krt0143

Bear with me, I'm new, and the manual is more like a guided tour... 1. First and foremost: How do you rotate objects when placing them in the editor? 2. What are the "_trainable" versions of fauna animals you find in the editor? I'm guessing it means those are the animal the corral trains, rather than you can teach them cute tricks, is that true? 3. What's the difference between the vanilla "/structures" and "/units" and their "skirmish/structures" and "/skirmish/units" counterparts? 4. What's the difference between the "support_female_citizen" and "support_female_citizen_house"? 5. There are some units which don't seem to belong anywhere (Thebans' "Sacred band", "Fireraiser" (what's that!?), Thesprotians' (I guess) "Melanochitones", a Noldor ship (?!!!) and a lone longship). Are those fully functional (I know the Spitfire plane is), i.e. can you use them in the game? Don't think I will (well, maybe the longship), but I'm wondering. (Yes, I could simply try, but I'd rather ask) 6. Same thing about structures: What is the "rotarymill" you find in some civilizations? Dropped project I guess? Does it do anything? There is also a cute little "merc_camp_egyptian". Does it do anything in-game or is it just eye candy? Would be cool if you could buy mercenaries... More stupid questions coming, as soon as I've stumbled upon them...

I'll take your word for it... Whatever it is, it appears in both Windows and Linux versions of the map maker, so it's a common function. Also, the Windows error handler can't handle it!... It just says so for a second or two, and then the program closes. Linux at least gives the full error handler window with options. As for GDB, I neither have it, nor would I know how to use it. Sorry... Yeah, I've been admin for over 10 years on a hobbyist forum, so I know the problem all too well. That been said, my first post isn't what a spammer would usually post (some generic comment, or a out-of-topic cut/paste from elsewhere on the forum)... Oh well. "Differentiate Macedonia"? Care to elaborate? I don't want rolling updates, I just want to play (and mod)!... As I said further up, I'm on Mint 21.2 (= Ubuntu 22.04 "Jammy Jellyfish" - an LTS). As your website states, the official repo has .25, but also a flatpack which might/should be .26 (I don't know, since they are named "version 4" and "version 5". Go figure.). The "old versions in repo" issue is as old as LTS versions are, but normally I don't mind, I don't need the latest and fastest except for games, and usually I play those on Windows where I do have the latest and fastest. Loading? It's the map editor which crashes. I only managed once to save a map and try to load it in the game. How do I do it? I select a map template in the dropdown menu, and click "generate map". Usually it manages to create the map, and I try to change/add some stuff to it, just to make sure it's my own map. At this point, sooner or later the map editor complains about something and leaves. If I manage to save (only managed once in 4-5 attempts!), the resulting map can be loaded in game, but is missing the 2-3 buildings, trees and stuff I added, and the game spams a dozen chat lines complaining about stuff I don't have the time to read, much less understand. My mod right now is just a 1:1 copy of a Briton hero unit, using the existing game files. I just copied and renamed the templates changing the name. I can't imagine how this could possibly make the map editor crash (the game doesn't complain), but I'll try unloading it. But yes, all the maps I've tried to make were big. I don't like tiny maps, I need space... Besides the game already provides a slew of tiny, claustrophobic, but otherwise excellent maps to play in, there is no need to make more of those. What I'm missing, and thus try to make, is big 2 player (or more) maps, maps where the opponent isn't right behind the edge of the fog of war...

Great! That been said, according to the linked thread, progress is glacial at best. I'm of the older persuasion, I wonder if I'll live long enough... You did? As I said I tried on both Windows (0 A.D. 0.0.26 on Win11 64-bit, 32GB of RAM, Intel Core i7-12700H, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8Go, everything up to date), and Linux (0 A.D. 0.0.25 on Mint 21.2 64-bit, same specs, everything up to date). Windows (0.0.26) crash sometimes briefly displays a map and only says "error formatting error message" The Linux (0.0.25) crash was more articulate, it showed me a persistent error panel stating: Assertion failed: "!EntityExists(ent)" Location: ComponentManager.cpp:770 (AllocateEntityHandle) (lots of stack info I didn't memorize) What do you need? What is "GBD"? I'm not a developer, just a savvy user having started tinkering with games on a 2-floppy IBM PC running DOS 2...

