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@kheeva @Thalatta Implementing some kind of rating decay or reset seems quite appropriate to me. There are players who have had the same rating without playing a single 1v1 rated game for many years . Perhaps instead of getting tangled up in intricate calculations, “seasons” could be implemented. Basically, with each new release, all ratings would be reset and everyone would start over. It’s a fairly common mechanism.

Being forced into a particular strategy by your opponent is one of the most normal things in RTS games. It's up to your skill to avoid or reverse that situation and force your opponent to react instead. If my opponent is massing sword cavalry and I stubbornly insist on producing only javelin infantry, then I'm most likely going to lose. And, in fact, every civilization can go for a pikes + jav cav build and, when used properly, it can be quite effective. It's just that with civs that have very strong infantry, like Spartans or Athenians, it often feels like a waste to opt for it instead. Come on, Alex. This is not really a trend. It's a small group of players who found a way to beat each other. Personally, whenever I see them play in higher-level matches, they usually perform quite poorly. People often believe they have found the key to making the game successful and, frankly, I highly doubt that over nerfing melee options from Athens is it. I'd say that having solid single-player content is far more urgent and effective for long-term engagement than trying to neutralize a marginal tactic.

Hi, @Satevis. Welcome to 0 A.D.! I'll try to answer some of your questions.: 1. What is the advantage, if any, of raising livestock in a Corral vs building more Fields? Economically, Fields are still generally more efficient than Corrals. However, Corrals have a harder-to-measure advantage: they allow you to replace some Civilians with Cavalry, since cavalry gathers food faster while also giving you defensive units in your base that can help protect against raids. In addition, you can garrison livestock inside Corrals and get a small constant food trickle. At competitive level, the standard is usually around 45 to 60 Civilians distributed across 9 to 12 Fields. A strategy that is becoming increasingly common is replacing around 20–25 of those Civilians with Cavalry. 3. How much better do my units perform given the different formations? The repositioning that @Deicide4u mentioned is key. An army deployed in a proper formation will have a much better chance of winning than a disorganized army attacking in a straight line or with ranged units (which are weaker) exposed on the front line. Units also run while repositioning, which gives you a mobility advantage that can be enormous if used correctly. In addition, units in formation can overlap slightly more. This allows melee units to attack enemies without needing to move around to find an empty spot. 4. How does the Trader unit affect prices on the Market? Traders are only used to establish trade routes between Markets. Every time a Trader reaches or leaves its destination, you receive some amount of the resource you selected. They are especially useful on maps where certain resources are scarce. 5. Are walls important for defensive play as Romans? Walls are not used very often because of their weakness and high cost. If used properly they can still help with defense, although many players consider them too weak at the moment. 6. How do I handle extremely long ranged archers (vs Seleucid?)? Spear cavalry is probably the best option. They are faster and have a damage multiplier against cavalry. Gaul Naked Fanatics are also an excellent option against all kinds of cavalry. As for struggling against the AI, I recommend watching this video. It explains the basics of economy management while also giving many valuable insights that can help you improve your gameplay. ValhirAnt is one of the best — if not the best — 0 A.D. players. I highly recommend watching many of his videos, from beginner guides on beating the AI to highly competitive 1v1 matches against top players.

Like any other RTS, the game keeps evolving as players discover tactics and strategies to exploit the strengths and weaknesses of different units and civilization mechanics. Maintaining good balance throughout each release is a very difficult task, carried out by very few people who dedicate a great deal of time and effort to it. It would be useful to properly identify what the actual problem is and why the unit is considered broken. Perhaps the issue is the capture system itself, which allows a ball of hoplites to steamroll everything and capture your base. Perhaps it is the Hoplite Tradition technology rather than the unit itself. Or perhaps there is also a lack of skill involved in dealing with a ball of hoplites, which are actually easy to micro against due to their slow speed. The frustration is completely understandable. Balance issues happen and will continue to happen. Contributing ideas to solve a potential problem is always welcome, but ranting about the supposed motivations of the person responsible for the unit’s design does not contribute anything at all.

The PR to make capturing more difficult is already done and, hopefully, it can be reviewed and merged for the next release. I think the capture mechanic is interesting. I wouldn't sacrifice it just to repeat what other RTS games do, where everything boils down to destroying buildings. I think it just needs further polishing and balancing. I think it's strange to see a stone building fall to sword attacks. One could instead imagine it being set on fire, which would make more sense especially for wooden buildings, which are already weaker by default. I think it's good for macemen to keep this role of being effective against buildings. They're weak against units, so the player has a meaningful choice to make, with an associated cost; that adds an interesting layer to the gameplay. I mostly agree with this, finding the right balance is complicated but desirable, so the game doesn't end up excessively favoring turtling either.

I think I found the code related to this behavior. Value seems to be hardcoded. It should probably be exposed as a configurable value so it can be adjusted more easily. Check this line: // If Health is lower we are more susceptible to capture attacks. const cmpHealth = Engine.QueryInterface(target, IID_Health); if (cmpHealth) total /= 0.1 + 0.9 * cmpHealth.GetHitpoints() / cmpHealth.GetMaxHitpoints(); This is in simulation/helpers/Attack.js

Makes sense. With less resistance, capture points drop faster than they regenerate, creating an optical illusion in the capture bar.

