Suggestions for 0 A.D.

[DarcReaver]

On 1/2/2019 at 11:49 PM, thankforpie said:

oh i didnt notice this thread, i have balancing some suggestions

Spoiler

 

1. OP CIV META

my sugestion would be nerfing gauls, britons and ptolemies - that will let players for more competetive play (and more fair play), players in multiplayer wont be forced to play these 3 civilizations if they want to win.

there are lot of civs that i like but the urge to pick OP civ is ultra big. above mentioned civilisations are too fast

I played many competetive games MOBA included and it is unavoidable to not have stronger and weaker civs/characters/champions but the gap between these 3 and rest is so big that most players started 'maining' celtics and ptolemies, to the point where at least half of each game on multiplayer are celtics and ptolemies (sometimes all players)

 

if these 3 civs were growing at same pace that other civilisations do, it would be great

 

2. RANGED UNIT META

Althrough point 2. and 3. arent as troublesome as point 1, I noticed ranged units are much stronger overall than melee units.

maybe with small dmg nerf people would start using melee units for something else than for human shields supposed to die instead of ranged units lol

 

3. SLINGER > ARCHER,JAVELIN

one could think if archers have biggest range then they are strongest,  or vice versa - javelins, because they have biggest dmg.

thats not the case. slingers can kill javelins before they come close.

 

Javelins have bigger dmg than slingers, but it doesnt do anything because slingers already have enough dmg to kill. why would you need more?

ranged units are often hitting same target, so if u have 60 ranged units together, theres HUGE chance they will atk same targets, and only 5 attacks would be enough to kill, but since it was the closest target, theres often situation where 60 of ranged units hit exactly same person instead of splitting their arrows for targets, therefore a lot of arrows are wasted.

thats case in fights javelin vs slinger (not with archers, they have low dmg),  javelin just die before they come close, and when they are close they also atk slower so the 'bigger dps' isnt really bigger, its much smaller

 

slingers somehow have perfect atk range and atk speed, so the supposedly bigger javelins damage isnt helping them at all, because they are slower and need to come closer, and they will die before that happens

 

 

 

 

 

 

my few thoughts

The game currently has no counter concept and no real tech progression concept, so this won't help in the slightest.
All you gain is that the spamming meta switches from one unit to another, or one civ to another. There won't be "true" balance like you're imagining it. 

As long as the design is not final every stats change has to be reverted every time a new design aspect is introduced or an existing design aspect is changed, because changing stats requires quite a lot of effort. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by DarcReaver

[LANDLORD]

My opinion for balance and changes:

Economic:

-I think that building repair should cost metal/stone/wood (or whatever it cost to build the building). Rebuilding for free is a bit too easy and it doesn't make sense from an economic perspective either- it always costs resources to rebuild anything in the real world. If a temple is damaged by 50% and you want to repair it (and it costs 300 wood to build the temple), it should cost 150 wood to fully repair it (obviously on a sliding scale).

-Some civs have a big hindrance in terms of some of the resources it costs to build their buildings. Iberian Fortresses and barracks costing so much stone is tough to overcome at times. 

Game Units/balance:

-I think that melee calvary should be much stronger vs. infantry (that are not pikemen). In the real world, calvary was very strong vs. archer formations. I would like to see a bit more balance in terms of melee calvary doing damage vs. non pikemen infantry units (this may cause some balance issues early on with some melee calvary rushes, but most civs are able to build pikemen or spearmen at the start). 

-Archers should be buffed a little bit. Their range is great, but their attack is very weak. I understand you need to have the tradeoff as well- higher range SHOULD equal lower damage (and vice versa, low range = high damage). But archer civs are still very weak.

-Some siege options for some civs are very poor. Elephants for Mauryans die very fast and are very vulnerable. I think that buffing elephants to make them somewhat equal to rams would be good. And if not, then at least increase the attack they have vs. regular units (maybe with some splash damage). Elephants need a buff. 

