hollth
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Posts posted by hollth
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Other examples include things like armor being stronger in the front of the unit than in the back. This would mean that flanking would become one of the ways to win battles. Formations will also get a bigger role in fights than before. That sort of thing. Multipliers would be gone though, except for a few units like spear men, which retain their bonus against cavalry (and rightly so).
I consider your last paragraph the most interesting. It seems to me that it's not that multipliers are inherently bad, it's more that multipliers and balance in general isn't in the best shape. The way I'm reading it you're saying multipliers should be used far less. That's not to say that every unit should retain a multiplier. I agree with Hephaestion/Radagast that multipliers in this game ought to be used as a balancing mechanism for when other parameters can not be taken into account.
On another note, theres mention of Alpha123 changing design direction. Is there any more information on this so I'm not completely out of context.
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Good job. There is a very noticeable performance improvement. Its hasn't reached an unplayable point at all.
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Well, it's not such an expensive investment overall given that you >should< be building CCs to get map control anyway. You're pushing out for the map to get natural resources like metal and forests, correct? Why not do the same thing for food? Farming as of right now is oddly one-dimensional, you just put down farms and forget about it. Nowadays when I build CCs (obviously I'm a nub at the game) I just plop them down wherever I feel is nice, which is generally either somewhere that annoys my opponent or somewhere that secures a mine or forest. I think it could be interesting to put down CCs where there is also fertile farming terrain. It's a way of making food a resource which is more map dependent, even though it's an infinite resource. I don't see it raising any more problems than the fact that mines and forests are spread around the map.
Sure, there's some risk to putting a CC out on the map, but there's always some risk in pushing for map control, that's what makes the game fun!
Proper design and balance can be achieved in a number of ways: balancing the amount of fertile terrain on the map, balancing the bonus fertile terrain gives, putting natural barriers around fertile terrain, etc. There are lots of variables to play on.
The reason that you wouldn't do the same for food is because food is primarily from farms which is infinite. So its the rate not the amount available thats the is the important gating factor. If the rate is too low there is the safer option to build another farm near your original CC without the significant investment. You wouldn't build a CC just for the terrain bonus unless it was an OP bonus that made food more redundant (because the rate is so high you're never in need) and allowed food to be traded for the other resources. If it just so happened to be at a place that there was a mine or forrest that needed to be secured, then you have even more of an advantage than you would normally get.
It wouldn't make food more map dependent again because is food is primarily gained from farms which can be built anywhere. You only need to a achieve a certain rate of food. Once thats gained theres no reason to have a higher rate. You yourself said that you build farms and forget about them. You forget about them because there is no need to keep them in mind. You've reached a rate that allows you to progress without constant attention. Essentially farms are designed to be non map dependent, so to try and force them to be map dependent is basically trying to smash together two opposing designs.
The other variables are irrelevant. They assume that the design is solid, which I contest. None of those address any of the things I've brought up.
Let's rephrase the question. What is the purpose that this change aims to achieve? Do we even want these changes? E.g. Is it to make food less one dimensional?
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Towers as defensive buildings can only be build in owned territory and they can't move.
They should be strong (have a good price/value ratio) in early game to enable defensive strategies vs rushes/offensive strategies. They loose their strength in city phase due to availability of siege engines and they should not get much stronger then (ATM there's no upgrade at all for towers in this phase though a general "tougher buildings" tech might be good - but no offensive upgrade).
Additionally stone (and metal) as a resource is much more valuable than food (and on most maps wood as well). So the price might seam low at the beginning but not being able to pay for catapults (or in a lesser extend slingers) later on (or have to barter/trade for the needed stone) is a real drawback of excessive use of stone early in the game (and I feel slingers cost to much stone for vilage phase units - as swordsman cost to much metal IMO).
Building a civic centre early in front of the enemy base is expensive and risky. Just a bit of scouting can counter this.
If a player succeeds with this strategy its entirely OK IMO if he got "repaid" for taking the risk of loosing the resources when his CC is taken down.
