit with it.

Thanks very much for the tip is fixed now. The mod is now functioning as I intended. The only thing left to do is indeed to tweak the strength/ range of the aura.

Yeah, good point. I tried to simulate a large battle, but its hard to control two player at once. From what I saw it is not that big of a problem, as the elephants chase the cavalry easily out of the range of the ranged infantry. But yes it is very chaotic and the cavalry is more or less useless in this case. You would have to send them raiding, while you use your infantry to counter the eles. Or research the not yet implemented tech. Also I think it is not that problematic with the cav, because they are not such tanks as the heroes. Otherwise you could use the strategy you described also without this mod just set the cav to passive, order them to attack and then send your infantry. At least I haven't seen someone use this until now. But yes, maybe something has to be changed in the chasing mechanic. It might be better to preferably attack non-fleeing/non-passive units and only target them when there are no other targets left or you specifically order to attack them.

@Freagarach that would be really nice

True, but to me it seems like that would only bother a small amount of the top players. If your micro skill are only average (which I guess should be true for most players ) and there are often moments in the game where you forget to produce more units, this feature can add more fun / reduce the unnecessary stress. Especially when trying to use the corrals. Also, efficiently using the batch size to your advantage does still provide a reward for micro-skilled player who like to do it manually.

I mean it is only cheating if it gives an unfair advantage to one player. If everybody can use it I hope this would not be a problem The benefits of reducing micro and not having to click on the buildings every few seconds is imo way to great.

That would make a lot of things easier. feedback: very nice, I only had to goggle why tomyris aura is called "fill of blood". So maybe a tool tip that explains that or an name that is easier to understand without knowing the historic context. e.g. "bloodthirst" or something similar.

It would be good if this is added to the main game. Then there would be no discussion if it is "cheating" using a mod that includes this feature. An extension could be to automatically adjust the auto training batch size to get even more efficient training times.

nice, ok that should help fixed now. Thanks again.