real_tabasco_sauce

yes, heroes are part of the balancing strategy, and my point is that there are places where this falls apart (ptol being OP and having arguably 3 of the best 10 heroes in the game). I agree it may be appropriate to have some civs with less powerful heroes, but the heroes with no aura should still do something. Ex: Sparta already have 2 great heroes, so no need to make Agis similarly strong. (although the spartan heroes are very important for the civ, along with skiri and the spear bonus)

My apologies, I was not clear. I should have said that their relative strengths should at least be comparable. I certainly don't think the heroes should be identical, in fact quite the opposite. Creative hero auras make the late game more interesting.

its true, not an entire waste of resources, but the heros should be fairly comparable across civs.

+++++ yes I agree. we need to develop a concrete list of the heroes that should be given a new effect (either because they don't have one or because their bonus is worthless).

to delay the ability to spam champs to a little later in the game. This way early p3 attacks have a little more time to stop someone booming longer for champs. Maybe instead of cost, increase the time to unlock idk. The price really isn't as important as the time IMO. Also makes champs that train from the fort a little more relevant, if you just need a few.

yes keep fort stats the same for sure

I think we should keep the ptol house bonus, but I agree this civ is pretty op. In particular, having 3 really strong heroes is kinda nuts meanwhile athens has one okay hero and two wastes of resources.

For all civs: 1. barracks and stables train champs: perhaps increase cost of champ unlock? or make it cheaper and required for each barracks as @BreakfastBurrito_007 said. 2. For civs without dedicated champ buildings, champs train from the fort with no need to unlock. Allowing to train from the fort is great because sometimes u just need 3 -5 sword champs to stop a ram spam attack. I don't think forts are OP, just annoying. Its almost always best to attack something else if you can.

it would be awesome if there was some means of limiting ranged attacks through stone walls tbh. although that would be really complicated and controversial.

emphasizing defense is fine and all but why on earth do people want turtling to be a viable strategy? I think currently, a successful defense is maybe just a little too hard to pull off, but that it is still very rewarding to quickly counterattack. A24 was a defensive alpha and I think most people agree it was sub-optimal. As for the fort training champs situation, i like @chrstgtr's solution with forts and barracks training champs, but with the tech needed for barracks.

yes, and also if you compare military score to res spent, this gives an idea of their skills (micro, unit composition, etc) ^this could also help show if some units are too OP for their cost.

I could probably make a diff for this, or at leat part of it. IDK about any GUI stuff, but changing the calculations looks pretty easy. My question is would anyone be interested?

oh thats my mistake, i didn't realize there already was one.

@LetswaveaBook's mod showed us a few things about balancing, in particular across civs. One thing that I thought was great from this mod was allowing persians to train both spear and skrim cav during p1. Currently pers are basically only good in the very late game, and if you want to do a p2 archercav rush. I think it would reaffirm pers as a cavalry civ and a good/decent rushing civ. It would also bring more benefit to the stables which used to be persia's unique building. Thoughts?

this is also with greater range than briton champ chariots and firecav. So Omega OP. Three unique upgrades that apply to crossbows both CS and champs seems like an impossible balancing situation to be honest. Either: 1. you balance for the upgraded state and the units are only good after you get all those upgrades or 2. you balance for the unupgraded state as above and have godlike champs for the late-late game that nobody can beat. balancing between 1 and 2 would be ok i guess, but i think these unique upgrades would work better as tradeoffs of sorts. (increasing cost, or movement speed, or accuracy as examples)

Yeah, i'm not sure how successful a trash unit (like in AOE2) would be in 0ad. In @LetswaveaBook's mod's mod, persian skirms train for cheaper, train faster, and do less damage. I'm certainly fine with crossbows being cheaper like this, but their strength should mirror their cost, keeping in mind upgrades they receive. Perhaps something like "repeating crossbows" or "crossbow regiment" or whatever unique damage upgrade they end up receiving in p2 (p3?) should bring their cost to 50f 40w 10m, the same cost profile as a sword and remove the -10% health? ^this upgrade would probably need to have a more substantial cost associated with it.

There is no objection so far. rams and catas play very differently because of range, weakness, and the need to unpack them. A damage buff will not change that.

This is the main thing. I think a very small radius is ideal if we bring back splash at all, since they really should be able to do some damage to units, just not over such a massive area like in A23. I think a25 has missed the gradual pressure provided by catas, since rams and eles are just way better.

Right. So the cost is 50 food 40 wood?

Catapults at the moment just take way too long to destroy enemy buildings. Their damage rate and unpack pack times (with adjustment) mean that it takes forever to deal proper damage to your enemies. To make matters worse, they can be killed by ranged units very easily. Should they recieve a buff in A26? I think adding a very small (1 or 0.5 meter) splash damage range where the full damage of the projectile is dealt. Also, they should do more damage IMO. @LetswaveaBook made these changes in his gameplay balance mod. To me, it seems like a no-brainer for a26.

Well if they are the repeating crossbow, i think this model is fine! I also like how they are in the changeset.

Yes, I think something like this would be great! What would be done about shift clicking multiple units in a row, and abusing the charge for dancing? (pikes charge back and forth between a some enemies for example)

increasing melee HP/armor will only decrease the amount of melee units required for shielding ranged units. The melee will still die first.

It's usually not, especially for pikes. In fact, recently I have seen lots of success with manually tasking 10 or so archers to kill 1 skirmisher at a time, since players expect them to be safe. Really what I'm getting at is that if archers could use their range effectively, they would be much stronger. Yes, I think this is the way to proceed for now. An attack-ground solution will have to wait as seen in it's own discussion.

Yes, this indeed is the problem. ranged units default their attack to the closest unit, which is usually a melee unit. This makes melee inf, in particular pikemen serve as shield for ranged units behind them. This property of ranged units behavior is also responsible for archers seeming weak, since they often do not use their range effectively. I think the game needs an improved form of control over ranged units, instead of nerfing/buffing ranged/melee infantry. What I have proposed in the past is "Attack-ground" where essentially ranged units can fire volleys where the player decides. Unfortunately, there was little agreement on how best to allow this control.