Deicide4u

We had siege that wasn't OP. Catapults were weaker and it took forever for them to bring the Fortress down. That is without repairing it. The trebuchets in AoE2 will bring the Castles down easily. Fort's job is to slow down the enemy, and give you the advantage. Fort shouldn't stop the push, only delay it.

This is where I think Delenda Est has an advantage, in that the capture mechanic is clearly defined and localized. With capture out of the picture for the vast majority of buildings, you can do things like adding HP to Fortresses, adding special techs that increase that HP further, add more crush resistance, etc. Capture bar limits these possibilities, leaving you with balancing the balance of previously balanced capture system.

If I recall correctly, Roman Army Camp used to be able to hold 40 soldiers. Granted, when the collision issue (or just the formations exploit) is fixed, a full Fortress will be almost impossible to capture at full health, which might be a good thing lol.

I agree with that. The issue of too many units capturing one building in the first place.

That would be one of the easier balance corrections, but it wouldn't fix the issue. What if a player attacks you with 200 Marian Roman Legionaries? That are magically stacked in a corner of your Fortress. The end result would be the same. No, the enemy needs to surround the Fortress, and you can't surround it with 200 units.

Not the cleanest game, but Zagros Mountains is really a good map for these skirmishes. Population cap set to 200, to avoid massive lags in late game. Mace_VS_Rome_H.zip

Here's another idea. Capture attack -> Siege attack. Buildings can be captured only if they have less than 50% of total HP (some techs could bring this percent down further). Default action for units is now siege attack. Capture is possible as before, but only after a structure is below 50% of HP. Otherwise, the capture attack is disabled (has red X across the capture icon, to indicate it's disabled). Siege attack animation is the same as the capture animation, but units are holding the torches up instead of their weapons.

They should, if you have other units that are to engage the enemy. But, the issue here is that currently there is no soft cap on amount of units that can capture one building. That soft cap should be the size of the building, and when the enemy surrounds it completely, that's it. How many units can realistically surround the Fortress? Surely not 150.

Or, and hear me out on this, we can actually fix the collision so that those 150 Marian Romans have to surround the building (thus exposing them to fire from multiple angles) in order to capture it? In the picture, I see that all units are on one side, and many are literally inside one another. The collision system was annoying and buggy in A23, but it worked. If you sent 35 cavalry against enemy's 3 archers, the cavalry would still have to surround the archers, so they got in the way of each other. In R28, those 35 cavalry would blend into each other, instantly vaporizing the poor archers with 1000% overkill rate. Current system is: - Physically impossible, - Historically inaccurate, - Looks terrible, especially with massed cavalry. I know that this is a separate problem, but you aren't exactly supposed to keep those champions inside the Fortress. They should be outside fighting. Losing one Fortress while 150 enemy units are exposed to fire won't hurt you as much if the collision worked. I voted for adding to base capture regeneration and for both added tech, btw.

@Thalatta Kate, is that you? Anyway, I'm not doing that much math. I stand by my opinion that the game should be simple to learn and harder to master. New players already don't want to spend a lot of time learning this game. In fact, I believe that feature creep (especially since AoE III was released) has pushed people away from RTS. Couple this with the short attention span of younger generation, and you get only a fraction of former player base. No wonder that AoE 2 and AoE 1 (via Return of Rome) are still very popular. It's simpler, it works and is just wining timeless formula. There are some specific people who like to obsess over feature creep, sheets, statistics, and they are a minority. But, I digress.

It's great that you're enjoying 0 A.D., but someone already asked this question and all answers are there. Please use the search function next time.

Yes, the default AI is researching them way too late, around minute 30 or so. I've noticed that it doesn't have a lot of problems with reaching high population, but around minute 20, it just keeps sending tiny raids with siege. While annoying, they do very little damage unless the player is not careful. I know it eventually starts sending huge waves, but even those are not dangerous as it sends all units in a straight line. Unless you let all of their units reach your base (which is unlikely), you can kill them as they're approaching. If the AI can start using formations again while moving its troops (it did in earlier versions), it'll be much more powerful. You can set the AI to use default Box (or Closed Line) formation while moving a certain amounts of combat units. Then, when enemy units are in sight, order the AI to disperse the formation and attack. Enemy moved back? Start using the formation movement again, to stop abuses. If you can implement just these two things (earlier Forge upgrades and formation movement), you'll make the AI much stronger. EDIT: Example replay below. In its first wave, Petra sent 60 swordsmen, 20 of which were killed before the others had a chance to reach me. Had Petra knew what formations were, I would've been in trouble as she out-boomed me. Spart_VS_Rome.zip

The game is complicated enough as is. Let's just keep it simple, people. Improve what we can, but let's not add feature bloat. EDIT: For context, if we implement both of these, then that will break a lot of existing stuff, mainly involving the AI. And now you need to fix things that were working fine for decades.

