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Hello there and welcome to my thread! What this thread addresses: General concepts of real-time strategy games. Who this thread is designed for: Novice and amateur players. Civilizations, heroes, economies, military power-houses and team play (a preface) Civilizations Each civilization provides it's own set of modifiers that will affect: How you play, how your opponent plays and how your allies play (in team-games). Civilization modifiers come in a few flavors: Passively occurring (provided to allies or self) Actively occurring (a unit or structure) When you are playing a particular map or map style: You should select a civilization that best suits both your game play style preferences and the map or map type itself. This is also affected when you are in a team play game (as your selected civilization might provide modifiers for your allies or the civilizations you and your ally choose to use are synergetic in relation to their units, special units, production times, cost, etc). Heroes The hero you choose to use should reflect your currently chosen strategy. A hero is not just another unit, but is very special and serves a special purpose. Some heroes are designed to act as an anti-unit to many other units of a given type (EG: A hero might deal the equivalent of 15 units of the same type). Some heroes are designed to increase production of a particular type of unit or structure or a generalization of a given field of type of structures. The hero you choose to use in a game might be intentionally brief; you can only ever spawn a hero once and your strategy should take that into account. Economies In order to better comprehend what an economy is in relation to a real-time strategy game: You need to have a basic understanding of mathematical concepts (from arithmetic to algebra). If you would like to become a better player: A basic comprehension of the fields of discrete mathematics and pre-calculus would be an immense help in forming better strategies, counter-strategies and other predictively pre-computed concepts that might mutate real-time during game-play (EG: You saw an opponent do something for the first time and have never contemplated that set of actions before). Military power-house 0AD is the type of real-time strategy game that does not have a strong division between military units and non-military (economical) units; the line is blurred with few exceptions. You cannot support a strong military without an equally strong economical income of some form (ally proceeds, merchant vessels, self-sufficient production or temporary capitulation from an opponent (as vassals do not exist in this game). Team play 0AD supports team-play, but it has a high emphasis on independent play or lacking inter-co-dependent play (few synergies that place a high correlation between two civilizations being stuck together cohesively in every match); the inability of creating structures on an allies cultural borders also hinders team play, but promotes independently supported team efforts (primarily in the forms of: Direct military and economical support). A team of two novices would be no match for a team of two semi-professional players. Civilizations There are no magical silver bullets for a civilization to play; each has their own unique strengths and weaknesses in both solo and team play matches. You should take the time to review every civilizations unique traits. I will forego listing an enumerated description of all the data related to civilizations and instead suggest that you look at them in the Civilization Overview tab in game. Team play: Water maps The Athenians have an immediate advantage at first glance over other civilizations. Their team bonus is -25% construction time for Warships. When a player in a team match or solo match is playing as the Athenians: Each Pentoconter cost 11.25 seconds to construct (as opposed to 15 seconds). That means: 10 Pentoconters cost 112.5 seconds. If the opponent(s) do not use the Athenians: They would require 150 seconds for the same set of units. This difference might sound inconsequential initially, until you factor in distance over time and the average military control over an area with that set of units. The total damage and the total health of all units summed can be distributive properties over a given surface area; you can factor in reaction time (the distance over time average of each individual unit; the closer they are clustered together: The lower the average cost to move across the surface from point A to point B). Team play: Land maps The Gauls have a powerful modifier. Their team bonus is -15% research time and -15% cost for all technologies of the Forge structure. The Forge allows you to increase the effectiveness per unit (which is a multiplier) by means of decreasing the amount of damage taken and increasing the amount