real_tabasco_sauce

I think the one @vladislavbelov posted is pretty good, but its missing plenty of changes. I think it might be worthwhile putting together a more player-attractive patch notes document. Some type of summary paragraph, then start with gameplay, then balance, then art/audio, then major engine improvements and of course a section for the new graphics backend. Important changes like that can get a paragraph explaining and summarizing the change, and simple stuff like (Elite athenian spearmen may promote directly to champions) can be a bullet point under an "Athenians" subheading. Adding some gameplay screenshots to the document could also help make it more eye catching. I think this way, the trailer could be shorter and more focused on exciting players than on communicating changes.

We have a whole lot of changes coming in this alpha, so wonder if it would be worthwhile to compile a sort of "patch notes" style document that lists summarizes the important changes.

How should I get ahold of @Itms or @vladislavbelov, maybe on IRC? Maybe I should just add Itms directly to the mod?

That seems like a pretty good solution.

Its really not an issue, I think @0 calories is sarcastic here.

anyone know who the mod.io administrator is these days?

The way it addresses sniping has a lot to do with what you said here. That archers have low dps doesn’t really matter all that much. Sniping is also very strong with skirmishers. the important part is that currently ranged units are a higher value target than melee units, making the ability to target more distant ranged units overly important. if an archer is equally valued shooting a melee unit as shooting a ranged unit, then new players that don’t know how to snipe won’t be punished overly by a technique they haven’t learned. in that case sniping would be a highly conditional approach with mixed results. It would only be useful for highly knowledgeable players that know when it will improve the battle outcomes. for example, if a player tries to snipe under the rebalance, the opportunity cost is that the enemy melee units will more quickly win their fight, forcing the retreat or loss of the players ranged units.

I have raised concerns with your existing mod and also with your stance idea, do not dismiss this as bs. There are 2 issues with what you suggest in my opinion 1. It is a 'smart' behavior from units. The default UnitAI without human input shouldn't be capable of doing things of high value that traditionally take human actions. In other words, they should be somewhat 'dumb'. The example here being that a group of cavalry trying to raid would find their weakest unit killed sooner which would typically be a skill (find and kill weakest enemy unit first to improve odds to win the fight). 2. It will not address or help the 'sniping meta'. If all one's units are tasked to shoot the weakest unit, what happens when an army is full hp? Shoot the closest unit? in that case, the closest unit is therefore weaker. Basically, in this system targeting is dependent on the unit previously targeted, which won't do much for sniping which generally entails focusing the enemy ranged units above all else. The sniping and meat shield situations go hand in hand. It is a "meat" "shield" because it literally is: melee units are all super tanky and do very little damage, ranged units are very fragile and do tons of damage. While your proposition might partially help, the real solution would be a rebalance.

yeah all the maps except 1 I think use biomes. I last tested them all with all the biomes a couple of months ago. I suppose I check again.

https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/badosu-balanced-maps/

yeah my 50% against (ignoring any art development effort) is that with the CS model, armies are very large, so having to get specifically transport ships for this would make army transport even harder than it already is.

Im kind of 50/50 on a dedicated transport ship.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4964 This works for ships and buildings at the moment (latest revision). Just use the existing 'autorallypoint' hotkey to specify the degarrison point. You won't need to use this hotkey if the building doesn't have arrows.

Well before you get a ton of work underway, check out the suebians in delenda est. If the goths should be a separate civ entirely, then you should be familiar with the suebian/cimbri buildings so the goth ones stand out.

Kind of semi-nomadic I guess. Economic flexibility with carts, but not as mobile as the xiongnu or scythians, which also need some art if you are interested:

Actually, I am all for it. My buildingAI update is made primarily with true buildings in mind. Right now its not going great. I know I need to make a new order in unit_actions.js, and commands.js, but I can't quite get it to do anything. I will next try to use the set-rally command as an example of something that works on buildings.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone this might be from the cataphract mixin.

Great, the build works fine. Thank you!

seems similar to this too: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5023

Ok @vladislavbelov, I could build previous versions such as rP27909 using the fixes from (https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5092), but now I am unable to build moltenvk. Building Molten VK... Downloading MoltenVK-1.2.2.tar.gz % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 0 196 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- 0:00:01 --:--:-- 0 curl: (22) The requested URL returned error: 404 ERROR: Download of https://releases.wildfiregames.com/libs/MoltenVK-1.2.2.tar.gz failed Is the link down or outdated? not sure why this link is being used since the libs part of the site doesn't exist (or isn't accessible).

Since they come from the embassies, you could just let the embassies be built in p1. If you want them to be available from barracks, you will just need to add them to the barracks template. also, what version is the mod for? I recall the ‘techs data type’ approach is new for a27/current version. So if you are using this approach for an a26 mod I think that causes the error “Did not expect requirements”. for a26 I think you have to use requiredTechs or something similar

Pericles' strategy to defeat Sparta was simple: He evacuated the Athenian countryside to avoid engagement with Sparta's superior armies and brought the population into the Long Walls, protecting Athens and passage to its port, Piraeus. Athens' strong fleets were responsible to acquire necessary food supplies, as well as directly attack Sparta and its allies at sea. This strategy worked well, until a plague broke out and devastated a large part of Athens' population. Pericles himself fell victim too, which might be on of the reasons Athens ultimately lost the war. I just did a couple suggestions here and there for grammar/flow. I think Themistocles was the one that ordered the construction of the long walls, no?

It might be good to talk a little about his "Defensive Strategy" which is the inspiration for one of his auras.

yes. The only issue is how and when to call the function that allows the targeting. In the video above, I basically just stuck the function call inside the attack order in unitAI around line 400. Since the ship unitAI is also trying to target the closest unit as other units do, it turns out that the function is called both on user input and also by the default behavior of the ship. The desired behavior of the unfocused buildingAI is to shoot the closest unit. So if a unit is no longer the closest it won't be targeted. Meanwhile, the user-targeted unit should be attacked until dead or out of range. Because of the aforementioned issue, the setup I used to make the demo video results in the closest unit being targeted until dead automatically even if moves to be farther than another potential target. This is too 'smart' and would be extremely annoying to play against, since when you are retreating, whatever target you are trying to save from the tower would be still targeted. So it was pretty easy to make the modified building ai, and I think it will be much harder to call the new function to produce the correct behavior for buildings, ships, and siege towers.

You make a good point though. The modified buildingAI behaves very similarly to how a ship would if it used the unitAI attack.