Libervurto

Why is it left click to place buildings, when every other order is given with a right click? This inconsistency continues to confuse me.

I feel like seasons would add more structure to a match. Different seasons would have different effects, food production would increase in the spring/summer, the terrain would be treacherous in the winter, etc. There are some other ideas floating around here for longer matches and seasons would make more sense for longer matches. So, yes I don't think seasons are necessary for a good game and would likely slow down the game but I would love to see someone experiment with these ideas to see how it effects things and what new challenges and decisions it brings. Maybe if I get into the coding side I will make a seasons mod. I have the summer to learn!

Not quite, I would like to see seasons because the seasons played a huge role in warfare in ancient times. There are a whole load of ideas for seasons but that would be appropriate to discuss in a separate thread.

Why not instead make construction sites drop sites for the materials required? This would mean you could place construction sites for buildings even if you don't have the resources at hand to build them immediately. Would that mess with the game? So the Civic Centre would only have a dropsite in phase 1? Then changes abilities through the phases? Interesting idea!

As a purely visual thing I would like it. Possibly if seasons were implemented then different crops could be planted at different times of the year. As for making farms finite, that seems like an option to be set before the start of a match. Otherwise, if you give faster harvesting rates to the finite farms then that's the one everyone will use, so it makes the other farms redundant.

Would it be fun to have optional random victory conditions secretly assigned to each player? Like in Risk. Then you would have to try and work out which victory your opponent is going for and shut them down while going for your own victory. Some more victory condition ideas: Population exceeds X Resources exceed X Build X Civic Centers We could even have some silly ones for fun: Survive for X minutes without progressing from the village phase Breed X hundred sheep Let your enemies destroy X of your buildings

Something that Danny and my ideas share is tying technological progress to physical structures on the map that can be destroyed and thus the technological progress lost. This seems like an avenue worth exploring whether pro-phase or anti-phase.

This discussion highlights everything that is bad about phases. Look at the posts endorsing phases, they are all about ways to restrict the player, and arbitrary ways to categorize things into phases. I understand that this is a game and things have to be simplified, and I appreciate the efforts of people to try and improve upon existing ideas (this is in fact more important than new ideas!), but I really think phases/epoch/ages have always been a dead duck in RTS games. A city/civilisation is something that evolves gradually, it does not jump from one age to the next, there is no reason why we cannot have this authentic feeling, there is no real reason to limit the game to distinct phases other than to emulate games that came before. I edited this part out because I went on a rant about how phases make no sense and seem to be completely detached from the game world, but I have deleted that and instead I will try to provide some alternative ideas. Knowledge as a Resource I want technology to be something tangible in the world, not a flowchart disconnected from the rest of the game. I will start by describing a basic settlement and how knowledge is accrued and used by primitive cultures. Each working citizen will accrue a trickle of knowledge while they work (this simulates the natural tendency to innovate and find more efficient ways to complete tasks). For every working citizen, the science score of the civilisation is increased by a small amount; the science score affects the rate at which knowledge is acquired over time. Advanced buildings and units require knowledge to build, however, knowledge is not spent like other resources, but also unlike other resources it must be maintained. The population itself is the basic and most vital store of knowledge, if your population collapses then your technology will disappear along with it! Libraries (as separate buildings or contained within other buildings, e.g. Universities) greatly bolster the civilisation's knowledge base. Buildings such as the Temple, Library, University and Observatory* are places that provide huge boosts to the science score and thus the rate of knowledge acquisition. So knowledge is not a static resource, it is not something that can be simply piled up but can change greatly depending on these factors of population size, libraries and science score. (For the more mathematically-minded amongst us I have attached an image of an equation that produces the desired relationship.) What this means in terms of gameplay is that knowledge (and thus technology) are bound to tangible objects and people that must be protected. * The effectiveness of the observatory depends on its elevation, being more effective on higher ground, like in real life. Technology Buffs & Building Upgrades Technologies like efficiency boosts would either be unlocked automatically past a certain knowledge threshold, or require a new building to be constructed (which would be unlocked by passing a knowledge threshold). You would not pay to unlock technologies as before; all technologies must be linked to either a specific building or the overall knowledge score (and ultimately the population of course). So technologies would be fluid just like knowledge. My thoughts on building upgrades is that they should be very limited if existing at all. Why? From both an aesthetic and gameplay point of view it seems a bit of a spoiler to simply click on a building and upgrade it. Instead, what is far more natural is to build new buildings alongside the old, or to demolish the old to make way for the new. In real-life cities, the mixture of architecture styles tells you something about the history of the city. I would love this to be a part of 0AD, being able to see how a city has evolved over time; you could look at a city and maybe you will see a clear divide between the old city and the new city as it has expanded over time, or perhaps the outskirts are littered with ruins from an ancient war or perhaps the ruins are simply old buildings that were demolished to reclaim building materials. I am getting carried away with this idea that would require tonnes of new art! Should Other Resources Be Volatile? I think so, yes. So you have 10 000 stone? What if I need stone, why can I not raid your base and steal your stone? Why can I not burn down your granaries so that your people starve? Resources are what most wars are fought over so why is this not the case in 0AD? I think I will have to learn this level of programming because I always have these grand ideas and then I sit around and wait and hope that somebody else makes them!

