TheCJ

I am not sure you are? It is possible to make nothing but women and champs. If you work out a good build order for that, it might even be quite strong, since you only really need 40 champs to win against a full cs army (130 units). There is not much more the game can do to make them feel that way, though. I mean, if you choose to use them as your only army, you can (and many do, I agree with you on that), but its not a very good idea, since they are a lot weaker than champs. I mean, I can choose to only make villagers in AoE and use them as my army, the game doesnt "prohibit" that, but i will lose. likely, if your enemy makes champs and you dont, you will lose.

And what do you want from those "30 people", other than that they should kiss the feet of you and the other 10 people that complain about the core gameplay? Hehe. But no, please keep giving feedback on everything you see that could be improved (but stay civil in the discussion. This game has as much of a mp fanbase as a sp one).

Why? If this is not just an opinion you wanted to share with us, but an argument, you have to convince others that this is true. I mean, the current system makes sense logically; every man that can work as a lumberjack or miner can also be called to fight in war. Those conscripts would not be the best fighters, but they would be plentiful. Professional fighters on the other hand cost lots of money, but are a lot stronger. Those would be mercenaries and nobility/bodyguards/temple guards. Ingame, the second category is represented by champs. Ok, that was my cent about the logic part... but how about gameplay? In his original post, @Deicide4u mentioned that the cs concept was which I interpreted as the first argument, even though it is (merely?) an argument of personal opinion. I am not sure how many people that come from AoE have this opinion (I myself dont), but if you like the way AoE did it, why not stay in AoE? (And I dont mean to tell you to leave, we all love to have more people here, but sometimes certain games just arent made for certain people). It was continued on with which is presented as a desirable goal without argumentation, while simultaneously already being the case; champs and mercs are fighting units, cs are just poor citizens you told to get a sword and fight in your war. As a third point, we have the feeling that 0ad starts too quick; and this point, I actually agree with, but its just a design choice/preference issue. Many players love the fact that a 1v1 round of 0ad only takes between 5 and 20 minutes. (while a 1v1 in AoE can easily take up to an hour) Lastly, I want to ask a question; Why is it a problem if "booming equals turtling"? This is only really an issue if you accept the notion that there needs to be 3 types of strategies (booming, rushing and turtling), which have to be differentiateable and counter each other. But why would 0ad have to follow this notion? What exactly is the problem with the gameplay right now? (in your eyes) I already commented a bit on the way I see it, but I will reiterate; which is true, but doesnt mean you lose the fight, if you catch your opponent by surprise or use stronger units (mercs, naked fanatics, cavalry), or just have better upgrades since you went p2 sooner. here I unfortunately chose the word "soldier" to refer to a citizen (cause they are citizens foremost and soldiers secundarily). But I still dont see this as a problem; as @Deicide4u pointed out, you dont want to give the player a unit thats too versatile right from the start.

Indeed. But sticking to what other rts are doing just for the sake of being the same is useless aswell.

good thinking, but icons cant be too complex either, since then they are hard to understand at a short glance

Thats not an argument. Even if everyone was a vegetarian, the icon for "food" could still be meat, just like the icon for "saving" on your pc resembles a floppy disk, even though nobody uses those anymore. The purpose of the icon is to convey the meaning "food" in a way thats easily understood and requires little space on the screen. A meat icon fulfills both those qualities regardless of whether a player eats meat or not. Or was it confusing for you, because you didnt automatically make the connection "food - meat icon"? A wheat icon would work just as well, so theres no technical reason to change it. Your personal preference is indeed a valid argument, albeit not a very strong one. I find the argument that the icon should resemble the most common food source in the game a lot more convincing.

might run into a spacing issue with languages that have exceptionally long names for "food" and players with small screens, no?

just because others do it, doesnt mean we have to Even if the player changed the ingame language? or would that be a translated expression? Then we would also have to change the other resources for consistency. I like the idea of swapping the meat icon for wheat, since wheat is the most used food source in the game.

This is good advice and will reduce the challenge for now @Ludwik. There's a lot to do in 0ad, so giving yourself some time to think about what you wanna do will help you learn quicker.

and then they still get destroyed by a champion that took 25s to train

I agree that this would probably fit 0ad more. A monologue (or "citation") at some well-thought about point obviously wouldn't feel completely off, but in my humble opinion, a first person narration would feel out of place for 0ad. Also, you're all doing great work!

