maroder

While I understand the reason, I personally disagree with it very much. I hate being told what to do or not to do Especially in a less competitive setting, I want to be able to place my buildings wherever I want, to be able to build an unconquerable city. So I would remove all minimum distances and building limitations. IMO Turtling should not be prohibited by the game mechanics, it should be punished by the fact that you run out of resources in the long run and that you have a slower economy.

That is one nice name

True indeed, but what if you would balance it with time limited strong attack bonus? i.e + 50 attack for the first 30 sec when the troops leave the forest. So you can make a big impact even with a small amount of solders. This might be worth setting them aside as a future investment. It of course makes only sense in a biome with plenty of forest that you cannot avoid.

First of all, thanks @wraitiiand @Stan`for your explanations, as someone who is relatively new to the forum I had no idea how difficult the release process was. Which is part of the problem. Forums are great to exchange opinions and discuss stuff, but they are very inefficient in transporting information, as all important stuff gets inevitably buried under other posts. Therefore there is no way for someone who is new, as to ask again. I second @mysticjimopinion and would like to illustrate it by using myself as an example: I first discovered 0ad maybe three years ago because it was listed on some website as "cool free game". I tried it out and lost to the easy AI, then put it aside for a few weeks, tried it again and got crushed again. This continued for a year until I finally googled "how to play 0ad" and found one of Tom0ad's videos where he explains basic strategy. This video has done an incredible job at making the game more interesting for me (I never played other RTS before). And the only reason I am now here on the forums, is that I wanted to know when a new alpha would come out and after checking the homepage for several months and there were no updates, I finally began to read in the forum. It is hard to keep people engaged, but the only way to keep them interested in the game is to reach out to them, again and again and again. 0ad is certainly not missing people who work hard on it, but the communication how hard the work is and what progress is done. From my understanding open source lives from the people who want to contribute to it, but why should they, if they don't know how great the game is or if they never heard about it. It not about "hyping" and making false claims, its about communicating the actual progress and catching peoples attention. I want my comments here not to bee seen as "attacks" on the communication strategy the team had so far, I mean the project is still around and people are playing it, therefore it is not a failed strategy, but I do believe the engagement of new and old audiences should have a higher priority when we want more people to play it.

@user1

I think that is exactly the point. The game has been around for a very long time and as @wraitii said, it doesn't seem like " the final version" will be ready anytime soon, because there is always something to improve. So the options are 1) to lay low, let the few people who work on the development side do their thing, until they don't have the time or fun anymore and let 0ad be a project that is only something for enthusiasts or 2) try to actively get more people involved and grow a bigger community. Because in my opinion 0ad is already a great game and you can have a lot of fun playing it. We don't need to hide that it's an alpha and that there are flaws, we can tell people: yes indeed and if you want to help fix them you are more than welcome. In an age where game develogs on youtube get millions of views, it think there are enough people out there who find game development interesting and may want to help, but they never heard about the project.

Another problem is that interesting mp games are played on mainland instead of nice looking maps

very true. The best example is probably Fortnite, where they call they call it "Season" when they bring out a new beta and add more stuff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale#Seasonal_changes Yes and I think this was the problem, after a pause of ~2.5 years. After such a long time the regular player got very attached to A23 and a little more preparation and communication could have saved some of the negative comments aka "what have you done to my civ" ect. But the whole: is it an alpha? discussion is sidetracking the original topic. This is my point of view: 0ad has a decent sized player base, who don't closely follow the development process and are caught off guard when something new happens. In order to keep the project alive for many years to come, it is important to continuously reach out to the public and new players, as some of them may choose to contribute to it. Getting more people involved is of course more work, but division of labor takes the pressure of of individual people, which would be positive in my eyes. (See Stans vacation announcement) The key to reach that is , again from my point of view, a better communication strategy, not only in the forums, but also to the public over social media or other outreach opportunities. I can completely understand if the devs don't have the time and don't want to prepare a public announcement for everything they do, so I think this would be a good opportunity to get the people from the community more involved. Maybe something similar to the Council of Modders. The "Council of PR" for example (maybe with a better name)

thanks for the explanation And yes, my statement was not meant to be accusing, that is exactly what I thought was the reason It is is good that the developers are developing and the players are playing, if they would do something different it would be a waste of resources. The only thing that is missing for 0ad are influencers that influence @mysticjim? sad but probably true. But the goal does not have to be to be as big as AoE, but to attract new player and maybe also new contributors to the project. Fair point. I personally think A27 would be good to switch to beta. Then the alphabet is completed.

