real_tabasco_sauce

This is true @Fabius, however the two units are rarely achievable together. Even when you can get both units in a fight, the different mobility of the consular bodyguards and the centurions makes them fairly incompatible. The centurions have a small aura radius, so you would have to keep the consular bodyguards nearby. Also, all the roman heroes are mounted and you would surely rather have them with your consulars than with your smaller CS army (assuming you have some CS at home on resources), so in that case it would be harder to acquire a centurion. So, thankfully, the design doesn't particularly lend itself to use with consulars. One thing that could be very strong currently, and I have not seen anyone try this, would be to combine CS swordsmen with champion swordsmen to try and get centurions. The melee champions then would be absolutely a force to be reckoned with, probably the strongest in the game. @chrstgtr feel free to try it

I am making a list of simple community mod shortcomings that would need to be addressed if/when it is implemented in a27. Roman Civilization Overview (perhaps specific technologies) should mention ability of rank 3 melee infantry to become centurions, should also be listed on Spearmen and Swordsmen tooltip for romans. Carthage team bonus should say "infantry mercenaries..." instead of "Mercenaries -50% train time" if you have anything else to add, mention it.

Maybe to add to the description: at game start, Berries are visible as far as the starting exploration circle is. Quickly (maybe immediately) after game start, berries which lie outside starting units' line of site disappear. When units can see the berries, they reappear and remain explored.

Fire ships can be trained from captured docks crossbow training can be researched from the stables and mentions crossbow cavalry train time reduction.

In the random map Frontier, you can choose team placement: Could this be done for mainland and some other random maps? I think it would be great!

I was actually thinking something more asymmetric would be ideal. On the order of 10 % less survivable and 25% to 30% increase in attack. The attack is really more important. You are right that the crush units become less effective in comparison, but if you remember, I already have a crush rebalance branch that would be ideal for this. yeah this is a concern for sure. To be honest, I would rather building arrows be targeted rather than random, but this is a different topic. You are right, we would have to increase melee cavalry damage to follow suit. In this case, I am fine with higher melee cav damage. Spear cavalry need it anyway, and I agree some armor/hp changes might be necessary as well. However, remember that these cav will be in close quarters with much more damaging melee infantry, especially spearmen and pikemen that have a cav counter.

exactly. I would probably do this for melee inf in the community mod, and see where things are at for cavalry.

glass cannon is certainly the wrong word. Currently melee's strength (even swordsmen to be honest) is primarily how tanky they are. This inevitably gives rise to the meatshield meta and the sniping required to beat it. In short, the current stats melee infantry have make them unimpactful on the battlefield, when compared to ranged units. This is because they contribute little damage to fights. The goal is resolving the issue of the meat shield meta. I propose to do this by most importantly increasing melee damage to be closer to ranged classes' damage per second. The decrease in armor is to avoid all melee quickly becoming OP, and it would be a small decrease 4 hack 4 pierce instead of 5 perhaps.

@chrstgtr I think you are overthinking it. Melee units serve as a "meat shield" because they are all tanky with 5 hack and 5 pierce armor. The idea is decrease armor a little, increase damage. It isn't really about ranged vs melee balance. Melee units nicely beat range units currently, and they would also after this change, but in a different way (damage vs survivability). The reason I discuss ranged units is because this change would give melee units more impact on the battlefield compared to ranged units. only after many more have been killed. its not about melee vs ranged, it's about melee in general. The idea is shift melee's strength away from tankiness and towards higher damage. The net "effectiveness" as you say, should be roughly zero. A little bit, but arguably sniping is more important for killing the enemy dps units (always ranged units) behind the meat shield. Since I know the enemy slingers for example are dealing 95% of the damage of their army, I will be sure to snipe them past the pikemen even using skirmishers. Once the slingers are gone, the pikemen can't do anything.

This, as it turns out, has more to do with their armor than their damage (and the fact that so few players get hack armor). Usually when ranged units start to get hit by melee there is plenty of time to just start running away. The idea here would be to increase damage substantially, and decrease armor to like either 4 or 3 hack and pierce (for swords/spears). For one reason, one wouldn't want melee units to be much more susceptible to hack versus pierce, as this would basically make swords much better than they already are. The primary reason is that we don't want 5 to 10 swordsmen to be able to beat almost 40 skirmishers for example. They should be highly damaging to ranged units but still killable. The whole idea of reducing armor a little is to alleviate the meat shield meta. If my ranged units can find decent damage now versus enemy melee units (which are also more valuable to kill due to their higher damage), maybe I will let them target melee instead of always sniping.

The discussion may have involved this idea, I am not sure. Basically, a small armor nerf would be applied to all melee units, with a more substantial increase in their damage. This will designed as a net buff to infantry units, while decreasing their survivability somewhat. The idea is that melee units should be less of a meat shield and more impactful in the outcome of fights. For instance, If my 40 spearmen are upgraded compared to my enemies spearmen, my spearmen should beat their spearmen more quickly and move on to attack the enemy ranged units. Currently however, the survival of my spearmen versus the enemy's spearmen is determined by the health/armor of my melee units and the damage of the enemy ranged units. The damage the melee units do to each other is not very important. Take a look against melee units: (5 hack and 5 pierce are equal, so pierce and hack damage may be combined) pikemen: 2.5 dps spearmen: 5.5 dps swords: 7.33 dps archers: 6.7 dps slingers: 9.2 dps (ignoring crush) crossbowmen: 9.3 dps skirmishers: 12.8 dps ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This change would mean melee units kill ranged units somewhat faster, although they will also die to ranged units faster as well. (maybe players will find themselves needing hack armor from the forge) Importantly, however, it makes melee units and their relative strength to enemy melee units more impactful in the outcome of battles.