of damage dealt per attack. The -15% seconds decreases the research time by an amazing 6 seconds for the Side Arms (+15% melee damage) upgrade down from 40 seconds (-6) and reduces the cost from: 200 food and 100 metal to 170 (-30) food and 85 (-15) metal. In early game when a player attacks another player: Every multipler adds up to the attacker's advantage. With every successive battle fought: The player has altered the game's timeline for the defender. Every unit has an associated cost: Time to build the unit lost, the resources expended in building that lost unit, the resources and time spent collecting the resources for that lost unit and the resources spent constructing the unit(s) that collected the resources for the lost unit (which can be nullified if the lost unit collected the resources themself (EG: paid for themselves; but this implies a cost: That unit has spent time gathering resources as opposed to exploring the map or performing another task)). Heroes Heroes are used to tip the scales of the game in your favor, but not by a lot. How you use them will determine how effective your military strategy is and every battle they might play a role in. There are far too many heroes for me to list every one, but you should definitely glean over the list of them and their various modifiers. The Athenians' hero Themistocles has a surprisingly powerful set of modifiers: -30% batch training time and +50% movement speed of the ship he is garrisoned in. This means to batch build 10 Marines would cost less than 10 seconds! When garrisoned inside of a ship: He converts the ship into an effective mobile Barracks (which is not constrained by cultural borders). He could be perched off shore of an enemy's base in the fog of war allowing for a proxy attack or kept in a puddle near your own base or traverse the seas rapidly and harass the opponent's economy. His other modifier is to reduce the cost of metal used for constructing ships by an amazing 50% (-50) metal for an Athenian Trieme as well as -20% (-3.8 seconds) construction time for any ship. To build 10 Athenian Triemes with Themistocles garrisoned would have a reduced cost of 500 metal and 38 seconds. The raw cost is 1,000 metal (-500 garrisoned) and 190 (-152) seconds. If you were to batch build with Themistocles garrisoned then the cost of time is reduced to ~76 seconds (~1 minute : 10 Triemes). As a general unit: He has 1,000 health and a very high 22 Hack damage with a very high 72% Hack, 72% Pierce and 93% Crush reduction in damages. It would require ~533 attacks from Mauryas Longbowman to kill the hero unit. If a player had 100 Longbowman: That would take 6 attacks over the course of 6 seconds to kill only the hero unit. Economies In order to support a strong military: You require an equally strong economy. Without the supplies (food, wood, stone, metal and population capacity): You are unable to sustain a military force. To better understand how you acquire a strong economy: You need to understand more of mathematics (arithmetic, algebra, discrete mathematics and pre-calculus; although just arithmetic and pre-algebra will suffice). The naïve way of playing a video game is to behave as a young child: Perform random actions and hope for the best! As we grow older: We begin to understand more of how the mechanics of things work; High level concepts such as what "cause-and-effect" are. These generalized concepts can be translated into playing video games and they fit quite well. Those who understand them and apply them will play better and learn faster as a direct result. Let's examine the mechanics of 0AD and how the economy functions within this complex machine (video game). Villagers are a special type of unit: They have a higher gathering rate for food (source: Berries and Farms) than other units in the game (+50%). Fishing boats also collect food (source: Fish) at a higher rate than other units in the game (nearly twice as fast (+80%) as a Villager unit). These two units specialize in the collection of the food resource. Other military units collect wood, stone and metal faster and gather food (source: Animals) at the same rate. Expressing these ideas using mathematics is much more concise. Generalizations are what humans do best! So let's generalize and reason with the information we have to work with! Let's abbreviate "gathering rate" with GR. A GR defines the quantity collected over the duration of a single second. 1.80GR = 1.80 of a resource per second. Fishing boat - Fish - 1.80 GR Villager - Berries/Farms - 1.00 GR Military units - Animals - 1.00 GR These are the primary sources of income of the food resource from producable units. Without delving further: Let's examine what associative cost there are. The cost per Fishing boat is: 50 wood, 15 seconds and 1 population. The cost to collect 50 wood using a single Villager is 100 seconds (50 wood / 0.50 GR); this is excluding commute time and the associated cost of the Villager. To construct 5 Fishing boats would cost a single Villager: 500 seconds + commute time + associated cost of the unit itself. 