-Overall civilization balance- I would like it if there are some different buffs for some civs. There's a reason why you never see some civs being used in multiplayer games. Nerfing the celtic civs is a good start. Either scrap some of the other civs that nobody plays (Carthage) or buff them IMO. 

[amanita]

Im thinking about "health wavering" - Imagine the health of all units wavered randomly a bit. Each units health would always be getting a little better or worse by an amount randomly updated every few ~days. So when you retreat damaged troupes, a few would die as they go, some would recovering a bit on the way to a temple or barracks. Even without battles, after a time some units could be in poor health and need restored, just by bad luck with the random twists. Perhaps block the health going down if the unit is inactive as they can rest a bit, this would slightly soften the error of leaving units inactive. General wavering health would increase the benefit of temples and breaks and it could make the individual units seem a bit more complex. New units could arrive at 80% health to give them room to go either way.

[thankforpie]

On 1/9/2019 at 6:59 PM, LANDLORD said:

My opinion for balance and changes:

-Some civs have a big hindrance in terms of some of the resources it costs to build their buildings. Iberian Fortresses and barracks costing so much stone is tough to overcome at times. 

 

-I think that melee calvary should be much stronger vs. infantry (that are not pikemen). In the real world, calvary was very strong vs. archer formations. I would like to see a bit more balance in terms of melee calvary doing damage vs. non pikemen infantry units (this may cause some balance issues early on with some melee calvary rushes, but most civs are able to build pikemen or spearmen at the start). 

 

-Archers should be buffed a little bit. Their range is great, but their attack is very weak. I understand you need to have the tradeoff as well- higher range SHOULD equal lower damage (and vice versa, low range = high damage). But archer civs are still very weak.

 

Elephants for Mauryans die very fast and are very vulnerable. I think that buffing elephants to make them somewhat equal to rams would be good

 

-Overall civilization balance- I would like it if there are some different buffs for some civs. There's a reason why you never see some civs being used in multiplayer games. Nerfing the celtic civs is a good start. Either scrap some of the other civs that nobody plays (Carthage) or buff them IMO. 

1. agreed, before u make all important buildings as persia (but not only) u will die from celtic civ spam. most civs need stone to spam barracks (the more barracks the easier to win) that is expensive considering u also need stone for slingers/fortress,p3 advance,etc

2. sword cav is really strong (you probably wont see it because they can get one-shot from grouped slinger/javelin attack, but they are strong, and most units will get oneshot from such attack anyway).

spear cav is weak, as they attack once per 2 seconds. they are not legit dmg option as there are better choices(javelins and slingers) and they are also not good tank as spearmen and pikemen cost less and have better defence (at least pikemen). they also barely can destroy enemy siege (but sword cav can) so theres little use to spear cav in game (other than early rush or some later women killing)

3. afaik archers miss majority of shots (that are quite weak even if they hit) on their max range so yeah quite unfair

imo archer civs could at least have skirmishers (if thats not wrong with history), as skirmishers can win a fight vs slingers (sometimes) and can kill melee units

4. totally agreed on elephants, they die like mooths. destroying a cc/fortress or something that has a lot of hp, armor and shoots arrows as elephants most of the time will either completely kill your elephants or badly hurt them (lets not forget they also almost get oneshot from slinger/javelin attack but rams dont, at all) rams take long time to kill even as 50 slingers or more. i most of the time skip destroying enemy fortress as elephant civ due to the cost, but it is not good to skip it.

some civs have combo elephants + catas, but catas are bugged at the moment and will often refuse to listen to your orders(and need to be protected)

5. yes, currently most played civs are gauls and brits, then ptolemies and romes on second place (something like that, not exact stats). i believe its because you can reach high pop and fortress/rams about 2 min earlier as gauls.brits than on normal civs. also their barracks cost only wood which isnt that limited and is chopped faster than stone is mined for example, so they can get to 4-7 barracks without issue and without postponing building fortress

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

Hmm, I am a noob and all but I thought about melee infantry only being able to walk up to enemies to kill them, even at similar speed to ranged infantry. From my experience some melee units seem to have difficulty chasing down lone rams, which seems weird. I think infantry should  be able to break into a run when attacking units within a certain distance. This would mean you would need to protect your ranged infantry from melee units and rams could be more easily stopped. I think the run speed for infantry should be their current run speed unless it needs balancing. I think this could help make archers more effective since their range would allow them to stay behind melee infantry and still shoot units. If this is dumb please don't lambast me, but do let me know what you think.

