thephilosopher

Why not both?

Can do we an 8 worst players list after this?

In theory, smurf accounts can be bad because they can mess up the ratings of other players in 1v1 games. In practice, I haven't found that to be much of a problem. Players inflating their ratings into the 1300s and 1400s by only playing noobs is a much bigger force in creating inaccurate player ratings.

That restriction makes it a lot more attractive.

It's an interesting idea worth thinking through. One problem is that it would potentially conflict with the strategic decision to capture an opponent's buildings. If I'm sending in my army to weaken and capture a CC or barracks, I might not want to waste troops to repair a building after I've captured it. Especially if I'm using champion units or cav as part of my army. But I'd need to do that if it were on fire and I wanted to keep it.

It's probably phrased that way ("metal" in general rather than "gold" in particular) for historical accuracy. I think civs in this era mostly would've been using bronze and iron for the things you buy with metal in the game. If gold were called out as a special metal for in-game mining, it would probably only be used to build Wonders or CCs.

Zeno. Could be of Elea or of Citium.

Just watched these three games - all very good, competitive games!

This is helpful, and I'm playing around a bit with the build order. I'd say that for beginners, the main thing I'd point out is that a lot of them will run out of wood early when using this build order. I think a lot of people playing their first multiplayer games take things too cautiously and create too many infantry too early. If they do that on the build order in this doc, they'll run out of wood repeatedly in the first 5 minutes of the game. They'll have to compensate either by creating fewer infantry or assigning more units to wood collection (or by building farms more slowly, but that wouldn't be ideal).

This sounds great! I'll definitely watch the youtube coverage.

Ah, so that's how people seem to be both in the lobby and in a game at the same time. I'll start using that.

I like the idea of trying to equalize games a bit, but players are already able to decline to join games with players that have a much higher rating than them. If we're talking about one simple fix that would help equalize games, I'd recommend this: allowing us to view the W-L record (and not just the rating) of other players who are in the game before it starts. As things stand now, you can see this information in the lobby. But I don't think you can see it after someone joins a game you're hosting (or I just haven't figured out how to see it). That would allow players to make better decisions as to whether or not to begin a game. For example, let's say I host a game. My current rating, by the way, is 1121, and I've played about 35 rated games. If a 1250 rated player joins my game, all I see is that they're 1250. I don't know if they've played 10 games, and won 6 or 7 of them. Or if they've played 500 games and won 270. I wouldn't have any problems playing against a 1250 player who's only played 10 games. That's probably a fair match. But the game against the 1250 player who's played 500 games would probably be less balanced.

I'm a lot less sure about how these things go in games against the AI. But in my experience, the AI rarely commits the kinds of overwhelming numbers most people in this thread have in mind. I was thinking of a hero plus 50-75+ units. I don't think I've ever seen the AI attack with that many. If you're talking about the AI attacks that happen around the 10-15 minute mark in single player games, you can typically brush those aside with 20-25 infantry units. The best advice against the AI is usually to develop faster and generate enough infantry to beat the AI back.

If you're fighting an overwhelming force that's led by a hero - and you don't have enough units to either fight back or launch a simultaneous attack on the enemy - then, yeah, the "resign" button is probably your best bet. They'll have enough firepower to capture your barracks and towers, and they should be able to take down your fortress with rams or catapults. Keep in mind that quite a few new players try the "load up every male unit I have and take all of them to invade the enemy at the same time" trick. And you can fight against that trick if you're at Phase 3. Those players sometimes leave their home base wide open, and you can march in with an army and a couple of rams and capture their CC.

Yes. This is the reason why so many people exit without resigning when he's winning a game. If he'd knock it off, he'd have far fewer rating disputes to report.

The league idea sounds great, but I'd recommend checking where people are actually rated to see if those divisions make sense. My impression is that there aren't enough players rated above 2000 to separate them into three or more leagues. But I could be wrong about that. On the other hand, there's a huge difference between a player rated 1350 and a player rated 1000 (both in the "Wood League" here).

I don't have anywhere near all the answers for this, but at least one piece of advice: take walks! I've found it really helpful to step away from my desk for awhile and get around and walk around. Good for clearing your head, and the exercise always makes me feel better.

I've played a lot recently as the Spartans and agree with what LetswaveaBook said. Using them well really depends a lot on dominating territory and securing access to metal. That's what you need to spam out skiritai and get them upgraded. And even if you get all that done, you have a slow-moving army that needs to be supplemented with cavalry against better opponents. If I'm playing the Spartans and the enemy is able to attack me early or dominate territory and cut off access to additional metal, I won't last long in the game.

A league of some kind sounds fun. It wouldn't matter to me whether or not money was involved. I'm well aware that with a rating around 1090 that I wouldn't win (especially against ValihrAnt, borg, et al.), but I'd probably play.

The whole "exit without resigning" schtick makes little sense to me. In the end, it just inflates your rating and causes you to end up in games with players who are much better than you. It makes far more sense to take some losses, lose some rating points, and then find people closer to your skill level who you can beat.

What's the worst, most bone-headed mistake you've made while playing 0 A.D.? Here's mine: A week or two ago, I launched a major invasion shortly after moving to Phase 3. My army entered opponent's territory, defeated some units, and then captured an elephant stable. I selected the elephant stable and deleted it. Except that I had accidentally selected, and deleted, my entire invading army.

Hi. First time reporting! @user1 My name: thephilosopher (also the host) My opponent: Thomas13012m My opponent exited a rated game without resigning as I was in the middle of a successful invasion and knocked down his CC. He could've stuck around and fought for awhile, but the final result was in no serious doubt. Mostly I'd just like the credit for the win and the ratings points. I'm still playing my first dozen rated games or so and hoping to get a more accurate reading of my skill level. I know I'm better than my 1060ish rating, but I want to know how much better (probably not *that* much)! commands.txt metadata.json

That's fair enough. It's about what I'd expect as a response. If there were an adjustment, I'd think it would have to be a very mild one that still left 100 units much more powerful than 20 units. Maybe just not five times more powerful.

I'd qualify as a "new player" for our purposes here. I've played 3 rated games (and several unrated ones) and lost all of them. I don't find the rating system itself alienating. It doesn't really bother me much how I'm rated. If I have a problem with it, it's the other part of what you said - that it's not very accurate. I've played at least a couple of games against people who were rated lower than me or not rated at all, but were clearly as skilled as people rated about 1300-1500. It'd be nice to have something in the game lobby that genuinely sorted things out for newer players to find people closer to their skill level. I don't mind playing some games against people more advanced. I learn something from the games. But I don't really want all my games to be that type.

Campaigns really would do a lot for single player appeal. If we're brainstorming ideas for how to improve multiplayer games - and not necessarily thinking about the work that would go into it (I don't know the first thing about coding or about how difficult it is to do specific things with code) - I'd put forward something like this: make individual units less effective at fighting when they're part of large armies. When individual troops are part of a group of troops larger than a certain number of units, let's say 20 for example, each individual unit loses attack points. Again, don't know if it's practical, but it would at least reduce the effectiveness of the "spam out units and then send 100 skirmishers to overwhelm the opposition" strategy.