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ralphierocks

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  1. I have shown my ignorance then, I assumed coding in the extra civ's was taking away from the dev of the game. Building capturing would be a plus in my book as well as the other person mentioning something as simple as slowing down units in dense forestry or heck even slowing down units not suited/used to fighting in desert terrain would be a plus. Little features like that go a long way in distinguishing 0AD from the stock RTS games we are used to seeing. I took the 6 months off and came back, I don't mind coming back again in a few months to see how things have progressed. I'm happy someone picked up the torch where AoE left off and I look forward to further developments. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
  2. Hey community, I have taken about 6 months off from this game/forum. I played a good 4 hours of it last year and figured I would give the dev's time to work on it and bring a more playable version to the front. I looked back over the last two releases and I am wondering something; See I build websites and small business applications for a living and I run into customers from time to time that ask for features to be implemented into their site or software before it's logically relevant. When I play this game now, I still see the same issues with AI that I saw before, there are some great improvements, don't get me wrong, but the basics aren't even polished out yet. What I do see however is more civ's added to the game and that raises the question, would the limited time you guys have be better spent on adding content or making the game more playable? Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this game a lot, it's just not something I can play more than once or twice before hanging it up again to play a more complete game. The path finding is still an issue, AI is still...yeah, basic features are still lacking, etc. I would just prefer to see those things fixed before adding Egypt in as a civ or the like. Either way I will play the game, the only question is will I be playing the next update or waiting a few years for the completed game. One other question, idea, suggestion, thought: In an effort to not make another AoE clone, unit formation's are a step in the right direction, but that won't change "much" of the gameplay/strategy mechanics. Like AoE, this is a numbers game, who can throw the most troops the fastest at the other guy. Sure some troops are stronger than others, but sending an army of villagers could wipe out a small legion of men. I read in the forum about adding modifiers for terrain height when it comes to archers and I have to say, that is exactly what I was thinking. Another thought would be terrain height modifiers for general troops, swinging my sword down at the enemy is going to do more damage than swinging my sword up at the enemy. Another consideration would be dense forest modifiers, cav slows dramatically, archer accuracy lowers dramatically, and maybe civs historically known to have waged combat in dense forestry get a bonus. I know the above is asking a lot but lobbing my troops at the enemies troops repeatedly until the AI "submits" feels like AoE all over again. There was no real strategy minus the basics of either walling up or rushing out when it came to AoE, they added the Wonders and then they added Posts you could take over to give the game a more strategic feel, but intelligent players still realized at the end of the day it came down to who could click their mouse faster tasking people to gather resources and build more troops (any unit will do) than the other guy. Common sense would dictate that if you rush your cav into spearmen in a phalanx, bad things are going to happen. Slight modifiers for that mistake won't cut it, a "strategy" would be to occupy the front of the phalanx while the cav flanked their exposed sides or back. Who knows, at this point I may be growing too old for this point and click style of an RTS and have too much appreciation for Rome: Total War which seemed to nail combat more STRATEGICALLY and realistically. As it stands now, if they ever made an AoE IV game, what would become of 0AD? I would just like to see some clear distinction between 0AD and AoE...these are just my own personal opinions and thoughts. Anyway, I know you can't please everyone at once, so I can only ask to take those things into consideration, I was just hoping for more of a game after taking a break for 6 months. Thanks for your time and committment to the RTS genre. Edit: By Age of Empires III they added Cards and Home City Shipments, which did provide an element of strategy, by creating decks you could counter rushers or turtlers alike. Plus the French Factories that could generate resources were an all too valuable building and destroying the enemies Factories was a real game changer. But, combat was still the same point, click, hope to have more men than the opponent, no strategy, meet in the middle and fight it out redundancy.
