Yekaterina

I guess this is where the community mod comes in place: vanilla gets turn rates as they are, but community mod get instant turns, instant acceleration etc. But the problem would be solved completely if the rams can repel surrounding ally units

Dancing can be prevented by using infinite speed arrows. Currently the speed of arrows is just 100m/s. We can change this speed to 10000m/s and that will solve dancing completely. I can still dance (with difficulty) right now, even with turn rate and acceleration. I don't see why dancing is so hated

@Helicity turn rate is the angular velocity of the unit's self spin that you were talking about and is measured in radians per second and the value is stored in the template file for the unit type. The acceleration is measured in SI units like real world physics, but beware that values are strange: the average walking speed of an archer is already faster the Usain Bolt's maximum speed, so take these values with a biscuit. Acceleration was introduced after the release of A25 to nerf cavalry rushes (because javelin cav were too OP) and to make the movement of units visually smooth and satisfying. @chrstgtr On one hand, turn rates nerfs cav rush, so that you can boom in peace. On the other hand, you don't want it in late game because of lag, annoyance etc. So to achieve both, we can only introduce a finite turn rate for citizen javelin cav and citizen archer cav. Everything else, from rams to infantry to melee and Merc cav, all get infinite turn rate. This means no lag and frustration in late game, but early cavalry rushes are still reasonably nerfed. In code, that is 10^6 radians per second.

I'm not sure what you mean by turn rates, but I think the response of units can definitely be improved. Right now, it seems like the units would freeze for a moment then respond to formation orders. When retreating, many units struggle to turn around and run before they are killed by a shower of enemy arrows. There were also instances when an enemy spearman was just waving in the air and the cavalry unit on 30% health that was already some distance away from him just dies suddenly. Furthermore, I noticed that some units, especially cavalry and siege, have acceleration. If you order them to change direction, they stop themselves, then take a long time to rotate itself to the direction you pointed to, then gradually accelerate towards there. I think the acceleration is completely unnecessary; just let the speed be a step function and that will feel much smoother. If you must consider physics, then perhaps the unit can choose a curved trajectory towards your point, given its current position and momentum. A curved path is how a real human would walk if you wave at them from across the street. The rotation of units would ideally be instant, i.e. the angular velocity is very large. This will cause less stuttering as described above and less miscalculations, meanwhile improving the smoothness of the gameplay.

Then the Spartans will become absolute skirmisher hyper-fans! I think having too many units of the same range is bad, because there will be overcrowding at that line and

I will try them out! Thank you!

Or, alternatively, we let the American civs get the champion skirmisher and champion slinger since they used these very frequently in battles.

For example, the Spartans underwent rigourous training since a young age, so we can argue that the javelin throwing skills of some of them are of champion quality, so we can add a champion skirmisher unit to the Spartans. I'm just using the Spartans as an example to illustrate my point; the Spartans already have too many skirmishers and what they really need is archers, not more skirmishers. But similar arguments can be made for other civs: we can give the Persians a champion skirmisher unit since their infantry is slightly monotonic.

Unfortunately, we already have too many Hellenic civs and I am not suggesting we turn 0 A.D. into Greek A.D. Is it possible to add champion skirmishers and slingers into other civilisations, with the excuse of having a few very well trained athletes who were also well equipped in battles? There are always a few students who excel from the pack and we can just proclaim them to be the champion units of that civilisation.

We do know more about East Han than west Han so it's probably easier to implement. Both are around 0 AD, but west Han started in around 200BC and East Han ended in around 300AD Sad, it was a glorious empire Not sure about mercenary uses in Han dynasty but we can definitely go from a javelin unit.

This wasn't a very big problem back in A25, probably since we disabled unit overlapping, the rams can't squeeze through infantry anymore. So the solution is to decrease the effective size of rams or add a repulsion field for rams that automatically scatters nearby infantry, like a proton flying into a cloud of positrons.

*sad Mainland noises* Most big 4v4 team games are played on Mainland and this will cause some problems since that map has no water. What you can do instead is offer 2 types of fields: paddy and "other grains". Paddy needs water but "other grains" are just normal yellow fields with 5 farmers like those of all other civs. A funny alternative is to add a structure "well with pump", which pumps water from underground to your paddies, and you have to build a well before building paddies. This might make the game more realistic but hardcore players in team games (SaidRdz) probably won't fancy this...

Personally, I would like a new civ which contains: Infantry slingers Cavalry archers (or infantry archers) Skirmishers (any type) Elephants Champion chariots Pikeman Champion swordsman Catapults I'm not sure if this is too much of an ask, but a civ that has all of these would be great. In terms of region, we haven't anything from both American continents and none from Oceania (if there were any civilisation there). So it would be great if we can add a new civilisation from these 2 regions that contains all of these units. Furthermore, I haven't seen an infantry skirmisher champion nor an infantry slinger champion. Perhaps we can incorporate those into a new civ?

@Norse_Harold after changing the power mode to "Maximum performance" in the BIOs and all system settings, the connection quality did improve greatly. Previously unplayable hosts became playable. In addition, the thermal throttling issue was gone as the fan absolutely committed itself to the job. I think this would be a great lesson for any player who is using a laptop. Battery saving mode was the culprit after all... turn it off while gaming!

