Deicide4u

You already have that option, and it's on by default when you install the game.

I'm not the one who proposed adding battalions*, but the benefits from my point of view are: - streamlining formations, allowing us to tie formations to battalions, - implementation of battalion-specific bonuses for units that can form a battalion, - de-coupling gatherers from front-line units. In the long run, this will enable us to do all kinds of "battalion-specific" combat roles, allowing players to choose between stronger army or stronger economy. The units that are gathering resources obviously won't belong to any battalion, and they will, for example, need to drop-off resources in order to form battalions. Furthermore, individual units will be weaker than units in a battalion, - more opportunities for strategic positioning, decisions on when to attack and with what, etc. - implementation of a "shared experience pool" between units in a battalion. All units in a battalion will share the combat experience, and when an unit from a battalion dies, its experience is shared between the surviving soldiers. Cons would be the massive changes to the game's meta, and the cost of implementing all this.

What? One battalion of champions would destroy several battalions of CS. Which is why battalions would need to be a togglable feature, similar to grouping in AoE1. Just in a proper formation. You'd select a group of units that is eligible to form a battalion and you'd click on a "Form Battalion" button (or use a hotkey). Now, any time you select one of the units in a battalion, you will select an entire battalion. Similarly, with a battalion selected, you would click on a "Disband Battalion" button to un-group the units. It's simple in theory, but the implementation will be more complex (as will be adding any bonuses to units in a battalion).

The battalions need a lot of disposable units to work. We currently have meta where all you do is mass cheap, disposable CS units. Ergo, if this meta doesn't change, we can implement unique battalions to make this meta more interesting.

This would be very cool to have for the (eventual) campaign. A separate screen where you get to customize your elite troops from a battalion and choose several for a mission. Obviously, the inspiration would be how Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War did these (called squads in that game). We have a primitive version of that with the "Battalion formations" checkbox. The issue with that option (and why it's always ticked off in my game) is that you can't easily micro-manage the troops in a formation. You have some that are heavily wounded and you want to send them into a Temple? Well, you first need to disband the formation, otherwise all of your units are selected by default. In principle, I agree. If we double-down on spam economics where all you have to do is make more units that are at the same time your workers, then there is an advantage to forcing them into battalions. However, if we want to scale back on the spamming, the battalions are useless. So, in essence, it depends on what the main vision for the game is. What meta are we striving to? Also, because we have CS ranks, we'd need to figure out how experience gain affects the battalions. Is it individual, or will units in a battalion share experience and rank up at the same time?

On the contrary, I would say that 0 A.D. has too many features. Building capture being the prime suspect. While some features, like trade and healing, are under-utilized. This stems from the core gameplay loop being a unit spamfest in the first 8-10 minutes of each match. And it's almost always the same two types of units. Not sure about the difficulty, the current AI is very weak once you get the mechanics right.

"An Offering of Flesh" or something like that. Raw, savage, but still subtler than outright spelling it out.

Aztecs? You capture enemy soldiers or civilians and offer them to whatever pagan God you worship.. Come on...we literally have the tech called "Slaves".

Do you see the cursor changing once you get to the edge of the screen? Check if you have monitor scale changed to 125% or more. It needs to be on 100% to avoid this bug.

Just a quick feedback post on this release, since I see there is a heated discussion around the quality of some art. I do still lurk here, at times. Correct, I've noticed the departure from A23's quality portraits in later releases. Especially (some) hero portraits. I don't mind people doing this, as long as the coloring is "right". But, that is a quite difficult thing to do, which is seen in most of the German unit portraits. That said, @Carltonus, you shouldn't expect a lot out of the project that is done by a handful of volunteers in their spare time. I'm sure all of them love this game, and would be happy to work on improving things over time. Someone mentioned Han as another example of an "unfinished" civilization. I don't know, I think the Han need only a better Ram and Siege Tower models. Everything else looks fine to me. On the topic of "yet another civilization". My idea that the game doesn't need to encompass each and every civilization from the target time period. Having only major civilizations at their best (like Romans, Persians, Greeks, Carthaginians, etc.) would have been a better end option. Late Roman republic had Legionaries. Gendered Citizens should have been introduced a looooong time ago. Having specifically female workers in a ancient war game is beyond strange, to say the least. And with this, I leave you. Looking forward to the release 28! EDIT: Oh, there's no more alphas...better fix that real quick.

...and thank you for everything. The time has come to pursue some other things, which are more important than hanging out here all the time. I have IRL stuff that will need attention, and simply can't afford to procrastinate on them. I'd like to express my gratitude to you for making this game. Also, thanks go to all good people who shared advice and interesting things on this forum. I would like to think that I was a part of it, however small. From now on, I will be just another player in the shadows. Looking forward to the next release. Here's to many more to come! Thank you Wildfire Games.

