real_tabasco_sauce

Yeah, I guess that's right. Well, what I have is added a pack/unpack functionality just like other ranged siege. It has area attack, shorter range, short prepare time, 5 sec repeat time. My main issue with building siege in the field is that it gives you such a massive amount of flexibility compared to other civs. That being said, the unit isn't particularly good vs buildings. So I think it would be good to allow legionaries to build them. Another option would be to instead unlock them upon reforms tech and also allow training them at army camps. This way they can be built near but not in the middle of the fight. @borg- @chrstgtr Which sounds better? Always available from workshop Available from workshop, available in army camp after reforms tech. Available to be built by legionaries after reforms tech. I think all three might be cool. In that case, would you all be fine with me adding this into the existing patch? or should this be separate?

I know I understood the first time, I just do not want to break @Pureon's model @borg- and I are thinking about how to add best to add the onager to rome. I would really prefer the onager to have wheels and no need to pack up. For this, the unit would just have to have a long prepare time. However, it seems adding wheels is not as simple as I would have thought. (I hoped to be able to add wheel props). Any ideas? I guess it could just be packed/unpacked like other siege, but it would be more interesting to be mobile.

I am not sure how range ties are handled or how frequent they are, but in theory when selecting the closest unit, one could round ranges to integers or to two significant figures and then choose between the ties randomly.

So basically allow the user to customize the 'order selection 1 by 1' hotkey (2 by 2, 3 by 3 etc). Perhaps the scroll wheel would be good for this as it is in batch training, although i'm not sure how the change would be communicated to the player.

Throwing aside the effort to develop this, the potential performance costs, the UI clutter, and the difficulty for new players to learn something like this, I think this would be actually harder than using the mouse and hot keys to select and attack. (Aka micro). There is simply no way it turns new players away. New players don’t experience micro unless they go against a player far better than themselves. new players get turned away by difficulties in finding matches, performance issues, and boredom. the learning curve for micro is actually part of a “skill gap” and it is essential for games to be fun and learnable. people who have played for years should be able to beat new players because they are better. There is nothing wrong with this. now overkill can be addressed partially by modifying unitAI. I think there was a motion for ranged units to target the next closest unit of the closest is already being attacked by x units. Personally I am 50/50 on this idea, but in the grand scheme of things, it should be the player’s responsibility to manage overkill.

Right, but the 'curve' or the 'playing field' for most players shouldn't be all about micro, sniping, hero baiting, quick walling, and other techniques. This should only be how the top 10% can get to the top 1%. For the majority of players, especially new players, the learning curve should be all about economy, technologies, and army composition. Once sniping becomes a more nuanced approach, like how I expect things will turn out after my melee rebalance patch, it will seem silly to implement an auto-sniping feature with so little interest in sniping.

Reworked nomad territory system: Ovoos available in p1, they provide a small territory root and may be built quickly in neutral territory and own territory. The ovoo also serves as a stone dropsite and provides an armor aura. They are weak structures. CC can train while moving Both nomads recieve a civ bonus "nomadic structures" that gives -25% hp to buildings but reduces their territory decay to enemy and gaia by 5x, allowing the structures to survive a long time without a territory root. nomads_demo.mp4 Maybe it would be good to allow the packed CC to still provide 20 pop, and allow houses, storehouses, farmsteads, and farms to be constructed in neutral territory, but still decay. All of this is designed to provide a more flexible spin on the territory system, rather than throw it out entirely for the nomads.

You are probably referencing the release candidate for a27. These changes are not in that version, but I’m certain there will be another release candidate on the way later. so I’d say stay tuned for the next release candidate to drop, and then you will be able to play test the Sparta update.

there are a number of unique techs added, as well as bonuses. I guess you could apply the patches in svn and try to play, but these are committed and will be in the coming alpha 27, unless we need to balance some of it.

Plague

@borg- has a very awesome differentiating Sparta patch that was committed a bit ago. This makes it far from ‘plain’ https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4736 this addresses a lot of your concerns. Among the other changes, Champ hoplites are available in p1 owing to the huge cultural importance of the spartiates. They will still have mobility issues but this is just a weakness of the civ.

I think they would, but the rank 3 spearman and swordsman are not in the structure tree, so they can't be 'trainer units'

Well the idea there is that with one centurion trained, it makes it a little bit easier to get more.

Basically, when melee CS infantry reach rank 3, they may be upgraded at a smallish cost to centurions, which have an aura for surrounding units. The aura is damage for melee only, and decreased promotion xp for all units in the radius.

I put it in civ bonuses, since its not a technology. https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5083 I would think it much harder to get promotion units in the tech tree. And it might be a little cluttered to then show the promotion of cs units too.

where can I find the warlord icon in the top right? Nevermind haha i just got it off @Yekaterina 's github. I will edit it with an axe and give the current icon to champ spearcav.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone could you do one of an axe-wielding warrior for the xiongnu? Or are these more for menus than icons in the UI?

They are much weaker @Buchi. They have lower armor. Also, while they don't cost metal, they do cost a lot of food and wood.

The xiongnu storehouse crashes the game on the most recent release candidate for a27 (not sure about svn since I can't yet build). It is very reproducible and happens only on placement. Edit: same with the house. Both my changes and terra-magna working version have this crash.

@wraitiiis busy atm, but I have two merges for the community mod ready for a potential 5th community mod. One is a bunch of gameplay commits from a27, designed to make balance testing of the RC easier. The other is my melee/ranged rebalance. I’d say most balancing stuff is directly in Phabricator along with some discussion here or in PM. These are typically less ambitious changes since it is hard to get much agreement for more ambitious changes. My thoughts are that these more ambitious ideas can be implemented through the community mod for good play testing. I have a few other cool ideas ready for when a27 drops.

Ah see my perspective here would just be to let it come down to opportunity cost. You can only afford so much attention in different areas, so you have to choose (for example between micro techniques, or between managing army or managing eco). When you add automation you also lose some of these choices the player must make on how to spend their attention. I say no need to force a solution when the root cause can be addressed. I expect my rebalance to make sniping useful about 15% of the time compared to about 80% of the time currently.

Well, I would say it is not elegant to implement a stance to do a highly specific action that is only occasionally helpful (assuming proper balance). Especially when that action is just a sum of multiple clicks. It sort of sends us towards a slippery slope of adding more and more 'bells and whistles' that distract from core gameplay mechanics. What happens when the meta changes in the future? Would you want to have a setting to automatically execute that meta? My main argument against this is that automating too many things for the player makes things less fun. For instance automatically targeting the weakest unit is automatically calculating and executing what is currently a fun and exciting part of gameplay. Ex. I have been raided and notice that one retreating cavalry has 1 hp. I pick out the weak one and get a kill. This is a lot less fun if my units were already on a stance to do this for me. I probably wouldn't even notice :l If this stance could actually snipe automatically, It is more fun to snipe manually than to click a button and watch it all happen.

There is a pretty huge difference in elegance. It is logical and sometimes helpful that workers automatically go to near resources after building a new cc, and it is nice that farmers look for empty farms to work at. ProGui and the discussed autosniping feature are not very elegant, as they require additional modes, gui panels and settings to work (all requiring clicks of some kind). ProGui sits on top of 0ad and you have to learn it almost like a separate game. It would definitely feel out of place and overly contrived if it were a vanilla feature.

Well, I hope it can make it into the next alpha, but I wouldn't count on it. It might make its way into a fifth a26 community mod in order to be more effectively play tested.