LienRag

The idea is clearly fitting, but I haven't seen any proposed implementation that seems to do the job... I may try Al-Mansour's mod as I don't understand his explanations so far, but I'm not really convinced from what I've read.

So, like in Age of Empire ? Where it actually served no gameplay purpose ? One way that could be interesting strategically is if farms could not be regrown on the same location after they wither (the soil being exhausted). But that's not easy to balance on so many different maps...

How so ? If units don't see their back, it means that the player has to make them constantly turn around so they don't miss anything. A real recipe for micromanagement disaster in my book...

Can you do that without inciting very tedious micromanagement ?

Do you mean micromanagement hell like in Age of Empires ? Or do I misunderstand your explanations ?

I don't know the numbers, but they clearly die much, much quicker than they should. So quickly that it's usually useless to garrison them there if you don't intend to sacrifice them, as getting them out of harm's way when wounded is a hassle. I also never understood the armor formula, so I can't say what would be the right values, but basically they should be heavily protected against anything thrown at them from below.

???

Note that if you want to use greek Archons in the game, and can do it in a way that is historically credible and, in terms of gameplay, sufficiently different from the Han Ministers, feel free to propose your original ideas...

Romans building capabilities would be nice to have, but that's a huge change to the game (and probably to the game engine). Having maps as a map feature is easier to do. Everybody was able to use roman roads afaik (if you can overcome roman fortifications along the road). Making movement faster in own territory and slower in enemy territory is currently not possible with the game engine (from what I've read elsewhere) but should be a very interesting feature...

You may be interested by my last suggestion to have buildings outside of territory cost maintenance.

I've played DE once, and found it too weird for me. Can't say it's bad, but it was too much of a change. And though slaves are an historical feature, I'm not comfortable with them. Also, farmsteads decay outside of territory if I'm not mistaken ? That makes them nearly useless...

Possible solutions : 1 - I believe the fundamental way of solving it is by enforcing the formation systems. Units should be (as it was historically the case) basically unable to fight (except against soft targets like women, or when outrageously outnumbering the enemy) if not in formation. I suggested "formation trees" elsewhere; that would make choosing a formation for a group of units a real tactical choice, with consequences, as changing formations out of the current branch would generate penalties. As I already wrote many times, formations will really thrive once we have a moral system, but it's still possible to make do in the meantime. If the AI use simple formations and knows not to change from one branch to another (except when reorganizing behind its own lines) it should be able to be good enough to keep the game playable (it's always a nice experience to outsmart the AI, as long as it's not suicidal). 2 - It would be probably good to introduce basic rams (tree trunk carried by a few men, without protection, and no garrison possibility) in P2. These would be vulnerable to arrows, so they won't be an option against heavily fortified enemy, but still a way to make a quick and devastating raid. It would be nice if shielded units protected units behind them when the shooter isn't on a higher ground, too. Both in general and to make these unprotected rams both usable and vulnerable, depending on the tactical skill of each player. 3 - Range of siege engines should never be superior to the range of vision of military units or buildings. Long-range siege weapons should have few hit points, normal armor against arrows, and basically no armor against melee. Protected rams should keep their armor against arrows, but have much less against melee units (I mean, not only swordsmen or axemen). Basically, if you can't protect your rams all the way to the enemy fortification, your offensive should fail. Note that this suppose another thing : that some formations could be given orders to block passage of enemy units, and some other formations could be ordered to try to break a blocus. As of now, it's quite easy to slip a few cavalryman through the enemy lines, without the defending player being able to prevent it except through extreme micromanagement. So, we want to have a few cavalrymen (or any melee unit, actually) to quickly destroy a siege engine, but we want that result to be achieved by good tactics, not by AI failure. 4 - Terrain should be highly strategic : heavy units hindered in swamps or shallow water, higher ground giving multiple advantages, forest hindering tight formations, ... Line of sight should be a factor, so strategic placement of watchtowers and outposts would be of the utmost importance (and blinding the enemy by taking out some of its outposts, too). 5 - This is harder to tackle. One way would of course to have more treasures on the map, but these should be tactical objectives, not random boni to the first one who gets to them. That the first one to get to them gets an advantage in exploiting them is good, that he gets all for nearly nothing (except the cost of exploration) isn't. Another could be to have less resources just around the Town Center, so the player would have to carefully balance risks and rewards of expanding. Maybe give just enough stone and metal in the base territory to build another (or two other) Town Centers ? With some little surplus so that losing one extension would not mean total defeat ? This while making P1 techs not cost any metal nor stone. Also, make farms host fewer workers ? As of now it's possible to have 8 farms around your Town Center, so 40 women, which is nearly enough to provide food for most of your needs. Or have farms' yield depend on soil fertility, and make the soil around the town center moderately fertile. Or (combining the two ideas above) make the number of workers on a farm depend on the soil's fertility. And have only a small berry patch in range of the town center, with one (or two) more farther away, near the frontier : that would allow for more devastating disruption raids. 6 - That is even harder to tackle. There are a lot of propositions on the various subforums, most of them resulting in basically removing the interest of territory... Would a tiered territory aura be possible ? The core aura would work as of now, the second tier would allow for watchtowers and resource buildings, the third one would allow for non-decaying outposts (and maybe fortresses in P3). Basically, what we want is to make possible for a player to make a move early towards some strategic point of the map, while making it possible for the other player to counter it. This without removing the distinction between inside and outside territory... Maybe more varied out-of-territory defenses ? Someone proposed a maintenance cost for buildings, I'm against this idea inside territory, but it could be interesting to implement it for buildings outside of the territory... Especially if the maintenance cost is exponential with the number of each of these defense buildings. Basically, these defenses would need to : - Warn early about an enemy attack - Fend off the enemy for long enough to bring in reinforcements from workers nearby (but not from the main town center, if it's too far) - Give a tactical advantage to the defenders once the reinforcements are in - Help concentrate on the tactical level of the battle (i.e, limit the micromanagement of the defense by creating choke points/ taking out single units that were trying to slip through) - But be vulnerable to a well-planned attack with superior forces Also, could it be possible to have roads/lanes where movement of units is quicker ? That would allow for counterattacks and a more strategic game (as of now, if you try to counterattack, by the time you're there the enemy has usually reconstructed its defenses).

