Deicide4u

Any tool, be it GUI mod or any other mod, that helps one player play the game faster than the other player, is cheating. In RTS games, time is a very important factor. It's in the name. If something helps me play faster than you and it's not an official part of the game, then that something is a "cheat" tool. I think this is obvious.

We already have a filter for maps that are "Best for MP". We also have a filter for "Naval Maps" only. Default is just the same as "All Maps", if I'm seeing right. If you install "Community Maps" mod, it adds a filter for them. Add in filters for "Random Naval Map" and "Random Land Map", and it won't be overwhelming. We can just mimic Age of Empires 2 for this, no need to make it complicated.

"Bad" maps can be challenging and the imbalanced design can be viewed as additional fun factor, especially if the map is pretty or "looks cool". Pompeii, for example, is a horrible map. But, it looks cool and the buildable layout provides some challenge to the player. A better criteria would be to either remove or update maps where the AI is broken. No use in keeping a map that's useless for SP.

@LienRag, one option could be to move access to Battering Rams to the Town phase. No Catapults and Bolt shooters, just rams. This would allow more military options, earlier. Reasoning is that in all "Age of" games, players have access to siege weapons in the second-to-last age. Weak reasoning, I know. Here's a better one: no more only "boom and turtle to win" strategies. No need to do it in the next release, though. EDIT: Also off-topic, so regard the above thought as just me thinking out-loud.

@TheCJ while that may be true, food is much easier to gather. I can have 30-35 women on 6-7 fields around my starting CC and farmstead and have near infinite food as long as I keep them safe. However, I'm forced to expand once my initial supply of wood runs dry. My wood gatherers are also more vulnerable to enemy raids. I also need to keep building storehouses next to the forest as my workers chop it down, to reduce the drop-off time. Which ironically costs me more wood.

Also, women are useless in a fight while soldiers can at least defend your town. Another aspect to consider.

Spartans defeating the Persian "Empire" on the ash-covered Pompeii. I barely had room to build anything here, so I had to rush. Luckily, Spartans have some great early champions Those 5 workers on food are from just one farm. I had 4 fishing boats that were AFK.

Snap is universally hated in the Linux world, so your data is a bit...inadequate. I'd think most players will either use their distro's package, or just download and play on their Windows PC. Also, Debian has backports and Ubuntu has PPA's if new versions are wanted. Either way, if the increased training times would cause another rift within the "pro" community, then you'd better not do that. The game needs good players to guide others. EDIT: Increased training times, not decreased.

Which version of Kubuntu do you use? Either way, you can use a Snap package to install it, or use a PPA if you're allergic to Canonical. Link to the official instructions: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/wiki/GettingTheUnixRelease#snap

Spoiler, it's a lot of fun. Now that I've spoiled the entire premise of this post, I wanted to thank the development and art team for making something truly unique. I've been following 0 A.D. since I got interested in Linux (around 7-8 years ago), because it was the first package listed in Synaptic, the old GUI package manager. I couldn't play it at the time, my computer barely ran Windows 7, let alone an RTS game full of eye-candy detail. Well, now I can, and the feeling of finally being able to play THAT ONE FREE GAME I've always wanted to play is phenomenal. The fact that this game is free (as in freedom!) is a miracle. I can't even fathom how much work went into this game. Technically, it feels the most like Age of Mythology, while gameplay is most similar to Age of Empires 2. The choice of civilizations is at first daunting, but each one plays similarly enough that you could just pick any and learn as you go. One feature stands out, and it's not intuitive at first. Citizen Soldiers (CS) are both your workers and your basic soldiers. They cost Wood in addition to Food, and some of the swordsmen types can even cost Metal. They might be weak, but they're easy to mass. You would use them primarily to gather Stone and Metal, with few of them on Wood (females gather Wood only slightly slower than males). Since females will be your primary gatherers in the early game, you should avoid making too many of CS in the Village phase. The game begins in earnest in the Town phase, when more of your soldiers become available. Most champion units are still locked behind City phase. More importantly, siege engines can also only be built in this phase (baring a few civs), so your options at storming the enemy towns are limited until the City phase. This might be my only complaint so far. In Age of Empires 2 or Age of Mythology, you get access to siege weapons in the 3rd phase. In addition, 20 Knights can level the Town Center alone, if it's not defended. In 0 A.D., attacking a Civic Center with 20 Town phase cavalry units will likely result in utter failure, wasting resources. Maybe this is a good thing, maybe not. It depends on what kind of player you are. But players should get an option that is not simply "move to the City phase ASAP". Other than that, I had a blast playing Romans, Athenians and Persians so far. I'll try some other civilizations (SPARTAAAAANS! READY!) and ultimately decide on my "goto" civ. This is really a fun game to play on a relaxing rainy day. Absolute chill when compared to the APM madness in StarCraft. And I love it. Thank you so much.

@Seleucids, I can't see the images.

Text about the wolf warriors. Seems like it could be possible that some ferocious German warriors in ancient times would dress themselves in wolf skins. Especially as a way to "summon" the strength of mythological or religious wolf totem. I don't think that the wolf skin would be very effective as a suit of armor, though. Maybe add them as very brutal, very aggressive melee glass cannon shock troops?

