Seleucids

1v7 Very Hard Petra: Mission Accomplished. This proves that I am qualified. To improve on: kill faster!

This is an interesting metric and the top 3 are indeed consistent with experience with booming using these civs. However, some civs generally spend less than others due to bonuses and mercenaries. The most prominent examples here are Ptolemies (who get wood discount on all buildings, so they spend a lot less), Carthaginians who make mostly mercenaries and generally are a rush civ; Iberians get cheaper skirmishers so less investment is needed etc... Also, could these scores be affected by the frequency of usage of these civs? For example Mauryas and Seleucids might be played less often than the others here...

In a comparison between A26 and A27, I did 300 cavs per side for battle. You have seen the A27 version already. The A26 version was not worth recording, but there are a few observations: 1. Average frame rate was on par or even lower than A27. 2. Much less freezes and stutters in A26. It was a simple matter of low framerate due to too much models being rendered on a weak GPU. 3. My laptop was stretched much harder by A26 than A27. While playing A26, I had a single core at 100% and the temperature rose to 95 degrees Celsius. At this point the frame rate began to drop to 24fps. On the other hand, in A27, even if you are at 3 fps, the usage of CPU is merely 50% - 60% with a temperature of around 70 degrees. I have never seen A27's CPU usage exceed 60%, not even for a single virtual core. The laptop was barely doing any work. There is something wrong with the way A27 consumes CPU resources that is causing the stutters. Barely any hardware is used by A27. Maybe there is too much waiting for a particular process? A27's optimisation improved in the sense that its maximum frame rate could reach higher values than A26 and the average over time was better. However, the range of A27 fps values is much bigger with the lowest values below 1 (totally unplayable). There is no frame rate stability in A27. Therefore, the solutions is to make A27 consume as much as A26, then the stutters should be much less. @real_tabasco_sauce @wraitii

A sniping tutorial for those of you who haven't learnt this key skill:

I have not even attempted to turtle since the end of A24 Gauls are the ideal quick boom and push civ, then you spam champion cav with the loot.

Great civ, used to be my favourite. Pros: Epic boom, the fastest civ aside from Romans. Ranged cav + pikeman is a strong combo. Great champion options, instant unlock, then boosted cataphracts. Has something at every range so that you are never stuffed. Military colony allows you to gain map control without too much investment, then you have cheap CC bonus on top of it. Elephant spam with Nikator is nearly unstoppable. Has nice siege options to kill turtle players or troll with siege towers. Siege has become relevant again in A27. Cons: Your skirmishers will get sniped by Ptolemie slings in the first battle, then GG with your 0.2KD. No citizen class melee cavalry - can't really go full cav spam army unlike the other cav civs mentioned above. Champions and mercs are a bit too expensive at ~ min 15 but of course no problem if the game lasts more than 20 minutes. No slings and can't get too many archers in early game. You die against snipers.

Sword cav. Make 3 Cavs since the very beginning, arrive at enemy berries and woodline at minute 1:30 and they loose all. Then your cav go back to hunt, which gives you ample food supply to women spam meanwhile your enemy has no chance to counter attack. Feels like cheating. You can also boom with cav, since sword cav are good at hunting. Get a dozen cavs and send to enemy fields at min 7 then they loose all their food production

Defending cavalry raids explained by the French Anthem La Marseillaise: Allons enfants de la Patrie, *Trained units spawn from barracks Le jour de gloire est arrivé ! *Attack moves towards enemy base Contre nous de la tyrannie *Loses hero because it charged too fast at the enemy L'étendard sanglant est levé, *Garrisons units into defensive buildings, causing the flag to appear Entendez-vous dans les campagnes *Checks outposts and edges of the visible area and hears cavalry noise Mugir ces féroces soldats ? *The attack sound effect plays Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras *Enemy raiding calvary gets close to your woodline Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes ! *Kills your women and low rank soldiers at woodline Aux armes, citoyens, *Call to arms and raise alert Formez vos bataillons, *Group select soldiers and close order formation Marchons, marchons ! *Close order formation marches towards enemy cav which is attacking near your CC Qu'un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons ! *The enemy cavalry is killed by your spearman because they were stuck due to the pathfinder. The mixture of horse blood and human blood soaks your fields, hence “impure blood”

