alre

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.

I guess because temples are nice features and you want some use to them.

not necessarely. when placing the walls it's easy to guess if there will be gaps or if the segments will rather touch. try.

in (very) short: when you place walls, destroy turrets before building them, they take building time, way to much stone, and are useless.

healers are UP. I suppose @ChronA meant any type of resource gathering. Doesn't seem like a bad idea to me, but it could turn them from UP to OP. However, I'm not sure healers need a correction (a less steep improvement from promotions would be nice though), because it makes sense to me if they are only used in tiny numbers.

but if the forest is half-cut, doesn't it look strange to have all the bushes on the outside only? is this actually for performance reasons?

The side with extra javelineers almost always won. Although I too must admit I didn't sign down all the results, so I'm going by memory. Also when priests work well, it's just few of them (they support champions wonderfully). I agree that maybe archers would be a better comparison for priests. I chose javelineers because are. more comparable to them in range. Also healers are costier so it didn't feel they deserved an easy benchmark. Anyway I'd say that any other ranged unit other than skirmishers are quite UP in this alpha (or rather they are OP, but you would also use spears otherwise).

Not really. I made tests, a support javelineer makes your melee survive better than a priest. I tried 100% spearmen battles, and also 50% pikemen + 50% javelines. I don't know why but not even level 3 healers could save those pikemen from an army with extra skirmishers (the opposing army had skirmishers instead of healers, 1 to 1). I also tried spearmen champions, and they work better with healers instead. Metal? No please! At least now you can train priests without problems when you have extra food. Stone maybe? As in temples? By the way, it's not like they are totally useless in this alpha either. If you have a level 3 priest somewhere, it arguably means that he had repaid his cost. It's just that only a smaller part of their job is during battles.

whatever is your army composition, healers have a very weak effect on battles, a single javelineer deals more damage a priest can heal. The value of priests is given by the fact that they can keep healing your troops after they stop fighting. If your army is fighting without rest, it makes much more use of a javelineer than a priest. However, note that, while ranged soldiers get almost no benefit from veterancy, veteran healers are extremely more effective than base healers, also note that healers have their dedicated set of techs in addition to blacksmith techs for soldiers, so it is possible to have healers make a decisive impact to battles (especially in support of melee infantry champions), but it requires a lot of preparation, and I honestly don't see how can it be worth it.