Yes, this is ok.

As Iphicratean reforms would now be a Phase 2 tech the research time should also be reduced to 40 seconds.
In phase 2 it will take 1000 resources (200 Stone + 200 Metal Gymnasium, 300 Food + 300 Metal Iphicratean Reforms) to be able to train units from the gymnasium, which is super expensive. They're also the only civilization to have completely unique buildings for their heroes and champions so I think it's fine to reduce cost of the gymnasium too. 150 Stone + 100 Metal? Iphicratean reforms to 200 Food + 200 Metal? Should make it a bit more accessible.

I see absolutely no need for this. Getting woodcutting + farming + the usual blacksmith upgrades (Ranged attack + pierce armor) takes 3200 metal. Include will to fight and a hero and that's 5000. If you have access to 10000 more metal that only allows you to get 125 infantry champs or 100 cavalry champs. Champions are already very rarely used.

Agree with the cost increase.

Reduces their strength in direct combat whilst still keeping their identity.

What value would you suggest for pierce then? 25 or more / less?

25 is fine.

Upon playing around with this, I'd like to reduce their attack rate to 1.5. The stacking fire makes them very capable against high-armor units as it ignores armor and it will make it a bit more difficult for them to make enemy buildings magically disappear.

Definitely agree that catapults desperately need a buff. This makes 3 catapults deal very slightly more damage than a single ram, while still costing significantly more and taking more population space, and being more vulnerable to ranged units.

@ValihrAnt would you prefer this or what is in svn now?

I prefer this as it leans more into their unique fire damage and actually differentiates them from the Briton chariots.

lowed the pierce to 25 (so -10)

in my test in atlas vs the briton chariot champion and the rome spearcav champion, they are now roughly equal.
Which means that they are overall still better as you can get them cheaper and they are able to damage buildings.

If they still trade evenly with the Briton chariots or their counter unit, I'd prefer to further reduce their pierce attack or attack speed. Imo they should be inferior in direct battles so they can't be mindlessly ran into the enemies base, destroy buildings and then fight off defending units.

I'd much rather have them an increased multiplier against other cavalry. Their supposed role is anti-cavalry so I prefer buffing them towards that rather than making them sword cav 2.0

I missed that the patch had to be rebased
https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4544

Better generic name of the technology.

I would like it more if the macedonians would have some kind of siege bonus tbh.

This doesn't keep them from getting a siege bonus. It's just a basic economy bonus that will hopefully also lead to some slightly different openings for them.

Might as well move pyramid_large to the mixin too while you're at it, unless you think that should be a different diff (le sigh).

The small pyramid was moved there to have the icon in a more visually appealing/logical spot. Now it is together with Phase 1 economic buildings, while it used to be with Phase 3 buildings. The large pyramids icon is already in a good spot so I don't see why it should be moved, unless I'm missing something

Rebased
Increased cost in accordance to suggestions by Letswaveabook (From 150 Stone to 150 Stone + 75 Metal

It feels a bit strange to me (no need to act on this comment) that units specifically trained for war require _more_ experience to get better.

The idea was rooted in trying to balance them better and doesn't really have any realism thought behind it. Starting on a higher rank gives them greater health and means they're more likely to survive until rank 3, for melee they also get greater attack and armor which means they'll get the next promotion more quickly + their foes will be dealing less damage to them thus getting less experience for their own promotions.

The promotion experiences are a bit all over the place. Ranged cavalry require 188, melee cavalry 150, ranged infantry 125, melee infantry 100.

Proposed by @chrstgtr
same cost as CS cav, but all metal

I'd prefer 90 metal cost as that is 1.5x their infantry counterpart cost just like for citizens. Combine that change with adjusting their requiredxp for promotion to 2.5x or 3x relative to their citizen counterparts. It should help retain the mercenary identity of a quick to get and strong unit, but they'll be slower to reach rank 3 than their citizen counterparts.

I'm also not a fan of slowing down movement. I want units to feel responsive. This is definitely a step in the right direction. I personally prefer a value of 30, 35. With these values, it would still be possible to dodge shots at further distances, with the 35 acceleration value it requires very good timing to dodge a shot at a 30m distance with cavalry. Don't know how achievable it would be in multiplayer, but I suppose it does still go against the base idea of such being impossible.

