why alpha 24 is not nice ?

[Genava55]

1 minute ago, Nescio said:

Each civic centre already gives 20 population. Sure, one could give e.g. a further +5. Or just give Britons an extra house at game start. Or merge the farmstead and house for them. Or something else

Each option is fine for me.

[borg-]

15 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Each civic centre already gives 20 population. Sure, one could give e.g. a further +5. Or just give Britons an extra house at game start. Or merge the farmstead and house for them. Or something else .

Extra house would be a useless bonus in nomad games for example, i prefer the center bonus.

[chrstgtr]

 

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Everything else? 

It's obviously an overstatement. I laid out a lot of the changes I would like to see implemented. Below is a incomplete list I would like changed back.

1. Shorten unit production time
2. Increase unit speed
3. change stone upgrade costs to include food instead of wood 
4. reintroduce phasing HP bonus (not in original post but this would help units not die under buildings so fast)
5. reintroduce civ differences
   1. don't give every civ siege factory
   2. give celts building pop bonuses
   3. give ptol free houses
   4. and probably many other change that I haven't realized yet
6. give outposts more vision

 

16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

I think units are slower to rotate to prevent dancing.

Some of it is also probably units being default in formations. So old units that used to be fasted like skirms are now beings slowed by being grouped spears. Undoing this manually is very micro-intensive. Can we not make 180 rotations slower than small turns? Can we not make minimum unit movements (even if this is done just for heros, which is where dancing is 95% of the problem) to make dancing in place less effective?

 

5 minutes ago, Nescio said:

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

The game moves much, much slower. Part of this is because unit production is way slower. Part of this is because units actually move slower. I do not see the need for either of these and both make gameplay considerably longer. 

As for unit production, some training times have been tweaked, yes, but not everything is slower; e.g. citizen cavalry went from 15 s to 16 s, but champion cavalry from 30 s to 27 s, reducing the gap between citizens and champions a bit, to make champions a more viable option.

The most common units (which were also the units most quickly produced) all had their unit times greatly increased. For example, women went from 8-->9, citizen solider inf went from 10-->12, citizen cav went from 15-->16. Those are large differences. 

11 minutes ago, Nescio said:

As for unit movement, cavalry has been slowed down a bit, but not everything moves slower; the base speed remains the same (9), traders and female workers are unchanged, rams are a bit slower (8.1→7.2), but infantry spearmen (8.1→9) and pikemen (7.2→8.1) are a bit faster.

 

I agree champs needed to get produced way quicker. This is a good change and has made champs a more viable strategy in a24. 

12 minutes ago, Nescio said:

As for unit movement, cavalry has been slowed down a bit, but not everything moves slower; the base speed remains the same (9), traders and female workers are unchanged, rams are a bit slower (8.1→7.2), but infantry spearmen (8.1→9) and pikemen (7.2→8.1) are a bit faster.

 

Again, I suspect a lot of the slow down is actually attributable to formations being the default. 

 

13 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Nevertheless, the game certainly does feel slower. I suspect it's primarily because unit rotation rates have been changed to discourage “dancing”; see D2837 for more details; D3274 softened it a bit.

1 hour ago, Genava55 said:

I've played a few games. Quick team games (ones where one team dominated and won on the first push without any retreat) went from gg at about min 18/19 to gg at about min 25-28. Some other games that were never really close but people turtled lasted much longer than 25 mins. That's a massive increase.

I suspect this is more likely the result of slower unit production times. Also techs are harder to get now, which slows down the game a lot. And because turtling is a much strong strategy now, which makes a ton of siege required in basically every tg. 

[Silier]

2 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Again, I suspect a lot of the slow down is actually attributable to formations being the default

so disable it

[chrstgtr]

2 minutes ago, borg- said:

Extra house would be a useless bonus in nomad games for example, i prefer the center bonus.

The original reply was in response to how we can make civs more differentiated (again). The one of most obvious ways is to give celts back their building pop bonuses. You can layer onto that extra pop from CCs, but that doesn't change the fact that the original a24 problem (a lack of civ differentiation) remains.

Just now, Angen said:

so disable it

can you disable it as default? If not, that is very micro intensive for every single unit that is made. 

