LetswaveaBook

I like the idea of having Spartans in p1 and I think it is not problematic for balance. However what I consider a undesirable consequence, is that the Spartans then would only have a single type of champion and it is available in p1 Any ideas for additional champion units for Sparta or will it just be their current Spartiates?

If I did not miss a step, this is what I did: Downloaded the code. Found the kushite architecture tech and changed its cost. inserted in the command line $ cd ./0ad $ svn diff --diff-cmd diff -x "-U 99999" > changes.patch That created a document changes.patch in the 0ad folder, which I uploaded to https://code.wildfiregames.com/differential/diff/create/ and now we have https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4310

A new feature might make it easier for the AI to build walls. Whenever you try to build a wall, you can not build it if a building/obstruction is in between. If it would be such that if a building/obstruction is in between the endpoints, it would create two wall pieces: One from the starting point to the building/obstruction and one from the building/obstruction to the endpoint. For multiple buildings/obstruction it would work idem dito. That would also make it easier to avoid gaps. For the AI we then could just order it to build square walls around the CC and any buildings/obstruction in between should not be a problem.

That seems like a mistake, especially if the fortress is garrisoned. That is a good ammount of champion cavalry. The issue probably is that you did not use them very well. They might lose to elephants one-on-one, but they have several other advantages. They can run around the opposing base and try to kill all vulnerable units that you see or capture building. 70 champion cavalry could fairly quickly be able to capture fully garrisoned towers even. What you need to avoid is to attack the elephants head on. If the opponent attacks with the elephants, you should use the cavalry to take out the supporting units. If the elephants are alone, you could defeat them. Could you share the replay on the forum?

In 0ad cavalry is not significantly more effective against towers. Cavalry only has the advantage of being better at avoiding and running away from them.

The asian elephants cost around 550 resources and are 6.5 times as durable against pierce damage as a CS pikeman. I don't think that they are hugely problematic. 40 Elephants is no small force. I assume it is more the size of the army that trouble you rather than the units. There are other strong options available and probably your friend would be as difficult to beat if he used different (champion) units.

I would not blame you for accusing me of trolling, but I was serious about the 1 m^3. You found a source and the my numbers were a little off. In the linked article, we find infographic (part II - in dutch). The Netherlands produces 1100 m^3 LMRA (laag middel radioactief afval- low or medium radiactive waste), which is something that is created for medical isotopes, smoke detectors and other things. The production by the nuclear plant is 4.5 m^2 in the HRA (hoog radioactief afval-highly radiactive waste). So that means that it is 4.5 m^3 instead of 1 m^3. However the main bulk of radioactive waste is not highly radioactive and is not produced by nuclear plants. It has to be said that the Netherlands only has a single fairly small nuclear plant. There have been some hypothetical suggestions to store nuclear waste in some underground locations called zoutholtes in the Dutch language(In Dutch we have a few words that can both have its plural being written differently, so the plural of zoutholte can be both zoutholtes and zoutholten). I don't know the proper translation for that, but I think salt caverns could be accurate. I am referring to underground cavities that are the result of mining operations. Anyway, these underground locations are deep underground and also big enough to store a lot of stuff. So I don't think storing the radioactive waste should be a problem and this world would also be rich with other places where it can be dumped. The only problem is the Not-in-my-backyard issue. Even if location is safe, local residents could still be protesting against it.

In the Netherlands we have a nuclear plant as well. It is awful that it produces about 1 m^3 highly radioactive waste per year! Every year radioactive waste will be produced. If it would operate 1000 years, we would need to find a cube with sides of 10 meters to store it. For the global population, it was super smart to rely on fossils (and aid to irreversible climate change) rather than producing nuclear waste. The @#$%ushima problem was also caused by cutting corners on safety. If you build a nuclear reactor in Japan, you need to be prepared for tsunamies and earthquakes. I believe this is what will happen whenever this debate starts. People like to do cherry picking.

Is there all ready a bracket for the tournament? Can we play the games and send a recording or are the games planned to be live viewable? I could play some games on the 9th, but won't be online all day. Prizepool is not relevant to me.

That seems like booming is not a lot of fun.

