DesertRose

Unlocks "Scale Body Armor" No "." at all

For Forge techs, the information that it unlocks the next tier is so unimportant that you can even leave it out. It certainly does not need a bullet point or being bold. Also, somehow showing if it unlocks another tech, unit or building would be nice. Either color coded, or something l like Unlocks "Tier 2 Hack Armor" [Tech] Unlocks "Champion Swordsman" [Unit] "Hack armor level" sounds strange. Why not simply "Infantry +1 Hack Armor"?

Yeah, that's one way. I want to achieve it without bonus damage though, only with the use of damage types and resistances, though.

It gives you EasyStart or something where the game plays the first ~5 seconds for you, allowing you a near perfect start. It also has some trainer options.

Regarding range units, my idea was Archer All-purpose ranged unit Slinger Especially strong against ranged units (pebbles are very strong against non-armored or only lightly armored targets) Javelineers Especially strong against cavalry units The gameplay goal is that Javelineers behind a meatshield / walls is somewhat as dangerous to cavalry as Spearmen, and the same for Slingers against ranged units compared to melee cavalry. Thus breaking up the core triangle cavalry > ranged > infantry > cavalry, and allowing to create Civs that have armies that approach threats differently. And yeah, techs that buff a specific unit type to either make it excel at its intended role even more or lessen its weaknesses and is only available to one of a few Civs is another possible idea to make the gameplay approach of each Civ more unique.

Create a gitea account and push your changes to the repository. Little cumbersome to set up, but it would be sad to see this change not lasting.

Another idea somewhat related to this. Farm upgrades, instead of giving you +x% faster gather rate, allows you to put one more farmer per Field. E.g. Fields start with a maximum of 2 Farmers, and each Farm upgrade increases the maximum by 1.

That's an interesting idea. It would mean that you can still train Citizen Soldiers to kick-start your economy, but the further the game advances the less economically viable Citizen Soldiers become. So advancing to the next Phase does not also mean spending resources now to gain a long-term advantage, it also means that you potentially sacrifice economic power for military power. It also has the downside that after advancing to the next Phase you are practically forced to attack; you cannot advance to further increase an economic lead.

Use the "End Alarm" button / hotkey (if it exists). It will make garrisoned Civilians go back to the work they did previously. Dunno if it works on Citizen Soldiers. In any case, killed cattle should count toward your maximum cattle until they are fully eaten up. Tbh I find it rather annoying as it mostly just adds a tiny detail you need to consider to optimize your BO, while adding little depth otherwise.

That animals currently do not rot has some strange implications, especially regarding Corrals. You can simply kill a couple of your own animals to bypass the maximum number of cattle, and enemy raids killing your cattle does not actually hurt your economy much because they do not rot.

I mean gameplay-wise. An archer with less range but more damage would be very similar to a javelineer. As there is already Archer, Javelineer, Slinger and Crossbowman I don't think another ranged unit is helpful before these four units are distinct.

Wouldn't that simply be a Javelineer? Also, why should a shortbow deal more damage from a realism perspective?

If I have understood that correctly, and to simplify it a bit, in addition to Resistances that reduces the damage by a certain percentage there is also a block / dodge mechanic that completely negates the damage of a melee attack / projectile. Would certainly give you more options to make one unit type effective against certain other units types. E.g. cavalry has high dodge but low block to make them effective against ranged units but "bad" against melee units.

