iNcog

Have you never house-boomed? E.g. you get the fertility upgrade and make like 10 villagers in 15s. You also get the advanced upgrades for your units since you can base your eco on villagers instead of soldiers now. So you get better units than your opponent and your eco isn't based on using your infantry to gather resources but it's more centered around getting a LOT of villagers very quickly. Houses is one building that you have a lot of, unlike barracks or CCs. E: or you know, you could house boom with infantry gathering and get an even more insane economy.

Hard counters make a game remarkably micro heavy. You literally have to constant re-position units throughout the fight until the fight ends. Unless your opponent is bad that is, in which case he doesn't re-position his units and you don't have to reposition yours either (and you win). The other dumb thing your opponent could do is make a huge mass of a single unit. That doesn't work in a game with hard-counters; you just make the counter unit and win. You can't make 75 strelki (light ranged unit which is anti-infantry) and hope that they'll be able to deal with heavy cav (whose primary role is to take out ranged infantry, villagers and siege). You absolutely need a well-balanced army, that is a composition of several unit types. Hard-counters also imply that units which counter one another counter each other very hard. Here's something I once wrote to explain how hard-counters in aoe3 worked in the early game, when you could only get out 2 types of units (3 is necessary to truly complete the counter-circle in aoe3):

The same thing could be said with hellions against zerglings, zerglings vs siege tanks / widow mines, banelings vs zerglings or even banelings against marines. Hard counters exist in Starcraft 2 on paper but in reality it comes down to micro. Skirm cav are a problem at the moment, yes, that's why this thread is getting so much attention. @Tango, reread my post, you'll see that the changes I'm talking about would push 0 AD away from Aoe3's hard counter system even more, though in all seriousness the counter system in 0 AD is much softer than in Aoe3. When I play 0 AD I just make units and attack with them while constantly making villagers. Aoe3 is a far more subtle game that is based on micro but also using the right strategy in a given match up. Every civ in aoe3 has their own very unique strenghths and weaknesses, playing aoe3 correctly is all about using the right strategy which allows your civ to maximize its potential while hitting the other civ where it's weak. For example, a Russian player massing strelets will lose very hard to a French player who will fast-fortress, see that the Russian player made only Strelki, and responds by making heavy cavalry units. A more intelligent Russian player would get a very strong mass of musketeers and cossacks so as to exploit Russia's strength: very cost-efficient units coupled with a great late-colonial economy.

Hard counters is actually a great way to have unique units that work while keeping balance in check; age of empires 3 and medieval total war 1 are prime examples of this. One of the biggest reasons people dislike hard counters (I have seen this on starcraft forums especially) is that they believe they can only mass a single unit type. The thing is that if your counters are hard enough, like they are in Aoe3, you basically have to go for at least 3 different unit types to complete the counter circle. It becomes unit composition against unit composition instead of unit vs unit. This would make some particularly fun micro battles; in aoe3 it's impossible to win a game if you don't micro properly, because you HAVE to babysit units so they're positioned properly. In 0 AD this is kind of what we have, but not really. Ranged units in this game are king since they have such high dps and counters in this game are much softer than they are in Aoe3. So to make units work (i.e. nerf ranged units and make other units more viable; everyone complains about skirm cav but ranged infantry are really stronger than melee infantry as well) you'd have to either harden counters or change unit stats so that those are what define the unit. The current approach of the redesign is the latter: multipliers will be mostly gone and units are defined in other ways. A simple example of this would be to give melee infantry much higher dps and HP than their ranged counterparts (get rid of multipliers). With their range, ranged infantry would inherently soft-counter melee infantry thanks to their range. However ranged infantry caught in a melee fight with melee infantry would lose quite hard. It's all about positioning, if the ranged infantry is properly placed, then it'll do damage and be an asset to your army. The real thing that would make ranged infantry worth it is their range, not their dps. Ranged infantry would serve more as a support unit to melee units rather than being the actual backbone of your army. This is a simple example of how you could make units unique without using multipliers. Balance is done by adjusting HP and / or dps so that units are just strong enough to fill their niche role (ranged support for example) without breaking the system. This is a different approach to what's currently in the game. Doing this approach would also have cavalry skirmishers be closer to what Tango suggested in the thread: they would get a nerf of stats but their design (fast ranged unit) would allow them to continue to have a role in the military. You could lower for example their dps so that it's much lower than that of ranged infantry. This would ranged cavalry a poor choice for an army's "backbone", however ranged cav would excel at harass, since they can do damage with relative impunity against melee units, economic units, support units and retreating units. Ranged cav would have to avoid large groups of ranged infantry though, as well as melee cavalry. In a straight up fight, an army with an emphasis on ranged cav will be weaker overall than an army with an emphasis on melee infantry. So again, ranged cav would get a specialized role, but other units have to be considered as well if you want a well-rounded army. 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).

