Thales

In playing the Seleucids (using the "reform" army), the fortress offers options that can't seem to be implemented. One being "professional garrisons". What is a professional garrison? According to the explanation: "Hire soldiers to hold defenses against enemies". How is that done? Initially, it was implied that a fortress could now train champions with this version, but it appears that capability was recently removed? I see that "murder holes" can now be researched in the fortress. The "glorious expansion" now appears to require that additional houses be built before the population is allowed to occur. Previously, did not have to build additional houses. Any additional thoughts with the Alpha 27: “Agni” version?

In observing Grok's behavior, it is reading webpages. As such it does not know if the advice in any post is correct or incorrect. Consequently if a preponderance of posters post incorrect responses, Grok will unfortunately also give an incorrect response. Hopefully, if there are enough posts wilth correct answers, Grok would be able to answer that question fairly accurately (again Grok would not know an accurate response from an incarcerate response.).

I've only played with the "X" AI for one day. Your post presents very legitimate questions. The sources for the answers the AI provides in the case of "X" seems to be based on a casual reading of various internet posts. So the answers provided by the AI are limited to that small "universe". The AI, in "reading" those internet post would not know which posts that it is reading are correct or not. (The AI does provide (lists) its source material) Additionally, many of the AI answers are "politically" correct in the sense of being appropriately vague and non-committal. i.e. -> it depends on your strategy. A big question. Does the "X" AI have the ability to access the official 0 A.D. rules? I don't think so.

Has anybody used an AI application to get gameplay answers? "X" formerly Twitter now allows you to use Grok to get answers. I asked the following question: "In the game 0AD can healers heal from inside a building?" Question: "In the game 0 AD should healers go with the troops into battle?"

Thanks. I'll give that a try.

Thank-you for responding. I looked at (https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Modding_Guide), which could serve as a good starting point. Attempting to follow-up on this did not work-out. I should mention that I am using Linux Mint and I installed 0 A.D. as a flatpak on my desktop computer. When I went to look for the following directories/files: mod/art/textures/cursors/default-arrow.png, in-game cursors are inside public/art/textures/cursors, these directories/files were non-existent. Additionally, there was no directory: binaries/data/mods/. This may or may not be a consequence of using the flatpak version of 0 A.D.

Can the size and color of the cursor be customized? I have poor vision. Consequently I keep "losing" the cursor. To improve its visibility, I would like to make the cursor bigger and to change its color.

I established a Klēroukhia Military Colony near some resources. The Klēroukhia was not near the enemy. After the resources were exhausted I abandoned the structure. I left the Klēroukhia, as is. Out of curiosity, any benefit to demolishing the Klēroukhia once it became "useless"?

Not a question concerning the strength of a fortress, but the acquisition of experience points by units through training. Fortresses, due to their size and purpose would seem to offer more training opportunities than barracks and stables.

Do they even have opportunities to gain experience?

I would like to suggest, as an enhancement, that units gain experience in a fortress. Additionally, that fortress have an enhanced experience benefit, such as 2X what is obtained in the barracks.

Garrisoned units gain experience in certain buildings. I'm using the Selecuids as the example. These buildings include the: barracks, stable, and elephant stable. The narrative for each of these buildings includes the phrase: "Units gain experience while garrisoned inside the building". I assume that means any and all units gain experience inside any building that allows for that. Meaning that a Romanized Heavy Swordsman would gain experience in an elephant stable and an elephant would gain experience in a barracks. Is that assumption correct? Surprisingly, fortresses don't offer gaining experience points. Seems like they should. Where do women and healers gain experience points?

Interesting. Thanks.

For each unit there are two status bars. The top one shows the units health.. What does the bottom one display? I noticed that the "healers" could restore a unit, going from red back to green (top status bar). However, I did not notice any change on the bottom status bar.

We have no problem connecting on our home LAN, where we are in the same house. What we have been attempting to accomplish is to connect from two different locations about 150 miles (241 Kilometers) apart. That is the reason for attempting to use the public internet address obtained from https://www.whatismyip.com/ . Just tried it as an experiment. Anyway, the lobby worked. Problem solved.

The short answer; success, we made an internet connection through the lobby. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The longer answer. When I first experimented with using the lobby, I may not have set a server password. Overlooked it???? Anyway this time I made sure to set the password, my daughter successfully joined the game with that password. Didn't see anyone else attempt to join. That is the process we use on our local home LAN. When I used https://www.whatismyip.com/ to get my internet IP address, my daughter was not able to join. She received the error message that "this is often caused by UDP port 20595 not being forwarded on the host side, by a firewall or anti-virus software". For a quick test, turned off the firewall, but she was still not able to make a connection. Very helpful. Thank-you for responding.

My daughter and I would like to play a multiplayer game using the Game Lobby. Is it possible to create a "private" game? In exploring how to do this, I did not see any option. Additionally, others were attempting to join. Hopefully, I did not irritate anyone.

Thanks. We started over this AM. It only took two of use to beat the AI on easy!!!

Unfortunately, it got extremely late so we saved the multiplayer game being played over a local LAN to be resumed in the AM. We can see the saved game, we don't see an option for how to resume it. How do we resume play?

Now for the follow-up question. Does the "arrow" benefit differ differ between sword units and archer units? Or to phrase it differently, do you still get the "arrow" benefit with a non-range unit garrisoned in a ship? As a similar side question: Both towers and forts have an "arrow" benefit when a unit is garrisoned in one. Do archers add "extra' arrows beyond what a non-ranged unit would provide when garrisoned in a tower or fort?

Your response invoked something I had not considered. That is that the area my civilization covers is larger than the screen. At times enemy units have snuck past my front and have created havoc around the civic center and fields. These enemy units, at times, were off screen, so it took a while to see them and react. Also I have had a couple of cases of two-fronts (I'm attacking on one front but defending on a second from), meaning that it takes a while for reinforcements to get to the breach. This of course, means some troops have to be left behind as a defensive measure. Thanks for your response.

Thoughts concerning the preferred approach to garrisoning troops in towers and fortresses. As a broad statement, there are two generic types of units: swordsman and archers. I assume that swordsman would be most useful when a fortress or a tower is in direct physical attack by the enemy. Archers most useful for stopping enemy units approaching the tower/fortress or killing enemy units attempting to pass by. The implication. Swordsman would be more useful (garrisoned) near the front and not really as necessary in the rear areas. Archers would be useful in all locations. Especially useful for providing area coverage near the community center and/or fields to kill the occasional enemy unit that gets past the front.

Well, I'm up to 1.14 for a kill/death ratio. My opponent is down to 0.88 for a kill kill/death ratio. My "improvement", I suspect is because I am hiding behind walls. Now, I have to develop a break-out strategy, My troops are too widely dispersed as there are two combat fronts. I may also have too many troops garrisoned in the walls and towers.

I noticed that I had a kill/death ratio of 0.9. My opponent had a kill/death ratio of 1.1. Beyond what the ratio means, is it "good" news for me, or "bad" news?

I have favored archers, I think that is turning out to have been a mistake. Based on my recent experience, going with swordsman will be more appropriate. I also made two other mistakes. One, I forgot to use my champion. Second, I neglected have a supply of horse cavalry. I'm also pretty fumble fingered with the stress of RTS games. (I forgot to use my champion) I attempted to get the women into the CC, but I bungled that.