I posted this on some other balance related forum but I then realized it was very old.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

On 1/9/2019 at 9:59 AM, LANDLORD said:

My opinion for balance and changes:

Economic:

-I think that building repair should cost metal/stone/wood (or whatever it cost to build the building). Rebuilding for free is a bit too easy and it doesn't make sense from an economic perspective either- it always costs resources to rebuild anything in the real world. If a temple is damaged by 50% and you want to repair it (and it costs 300 wood to build the temple), it should cost 150 wood to fully repair it (obviously on a sliding scale).

-Some civs have a big hindrance in terms of some of the resources it costs to build their buildings. Iberian Fortresses and barracks costing so much stone is tough to overcome at times. 

Game Units/balance:

-I think that melee calvary should be much stronger vs. infantry (that are not pikemen). In the real world, calvary was very strong vs. archer formations. I would like to see a bit more balance in terms of melee calvary doing damage vs. non pikemen infantry units (this may cause some balance issues early on with some melee calvary rushes, but most civs are able to build pikemen or spearmen at the start). 

-Archers should be buffed a little bit. Their range is great, but their attack is very weak. I understand you need to have the tradeoff as well- higher range SHOULD equal lower damage (and vice versa, low range = high damage). But archer civs are still very weak.

-Some siege options for some civs are very poor. Elephants for Mauryans die very fast and are very vulnerable. I think that buffing elephants to make them somewhat equal to rams would be good. And if not, then at least increase the attack they have vs. regular units (maybe with some splash damage). Elephants need a buff. 

-Overall civilization balance- I would like it if there are some different buffs for some civs. There's a reason why you never see some civs being used in multiplayer games. Nerfing the celtic civs is a good start. Either scrap some of the other civs that nobody plays (Carthage) or buff them IMO. 

There is the opportunity cost of workers' labor... could be mining shooting whatever. However I think adding a repair cost might also be good.

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

On 1/2/2019 at 2:49 PM, thankforpie said:

oh i didnt notice this thread, i have balancing some suggestions

1. OP CIV META

my sugestion would be nerfing gauls, britons and ptolemies - that will let players for more competetive play (and more fair play), players in multiplayer wont be forced to play these 3 civilizations if they want to win.

there are lot of civs that i like but the urge to pick OP civ is ultra big. above mentioned civilisations are too fast

I played many competetive games MOBA included and it is unavoidable to not have stronger and weaker civs/characters/champions but the gap between these 3 and rest is so big that most players started 'maining' celtics and ptolemies, to the point where at least half of each game on multiplayer are celtics and ptolemies (sometimes all players)

 

if these 3 civs were growing at same pace that other civilisations do, it would be great

 

2. RANGED UNIT META

Althrough point 2. and 3. arent as troublesome as point 1, I noticed ranged units are much stronger overall than melee units.

maybe with small dmg nerf people would start using melee units for something else than for human shields supposed to die instead of ranged units lol

 

3. SLINGER > ARCHER,JAVELIN

one could think if archers have biggest range then they are strongest,  or vice versa - javelins, because they have biggest dmg.

thats not the case. slingers can kill javelins before they come close.

