Deicide4u

You know it will be "Yes" eventually. Why not start early?

Besides the Fanatics, Spartiates are by far the most broken units in the game. Seriously, these units are insanely overpowered and hard to counter. Can anyone name a unit that can reliably stop Spartiates? I bet you can’t. They hit hard, have massive armor, can promote to Olympic status and even have technologies that make them stronger and faster. The only thing the developers could have done to stop the spamming of this unit was to add a population cost of 2. Unfortunately, they didn’t do that. There are players abusing this by spamming Spartiates in P1, and it’s ruining the game for everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if some ecobot or clever Sparta player designed this unit to exploit the game by spamming them relentlessly for an unfair advantage. What do you guys think? Any ideas on how to properly nerf or counter these broken units? I believe adding a population cost of 2 to build them would be an effective way to balance this unit. Moreover all Athenian Marines should be nerfed for sure. We’ve already banned Fanatics from our games, and Spartiates definitely need to be banned as well. If the developers don’t nerf these units in the next alpha update and keep introducing unfair, broken units, we’ll have no choice but to keep banning them from our matches to maintain fair gameplay.

I actually fully agree with you there. That's why I love that this game is open-source. If you don't like some unit, you're free to balance it however you wish. You're also free to convince your friends that your balance is good and you should all play together with your fair rules. EDIT: You just have to change this one file.

New balance update. - Ranged units have no minimal range, similar to later alphas. The damage of archers is reduced. Also, infantry archers no longer have damage bonus against one of their counters, spear cavalry. Tooltips adjusted. This will prevent ranged units from running away and dragging your melee infantry into danger. It should also reduce the lag from bad pathfinding. EDIT: - Backported the female citizen sounds from Alpha 11. No more huffing I would now like to present the goals of the mod. 1) Overhaul of the combat system with various civilization and rank upgrade bonuses. Civilizations will train better units of certain types, and rank upgrades of those types will be better. We had something similar in A16, with rank upgrades only being available to certain unit classes for some civilizations. Overpowered units will be nerfed, in time. Capturing will not be implemented. 2) Preserving the early vision of the project. I'm aware that developers and designers come and go, things change with addition of new civilizations and features, etc. But the core of the project still needs to exist, and one of the main goals of this mod is to provide players with an "what if things stayed stable for a few more years" option. 3) Reducing the base building phase of the game to a bare minimum that's needed to field armies and build a stout defense. The rest is on the player's skill to micro his/her units and use a proper army composition to counter his/her enemy. 4) Simplification of the economy. Females gather food from berries and fields faster. Cavalry hunts better than everyone else. Citizen Soldiers are slightly better at chopping wood, and much better at mining stone and metal. That's it. 5) Visual and graphical consistency. Unit portraits will have similar, retro-style textures. Units will be clearly distinguishable on the map. You will be able to tell a difference between unit ranks, for example. This is mostly complete in Alpha 9, I just tweaked some unit and building portraits. Also, the old Hellenic female portrait is back. I might have missed something out. In any case, this is still a work in progress and more is to come.

I've just done a little demo, and you are correct. They don't have an animation for attacking. Sadly, the team is on a tight schedule and often these issues creep up. Sometimes, new units are introduced and some of them are missing animations. The most famous historical case being the Mauryan War Elephant.

For correctness's sake, Temple of Apademak is the Kushites normal Temple. You can check the specific and generic names of the Temple in Alpha 23. Never mind, It's the same name in the latest alpha. I'm just trying to be smartass here and failing.

Optimal farm placement in Imperia Vetera. Farms yield about the same food as the most upgraded ones in AoE2. Persians get a bonus 100 food per farm.

@Fabius there was already a precedent for that, so it's possible. Elephants had a "Stench" aura in the early alphas. What that actually meant is they had 50% additional damage reduction from cavalry attacks.

Digging through the old discussions, I've struck a gold mine. Here it is for some developer nostalgia https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PxeSahVf5J6h32jy2iqTHlnogtQSHPocXKqNSspyMUs/edit?tab=t.0

Let's not include virtue signaling in a historical war strategy game. Heroes and generals of the past were usually far from noble.

@Dakara, yes. Alpha 9 was a good base to build upon.

It will be balanced around the 6 original civilizations.