  3. They have not (and I think they said will not) make the AI more intelligent (minus pathfinding and using technologies and the like), the only way to make it harder is by giving it bonuses to gathering rates, etc. That is essentially cheating and the way that AoE worked it's AI as well. His issue is playing the game casually not realizing the AI is simply building numbers to attack from the very beginning. As pointed out, the demo bot would be the easiest way to go for someone looking to casually play the game. With triggers added hopefully the AI can be more "intelligent" at first glance, providing people the opportunity to turtle, rush, etc without having to adjust their play style to suit the AI rushing.
  4. I thought the same thing as you, the AI was killing me at first and then I realized they are just rushing. So instead of turtling when you play (gather stock piles of resources, buidling walls/towers/etc), you might want to focus on building an army with every resource that comes in. I know it does not leave time to really enjoy the game and the art work contributed to the graphics, but it will keep you from getting murdered from the AI. The way games like this (AoE) works, is that it's typically a rush to see who can build an army the quickest and rush the fastest. I experienced this very heavily on while playing AoE Multiplayer. You are building your beautiful looking city and peacefully farming for resources, while the computer is literally building things related to military and troops and prepping an attack. The way me and my friends would combat this in the AoE series was to enable deathmatch with a 30 minute treaty. That gave us 30 minutes to build up the way we wanted, knowing the computer could not attack prematurely. The only issue with that is the later AoE games, the computer would just cannon spam you, so after the 30 minute treaty expired, they rushed you with an army of 50 cannons. Hopefully 0AD will have some feature to allow for a timed treaty to allow players that like to city build first, actually get an opportunity to do so without being harrassed by the pesky AI.
  5. I don't think nor expect any of the AI's to be perfect, but I am happy to see that others agree and would like to see a defensive AI as well. I hope that this idea does get overshadowed by additional in game features or the like. I also enjoy the randomness of the bots AI as suggested above and the ability to override that randomness, those ideas are pure genius. Keep up the great work, I can't wait to see what comes next.
  6. I have been playing this game now daily for a few weeks. I have found the AI to be more irritating than challenging. Let me explain: qBot will send 2-4 waves, then mass build villagers and simply idle them creating lag and stuttering in the game. Once you massacre these idle (broken) villagers the game speed returns to normal but the AI will not make any attempt to rebuild or carry on. Aegis Bot will send a decent sized army within the first 10 minutes, followed by wave after wave roughly 8-10 minutes apart. This forces you to just gather wood, food, and then send over an army to defeat them. Again once you dominate in the least bit the AI will not continue on, they will gather random resources without rhyme or reason. I love the game, everything is going great minus a few bugs here and there, but I would love to see a builder (defense) bot introduced. Rushing is fun in it's own ways but it's preventing the game from fully shining. You rush to get wood and food and never get to see the late technologies, unless you simply back off but at that point the AI is broken and useless, so essentially your playing by yourself. If you introduce a Defensive Bot you can keep the AI from mass producing villagers, and even mass producing an army because they will be walled in with towers. It will keep pathfinding down to a minimum as they don't have to travel far for resources. It will give us an opportunity to strategically play the game instead of just throwing our blob of troops at the enemies blob of troops. I like having the pressure of the enemy attacking me at (somewhat) random, but that concept will not work if the AI is quick to "give up" once you create a decent sized army and kill 10-15 of their villagers. At least with a defensive bot you will have time to see some of the later technologies without having to worry about stuttering (to the point that you want to throw your monitor out the window) simply because the AI thought it would be a good idea to wall themselves in with villagers instead of walls ( lol ). These are just my experiences and my suggestions, I'm a fan for life at this point and I'm going to play regardless, but I would enjoy it far more if we stopped focusing on the attacking bots for a release and focus on at least one defensive bot. Thanks for taking the time to read this, RalphieRocks
  7. I read up on this and understand everything that is happening. My experience is redundant each time I play; Roughly 30-45 minutes into game (non-scenario game, small map, no oceans, 1 computer AI opponent) the game starts to stutter to the point that it is nearly non-playable. It takes 4-5 times more to do tasks than before and every second of gameplay is followed by at least 1-2 seconds of pausing. When I manage to grin and bear it, I create an army and march towards the enemy. In every single game I have played the computer AI has created an army of villagers that just stand around a mill or food supply drop. There are 40+ of these villagers not doing anything, once I unleash my archers and cavalry to reduce the number of (idle or broken) villagers the game resumes to normal speed with no issues what so ever. Unfortunately it appears as if the AI has surrendered because they will not create any more troops at this point so it's basically a slaughter. These experiences are when playing against the qBot. I am going to fraps record the whole gameplay from start to finish so I can pinpoint exactly when the AI "gives up". So I survive the first 3-4 waves of troops from the enemy, they create a mass army of nothing but villagers and randomly collect resources without rhyme or reason. I tried the new bot with the Alpha 11 update by I find it to be OP'ed, able to send a large army within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. I don't find it challenging, I just find it rather extreme and it creates a situation where I cannot fully enjoy the game as I am forced to destroy them within 30 minutes of playing and without reaching any upgrades for my civ's. So for me it's like there is this whole other half of a game that your not able to experience because your forced into combat at such an early stage and once you destroy a few of their villagers they simply quit as well.