Civilisation choice is dependent on map, position and your strategy. If you are next to enemy, or map is small: Ptolemies, Macedonians, Spartans, Iberians If you are in pocket position: Persian, Mauryas, Kushite If you want to do cavalry spam: Persians, Gauls, Romans, Carthaginians If you want to rush someone or play aggressively: Britons, Han, Mauryas, Iberians, Ptolemies If map has low resources: Mauryas, Carthaginians

no-animation.zip

I am doing some graphics mod and there are error spams. These are false alerts spam and should be ignored by the player. How can I stop them from showing?

fpslog1.txt average fps: 76.17021276595744 fpslog1.txt `10%` low: 30 fpslog1.txt `1%` low: 20 fpslog1.txt lowest: 18 fpslog2.txt average fps: 92.876254180602 fpslog2.txt `10%` low: 30 fpslog2.txt `1%` low: 21 fpslog2.txt lowest: 17 fpslog3.txt average fps: 91.12413793103448 fpslog3.txt `10%` low: 31 fpslog3.txt `1%` low: 21 fpslog3.txt lowest: 17 fpslog4.txt average fps: 81.94713656387665 fpslog4.txt `10%` low: 30 fpslog4.txt `1%` low: 20 fpslog4.txt lowest: 16 fpslog5.txt average fps: 119.80232558139535 fpslog5.txt `10%` low: 42 fpslog5.txt `1%` low: 27 fpslog5.txt lowest: 20 fpslog6.txt average fps: 188.7904761904762 fpslog6.txt `10%` low: 53 fpslog6.txt `1%` low: 30 fpslog6.txt lowest: 29 The 10% low and 1% low has been calculated. Human eyes will feel smooth for animations above 30 fps. Having decapitated frozen Maurya spearman ensures the fps is smooth even in 300 vs 300 situations (extreme 2v2 battle). This can at least remove the GUI lag from A27, without the pain of editing the engine. I will be working on a mod which can do this.

The result, graphed: This might explain why experiment 4 and 3 yielded lower values than they should have: I could have paused the experiment prematurely, while the fight was still happening. This decreases the amount of high fps values recorded at the end and hence reduces the total values. However, it is still clear that experiments 5 and 6 (disabling spearman animations) consistently outperformed the vanilla 0AD.

Experiment 6 only removed the attack animations of half of the melee actors present, but the performance improvement was already this huge! To reduce render, one can seriously consider replacing all spearman templates with Maurya spearman. It will look weird but it will really help your fps. Files used attached below: fpslog6.txtfpslog5.txtfpslog4.txtfpslog3.txtfpslog2.txtfpslog1.txtcomparator.pyfpslog6.txt

A source of frame rate drop found: attack animations. When we fight large armies, the GUI must render all of the attack animations, which is a huge task. I removed the attack animations of some units and did a fps comparison to with the attack animations and noted the results. Experimental method: 1. Mod the fps counter so that it prints out the fps value into my terminal. I then save the terminal outputs to a .txt file. 2. For each test, I ran the Combat Demo Huge map on automatic. On game start, I zoom out to my zmin (8.00 in user.cfg) and watch the units fight. 3. Kill 0ad as soon as one side lose all units. 4. Use a Python script to compute the average frame rate recorded, discarding anomalous values and the gamesetup screen etc. I did a FPS measurement and save it to a new file every time I remove an art feature (sorry Stan ). Results fpslog1.txt average fps: 76.17021276595744 fpslog2.txt average fps: 92.876254180602 fpslog3.txt average fps: 91.12413793103448 fpslog4.txt average fps: 81.94713656387665 fpslog5.txt average fps: 119.80232558139535 fpslog6.txt average fps: 188.7904761904762 file 1: Vanilla 0ad units with just my katemod. file 2: removed attack animation of just Roman skirmishers file 3: repeat of experiment 2 file 4: removed Gaul skirmisher attack animation, but kept Roman skirmishers file 5: removed some Roman and Athenian spearman animations; removed both Gaul and Roman skirmisher animations file 6: kept all above changes, replaced Roman spearman with a Mauryan spearman, then decapitated the Mauryans. Subjective observations: Experiments 1, 2, 3, 4 all had a stutter immediately after game starts, then fps rises over time. Experiment 5 was not perfectly smooth animation but playable from a first person perspective Experiment 6 had almost no lag or stutter. Units were selectable in real time without delays. Conclusions: This is consistent with my experience of Romans being one of the most lagging civ and Mauryas lagging significantly less. One big source of lag (at a GUI level) when fighting is the sudden need to render many animations. Removing spearman animation had the biggest effect on fps. A mitigation strategies: simplify skirmisher attack animation (we can't remove it completely because you wouldn't know whether they are attacking anymore); remove spearman / melee attack animation (you will not watch your spearman in battles, you just assume they are fighting ).

