Deicide4u

Feel free to post your own interesting games against the AI here But do note the version and any mods you use, as replays are not compatible between A27.0 and A27.1 versions.

Works fine for me, too. OS: Windows 11 Version: A27.1

Works with: Civilizations with strong and diverse champions such as Seleucids or Persians, but can work with any if done correctly. Requires: Maps with a lot of metal, choke points desirable. Start normally by focusing on women, but avoid cavalry unless there is a lot of hunt nearby. In that case, get a few, but no more. You'd want to have two houses and a Barracks as soon as possible. Get the first woodcutting upgrade after Barracks. Our goal for now is to reach 80 population before phasing up, so focus on Citizen Soldiers. Your female count should reflect your needs for food, so try to balance out food and wood production. If the map is small, send a couple of units to build palisade walls near the choke point. Avoid building walls over trees, build them around the trees, as trees don't block movement in this game. Otherwise, wait for the Town phase and send some CS to stone. By now, you should have already gotten the first farming upgrade and you're now in Town phase. Immediately send a couple of units to build stone walls and defense towers over an area where your next Civic Center or Military Colony should be. Your goal in the Town phase is to get hold of as much of metal as you can. Use other resources to train CS and send them to work. Build a Market, then a Temple in an area between your walls and second Civic Center. Also, build a Forge to get the first pierce armor upgrade (at least). After that, get 750 stone and metal in order to advance to the City phase, use the Market if necessary. By now, you should have around 130-140 workers, 100 of them CS. That's more than enough, since you won't be sending them to battle...at all. You will send only your champions, any siege weapons and a Hero. You are now in the City phase, and your first priority is to unlock champions or build several structures that train champions. Focus on the diverse unit composition, as most civilizations get only a couple champion units. If you are Sparta, supplement your Spartiates with Skiritai and either Hoplites or Helots, depending on the hero you went for. Your second priority is to build a Fortress next to that wall you've already fortified with towers before. Your third priority is to get siege, but only if your enemy has a Fortress of his own. Start your push when you feel confident, but don't include any CS. The strategy is to keep your economy booming while you force the enemy to idle his CS. If your army gets pushed back, regroup and heal any survivors. If you have extra food, train some healers and include them in your push. Never waste units by pushing Fortresses without siege, or by fighting in tight choke points. Micro your units during the battle. While you don't have a numerical advantage, this means you can have unconstrained control over how your units behave in a fight. They won't bump over each other or get lost in a crowd, or suffer AoE damage as much. They will maintain perfect formation, too. Upgrade your units, but focus on first and second armor levels and only one weapon upgrade. You won't have enough metal, unless you completely dominate the map. But, you won't even need them if that's already the case, right? If you do lose a lot of units, don't panic. You haven't lost any economy, and you still have your walled city to return to. Re-train and move out as soon as possible. Don't let your opponent breathe in the late game, or he will get champions of his own. As you gain more ground, send some CS to build Fortresses and Civic Centers to claim it. Wall them both off. You don't need towers at this point, the stone is better spent building walls. If you haven't got Murder Holes by now, get it. A Fortress is useless without this tech. Rinse and repeat until you win the game. Hopefully, you made some cool screenshots by now. If you get rushed before the first wall is complete, don't panic. Your enemy likely rushed you with cavalry, and his only saving grace is to kill your women. If the rush fails, he will be behind, so let that be your motivation to hold. Get the spearmen near your women on farms and he won't do much with spear cavalry. Flank his retreat points with ranged units if he rushed with javelin cavalry. Keep making infantry CS. PS: Rome gets special Siege walls that cost wood and can be built in the neutral areas. However, don't try building them there, as your enemy can still capture them if he builds his CC nearby. Spartans don't have strong walls. Use Spartiates as your walls, or train Agis hero to tank damage.

Romans VS Kushites on snowy Mainland. Beautiful map. RomansVSKush_H.zip

Not a spear, a pilum. They threw pila at the enemy, before engaging in melee combat. Unfortunately, 0 A. D. still has no way for units to use multiple attacks, so the Hastatus is melee only. If we get to have units with multiple attacks, the plan is for Advanced and Elite Hastati to throw pila first, then engage in melee. https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/wiki/Civ_Romans_Republican

Surprise, surprise. A unit good against cavalry is cost-effectively killing a lot of cavalry. In other news, water is wet.

