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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!

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.

yes, another reason not to use op stuff.

aesthetic reasons and perception. I find them cliche.

I understand, and we all thank you for your knowledge, but please discuss this in another discussion because this is about balance.

I'd say we need to stay in the middle ground. AOE4 seems to go for too much asymmetry and it hurts gameplay. I think the Han dynasty civ is a step in the right direction: the heros are interesting, the CC upgrade is interesting, rice paddies interesting, and ministers interesting. I would say we are also taking a step in the right direction here with pers including @borg-'s changes, and hopefully (if it gets accepted) my hyrcanian cav patch.

-Podríamos pensar en algunas tecnologías comunes , que podrían ser específicamente" Tecnologías Mesoamericanas". ¿Qué pensáis @Lopess , @Lion.Kanzen y @wowgetoffyourcellphone ?

The Han Dynasty also needs to be revised on the issue of historical authenticity. 1. The faction name should be called "Han". 2. Regarding the crossbow cavalry, although there are brick carvings to prove their existence, this kind of cavalry uses crossbows because they cannot use bows, not because the power of crossbows is stronger, so there is no need to exist as a unit. 3. Then there are special buildings. Han's current unique buildings have no historical basis. "laozimen" is completely fictional, so is the Imperial College. "guanshu" is the office of the local administrator, which is actually the core of a city. In other words, the government office is the civic center. 4. The information of Osprey Publishing referenced by the warship is unreliable and needs to be redesigned. 5. The melee cavalry of the Han army use pike or JI with both hands, so they are not equipped with shields, only cavalry with swords will use shields; the shape of the sword is also wrong, it is the style after the Ming Dynasty. 6. The Han Dynasty actually recorded a chariot with a winch crossbow, but the shape has not been properly restored, and it can be considered to be added in the future.

Fix this egregious grammatical error, then we can talk.

we need to vote on this option once and for all. i'm tired of all civs playing the same way.

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

yes, the distance is doubly valuable it seems.

The distance just needs to be large enough to prevent walling. 10 or 20 meters.

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.

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.

How do we install this? It is a .patch file, which I have never seen before. Putting it in the mod folder doesn't work. This will open up some cool new build orders.

I am going to develop icons for astronomy and another one for Astrology. I must correct the archer icon. I'm going to help lopess with the Mayans, I've been indebted to that for a long time.

Some of these changes won’t be noticeable to the average player. And if this exercise is done for all civs then the traditional spear/archer/sword/skirm/etc. stats will become meaningless because too many civs will have one off special stat adjustments. I would want something that is easier to understand so each unit type is same across civs. Different unit types will be different even if they are similar (for example, pikes and spears are pretty similar to each other but we all understand how they are different). Making a system where a Persian spear is different from a Athens spear, which is different from a Brit spear, which is different from a Roman spear, will very quickly create a complicated system that can’t be easily understood. This is fine. Perhaps the "Archery Tradition" tech should unlock this (instead of what it currently does, but I forget what it currently does lol Agree. Just make a tech. This would essentially be like the hoplite tradition for Sparta/Athens but with a focus on promotion/performance instead of promotion/train time. I like that slight twist. Sounds good Do it through a tech or make it a different unit type. I would lean towards a tech so that the player has the choice on what to do. Also, what you describe is pretty similar to how pikes will function in the next alpha. The main difference will be that Persian spears will be faster. Not sure that makes sense historically because this will probably mean that Persia gets the best of pikes (armor) and spears (speed) which will give them one of the better inf melee units. That might be good, but it seems misplaced with Persia being the civ to get that I don’t care about the woman change. Do that if you think that’ll be cool. I’m a little concerned about this. This will lead to more “cameling” rushes with the archer cav Can’t axe cav destroy CCs quickly (currently or as proposed)? That could be very difficult to counter in p1 which will lead to a lot of early GGs maybe it best to just keep the same roster from the stables (jav and spear) Yes

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.

Thank you for your effort on this! I must say this Design Document rather looks like an result of one? It looks more as an implementation of a design than a design itself? But I could be mistaken. For a DD I would expect more something along the lines of the tail of this post:

Not a bad plan. 2 years seems excessive. Maybe 2 alphas. 1 alpha to enact some changes, and 1 more to fix/tweak these changes.

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

This would be good, yes. I'll update the proposal to reflect this. The eventual design document should include this, certainly. However, for this proposal I'm only listing any features that I think should be changed or which I think need to clarified. This sounds like a good idea, but I'm not sure if it really fits in the general design document. This could be done along with the pages for the individual civilisations, but I think the overall design document should describe how the game should play in general, not the specifics of civilisation design. I will add the information about viable counters, thank you. Perhaps, but I'd like to keep this issue as centralised as possible for now. I have tried to avoid adding anything too controversial, so I don't think that should be too much of an issue at the moment.

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.

the purpose of a design document is to fix things and avoid always rediscussing them. the document is not enough in itself, a real leadership is necessary to make people respect the document. we actually already have one, the problem is noone cares (the base principles of 0AD design could still be taken as valid, and they say some very clear things about micromanagement, but I remember seing micro role in the game being questioned many many times, and noone ever pointing out the design principles).

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.

taking the lead is a bit of a blurry description. Do you mean as in 'writing down how the game currently works' or as in 'how it should work' ? The latter will probably cause some conflict e.g. making or contributing to a design document would also require some kind of decision or knowledge about what features will be implemented in the future and which just won't make the cut. E.g. secondary weapons. phase 4, new civs ect. Generally I would like to help out with that task, but it is unclear what *exactly* the task contains. ______ Hmm sure, some things are better / quicker to discuss in real time (so it might be a good option to have some kind of regular internal chats), but I think the asynchronous communication is actually a strength of the development process. I think it's mostly a problem of diverging ideas about how the game should play and discussing something like that means emotional investment which just cost a lot of energy.

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.

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.