Radiotraining

I agree a lot with this. Is one of the things that make the late game a bit boring, to be honest. It makes you feel you're playing "world of tanks" instead of ancient warfare and is immediately game over. Also I feel like these features kill a bit the creativity in the gameplay, because is kind of a shortcut to victory. Ideally elephants should be regarded as support unit to the bulk of an army and not viceversa, so economic restriction or pop cost could definitely play a role here.

ehehehe you're also right .. it was only a simple suggestion off the top of my head Maybe I would add that "unlocking" it could add that little engagement with the action, otherwise purely passive and automatic. It would become then a choice. But yeah, is totally not necessary if too redundant

maybe a shorthand solution for this case could be a tech "training" to be unlocked in the barracks, so it requires a deliberate choice from the user, making it obvious at that point. As a feedback to the previous comment, to be honest I personally can't imagine much to build a structure only dedicated for training. I mean, maybe could be useful to differentiate from the barracks and perhaps add some new tech and features, but it sounds quite a bit of extra work in terms of design and animation for each faction and it would still have some "passive" role, since you just station soldiers in it and wait. Is great visually tho! that's for sure

nicee!! always a great show to watch!

I think that's probably the point raised by this thread: how to give civs more "flavour" beyond the basic rock, paper, scissor dynamic? As you describe in the example, it doesn't really matter which civilization you choose, you can simply ammass champions to make your army stronger and invade your opponent. I think that's what lies beneath the feeling of uniformity among the civilizations. They're carefully balanced together, but in the attempt to make them even they're more or less replaceable from one or another. Now, I'm a completely casual player and I enjoy the game as it is already, so I have no complaints. But I find the discussion very interesting and one of the things that can potentially increase the longevity of the game! Maybe the options that can be explored shouldn't be only exclusive to warfare, but could encompass other game dynamics. - Scythians are definitely a good example on how to bring a unique flavour of gameplay to the civilization. - But I also personally like the idea of a "trading civilization", that can be built specifically on trade and less from conventional forms of income. Protecting the caravans would then become a particular meta playing in this civ and add a new layer of difficulty - Another civ (Chinese maybe?) could instead get bonuses from farming extensively, but this would require also a lot of territory control on the map - A civilization strong on mercenaries can have a stronger army than the counterparts, but needs A LOT of resources, so you have to make sure to sustain a florid economy to use this potential to the fullest - On the contrary, a rush civilization may have cheaper and weaker units, but this gives the advantage of the big numbers. Maybe the can have the advantage of a cheaper/quicker expansion to other territories, so they can rely on map control in the middle/late game. - Other civs may rely on population bonuses for big numbers and others on social/culture bonuses with moral boost if they fight in their own territory (or some unique aura units like, idk, a priest or a standard bearer?) I'm just basking from previous ideas here, but I find some of them quite interesting to shuffle the game and make it less linear, depending on which civ you chose. Some civilizations have already their uniqueness with some special buildings/units and maybe is more a matter of making those small differences even more obvious, so is less about micro differences between single units, but more in broader, macro terms on how each specific gameplay will unfold. In that sense, I've found AOE 4 interesting from the sneak peek I've seen, with the choice of specific buildings to pass to the next age. It gives exactly that feeling of a deliberate strategic choice. Another game that comes to mind is C&C Generals, with the choice between generals in the beginning, and their respective "doctrines". The roast of basic units and counter-units was always present, but each general gave a different "extra" that made the game extremely variegate even by playing the same civilization. So yeah, maybe civilizations in 0ad could simply have that role instead.

