TheCJ

My go-to is 1. Ranged Damage Upgrade 2. Pierce Resistance Upgrade 3. Hack Resistance Upgrade 4. Melee Damage Upgrade but it does depend on which units you are planning to go for; with athens/sparta, you might opt for melee first, against rome you might make the hack resistance upgrade first.

Of course. But as long as we dont have a button to jump to the next idle building, the same cant be said about buildings, which is why a graph with the cumulative building idle time would be nice.

As repetitive as these kind of threads are, I think these ideas are great and we should definitely consider implementing them; (This alone would fix a big part of the problem; sure, there might be some who will hide it, but by doing so they become openly dishonest and it becomes clear that they do (try to) cheat (as in "gain an unfair advantage") and they wont have any real leverage to argue why they shouldnt be banned from any future games by the host (if people noticed their cheating (attempt))) (maybe even unit idle time, while we're at it. But that doesnt really have anything to do with the cheats so its a bit off-topic.) (And if possible we could also draw the structure idle time as a graph at the end? makes it easier to find mistakes in my own gameplay and get better.)

Well, that makes me look like a big ol' fool. I take that back and apologize; I actually totally forgot about the market exploit, please forgive me. ...But talking about how the other side doesnt even want to have a real discussion is certainly not shifting the topic, right? Alright, but as long as 0ad is open source, you cant enforce anything really. If a cheater really wants to cheat, he can build the game with some of his own code injected. Now, making it so you would atleast have to do that "injection", to be able to cheat, would still be an effective deterrent for many cheaters, but if done wrongly, could also hurt the developement of "non-cheat"-mods, like GUI changes (even if they are just resizing buttons, you change the simulation folder afaik, so youd be flagged incompatible by the current modio rulings? So if we somehow made it impossible to play with mods flagged incompatible in modio, I couldnt make any changes to my gui, as harmless as they may be, without injecting it before building the game, which would be a significant detriment to the modding aspect of the game) [tl;dr: Restricting mods further hurts modding.] So enforcing a consensus (if we could reach one) is quite a challenge, isnt it? I agree with you. I would consider using autostart to be pretty embarrassing. Good thing the only cheat I use is autociv, which seems to be generally accepted. I was not trying to defend people using autostart (they shouldnt), but rather trying to lay out why I dont care whether they do. Some people take games too seriously and try to get any advantage they can, be it fair or not. Thats embarrassing for them, but as an opponent, I dont really care if its at the level of autostart (or proGUI), since the advantage they gain is so insignificant that it doesnt actually affect me at all. Now, if you dont use autostart or proGUI to gain an advantage, but rather to change how the game feels to you and maximise your fun, it even ceases to be embarrassing. This is an assumption that one player makes about 7 others. And when they find out they lost because someone was cheating, the answer is "chill out its just a game". Awesome argument guys. Ripping my comment about autostart out of context to make it appear like I was talking about all cheats doesnt make it look like you are actually... (The difference is, you have never lost because of autostart, while it is possible you lost because of other cheats. And thats why I wouldnt say "nobody cares" about the other cheats.) This is a very interesting argument. May I ask on what grounds you say that 1. Most players that encounter players with "cheats" (e.g. proGUI, autostart, autociv) are unaware of the cheats 2. The people that are aware of the cheats cant grasp the magnitude of advantage [because I think almost all of the consistent long-term players know about proGUI, autostart and ofc autociv. And I dont know any user of those cheats that likes to play against newbies that dont know about them. And that the autotrainer function provides any statistically relevant advantage still remains to be proven.]

