Deicide4u

@real_tabasco_sauce, thanks. I've tried it already and the changes are good. I'd even reduce the hack resistance a bit more. Some random maps had issues with hanging during the map generation, so I'll wait until second point release to try it again.

Honestly, the settings screen is already too crowded with options. Being able to configure things is good, but the expected behavior should be set in and by the game, not in some settings option. Unless it's really necessary and useful (like the default batch size). Just to give you guys an idea, I'll list an example from Brood War. To destroy a Protoss Gateway in mere seconds, only 10 Zerg hydralisks are needed. 500 Shields + 500 Hit Points = 1000 health. On default MP game speed, 10 Zerg Hydralisks dish out 10x10 damage per 0.8 seconds to the first 500 shields, then 10x9 damage per 0.8 seconds to the 500 hit points. So, you have about 15 seconds to save the Gateway.

Swords are useless versus buildings, slingers are situational and civ-dependent. Towers, Civic Centers have 95% hack armor. Most other buildings that train units have 92%, including Fortresses that don't train anymore. So, 5-8% damage received. That's nothing. Even if it was 10-12%, that's still 1-2 damage from most swordsmen units. Even less for hoplites and spearmen.

Like rams and elephants? Both are in the City Phase, that's the point. I don't want to wait for so long, it takes ages to prepare a push with siege.

Why would I ever attack a Civic Center with human troops if I can capture it much easier? Buildings need to have their hack armor lowered. That will just confuse the newbies more. Then you'd have to answer questions like "Why are my troops not attacking this structure when I right-click on it?" or "Why are my 50 troops tickling this tower for a full minute?"

That's a shame, I like studying the results screen.

Are we finally going to get free and open source Age of Empires 2? Jokes aside, this mod has serious potential. Keeping the game simple and more familiar to most RTS players will definitely attract people.

Any errors, does it work fine? Will there be any official updates to the Delenda Est mod for A27?

The AI tends to overproduce citizen soldiers, so it's quite easy to win by war of attrition. Champion spam in the late game wins nearly all the time, but requires a lot of preparation. Using a lot of upgraded CS + siege also works. I don't play multiplayer in RTS games, so I can't attest to that.

Yeah, let's nerf the only unit that can break turtled up positions in a game where turtle booming strategy is very OP. Siege catapults at least force your opponent to make some melee cavalry. They are very slow and expensive units that also require the faster pack-unpack tech researched, to be useful.

Is this for multiplayer only?

Nah, it's sadly impractical at decent levels. You need men in P2 to gather stone and metal fast enough. Preferably skirmishers as they are faster, but also some spears to kill cavalry. Women in this game are only good for berries, farms and early woodlines. The cavalry rush is an all-in. Once the enemy builds decent defense, you auto-lose. Your only chance is to capture the Civic Center fast enough, which can sometimes work. This is why I don't like the capture mechanic, and why I always try to destroy buildings.

A game of myself as Romans versus the Medium AI playing as the Han dynasty. Noticeable improvement, I'd say. The game still lasted for too long since I wanted to give the AI time to build up and also have some fun tearing down his towns. He really explodes in the City phase. I had a few issues, mainly wasted too many cavalry during the attack. Forgot about the fishing ships. Slow start. The rest was fine, I think. As soon as you get the champions and an economy to support them, investing in CS is a waste of resources IMHO. No Marian Reforms this time. Didn't really need it. 1v1RomeVHan.zip

Sounds a lot like Rise of Nations. Good luck, looking forward to trying out the mod.

That is an army xD But I get what you're saying, I'm not just used to the CS concept yet. Too much APM needed for that. Maybe I shouldn't have wasted resources on them, as most of them died defending the first push. Definitely could have made a bunch of farms and just assign the females from the woodline. Also, could have made a Dock and some fishing ships. Maybe I was collecting it for the next game? Yeah, I'm a turtle of sorts. Watching the replay, I laughed at how late I got my City Phase and Fortress. Also, I could have made more Military Colonies. Thank you for the tips. I had fun in this game.