I just found this exact video a few minutes ago on youtube! I don't know... calling it a "masterpiece" is a bit too early I think, but overall is interesting to see the different reactions on the game. So far it has been pretty divisive: Some people love it, some people hate it. But surely is bound to stay and probably become a relevant title in the rts universe. Personally I would say it looks fun to play, but is not particularly memorable. On the contrary, it would appear a bit "anonymous" if it weren't for the heavy legacy it brings with it. But is definitely not a bad game as some people try to depict it. Optimistically it can still offer both opportunities and threats to 0ad. Is not the groundbreaking game it promised to be, so there's still space for 0ad to shine as direct alternative. Especially by catering the frustration of old aoe2 hardcore fans disappointed by the new release. Is still a potential threat because it's going to naturally steal the spot from 0ad for a while and set a new gameplay standard that we'll have all to deal with. But at the same time it can offer a new opportunity by fostering some innovations in the game. It would be pretty cool if in the future will be possible to have features like "ambushing", or switching weapons feature. Or the battalion idea in Delenda Est. The competition may push for some cool changes and hopefully can bring a new energy and momentum on 0ad. But as always, this depends on the effort and desires of the devs and I can't thank all the crew enough for all the work and passion they put behind the project! All the new attention from the rts world made me want to get back playing with the good old 0ad even more!

Speaking of siege rams, one of the things that bothers me the most is the extreme discrepancy between melee and spears to counter. I mean, I get it they can have some different efficacy, but shouldn't be as extreme. This really is a turn off for immersion. Maybe this is going to be already patched in a25 tho, i'm not in the loop. Besides, I think rams are already tanky enough and I wouldn't favour to buff them even more. Instead, maybe is possible to tweak a little bit the state of elephants so they're not so OP as rn

Hey hello! I was browsing around the many ideas flowing and I've found this. I just wanted to bring it up, because I think it offers some interesting points to spicen up the diplomatic game I think diplomacy is usually neglected but maybe there's potential for some interesting variations in the gameplay if expanded a bit more .. why not? Definitely not the priority at the moment but I think is worth considering .. what do you guys think?

Wow very cool! It definitely lives up the expectations .. knowing the franchise, I couldn't expect anything less than some AAA title. However, strangely as it may sound, looking at the images and previews, I have to say I kinda prefer more 0ad look and feel, more solid and realistic. As many have also observed, that "cartoonish" look makes units and structures appear a bit disjointed together and I think it takes away the immersion and atmosphere of the historical period. Ahahahah probably the day it will come out an updated version of Millenium AD I won't look back for a while One thing very nice from AOE, though, is the extension and openness of the sceneries. Also the cities, is visually interesting how they expand, taking full space of the map

I like this! Sounds like a good mid-way to prevent the misuse of the autodestroy button. I would argue it could also be a "middle-step" in the conquering process, so to incorporate something similar to the RoN concept, but in a more consistent way to 0ad gameplay: 1. First you neutralize the buildings, they lose owner and return to gaia. This is often the primary goal when it comes to conquer the enemy, especially with turrets and defensive stuff that can be annoying and you just want to have them out of the way 2. Then you can actually "conquer" (or annex) the building to your own. If you fail to do so, the buildings will remain neutral but eventually return slowly to their original owner and you lose your advantage. This would lengthen the overall process of conquering enemy's buildings and prevent too much spoilage of the feature, but still retaining all the original mechanics and without penalizing siege/conquest. I don't know, just throwing ideas there I don't use much the auto-destroy strategy, but I agree is unfortunately prone to be abused in a competitive setting :|

That's exactly what I was trying to say and you said it perfectly better! Ahahaha Edit: maybe, instead of a time-limit I would suggest the upgrade is cheaper than building a CC on its own, but maybe takes more time to develop, so there's an incentive to follow this way if you want to expand quickly and cheaper on the map, but there's also a small time penalty so you have to consider your choices

I may be biased, but I like the little realistic nuances that enrich and diversify the gameplay such as this, so thank Badosu for bringing it up. To expand the concept, I remember some ideas from @wowgetoffyourcellphone about "cities vs countryside" to encourage early expansion against turtling and full use of the map. One of the ideas was to introduce some cheaper and weaker version of CC, sort of military colony, that you can eventually upgrade to full CC once necessary. I really liked the concept and I don't know, maybe it could be an interesting blueprint for the camp you propose. Some cheap, early outpost that can serve to secure an area and can be later be upgraded to a CC. In this way, I think it would make sense as an added element with some purpose consistent with the existing game dinamics. I agree that it should serve as bonus area/dropsite but shouldn't produce units