I like the car analogy. The first analogy I came up with was shoes; when you play soccer (or any other sport during which you run around a lot) with your friends, neighbours or acquaintances, there are no rules for which shoes you use. And the shoes are how you interact with the ball and the game, so they're like a GUI. If you want to, you can play in high heels and make it extra hard on yourself. Or you play normally, with general sports shoes. Or you are very competitive and you get yourself special soccer shoes. Only when you start playing your sport professionally, youll begin to encounter rules regarding your footwear. And autostart is like cheating in a race by starting 0.5s too early; in a professional setting, youll get punished for that, but when you're just running around with your friends nobody cares.

well, you are claiming its undisclosed and at the same time, whenever this comes up everyone seems to know who the "cheaters" are. Which one is it now? Between map randomness, fluctuation in player performance due to outside factors, hardware used, time spent playing the game before this round, there is no "fair gameplay". That the autotrainer provides any statistically significant advantage remains to be proven. well, I cant speak for everyone, but I am not. I am trying to have fun and improve.

So the short answer is: There is nothing to repent. Trying to have fun when playing a video game is not a sin.

If its so obvious who cheats and you have such a big problem with it, why do you play with them? Does anybody force you to play with the "cheaters"? And before you say anything, thats entirely different to as you can still play with like, 80%+ of the players who dont use anything remotely "cheaty". Also, god forbid people play a casual game in a way that brings them joy... Like, I play mainly with the historical patch cause I dont like certain imbalances in vanilla. Likewise, players that use an auto trainer probably do so because they dont like the clickyness of vanilla. I see no problem with that. 0ad has no real cheating, as cheating would be something like a "violation of competitive integrity by usage of undisclosed or unallowed modification", but there is not competitive integrity, since the game is not competitive (unless youre talking about 1v1s, which could be considered competitive, but in that case just dont play against the "cheaters"). If you want a teamgame you participate in to feel "competitive", talk to the people in the lobby, manage the players expectations until everyone agrees what this round means to them and then youll have a good time.

Oh sweetie, thank you for being so cute. And you're welcome!

Good to know

I mean, you would try not to kill the horse, but capture it, no? That sentiment is very understandable. You seem to have reached a point where you have a good understanding of the basics of most/all civilizations, hence why you notice that some units being equal for certain civs doesnt really feel right. But there is a counter-argument for more differentiation, as it is more complex, especially for newer players. When you first pick up the game, you would be happy if you could rely on a spearman doing the same no matter which civ you are, no?

nobody claimed it was. I agree that different discord servers can only really be a boon to the common user, hence why I wished you; That being said, is a bold statement, considering you literally said which reads; "This server is designed to [be] [...] superior to 0AD Enjoyers, as I offer [...] freedoms that they don't have, especially when it comes to [...] NSFW content. I will not ban you for swearing or political incorrectness." Its true, you didnt directly say "0AD Enjoyers bans for swearing" but the implication is more than obvious when you say you offer freedoms we dont have and follow it up with "I will not ban you for swearing or political incorrectness".

And how is that an argument for fostering an environment where people wish each other pain and death?

You got a 24h timeout (not a ban) for [something]. That's not a ban for "political incorrectness". Thats just a logical repercussion for your transgressions. Honestly ban-worthy, but we all know nobody can ban you, as you are more than capable of making another account. Therefore I humbly ask you to stop lying by implication about the 0ad-enjoyers discord server- We dont ban for swearing or political incorrectness. We time-out people that seem to be overly emotional, racist or misogynistic. And I hope you do the same on your discord server. Best of luck in your endeavours.

It takes one infantry javelineer 2 throws (so 1.9s) to kill a women, while it takes one infantry javelineer 200s to take a house. He can kill 100 women in the time he takes 1 house.

If your enemy spends their time capturing a house and deleting it instead of killing your women, thats much better for you. You can easily gather the wood for a new house in the time he takes to capture with the same amount of soldiers. (capture strength of infantry is 2.5 if im not mistaken, while gather rate for wood is 0.75; a house costs 150 wood and has 500 capture points. So it takes exactly equally long to gather the wood as it does to capture the house. Cav is even worse at capturing, also there is a base capture point regeneration that i havent taken into account. Also he has to walk across the map to get to you.) Now, you do lose time on construction because you have to rebuild the house, but thats nowhere near as bad as the time you would lose if he killed your women gatherers. And those walls give you the time to react, cause it takes much longer to capture them than to kill a women (or even a soldier).

