TheCJ

I get that it sounds that way, but the way we did it* actually gives the player more agency while making the library not quite as powerful as a full p2 variant, but still more useful as in vanilla. (* we put a tech for each "category" of techs in the library; "Gather scrolls on military knowledge", "Gather ... economic ..." and "Gather ... general ...", where each of them applies the reduction to the relevant area. That way, the player can choose what is more important right now/for his gameplan. But each unlock tech in the library takes 60s i think, so by the time you got all three youre already in p3, at which point the library is as useful as in vanilla)

library in p2 would make the p3 tech in the cc cheaper, no? thats op (We moved library p2 in historical patch and had to nerf it by adding three techs inside that you have to get first to get any reduction, because instantly building a library in p2 and getting a discount on every single forge tech, all p2 and p3 eco upgrades, the p3 upgrade and w2f is pretty op)

but your cc cant outrun anything (until the introduction of nomadic civs, that is)

ah so it were at least 4 years. Maybe someone also used fanatics 4 years ago, but didnt "abuse" them and now the tactic is reappearing. Which is why rezas argument is not an argument at all.

So if you replace the 100 food cost with 50 food and 50 metal, instead of 55 farmers, youd need 27.5 farmers and 27.5 metal miners. You can always have 24 metal miners, but you might want more for upgrades... which would mean you can not do the tactic exactly as before, so long as you dont have any extra metal. But with just one extra metal deposit, you can easily put the 28 citizen soldiers on metal that you need to have the exact same output of fanatics. Ask yourself why the market abuse possibility went unnoticed for 3 (?) years. Sometimes it just takes time to come up with a tactic. But in this case, there are other factors aswell; the relative strength of melee compared to ranged units, the superiority of cavalry to infantry, etc. which werent the case 3 years ago.

Well, I believe you are wrong. For the following reasons: 1. Just because you're better at the game (supposedly), you aren't necessarily smarter or better at balancing. Even a complete noob that uses their brain can understand why champion cavalry are too strong at the moment, no matter if they ever built some themselves. 2. If you're actively playing the game and investing a lot of time into it (which you need to reach a highly skilled level of gameplay), chances are that your opinion on a good balance is biased. Because you want your favourite strategy to be viable (or perhaps even the best), while you want strategies that you struggle against to be reduced in effectiveness, even if they may not actually need any balancing. 3. Concerning yourself only with the opinions of pro players inadvertently leads to a worse experience for less skilled players. This can be seen in almost all teamgames that have an E-sport scene; some tactics only become very good with communication and teamplay, but nerfing the tactic itself will make it unusable in casual play. Well, either you make fanatics more expensive to reduce their cost-effectiveness or you aren't actually making them more expensive, in which case such a change would be useless. A good player can balance his eco (as you should know if you're playing in "op games"), so it doesnt actually matter to him whether its a metal or food cost. The only exception being that metal has a ceiling of how many gatherers it can have and a ceiling of how much metal you can mine. Both of which are pretty much irrelevant in early p2.

The problem with you is that we have to argue with someone that doesnt understand that 1 singleplayer is an entirely valid way to play the game if they're having fun 2 people that dont play often still have a brain and can compare unit stats and costs 3 the game should be fun for everyone, not just ValihrAnt and borg Sure, why not make it more expensive than any normal champion, after all its already weaker. Very logical... And then you would have the same problem with athenian marines and spartan hoplites, as after that change they would be cheaper and more powerful than fanatics. Iberians were famous for metalworking aswell, one of the most prominent roman sword designs was inspired by them.

Some terrain is impassable in 0ad. by building a house right next to it, you extend the natural barrier of the mountain with a barrier of houses, thus requiring less resources and build time to block off a certain entryway.

Sure, but then we need actual viable defenses, otherwise this "tactic" does not have counter play. And ita in no way engaging or interesting.

Yknow, thats something you could say about the "send your cavalry hero alone into the enemy food economy"-"tactic"... Thats a weakness in gamedesign. But using formations to trap enemy units? skill. And while hero dancing doesnt take much skill, it also doesnt take much skill to just not follow the hero and have an eye on what your units are doing. If you blindly send your units to attack the enemy hero and then stop looking at them, thats your problem. 1. I didnt defend cheats, I just pointed out how nonsensical your "solutions" are. Come up with a solution that actually helps and you wont get any comment from me. 2. None of my friends cheat. While I dont have any problem with @Atrik (who you're probably referring to?), I dont know him enough to call him "friend".

