Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[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 Tuesday at 17:58 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 yesterday at 00:05 by Thalatta

[Asher]

Is there a way to change certain map settings (like rain, darkness, or fog) during the game?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 28/03/2026 at 7:48 AM, 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==

https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/8859

[DesertRose]

18 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

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)

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.

18 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

Little trick if you have at least one farm built already.

But wouldn't that cause the workers to go to the old Field first before continuing with their queued tasks?

18 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

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

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.

 

[guerringuerrin]

45 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

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.

Yes, it doesn’t work when using Shift. It’s only meant to prioritize a single order. If you want to queue multiple houses for construction, the best approach is still the standard method using Shift. 

You can use this command in multiple ways. For example, if you only need a small amount of food, stone or metal, you can use “Order one unit” so they deposit the resources and then immediately continue farming/mining. It doesn’t work quite as well with wood, since they might end up chopping a tree that’s far away from the dropsite.

It’s also useful if you have a production queue and want to prioritize a specific unit or technology.

45 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

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.

When you queue multiple houses using the traditional method (Shift + click), units won’t go and build any pending farm foundations until they finish their previously assigned tasks.

On the other hand, queueing the construction of many houses using Shift + click is not very efficient from a resource utilization standpoint. That said, there are situations where it doesn’t hurt of course, especially if you have plenty of spare wood.

IMHO the situation where a farm is left unbuilt and civilians go back to it after finishing all assigned houses/buildings is quite an edge case and easy to handle with a bit of practice. So I wouldn’t treat farms differently from other buildings in this regard.

 

45 minutes ago, DesertRose said:

But wouldn't that cause the workers to go to the old Field first before continuing with their queued tasks?

The trick is that this old farm is already occupied. So, the units that just finished building the first farm will try to go and gather there, but since it’s already taken, they’ll get reassigned to the new farm instead. Meanwhile, the remaining five, seeing that all farms are occupied, will move on to build the next one. 

This way, you avoid having all 10 civilians build both farms before starting to gather. You shouldn’t send them to gather from a distant occupied farm, but rather to the closest one relative to where they’re building to avoid them to walk a long distance for nothing. It works quite well for me. Give it a try.
Btw, I’m not saying this to defend the current behavior. It's just a small tip that might help you in the meantime. 

 

1 hour ago, DesertRose said:

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.

Ah, got it. I don’t have an opinion on it. It would be a significant change to the game’s dynamics tho. It might work well. I’m not sure. I do know there are some approaches in this direction in the @Emacz mod with the Serf units.
 

 

Sorry for the long reply. 

 

[Atrik]

52 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:

2 hours ago, DesertRose said:

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.

When you queue multiple houses using the traditional method (Shift + click), units won’t go and build any pending farm foundations until they finish their previously assigned tasks.

Civilians don't actually farm on fields unless building the farm was part of their order queue so I don't know what this discussion is about.  
They might build the unfinished field, but they won't farm it. They will look for another thing to build OR go idle.

[guerringuerrin]

@Atrik I think my repeated second quote from the second paragraph may have caused some confusion, but if I understood correctly, their response was referring to my suggestion of using “order one unit” when building a house with civilians who are already farming.

1 hour ago, guerringuerrin said:

2 hours ago, DesertRose said:

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.

Yes, it doesn’t work when using Shift. It’s only meant to prioritize a single order. If you want to queue multiple houses for construction, the best approach is still the standard method using Shift. 

 

35 minutes ago, Atrik said:

Civilians don't actually farm on fields unless building the farm was part of their order queue so I don't know what this discussion is about.  
They might build the unfinished field, but they won't farm it. They will look for another thing to build OR go idle.

You are right. I was wrong about this

[Thalatta]

Some time ago I posted 20 points with:

On 28/01/2026 at 6:02 PM, Thalatta said:

a few trivial things I noticed

Now I've compiled another 20 points of maybe not so trivial (or even controversial ) things, some that have been discussed around. Maybe the first two have already been discussed and decided, since I was surprised when I came across them:

21) Free repair seems too simplistic. Maybe for HP below 50% it should cost 50% of resources. That way, by not letting it go below 50% repairs would be free, and repairing an almost destroyed building would take around 25% of its total cost. Or something along those lines.

22) Same with fields giving infinite food. I’d give them a small food cost (the seeds), maybe wood cost (the tools), and the time it takes to sow again would seem important. They could be set on automatic sowing. I think their allowed superposition maybe should be removed (if there's no penalty for that already). I'm not sure if there are fertility considerations with terrain and weather already.

23) When ending an alert, everyone should return to what they were doing. My farmers end up chopping wood often.

24) Land workers should be able to fish near the coast, and hunting seems a bit too easy, prey barely escapes and predators are slow and weak. I would make the fauna a bit more dynamic in general.

25) Dead animals should slowly rot. Lately there was a post about this, and resource regeneration. It would be a nice addition, the same with growing trees or berries. Overexploitation or sustainability would then become part of the gameplay.

26) Units seem to go through each other, most noticeable with ships, which doesn't seem very nice.

27) Showing 2 charts in the Summary seems a bit arbitrary. Maybe one could choose how many rows and columns of charts to see (at most a couple of rows and 3 or 4 columns), including 1x1. Could choosing the time interval be implemented?

28) Regarding the charts, it seemed to me that an “at any time” option was missing when counting numbers of units, structures, etc. Then “population” would be redundant with “units” “at any time” and could be removed.

29) Maybe a complete interactive tech tree from where one can decide and perform research would be nice, one wouldn’t have to go through each and every building (maybe some are just into that).

30) Ships should have a button and indicator to dock or beach them so for sure troops would be able to (un)garrison (which should happen gradually, faster near a port, maybe only for certain big units).

31) Often threaded paths could show wear, creating roads that make movement a little bit faster. Paths on a field should make it less efficient.

32) Units reaching full experience when garrisoned cheapens experience. Training and battle experience should be quite different. Either there should be a cap for experience learned through garrisoning, or they could garrison only to learn proper complex formations (or abilities, if introduced at some point).

33) Battle mode: this has been asked and it’s a good idea for both SP and MP. There could be scenarios reproducing famous battles. Also, after setting resource values, players could make up an army spending them. Then each places their army, and goes to battle.

34) After winning, don’t keep repeating the short victory music over and over. Maybe some people want to continue playing to check some things, but the music gets too repetitive after a bit.

35) Portraits in the panel of multiple units of a single unit type should do much more. I double click them and nothing happens, the view should center on the selection (something I haven’t been able to do when having more than one unit selected). And why not, the icons could be expanded on a per unit portrait (don’t be afraid of sidebars), where their individual info could be displayed when hovering over them (a small HP bar would be helpful).

36) Siege units should be capturable, but one could only move them (no attack) until an arsenal is built for the first time. I still think that they, together with ships and buildings, should have an inbuilt base garrison acting both as capture resistance and turn around limiter.

37) As has been mentioned lately: night, day, seasons, weather and natural phenomena. Empire Earth had the later ones, but caused by the priests, which I didn’t like. They should be random events.

38) Stealth, for spying, ambushes, and to make use of the night. Important as possible abilities of certain units or possible scenarios like the Battle of Lake Trasimene.

39) Better to use interesting historical names, like "Kripteia" and "Agoge", instead of things like "Unlock Neodamodeis".

40) Better to use technologies actually developed at the time of the game (500 BC - 1 BC), instead of generic things that have existed for thousands of years.

Regarding the last 2 points, along with other things, I’ve been preparing a post about the Spartans.