alre

5) they are not used to games with a MP lobby. It's a rare feat nowadays.

isn't this whole charging thing a bug? I'm kind of impaired now at writing in the forum, but I was doing some testing and soldiers charge only when in a idle formation. I thought it was formations use of running speed leaking somehow.

what's your point? the kushite temple should have people painted in red? anyway, the time reference for the kushite faction in 0AD should include the 25th dinasty and the meroitic kingdom I suppose.

and you can tell women apart from men instead?

Ramming as with Grapjas charge would be nice to see in the game, but would not add any real strategic layer to it. At the moment, naval warfare in the game displays heavy imbalance among civs, lack of rock-paper-scissors mechanincs, and also, I think, unsatisfactory scale of fleets and battles. All these problems stay. All this, together with ships OP-ness and lack of viable counterplay, makes naval maps pretty unpopular in the MP lobby.

I can't write in the forum from my PC. I'm doing this from my cell phone. I have a windows computer, and I usually use chrome, but I also tried edge and IE, and there I can't even log in. It just ignores my tries. In chrome I'm logged in and when I try to submit a reply, it just doesn't save it. Clearing the cache doesn't work, restarting the PC doesn't either. This problem first came out yesterday.

Name me one battle where light infantry is reported to have done more damage than the phalanx. @PyrrhicVictoryGuy is quite right about the macedonian phalanx baing designed to beat hoplite formation, at Chaeronea already it was sufficient for the victory, most probably without cavalry intervention. Hoplites were also very little mobile (excluding reformed troups by Epaminondas) and had no advantage over the macedonian phalanx. But we may also consider that the spear did never come out of use, and saw heavy employement in late roman legions, when general weaponry and armor had changed again.

No, I don't think it's great to have a civ that is uber OP, a couple more that are still quite OP, and a bunch of civs that are mostly crap. We can do better. Also, since when "for gameplay purpose" we want meatshields? To me, that's basically an exploit of UnitAI, and I don't actually think I know other games that have such units (maybe there are, but they are no way necessary to an RTS). Persian shield bearers, for example, could be a better fit for a pierce-resistant unit, but I had the impression that meatshields as a concept was quite unpopular anyway, I'm surprised you like it so much.

just keep their high hack armor, but decrease their pierce armor. so simple. for a reference look at AoE I 'phalanx' unit. don't agree here. we can see macedonian phalanx was not historically invincible, so making it historically accurate doesn't mean that it becomes invincible at all. just really effective in some specific circumstances. anyway, I hope we agree pikes are op, so I'm actually proposing a nerf.

yes, more of the same kind. when I say "10 archer", count some 4 skirmishers instead, and the result is the same. wouldn't you agree that the phalanx was significantly less manouvrable than - as a typical comparison - the roman legion? speed of units in game is based more on general "manouvrability" than on actual speed of moving soldiers.

@BreakfastBurrito_007 it's not a matter of archer or slingers, they all deal the same kind of damage. Unless you are facing a 100% melee opponent, pikes are still OP in a25, compared to other melee infantry.

it certainly depends on the civ, but ptole boom is not bad! and they use pikes a lot. false. I've repeated the test above and it's sufficient to alter the proportions a bit in favour of archers (40 melee + 20 archers) to make pikes prevail on swords as well. and pikes are cheaper too! truth is pikes are extremely resistant to everything, and they don't have counters. also their role in game is a mistification of their historical one. see the liked thread.

about pikemen, remember that it's being asked to change their role: Pikemen are currently OP*, so I think it's a good moment to change their stats completely. *Pikemen currently lose to other melee infantry, but their durability has a great tactical value, and, as long as ranged units are present, pikemen are very effective: I've done some simulations, and 50 pikes win against 50 spears, if backed up with even just 10 archers (on each side), so in practice spears always lose to pikes.

Actually, horse archers were famously capable of shooting at the back of their horses (partian shot). Instead, they had probably more problems while shooting at their weak arm side.

You are saying that simply turning the "citizen" class from visible to invisible is possible and would make no damage, and that deleting it altogether may not too? For factions with significant women partecipation to the military, we can make a woman phenotype to mix with the men. The proportion may be discussed by the historians. Although I wouldn't consider this to be a release breaker.

@m7600 come on just drop it. For most of us, it's not desirable to play a game with historical factions displaying clear politically correct revisionism. If you like the idea though, you can make a mod. It could even be MP compatible. So you get all the FUN you want.

Agree, also there is a line at the other hand: for an example, it would be bad, even if historically accurate, if soldiers could catch and rape enemy women, that would be repulsive and unnecessary. I think that women having different roles from men, and also slaves, both stay well between these lines. In any case, we could add a disclaimer remembering that a game based on historical facts is not meant to advocate the return of any practice of that timeframe. I guess someone may wonder...

shouldn't rostra display, well, rostra?

This is great but I think that asking to micromanage garrison of chariots is too much, chariots shout come out the factory fully garrisoned. I think that what Wow did goes plenty in that direction, but a solution should be find for the problems about directioning fire and UnitAI.

Were hoplites in persian wars always mercenaries? Were they generally ionians? Ionian greeks stayed under persian rule for a long time span, but I don't remember them providing hoplites to persian army, ever. I may very well be missing some known event though.

If we are talking meatshields against line infantry, then you are right. If we are talking about meatshields against arrows, their shield bearers were just perfect. You can see my proposed changes are no better than of current game meetshields, and that all other melee units would smash them. Persian empire hired hoplites many times in their history. Most notable one was a whole army of eleven thousands (Anabasis).

Ok maybe these could do: walk speed: 10.8 -> same as archers crush armor: 15 -> same as other melee infantry pierce armor: 10 -> same as pikes currently hack armor: 3 -> midway between archers (1) and spear/swordmen (5) damage: 1.5 hack + 1.5 pierce every 1 second -> the bare minimum to make them somehow a threat range: 3 m -> same as swordmen, less than spearmen (4 m) health, bonus against cav: unchanged. So basically they would have the meatshied potential of what pikemen are currently in the game, but they would mealt very easily when confronting another melee fighter, as for the very bad hack armor (compared to pikes) and low damage output - I'm being conservative there because I don't like the whole concept of meatshield and I wouldn't like one to work too well.

I don't think it's fair to say that persian infantry was inferior to any other, they were different, not inferior. Persians fielded light infantry, that is represented in the game by archers. Of course if archers meet heavy infantry in close combat, without possibility of retreating, they lose badly, so I don't think there is need to penalize them further (not only persian archers anyway). On the other hand, persian shield bearers should probably be differentiated from greek hoplites, having more pierce resistance, but less hand-to-hand proficiency. They could also be made faster, so that they can move along archers, as they historically did. But I think we could have much more variety in melee soldiers stats in general.

yeah, unless you actually want to use formations.

Slowing down hurt soldiers has sometimes been proposed, that would have deep strategic gameplay implication and I'm quite usure about it, but we could try it, and see how it plays out. Instead, I would love to see some terrains slow down armies. One obvious choise is marches like the ones in the map Rheine marshland, another one is when climbing up hills. This would add strategic depth to gameplay, but it indeed poses a new problem for the pathfinder. Talking about the pathfinder, does anyone here know about the open source game BAR (beyond all reason)? It features acceleration of units, and elevation affecting units speed.