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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. Install instructions: - Install 0 A.D. Alpha 9 from here: https://releases.wildfiregames.com/0ad-r11339-alpha-win32.exe - Replace "public.zip" from the binaries/data/mods/public directory with the one from the download 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 javelineers, Hellenes can no longer train Slingers. EDIT March 28th, 2026: - Champions are now stronger and worth the cost. - Two new trainable heroes. Demetrius for the Hellenes and Caratacos for the Celts. - Population cap is back to 300. - The AI is now stronger, with more massive attack waves. EDIT April 19th, 2026: - All melee units now deal only hack damage. - Fixed a major balance issue with ranged infantry CS units having too many hit points, often inconsistent with their rank. Now, all ranged infantry CS have 55/65/75 HP, depending on rank. - Elite spear cavalry and cavalry spear champions now have very high pierce armor, being heavily armored ranged unit counter. Likewise, infantry spear champions, infantry champion pikemen and elite spearmen also have greater pierce armor, due to them having heavy armor and large shields. Spear champions now also deal less damage. - Defense towers, ranged units and Fortresses now deal less pierce damage. - Siege Rams now have more hack armor, to compensate for the fact that spear-wielding units now deal more hack damage. - Traders now generate less profit and are more expensive. Screenshots: Imperia_Vetera_19_04_2026.zip

Let's have a thread where we can discuss different strategies in TG and 1v1 to make our gameplay more interesting! Some interesting TG strategies that I have observed: 1. Min 11 double push. Two players boom with infantry then suddenly send all to attack the enemy border, causing them to loose huge amount of units and all wood eco. Then the two pull back if the pocket is going to help. To prepare for this, you need to make only 50 women and 4 barracks to spam out infantry so that you get a lead before min11; at the same time you must scout where the enemy woodlines and economy zones are. If the enemies are unaware, you can beat both in one go. You can also set up outposts and palisades beforehands to prevent the pocket from coming to help. 2. Siege Hail. One player makes an insane amount of ram 25~40, then the other comes with infantry for ground support. The siege spammer should garrison their eco infantry into the rams when attacking; the garrisoned units can serve as repairers. They should also research all siege related upgrades. The supporting player should ideally use more ranged inf than melee inf. Entire bases will be obliterated in minutes and the enemy will have to rebuild. If they focus on taking out rams, then they will get killed by the supporting inf. Tough choices. 3. Boltshooters + elephants. Use elephants to protect your boltshooters and do massive damage.

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 recently read the eyecandy topic again and decided it might be a good idea to make a big list of all the eyecandy that is in the game, will be in the game and should be in the game. Color code: Not in the game Not animated/unfinished (but no one is working on it anymore) Someone is working on it Finished and in the game! If you are working on an eyecandy model at the moment, post in this topic and I'll add it to the list/change the color (and add your name). Also give me a link to the topic. Don't spam this topic with suggestions, take a look to see if it hasn't been suggested before. I'll update this list regularly. Minifactions: African Tribes (link, hut variations, farmers and hunters) Polynesian (link with download) Pirates (ships, soldiers ; Illyrians, Tyrrhenians, Greek, Romans and Phoenicians, art can probably be reused) Fauna: Hippopotamus Flora: Hay Charred Trees (link) Hedges (like fences: short, medium, long, corner and maybe even 'arch' as a gate) Logs (needs more varieties) Tree stumps Geology: Iceberg Waterfalls (enrique, link) Cave entrance Structures: Nomad tents (are in svn, link) Roman Triumphal Arch Stone Bridge Stone Fence Wooden Bridge Aquaducts (LordGood, link) Roman Sawmill (Stanislas) Ziggurat (link) Columns (LordGood, link) Roman Arch (needs updating?) Trajan's Column (link) Dock Extensions Sphinx Ruins: Broken bridge (broken hangbridge is in-game, Roman bridge being made by Idanwin link, download) Greek Temple Shipwreck Mine entrance (think dwarves, link) Units: Elven Ship Roman Centurion (has aura that increases the effects of formation bonusses) Onager (Pureon, ) Archimedes Assassin Cicilian Pirate Dorkim Garamantim (Garamantine Infantry) Dugunthiz (example) Executioner Gaesofluxo Fijot (example) Gladiators (b,a,e and weapon variations, Stanislas) High Priests: Dastur (Zoroastrian - Indo-Iranian - high priest), Archiereus (Greek high priest), Kohen Gadol (Israelite high priest) Hunter/Huntress Kings (for each civ - regicide game mode) Makkabaioi Zelotai (example) Mercenary Cavalry (Camel) Pirate Ships (Illyrians, Tyrrhenians, Greek, Romans and Phoenicians where known to have resorted to piracy) Raft Shield Bearer Siege Wall (movable wall to protect infantry from arrows, basically a unit with a lot of armor and no attack) Spy (unit that can move undetectably into an enemy base) Watchmen (link about Roman and Greek watchmen) Statues: Aphrodite (huge & small) Egyptian Roman Hermae (one: link) Corpses: Skeletons (I believe there's already two variations) Body Parts Crucifix & Crucified people (no one is modeling, some information has been posted: link) Decaying Hanging men Impaled head Special: Anvil Amphorae Barrels Campfire Crates Dummy Piles (wood, stone) Snowman (they probably already made snowmen around AD ?) Tables Vases Wheel Archery target (LordGood, link) Butcher racks (Bloc, link) Cages (Idanwin, link) Gate lever (LordGood, link) Pillar of stones (link) Weapon racks (Idanwin, link) Gravestones (there's already one) Well (needs water planes) Armor racks Fountains Fisher racks Sign posts / Milestones (link) Torches Timetravel, Tourism and Myths: Mustang plane Lamppost (à la Narnia) (Idanwin, link) Mirror Tower (LordGood, link) Moai (link) Dragon (needs to be animated) General Lee (example link) Skeletons Trojan Horse Walls of Troy UFO UFO (Crashed) Unicorn Unicorn Cavalry Zombies