Sure. Do you have any replays to share? EDIT: One subtle nerf would be to separate the upgrades into infantry-only and cavalry-only. Weapon upgrades would further be split between melee and ranged weapon upgrades. Additionally, make the upgrades more expensive. Essentially, as they were in A23.

Every unit has strengths and weaknesses. Spearmen are basic units. Average speed, low cost and mostly pierce damage in melee but can counter cavalry. Trainable in the Village phase. Useless against rams and buildings, somewhat bad against other infantry. Champion cavalry are late game power units. Fast, mobile and powerful, but very expensive to mass. Requires City phase to unlock. Also needs upgrades to resist most of the bonus damage from spearmen, so it requires even more metal to work. Unless metal grows on trees in your games, I don't see how this unit can be considered broken.

My post was mostly sarcastic...Oh, well Champion spearmen. Or mass regular spearmen with upgrades. CS spearmen cost 50 F/ 50 W. Champion cavalry costs a LOT more. Fight for map control and force an engagement. Champion Cavalry can pick fights, but not when you're the one who controls Metal mines on a map.

This is so wrong, Mauryans have the strongest champ unit in the game.

Except Carthage, which has both But yeah, 100% of the above. There will always be some strong unit that will carry the game, no matter how many OP units you ban.

I have a different suggestion. How about the 20-30 top-rated "competitive" players agree on a "multiplayer balance" mod, and y'all start using this mod in your games? Leave the "broken" units alone. Every single RTS has them.

Oof, that's potentially game-breaking regression. Should be fixed upstream. Good thing I avoid that map like a plaque.

A better part of "Gold Rush" scenario. It's a fun map full of action...when you finally get some resources, at least. Gold_Rush_a23.zip

So, all you need to do in vanilla is to keep the Biome setting random for this "bug" not to occur?

I downloaded the maps from https://github.com/vpereira/Macedonia_0ad Hopefully all goes well in Alpha 27.1. If not, it might be worth it to download v26 just to play this massive campaign. Thank you very much for taking an enormous amount of time to create it @SciGuy42! EDIT: Mission #2 doesn't work as expected because of the naval overhaul in A27. Oh, well...

Spartans have an elite swordsman, they were the precedent. Carthaginians, Romans and Seleucids all have advanced infantry swordsmen in their rosters. I don't think it's an issue, but perhaps it's better to give them a swordsman champion? One with a weapon similar to the famous Zweihander, just to be cheeky. EDIT: See https://riseofnations.fandom.com/wiki/Solduri

Think of it like this: They are too important to chop wood and mine metal or stone. Their experience is much more valued in battle, so they are sent to battle more often by their superiors. Hence, lower gather rates to compensate for this historical truth. And since they spend more time on the field, doing repairs and building army camps, their build speed remains constant.

90 score Reasoning is 665 out of 666, so just a tiny bit below diabolical.

It makes no sense to nerf the build speed. Soldiers in ancient times needed to know how to quickly set up a base camp, repair siege engines on the spot, etc. If anything, they should get a build speed buff with experience, but that wouldn't be balanced.

Yes, they are one of the few buildings where it's justified to capture them. Even in real life, the enemy watch towers and other fortifications are usually captured first to provide an advantage. Is it fair that they fall so easily? No. I've recently played an alpha 18 game. Most buildings have at most 15 hack armor, including the Fortress, and capturing wasn't implemented yet. This makes it reasonable to use a swarm of melee units in case you don't have rams. But you still had to have a lot of units and destroy the enemy's army first.

Which one do you prefer to do? Why? Why not? For myself, I hate to capture things as I find the mechanic unfair most of the time. It also makes towers useless. Capturing a unoccupied tower, barracks, or a stable is also very easy with a mid-size force. Once you capture the building, 90% of the time, it's best to delete it. Unless it's a Civic Center or enemy tower/Fortress, your best bet is to delete the building. That's why I destroy almost everything except rarely for the towers and Civic Centers.

Yeah, it's a bit harder than I thought Changeset that implemented the feature: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/12832/

Release 28: Beta

Leonidas with his swag aura checking out ladies from the enemy camp.