I work on a similar mod, and I have started with the Mauryas. Some ideas I am testing. Temple can be build on neutral terrain, but does not project a sphere of influence Several new Temple technologies (not necessarily unique to the Maur): Aura around Temples that increase worker gathering and building rate; Temples grants structures +x% territory influence radius Historical reasoning: It is claimed that Ashoka spread Buddhism and interlocking of religion and economics / state Stables and Elephant Stables switch places Historical reasoning: According to sources I have read elephants accounted for about 20% of the empire's "cavalry"; enough to use some leeway to make them gameplay-wise more relevant, and make the Civ more unique Visha Kanya can be trained in the Temple Only trainable after researching a tech? Are one or both of them trainable in P2? If Archer is trainable in P2, P3 tech to increase poison damage Swordwoman has a damage bonus against heroes Still trainable in Palace? Give all Maur heroes an aura that buffs Visha Kanyas? Historical reasoning: According to the folk lore Visha Kanyas were young girls who were administered various poisons and antidotes to make their bodily fluids toxic, and then sent out to assassinate influential targets by being intimate with them

Shameless self-adulation: All changes of the above mod will be in 0.29, btw. Better GUI: You have a better structure overview in the main menu, and it adds more hotkeys. You can also use it to "cheat" if you want to. Haven't tested it, but this seems to be good: This makes the differences between Civilians and Citizens more noticeable, as currently male Civilians and Citizens use the same voice:

I have found that the "order in front" behaves weirdly. Iirc in conjunction with SHIFT queuing it makes workers ignore all queued task and go back to their current tasks. Very annoying to get housed and when going back to your base seeing that your Civilians are back to farming instead of building the other houses. But wouldn't that cause the workers to go to the old Field first before continuing with their queued tasks? It's referring to the suggestions that "storehouse and farmstead technologies apply only to civilians". That would make Civilians almost from the start of the game better gatherers than Citizen Soldiers, making training them pointless as they slow down your economy. That would lead to either a super defense play where you train only as few military units as you need to survive until you get close to max pop, or play super aggressive and go for an all-in.

Hotkeys for buildings Grid hotkeys preconfigured

Romans if you play with my bugfix mod. Being able to produce Civilians from Houses from the start of a match is crazy strong. Ptolemies also feels very strong due to cheaper buildings. I have read that most top-rated players judge Macedonians to be among the strongest Civs, but I don't fully understand why.

No, medium AI is fine. It's about the level a somewhat competent player can beat consistently after 1-3 tries. AI can be made easier by decreasing how many units they produce (e.g. Very Easy AI stops producing units when it hits 1/4 of max population), and only advancing to Town Phase / City Phase when the majority of human player clicked on the update. Giving units / buildings bonuses to their combat stats is a terrible idea. It makes it virtually impossible to learn the game. You cannot learn to gauge the strength of your opponent's army, and learn how strong different unit classes are if AI units "behave" differently. Discounts seem pointless when you already have an eco bonus. The only one that looks acceptable is training time discount.

To be honest before trying to make Civs unique the focus should be on making units more "unique". If an army of Spearmen, Archers and Cavalry Swordsmen, an army of Pikemen, Slingers and Cavalry Javeleers and an army of Swordsmen, Javeleers and Cavalry Archers would be gameplay-wise noticeable different from each other making Civs feel more unique would be a lot easier. Temple also needs a rework. Remove all techs aside from maybe Living Conditions, and create a bunch more interesting ones, like bigger healing radius for Temples, increased RoF around Temples, several techs giving giving Healers different kind of auras and so on. Then each Civ gets only a few of them. Healers themselves could also be made more unique. Like a Surgeons heals idle units / units in combat with 5 / 1 effectiveness, Doctors 4 / 2, Priests and Druids 3 / 3.