  8. I was spartan vs romans on the isthmus map (default size, etc) it was only us two. OS : Win7 SP 1 (6.1.7601) CPU : x86, Intel Pentium G630 @ 2.70GHz (1x2x1), 2.69 GHz Memory : 6144 MiB; 3682 MiB free Graphics Card : ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series ; OpenGL Drivers : 3.3.10524 Compatibility Profile Context; atioglxx.dll (6.14.10.10524), ig4icd32.dll (8.15.10.2291), ig4icd64.dll (8.15.10.2291) Video Mode : 1920x1080:32 Sound Card : AMD High Definition Audio Device; Realtek High Definition Audio; Engine exited successfully on 2012-09-08 at 12:24:04 with 523 message(s), 2426 error(s) and 0 warning(s). All of the errors where a copy of the one I posted, as I stated it continued to create the errors until the game hit no frames per second and I had to exit out.
  9. This bug started as soon as I tasked fishing boats to start fishing a whale. The bug continued increasing the numbers printed on the left hand side, it ultimately created lag which increased as well, the lag rendered the game unplayable as it got me down to 0 FPS, I stopped the game and the bug "vanished" it removed itself from the screen and I was able to start a new game. I was playing against the JuBot. P.S. The whale fled by the way and I was unable to fish anything at all, it would continue to flee into the FOW and I eventually destroyed my boats and docks in an attempt to stop the bug. I'm not sure if this bug has been reported or not, I have played 30+ games and have yet to see it. Thanks.
  10. Sounds great I can't wait to see what you guys come up with for it. Would like to see a tad more options than AoK but hey, your game is already so awesome I can't really ask for more!! Great work guys
  11. Hey, Me again. Sorry for all of the questions, I'm just super pationate about what you guys are doing and too eager to wait for updates lol. I had two quick questions for you: Are you going to include diplomacy in the game. That was something that was totally overlooked in the AOE Games, the ability to form even loose alliances with the computer and then betray them or encourage them to do your bidding. I think diplomacy would have brought so much flavor to the AOE series and I would really enjoy seeing it implemented in your game!! The computer AI, I know I mentioned something about this before but I was wondering when a player increases the difficulty against a computer opponent is it going to only give the computer AI a gather multiplier or is it going to actually affect their AI and behaviors? Basically will it give them a handicap or will they be more intelligent and strategic? Thanks again for keeping this thing going so long and working so hard on it. A special thanks for taking the time to talk to the community and keep us informed about the progress and ideas!!
  12. Excellent, I remember that style of trading I think civilization used it or something like that. That's the best way!!
  13. Okay that sounds great. I have not gotten far enough into the game yet to experience trading, just a quick question; is it based off of AOE 3's trading i.e. the market place where you basically buy a stack of wood at a set price and ultimately saturate the market with too much gold / not enough wood, or is it more like the old ship trading style where you dispatched a unit and set them to trade "x good" for "y good" (trade food for wood, stone for food, etc)?
