Effervescent

I would like to put forward an interesting idea for a new simple game feature: The Commander The idea is to add a non-player mastermind that can help the team to coordinate, come up with strategies, and supervise the team performance during all stages of a game. This "Commander" will act as an additional player in team games, who has no control of troops itself, but can share ally vision, ally map flare, and ally chat. And of course, doesn't have spectator view privileges. Only one Commander per team would be allowed, and it would be an optional figure. Leaving it to the discretion of the team to make use of the feature or not. This would make it possible to involve up to 10 players in a normal 4v4 TG, while adding almost zero extra overhead in terms of unit counts and overall lag to the game as a consequence. Also it would allow players that currently don't want to actively play, but would be willing to act as coordinators and strategists to be part of the game instead of spectating. It could also open new possibilities for balancing games. For example, by giving a "noobie" team a very experienced player as Commander, their combined strength could skyrocket, as most of the time new-ish players can boom well and mass good armies but lack the experience to make op team decisions. Being guided by an experienced Commander should also help players get better at playing in general. We would encourage the dev team to implement this simple feature first, in order to make it straightforward to include soon in a new alpha. Then, in case this feature becomes popular, other more refined ideas can be implemented later, such as: - A scouting or hero unit that the Commander can control. This unit could be used by the general to gather information about the map and the enemies in order to help him strategize. It could also be a kind of hero that could possess an aura to benefit his players in some way. If this unit is a hero it would possibly make sense to not give him fighting capabilities as that would break early game balance (hero being too strong in early game). - The players could send the general floating or excess resources for him to redistribute as needed. - In general the consensus among the players brainstorming this idea was to give The General only power of vision, scouting, strategizing, and maybe logistics, but no direct control in wars. - An interesting feature proposed by one player is that if the commander gets a hero to control he could use it to dance in front of armies during wars to break 0AD fighting mechanics more efficiently (joking! XD). Credit to players contributing to this idea: Stockfish Kakutstha guerringuerin effervescent Mucholag

I'm definitely into this. I like the idea of having a pot of players from which leaders can select names with conditions like 1 player in a certain rating range. For example: a 1200-1300 pick, a 1300-1400 pick, 1500-1600 pick, etc. This would balance teams better by preventing scenarios like having more than one super-op players or super-nub players in a single team. It would also involve newer players who maybe intimidated to participate in such a tournament. p.s. - I realize now that it sounds like I'm proposing flexible teams, which is contrary to the title of fixed teams. :D

I like the space that's saved by removing the native panel and especially like the toggle for the side panel, but still I'll have to agree with Nobbi that the native panel is required. Maybe add a toggle for the native panel too?

Hi, I tested this in a game and I was unable to make pillar in phase 2 because the pillar needed hero to raise the limit from 0 to 5. So basically, I had to train Ashoka to get pillar(p3), an to go overboard I trained chanakya and garrisoned it in blacksmith. The train time was op fast, almost exploit level. but the wait was not worth it. It'll be good if we can make pillars without hero in town phase as proposed though.