[Silier]

1 minute ago, chrstgtr said:

can you disable it as default? If not, that is very micro intensive for every single unit that is made. 

right click at null formation 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

This is an alpha release (after 2 years), not a monthly gameplay patch for a Gold-released AAA game. Expect large changes.

[chrstgtr]

1 minute ago, Angen said:

right click at null formation 

But that has to be redone for every unit? That is very micro intensive when you are producing at least 400-500 per game and doing other actions in game

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Just now, chrstgtr said:

But that has to be redone for every unit? That is very micro intensive when you are producing at least 400-500 per game and doing other actions in game

No, it doesn't have to be done with every unit. Just try it.

[borg-]

9 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

 

It's obviously an overstatement. I laid out a lot of the changes I would like to see implemented. Below is a incomplete list I would like changed back.

1. Shorten unit production time
2. Increase unit speed
3. change stone upgrade costs to include food instead of wood 
4. reintroduce phasing HP bonus (not in original post but this would help units not die under buildings so fast)
5. reintroduce civ differences
   1. don't give every civ siege factory
   2. give celts building pop bonuses
   3. give ptol free houses
   4. and probably many other change that I haven't realized yet
6. give outposts more vision

Understand that balancing is not as simple as it looks. Having hp bonuses again after passing the phase increases the amount of health of the units in late game, making champions op. If the problem is defense construction, then we will change defense construction.

Bonus ptol is better now, you want free cuz more difference?

Outpost i agree.

[chrstgtr]

Just now, borg- said:

Understand that balancing is not as simple as it looks. Having hp bonuses again after passing the phase increases the amount of health of the units in late game, making champions op.  If the problem is defense construction, then we will change defense construction.

HP bonuses don't have to impact champs. We should be able to exclude those. Or just adjust their HP lower so it doesn't have as large of an impact. For example, most (all now?) champs are only available in p3. So a HP bonus from p1-->p2-->p3 shouldn't impact a p3 unit's HP.

Regardless, this was only one suggestion. I also like the idea of changing defensive constructions to be less op.  I still like giving phasing HP bonus, but it isn't super necessary. 

Overall, I like the balance changes. Based on what I currently know, I wouldn't change much in terms of unit stats. 

4 minutes ago, borg- said:

Bonus ptol is better now, you want free cuz more difference?

 

Yes. Ptol bonus is still nice, now. Just less significant of a difference than before. 

And free houses with ptol is just one example of how I think civs should be modified to be more different. Other possible reversions would be something like

1. giving celt their building pop bonuses
2. giving siege factories only to mace
3. keeping worker else for mauraya (and maybe giving it building abilities back)
4. I like walls/towers for iber
5. I like cav health bonus for persia/sele (so I would take this away from other civs)
6. I like kush pyramid bonuses
7. I like rome camps and would give it siege again to make the difference more pronounced
8. I liked skirati exp. bonuses for sparta and I think this was nerfed too much 
9. Carth and athens could use better differentiators imo
   1. carth champs from temples might be a fine strat with champs being a more viable strategy. I haven't tested this
   2. athens basically is no longer unique in any way?

[Nescio]

46 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

I still like giving phasing HP bonus, but it isn't super necessary. 

One of the reasons for that removal is to make player choices more important. Having technologies everyone would research anyway also increase other things for free is not particularly meaningful. In my opinion technologies should be simple, small, and straightforward, leaving it up to the player to decide what to prioritize.

38 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

keeping worker else for mauraya

I'm not sure what you mean.

41 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

I like cav health bonus for persia/sele (so I would take this away from other civs)

Persians and Seleucids still have a city-phase Nisean Horses technology, which works on top of the generic cavalry health technology that's available to all civilizations (it was added as a partial compensation for the removal of health from the city phase).

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

I like rome camps and would give it siege again to make the difference more pronounced

Siege engines were removed from them at the explicit request of someone who pointed out they were only slightly more expensive than arsenals but much more effective.

Perhaps rams only could be readded to the army camp, I don't know how that will affect balance, it needs testing, as do other things.

33 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

athens basically is no longer unique in any way?

They still have +10% metal gather rate per phase advance (i.e. +21% in city phase), the possibility to train troops in triremes, and the quite interesting Long Walls technology.

