Considering this patch as a standalone (ignoring major gameplay changes that could happen), and from a multiplayer gameplay POV:

• From the few games I played up to now in a24, I would say that in 1v1 mainland, both strategies (making a new Civic Center in town phase, against going straight to city phase without building a new CC) are good depending on the situation. Note that for the 2nd strategy, still building a new CC in the city phase will probably be needed.
• However in teamgames played in mainland expanding with a new CC is generally not worth it.
• That said many maps other than mainland reward expansion.

where one player can be basically entirely surrounded by mountains except for a minor passage near the border, things like that

It is in my plans to add a constraint so that the flood fill passage can't be near the border because indeed that can hurt gameplay.
I will also try to guarantee bigger passages but I don't know to which extent I can go without making the loading time too long.

Rebased

In D3538#155144, @wraitii wrote:

I'm OK with committing this if you're confident in the values. They seem sensible to me.
For reference, bireme is 800 health, trireme 1400, quinquereme 2000, meaning it now takes one additional fire ship death to destroy them.

Not really. We had two +10% cavalry speed technologies, now only one +10%. Before we had a +20% health increase for all cavalry, now it affects only champion cavalry and a new one with +10% health.

Fair points. The speed technologies were quite expensive though.

In general the ranged cavalry was very nerfed compared to the a23. Now you need stables for mass training, range and attack is reduced, spear cavalry has its bonus increased and sword cavalry is more effective against ranged units, including cavalry of course.

To compensate there are 2 new technologies for cavalry (speed and health) whereas infantry doesn't get any of this. Also now forge technologies that affect cavalry also affects infantry so it makes it a bit easier for cav player since sometimes they will want to fight with infantry too.
The train time of cavalry has been relatively reduced compared to infantry (+2 seconds for infantry when they were at 10, +1 second for cavalry when they were at 15 iirc) so it makes them easier to mass. Also persian for example has 2 technologies that reduces train time by 10% for archer cav
Range is reduced but spread as well so they are more accurate.
The formation change makes it easier to hit and run.

Good for me, the fire values before the patch had very little effect.

I think Freagarach's values are a bit more natural, it makes fire damage more continuous.

I used svn's context menu on windows.
I asked someone else and they also could apply the patch just fine so no problem.

Can do that.

Rebased

This is blatantly untrue. They had 150 crush / 1.5 s in A21, A22, A23 and still do in A24.

I guess borg looked at roman ram and forgot about the bonus. That number also felt familiar to me.
I'm also fine with not changing because of the new siege technologies and also because after all there were a lot of complaints about rams in a23

I had this error on applying the patch:

I think there is an issue with the patch (file path)

I see. Then just in case I will do some experiments with the new values I think.

Indeed as of right now siege technologies are almost never researched. Looking at the modifications the new values seem good, nothing will be broken.

Indeed as of right now iber champion cavalry's fire damage has very little effect. I like the proposals in this patch, either borg or Freagarach values
That said are Freagarach's values really equivalent? For example if an iber champion cavalry constantly attacks a building, is the 'Duration' constantly extended or something different happens?

I agree with this line of thought (there's also the fact that if a bunch of sword champions are garrisoned in a fortress for exemple, and that a ram attack if, then they can unload, melt it in 1-2 seconds and go back in)
That said their cost was a bit reduced. Just in case I'll try to talk to Valihrant today about this patch.

I like this patch because it goes well with the defense upgrades rework that is already in, and it will not (or at least, less) lock players into an army composition they invested in (like they can switch from cav to infantry and vice versa if they have to)
That said the first technology might be a bit expensive but I think it's an improvement.

Good for me.
The reason I want to see this in a24 is that it will act as a buff to corraling, encouraging players to consider this option.

My proposition.
I think I remember Valihrant agreeing with that too when we played a game.

Oh and yes, I think it would be a good call to raise cattle time like you said

Indeed they are, I rather like it, but since this patch goes a little bit against my policy which is to be careful of patches that could change balance in a not 100% known way just before balancing freeze, I would invite other players to state if they feel it's dangerous

Could you elaborate? I'm confused now, 25% of what? And 20 to 40 s looks better than 30 to 60 s, doesn't it?

When writing this post I didn't see that you already modified the patch, but I meant a 25% reduction from animals original training time.
Now the new values are a buff of corrals, which I'm good with. However I don't know the stance of other players about it.

I initiated the idea of reducing range because my feeling was that archers were possibly too strong, and that it would also make the game a bit nicer (and also fixed buildings range).
My fears for this patch is that it will have unknown effects for balance, it could change quite a bit the balance between ranged units, and we don't have the time or the means to do proper tests for a24

It could work, although i'd prefer 25%, but I think an additionnal problem with this approach is that train time values are supposed to look good in the beginning if you see what I mean

If the question is between having a cost or not for this tech, I'm fine with anything I guess. I'd also have been fine with keeping training in fortress.

