Karamel

New week, new release (even if it may not be regular). This version just changes the capture values, with empty buildings being easy to pick while not that much when someone is inside. There's no real concept behind this, just a experimentation. On the way I started to think about how resources could be categorized for a simple usage and smooth progression. sibyllae vox 20151115.zip

The other proposition is have integrated manual with links, where the detailed info are avaible through links, like AOM, you have to do double click in unit icon and this display very detailed info, even some about history or mythology. Even if I like a good old printed manual, the fact is nobody reads it anymore. I also like the one picture counter scheme but in fact, with the removal of hard counters, it is a bit more complicated. If I compare to Starcraft (well I don't often do it to tell something that could work to 0 A.D. ) they have included the strategy guide on the website and a summary in game almost like it is done for the tech tree in 0 A.D. It doesn't tell much, it just tells which unit is good against which one and weak against which other one. Kind of an hardcoded document, without even telling in which proportion. For it to be successfull, I think it must have a kind of in game tutorial for the basics (even being very bold like using melee to shield ranged units and cav to run for unguarded ones) and leave the rest to players, guides on the forum, videos, learning the hard way… Or even use the design concepts to explain unit roles in a few lines. Being logical also helps a lot. So regarding stats UI, keeping a popup may be nice because these are advanced things, a reminder that make sense for the most mathematical spirits or just see a weakness (or strength) to toy with but without comparing to an other unit. You still want to have HP and stamina visible at a glance because it varies a lot during the game. The rest may be only a hint to understand how things work and try new things. For damage and rate of fire, you can group them under a dps stat. There are already some hidden or not implemented yet stats (prepare time, accuracy, melee range, charge range, charge bonus, stamina consumption) that makes this figure not reliable by itself anyway

No matter how clear the figures are, these are still abstract figures. From my point of view throwing a lot of them is not usefull in game, you'll lose the player as it was with 4 to 6 hard counter scheme informations (just adding icons to be more identifiable may do the trick), and a kind of counter scheme to display somewhere. Either in game, in game tutorials or even a learn to play document. There is no point of putting a house to be used as a wall, or build a temple because it is more resillient. For buildings you should build them because you need them. If you want HP, use defensive buildings and there is no comparison to do. For units it is rather the same. You won't choose a unit because it has a lot of HP against pierce, you will use them because it counters archers. If unit roles are clear, you don't have to rely on in game figures (you can still do some maths outside a game to know if 10 against 15 is sufficient or you need to be 12). In fact because HP and armors are doing approximatively the same thing, I greatly simplified HP variation in my mod to have one thing less to compare. To conclude, I think the way to make HP and armor more clear is not about improving their display, but make the concept that lead to use them clearer.

To start with, because I don't really know the heroes auras, can you make a list of current heroes and their would be class? Even if it's not precisely the current bonus to see if there can be some classes to sort out? This is just a suggestion to have a list of hero classes not from scratch.

Tower territory is a bug that I fixed in this version even if you couldn't build them in neutral territory (the screenshots are from a game in the previous one). You also need some other buildings to expand outside the build restriction of the towers. Tower rush is still possible but only with wooden towers (stone ones requires a nearby CC), if you dare sending some troops early to build a depot next to the opponent base and constantly bring reinforcements because it can be easily captured and infantry is walking slowly (you can't build a barrack far from your CC). I didn't tried it, but I don't think it would be easy to do considering the wooden tower power.

