LienRag

I was never able to capture a dock, though.

Are the capturable buildings the same than before or has their list been changed ? I tried with "C" to capture a dock, but was told I couldn't.

BTW, how does one capture in a27 ?

I heartily agree with the last part, but note that using bows to shoot over one's own soldiers is AFAIK a historically attested practice. So not something we should forbid. And I mean, shooting over one's own melee soldiers was probably done to shoot on the soldiers engaging in melee with such melee soldiers...

???? I don't understand what you mean ?

Since 0ad is a historically-themed (if not historically realist) game, the way missile work as of now (being the main weapon) is really bad and harming the gameplay a lot. What are the solutions ? What is the role that we want for missiles and how to do it right ?

Especially since walls are heavily underused in the game now, as some already pointed. And that's a shame ! Walls are historical and should be fun to play. Maybe remove the fortresses and have a "dungeon" building instead (yes, dungeons are the wrong historical period, so use the historical one, but I don't know its name) that can't work as a defense without walls ? So the actual defensive structure will be much more varied, and tactically interesting ? And of course change the way soldiers fight on walls, so that they don't die immediately from enemy missile (except from missiles on siege towers, obviously), which is the reason nobody garrisons units on walls as of now.

To carry it, yes. To use it without getting killed in the process, less of a guarantee. And some people did care about that last part. Tribal societies are ones where everyone is a warrior. Antiquity societies, quite less so. Citizen-soldiers are a characteristic of some, but not everyone is a citizen. Levies are a characteristic of some others, not sure what percentage of male adults are potential levies though (a high number, not necessarily 100%). It would be nice to have all these in the game, but it's a bit hard to balance.

Having multiple markets of the same players on the same route should stay less efficient, lest it becomes exploitable. But the OP idea of having a route with multiple markets of different allies (max one market per ally) should be made a little bit more efficient (I don't think it would be hard to tweak the formula to make it so) as it's funnier, has nice strategic implications, and is immersive (that's how trader worked historically).

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.