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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

Why? I was recently having discussions with some smart community members. I shared with them my reasoning: Sniping is definitively not, following 0AD vision on Repetition - "If you find yourself doing the same action over and over without thought, then we need to either eliminate or automate such an action. Linear repetitious procedures are meaningless and boring." Manual sniping is as today, very clearly on the very repetitive end of the spectrum. Testing if this would be OP A mod in development from a very smart community member, gave me the opportunity to emulate some kind of "auto-sniping". I was surprise to find out it was indeed very effective, and beating by far a top player sniping skills: NoobDude (That I have 0 chances to beat normally). I was very surprise because my expectations was that it would make little difference compared to player manual sniping. So I though about just putting the idea into a hole forever... ... But since my initial reasoning was still holding true, and smart members were agreeing that it was, in theory, undesirable to have to have to spam so much clicks to control a very simple behavior, sniping still feels like a problem needing a solution. How could this be addressed unit_action.js, already have a kind of class filter for "attack-move". Another way I found to get a sens of what would such feature could feel like. "attack-move": { "execute": function(position, action, selection, queued, pushFront) { let targetClasses; if (Engine.HotkeyIsPressed("session.attackmoveUnit")) targetClasses = { "attack": ["Unit"] }; else targetClasses = { "attack": ["Unit", "Structure"] }; Implementing a stance, or hotkey, in main game that would help players "attack weakest unit in range" or another similar feature may change the meta. But this "sniping" meta of is arguably not most rewarding mechanics you can hope for a strategy game. TLDR: No script publicly exist for (practically) sniping in a multiplayer game. I think we should however seek to fix the compulsive clicking required for sniping. This won't end 0AD, but may give way to the implementation of more interesting mechanics, and game-play metas. Also the unfair advantage that this could provide may deter any moders to do it. The best approach could be to have it in native game.

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.

What is the advantage of spam clicking so many times ? Do you spam click on just one spot or do you have to select different targets then spam click on every target once? (after trying alt + right click, I still found my queue method more effective at sniping. I just had to remember all of the numbers of archers needed to do an instant kill under different conditions)

Considering the whole conceit of "phasing up" revolves around the advancement of a settlement to a city, removing building requirements kind of ruins the concept. What we could do though is genericize the requirement to X number of any kind of building (except Farms and walls). You could say someone could spam 30 houses and upgrade to final phase! They could, but then they haven't built anything else either, so are vulnerable af in many ways. Could open it up to some create and/or wild build orders and strategies. Possibly worth considering for A28's comm mod.

Yes, actually I think champion cavalry is weak. But the point of this thread is solving the problem of champion cavalry becoming the one and only solution in all TGs; all other gameplay becomes irrelevant when someone makes 30 champions. The current motion of TGs is a race to spam the most champions. The first to reach 35 champions wins for his whole team. All other units are irrelevant; all you need in your army is the champions. That is the problem right now. The champions themselves are not strong but they monopolise the battlefield. Mauryas , Spartans and Athenians are unplayable in late game due to the lack of this unit We are also seeing middle players letting their borders die just to buy them time for massing up this unit, then one player with 60 champs dominates the map with brainless brute force. This is not a health way of playing

Yes this is why people spam skirmishers, because they, unlike spear cav, kill champion cav Not really. Any group of class b or class a infantry will get massacred by a significant number of champion cavalry

Yes this is why people spam skirmishers, because they, unlike spear cav, kill champion cav

As a player who likes to make 3-4 Forges and get all upgrades ASAP, I can tell you with certainty: I'll still spam Forges at the proposed cost. In fact, I'll make sure to spam Forges if they are expensive because that'll make my tech lead even more valuable. Having said that, I completely agree with the intention behind the proposal: Make players consciously pick their upgrades and make that choice have a certain weight to it. We can achieve this by simply limiting the number of Forges a player can build (like heroes, or maybe like civic centers in Village and Town phases). Once again, I agree with the intention (and I doubt any 0ad player will disagree with it). The proposed cost however seems very low. Traders IMHO should cost as much as a cav, (about 100-150 food). I propose this not based on a balancing perspective, but purely from an aesthetic standpoint. I mean, a horse costs 50 food (cost of cav unit - cost of inf unit), a woman costs 50 food (don't cancel me pls :). But a horse with a trader on it costs 50 food and 10 metal? How!? Seriously though, I can accept the cost if you give me a proper reason for it. P.S. Maybe a child on a donkey trading goods would explain it. LOL

Agree. Disagree on metal. It's too scarce and the upgrades already cost metal. But I do think it should cost more. I would add a food cost because it is the slowest to produce (yet is infinite so it is just a time trade-off) and would force a player to forgo pop to spam blacksmiths. This feels really cheap. The problem with traders is that they quickly become OP, so you don't want them to become too easy to spam. When resources get depleted on a map this is particularly true. I've played multiple games where the first player to get like 5 traders consistently safe wins. If traders are super cheap, then there will be a very narrow window in which you could effectively respond to your enemy switching to traders (either by raiding or making traders of your own). Because of that, I would keep metal cost higher (like 100m). An alternative fix would be to keep the cost the same but increase the min yield of traders. Right now, traveling between your base and your closest ally yields something like 4 resources. That is so little that it never makes sense to trade unless you are traveling super far distances. Increasing the min yield will make "safe" trading over short distances more viable.

