Thorfinn the Shallow Minded
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Posts posted by Thorfinn the Shallow Minded
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48 minutes ago, alre said:
I proposed, when a24 came out, that javeliners were differentiated lowering their price, another thing (realistic for other reasons) is that archers and slingers have longer training.
I would be in favour of higher training times for them.
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6 minutes ago, ChronA said:
Yes, that appears to be our consensus objective with this thread. If the javelinist is just a inferior archer variant, why would anyone with a choice make it? And if we buffed it to make it better than archers, why would anyone make archer? It needs a distinct identity.
The right approach to that question is perhaps to look at the different possible variables at play. Namely, there is defence, damage per second, mobility, and range. All of these are then considered in relation to the cost and necessary training time of the said unit. Fortunately those last variables are constant in most cases. Generally speaking a unit should be able be decent with two of those categories to be potentially worthwhile. Honestly the difference between archers and slingers is more or less a false dichotomy; they had similar roles. It's trying to figure out a niche for the skirmisher that is a bit tougher since their lack of good range, defence, and mobility make their high damage output harder make use of.
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1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:
Easy. Should they just cost stone + wood or some metal as well?
Probably they should cost fairly standard resources. One idea that borg was rather favourable towards was having helots be cheaper at the cost of worse combat strength. This kind of practice could be extended to other units as well such as the Persian spearman. I would go with something conservative like -10% resource cost for -15-20% hitpoints. Obviously those numbers could be up for debate, but I think that it could be worth experimenting worth if you want to try that out as well. Fantastic work.
2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:This is actually a super brain idea. Sparta could have a flexible champion available in all ages, This can probably help Sparta with its unit diversity problem. And make it have a potential advantage at any phase. We would need to be careful to balance the unit accurately at each phase and with each personalisation/upgrade.
My thoughts exactly. One of the key sorts of ways I think would be interesting to see would be something along the line of one approach making the Spartans be more like officer units while the other would allow for a larger mass that could be fielded.
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28 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
My main qualm with this would be pocket usage in 4v4. imagine ur a border player and ur facing equal army plus 2 rams, then suddenly 20 spartan hoplites hop out of the rams and cap ur cc. I would be very worried about how this might work in 4v4s.
A couple thoughts come to mind for how this could be addressed. Spartan hoplites could be a bit weaker in the Village Phase. Better yet there could be paired technologies available with each phase to personalise them. Yet another approach could be to make their training time a lot slower in the Village Phase to prevent them from being massed (which would be undesirable). Even another option could be to have the Spartan hoplite available at the Town Phase instead, but I like this the least.
51 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:Spartans and Romans can recruit mercenary archers.
I would maybe recommend making a helot slinger be possible for Spartans to train in the Town Phase. For Romans, they could have access to a Socii slinger or archer since Polybius states that roughly half of their army was made up of allied troops.
53 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:Athenians can train a sword champion from their gym, which allows them to counter archer raids more easily.
The marine could be a gymnasium unit as well. I always found it sad that they are only available on water maps.
55 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:Britons get P2 champions. The exact type is up to you.
Geneva had a few ideas that I think might be worth exploring.
https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37979-britons-rework-guerrila-and-mobility-oriented-faction/?tab=comments#comment-422631
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7 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:
Very good suggestions, thank you. Now it seems like I need to redo the whole mod but I will do it (I am a Try Hard).
I will implement everything said by Throfinn the Shallow Minded. P2 siege is absolutely pleasurable for Mace players and pain for everyone else
Glad to be of help.
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1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:
The idea is we want Athens and Sparta and Mace to have P2 champs
For Sparta, they could just have their mess hall be available to build at the Town Phase (or maybe even the Village Phase). Spartans training Spartans would be a fun novelty.
Athens might be a bit trickier, but at the same time perhaps the gymnasium could be available one phase earlier.
I would like to see Macedon's siege weapons available in the Town Phase alongside possibly their companion cavalry.
The point is that the stoa is not necessary for this. The heavy skirmisher would be appropriate for Athens and Macedon, but those seem more like City Phase troops than Town Phase ones.
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9 hours ago, wraitii said:
I must say I find it odd how most civs have no siege option in Phase 2, when you do get some turtling options (towers, etc.) That being said, I suppose it's still mostly eco growth at that point in theory and so making the fights about eco makes some sense.
I would have to agree. If there is no ability to produce dedicated siege units, there should be some way in which some units are better able to destroy or better capture buildings possibly through a technology.
10 hours ago, wraitii said:As for game start, perhaps an option would be to make Citizen Soldiers take longer to train at the CC than at the barracks?
I would see this being a good choice although it might have the unintended side-effect of making players want to build even more barracks, which is the current meta and is probably undesirable. That kind of builds into another topic considering the extremely economic role of barracks, which is one of the key reasons why turtling=booming.
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At the moment most people generally seem to describe the meta to be some aggression in the Village Phase, practically none in the Town Phase, and more in the City Phase. Ideally speaking there should be good opportunities for fighting during all of these times in the game. With that in mind, there are a few reasons I can think of that have led to this situation.