Yes, please. I don't want to wait forever for my infantry or rams to catch up to the rest of the army. And I surely don't want to wait forever for my buildings to complete. Not sure if I'd like this change, but I'm not a pro. I suck at this game, so I'll let better players argue with this.

Yes, modern RTS games are all about the E-sports scene. People forget that a major part in StarCraft's 1 success was that the game had character and a very good story (for its time). It also appealed to casual audience through Use Map Settings custom games, very fun and casual team games and a good balance of easy and hard SP missions. Age of Empires 2 also had fun casual gameplay, even more so than StarCraft. I guess you've already played Stronghold and, in a way, you want some of that feeling here. But I don't know why would anyone want a "Free Build" game mode in 0 A.D. As for the "laying down houses", just assign a couple of females to build them in quick succession.

Train time is already fast enough. Units dying too quickly can be solved in some other ways, like adjusting the overall health of units. Or you could stop sending them into heavily fortified areas to their deaths Siege units exist for a reason. This is not a game where you can just a-move your army and see the enemy's fortresses and towers fall like dominos.

@Thorfinn the Shallow Minded, the issue you're raising can in part be resolved by lowering the in-game speed, but that is only in single-player. MP community is highly competitive, that's a fact. RTS games nowadays attract mostly skilled MP players, most casuals either play against the AI (like myself) or choose a less demanding genre. Granted, I'm a veteran player of StarCraft 1 and even I avoid the MP scene there. I've also casually played AoE2 in the past. 0 A.D. can be played casually, just stick to the Easy or Normal AI. Move the difficulty up once you get better. Otherwise, try to find players that are of your skill level. One other reason why so few people play these games seriously is time. Most of us here are dinosaurs who have other priorities in life right now. So, I would often just save a game after about 15 minutes and go do other stuff. Maybe devs should pay more attention to the casual aspect, but so far its been fun for me as is.

Yes, batch training alleviates this issue. You wouldn't ever only train just one woman, except only at the very start of the game. I usually just either: 1) click two times, and come back 15-ih seconds later, 2) batch train 6-9 units at the time, 3) count exactly how many women I need to fill up a farm, then click that many times. Later on, when you have multiple production buildings ready, you'd just batch train units until your resources fall to around 400-500 food/wood. As long as you keep your resources low, it's ok. Also, keep in mind that you don't have to always produce units. Having a stockpile in this game can sometimes be beneficial. EDIT: Starcraft 1 Probe's build time is ~12 seconds on Fastest speed, the speed at which pro matches are played. 20 seconds is on Normal, which is too slow.

Where is all of the terrain? Is this just a replay? Sorry, I've never watched a replay of a 0 A.D. game

There's just too many sub-factions in play. You'd have to make them distinct enough for people to care. Also, it'll require a massive gameplay and balance rework.

So that is why Balder Knights from Dark Souls look a lot like Teutonic knights.

I've tried out the new Romans, and the strategy might work. Well, against noobs, at least. Don't waste resources on champions. Instead, train a balanced, huge army of citizen soldiers. Cover the usual bases, mass skirmishers as ranged, swords and spears to defend them. Max out, if you can. Leave some room for siege weapons and a Hero of your choice. Linger on a bit, to build up your stockpile of resources, because you'll likely need it soon. Making a good trade network is advisable, but optional. As you're preparing to head out, select your Fortress and click on the "Marian Reforms" tech. Congrats, now you have 200-240 champions eager to smash into the already prepared enemy defensive lines, as your opponent figured out what you're doing 15 minutes ago. Or, you push out, destroy his army and reduce his towns to rubble. If some of your elite warriors die, replace them with the resources from your stockpile. If the enemy tries to buy time by spreading out, roll out some cavalry to intercept him. One of these two things should happen

@Gurken Khan I have just finished a game with Romans. Just ignoring sieges until you have a good siege unit helps a ton (in the case of Romans, it's the Siege Catapult). Also, Marian Reforms turned my army of weaklings into around 150 champions led by Maximus. Needless to say, the Carthage was screwed. So, I guess the answer to my question is indeed: it depends on the civilization. Also, the performance was much better after some tweaking of graphics. I had average of 45-50 FPS during the large battles.

With all of the above in mind, what should be the focus of someone pretty new to the game? Quantity or quality? Do I spam units in the Town phase, or turtle and wait for champions? Or should I continue to spam CS even in the City phase, with some champions and a hero sprinkled in? Don't really wanna make a new thread if the answer is simple enough.

How about "Borderlands"?

This is basically a Age of Mythology's minor gods choices, on steroids. It will be very messy to implement, especially from the historical standpoint. It's better to just streamline the existing factions. For example, limit the bonuses and technologies to one bonus and one unique tech per civilization. Decide on three unique units per civ, and 3 heroes. Also, start excluding some "basic" units for civilizations that weren't very strong in that particular area. Need to counter champion sword cavalry, but don't have pikes? Tough luck, why didn't you make that armored elephant you have an unique access to? I hope you get what I'm saying.