IMO defensive structures should be available even earlier (village phase, not necessarily defense towers but some sort of tower stronger than the outpost but only buildable in owned territory) but that would not fit the phase design well and the civic soldiers could be considered an early defense though they can be used offensively as well (which is my point).
I assumed the concern was that during the town phase building towers near resources like metal and stone so it became too expensive to contest. That was my take on it at least. Its also not THAT risky since buildings foundations refund all the resources upon death. ( I feel the risk would be more proportional to the reward if buildings didn't refund everything, but thats another story.)
Other than that, I half agree half disagree with your sentiments. I agree that towers ought to be most powerful in the town phase. Relatively, at least, and I think this is where we slightly disagree. I think towers should continue to grow in absolute strength throughout, but they should be relative weaker as the game continues to progress. That's why I think technologies are a good solution. It allows us to change how strong they are at each point of the game instead of needing to be overbearing to still hold relevance in the later stages.
I'd also like to say that I am in agreement with you that there should be some very weak tower in the village phase. Personally, I would like it if the outpost fired an arrow (If built in your own territory) and if the outposts could be upgraded into stronger towers in later phases. Preferably on a tower-by-tower basis.
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tweak the numbers so that the guy who gets some fertile terrain has an edge but not a game-winning advantage. or spread the fertile terrain around the map so that both players each have easy access to some fertile terrain, yet it will still be somewhat vulnerable .
You missed my point. I don't think it is in the interest of the game to introduce this mechanic. In the event that there is not a game winning advantage I do not believe the feedback loops will be strong enough to motivate people to take on the increased risk associated. A more than slight advantage needs to be gained to provide enough incentive.
There are a few primary reasons why I think this. There is a lower risk of having farm fields by initial CC. Building a new CC and new farm fields has a massive cost associated with it. Farms give infinite food (metal is highly contested over because it's limited)
So either the bonus provides enough incentive to change peoples behaviour and the bonus is quite large. You have after all invested a huge amount of time and resources in securing a bonus. Additionally, thats a huge amount of resources not invested in gaining a finite resources, which, being the more gating resource type, is more tactically important.
Alternatively, the terrain bonus is not enough to change peoples behaviour. In which case it's pointless.
I do not see it as something that can be fixed by changing the values of the terrain bonus. The discrepancy between the bonus needed to make it seem worth and a bonus that does not change behaviour is too big.
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I'm against the terrain specific bonuses. It seems like something that would have to be over tuned to give the perception of being worth it and feel good to use. To that end if it does induce people to fight over the area, i suspect it will be to much of an advantage to the one who eventually secures it.
I do agree that there isn't a sufficient motivator for map control, I just don't think that this is the right avenue.
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Last time I looked the effective HP of all buildings is asinine for all buildings in this game. IMO towers ought to be more durable than most buildings, so unless all buildings are all being rescaled or towers are outliers I wouldn't target the durability significantly (at least when fully upgraded)
If they need to be reduced in effectiveness, decreasing tower stats and having tower upgrades to bring them up. That in itself decreases the cost effectiveness. Most importantly though, it allows for towers to be potentially weaker in phase 2 by having upgrades in the last phase. That reduces towers effectiveness for the specific time period when siege weapons are not prevalent, whilst still giving them presence later. Additionally, having technologies gate towers means ants that the technologies become another balancing lever if they become egregious again.
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I meant have more differences between the village, town and city phase.
I feel like it should be more of a hard transition from economy -> map expansion -> conquest. I feel like its a bit more a continuum rather than discrete steps. I think it would create a better cadence and have improved clarity for the aim of each phase.
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The one macro balance design I would like is to have each phase more discrete from each other.
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I'm not arguing that all should be paired. I agree that there should be some expensive techs, but again I suspect it will be a while before there are enough techs to support both expensive strategic and cheap tactical techs. (I assume that's the goal with techs ).
I would disagree that opening all techs up would increase depth. If there were a pair of techs (not ones that locked the other out) one that increases speed by X and decreases Y HP and the other increases HP by X and decreases speed by Y then,
Instead of having a hoplite that had X%hp and -Y%speed, I imagine most people would get both and end up with an increase in hp and speed. It's not making as much of a trade off, and opening it up to weaknesses. If it's such that the stats cancel out, then they should lock the other one out so then its not possible to buy both, waste a bunch of resources and gain nothing.
