iNcog

NOT ETHICAL there's already a slave upgrade in the game anyway

Just don't pair 'em at all and you're set! Yeah I post a lot in this topic but this is a really important discussion in my opinion.

Techs that trade unit stats are the techs I feel should be paired. i.e. you get it and it locks you away from the other. Any tech that only gives a straight up bonus or boost should not be paired in my opinion.

I see what you're saying, however units become more unique (and the techs as well) if there's a trade between stats as well instead of just a single a single stat boost. Actually I'd argue that if you're pairing up techs that give just a single stat boost, you might as well open players to both of them (see almost every other post from me in this thread) and make them both strong and expensive. That adds depth to strategies. If you do only a single boost then players will focus on the boost that does better overall, this is what we currently have with the blacksmith upgrades, which I feel shouldn't be paired. I would rather have my spear-men get better hack armor than pierce armor for instance, since I'm not someone who makes spear-men so they soak archer/skirm fire. I make spear-men to take out cav and do well in melee fights. I would find it much more interesting to have a Hoplite that has more HP and is slower than a normal Hoplite for example. They would be better at their role of being tough melee units however with that would come a shortcoming, their lack of speed. So you get a slightly more powerful, yet slightly less mobile force. Remember that you can do what you want with stats, I'm not talking about 50% HP vs 50% speed. Something more subtle like +10% would be enough to give units a more unique feel without breaking game design. You can play on the following stats: Attack HP Speed Rate of Fire Range Hack Armor Pierce Armor Abilities Formations

Nah, those are interesting techs that make units more unique. I'd like to see a lot more of them, in pairs hopefully.

I'm more amazed on the amount of work that's been done on this game and how good the quality of the work is. The graphics are gorgeous, the game is fun and well designed. There are some teething issues. However what's really amazing is that a bunch of people simply got together and started working together on this project. I'm absolutely astounded that they've made something this good on their own. It's seeing stuff like this that makes you wonder what actual game devs are up to. Either way, don't expect to come to these forums with your first post being one that shits on the game and except to get pleasant replies. No one forced you to download a free and open-source game and no one is forcing you to play it. Especially for such a non-issue that can be worked around by simply adjusting your monitor's resolution and then going in game. Yeah, it takes 30s to do. Which is way less time than what it probably took you to make the complaint video. Let's just stop here and not muck up the thread. I highly encourage you to try out the game anyway and forgive its current shortcomings (which are being worked on anyway), it's been in development for a while but it's starting to really blossom.

As long as it's unique I'm not complaining. My vendetta is merely against the pairing of eco and blacksmith techs (both of which I think need a good boost). More market upgrades could also be interesting. That sort of thing. The tech to train villagers from houses should be nerfed or made more expensive by the way. It's easily the easiest way to get your economy to explode, you can essentially trade 1k food for 20 vills in 17s, those 20 vills can be put to work on a resource you lack. I'd perhaps nerf the training time of vills from houses. Some possible unique stuff would be to unlock group abilities btw. I'm not sure if it's possible to code. Basically something like, if you have a group of archers and you unlock "volley", then you can use a group of archers to fire a volley, which does area damage in a given area. Something like that? Cavalry could get charge for example. Hoplites and Spearmen could get their phalanx formation from an upgrade. Things like that. I totally dig stuff like that. However, don't think that trading one stat for another is a boring thing. You can get really unique units that way. In Aoe3 Germany has an Uhlan instead of a Hussar, these are both melee cav units. So it's something like 30 attack / 320 HP for a Hussar and 37 attack / 250 HP for the Uhlan (not sure on stats but whatever). Well, the Uhlan is a really unique cav unit. It's amazing because it does so much damage, it's great for raiding and it's even better when it's fighting weak units that will get quickly chopped down. however Uhlans are much more fragile and they can take less punishment from anti-cav. So you really have to be careful with them. However, neither the Uhlan nor the Hussar was considered inherently better in Aoe3. Perfect example of how even doing simple things like trading stats can give real flavor to a civ. You could also upgrade spear cav to get a small range on their melee attack I guess. Spear infantry same thing. Well, there are LOTS of possibilities.

Just set your monitor's base resolution lower and then play in fullscreen? Windowed doesn't work? You realize the game is in alpha right? That a lot of work still needs to be done? Why would you waste your time making a youtube video out of it, just to post here, lol. In windowed mode (I have to use windowed mode to make VOD btw), there's a program called clip cursor which is very simple to use and your cursor won't leave the window, so you can scroll around and stuff.

The game is open to development either way so anything goes.