[Nescio]

Basically, there is a reason for every change, otherwise it wouldn't have been committed.

What conversations such as this show is the need for more people to frequently play-test the development version and give feedback before a new stable version is released.

Feedback afterwards is certainly welcome too, however, keep in mind the next version is months away and will also include (many) other changes.

[chrstgtr]

2 minutes ago, Nescio said:

One of the reasons for that removal is to make player choices more important. Having technologies everyone would research anyway also increase other things for free is not particularly meaningful. In my opinion technologies should be simple, small, and straightforward, leaving it up to the player to decide what to prioritize.

But it does give a choice on how to prioritize. These are real benefits--same as researching military techs. And these provide a benefit to a player who pritiozied phasing earlier than a player who prefered to build pop. 

5 minutes ago, Nescio said:

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

keeping worker else for mauraya

I'm not sure what you mean

My error. I meant give it building abilities. 

 

5 minutes ago, Nescio said:

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

I like cav health bonus for persia/sele (so I would take this away from other civs)

Persians and Seleucids still have a city-phase Nisean Horses technology, which works on top of the generic cavalry health technology that's available to all civilizations (it was added as a partial compensation for the removal of health from the city phase).

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

This is my point, it is available to all civs now. This makes sele and persia less "special". There needs to be more civ differentiation--like it was before. 

7 minutes ago, Nescio said:

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

I like rome camps and would give it siege again to make the difference more pronounced

Siege engines were removed from them at the explicit request of someone who pointed out they were only slightly more expensive than arsenals but much more effective.

Perhaps rams only could be readded to the army camp, I don't know how that will affect balance, it needs testing, as do other things.

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

This is a balancing question. Again, I like the way this differentiates civs and makes rome "special"

 

7 minutes ago, Nescio said:

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

athens basically is no longer unique in any way?

They still have +10% metal gather rate per phase advance (i.e. +21% in city phase), the possibility to train troops in triremes, and the quite interesting Long Walls technology.

Metal gather rates, especially at that low of a level aren't particularly "special" when compared to something like being able to build a camp in an enemy's base (rome), getting building pop bonus (old celts), getting free buildings (old ptol, still cheaper buildings now), getting to collect res anywhere on a map (mauraya), getting to spam siege early (mace), etc. 

Naval maps are disfavored by most players, so naval abilities aren't very relevant. 

Good players don't use walls. Besides, as I have stated at several points elsewhere, the game benefits turtles too much.  

[chrstgtr]

9 minutes ago, Nescio said:

Basically, there is a reason for every change, otherwise it wouldn't have been committed.

What conversations such as this show is the need for more people to frequently play-test the development version and give feedback before a new stable version is released.

Feedback afterwards is certainly welcome too, however, keep in mind the next version is months away and will also include (many) other changes.

Not to be petty, but I and several other of the top players commented quite a bit on a thread or spoke to devs in the lobby about it. One player and some of the devs, none of which I have ever seen play the game, thought the idea should be implemented. All the other players thought it was a very bad idea. Nonetheless, the revision was implemented. As a result, I decided not to bother commenting on other revisions since my opinion (and the opinion of several other top players) clearly didn't matter. I spoke to other players who commented and several others expressed similar feelings. 

What you propose is great. But a near consensus shouldn't be ignored lest you invite commentators to become disillusioned and withdraw from the process

[Silier]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Good players don't use walls. Besides, as I have stated at several points elsewhere, the game benefits turtles too much.

This does not make sense to me. If tutrling is so good why would not good player use walls?

[Silier]

2 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

•  
• I like rome camps and would give it siege again to make the difference more pronounced

and there will be complains for Roman's being op because they have siege workshop and camps to produce rams which most players don't know how to counter? 

[Nescio]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

This is my point, it is available to all civs now. This makes sele and persia less "special".

The Nisean horses technology (city phase) is still available to pers and sele only.

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

There needs to be more civ differentiation

Yes, I agree; as I wrote in this thread only yesterday:

22 hours ago, Nescio said:

Yes. Civilizations were already very similar in A23 and earlier releases and have become even more similar in A24. This is unfortunate, I don't like it much either. The reason it happened is because it's more important to get the basics right and having a balanced core gameplay, from which to further differentiation later.

