real_tabasco_sauce

I'd like to revisit this topic to see if there are some ways to limit snowballing. Obviously, if you gain the advantage, it's rightfully yours, but the opponent should have more opportunities to win it back. And I think there would be more fun/creative play by increasing these opportunities. Here are some mechanisms that contribute to snowballing: Citizen soldiers: This means that gaining a military advantage is often accompanied by a proportional economic advantage. Also, by training economy units from military buildings (and military units from the CC), the military infrastructure is largely the economic infrastructure, and vice-versa. Loot: Resource and experience loot leave the victor with a military and economic advantage. However, promoted units are somewhat slower to gather, which partially counteracts the other advantages. There are other features that could arguably contribute to snowballing as well, like preventing construction with ranged units, but these contribute much less. Ideas to reduce snowballing: Unit diversification and counters: by implementing more sophisticated relationships between the units, we can decrease snowballing by allowing smaller armies to beat larger ones if they have a better composition. we will need to vary more factors that are often held constant for whole unit classes in 0ad, like price, train time, and HP. Shift economic contributions more towards civilians (formerly women): This would benefit 0ad by partially deblurring the line between military investment and economic investment, and by decreasing the economic opportunity cost of sending citizen soldier (CS) units to battle. Alternatively, a new eco unit could be introduced to complement civilian gathering abilities, such as a more metal/stone specialized gatherer. Unit-specific technology tree: By providing players ways to selectively buff particular units, strategy will emerge in the prioritization of "teching into" certain units based on the civ matchup, map, and resource availability. Developments in this area will compound nicely with unit diversification. feel free to comment some thoughts and suggestions.

its easy to think of some desirable behavior, but since it is maliciously compliant, its also important to think of the ways that the behavior might occur when you don't want it to. Some behavior could be useful in one case, but annoying in several other cases.

@Classic-Burger I can explain why a sheet with a bunch of ideas doesn’t translate to an equivalent bunch of gameplay changes/features. gameplay changes should fit into the scope and style of 0ad, be compatible with existing features, not introduce unnecessary complication, while enriching gameplay. For example, users may suggest realism features, like capturing wild horses to give the player a 1-time discount on a cavalryman. However, that would conflict with other features, like siege speed, hero HP, as 0ad is not an exhaustive simulation. if every idea we came across was implemented as is, 0ad would be quite a mess, wouldn’t it? One other thing is that these changes require people’s work to get them over the finish line. So arguments for a new feature should either convince a dev to take up the task, or the arguer should try it themselves. And that means you may need to modify or walk back the original idea to get more people in agreement.

@ffm2 we are past the string freeze, so changes to the description can't be made for R28. They can certainly be improved down the road tho.

Enemies would be good. I went with Humans to make it clear that it doesn't affect buildings or siege.

I think it looks good to include a bit of their equipment. They are not screenshots of the actor units, but they do have components from screenshots. In fact, they are so fit into the "norm" that they are long lost cousins of other heroes! The fact of the matter is nothing gets done unless someone does it. I am no artist and I don't think we should wait years for artists to deliver stunning portraits just for the GUI.

But what about the German heroes is inconsistent with the norm? you didn’t answer my question.

My disagreement stems from that I forgot to add "Hero"; someone might notice the departure from the norm, as with the Han counterparts, Cleopatra, or those since Alpha 24. Still awaiting a volunteer for Candragupta... How are the German hero portraits a departure from the norm?

Metal availability varies a lot by map. Metal is gathered more slowly, but if you want it, you can put as many gatherers as you want on it. If it is a metal-scarce map, then maybe reconsider using mercenaries. In a25, we rolled out a version of mercenaries where their metal costs were lower because metal was thought to be more "valuable" than the other resources and it was a nightmare for balance.

The idea behind mercenaries is that they are cheaper in total resources, but you have to pursue a lot of metal to make them. They are also quickly trained and are more effective than their CS counterparts. So you just have to prioritize metal in your build if you want to use those units.

No, same reason as @ffm2, and no entity get spawned. Just test it lol. I tested it on my own builds when developing obviously and nothing was wrong. Something must have gone wrong since then. I haven't downloaded the build since i've been very busy. K i can disable those in order to prevent weirdness/unforeseen bugs.

is that because of points 2 and 3? Or a different reason? Not sure how that happened, its not supposed to be like that. That is intentional, as the tech turns them into 5 pop houses.

If you look at the actor for the encampment, it is an example of how you can use props to let an actor conform to the terrain.

@nifa I like the direction with the wonder. If the ship settings were supposed to be a monument or memorial, then perhaps we can imagine some decor that would be fitting. We may not even need the ship inside as the rocks were arranged in the shape of a ship.

Incredible I love it!

Changing unit speeds and giving units more specialized roles. This is made quite difficult by citizen soldiers, and by unit availability by civ, but i believe it is possible.

try using your women if you don't want to use any soldiers to destroy the ram. They destroy rams pretty quickly.

I don't think rams are OP. Once players figure out that swords and melee destroy them, they are pretty harmless. Right now because of the strength of capturing, you oftentimes don't need siege at all. I don't see the point of requiring them to be garrisoned to move, as one could argue the 3 population cost is three dudes that come "pre-installed" inside the ram to push it.

In 0ad, units can attack enemy foundations which prevents them from being built. This tends to limit the use of buildings. We could also let foundation damage impact the HP of the complete building instead of affecting construction time (as in AOE2), or increase the durability of foundations for a more hybrid approach (more difficult to deny buildings, but not impossible). thoughts?

I suppose the way to do it would be to set origin, then destination, and then use shift+click to "add" destinations in order, similar to queueing orders for normal units.

For a27 you can only get it by building the game. However, this is being worked on for release 28: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/8404

Yeah, I think this would be cool.

IMO its a bit obscure for a tooltip @guerringuerrin

so basically there's less unit pushing when they are technically in a formation, so they spend less time bumping into each other when gathering.

yeah I think some simplification is needed for the nomadic part.