This is a very good tip. You have to build houses anyway; try to use them to "wall off" an area instead of just randomly placing them anywhere. Especially with civs that have small houses, you can surround your entire field economy by lategame without any real additional investment. As ffm mentioned, to not have unnecessary long walking times, you should include palisade gates at regular intervals when doing this.

Thats why you dont let kids balance the game, they try to use some pseudo-logic to buff the units they like more and nerf the ones they dont like. On a more serious note, whether a general lost at the end is not a ideal indicator of their skill. If you only have cs units while your opponent has champs, you can micro-manage them perfectly and still lose... I mean Hannibal lost to Scipio at Zama?

Well, larger maps are better for hit and run units, like cav archers, since you have more space to micro/run to. But jav cav doesnt really benefit since it cant hit and run (it gets outranged) and neither does melee cav. For both of those (jav and melee cav), larger maps just mean more time for the enemy to react or build up defenses in preparation. For early rushes, you might get to my base before I have my first additional soldiers out on a small map, but after I got them on a large map; similarly on a large map when approaching lategame, you can scout that your enemy has cav and build palisades/towers before he arrives.

I agree. Melee cavalry needs to be faster than ranged cavalry if its supposed to be a counter. And if ranged cav already falls in that range, thats also good. But it might be better to equalize the speed of all ranged cav to a greater degree (so its not 1.3× to 1.6× but instead maybe 1.3× to 1.4×), then we could reduce the speed of melee cav while still having melee cav quicker than ranged cav (maybe at 1.5× to 1.6×)? Lastly I wanted to add two more things I think are relevant to the cavalry issue as a whole: For one the entire game is incredibly quick by the numbers; fast queue times, fast build times, fast gather rates. Thus, it feels like cavalry needs to be even faster to keep "the same advantage" as in other, slower rts. Additionally most games are played on "standard mainland settings" or even ambush nomad or pizza, all of which are very small. You can see this by looking at how often people build additional ccs to get more map control (it doesnt happen often, atleast not in my games). Small maps also make cav more effective, since the moment you see them coming, they are basically already in your economy, thus you need to be very quick in reacting to defend sufficiently.

but do they have to be twice as fast? wouldnt 1.5× or even 1.3× as fast be fast enough? I feel like this would be an unnecessary "unification" of playstyles across different civs. A civ with good defensive options could (if walls, forts, towers werent so bad) secure their eco without needing to keep troops at home and force the enemy cav to take a fight by attacking the enemy base. Then the cav die to normal spearman and no "quick" counter unit is necessary.

I mean, the concept of free software (as in, you can read the code and find out exactly what your pc is doing) has its place in certain situations, although I dont necessarily believe gaming is one of them; it makes more sense when actual real-world data is involved; i dont really care to know *how* the game calculates where my units go, i just need them to go. But I dont think this quote (even though its certainly true) is very applicable in this situation? Just knowing what code is executed doesnt mean anybodys screwing anybody over?

I dont think its a "strict violation", but your goal is to obfuscate the code so its harder to determine what the mod is actually doing, which kinda goes against the concept of free (as in freedom) software? I think?

I dont really think cheating in mp is the reason we need more sp content, but we would definitely profit from more sp content. That being said, there are some great minds already at work to make it happen afaik, so be patient

Well, since I posted this, I have tried it in a teamgame, and together with my pocket (who had a normal cs army), my 50 roman sword champs decimated two opposing cs armies while fighting under 2 forts and a cc. I am also not sure why you think spartiates would be so much stronger than roman or iberian swordsman, why persian or selecid champ cav would be so much stronger than gaulish or roman champ cav and why you disregard the champ pikeman, which are still the most "tanky" unit? Probably every champ wins against 3 citizen soldiers of his type at once (although I have yet to test this).