alre

I think it's safe to guess that he meant "attack and destroy".

lol. noone suggested that.

Between a24 and a25, the biggest change has arguably been unit pushing. This new feature has succeeded in smoothing unit movement considerably, but has made much more than that: it has changed they way units move and look, and the way they approach and engage enemy targets. I always felt like in this regard, mine was a minority opinion, but after discussing with a friend who was much more enthusiast than me about unit pushing, I think we can possibly agree on some way to enhance it, so I will speak out about what I think it's wrong about it. Units interpenetrate basically every time you move them. When you have a whole bunch moving together, they form queues so tight that they look like solid worms of people. In some cases, it may be hard to tell how many soldiers there are, making it particularly difficult to predict how a battle is going to go. It is even more difficult to tell how many soldiers are getting killed, because they are so densely packed in the melee that people dying are invisible inside the mob. Rams can sometime interpenetrate so deeply that two of them may look like there is only one, while they are attacking a building. Choke points are no longer of any real strategic relevance, you have to fit melee units into them to make them effective, and that's usually impossible/unfeasible. And the slightest gap between two buildings allows a whole cavalry army to pour in between in a couple of seconds. Any passage, narrow or large, can fit an army as large as you want. I think it wasn't necessary to deviate so strongly from how unit movement looked before, the new pathfinder is more andanced and effective, but it went too far on this new road. It is ok if a big mass of units struggles to go trough a narrow passage, that's how things work in reality anyway. And besides that, I think the look of battles is worse now than before, less clear and more hazardous. In any case, unit interpenetration is bad and should be avoided if possible. Thank you for bearibg my rant, let me know what you think.

by this same reasoning, they already have no sense, except for gates.

yes but would you like to have vision decreased as soon as you get near a tre?

structures are buildings. is that what you referring to? forest groves are in delenda est only, I don't know how much are they compatible with this kind of aura design.

one could have an aura applied to units in the forest, that: - lower their vision range - make them invisible to enemy units - make them capable of seeing other invisible units. Provided that forest grooves are implemented, all these changes seem not too hard. Hardest thing seems to me to make the aura of the groove responsive to deforestation. I'm not sure about how to do point 2 e 3 either, but the undying nephalim did those already.

in practice you were buying too much of the same resources. try to gather them instead. you can buy some resources if you have a more or less urgent need, but you need a balanced economy, and try to gather everything you need. be aware of what kind of resources you are going to need in each phase, and plan your economy accordingly.

If it was for me, I'd make all ships move by rowing. That's how naval warfare was done in the mediterranenan, and that's also how ships would move up into rivers. However, it would still be a stretch to say that this would be a totally realistic solution: oceanic gallic ships relied mostly on wind and sails, fishing vessels also generally did.

come on! we all love it! tell us more, what are the current issues, how can we help?

I would rather nerf cavalry giving them wide turns than slow acceleration, but it's hard to say without trying.Anyway, I hope that would make cavalry only stronger in the open, which is realistic and adds strategic depth.

yes, a ship that magically has wind always coming from its back will indeed bend to the outside when turning, for what it's worth. but anyway, I love the U turn movement, tell me more about it! what do you think about applying it to other entities too, like rams, chariots, formations, cavalry?

lol, I did it once, to a friend.

seleucids are not wow's favourite serious edit: maurya are quite a bit too skewed, and in general differentiation is nice if geared towards preferences and play stiles, what are those here for each civ? I suspect this rework is simply going to turn into some civ being OP and the others being sub-par because some particular combination of boni turns out to be simply too effective in building up a good army quickly, which is how the game works now. nice ideas though, I like the persian ice houses. very pretty.

