[New Civ for Alpha 28+?]

15 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

I have an even better idea: insert the template of siege towers into wild gaia horses, so that you can capture them and ride them early on. This may be useful for potential American civs who don't currently have cavalry units.

 

 

I agree with this and would also add one thing that got forgotten from a24(25)? when there were stated "bonuses" for captured animals garrisoned in corral which never got implemented - if you could capture wild gaia it would be neat to be able to put them to use with a small buff like 1%move speed per horse for example (wild lions/tigers could give +0.2 attack damage and cows/pigs could buff hp points by small margin) - although it seems like it would be rough to implement and tricky to balance

[Naval Overhaul (Alpha 27)]

I'd like to add some ideas on this topic:

1. I love the idea about the free scout ship - would be nice if it could be implemented to get it when you build your first shipyard and would also add a symbolic price (like 50/100 wood) when you need to build another if first one gets destroyed or you need a second scout ship (if there would be possible to make more then one)

2. I really believe that upgrading naval combat will make this game stand out from other similar games in the genre and would make meta of the game more interesting -balance wise the paper/rock/scissors model would work wonders and I think it was already mentioned in previous comments - I agree with that concept 100%

3. About civilization diversification - maybe give carthaginians options to have all of the ship types just like macedonians have all of the siege options and persians have every cavalry option  - and other civs can be differentiated for example celtic civs get ramming ships and helenic get boarding and ramming ships romans/han/ptole/kushites get artilery and boarding ships (celtic civs already don't have much naval options so I was going with the current ideas of them having not as strong ships compared to other civilizations) - and on the side note consider something like fire ships (like iberians have now) to be added to celtic civs to give them a chance and balance things out a bit

      3. 1. If there could be a possibility to get han civ option/tech research to chain ships into one large construct like in that "Red cliff" movie o m g that would be amazing because technically battle of red cliffs is historically was 208-209 AD - Han and Carthaginian civilizations would really shine with future naval overhaul in my honest opinion

4. Upgrades for ships ideas: basically everything delenda est mod has is pure goldmine for the research tech ideas since it has excellent diversification between all civ groups

5. This one is a wishful thinking but maybe consider dividing romans into two separate factions like delenda est did and focus republican period on naval combat so there can be a genuine Punic wars scenario/campaign in the future

[Gameplay Feature: Battalions and Formations]

After taking a long break from RTS games I returned to a game from my childhood - American Conquest - and it reminded me of this specific topic because I think that the way battalions work there would make this game possible to implement them at the full capacity

Battalions in that game are made from singular units and can be created with proper special units and disbanded at will or after the battalion looses too many troops - in that game battalions help buffing units and lower the fear of encountering cav/overwhelming enemy force in the fights (fear can actually cause units to flee for their lives and be uncontrollable for a short time) - so battalions serve a double purpose:

1. They boost morale for the troops they are made from so they fight in sync and don't flee from the fight

2. They help ease the micro intensity (and also make the game look smoother/easier to manage when fighting on more than one front)

Also - adding battalions might also make sense if you view the development of your civilization over time and would add a leverage to a town/city phase rush if it's implemented as a later phase thing - in the first phase when you don't have much you still build one by one but later on when you get bigger you get options to organize your troops (adding battalions as a tech in a building to research at a city phase for example)

As stated earlier BFME2 has awesome battalion system but on the other hand I see more potential for American-Conquest-style of battalions in Delenda Est (possibly even in base 0ad game) since making fixed battalions would negate a lot of potential singular units provide (not just gathering aspect that was changed in Delenda Est but scouting and building multiple buildings at once as well - sending 20 troop battalion to scout could be a huge blunder if the area is dangerous/occupied already)

[Smurf tag.]

On 18/07/2022 at 5:57 PM, alre said:

I don't think there's any problem here, have you been accused of anything? 

making more info avaiable is only good. also rated team games would be wonderful.

Well my personal problem was more in regards to being ether called a noob or a smurf and therefore "bad for balance" when I wanted to play TG's - not as in hard accusation but more like "let's just take somebody we can balance the game better" since nobody (myself included) likes TG that's way off in balance.

