alre

She really is. Very positive attitude.

It was this one:

There are various ways one could implement espionage: special units that are invisible to other players, exept for some units or buildings who can see them (outpost are obvious candidates, as other spies, but maybe also heroes, other towers, etc.) this is how EE2 did it special units that are not invisible to other players, but could get confused with their own units, other players should personally spot them, and in the very moment they try to give them any order, their true nature is revealed, and they are attacked by other units. bribing units to get access to their sight. for what I know, this is how 0AD does it, isn't it? I never use it. having a tech that temporaryly makes you see anything in any point in the map you decide. This approach is avaiable in Imperium. having a tech that only takes out fog of war in that region of the map. Maybe when the tech is being started to research, the situation in that region is recorded, and when the tech is finished the information you get is already old as much as the time needed to research. All these options have one thing in common, which is they are used to get intel on the enemy base and defenses. The same thing can almost always be achieved with a simple scout, which makes espionage something always renounciable, more so if you think that vision and intel is not something essencial either. This much to say that any of these options, and surely many others, could be given to specific civs, with relations to their history and lore I guess. Giving different civs different means to do the same thing is an example of good asymmetrical design.

I see, nice info. I renounced to any phisical/probabilistic derivation, and went for the easy path. Linear function: Every ten meters of distance reduce damage dealt by one point Exponential function: Every ten meters of distance reduce damage dealt by X%. It's viable too, but I would let gameplay decide: there are too many things to consider anyway, like different arrows for different distances, probability of missing, ecc.

@Yekaterina how you derived it?

My formula for damage dealt by archers could be 7.5 - distance/10m. when an archer shoots, his target always takes that damage. Random spread of arrows may be computed for the only sake of rendering the arrow flight, or not at all. Also javeliners and slingers should have damage scaled similarly. Note that the particular formula is just a suggestion, that seems good to me and is as simple as it can get. Random spread is not so simple.

I get it. So this mod simply provides a baseline for accuracy, pumping up long term damage especially at longer distances. Don't think I like it though. What I personally would like most is a deterministic (random is ok, but it doesn't make much sense in a game with health points I believe) damage that depends on distance, similarly to spread, but doesn't depend on movement or any other thing that has to do with details that aren't in the scope of 0 AD to simulate, like density of formations.

Your point about pikes absorbing projectiles is interesting, but you can't possibly use a 6 meters long heavy pike like a baseball bat, you may at most hopes it catches something by chance. Also, phalangites couldn't move shields with the same liberty as hoplites and legionaries (they needed both hands for moving the pike), so they couldn't make a wall shield like other heavy infantry. That was a very common tactic, it was not unique to romans (although it's understood that romans employed a perfected version sometimes, called testudo). I did a quick reserch, and I found this interesting Q&A. It's also worth noting that phalangites wore very effective armor, that persians weren't used to confront, Alexander himself used to wear an armor of the same kind phalangintes had access to (linothorax). In a fair simulation like 0AD, if players are in pair with armor and armor-piercing technologies, archers should be pretty effective against phalangites, more so than against hoplites, I think, not less for sure.

Sure about that? What's your source? Persian archers are actually the only ones currently rendered with a shield in game. I am happy that there is willingness to discuss roles, but I must say @Yekaterina's proposal confuses me. Most asked changes with historical groundings are: - increase importance of melee with respect to ranged - make pikemen stronger as melee fighters, not as arrows soackers, like @LetswaveaBook said. I believe @borg- made a mod like this. - mitigate, or straight out cancel the differences in damage types among melee units

@ChronA can that proportion depend on distance, regardless of if the unit is moving or not, or if it's next to other people or not? Or maybe change damage directly (depending on distance)?

true that. the second part of the clip is the relevant one here.

there must be limits on how micro can be effective, otherwise dancing is acceptable too. My idea is that you should never be required to tell your men exactly who to aim to, there shouldn't be strategies to attract enemy fire to units that are a distraction and that, at the same time, manage to avoid projectiles or the consequences of hits taken in any way. There is request for lowering turn times of jav cavalry. That should not work for dancing though. Assigning damage to whovever is being shot, without any randomness, would resolve this problem once and for all, and it's the same path taken by all AoE-style RTS I know. I think it's mostly a good idea. By the way, he problem with that video is actually that the camels weren't shooting at the cav. You can see that they are chasing women and ignoring the horsemen. If cav attacked the camels, they would have achieved even better results.

maybe not stone, so its price is differentiated in respect to the fortress. 300 is good, was it this the price it used to have in a23?

Make them cost metal and give them rams again. This change was much contested, so let's revert it.

In theory, it should be Castra auxiliorum. However, I don't think it's attested, only references I find online are suspicious latin written blogs and forums.

Why not give the same bonus to infantry? Why only archers and not also slingers/skirms? It's something that many players would like, and comes out sometimes. I don't know why it's not in the main game. Maybe there's fear that if melee was stronger, the game would change too much too fast, unsettling the community. I would test with pleasure a mod that buffs all melee. I mean, player vs player.