Random idea: To lessen the impact on QuickStart mod, make the beginning of a match more similar to Age of Mythology. So you start only with your Civil Center, after 2 seconds your 4 Civilians and any eco units such as Worker Elephant spam, 2 seconds later your 4 infantry, another 2 second later your cavalry. That makes the start less hectic for everyone. It also makes maps slightly more balanced as your Civilians no longer spam at the other side as your berries.

It's getting out of control. Is it possible to do something about it?

Yeah that Hoplites spam is a nightmare, that's why I made this test

@EilatHere to fulfill your first request. Your second request maybe tomorrow. Deathmatch is a rather different mode and it doesn't suit your EconomyMaster AI's personality because the resource are already there. The thing I do note in its behavior was not teching Festival Fertility to spam civilians to speed up economy and building stuff, and that it stops building house until it reaches its max limit my recommendation is to have 10 individual citizen to build houses individually nonstop... Anyways I'm tired. oh and I'll try to give few more minutes before I go in, I was so not mercy to your AI, 15 minute is too early XD. Game 2, ceasefire 25 min, low resource(300), if you mean't 100 resource at start, I'm too tired and mb. - Making lots of field but only a few are doing the job I guess thats an error which in turn has 5PPM at min 20, why not make use of the bearies first as its faster, when its done then you can focus on field. - Trade early T2 was a mistake as it should only do it when one resource is out, you need more basic workers as its more effective. - It made 10 horseman, which tbh is going to be useless once food is out and that its not doing any harrasment at some point. Keep it max 5 early. - Fertility Festival, make use of it and don't bother with making priest building although the tech Battlefield Medicine is nice, just build it once economy is okay rich. Score for EconomyMaster This is EasyAI as its not efficient enough in making use of the resources in front of it, remember citizen harvest faster with bearies then with field, if you can fix the max pop building issue that would be nice. I'll redo the turtoise with infinite pops and deathmatch later as well as protectorate and score them properly next time. commands.txt commands.txt

Besides the champion cavaliers, Fanatics 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 Fanatics? I bet you can’t. They run fast, deal massive damage, and don’t even require metal to produce, which makes spamming them nonstop super easy. The only thing the developers could have done to stop the spamming of this unit was to add metal as a required resource. Unfortunately, they didn’t do that There are players abusing this by spamming Fanatics in P2, and it’s ruining the game for everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if some ecobot or clever Celt 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 metal as a required resource to build them would be an effective way to balance this unit. Moreover all cav champs should be nerfed for sure. We’ve already banned Champion Cavaliers from our games, and Fanatics 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 think I already wrote these, but lemme write it here too x) - Performance, especially in TGs then few spaces empty and then: - Fewer units in general, ie. less/slower units spam so you can micro a bit more (like in Starcraft, AOE, etc.) - Matchmaking - Ladder website - more 1v1/2v2 tourneys

-Petra doesn’t seem to know that blades must be used against rams. I started playing a few days ago and won in very hard difficulty by leveling the AI’s continent using only a bunch of these unrealistic rams. -It also didn’t try to use transport ships, I guess because there was a land possibility, since on an island scenario I’m pretty sure the AI did it. That would have made things so much more difficult. -Also, it doesn’t send full armies as fast as it could towards the end, it kind of gives up. It should build way more military buildings to spam armies. -It should use more fields, traders and whatever to support the previous point.