I used to play almost solely 1v1s as I felt they are more competitive. Personally I don't enjoy games were 8 players boom, one is behind and his team loses because they are practically 3v4. I would not mind uploading the losses of my team, but as a bad team member I mostly feel that when my team loses it is because someone else let us down heavily (The game in which I wanted to delete 2 women and deleted 80 military units instead is one that I conveniently ignore). I also cast some interesting games on my youtube channel, but I don't envy casting long team games there. Neither do I want to overload @mysticjim e-mail. Recently I had some fun team games and I would like to upload some special strategies. I like to try some unconventional strategies, as just standard booming is just boring. A25 gives more room for full on cavalry aggression and that is a good thing. Game descriptions below if you are not afraid of spoilers: game2.zip game 3.zip Game 1.zip

The problem with it being hard to tell how much rank units have gained would be easy to solve. If you select the barracks, you see the different unit types. By making it such that a rank 3 unit would be regarded as a different unit, this problem would be (partially) solved. It is indeed a slow mechanic. A nice experiment is the reduced xp for hoplites currently granted by the hoplite tradition tech. That means hoplites promote twice as fast. So by garrisoning your hoplites for 100 seconds, you get it from 0 xp to rank3. However I think it is most often better to have your hoplites work for 100 seconds. However for hoplites, it is not the worst thing you could do and players could experiment with this. Also when I rushed a bit and at the moment I considered that my cavalry would no longer be able to cause casualties, I tried during some game to garrison them. The cavalry gain about 25% in value after 150 seconds of garrisoning, which seems as efficient as hunting in the middle of the map. Though garrisoning for xp seems reasonable, in many cases in hindsight it would have been better to have them patrol (or hunt) in the neutral territory to spot any attacks or expansions.

@Huffman3829 I guess the title for this tread was maybe a ill proven. I mainly wanted to make a point in a humorous way that the armor values are problematic. So take the suggestion with a grain of salt.

For me, they feel very situational. Without garrison, it can be captured easily. You can't have forces nearby to quickly garrison a tower once an enemy arrive. If a large enemy force(50+ units) arrives, then they can take out the tower and its garrison. Every unit that is garrisoned adds one arrows which does 10 pierce attack per 2 seconds, which is not much. You can ignore the towers to some extend and use your army for easier targets. Furthermore, towers distribute their damage over all enemy units instead of focusing some units down. This means that in some situations, the tower can get decent damage output but fail to get a kill. A way to render towers ineffective is by healing your units that have sustained damage. When a lot of your units have sustained damage, it is better to retreat. Also, if your army is big enough the damage of the tower does not compare to the things your army could achieve.

ouch...

There has been a lot of discussion about Carthaginian mercenary cavalry, inspired by @Dizaka and @BreakfastBurrito_007. I would like to point out that it is not unstoppable as I stopped it in this video against a respectable opponent. I have to admit that this was the 3rd game I played with Dakeyras that day. In the first, I played as britons against Carthage and I opened with a stable. Later I added a barracks but before I lacked enough spearmen, all my units were slaughtered. That build did not seem to be a workable strategy. So then we played again and I took Seleucids. I was housed 2 times before reaching 40 population and planned on getting 2 colonies, which did not do wonder either. Only the third game I got a right approach and execution.

Is the question correct? Is A26 planned?

We can give factions each an economic bonus such that it cancels out, or we can give none of them an economic bonus. I don't see why the difficult option would be worth the effort. That feels weird to me. I would prefer to make the trumpeter champion useful. Maybe the trumpeter is all ready useful, but it does not see a lot of play. I like this idea, but I doubt if it works in practise. If they are weak, they can be hunted down by cavalry and most often, players place their buildings such that there is not much to be captured. However adding extra units in the game is not bad as nobody forces players to make them. I think the game should be balanced on maps such as mainland. Other maps might not be balanced. If people like to create other maps, they need to keep balance in mind. So that might sound the same, but it is a different way of thinking about it.

I meant that indeed and it is problematic. Also for Javelin cavalry this is problematic. Not only for CS, but also for champions, which perform surprisingly well against melee cavalry. From 48 meter, the slinger does not do OP damage, but if the enemy gets closer it can have DPS comparable to the skirmisher.

That might help to balance the ranged units against each other, but it does not help so much to balance ranged units against melee units. Secondly, also the skirmisher/slingers could use the attack ground option to target the archers, even though not as effective as archers could.

I was still looking on how to make a diff and I was on the page: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructionsGettingTheCode I have used some SVN for testing/playing a development version of A25. What would be recommended for a new user on linux mint, would it be Git or SVN?