 

Javelins have bigger dmg than slingers, but it doesnt do anything because slingers already have enough dmg to kill. why would you need more?

ranged units are often hitting same target, so if u have 60 ranged units together, theres HUGE chance they will atk same targets, and only 5 attacks would be enough to kill, but since it was the closest target, theres often situation where 60 of ranged units hit exactly same person instead of splitting their arrows for targets, therefore a lot of arrows are wasted.

thats case in fights javelin vs slinger (not with archers, they have low dmg),  javelin just die before they come close, and when they are close they also atk slower so the 'bigger dps' isnt really bigger, its much smaller

 

slingers somehow have perfect atk range and atk speed, so the supposedly bigger javelins damage isnt helping them at all, because they are slower and need to come closer, and they will die before that happens

 

 

 

 

my few thoughts

For the 60 slings to 1 enemy issue there could be a volley mode set as a working formation. The sum of all the damage from all the archers or slingers shooting at once could be cut by a ratio and then randomly distributed to a formation that is attacked. It might be possible to create an algorithm that estimates the population density of the formation being attacked by archers and then uses that to assign a ratio for how many arrows hit. Parts of the attacked formation that lie outside the range of the center of the archer group that is attacking should not be factored into the area of the formation or the number in the formation. That way the damage done from the formation of archers is naturally varied between the formation under fire and the range of the archers is not violated. Also a really cool trajectory animation for arrows could be made. ;D. This might also be a good way to give archers something that slingers and skirmishers don't.

I have no experience developing anything, but this does seem rather difficult to do. Yikes.

I was frankly just wondering if you guys thought this would be cool or even a good gameplay addition.

[Dakara]

Je suis contre un coût pour les réparations.

 

--

I am against the cost of repairs
Don't just copy other games
Repair = idle troops so no economy

Edited May 28, 2020 by Dakara

[coworotel]

One suggestion:

Right now I see we have a good number of nice mods, and they were downloaded many times, but it is still very hard to find people for a multiplayer match using mods. Anytime you look, there is at most 1 game using mod (I mean a major gameplay mod). It would be interesting if there was some way to:

• see which mod the players in the lobby were using;
• filter games by mod.

[Grigoris]

On 1/22/2019 at 6:21 PM, coworotel said:

One suggestion:

Right now I see we have a good number of nice mods, and they were downloaded many times, but it is still very hard to find people for a multiplayer match using mods. Anytime you look, there is at most 1 game using mod (I mean a major gameplay mod). It would be interesting if there was some way to:

• see which mod the players in the lobby were using;
• filter games by mod.

When you try to join a game with mod, if you don't have the mod activated, then it fails and shows you in a new window, which mod or 0AD version is used.

[Nescio]

A few suggestions:

• enable workshops for all factions (D1761)
• enable cavalry stables for all factions
• enable elephant stables for all relevant factions
• disable “hellenic royal stoa”
• create a palace structure for mace, ptol, and sele (maur and pers already have one)
• make the fortress a purely defensive structure, unable to research or train anything
• give fortresses a territory root (D1762)
• move city walls to city phase

[coworotel]

Kind of a random suggestion: make the corpses a bit "faded" in color, so it will be easier to identify live troops when they are fighting in a field full of dead bodies.

[Ulfilas]

Archer and ranged Unit Balancing idea:

 

When a unit is adjacent to an intact tree, increase its armor rating versus ranged damage.

 

In this way, a band of archers could be attacked from a forest

Edited February 8, 2019 by Ulfilas

[cloud9]

On 2/4/2019 at 12:44 AM, coworotel said:

Kind of a random suggestion: make the corpses a bit "faded" in color, so it will be easier to identify live troops when they are fighting in a field full of dead bodies.

If any mod wants to do that, add:

cmpCorpseVisual.SetShadingColor(r, g, b, a); // ignore a, that is useless in the sense that it wont work

below Health.js L308.

[mysticjim]

Hello all

Loving 0AD, am not nearly clever or technical enough to suggest anything in the physical gameplay to be improved that probably hasn't been already suggested and debated here, but I have some suggestions regarding the experience the player gets at the end of a game. I'm talking about the game statistics.