I'm proud to present to you a new mod for 0 A.D. called Imperia Vetera. As the mod is based on an alpha that introduced the final original civilization, Romans, it makes sense to name the mod in honor of their ancient language. Imperia Vetera is "Old Empires" in Latin, and the name itself reflects the vision and the source for the mod. Be aware that this is a so-called "retro" mod. It doesn't and it will not, represent the full features of the original game. Changes when compared to Alpha 9 vanilla. Siege Weapons overhaul: Siege weapons are much better at destroying buildings, but much worse at killing organic units. At the same time, all economic and civic buildings are more vulnerable to hack damage. Building costs overhaul: Overall, higher tier buildings (Fortresses, Army Camps, Gymnasiums, etc.) are now much more expensive to build. This is in part to compensate for the lack of phases. Houses and other civic structures are cheaper, except for Carthaginian apartments (Bets). Champion units: They now cost more population space. Champion infantry costs 2 population, champion cavalry costs 3. So, there is no more champion unit spam. Heroes: All Heroes are now just very powerful units, identical to Greek heroes from Age of Mythology. I'm still working on implementing a training limit. They also cost more population space. Celts and Hellenes can now train only 3 Heroes, the same as other civilizations. Hellenic heroes are Leonidas, Alexander and Themistocles. Celtic heroes are Boudicca, Brennus and Vercingetorix. Mercenaries: They all now train at an Advanced rank. Ranged units: Removed minimum range. Archers were heavily nerfed. Technical changes: All features that weren't implemented, or were implemented partially, were either removed or tweaked. Charge attacks are removed because they didn't work and they were cluttering the UI. Priests are removed, but the Temples now heal faster and can garrison up to 30 troops. GUI buttons that did not work are removed. Civilization pages that showed technologies and bonuses are also removed, as almost nothing was implemented at the time. Population cap is now at 150. In Age of Empires 2 campaigns, you had only 75 population space. I think 150 should be more than enough, considering the lag at higher unit counts. The AI (legacy qBot as base) is now harder, and attacks with more units. Hellenic AI can now train Siege Towers. Towers and Fortresses: Towers are now weaker, but you can build more of them. You can now only construct 5 Fortresses, so turtling is not really an option. Changes not considered: Technologies and phases are not in the game. This is a feature, not a bug. The full mod, changelog and install instructions are inside the ZIP file below. EDIT September 4th, 2025: - AI bugfixes, mostly Carthage. - Reduced the range of melee Cavalry. - Nerfed Persian Chariot Archers and reduced their cost. Previously, they were comparable to Brythonic Champion Chariots. EDIT September 23rd, 2025: - Added back Jubot AI, modified to be compatible with the mod. It should be a bit more unpredictable than Qbot. - Population costs changed. Now it's 1 population for infantry CS, cavalry CS and Champion Infantry, 2 population for Champion cavalry and Siege weapons (Siege Tower is 3). - Some cost changes for Carthaginian mercenaries. They now cost a mixture of food, wood (for cavalry spearmen) and metal. - Population cap is now 200. - Qbot AI will now properly defend its Fortresses and Barracks. EDIT December 7th, 2025: - Cavalry can no longer hunt. Use infantry javelineers to hunt animals. Infantry meat gather rate increased slightly to compensate. - Cavalry javelin throwers are no longer trainable by any civilization, except by the Iberians. They keep their cavalry javelineer champion, but he is not very effective against units. - Civic centers can no longer train cavalry. Build a Barracks or Stable if you're Persian. - You can no longer build bolt shooters. This was done because their model is ugly and looks ridiculous when moving. I'd done the same with the Catapults, but you need some ranged siege options in order to break fortified positions. - Jubot AI removed, as it's very buggy and has poor performance. - Roman Army Camps can't build Rams anymore. - In addition to cavalry javeleneers, Hellenes can no longer train Slingers. Screenshots: 0ad_imperia_vetera_07_DEC_25.zip

