LetswaveaBook

Tom 0AD is back and I hope that with his 2.3k subscribers he can bring back some people that have lost attention for 0ad.

Whether something is a solution, depends on the problem. If the problem is that walls are never used, then the solution is to think about changing the role of walls. If the problem is that merc cav are OP, then walls won´t fully solve that.

currently you can easily stack 30 infantry in a very tight space, so only having 8 on a wall segment would be very limiting.

Some want walls to be easier to build, while others like strong but expensive walls. We don´t need to compromise as we can have both. However we can do both and allready have both. Celts build them 20% faster and have 20% less HP, Mauryas have the wooden walls faction bonus. While Carthaginians have the triple walls civ bonus. If opinions differ on how walls should function, we could differentiate factions by walls. Similar as we have big house and small house factions, for the next alpha I would suggest that some factions get cheaper but weaker walls(-50% HP, cost and build time) and other have stronger walls (+50% HP).

I think you should try to accelerate the development of the game, because that means we need more developers. More developers mean more cool features. Some people have a practical mindset, some people are geniuses. Though be wary: Some people are just trolls.

That is just the cherry on top of the pie. Even if a civ in AoE2 has no relevant civ power spike to speak off, then the age up timings still totally change the flavor of the game.

No expert RTS player will say that the cost of CS soldiers is the cause for players floating spare metal. Because any expert player will not waste energy to collect any resources that are not being spent. What age of empires 2 does better than 0ad is the following: When a player reaches the next age, the timing difference between you and your opponent is hugely important. important crucial timing difference is not a single moment in the game, but it happens when players reach both castle age and imperial age. Only after these important timings have passed away, players are able to think about unlocking their full arsenal. So age of empires has 2 very important moments in the game before you can start working on unlocking your full arsenal (getting all the relevant technologies of the so called post imperial age). In 0ad for comparison often see the following: there are 0 import stages of the game before unlocking your full arsenal and players cruise nearly mindlessly the position to unlock their full arsenal (p3 with all relevant forge technologies).

I was referring to balance update, not engine updates. If balancing is meant to be a thing that helps to define more dynamic gameplay, then we need to dare to make more changes. If the game is supposed to have a better engine in 2025, then leave engine development to the developers. The balancing team should create a balance such that there is enough strategical diversity, regardless of the engine. In my view it is important to see both how they are related, but also to acknowledge that they are very much their own thing (e.g. multiplying food gathering rate by 1.5 and wood gathering rate by 0.67 would do way more for balance that any reasonable engine upgrade could do).

Both Vali and I (and possibly some others) have created some mods to change the flow of the game, But it is difficult to convince players to try these modification. Even if you get players to play the mod, then it did not have a lasting effect: It still takes considerable effort to find players to join a game with modded settings. 95% of the players in the lobby are unlikely to try any mods. Vali and I have tried to pushed to try some lobby games with mods, but both of us had trouble to find enough people that wanted to try something different. As long as that mentality doesn´t change offering lobby players the option to download a mod won´t result in anything. I uploaded a mod on mod.io that allows you to research tier 2 forge upgrades in phase 2. Since it is on mod.io, it is super easy to install and can be done when you go to setting>mod selection>download mods in the game menu. As easy as that. No need to go to the forum, download the correct file and unpack it in the right folder. However I failed to get more than a few responses on the mod. In the end I think it is a bad thing: we don´t know if something is an improvement or not and we don´t get any experiences about what changes would improve the dynamic of the game. If you want the lobby to try changes to the game as @wraitii suggested, then I would say that you would need to create a ¨(semi) progressive mod¨ for A26 that features changes and make it the standard. Then players that do nothing use and test the new changes. Then also give players the option to use a conservative mod that allows people to play A26 in a way that is closer to A25. I think even some minor changes to technologies and templates could improve the flow of the game significantly.

