Atrik

As always we disagree on what is skill. The current meta for attacking and defending is all about mitigating defense building attrition. When you see an attacker retreat units in time and heal after inflicting damages to defender's eco, I see it as skill. When a defender use the attrition effect of defense building to weaken the attacker and slaughter them in a ambush in his city, seems like good plays. With @real_tabasco_sauce patch, defense buildings mechanic are about: For attacker, bringing a/a few units closer to cc and dance, for defender, shift-click all non-dancing or weaker units (new spam sniping mechanic). These micro seems to me extremely predictable (I wouldn't have posted if it wasn't that obvious). The random by default and focus-fire by user control patch the dancing obviously, but also increase the importance of sniping with building. Besides, it is expected that a lot of re-balance will have to happen if you change such a thing then how defense building works. Starting by the fact that towers and cc will be far less forgiving to rushes and raids, and turtling in general would be more efficient. A full garrisoned fort already shot over a couple of seconds to kill a solo unit so I doubt overkills are compensating the efficiency of focused fire. It's pointless to favorise spam-click meta mechanics, the more importance they have, the less others things are making any difference, like counter units, game plan, teamwork... The skills that also probably take the most time to master. The problem isn't user controlled abilities. You could have ideas to make some buildings have some user controlled abilities, if they are fun they'll add more to the game then adding more sniping similar spamy stuff. In that case since healing will not be rly useful anymore, I do think you remove some possible strategies and tactics to the profit of some mechanics that aren't so worth it.

Here some critics I came by also talking to other players: Currently, defense buildings feel balanced the way they inflict attrition over time to a army. If turrets can kill soldiers 1by1 more efficiently, the cost of going under a turret is dramatically increased. Healing (temple, hero..) is used mostly to heal units after taking damages from defense buildings. Healing doesn't feel overused currently. The exception that can come up is healer hero but maybe there are others ways to keep them good but not as OP. If you try to ram a fort with garrisoned swords (something extremely difficult already), you have have very low chances because your army shrinks every time you go into the fort's range. In others words every time you get into a defensive building attack range, it cost you permanently (can't heal dead mens) more then with random arrows. Dancing: Good micro with non-random would be to try to engage with a fast moving unit and dance to wast turrets shots until the opponent react and order the turret to attack another unit. I consider this not desirable. Haven't tested the mod with other players yet, if someone want to test or prove me wrong about something above I'm up to it.

@guerringuerrin yes, the point of disappearing leaves is to reveal what's behind, thus revealing additional info. Still very attractive feature. But no reasons to blame players using it because you don't like the implementation or anything. I resonate with most of what you say but I just don't see why would the default reaction should be to restrict use else then letting the decision to hosts.

Seems we all agree on this then. Not sure what the second point is. Perhaps these translate to: 1. Prevent unequal access to gameplay altering mods. (one player has an unfair advantage)(or you can call it cheating because that is what an unfair advantage is). 2. By better/resilient mechanics and better features, do you just mean your mod should be in the game? You are deforming my point and bring it back to progui. But besides, I'm not the only one who already posted ideas to adapt some features to vanilla, as crazy as you'll believe it is. My point was about how some deal with customization in general, where everybody should be equals, at the expenses (in the context of the post you quoted) of not being able to hide decorations on map as example. This setting isn't in my mod. It's in vanilla. Still the reaction is that peoples shouldn't use or even be aware of it's existence for the sake of fairness. I don't use this setting nor Star GUI, yet makes sens they exist and removing/banning them doesn't sound like making ANY sens.