I think we should follow weirdJokes' idea and move the champs to barracks and stables, because that is the standard of most A27 civs. Only training champs from temples nerfs the civ too much. The temples can be differentiated in other ways. For example, Carthaginian temples have faster healing rates or greater area of influence, for some rituals they practised. Carthage is already unique enough, no need for more weirdness.

Another observation: some civs lag and stutter more than others in P3 and when fighting. Unplayable stutter: Athenians, Romans Very Lag: Spartan, Seleucid, Carthaginians, Macedonians OK: Gaul, Britons, Persians Least lag: Ptolemies, Mauryas, Kushites, Han Unit type also matters: in general, skirmishers lag much more than slingers and archers. Pikes lag less than spears or swords. Cavalry units also follow the same pattern, but will stutter completely if you try to retreat them.

Carthaginians lack bonuses and they are quite a weak civ right now, compared to the others. They are too dependent on metal and mercenary. They are an archer civ but don't have the archer upgrades... Some ideas: At least give them the archer techs? Numidian skirmisher cavalry run 10% faster than other civs, because they were known for speed and agility? Metal mining bonus, because they are a merc civ? Trading / barter / eco bonus, because they were the richest civilisation around the entire Mediterranean sea? A tech which increases the speed of units but reduces armour or something - new hit and run strategy.

Why is it that Spartans have two separate buildings for heroes and champions? Could we add champion skirmishers back to one of these buildings, and possibly some kind of archer / slinger unit?

Some trolls like to impersonate others. Thankfully MarcAurel is kicking them out on time. I don't really mind this as long as they don't ruin balance or defame the original user; I am just notifying you to look at usernames carefully before assuming who they are. Some hosts fell for the trolling. Examples of impersonating troll accounts: rice-curvature nice-curvature hakunamatatata phyZik PhyZic. PhyZic- .PhyZic. The correct spellings are: Ricci-Curvature Hakunamata PhyZic

What is this and could we mitigate it? Question: how can i compile A26 on Linux? There are many errors

commands.txt This is a 4v4 where I suicided due to lag. Hakuna was pinging me to retreat but I couldn't, because the GUI was almost frozen. The counter claimed 8 fps but it was more like 0.8 fps. Within 1 frame update, my pop dropped from 200 to 173. The next frame I saw I was at 130. All I did was order a retreat. This one is me attempting a 1v7 challenge against AIs: commands.txt

Sadly anti-cheat solutions don't seem to work on Linux. Anti-cheat programs be like: Linux user = Hacker + cheater -> ban Linux users would have many more games available to them if it wasn't for anti-cheat engines; they are the true roadblocks; the compatibility issue is already handled very well by WINE and PROTON.

Is there something special about the Linux kernel that you have noticed, or is it just a coincidence that most people replying to this thread are Linux users? I have tried to play A26 on Windows 11, with Atlas playbook. The frame rate on Windows was on average 70% of my Linux values but generally more stable. The CachyOS kernel always pushes for the highest frame rate possible so the fps is somewhat uneven. Vulkan only deteriorates performance compared to ARB, in my laptop's case. But on a stronger computer, Vulkan performs a bit better.

With the stutter "fix", in P3 there is visible delay (between input and GUI response) as soon as the phase 3 tech finishes researching. It's almost magic. Frame rate wise, the counter drops from 120fps in P2 to 50-60fps. However, in reality (at least from user perspective), it is nowhere near the 50 fps claimed by the counter. Occasionally the frame rate counter does shop dips to as low as 8fps while building barracks in P3. Weird thing is, if I push with large army in P2, the stutter is significantly less and frame rate is high. P3 seems to be the culprit. These graphs illustrate my frame rate experience: Multiplayer: