sounds good

In D3319#161241, @Nescio wrote:

Allow me to explain my reasoning.
Earlier in this discussion (January 16 and 17) you suggested having three levels of rams with greater differences and also different population costs (2, 3, 4). Rams can already raze structures very quickly and are very dangerous in large numbers; reducing their population to 2 would mean even more of them can be fielded, further unbalancing the game; hence why I opted for 3, 4, 5 instead.
Furthermore, rams can be quite hard to destroy, so giving them a lot more health is probably not a good idea; your earlier suggestion (January 17) equated to 320, 400, 480; I lowered it slightly, hence 300, 375, 450; I suppose we could consider 300, 400, 500 too. However, 400, 525, 650 is really far too much. (For comparison, siege towers are a lot more expensive and have only 500 health.)
As for capacity, it ought to be an even number (rams are symmetrical); I prefer 4, 6, 8 but can accept 8, 10, 12.

I tried to be consistent with the current values of the game as far as that is possible (keep pop, keep other stats OR increase pop, increase other stats including costs). In my understanding a 650 HP ram is not more OP than a 400 ram if it costs about 2/3 more (so instead of e.g. 5 rams you can only afford 3). Siege towers are different overall, but I don't have enough experience with them to go into more detail. I don't mind the exact stats, I tried to keep the current balance. I support your changes in general and won't request changes if experienced players don't see problems.

In D2854#160316, @Freagarach wrote:

(On the other hand one could argue that an increase in attack damage means you can save more of your own troops standing around your CC.)

In D3319#161098, @Nescio wrote:

And no, metal cost stays the same: basically the idea is to have the wood cost proportional to its health, while the metal cost is proportional to the attack damage.

Sounds interesting!

In D3318#160223, @wowgetoffyourcellphone wrote:

I don't agree with the constant nerfing of the Fortress.

I think the primary function of the fortress shouldn't be unit training or technologies but defensive protection. In fact I would like to see bigger, stronger and more expensive fortresses...

In D3488#157095, @Freagarach wrote:

People can always set the speeds differently ^^

In rP24693#48309, @borg- wrote:

The champion could have been kept just by removing one citizen spear, that would balance the economic damage done to the enemy.

sounds interesting to me

In D3697#161208, @borg- wrote:

Yes, I think it's fair, but they usually can't be as effective as land traders cuz pathfinder, so I think there needs to be a greater commercial gain than land units.

On the other hand it is possible to have longer trade routes on sea than on land (so higher gain) - at least on maps with several islands.
And if we make trader garrisoning more attractive in D3693 we can effectively reduce the number of merchant ships and thus improve pathfinding.

In D3681#160619, @borg- wrote:

I think the damage should not be taken into account for the xp.

I agree

In D3693#161102, @Nescio wrote:

[EDIT] Here you go: D3697.

Thank you! To keep things simple, I would wait for that ticket before continuing to discuss the trader garrison bonus...

Good change as it

• makes land trader and merchant ships comparable more easily, also regarding the balancing of trader garrisoning in D3693
• absolutely made no sense for a ship to be cheaper than a human unit
• made no sense to have a higher trade income with a cheaper unit

In D3392#161192, @wowgetoffyourcellphone wrote:

Bonus 5:
"Iron Mongers" or "Iron Smelting": A new special technology in the Forge, gives a trickle of Metal for every Forge built

I would prefer an additional set of forge technologies ("level III") succeeding the current ones ("level I+II"). Maybe only attack upgrades, not sure. They would be resource and time heavy but could be the edge in extended games.

In D3693#160944, @borg- wrote:

I have never used it and I have never seen anyone use it.

It will be difficult to find good values for trader garrisoning in the first try, we may need some playtest from good players as you :)

I like the direction.

In D2854#160110, @Nescio wrote:

And yes, I was also quite fond of Age of Mythology.

