LetswaveaBook

The big thing people seem to be curious about is unit acceleration and the ability for cavalry to escape bad situations. I watched on the SVN version in slow motion and compared speed of an infantry javelineer against the speed of cavalry javelineer. I would assume that the most important factor in this situation is the time cavalry needs to accelarate to a speed such that it is faster than infantry. Only during the first step the infantry javelineer seems a tiny little bit faster. So that seems not very impactful. What does seem impactful is the following: I ran away with a cavalry archer from a chasing spear cavalry. Everytime the spear cavalry attacks, it needs to stop. In A25 that because of this stopping, after the attack finishes and the spear cavalry starts moving, the cavalry archer is about one length of a horse ahead of the spear cavalry. In A25 the spear cavalry needs to accelerate after each stop/attack, the length of the gap will get more than twice as long. Basically chasing and killing cavalry with other cavalry becomes nearly impossible even if your cavalry is faster. If we consider it a problem, a solution would be to reduce the stopping time such that it is close to 0.

Please give me a day to think about how these two will fit together.

Why would it be the only option? I think it does not necessarily need to be this way. It is a decent start, but it is not the only option. I think it is fine if melee is slower. it does not mean that archers can endlessly hit and run, that is a false assumtion. Suppose you want to hit and run against this: If you get 80% sword/spear infantry and 20% javelin cavalry, the infantry can never catch the archers, but the archers can't afford to turn around to deal with the chasing jav cav or the infantry will close the distance. Honestly, I think these 3 points made by you are more like assumptions than solid facts.

In most situations 20 spearmen struggle to beat 20 skirmishers even without micro. In reality the player with ranged units get the chance to decide when to fight, can micro during the fight and can easily retreat when needed. I tried going for high numbers of CS spearman in TGs and the results were very poor. I don't think that is just an A25 conclusion. I think the spearmen never performed well. When talking about units, people are only obsessed by "This ranged unit is OP" or "This ranged unit is worthless". So melee units are ranked as Pikemen are the best for absorbing damage, spearmen are as good at absorbing damage but are a little cheaper than swordsmen. Can the melee infantry do enough damage for any other role? I don't think so and damage output is not their only disadvantage (lack of speed, can't hit and run on opponents). Pikemen do so little damage that sometimes in a fight I consider it better to use them to capture a temple than actually attacking the enemy units. When I have javelin cavalry and the opponent has pikemen and infantry javelins, I don't bother if the pikes can attack my jav cav with their 3x multiplier, as longs as I can target and eliminate the more dangerous skirmishers. So I feel the 9% damage boost is a very conservative boost.

For the smaller farms and higher cost, we also need to consider the full cost per farming lady. We need 50 food for the woman, 20 wood for 1/5th of a farm and 15 wood 1/5th of a small house and there is thus 16 seconds build time. All of that adds to a cost of 50 food, 35 wood and 16 seconds of build time. For Han the cost are 50 food, 48.33 wood and 22.66 build time. Not only the wood cost, but also the build time each worker needs to do is increased. I don't think it gives a comfortable early economy. When other factions place 3 farms for 300 wood and 150 seconds build time and research the farming tech, the Han need to place 5 rice paddies for 500 wood and 250 seconds build time and thus lack the wood for the farming tech early on. If we ignore the ministers, this faction has similarities with Persians. Persians also get the 10% more pop and the Persian palace also gives resource tickle worth 3 population. Persians have a very strong lategame, but they start with archers/crossbows. Persians are not a good 1v1 and are below average. Ptolemies and Iberians are way better than the average faction. I don't expect Han in 1v1s to be more potent than Ptolemies or Iberians, unless these factions receive major nerfs.

In A24 we had inefficient pathfinding for groups. In A25 units in groups almost move like there aren't any obstructions at all. I also think the speed difference between the units is to much. The long range of archers makes it seems as if they are meant to do hit and run tactics and their speed prevents that.

While mainland has the best distribution of resources, I wouldn't consider it a piece of art. Replacing mainland with balanced mainland would be fine to me. Though I do feel that we discussing what we do with mainland is harmful. We can do it all, so we need to discuss how to do it all. I suggested making several different types of mainland and put them into their own category.