I like the idea of Priests converting enemies. How would this work though? How would the priest be able to convert an enemy without your other troops killing them and without the enemy killing your priest before conversion is complete? Priests could also be involved in researching tech in some way. This would make sense since historically, priests were the most educated people and some clergymen were the earliest scientists.

Okay, but this does seem to be brushing aside Thorfinn's concern without good reason. Would it be okay if farmsteads or any other non-military building trained spearmen as well because barracks have more troops and techs? However, Thorfinn commits a similar fault… Is it not just as strange that women would be "produced" at an administrative building? Perhaps we need to think of the civic centre with a new perspective before we can understand whether things need to change and how they could be changed. What if we view the cc not as "producing" units but organising the populace? Whenever we build a house we can assume that people are living in it but only once we "build a unit" do they appear to us because they have been "recruited" to our cause. In this way we can view the cc producing basic troops as the "council" deciding to organise the men. Perhaps troops should not gain combat experience if there is no barracks? General tip: if you want to change something in the game, first, before introducing new ideas, see if you can achieve the same effect by using existing mechanics. This is not only helpful for programmers but for the player as well, since they have less to learn and reused mechanics will become intuitive and instantly understood. Also, introducing a new mechanic might have unforeseen effects that are undesirable. By tying the number of barracks to the number of cc's, you'd have to keep a tally of how many cc's you have, would that need another counter on the HUD like for citizen count? What happens if a cc gets destroyed? What if I have an island colony and can't build a barracks on it because I'm already at max; do I need to destroy another barracks first? What if I have an island colony and a cc is destroyed! Do I then have to destroy two or three barracks before I can build one on the island?… It starts to sound a bit messy. To limit the number of barracks a player can build, IMO it makes more sense to impose a minimum distance between barracks, just like for towers.

I like when terrain is very important and I have to plan how to exploit it best. One thing 0AD does not have that I enjoy is units with unique names that upgrade with experience to become legendary soldiers. Yes, units can gain two levels of proficiency but I would like to see them promoted further and have names so I can keep track of them and build a story around them.

Very nice demonstration. The visual effects really suit Red Alert's hi-tech theme, but how would it look in 0ad? You mentioned a "god view", so would you literally be a god? What would the world look like? (A disc held up by four elephants riding on the back of a turtle?) What would the pointers and menus look like? I think this would require someone very talented and dedicated coming in and basically doing this on their own from scratch. Not many people have this hardware. I don't see it happening but you never know.

https://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?/topic/21523-my-impressions-and-ideas/&do=findComment&comment=324399 No thoughts on these ideas?

I don't think that is necessary. Having layers of walls is a tactical advantage, no need to buff that with bonuses.

I was thinking this too. I think gaining xp from a combination of damage dealt and received would work best. I am assuming that units have a data flag to state when they are engaged in combat? While in this combat state, we record the damage dealt and received by the unit. The amount of experience gained is only calculated after the unit has left combat—at which point damage statistics are deleted. The experience gained is calculated simply by multiplying the damage dealt by the damage received during combat. Experience Gained = Damage Dealt × Damage Received This relationship makes a soldier's attacks count for more when fighting a tougher opponent; or conversely, his injuries teach him more when he is fighting well. Major battles become historic events. Fighting in one large battle gains far more experience than several minor battles. For example, let's say we have a soldier who fought in a major battle, he dealt and received 50 damage, so he gains 50² = 2500 XP (actual number of XP not important for this). His next combat is a minor battle, where he deals and receives 10 damage, so for this battle he gains only 10² = 100 XP. Therefore, he'd have to fight in 25 of these minor battles to gain the same amount of experience he received from his one major battle! So, either way, you can look at your veterans and know they are truly battle-hardened. Encouraging better battle strategy. Players will start to think about battles more as separate events. Players who are more strategic in the deployment of their troops will be rewarded: by engaging the enemy where they have an advantage or a route open to retreat, their troops stand a better chance of surviving the engagement and gaining XP. Addendum. It is almost absurd to me that I have this much to say about multiplying two numbers together! That's why I like thinking about this stuff, though. Simple changes in how these values relate to each other can have huge effects.

