alre

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"?

So you are asking that arrows are slower, so you can micromanage soldiers away from them, but you also want unit-AI to be robust to dancing. How exactly? I must say I'm skeptic.

Let's be clear, you want dancing back, that's what you call microing battles? Dancing is not the solution, and it's not dancing that made a23 more fun than a24. Quite the opposite. I think there microing already has its right role in the game, and should be particularly useful only in limited occasions, like with javelin cav and siege. This is not the issue and all the proposals you are talking about, at least in my mind, have noting to do with extending micro importance in battles. By the way, using micro and fortifications, battles can already be won by inferior forces. I'm quite a "military player", and I do it all the time.

while I can generally support this call for a wider vision, I don't think we need it now. We want back some things that were ok in a23, so it's clear that there's no need for a change of paradigm. A simple way to encourage hit and run, especially for javeliners, could be to skip turning time after a throw. We can also take all turning times away if we decide to let go on projectiles randomness. In that case, dancing would stop being an issue altogether.

and what would that change, other than making phasing a bigger priority?

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`.