Prodigal Son
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Posts posted by Prodigal Son
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Ofc speed belongs to a RTS, I didn't claim the opposite. But the more you make the game about speedy micro, the more you dumb down strategy, as there is less time left to think of plans. That said most successful competitive RTS game go that way, but it's not something I really like and I think it partly happens to appeal to players more familiar with faster paced, action-packed game genres.
Repetition is inevitable as well, but mechanics such as manual or semi-manual looting seem tedious and over-repetitive to me. Handling it automatically depending on unit stance does sound better though.
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Indeed not that hard, but imo a little micro here and there in things that could be handled with stats make the game more about repetition and speed than real strategy.
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You're right, the merchant ship already functions as a transport, but I think it needs more cappacity, if not from the start, with a tech.
Boarding could be done with having the ships lock together (maybe with some hook "missile" animation, like in RAF:CAW Lion mentioned earlier) and have the capture points determined by marine numbers/strength, losing capture points during the action could also reduce the crew.
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Triremes did serve as troop transport, but their capacity was not appropriate to their size and they almost always carried only their marines as extras, due to all those rowers and the thin design. Large expeditions would need real transport ships or huge numbers of warships.
My suggestion mixing all the ideas above is:
Village Phase:
Fishing Boat - just fishing, no combat, no point in micro-ing a very small transported size for those.
Merchant/Transport Ship - Can trade or ferry units, upgrades for more transport capacity on a following phase.
Bireme Class Warship - Can ram like all warships and board or skirmish depending on crew (or maybe civ dependent crew and role). Can land her starting marines, which makes space for loading extra units. Same with loses. Small crew, say 10 units, landing them could work for an early game raid.
Town Phase:
Trireme Class Warship - Same with Bireme, but bigger, faster, with a larger crew. Alternatively, Biremes could be boarding ships and Triremes missile ships, or the opposite, but none of the two seems historically correct.
City Phase:
Quinquireme Class Warship - Possibly less agile than the other warships, with the additional option for artillery crew, or perhaps by default an artillery ship.
*I think ramming and boarding were scrapped as features, I hope I'm wrong though. Especially boarding and ship capturing would be very interesting.
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It depends on the implementation of combat. If units die in the blink of an eye, and huge amounts of slaves occur on top of being able to only capture one at a time I agree that's way too micro intensive.
However, you can automate this process. After fights units can capture enemy wounded automatically (just like regular units auto attack and follow enemy units), or you create area abilities that make them collect slaves in the target area (although I'd prefer automating the whole process).
The counter would be that your enemy could also "capture" his own wounded soldiers to receive resources back. And while combat is going on, slaves cannot be captured.
It could work easier than that I believe. Capturing percentage modifiers could be adjusted accordingly to the game/combat pace. Stopping to gather the wounded from "corpses" would partly defeat the purpose of winning a local battle to gain the chance to advance on your opponent.
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Maybe a bit off topic, but I don't want to spam mass topics in this forum. So I post here instead.
What about ship warfare? I've read some cool stuff in your wiki about ramming and entering ships in naval combat. I REALLY love that idea - I also loved naval combat in Rome II, which has ramming and entering possibilities, too.
If you look at age of empires, naval maps are pretty boring - just spam galleys all day long and hope you have more than your opponent.
The idea of ships being real "tactical" weapons with flanking and ramming is just awesome. I'd love to see something like that. As for implementation, I'd love to see no transport ships at all. Instead, all regular ships are spawned with a garrison, but are rather expensive.
For example you construct a Trireme, and it comes out armed with like ... idk 20 soldiers. When it's out the Trireme can be used to transport these troops to the shores to raid enemy villages. Additionally, you can later on build/upgrade them with ballistae, catapults and stuff like that (maybe even individually). Little fishing ships can be garrisoned with a few spear infantry units/archers to raid/capture/ram enemy fishing ships early on, creating a very unique dynamic on the sea.
As a drawback, most ships would be VERY expensive, take long to train and be rather slow. That way, loosing ships/microing/repairing them becomes very important. That would be something entirely new and very awesome.