@Hephaestion, the more the game is close to history, the better. I like the historical aspect myself, I'm a big sucker for games that try to reflect reality. So I really agree with your sentiment. I've been asking around and sent PMs to both Mythos and alpha123, to be honest the way units work as of right now is going to be changed in a big way. If our friend alpha123 manages to get a working unit set without hard-counters, it would be entirely possible to have some civs simply not have a certain unit type. This would be a big buff to history in the game (since some civs didn't have some types of soldiers) and it would also make the game much more unique than it currently is. It would be taking another step away from AoE. It would still be possible to maintain balance as well. I've asked for details about the changes and I think it's actually possible for it to work. Hard-counters will be gone and units will be different through their inherent design instead of what multipliers they have. However, these changes (at least what I'm reading on paper) are really huge and it's possible that the community wouldn't be happy with the changes at first (since they're really, really big). If such changes go through then the current discussion we're having can go out the window since everything will be reset. I'll say it again though, I think the redesign that is proposed by alpha123 can definitely work.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing a kind of mobile drop site for stone, wood and metal. Yeah the elephant does do that for the Mauryans, but I'm thinking of a slightly faster unit, which obviously costs more. The idea behind a mobile drop-site is that you could use that to gather resources on the map outside of your frontiers, with infantry. In this manner one could be aggressive with infantry but still gather resources during the down time. The favorite thing age of empires players like to say about 0 AD is that defender's advantage is too strong in this game since infantry gather resources. I don't agree with this at all but introducing this mobile drop-site would be a great way to both make the naysayers shut up while adding something potentially interesting to the game. Just a random thought I had, might as well share it. I don't think mobile drop-sites are a priority at all but it's nice to talk about. It would certainly help players who have lost their CC stage a comeback.

So basically in Age 1, Swordsmen and Spearmen would be basically the same unit, upon getting to Age 2, they become different. I'm guessing this would be done via upgrades? Like in AoC? That's actually a pretty interesting idea, it would certainly be a sort of compromise between history and design. If you fire up google and do some research, apparently Hastati originally fought with spears anyway: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastati So you could actually do an interesting upgrade change, something along these lines for Romans for example: in Age 1, Hastati are spear-men. In Age 2, with upgrade, they become swordsmen. You could do the same with Iberians or most civs really. All melee infantry use spears in age 1 and you get access to swordsmen in age 2. Well, that's just a mild suggestion, for Romans only since all the other civs have the spear infantry "needed" to deal with melee cav. Either way, I think that melee cav rushes aren't going to be good enough anymore to warrant actually doing. Unless it's melee cav "rush" with 5 cav and then you switch back into a normal play-style.

Well if the goal is to recreate history then I guess do whatever ^^ However if you're looking to make an enjoyable game you're going to have to bend historical accuracy here and there. I realize historical accuracy is important in 0 AD and even more important for some people; however you have to draw a line somewhere. Humans and horses are already way bigger than they should be compared to buildings, things like supply lines, food, money, trade and whatnot aren't really modeled. Even the best simulation is an interpretation of reality, it can't be perfectly spot on. In 0 AD you'll probably get fights that never occurred, like Celts vs Mauryans. In terms of actual game design, some concessions need to be made to history. I'm not saying disregard history, I'm just saying that history shouldn't get in the way of good game design. It's best to find a compromise between both instead of giving one priority over the other. For the record, I think the best course of action right now would be to >simply< switch skirm cav with melee cav for every civ in the tech tree, without doing a radical change like giving romans/iberians spear infantry in age 1. I don't think that melee cav are strong enough to be as effective as skirmcav if you do a melee cav rush. This is where theory needs to stop and actual play-testing needs to take its place. I believe, but I'm not certain, that ranged infantry with the CC can fend off melee cav rushes. If it really turns out that civs without spear infantry in age 1 can't fend off melee cav rush, then perhaps it would be time to look into deeper changes.