So you run into one of several problems.
- People buy both techs and there is no statistical downside.
- People buy both and the techs cancel each other out - player is basically punished via loss of recourses for what appears to be the good action of researching
- People only buy one and it acts the same as pair -if there is one superior tech in a pair it will retain its superiority when it's not a pair. If it is too expensive to buy both then people buy the superior one, same as before. i.e. its a problem in balancing not the pairing.
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If they are in pairs then presumably one is the inverse of the other, in which case it would be better to strictly gain one stat and the trade of is that you lock yourself out of the other tech.
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The only thing I don't like in techs is when there is a gain and a loss in the same tech. e.g. Train 10% faster lose 10hp.
Generally I think they would be better either putting them into a paired tech or removing the negative stat aspect and increasing the cost.
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Ah don't worry. I get what he meant now. I only skimmed through the first time. I wasn't sure if he wanted to have the trainable units static or dynamic for the duration of the each game.
I'll edit the question out of my first post.
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Perhaps think about possible units we could include in a "Mercenary Camp" system, where all players, regardless of civ, can capture a Gaia "Mercenary Camp" and then train specific units from it.
Here's how I have proposed it works: We can have multiple mercenary camps in Atlas, each one having slightly different mercenaries available from it based on culture or biome (say, "Middle Eastern", "Anatolian", "Italian", "North African", or whatever) with around 2 units available based on this culture, and then the Merc Camp would also have 2 or so units available based on the owning civ (say, Cretan Toxotes and Thracian Peltasts for Athenian ownership, "Samnite Swordsman" and "Celtic Auxiliary Cavalry" for Roman owners). So, up to 4 units available from the Merc Camp; 2 based on the map or maptype and 2 based on the owner of the camp. With that in mind, what kind of "Merc" units would you choose for the Persians? Maybe Sacae (Sythian) Horse Archer and Cardaces Hoplite and perhaps Indian War Elephant? This way we can give the Persians some extra strong units, but only if they can manage to capture the strategically important Mercenary Camps? These mercs would have benefits (they cost no population room and they are trained at 'Elite' levels), but a few minor drawbacks (they keep "loot" to themselves, so the player doesn't get any of the "Loot" they get from kills, and you can only train a limited number of each).
Its a much better option than being able to train from captured buildings of other civs simply because that would cause way to much homogeneity. I wouldn't implement mercs not receiving loot. Loot is already in a really bad sport in terms of communication. Having them not yield loot adds more burden of knowledge and complication with no real benefit.
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I think what a lot of people are getting at is that this
This council will unite sub organizations which are modding 0 A.D. Under one committee, for the benefit of 0 A.D. as a whole. Forming and combining a team comprised of studios and freelance modders.
isn't really an explanation of what it actually does. It;s more who comprises it and one very very broad 'goal' (i.e. for the benefit of 0 A.D.) I feel like most people are having trouble coming to terms with what it is you want because it hasn't really been decided/explained well.
It might be best to come up with some specific things that this council is supposed to do and why it is better than what is already in place so people have more of an idea.
I could be wrong but that's my interpretation of how it is.
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I think that the loading screen should be altered over having hoplites buffed (Considering swordsmen are meant to counter spearmen)
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I personally wouldn't like it because it civs less unique. Other than that having that many units means there are likely to be multiple units that fill the same roll (or no lack of a particular type of unit, which goes somewhat back to the generic civ argument), which creates its own inherent problems.
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It would be nice not only to have various formation types but also various formation "durabilities". For the Celts certainly could hold the line until first contact but then you would tell the difference between them and more disciplined cultures. It should be the same for mercenaries: they should stick to their original culture's habits, not their master's, and as such being employed in full knowledge of that fact. This discrepancy could even make for the lack of a morale system, so true is that being and keeping in a formation is an advantage (defensive or offensive).