While I generally don't like the current naval combat with garrisoned ships being much stronger in attack to ungarrisoned ones, having them trained with a starting crew is a nice workaround, since it prevents many possible imbalances/annoying cases like having to constantly move new ships around to add troops to them or losing your only/few garrisoned ones and being left with a much weaker navy even if you still have many ships. Having less and stronger ships sounds valid as well, given the huge ship size in the game which makes large navies a messy/buggy display. Marine units could also make sense this way. You can unload the ship's starting crew to land, instead of having some ships train units.
Capturing ships with some visible boarding action (or just similarly to structures if visible implementation is hard) would be a nice feature as well. Ships could be geared for ramming, boarding or ranged combat (or a couple of those each) giving different tactics/ship classes and civ bonuses.
Still, fighting with fishing ships in a no from me, and transports should be available to ferry land troops, the merchant ship could easily double as a transport.
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Water maps could indeed be almost exclusively fish-reliant in food gathering if they are ment to be too punishing for losing water control, but I'm not sure about that. But both Darc and Roek you seem to have missed my other point, maybe because I didn't expand on it. Food is the most basic resource. Farms are most basic/stable way of getting it. Limiting them to pre-placed slots, and given the hard (and imo uninteresting) to totally balance random map generation, can lead to cases with severe imbalances to a resource you'll need throughout the game, not one you can do without for a while and plan ahead to get.
Corrals are bit hard to decide on. I kinda like the way AOM handles herdables, having them fatten over time (starting from the time you capture them). You could slay them fast for a food boost or wait to get more later. Garrisoning them for income is also a viable idea, but it seems too similar to farms in the end. Autoproduction with a limit could work too. In my mod I haven't touched them yet, besides replacing the cavalry speed tech which went over to the stables with some "herd techs" reducing cavalry/camel/elephant food costs, that might stay in place of the planned mechanic to capture and garrison animals for cost reduction, as I generally prefer to represent minor things with something simple instead of extra micro. I'm also considering the possibility of removing the corrals and have herdables available only though scouting/as starting units.
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Capturing individual units, especially small/numerous ones sounds like too much micro. Reminds me of a less crazy (but still complicated) version of the disastrous feature in Ancient Wars: Sparta and other games of that franchise, where you could pick individual weapons from the battlefield to sell them or equip soldiers with them reducing their costs and creating new unit classes that could be unavailable to your civ. Not every cool sounding concept translates well to gameplay. A percentage of kills as captured slaves granting some bonuses is a nice idea though to reward combat and add another layer of realism. Some Civs could be bonused in capture percentage or exploitation of prisoners.
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Farms built only in farmland might be hard to balance, especially placing them in random maps and even more so, how would they work in maps with small islands? Have weird looking islets full of farmland, or have almost no farming for those maps? Overall almost any (relatively) flat ground should be farmable imo, and for balance reasons at the same rate. In my impression RTS games who have huge placement limitations to very basic resources didn't work that well.
Some old discussions could be revisited though. Maybe the Civ Centre could have a small-ish radius around it where structures can't be constructed (or just farms) but units can pass through. This would make the econ more vulnerable to raiding, while being realistic, as you wouldn't farm in a City Centre. I'd prefer farming being available from the village phase, for realism and for preventing early defeat in cases where the opponent has map control and you can't venture far from your starting region for hunting.
At the same time, starting mines and to a lesser degree forest masses would be nice to be a little more distanced from the CC as well, for similar reasons. Also limited starting exploration of the map to the Civ Centre's vision instead of the whole territory would make scouting more important, especially coupled with the ideas above, since you would have to locate your starting resources.
I more or less agree with the OP in the resource and ranged unit dominance parts.
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I don't really like capturing as a classic RTS mechanic, it feels to me more weird and messy than soldiers just attacking structures when you have to control basebuilding, combat and a rather detailed economy at the same time. That said it might turn out good in it's final form. Certainly though more expensive units (considering overall mass-ability through resource/time costs and how many structures can produce the unit - fortress only units could be considered slightly more expensive for example) should have more capture points/second else massing weak units will be a huge advantage. In addition to that, Swordsmen and especially champion ones can be extra bonused here as assault infantry, while units like Pikemen are more effective in open field battles.