I think the best idea so far is making hack resistance lower for hits coming from the back. mods like this have already been proposed, but were never seriously taken into consideration. I feel like there are two sides among the balancing testers, where one would like a game with more "AoE" variation, as with more varied units with different fancy stats, but same old mechanics, and the other one would like more realistic depth in the fights, and more varied tactical situations - not talking about the conservatives of course. the first group will frown upon proposals like these.

maybe it was made this way because in smaller bodies of water you do find smaller waves. big waves may look out of place. if not particularly windy though, most of the time the water would be still. anyway, I really feel like insisting that it doesn't make sense to try to be accurate about the historical choice of materials and then have rice fields in patches like those. I mean, it's both unreal and eye catchy, so I guess it's a tradeoff, buth mind about where do you stand.

it depends on how the algorithm works. if it just searches for the closest unit to the last one killed, that would be the same unit for all your shooters, and after that one, still another unique target, and so on. otherwise we could make things more complicate, but with a computational expense (how else?).

today I was just thinking about how a 1v1 could last more than 20 minutes in this alpha, when this replay came out in the you tube thread: I don't know about you, but I was amazed by what Lorenz has managed to pull out in this game. I think that, with the exception of the very first minutes, he played better than @LetswaveaBook for all the match. Of course Letswaveabook was also playing very well, he could afford to slip a couple of times because he was really never in danger. What do you think about it? Do you agree with me here on this particular match? Do you think, more in general, that the next iteration of the game should have late game more decisive?

it could lend to overkill

nice. that would be best, I think. possible. it should be well documented in any case.

I think planned constructions should be invisible for all players except the owners. It would make some situations (like places a building next to a enemy tower, or simply in a advanced position) more comfortable and avoid some possible exploit (like placing planned structures to attract enemy catapults fire away from your army).

the possibility is intriguing, because historically it would happen quite often that the same soldier would fight on horse or on foot depending on the context. However, for a game like 0AD, maybe it's a bit too much to show things like these. The game must stay relatively simple.

I don't believe to much that has ben said here in the last posts. - I have read in history sources, that polearms were often weapons of choice of footed soldiers against knights, on 1v1 just as much as in mass, and even if massed soldiers can more easily stop a cavalry charge, I don't really see what difference does the weapon make in that - positioning your soldiers is a big factor in every RTS, and formation can help in this, regardless of boni or such. Also open formation can help limiting ranged sources of damage - consider that in 0AD soldiers don't fight in formation (ranged units may do, but not melee) so it doesn't make much sense to me to grant them any bonus. It is true that formations had a role, historically, in combat too, but for that you'd need formations much more flexible than those we have, so that soldiers can stay in formation while fighting

aI made a mod that implements my proposals on formations. I think the improvement is stark, here's a preview: Some detail: Assignment of units to formation places This is already very similar to the current algorithm, the only difference is point 3.2. I tried hard to introduce it, but, for simple that it sounds, I can't seem to make it work. Sorting the array doesn't seem to have any effect, I noticed it's always the same units that take the farther positions, those left out by the others. I'm attaching the js file with attemted edits. Also point 2 has seen an improvememt, similar to the one dealt in the next section. Rotation movement This had the greatest impact, in particular the second point. Makes formations a lot more usable I think. First point is dealt as in my last post of June 30. Column formation This was easiest. Not much to add about it. Further considerations and questions - I did quite some code refactoring, as much as I thought it would be acceptable. External use of some function may break, although it seems unlikely to me. - I'm not sure I respected coding conventions either. - Formations now don't get formed anymore in the mean direction of their members. - Browsing Formation.js history, I was startled noticing that actually my proposals are nothing new and already where in the engine some time ago (rP14292, rP14300). I'm not sure what to do with this information. - How is LoadFormation supposed to be used? - The only way to make formation turns more natural than this, is to change how entities turn around obstacles, so that they do not do it on position, but rather sliding around the corner as they turn. The improvement would be evident for formations, but would also be noticeable for rams and cavalry. I'm not sure where's the code for that. - I can keep making improvements if you like, my goal is to make formations good looking, and also reasonable even for competitive games, and I'd like my edits to go in the main game. (edit/clarification/license: I renounce to all rights on my work on the mod and agree to the legal disclaimer) Formation formation-mod-proposal.pyromod

linothorax makes sense for elite citizen soldiers, same as other factions.