It represents the fact that Rome was one of the most populous cities in the ancient world.

More urbanized means more likely to have workplace and living place separate, also the typical settlement having more houses. I'm fine with Romans getting that bonus just that the justification used here seems backwards.
Also building lots and lots of houses can be annoying, so giving it to a 5 pop per house civ might be some compensation there.

I'd like, if possible, to only have fields that are placed right next to a farmstead to be autobuilt. Adds an extra macro element in deciding whether the saved build time is worth the farmers being more exposed to danger.

Works

Getting errors when selecting Maurya Palace on r26109

Switched to directly modifying templates instead of using a tech

If you move the Athenian Marine to the barracks or gymnasium, then I suggest you rename the unit back to its original name from years ago: Athenian Ekdromos. Full circle.

If you have it trained from the dock, then "Athenian Marine" still works, but I'd keep it trained only from the dock. Keeps it unique and also keeps it thematic (marines make sense trained from a dock or ship from an in-gameworld perspective).

Fixed a string

I think the tech needs to be rethought for it to get used as more than a late-game stone sink. I absolutely don't care about health or capture points for civic buildings, especially if it also increases the build time. Getting this tech forces me to waste more time setting up temples for champion production while also affording fewer of them. Looking back, it actually used to reduce build time but was changed due to fear of being op. Going in a circle and just having it reduce build time is one idea or could probably have it give a health boost to defensive and civic buildings as another.

It’ll be interesting to see how the bonus applies to 10 pop house civ.

It pretty much negates the early disadvantage of being forced to have idle time or skip baskets and afterwards it plays the exact same as it did for the Celts. Additionally, it allows them to execute the instant spear cavalry rush more comfortably.

Correct way of applying the bonus by @Freagarach

more redundant lines, from unit templates

Correct indentation

Moved the icon location to be after the house and removed now useless lines.

One thing to consider is to make pyramids easily captured.

They're already captured in the same time as a house or storehouse but can't be garrisoned at all, so if you get pushed off a resource they're an easy target.

Their cost is reduced to 150 stone, build time to 120 seconds. Can someone elaborate on why this is good costs?

It makes the pyramid more affordable. What's the point of moving it up to village phase if players will at most build one at their farm economy and then forget about them existing like currently. The idea is that the reduced build time allows players to place it early on and the reduced cost to afford 2 in the village phase after some minor stone collection.

I would like to see 75 or 100 metal added to the cost, so you can still build one with the starting metal. However the metal cost makes it less spammable and thus less easy choices.

I don't think it really needs any cost increase. It could be maybe given 50 metal on top of the current cost but not more I think. The fact that it is a capturable building already gives it a risk factor. If you balance the cost for it not to be spammable in the late game you simply won't see any in the early game and if we go by how it is currently, you'll rarely see Kushites build them in the late game either. Also, keep in mind that the reduced aura indirectly increases the cost, and the funny thing that placing a pyramid in the best spot steals away the best spot for a storehouse.

I suppose the bigger problem is that there isn't really a design plan/idea for how the civs should play and how many bonuses, unique techs a civ should have

Therefore this should be fixed first. Unless there is a real need don't change things until this is sorted out.

It'd be great but who knows how long it will take for someone to go out and make it. There is this https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Design_Document#PlayableCivilizations, but it doesn't detail anything for gameplay in generic.
Until then, I think it's fine to start adding a base of bonuses/techs just to differentiate civs more than by only their architecture.

And I agree that boni like additional pop for storehouses etc as we had in the past are preferable as they are also apparent to non (semi-) pro players and as such make more sense to use for the "differentiate civs" purpose.

The Britons can be given the structure population bonus and this woodcutting bonus moved over to the Mauryas maybe or just gotten rid of.

Economy bonus not only affects the early game but the late game, which is not the intention in a good rush civilization and weak late game.