Personally, I downloaded and installed the GitHub zip something like a couple of weeks ago and is all working (great stuff btw!!) .. so not really sure what could have changed in the last few days

Hi! Nice improvements overall! Loved the change on hp of structure, it looks more consistent now. If I may add, as a random player I don't mind too much a hard limit on fortresses (it always bugged me to see them sprawling everywhere in some maps, it takes away a bit of realism sometimes) but I agree that is may be not the prettiest solution. If I can share an idea for a soft limit on turtling: I thought that a way to simulate a resource penalty during a siege could be a food trickle for garrisoned units. It could make sense realistically, as if your troops are sustaining a siege they should slowly depleting your resources and it could add an interestic mechanic for sieges, as you can take down a city through starvation and you kinda force who's turtling to move forward with their troops to challenge the stalemate (or sustain a heavy cost for a prolonged defence, that's also a choice ) I never tested such idea so I'm not really sure how it can play out in the game and if it makes sense or is consistent with the general gameplay, but yeah, they are only my 2 cents

Hi everyone! I know this is a "hot topic" and is been already thoroughly discussed.. sorry if I'm jumping in as totally casual player of the game, mad respect and admiration to all the devs that made the new update possible! the game keeps being amazing! If I'm allowed only a little observation on rams, yeah, is the only unit that feels a bit "weird" in the game, but I couldn't pinpoint exactly why. But I came to the conclusion that is probably because they make any defence feel completely irrelevant, as it takes only a couple of hits to bring down a tower, no matter how upgraded and how many people are inside. This, coupled with the lack of visual feedbacks, makes the buildings feel like made of butter and the rams like unstoppable tanks, giving a unrealistic feeling to the siege mechanic. Yes, rams are extremely vulnerable to certain attacks, but if left alone they still can destroy two fortress in a row and some towers without a flinch, so I feel there's a bit of unrealistic unbalance here. Maybe to bring back better balance, could be an idea to add an "extra" tech for towers in later phase? I don't know, unlocking "fire arrows" (if they're historically accurate) or something that can justify a stronger defence that better reflects a fully garrisoned and upgraded tower? Towers should be anyway easily destroyed by the ram, but at least the ram would suffer more damage from the arrows and I think this would reflect in a more realistic gameplay, where a strong defence can effectively slow down an advance (and not being useless as currently is) This could also takes away the necessity for a overly strong sword infantry or other rams to beat a ram and would smooth down the striking differences and unbalances. And maybe a weaker ram could force the introduction of a catapult in combination and spice up game variety during sieges (?). I know there are probably already plenty of good reasons why it's the way it is, especially when it comes to competitive matches and I know there have been already plenty of other suggestions, like making rams capturable and so on.. take this only as a general feedback from a general player with a big pinch of salt! I hope this could be a constructive point of view and in any case I already fully enjoy the game as it is! Thanks to all of you guys!

Just a quick overthought : Ideally, to answer the problem, the attrition thing shouldn't be so strong and should be easy to counter-effect, but maybe just at some "x" expenses of food. This way, is not totally punitive, but only pushes you to consider this aspect (and build a solid economy lol) But yeah, can still maybe alter the gameplay tho, and in that case I agree with all your observations

Thank you for your comments! Yeah, I was still tweaking the idea but both your points seem fair enough. Pretty dope to know that there are already enough features in development, that makes me excited! Ahahaha I understand that another feature might be redundant at this point and maybe is just not the right time to talk about it And thanks to Badosu points regarding gameplay that I haven't considered deep enough. The idea to reverse the feature and make a bonus of it, instead of a penalty is an interesting workaround and maybe would fit better with the existing dynamic. Maybe in this case is more a matter of balance with the other bonuses in the game idk .. Think there are many good ideas in this topic if anyone would like to pick one and experiment a little .. but otherwise quite excited to see where the game is already going! thanks everyone!