I'm confused, are you sure we agree? Generally speaking, pairing techs limits the amount of strategies you have at your disposal. Imagine for a second that every storehouse tech were available for me to research, albeit every tech was 50% more expensive (completely arbitrary number). Given how strong storehouse techs are, I would get a substantial boost if I took the risk of trying to get them all relatively early. I would get an economic edge early. However, since such techs would be expensive, it would be a significant investment to get them early on. Getting expensive yet strong storehouse techs early would allow me to play a defensive play-style focused on booming quickly. I would have to make do with little units and carefully using defender's advantage in my favor. My opponent would do everything in his power to pressure me with his military units. If he's good at micro, his pressure will do lots of damage since I invested so many resources into getting expensive economic upgrades which cut into my unit production. My opponent might also respond by taking map control (with military colonies especially). So by unlocking all the storehouse techs, you open up this new play-style that allows people to invest into their economy while playing defensive. As of right now you can't do anything like that in 0 AD. You can only do a half-assed version of this since you're only allowed to get half the economic upgrades. The same thing can be said about blacksmith upgrades. If I could choose to invest a lot of resources into getting lots of blacksmith upgrades (instead of just half of them), I could think of a mid-game "strategy" that revolves around investing LOTS of resources into getting blacksmith upgrades. I'll be at a disadvantage during the time it takes for the upgrades to research. I might also be at a disadvantage when they're actually done since my opponent might have invested his resources into economic upgrades. So you get an interesting dynamic where a player with a weaker economy yet a stronger set of units will face against a player with a stronger economy yet lesser units. How does that play out? Are there some civs that might do this better than others? Are there civs I shouldn't do this against? Are my units so good that I can win a straight up fight, yet not strong enough to take out his CC? Should I try to push or should I try to expand, using my new strong units to take and keep map control. As of right now, you can't do anything like this, since you can only get half of the blacksmith upgrades total. Forcing players to choose between stone gathering and metal gathering doesn't add anything strategically. Making a "choice" isn't really a choice when one choice is clearly better than the other. Pairing techs just means that one tech is better than the other, so one tech "shouldn't" be researched at all. As mythos said, why would you get the stone upgrade to do a slinger rush if it's going to penalize you later in the game? Just get metal and forget anything you had about using a relatively unique unit to pressure your opponent with. Pairing techs forces players to go down the strongest tech route; that doesn't lead to diversity. Techs that trade one stat for another actually make for some unique units. I wouldn't mind getting cav that was just a bit faster and just a bit weaker if it meant that I could get raid a bit more effectively, or position my cav better in a fight. I wouldn't mind more training time on my heavy infantry to get them to have more HP. That sort of thing just makes units more unique. These are the kinds of tech that can be paired. For example, I could choose between either stronger infantry or faster cavalry, but I couldn't get both. So when I'm in the game, the civ will play out just slightly differently depending on which of the two techs I chose. I might want to be more in my opponent's face with stronger infantry but I'd rather try to raid and harass him with faster cav. I can't get both however. That's not a problem since if I get faster cav, well at least my infantry trains a bit faster. If I get stronger infantry, well at least my cav is also stronger as well.

I don't want to play devil's advocate so I'm not. My point as a whole, and one I'd like to stick to since that's what really important, is that pairing techs isn't good for economic or blacksmith upgrades. It actually detracts from the game instead of adding depth to it. I think pairing techs has huge potential though, as I said in my earlier posts, you can pair up techs that trade stats (health vs training time is but a simple example) and I'm sure that that would add more diversity to the game. Techs that trade stats mean that one tech isn't inherently better than the other, so you can diversify civs quite easily while remaining in good norms of design balance.

I've found that a good forest can be made up of something like 50 trees, making a forest isn't that long in the end. It's like, oh idk, 1 minute? It's faster to create the forest manually through spam clicking and counting than it would be for me to go through xml files. ^^ Thank you very much for all the advice you've given to me up until now sanderd. I really appreciate it.

Because wheelbarrow is a boost for every resource. Harvesters will almost have to move some distance to drop sites. Don't get me wrong guys I think pairing up techs can be very interesting. It's just that some techs aren't meant to be paired whereas other pairs can add a huge amount of diversity to the game. Adding expensive techs which also give a substantial boost (ie making it a huge investment with in return, huge dividends) can add so much to the strategic aspect of the game.

http://nooooooooooooooo.com/ Well it doesn't matter, these maps will be HAND CRAFTED. Thanks for answering. For the record I looked at the Atlas Manual and indeed, there wasn't anything about copy/patse.

