thephilosopher

I wouldn't want to speak over people who know the game's capabilities better than I do, but I'd be shocked if the game could handle 12 players without massive, unacceptable lag. 8 players is already a challenge in a lot of cases.

If I had to take a big guess as to why the player base might be shrinking right now, I'd say it's this. I know I really ramped up my playing during the pandemic and haven't been as active in the last year+. I think lots of others are in a similar position. I won't deny the toxic stuff happens. I've seen it. But I'm not convinced it's happening any more often now than it was a few years ago.

If they actually fight, I suspect Zuckerberg's strategy of training for a fight will work out better for him than Musk's strategy of non-stop shitposting on Twitter.

Kinda neat to see some screen grabs from an earlier Alpha. I started playing at A23 and haven't seen anything before 21 or 22.

I was able to install the mod on A26, but it didn't work. Every time I try to play against Elytra, no matter the difficulty level, the AI just sits there and doesn't do anything. Its troops just stand around the CC.

Will anyone be covering on youtube? Gotta say I'm a little bummed that there haven't been as much youtube coverage with A26 as we had with A23-25.

Thanks for creating this! Just downloaded, and I'll see how it plays.

Oh my God, the end of boonGUI? End of an era, and a really, really excellent project. To be honest, I think boonGUI, more than anything, is what has kept the game interesting for me the last several years. Along with watching vids from Tom0ad and NewbieRush, both of which also make extensive use of boonGUI.

This is the most Shakespearean thread on the forum.

I'd probably make a case for more 3v3 play. At its best, 3v3 has all the best features of 4v4 without the lag. 2v2, imo, tends to descend into "parallel 1v1" games.

I seem to remember this issue arising a few other times, mainly the one about it not being present when you expect it to be there. I think the usual problem is that if you happen to make a stray click or give an additional order to some units, the "back to work" button disappears. The button only appears when you go directly from resource-gathering to fighting without giving them additional orders after the fight. Once you've given additional orders after the fight, you no longer get the "back to work" button.

After running the software update to 13.1, I had the same problem and fixed it with the same solution. So, yeah, looks like this might be a general issue with Ventura 13.1.

I don't know the details of your situation. But I currently have OS 13.0.1 Ventura and run 0AD just fine. I haven't yet run the software update to 13.1, though.

Just wanted to pop in here to say that Frank Zappa was great.

That's fair enough, though ultimately I don't mind having a few imbalanced maps floating around. We have so many good maps available that it shouldn't be too big a deal. One piece of advice I always give new players is to never join a game on a map they haven't already practiced on at least a couple of times. Of course that goes for imbalanced maps like Northern Island. But it also goes for other maps where players can use "fair" terrain to their advantage - Acropolis Bay is a really good example here. It's a totally "fair" map, but there's at least one Acropolis Bay specialist regularly in the multiplayer lobby who can beat almost anyone who's never played the map before.

Northern Island is definitely heavily imbalanced in favor of the person who starts on the other side of it. There's a small number of people who rack up cheap wins (and rating points) in multiplayer games by using it. FWIW, it's not impossible to win from the "bad" position in Northern Island. I've done it before. But it's pretty hard and requires creative planning (or just a much worse player as your opponent). But I don't really see it as much of a problem to be solved. Just don't join games with an opponent who insists on using it as the map.

Congrats!

I've never had much luck with distinguishing units in a huge blob, other than watching what they do. Skirmishers and archers stop further away and fire, with melee units move all the way up and fight at close range. Beyond that, there are some things you can infer from the civs people choose. Usually people choose a civ for its special units. People who play Britons probably like using slingers. People who play Carthaginians probably want those merc cav. I used to play Spartans all the time because I liked using skiritai. Gaul players often like to do cav rushes. And so on. You can tailor your army a bit around what you think your opponent will probably use. Maybe this isn't the best example because I obviously lost the game, but when ValihrAnt and I played yesterday, he chose Han. Plus I knew he was a great player. From that, it was pretty obvious he was going to be sending sword cav to go after me in Phase 1. So I built my early army around defense from sword cav. He easily won the game, but at least he didn't completely wipe me out in the first 5 minutes with his sword cav. I survived long enough to hit phase 2.

Rams can handle nearly unlimited amounts of attacks from skirmishers and other ranged units like archers while taking basically no damage. They can also take out other rams, but it's best to use sword cav or swordsmen to do that. Trying to use skirmishers against rams is a common mistake people make when they're starting out. If you've got an opponent who does that, then send the rams forward.

This is also my guess, but we'll find out.

If you're short on players and include anyone down to about 1300, I'll play. I'm not as good as anyone else who's signed up, but I'm a 1300-1400 player. In game name: thephilosopher Prefer BO1, weekly games or evening lightning round.

I played my first boonGUI A26 game and all looked good - thanks for the work on it! It was just a single player game, so I haven't tried any form of multiplayer yet. Looking forward to that!

Congrats - excited to play the released version!

Are the imposters good players? Is this finally my chance to "defeat" a 1600 rated player?

It seems to me that the natural way of incorporating the bribing of units would be to carve out mercenaries as being the main (or only) unit susceptible to bribery. The game already tries to incorporate an element of this by requiring that mercenaries cost metal to train. And that's based on solid historical evidence. Making them susceptible to bribery would also be based on historical evidence, and it would also complicate strategies that over-rely on the use of mercenaries (which would definitely improve A25, imo).