LienRag

I'm watching the video and there is some shape that I can't decipher on the minimap even at the beginning of the game, on parts that haven't yet been explored. How come ?

By curiosity, what's this "market bug" ?

Oh, so they appear in DE (though quite differently than I suggested) and in normal maps they are the "temples with their own roots" that I mentioned in my first post. Thanks for the explanation !

Really ? Could you tell us which ? And what is their effect ?

We could also have Shrines, that work like Relics but are unmovable (and have their own territory root). Some of them should be revealed at start, others would need exploration to be found. They'd need to be apart from each other and far from players' starting positions. If they take long enough to be captured, that would allow for more interesting tactics than just surprise attacks... Another thing we could do with Relics is to forbid them to move too close to another Relic (like, minimum distance would be half a starting territory away). That way the player that gets more of them has to spread them, allowing for enemy raids to try to capture them.

Right. I tried to do it against AI but it requires a whole lot of micromanagement - one misstep and you lose your units to enemy arrows. With Britons I sometime succeed at it with the starting dog, but most of the times it still gets killed (after doing some havoc, so it's not a total loss).

All-seeing is a cheat and a bad one, but from what I've been told there's no way to avoid it.

I don't remember if it has already been suggested, but what would really better the game would be secondary objectives, and especially in P2. I mean, it's nearly impossible to attack an enemy fortified area before siege units in P3, which means the gameplay lacks diversity. We'd need things to fight for in P1 (like treasures/relics, but ones which would be revealed at the beginning of the game, to remove the randomness of getting there first if you don't know the map already). Note that many maps have Gaia buildings, but it's never (AFAIK) explained whether they have their own roots (some have, so are nice to capture early) or not (most of them don't, which makes them nearly useless to capture early). A few nice-to-have-but-not-totally-unbalancing buildings with their own root territory clearly established, and revealed at the beginning of the game, could be nice. Like towers, houses, markets, storehouses, farms... One map at least have temples with their own roots, it's a bit strong imho but why not. Not necessarily all treasures and relics and buildings-with-their-own-roots need to be revealed at the beginning of the game, it's fine to reward exploration, but a few important ones should. And all buildings should make clearly visible if they have their own root territory ! Of course those revealed at start should be at a minimum distance from the players' starting position (basically no treasure should be closer to one player than to at least another one, and other rewards should still be relatively far away, so that a player sending troops to it can get there before the closest player has finished to capture it if he did send only one citizen soldier). And in P2, we should have things that resist attacks by non-siege units (like garrisoned towers) and simple, unprotected battering rams that can take them down (but slowly, and also are vulnerable to counter-attacks : basically no armor, even against pierce). Not sure what the equilibrium should be concerning resource gathering : we'd want something that can be built in the open (to serve as a secondary objective for the enemy), that is resistant to non-siege units once garrisoned but can be taken down by these P2 rams. But also not something that makes it too easy to build outside territory, so as not to compete unfairly with the Kleroukia or Town Center. Maybe something that take nearly as much time to build than a Kleroukia, doesn't cost metal and costs only 50 or 100 Stone ? With less hit points, less garrison, and way less territory around it ?

What is it ? I wasn't aware of it... Does it cheat ? As written above, I don't like that.

Thanks. I wasn't aware of difficulty levels for the AI. I really dislike cheating AIs, though. What is the highest level where it doesn't cheat ? Note also that I'm absolutely not asking for advice on how to play against AI. I like discovering myself what works, it's the most enjoyable part of the game. My question was about how many AI opponent to choose (eventually, how many allies too - allies are good for trade, but it's quite random how long they survive, which is something I don't really like). And, for high level of opponents, what level of cheating (additionnal resources mostly) is acceptable and makes for a game that is both fun and challenging.

I played a lot of lame games against AI but now I begin to understand how to make 0ad games more interesting. So I'd like to ask what settings players use to make their AI games interesting ? The problem I have is that too little AIs make the game boring, but too much make their first attack nearly impossible to repel without cheating, so in both cases the gameplay is boring. I guess that some cheating may be fine against more than 3 opponents (all allied; games against non-allied opponents are too random) but I don't know which exactly will make the game fun (basically, some wood with "bring me my axe" to get some palisades in order to survive the first attack and then counter-attack I guess, but how much would be reasonable ?).

Actually, big horses that can't feed on pasture only cost money. Smaller horses (mongolians, US mustangs - yes I know, not the same time period, and afaik berber horses) don't; they cost food and care. So basically we already have that in the game : skirmish cavalry costs food, war cavalry costs gold.

This one is quite obvious, IIRC on the same map some other aren't that obvious.

Oh right, you meant impassable mountains, not regular elevations/hills !

Sure; but more importantly, fix the Temple of Amun not expanding territory... (if this isn't already fixed in a27, I mean)

Yes, that's a problem. Historically people didn't fight like that because the one who didn't get in formation would be wiped out easily by the one who was in formation. That's what we should try to reproduce - if I'm reading Devereaux's Acoup well, the roman formation had swordsmen stabbing the enemy if they had an opportunity, then retreating to the formation. We could have something like that for some formations I guess... Also and as I mentioned many times, historically one of the main reason for formations was to keep morale. So only when we'll have a morale system will we be able to have a good formation system. Side note : IIRC Devereaux also stated that the modern recreations of shield walls pictured above are not really how a shield wall was done historically.

Is the formula for that available somewhere ?

How does that work ? I've never understood how terrain (and especially elevation) could be used for defense...

As written above, they do when you garrison them on walls. But alas they die quite quickly there - that probably should be buffed in a way or another. Maybe with an option to have them automatically garrison in the wall towers once they lost half their hit points ? Archers on walls are a historical thing, and in-game they're nearly unusable without too much micromanagement...

How do you do that ? I mean, loading and unloading is easy of course, but I've never been able to make a trader resume an interrupted trade. I only can select a new origin market then a new destination market (both of which could be the same as the previous ones) which then makes them lose whatever resources they were trading and go back to the new origin market to load some new resources.

I wasn't thinking about bonus, but about AI : put the vulnerable units behind melee ones, close gaps, have the fast units engage the cavalry and the strong then come and destroy them.

That should be addressed by specific anti-cavalry formations (again, as it was historically).

Light melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry. FTFY. Ranged cavalry, being light, should certainly be faster than heavy cavalry. If we make disengaging from the enemy quite costly (as it was historically) either in time or in blood (the choice between the two options being made by the player through specific formations), then we can have light cavalry engaging the ranged cavalry and the heavy cavalry coming behind them to finish the job. Is it difficult to implement Charges mechanism with cooldown timer after use ? That would allow even light infantry to somehow counter ranged cavalry, and more so for champion cavalry.

If they have a toggle for their behavior after being out of ammo "go fight in melee/go reload" then no it's not too micro-intensive. They could even have toggles about what to do after spending half their ammo : keep firing until no ammo/lower their rate of fire (with lower rate of fire should come better accuracy).

It's probably the best way to solve the problem, yes. But I wouldn't have it replace the different stances, rather parameter what each stance means (like in "passive" stance, do the unit flee at first attack or after having lost 10% hp ? does it go to a safe distance from enemy units and then stand idle, or go back to its task once it's out of range of the enemy ? In "aggressive" stance, how far do they go from their allied units ? Do they pursue someone who is faster than them or not ?). Also, we could use work formations for Citizen-Soldiers : go work as a group, and if one member of the formation is attacked, they all fight back (but if someone not of their work formation is attacked, they keep working).