Stats are a bit boring, compared to the action in the game, but they effectively are the story expressed in numbers of what went down and when, displayed in summary form. 0AD does provide multiple pages of stats on the players performances, and when I first began playing (and getting horribly slaughtered time after time) - the stats were a really good visual indicator about what I may have been doing wrong. To be honest, they still are - I've improved a bit, but I'm still blatantly a complete novice, but stats have given me the insight into what I need to focus on and what my opponent did better than me to give them such a decisive advantage (or on the rare occasions when the stars align and I actually manage to scrape an unlikely victory, how the hell I managed it!)

While I appreciate the current multitude of stats - I feel there are a few glaring omissions in terms of giving me the full picture. Here is a list of all the ones I feel would be most useful/nice to have;

1) Population Count

So currently we have the unit stats which show basically the rates at which the players churned out their population units throughout the timeline of the game. This is handy for seeing just how rapidly my opponent out-produced me, which is super useful (but sometimes makes painful viewing for me!) But I'd really love to the players actual overall population mapped across the timeline. Unlike the unit production stats, this would show the rises, stagnation and falls in population at any given time. I could see how effective attacks were, and where the eventual victor got a critical mass of population over the opponent - or how well or badly they responded to a devastating attack in terms of their efforts at rebuilding. I think it would provide useful data to study, learn from and apply in future games. At the moment if I want to know this I have to watch the replay and keep contrasting the players populations. This is interesting, and I probably would still do this anyway, but I'd love to have easier access to this statistic. I feel this would be useful in gauging how productive my attacks and defences were in a game, and probably highlight a number of times when I should have pressed on with an attack because I was closer than I thought to achieving an unassailable position, or when I didn't attack or defend with sufficient forces and took a costly hiding! 

I imagine this would probably be the easiest stat to implement into the game as it's just a running total for each player. I've love to have this at my disposal and be able to chart population count alongside the existing stats for unit production and loses/kills. 

This could probably be expanded to include similar stats for resource count and number and type of buildings. I'd bet there is no warmer feeling inside when you look back at a game and realise that the simple strategic capturing/destruction of your opponents poorly positioned and defended farm led them to running low of food and really screwed them over at a critical point in the game!

 

2) More In Depth Breakdown of Units

Despite all the colourful array of the individual units a player can produce, the stats break it down by workers, infantry, cavalry and so forth. This really only gives part of the picture. I'd love to see the breakdown of how many swordsmen, pike/spearmen, slingers, archers, etc, or the split between ranged and sword cavalry that got produced in a game. And what about women? I know I can calculate the split of workers against the feminisation percentage, but seriously, who the hell wants to do that for fun!  

Appreciate that this might be a bit more tricky - I'm assuming that the would require a bit more tagging of the data for the individual units, so coding that into the game might be a hell of a lot of effort just to produce a slightly more in depth page of stats - I concede that perhaps the time would be better spent working on the physical dynamics of the gameplay, but it would be great! 

3) Kill Stats

I suspect this is another thing that would be seen as fanciful, time consuming folly, but I'd also love to get better visual representation of how effective units are at killing the enemy. At the moment I can see how many of a class of unit I've produced - in the broader terms I discussed in the previous point, and I can see the corresponding numbers for the opponent contrasted - i.e. I know how many infantry I produced, how many were killed and how many of the equivalent type of enemy unit were killed, but these stats aren't a true picture. Even though, say I produced 80 cavalry units, and killed 70 of the opponents, those kills will almost certainly not all have been attributed to my cavalry, my infantry probably did most of that, or my heavily weaponised towers, etc. 

Owing to the sheer number of units, the gradual decrease of health of units due to multiple skimishes with different emeny units, etc, I appreciate that it's pretty much impossible to attribute an individual units death to any one exact factor, so honestly I have no idea how this might be done, but I'd really like some kind of measure as to how effective a type of unit actually was in a game, especially in terms of analysing the strengths and weaknesses of different civilizations and understanding the strategies of a really good opponent in terms of why they were able to slaughter me so darn effectively! 

