alre

"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.

@Yekaterina does that only remove the spread or does it also assures that every shot hits? I personally think that the best part of random spread is its rendering, wich looks better than 100% precise projectiles. But that's not the only thing, I also think that it's a good thing that ranged units deal more damage from closer, so if we remove spread, I'd also make damage dealt dependent on distance. All in all I'm in favour of such a rework, I think it would make the game simpler and more consistent. Archers can shoot much further than that. We know it well enough because archers were used in good numbers in more recent times (english longbows). We have some conflicting sources on which weapon had longer range, it's generally speculated that slings were somehow superior in that regard, but most probably they achieved fairly similar results.

The main problem with palisades, is that at now their role overlaps that of walls almost exactly. I know it sounds bad, but a good solution would be to remove them completely, until we find a way to introduce more anti-personnel defensive options. This at once would make it disappear those weird palisade mazes that can be seen sometimes in multiplayer games, substituded by saner stone walls.

Could foundations be made invisible to other players? I always liked that approach better.

I like the idea of making towers stop shooting while upgrading. Maybe if you hit them while upgrading, they could also stop or lose progress in the upgrade. I think building time of sentry tower is balanced enough though.

About palisades, I'm not against making them weaker, but I must say they have little use in p1. They are mostly used against rams/elephants actually.

easy enough if you are next to your opponent. You may know he/she has a tower, in that case and if you feel you are ahead, you may try to steal it. It's a very rewarding tactic.

There is currently no issue with this in the meta. Better not to change anything. Anyway, sentry towers are already a target and a weak spot in p2, because they are quite easily conquered. Players usually rush to upgrade them as soon as they get to p2.

If houses were completely useless defensively, it would be a total bore to build them though. Walls have that same problem: they need focus and time to build, but they are quite sparing in fun.

Also, I think the game punishes enough those players that lose houses and, more often than not, whole cities, so I don't think there is any need of additional mechanics to punish them further in the case they are left with more population than they could train.

I like the idea of making houses give more loot, including maybe food and metal, in account of family possessions. It would help turning raiding in a more enjoyable and profitable activity. However, I mostly like how houses are used currently, and it's not really unproper, from an historical point of view, to use houses to wall your settlement, so I would keep their defensive stats in line with the ones of other civilian buildings.

I was thinking: If one really wanted more realism, a solution could be to build three functionally differenct CCs, instead of just upgrading the first and only one. For example: Village phase CC - rural center, works as a dropsite, has limited garrison power Town phase CC - acropolis/hilltop fort, doesn't work as dropsite, but has high defensive capacities City phase CC - agorà/central square, mostly economic building, doesn't defend Note that the historical position of such locations would not be the same, and that they could coexist. Anyway, such a different approach to phasing makes more sense if looked as a more nuanced progression (instead of neat numbered phases), where completing some building gives you access to other buildings which give you access to further buildings and techs, until you have unlocked all the progression tree.

Petra and Kiara are have the same structure? I mean the code.

I'm a big fan of EE fields spawning around farms. However, they mostly make sense if fields are only allowed one worker or very few anyway. If you only need one farm in your whole city, that is not going to look more natural or realistic.

3 visually different versions of CCs would be a greatly appreciated addition anyway.

@hyperion - micro is already important in 0ad - just because micro is generally important for rts, it doesn't mean that we must commit to make it more important than it already is. it's a non sequitur. - in fact, 0ad guide principles precisely say that sheer apm should not be the discriminant factor for victory, so, even if in other rts games it was possible for 5 archers to win against 20 (which I don't even believe it's the case) there is no reason for which 0ad should not aim to set itself apart in this regard - I, for one, was convinced about 0ad when I saw a video of a match between two top players and I noticed that micro was much less relevant than it is for other games like starcraft. And I'm convinced that most casual players dislike the excessive importance of micro in games like that - even if we made possible to nullify archers power trough micro, this kind of solution would only be valid for a handful of top players, while the rest of us would still have to deal with an unbalanced gameplay. I can't see how this is desirable.

Not necessarely. The more variation in attack strategies, the better.

I meant that people generally attacks either in age 1 or 3. I think the best scenario would be people attacking at any time, with any civ.

I can't possibly agree more. It doesn't make sense that a civ doesn't have any unit capable of shooting anything as far as an arrow... until they enter a tower. Slingers should have the same range as archers, and all civs should have access to at least one of these units. That would also be an improvement in realism. That's because in 0 ad age 2 is not very useful, and that's another problem still.

Maybe It's me, but I can't see how your proposed mod on unit-AI changes that anyhow. Maybe write it again in a more precise form.

I'm confused. Wasn't dancing done by shuffling some hero around, (or better, giving him a patrol order) always within the range of the opposing army? Because in that case I don't see any improvement in your proposal. What do you mean by "dancing"?