LetswaveaBook

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.

In The Conquors expansion for AoE , most civilizations had a tech tree that gave both options and liabilities. But with the balance changes, the liabilities were softened. This makes that the different tech trees become less unique and the game becomes age of eco bonuses.

I think you need to accept that the product will be unrealistic if you have a game where cavalry and elephant´s can´t move and attack at the same time. What I think about AoE 2 development? The developer added enough dis-likable balance features to the game for me to say that the end result is worse than what they started with.

Unless you use shift-delete, there is a warning before you delete something. You might expect that the warning is just something you need to click away, but actually it should be used as a moment to think if you really want to delete it. You can´t blame the system for not checking what you were deleting before you deleted it.

I disagree with @BreakfastBurrito_007 and @faction02 that the CS system makes siege units more important. In most RTS games, an idle army is wasted time and is a serious limitation to your chances to win. In 0ad an attack does not need siege units to be effective. Pikemen weren´t well protected so the high armor values doesn´t seems historically correct IMHO. The main protection of a group of pikeman was that undisciplined soldiers don´t want to walk towards a wall of pikes. Personally, I am no fan of adding arson to the game and I prefer the capture mechanic. The capture-delete mechanic is not a great design choice. Maybe instead of deleting buildings, a player should be able to set his own buildings on fire to slowly destroy it instead of instantly deleting them.

That would be very nice. Currently the dominant strategy has little strategical depth: Spam skirmishers and spearmen (or pikemen)

I dislike this approach. If a faction lacks diversity, just jumping to the solution of giving them slingers makes factions more like each other rather than making those faction truly unique. Spartans have the Skiritai and Spartiates, yet those units don´t stand out as the units that make Sparta unique.

I have seem some people saying that if melee units deal to much damage, then there is no reason to create ranged troops. As long as ranged troops can kill enemy units faster than melee troops can, there is a reason to add some quantity of ranged troops in your army, even if the difference in damage output is relatively small. Even though the damage difference between spearmen and archers is fairly small, a composition of 100% spearmen will lose against 90% spearmen and 10% archers. My point is that ranged units are still viable even if the damage difference would be small.

On mainland there is no guaranteed way to defeat turtlers, but a map that make turtling very difficult is the empire map. On that map you start with 2 CCs and both thus you can focus your cavalry attacks on the weakest point of their bases. But then again, turtlers might not like to play on empire.

NO, it needs an FTA(First Turn Advantage) counter!

It think one should be careful not to misquote people, but for me it is bad language/attitude to suggest that someone does so on purpose. For all of these changes, there are good reasons to accept them as well as there are good reasons to grief about them being eliminated. A23 is history right now. Some things have gone and some have come in place. Rather than saying this is bad, it is better to try to undestand both sides of the discussion. So we should look on how we can move forward. When discussing if something is unbalanced or not, the settings should be considered. Though there is a lot of complaining around here, there is not a lot of people that try to play in different settings. In A24 TG players said that there was to little metal, yet nobody with those complaints created a map where players start with 2 metal mines around their base.

I don't think RTS is doomed. Obviously RTS is not where the big money is.

I am not an expert either but the <ProductionQueue/> element seems strange to me. Shouldn't there be an opening and a closing statement like <VisualActor> </VisualActor> ?

I would like to know where the in what the name of the files is where hotkeys are stored (preferable both where vanill hotkeys and autociv hotkeus). I have found a map ad/public/gui/session/hotkeys and wonder if all and which hotkeys are stored there. Backstory: Several weeks ago I decided that I wanted to give Linux fedora a go. You will never really get to know the sweet things Linux offers if you always stick to the same settings. Linux mint runs a lot of things just simple and easy out of the box and for a Linux rookie that is really a big plus. It also allows a lot of good third party software and fedora feels restrictive in that aspect. One thing I did enjoy about fedora is the Gnome desktop interface and I intend to use Linux mint with the gnome destop interface. As I am moving back to Mint, I would like to know how to copy the hotkey file and not enter them manually. I have a habit of installing new versions of linux a few times a year, so not having to insert my private list of hotkeys every time would be nice. Also it might be nice to be able to share hotkey files. Ps: Once the answer about the hotkeys is given, we can move to a conversation to discuss which linux versions are most cool.

I think Briton chariots should be different from archer chariots. Maybe Mauryan chariots should function different than scythed chariots. What I would like to see is to make the Briton chariot a unit that can carry infantry (or priests) without further benefits than speed. This gives the player the ability to quickly do guerrilla strikes with infantry. Every chariot would have fighting capabilities similar to an elite rank CS jav cav, but when produced it also comes with a free infantry champion garrisoned in it, so you don't need to tediously load the chariots. It would have the major advantage that the infantry are now a mobile force that unlike cavalry do not take a bonus damage from spearmen.