But to stay on topic, while Stan is on vacation, maybe @Sundiatacould shine some light on the topic and explain if there is a official PR strategy / policy about promoting the next alpha before its release. I would guess the reason why A24 was not more promoted, is that the team was busy with development and no one had spare time to do it?

This is the only answer I could find https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42610756/register-new-game-for-youtube-gaming So maybe a problem with the wiki page, or the play0ad homepage has metadata in the wrong format. Or google just changed their algorithm.

It sure does not help that the main homepage has sections that have not been updated since presumably 2012 "Unit formations: Arrange your units in historical battle formations from the Phalanx to the Testudo and gain bonuses, such as increased armor. However, beware the costs that may come with them, such as lower speed! (As of August 2012, this feature has not been implemented yet.)" https://play0ad.com/game-info/features/ But yes even something like a weekly re-post of a nice screenshot from the forum to the relevant social media platforms would be good.

I totally agree. Additionally smoother camera control in-game (rotation, zoom, ect.) would be nice for such clips. Also: I would like unrestricted viewing angels, without having to turn on the developer tools.

maybe time to think again about 1v1v1v1v1v1v1v1 much less setup needed

I tested it in combination with the Defense test mod from Nescio. Let me try it without. Yes sorry, my bad. No problems if its the only mod.

Yes could easily be, but playing against AI it didn't matter much to me. In that case it makes sense that it doesn't feel different. Btw @BoredRusher this is your chance to give some feedback before something gets into the game

I tested it and it is definitely a nerf for defensive buildings. For me it feels a lot more similar to a23. I am actually not sure if i like it more or less, but at least it makes much more sense that every arrow inflicts the same amount of damage now. The territory increase seems fine. The rams also. I didn't notice a big difference from the archer reload time. No opinion on the theater & the CC techs.

Generally very good. But I get two icons for citizens when I play with the kushites. One for female citizens and one for citizens in general. (Did not test all of the civs)

I want to hear your opinion about the following mechanic: Disable the ability to use the CC as storage, but make farms and storehouses therefore either gratis or let them have a very reduced cost. Why? It is inconsistent that you can use the CC as storage and not the fortress. Historically you would need to store resources in a fortress as well, otherwise it would be very susceptible to siege. It is generally a bit inconsistent that you would store resources in either the CC or the fortress themselves. Wouldn't the resources be better stored in a storehouse or farmstead by the CC/fortress? As mentioned somewhere else, it makes not so much sense to have your field directly in your city in front of the CC. -> See DE or the city building mod. Pros: more realistic city layout it gets easier to rush, as the fields are not in front of the CC. (At least not all of them). more interesting gameplay. You need to think about how you want to protect your fields. Cons: little bit slower game start, but as it is the same for all players it shouldn't change anything balance wise. gratis buildings are not realistic, but you could argue for a really reduced cost. In comparison to a house, a storehouse can be build much simpler/cheaper. Looking forward to hear your thoughts on that, or maybe just tell me if that has already been discussed somewhere

Kind of related: One idea discussed there was to make forest "groves" where you can hide your units and ambush your opponent.

That does seem very nice. And it also seems like you want to showcase Fork A.D

which would mean it could, contrary to the technologies, be taken away from you again, when someone destroys the building. Sounds interesting.

i don't think i understand that concept.

@borg- @Nescio Would it be an option to let mercenaries have zero training time? Because as i said, from my point of view, if you hire them (that's why they have a high metal cost) they should be ready. No need to "train" mercenaries, because they are already soldiers. Or does the training time implies the time they need to arrive from their original country?