I usually don't play it; not a fan of that restricted basin, the paths to useful terrain are often painful. Meh. Both positions can be painful. Sometimes there's no wood for miles, sometimes the back position is extremely limited by a body of water. I actually like those, except the ~Istanbul spawn points; just the other day I re-rolled for another spawn point and then played Marmara. I like Fields of Meroe and Wild Lake. (I assume "spam spot" is supposed to be "spawn point"?) I don't see the problem with FoM. Hellas I look at the map and then decide if I want to play it (~50/50); sometimes I think the terrain is just BS, not a fan of that one Gaia siege unit. Scythian Rivulet I also look at the map and count trees, access to wood is very unbalanced; same goes for Volcanic Lands. I like Mediterranean (although it has issues) and Red Sea, never felt like the later had an issue.

Thoughts. If you disagree with any I can explain. There's a pretty strong association between maps being based on a real place and the map being unenjoyable. Great Ambush Archipelago Continent Hyraccian Shores Mainland Cross Foothills Frontier Slopes Stronghold Unknown Wrench Fun African Plains Alpine Lakes Alpine Mountains (but basically the same as alpine valley) Alpine Valley (but basically the same as alpine mountains) Ardennes Forest Atlas Mountains Corinthian Isthmus (I personally hate it but others like it) Deep Forest Flood Gear Guadalquivir River Gulf of Bohemia Harbor Hell's Pass Lake (basically the same as Harbor, though. I would make these consolidated the way that Gulf of Bohemia is for frozen lake) Latium (I personally hate this map but others like it) Lorraine Plain Ngorongo (a bit unbalanced, though) Oasis (I personally hate this map but others like it) Persian Highlands (could use more wood, though. If it had more wood it would be a better version of Ngorongo) Pyrienne Sierra Ratumacus Rhine Marshlands Saharian Oasis (I personally hate this map but others like it) Schwarzwald (very similar to deep forest) Meh Arctic Winter Brittanic Road Cantabrian Highlands Canyon Kerela (just a worse version of Hyrancian Shores) Lion's Den Marmara Migration Neareastern Badlands Phoencian Levant (Just a much, much worse version of Hyrancian Shores) Rivers (basically Harbor but more ship focused) Sahel Watering Holes Syria (getting close to feeling the pain) Nile Feeling the pain Belgian Uplands (borderline painful but would be fun if wood wasn't awful) Botswana Haven (borderline painful but would be fun if wood wasn't awful) Caledeonian Meadows Fields of Meroe (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but if that was fixed it could be fun) Hellas (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but fixing that still won't make it fun) India (could be fun if wood wasn't awful) Lower Nubia (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but fixing that still won't make it fun) River Archipelago Sythian Rivulet Wild Lake (basically the same as other good maps except it throws AI units in to make it a bad map) Painful Anatolian Plateau Northern Lights Pompeii Snowflake Searocks Volanic Land (also basically the same as Pompeii) AI Maps Danubius Jebel Barkal Survival of the Fittest Gimmick Maps Empire Extinct Volcano Fortress Polar Sea (but really belongs in the painful category) Sahel (it's a trade map) "Atlas" Maps Mediterranean (the spam spot positioning on this map are nonsense and make balancing impossible) Red Sea (the spam spot positioning on this map are nonsense and make balancing impossible) "Creator" Maps RMS Test Wall Demo Naval (unplayable right now because of issues with ships but still deserving of their own category and shouldn't be deleted because hopefully ships become playable in the future) Aegean Sea Bahrain Corsica vs Sardinia Cycladic Archipeliago Dodecanese Elephantine English Channel Island Stronghold Islands

Multiple ideas can be used at once to stop spam. It also needs to be nerfed a bit. The cost is not going to take away the unfair power over their own counter unit; the spear infantry (Hoplites, pikemen, spearmen).

Ive addressed some of these things in my mod, if anyone is interested. Ive actually decreased everyones capture rate, infantry and cav, champ and regular. Also Champ cavs cost slighly more and take a little more train time so its a little harder to spam them All sorts of other changes too. Similar to com mod, and would like to get more imput for more players!

The current build distance for defense towers was to prevent spam back when towers were OP. So, a minimum distance was implemented, but since then the relative strength of towers has decrease making the minimum distance a little suspect. @real_tabasco_sauce I think this should be looked into.