 

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Not to be petty, but I and several other of the top players commented quite a bit on a thread or spoke to devs in the lobby about it. One player and some of the devs, none of which I have ever seen play the game, thought the idea should be implemented. All the other players thought it was a very bad idea. Nonetheless, the revision was implemented. As a result, I decided not to bother commenting on other revisions since my opinion (and the opinion of several other top players) clearly didn't matter. I spoke to other players who commented and several others expressed similar feelings. 

What you propose is great. But a near consensus shouldn't be ignored lest you invite commentators to become disillusioned and withdraw from the process

I'm sorry your experience has been an unhappy one. We're all human in an imperfect world.

Gameplay and balance are discussed in numerous threads on these forums, as well as in private conversations and via other channels. It's impossible for anyone to keep track of everything. Moreover, making changes is a slow process, it's not unusual for a patch to be committed (or abandoned) months or even years after it's proposed, which means that even if some comment was read and replied to in the past, it may have been forgotten by the time a final decision is made. Therefore it's really important to keep the discussion unified in a single place: the relevant patch on https://code.wildfiregames.com/ , because it's there the actual development happens and commits are made.

In case you're referring to https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2507 : you left one comment there and disappeared. Others continued the conversation, on-and-off, the patch was revised six more times, and in the end several people agreed it should be given a try; it was left open for a couple more months and finally committed in December. If it turns out to have a horrible impact, then it can be reverted in A25, of course, though so far I haven't seen people complaining about palisades in A24.

Edited February 25, 2021 by Nescio
finish sentence

[wraitii]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Not to be petty, but I and several other of the top players commented quite a bit on a thread or spoke to devs in the lobby about it. One player and some of the devs, none of which I have ever seen play the game, thought the idea should be implemented. All the other players thought it was a very bad idea. Nonetheless, the revision was implemented.

Can you clarify which change you're talking about? We certainly want to avoid this type of situation.

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

As a result, I decided not to bother commenting on other revisions since my opinion (and the opinion of several other top players) clearly didn't matter. I spoke to other players who commented and several others expressed similar feelings. 

If you no longer voice your opinion, your opinion will _indeed_ be ignored. 'We' are not some secluded private studio with a completely opaque decision process: every diff and commit is available and open-source on https://code.wildfiregames.com. You literally have no reason not to voice your disagreement or concern with changes there.

It's possible a few diffs get committed without player consensus, but I want to highlight that this really isn't how things have been done in general in the A24 process: most if not all gameplay commits got some agreement from some top players, including usually borg-, feldfeld or valirhant.

[BoredRusher]

Yeah,

As Reza, I think that a24 is terrible compared to a23.

In few points, I agree great improvements have been done. Those points are :
1. Dancing prevention by sleep time on turning

[badosu]

Believe in the process, the first release that actually accounts for balance taking player experience into consideration will always be controversial.

It had to start from somewhere, remember all cav or all champ metas, how is it that different?

If you feel a game is slower you can make proposals, e.g. decrease economy requirements overall (buildings/training cost) etc...

Granted, 0ad does not make it easy to provide accountable feedback, no continuous testing mechanism or a better platform (forum is too difficult to track and prioritize channels and discussions). Testing dev version requires dealing with SVN  some technical prowess, synced rev, etc..

Hopefully with 6-mo cycle it will be more straightforward (though I'd better have a weekly release, make an AppImage for linux, exe for windows built by CI gg).

The only thing that has turned me away are the sounds, maybe I'm a bit autistic but I can't absolutely play with those sounds so preeminent in the foreground (unit selection, unit move, fight actions, etc).

Maybe I'll play when there is (or I make) a mod to have unit selections/actions sound fader.

Edited February 25, 2021 by badosu

[BoredRusher]

omg

I was writing for a long time a long explanation of all the good/bad parts of the newer alpha when i missclicked to close all :/
Is there anything I can do to retrieve the draft ???????? (had written pages sosad :/)

30minutes text lost, forever ??? :/

Edited February 25, 2021 by BoredRusher

[Stan`]

19 minutes ago, badosu said:

he only thing that has turned me away are the sounds, maybe I'm a bit autistic but I can't absolutely play with those sounds so preeminent in the foreground (unit selection, unit move, fight actions, etc).