Doing crazy stat changes is actually more complicated than just switching a few units around in the tech tree; in terms of coding it would probably be a boring and tedious task but not a difficult one. If you increase skirmcav cost or decrease their stats you're basically doing a band-aid solution where you're trying to fix a major design flaw with strange stats. Nerfing skirm cav so they aren't a problem in age 1 would mean making them useless in later ages or something. It would just create more problems while not solving the core issue. The issue is that skirmcav are both ranged and mobile in age 1. Melee cav & spear infantry for every civ is better than every civ having a broken unit which limits open build orders to skirmcav rush. Units in 0 AD can be compared to Aoe3 but it's definitely not the same thing. I wouldn't hesistate to send 5 melee cav against 20 ranged infantry in aoe3, because that's a very cost-effective fight for me. Counters are much harder in aoe3 than they are in 0 AD. However sending 5 swordcav in this game vs 20 archers will likely have your swordcav die in vain. Counters in 0 AD give units an advantage in a fight but numbers count more in 0 AD than they do in aoe3. That's why melee cav for all civ wouldn't be broken. 10 melee cav in 0 AD aren't going to beat 10 ranged units cost-efficiently if those ranged units can get a few volleys off before the melee cav engage. Use the CC to cover the RI and you could probably hold against melee cav very easily. E: also worth mentioning is that all units are going to be reworked by the way. can't go into details because i don't know them myself, but basically the way fights work will be dictacted as much as the formations/position you use as they will by actual unit stats. i think counters in this game will get a nerf and units will be reworked in consquence. think the phalanx bug, but fixed

Well I think that Romans and Iberians should also get spear men in age 1, if it becomes necessary. Perhaps it would be best that every civ should get a ranged infantry, a spear infantry and a melee cav in age 1. This should, very roughly, complete the counter-circle, which is RI > SI > MC > RI. However it's worth noting that defender's advantage is pretty big early game, if you go for a melee cav rush you're setting yourself behind in eco. The CC can't cover your wood but that doesn't mean you can't retreat your units back into the range of CC ranged attack temporarily. Melee cav will be forced to take CC fire if they get in too close, the problem with skirmcav is that they could attack most units inside the protection of the CC without taking CC fire themselves. So going broke for eco with your melee cav rush means you have to do real damage or you will be behind. Dealing that damage is much more difficult with melee cav than ranged cav. Also worth noting is that ranged infantry will be able to fire at melee cav from the safety of your CC as well.

So imagine a unit with a pierce armor of 5 I do a pierce attack of 20 so the damage the unit takes is: 20*(0.9^5) = 11.8 ?

By the way, how is armor calcuted?

For a very basic build order that works* for every civ, I have this: Start: 4 vills > build a farmstead near berries, get basket upgrade 4 infantry > chop wood Cav > gather chickens Queue 5 villagers, rally CC to wood. As soon as you have 150 wood, make a house. As soon as you have 100 wood, make a storehouse near closest forest. When the cav runs out of chickens, scout the map for hunts (gazelles, deer, ox, camels, etc) and then gather food from those hunts. Continue training 5 villagers, all rallied to wood. As soon as you have the wood, make second house. As soon as you have the wood, make your third house. With this set up, you should be approaching 800 food / 800 wood which should allow you to age. You only need 4 villagers on berries and 1 cav hunting to get the necessary food. Every villager you train from the CC goes straight to wood. Generally speaking: When you age, you can throw up a barracks with all 4 infantry units you have and you'll age before the barracks is finished. While you age up, get the wheelbarrow upgrade. While you age up, build 3 farms with 5 villagers on each farm. As soon as you age, get the farm upgrade at the farmstead. Farming is really slow so you really need this upgrade. Allocate your remaining villagers between wood, stone and metal, keep at least some on wood so that you can build houses. Otherwise there aren't really strategies yet, unless we're talking about skirmcav rush (check my youtube for build order if you want to see it, it's not worth a post), or Roman swordsman rush (idk how that works), but those are very basic builds anyway. It's mostly age, build stuff, train units and see what happens. *this doesn't work a skirmcav rush; lul. only thing you can do vs a skirmcav rush is a better skirmcav rush.