Hey! Thanks everyone for taking in consideration my suggestion and all the feedbacks! Even if not eventually implemented, is pretty interesting to jot down ideas and share different solutions! In general, I would say that the best solution must be easy to implement and develop into the game. It should work as an added nice detail, but not overhaul the established gameplay dynamic. Or, at least, that's not what I intended by proposing the concept. So, for example, I feel like changing the whole resource-gathering dynamic by making it unlimited kinda push everything a bit too far from the purpose at hand. To avoid too much confusion I think also that if we want to simulate a food supply system, is better to choose from one of the shared solutions, being either some effects on the food resource counter, or with some effect to singular unit's HP, but not a mix of both. On one hand, I like the food trickle idea for being quite straightforward, with a clear cause-effect between unit movement and food consumption. Especially if this is supported by introducing the expenses in the GUI On the other hand, I like also the vision proposed by Badosu! I haven't thought about RoN supply wagons, but sounds like the right model to follow for this game-mechanic. In this case, in my mind I was thinking about some standard "autonomy time" for the units when they leave your safe territory, and when this initial time finishes you start to have some slow effects on their HP (or maybe just the already mentioned "attrition damage", but at a very slow rate). No particular need to represent this visually, other than the hp line at some point slowly depleting. This should allow you to move your people freely anyway, and maybe do some very quick skirmishes and raid with the cavalry, but if you plan to start a proper campaign or sending your villagers far away to gather resources, you better claim some portion of territory or make sure your troops are supplied with either a wagon thing or some technologies to unlock. Think about priests. You can be totally fine without, but is just nice to have a couple or more with your army to cover your back. Similar way, it shouldn't be a feature that cripple movements and gameplay, but you wanna take care of this if you deploy some big strategy. In both cases, the goal should be to add a little realistic "nuance" to the battlefield, a small layer of complexity to consider strategically, and a deterrent for spawning massive armies and just flood the enemy without thinking. With this feature you should have some proportional food cost counter-balance to prevent that from happening too often. If it goes too far beyond that, and if requires too much micromanaging then maybe is not a feature worth pursuing in my opinion, as the game is already rich and this should be only a "plus" on top of what's already there and works well Just my humble opinions as a random player just happened to pass by this forum! Obviously the last word then is to the devs or whomever wants to experiment with the concept, but again, is very cool to have the chance to share at least some ideas Have a good day everyone!

Hey! You're very welcome! Considering the effort you guys put into it, being a side-project along other things, makes the game and your work even more amazing and the minimum is to give proper recognition to that! For the slave/citizen thing : exactly!! That's the purpose I had in mind when I wrote that. Like, some sort of extrema ratio when you lose everyone else and you need someone to build something, for example About your feedback : I must agree with you, a food trickle alone without any other visual clue doesn't "fit" well with the gameplay. A quick solution to the problem could be a minus (-) value that appears together with the food resource counter when your troops start moving, to give a sense of the expenses. But at this point, I find that the effect on units HP more appealing, as it provides a sense of vulnerability to the units you send to the frontier. The problem is to find one easy way to make this effect reversible, so it doesn't affect the gameplay entirely, but just provide a small inconvenience to overcome in battle. For the sake of brainstorming, maybe a visual clue could be a small "starving" symbol that appears with the unit thumbnail to show that they lost their "autonomy" and just need to come back to their territory to refreshen this countdown and avoid HP loss? It could be some "extrema ratio" that only appears after a very prolonged time "abroad," so affecting units HP during long sieges, stationary people outside the territory, or whatever action that takes longer that a definite time threshold so to not affect otherwise general movement of people? Really, is definitely not an essential feature, tho. So I was just toying with the idea as long as it fits consistently with the overall game and makes sense to add. If it's too much of a burden, also coding-wise then nevermind Slightly off-topic : since I discovered this forum and some amazing behind-the-scenes of the game, I stumbled across a concept idea that you proposed somewhere, about "settlements" that you can build elsewhere and develop independently as towns and cities alongside your capital and I just wanted to say that is a really great concept and intuition!! It would bring more focus on map features and strategic expansion and add another interesting flavor to the game. Whatever the case, is really amazing all the improvements so far, so thank you and all the people involved for creating such a fun experience for everyone!

Thanks for the reply, I had the opportunity to know your mod! and hey! this is actually a smart trick! it would make even more sense if is affected by the territory, so it really emphasise on the cost of conquest Anyway I downloaded and now I'm gonna try it out!