I think we're also looking at this very differently. A ''rush'' civilization for me is one that has wide-open options and opportunities for early and sustained aggression. The weak late game part doesn't refer to them being directly inferior to other civs but just simply lacking as many late game options. Otherwise, we create civilizations that are only seen in 1v1s and vice versa for only strong late game civs.
So in this case a wood bonus allows the Britons to more quickly get a stable and fields for war dogs/cavalry, or a stronger slinger rush as they can afford to have more on stone from the get go. And then the Britons can have an 'inferior' late game by missing cavalry upgrades, having weaker siege, and being reliant on infantry (Probably missing an inf armor upgrade too as they'd have better wood eco and thus would be able to field a bigger army). So in a 1v1s late game, the opponent can counterplay their strength and force them into playing suboptimal units but in team games their infantry is already accompanied by supporting units. This way they're still focused on the early game but aren't a crutch in late game.

Britons/gauls must be a rush civ, so there may be a bonus for that, like, brit can build fortress and barracks on neutral territory for example.

For a rush civ, an early economy bonus is the most important thing. I don't see any value that being able to build a barrack in neutral gives early on. It's why the Mauryas and Ptolemies like to play extended early aggression much more than other civs.

Switched the bonus from the Gauls to the Britons

Is there a reason why we are applying this to Gauls instead of Brits? I only ask because Gauls already has some nice bonuses while Brits doesn’t.

It's such a generic bonus that it can be justified for basically any civ, Gauls were just the first ones I thought of.

Also, this wood tech paired with Gauls’ food tech makes Gauls the best wood/food civ on the game by quite a bit.

I suppose the bigger problem is that there isn't really a design plan/idea for how the civs should play and how many bonuses, unique techs a civ should have. So I'd imagine the celts having an eco advantage which transfers to a numbers advantage to make up for inferior unit quality, but obviously, that's not the case currently so it would make sense then to switch this over to the Britons. Then they'll have an eco bonus and their unique tech, unlike the Gauls, could be military focused and the Gauls can just receive a different eco bonus later.

More appropriate name and improved history

Added a . I had forgot.

Extended the bonus to corrals and fishing ships.

Better icon

I would make the fields free. That by itself wasn’t super OP when ptol had it (it was the free storehouses and farmhouses that were the main eco benefit).

Maybe it's something from before my time but in a23 the Ptol farms were completely normal cost. I think you're also underestimating how useful this proposed bonus is in a no extra food start or when you're playing aggressive.

As I said on the forum, the main source of kushite economy was husbandry, and we don't have any bonus like this, so I would give a bonus to the corrals/animals, or I would increase the hunting power of the kushite horses.

It seems to me that Kushites had both good farming and pastoralism so what about having the bonus affect both farms and corrals?

I think the most appropriate is "Fields -50% resource cost".

Yep, will do.

kushites is currently an economic/defensive civilization, I think this bonus adds to the style of play.
I'm not completely sure about the value, it can give you a big early game advantage.

Giving a unique early advantage is the point. You actually piqued my interest about how this compares to the Ptolemie wood saving bonus. Generally you will get to 8 farms, and remain at that count for the rest of a match, at around 80 population, which will save the Kushites 400 wood. The Ptolemies in that time will have saved 440 wood (1 Storehouse + 1 Farmstead + 12 Houses) and will continue saving wood as the game goes on. Additionally, for Kushites the bonus will come into effect later if extra berries/hunt are involved. Makes me feel like this bonus should actually be increased to like 75% or also reduce build time.

Yeah, my issue was taken care of

I don't mind a slight reduction in cost. Probably better to just remove metal cost and keep stone cost the same. Should then also include mil colonies. Balancing @StarAtt would be nice to get more opinions.

Definitely, something I'd love to see.

Also, it's hard to tell from this small number of gens, but it looks like there will now be at least 4 metal mines per every player. If so, that seems high to me.

It's about the same for 1v1s currently, 30-35k metal generated on average. Just sometimes the mines would really gravitate towards one of the players. For TGs being able to have about 3 metal mines per player is a great improvement. Too often I haven't been able to do anything fun with champs/mercs or even swordsmen because I've just no metal.

Spear cavalry counters other cavalry, so if we have a cavalry battle between the Seleucids and Persians now, the Persians will kill all of the Seleucid horses quite easily with a few Cappadocian Cavalry Spearmen. The Seleucids cannot do the same to Persians without spending huge amounts of metal on champions or mercenaries. Therefore as a Seleucid Player you have a weakness against the Persians and you will refrain from using cavalry if you see the Persian Opponent making a lot of them.