For a rock-paper scissors system, you need only to give a multiplier to a single unit, illustrated by the following example: -Unit A has a raw power of 8 and a 2x multiplier against unit C -Unit B has a raw power of 10 -Unit C has a raw power of 12. Out of the melee citizen cavalry, I would consider sword cavalry a good counter against slingers and infantry skirmishers. Only Athens, Britons, Gauls and Mauryas have access to them (Though melee merc cav is also good against ranged infantry). This means many faction don't get the unit that seems supposed to defeat the slinger and infantry javelineer. Also I think the number should be tweaked such that melee infantry is the dominant force.

It is a 1v1 with Macedonians vs. Seleucids: Which faction do you think has the advantage? Casted by @mysticjim If we want to understand balancing, I think we should also discuss fair matches (instead of 60 firecav agains 80 CS infantry).

If you are bothered by the way fruit plants look, then you should go to settings and ideally there would be an option "Yeka Fruit". That option would change to visuals of fruit plants to the equivalent of yekaterina's chickens. I think that is a fair solution to the problem.

I am a big fan of the arena clowns of age of empires 2. 18: Monk, Monk, I need a monk 30: wololo I would almost consider it an honary title (in the Age of Empires 2 community). Jonslow is the most popular among them on youtube.

Creating a different class for cataphracts might sound all cool and such, but I wonder what the champion spear cavalry of the Gauls, Carthaginians, Kushites. Macedonians and Ptolemies are supposed to excel at. I see suggestions of durability, which might be not needed as there is a nisean war horse technology. I am not sure what to think about scythed chariots in the timeframe of 0ad. In most stories that I know about them, they weren't overly effective.

The engine of 0ad wouldn't be my first choice for creating such a game. If you want to create a game, you actually need to do a lot of art design and (possibly) coding. It is not as easy as having a nice idea and someone is able to pull it of. My advice for creating a game would be one of these options: 1. Look for a game and try to make mod it. Examples are the Enderall mod for skyrim or the Lord of the rings mod for age of empires. Pros: You can use assets of the original game and it requires less work or programming skills. Cons: Often the game is proprietary. The original game engine can not easily be adapted and you might not be able to do what you envisioned in the engine. Also it is not easy to determine which game is suitable for your needs. 2. Use a game engine that is designed to allow new game developers to create a new project. Examples of these engines are Gamemaker studio or the Unity engine. The unity engine also comes with a lot of tutorials. Pros: These engines can be downloaded for free, they often have tutorials and can allow for a lot of game mechanics. Cons: This approach requires a lot more skill than the previous one and work. I would recommend looking for some tutorials on youtube. Links https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1272363891 https://unity.com/

I think seleucids and kushites also are close to being "done". For kushites, I would say the go to 95% to 99% if they were able to build an affordable pyramid in p1. With a few tweaks to persians (2 types of CS cav in p1,better armor for axe cav, cheaper and weaker skirmishers, useful Persian architecture tech and make p2 useful in general), I also think they could move to 95%. When gauls get a more interesting p2, I also would say they reach 95%. Mauryas are also diverse, but they feel to me more like a random bunch of unrelated assets. Britons also have some unique things, but I think they lack something. Maybe they could get the kennel back, but after starting a topic about that I think it might be a flawed proposal. Carthage might also have good design for a mercenary faction, but I think they should be a mercenary and trade faction. Currently I get the impression people only want Carthage to be a mercenary faction and forget about trade (and the colonization technology). Iberians are also pretty good as a faction with big towers and a starting wall, but I don't know what else Iberians are meant to be apart from a faction with walls. I think Athenians, Macedonians, Romans and Spartans lack identity. They get bonusses and other assets, but I consider those gimmicks instead of bonuses. With all the good hero auras I think we are a bit like spoiled kids. Even without any auras the hero is worth it. They are a lot stronger than regular champions. Philip of Macedon and Ashoka the great easily take out 12 skirmishers on their own.

My idea was that if you could use stables to train both dogs and cavalry, but if you want to specialize in dogs then you can build the kennel. I am leaning to think you are referring to a situation where food has very little value. If food has very little value then, dogs are a good deal. When food has very little value then saving little food cost is not impactful, so I don't consider that a strong argument against lower food cost for dogs. Also if food has little value to you, then I think you (or those who dump food at the market) have an inbalanced eco. I wouldn't consider it a natural state of the game that food has a low value later in the game. However it is certainly true that a good number of play the game as if it has a low value in p3. I think it is best to agree that for both sides have good reasons to view things differently. I am not trying to convince you, but I hope that can view my reasoning as equally valid. I also view your reasoning as equally valid. I assumed that we had good art for the kennel, but @Carltonus encouraged me to check it out. We have an older post on the forum that also shows the limitiations of the kennel Personally, I would like the Britons to get something that makes them a little more unique. After this conversation I have doubts on whether adding kennels is a proper solution.

I agree on this. Though maybe it is just because I want to terrorize my opponents base instead of being on the defensive side. Whenever I have the 600 stone required to build a fortress, I regret having the stone and wish that I had collected metal instead of stone. I like siege workshops. It feels restrictive and counter intuitive to allow siege only to be trained at the fortress

I don't see the connection with the redundancy theory. Could you elaborate on the theory? Adding kennels will only diversify the Britons compared to their current state.