Except that you wont be outnumbered, since your enemy is in the exact same position. If he decides to play aggressively like you, both of you will have similar soldier numbers and if he goes full eco, you will outnumber him, he might not even have any soldiers. The opposite is only true for 0ad; in 0ad an aggressive play will result in your army being outnumbered by someone that went for eco, since you have to walk to his base and his reinforcements spawn right there. ...Therefore you use res and time on units that dont eco. They shouldnt be idle. The mindset that a soldier that isnt gathering resources is idle is unique to 0ad; reconnaissance, defense, harassment all mean that a soldier isnt idle. Its just that in 0ad the economic benefit outshines any strategic advantage from any of the other occupations, thus reducing the valid uses of a soldier and making the game as a whole less complex, more streamlined and more focused on booming/"ecobotting".

better to be a fairy in your eyes, than a nuisance in everyone elses eyes! (Also better to be a fairy than a human tbh)

except that people that think this way are a very small minority. Sure, some people think being racist is funny, but almost everyone disagrees. So you are plain wrong. It's not "usually funny", you usually think it's funny, even though no one else laughs.

I take nothing seriously. I also want to "enjoy the ride", but thats quite difficult when someone is toxic, uses swear words or derogatory language, making the lobby atmosphere uncomfortable and embarrassing themselves in the process. Its like someone taking a crap in a public swimming pool. Its not serious, but it makes the entire experience, well, @#$%.

Ah so you're a troll. I do see the appeal in that, I won't lie. Still, you wouldn't catch me admitting that I can't even control my most animalistic urges. And especially not advocating for everyone to succumb to them aswell.

yeah, yeah, we all know I'm a fairy (although if you want to be exact, I'm more of a Sídhfir), you're repeating yourself. What I would be much more interested in is why you even want to swear. I mean, I understand swearing in one of three situations; 1. When you're having an emotional moment (e.g. a frustrating loss or a close victory), you might swear to express your feelings ("the f is this" "f yeah"). 2. Sparse, well-placed swear words can have great comedic effect. 3. Children that think swearing makes them look cool. But what reason would a well-raised adult have to insist on swearing all the time? Please enlighten me!

Be careful @Emacz, if you tell @Barcodes he cant spam 100 swear words per minute, you might hurt his fragile ego.

if you dont believe me, join the "0ad-enjoyers" discord server, they are in the voicechat regularly (Im talking about JagsusIndia for example) https://discord.gg/gKZkyMx46K

0ad is not an adult game. I personally know atleast two children (in the legal sense) that play this game personally. getting offended when someone insults you is conpletely normal. When he insults you in public, there are even laws against that in many countries (laws against public defamation). That everybody can behave as terribly as they wish is not a desirable state.

4. Ptolemaic Camel Archer Rush. Instead of building a barracks after the 2nd house, you build a stable and start making Camel Archers. In a 4v4 teamgame, your pocket can even send you a bit of food to get even more camels out even faster. With good micro, you will not lose many of your camels, especially if your enemy didnt expect that rush. Then after you annoyed your opponent for 5min, you could add your own barracks at some point and go back to eco-ing while still using your one stable to keep up some pressure on some women somewhere (maybe the enemy pocket or the other flank?). But I like to double down on my rush instead, by adding a second stable and using the cc as a stable aswell. Once you have like, 30-40 camels its gonna be hard for your enemy to do anything, as he doesnt have the stables to make enough counter cavalry. If the game goes on to 2nd phase or further, remember: If you let your camels take damage, you already mis-played... so you don't need any armor upgrades. Only ranged damage. [I like this strategy as I wish to believe I invented it (most likely someone did it before me, but I didnt know about that, so I came up with it myself, okay?!)]

A map of the entire Continent/world of the respective fantasy universes? Seems like a daunting if not outright impossible task. I generally like the idea, but I would rather take a certain area/landmark; maybe a "great ice wall" map where theres only snow on one side and "normal terrain" on the other side. Or a "Gates of Mordor" map, or maybe a Helms Deep/Hornburg map.

...Im confused, do you want eye-candy or not? I can assure you, most players do not pay attention to those counters. They are helpful to spot not-optimally used farms and get an indicator when you could/should start sending cs to gather metal/stone, but they are not affecting the gameplay to any detriment and they especially do not affect the fun (its really easy to ignore them if you dont like em).

@Emacz and I added very significant speed changes to the historical mod, as it seemed somewhat silly/unrealistic how fast cav is compared to infantry. I know our mod does many other things aswell and any "data" we get might not be useful for the base game, but we are aiming to test those changes a bit over the course of the next month, after which I'm hoping we can release the first mod.io version of our mod (and maybe get even more players to test it out and give some feedback).

For a casual game, this will work just fine I think. Even "competitively", I think @Atrik sometimes only has women working in the lategame? He's a fairly skilled player, so you can get pretty far with an economy like this. Obviously, you should not keep any units in a tower that isnt currently shooting at enemies, you can rather attack and keep raiding the opponents economy, that way the advantage he gets from using more effective gatherers can be minimized. This strategy can work because women are so much cheaper than soldiers (and produced faster, especially with Romans).