We will need more details than that in order to help you. What are your specs? Which OS? Do you use OpenGL or Vulkan? Did you change the display settings recently? Etc.

What do you say, more absolute Roman domination. This time on Gold Oasis. Vanilla 27.1 replay. Romans_vs_Sele_H.zip

There is no easy way to utilize it. You'd have to write a lot of dynamic and flexible logic that will account for various scenarios. You first need to periodically send an unit to scout, this is an easy part. Now you need to account for what that scout saw, if anything. If he saw that you have a lot of civilians and few Citizen Soldiers, it may opt for a rush, for example. If he saw a tower and not much else, the AI should opt for a more defensive, booming strategy. Then you need a general build order (what we have now) to account for no adequate scouting info. If you did all this, then you have to write a dynamic strategy shifting based on info from further scouting as the match goes on. People have spent years perfecting AI strategies in some of the more popular RTSs, like Brood War. These AIs can play on levels far above the average player. And this is for a tactical RTS with 2 resources, 3 races and 11-13 units per race. Imagine what kind of code you'd need to account for all civs and units that we have.

"Non-cheating" here implies that the AI doesn't get gather rate bonus. "All seeing" is a cheat, but it is a technical trade off for not having to give the AI complex scouting logic. I don't care if the AI sees everything, but I do care if it gets significant resource advantage.

The AI sends its only hero to die in its first attack. The hero dies, so the AI instantly lose. Make the hero stay in home base, near the Civic Center. I can see that the "retreat" trigger activates when the hero is at low health, but it doesn't work very well on slow infantry and Elephant heroes.

I partially agree, but you don't have to attack the fortified positions to be ahead. In fact, you should ignore the buildings and go after the enemy's gatherers. In multiplayer games, people will resign once they see you are far ahead. This is possible even in P1.

It's a mod with better AI. Check the mods in the Mod dowloader. You might first try winning against a unmodded Medium AI, though. It's the highest non-cheating difficulty that still can pose a good challenge if you procrastinate and let it build up.

Nowadays, I always play against Hard Balanced AI. I've tried playing against the Hardest, but found no major difference in difficulty. There's also Petra Expert AI mod if you need more challenge. The AI gets bonus gathering speed at levels greater than Medium. It also trains larger armies more quickly. However, you will beat it easily if you're a decent player.

We already have a lot of civs which have access to War Elephants. Romans have focus on infantry and siege. They are also currently the only civ with an additional unit roster. I think they are fully covered now, but I would like to see the return of Donkey-pulled Scorpio cart. Romans have an abstract technology called "Roman roads", which provides a small speed boost. I'd say that the idea is fun, but this is not a City building simulation game. This is a fun idea, Praetorians had this feature. Again, would make this into a City building simulation game. The players already need to worry about positioning for their structures, we shouldn't make it worse. For anyone who played Metal Fatigue, you know how annoying this can be. Or fun, depending on if you're the one who built a huge tank and artillery army underground and are now wrecking the enemy's base.

I'd also add in the sound quality. Music is beautiful, but the sound effects need to be more pronounced. Like, if my catapult hits a building with a large flaming rock, that should be felt. Currently, only thing we hear is a faint "thud". It's the same with units, especially ranged units. Right now you can't even be sure if your archer fired a bow or not. Melee fights get that obnoxious "umpf, umpf, huff" sound. If you were only listening, you'd think they're doing something entirely different than fighting. Still, some sounds are on point, like building selection sounds and the sound when your melee units attack buildings.

You mean, re-introduce? They were available briefly in Alpha 16, but every civilization had them for specific unit classes only. It's a good idea.

Version Alpha 27.1 vanilla. Hard AI. Maur_vs_Gauls.zip

I struggled with trying to understand why this game felt weird when compared to other similar titles. For a while now I thought that this weirdness comes from the Citizen Soldier system, but it's not it. The weird part is that your units don't progress. Yes, many of them have ranks and get cooler looks as they go up in rank. But, it's the same unit in the end. A Hastati is always just a Hastati (unless you upgrade him to a Centurion, a rare example of unit progression). In "Age of" games, you get unit line upgrades. Militia upgrades to Man-at-Arms, which upgrades to Long Swordsman, etc. Scout Cavalry upgrades to Light Cavalry, which upgrades to Hussars. You get the picture. There isn't that familiar upgrade icon below the unit. We do have unit classes, and this helps to differentiate civilizations. But, for me at least, the unit upgrade system is what the game (intentionally) lacks.

Yes, they currently function like mobile defense towers, which is not how they were used historically. I think it would be rather boring to make them just be able to let infantry scale walls, like in Age of Empires 2 DE. Especially since walls are heavily underused in this game. If we decide to do it, then we should make them a lot cheaper.