Deicide4u

There isn't anything wrong with the AI difficulty names, and most other RTS games are using this nomenclature. Professional? So, you can become a professional in 0 A.D.? Professional is a person who has a profession. And Easy is way too easy for an intermediate player.

I remember the "Medium" Age of Kings AI. Let's just say that it wasn't medium at all, more of a "git gud" test of your skills. I see our "Medium" AI in the same light.

I voted for, but does this mean the game is pivoting away from including "Civilizations" to including "Empires"? For example, we had Hellenic civilization before, but it was split into nation-states and later Greek "empires".

It's obvious why you won that one. The AIs had major issues with grouping their units, helping their ally out and researching upgrades. Slingers are also slightly OP, in that they bring down siege engines quickly. Even with so many slingers, 20% of your town was razed in that large combined attack. As soon as I saw that the blue Romans had no upgrades at all, and seeing that single-file line near the end, I knew it was over. It's so funny to see how Ptolemy players ignore their large mercenary roster. Good game. On to that 1v3 one. EDIT: Watched the 1v3 one. Slingers are the sole reason you won both games. A fully upgraded elite slinger does over 18 piercing damage, plus bonus crush vs siege. The AIs also waited forever to start getting upgrades. When you switched to Royal guard cavalry champions, you were just toying with them. Anyway, gg. Petra needs serious upgrades when people are casually 1v3 it using nothing but one unit for the first 30 minutes of the game.

Elephant Archers can't hunt, nor they can build. It's useless to have them respond to "Idle worker" hotkey when I'm searching for actual idle workers. I believe they respond to the hotkey because they're implemented as Citizen soldiers since they have ranks. IMO, they should be Town phase champions, and use their Elite actor only. As HP is their only stat that improves with rank, they can have 250 HP (their Advanced rank stats). Or, implement the hotkey in such a way that only Worker classes respond to it.

A game with Mauryans using their favorite animal pets. Map is Neareastern Badlands. Maur_VS_Han_M.zip EDIT: Another one with Spartans on Miletus Peninsula. There's a big final fight. Spart_VS_Cart_M.zip

Are additional voices planned for R29? I was inspired by Carthaginian voice lines in DE, but I'm not sure how much of it is made by AI and not historically accurate.

Wanted to share some feedback after playing a couple of games with Kushites and Imperial Romans. I've mentioned this before, but the hero portraits should be smaller, IMHO. With that said, I like this mod a lot. All changes seem logical, and the addition of two new resources seemed overwhelming at first, but it's really not. Glad that I don't have to reset the rally points of my Barracks every couple of minutes. The new economy model takes a while to adjust. Market is a relevant economic structure now, which reminds me of AoE 1 a bit. Using slave labor for optimal boom is almost essential, but fields might need a build speed boost. Or else you have to bring more Citizens than necessary to prepare them for slaves. The phase up mechanics are much more interesting than in the base game. The AI needs some work in order to make it more challenging. Half of the time I didn't know what I was doing with the Kushites at first, but still managed to win that game. For the sake of visual consistency, I'd try to make each portrait adhere to a standardized style. What you did for the Persians and Seleucids looks like a good pattern to follow. Overall, great job. You managed to make the game better in nearly every aspect.

Not really a bug, but could we get smaller hero portraits on the top left? It takes a lot of the screen space in that corner, and it's often distracting. I can bind a hotkey for my scout, no need for him to have a hero portrait.

Of course they are important, when the developers made them so essential to the game. Let's look at economic technologies. At one point or another, you will want to research all gather speed upgrades, with the exception of lvl2 Stone gathering (if not slinger civ) and Wheelbarrow. Otherwise, your workers are so slow, that people are metagaming 100 pop in 10 minutes games for 11 years now. The original developers knew this trade off was artificial, so they gave you efficient workers from the start of a game. When they introduced technologies, the techs came in pairs, and they were cheap. The point was that the techs were just a path you chose to follow, not something essential to your build. Just played a longvgame with a retro version of 0 A.D. It's so much more focused that it's basically a different game.

@Thalatta The game doesn't need too many technologies. Only a small number of generic techs, and from there build upon each civ's strengths. Technologies give an illusion of choice, and often give bonuses that should've been there by default, or not at all. Examples are the two techs for towers for greater range and more default arrows. They are also too expensive to be viable during the period of the game when towers matter. The attention of the player needs to be elsewhere, on the training of troops and construction of production structures.

That's not even playing, that's try-harding. And you can't try-hard this game and marvel at its beauty at the same time. One of the reasons why all first "try-hard" esport RTS games didn't have awesomene graphics. At some point, developers said: enough fluff, let's focus on gameplay.

Also, if you have a low end PC, you should reduce the quality of textures, models and shadows. If you set the shaders too high (7-10), try reducing that to around 2.

Honestly, the improvement in quality is insane.

@Lopess Don't use ChatGPT for generating images. Try to find some better AI image generator. That said, I wouldn't want this game to use AI for generating its art.

They reduce the walking time of your gatherers. I'd say that Wheelbarrow is still worth it, Hand Carts maybe not.

@wowgetoffyourcellphoneTrying to do that would probably crash and burn your only server.

I don't think she can either win 1v2. In her 1v1v2, two of the AIs were fighting each other, so she actually played 1v1 for a while. @Seleucids, for your test to be successful, you need to play 1v2, against two very hard AIs that are in the same team, with teams locked. And the AIs need to be at their best, so choose two strong civs, like Romans and Seleucids.

Agree. I disagree. Turtling is a valid playstyle like all other playstyles, and it needs to have place in this game, when executed properly. Right now it's almost impossible anyway, especially because we first need to fix walls. Walls are currently the only thing that's not capturable in this game, which means you need siege to break down stone walls effectively. Everything else can just be captured with overwhelming force of units, and that makes turtling nearly impossible. By turtling, I mean investing in defensive towers, Fortresses and CCs to expand, not camping in base amassing CS (what we do now, essentially). Towers are made of wet tissue paper, it's laughable how easy they are to capture. Fortresses are buffed in R28, but I still find myself capturing garrisoned Forts with masses of units. This shouldn't be possible, which is why I still believe capturing feature was a mistake. It just made the game harder to balance in the long run, and it has created some ridiculous tactics. Like capture+delete of building with 2000+ hit points and ~500 capture points.

Which faction is that? Looks amazing, that monastery at the left is like from a picture.

He needs lumber for his farming tools

Latest iteration is better. Cost should be the first priority, then the explanation. Enlarged icon might not be necessary, but I am not a UI designer.

Man, I love open-source. We've touched on this, but I've just enabled Citizen-Soldier upgrade techs on Alpha 18. Thanks to the developers for leaving them in there. All I had to do is to edit several templates and put them in. Since there are no standard rank upgrades through fighting in A18, this is the perfect compromise for me. I've also removed the useless Stamina bar on multiple selection. EDIT: The CS rank stats are all messed up, and basic units are often stronger than Advanced units. It seems like the game was balanced around Basic CS only at the time. Such a shame.

Congrats. Is there any effect of the AI enchantments in R28 for DE?

I see that there is something cooking for R28, but I'll not speculate until we hear something from the developers. Looking forward to trying this out.