Yes. Taking down walls with infantry should not be doable if the walls are manned, but still doable if there's nobody around. Would it be possible to reduce damage to near zero when attacking from only one side, but to multiply it drastically when the wall is attacked from both sides ?

Yes, making walls block entirely missile attacks is the way to go. With exception for units that are placed above the wall (like in a watchtower, a fortress, a siege tower, whatever). Units inside a fully walled area should indeed not be targetable by enemy missiles. If there is a hole somewhere on the wall, ranged units would try to path around the wall to get line of sight/fire (there should be a visual cue for that when hovering the enemy unit to click on it to target it).

If well balanced and specific to some civs, why not. But not a general thing.

Would be nice to have road allow for quicker movement...

The problems are multi-fold¹ : 1 - The AI is so bad that the player is forced to micromanage everything, leading to multi-pronged attacks or small raids (which would allow for real tactical diversity and/or actual strategy) being much more difficult to manage than just sending one big army towards the enemy. 2 - Defense is unbalanced : Town Centers are extremely good defenses especially in early game, which is a good thing as "zerg rushes" are imho unfun; but also means that it's nearly impossible to attack before the third age (and siege weapons) beyond small cavalry raids. For most defenses, once they're garrisonned, it's all-or-nothing : either you come with siege weapons and you've basically won, or you can't do anything. 3 - We don't have siege weapons, we have artillery : They have a way too long range (especially, compared to range of vision for buildings) and they are way too powerful and too strong against melee units. To destroy an enemy siege weapon, you need a sizable force : historically, just getting a melee unit near an enemy siege weapon usually meant that the siege weapon was toast². 4 - Terrain has very little effect (and the little effect it has is poorly documented - basically I don't know which effect it has, even though I've been playing for years³). 5 - There are very little secondary objectives. You can put most of your production around your town center, so there is very little for the enemy to do beyond a full-scale attack. 6 - The territory system is all-or-nothing. If (at high cost) you can extend your territory to some place in the map, then you can build a huge defense system there and exploit all the resources. If you can't (and possibility to do so comes only at second age) then they're nearly nothing you can do. ¹ Note that I don't play MP, so please tell me if I'm wrong. ² With exception for some very specific ones, like the Persians' I believe ³ Yes I'm not the best player nor that dedicated to the game, but if one has to explore all the forums and sub-forum to understand such a basic concept, it's a clear documentation problem.

Well, yes and no. Technically, that's not the only possible play. Raiding the enemy's economy is a way to gain advantage over him. The problem is, to raid the enemy's economy without taking more losses than him you need to pay constant attention to your units, which means that you can't develop properly your own economy in the meantime, which means that players tend to rather rush for siege and then devast the enemy. So yes, there's a problem, but not one that is that easy to solve. As I wrote above, that really depends how you play it (and especially at what time you send your raid). But yes, though war in the ancient world was often decided by tactics and strategy rather than by sheer numbers, in 0ad it is very often the numbers that count. I agree that fortresses should not be that easily destroyed by siege engines - the goal of the enemy should be to bypass them, not go straight through them. Of course if fortresses are meant to interdict an area to the enemy, there need to be a way to prevent a player to put fortresses everywhere, so s/he has to choose where to put them to maximize tactical effectiveness. Watchtowers are good as they are imho, though. Their role is to prevent small raids and to alert to enemy attacks, they're not supposed to resist siege engines for long. That's an interesting idea, but it needs to be carefully balanced. Going straight to the opponent's base is a valid strategy, the problem now is that it's basically the only one. What should be is that it would be doable if the enemy doesn't fortify well (basically, if you find a way through his defenses, for example if you can trick him by a false attack elsewhere). And not possible if the enemy prepared adequately for your attack.

I'd say that it's probably very pleasant to your enemy... If the enemy is able to play that well, then it should indeed be rewarded.

I meant more a food resource for enemy units.

No, I mean as a source of food for soldiers. (not the house itself of course, except if you have a termite army, but the food which is in it)

Nice ! You probably should also include houses, though.

This I can agree with. Note that the Champion units already cost a lot, so it's sort of an abstraction for that penalization. You'd have to design your OPEX mechanism to do sufficiently better so as to make the complexification worth it.

Foraging was of great strategic importance¹, so it's very nice to have that simulated. How do you do so in your mod ? What do they consider "food" ? ¹ Basically, that's the reason for fortresses, as Brett Devereaux explains : most fortress are easy to bypass, but then they have a standing force able to interdict foraging (because it's strong enough to attack and destroy any foraging party, because to forage you have to disperse your units) and that's something no army of the time could afford.

Because that would make a different game, while affecting only mercenaries/champions would make these units more distinct (adding variety to the game) while keeping the main gameplay similar.