 

I think that will probably do for now, I suspect I could go on, but I seriously doubt that many other people get that excited about statistics!!!!! And of course, stats can be just as divisive as they are revealing - but for me at least, as someone who is always looking for little secrets and insights to becoming a better player, I always appreciate more of them! 

 

[Sundiata]

31 minutes ago, mysticjim said:

Hello all

I love all of that!

Especially number 1 has always seemed like a no-brainer to me.

Having small icons of crossed swords to indicate battle-events where more than 100 units died over x amount of minutes could also be a nice extra.

[mysticjim]

18 hours ago, Sundiata said:

Having small icons of crossed swords to indicate battle-events where more than 100 units died over x amount of minutes could also be a nice extra.

Wow, that is an awesome suggestion!  

[Alexandermb]

Some suggestions:

Add special investigations to some factions as a replace of the "base" technologies.

For example i have an enciclopedia (does it means the same in english?) wich takes some of the most notorious researchs from the history. Julius Cesar reforming the calendar, An egiptian guy who's name i forgot calculating the circunference of the planet with only an obelisk, a water well and the shadow of the sun, Philip II introducing Sarisa (Long 6Meter spear) who beated the hoplites to blacksmiths or aura.

Make proper icons and add 20% of the technology benefits related to the history behind it, also add the researcher and the history to the information for better educational purposes.

Rework the LOS:

Divide the LOS in two factors:
Long range sight: Use for spot buildings from afar as well as forest's and inanimated objects
Short range sight: use for spot nearby units, fauna and moving objects.
Add an aura or an function to trees and tall bushes to hide whatever is behind or nearby or reduce the chance of "being seen" (perfect for ambushes)

Add auras to the trees to reduce cavalry speed, or to one particular tree of every forest kind, this way one army can go throught forests to escape from cavalry charge.
 

[Diatryma]

1 hour ago, Alexandermb said:

An egiptian guy who's name i forgot calculating the circunference of the planet with only an obelisk, a water well and the shadow of the su

Eratosthenes.from Cyrene.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes

[coworotel]

3 hours ago, Alexandermb said:

Add auras to the trees to reduce cavalry speed, or to one particular tree of every forest kind, this way one army can go throught forests to escape from cavalry charge.

An easier and cheaper way would be to make cavalry slower when they are turning.

[Azura717]

This game is amazing, I've been looking for something like this for awhile now. I love city builder RTS games and I've been looking for a game that has anything to do with Egypt and this fits me perfectly. I do want to know though if you'll be expanding on the building aspect of it? like Id really like to fill my kingdom with different structures or statues and pyramids, obelisks, even adding roads would be awesome, because right now it kinda feels empty with just the same few structures

[Diatryma]

On 3/17/2019 at 1:49 AM, Azura717 said:

This game is amazing, I've been looking for something like this for awhile now. I love city builder RTS games and I've been looking for a game that has anything to do with Egypt and this fits me perfectly. I do want to know though if you'll be expanding on the building aspect of it? like Id really like to fill my kingdom with different structures or statues and pyramids, obelisks, even adding roads would be awesome, because right now it kinda feels empty with just the same few structures

try Aristeia is almost abandoned but have some buildings.

[Diptangshu]

 There are few problem that I want to discuss:- 

1.    We knew that Darius, Alexander or Romans all were successful because of their superior infantry. But, in 0ad gameplay we can constantly observe that skirmishers and slingers are the determining force rather than infantry. If someone make 30 skirmishers and employs them to kill 30 spearmen or swordsmen then he/she will loss only a few troops whereas the infantry side may lose all of his/her troops. But in reality it won't happens. I think the main problem of ranged unit lies in the idea of unlimited ammunition. A skirmishers can throw javelins constantly. But he needs to refill his supply after sometimes. But it won't happens. Maybe a 3 seconds gap would be sufficient for refilling. I think it can be solved by limiting the number of projectiles for skirmishers, slingers and archers according to their damage.