Great!

just my 2 cents:
CC's always felt quite weak to me given their importance for holding territory (that may have changed now with territory root for fortresses).
Maybe it's also because AoM was one of my most played games where for some civs a fully upgraded fortified town center could easily have 2x the HP of a fortress. There was even a "Citadel" god power which basically made one of your town centers an uber fortress.
I think the game should provide opportunities to turtle the same way it gives the option to rush (it feels like many games go the direction of rewarding quick aggression). Therefore I like the approach to have strong defensive CC's in the case you heavily invest into them with several technologies.
Given they are buildings (and thus provide a height advantage), they can have considerable more range than archers IMO. I agree with @borg- that the proposed values are not an attractive option for research. I would like impactful technologies which cost something like 500/1000/1500 resources total (phase I/II/III) and affect both defensive (HP, capture points, capture regen) and offensive (arrow count, range) capabilities. To make them worth a phase III fully upgraded CC should be at least 2-3 times as strong as a phase I CC (taking offensive and defensive bonuses into account).

In D3488#153824, @wraitii wrote:

I would generally be in favour of this, alongside with a corresponding reduction in vision ranges. Note though that this is a debuf to raiding.

Maybe reduce vision range for infantry only, so cavalry is more focused on utility (scouting) in early game.
I'd experiment with different values and even try 7.5 base movement speed (would make maps 20% larger effectively)...

In D3417#151496, @Nescio wrote:

While I understand the reasoning behind it, I'm unsure about it, since it changes the pikeman's effectiveness against about everything, not just rams, so I would recommend postponing this to A25.

In D2917#151495, @Nescio wrote:

As I wrote earlier:

Upgrading does not involve any workers, therefore the time is basically free.

Sorry, I have not been aware of it. In that case I'd raise upgrade costs.
E.g. 150 stone, so the player could decide if he wants to save build time and building space and invest stone or build another house with wood only.

I think we have reached a good compromise.
Houses will still be used in village phase, apartments from town phase.

Do you think it is balanced?
+40% total attack increase vs. -20% effective health decrease?
That means they are now about 20% stronger in 1v1 melee combat...

In D3418#151482, @Nescio wrote:

It doesn't make sense to keep units idle, you're wasting time / resources.

That's precisely the point: rather than sending wounded troops back to work immediately, give them time to rest and heal, sacrificing a bit of income to save men. The trade-off seems rather reasonable.

As the author of one of the forum discussions you mentioned in the descriptions, I like that change, too.
If it turns out to be OP (what I do not expect), we could e.g. remove one of the citizen spearmen at start for exchange.

In D3319#150874, @Nescio wrote:

They have the same population cost.

What about the following, then:

Probably garrison capacity should be adjusted as well.

In D2917#150851, @Nescio wrote:

Not my favourite cost, but I could live with it.

Nor mine, I think it's too cheap.

I have not read complaints so far about Carthage being overpowered, so I don't expect this change to change that considerably (also having the town phase delay in mind)... If you like to make it a bit more difficult to build apartments, I suggest raising the build time modifier from 1.5 to 2

In D3319#150843, @Nescio wrote:

I like the intention of this patch.

Thanks. I'm not entirely sure I like it myself, though.
Currently kush, pers, rome rams have +20% attack damage, so effectively we already have two groups. Those of mace, maur, ptol, sele could stay as is (and be the “medium” group), while the athen, brit, cart, gaul, iber, spart rams are visibly smaller and could share a discount and damage or health reduction.

Following realism, I'd adjust both health and damage.
However, distinguishing by health alone seems to be the choice for a clean gameplay design.

In D2917#150842, @Nescio wrote:

In case it wasn't clear, yes, normal houses will be restored.

Fine!

So we all agree that normal houses remain what they are (10 pop), right?
I would be okay with town phase also.

