real_tabasco_sauce

no i mean more like a civic equivalent of the heroes we have. The ministers are more like an economic version of the trumpeters.

@Vantha yes but it seems using numbers like this does not work and produces some strange behavior, like not being able to click. Can anyone else on windows confirm?

well, coming from someone who has -tried- to balance civs and design new features, the team bonuses can be limiting. Ie, I am thinking of some civ bonus and I realize that basically the same thing is already a team bonus from another civ. If those bonuses double up, then you have super OP combos of civs, which is not intended. Then in essence, every team bonus for 1 civ restricts the civ bonus possibilities for all the other civs. Then as you start to add new civs, this task gets harder and harder.

I don't know about that. For one, heroes have super strong stats and could be used for very cheesy stuff early on. I suppose we are introducing a p2 hero (kind of a B tier hero) in a27 for Athenians, so we will see how strong that is. @wowgetoffyourcellphone what about this: instead of selecting a hero, you select a ruler. This would be a purely infantry unit without much fighting stats, but some bonus or aura, potentially you could use existing civ bonuses for this too. I don't really like doing it at the start of the game, because it becomes a 1 click strategy: your choice would determine your follow up moves. It could be interesting to make this available from the cc once you reach p2: Click an icon in the cc called "Take rule" or something, and it pulls up the dialogue to make the selection. Then these ruler units could be used for regicide. idk, just a thought.

I agree, I think the 25 wood cost especially has made them much less worthwhile. However, lowering the cost back to 100 or 80 wood and keeping them weak (-50% garrison dmg), makes them a bit more spammy (too easy to cover a large area), which is kind of what happened in 26.6. I would rather keep the cost as is, but add a single default arrow to make the 125 wood more worthwhile. I think it is good design to make scout towers something you get if needed when you can't fight off rushes. For example in aoe2, they talk about "forcing a tower" basically applying enough pressure to make the opponent invest in a tower for defense, therefore that money isn't invested in eco.

imo the roman heroes are very bland. Somewhere there is a version of a roman hero (DE maybe?) that slows enemy units among a couple of other things, and I think that one sounds super fun (not for the enemy ofc).

I like multiple civ bonuses, but as for team bonuses I think there should only be one. I agree some team bonuses are very lacking (looking at you britons). The reason for my take is pretty much for simplicity: When you are teaming up with three allies, it is less to keep track of knowing only 3 bonuses may affect you. Also, by allowing only 1 team bonus, you run less risk in accidentally introducing OP civ stacks.

the scaling is just the recording (i think). These were things i did on mac but now cant on windows. (use numbers to shift queue batches). i havent tried cmd and ctrl, should that be done before or with the other keys?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agni-I

Ok, not sure what is wrong with the video format, but it shows what is happening in my windows experience on 0ad. 1st (not exactly related to the video): I can't use 1,2,3,4 to queue units with shift, only queueing single units by pressing 1 without shift. 2nd: in a game I played yesterday, I would occasionally notice a batch of a few units I tried to train with shift+clicking the icon a few times. This batch would not train, and clicking the icon again would add 1 unit of that type to the queue. Also the batch number would disappear back to normal. Now about the video, this is what happens if I let 'queue first unit' be shift+1, in an attempt to be able to shift queue with the numbers. 1st: I train a few units without batching, this is fine. 2nd: I use shift+1 multiple times to make a batch of 6. 3rd: this batch isn't produced. Instead, a single unit is queued and the number 6 is stuck over the unit icon. 4th: Now I can't click anything except the icons in the barracks menu. 5th: I click the unit icon with 6, and a single unit is queued, 6 remains on the unit icon. 6th: I press shift again and the 6 units are queued and train, I can click now. Pretty weird, can any windows users replicate this? 581462794_0A.D.2024-05-1608-49-52.mp4

You might just think you have reached peak performance. I think seeing someone else's gameplay can help a lot with this, so I'd also recommend you look at @ValihrAnt's youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ValihrAnt/videos

What I would suggest is this: let each civ train more 'generic' champions (those that are the same or very similar as the template) from the barracks/stable with the unlock champ tech. Then, for 1 or 2 champs for each civ, diversify them additionally and let them go in either the fort or the champ building, depending on their strength. Then the unit stats could also be adjusted if they are going to a building that is more expensive. I would recommend this once we get enough ideas for cool unique units for each civ. I suppose the centurion, persian immortal, and the fire cav are already sufficiently unique.