There is an anti spam mechanism that sometimes blocks posts. And we have to validate them for them to show up

This error spam occured in the middle of a TG. There was a lot of action and a lot of pathfinding happening at the time. Cavalry going through forests etc. ERROR: Error in timer on entity 17694, IID7, function RepeatRangeCheck: TypeError: this.template[type] is undefined Attack.prototype.GetRange@simulation/components/Attack.js:450:12 UnitAI.prototype.GetRange@simulation/components/UnitAI.js:6272:19 UnitAI.prototype.MoveToTargetRange@simulation/components/UnitAI.js:4741:19 UnitAI.prototype.MoveToTargetAttackRange@simulation/components/UnitAI.js:4773:15 enter@simulation/components/UnitAI.js:2321:16 FSM.prototype.SwitchToNextState@globalscripts/FSM.js:366:14 FSM.prototype.ProcessMessage@globalscripts/FSM.js:274:8 UnitAI.prototype.ProcessMessage@simulation/components/UnitAI.js:4385:15 Attack.prototype.StopAttacking@simulation/components/Attack.js:566:14 Attack.prototype.RepeatRangeCheck@simulation/components/Attack.js:468:8 Timer.prototype.OnUpdate@simulation/components/Timer.js:140:44 The game was able to resume with no other visible problems. interestinglog.html

@Stan` I've updated to 26.2 and really sounds are working now! Thank you! Speaking about Germans civ. I could not start game. <p>'art/terrains/terrains.xml' does not exist. Using previous properties.</p> <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation error: special/players/germ:1: Invalid attribute comment for element GenericName</p> <p class="error">ERROR: RelaxNGValidator: Validation failed for '(null)'</p> <p class="error">ERROR: Failed to validate entity template 'special/players/germ'</p> <p class="error">ERROR: JavaScript error: simulation/components/PlayerManager.js line 20 spam of <p class="error">ERROR: CColor has to be an object</p> <p class="error">ERROR: Error calling component script function GetDisplayedColor</p> <p class="error">ERROR: CColor has to be an object</p> and also this warn <p class="warning">WARNING: GetPlayerByID: no player defined for id '1'

I am doing some graphics mod and there are error spams. These are false alerts spam and should be ignored by the player. How can I stop them from showing?

@Classic-Burger Please don't spam 4 posts in a row, there is an Edit button. Also, back when forums were the golden grail of internet discussions, that was called post-farming. Another thing, you should calmly collect your thoughts before posting anything. For example, you are constantly calling 0 A.D. a clone of Age of Empires. While that may be true in general part, it's a fact that this game has some unique features not present in Age of Empires. Features like Citizen Soldiers and capturing, Even the lack of a feature can be feature. For example, the lack of clear unit upgrade paths. Once again, as an author of this thread, don't spam post. It looks really bad and it makes me scroll more.

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?

Lately this forum has a bigger problem with spam. Maybe a solution would be to forbid new accounts to post links? Like you can't post a link in your first 5 posts, and neither if your account is still quite young.

Noticing an issue with this bot; on lower difficulties, (specifically I'm playing on Very Easy at the moment), I get spam in the logs which says "warning: Invalid command: Can't train 0 units" once Markets are built. This issue doesn't appear to happen on higher difficulties.

Spam.

Finally won 1v7 on againt very hard AI with open map. Earlier used ibr to play xd. Was hard but nothing is impossible with gauls, given you can spam fanatcis then switch to melee champ cavs. @SaidRdz, @Player of 0AD, thats how to you do it

A merc elephant would be great As a thought experiment I would assume a full metal cost, which going off the smaller African elephant would be 450 metal in total after converting food cost to metal. Given training is faster, and also knowing the limited acquisition that Rome has from Numidia, I would run with the elephant stables but cap it at 1 or maybe 2 buildings, that way production should be slower than other civs who could spam like four or five elephant stables so they can mass them fast. A cool side affect would be that now a Roman player could use captured elephant stables, which would be a fun niche feature.

This progress is noticeable in battles. A militia cannot defeat the champion unit of Rome. Same axeman and Legion. Spam trash units vs the best units.

Play macedonians (bonus training cost), do 4 siege tower, somes men inside (10 by tower, more for ungarnison garnison spam), you win the battle if enemy plays not the counter army have you thought of a way to counter this siege trick? civilians who don't have catapults?

Hi, I would like to discuss some potential changes to champion cavalry units and their role in the game. Currently, many players dominate by spamming large amounts of spear champion cavalry in late game. It is becoming the common theme and is getting a bit monotonic. This is fine, however, it causes a few issues: Factions without champion spear cavalry suffer in late game: Athenians, Spartans, Mauryas and Britons have little defense against large numbers of spear cavalry champions. More spam and less strategy: early attacks and other creative plays always loose to one player who decides to spam large quantities of champions Monoculture army Champions should be elite, rare and cherished, not spammed en masse. I am not saying they are too OP at all; each single champion unit is not significantly stronger than an infantry unit. The issue is the numbers. My suggestion is to make champions only producible from certain buildings, for example the Imperial Academy of the Han civ, or only allow them to be porduced from fortresses. With this constraint imposed, we can turbo up their stats to even higher values so that they can be used strategically as true distinct champions and not just spammed upgraded soldiers. The late game is still a game of strategic fights and not spam. It also doesn't make sense that the same stable is training units of different classes. Elites need better environments and need longer time, so they should get their own buildings. Same applies for infantry champions. Let me know what you think