Few players do it. I don't bother with anything more than a couple of fields and some towers. Maybe a Temple and a Fortress if it's a forward CC. You can remind yourself by watching a couple of Rise of Nations gameplay videos on Youtube.

Carthaginians bring wealth and prosperity to Kush. Played against a Hard Petra on Marmara map. Cart_VS_Kush_H.zip

Because even players aren't building "cities" around their new CCs. And because this is not a City-building game, but a conquest one. Rise of Nations had an interesting mechanic of forcing players to build up their other bases (literal Cities) in order to progress their economy.

Roman legions drive back German tribes from their lands? Or, are they occupying their lands? Nevermind, doesn't matter. Rome_VS_Germ.zip

Click on the "Barter" icon on the top right. Play "Best for MP" Random map types with Anatolian/Fall/Temperate biomes. Those biomes usually have enough wood. I do agree that the early game is heavily dependent on wood.

Yeah, not to mention the batch training, which also increases the total training time to equal or more than "3x the speed of training" in SC II per batch. Or, you can change the setting in the Options and never be bothered about it again. Oh, and you can also disable the match-setting tips, so you aren't annoyed by that "Medium AI is too hard for beginners" message. Again, the "Normal" AI in AoE2 will destroy any new AoE 2 player, regardless of his/her experience with RTS.

One of my favorite old games. It's a diamond in a rough and one of the reasons why I'm so interested in ancient Rome. My retro mod Imperia Vetera is heavily inspired by that game. Ah, I agree. My reasoning is that Petra had sufficient units to destroy you in that 1v3, but terrible grouping logic (formations!) and major lack of unit upgrades is what caused it to throw that game.

@Thalatta One of the posts from the topic you've shared summs it up perfectly. "Progression systems and other stuff that don’t belong in RTS games is what kills them. After the golden age of RTS games they started to over-complicate the formula by adding all kinds of stuff in an effort to further bring innovation just for the sake of it. When they realized RTS games became too complicated for people to bother, they started simplifying them by removing things that were good, instead of the things that were superfluous. For example, removing base building, many of the units, maps and game modes, but keeping the progression systems. So now not only you can’t just jump into an RTS to build a nice base and use all the stuff in the game, but you have to grind over time in some progression system to be able to use everything which is already scarce as a whole." Most of the RTS players are veterans of older titles. As people get older, they have little time to adapt to new complex features, and prefer playing something they already know. New RTS games are no longer simple build->expand->conquer games of old.

Release April 19th, 2026: - All melee units now deal only hack damage. - Fixed a major balance issue with ranged infantry CS units having too many hit points, often inconsistent with their rank. Now, all ranged infantry CS have 55/65/75 HP, depending on rank. - Elite spear cavalry and cavalry spear champions now have very high pierce armor, being heavily armored ranged unit counter. Likewise, infantry spear champions, infantry champion pikemen and elite spearmen also have greater pierce armor, due to them having heavy armor and large shields. Spear champions now also deal less damage. - Defense towers, ranged units and Fortresses now deal less pierce damage. - Siege Rams now have more hack armor, to compensate for the fact that spear-wielding units now deal more hack damage. - Traders now generate less profit and are more expensive. The above changes are meant to finish the balancing portion of the mod. New features are increasingly harder to implement, due to many of them needing the underlying engine rebuilds. For the time being, this will be a final release of this mod. Have fun playing!

Extremely aggressive, attacks in force and frequently, ages up as fast as an experienced player would. I know that I found it much, much more difficult that Easy at the time. I heard that The Conquerors expansion made it even stronger.

@Thalatta, while I somewhat agree with you, the truth is that the AI has some serious flaws, and games against it start to feel samey after a while. Case in point is the 1v3 game that @ittihat_ve_terakki has shared. The AI is just plain stupid, doesn't upgrade its units and wastes them frequently on useless attacks. Only after reaching the City phase, the attacks start to become huge. Any experienced RTS player that sticks with the game for a couple of weeks will be able to crush Medium Petra.

@Asher Carthage has embassies because it's historically relied on foreign troops and technology to wage war (much like Saudi Arabia and UAE are doing today).