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 user 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.

I think that patch has some advantages

• Could make the siege workshop feel less empty overall for some civs (it's in the game right ?)
• Gives another option for some civs to attack building : both rams and elephants have a way to be destroyed very quickly when the defender is well prepared, however the ideal units used to destroy the rams are different from those that kill the elephants. So another option is welcomed.
• Possibly a tool to battle rams but as @borg- said it's far from ideal.

But if only some are changed and other heroes are left untouched, wouldn't that distort gameplay balance?

Not more than it is now, since the patch aims at fixing auras of the weakest heroes to match the strongest, or have some sort of usefulness. But i'll try changing auras of other heroes if I have some ideas.

Changed Alexander, Boudicca and Philip auras and fixed Xerxes

It's probably best to have a critical look at all hero auras in game.

There are some other heroes that could use a small buff, like Boudica as mentionned in another patch, but the ones addressed in this patch are the priority I think.

Well, that's a shame for the train time aura. I really liked that idea. Now for the military aura change, I guess it's fine, I would consider perhaps reverting large pyramid cost to 400 400 because that could make defensive positions quite strong. Not sure.
I think there is a mistake in the templates, the small pyramid food cost was changed instead of stone. I would consider making the small pyramid cheaper, like 200 stone 100 metal, but I guess that goes in dangerous territory.

I leave this here for now, but one possible consequence of this rebalance is that rams (maybe elephants) could need a buff (perhaps better techs to make them more resistant).

Another way to compensate is that the large pyramid's aura would also reduce soldier training time by e.g. 10%. (That would also make it more different from the Iberian monument.)

Sounds like a good idea. I'm hesitating between 10% or 15%, other opinions welcomed.

Maximus having a larger aura would be beneficial.

What do you think about having it affect allies ? This idea is already used for the Hannibal Barca hero. With 60m I feel like that's already enough to cover whole army anyway given a little bit of micro. That said it doesn't go well with the aura name.

In D2814#120157, @badosu wrote:

Not sure if related to the scope of this change, but it would also be good to be able to bind keys that (I, currently) are not able to, for example Tab and CapsLock. What's strange is that I looked at the codebase and there are constants for handling these keys but they can't be used for hotkeys.

I think that some sort of champion rebalance is necessary for next alpha. I'll check the details later but let's bring one concern in the table.
IIRC, @ValihrAnt disliked the idea of keeping a high metal cost due to map imbalances. In a typical game the first metal mine is enough for all the tech until p3, some siege and that's it. So with 0AD maps there could be situations where only one player gets to be able to make champions which is a possible imbalance. There could be multiple stances regarding this issue.

• We can assume the maps will be balanced (they exist in mods after all) and judge that this patch brings ideal balance/gameplay.
• We can compare this issue to the early game imbalance (food/wood distribution) and notice that the metal distributionafter all has a smaller weight.
• We can reduce metal cost for champions (but i don't really like that idea, for me it would bring a bit less interesting gampeplay, although there could be ways to reduce metal cost while it remains arguably high, like 100->80 or 100->75)

It also depends on how it is possible to fight an army with champions with an army without. Buffing champions will not necessarily make them the go to unit in any situations. That depends on how they are buffed.

I can include this patch for D1400, however before doing so we could agree on the changes here. I think the change for Caratacos is fine as 15% movement speed is quite strong. However Maximus would be pretty weak. Ideas to buff him could be to make the radius bigger (80 meters ?) or having it affect allied units too. But it's true that the aura being global doesn't sound nice from a gameplay perspective (the hero could be hiding somewhere in the map and still give his bonus, it also means unnaturally less intel for the enemies).

Rebase and changes to the style.

I agree that these buildings having a territory root is unnatural.
The iberian monument is good thanks to its aura, the Ashoka pillar is unused in multiplayer, and I don't know what the Rome arch is. By the way I didn't even know that these buildings had a territory root. It isn't documented in tooltip I think and I don't know of online players that build them for that reason.

If the small pyramid has an economic aura, but the large pyramid economic, military, and territory auras, why would anyone want to build a small pyramid then?

Because it's cheaper and/or the player doesn't expect to be attacked in that spot.

removed economic aura from large pyramid, didn't seem right

Then you might want to compare this building with the iber unique building which also gives a military aura. Large pyramid feels too expensive for this task

I dislike this change for 2 reasons. It makes stone in general less useful as a ressource and it removes some uniqueness for the slingers. I mean yes, unique doesn't always mean good but still I think stone cost is good now.