yeah champ melee cav certainly could use an hp reduction. The consular bodyguards get even more armor than champion spearcav when compared to their citizen soldier counterparts, so some armor adjustment might also be necessary to be honest. One thing that should be mentioned about spearcav is they do less damage than infantry spearmen (much less for champ spearcav and about the same for citizen soldiers). It's as if their attack repeat time was increased from 1.0 sec to 1.25 sec without the appropriate damage adjustment. I think 0.26.4 is the last iteration of the community mod before the a27 feature freeze, but these are certainly items I will work on for the community mod during a27, assuming one will be maintained. I am planning on: Melee champ cav nerf (armor + hp), maybe a tiny bit more for consular bodyguards. Spearcav damage buff (to correct the aformentioned inconsistency) Broad melee damage increase, armor decrease (help resolve meatshield meta) Han ministers 1 pop, higher percentage effectiveness. warship classes: light warship(could become a scout ship via upgrade), medium warship, heavy/siege warship, transport ship, and special ship (fireship + future additions to this class). separate need to garrison boats from boat effectiveness. might even try to give boats unit AI instead building AI so that they are controlled like units rather than siege towers. Revised unit specific upgrades.

I notice there is a hotkey to delete without confirmation. This does not work for me no matter what the hotkey is, and I always have to confirm everything I want to delete. Does anybody else have this issue? Steps to reproduce: use macos build (maybe), try to delete without confirmation.

I think this could be good, might make the ministers more accessible. Also, there is no need for ministers to cost 2 pop, the cost is prohibitive enough to spam.

Another thing is that it seems to consider normal conversations spam. Whatever character threshold that is used for considering something spam may need to be increased. I saw a warning go up for a sentence of about 30 to 40 characters.

potential sources of inspiration for some units. I think it's fair to say that boarding vessels was a very common approach, so there might be some benefit to using 0ad's own capturing mechanic. Maybe on all ships, or some class of ships designated as boarding vessels. This would mean all ships may be captured and either all ships can capture or select ship types can capture. In this case, one could give ships fairly low capture points so that land units could capture a neglected ship used for landing.

merged: https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged closed: https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=closed

version 4 changelog: community_mod_changelog.txt #This is a written changelog for additional merges to each version of the community mod. If you would like to review the exact details on #each merge, visit this link: https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests?scope=all&state=merged -0.26.1- !1 Set up gitlab with continuous integration to the mod. -0.26.2- !2 Han farming technologies (village and city phase) fixed. !6 Regicide mode infinite loop from enabling hero garrison fixed. -0.26.3- !4 Move tier 3 blacksmith technologies to the town phase. !5 Healers cost 100 food 25 metal, cheaper temple technologies. !8 Themistocles now provides a wall discount as well as a naval buff, Pericles provides technology discount and soldiers in his aura do not give loot. !10 Civic centers and colonies decreased cost, decreased territory expansion with each age. !11 Axe cavalry buff to hack damage. !12 Change to ptol civ bonus: Ptolemies houses, storehouses, farmsteads +50% build time and -40% capture points. !13 Team Bonuses: Athens get CC technologies -30% cost, -50% research time, Seleucids get CC decreased build time too, Persians get cheaper barracks and stables, Carthage gets -50% mercenary infantry train time. -0.26.4- !26 Add a new aura to Alexander that does: "Enemy Soldiers, Structures -10% attack damage". Change Aura1 to "Soldiers +10% attack damage, +15% movement speed." and aura 2 to ""Enemy Civic Centres −50% capture points garrisoned regeneration rate." !27 Add centurions to the romans (100 food, 50 metal) with a limit of 8 with an aura "Melee Soldiers +10% attack damage and all soldiers -25% experience points for promotion."" !17 Change roman army camp to 400 wood 150 stone (vs 500 wood 100 stone 100 metal) Reduce health to 1750 (vs 2250) move it to town phase !24 Add a farming civ bonus to Seleucids ("Farms -25% wood cost and -75% build time.) !19 Increase by 15% Melee and Melee Champion cavalry acceleration

I think one should consider any inconsistencies between building fire and unit fire (typically archers) that may exist or if they would arise after any of these changes. i would expect it to be better to have a consistent response to attacks, but maybe not. I don't really have a solid opinion so I haven't voted yet.

I am taking suggestions, like I removed projectile velocity from the upgrades since this is not visible to players and should be a constant. I am considering allowing them to affect mercenaries as well.

this is experience. your citizen soldiers will gain experience by fighting, and a tiny bit by hunting. You can gain experience by garrisoning in barracks/stable. When the bar is filled, your unit will promote to the next rank with better fighting ability. melee units get health, armor, and damage with each rank, ranged units get more health and accuracy with each rank.

Well I guess its hard to communicate laughing at versus laughing in agreement via emoji. The bottom line is repeat offenders of racism, toxicity, and hate speech should be banned, and players should be able to mute others as they wish. More minor offenses can have some other more minor penalty. It is evident in screenshots and in this very discussion that there are minor offenders and very major offenders.

no, this is a community mod. The community has spoken on 5 of the MR's and these are the ones that should be added. I will revise the upgrades and see if they are of interest later.

also, to anyone, why not reduce pikemen armor and increase damage? Im curious since plenty of complaints exist on pikemen being too tanky.

the 5 changes that were voted for can be added in 0.26.4 and could go on into a27. Maybe it is for the best that we postpone adding the upgrades to the community mod until after a27 is released, since this way they would get more playtesting and balancing time in the community mod for a27. This close to feature freeze, I think players want features they have more confidence in.