This patch nerfs corralling to the ground (and it was already difficult and arguably subpar against farming). There needs to be some compensation, like reducing base animal training stats by quite a bit (like the values after researching the technology that is getting removed)

I'll copy my arguments from the balancing PM here:
"2 things changed that lead toward the same effects: the effect of economy technologies have been increased a lot for the early phases of the game (from +15% to +25% for anything that is not food, +15% to +20% for food I believe). Secondly, the train time of citizen soldiers and women also increased.

Adjusted player placement so that they spawn further apart (on low player numbers) which reduces the imbalance in player positions.
I didn't yet replace the unreachable trees on mountains by their actor variation, because some of them are placed with a TerrainPainter which requires a template.

Adjusted values in previously deprecated functions

Well probably not actually otherwise the deprecated functions placeholder wouldn't be needed. Plus I just reread the ticket so indeed there is no equivalence. I'll adjust the values if necessary

If I recall from my whacky memories, createObjectGroupsDeprecated is equivalent to a createObjectGroups call with a retryFactor of 0, is that correct?

Bug fix required for D2830 to work.

Hi, after I realized that the look of this version of the map might not be as bad as I thought back then, I decided to rebase it to open it once again for feedback.
When evaluating the look of the map I recommend to sometimes generate it with the fog of war, as seeing it from a players perspective can be different from having all revealed.

In a21 where champions were more used, spartan and macedonian champions were quite popular with the previous values of the technologies, which encourages me to think the techs shouldn't be buffed too much.

I also wondered why they were the same when I started the game. The values look good to me. Still ping @borg-

Understandably so. If the train time is removed then the tech should at least cost equal amount of resources than the macedonian silver shields (like now)

I'm fine with it too but the fact that macedonian champions are almost equal to spartan ones, but train 10% faster bothers me a bit but arguably this is compensated by tech cost.

Discard the preceding post, it was not up to date. The changes look good to me

I completely missed that he changed the stats (had probably another version in mind), then it is fine. Now spartan champion might be a little bit too strong but this is probably fine.

In D2846#122473, @Stan wrote:

@Feldfeld care to accept again if it's good?

The changes are good for war horses
For silvershields, the tech will still remain better than the spartan agoge. (macedonian spear champion remain a little bit stronger and train faster than the spartan equivalent after the techs). This is not necessarily a problem by itself but I just want that this is recognized before accepting the patch.

Feel free to suggest different values.

I would suggest not to change champion elephant stat so as to keep current balance for them (which has been achieved by the patch I linked)

I don't understand (in particular the values @borg- suggested), this nullifies half of the work done in D2575(@ValihrAnt). Having hack attack is justified by elephants being good against humans, the walk speed could be justified by armor values (but I can understand why we would want it to be the same as other elephants, that works too).

In D2854#122354, @Nescio wrote:

Does it affect the regeneration rate of all buildings ?

No, not all structures, only centres, colonies, and crannogs are affected by these technologies:
"affects": ["CivilCentre"],

Does it affect the regeneration rate of all buildings ?

The changes are good. Small thing to note though, this makes the upgrade arguably inferior to the macedonian silver shields upgrade (especially for the train time increase). I don't know if this should be considered a problem or not.

After quick playtest I don't think it will have much impact on gameplay for everything not related to combat. For combat (raiding in particular) there might be a need for multiplayer testgames to get a better feel of it.

I think that this nerfs dance up to a reasonable point. Here are some details I got from my testing :
First note that when testing (for everyone that is interested in that) it's important to know the difference between singleplayer and multiplayer. In multiplayer, IIRC there is 1 turn every 0.5 seconds (which makes traditional dancing easier). In singleplayer, things are much smoother. When testing, you should go multiplayer -> Host game (even if no other human players will join you).

• There is one variant of dancing i came up with trying to break this patch, however it works only in singleplayer, not in multiplayer (because somehow this requires perfect timing). It consists in clicking a resource and then repeatly hit the stop hotkey, then back to work hotkey, then stop hotkey again etc. Works a bit differently between attack stances and no attack stances. As i said it shouldn't be a problem but i say it just in case.
• Even if formation dancing is not fixed this should be less of a problem (because it is easier to call out formation dancing) but some players that don't care could still do it i guess.
• Other than that it is still possible to dance between resources (depending on the situation this can require good accuracy from the player though) but despite that it's still good to not waste time turning going for ressources / buildings for the gameplay I think. That also is made a bit easier to call out, and impossible to do for heroes, very situational for cavalry. Dancing with infantry citizen soldiers is harder due to low speed and HP. (But in the end still possible).