And I do really like proposition @Darkcity made since it seems it would solve most of the problems that were raised here.

 

All in all old accounts/players should have a differentiation from new players, and also - maybe show how many TG games won/lost player has separately. Idk when I have time to play I prefer to play TG, maybe it's just me but I don't really enjoy 1v1 games all that much so my rank is not going anywhere for long periods of time. And I think that alone makes it difficult to balance when only info you have about the account is ranked games win/lose.

I do hope I get to play some TG when I get back, but gotta fix my internet first...

[Smurf tag.]

So I caught up with this topic and found myself wondering where would people classify players that have on-again/off-again relationship with 0ad multiplayer? For example I started to play in a23 and I did my fair share of TG-s back then (I am, for all that don't see it as obvious, Alarik in lobby and don't use other names)

But here's my problem with "smurf" tag - see I take looong breaks from multiplayer and usually only have decent time to play consistently/good around winter when I have more free time. So thing is - I know a lot more about the rules/mechanics then the new player but when I do try to get back I am listed as "new/unknown/noob" and I cannot seem to explain to people that I am just rusty since I don't play regularly throughout the year and not be called a smurf if I do well since "the game was not balanced from the start"... (and yes getting back in 0ad isn't so easy when you forget basic commands and need to find your old mementos about strategies that worked for you before but might not work in current alpha... but that's another story...)

So I'm wondering - is there a way to flag your account name so people could see the year your account name logged in 0ad? Maybe that would help in some cases when smurfs play on their old accounts so people would know "aha so this account is not brand new, he might know a thing or two" and it would also flag brand new accounts as brand new so people don't mix up returning players with new ones?

[Your 0 A.D. Screenshots]

On 06/07/2022 at 7:41 PM, LetswaveaBook said:

I increased the number of ponds and pond size.

@Alar1k The question is not if you can do it, the question is whether you will spend time on making these maps.

This looks really nice!

And yeah, I agree with what you said, I personally have little to no skills in map design so I usually get lost whenever I try to implement my ideas hahah

[Map: Balanced Plainland]

Just an idea inspired by the hill removal - what if the new map named "plainland" would have little ponds of water instead of cliffs - mainly so that one could use fishing advantage and also make Athene civ more balanced since they could finally get their full potential since they have mercs and champions locked to only maps with bodies of water present

Athenes really could use the ability to unlock their full roaster of troops on the most popular of maps for TG-s since as of now they just feel like subpar civ if you get them on random compared to games with water anywhere on the map

Fishing is super good as well and would make booming more interesting as well and would make "mainland" meta more diversified and interesting to play/watch

[Catapults dont work]

8 hours ago, Purgator_ said:

I would partially agree, but here is the related bug I've noticed - Attack Move across map makes catapults stop on first enemy building sighted. They will unpack and start shooting, but because building isn't at uncovered area, You cannot see building HP - so your catapults shoot infinitely (until you move them closer to reveal that the building is dead hours ago).

Well that is also the case in other games where you only see you've crushed the building after you go scout it - but yes indeed - catapults need a better vision range - maybe add a tech that allows like +25% catapult vision range for 300-500 food "eagle eye" or "sharp shooters" (this latter one I would argue should be 500 food and add +15% accuracy as well so the catapults (and bold shooters) can be useful - I really miss bolt shooters from a23 where you could capture them but they couldn't be destroyed by archers...)

Bolt shooters should have larger shooting max limit then archers so you can counter ranged like you used to back in the day - these last two alphas made bolt shooters obsolete because you can literally just send archers a bit closer and they melt ranged siege so the catapults (and bolt shooters) - because the cost is too big for them to be melted in 1 arrow volley - ever since the nerf of catapults/bolt shooters every single civ became too reliant on rams - romans lost the most in this trade since they relied on bolt shooters to deal with ranged troops back in the day (they don't even have basic sword cav, just champions)

 

Giving every civ a ram + nerfing catapults/bolt shooters to death killed the siege diversification in my humble opinion

[An Idea about the general phasing up and late game]

I've been pondering this idea ever since I've started playing delenda est mod last week (which I fell in love with btw - brilliant mod but I digress)

