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Showing content with the highest reputation on 2015-01-21 in all areas
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3 points
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Well, i'm starting to make new animations for every type of unit in the game. It's a slow work so i'll be uploading every progress on the animation proposal. if something doesn't look good or can be improved please tell me, that's why i made this topic. FEMALE CITIZEN2 points
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2 points
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I feel the current wooden walls are okay in terms of hitpoints and cost, but are strategically very nearly pointless. From a pure strategy game point of view, a wooden wall serves to buy some time when performing a risky strategy such as fast-teching, where you need to delay the enemy a little while to give your few ranged units a chance to weaken them or buy the time to produce more units. Or to give time to bring your army to bear. Or to make a weak harassing force turn around and go home. From a balance perspective the wall doesn't need to delay an attack for long. If the wall lets a player go without units, if an opponent effectively gets stone-walled by a stone wall, then the game balance is off. In most cases, players will prefer to wall off their base using buildings, as this involves very nearly no additional cost. On maps and for civs where this is possible (obviously much easier with cheap houses) the only real use for a wooden wall is for a gate, although gates are not really needed for a component player as there is enough strategic value in having a chokepoint, or you can do a total walloff with a barracks which has it's exit on the outside, and later remove a house to make a hole. Walls are not really practical when there aren't already natural chokepoints. The problem is that walling the enemy out is the same as walling yourself in. It is essentially giving your opponent an unopposed victory as they can either expand or tech more quickly and so will have an advantage in resources and/or technology. The expense of building the wall is never going to be recouped and early in the game wood is *the* limiting resource. That wood means a slower tech, fewer harassing units, or fewer soldiers which could be harvesting. It's just not viable to spend more than a hundred or so wood on walls. One interesting idea would be if wooden walls could be built in neutral territory, suffering the same decay as scout posts. This would help to distinguish them from house wall-ins, and make them a more useful defence against rushes as choke points could be walled off on more maps. Note that wooden walls in neutral territory would be by no means a guaranteed defense even on maps with suitable chokepoints, as cavalry harassment can arrive very early, definitely early enough to kill or at least hamper the units building the walls. There is a kind of exploit which you can do with walls, you can build the wall then delete the towers. The long wall spans are cheaper and build more quickly than the 'towers', and oddly enough deleting the towers doesn't leave any holes in the wall, if you do it right the wall still seals perfectly (wooden walls always seal perfectly even without towers, stone walls require some attention as if you use maximum length spans it doesn't work, but stone wall spans can overlap if they are less than maximum length, thus sealing the hole). For stone walls this permits building the wall at a cost of 30 stone per span which is way cheaper than the 130 stone for a span with a tower, and the build time is much quicker. Wooden walls do not enjoy such large benefits from deleting the towers, you still save about 1/2 the cost and build time. In some cases deleting towers is a no-brainer as they literally add nothing to the wall, in other cases terminal towers are helpful as they allow extending the wall, and may be required to seal the wall against terrain. There is another kind of exploit, which is deleting (or ignoring) the spans and using the stone wall turrets as towers. Lets compare these wall turrets with normal towers. Wall turrets cost 100 stone, which is 100 metal less than a tower, they build in around 130s, a bit quicker than the ~160s for a tower. They garrison 2 soldiers, vs 5 for a tower. They provide no free shots, while a tower provides 1 (the upgrade adds +1 to both, but it only works with the turret if there is already a unit garrisoned). They have slightly less range. They do not count as one of the 5 buildings for unlocking City Phase, while towers do. At first glance a wall turret is just a cheaper, inferior tower. They cost about half as much, and have about 1/3rd the firepower when fully garrisoned. They DO enjoy all the upgrades which towers enjoy and benefit proportionately more than towers, more than doubling their firepower. But there are two really big advantages of wall turrets. First they have *way* more hitpoints. it depends on the civ, but normally about 3-5x as much hitpoints. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, there is no minimum distance restriction, you can build as many wall turrets as you like, as densely as you like, just like towers in nearly every other RTS game (yay!). They have to be built in pairs with a span, but you can delete the span and one of the turrets if you like. So at second glance it can be summarized like this: Early in the game towers are probably a better choice, as they offer much more firepower, and more protection for units, at this point raiding forces will have trouble tearing down a tower even with it's modest ~1000 HP. Later though, upgrades improve wall turrets more, and enemy units become powerful enough to cut down towers quickly, at this point wall turrets are a much better choice as they can offer up to 10x the hitpoints per resource invested, and can be spammed much more densely. Wall turrets would be the natural choice for offensive towering where the enemy has some serious incentive to kill your towers, and where you want/need to creep forward with the towers (turrets do extend influence, so you can creep into enemy territory). Because wall turrets have so much hitpoints and build fairly quickly it is quite practical to build one even under enemy fire, making them good for offensive towering, or for building them when being attacked. Their damage is lackluster without upgrades, but with upgrades they are quite good. In fact late game it would seem there is very little reason to build towers when wall turrets have so much more hitpoints. When balancing stone walls, these exploits or unconventional uses must be taken into consideration too, namely turretless spans, and spanless turrets. I am not certain what the fixes to these exploits would be, although it might work in such a way that a span without a tower is unstable and is destroyed, and a tower without a span is unstable and destroyed, or if not destroyed, at least suffer some kind of penalty to it's effective hitpoints. This would do nothing to address the fact that 'dumbbell' walls could still be used as uber-tough towers with no minimum distance restriction.2 points