I think the best biome for 1v1 on mainland is Aegean. It has less wood, which makes controlling area more important. This map suits my taste sufficiently well, so I don't really bother trying the other maps, which am might have their issues. That also means I am not qualified to compare other maps to mainland or any other standard. Also, if you and your opponent have the APM then empire can be nice. If I wouldn't be interesting about learning more about how different strategies are executed well and work against each other on mainland, then I would consider empire very much worth my time.

By the way, it is bad for historical accuracy. You can't gather a lot of fruit from a blossoming apple tree.

On the scenario editor it can be found as gaia/fruit/apple I haven't tried anything successful with visuals, but I think it is just a case of giving each fruit template <VisualActor> <Actor>flora/trees/apple_bloom.xml</Actor> </VisualActor>

I didn't think about Rome, but it is true that it is not completely unique. The roman one is more expensive, takes longer to build and doesn't train ranged siege units.

What I would consider an improvement is not using the pink blobs for fruit plants but rather use those recognizable trees with pink blossoms.

That seems like a good move. Another idea: Why can't mainland have peacocks instead of chickens?

I am not really a fan of team bonusses that give a raw power increase or cost reduction to spamable units.

It would only benefit the techs at the CC, but it also keeps its old aura of the extra territory. Also I disagree with the idea that team bonusses should have synergy with all possible allies. Only 4 other factions have theatres, which is indeed on the low side. But it is still better than the current team bonus. I don't see any historical justification why Athenians should make buildings in iberia or India cheaper. In a world where each faction is unique, there is no such thing as being in line. Also it does not hinder siege in p2. I think siege in p2 is a bad idea, but I would not be opposed to trying out bad ideas. Though I can't try out any idea tossed towards me. Another possible civ bonus for Mace could be "can build siege workshops in neutral territory". That would also make Mace unique.

I consider that hero to be weak. So a little buff to their ranged siege weapons might still be okay.

I differentiated the following factions in V3: Athenians: Can now reasearch economic technologies for 50% less metal. Coupled with the extra metal mining speed this encourages players to use p2 earlier than other factions. Gauls; Can now train fanatics for -20 metal in 15 seconds. This should allow fanatic rushes to be more succesful. Also the slinger becomes available in p2 in the CC, which means that if you go to p2 early without barrack, you can use that precious stone to train infantry (slingers). In addition to that, slingers cost -10 stone for gauls, but have -1 pierce and -0.1 crush. Iberians: Slinger in p2 cost -10 stone, but have -1 pierce and -0.1 crush. The fire damage of their champ cav is now changed. When building are attacked by a group of fire cav, they now "burn" for a while. Their team bonus is also changed. Kushites: Can build small pyramids for 150 stone in p1 and have 50 meter aura. This makes their eco unique. Mauryans: Can build pillars in p2. Pillars reduce the research time of nearby structures by 50%. Persians: Can now train spear cavalry in p1 at the CC as well as jav cav. Persian cavalry should now carry 40 resources. Their skirmishers cost -20 wood and have -20% attack. Having access to the skirmisher is an now a bigger advantage for the boom, encouraging Persians to reach p2 earlier. Their CS melee cav and archer cav is now better(see below) also encouraging p2 play more. It also creates a quantity of quality approach for Persian infantry. Their team bonus now makes stables cheaper and the stable techs are produced faster. Romans: Can open/close the doors of Janus in the temple. When closed the temple has no additional aura. When opened Infantry trains 20% faster and need -20% experience for promotion but they gather resources 20% slower. Spartans: Skiritai are now rank 2 but move 30% faster. I am curious to see if faster speed is more fun than bare strength. I also added some team bonusses, since Athens, Britons, Carthaginians and Persians have team bonusses with little impact. Whereas Iberians and Macedon have team bonusses that are considered to be broken. Athens: Theatres cost -40% Brits: First healer is free, other healers are 20% cheaper. Cart: Markets are 40% cheaper and first land trader is free. Iber: skirmishers and slingers cost -10% food. Mace: barter bonus is now a civ bonus and gives only 15% better prices. Their new team bonus is siege +10% range and -20% train time. Persians: stables are 20% cheaper and stable techs are researched in half the time. Generic changes affecting team bonusses Theatres: CCs have 20% cheaper techs and -50% research time. Catapults have a small splash damage and their accuracy is improved a little. Their damage is increased to 225 crush and their splash damage is 150 crush, enough to 1 hit KO basic ranged infantry. Demetrius now gives also higher splash damage. The siege damage tech now gives also 25% more crush splash damage. Bolt shooters now have building AI, possibly improving their performance CCs are 10% cheaper and 10% less build time (affects sele team bonus) 2nd tier blacksmith upgrades is now available in p2 (affects gaul team bonus) Also I want to add a few minor balance changes Ranged infantry changes Archery tradition is 50% cheaper, but requires p2 (a net buff as nobody would do the tech in p1 anyway) Iberian team bonus affects both slingers and skirmishers byt only reduces the food cost 10%. Cavalry changes: Rome/Iber Champion cavalry nerf: Rome cav loses 2 pierce&hack armor, while Iber champ cav loses 9 pierce attack and when they attack buildings in a group, the building "burn" for a while instead of going down instantly. Merc cav now cost 80 metal and 30 food. Spear cav gets +1 hack/pierce armor and axe cav gets +2 hack and +1 pierce armor. Promoting CS units from rank 2 to 3 now requires +50% XP Melee infantry get +9.1% attack (NB This also affects the skiritai and fanatic). ** I think it is odd that sele is the only faction without a civ bonus and Ptol might need to be nerfed in some way. ProposedFeaturesmodV3.zip