I think this hits the nail on the head. Sometimes it's hard to believe what you guys are doing. it's amazing really This may not really be the thread for it, but I think I may write up a huge post about 0 AD's actual game design, my thoughts on most aspects, the pros and the cons of the design itself. The best part about 0 AD is that everyone listens. There's actual discussion going on here, it's not one-sided where someone posts something and no one cares. On these boards, someone posts something and everyone actually thinks about what's been posted and responds accordingly. This is huge. Never seen it before in a game community. It's a huge asset that the people here are so open to suggestions but also criticism.

Automatic kiting isn't that big a problem, in that skirmcav will often move to dumb areas when they kite. They'll target one spearman and move to the side, closer to enemy units instead of moving away from enemy units. Skirmcav are fairly dumb when it comes to taking into account more than one unit which is why I don't think it's a problem that skirmcav move back by themselves when attacking a unit; you still have to babysit skirmcav when you're doing hit and run with them so that aspect is mostly fine. It's actually better that you need to micro your units. (: I often repeat myself, but whatever, I'll say it again. The problem with skirmcav is two-fold. On one hand, the unit itself poses a problem. On the other, they're "tech" units which are available far too early in the game in comparison to what they're capable of doing. The unit itself: The biggest problem with skirmcav is that they're fast and have long range. This means that these units can position themselves in a way that they inflict damage on other units, while taking minimal damage in return. By nature, skirmcav will always soft-counter every slow melee unit. In itself, this is not a problem, so long as every civ has an answer to this unit. By nature, you want the counter to skirmcav to be another ranged unit. In this manner, it will be difficult for skirmcav to inflict damage without taking damage in return. This problem will be even worse once our lovely devs fix pathfinding and lag issues so that units are even more responsive. The most ideal solution I can think of, on paper, is making skirmcav short-ranged units and giving skirmishers a bonus against skirmcav. Skirmcav themselves get a bonus against siege engines and support units, but nothing else. What happens if skirmcav get the following change? - Skirmishers become an effective counter against skirmcav. This won't make skirmcav useless. It just means that skirmcav will be forced to be more careful when and where they engage. Skirmcav still have the speed which allows them to engage and disengage quite easily. - Skirmcav retain the ability to kite any melee unit. - Skirmcav retain the ability to harass without actually engaging. - Skirmcav will be "soft" countered by archers since archers will be able to attack skirmcav before skirmcav come into range to engage archers. - Skirmcav get a specialized role where they're ideal units to take out siege engines. They can use their speed to get in quickly, they can use their range to take out siege engines. They have the speed to potentially avoid skirmishers and spearmen. So skirmcav become this unit which is very good in some situations but not as good in others. This gives a "role" to skirmcav and a place in the game. As of right now, skirmcav are the jack of all trades. They can do anything and everything. Anything another unit can do, skirmcav can do better. ^^ Skirmcav in tech trees: This is an issue which is 100% also needing to be looked at. Imagine for a second that we get the skirmcav I described in the first part. The skirmcav rush will still be a very strong rush. This is because you can still get 8 skirmcav 3 minutes into the game. Skirmcav will still be able to kite melee units, they'll still be able to stay out of CC range and they'll still be able to kill villagers very easily. They still have their speed, even if they're more short ranged. Even if skirms now "counter" skirmcav, skirmcav still have the ability to harass the other player while developing his own economy very safely. By design, having a fast & ranged unit so early in the game is a problem in that its inherent abilities are much better than other units. If it's just fast, it's not a problem. If it's just ranged, it's not a problem either. But if it's both, well, it has a decisive edge against other units. This edge is very clear as of right now, where everyone makes skirmcav and that's it. Even if their stats were half as good as they are right now, it would only mean that they would take out other units in twice the time. The real fix isn't in stats or changing the unit itself. It's changing when the unit becomes available. If you can't build skirmcav until age 2 for example, then the other player has more than enough time to develop a force capable of dealing with skirmcav. It's really as simple as that. We still need a flexible early game unit which is capable of scouting and hunting though, so it's better to replace the skirmcav in age 1 with melee cav. It's a simple, easy fix: - Melee cav can still hunt. If needed, perhaps melee cav can be given a small bow for hunting, but this bow wouldn't be used when fighting other units. Not sure how difficult this to implement, this is just a small, cute suggestion. - Melee cav cav still scount. - Melee cav can be dealt with melee infantry (spearmen). - Villagers can be protected from melee cav by the civic center. - Melee cav can still harass and kill villagers or units which are out of position. It becomes a battle between two players, the raiding cav player is looking for units out of position, the defending player is looking to make sure that his units are all covered.