In D2821#122209, @borg- wrote:

What about increase cost of brit stable to 300w? since can train dogs now.

This can be an interesting idea to nerf celtic civilisations. One thing to discuss would be if that makes sense to make a separation when the justification of that tech is for celtic structures. I would be interested in the opinions of Valihrant and borg on this.
Also, just to makes sure, does that give back the 5 population increase on docks for gauls ?

Units don't get increases in other stats (e.g. armour, attack damage, resource gather rates) automatically from phasing up, separate technologies are for that, so why should phases increase citizen health?

They shouldn't necessarily do that, but all current numbers for balancing depend more or less from that. Removing health increase will nerf citizen soldiers and can lead to unknown consequences

Looks good

Different players have different play styles. Not everyone is interested in competitive multiplayer. Many people are perfectly happy with single-player vs the Petra AI.
The point is that these phase stat increases strongly favour a particular play style, punishing players wanting to explore different strategies.

But isn't that the point of gameplay balancing ? By removing the scaling of RegenRate you will either heavily favour focusing on capturing things in the late game, or you will make trying to capture useless in early game, or maybe both. It will punish players wanting to try different strategies and, if that turns out to be a balance problem, could lead to the usual complaints on the forum, which should also be perfectly valid for single players, and that will be a bit different than "I'm in the Village phase and researched 0 technologies, my opponent is in City phase, and I die, how could this be happening?". Plus I don't think think this prevents players to go with other strategies if they ever wish to. They can stay in the Village phase for a long time if they ever wish to, but first, they should expect it to be inferior, and then, if they don't want to compensate with some other smart ressource spending choices (like training more soldiers), they should reduce the level of the AI. Plus, the AI should be quite bad at exploiting players weaknesses.

In D2845#122074, @Nescio wrote:

For me it makes sense that regeneration rate scales through the game. As a game advances the attacker will be able to output more capture power while the defender will not be able to garrison much more units. The current values seem good now.

The problem with this is that it effectively means a severe penalty for everyone who's not advanced to the city phase. Suppose player A rushes to city phase and player B stays in village phase. Then if A attacks B, each garrisoned unit equals one champion; if B attacks A, each garrisoned unit equals ten citizen soldiers.

Good changes. I still kind of wish small pyramid to be just a little bit cheaper but new values are an improvement.
The monumental architecture technology, either before or after the patch will probably not be used much, but it's good that it got cheaper.

For me it makes sense that regeneration rate scales through the game. As a game advances the attacker will be able to output more capture power while the defender will not be able to garrison much more units. The current values seem good now.
For the health change, I don't know. This is an indirect buff to champions, towers and fortresses and it is difficult to see how gameplay will be changed.
I don't consider phasing up to be too strong now. Players can decide to phase up earlier when they expect fights to happen for the HP increase, but that's an investment of a good amount of ressources that could be spent somewhere else. The primary benefit of phasing up is unlocking economic techs in current meta (it is also often motivated by territory increase in 1v1s). This could change a bit depending of how the game changes of course but I think right now it's in a good position.
The changes of territorial increase could decrease just a bit the interest of expanding with another CC in town phase but nothing crazy.

The only technologies that do are advanced_unit_bonus.json, elite_unit_bonus.json, and special_war_horses.json

There are the phasing tech that give HP bonus. That brings spear cavalry to over 300 HP if advanced and about 360 HP if elite.

{ "value": "Heal/HP", "add": 5, "affects": "Healer" },
is rather excessive (basic healers have a value of 5). Could you replace it with e.g.

		{ "value": "Heal/Rate", "multiply": 0.8 }?

I think that indeed basic healers are too weak but promoted healers are probably too strong, maybe overall changes could be done in another patch. I think @borg- had ideas for them.

Also the consistency is not strictly held through all the game. There is special_colonisation.json for Carthage, and special_hellenistic_metropolis.json that doubles the HP of civil centres (but is quite specific)

In D2792#121841, @wraitii wrote:

I have personally always disliked our promotion system. It gives no real choice to the player, and it stems from a weird vision of historical perspective where people would be more or less specialised towards combat, but this is completely inaccurate anyways -> the warfare division was generally based on social class, not on 'experience'.

My question is simple -> Are the current values of these techs actually a problem in-game? I would agree that in general I would expect most melee units to die anyways, so promotions seems irrelevant.
If it's simply a change because you dislike the promotion system, I would actually go all the way and simply remove it entirely.

If it's a necessary balance change, then I would like to see some more motivation for it in the comments.