If we gave them shorter training time than archers and slingers, that alone would be a very significant change. It would give them a different role economically. Archers currently have the same speed of other light infantry. It's only logic. Have you checked out how was it changed in SVN? Now it only gives the range buff, and maybe it's also more expensive, I don't recall. They need an attack buff, I agree here. But spash damage was changed in line damage, that should be still good. Note that it's quite logic that artillery is not cost-effective against archers, because otherwise they would be op against all infantry, and guarding them with pikes would be enough to make them absolutely imbeatable. Do you mean that at Agincourt bows had little influence, and that 25 000 heavely armored knight and gros valets were defeated by around 2000 english knights and some 6000 peasants? Of course melee troups were employed by all armies, but many of them made much more reliance on ranged troups. Also, you are biased because you are only considering pitch battles, which are by definition decided by melee troups. The rest of the war was an affair for light troups. I agree here. Consider the importance of micro though. That's it. In an RTS, heavy infantry can only be that. (and a guarding force protecting siege). I agree, let's just buff melee attack of cavalry and infantry alike. Spears and pikes already have a bonus against cav. That said, I don't think rising damage dealt by melee inf will change much in higher level games, but it will make even less convenient to confront it with cav, and will encourage nubs to use melee more I think.

Mmmh I don't totally agree. Slingers lose to archers. They are fine if covered by heavy infantry, but in general they are not so useful anymore. If the meta didn't have so many arrows, maybe they'd be good... maybe even too good, like in a23 Yes. Main change is the nerf of fortifications. I think they are going to make it right with a25. Mmmh yes... sometimes. During all history there have been a lot of civilizations that relied almost exclusively on ranged troups, and they had their fair share of success. I don't know why melee troups deal so little damage in this game, it could be much increased, however, my fear is that that wouldn't change the game so much, because you can prevent them to do any damage now, by just avoiding them. Melee trooups are already most useful if used in large bulks, penetrating in dept if not stopped, and possibly escorting rams directly to the opposing cc. I had a game against a player that employed that strategy while I only had archers, plus a very small batch of axe cavalry, and I lost my cc, but I won the game because the other player had lost his/her whole army to my archers, I was lucky that my cav could kill a lot of rams, and I archer-rushed all around his/her city befoure building back (then my teammate arrived and well... I think I would have won anyway). That player also had some javeliner, but I think he couldn't manage them with enough care, because they got killed very fast. I think this is the problem: spearmen are slow, pikemen slower, and skirmishers have a short range, so it's hard to manouvre them effectively. But yeah, if melee was more common, skirmisher would find their spot maybe. Archers, on the other hand, require less attention in general, just as slingers do when archers are not around. This is a considerable advantage, especially for nubs and for players that like to focus on economy. Slowing down archers won't prevent them from pivoting a defensive position, just gives them less effective range around it. This large range archers have to make hit and run strikes is the one unique thing that makes archer so fun to play. I'm against taking it from them. I'd rather lower their damage (against melee, not skirms).

Real gameplay is not like open field simulations. In 0AD positioning is very important, and archers with their range can attack and retreat before having losses, which means they can decide either when or where to fight. The only way to break this is with cavalry (but of course you have archer cavalry). I think this is a fairly realistic thing, it's what ranged units used to do in history: they would provoke the enemy into fight. Another realistic thing is that archers beat javeliners, as the latter are not armored enough to stand the archers volley for the approaching time (historically, they had similar armor, similar shields and side weapons). I proposed, when a24 came out, that javeliners were differentiated lowering their price, another thing (realistic for other reasons) is that archers and slingers have longer training. Also, if bush-hiding is implemented, I can see some potential in javeliners there... PS: lowering the importance of positioning is something undergoing, so we can expect range advantage to lose some importance in a25.

what switching some toggle, like pressing f6 or something, a pink square, or anything visible for that matter, appears under all animals and fruit trees/bushes? edit: just seen stan' work, very good! they are not only visible, but also very nice

"when a man with a javelin meets a man with a bow, the men with the javelin will be a dead man"

Equalize range of archers and slingers and give one of the two to almost every civ if not all of them. It is true that bows were overall a superior weapon to slings, that is proven by history in many ways. However, I think it mostly boils down to the fact that bows are more versatile than slings: they are better for hunting, and much much better for shooting behind cover, which is a key advantage in sieges. By the way, in the ancient world noone bothered equipping their armies with slings or bows, that kind of weapons were personal, and cared by their owners from the moment they were taught to use it by their fathers. At that time, it appears from the sources that slingers were generally valued no less than archers, and they were considered interchangeable.

@Yekaterina Oh well I'm much behind with the number of mods I'd like to try. If I remember well I still haven't tried any of yours.

There are many mods proposed in this forum, that need serious testing. If we had some general testing schedule arranged in some way, it would be easier for us to join the efforts. I don't have so much free time, and just popping in the lobby when I can, to see if there's someone to try mods with, doesn't work. Or at least it didn't when I tried.

What do we want the role of palisades to be? Because if they can be destroyed easily by both siege and melee, and they don't really affect ranged troups (because they don't), then what's their use? They are just a nuisance, only effective to disturb the pathfinder and attract the fire of idle enemy units.