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https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP26944 https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP26943 the distinction between grain and rice was removed, so they now only have the regular gather rate: https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP26937 https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP26891

Yeah, your problem is this: https://github.com/0ad-matters/community-maps-2/blob/master/maps/random/gaia.js#L363 So better to use addProps only on unreachable areas.

Hello Everyone, Rather than dig up the old topic for balancing han, I started a new one centered around RC1, which @Stan` has graciously provided us Since the Han is a new civ added, we will need to carefully ensure everything is well balanced. To start, here are concerns of mine: Stacking unique economic technologies: 1. Farming upgrades are +25%instead of 20% (p1) 5. Rice paddies are cheaper, smaller than farms (more can be protected) 3. higher rice gather rate for women (.6 vs .5) 4. ministers (slight eco bonus) 5. imperial ministry upgrades (cheaper buildings, non-forge techs) (p1,p2) 6. crossbows cheaper wood cost these will make han a top tier eco civ, possibly competing with ptols. Stackable military stats: hero: -50% promotion experience fort upgrade: -25% promotion experience This could be OP: nearly instant rank 3 units. Champions: 5 different champs, 3 champ cav. Some civs only have 2 (britons) and 1 (spartans). Very strong defenses: great tower, super CC, stronger walls, can build multiple laozi gates for pretty cheap. This is probably stronger defense than iberians. It seems they have the eco of the ptols, top tier heroes, probably the best military, and on top of it all: 220 pop. Everything that makes the other civs good, the han seem to have all in one package.

Hi team, I would like to request a new feature in the game - even if it is only used by modders. The feature would allow for your very own units to become disgruntled and turn on you. I would like to see a new class type "Leader" who gives the player various benefits but who is also at risk of betraying you and taking his soldiers with him - effectively becoming a new AI player (but with various limitations). To help illustrate how it would work, I will explain how I would implement it in my mod: You start the game with a Lord who represents you (the player) in game. The Lord offers a population cap (e.g. 30), rather than buildings. Houses are the only structure that can boost the population cap (by 2) but the Lord Player can only build 5 max. The Lord has the ability to grant Lordships (upgrade) to experienced Men at Arms. Making them your vassals. The vassal Lords further increase your population cap (eg by 20). The Lord Player is the only unit in game that can build a castle. The vassal Lord is able to build a manor that is at least 100 meters away from the Lords castle or any other manors. The vassal Lord can then build an additional 3 houses around his Manor (increasing population cap by 6). There are also limits on farms and so having vassal Lords allows them to build more farms on their manor for your overall benefit. What I would like to happen is that each vassal Lord could have a random personality. If you lose a lot of soldiers in a short amount of time, a vassal Lord might begin to think he could overthrow you and attack. Alternatively, if you play too defensively, another Lord might think you are a coward for not being aggressive enough and end up turning on you. There might also be a situation where the vassal Lord does not attack you, but him and the soldiers that were created via his manor house stop obeying your orders, or you begin receiving less resources from their gathering. The idea (in my mod) would be that having vassal Lords increases your population cap and farming ability while also increasing the speed in which you can raise an army (you can train soldiers via the manor and via your own barracks - which would also be limited to 1 in the game). If you have two vassal Lords plus your own barracks, you can train soldiers from three buildings rather than one. The downside to having vassal Lords is you risk your vassals turning against you with all the soldiers that you trained via their manor house. Outcomes for treacherous Lords: 1. They attack you. 2. They don't attack you but they also refuse to obey your orders. 3. Gather rates from units built at the manor house decrease by 25%, 50%, 75% (simulating the vassal lord not passing on the resources to you). 4. They actively help your enemy. 5. A combination. Loyalty variables: 1. Soldiers/villages that were built via a manor house are killed at a much higher rate than those built via the Lord Players barracks/castle or other manor houses. 2. Too much defensive play. 3. To much aggressive play. 4. Building a manor house close to enemy territory. 5. Your overall strategy/policies - a feature where you could choose a "defensive/aggressive/economic" strategy where the health of your units is increased by 10% or their attack is increased by 10% or villager gather rate is increased by 10%. Different vassal Lords will react differently to different strategies of the player. I imagine this being a feature where you can adopt specific policies for how villagers and soldiers are treated (each policy with its pros and cons) as well as different policies regarding military strategy. You can choose to be a "Just" Lord Player who focuses on "defense" and making decisions "Collaboratively". Each of those three policies (Just, Defence, Collaboration) would effect the vassal Lords relationship with you. Alternatively, you could be a "vengeful", "aggressive" Lord Player who "Dictates" decisions. Of course for the actual 0AD game, I imagine the player could appoint Governors/Consuls/Generals etc etc. And of course the advanced diplomacy could be a feature the player choses to turn on/off at the beginning of the game.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Please also mind the recent commits. We removed the rice subtype. Han still have a grain gathering malus.