I think there has to be some kind of physical actor involved in tax collection. Either a building (temple?) that collects taxes from houses within its aura, or a special unit (tax collector) who visits the houses to collect their taxes. This means you cannot just plonk houses anywhere and claim taxes, you must build infrastructure to collect taxes. Having physical infrastructure also gives your enemies a point to attack; your taxation infrastructure can be dismantled without having to demolish every single house.

Here is my island of sheep all receiving a combat bonus from their hero!

I have similar thoughts about the pace of the game. I'd love a game mode where maintaining my own civilisation is more the focus than destroying my enemies. Here are my thoughts, building upon your ideas. Regeneration & Seasons - I've changed my mind about the growth rate for trees, it should probably be the same as fish, growth accelerating in proportion to the current quantity. Individual animals could have a random chance of spawning babies, which would mature with time (luckily, nature runs on a pretty strict clock, so breeding and maturing could be done with global counters, like the seasons). Animals would also have to die of old age (I guess this would just be a random chance during the "death" season). Here's how I see it happening (while trying to keep things as simple as possible): at the start of spring, randomly selected mature animals give birth, at the midpoint of winter a random selection of animals die, young and mature alike (midwinter will become an obviously sensible time for deaths if seasonal weather is implemented). Any newborns that make it through to spring will mature, but maturation is done after births, so these newly mature animals wont have a chance to breed until the following year. The seasons could also effect the regeneration rates of fish and trees: summer being a time of accelerated growth, and winter being the opposite. The spring could also be a time when trees with max wood spawn saplings nearby. This would be a random number of saplings at random positions near the parent tree. The position would be completely random and if there is no free space at that position then the sapling simply fails to take root. This would usually be a "bug" but for this purpose it actually works nicely because it creates a natural rate of expansion for forests, and means you'd want to keep your forests relatively far from built up areas. (Fruit bushes could operate the same way.) Harvest Controls - With these regeneration effects in place, we need to stop our workers from completely depleting organic resources but still be able to order them to be cleared to make space for building. (I went through at least half a dozen ideas trying to think of something sensible for this!) When you assign a worker to harvest wood from a tree, with at least 1/2 its maximum, the worker will gather wood until the tree is down to 1/4, they will then automatically leave it to regrow. Workers will never automatically harvest trees with less than 1/2 capacity. If you assign a worker to harvest a tree that is below 1/2 this will command the worker to clear the tree entirely (which could have a special cursor icon to indicate this to the player). (I toyed with the idea of setting your own percentages to harvest, or even have settings for each worker, but that all seems too complicated.) Potentially, (code gods willing) if you wanted to clear a tree with over 1/2 wood, you could click to harvest and then shift-click to harvest the same tree again, exploiting the already-implemented task queue to automatically give the order to clear the tree once it is down to 1/4 remaining wood (and the worker has stopped harvesting it). (The same rules would apply to all other organic resources.) Growth: Area Effects - I had some ideas about area effects but I'm not sure how taxing they would be on the engine. Trees could boost nearby growth of fellow trees, farms and animals, while all buildings—except the farmstead—reduce the growth rate. This would encourage lining farms with rows of trees, like real farmers do, and planting forests away from developed areas. I don't like this idea any more. Mines & Quarries - We need to make these resources last to keep up with the organics. My suggestion is that each mine/quarry has several layers of resources. To access these additional layers you must research new technologies. The layers could be quite varied in size, so you might, for example, have a mine that at first is very productive but then in the mid-game yields almost nothing, but in the late game yields a huge volume. This would make it important to keep scouting around as the game progresses; new resources could seem to pop out of nowhere because their initial layers were very small or non-existent. Idle Chatter - At the moment, idle workers do literally nothing. My suggestion is to make idlers wander about a bit at their own will and form groups with other idlers and talk to each other (with some little animation). This has the advantage of getting them out of the way of workers, stops them blocking access to buildings, and groups them together so it's much easier to put them all to work. Also, this allows for more sinister mechanics like in my next point. Dissenters & Rebels - If we're going to be focusing on maintaining our own civilisation then let's make things interesting! Randomly (or based on something I haven't thought of yet ) some of your workers may become dissenters; this means they may randomly stop working and go idle from time to time. Dissenters can spread their dissent but only to other idle workers—so keep your workers busy! If enough dissenters group together they will revolt against you and become rebels, their faction will change to "[Your Civilisation] Rebels" and they will either attack you or flee to set up their own base. Rebel factions can do everything a normal faction can, with time you could even become allies with them. There is only one way to quash dissent: you need to execute the dissenters, but executions will give any surviving dissenters an easier time converting idle workers to their cause. Here is the part where you become very paranoid about whether your idle workers are guilty only of finishing their tasks or if they are causing unrest in your city! Maybe you need to keep a closer eye on things and see who is abandoning their tasks. Names - I love games that generate random names for each unit. It really helps to create your own story through the course of a game—and would greatly help in identifying those pesky dissenters. We could have culturally relevant names for citizens and soldiers, and even have special names for our ships. It would add a nice touch of flavour.

