alre

I noticed today that han fields look... mmmh, let's say they look weirder than some stone wall. I'm guessing that's impossible to create buildings that go under ground level in 0ad, but it would be much more logical if rice fields looked more like square patches of low terrain, circled by simple embankments on their sides. Something less eyecatching, it's just fields. Now they look like some kind of hot springs. Of course if fields are built on slopes, than the current model are much better.

a change in the role of pikemen or elephants, DE farmland or bushes, bonuses for formations, are just examples of things that may be changed, or maybe not, but are relevant for the present topic. I'm not saying new assets block the development of the game, and I don't believe that, I was just expressing a sincere worry I would have if I were to create a new asset myself.

Why not a campaign teaching multiplayer principles and standards? That's something you can do better than others. The only problem is that it could be made obsolete easily, by changes relatively small changes in the game. But the game is accumulating some inertia anyway, with all the new assets.

shouldn't C be "quit and view summary" instead?

Elephants are now the only counter to siege towers, which would be riddicously OP if they were faster. I am against turning 0ad in a tank battles game.

I never said that your observation was wrong or out of place, and I never attributed the statement that archers are faster than other units, that's what @BreakfastBurrito_007 said. There's no need to get offended.

It's not about the weight of a sword, light infantry is understood to have been more mobile than havy infantry in general. My biggest problem with @BreakfastBurrito_007's idea, however, is about gameplay: slowing down archers would kill their defining tactics, which are hit and run and archer rushes. Those are what make archers so fun to play, and if we slow them down they will be heavily crippled. What BB wants is to reduce their effective range around defensive positions, and that can be achieved in many ways, not only lowering archers speed. I think reducing archers damage at higher distances - either by raising arrows spread (already in SVN I believe), or enforcing a fixed damage dependent on distance - is the best way out of this bog, it would not change archers identity, but would make them just enough less effective in what they do best. It doesn't have any creepy eco implication, and it doesn't push us back in this endless swing where every alpha we reconsider the choices made in the last releases. Light infantry speeds were made equal for good reasons. And no, archers are not faster than slingers or javeliners, they have the same stats.

but that doesn't happen currently. My idea was lowering attack range of other melee to see if it helps it. Maybe with unit pushing if not with a24 engine already.

This I agree. It's not going to make a real city anyway.

how is it plain to have an administrative center of a "something" without houses, production, anything really, just eight chickens?

those won't make the game feel more realistic though.

I don't know how reliable the poll is, as many options were added later, but if I'm to say what I think, it's that it makes no much sense to me to try to take farms away from the cc. It's not going to make the game more realistic because the cc itself is not realistic. A defendable dropsite/store makes a lot of sense in itself, unfortunately though, that is no way related to the meaning of the words "civic center" or to they way the building is depicted. If I start a game with just a defendable dropsite, I will of course make fields around it, while civic centres were built by cities that were already populated, fed and defended. Agoràs were built in the middle of the cities because people needed to go to the agorà to participate in democratic decisions, public trials and whatnot. Were they used as dropsites, they would have been built in the countryside. In other words, either we accept the way the game works, with its weird but gameplay-wise functional city layout, or we change the game radically, by not giving a cc to players at the start of the game, but just a defendable dropsite that also looks like one. Here a slightly more developed idea: Moving the farms to less defendable positions is another bucket of worms and is a thing we can do regardless by enforcing one worker per farm, as @Feldfeld said. Also automatic spawning of fields around farmsteads would help (reseeding, kind of), but neither of these will change the fact that at the start of the game players have one preferential spot where to build farms, which is around the cc. It's only logic.

love it. I had in mind to try to create a mod like that.

I like the proposal of @Dakara of disabling the rank system for mercenaries. It's a good idea because makes them an instant reward (good warrior, fast train), but not a long term investment. That would be even more evident if combined with @wowgetoffyourcellphone's proposal of negating loot collected from them. Pushing it a little more we can even make that they are not cured by garrison or temples, so they are 100% expendable. Making them builders maybe, but not gatherers, would also help in this same direction. For better distinction, we could give mercs a selection circle with a square inside, like chinese coins: it's a symbol easy to recognise internationally, but I guess if we wanted better cultural coherence, we could make different symbols in the circle for each civ, resembling their coinage. I say the square is a good option. A variation is needed if they are made so different from citizens. About making them in ready-made companies, I support the idea, I had proposed the same here:

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.