And wrong on most accounts. The AI isn't broken, it just needs a lot of time to build up. It knows how to recruit champions, and it's also a decent challenge for someone relatively new to the game. The only thing that's really broken is the mouse cursor "lag", but that can be ignored for SP.

Sharing this chaos just to let you guys know that the AI actually works, although it's a bit slow to train champions. I suck, I know that I like how he completely ignored siege weapons, lol. Probably thinking that elephants are still good enough for siege. Maybe that can be adjusted? 1v1vsPers.zip

Well, I just got my ass handed to me. He really did have a bunch of champions. This proves my point that changes in alpha 24 broke the AI.

Sorry, my reply was meant for the OP

This game isn't Stronghold, realistic walls are not a priority. However, there is ongoing work to make walls more usable.

I was just frustrated with the broken AI. I don't really care about the icons. Fix the mouse cursor bug, make Fortresses great again and I'll be good. Or just show the AI how to research them champions.

Thanks for the link, I'm glad you're already working on it. That Youtube comment mentioned at the top of the issue is also by me, it's just that I've deleted my channel so it's no longer there. Just wanted to correct myself since I saw your video of the issue. It does exist in A23b, albeit mostly on the top-left corner. On A27, it was on the lower-right corner most of the time. The cursor icon changes to the Windows one, causing the game to "lag" by not reacting to the cursor input. There isn't any performance-related lag, only that the input is not registered by the game. Sorry for the inconvenience. EDIT: Alpha 18 has the same issue. So, the bug is long-standing.

No, no lags with the arrow keys. Just when moving the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen. I'm using Windows 11. Intel UHD card.

I've installed Alpha 23b and it's what I recommend to anyone who has issue with this version. The game still looks great, uses around 50% less resources and plays better overall. I also don't have weird mouse cursor lags when moving it to edges of the screen. This is wrong, see further replies. This will be my harshest critic of the game so far, seeing how it looked and felt to play before. LOL at this. I'm all for improvements, but the development needs to be streamlined and focused on gameplay. Not eye-candy. Eye candy art in a strategy game can often be bad. Sometimes, it can even alienate the players. I'm speaking as someone who played RTS games since childhood, and knows which features are good, and which are bad for the player. Why were resource icons replaced? They look perfectly fine to me in alpha 23. Why did we add worker counters below the resources? Now the player's attention is always on those counters, affecting the gameplay and fun. I want to play a RTS, not look at my worker counters all the time. Who cares, they are fine for quickly checking farms. Why were great hero models removed from unit portraits and replaced with lame images? We don't know, but we have lame hero images as portraits now. Also, we removed a bunch of tech from blacksmiths and replaced some good-looking unit portraits with lame ones. Irrelevant. Why females build everything now? It's just visual clutter, especially in the early game. It also lessened the distinction between pure economy units and CS. Why were champions and siege removed from Fortresses? Among other bad gameplay changes, it broke single-player AI. Now it doesn't train champions in newer versions, except for elephants. Not a single champion unit trained in most games on Alpha 27, even on Hard. My guess is because it doesn't know how to research the unlock tech at Barracks and Stables. It doesn't have to research anything to train the elephants, so it can train them. Nope, it trains champion units just fine. I won't bore you with more details, you get the picture. The game stayed at alpha 23 for nearly 2 and a half years. There was no reason to change the core gameplay and break everything just for "better multiplayer" or whatever. Hopefully you stop with the eye candy and focus more on the gameplay. Cheers.

Thanks. It seems like the default bot can't train champions. It also doesn't upgrade weapons and armor at the Forge. My suspicion is that changes made in Alpha 24 broke the AI. AI used to train champions at the Fortress, now it can't. Maybe, I did not test this. EDIT: Ok, so the AI is definitely broken in Alpha 24 and up. I'm playing a match on Alpha 23 and the AI WITHDREW its forces once it realized he doesn't have enough to beat me. I'm still playing so I'd expect him to come with champions soon.