The Crush damage type is a mess because it incorporates three different kinds of attacks: Small blunt objects, e.g. stones Blunt objects with a lot of mass, e.g. maces Anti-Building attacks, e.g. rams This will always lead to weird gameplay implications. E.g. currently Slingers are more effective against "lightly armored" targets as they should be, but they are also somewhat of a siege unit. Macemen behave more like arsonists with high anti-building damage but low damage against human units, especially heavily armored ones. How to fix this? Idea 1: Two "new" damage types: Thump and Crush_new Slingers deal (mostly) Thump damage, and resistance of units is similar to current Crush Resistance. Low for weakly armored units, significantly higher for heavily armored units. Like 1-5-10 for infantry ranged, infantry melee / champion ranged, champion melee. This tries to simulate that the Sling loses comparably a lot of its lethality against armored targets. Crush_new is the damage type Macemen and partially Axemen deal. Crush_new resistance would be fairly low, like 1-2-3. This tries to simulate that maces and to a lesser degree axes have so much kinetic energy that armor is a lot less effective against it compared to how well it protects against e.g. swords or arrows. With two new damage types it would also be easy to incorporate them into Forge techs; Pierce Armor upgrades increase Thump Res, and Hack Armor upgrades increase Crush_new Res. Siege units get their own special damage type, or a bonus against buildings. E.g. a Ram deals Pierce and Crush_new damage and has a huge bonus against buildings. One issue with this idea is that very few units would use the Thump damage type. Mostly just Slingers, and maybe Onagers. Idea 2: Blunt and Piercing Both Slingers and Macemen deal Blunt damage. Blunt Rest is similar to current Crush Resistance. Macemen also deal a little bit of Piercing to simulate them being good against heavily armored targets. Units would have 0 Piercing Res, and buildings a very high one. This would also enable the option to make other units relatively good even against heavily armored targets, e.g. Bolt Shooters. Against, Siege units would either get their own damage type or a damage bonus against buildings. One issue this idea has is it's hard to decide with Forge Armor upgrade should affect Blunt. Idea 3: Crush_new Crush_new Res is something like 1-2-3. Only weapons particularly effective against heavy armor have the Crush_new damage type, e.g. maces. Slingers deal only Pierce damage, but have a bonus damage against ranged units to simulate the Sling being effective against unarmored targets. Siege units deal either Hack, Pierce or Crush_new damage, and have a damage bonus against buildings. This doesn't add any new damage types, but has to heavily work with bonus damage. The issue is if Forge Armor upgrades should affect Crush_new Res, and if so which one.

Civilians become better lumberjacks after the first wood upgrade, and better miners after the second mining upgrade. Citizen Soldiers are not economically viable anymore and training them puts you behind. So the optimal game plan is either hyper aggression and attack the opponent after a few minutes so they could not wall / build defenses yet, or super defensive and tech to P3 and get to 100+ Civilians before you train only Champions. If you want AoE2 rage forest where there is instantly a lot of fights, then 10-30 minutes of boom, then fighting with endgame units it will be great. If you want fights between late P1 and early P3 to happen it sounds like an awful change.

Some ideas / thoughts: Ranged soldiers don't always attack the closest enemy unit, but instead semi-randomly any enemy unit in range, where the chance depends on the distance E.g. if two enemy units are almost equally far away the chance the the slightly closer enemy unit is attacked is 51%, the other one is attacked with a 49% chance. If one enemy units is far closer the chances would be more like 80% 20%. Overall that means that ranged soldiers spread their attacks more instead of many attacking the same units, preventing massive overkill and greatly reducing the effectiveness of ranged units During small scale skirmishes, e.g. in the early game, you can manually focus fire to intentionally kill a specific enemy unit Maybe the probability which enemy unit is attack depends on where you attack moved. Instead of prioritizing the closest unit to itself it prioritizes the closest unit to the target location. So you could manually move your archers into range of the opponent's Javileers and then attack move next to them so your archers attack them instead of your opponent's melee units Melee soldiers behave similar. They don't always charge towards the closest enemy soldier but spread out based on probability Random attack delays. SC2 does this. Each unit has a small random attack delay so that two units rarely attack at the same time. That's e.g. why Siege Tanks virtually never shot at an already dead unit. This would also cause units to slightly spread out their attacks as they attack at slightly different times

Endpoint=https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad.git/info/lfs (auth=basic) Endpoint (upstream)=https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad.git/info/lfs (auth=basic) Yeah, but I have only those two. Everything seems to work now.

That sounds like horrible game design. An in-game upgrade that plays the game for you.