I think you overestimate how well spear cavalry counter other cavalry. Best comparison is Camel Riders from AoE2. If outnumbered they will lose to Knights, but in about equal numbers they'll take a pretty convincing fight. A major factor in such matchups, at least in my experience, is that players want to keep massing their power unit and spear cavalry interrupts that. Keep in mind that spear cavalry are still countered by spearmen and it's not difficult to bring forward a few of them. So that forces the enemy to either commit to spear cavalry, which deviates from their game plan and is vulnerable to opposing spearmen, or continue going for their initial power unit and maybe mix some spear cav as a threat if the enemy tries to push too far out. Also, the military colony plays into a strength of archer cav, which is securing map control. They're much cheaper than CCs and let you secure vulnerable spots of the enemies base or just get access to metal/wood.

Cavalry is generally underused in A24, and if the Seleucids are now almost as good as the Persians in cavalry, then we can perhaps change that dynamic, also more people will play the Seleucid civ, which is actually capable of many surprising strategies, especially if spear cavalry is added.

From the very few MP games of A25 I have tested, I really liked going cav so that should hopefully change, but hopefully not into the cavalry is op territory. I'd also say that a reason for Seleucids currently being rarer is that many hosts ban archer play and that includes cav archers. The Seleucid hero is also superior in terms of making your army much more sustainable while under fire of enemy towers, forts, etc.

You can't spam military colony like stables so you will always produce less mercenary spear cavalry per minute no matter how rich you are.

Mercs do have a faster train time, but it doesn't make up for not being able to put down as many production buildings, true.

Mercenary cavalry is too expensive and can only be trained from Kleroukhia, which is not always accessible.

It doesn't make much sense to me to replace the mercenary unit with a citizen counterpart because mercenaries are currently underpowered. The unit being a mercenary adds a different dynamic compared to the Persians.

This change enables the Seleucids to rival the Persians in the cavalry department meanwhile being able to protect themselves from an archer attack, and hence the Persians and archers will not always be OP compared to other civs.

Can you explain more what you mean with this as I don't understand.

rP25721 already makes elephants weaker to pierce attack. Probably overkill to have this too?

The hit and run they could do with their now lowered prepare time was absurd as the reload time can be waited out whilst moving. This makes them weaker at that and also should help cavalry become a bigger threat to them.

Update -> Maur/Iber get the normal tech but 20% additional swordsman damage on top, so they effectively safe one tech (200W/200M). I'm thinking it might be worth making the tech a bit worse because of that ?

It does only affect swordsmen so it shouldn't be too extreme. Can do 15% to be safer. Other than that I don't think it's necessary to push the second level to Phase 2, at least not for a25.

I agree on getting rid of the root.

Don't really feel like they need a change. They're a difficult and slow unit to mass but if you do manage it they're also strong enough to make it worthwhile.
I feel like these changes will make them quite weak and remove some identity. Going from a unit that's threatening to a unit you try to target last as they're so tanky. Also, this gives them less armor than the worker elephant.

Had animals spawning inside of mines. Only happened to me on Sudanian Savanna so maybe biome specific

Like this a lot. Adds opportunity for Phase 2 aggression and hopefully gives incentive to aggressive play which values the quality of units over quantity

I wouldn't require a tech to get siege because that will make siege from camps quite a bit slower than siege from siege workshops, which is what will be built and to counter Roman camps. It could create a situation where Roman camps aren't useful for siege because enemy siege destroys the >camps too quickly.

As the Romans, you still have very easy access to swordsmen to counter rams. Should also try to avoid a situation where the military colony is just a superior siege workshop. In general, I don't mind either solution.

This is the file

Should probably be in the patch then.
I'd rather just have the siege come back and not change anything else or have a basic tech to unlock siege in the workshop.

To clarify -> you do have to wait for the repeat time, but the units can move during that time right ?

Yes.

Wouldn't that just be fixed by increasing the repeat time further still?

That would lead them to being much weaker in normal fights.