The real reason Star GUI or simplifying the tree models is great is that in helps you build better woodlines. I like to play with good realistic graphics so I don't use it. Yet, I never doubted it was a cool feature. If someone worked on a patch or mod to make tree leafs disappear when they are close to the camera, would probably be a great feature. (Some other RTS have this feature but seems I can't remember witch ones to provide a screenshot, in short it just display trees far in field of view as leafed trees, and leafless trees when they are close in the field of view of the camera.) Enforcement features: You can already refuse to play with players you'll deem "cheaters" by your standards. All enforcement / whitelisting of mods doesn't sound reasonable to me. Smurfing, map, stats and chat hacks are probably much more nefarious then using some controversial gui mods. And as discussed multiple times above, theses cheats, are already mods players hide. So once again: a mod-banning feature would just decrease UX, and do nothing against real cheaters. Normalization of everything vs stronger mechanics: And thank goodness it is not exposed, since it clearly provides a visual advantage. This helps reveal the two different approaches people want to take to make the game "more fair". => @guerringuerrin you always want to prevent access to some features to players that could want to use. => I would prefer the game to have better/resilient mechanics and better features. Hence putting a feature in vanilla game to get rid of sniping. If the game has such mechanics requiring to spam clicks just to make something very simple, it will advantage the players using a particular mouse model or driver too much. And this dumb mechanic isn't worth developing an anti-cheat system like throttling cps or something silly like this.

I'm not that sure that cavalry are as op as to deserve to double their pop cost. If you spam cavs you are trading it for eco, if you spam champs you are trading it for early attack. I think overlooked kdr is another reason why champs feel op. If normal units are fighting champs you could expect kdr to be in favor of champs. However you must recall that the cost of champs is more than double the one of normal units. Some civs can stack bonuses like with seleucids tech +hero (+ 20%hp and + 3 resistance) to your champ cav. However others civs like Athen have OP combos : easy Rank 3 inf + hero.

I love a lot in this mod, I would have been most interested into testing the features in pvp but haven't been able to yet. I post my thanks meanwhile. Hoping I can come up with critics soon. Cheers.

Sure but then it's not a good feature to have, if people can't use ANY mods if they want a prized "vanilla" badge. Sounds better to display details on what mods a player have rather then a binary validation mark. Just an informative useful tool-tip in game room to avoid problems like missing maps, would do the job already.

"Cheats" are more likely invisible modifications. If you don't hide a mod, probably you don't consider it a cheat. And auto-sniping still don't have a mod. Most likely if ""auto-sniping"" was found into a mod one day, it would be an incompatible mod that would introduce larger panel of options to control unitAI. I was thinking about doing such a mod with a better variety and smarter stances for fun and because it's not too hard. ""auto-sniping mod"" is a legend used by players losing games and in need of an excuse to not face their mistakes or true level in the game. We could limit click inputs. Not sure if you are being serious. There are a tone of ways more or less fair to improve click rates. Solution 1: Limit click inputs and create even more frustrating experiences for the players. What happen when you just click fast? Order are ignored? They are executed with a delay? Maybe even with more checks and limitations one could imagine something great. Solution 2: get ride of the mechanic of "sniping" by simplifying how it can be done. Ofc this will definitively kill 0ad and therefore is a rly dangerous approach. So let's be smart go for solution 1.

A vanilla badge seems very very arbitrary as some mods don't even change anything/much* in game. Also the badge will dumb down the approach to mods, that will in turn just result in people going for defeating this badging system by hiding mods. *Language packs, shiny, local rating.... Idk know about this badge idea but having all players mods displayed in game room could be nice to have still. This will allow people that use mods and don't host to be transparent with mod usage. + This is a better approach for map mods, instead using the compatibility check.

Your re-balancing is great, only for sniping, I can't picture how it's a definitive solution to make sniping just less important. Long-range unit potential should be used easier. If they are used without sniping, long-range/archers will always be useless in big battles because of their lower dps. All players should be able to use their archers attack back-lines units. Currently a very small minority of players can execute this basic tactic because of how sniping is done. I don't see how spamming clicks should be considered as high value, nor how allowing players to change unit targeting would make unit look smart. The stance suggestion I made, you'll have to pay attention on your unit placement. It won't even make much difference if you engage without micro. Simply, when engaging, instead of rushing to spam clicks to assign all units to weak targets, you'll now have to move ranged units in a spot where they can attack weak units. Battles will look more realistic if more importance is put on unit placement rather then cps race.