Proposition - make phasing up more distinctive - how? - well, idea follows the theory that modernizing societies with industrialization brings specialization in the division of labour - and what do I mean by that - well after you develop in phase two (town phase) you get a new unit specialized in better resource production - so you may start preparing for the next phase

And now things get interesting - you could just rush phase three - but - at phase three your citizen-soldiers would now loose the ability to collect resources and become like mercenaries (your city phase grants you "standing army" - soldiers from now on can only fight and build and they should get a bit of a buff like +5-10% hp) - fast phasing up can potentially then leave you with crippled economy if you didn't prepare/made enough of specialized eco-units so then now you would think twice about should you phase rush and win fast or wait out and take time to make sure you are secure for the longer fight

 

In my honest opinion - diversification of labour would make the town phase more important and not just an ugly child in the middle between the early and the late game - delenda est on the one hand provides you with the better gathering units but on the other hand I feel the early game is a bit too slow because you cannot use your starting troops for the resources early on - and I remember in a23 that each phase did grant a bit of a buff for all troops - so why not make phase 2 more distinguished

I think as well that this could even make TG-s more interesting - having one player focusing on early phase 3 while others supporting him if his rush backfires and he needs to reset economy for example - it would add a subtle layer on the game and rushing last phase would actually need to be better thought through like for example: "Will I be able to support my standing army or is my eco too reliant on my citizen-soldiers" or "Will my faster phasing up help me rush my enemy early or will it help my enemy because I was too eager to phase up"

[Gaia is a troll, Iberians are bigger trolls]

My thoughts on this discussion - Iberian walls should stay so that early on Iberians have a chance against early raids - and furthermore, I don't see much of an issue with walls after you start your war path at P3 and already have rams (since EVERY darn civ has rams since a24 smh - but that is of the other issue...)

 

Another thing - I understand your problem with gaia after resignation - it should be made at least that units die after the ally resigns, and that buildings get destroyed - why destroyed? - well if the gaia buildings after resignation stay then the team that is left 3v4 is having even less of a chance then it had before the first teammate resigned

At least that destruction wouldn't tip the winning slider even further because more often then not the winning team will just capture all the remaining barracks and in an instant replenish their troops (even tho more often then not the enemy civ is of a different civ from the conqueror)

 

walls are really just awful after phase 2 (imho) when you want to support your teammate and he doesn't pay attention to them (but still you gotta learn to play with them if you get iber so it might be a good training for the inexperienced players) - and after resignation dear lord do walls annoy the hell out of me... so therefore why not make walls be torn down after resignation - it would help winning side and it would help loosing side as well - a win-win situation

 

Edit: Why not make fire cav limited - for instance "you can only make 20-30 fire cav per game" - make them take extra time to build as well or just don't let that iber champ affect champion troop timers at all

[Javelin and Slinger damage too high.]

9 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

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.

Well since all civilizations have some form of melee cavalry why not just buff melee cav against ranged units in general - like give them +1 pierce damage armour  (maybe they don't even need an attack buff if they can survive just a bit longer against ranged units, and +1 pierce would help spear cav against ranged cav as well) and give spear cav at least 2x against other cav on top of +1 pierce armour since they really really need to be able to deal with other cav more efficiently and that damage buff wouldn't still make them op against spear/pike infantry

 

Edit: I wouldn't really nerf ranged troops too much - I'm more fan of mixing troops then relying only on one type - be it melee or ranged. (and ratio 30-70 in favour of range really makes sense since ranged units don't need a pathfinder around other adjacent units in the middle of the fight - if you have too many melee half of your units are useless until some die and they take their place - just like too many units on a build order

[Resource regeneration]

I mean if we are talking about "time realism" - come on... building a house in 30 seconds ingame time sure isn't realistic - if you can build a house, a civic center and a fortress under five minutes a tree could grow in say 4-8 minutes after being planted

Idea - make a tech "forestation" (unlocks the ability for citizens to plant a tree that will "upgrade" itself after 8 minutes - It should cost 50 wood for a 100 wood tree - kinda like corral animals cost food to get you food and if you are really that desperate or the map is so horrific you have that option - and also "Irrigation system" (planted trees get watered to grow) - halves the time of growth to 4 min but costs like 1000 metal to research

On desert maps - you couldn't grow trees without irrigation researched and in winter biome - well you cannot grow them at all since it is winter

 

But idk - don't have too strong opinion on this topic - I would rather have another civilization and a buff for spear cav x3 against other cav then ability to grow trees if I would need to choose one

[About the Glory resource gathering - sacrifice proposal]

6 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

All good thoughts from both of you.