https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/26945

they did not keep the balance. AoE 3 and AoM are assymetrical.

it's normal, it's their first alpha.

I can fix this rather quickly.

Everyone praises A25, but I think A25 has some problems and overlapping is a serious one.

I would say immediately: farm upgrades back to 20 percent instead of 25. only 1 laozi gate permitted. I bet these will be unanimously agreed upon. I expect further nerfs will be required on top of these two.

Perus em portugues.

Very nice! May I use for Delenda Est Zapotecs?

Actors should definitely be removed by building footprints.

Right. And why are we using them like natural written parts of names? I never see Brutus with a diacritic anywhere else, unlike for example José or René, where I'd say that's just how they're spelled. Because technically they are natural.

the game doesn't do anything to make you believe that persian sparabara (translated in game as shield bearer - spearman is only listed in little among their many classes) is the same unit as athenian hoplites. I believe it makes no sense to assume that random players understand that all CS units with a spear (but not a pike) have the same stats. whatever notion you have about history and fighting, you wouldn't think that persian shield bearers have the same stats than all other spearmen, and the only way the game tells you that is by showing you the units stats. change those and the problem is solved. they will just be used for walling like houses. I wouldn't assume that a mostly agricultural, patriarchal society like the ancient persian one, had many women learning to use the bow. just saying.

We can do it!

I agree that the Han has OP economic strenghts, however, their military is outstandingly weak, which achieves a balance. The reason being, all of their ranged units deal too little damage per second. Archers and crossbows with melee can't possibly beat an army of slingers or javlins of equal size. In late game, they depend purely on champions, but their champions are trained from Imperial Academy instead of barracks, which makes spamming much more difficult. @real_tabasco_sauce if you think the Han are really that OP, I challenge you to a 1v1 where you use the Han and see if you can beat me, where I will be using a 'weak' civ of your choice.

Pers will be/ already are a cav civ. Does it make sense to add meat drop off capability to ice houses or would this just be op? I think it might be a way to justify the early cost of ice houses while supporting a cav army that Persians usually require to not die in the first 10 mins.

aesthetic reasons and perception. I find them cliche.

including unique technologies takes time. the priority is the generic tech tree and then the cultural/regional tech tree.

yeah, @wraitii corrected this in A26. I had the impression that it's not enough, but I never bothered to test a new set of parameters. If you want to, check this discussion:

Cavalry acceleration is fine but I think their minimum speed should be increased a bit. Ok I have not played any MP yet, but just taking a look at han civ and their bonuses: han farming upgrades: +25%---> +20%, or remove town phase farming upgrade han farming base rate .6-->.5 like other civs, perhaps increase farm occupancy to 5 keep in mind the small sized farms/rice paddies are a great bonus by themselves laozi gate should have same minimum distance as iberian monument and perhaps increased cost 2x infantry balance seems ok, a wide array of choices for infantry, cavalry, and champions could be op, as well as new CS and champion crossbow units. This will need to be determined by testing because it is not blatantly op like the han food bonuses. One thing for certain needs to be changed and that is the food/population rate of Han, 1.17 is so much greater than the next contender .95 (gauls) who dont have +10% population space. Han will have 10-15 fewer farmers and 20 more population space against regular civs, this will mean the largest han army will have 30-35 more men than the largest regular civ army. In addition to this, having fewer women makes it easier to withstand raids, and easier to reallocate units onto wood and metal for the production of champions. The civ needs some serious work and we won't be able to balance its units properly if the farming bonus remains this overpowered.

I think it's better to consider the issue of historical authenticity first, "laozimen" as a facility does not exist at all in reality.

estoy con ese arquero, que debo ser valiente y mejorarlo. y luego icono para caballeria de elite. voy mejorar otros. tengo fotografías que pueden servir para otros.

