Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[Vantha]

@Atrik

I can relate to the points you mentioned, actually, because I felt a similar way when I first started contributing to this project. What I can tell you from my own experience, though, is that things tend to run smoother and quicker over time, as you would become a more regular contributor and also learn how things run and what to look out for in implementations.

Of course, making mods will always be faster and allow for more creative freedom, this is an essential aspect of the opens source philosophy, so I completely understand if people want to take that path. I welcome anyone who wants, though, to also open a PR and try to get the changes into the game, I think with git now it's easier than ever. I always try to work on those PRs as soon as I can, but of course it can take some time, it's important to think long-term I believe. And I'll admit that it can be difficult for me to find the balance between making it easy for the contributor and ensuring the best possible code quality.

@Atrik E.g., I'd love to eventually work on the wall snapping you implemented a while ago, if you feel like it.

[Stan`]

50 minutes ago, Vantha said:

@Atrik E.g., I'd love to eventually work on the wall snapping you implemented a while ago, if you feel like it.

If you do, please consider this too => https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1190 I think it would be really nice

 

@Atrik thank you for switching to the contributing side, it's very appreciated. My goal was to get all the modders on the main team eventually so the lack of speed would be curbed by the sheer number of people  It did and did not work out at the same time; so many areas to work on

 

 

[Perzival12]

15 minutes ago, Stan` said:

My goal was to get all the modders on the main team eventually so the lack of speed would be curbed by the sheer number of people  It did and did not work out at the same time; so many areas to work on

Once I figure out how to use git, I might consider adding some of Hyrule’s features to the main game, like spawning and stun.

[Atrik]

58 minutes ago, Vantha said:

@Atrik E.g., I'd love to eventually work on the wall snapping you implemented a while ago, if you feel like it.

6 minutes ago, Stan` said:

If you do, please consider this too => https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1190 I think it would be really nice

Yes! I also finely got it working almost perfect. There is just a couple things to clear and the feature tend to awaken a pre-existing bug. But it's very satisfying to use so definitively a must have in vanilla! Since I'm currently playing with it through moderngui, I think there are a couple things that would be also nice to have included, like what @Stan` linked. Overall maybe not a too small PR, so I'd maybe try to have the current big ones I have opened done and merged first (don't like the idea of having rotting PRs ), I enjoyed when we got things done for formations together, and I'm looking forward to get this rolling again!

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

@Atrik thank you for switching to the contributing side, it's very appreciated.

Thanks @Stan`!!
'switching' sounds a bit like there is a wall between the two  and sometimes I also read comments that make it look like it's a sort of vs.
Modding allows for people to get used to the 0AD code, experiment and learn. That's was the case for me, and for others like @guerringuerrin. I'm also not planning on stopping modding and in general, want to use it as a way to try a lot of things, and select the best ones/ the one that can be implemented into vanilla. Mods also can be used to patch some bugs in between releases, and of course just to mention them, the total conversions are a subject on their own.

[Atrik]

11 hours ago, Tapothei said:

my only choice is to manually click cancel and its annoying in multiplayer where input lag is present as well as mistaking a batch number or wrong unit, so solving it by a click of a button would be nice. I've made an issue already on github.

In the meantime this get addressed, autociv--or ModernGUI-- have the a hotkey for it : "autociv.production.queue.clear".
Assigned as Alt+R by default.

[guerringuerrin]

24 minutes ago, Atrik said:

In the meantime this get addressed, autociv--or ModernGUI-- have the a hotkey for it : "autociv.production.queue.clear".
Assigned as Alt+R by default.

I'd love to add this to the training system improvements

[DesertRose]

• Builders and "Field Builders" are made separate. Builders that just have finished a House should not go over to build a Field but become idle
• Up to 5 Builders who are currently buildings a Field become Farmers instead of searching for other buildings to finish

Really annoying when your House builders "go missing" because they decide to become Farmers, and if you build two Fields with 10 Civilians they first build both Fields, then start farming.

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

Really annoying when your House builders "go missing" because they decide to become Farmers, and if you build two Fields with 10 Civilians they first build both Fields, then start farming.

You can set your builders on hotkey, thats what I do to my 4 civilians at the start.

[DesertRose]

From what I have seen there is neither a "drop resources and go idle" UI element nor a "drop resources and go idle" hotkey.

Use case: You want to shift your economy, and instead of having to find the nearest drop-off point yourself you can simply go Hotkey -> SHIFT + New Order.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

storehouse and farmstead technologies apply only to civilians.

thoughts?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

14 minutes ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

storehouse and farmstead technologies apply only to civilians.

thoughts?