Archers and Javelineers are no different that you can 'hack' the repeat time by moving the units.

Yep. For archers it is very minuscule. For skirmishers, it's similar to crossbows while not quite as extreme. Them also having the least range of all ranged units makes them unable to hit and run any other ranged units. Obviously still can endlessly kite melee.

Messed with crossbows a bit and the prepare time is severely flawed. It opens them up to absurd hit and run as you don't have to "wait" for the repeat time if you just keep them moving for the duration of it. The obvious solution is to have them stop reloading if you move them and force them to continue reloading after stopping, but don't know how feasible that is, especially on short notice.

This moves away from D3668 entirely. It also makes the building superbly weak defensively. Also reducing the batch training time modifier leads to a much faster train time rather than slower.
I might be missing something but where is the tech itself, to see its values?

I'd prefer to up the pierce armor to 5.

3x bonus is way too much. It'd make them far weaker than they were in previous releases. I prefer to give a bonus to spearmen/pikemen or to simply reduce the armor values of elephants by 2 or 3.

Are these the same rotation times and speeds in the mod you created? If so, I like the balance.

Yes.

You're not changing elephants, is that just on purpose?

Yes, I'm not changing champion, elephant, hero, and siege rotation.

For what it's worth, I dislike these rotation values, since they feel too fast.
I'm not sure how to go about this problem. There is obviously a fundamental disagreement between the 'competitive' scene and more casual players, and I'm not sure it can be fixed...

Yeah, it is difficult to find values that would have consensus.

I think the +10% health tech would be too cheap/too quickly researched.
This would make the tech very cheap compared to training more cav units. +10% health is a really good upgrade for the relatively cheap cost of about ~3 cav right now. This would give +10% health for the resource cost of less than 2 cav, which just feels super cheap. Research time would >also be similar to the training time for 2 cav.

This would also make tech very cheap compared to similar blacksmith armor techs available in p2. Blacksmith armor techs are both much more expensive (400w/400m) and have a longer research time (40s) than the proposed values despite providing a benefit that is similar to a +10% health >increase. Additionally, blacksmith armor techs only provide a benefit against either hack or pierce whereas the +10% health boost provides a benefit against both.

I think the reason why this isn't researched more in p2 right now is because so few people actually fight with cav in p2 (which is largely the result of rushes not being very viable this alpha).

This is something I really like. It's an easy way to add more diversity to the civs themselves.

Changed from a cost reduction to a research time reduction of 15%.
Added an icon.
Added a description. Probably a bit reaching on it though.

Removed now useless classes from player.xml file as per Stan

You also need to edit the player files to remove that limit

That would be needed for multiplayer? In singleplayer I could put down as many of the buildings as my heart desired

I don't see a reason to remove the ability to train worker elephants in the CC. It rewards players who aren't scared to expand over the map and take map control. I think the reason Mauryans are seen as so strong is that their nice early game, aided by 75 wood houses and the elephant, transitions into a very strong early late game, with a 10% population boost and a hero that lets players get blacksmith upgrades super quickly. That works out to let the Mauryans outnumber and out-tech their opponents.

Agree with this.

I have never been in favor of different speeds for common units, for me ranged/melee must have the same speed, varying only in some cases. Anyway, it is a more pleasant situation that D3735 about camel rush.

I don't think there's a need to have all common units types have the same speed. In my opinion the more range a unit has, the slower movement speed it should have. That avoids endless hit and run opportunities by archers or slingers.
I think it's one of the main reasons why so many complain about archers in this release, as they can safely pick the fight, get a few free shots in and if they realise that it won't be favourable just run away. And unless the enemy was massing cav they can't be caught up to.

I'd rather have the wood gather rate matched to infantry not citizens.

I think it is unrealistic for men/women to have the same gather rates. Cutting down trees requires a lot of strength. Mining is requires a lot of strength. History shows that men were mostly in the woods/mines while women were mostly in the fields.

While it might be unrealistic, I think citizens/women having a better gather rate than men would make for better gameplay. Currently booming = turtling. That way greedy players going for a fast boom would atleast leave themselves more vulnerable and encourage aggression from other players, making the meta more than just full boom.