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As reported here : http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1437 A fishing animation of a unit would help to make a design decision on the ticket. If you can try to make that anim too Also you can make a fishing rod and rig it to make it even more realistic. In the design doc this anim is missing (Enrique made it some time ago), And those too : - Double Rowing - Simple Rowing - Boat Fishing - Land Fishing. Example (using current in game anims) :1 point
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SInce 0.A.D is trying to be as realistic and historical as possible while keep the gameplay fun i think units sould be more uniek. - Units sould not be able to destroy stone buildings "But some units can have torches that can be trown to wooden buildings/defences" But is a slow process. - Battery rams sould not be able to kill units only buildings, With health , armor , damage upgrades. - Towers sould have upgrades for different arrow types like: fire , armour piercing types "and when selecting the defence tower you can choice what arrow type you want" - Gates sould have some defence upgrades like: boiling oil , iron gate. So you can defend your gate house from rams. - Scorpions sould do no to very little damage to buildings with normal arrows but when selecting fire arrows it those fire damage to wooden buildings. just a few things with many more of those type of changes and units with special roles and well belanced for all factions with there own style and then i think it will be the best strategy game ever!1 point
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+Carry Grain/fruit +Slaughter +Carry Meat I think maybe every death animations must be finish in the center of the model, so there would be no problem like the one you see in the meat gathering video I'll finish all the FC's animations and then i'll check and try everything you ask1 point
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Ok, the (blank) strategy guide is http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Strategy_Guide. Let's contribue !1 point
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I like the idea of ranking the most outstanding features of the civs. Probably the most useful information is hidden in the design documents. I've consulted them often, but still fail to memorize their content. Also, with random civs the first click is usually the diplomacy dialog to find out which civ I actually have. Well, except Mauryans, their blue colors + unique architecture + mobile dropsites make them easily identifiable. A feature rank would help me to easily make a quick plan, because it avoids selecting units and find out what they actually can build. The upcoming structure tree will definitely help in this regard. Even better would be a cheat sheet with all the relevant information on a single page ready to print out and put next to the keyboard. Out of thin air I'd suggest the civ name, a visual indicator to link to the screen and the top three unique features, if exist. The elephants are a good example because there is nothing to counter that feature. Many civs have specials which can neutralized with some other trick. I think, this kind of information is useful later in the game and once a player has some experience. Since a structured civ feature table will help me to make my bot project more interesting, count me in. PS: Another line of thought at game start is: Wow, lots of stone here. Does it help me with this civ?1 point
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Nice work, I like the variation Less clones there are in the game, the more real it looks.1 point
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1 point
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I think it would make sense having yes / no in the same order the language writes - so yes = left for LTR languages, yes = right for RTL languages, and yes = top for top-down languages (in case we ever support these)1 point
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I address some of Panando's analysis a little bit in my mod. I make it so walls are strong (and availabel to the player a phase before civic center), but wall towers cannot shoot at all unless they are garrison. At least this way you must plant a lot of your pop into your line of exploit wall towers to get firepower, which would be stationary and not responsive to flankings. You can only put 3 units in the towers too, so it would be best to have a mix of towers and long sections of wall so you can put archers on the long sections of walls (ranged infantry's bonuses on walls are also beefed and different). An interesting experiment would be for Civic Centers Fortresses to have an aura that prevents enemies from building towers (like a line of exploit towers for instance or defense towrers).1 point
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+Farming +Carry Grain/Fruit +Meat Gathering there is no gameplay because i'm having some troubles with the prop in the back bones. I'll fix it soon enough. That it's not up to me, it's a great idea. i would love to make any animation even more if it makes a difference with other games. Yea, I just wanted to make it look more heavier. i'll fix that later as you can see i have a plenty of time...for now, And Yesterday i came up with an idea to make a little animation for the logo of 0AD, i'll upload it in a couple of days. It's no much but maybe you like it. Here you have an advance about how it's looks like.1 point
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> Nice analysis Indeed. That's probably all you need to know about towers. Is there a best of forum category?1 point
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1 point
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I've found random trigger maps are superior to manually designing maps for bot testing. I can easily change number of bots and civs from the commandline without editing XML files. But that's the random map part. With the trigger part I even managed to change the resources before bot initialization and force research of technologies at game start. So a bot can build fortresses right away from start instead of collecting all needed resources and raising a town first. I'm sure I'll detect more useful possibilities soon and add them to 'brainland_triggers.js' as from trigger map code the simulation is available and Hannibal's groups scripts will make it a good choice for smarter map natives. If interested grab the files from git: https://github.com/agentx-cgn/Hannibal/tree/master/maps/random1 point