I think pikemen are not problematic, the powerful ranged units that support them are. In the scenario editor I saw that if a force of 10 swordsman attack 5 pikemen and 5 skirmishers, the skirmisher survive all and 1 or 2 pikemen survive. If we take a weaker ranged units such as the archer, the swordsman defeat the pike+range combo by a small margin. The fact that 1 on 1 the spearman can't defeat the javelineer convincingly is something to keep in mind concerning this topic. I do not agree with the fact that these changes are too small. I will list some thoughts on uniqueness. Group 1: Uniqueness from the start. Ptolemies: There is no reason to call them ordinary. Mauryas: Starting with an worker elephant does significantly impact how you can play the game. Also they have unique options with swordsmen and elephants. Iberians: Starts with walls, giving them a totally unique feeling on top of all other uniqueness they gain. Britons: The are the less unique than the 3 factions above here. They start with a dog, which can be used to bring the deer towards your CC in the start of the game. These deer allow you to get more cavalry, which can rush excellently with the help of the dog. The war dog can be a very convenient unit for rushing. Having with slingers allows you to put that 300 starting stone directly to work, which means you can produce ranged infantry very conveniently at the start. Also the hero Caratacus makes the Briton units the fastest in the game. Group 2: Uniqueness in p2. It is not difficult to reach p2 and reaching p2 becomes all ready feasible at 40 population. Carthaginians: Strategies where you advance to p2 with 40 or 50 population and go for merc cavalry are very much feasible. Also they get the colonization technology, which is worth after you have build an (extra) CC. Once you reach p3, you get access to powerful heroes and you can instantly train champion infantry from the temple (does not require a technology like most champions do) Seleucids: They get their military colonies for 160w, 160s,160m. what you get for this investment is a great deal, 2 population space (equivalent to 2 houses=300wood+100sec build time), a resource drop of point (valued at 100 wood and 40 seconds build time, I will ignore for this comparison that you can also drop food on it), a defensive structure(a tower cost 100w, 100s and 150 sec build time) and you can use it to produce mercenaries(mercenary camps of kush/carthage cost each 200 resources and 150 sec build time). So the value totals at 500 wood, 100s, 200 extra resources for the value of merc camp and 540 seconds of build time. I am ignoring in this value, that it is a resource drop of point for food, can train women, allows for territory expansion and can heal garrisoned units. All in all the value of this building is much larger than its costs. Furthermore the faction boost instant hero and infantry champion production at p3, as you do not need to build an extra building or wait for a technology for the champions. On top of that, it also has good unit variety. Kushites: Once you reach p2, you can build mercenary camps which makes it feel unique. The Noba clubman is one of the few tools that can efficiently deal with fortification in p2. Also it gets a pyramid for faster gather rate. Once you reach p3, you can instantly produce champions from the temple. It heroes are fine and they have a big temple for rank 3 heroes. They also can mass elephants easier. Overall, this faction is still feels under-powered because the archers are under-powered. The kushites have 14 different types of soldiers (elephant included) and 2 siege weapons. So the Kushite problem is not a problem with its design, but with balance between ranged units. It could be more unique if it would be allowed to train pikemen in p1 or its pyramids would get available earlier: see https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4280 Group 3: Factions lacking things that make them feel unique. I don't mean to say that these are bad or don't have unique properties. However the unique things that they have mostly don't make much of an impact until p3. Gauls, Romans, Macedonians, Athenians, Spartans, Persians. Now that I have concluded that 6 out of 13 factions lack the unique feeling, what can and needs to be done about it? First of all, there aren't completely bland. Secondly it might be nice to have a group of more standardized factions and those who are more unique. Just a few suggestion: Make Naked fanatics more usable, make the temple of Vesta more special (like larger aura), No idea for Macedon, Give Athenians a Theatre bonus and allow the council hall to train champ hoplites in p2, Persians could use their levy upgrades and spear cavalry in p1. Having 7 factions out of 13 being unique is not bad. I am not opposed to p1 champions. I feel that it would be well balanced as people would prefer in p1 to make units that can gather resources over melee infantry units. Even if it allowed for gimmick strategies, Sparta was know for a militaristic culture and aggressive wars to enslave fellow Greek populations. Furthermore, I have decided to end every post with this quote Cato Maior: Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, LetswaveaBook: Furthermore I think ranged damage must be reduced.

In my view, increasing damage of spear cavalry does not make cavalry better overall. It just makes spear cavalry better. Things are all ready screwed up. If you try to have 20% of your army to be CS spear cavalry, you would lose in an otherwise even matchup. Also, I tried 10 spear+javelin cav vs. 10 sword+javelin cav and the side with the sword cavalry won the fights with a small margin. So that's how decent of a counter it actually it.

I have voiced my issues with crush damage here and there on the forum and I agree with the room for improvement. What I would like crush damage to be, is damage that is not as deadly as pierce and hack against weakly armored units. However I would like to see that heavily armored units don't see their crush damage improved as much as their other armors, so crush would be something to overcome armored units. That is also somewhat historically correct. So an citizen ranged unit could have 6 crush armor and a champion infantry could have 10, which is a difference of 4, while for hack/pierce the difference would be 7.

That is a good question and something I did not think about. Sometimes asking good question can be as valuable as trying to provide an answer. I have no answer on the question, but it is good to consider all the options. Another question would be: If you were able to train champions in p2, would you actually train them in p2? I would not advocate enabling Kush or Macedon to train rank 2 javelin cavalry for 80 metal in p1.