I like the idea, but one possible concern with very cheap gates is that in multiplayer, players could be encouraged to make gates everywhere in the walls to help pathfinding.

I also agree with this change.

I agree with Valihrant there.

The barracks to town phase was just a suggestion to make the game less “spammy”, but it's not necessary and probably outside the scope of this patch. Personally I dislike entity build limits.

I think it's fine to have no restrictions if barracks cost isn't changed. Currently it's fine in multiplayer meta to stay on 1 barracks village (and even town) phase but if cost or build time is reduced then that could change.

I agree with the costs / build times.
Now for the town phase requirement of the barracks I don't know. I feel that it's fine the way it is now. This change could have a lot of consequences gameplay (and possibly balance) wise. We could consider build limits if we want a change like that too but for now i'm rather against

I personnally don't like the idea of reducing cost or build time of barracks, would make the game more spammy.

Some hero rebalance could be nice.

In case we go for palissades in neutral territory I'd say territory decay should be disabled, but in case enemy gains territory where palisade is built, then it should still be captured due to territory influence, and quite fast in my opinion.

Personally I don't think palissades should be nerfed. They feel not worth it at the beginning of the game where say, you would want them to surround your farms in order to avoid cavalry raids there. They are too expensive and slow to build for that task. In the late game it sounds like they are spammed to disturb pathfinding a lot, indeed it sounds like something annoying, perhaps it would be nice if, when you destroy a palissade wall, a lot of the surrounding palissades go down too, which would help a lot for pathfinding, this would solve the issue i think.
I don't like the idea of them being buildable in neutral territory for laming potential (it could affect trade in some cases too) but i kinda like the possibility of building them in ally territory (same for stone walls) it would make it easier to complete teamwall. I mean sure you can lame your ally but it is not the only way (you can go and gaia them) and it is not an issue i think, if they ruin your game then don't play with them again. It would only be one of many ways of intentionally ruining game, and that almost never happens anyway.

Yes, that's why i showed reserve if this fact should be taken into account.

Yes there is perfect ballistics by default in the game.
One thing to note is that perfect ballistics allow for easier dancing (in fact, both in 0 A.D. and in AoE2) but not sure if that should be taken into account for decision making.

It looks good to me. Only small grey area for me is that citizen cavalry is slightly faster as a result (x1.95 to x2.0) but at this point it's just nitpicking, I don't think it will have noticeable effect to balance.

I personally have nothing against this, I think a slight imbalance between traders will not change much there. Can ask @ValihrAnt just in case.

I have nothing against this patch, in the current state of the game it would do no harm, but i would like to note that if we are in a situation where champions are balanced and viable then suddenly persians would become (by far i think) the civ who would be able to spam them the fastest entering city phase and it could become a problem in that case.

I also think it might affect balance. Here it is not the balance between civs but the balance between units which is also important (to compare, right now champions aren't really viable compared to citizen soldier which is a problem). If cav become harder to hit it would buff them. Now i don't know if this patch actually noticeably changes balance or not, but to me it would be the kind of patch that could use some testing to be on the safe side of things.
If it does affect balance but we still want that patch then maybe cavalry would have to be nerfed in some other stats.

Yeah, that's it. It's been a long time, I kinda forgot about it

To be honest I think a lot of work is needed to balance the heroes while keeping their bonus diversified and somewhat accurate historically. I think there was once a patch by @Hannibal_Barca with many of the changes I proposed or agreed on.

I agree with the changes now.

I was thinking of the generic +20% attack heroes (Vercingetorix iirc has radius 60, affects soldiers and maybe siege), Hannibal also has radius 60, affects own and allied units. Compared to them, Scipio, Seleucus and Boudica feel like in a lower tier.

Oh ok i thought it got removed too. Then I think it's ok.

For me a 25% bonus feels kinda low but i could be wrong. As a comparison i wonder by how much celts civilizations build faster than others ?

I'm not sure about that change. I feel that the +20% damage heroes with local are better anyway so making the +1 armor local makes it feel pretty weak for me.
On a side note, antiochus is fine (compared to his counterpart, that one persian hero that gives attack to cavalry) because it allows to micro away the cavalry to save them before they die and heal them which helps them get promoted

I agree with that change

I agree with the changes, suggested some of them

If it is historically accurate I have nothing against it. It could help kushite a little bit.

Didn't mean to accept btw

I agree that the build time needs to be reduced, however not sure if it should be to 100. Carthaginian embassies have 150 build time, too