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instead of champions, could we take basic siege to age 2 instead? rams as they are in game are good for age 2 I think. Would it be so bad if we had anti-siege* in age 1 and rams in age 2 already? It would basically be like AoE age 2 to 4. *swords, if we really want to keep pikes dealing the same kind of damage arrows have

fortifications are already being nerfed significantly. archers too. I don't like the idea of slowing them down and I think their speed has been leveled with other ranged units for good reason.

what's the biggest change from a23 in this regard? is it training times? I think training women has become too convenient, and loosing some of them, even in early game, is not much of a trouble.

I often have this problem when joining and when hosting. When I cannot join a game, switching to another connection generally allows me to pass. I don't have any clue about what the problem may be.

For me, lopes version is the best so far.

Those rock textures are pretty awesome. What's the plan with random maps? There I could help a bit.

I don't think this would really affect gameplay, but it does look nice. I wouldn't make archers more limited in the near distance than slingers though, there is really no justification.

I wanted to say that both archers and slingers had side weapons and could fight close quarter, but if they weren't to, slingers needed more room than archers, not the opposite.

But, isn't it an unnecessary complication to have random spread of arrows too? no one uses loose formation, even if archers are extremely popular, and ranged units in general always were. If I remember correctly, archers in AoE shoot at the exact target.

So having a loose formation actually helps against archers? That's a surprise! For some reason I always assumed that only the target risked damage. What about friendly fire?

noone liked my proposal of having formations uniform soldiers speed, while they would have randomly different speeds? I thought it was a nice idea. For realism, mainly, but with some interesting gameplay implications.

Archers are being nerfed in A25. So maurya will be very much stoppable, for archers are their main weapon. Elephant archers are being reworked too. Siege towers, especially if garrisoned with pikemen, are very effective against cavalry, and even more so they are against slingers. Not sure about catapults, but many civs don't have them. If we are talking about how units should be in a more realistic gameplay, elephants shouldn't be effective against siege towers, but siege towers should have very little mobility (little more of actual towers, in fact early siege towers were just towers, sitting still). For this to be playable, siege towers and rams should be buildable directly on the field by soldiers. Slingers used to be like that. They could be used to tear down towers and walls, which is grossly unrealistic. Also slingers being particularly effective against siege towers is quite unrealistic actually.

indian elephants are a strong counter for siege towers, that's true, but they also are the only counter siege towers have. please don't turn the meta in a series of clustered siege towers destroying everything on their path. ranged units, and skitmishers in particular, are already the best counter for elephants at now. I don't think there's need for a hard bonus.

I'd be fine if retreating would be as harmful as it already is (particularly when in a bad position), my point is that I fear the new pathfinder changes that, and thus I'm asksing for a counterbalance. I think such a mod would be very interesting. Actually, among all proposals, this is the one that has both the most likely side effects, and the most interesting implications. Have we any testing program or schedule?

In ancient battles, only a handful of men were usually killed during each battle, most kills were scored while pursuing the retreaters. I don't think we should make retreating easier with this new pathfinder, without balancing things out in some way*. Cutting the retreat with additional forces is helpful and always will, but shouldn't be necessary for inflicting reasonable losses to a retreating force. But maybe I'm exaggerating the role of the pathfinder. *@ChronA already mentioned running charges and directional armor, other options that come to my mind are slowing people down when hit, or having soldiers moving at randomly different speeds when not in formation. That's very possible. Also, I don't see any other way to differentiate the many avaiable formations. But to be honest, I'd like it more if formations had benefits by themselves, rather than being a liability that needs a hard bonus to be useful.

maybe I'm saying nonsense, but would it be possible to have an open game protected from dos by switching it to a password protected game automatically, before the match starts? I hope the game itself could do this automatically (but if the game crashes it should be possible to rejoin without ever having to know the password).

I had read that a new push mechanic was added to the game, and I wanted to try it out. This is a comment on that feature. Tag to @wraitii as he/she wrote it. I love the idea, but I don't think it plays out too well. With this new feature, formations are totally worthless, because people move even too well. Since there are no chain bumps slowing down mobs, there is almost no friction when moving blobs of people, which makes retreat very easy. I don't think I like the idea: the damage taken retreating is a big element in game strategy. Also, if moved to point when not in formations, people can form very dense masses that are both OP and weird. I suggest to raise the distance at wich there is repulsion. Another thing I noticed, is that when moving people and rams together, people can pass trough rams like they are made of air, but rams can't do the same, with the result that moving rams is possibly even more frustrating than it already was. Is it possible to add "mass" to rams and elephants, so they can push other people and maybe not be forced to make long roundabouts to avoid people and instead push it? Formations could do the same thing.

@ChronA I liked your rant. However, I don't think you are quite right. For starters, what @wowgetoffyourcellphone said is very much true, balances breaks every new alpha, regardless of the number of civs. Then, I think you may miss that in FLOSS projects like this one, it's not that doing some work for a certain feature really takes away work from other features, becouse everyone does what they like better. Of course some balance is needed, but this is why this discussion is happening. At the end, it's really up to @Stan`.

I know, I was referring to that too. However, more could be done, and I was also thinking about gaia mercenary camps, that were proposed to be integrated from Delenda Est. If that wasn't done, I think something else is necessary to differentiate mercenaries from normal units. For a start, the fact that mercenaries are faster to train is kind of defeated by the fact that in many civs they require their own building. What if the mercenary camp costed much more (mainly food and metal) and at the moment that you build it, a small company of mercenaries spawn next to it? After being built, the camp could have several roles: a building where to train other mercenaries, or one that if you lose it, the mercenaries leave you.

Considering the striking difference in price, simply being an otherwise unavaiable kind of citizen soldiers is not enough of a difference to justify any mercenary unit. I hope mercenaries get a strong rework in a25, at that point having both citizen and mercenary versions of the same unit could actually make real sense.

As I already wrote once in a different thread, I'd like to create a random map where height and reliefs have an important role, but I need answer to some important questions: how can one access the heightmap from random map generation? how is passability computed from heightmap? how does that relate to height rendering in game? how can one apply a specific texture to impassable terrains? An answer to one of these questions alone, is better than nothing.

savanna biom is the worst, let's just not use it.

I agree that we can change dropsites for individual civilizations, but I have to admit it doesn't sound so exciting, instead it could be confusing for players switching civ often. I propose we combine changes in dropsites to other big economy changes, so that the difference is more enjoyable, and we should make similar civs have similar ecos, so that the differences are easier to remember. Some possible economic changes are: - slaves - buildings that are free but take more time to build, like a23 ptole - dedicated builders - economic buildings like a23 brit mill - fish traps - ship dropsite - variations in the use of the corral or the market - currency - economic role of temples or priests I think these choices should be taken when reworking individual civs, so that they have sense to that culture, and combines with the other gameplay aspects of that civ so that it's fun and also reasonably balanced.

guys it's not like you are forced to use it

We could make that it only works as a dropsite if it's in your territory. And we could have a tech to make it work in ally territory as well. In any case, I think we should make it easier and cheaper, for any civ, to claim new territories, without the need of building fully fledged civic centres. This would level the ground in any case.