Yeah, I'm not a developer myself, so I don't really know the feasibility of implementing new features, and also, I imagine the devs of DE arleady busy dealing with enough stuff than thinking of another feature to add to their workload, so take this idea with a good grain of salt. Ideally, what I imagine the best implementation would be a slow HP decay over time, with a way to counter-balance this effect. The decay shouldn't be something that completely change the gameplay dynamics, but enough to weaken your units if you forget them somewhere random in the map, you have to move them far away or you have to sustain a prolonged siege, for example, so you have to take that into consideration. While I was writing my point before I thought about the "upgrade" button already existing, that could push back the decay effect for each unit, but would cost something in food, for example. This way the cost would be proportional to the units you have selected on the field, so a big army requires some "high" additional food cost and a good food production in your base to keep it sustained. Another way would be simply some upgrades in the barracks that slow down the rate of decay, but you have to unlock it in different city phases, so you can get rid of this effect only in the last stages of the game, and kinda prevent random fast rushes in the beginning .. idk If we want to follow the "Imperivm" model, then that could be this mule/donkey units (or whatever) that follow the army with maybe some "area of influence" around that should cover the troops? In this case, it could be also an element that you can kill or conquer as well, I guess. Just throwing ideas there at this point ahahaha The "bonus" for the defending army would be obviously to not have any kind of HP decay for being already in the base territory, thus making it a little bit stronger In general I don't know.. I think it could possibly add an interesting dynamic in the gameplay, but can also risk to make it unnecessarily clunky. I guess it should be experimented and tweaked a little, but if it's also too complicated to implement from a dev standpoint, just forget about everything edit: just read the last comment.. gotta try your mod man!

Hello! I don't know if it's the right place to write, mine is just a shoutout to the developers and modders of 0ad Delenda Est, because I really loved their work!! I just recently downloaded and played 0ad which is an impressive game already, but is only after trying DE that I really found complete satisfaction from the game. Although more experimental, I found the gameplay of DE a more polished and definitive version, adding a new layer of depth and complexity to the vanilla core. I felt the need to write about it on reddit ahaha Since, as far as I understood, both 0ad and DE mod are mostly passion projects, I couldn't help but recognize the amazing effort of all developers and artists involved. Now, I wanted to write in the forum as well to propose a further idea for the gameplay, since is still a work in progress. I don't know if new ideas are welcomed or this is the right place, but here we are. Please don't kill me. I come from a long experience playing a Haemimont Game, Imperivm (this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperivm:_Great_Battles_of_Rome) and there's an interesting element in the gameplay, such as food supplies for the army. Basically, there's a decay on the HP of your units, the furthest they march away from your town and villages, so you have to plan to have enough food supplies before starting a long campaign of conquest. Now, I don't know exactly how this could be translated into 0ad world, but it could be something related to territory influence, with some attack/defense penalty or HP decay - similar to what already happens to outpost - when you stations your army for too long outside your borders. This could open new strategic possibilities, for example giving a new importance to territory expansion, and also -maybe- prevent from just spamming the enemy bases with armies, forcing for a more calculated approach to conserve the troops. The reverse could happen for the defense, meaning that in case of attack the units in your territory result to have some bonus for being inside your area. Of course, together with this there must be also a system to secure supplies to the army in enemy's territory. In the game I mentioned beforehand (Imperivm) this happened by assigning mules with food to the battalion. I don't know if the same could be implemented, or other solution would be better, for example some technologies to unlock that counter-balance the decay/penalty effect, or the already existing "upgrade" button of the units. The idea basically would be to make the conquest of other territories less obvious and more costly, requiring more planning effort than just flooding the gates with units. I don't know if this makes any sense ahaha I just thought about this because I appreciated the details such as the slave/citizen mechanics introduced in DE, because it gives a great element of historical accuracy, and at the same time it opens up an alternative way to play the game, bringing it to a slower pace before booming. So, similarly, I just wanted add my two cents with an element of realism and strategy. In any case just take my words of appreciation from a simple guy who really enjoyed the game and can't wait for the next Alpha release! Ad maiora semper!