That seems like it would favour the highly disciplined civs far too much in terms of gameplay.
Having said that, if morale were ever to be implemented i would suspect what your suggesting could be leveraged through that relatively easily.
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Thats a good example that "game improvements" should be playtested before being added.
Formations is another example. Though units far away from each other don't try to reach each other any more in many situations the "center of mass" of the selected units move in the opposite direction of the target making chasing enemies a pain. On other occasions the stuck in a bunch of trees or other obstacles.
So I ask again to add a default "simple" behavior to such features (making them optional) as long as it doesn't work well.
So please add a "no-formation" formation giving the order to each unit individually and the ship (or other unit) to garrison troops in not change it's orders when units are ordered to garrison in it (while the experimental behavior could be optional).
Adding things like this prematurely and non-optional makes the game worse and not better.
While it can be frustrating when things don't work intuitively, its better than them not working at all. It may not have been a case building on a simple working behaviour but, instead adding a completely new behaviour. I for one would prefer ships to be buggy etc, yet work sooner, than release a very simple bandaid fix that pushes the release back of proper ship behaviour.
I could be wrong, but I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt
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Thanks, now I'm on the track.
What about replacing all wall towers with the connector (independent on the appending wall parts length) and make them upgradeable to wall towers (like long wall parts to gates).
This way the wall on it's own can be cheap while wall towers could be as expensive as defense towers.
Then the player can decide what he wants - but for a price.
I don't like minimum range but in case of buildings and if it's historically accurate it seams sensible. It should be longer then a siege ram but shorter then a siege tower IMO (if this value exists).
The maximum range, however, should be higher then that if a normal unit because of the higher position.
Making wall towers more expensive would enable us to balance this.
A drawback of this concept is more micromanagement though.
I like this idea more tbh. What is happening is more clear than having some towers shoot and other not. It would be ideal if there is some visual differentiation between the two. Not sure if its possible to have this yet. IIRC there was some code that needs to be done before something like this can be achieved.
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Hmmm. I did it twice in a row earlier today. I don't have time to try again now but I will sometime this week.
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Not sure if this is applicable to all auras and how generalisable it is etc. So far I've only seen it on Boudicca (though I suspect that its to do with global aura's). Will try to repo on another hero if needed.
The effects of the aura don't update properly. After a hero dies the changed values remain in place for all units that are already extant.
Repo steps.
Played Boudicca.
The attack increases for all champions.
Delete Boudicca.
The attack of living champions is not decreased.
Only newly created units have less attack.
As an aside, hero aura tooltips need a bit of a clean-up. Its ambiguous in many cases as to if its a global or local aura. E.g. Boudicca's is global but from the tooltip I would've thought it is local. I propose that instead of all being labelled as 'hero aura' they instead be labelled as 'hero effects' if they are global or not an aura in the sense of affecting those in the area around them.
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Didn't know where to put this so feel free to move it if its ill placed.
A bit of an inconsistency with the civilian/champion unit divide. Civilian persian chariots are stronger than british champion chariots in almost every respect. Realistically this might not be something that needs to be altered since balance needs to be looked at holistically as well. However, if there is need to nerf persian or buff Britons this is probably a good place to start. My feeling is that Britons are currently a bit too weak (but then again I lack any data) so I thought I'd bring this up. Personally the population is the thing I'd change.
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Garrison? I'm pretty sure its 20
Alpha 17 Balancing Branch
in General Discussion
Posted
Some feedback
- Cavalry have been made weaker to pierce damage, but more resilient against hack
Aren't spearmen and spear cavalry supposed to counter horsemen? Since they are a problem shouldn't they have less hack to highlight the weakness?
- Healers now cost only food since metal is quite rare.
I think they should have another resource added to the cost.
- Female Citizens train much faster.
I think this is the wrong approach. From what I can gather people feel there is not enough to do during the early phases of the game? Most of thats due to batch training being available from the beginning. Although a more difficult way to fix this, I think making batch training a technology available in phase2 would be a better way to solve this.
- Swordsmen cost less metal, but cost a little wood.
I dislike that they have three materials needed to make.