LetswaveaBook

What is more peculiar to me is that we build markets and blacksmiths at the edge of our territory to make it bigger.

However one thing that is an issue, is that champions aren't used regularly. There is few reasons to train champions in 1v1s. So I think first we should make champions more viable. What I would like to see is moving buildings like Gallic assembly of princes, Athenian council hall, and Spartan mess hall to p2 and allow them to train champions in p2. Since the number of these buildings could be limited, it also allows for some but limited champion training. Also I would like 1 type of champion per faction being selected as the favoured champions, which can be trained in the fortress and does not require any technologies to unlock them.

I agree that this is undesirable. On the other hand, I do not want to introduce a " mostly fantasy" unit like the Mauryan Visha Kanya champions. In many fantasy games we see more weapon diversity, but I have failed to see any references of axes being used as main weapons in the Hellenistic period, apart from the axe cavalry and the Cantabrians. I have seen some mentions of axes being used by "barbarian tribes", but I did not find anything that points out if that was as a main or side arm. So maybe there is from a historical point of view no reason to add more axemen. If there are people that would say that for certain factions it makes historically sense to add axemen, then I would welcome some statements.

I am not a historian, but the two handed axe also makes you very vulnerable. If there is a soldier with a long spear, you do not have the best ways to defend from that. Two handed axes were used by the English housecarls of the viking age, known as the english long axe. The dane axe is also well known. However there remain some difference between the units. The housecarls were an elite group and only used them because they had armor that protected them and thus they did not need a shield. Also the type of warfare really affects the efficiency of the weapon. It seems difficult to me to fight a phalanx with two handed axes. However these two handed axes are not an overly complicated design and if the ancients wanted them, they could have produced them probably. We all ready have kush axe champs and persian axe cavalry and there exist allready a template for them. I would model them to have similarities with the axe cavalry in therms of attack. Stats: 6 hack attack, 1.5 crush attack, repeat time 1s, 100 hp, 4 hack armor(axes make parrying more difficult), 5 pierce cost: 50 food, 45 wood, 5 metal. These stats put them in infantry combat between spearman and swordsmen. If you compose an army of 2x axemen, you spend as much resources as an army of x swordsmen and x spearmen. You would get similar combat effectiveness apart from lacking the cavalry counter. In return you get crush damage to destroy buildings. I think it would be nice to give an axemen infantry to some Celtic faction, as the lack CS swordsmen. That way they get an extra unit against siege and with some purpose against buildings (in combination with slingers). Also I would like to give them as a mercenary to either or both Macedonians or Seleucids. Seleucids have the "problem" of difficulty to get access to mercenaries and placing a new mercenary in the barracks might help with that. The 'stronger' sword mercenary would remain in the colony. However I do not like to add things just because of gameplay reasons. It also needs to have some historical connection. However it is not unlikely that there would be a Celtic tribe that used battle axes more than others.

I was involved in some 1v1 small mainland games and it was time to get an overview on the different biomes. I hope this video makes you think about which biome suits competitive play best and it informs about you what to expect from each biome.

The game would benefit if it had an option to turn eye-candy object off. They do not affect the state of the game and are limiting vision and it can't be good for performance.

Someone has to upload a video about camel archers...

@LetswaveaBook Stupid nub, you should use all the game functionalities! On a serous note, I never used the attack move command before I reached a rating of 1700 on the ladder.

Age of empires 2 and then monk rush your family members with Christmas.

In the game citizen soldiers make up the bulk of your army, yet there are 4 factions (macedonians, athenians, carthaginians and ptolemies) that have only 2 types. In addition, 3 more factions(britons, gauls and persians) do have multiple ranged citizen infantry but only 1 type op melee citizen infantry. For 5 factions it is like you get a spearman as nearly all others and we add 1 type of ranged unit to. I would like there to be a little more diversity. It this something which bothers more people? What unit type I would like to be added is an citizen soldier axeman. If I am correct, the most common melee weapons types would be pole arms, swords and then axes. So it does not seem strange to add an axeman. In game the infantry axeman could function as the poor mans swordsmen. I would like to hear what our historians have to say about axes and if they ever were a main weapon (possibly with a shield or not). I have to admit that I have been looking through tinted glasses in the hope for spotting some historically plausible axeman references as I would like an option for an extra unit type.

I think that is overdoing it. Lets consider an example. If we want to produce 5 women, and we have either 5 big houses or 10 small houses. Then with a train time of 15, 5 of the women are produced after 15 seconds and get to work for 15 seconds until the "competitors are produced in the small houses". In those 15 seconds, they can collect per unit around 10 wood making them effectively 10 wood cheaper. I think this gives to much of an advantage to the big houses. With a train time of 25, 5 of the women are produced after 25 seconds and get to work for 5 seconds until the "competitors are produced". In those 5 seconds, they can collect around 3 wood making them 3 wood cheaper. I think this gives an acceptable advantage to the big houses. So if you want to produce limited amount of women, the big houses have a small economic advantage for production. On the other hand if you want to train lots of women, small houses are better in this example. So I would advocate not halving the training time for big houses but giving them a more modest reduction, which is still a reduction.