Ah, ok, that makes sense to me. (:

Does 1 women suffice for the area around her?

Missile inaccuracy already exists in the game and it's an indirect buff to melee units which I find interesting. What you're talking about is a fairly roundabout way of fixing a problem that doesn't even exist. It's not that ranged units are too strong, it's that one ranged unit in particular is too strong.

I responded to actual skirmcav "nerf" in the skirm cav thread so as to not go off topic. Either way the problem with SVN is that, as you say, no one plays it. Scythe's rebalance branch is a step in the right direction however it has two inherent flaws: 1. It takes 10 minutes of work to set up svn + balance branch, which is more than enough to turn off most potential play testers. Remember that players are lazy by nature, myself included, so the more work it takes to get a balance branch up and working for play-testing, the less actual play testers you're going to get. 2. With balance branch, SVN and A16, you get three different versions of the same game. most people play A16 because that is by far the easiest version to set up. SVN has mostly mods and zzippy, nothing more. I always fire up SVN before going to A16 and I never seen anyone on SVN. Balance branch would be a third version of the game, which dilutes the player base even more. Why not balance the game in SVN directly?

bump in response to this: Skirm cav can get lesser stats and they'll still remain a problem so long as you can make them in the first 5 seconds of the game. Mobility, high attack and long range are still there, they're much better than other units for those reasons. You can also make them right off the bat. It doesn't matter if you need to make 10 skirm cav instead of 8 to kill an infantry unit it one shot, that's exactly what that "nerf" does. Ranged cav so early in the game is a design flaw, skirmcav in age 1 needs to be replaced by spearcav or swordscav (melee cav basically) so that you can't hit and run melee infantry and you can also defend yourself using the civic center. You can still hunt with melee cav and also scout, so this is a very simple solution and it instantly solves every single problem that skirmcav poses. Skirmcav themselves also need to be reworked; even in age 2 when you don't get rushed, they're just the best units overall. They have high damage, long range and insane mobility. You can get so much value out of skirmcav it isn't funny. I would propose something more along the lines of making skirmcav specialized units. Give them lower attack and a strong multiplier against certain unit types, siege engines and support units for example. Skirmcav also need a >ranged< counter; I think skirms fit that role quite well.

That is the topic though; a tournament would be meaningless right now because people would just skirmcav rush and wouldn't bother looking into the rest of the game. Tournaments are all about competition and right now the game can't really be played competitively, due to performance issues and design issues. I still love the game though. ^^

I think you got the "friendship is magic" part wrong there. But I openly admire the work you did with this mod. Amazing stuff. If you could flesh it out into a "real" game with balance and no bugs, maybe some brony will find it and it'll light a spark and make the mod go viral. That would be pretty funny. Either way, nice work.

First thing that needs to be reworked is skirmcav. Second thing that needs to be reworked are buildings, which are boringly too strong. It's impossible to get a fun game going these days because you either get skirmcav rushed (which is unethical) or you get a game-winning advantage but can't close out the game because you have to go all the way up to siege to end the game, which is incredibly boring. I straight up leave in both situations, because it's just not fun. I tend to forget that you're supposed to resign too, which is somewhat annoying; ;/

It would probably be too small for us to see units clearly.

copy/paste is huge. gonna play around with that right now