Any of these suggestions has math that might be intuitive in some situations. Any sentence used to describe the system does not provide a good intuitive way to judge statistics. When it is impossible to explain the entire story in one sentence, the best might be to use a few extra ones. What I would suggest is that if you look is to give more information in the structure tree when selecting the armor upgrades. Example:

I might not be entirely up to date about the woke movement, but calling data misogynistic seems on the woke side of things IMHO. Women make different decisions as men. That is reflected in some data. I would say it is a difficult philosophical question such a recruitment engine should be considered misogynistic.

When I get famous, I would want to get creditted for the phrase: ¨Technology only seems like magic to those who are ignorant of how technology works.¨ The only thing in my way is that I need to design the next equivalent of ´flappy bird´.

More of a meme idea: Tux in a schythed chartiot pulled by one or more zebras or unicorns. Can be summoned by the code: Cutting edge tech for nerds. Maybe the models of pony ascendant could be of any use.

What if ships had no firepower other than their turreted ranged units and an anti-ship ram for some ram ships and a catapult for quineremes? What if there was a "board enemy ship" feature for ships when adjacent? What if ships had capture points and could be boarded and captured? Feature request: When you select a number of boats and soldiers, click a button to have all soldiers evenly divide themselves and garrison (or turret) onto the boats. Also a button to have the soldiers evenly repair all the boats. I would like ships to have 3 ways to combat other ships: -having turreted soldiers/catapults/balisatas -ramming -capturing/boarding. But this can probably not be achieved by a simple changes in parameters.

I think such an option does not solve the problem. If it is easy focus your attacks on melee infantry, I doubt if melee infantry would still have any use. I don´t think we should keep a bad system because it provides challenges. I just mean to say that if we do so, we need to rethink the role of melee infantry.

I uploaded a differential which can be (re)viewed at: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4625?id=20173 @Nobbi, if you think the discussion is going off topic you can ask Stan` to split the topic.

I think it suits Seleucid history to create a bonus centered about marital alliances. However I must admit that I also like the cheaper colonies. So I would be in favor of keeping the current team bonus and allowing Seleucids to produce a princess. What exactly should be the bonus that a princess would provide, is something I would leave open for discussion.

I could understand if you were disappointed by the fact that this topic does not discuss mercenary cavalry. You have made a few valid points that merc cav would deserve a cost of 95 metal. Though the essential question is: how much advantage merc cav deserve to get to compensate that they require phase 2? I think increasing the cost to 90 metal is a step in the right direction and with 95 metal you might hurt them to much.

*could be made If the multiplier for CS spear cav is boosted to 2, should that also happen for the champion spear cavalry? Furthermore I think the hack armor could be nice as I deem spear cavalry to weak against infantry swordsmen.

The video has several comments and I hope it can contribute to making 0ad more popular. Among the comments in the video we find:

This is all ready the case. If you open the scenario editor and let the cavalry archer and infantry archer fight one on one,You will see that the infantry archer hits the cavalry archer more often. Both units have the same accuracy.

To be honest, I think the call to for a design document isn´t rooted in practical purposes. I would consider the hope that a design document provides misleading. You might think that things get done once it is clearly put in a design document, but issues don´t magically solve itself when there is a design document. I expect any design document to quickly get stale. So rather than saying this is the design document, It would be probably better to set goals for the next 3 alphas and count how much has been achieved to reach these goals. There was some talk about faction differentiation, but what have the discussion since A24 delivered? Hoplite tradition and moving possibly kush pyramids to p1. You can´t say we should achieve this goal and just wait until it is achieved.

I think the player killing the 400 enemies performs better. Strength is how much trouble your opponents can throw while they are still unable to take you out.

I think it would be nice to introduce some features that represent the culture of certain factions. An idea would be the Roman bathhouses. The in game effect could be similar to the technology living condition where garrisoned units regain HP.

The Numindians provided elephants to Rome in the Second Celtiberian War. So the Romans had sources of elephants, but they did not focus on elephants corps.