We should make battering rams able to go through allied units more easily. Often, a large group of allied archers are spread out over the entire territory and rams are blocked, unable to reach any important buildings. Furthermore, rams are often involved in melee battles, just twisting itself in the middle a huge firefight. This makes pathfinding more difficult for everyone and the game will lag, therefore I think rams should be able to pass dense crowds of human units more easily but not through buildings or palisades. The same applies for elephants. In real life, the archers would move themselves a bit to let their friend's ram to pass through, and the ram would always head towards some enemy structures instead of trying to involve itself in a melee confrontation. Elephants would definitely step on human units instead of politely going around them. So I am suggesting that we add a feature which lets large objects pass through allied units but not structures or enemy lines. On top of that, cavalry units often get stuck at a building site, unable to move out. Therefore I think we should add a mechanism which allows units to push others away if necessary.

I am more inclined towards to the latter as I have never experienced network problems doing anything else: downloading large files, browsing web pages, chats, watching YouTube and uploading content were all smooth. Below are some test results:

I'm afraid that the modem is built into the router and I cannot access it, but I think it's unlikely to be Intel Puma given the circumstances. Now this is very likely the case, thanks. I have now disabled power saving from system settings, but I will also change the mode to performance mode in the BIOS just in case. This is in fact a real problem: when I play 0AD, in late game, the CPU's temperature often reaches 97 degrees Celsius. It is a design flaw: my laptop uses an processor with 64W turbo TDP when it has only a single fan cooler built into a 1cm thick chassis... I'm afraid I can't change this. Thank you for the reply, Norse_Harold.

Dear developers: I often find myself disconnecting from games hosted by other people in multiplayer team games. I can maintain decent connections to some hosts, such as NoobDude, axi and juarca, while I struggle a lot with others, for example weirdJokes and Cesar. Every time before I disconnect, I see a yellow message on the top right corner of my screen saying losing connection ... (n s). Some observations have led me to believe that the cause is not my own home network. Firstly, the disconnects occur more frequently in early game than late game; the disconnects are almost always during booming or resting before battles; I've almost never dropped during a battle where there is a lot of action. It seems that the more data being transferred, the more stable the connection, contrary to intuition. Secondly, sometimes I could hold myself in the game by spam clicking hotkeys, F5 and alt+tab to switch between windows. If I do it fast enough then I can maintain connection in spite of the yellow message, else I will drop out. This is very strange indeed. Plugging in the laptop charger improved the stability; without the charger being connected, I drop so often that the game is unplayable. This seems to be something related to my laptop hardware / software and not the network. Thirdly, using an ethernet cable not only didn't improve the stability but made me completely unable to rejoin hosts, so I switched back to WiFi. Lastly, when I host a game, some players might get yellow messages or disconnect half way, but at least 6 of them can play until the end. I myself don't get disconnected from the lobby. We have never experienced issues when I play LAN games with my family. In addition to the above observations, when I try to join a host, if I click too quickly, I would see a message: "Stun Error", however, this message disappears if I click on this host a few seconds later. When I try to rejoin a host after a disconnect, sometimes it claims "Player name in use" for a long time (nearly a minute). But if I kill the 0ad client and restart it, there will be no obstructions and I can rejoin smoothly. I hope these observations can give you some clue. I am not sure if it's just me or is anyone else experiencing similar issues. Most of the time it's playable for me but occasionally, some hosts lose their patience and kick me. Best, Helicity

Although I'm not a programmer myself, I think this file offers some clues: there are some behavioral controls in the stances settings, which means adjusting these would help. So far the violent mode seems the most appropriate for invading the enemy base, because of "targetAttackersAlways": true," If we can use different combinations of true and false here then we can construct the ideal mode of operation for these units: "ideal": { "targetVisibleEnemies": true, "targetAttackersAlways": true, "respondFlee": false, "respondFleeOnSight": false, "respondChase": true, "respondChaseBeyondVision": false, "respondStandGround": true, "respondHoldGround": true, "selectable": true },

Thank you for your reply! Where can I find this file? I'm afraid that my replay files are completely fragmented because I disconnected in almost every match. Nevermind the details, the 4 changes I proposed should be doable without having to look at my replays right? I think they are quite general changes to the code.

I think the solution is in UnitAI.js Can you provide some logs or replays?

Dear developers: Even though the game is already very well programmed, I noticed some strange behaviour in soldier units when I attack move (ctrl+right click): some soldiers prefer to capture enemy buildings instead of killing the nearby enemy units, while others stand there and do nothing instead of fighting. Their reluctance to fight the enemy units first has resulted in many unnecessary casualties, therefore I believe that we should prioritise the enemy units over structures. Furthermore, I saw my archers shooting at enemy rams instead of soldiers even though I did attack move on of their units, which is utterly a waste of arrows. When I order the soldiers to attack move on units some distance away, I often find a group of them standing idle half way, which again results in more casualties at the front line. Often this is caused by the one of the enemy unit being killed already, or for some unknown reason they were distracted on their way there. So my suggestions for improvements are the following: 1. Change attack priority: soldiers always should attack living enemy soldiers and cavalry first, then women. Only attack siege and buildings if they have been specifically ordered to. 2. Please fix the stopping half way bug. If the targeted enemy is dead, at least walk towards the pointed location then attack what's left there... please just don't stand there and do nothing... 3. All of my soldiers should focus near the point where I right clicked instead of being distracted and going elsewhere. In addition, rams and elephants seem to get stuck between units too often, such that they cannot reach the enemy building that they have been ordered to attack. Hopefully there is a way to resolve this. Best, Helicity

Currently the speed of 0ad infantry units already walk way faster than Usain Bolt's maximum speed, so there is no harm in making a new unit that looks like an infantry but has identical stats to cavalry.

I have an even better idea: insert the template of siege towers into wild gaia horses, so that you can capture them and ride them early on. This may be useful for potential American civs who don't currently have cavalry units.

Separate the horse rider template and the horse template, then study the capture of catafalques or siege towers from A23 code, then implement those into the horse part. The technical part should be manageable.