My two cents to this would be: Melee champion cavalry is over-performing, therefore it should either A) be weaker (deal less damage, have less hp, get countered more by spearman) B ) be more expensive (my favorite idea personally; put all champions of all civilisations in an extra building like the spartans/athenians/han already have, which discourages spam. One could also imagine just increasing the training time by 1.5x or the cost to 300f 100w 150m) C) be countered together with all cavalry, by making defensive structures actually relevant (why cant I build 5 Towers next to each other? Seems like a silly restraint considering how expensive and underwhelming each tower is.)

Besides the hurdle of having to find the good limit to population of allowed units, I don't think it is fun to make a limit on any unit. Champs are a great way to 'coil up' and invest some economic advantage. The problem is the lack of counter options and their efficiency against specifically: melee champ cavs spam. As I said above, even champ spears are meh... not that good of a counter. In short, investing in champ cav is too safe, because of the lack of counters and the amazing versatility of cavalry. Hence the suggestions to nerf capture rate, and increase counters.

I meant we should stop spamming champions. It's okay to spam citizen infantry.

Spamming happens due to many circumstances, a snowball effect of CS, a product of citizens being soldiers and collecting resources. Therefore they can also build barracks, therefore they can create more CS to collect more resources. Another problem in my opinion is the population cost of the units, a horseman = a foot soldier, what changes is the resources, but when you reach the middle is pointless.At that stage, 10-20k of wood and food are already reached. It's easy to spam anything that costs wood and food, as well as getting metal through bartering(In case of not having metal mines).

A limit on the numbers will be effective. Reading older forum posts, it seems that every version had some OP units that messed up the balancing, but the issue is never the unit itself but rather spam champions in large quantities. What we really need is not adjustment of stats but anti-spam! @Atrik @real_tabasco_sauce

Champ spear cav is just more available and is also the champ cav for the civilsations who have buffed champ cavs; such as Persians, Seleucid and to a lesser extent Gauls. I guess champs cavs are really just slightly too good of an option too often, because of the mobility and strength, and capture rate. The problem really is that the critical mass of a champ spam being unstoppable is reached too early. If some suggest that they should cost 2 pop, I think it would be too much of a nerf. Spears could have increased counter damage (restore it to x3 in com mod as an example, no idea why it was brought down to x2.5) and maybe cost slightly increased, like 100metal instead of 80. Also all cavs could have 50% only of the capture rate of their equivalent infantry.

Congratulations for the replay sharing platform. Regarding the @guerringuerrin spike of 80 ungarrison commands in one turn, that's a bug in 0AD, and should be fixed. During the sniping autoclick trend of last year, some players analized spikes in 'command.txt' files like the one mentioned above, looking for click amplification during sniping on some games, and by chance they found this problem existed. The situation is caused when, during lag spikes in games, the user keeps the ungarrison key pressed for several seconds. 0AD seems to record the key press every frame, so the amount of commands start to accumulate super fast, even if you keep the key pressed for only a few seconds. Of course it makes zero sense to record and send so many commands over the network, when just one command per turn is enough. Keeping the ungarrison key pressed for several seconds is useful when you want to teleport a lot of troops, say through a castle: 1. You set the garrison point of the castle the way you want. 2. You order your army to go into the castle 3. You keep the ungarison key pressed for several seconds until all troops teleported. If you make repeated key-presses instead of holding the key down it will likely not produce this spike. As this behavior is useful in normal gameplay, and players will continue to use it, it would be ideal if 0AD would not spam the replay file and the network with such useless identical commands on one turn.

Oh, that's nice, a messy new thread with so many useless posts it looks like spam. I can't understand how you can refer to the notion of index while at the same time misunderstanding the notion of index.

You can force your units to attack only enemy ranged units by editing unit_actions.js, change the target classes then setting the appropriate hotkey. However, the effect of this is not so persistent and does not save you much effort. FFM you should also be aware that during large fights, each turn may take a few seconds to process and during this lag, some players panic and spam click. As a result, you may see abnormal amounts of commands being sent.

As an user who joined just yesterday, I would like to offer my humble opinions: 1. The registration process is already quite complicated and difficult to automate with a bot. The email confirmation step requires a new email address each time, which would be challenging. The verification questions are also non trivial for current AI technologies. Although GPT-4o may be able to solve the problem, the effort and cost is simply not worth it. 2. With the above, and the observation that the spam posts appear infrequently (on the timescale of RPA) and irregularly, I am inclined to believe that a human is doing the spam manually. They create new email addresses each time then register with their new email. 3. The effective way to crack down the spam is for the website admin to observe the source IP of the spammer(s) and take actions accordingly. 4. We need to understand why the spammer is doing this, their motivation and goal. Some communication is necessary in order to negotiate a solution.