All right, that's a piece of information I didn't have. I saw RC27 was released and thought the development process is ongoing (albeit very slow, as usually for that kind of project). A pity, this game is great. Needs just some polishing, there are just some rough edges remaining. You people are most likely used to them by now (and know how to bypass them), but they are obvious to a newcomer like me.

Oops, missed your post. Sure, but why not make it a standard game feature? I mean, everything can be added externally, but the game should be self-sufficient. As for the economy, except the excellent idea to drop the specialized male peasants, there is IMHO not much difference. It still boils down to controlling/harvesting specific resources and preventing the adversary from doing so.

Yes, I know, but that doesn't really solve the problem, it just moves it. Slightly muting the minimap background would solve it once for all, and it's quite easy to do too.

(For the record, after a while I realized a lot of Briton units have some Greek lines. I'd need to play some other (non-Greek) civilizations to see if they also have the same lines )

OMG! That's really, really bad! Almost a deal breaker, I like big spaces. In AoE I only played on "huge" maps... Why don't they (also) compile it in 64-bit? I mean, Linux and Windows are both 64-bit nowadays, and even the few people still on older computers are bound to upgrade eventually (I know, I'm one of those hold-outs; Since I only use Windows for games I kept to my old-but-beefy Win7 box until after 15 years the magic smoke left it... ). Crap, I'm afraid I'll have to put 0 A.D. on wait till they start allowing full sized maps. I know, but I don't know how much those self-contained formats affect modding. I'd rather stick with vanilla, old-school installations, to keep things simple and problems easier to spot. Anyway, unless Linux allows big maps the point is moot: I tried creating aforementioned "Caledonian meadows" random map in "giant" (not even "huge") and the Linux map editor crashed just the same.

A couple minimap suggestions. The 0 A.D. minimap can easily be improved: 1. Please highlight the selected unit(s) on the minimap (in white) so you can see where they are. 2. Minimap visibility is not optimal, especially given the player is in dark blue and thus tend to blend into the background. Would it be possible to mute (de-saturate?) the minimap background, so that important features (units, buildings) stick out more? 3. Or even create a set of display filters for the minimap, like "Show only units/buildings on a gray background", "show only friends/enemies", "show only resources".

New suggestion, and IMHO a quite important one: Please show the group number on grouped units! (as a tiny floating number?) In the map view, and/or (at very least) on the portrait when selected. Quick example: I have 3 cavalry scouts I've hotkeyed as Ctrl-8, 9 and 0. When I see one on the map, I'd like to know on a glance which one it is, and not have to push 8, 9 and 0 to see which key (if any) selects it... I've been using groups a lot, for years, and without displaying the individual memberships on the screen they lose half of their interest (you can't use them to easily keep apart different task groups of identical units).

I see. More effective? Are you sure? (Genuine question, not rhetorical) As it is now they will just kill your units one by one, which also disrupts your economy, through lost work + those units' cost in resources and training time. (I admit I'm new to 0 A.D., but I'm a veteran in AoE, where this strategy is terribly efficient against the AI)

Well, I had a "full population", except the bulk of my units were too far from the town center, those were the reserves. Besides the AI isn't able to put a stop to them either: If I ram-rush it, it's toast, and it sure always has a "full population"...

What for? When given a command to attack they always attack, no matter what stance they're in. I don't understand. The point here was more about being able to quit an assigned job automatically when/if a friend nearby starts taking damage.

It depends: If your working units are fighting units, it's just another fight, much like if they were standing around. If they are not fighting units, they should take shelter, running away is pointless.

Didn't work for me, and spearmen was all I had... Of course it depends on what you mean by "good number". The 10-20 I had weren't nearly enough to stop (or even delay) the onslaught.

Definitely, and that's a pet peeve of mine too. When working, you can hack them to pieces, they won't react, so you need to constantly babysit them and tell them there is somebody killing them, do something already! Given in 0 A.D. workers are soldiers, they should react if somebody gets attacked in they immediate vicinity, fight, and then only go back to whatever they were doing.

Are they? The Britons don't have any. Nor do they have elephants... My point was axemen should exist in all civilizations, right from the first age, maybe give them a bonus to wood collection too... Slow, big damage, cheaper than sword, more expensive than spear, very bad against cavalry, bonus against rams and buildings. And here we have -- tank battles!...