In D2917#150595, @Nescio wrote:

1. increase the population to 20, keep the cost as in 2, making it more cost-effective, but postpone to city phase (@Palaxin's A)

I second @borg-
However, instead of 200 wood and 50 stone (-17% cost), I'd prefer 100 wood and 100 stone (-33% cost), since they are available only in city phase where you already have built a considerable amount of houses, so the average cost reduction including regular houses is way smaller.

I came up with another interesting mechanic:

In D3318#150418, @Nescio wrote:

Age of Mythology is a nice game, but temporary effects like god powers are not (yet) possible in 0 A.D., to the best of my knowledge: auras last as long as their entities last.

True, that would clearly be outside the scope of this patch and require one of the core developers... Consider it as brainstorming

In D2917#150413, @Nescio wrote:

A fair question! (And yes, I do value consistency.)
Without this patch the cart house is a level two house and the cart apartment basically a level three house.
I'd be fine with 20, if the rest is adjusted proportionally, i.e. doubling the cost and health too; but then it would cost as much as the barracks and have more health, something to which @borg- objected earlier. Hence why I kept it at 15 and decided to further the gap by lowering the ordinary house proportionally by 20%.

+15 is not exactly doubling +8 and neither of them is comparable straight forward with other civs...

The 8's values are proportional: 15 wood and 5 seconds per population and 80 health. The 15's cost is slightly different (200 wood and 50 stone instead of 225 wood), but this is compensated by the having twice the capture points and counting towards the city phase requirements.
Basically the idea is that they're different yet roughly equivalent: if one were clearly better, the other wouldn't be built, which would be a loss; player should have reasonable choices.

See my previous message.
Thank you for your work!

I like the intention of this patch.
However, 7 different classes of rams seems a bit too much to me. I'd rather suggest having three classes of rams:

• light ram with -25% cost/health (-20% if too much of a nerf) and +10% speed
• medium ram unchanged
• heavy ram with +25% cost/health (+20%) and -10% speed

In D2951#145132, @Freagarach wrote:

In D2951#145126, @Nescio wrote:

For the +10 or for the +50? I build wonders for the latter, which is significant, but not for the former, which is too minor.

At first for the +10, since the +50 is too costly until very late in the game.
Our game is usually like this: Pump citizen soldiers until pop limit, find out we can't take cities with only those, build a wonder for the extra pop limit, build three rams, win.

In D3384#150287, @borg- wrote:

Objetive patch are give a Fortress a defense objetive + Future special techs.

To me, "Will to Fight" always felt as the super late game tech par excellence, meant for the finishing blow. If having a temporal effect (about 3-5 minutes), I could even imagine it being more powerful (additional defensive bonuses), giving you a boost similar to a Titan in Age of Mythology or the Ragnarok God power (turning all your gatherers into strong fighters).
As the wonder fulfills a similar role, @Nescio's proposal sounds reasonable to me.

Why not +10 pop for houses and +20 pop for apartments (adjusting cost and build time accordingly)? That would follow/expand the logic of the house pop of other civs (+5 / +10).
+15 is not exactly doubling +8 and neither of them is comparable straight forward with other civs...

In D2856#144142, @ValihrAnt wrote:

Personally not a big fan of adding increased cost. What about getting rid of that and reducing the health increase by 5 or 10 percent?

In D2956#131486, @Nescio wrote:

currently 1.25:1

Currently merchant ships cost 100 metal and 0 wood.

In D2956#128928, @borg- wrote:

Do not agree with the new cost of merchant ship, it is very expensive, and some players including @badosu were talking about removing the metal cost of the merchant units. It's really bad late game you need metal to build units that in theory are being trained to collect metal mostly.

I think this kind of stuff is something for cheats...

Great to see my work from #3786 continued :)

Thx @elexis :)

One question regarding map design: Would it be possible to make the river meandering a bit and give the islands a lengthy shape adjusted to the current? Would look much more like a river then...

How can I add inline comments?
In the gaul_catafalque_1.json why is there a +20% attack bonus for ranged and +5% attack bonus for melee? Should be +5% for both...