Maybe I'll play when there is (or I make) a mod to have unit selections/actions sound fader.

@Samulis Can't you just change the volume?

[chrstgtr]

4 hours ago, Angen said:

This does not make sense to me. If tutrling is so good why would not good player use walls?

I personally don't use walls because I don't like them and I don't think they should be in the game. 

Strategically, I am rarely in a position where I need to use walls because I am usually the player on my team that makes the offensive push. 

Regardless of whether you think it makes sense or not, it is empirically true that the vast majority of top players never use walls. If anyone uses anything, it is palisades, which the vast majority of top players never use. And there have been threads/complaints calling out the players that do use palisades for their abusive tactics. 

4 hours ago, Angen said:

7 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

• I like rome camps and would give it siege again to make the difference more pronounced

and there will be complains for Roman's being op because they have siege workshop and camps to produce rams which most players don't know how to counter? 

There were siege camps in the last several alpha and very few people complained about them being op. 

And, the players that did complain about them being op were the ones who did typically did not know to use swords on rams. If that is the base level that you are concerned about then siege shouldn't be in the game or at least should be extremely difficult to make (unlike now). 

4 hours ago, Nescio said:

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

This is my point, it is available to all civs now. This makes sele and persia less "special".

The Nisean horses technology (city phase) is still available to pers and sele only.

The techs have changed. The Nisean tech in old alpha is more analogous to the horse breeding tech that gives a 10% health buff in this alpha. Horse breeding tech is available to all civs now.  

Before the Nisean tech used to be a 20% health bonus to all cav. Now the Nisean tech is a 20% health bonus buff, 10% increase in production time for champ spear cav only. Persia/Sele's bonus used to be relatively stronger/more versatile. 

This without a doubt makes persia/sele's cav less special than it was before. 

4 hours ago, Nescio said:

On 24/02/2021 at 1:06 PM, Nescio said:

Yes. Civilizations were already very similar in A23 and earlier releases and have become even more similar in A24.

This is unfortunate, I don't like it much either. The reason it happened is because it's more important to get the basics right and having a balanced core gameplay, from which to further differentiation later.

This isn't really necessary, though. There was differentiation before. The biggest problems with balancing was that slingers were too strong and archers were too weak. That problems were corrected this alpha. And, those changes have nothing to do with anything I have complained about or about the civ differentiation. In fact, I initially said this is one of the things I like most about this alpha. 

Regardless, is having 12 civs that are boring and really just one civ better than having 6 OP civs that are fun and 6 civs that need a buff? You can ignore that 6 bad civs, but you don't get the choice is all 12 civs are basically the same. Regardless, as I have said earlier, a lot of the civs are basically the same as one another with extra features, which will eventually prove to make a new list of OP civs that everyone plays. 

4 hours ago, Nescio said:

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Not to be petty, but I and several other of the top players commented quite a bit on a thread or spoke to devs in the lobby about it. One player and some of the devs, none of which I have ever seen play the game, thought the idea should be implemented. All the other players thought it was a very bad idea. Nonetheless, the revision was implemented. As a result, I decided not to bother commenting on other revisions since my opinion (and the opinion of several other top players) clearly didn't matter. I spoke to other players who commented and several others expressed similar feelings. 

What you propose is great. But a near consensus shouldn't be ignored lest you invite commentators to become disillusioned and withdraw from the process

I'm sorry your experience has been an unhappy one. We're all human in an imperfect world.

Gameplay and balance are discussed in numerous threads on these forums, as well as in private conversations and via other channels. It's impossible for anyone to keep track of everything. Moreover, making changes is a slow process, it's not unusual for a patch to be committed (or abandoned) months or even years after it's proposed, which means that even if some comment was read and replied to in the past, it may have been forgotten by the time a final decision is made. Therefore it's really important to keep the discussion unified in a single place: the relevant patch on https://code.wildfiregames.com/ , because it's there the actual development happens and commits are made.

In case you're referring to https://code.wildfiregames.com/D2507 : you left one comment there and disappeared. Others continued the conversation, on-and-off, the patch was revised six more times, and in the end several people agreed it should be given a try; it was left open for a couple more months and finally committed in December. If it turns out to have a horrible impact, then it can be reverted in A25, of course, though so far I haven't seen people complaining about palisades in A24.