Hmm, I'm in two minds about this: Is this a civilization management simulation, or a combat game with some generic resource management to spice things up? If the latter, it's actually irrelevant what those resources pretend to be (specific metals, food, gems, magic dust, whatever), all that matters is that the player finds enough sources (no pun intended) on the map, and controlling them becomes a strategic issue. In this case it would all boil down to the question, "how many of those generic resources do you want"? Traditionally it's 4, since the ancestor of all RTS games, Warcraft (the first). Now if you go for the simulation, you'd need to go all the way, i.e. on the map separate water bodies into drink water - saltwater - brackish water, create natural sources to place on maps, but also streams, and of course allow digging wells (with a % of success!), and also build reservoirs and irrigation channels (the player would have to defend/sabotage)... No fields should grow without water, each living unit you have would automatically use a given amount/time, so your population limit depends mostly on your water supply... You would also need some water transport unit to carry water over long distances and/or feed your troops during expeditions in arid places (pack animals, like horses/camels/mules). Prost.

Britons only have cavalry swords... Given all civilizations have and thus face rams, there should be an universal remedy to them, something they all have at the same level. I think I'll introduce axemen. Axes were actually the first elaborate tool/weapon humanity had (just a sharp stone splinter on a haft), everybody had them, and everybody used them to split wood and heads. Now I don't know if they actually used them in reality against rams back then (I doubt it), but it's something players might intuitively think of. Need to find a fitting model though, that would be the biggest hurdle.

Thanks, I will try that! Not very intuitive though, why would you use cavalry against tanks, err, rams? Infantry would be more logical (except that apparently most civilizations don't have infantry swordsmen I guess?).

I had a WTF moment when I realized the Britons hero Boudicca actually speaks Greek!... It sure sounds strange...

I often delete my own buildings, usually for redundancy/space reasons, or because I have somehow blocked myself. That been said, you shouldn't be able to instantly delete buildings you're about to lose: Explosives weren't invented at that time... I would vote for the "demolition" process, i.e. reverse building: It takes workers and about 50% of the time to dismantle a building, and you get about 75% of the resources back. This way you still can get rig of unwanted buildings, but you can't sabotage them if the enemy is about to take them.

I'm new to this game, started playing it a couple days ago. (But I've clocked many years in various Age of Empires, starting with the first one...) In my first skirmish game against the AI (normal difficulty), at some point, without warning, I saw a group of rams heading my way, and no matter what I threw at them (actually everything I had), impossible to do more than scratch their paint... One minute later they had leveled my town... In subsequent games I lowered the difficulty to "very easy", and discovered that actually you only need rams to win! If it weren't for resources, there would be no need to build anything else. Send half a dozen rams towards the enemy camp (no need to protect them), and watch the onslaught. By the time the enemy has managed to whittle down one or two of them, they have leveled his town. Then just send some troops to mop up the survivors, and that's that. My point is, aren't 0 A.D. rams a little too overpowered? In AoE rams were vulnerable to infantry, you had to protect them, and make sure they were able to reach their targets and finish their work unmolested. Here they are largely invulnerable. They really make me think of tanks... So, what am I doing wrong? What's the (apparently non-obvious) way to counter a ram-rush? (Starting a ram-rush before the opponent isn't a solution. Else this becomes a simple race of "who will build rams first" never mind civilizations and other irrelevant eye candy.) Now I agree that javelins and slings (or even spears) shouldn't be of much help against a heavy wooden contraption, but still, shouldn't there be a unit which has a special bonus against them, like axemen or some such? Something to slightly bother them while they level your towns?... Please advise.

Not used to this yet. But still, doing it that way allowed me to check the "how-to-build" part of units. Thanks!... Thanks! About #4 - Do you mean to say that the Windows version can't handle maps bigger than "tiny"? Please confirm/infirm, because that would be a problem... (Well, my primary OS is Linux, but I play it under Windows because the official repository version is outdated (v.25) and won't probably ever be updated. And no, I don't feel like compiling it myself...)

No, I didn't spot that feature yet. Sounds promising, but still, I guess unless I can change it for the AI only, it could get quite annoying watching your own units crawl along... The active pause, AoE-style would be nice to have.