There's "rush" and "all-in". If you rush him and you only succeed at doing enough damage that the game is equalized with neither player ahead (quite likely if a player is a strong defensive macro player), then the "rush" player shouldn't be penalized because he doesn't have access to good techs later on. A good player doesn't rush to win, he will rush to get an advantage off guard, or to penalize a player who is focusing too much on economy in the early game. It doesn't even matter if it's rush or not. Limiting the techs you can get through pairing means that you will only see players use strategies that rely on the stronger tech. Players will never choose the weaker tech (for instance wood gathering in A16) because there's simply no reason to. Pairing techs like this only limits the amount of strategic diversity in the game. It doesn't add anything except for forcing players not to use the weaker tech. Which is basically taking away from the game. This problem is somewhat alleviated as you mentioned, through the use of tiers. The question I'm asking is why tier at all? Just unlock all techs which give straight up bonuses (Blacksmith and Storehouse techs) and use pairing techs to make each Civ unique. You could for example, give the Hellenic states the ability to choose between Hoplites with higher attack in exchange for training time (just Hoplites, to make things interesting) OR better armor in exchange for attack. Celts, for example, could choose between giving their berserkers more attack in exchange for less armor OR having all their cav move slightly faster in exchange for HP. There are lots of stats to play with. You could exchange fire rate for longer training, things like that. There's also building time in exchange for building HP. If you give different pairing techs to different civs, you not only get unique civs but you also get unique play-styles. A Celtic player who wants to raid a lot will prefer to get the cavalry speed. A Celtic player who wants to fight straight will get berserkers upgrade. That sort of thing.

OK another question is there any way to copy paste a unit selection? would save SO much time for forests

I don't really see the point of specialization other than forcing a player down a tech route and preventing him from making the transition to something more suited to a situation. eg if I'm brits and I want to mass slingers early on, I get the stone upgrade. this upgrade becomes "useless" later on when I wanna get metal units. you're not really forcing specialization by forcing players to choose between stone and metal, you're just forcing people not to get the overall inferior upgrade. for example, there's NO reason to get wood chopping since wheelbarrow is a bonus to every resource. that's not specialization, you're just making techs useless. you get more strategic diversity with powerful upgrades that can all be researched. basically, it's impossible to research everything early on so strategies will revolve around a few choice techs. however, as the game progresses, players can get access to what they skipped early on due to their strategy. not having paired techs and also making techs more powerful and expensive at the same time also means that players are open to a new way of playing: upgrade heavy. a player who wants to boom will try to get as many economic upgrades as he can asap, while relying on minimal defense with units. he can do that to the detriment of his ability to pressure his opponent for example. his opponent, on the other hand, can choose to skip getting expensive upgrades early on and focus on getting out lots of units to pressure a booming player. as he does damage, he gets an advantage and can use that advantage to "get more ahead" by getting the expensive upgrades himself for example. the more techs you have, and the stronger they are, the more you're open to possible strategies. that is true strategic depth and it's something that should be developed in an RTS, particularly 0 AD which has a complex economy, which means you're looking at a strategic abyss. that's a GOOD thing. it's kind of like aoe3, where you would choose the shipments to send. what shipments you would send would define your strategy. e.g. early resources for a quick economic boost that is relevant only early game. or you can get quick hunting if you're using a civ that is food reliant. or, you can choose to upgrade your units if you're looking for prolonged age 2 warfare. shipments in aoe3 added a huge amount of strategic depth to the game, to the point where it defined strategy in aoe3. With good techs, interesting techs which are expensive (eg a big investment) yet powerful (they're quite relevant when they're researched) would open up a lot of viable play-styles. booming, rushing, teching, containing and so on. for example one possible strat we currently have is researching citizen infantry really fast. you then get better units than your opponent, however your upgrade takes a hit. you have to use that window of time where your units are stronger but your eco is weaker to deal a lot of damage to your opponent. there's an example of tech that defines strategy. it's really good! it's interesting! it's one of the reasons 0 AD's core design is so good! tl;dr, I don't agree with you at all Edit: I mean here, let's come back to my brits example. imagine I want to slinger rush Well, a stone upgrade would be a boost to my rush. however since overall, the stone upgrade isn't as good as getting the metal upgrade, I'm not going to bother with my slinger rush. i'll just do something else. you see? there's a potential strategy right there (slingers are unique in that they're 100% anti-infantry, so you can't compare a slinger rush to a skirm rush for example), but it has to be laid aside because later in the game, when i've transitioned out of the rush, I won't get the metal upgrade. Because I chose to do my slinger rush, i've actually penalized myself. some people might look at that and say "look, you see, there's an important choice to make there". but that's not true. what's really happening is that "look, he can't slinger rush at all, he's an idiot for doing so because he's going to penalize his economy in the long run". instead of having lots of strategies to choose from, you end up with good strategies and bad strategies. bad in a sense that it just isn't as good. that's why i'm pretty much against the pairing of technology, at least in terms of economic upgrades. eco upgrades are straight up bonuses, so they shouldn't be paired. however, upgrades which trade stats (like health vs training time) are techs that can be paired. you won't really penalize yourself if you choose levy infantry over levy cav because if either way, your units are either stronger or they train faster. one choice isn't inherently better than the other, so this means that you can pair up these techs. blacksmith upgrades are like eco upgrades. if you make blacksmith upgrades stronger, yet more expensive, and you also get the ability to get them all, then you can probably base mid-game strategies around trying to get an advantage with units that have lots of blacksmith upgrades on them. you'd have to invest heavily into getting these strong, upgraded units though. if you pair up blacksmith techs, then you can only get a half-assed version of this strategy. see where i'm getting at?