So ive grown used to the adjusted minimap icon sizes that I specified in my config, and now that I am back to the full size icons, I really think they are too large by default. I think they should be about 1/2 the area they currently take up at least.

we shouldn't sort players for circle placement in rmgen 2. Players are used to just alternating the teams in game setup to produce alternating team placement.

This is a good watch for those familiar with the automation debate. Ok so maybe its a different game from 0ad, but many points on automation are valid across RTS games. Maybe the most important is the division of attention between fighting and economy. The controversy of this farm auto-placement puts into start contrast the motion to automize unit and technology production like in proGUI. In 0ad, we already have some things heavily automated like autoqueue. Admittedly, autoqueue is more justified in 0ad given the citizen soldier mechanics, but I heavily advocate against further automation. Some say 0ad is too hard, but I say let it be hard. Learning how to do hard things and winning for your efforts is rewarding and exciting. To improve the experience of new players, focus should instead be placed on improving the ui, ranked games, and matchmaking/finding. Obviously, we don't have any kind of matchmaking, but it is important that new players get a few games with players of roughly equal skill so they can experience more than just village phase. Excessive automation makes RTS games easier sure, but also shallow, and shallow games are not fun for long. One of the main issues with aoe4 is that where aoe2 is deep, aoe4 is shallow (homing bullets, 1-click strategies). We can make 0ad more deep by increasing the amount of player-controlled features, adding more technologies (unique and/or unit-specific), and diversifying unit stats.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha27 lots of stuff for sparta including unique techs designed to boost the spartiate's stats. Also they promote into a stronger version called "olympic champion" Also, we made agis a much stronger hero like he used to be but also gave him a passive metal discount for units.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushan_Empire This civ could accompany the two nomad civs as a regional package. Even right in the wikipedia page, there are some really cool ruins for structure inspiration.

There are a lot of changes coming to sparta in a27, maybe you will be interested: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Alpha27 There is a section for "Differentiating Sparta," I might have missed a couple things btw, but these are the most impactful.

Well, I didn't mean that. I just wanted to set the record straight when I hear people call economy management "meaningless" and "unnecessary." There is absolutely a reason for it, even if some ppl don't like it. And sure, that is just my opinion, but it is a well informed one, since fully automating eco (including houses and tasking) would basically remove a solid percentage of the game's total content.

It wasn't factored into the original math that training a batch allows the next group of units to be trained sooner than 1x1.

Ok, maybe you two consider these things trivial, but I would expect the majority of multiplayer users would consider them not trivial. Sure the game would be "easier" if many economy tasks are done for you, but I guarantee the game would be less fun. If you take away unit production from the user, like in atrik's mod, what is next? You could also automate deciding where your gatherers go to have perfectly balanced resources, and automatically build houses when needed. At some point, you may as well not simulate economy and just place buildings on resources to get a trickle of food, wood, metal and stone. That way there is no clicks needed for economy and you can focus on strategy. For single player though, it doesn't really matter, you can mod it however you like. And like @0 calories said, multiplayer is fine as long as others are playing on the same level.

@SKAcz The opinion of myself and plenty of other players is that while economy management tasks can be repetitive, they are an important part of the game. Namely that a player must decide where to allocate their attention when they are under pressure or applying pressure. The autoqueue we currently have is simple so that you still have to manage economy. Learning how to multitask well is a (probably the) key skillset in RTS games, and overly automating the economy would ruin that part. Also just be aware that its widely considered cheating to use progui in multiplayer.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone can a structure have both terrain hugging elements (like a wheat field) and a model? If so, the dock could just be a smallish yurt with the skeleton of a boat next to it, a fire, and a rope ladder used to slide boats into the water. The rope ladder could just behave the same way as farms so that it doesn't hover over the shore.

I think all but the royal yurt and maybe the scythian version of the ovoo would need models. I think the royal yurt could just be a more decorated version of the current yurt (house), maybe using more luxurious prop points as well. The ovoo would be more complicated. Overall, the structure would be similar to the xiongnu one but made of stacked wood. Also, I don't know if the flags were used by the scythians like the xiongnu have on their ovoo. And then in general, we have a problem where the yurt fabric for scythians and xiongnu looks very similar across the board like @Lion.Kanzen said. Maybe a move to use more hides or skins for one civ, maybe xiongnu, could help.

these look really cool. If you need other ideas, we will also need a Scythian dock, a Scythian version of an ovoo, nomads stable, and a 'royal yurt' (other discussion):