  14. Let me just start and say you guy(s) are doing an excellent job with this. I am a die hard fan of the Age of Empires series me and my cousin play weekly via GameRanger. We both grew up on the Age of Empires series and it has more than entertained us throughout the years. Recently however we have found ourselves getting tired of the same maps, computer AI, etc and this sent me off on an adventure to find a new game. I ran through google search after google search and bought and downloaded so many games that I ultimately reformatted my 1.5TB HDD because it was so cluttered with random files from random games. This didn't stop me from searching though, I finally realized that all of the searches I was doing yielded results for commercial games and then it hit me, we also play Minecraft and that's an indie game, what if I search for indie RTS games? Low and behold I found 0 A.D. and I have to say I love what I see thus far. See we are old school (but not that old school), we are not into the sci-fi, robots, space RTS games at all, and unfortunately they have more than saturated the market since the Age of Empires series has ended. On top of that there was an influx of WWII genre "capture flags" (resources, I guess) style games. We drilled through them all, hoping that one would offer the resource gathering, base building, rts combat that we grew up on, and none of them delivered. To me, creating a troop, sending him to capture a flag and then have oil (or whatever) automatically deposit into my resources was not anything close to what I wanted. At the end of the day those games relied on numbers, if you brought more tanks than I had, I was done for. We also tried out AOE Online, and that is just a travisty, a complete disgrace to the series, I won't even go there right now about the horrors of that game. Your formula seems to be working well, and I never expected a AOE clone, and I appreciate that you guys want your own spin on the game. I think that alone is going to help this game take off. It amazes me that no one has done this before as I cannot be the only person seeking a new "AOE - RTS" game. I do however have some complaints about the game that I love so much. AOE is not perfect and I hope that your game will avoid some of the pitfalls that AOE suffered. There were three main things that hurt the game in my opinion and I will list them here just as a suggestion to avoid: On AOE 3 it took forever for them to release a update to allow you to use scenarios created with their editor in multiplayer games. Here we were, hours invested into one of the most epic maps ever created, only to find out that we could not play it online. This was eventually fixed of course, but it took forever to do so. The "AI". At a certain point in the game (single player scenario, or multiplayer) it seemed as if the computer AI simply "gave up" or "broke". I would withstand hordes and hordes of their armies pummeling my walls and towers and around the same point in EVERY single game the AI would just stop. They still had plenty of resources, so this made no sense what so ever. They would only create roughly 2-3 soldiers and camp them around their Town Center. Upon me invading them, they would simply continue to gather resources and not create more soldiers until the 2-3 they had were killed, only creating 2-3 more at a time. This essentially ends each game when it happens, what's the point in playing from there? TREES...Oh man the TREES...there were never enough to last for an enjoyable game, they never grew back and if you were on a map with no trade routes, or if you were a civilization that did not allow you to generate factories for resources, you were pretty much screwed. I borrow from games that allow you to build a forester (Anno I think allows this) to create more trees. AOE could have included a forester as a building type that would generate trees around the structure, much like Gaia and her Lush in AOM. When we log in to play, we want to spend hours base building and warring it out through the ages, the lack of trees prevented this. Don't get me wrong, we do rush, turtle, fast fortress, etc. But there was nothing more enjoyable than building that epic base protected by 3 layers of walls (because in AOE 3 the walls were "up"(underpowered) and the cannons were "op") and sending out our troops. Sometimes we meet on the battlefield as gentlemen, sometimes we send in a few spies others we just rush. The options were limitless, minus the trees lol. I understand the strategic value of trees, but for people that are not looking to end their game in less than a half hour, trees become vital to your civilizations growth. I think adding a forester building to the game would not throw the balance off because you could limit how many a civ could build and their rate a generating wood, plus like fortresses in AOE 3 you could limit their builds (how many they can build period, if it gets destroyed, it's gone for good). Sorry this is so long, I just wanted to point out my highs and lows from the AOE series, and throw in a few suggestions as well. I hope you guys keep up the great work and I can't wait for more updates!!
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