OK I tried what you said and everything works perfectly. The map editor is really, really intuitive, very nice. I'm going to try to make some maps, for fun but also make some nice balanced maps if possible. ^^ hmm

OK guys, I have two very quick questions. I'm looking to dabble into map making and I think if I could get these two things down I could get right to it. I think that my questions could probably be answered from a tutorial, however given the amount of resources one has access to on this site, it would take almost as long finding the tutorial needed as it would take to figure it out in the map editor. If my questions can be answered in a tutorial, please just link that tutorial. ^^ 1. How do you make spawn points for CCs in a map? 2. Is there a symmetry function in the atlas map editor? e.g. I'd like to make half of the map, then do a symmetry thing that would make the other half of the map a copy of that first half. I'm using the atlas editor that came with A16.

A lot of work is in this, can't wait to see if the faction actually gets in the game. ^^

If you're referring to the commentary of games in general than being tasteless is actually the best possible thing. e.g. being nick plott tasteless. that kind of tasteless. Here's one of the longer games I've had. I had fun booming with a civ instead of doing my usual try-to-kill my opponent at all costs. Then again the reason I boomed was that I didn't feel I had the units strong enough to straight up kill him. Well, maxed Athenians is fun.

Oh right, I have SVN too! I'll try to get on it tomorrow evening, european evening that is. ^^ By the way, Skirm cav and archer cav, just ranged cav in general, need to be removed from age 1. Currently you can do this broken strategy which consists of making 8 ranged cav then going to attack and the only way to hold that off is making ranged cav of your own or investing HEAVILY into slower, ranged units (archers and skirms). The problem with investing into slower ranged units is that ranged cav has the range and mobility to keep harassing and picking off units early game. Back home you just continue making villagers normally and you just get a huge, insurmountable lead. This can be easily changed, imo, by replace age 1 ranged cav with spear or sword cav. you can then rely on the cc for defense, as well as spearmen. it's much less broken than ranged cav which can do LOTS of damage and prevent units from gathering resources through their mere presence. spear and swordcav can still hunt and scout. See this game:

Hehe this reminds me of when I lost a game because someone killed my only CC and then my resource drop sites just died and I had no way of getting the metal needed to just build it again

Hey, I want to bump this topic to discuss the pairing of technology. I want to start a discussion about which technologies I feel are good in terms of being paired up (e.g. you have to choose one or the other) and which aren't. In my opinion, some technologies are interesting to pair up. Levy cav vs Levy Infantry of instance is a technology that I think isn't a bad thing to pair. You can choose whether to want to go for a Cav rush or infantry rush (not even rush, just raiding / pressure) and early game the levy tech helps. However players still have the option to make the other unit type later in the game, when they're done with their early game harass. Technologies that aren't interesting to pair up imo, are for example stone vs metal, or wood vs wheelbarrow. Rather than force a player to choose one or the other, it would be probably more interesting to make these technologies expensive. This way, if you want to get it early, it's a hefty investment and you can't get the other until after a while. However, later in the game, you still have the option. It would also be more interesting to tier these upgrades as well. You could get a cheap upgrade that gives you +10% for first level, then +20% as a more expensive tech, etc. I feel that technologies that trade one stat for another (health vs training time for example) are better to put in pairs than technologies that give a straight up boost. What are people's thoughts on this matter?

That actually has huge potential though. NR for 40 minutes was something implemented by ES in Aoe3. It was immensely popular. Treaty games were kind of looked down upon by sup players but managing your boom just right to get the best possible set-up in 40 minutes was actually a tricky thing to do. So it's not something to look down upon at all As long as it's not in regular games ofc