 

I have thought about "Sacrifice" as a concept in the mod, specifically for the Zapotecs/Mesoamerican civs. I've only now really thought about how to do it. @Alar1k gave me a hint by mentioning the upgrade feature. What I could do is allow you to 'Upgrade' individual slaves or animals to a 'Sacrifice' version of themselves that has a glory trickle of 1 second interval, but the new unit has a health drain that kills it before the 2nd second comes around, so it looks like you've gotten a burst of glory from killing the unit. 

 

Yes, I thought about modding the Temple to allow you to "barter" resources for Glory, but that's before I came up with the statue concept.

 

I wish I could do this. Perhaps the base game could be patched to allow a flag to be included in the resource file that dictates "maximum" resource amounts. @Freagarach

 

I like the sound of that - and in case you cannot limit the resource maximum point - i propose that everything gets progressively more glory expensive - like let's say first phase is starter phase and things shouldn't really be costing a whole lot of glory, phase 2 - you can make temples and glory statues - make things cost a few hundred glory or so - city phase - each upgrade costs in thousands of glory from 1000-5000 glory for most important research and phase four upgrades are extra expensive and - wounder eats away some glory every few seconds for the upkeep and if you loose all glory you loose wonder to gaia? - That would make players think: "Can I afford the upgrade if I get rushed and my priests die? Will I loose pop bonus if I cannot produce enough glory in time?" - would make phase four more challenging

 

And yeah - can't wait to see the "sacrifice" implemented - another idea: maybe even get a tech "obsidian ritual daggers" in city phase right beside "state religion" tech at temple - "sacrifice costs 50 more coins (or metal) but gives double glory"

[A26- Questions about cavlary and ptolemies]

On 12/03/2022 at 10:07 AM, faction02 said:

From a balancing perspective, it would be probably easier to ask the question what has improved since a23 rather than what was better before and should be reversed.  The previous Ptolemies system was indeed much more fun. 

The food trickle is about equivalent to having an additional woman on berries forever with a farmstead next to it I think. It took about 4-5 women if you splitted them for efficiency of house production. If the aim of this change is to remove part of the economic advantage, a 20-25% build time increase with respect to a23 may make sense but I am not sure how it would fit with all the other changes that have been made since then.

a23 - Ptolemies

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a25 - Ptolemies

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a25 - Iberians

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This - Ptolemies were so much more fun to play and had such a different feel in a23 - really made you think differently when you played them - yes you got free houses but what can you do with the resources if you cannot spend them if you get housed because an early rush managed to kill one of your builders and set you back a couple of minutes

And imagine if your house was captured - even worse setback when they were "free" since they costed just time to make - in my honest opinion the wood cost now is ridiculous since you can just spam the houses and still have enough time to get early pikes to mine stone for slingers and metal for mercenaries and housing problem is never an issue if you just pay like 1% of the attention to make a house from time to time

Scenario 1: - one house getting captured in a23? Ahh shoot man now I might be in a problem if I don't react quickly

Scenario 2: - one house getting captured in a25? No problem I just made 2 more while you were capturing that one - too cheap to bother saving it anyways since if one pike dies house is not worth saving litteraly

[Civ: Scythians]

Idea for fourth Scythian hero: name: Palacus/Palakus, son of Skilurus - he could be an economic/booming option

First buff could be something to boost his own troops "Supply the lines" - all Scythian citizens get +15% move speed and +15% gather rate while Palakus lives - movement speed applies to movable drop-site as well

 

Second buff - "For war and glory": -20% research time for all tech while he lives

Third buff - "Master the horse lords" - reduces the cost of cavalry by 10(or 15) %

Fourth trait - Palakus rides his war horse (insert name) when upgraded

[Should outpost make a warning sound while enemies are in the range of it?]