In a24 there was the experience in war tech that promoted your mercenaries. In A25 the tech is auto-researched in p2. The auto researching is also part of the problem. You could limit the expertise in war to p3 and then still allow weaker mercs in p2. If this was a cav alpha, then gallic CS cav would be a potent force. In a cav alpha, Britons would also have all the tools to shine. The Briton and Gallic CS cav are well balanced IMHO. A24 is more like a merc cav/special champ cav alpha. We also have Indibil that makes CS jav cav super affordable with their team bonus. If you would take these 3 things away then A25 does no longer seem like a cav alpha.

I am updating the mod this weekend so some things I want to add team bonusses: Athens: Theatres cost -40% Brits: First healer is free, other healers are 20% cheaper. Cart: Markets are 40% cheaper and first land trader is free. Iber: skirmishers and slingers cost -10% food. Mace: barter bonus is now a civ bonus and gives only 15% better prices. Their new team bonus is siege +10% range and -20% train time. Persians: stables are 20% cheaper and stable techs are researched in half the time. Their cavalry carries double meat. Generic changes affecting team bonusses Theatres: CCs have 20% cheaper techs and -50% research time. Catapults have a small splash damage and their accuracy is improved a little. Their damage is increased to 225 crush and their splash damage is 150 crush, enough to 1 hit KO basic ranged infantry. Demetrius now gives also higher splash damage. The siege damage tech now gives also 25% more crush splash damage. Bolt shooters now have building AI, possibly improving their performance CCs are 10% cheaper and 10% less build time (affects sele team bonus) 2nd tier blacksmith upgrades is now available in p2 (affects gaul team bonus) I think especially the 2nd tier blacksmith upgrades in p2 really make it interesting to chose between getting p3 asap or preparing a major p2 attack. Furthermore Continental slingers civ bonus for Iberians and Gauls: Slingers cost -10 stone but have -1 pierce and -0.1 crush attack I also fixed some bugs from the previous version. Any further ideas? I personally like suggestions that are moderate changes but I will be happy to read any suggestions. Also it might be a nice idea to give some factions a civ bonus "unarmored warriors" that gives spearman +10% speed but -2 less hack armor. These factions can research a (possibly free) technology called body armor giving their spearmen normal speed and hack armor.