No idea about the technical values, but I’ve tested it and at first glance I can see that the capture bar doesn’t recover as much when the building has lower HP. So I assumed its capture regeneration decreases.

A damaged building currently has fewer capture regeneration points. So this behavior is more or less already present.

Hi @razieve, this is a common issue among some players. The most common solutions are: Enabling UPnP on your router. Setting up port forwarding for UDP port 20595. Disabling the router’s/operating system firewall. Using a VPN. Note: in some cases, it may be necessary to restart the router for the changes to take effect properly. Here are some links with guides that will help you with these options: What shall I do when joining multiplayer matches fails with an error message? Setting up your network How open ports for 0AD multiplayer match?

DE has a lot of features and mechanics like this "Civic space aura" that I find very interesting, and I like it more every day. Some of them I’d love to see in vanilla, or at least in a single-player or campaign context.

DE has a lot of features and mechanics like this that I find very interesting, and I like it more every day. Some of them I’d love to see in vanilla, or at least in a single-player or campaign context.

Great work on this @mod_3d!!. I’ll give it a try as soon as I have some time.

DE has a lot of features and mechanics like this that I find very interesting, and I like it more every day. Some of them I’d love to see in vanilla, or at least in a single-player or campaign context.

@AlexandermbThanks for sharing the .blend file! It’s a great way to learn how to work on 0 A.D. assets.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone everything working good now! The Pyrobolos sinks straight into the ground when it dies. I assume it’s because there’s no destruction animation for the structure (units die with an animation). Black cloak champs looks awesome

Nice work @wowgetoffyourcellphone! I found some bugs, i'm not sure if this is only on my end. I'm using R28 vanila without any other mod than this. When building barracks and stables: And some more of them when selecting those built barracks and stables, probably related to the same issue: Dying heros: ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/materials/player_trans_spec.xml" ERROR: CCacheLoader failed to find archived or source file for: "art/materials/player_trans_spec.xml" Edit: and this last one. Duplicated fertility festival:

As a starting point, it seems fine to me. Still, I think that in some normal circumstances, capturing is still a bit too quick/easy. Maybe 1000 points are enough. We’d need to test it.

One could consider a system where capture points and garrison capacity scale with population. That said, it would likely introduce additional complexity. Even if feasible, it might be preferable to tune fixed values around reasonably standardized scenarios. That could work, although there are additional variables to consider. Capture time will always depend on the size and composition of the army. Are we talking about basic or elite units? Melee or ranged? Are heroes involved? Yes, that seems like a relatively simple solution to implement. As for collisions, they already exist. As shown in the video, when no formation is active, many units are unable to capture and instead try to find alternative paths. I think a certain degree of overlapping is actually beneficial for battles (though not for capturing), otherwise unit behavior can become somewhat clunky. It’s probably a matter of fine-tuning the parameters under specific circumstances.

From this initial post you made, it doesn’t come across as an additional idea but rather as a solution to the problem of buildings being too easy to capture. That is: instead of increasing capture resistance, allowing more units to garrison inside. That’s why I responded the way I did. What I mean is that, from a gameplay perspective, it seems much more interesting to improve the capture points of buildings and be able to keep more units outside, actively engaged in combat. If you garrison 40 or 50 units out of an army of 150, the enemy will most likely be able to wipe out the remaining forces due to overwhelming numerical superiority. I’m not opposed to increasing the garrison capacity of forts/CCs or other important buildings per se. But when it’s proposed as a solution to the issue of rapid capture, I think it’s better to directly strengthen capture resistance instead. As for the historical aspects, I understand them, but this is a game and, as such, it relies on certain abstractions.

This is what we are talking about with formation exploit: formation capture exploit.mp4 And this: formation gathering exploit.mp4 The problem with this approach is that, if you need to garrison, say, around 40 units to prevent your building from being captured, out of an average of 150 soldier units you might have in a 200 pop game, you end up dedicating 26% of your units just to guarding a single building. It makes more sense to increase capture resistance.

Nice poll, @Atrik. Additionally, it would be good to address the exploit that allows capturing buildings in tight spaces using formations.

Each iteration looks so much better

In this game, you can always rebuild even if you’re down to a single unit. This happens quite often in team matches. A player might lose their entire base but still have a few units left; even without enough resources, allies can share the bare minimum needed to bring them back into the game. Instead of breaking something that already works, it might be worth considering adding an extra victory option, something like “last CC standing,” so no one gets frustrated (especially when playing against the AI) searching the entire map for that last unit. As for the other buildings, you just need to wait a few seconds for them to lose control.

Yes, it's a work in progress created and maintained by @Stan`. It's happened to me a few times too. The good thing is that it's a great way to preserve replays and also to consolidate statistics and interesting game data. I imagine it can be improved over time.