2.    Secondly, a pikeman and skirmishers working speed is same but not their walking speeds which has a large impact on economy. We know that pikemen are slow unit in warfare but when it comes to working he is equally capable of working as fast as a skirmisher. So, I would prefer a common walking speed during doing some job for both of them. Maybe there would be some arming time(i.e. 2-3 seconds). During that time he would have a reduced armour, health and attack. As we know no one carries weapon during working.

3.    Thirdly it was widely discussed topic, whether ram needs man power to move or not. I think it needs. Maybe a ram should costs 2 population. But it needs additional 3 men to move it on. On the other hand elephant have a crush damage but it won't applicable for fortress. But a herd of elephants can destroy it. So, I think a elephant would cost 5 population and it have a health of 750. But on the other hand a ram should be only a siege rather attacking units and can be captured.

    That's all.

[Ozerol Notna]

Excuse me, i'm having difficulty understanding the armor. As in which version of damage and armor is used. I haven't played in a while so I must ask, is there three types of damage and three types of armor, or is there only one damage and one armor that reduced said damage? If its the latter, how does that work for gameplay?

[anonimitazo]

On 4/14/2019 at 4:35 PM, Diptangshu said:

 There are few problem that I want to discuss:- 

1.    We knew that Darius, Alexander or Romans all were successful because of their superior infantry. But, in 0ad gameplay we can constantly observe that skirmishers and slingers are the determining force rather than infantry. If someone make 30 skirmishers and employs them to kill 30 spearmen or swordsmen then he/she will loss only a few troops whereas the infantry side may lose all of his/her troops. But in reality it won't happens. I think the main problem of ranged unit lies in the idea of unlimited ammunition. A skirmishers can throw javelins constantly. But he needs to refill his supply after sometimes. But it won't happens. Maybe a 3 seconds gap would be sufficient for refilling. I think it can be solved by limiting the number of projectiles for skirmishers, slingers and archers according to their damage.

2.    Secondly, a pikeman and skirmishers working speed is same but not their walking speeds which has a large impact on economy. We know that pikemen are slow unit in warfare but when it comes to working he is equally capable of working as fast as a skirmisher. So, I would prefer a common walking speed during doing some job for both of them. Maybe there would be some arming time(i.e. 2-3 seconds). During that time he would have a reduced armour, health and attack. As we know no one carries weapon during working.

3.    Thirdly it was widely discussed topic, whether ram needs man power to move or not. I think it needs. Maybe a ram should costs 2 population. But it needs additional 3 men to move it on. On the other hand elephant have a crush damage but it won't applicable for fortress. But a herd of elephants can destroy it. So, I think a elephant would cost 5 population and it have a health of 750. But on the other hand a ram should be only a siege rather attacking units and can be captured.

    That's all.

I like your second point, but about the first i have a different idea. I think the problem lies in ranged units having no counter, which makes them easily stackable and cheap. What I mean by this is, cavalry would be the natural counter to ranged units (and pretty much any infantry except pikes and a prolonged fight outside charging), the problem I see is, cavalry costs normally 100 food while infantry only 50 plus cavalry can only hunt, leaving their use mainly for early attacks and gathering food really fast at the early stages. I think some kind of reduction to their cost (like, an upgrade that diminish their cost at a particular stage of the game or a building that lets you farm horses) would make them a potential threat, making a balanced army the best option. Also, there should be an option to dismount them and collect other resources like normal male citizens. The second thought i have about ranged units in 0 ad is, that slingers should be a counter to skirmishers by their superior range and skirmishers not being heavily armored but what normally happens is that slingers start shooting a little early but when skirmishers arrive they deal massive damage. And archers are even worse, more range means little in an open field fight.

Edited May 28, 2019 by anonimitazo