There are 3 map categories Random, Skirmish and Scenario. I would like to add a 4th category: Mainland like maps. The reason for this, is that a lot of balancing and complaining is done by judging how the game plays on mainland. As much as we can say people should play other maps more often, the multiplayer community sticks with mainland. I know some would say this needs to change, but it won't change. This might pose a danger of getting very one dimensional feedback. In A24 people complained about mercenaries not being useful. They costed metal and metal was valuable. Not by any intrinsic reason, but just because in TGs mainland spawned to little metal. Fast forward to A25 and we have a mercenary cavalry problem. Would it have been hard to create a mod for A24 where players started with 2 metal mines? No, it wouldn't. Would it increase the fun: probably masively. Yet the TG community didn't create such a map. Not only this example holds, but any complaint about the balance is hypocrite as 0AD is highly moddable. If you all dislike something, why not create a mod? How many complaints are there and how many mods are being created? If we make many different variations of mainland, we can get more diverse feedback. Variations could include: -starting with sheep instead of chickens =metal and stone mines spawn at larger distance to the CC. - only small mineral mines spawn on the map, possibly making map control more important. - Different positioning for team games (fortress or player river) -starting with a blacksmith to promote aggressive play in p2. -starting with other buildings such as mercenary camps or a temple. - A gaia fortress in the middle of the map that both teams/players would want to capture -any combination of those above. The A24 example shows that it is unlikely that the online players will do any major effort to test different setups. If we want them to try different setups, we should really make it easy. The way we can make it absolutely easy to try different setups is by just launching A26 with a dozen of different versions of mainland. I fear that unless we hand players this option, feedback from the multiplayer community will be one dimensional for A26 again. I would even offer to create some version of mainland. (Also: do we need a folder full of the same map? We could kind of make it a kind of hidden folder so only players that know where to find them see this folder. So casual payers don't see this ugly folder full of "repeated" maps)

If I lose because of a bad faction, it means I learned about its weaknesses. For me it feels good that factions are different. Though it would be cool to know which hero people consider to be the best.

@Yekaterina This can't be true.

Both are needed indeed. However if you don't have working SVN you can still do things.

The Iberian champion cavalry is a fast unit that can overpower its opponents. Walking a few extra meters won't really keep if from victimizing units. I would guess that part of the fun of using a mobile unit is using its mobility. So making it clumsy to use does make that feel less fun. Currently it has a spread of 1.6, whereas CS archers have 2.5, slingers have 3 and javelineers have 4. The Iber champ cav attacks units at short range resulting in that it does not miss a lot even if it has bad accuracy. We could make its accuracy really bad, but that would look ridiculous. We shouldn't make the game look ridiculous just for balance changes. For forts it is ridiculous fire cav can destroy them so easily. For CCs, I would say isn't it meant to be a unit that specializes in taking out buildings. For me part of the problem is also that Indibil makes the unit so cheap and with the fire damage it can also take out armies easily If you reduce armor, then it will not weaken the unit in the cases where it isn't hit at all. Therefor I think reducing attack is better. Currently you throw the flaming javelin and 6 seconds later the building has received 6 fire damage. If multiple Javelins are being thrown, then all the fire damage is taken within 6 seconds. I wonder how that simulates fire. Also it is unclear to me how the current option couldn't be seen as just another form of anti-building damage such as crush. What I might find an appealing option is to change the way fire damage works. Instead of stacking fire damage we could use the extend option. So every flaming javelin deals for 0.12 seconds 1 damage every 0.02 second (or maybe 0.04 is better). So in 1 second, 50 intervals fit. If the building is hit by more that 9 javelins per second, then the fire gets extended duration. For example we want to deal 2400 fire damage to a building with 25 fire cav units. Then we require 400 javelins or 16 javelins per unit. After 20 seconds, enough javelins have been thrown at the building to build up enough fire. However as fire damage is capped at 50 per second, it takes in total 48 seconds for the building to completely take the 2400 damage. Adding more fire cav in that situation would not increase the speed at which the building burns down, it is just allows to throw all the required javelins earlier. It would simulate fire better where you can view extended damage as buildings being set ablaze.

I can tell a story about this. @borg- wanted to discuss some civ differentiation. So he invited a few people to talk (I stated I wouldn't have access SVN until somewhere in february). So Athens was discussed. One thing to remark is that a lot of the effort for the discussion had to come from borg-'s side. Borg- stopped to give any input after a while and he actually had been the only one who had done anything at all. After that, nothing happened. IMHO, a system where most of the effort comes from one person does not work. We should have a group where every member does some effort and then things become bearable. Also to keep motivation high, it is good if everyone knows which contribution other people are making. You don't need SVN to conclude things like 35 attack is a lot for ships or that CS spear cav is hardly good for anything since it has horrible stats. Off course, having SVN is nice, but it is not like it is the strictly required.