Well... 1. True, not much to say to that 2. Even if fanatics were op, your solutions are both bad. Adding 50 metal to their cost means they are more expensive than regular champions. Considering that they are vastly more vulnurable, that would make them entirely useless. Restricting them to p3 would just reduce the amount of possible tactics, as going for champs p3 mostly just means ecobotting. Do you want more ecobotting? 3. 4. and 5. are skill issues. If your enemy micros his units better than you, you lose. No "solution" will change that. If they use formations to great effect, why dont you? If they put their hero on flee, why dont you? If they utilise palisades to great effect, why dont you? Saying its a "balance issue" or an "exploit" just because you arent able to use it the way they do is not very honest. 6. and 7. dont have a solution. Using them as cheats is already forbidden by the WFG "Terms of Use" (which you should have read?). But you shouldnt ban any mod from mod.io just because some people edit them to use them as cheats. If I want to play with proGUI and autosnipe in singleplayer, I should be able to download the respective mods from mod.io. They are, after all, marked as incompatible, so you wont be able to join a normal game after just downloading them from there. And if someone is ready to edit files to play in a vanilla lobby with those mods enabled, not putting them on mod.io wont have any effect on them, as you can always download them from github.

That can totally be the case. But in this specific game, he could most likely have achieved the same (or more) by going cav. Just because they worked in one game, doesnt mean they are broken. He just chose a good strategy for this one game.

Well, fanatics do lose against sufficient infantry. But that doesnt mean its not a very strong tactic. For one, as reza mentioned, the rushing player will often head for the food economy first, as women cant defend themselves very well. And for that use case, having more power in fewer units is very strong, as a larger force gets noticed sooner and suffers more from blocking each other/pathing issues. Also, while it is definitely defendable when you pull together some troops, you have to consider two problems: 1. When the fanatic rusher has massed about ~20 fanatics, they can take on any soldiers you put on any extra metal/stone or a small woodline. And given their speed, you cant really get your main force, thats working somewhere else, to help in time. 2. There are major economic implications in fighting with all your cs. Of course, he invested a lot of resources to make the fanatics aswell, but if you are chasing 20 fanatics with 40 cs and fight them for like, 30s, you already lost 40•30•0.75=900 wood just by not using them to gather. That being said, fanatic rushes are not as easy to pull off as reza implies. They are quite costly and its not as easy to micro as cav (since they are still slower). Its a strategy that needs a lot of investment and skill and has potentially massive reward. Such strategies are very good for a video game and the fanatics shouldnt be touched at all imho.

true and thanks, but that also comes at a cost, since the fanatic player doesnt have to get the metal upgrades at all, while the normal champ player has to. Of course thats a one-time investment, but it will still matter since games dont go that long anyways. (Also arent gauls the ones with the extra food upgrade)

Also metal is gathered just as quickly as food. 120f 100w takes 240s+133s=373s to gather. 80f 60w 80m takes 160s+80s+160s=400s to gather. So the ratio is pretty much that you can get the resources for 13 normal champ infantry in the time you can get the resources for 14 fanatics. 14 fanatics get decimated by 13 normal champs.

Because they have 3 hack and 4 pierce resistance less? So for every 1 pierce dmg (which is by far the most relevant type) a normal champion spearman takes, the fanatic takes 1.5 ...

capturing also got way too easy with a27... Thing is, if you wanted to raze a city, youd breach the wall and lay a fire. And burning down a house is very easy, but in 0ad only very few units use fire, unlike in reallife, where basically every soldier could start a fire. This results in spearman infantry and ranged infantry being very bad at razing building from the outside, which is why I capture>delete.

yea, but thats why i like vanillas system; you dont get the stats on your screen all the time, but you can hover over the icon and read them all if you want

Well, the art is nice. But we could remove every number (resistance, percentage, gather rate) from the players view and it would not matter too much

What is much more desireable is a short description of their role in combat (if there isnt one already? Would the encyclopedia contain smt like this? I dont know tbh). Like "The Spearman is a versatile melee unit especially strong against cavalry, but weak against siege units.", "The pikeman is a heavily armoured melee unit with relatively low damage but long range.", "The Swordsman is an offensive melee unit with high damage but a short range. It excels at taking out siege." Much more useful for new players.

Do new players need to know? And do you think not knowing about the hack damage of halbs made the veteran play worse?

I like the way vanilla does it. You dont need to know any damage or resistance numbers, really. Atleast not of your own units while playing. Either you know how to use your units, then that knowledge is way more useful than a damage stat, or you dont, in which case the stat wont really help you. And you shouldnt see your enemies upgrades anyway. If anything, you should find out about them by doing some sort of spy tech. So not showing the units stats at all is perfectly fine, and having the option to look at a breakdown of all stats is useful if you want to strategy-craft, make balance-change mods or just calculate stuff for fun.

You dont need any metal if you arent exploiting for metal. I am also willing to believe that Jagsus actually bartered in the wrong direction on mistake, I made that error multiple times myself. @ffm2 I understand that such moments can be heated ingame, but if what Jagsus says about what you said ingame is true, please try to be a bit "nicer". Same goes for @Arup of course. Its "just" a game, so long as there is a possibility that Jagsus made a mistake, you are all still on the "same side", trying to have fun playing this great game together. Also @Arup , maybe just dont use the bartering system at all as long as it remains broken? The exploit makes it obvious, but even normal bartering is probably unfair is some cases.

@Arup ? Even a child should know thats not okay. Or do you have anything to say for yourself?

If the trees from AoE2:DE as seen in the screenshot you provided are your measure of pretty, sure. I think most people would agree that realistic trees are prettier, though?