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It's not a bad idea but I see two problems, one in functionally and one in balance:
- The game uses a "normal" looking wallset for their walls due to placement issues Murus Gallicus would have and the mod has the same limitation even if the model exists for them.
- They play best as a pretty offensive civ from early on, in addition to one of the strongest abilities to mass elite units in the lategame. Adding a huge defensive bonus like that would make them overpowered without major changes being applied, especially vs civs that can access only rams as siege weapons. It would also break the cohesion of structure/unit roles making gameplay frustrating for some of the new players.
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Ty, guess I'll let them be as they are for now. The structure wouldn't help in random maps I guess, it would have to be placed exactly alligned to each forest to make sense, and still it would eventually start blocking woodcutters.
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Is there a way to create blocks of trees that won't leave pathfinding gaps in random maps?
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Those are (mostly) new actors, using available props and skins, for new or existing units. In case someone was confused, this is indeed a mod, not the main game. No new Civs are added so far, but it's possible that some will be added at some point.
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Bad in what way?
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War Elephants I
Left to Right: Carthaginian, Macedonian, Persian (Indian Mercenary), Ptolemaic, Roman (Numidian Auxiliary/Mercenary).
War Elephants II
Left to Right: Mauryan War Elephant, Mauryan Armored Elephant, Mauryan Elephant Archer (Unique Unit) & Upgrade, Seleucid War Elephant, Seleucid Armored Elephant.
New Archers
Celtic and Iberian
New Skirmishers
Carthaginian, Mauryan and Thureophoros (extra upgrade for Greek/Hellenistic Civs)
Cataphracts
Seleucid upgrades for Heavy and Unique Cavalry units.
Elite Hoplites
Athenian and Spartan Unique units without and with Linothorax (Speed Upgrade)
Roman Melee Infantry
Spearmen (Early Hoplite style Triarii to Marian Auxilia) and Swordsmen (Hastatii to Marian Legionaries)
Macedonian Unique Units
Hetairos and Hetairos Aspidophoros upgrade, Hypaspist and Royal Peltast upgrade.
Pikemen
Macedonian, Seleucid, Ptolemaic and Spartan (Reform Unique Unit)
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I'll be posting any help requests I have here, usually related to things that can't be solved by simple questions, like features needing new code or artwork/modeling.
Impassable Forests: Implementing a way to spawn trees aligned to each other, a forest floor ground type that blocks pathing and is changed upon tree removal or any other way of dealing with this issue would greatly enhance the mod, and imo the main game as well.
Workers with random sex: It is currently possible to use different versions for the same actor, but not matching sounds/voices for each one of them. I wonder if it would be hard to implement for someone with some codding knowledge, as it would come very handy for my mod and possibly other as well.
New Structures: This one seems hard, especially since the core game is still in need of several models, but if someone is good/fast with skinning I've got some requests, especially new stables based on the persian one or possibly on another model I might aquire.
Farm size reduction: I'm using one worker per farm. Is it possible to rescale the actor in the game files? If not I'd like someone to edit the models in some modeling program.
Random Maps: Since the gameplay is somewhat different from the core game, map layouts ought to change a little to make the most out of it. I've included early versions of the first skirmish maps for the mod, but imo random maps are were such games shine, and I'd love to cooperate with a random map designer.I've started learning how to create the first random maps for the mod. -
Updated to current version.
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Updated to current version.
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Updated to current version.
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Updated to current version.
By the way, there should be a technology for the Isis Cult that would allow for improvements in priests, individual units, and such. The Isis Cult was an important way of bringing the cultures together.
Used this name for the temple techs discount bonus.
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Updated to current version.
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Updated to current version.
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Updated to current version.
A call to QA
in Announcements / News
Posted
Maybe organizing series of SVN multiplayer games as done occasionally in the past could help? Could be done in groups which would frequently gather for games according to timezone/player availability and reporting observations after each session.