Changes so far, when compared to Alpha 9 vanilla. Siege Weapons overhaul: Siege weapons are much better at destroying buildings, but much worse at killing organic units. At the same time, all economic and civic buildings are more vulnerable to hack damage. Building costs overhaul: Overall, higher tier buildings (Fortresses, Army Camps, Gymnasiums, etc.) are now much more expensive to build. This is in part to compensate for the lack of phases. In the future, there may be some form of requirements for certain buildings, similar to StarCraft. Champion units: They are now much stronger than Citizen Soldiers, but also cost more population space. Champion infantry costs 2 population, champion cavalry costs 3. So, there is no more champion unit spam. Heroes: All Heroes are now just very powerful units, identical to Greek heroes from Age of Mythology. I'm still working on implementing a training limit. They also cost more population space. Celts and Hellenes can now train only 3 Heroes, the same as other civilizations. Hellenic heroes are Leonidas, Alexander and Themistocles. Celtic heroes are Boudicca, Brennus and Vercingetorix. Technical changes: All features that weren't implemented, or were implemented partially, were either removed or tweaked. Charge attacks are removed because they didn't work and they were cluttering the UI. Priests are removed for now, but the Temples now heal faster and can garrison up to 30 troops. GUI buttons that did not work are removed. Civilization pages that showed technologies and bonuses are also removed, as almost nothing was implemented at the time. Population cap is now at 200. In Age of Empires 2 campaigns, you had only 75 population space. I think 200 should be more than enough. I considered reducing it to 150, but it could have made some scenarios hard. The AI (legacy qBot as base) is now harder, and attacks with more units. Roman AI can train Marian Legionaries from the Army Camps, while Hellenic AI can now train Siege Towers. Towers and Fortresses: Towers are now weaker, but you can build more of them. You can now only construct 5 Fortresses, so turtling is not really an option. Changes not considered: There are some features that won't be included. For example, does it make sense for our civilizations to research "Iron Plow"? No, so technologies that can be researched won't be included. For the short term, I will explore other options for bonuses, that don't require compiling the game from source. I would like to implement auras on the more basic level. More changes and testing is on the way. I will provide more when the testing of the current changes is complete in Single player.

Due to janky animations, it is hardly noticeable. Units either die too quickly or are practically immune to attacks. Some balance changes need to be made to make it work as intended. For example, units died to siege very fast. That's why I made organic units almost invulnerable to crush attacks, as they are in recent alphas.

It will be presented later, in a separate thread. Yes. Gameplay will be different. Core part of it will be the lack of phases, as they don't really make sense to me in 0 A.D. The timeline is fixed, and the city development can be balanced differently. One example is with structure costs. Higher tier buildings will require much more resources to build. Most will have build limits, as well. We'll see, I'll post details when most of it is ready.

Update: Roman Army Camps can now train Marian Legionaries. I've restricted them to training only melee infantry and Siege Rams. I've also made a bunch of other "balance" changes. Looking now for a way to limit the population cap to a more manageable number. EDIT: Was an easy fix inside simulation/components/Player.js

Not applicable or appropriate for the Alpha 9 version, that I'm using. I'm doing incremental updates to an earlier Alpha. My first big plan is to backport healing by Priests, and any bug fixes possible. I've already removed the useless and legacy "Stamina" attribute. There was a blue bar next to health, now it's gone. Eventually, I hope to make a total conversion mod for this specific version, complete with custom AI and build orders. If you've ever played Praetorians RTS, that is something I have in mind.

I proudly present my first game modification I've replaced the weird Hellenic infantry spearman portrait (found here) with a more aesthetically pleasing one (just a previous icon, really): Here is how it looks in-game: Now, let's see if I can replace that ugly old Barracks portrait. And maybe fix some bugs by backporting code to this version. EDIT: I've replaced the icons for both Barracks and the Roman Army Camp. Alpha 9 used Fortress portrait as a placeholder for the camp. EDIT2: Persian Barracks and stable portraits also backported. It's already much nicer to look at.

Good enough for me. Add range and speed below them, and it's perfect.

I don't think using Call to Arms is worth it in the context of directly assaulting the enemy bases. When CS drop off their resources, they tend to form a single-file line during the attack-move part. It's better to reserve this feature for quick defense, or to gather soldiers near the enemy's territory. Then, when all troops are gathered on one spot, use the attack move as you generally would.

Just finished one of my most difficult and excruciating battles against the AI, ever. No replay, since the version is old (alpha 10), but here are a couple of screenshots. About 12 of those buildings razed were Fortresses. I was Sparta.

Time for another classic gameplay video. Siege without packing/unpacking. Unit portraits look to be heavily inspired by Age of Mythology.

I will test this in Alpha 9 (where trading was first introduced), to see if this is an regression introduced in recent patches.

If you believe HBO and the mainstream historical accounts, Caesar was killed because of his altruistic stance to civilians from all parts of Roman Republic, including those that he recently conquered. Nobility, aided by political class, killed him out of spite and envy.