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Sure they where primitive/simple peasants but not stupid do something for four hours a day you get better or you break so efficiency of the stroke in independent of our own cultural assumptions period. Enjoy the Choice1 point
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Thanks for the color variation suggestion Wijitmaker , I thought about multitexture before, but this way is efficient too (it's not player color, but object color). So I kept those colours variations for the male auroch : <group> <variant name="chocolate"> <colour>98 83 78</colour> </variant> <variant name="roan"> <colour>242 219 164</colour> </variant> <variant name="liver"> <colour>172 117 98</colour> </variant> </group> It's quite subtle once in game (compared to cow which are only brown at this time) How the textures look like : I also encoutered a seam problem with the UVs, but since I feel to lazy to unwrap it again , I googled and found this awesome technique : http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1800/completely_eliminate_texture_seams_.php PS: I just find the tail a bit too thick, even seen from top view, but it's not significant.1 point
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Buildings are too strong? I think they are about right. If they were weaker, then powerful non-siege units could tear them up in one second each. Example: I was using Gaul against Britons and was able to mow down fortresses without using any siege units. Takes advanced swordsmen five seconds at most (actually, I think it was a bit less) to take down a full health fortress. Houses fell so fast that it looked like the troops were still moving. The enemy skirmishers (a good sized group) were upgraded and firing at my units the entire time, but it wasn't worth fighting them because they were not doing enough damage to be worth stopping to fight them. Towers fell faster than fortresses and I couldn't see that they had any effect. (These were upgraded towers too.) I've tried this with other advanced units with pretty much the same results. I guess I feel that strong upgraded units should not tear buildings down so fast. Certainly not any faster than they do currently. They should fight other units better. I remember in AoK that trebuchets were useful. I haven't bothered to use a ranged siege unit in a long time as troops are more versatile and ultimately more powerful even against structures. Rams generally aren't worth it, however, there are a few cases where rams can be useful. (Also, a group of rams is exceptionally good against archers as one ram alone can take out dozens of archers.) I do agree about wall foundations; any unit should be able to destroy those.1 point
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Realistically, swords, spears, arrows and such should not damage walls - but then, you should have siege hooks and ladders available. Walls could be defeated without siege engines in the real world, they were effective only if actively defended. Adding the ability to scale walls with ladders or pull them down with hooks would add a lot of complexity for a small increase in realism. Having the infantry's regular attacks do the job is a reasonable substitute, and much simpler. It's much too easy now, though - I agree with Lion, the effectiveness of such attacks against walls should be reduced.1 point
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If someone took enough effort to build walls, I'd think it would be nice to require siege to take them down. We can make them expensive/slow to build as needed for balancing. I'd rather have expensive walls and/or slow build time than have walls that don't really offer any protection. If building conversion is implemented, it wouldn't apply to walls anyway.1 point
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Is there an overall idea for the balance in a18? I really liked the idea of certain types of units countering others. Like: sword infantry >> spear infantry >> cavarly >> ranged infantry Things are little mosh pit like right now in a17. Players just spam whatever unit looks cool. 100 archers here. 100 sword cav here. 100 hoplites there. There’s a big blob of a battle in the middle, and whoever has the most units wins. I really liked how in a16, spear infantry could kill cav at like a 4-1 rate, sword infantry could cut through a wall of pikes at like a 2-1 rate, and a small group of lance cav could chase off larger groups of skirms and archers. You really had to pay attention to battles, and make sure you had the right units at the right time. It was always satisfying see horses get knocked down against a dense formation of pikes, and frustrating to then watch said pikemen get cut down by swordsmen. The battles were more challenging, and there were rewards for players who managed their armies well. I don’t think this process of tweaking HP, attacks, armor, and rate of fire to make everything "balanced" is working. Things seem to be changing, but not really getting more fun. The lack of a clear counter system makes battling powerful units difficult. I love the idea of powerful units. But what are you supposed to do against fully upgraded sword cav or chariots? The sword cav can cut right though pikes and forts. The only way to counter them right now is with more of the same. Even elite sword cav should have to run away from a dense formation of pikes or forts. On another note, the game is a little more frenetic and stressful than it used to be. Pops are too high, and its difficult to move and mange such large armies. With just 10 carrying capacity to start, gathering sites are a hot mess of collisions. There are guys hitting 330 pop at like 15 minutes. I know the focus is on unit balance right now, so ill type more on that later if your interested in player feedback on that. Thanks for all the work you guys do to keep the game running. I'm just trying to offer a bit of feedback that goes a bit deeper than just "x unit is too powerful" type stuff. I know you guys have your philosophy on what makes the game fun, so I thought I would offer mine.1 point
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Nice pic, i need to work bridges out These have been downsized from 6400 x 4800 and jpeg'd so lost have a fair bit of quality, still looks nice though Here you can see the detail in a small section of the above shot, that is itself only the top 1/4 of the pic.1 point