Since there is a ping indicator that should work for the outpost as well - some french horn sound like preparation for alerted stance - like a few tones just to break the usual game music followed by notification: "(in colour of the player insert player name) red player has been spotted by your sentry" - just like there is a notification for attack from a player/gaia

 

And I like the Idea of a cooldown - maybe even make it like a tech for research costing 50 food and name it "Alert sentry" - each garrisoned outpost sounds a noise when your enemy enters the vision range

[Return of the K]

Overall I see kennel as a potential differentiation of Britons from Gauls - Gauls lost their special building tho that was of decent design

 

 

Or put dogs in houses and add a research "hunting dogs" - like there is "fertility festival" - the idea came from playing Epirotes form delenda est mod since they can train dogs from houses - really innovative decision right there and the pictures in previous comments also seem to be going in that direction as well

[About the Glory resource gathering - sacrifice proposal]

Well thing is I don't think if you could just dictate how much food you will trade for glory kinda beats the purpose of the glory resource in itself - it is not just trading x food for y glory - it should be more like a process - you take xy time to produce said unit and the unit you can then use for other stuff rather then glory

- thing is - if there is a glory statue building there should also be another way to gather glory other then fighting before you can build temple

Ptolemies do get the statue to gather glory from the start as their basic buildings cost glory as well - Zapotecs are kinda behind with how much 1 war captive costs (80 glory) - since if you can research "animal sacrifice" at corral you could produce goats and trickle a bit of glory from the early phases as Zapotecs to prepare for when you need glory for war captive production - and later on you can "upgrade" a war captive with that as you would "upgrade" champion units to toggle weapons - but before that priest needs to research "human sacrifice" so you can designate other troops to them for some glory points

 

In any case glory points should have a limit determined by the phase you are in - starting with say 300 glory for phase 1, 500 at phase 2, 1000 at phase 3 and 5000 for phase 4 for example (eliminating player from the game would maybe raze the limit for a few thousands in multiplayer?) - so it would stop the overflow of glory in the later stages of the game and make the early glory points a bit easier to come by

[About the Glory resource gathering - sacrifice proposal]

Hi, I am just recently discovering your mod and having magnificent fun playing around with civilizations  - you really did an excellent job in developing such nice gameplay mechanics such as the "glory resource" - I would therefore like to suggest a slight addition to it - what do you say to adding "ritual sacrifice" to the mechanic - for example you sacrifice an animal from the corral or human citizen/captured slave with a priest unit and then you get an instant glory points - like 20-50 depending on the animal and 80-120 depending on if it's slave/citizen/citizen-soldier

Reason I think it would help is - first of all I see Zapotecs slaves cost glory - and glory is hard to come by early on when you need an economy boost quickly - seems as they are lagging behind in eco compared to other civilisations even tho making that unit cost glory is excellent in theory I think it needs an early boost - you could add sacrifice the goats like you have burning pigs (that click to upgrade) so you can gather a bit glory in t1 faster - goat is 60 food and it should give 20 glory for balance example, cow could be

Also - I think it might be interesting to set an upper limit to glory resource - like if you are in town phase you can have max of for example 600 glory - and each phase has more glory to store - since it would balance overproduction of glory later on in the game - from these few days I played glory stood out the most to me and I really see the potential in this aspect of the game - really is something very innovative and a breath of fresh air

 

I cannot express with words how much I am fascinated with the whole mode - really really great job!

 

I have a few suggestions about hero buffs as well - when I collect all ideas on the one place I will post that as well when I play with civiliastions a bit more - would really like if there were some people that play this mod online but I had no luck finding anybody yet and AI isn't the best to find balanced ideas for hero choices I think

[Javelin and Slinger damage too high.]

First of all - as it was said - ranged units were devastating and therefore why they were used in the first place - for me as I see it it should not be "why are my spearmen so weak vs range" but "why I don't have cavalry to flank ranged units?"