All of these above options limit player option in some extent. What I would suggest, is that if a unit misses a certain amount of shots, it will switch to a different target. That new target should preferably be something that is easier to hit (close, big or stationary).

It must be admitted, in a24 I used fertility festival in almost every game. The reason is because it makes your economy easy to manage: Short on wood, make mainly women and when there is a wood surplus build a few fields and buildings. It always was tricky in the sense that you had a significant portion of the population that was not good at fighting. Now in a25 researching fertility festival is not viable strategy anymore and it is better to boom with infantry. 3 reasons for this are: 1. Infantry had their training time reduced by 2 seconds, while for women it was only 1. Also training time from houses stayed the same. 2. Rushes are more useful, so that makes players with many women more vulnerable. 3. Infantry cost wood and trees are more abundant now. I always like the idea that making women meant booming, making infantry meant turtling and making cavalry meant rushing. Currently booming can be done better with infantry. Also if we want the game to be realistic, having 50/50 ratio between men and women should not be bad. I would like to hear your ideas on which place fertility festival (or producing women) has and should have in competitive play.

Is there an A25 version for autociv? I dislike having no hotkeys for placing buildings.

If history teaches something, it is that we always hit the worst case scenario concerning climate change. Something called committed warming makes me think we only see the tip of the iceberg. I think we keep following the worst case scenario for at least a decade. That's a decade of wasted potential.

I hope to get the RC working for me next weekend. I don't worry for Persians as they get archers to provoke fights and citizen skirmishers as well.

Cavalry also has reduced turn rate IIRC https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/25626

Maybe the will do a better job at hiding it in windows 11...

I will give you some hints on how to start the first minute and what you should aim for. The idea is to pump out units initially as fast as possible. You will outproduce the very easy AI. I would suggest doing these moves at the start, which work on most maps. 1. Click on your Civic Center. Then press ctrl+z to train a batch of women. We train batches of units if possible, since training in batches speeds up the production and allows to produce more units per minute. 2. Order your women to gather berries and your camel rider to hunt chicken 3. Order 2 of your men to build a farmstead near your berries such that your women gather more efficiently. The other 2 soldiers can build a house and a storehouse. 4. Click on your Civic Center again. Press ctrl+1 to put the CC on a control group. When the CC is selected click on a tree to place a gather point. Once the women are created, they will now directly go and chop wood.. 5. Wait until the women are nearly ready. When they are, press the shift button and use the mouse wheel to change the batch size. You should set the batch size such that it is the maximum batch size you can afford. 6. As soon as the farmstead is build, you should do the berry gather upgrade and move the infantry that build it and order them to gather wood. The idea is to train the maximum batch size you can afford. Also make enough houses to be able to support the population. In order to do so, you need to press 1 (assuming you set the civic center on control group 1) and see how long it takes before you need to order a new batch. At some point, your berries run out and you need to think of a new source of food income. To keep your Civic center producing constantly, you need around 10 farmers or 4 berry gathers After some time, you can afford a barracks. Again it is the idea to put the barracks on a control group and constantly produce. You need to remember that once you get the barracks, you will need more food income to keep it running, so you probably need to add 10 farmers. The more units you produce, the more resources you gather and thus the more you can spent and the more barracks you will need in the end. Strategies can vary, but you will most often need at least 2 barracks before going to p2. Once you are thinking about going to p2, you have more freedom to decide what your priorities will be. The key is to adapt to your resources. If you are floating wood, you can spend extra wood by building pikemen from your CC, construct buildings and do the upgrades. If you are short on wood you probably make mainly women from your CC. Also if you can move camel archers and do economy at the same time, you can do a camel rush. However as a new player that might be too taxing on your skills.

I don't think it happens naturally, as the only player in the top 20 gaining points is Dakeyras and that is because I lost 3 matches against him. Also I agree with Gurken Khan and have little to add to his explaination. Imagine that with a new alpha all ratings reset. Then all players above 1600 will be 1200 and it would take several weeks before their ratings become faithful again. I think the idea should be to make the ratings faithful.

Or call it unaffilliated forces.

Maybe I am going of point, but I had a different idea for ratings for players on the other side of the spectrum. My suggestion: If a player under 1250 completes a game, his rating gets increased by 1 point regardless of whether it was a rated game. I think it would not hurt too much as people will probably learn from each game and after 50 games you are probably better than before. This would solve the issue with all the 1200 rated players and new players can easier distinguish between real noobs and those who did not play rated games.

8) Ratings are nuts. If you are new and are looking for a similar opponent, you might run into a veteran who is 1200 simply because he never plays rated games. If you are 1400 you will nicely run into smurfs. I had good RTS experience(I used to esimate myself to be in the top 10% online competitive age of Empires 2 players) and even lost 5 out of my first 6 games. I practised in SP first, challenged some 1200 players first and still had a rough start. However it is easy for me to imagine other people just quitting the game.

@vinme The fact that we don't know Many single players, doesn't mean that they are a small minority. Also if we serve single players well, they might become more active and that could strengthen the community.

That did not solve the issue for me. I don't really bother to much about it, but I think there are people that do not like to play a broken wheel.