5 Fishing boats collect 9 food per second (1.80 GR * 5 units) and hold a sum of 50 food (10 capacity * 5 units). Let's construct a strategy, but use math as our guide. We will want to have an economy that is strong enough to support the production of a military of a specific set of units that should be produced every 10 seconds. We will be playing as the Persian civilization. We must first assess what we are attempting to achieve (that is: An objective). We want to produce exactly 1 Sogdian Archer every 10 seconds. We must first determine how many resources this unit cost then decide what is the best way to obtain those resources. The Sogdian Archer has an associated cost of 50 food, 50 wood, 10 seconds and 1 population. We can break this problem down by examining our options. Let's assume we have exactly 50 food, 50 wood and 10 population capacity (available). Let's also assume we have 4 Villagers to work with. Let's ignore everything except for the raw cost of resources and time for right now. We'll get to the other factors afterward. A single Villager can collect 50 wood in 100 seconds; 4 Villagers can collect 50 wood in 25 seconds. What does this mean? We can sustain producing 1 Sogdian Archer every 15 seconds (25 seconds to collect the wood; 10 seconds to produce a Sogdian Archer (which allows enough time to collect 20 out of the 50 wood required for another Sogdian Archer, which requires an additional 15 seconds before you can produce another Sogdian Archer). This sustainability is only possible from the game state of having an initial 50 wood to begin with. Let's assume you have: 10 Villagers (0.50 wood GR = 5 wood per second). You could sustain the production of 1 Sogdian Archer per 10 seconds with a surplus of 50 wood by the time the next Sogdian Archer is produced (1 Sogdian Archer, 2 Sogdian Archer batch queued is a possible out come that will last one cycle (consuming the surplus of 50 wood)). This equation is ignoring a few important variables: The distance over time (the commute of collecting the wood), the food resource and the population capacity count. This also ignores that the distance over time variable is volatile (is modified; though the out-come might be negative, neutral or positive and has an associated set of cost in order to only reduce the variable modifier state (negative, neutral positive); that is to say: Building a new structure, creating a new unit or moving another unit all have their own associative cost). Let's solve the food resource part of the equation. We are trying to sustain the production of 1 Sogdian Archer per 10 seconds. The requirements: 50 wood per 10 seconds 50 food per 10 seconds Increased population capacity per 10 Sogdian Archers produced (1 House = 10 population capacity) Let's describe how much food a single Villager can collect. The GR is 1.00 (1 food per 1 second). We would then need an equal ratioed amount of Villagers (food gatherers) to collect food as we had previously with wood. We would need a sum of 15 Villagers to sustain 1 Sogdian Archer per 10 seconds (until 100 seconds have elapsed; at which point we need 1 additional House produced for the population capacity resource). This means you could sustain 2 Sogdian Archers per 10 seconds with 30 Villagers (20 Villagers collecting wood and 10 Villagers collecting food). Let's try to factor in the cost of the population capacity limit and the requirement of constructing a single House every 100 seconds (+10 Sogdian Archers). You would need to collect an additional +3 wood per second (+150 wood) to maintain the additional cost of a House (150 wood) with the cost of 50 seconds (6 Villagers collect 150 wood in 50 seconds) to construct the House (+50 seconds) factored in (to prevent the halted production of the Sogdian Archers). To increase your wood collection rate by +3 wood per second you would need an additional 6 Villagers for a sum of 36 Villagers. A simple way to break this problem down is to use arithmetic: 6 Villagers collect 3 wood per second over the span of 50 seconds (50% of our population capacity) which allows us 50 seconds to construct a House (which has a time cost of 50 seconds to construct). This allows the other 20 Villagers who are collecting wood to maintain the ratio of wood to Sogdian Archer to equal 0 every 10 seconds and the remaining 10 Villagers to collect food to equal 0 every 10 seconds). You are not limited to using strictly Villagers in this math problem. You can mix-and-match other units, buildings, team bonuses, heroes and more to solve the formula. I will edit this post at a later date and time and expand on it some more.