Calvary exists for a reason and if you exclude them from the equation you will make poor balance. Nobody is complaining that cavalry is dying like flies when spears/pikes hit but when ranged units actually counter, in my honest opinion they should counter, then there is "omg nerf them" - make cavalry do 1,5x bonus damage to ranged units like the spears/pikes have against cavalry units

- it's like rock/paper/scissors and ranged units are rock, cavalry is paper, spears/pikes are scissors

Don't see people complaining how spears/pikes shred through cav when they encounter them since it's only logical they would be hard countered - apply the same logic for ranged/infantry and voila

[Restrict the Mauryan worker elephant to within its own territory?]

I wouldn't say that worker elephant is the problem because if we remember a23 - nobody was saying "mauri too op bla bla" even tho back then those worker ele could also build as well as be a dropsite at the same time - the balance issue is not the worker elephant but other things like making archers destroy siege engines, giving rams and siege production buildings to all civs for the sake of balance

If Kushite can start with a priest and britons with a dog - why don't add something to others civs to start as well (carthage can make trade ships on p1 for example, and nobody minds that...) - athen/sparta/mace can start with extra sheep for example (like corral sheep controlable animal for scout and food)

[0AD A24 Civilisations ranking]

3 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

weirdJokes has proposed that I increase the score of Romans and Spartans:

Romans are well rounded and easy to play. Their sword infantry and consular bodyguards are also very effective. 

Spartan Skiritai are now able to gather resources and attack has increased slightly, so they should get credit on that. 

What do you think?

Skiritai could gather resources in a23 as well - idk spartans don't have -10%pop so that's good but i don't know, now that archers can kill boldshooters there is not much to help spartans out in later stages of the game, rome can still besige with millitary camp and garrison siege engens there so it still has potential you just have to drag the siege all the way down to the millitary camp which is not that ideal, also romans have better heroes to counter ranged attacks

 

[The release of Alpha 24 and the recent announcements about AOE 4.]

First of all I don't see any reason to compare a free and open source project with a corporate, big-budget product. Second - one needs to look at 0ad not just as a game but as an interdisciplinary art project that is a collaboration between different artists (IT, historians, graphic designers, translators, writers and so on and so on...) 

If somebody is unhappy with how the PR is being managed and wants to push more capitalistic, neo-liberal path of teasing and waiting to build hype for a few months before a game is released -  one should not criticize but make constructive suggestions with some objective examples of similar types of projects - and that is for sure not age of empires 4

In my opinion free form art like this should not be advertised by being a tease because it is not here to make you pull your wallet or make you anxious in waiting for it to come out - the community is too small to be teased like that and let down once the alpha released does not fulfil their expectations - imagine a world in which you had constant announcements on weakly basis on all social media and you get into a game and it is not something you are happy with - one must ask himself a question "is it morally right to tease people who like this project with something that they know is not a polished product and is still in development?" - after you ask yourself such a question then you might be more sympathetic with the developers choice of just putting it out - less build-up of expectations = less false promises and less overall unhappiness with the next stage of the game - because it is not a finished product you cannot expect it to be represented as such and build hype around something that will be changed/fixed in a few months or a year
 

[Worst building in the game?]

In my opinion it has to be Carthaginian barracks and stable as it is now - it costs like most other barracks (200 wood and 100 stone (50 for stable)) but only lets you train spearman and an archer unit from barracks and only cavalry javelin from stables - cost/benefit is horrible for this civilisation when you can only make three maximum embassies per game - until the proposal made by fatherbushido is implemented (proposed on this topic, second page, with video example), these buildings will stay the worst unit production buildings in cost/benefit spectrum in the game - where is the balance in this? How can barracks/stable cost so much and yet provide so little diversity?

 

[Help with linux - balanced map mod]

It's this mod - when I tried to open the latest version it opened through wine automatically and wouldn't stop sending errors until I restarted my laptop and deleted the folder - now the thing is, I don't really know what to do to implement this mod on my linux distro to make everything work (thing to note here is that I installed a24 through flatpack because at the time ppa was still on a23, didn't wanna bother with snap)