I don't know how the code works but it is probably easier to make modular bridges look good than walls. Bridges can be made of many lengths by having a choice of different length end-pieces, the middle consisting always of multiples of the same piece. /MM\ /TMT\ /MMM\ /TMMT\ /MMMM\ /TMMMT\

Okay, I couldn't follow the code very well but I did catch that the power being used is 0.7, which is very close to the sqrt(1/2) I was using (roughly equal to 0.707). So, that's nice! I have devised a general formula based on the building max HP and number of workers, it's not precise but it's a good estimate. t = k / n^0.7 k = v^2 / 22000 Where v is the building max HP, n is the number of workers, and t is the build time. I used a separate variable k because it is useful to have that calculation done in parts; k is the build time for one worker. k would probably be precalculated and stored as an attribute of the building class. We could create a look-up table for the workrate, for 1 to 100 workers, which could save processing time. for n = 1 to 100 workrate[n] = 1 / n^0.7 next n Then the formula becomes a single multiplication t = k*workrate[n] I wonder if this would work any better or worse than the current code.

Sometimes with games I like to try and figure out how things were done by experimenting in game. I know this is completely pointless with 0AD because it is open source (not that I'd be able to make sense of the code), but I find it fun to try and pick apart the systems and make predictions and see if I was right; plus, it is good exercise for all this mathematics I'm supposed to be learning! I have been looking at construction in 0AD. I select a group of citizens, build a structure, then immediately destroy it and build it again, this time timing the construction -- this ensures that all builders are optimally positioned for the timed build. I do this with a single builder, then two, three, four, as many as I think I need for the data. I tried this with houses and after gathering the data I can make an educated guess that the formula for construction is something like this: t = k/sqrt(n) where t is the time taken (in seconds), n is the number of builders at the site, and k is a constant specific to the type of building being constructed. The k constant for houses is 12. (k will always equal the build time using a single builder.) Am I close? As I write this I remember that I think citizen soldiers and women build at different rates. I can't remember which I used but I think it was all women. Anyone else "play" games in weird ways like this? [update] I've experimenting with building temples. I think the data I got was a lot better this time and the formula I sort of guessed my way to is a very good match. It seems the power of n is not a constant but is specific to building types: t = k/(n^c) where t is the construction time (in seconds), n is the number of builders at the site, and k is a constant specific to the type of building being constructed, and c is a new constant, also specific to the type of building. For houses k=12 and c=1/2, for temples k=240 and c=sqrt(1/2). [update] After a bit more experimenting with temples I've found that sometimes c=2/3. It's very odd to me that there are groups of numbers of builders that can be predicted perfectly (within 1 second) with c=sqrt(1/2), then comes another group that fits c=2/3 much better, it seems to constantly flip between the two values for c over increasingly larger groups. That's a bit disappointing. Something else must be going on here, the switching is too regular to be down to random glitches or CPU spikes. It has to be something systematic, like rounding errors. Trying to work this stuff out is fun but I'm getting bored of testing. I will try to figure out what the connection is between these data and the building type stats and come up with a general formula, then I will try to predict the build time for a building I haven't tested. [update] I was way off. I timed a build of a civic center and it took 2.8 times as long to build as my prediction. I even repeated the house building experiments before making my prediction, because I noticed that my data was way off. A single person building a house in 12 seconds!? I must have had a load of construction buffs or something. Still, it didn't help in the end. Oh, well. Now I will have to find out what the real algorithm is and see if I was on the right track.

Or have a maximum bridge height (or water depth) so that bridges cannot be built across oceans, or at least make it very expensive to do so. The problem I forsee with having standard bridge sizes is that then in order to make bridges useful the maps would have to be designed with bodies of water with a specific width to cater to bridges. This would have the effect of there being predetermined bridging points on the map. I like the idea to keep these things as free-form as possible. Also, I just want to see people build crazy bridges! I like the idea that a player might endulge in a big bridge building project, and it could end up being a great feat and help them win or it could be a disaster that is never finished and ruins them. We have all tried to build a "Great Wall" in a game, with mixed results, so why not tempt players with great bridges too? Reminds me of real life huge building projects that old empires took on, sometimes out of necessity, most often for prestige.