Good idea. As the game progresses, Civilians gain a greater and greater economic benefit over Soldiers.

[Deicide4u]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

storehouse and farmstead technologies apply only to civilians.

Sounds like something is cooking for the community mod 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

storehouse and farmstead technologies apply only to civilians.

thoughts?

That makes makes it more.... interesting. On one hand it satisfies the turtle and rewards the offensive side too, this makes civs with cheap houses overpowered since they can produce villagers faster. But what about their stats? They are great with food but does stone, wood, metal stay same? Those into military first will need to strike fast before getting overwhelmed by eco score...

Lets introduce the mod and see how thing goes. Obviously the AI would need to tweak again if this idea ever applies as well as there will be less army(100 civilian:100 soldier) which in turn you could manage somehow in 200 pop limit...

[Deicide4u]

30 minutes ago, Tapothei said:

AI would need to tweak again

Yes, this change also requires tweaks to the AI's number of trained Civilians. It should train more of them. 

Edited March 23 by Deicide4u

[DesertRose]

8 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

storehouse and farmstead technologies apply only to civilians.

thoughts?

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.

Edited March 23 by DesertRose

[Deicide4u]

23 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

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.

Not much different from today, where it's either a Cavalry rush in the first 5 minutes, or boom fest until you both max out and attack with masses of CS.

Champions are strong, but they are also very expensive. You will need to expand in order to continue making them after your first wave. Maybe not on Mainland balanced, where you have 2 full Metal mines and a couple smaller ones near your first CC. Perhaps that is not "balanced", but what do I know.

29 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

If you want fights between late P1 and early P3 to happen it sounds like an awful change.

Even now, fights rarely happen in this period as there is no economic incentive to. You just hurt your economy, when you should be booming. That is what your opponent is doing, and he will have more units by the time your mid game attack comes near his borders.
Boom fest in AoE2 can be stopped by Cavalry raids in the mid game. You will be behind if you haven't walled properly. In 0 A.D., walls are more expensive, slower to build and there is no proper wall snapping. How will you defend your 100+ Civilians without an army, before your champions are ready?

[Guest]

Improve the AI's personality rather then efficiency. Rather then a balanced army, make it so that they have a certain build in mind to play against you.  Mass horseman, siege focused, spearman mania, ranger runner, champion gigachads build type of memes. The goal is to have fun rather then being competative all the time, as well as strategize many weird build to counter their army rather then booming, turtling and aggresive only, might as well introduce a new strategy called countering Sun-Tzu.

[Obelix]

On 23/03/2026 at 4:39 AM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

storehouse and farmstead technologies apply only to civilians.

I really like the idea and would test it out in a (community) mod!

May I request to have this and all related messages from 2026-03-23 moved to a proper thread?

[ffm2]

The gaul trumpeters should make sound.

I was just scrolling reddit on the trumpeters. 

Some user says it's somewhat altered and provides 3 other examples: 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0eABuyDFXAM09jKd7MWPZh?si=vc-gGIsATEij3GbV-p0Ebg&t=1

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk1p8xk7z7o

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DU4spHMAM1H/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

Edited March 28 by ffm2

[Deicide4u]

4 hours ago, Tapothei said:

Mass horseman, siege focused, spearman mania, ranger runner, champion gigachads build type of memes. The goal is to have fun rather then being competative all the time

This would 100% improve single player experience. We can also make the AI focus on certain units in future campaign scenarios, similar to how other RTS games have done it.

Example, you would have 3 AI opponents and each opponent will focus on his own unique army. So, the player will have to adjust to 3 different armies at once and choose wisely which army to defeat first.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

3 hours ago, ffm2 said:

The gaul trumpeters should make sound.

I was just scrolling reddit on the trumpeters. 

Some user says it's somewhat altered and provides 3 other examples: 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/0eABuyDFXAM09jKd7MWPZh?si=vc-gGIsATEij3GbV-p0Ebg&t=1

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk1p8xk7z7o

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DU4spHMAM1H/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

 

I'd really love to make them work like the Einherjar character from AOM.

 

[Asher]

Hi guys! These are some suggestions some people and I have come up with. SPARTIÁTÊS in Spartans are really good, maybe a little too good, I think if you should only be able to get 10 per military mess hall, that would make them a little harder to get; you would have to expand territory to get a big army. I think it would be cool if there was a day/night cycle setting. Some units could have a light on them, but some could have very little on no light, so the enemy can’t see you unless you move your units into the enemies’s light. All structures would probably make light (some more than others) with the exception of scout towers. 