Creo que @Duileoga no le importaría, estamos pensando en posibles tecnologías para los zapotecas. Cosas como el caucho, el cacao, la tecnología naval y los calendarios eran bastante comunes, también pensamos en algún tipo de bonus o generación de un pequeño hilo de comida en los corrales a partir de la producción de turkey en ellos. I believe that @Duileoga would not matter, we are thinking about possible technologies for the Zapotecs. Things like the rubber, the cacao, the naval technology and the calendars were quite common, we also thought of some kind of bonus or the generation of a small amount of food in the corrales from the production of turkey in them.

kk have fun, lol

I don't know how that's more intuitive than a tooltip explicitly giving you the unit's bonus (rather than having to suss it all out by comparing stats). But anyway, I'll defer to the "stats dictate everything" faction and try some stats to create counters. Because right now the stats of the units don't readily do this. For instance, currently melee cavalry have lowish pierce armor to make spearmen, who have pierce attack, counter them, but this also makes them vulnerable to ranged infantry's range pierce attacks, a class of unit the melee cavalry should counter! First, let's GET RID OF THE PIERCE ATTACK OF SPEAR INFANTRY. Why? Cavalry's lighter hack armor can make them countered by hack units such as melee infantry. Whew, now that's done: Give melee cavalry greater pierce armor!

I've never liked how certain units get a "bonus attack" vs other types. They need to have their damage types, range, HP, armor types etc and that is sufficient to make a counter. It makes the gameplay far more intuitive.

I sort of like this idea. Each decision maker gets an alpha, or two.

perhaps a range requirement like towers have? For example, you cannot build one too close to the other. This way, you cant put all 30 next to each other walled up. It makes some sense from a realistic perspective too i guess.

I remember there were some history tags in the templates but I don't remember them having been exposed in the UI ever. Anyway some text would be nice, support for illustrations even better.

First patch is complete. - Women defend themselves with bow. They can also hunt wild animals with bow. Attack: 2 Distance: 48 Attack Rate: 1250 - -10% batch training time for cavalry each phase advance. - CC train all cavalry except champions. The cavalry training requirement phase does not change. - Apadana stone cost reduced to 200 stone from 300. Food trickle and wood removed. Now gains metal and stone only at a rate of 1.0/1 sec from 0.75/2. - Add Icehouse. Cant garrison Built in own/neutral territory. Village Phase Build time: 50sec Cost: 100 wood Food trickle 1/2sec. Building limit 30 - Immortals technology no more health penalty. - Barracks and stable batch training time technology are removed for balancing. Well I would like as many people to test it for good feedback. Tnx. pers0.1.patch

The core issue is that for the most part, team members are people working on features, because people that care about balancing & gameplay are players, and players like to play. And people just don't have the time to play and work on the game. Ergo the team are feature-builders, and there is real vision for gameplay. Add to that that amongst the team, we have severe disagreements on how the game should play. There is deadlock there to a large extent. Then nothing really changes. The problem with the 'incremental changes' approach that we tried to take is that everything can be scrutinised, and it kind of precludes changing the 'long-term vision'. I think it worked well to locally balance the gameplay, but it has lead to increased uniformity and has not really made the gameplay more interesting. Another way is the 'split & regroup' approach, that was tried with balancing mods or to an extent wow's Delenda Est. That has the benefit that it can leverage a benevolent dictator and realise a vision. If there are enough players / traction, it could be considered for merging back as the 'main' 0 A.D. mod. But it might need us to provide more support to help good mods gain traction, and it would probably benefit from a split between more 'engine' files and more '0ad-specific' stuff. --- Finally, 'balancing' is trivial. Just make all civilisations have identical gameplay. That's not particularly interesting, but it would work. The question is generally not how to 'balance' but what game to make.

More like a trillion games with machine learning, as @ChronA kind of points out.

As mentioned at https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/77438-looking-back-on-the-balancing-strategy/, a new design document is required. This is my proposal for a design document. If the community approves of this, it could be adopted and design documents could be revised for the civilisations. This is a design for the general gameplay, not for any civilisations. Most elements will remain the same, I've only mentioned elements that could change or which need to be clearly defined. All features which require mechanics not yet added to the game are highlighted in red.