You ask for a lot of things without giving much reasoning. Yes, the things you suggest would add a lot of colour to the game but do they add any depth? How would your proposed additions impact on the game? Think about these things when making suggestions, and be careful not to just ask for bigger and better versions of what already exists without explaining exactly what it is you want to change and your reasons why you think this is important. Two ideas I will focus on because they stood out to me: permanent/replenishing resources, and animating garrisoned buildings. Animated buildings I think is a great idea, a very nice, intuitive visual indicator that a building is garrisoned. Permanent/Replenishing Resources, you argue that fish stocks and forests regenerate in real life so why not in game? What purpose does it serve to try to emulate real life? Does this serve the game? This is not a good reason to promote an idea, be careful asking for realism or you might get what you wish for and will have to organise the disposal of all your 2000 citizens poop! Instead ask how it affects the game to have finite resources versus infinite resources, and try to determine which option makes for the best game. One problem is that with infinite resources the game could potentially never end. With infinite resources the issue of supply would change from quantities of resources to rates of harvesting, how would this be imposed upon the player? For example, perhaps the more you fish a certain fish stock the slower it regenerates. What about maturity? Maybe it takes time for new trees to grow and replace the ones you cut down, perhaps aggressively cutting down a forest of mature trees would even help younger trees to grow faster in the open space? So forests could have the opposite replenishment behaviour to fish, the more depleted they become the faster they replenish. You see how I am thinking about how the game works first, then drifting off into ideas that echo the real world, then pulling back to try and adjust these ideas to fit into the game and see how we could, in a simple way, get some of the feeling of those real world ideas without needed to simulate them completely? I hope you do not think I am being patronising. I give this advice because I see you are full of ideas but I think your ideas could use a little direction.

Here are my thoughts on bridges, Bridges should be plotted like walls, yes, but with small differences that are important not to overlook. When placing the beginning and end points for a bridge these points are not arbitrary, unlike with walls, instead they should mark the bridge footing*, with the length in between the two footings being the bridge deck**. Placing the footings further apart builds bigger arches, perhaps to allow large ships to pass underneath (allowing smaller boats to pass under smaller arches could be a nice trick), but bigger arches cost cost more materials. There's a limit to how far apart you can place the footings but you can build them in series to create bridges with multiple arches that span a greater distance. Wooden bridges are a good idea too. Wooden bridges cannot have footings placed in water (they would rot), so wooden bridges must span a body of water in one length. I do not see the need to add towers to bridges. If you want to defend your bridge with a tower, build a tower next to it. However, it would be worth making sure that bridges and walls can tesselate nicely together, so you could protect your bridge by walling it off and installing a gate. I do not support the idea to have weight limits and damage the bridges by crossing them. Think how much chaos this would cause trying to stop your units wandering over the bridge all at once and breaking it! Drawbridges, I am unsure about. I could probably be convinced they are a great idea and a terrible idea! * Bridge Footing - The parts in contact with the ground that bear the weight of the bridge. I think I'm using the correct terms but bridge terminology is new to me. ** Bridge Deck - The part that you travel across.

Basically, yes. I am imagining the AI being more concerned with controlling resources than killing the opponent. Like the saying in chess, "to take is a mistake", meaning that going after your opponent's pieces is often much less effective than concentrating on controlling territory. I am not suggesting that this should overwrite the current AI, I understand that many people enjoy the hectic "build and battle" dynamic similar to Starcraft, and even in my "pacifist" vision of the game there is room for erratic factions who just want to raid and pillage, but IMHO that shouldn't be the way most factions behave normally, they should be a little more cautious and self-preserving. I would like games to be quite long, several wars might be fought between the factions, interspersed with periods of peace, before the game is over. Maybe I am in the minority with this wish, but I've always wanted to play something that feels between Age of Empires and Civilisation in scope. Adding depth to the AI behaviour would allow for lots of different play styles and also new mechanics. For example, I've always thought it would be cool if instead of conducting diplomacy "magically" you actually had to send an emissary with a guard to negotiate peace and trade deals; can't really do that sort of thing if the AI attacks on sight. [edit] I shouldn't really say that the current method of diplomacy happens "magically", it is part of a "tabletop" paradigm where the players can interact with each other at any time, as if they were sat around a table together. Another paradigm could be that the player exists within the game world, either collectively as any of his/her units, or as a single unit that represents the player (like the king in chess); in this case the players' units would have to come into contact with each other to conduct diplomacy.