The Village Phase has a wide variety of options with unit compositions.
The Town Phase does little to help this and in fact introduces a number of defensive upgrades that discourage aggression.
With the City Phase, access to champions and siege make pushes far more possible.
Given these points, there are a few ways I could see the phases being more distinct and flavourful through a few measures:
In the Village Phase, players should only have access to one melee infantry unit (typically a spearman), a ranged unit (either a slinger or a skirmisher), and one melee cavalry unit. This would help to first of all reinforce the general rock-paper-scissors formula that I believe 0 AD is aiming to represent. Also, it probably would not be overly restrictive at least in my mind.
The Town Phase would introduce more unit types and perhaps some key upgrades to allow melee infantry to at least somewhat efficiently counter defences by either boosting attack or capture. At the same time I could see rams being introduced.
One important thing to stress is that this would not be an iron rule. If one civilisation has an appropriate reason to have more than just the three, that should not be a problem. Likewise, factions famous for swordsmen like Rome could have that as their early unit while Carthage could maybe start off using Numidian cavalry. The point is that where differences are valid, exceptions can be made. I'll admit that these would introduce some difficulties for balancing, but I think that there is still merit to these ideas regardless of that.
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43 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
And introduce militias? more civilian than soldiers.
Citizen-soldiers are by definition militias. The gather penalty is not necessarily the only option; having troops trained at an advanced rank (and costing more resources/having a longer training as a result) would have a similar effect.
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The problem with changing training times is that it does nothing to fix the fundamental issue. Barracks serve a primarily economic role in the Village Phase. Some people might not consider that a problem, but to me, the average Athenian just getting equipped to serve for the military doesn't say to himself, "Whelp, better start hoeing those fields."
Introducing a gather-rate penalty of some sort to units trained in the barracks would generally fix this problem. Suddenly booming would otherwise be done by researching fertility festival and training women or going with a suboptimal investment that would leave the player better protected at the cost of efficiency. And there you go. Booming would not be turtling.
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23 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:
Also this type of bot looks more like 2077AD rather than 0AD
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6 hours ago, ValihrAnt said:
Yeah, that is the unavoidable side effect of citizen soldiers. Though, I really don't see why them having a gather rate debuff would make the barracks a risky investment. Where else are you going to put the resources? If they're trained at an advanced rank that would hurt early aggression too as units trained from the CC would have to face off against some units that are a rank higher and thus stronger.
It would make it a riskier investment since there would be a slower return on the investment made first on the barracks and then on the units produced. What are alternatives? What about economic upgrades or a faster phase up? Granted, the point I would make is that people produced from a military building should be better at military stuff and worse at economic stuff than those trained from a non-military structure. Giving them an increase in hitpoints like +10% while having a -25% gather rate would be a fairly reasonable start to make barracks units not be a go to option for expanding one's economy; those numbers are of course arbitrary, but the point stands.
6 hours ago, ValihrAnt said:I can't speak for SC2 but keep in mind that AoE2 is played at 1.7 speed. Best comparison in AoE2 to the current boominess of 0 A.D. would be an Arena or Black Forest game as those are most generally boomfests and the lategame action starts a bit before or on minute 30, 30/1.7=17.5 minutes real life. Compared to 0 A.D. where the big late game figts break out a bit before or on min 15. I don't think the pace difference is that big especially if we consider how slow the Dark Age in Aoe2 is.
Villagers in Age of Empires II take 25 seconds, making it roughly 15 with 1.7 speed. Starcraft II sets training times of economic units to 12 seconds. That distinction small by comparison, but the fundamental difference is that every early game unit in 0 AD can work to snowball the economy, a large part of which expand the military as well.
6 hours ago, ValihrAnt said:There's no reason to cap barracks. The best solution is to offer military options and have players slow themselves and others by utilising them. Of course easier said than done, but that's what I believe is the best approach to be worked towards to over time. Players trying to remain in P1 and hold on just by sheer numbers is an approach that should be atleast semi viable in my opinion. Keep in mind that it gets hard to reach resources if you stay in P1 for long.
There is a reason; I clearly articulated that, but I will admit that it is not a solution I particularly care for. The point is that if we wish to reduce spam, decreasing training times is not the solution. Other options include increasing the cost of the barracks and/or increasing the training times at the barracks. Again, these would not address the fundamental issue (at least in my opinion) that I did point out.
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I'll say it quite simply. All melee units should counter rams. Making spears, swords, pikes, and other types of weapons have dramatically different stats in terms of their efficiency of taking down rams is frankly rubbish.
There should not be an elaborate meta built around who can dismantle the most simplistic siege weaponry.
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10 minutes ago, alre said:
and what would that change, other than making phasing a bigger priority?
It would mean that during the Village Phase unit production would be effectively capped. The Town Phase becoming a greater priority of course is one side-effect that it would have.
The point is that unit spam during the Village Phase is a thing, and merely increasing training time has not stopped it. I would go for a different approach (like the change to the barracks mentioned).
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6 hours ago, ValihrAnt said:
The train time increase in a24 was to reduce spam. In my opinion, it only increased spam as the meta went from 1 early barrack to 2/3.