Two years is too long without minor releases. Minor releases aren't really a thing since even small bug fixes can make versions incompatible. Minor releases should be compatible, else its a major release. There isn't a way to ship those changes without an actual release.

This. Consensus governance inevitably tends toward conservatism and policy gridlock (sometimes punctuated by episodes of violent identitarianism). If you can't get everyone to agree to do something, then the one thing you can agree to do is nothing. The Romans understood this, which is why they permitted the office of Dictator to be instituted during moments of crisis. Maybe this project needs a Balance Dictator? If you are looking for a policy proposal, here's what I would do if I were Princeps: First, a counsel of the most active developers should be convened to discuss candidates and appoint the balance dictator. Whoever they pick will then get 2 years to enact any balance overhaul plan they think is necessary, without any obligation to consult with the council of active developers or anyone else. To do this the dictator would for their 2 year office exercise a non-negotiable discretion to summarily approve or block any changes to the 0 AD development codebase and design documents, without any binding responsibility to defend or explain their reasons. At the end of their 2 year office, the active developers or the community at large would vote whether to revert the dictator's balance contributions, and/or whether to elect a new dictator or extend the current dictator's office for another term. If no one can agree to enact such a plan (or any reasonable alternative), or if the dictator or other parties violate the terms of the concord, that'd be viewed that as strong evidence that the current design is effectively locked in. In that case the active developers should adopt a binding resolution to spend the next two years excising any problem/unfinished features from the work and release it at the end of that period... as 0 AD Beta 1! But that's just my 2 cents. There are obvious risks to investing too much authority in one person. Even if the person with absolute power is a perfect saint, you risk alienating anyone anyone with a good faith difference of opinion about the direction of the project. But at the end of the day you are not trying to run a country here, you are trying to make a world-class video game. People don't need to be happy with the development process for the project to be successful, just the end product. P.S. "I love democracy..." /Palpatine.gif

Interesting. One time I pointed out that something could be done about the worker elephant's helpfulness, the reply I got was 'it was decided to have it skill-based', meaning microed.

I think there are some sort of authority are needed to enforce the design. There are code reviewers that could ensure all approved changes are according to the guideline provided by the design. Unfortunately, as is the point of my comment, the design document itself is not yet clearly defined in term of balancing. Yes there are some general advice on the document that says we have to reduce micromanagement, but I think this is too subjective to be able to define a line. By defining it clearly (what is micro, what are the behavior constitutes as micro and which could be tolerated, what should be eliminated to enforce this) it should help people to understand it more clearly. We should be able to quote a specific part of design document to stop any prolonged debates. The last time I was active here is around perhaps A24, where people complain about nerfed Roman. But there is no statement in design document that says Roman should or should not be weaker or stronger than other civs.

I'm no longer really active in this forum, but I do check it out occasionally from time to time. It's sad to see that we are still in a deadlock of balancing debate. I agree with this statement. To elaborate my argument: In Civilizations section of the design document, currently we have historical overview and then it jumps straight to detailed description of units/buildings, some even do away with overview altogether. What I suggest is the overview of what the player expect when they select certain civilization. What differentiate it from other civilizations. Add some historical based justification as necessary. Something like Rise of Nations, but less technical and more abstraction: e.g. Athenian: They gather silver faster (because Laureion mines), they research faster (because philosophy). Romans: They have strong infantry (because Legions), they expand faster (because Roman empire). Mauryan: They have mobile gathering (because ?), strong archer (because longbows). etc. Avoid exact numbers and percentage, focus on general advantages/disadvantages or strengths/weaknesses of each civs. Only after these established, we can then go to units/structure/bonus description. For each description, there must be a reference to this overview. The finalized design document should be able to answer questions like: why certain unit have certain stats/why does this civ have certain bonuses on the other hand, why this civ doesn't have that unit or structure what is the difference of gameplay between civ A & civ B I'd like to rush/turtle, which civs are suitable for me why does this unit too weak/strong etc. After that, the balancing discussion can continue. Refer to design document established above before making any changes. When proposing any changes, ensure that it doesn't break any of the established design first before we talk about the relation with other civs. I understand that we are not making this design document from scratch, as we already have the game, so cheating i.e make the design based on the finished game is alright. What I want to stress is that we need to make sure that people know the general intended design of each civ. When people suggest changes, there must be some degree of bias (favorite civs, preferred playstyle, favorite RTS games beside 0AD, etc) and I hope the established design document could be considered before proposing something.