I opened this topic to try to try to address the sniping meta that a lot of players legitimately think is problematic. A handful of people sized the opportunity to spread bs so unfortunately it makes it harder to have an intelligent discussion. There are (still) no mods that I know of, that change how sniping is done. In game chat and here I've read players giving 'solutions' like throttling cps, re-balance units etc. It has to be compared to simply giving the players the ability to control the unit behavior. Features that change unit attack behaviors already exist as 'Stances', so making/changing Violent 'Stance' to "Focus Weakest Units in attack Range", isn't far stretched at all. I can't see how this won't make the game more interesting as battle outcomes should be defined by other things then cps, it will greatly help the current faster clicker win meta. Ex: Toggle Normal Stance =>Make units attack closest unit. Toggle Violent Stance =>Make units attack the most vulnerable units in their attack range. (Meaning won't chase weak units, just attack them if they are found in their attack range)

It's great that you underlined the importance of NOT fighting when you are attacked by superior forces (2v1). Too much games outcomes are defined by players refusing to be cowards.

Thanks @Grapjas, I missed the "semi release" too. I was looking to try out all the features, I'm glad @zozio32 came asking

Nothing in the mod is incompatible and therefore it is safe to ignore compatibility check.

I think this was a bug that I patched since. Solutions: 1. Get/Enable autociv (and maybe load it first) it might fix it. 2. Patch proGUI. I don't remember how much this bug was affecting but I think it was very low. If you still have the error with current patch 0.5.15 please tell me.

I revised this mod for better playability. Autoqueue won't consume the resources needed for a building you are currently placing. Fixed more limitations it had in previous versions, that was causing autoqueue to break by itself.

Another idea is to apply the bonus in own territory only. I don't know any bonuses that apply by territory, even in unreleased civs but maybe could be worth introducing this. Example: 'Roman Roads Cost 500 Stones, 300 Food Own and allied units +1.5 Walk and Run speed, when in own territory; but enemy units in own territory +1 Walk and Run speed.' Applying an absolute bonus value would in benefits slower units most (Siege, then Infantry, then Cavalry etc..), @zozio32.

In this last game, nearly a shame that the team who won was using weaker borders as meat-shield But in that game it seemed to be the only option our team to do. We did coordinate this plan a bit in team chat early into the game. @borg- had great map control, even better then I realized while in the game.

Maybe the food regeneration could buffed to be as fast as 1 fishing boat gathering speed, but you can still make the trade-off to fish intensively with more boats.

Ideally someone reliable/mature/impartial should take the role. But I'm not sure plenty of the current staff members have extra time to even desire to be project leader. @wowgetoffyourcellphone is active and invested. But maybe there are things planned by Stan or the team that he didn't wrote in his post.

This sounds pretty unfair. One would rapidly figure out how much Stan did for the project (I know only 1% of it, and still it's obvious). I guess next project leader would be honored to take on his legacy. I don't want to ask in the dedicated topic because it deserve to be a thread about thanking Stan but is there a ongoing discussion on who would take the role? @wowgetoffyourcellphone would be a great candidate, but would he accept? Is there other members interested to step in it?

If you play a little with newer or less experienced players, sniping is perceived as a hack, exploit, or might think it require a external tool to be executed, by seemingly, a majority (in my experience). I remember when learning it, that I thought it was clearly a weird unintended 'gameplay'. Now I got use to it, so it feels less weird, but still think it's unintended?

Thanks Stan, we'll remember forever the time you was leading this project and how much you did for the game and the community.

I think one of us have to stop replying so I'll do it. Seems you can endlessly throw accusations even when it's you wanting to do something, I'll be responsible. Cheat mods, Atrik cheater, Atrik responsible of whatever @real_tabasco_sauce will push for that will downgrade UX. And if you disagree with @real_tabasco_sauce's very smart opinion you are a flat earther. Feel free to make all the claims you want about progui, or even accusation about things I didn't do, I won't reply since it's probably annoying to people to have misleading thread title deviating onto debates about something else. Edit: I'm not playing the victim when saying you guys are dismissive. It's simply the accurate description of making expeditious assumptions, and making conclusions that are just based on stretching approximates facts. Perfect examples nearly every line in the post below by @chrstgtr.