The suggestions: Observers should be capable of viewing the total quantity of garrisoned units The in-game chat-log window should be resizable When a game ends: Allow for players who are present to remain in the game without a dialog box forcing them to exit Show current bonus modifiers within the individual "units properties" window (EG: +15% (+4 Hack)) Provide a tick-box within the "unit properties" window to allow toggling displaying current stats (modifiers applied) and base stats of the unit (civic bonuses included, but noted) Show potential building influence border radius (before placement) as well as potential line of sight gains; the same could be applied with potential upgrades that affect radius ranges of all types (EG: +20% archery range has no visual representation) Enable specific upload/download speed delimiters (tucked away inside of a "NETWORKING" option); an automated system has flaws compared to a hybrid system of automation and manual overrides When packet loss exceeds a 75% threshhold over 5 consecutive seconds: Notify the local player in the client (EG: "You are experiencing severe out-going network data packet losses") Allow for formatted "/me" text commands to function properly in the pre-game lobby (not only the chat-lobby) Provide a mute/squelch/silence/ignore feature (all aliases included) Updated 'iconified' window to include the unread message count (EG: 0 A.D. (140)) When using the "/clear" command to empty the chat buffer from the chat lobby window while in a pre-game lobby: Allow it to be persistent. Create a "/report" feature for the chat lobby (as not everyone is inclined to register on the forum board). The ability of RIGHT-CLICKING a garrisoned unit to check the units properties The ability of RIGHT-CLICKING a hero icon to query the unit properties The reasons: Observing games is enjoyable and a method that can be used to help instruct other players on how to play better; not knowing how many units a player has garrisoned can cause issues with unit management (as a teacher who is observing) While switching from fullscreen mode to windowed mode: It is difficult to read the tiny chat from the windowed chat log; it is also difficult to observe a game while the chat log window is open and kept in the dead center of the screen A person who was observing only a single player all game might want to review the entire layout of the map, without being forced to watch the replay itself Both while observing and playing: It is difficult to quickly perform math to decide on what unit(s) to create or upgrade(s) to pursue without knowing the exact value of damage being dealt of each type and the resistances of each type for all units in the game (both yourself and your opponent) Self-explanatory; not everyone may wish to have amended text describing the current status modifiers (civic bonuses, hero bonuses, allied bonuses, upgrade bonuses, etc) When deciding on where to place an Outpost or a Great Lighthouse or a Sentry Tower or another building: It is difficult to know exactly where the 'range of effect' will be, without some sort of visual guidance It is not necessary to send 1 MB/s of data to enjoy a two player game of 0 A.D; some players are bound by quotas or wish to limit their data usage for some personal reason (namely: Myself) It is difficult to discern who is lagging and if it is you yourself without using external tools (which most common layman do not know of) There is no reason to enable special text formatting only in the chat lobby and in game, but no the pre-game lobby! Sometimes a player does not wish to see the messages from other players (it also conserves on data bandwith) If I have minimized 0AD for one reason or the other (such as using it strictly to communicate with someone): I would like to be able to quickly identify how many new messages there are (simply by hovering the mouse over the taskbar or using other platform methods such as ALT+TAB) If I am trying to talk to someone in the chat lobby from a pre-game lobby or in-game: It is difficult to read all of the messages without being able to clear the previous buffered set; closing and re-opening the chat-lobby window from within the pre-game lobby or in-game lobby causes the previously cleared messages to reappear Players are more likely to report other players if a quick and universal "/report <player> <brief message>" command were available; aliases such as: "/report <player> <quit>" could be added to rapidly address issues; the player's local client could send a "web forum post" using some client side ID representing 0AD (as to circumvent the need for registering an account on the forum board). This allows an observer to quickly learn more about the game as well as that unit (especially hero units) This allows an observer to quickly learn more about the hero and the hero's perks That is a small list that I have created so far from only a couple of months of having had played 0AD.