[Thalatta]

On 06/03/2026 at 10:45 AM, LienRag said:

And how do you do that ?

Well I thought pressing them in somewhat fast sequence (just like a dobule-click can be distinct form two clicks), but I see that when you press a given number in fast sequence it centers the camera on that group. Maybe it can't be done in a clean way (not disrupting what's already established). One possibility could be that repeated numbers can't be allowed (no 00, 11, 22... groups). Another that two different click speeds could be implemented: faster clicking for double digit numbers, a bit slower for centering on groups, the fast clicking working as the slower one if there are no double digit groups, making things work as they do now when you only have groups form 0 to 9.

[guerringuerrin]

On 14/03/2026 at 4:15 PM, DesertRose said:

• Builders and "Field Builders" are made separate. Builders that just have finished a House should not go over to build a Field but become idle

There is a "put order in front" command you can use for this. 
Select your farmers, select the house to build with hotkeys or clicking on the GUI, then hold your "order in front" modifier key while you place the building. The civilians will build the house and as soon as they finish, they will continue with the order they had before (farm in this case) 

 

On 14/03/2026 at 4:15 PM, DesertRose said:

and if you build two Fields with 10 Civilians they first build both Fields, then start farming.

Little trick if you have at least one farm built already. 
Select your 10 civilians, shift+order to build 1 farm, shift+order to farm (on the old farm you already have), then shift+order to build the 2nd farm. 
This way, when they finish the first farm, the 10 civilians will continue with the go farm order and only the remaining 5 civilians will go to build that 2nd farm you placed.

 

On 23/03/2026 at 9:13 AM, DesertRose said:

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.

Do you mean that the ability of citizen-soldiers to gather resources should be removed? Correct me if I misunderstood.

Removing this feature seems like a bad idea to me. It’s one of the most original aspects of 0 A.D. as an RTS.

Edited March 31 by guerringuerrin
language

[Thalatta]

On 09/03/2026 at 10:40 PM, Atrik said:

You are overwriting a player command for something maybe he doesn't want to do.

Indeed, I always want to do the opposite, fill fields one by one. And if I send them to a filled farm, they already go to a nearby empty farm (not sure how far away the farms have to be for this to work).
 

On 09/03/2026 at 11:27 PM, Atrik said:

Gatherers have diminishing efficiency in function of how much they are on a single field, hence the initial suggestion of having them spreading.

What!? How was I supposed to know this... there has to be some indicator for this kind of stuff (maybe there is?). I haven't played this game for too long.
 

On 10/03/2026 at 9:20 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I enjoy the GUI customization screen. Hadn't seen that before. I wish you would focus on adding things like that to the base game.

I agree that it would be nice for this kind of stuff to be added to the base game.
 

On 10/03/2026 at 9:23 PM, DesertRose said:

Maybe this could made more clear by adding 5 gather points on a Field where each Farmer has to do.

I like this, although if the point filled first are the ones closer to the dropsite, not to add micro.
 

On 28/03/2026 at 12:48 PM, ffm2 said:

The gaul trumpeters should make sound.

They should. Actually, I'd like for unit abilities to be added, and them making a sound could have a temporal aura effect (maybe increased damage stats for now, but more realistically enemy morale decrease if this is added).

 

On 31/03/2026 at 1:35 AM, Asher said:

I think it would be cool if there was a day/night cycle setting. Some units could have a light on them, but some could have very little on no light, so the enemy can’t see you unless you move your units into the enemies’s light. All structures would probably make light (some more than others) with the exception of scout towers. 

I'd like to see day and night, seasons, weather, and other natural phenomena, eventually.
 

6 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

Do you mean that the ability of citizen-soldiers to gather resources should be removed? 

In line with what was said before, I think they meant that they just become inefficient, since storehouse and farmstead techs would apply only to civilians. I think the idea is interesting (considering specialisation of trades), but faction considerations should be taken into account, since not everyone had the same dynamics between civilian and soldier. This could be solved by fine tuning which civilian, citizen-soldier and soldier units each faction has access to (and at which cost). For example, around the timespan of the game, Greeks and Romans would indeed mostly progress from civil militias to professional soldiers (that would find mercenary service more profitable than farming), but other factions like the early Germanics wouldn't make this shift in the same scale, and their armies (and male civilians) would mostly consist of farmer warriors even towards the end of the period (only later being more influenced by the Roman ways). All this would influence how the different factions should be played.

Edited April 1 by Thalatta