Just in case, I'm waiting for either a consensus or a decision by @FeXoR before updating my patch. I saw P212
This patch was intended as a connectivity test but I'm fine with changing it to return an Area.
The reason I didn't check against constraints instead of Tileclasses was because I didn't check how they worked under the hood (and, again, I wanted quickly something to work with my map), but that sounds better indeed.

The values are correct in fact. Multiplying the reload time by 0.8 corresponds to a 25% heal rate increase ( 1 / 0.8 = 1.25) Just like if you multiply the reload time by 0 you won't have a 100% increase but an infinite one instead

In D2835#121773, @Nescio wrote:

Or remove the food and make it metal only?

In D2839#121775, @Nescio wrote:

The reason the build time increases is to keep the health/second repair speed unchanged. I disagree with removing it. Other technologies and civ bonuses do this as well. See e.g. cart_walls.json, celt_structures.json, maur_walls.json and buildtime_walls_rubble.json, health_walls_geometric_masonry.json, persian_architecture.json.

All the other technologies/bonuses have a justification gameplay (balance) wise for their changes. As an example, celt_structures.json is a strong economic bonus and sacrificing building health is still quite good for it. For the technologies, since the build time change isn't applied before the technology is researched that makes it a good bonus. (And even for buildings that are built after the technologies are researched, there is no economic snowball so this remain quite good).
I would like to say that keeping the build time / building health ratio is not important here but that's just me I guess

This could be okay values, but what about 500 food and 500 metal ? For me it would make sense that this tech cost more metal. If that's too much maybe 400 food 400 metal ?

The current values for this patch seem good.

I use svn on windows, did "apply patch". I think build is usually done automatically when updating so I don't know how to do it.

I have errors trying this patch

Doesn't lowering the melee attack damage increase make melee soldiers relatively weaker compared to ranged soldiers, though?

A small bit, but it isn't going to change the snowball effect ranged soldiers could have

In D2792#121569, @Nescio wrote:

How about ranged attack damage?

Generally, in current meta, melee units die before they have the chance to get promoted or soon after, while ranged units have an easier time being promoted because of meat shield dying instead of them. A ranged attack damage bonus could lead to a snowball effect that would probably be too big

In D1400#120766, @Hannibal_Barca wrote:

I'm not sure what is going on here but hero auras could really use some uniqueness. I feel like everything is some sort of +% attack / +1 armour / movement seped which kinda makes it monotone and boring

Yes, but the problem is that there are (much) more heroes than possible aura ideas it sounds like. The problem with that one aura that got removed is that it was not historically accurate.

Small fixes, change the aura of one more hero

In D2792#121459, @borg- wrote:

In D2792#121456, @Feldfeld wrote:

Actually I don't think skiri would need to be changed even with this patch, after they're trained they either build or go fight directly anyway. After this patch they will still have a 30% gathering reduction applaying 2 times which is still quite a bit.
Mercenaries are a bit more dangerous though.

Ok, I will make changes to the tech of the mercenaries, but in another patch, ok?

The current cost of tech is very low. Only one armor tech in the blacksmith costs much more than the tech of mercenaries, , which besides armor and other attributes are gained.

Actually I don't think skiri would need to be changed even with this patch, after they're trained they either build or go fight directly anyway. After this patch they will still have a 30% gathering reduction applaying 2 times which is still quite a bit.
Mercenaries are a bit more dangerous though.

I can see why why we would want that change. After all, the rate at which promoted units gather feels unnaturally slow, and the 30% reduction as proposed feels reasonable. But well the concern is how it would change balance, if mercenary / skirtai become too strong. It depends if a strategy of almost only training mercenary units and relying on superior fighting power of units could become too strong or not. I can't judge as I don't see what other changes @borg- will do in that regard, but the following could be considered : making the mercenary tech more expensive and/or reducing the melee attack bonus from 20% to 10%. It feels like melee units benefit more from promoting than ranged units anyway so this could also help making the gameplay feel more natural.
tl/dr I like the general idea, just need to make sure no imbalance comes from this

It's not justified to have this in the codebase.

Here is what i got so far using Noise2D. The mountains feel to thin no matter how i change the parameters, difficult to find a good result.

For the credits, well just put my nickname I guess. I had another diff which modified it but I think it's pretty dead

It looks like I had an issue of scaling. I will abandon this revision if I'm able to find good values in my map using Noise.js

Well, first I didn't notice them while making my map, however once I saw them and tried them I had weird results. I could give it another try

Fixed the bug.

Huh, looks like there is a bug where players starting entities don't get properly deleted upon restart. Don't know how I missed that, will need to fix.