 

4 hours ago, wraitii said:

5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

Not to be petty, but I and several other of the top players commented quite a bit on a thread or spoke to devs in the lobby about it. One player and some of the devs, none of which I have ever seen play the game, thought the idea should be implemented. All the other players thought it was a very bad idea. Nonetheless, the revision was implemented.

Can you clarify which change you're talking about? We certainly want to avoid this type of situation.

Quote

As a result, I decided not to bother commenting on other revisions since my opinion (and the opinion of several other top players) clearly didn't matter. I spoke to other players who commented and several others expressed similar feelings. 

If you no longer voice your opinion, your opinion will _indeed_ be ignored. 'We' are not some secluded private studio with a completely opaque decision process: every diff and commit is available and open-source on https://code.wildfiregames.com. You literally have no reason not to voice your disagreement or concern with changes there.

It's possible a few diffs get committed without player consensus, but I want to highlight that this really isn't how things have been done in general in the A24 process: most if not all gameplay commits got some agreement from some top players, including usually borg-, feldfeld or valirhant.

it is water under the bridge. This was a hot topic for a week or so and I thought I had added more to the thread but apparently it was just talking in the lobby with and without devs. The general feeling was that we had been ignored, so we didn't beat a dead horse. I have been asked in lobby by devs for my opinion on other matters and felt I had the same experience. I am not trying to be petty, I am just trying to point out how in the ideal world we can all improve and in this instance that safeguard of borg, feld, vali clearly fell apart because in this instance only one liked the proposal and others did not.  

 

1 hour ago, badosu said:

Believe in the process, the first release that actually accounts for balance taking player experience into consideration will always be controversial.

It had to start from somewhere, remember all cav or all champ metas, how is it that different?

If you feel a game is slower you can make proposals, e.g. decrease economy requirements overall (buildings/training cost) etc...

Granted, 0ad does not make it easy to provide accountable feedback, no continuous testing mechanism or a better platform (forum is too difficult to track and prioritize channels and discussions). Testing dev version requires dealing with SVN  some technical prowess, synced rev, etc..

Hopefully with 6-mo cycle it will be more straightforward (though I'd better have a weekly release, make an AppImage for linux, exe for windows built by CI gg).

The only thing that has turned me away are the sounds, maybe I'm a bit autistic but I can't absolutely play with those sounds so preeminent in the foreground (unit selection, unit move, fight actions, etc).

Maybe I'll play when there is (or I make) a mod to have unit selections/actions sound fader.

I have been around for multiple alphas. I remember when a22 was released and players immediately recognized that cav was broken. And, I remember when a23 was released and players immediately thought it was an improvement. I am not saying all changes are bad. But I am saying that some changes are undesirable. Regardless, the point of this is try to make the game better now that I (and a large number of other players) think we have taken a step back. 

Edited February 25, 2021 by chrstgtr

[Sundiata]

Just now, chrstgtr said:

I personally don't use walls because I don't like them and I don't think they should be in the game. 

A very strange opinion for a historical RTS, imo. 

 

Just now, chrstgtr said:

Regardless of whether you think it makes sense or not, it is empirically true that the vast majority of top players never use walls. If anyone uses anything, it is palisades, which the vast majority of top players never use. And there have been threads/complaints calling out the players that do use palisades for their abusive tactics. 

It's also empirically true that the vast majority of players aren't competitive multiplayers, but casual players who love to build walls for a variety of reasons.

Anyway it's clear that the game's balance still needs some work, and that civilizations need to be diversified more, but as I understand, that was always in the works. Alpha 24 was just a first big, and necessary step towards addressing some longstanding gameplay issues, laying a foundation for future work.

Also, the lobby isn't exactly an official discussion platform for game dev. I can understand it's a good place to get some quick feedback from competitive players, but if your serious about development, you should use either the forum or https://code.wildfiregames.com, so that whatever is discussed is archived and easily retrievable and reviewable. Lobby discussions are far too perishable, and probably too biased towards competitive play. I mean, I'd hate to wake up one day to a 0AD without walls because I missed some random lobby discussions.

Just my two cents.