I'm still not in favor of having soldiers and siege weapons share the same damage type. Another way is to have maceman and axeman inflict a "stun" side effect on the enemy every once in a while.

No, statistics on which civ players choose, whether win loss/ratio fits statistical expectations, length of games and other collectable data, then trying to make sense of all the data. Complement it with questionnaires as to what people like about civs and what not. The goal should be to have all civs be somewhat attractive for whatever reasons, if it's just the sound track that makes a civ popular that is fine as well If those "we need ultimate balance for competitive games" people have a couple interesting civs which work for them to choose from that is good enough, they just have to have the possibility of a filter which is currently lacking. Contribute redirects to https://code.wildfiregames.com/source/design/ which returns an error --- @maroder A design document should be about principles, not stats or similar details. What it could describe without thinking much about it: How to update the design document (process) If I want to add a civ, what do I have to fulfill If I want to add a map, what do I have to make sure If I want to add a model, what requirements are there If I want to write a new ui, what must I make sure of How to bring historical facts to the users attention How should city building aspect work How should fights work on a meta level What is territory meant to achieve many more For instance the removal of kennels without the backing of a design document shouldn't have happened IMHO.

You must remember that, he expresses himself in his language and that he is from a different culture.

I agree that a bonus against infantry is not needed in this case as there is already the damage advantage that swords have. Perhaps it is because people want to have a game and not a historical military simulation. I would not denigrate the people who have worked on the game far longer than you and who made those decisions about units. You are also quick to assume anyone with a differing opinion holds that opinion because of some mental deficiency. You seem to be ok that soldiers are born out of the barracks, so I don't see why this makes you so upset. Gameplay can't be reduced to waves of spearmen poking each other to death just because it is more realistic. @wowgetoffyourcellphoneI look forward to testing these changes if I can.

I don't think thats what swordsmen were defined as in this discussion. In a25, there are situations where swords are better and where spears are better. The shorter sword is more maneuverable and it makes sense that it has a higher attack rate. Before tactics and formations are considered, which varied from place to place and time to time, it makes sense that a swordsman has a higher damage output than spearman. In one era and place it may be that spears were the more elite weapon, but the game is not modeled after one era and one place.

I just watched this video about why aoe2 is more popular than aoe3 and one reason discussed is the worse unit motion in aoe3 particular through a snare effect. Not sure if it is the same as you had in mind but something to consider. @5:40

Take the Cavalry Spearman and add the Chariot mixin. It's what mixins are for, to mix and match traits with different classes of units.

I am not against the kennel, I said it in my first message in this thread. Further, people asked me my opinion about the kennel and I simply said what I think about the design. The recruitment of the dogs can be done through a dedicated building (a kennel), through the houses or through the stables. From an archaeological point of view, most buildings were what we call "roundhouses", with only a few different features although they still had dedicated functions/purposes. But obviously, we cannot have every building in the game depicted as roundhouses. So it is acceptable to drift from historical accuracy. However, it is important to make it credible and senseful/meaningful. I think the Britons can be unique by being a civ focusing on skirmishing and mobility (basically guerrilla tactics). War chariots are a relatively unique feature they got access to in the second phase. I also suggested to highlight the bodypainting/tattooing tradition of the Britons but it would require new talents. If the two-handed swordsmen got removed due to their historical inaccuracy (it was really a fantasy unit), there is still an unique feature of British Iron Age that isn't depicted in the game, some warriors seem to have carried their sword on the back. This is still a simple one-handed sword but at least it is visually distinct. Finally the war dogs are indeed an interesting feature but it seems important to balance it correctly. In my opinion, a war dog should be an unit delivering a lot of damage, moving quickly but being particularly fragile. This is the current direction in the game. I also think they would have been probably efficient against light infantry and cavalry. However the question of how they should be recruited is important because it seems to be the point debated. Personally I think the war dogs should be efficient as a defensive tool in the village phase (quick recruitment and movement) and should become more useful as an offensive tool during the town phase. One way to deal with it is to enable their recruitment from the houses directly at the first phase and enabling the research of some technologies during the town phase from the stables, to improve the war dogs and make them meaningful offensively. Such technologies could be simply converting the dogs from "hunting dogs" to "war dogs" as both were attested by historical accounts.