The reason that the spam exists is attached to the fact that barracks can carry out virtually an identically economic role as they can to a military one. If units trained at a barracks started at an advanced rank or had a gather rate penalty, both of these would make the barracks a risky investment to commit to early on from an economic standpoint.
I have pointed out before and can make the same point again; 0 A.D. has extremely fast training times for their units compared to games such as Age of Empires 2 or Starcraft II, the latter of which is already considered a quick-paced game. If we want to reduce the spam without changing the economic functions of the barracks, simply having a cap of 1 barracks during the village phase would do the job; it would have other effects undoubtedly, but it would "fix" it.
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Dedicated workers could possibly have technologies in later phases that boosts their output; that could ensure that they would be more efficient workers in the late game but not make them a go to unit in the early game.
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16 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:
I think that spread aka inaccuracy should be removed completely from the game as it costs performance but brings only frustration.
It might be frustrating, but depending on how the projectiles are done, it could be something to better appreciate than you might think. Assuming that an inaccurate arrow deals damage to an enemy target it hits, this would mean that a large number of archers would not have their damage wasted when the player selects single targets due to overkill.
That all said, your point about spread not being seen ingame is a valid criticism that should be considered regardless of whether spread is incorporated in the game or not.
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I agree with Dakara that removing the metal cost from Civic Centres and attaching a stone cost instead would be a good choice. That all said, the point shouldn't necessarily be about making stone a necessary resource. When was the last time a war was fought over a quarry?
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2 hours ago, wraitii said:
That could work, but it could lead to issues: javelineers, with their lower range, will have trouble flanking melee units. If we increase their damage to compensate, they'll become OP from the back. And/or it relegates them to being anti-ranged units. Flanking is mostly a cavalry thing. And how much would it change DPS in combat situation? Archers are already close to being OP, and this could make the more powerful (but it could also be a large nerf).
That being said, the anti-kiting potential is interesting. I'm not certain directionality is the way to go, but maybe it'd be a useful addition for this particular setup.
I'm not _opposed_ to the idea, as I do see how it could add tactical depth, I'm just quite wary of unintended side effects.Fair points. As I would see it, javelinists would be the best ranged units equipped to face infantry head on since effectively fighting melee unit with them already is fairly involved. Personally I would like seeing archer and slinger missiles doing pretty minimal damage head on, making their role one of softening melee units unless there are some units in place pinning them down, which would allow for them to surround the force. Naturally that's just one approach, and undoubtedly it would have side-effects. Those problems in my mind would be navigable.
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2 hours ago, wraitii said:
I don't really have an answer to any of these questions. All I know is that an RTS like 0 A.D. is a complex system, and this looks like it could have a lot of subtle impacts, and I'm not convinced it would actually make the game more _fun_, or even more interesting to play.
I think that this feature in moderation could add some nuance to the game. In general ranged units probably could have little directionality to their armour by virtue of them rarely wearing much. Instead it could be focussed on melee infantry, making things such as flanking them a relevant way of countering them. A way I could see this particularly working well would be that a simple kiting manoeuvre would be suboptimal since the ranged unit would basically just strike in the direction with the most resistance. Instead it would be a matter of surrounding the force to hit their vulnerable sides.
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Possibly there could be a case for some factions that are more 'civilised' using more stone in their structures; one of the Settlers games did a similar thing with one being more stone dependant, another being wood dependant, and the last being a bit of a balance of the two. It wouldn't change the inherent issue (if we call it one), but it would be a somewhat thematic way of differentiating one civilisation from another; it being worthwhile is another question.
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One thing that does come to mind as a basis for why stone is less important in 0 A.D. compared to say Age of Kings can be seen in the fact that fortresses, previously essential for producing siege weapons, lack that utility with the inclusion of arsenals. Maybe the question could be a matter of how fortresses could have more uses outside of being super towers.
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7 hours ago, Carltonus said:
That means Agis III should be replaced as well, as he lived after the Peloponnesian War. In that case, this would affect the Athenian marines as well, they require the Iphicratean reforms tech alongside the Cretan archers. Any thoughts?
I have already argued against his inclusion. Agesilaus II was much more emblematic of Spartan hegemony following the Peloponnesian War even though his diplomatic stance in part led to its downfall; honestly he was a remarkable historical figure that deserves more attention at least for his extraordinary life.
Athenian marines could be affected by a different technology; marines existed before Iphicrates, and having their existence contingent on him seems strange. The same could be said for Cretan archers.
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Perhaps this might be a lone dissenting opinion, but having Iphicrates let alone Iphicratean like units seems against the central idea of 0 A.D. The goal is to represent civilisations at their height, which in Athens case would be most likely the timeframe between the Persian War to the Peloponnesian War.
Arguments for/against alpha 23 ranged infantry speeds
in Gameplay Discussion
Posted
I think that there is an argument for introducing a technology for skirmishers that would increase their movement rate. They could start of with just a marginal difference in speed to not make them massively better from an economic perspective. Archers being a wee bit slower seems fair.