New version which is a bug-fix one while keeping tracks of changes made in svn. And to make this post more interesting, here is a visual presentation of the some changes and the countryside feature, which I'm getting more satisfied with on large maps. Shape your city, you must cover more resource spots as there can welcome very fewer workers. But even if your CC territory radius is smaller and you can't build fields around it, you can expand by building depots outside your territory. Then build strong cities and small surrounding villages (which cannot house most of the buildings). When it comes to the battle, prepare it or surprise your ennemies either with a small quick raid or a larger backside assault (sorry, the screenshots were against the AI which don't really use large armies, so I don't either). The time to react and get your soldiers from the other side of the city, there will already be blood everywhere. Notice that towers alone won't be able to hold the ennemy line. And the more detailed documents: https://git.framasoft.org/0ad/sibyllaevox/wikis/home sibyllae vox 20151108.zip

I have tested a few games on a19.1 but without the full extension of planned features it's a bit boring. So here is the second attempt with countryside, including multiple building restrictions (it seems to be still a little buggy with message popup for a patch, the commit is there anyway: https://git.framasoft.org/0ad/sibyllaevox/commit/52db2a919cae06592ac82138d2ee2012f0bfc25d). There isn't much more things on countryside compared to the first attempt. It works basically the same way, but with most advanced buildings being buildable only around a civil centre (which was not possible without multiple building restrictions). It is still in an experimental state, I don't feel it to be in good shape but let's try this anyway to see what is not working. The concept draft is there: https://git.framasoft.org/0ad/sibyllaevox/wikis/base_overall Some changes were done on some units and buildings, generally giving buildings more durability and nerfing a bit slingers. I don't know why yet but some units xml are buggy (rome elite cavalry spearman for example). I'll fix it with other has-to-be-discovered bugs. sibyllae vox 20151103.zip

Well, talking about slingers, having them do significantly better against buildings seems a bit weird afterall. I rejoin wowgetoffyourcellphone in having two defenses phases: weak ones which can be dealt with a frontal assault without siege and later strong ones which requires siege. Slingers then are just an other ranged unit and not a special mini-siege as I suggested earlier. I've also found a flaw with the current counter scheme in early game: the only valid unit is the skirmisher. It counters melee infantry and javelin cav, which are almost all of the available units at start. A pack of spearmen in formation can make some troubles to force skirmishers to retreat but it would be only for short time (unless it could be an outpost with an available tower to capture for example). So I think it can be dealt with multiple manner, including making melee infantry more usefull in early game, maybe with countryside.

Just as a reminder for later, the patch is missing civ_male_trade.xml (from the Greek one is links to the generic "As you wish"). When there will be female voices to complete the patch, don't forget to add it (or ask me to do it).

I don't really understand, running/charging is related to stamina, stances in my suggestion are just the triggering way, there is still a stamina bar. Can you explain a bit more your thought (other than the fact you prefer having more real time micro, which from my point of view is an unecessary thing considering all the things to manage in the game)? About #3177 and camouflaging, I'll have to test this patch, I don't get what it does at a glance just by looking at the code. According to the War Story it was designed as infantry being able to move inside trees and for Celts and Iberians be invisible while not moving. So if they are not moving, they regain stamina (maybe the patch could still make them move at a decreased speed with more stamina loss), so it may not be incompatible. Also considering Iberian had light units and used a lot of guerrilla tactics (and their unit set being good for it), they could have for example more stamina and charging range than the others or more running speed. Finally if they are the only units having a triggered ability it seems weird in the overal design.

Hello again. Here is a new version which I reworked almost completely to make better use of git (and larger battles). The project repo is then available here https://git.framasoft.org/0ad/sibyllaevox. This version contains only unit and structure edit, trying to stick to unit roles and counter scheme that can be found in the general discussions forum (respectively http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20103 and http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20148). I removed the countryside part in a dedicated branch. This version is a19.1, not that it would be included in alpha 19 but it is compatible, without any added features (in fact countryside requires some new code, that's why I moved it to an other branch). So it changes a lot how battles are set, but not much more. Until alpha 19 is out, I think the master branch will keep only balance tweak and fixes, while I may continue to work on new features on other branches (or try to fix pathfinding issues). sibyllae_vox_a19.1.zip

Hello, just a big topic about all of this. Previous charging discussions First some previous discussions: see http://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/994 about how charging could work. If tldr, here is a summary (that may be innacurate at some points) : Units could run by double clicking, and be ordered to charge ennemies. When running and charging their stamina reduces until it is depleted and they cannot run anymore. When they stay idle, their stamina replenishes. When charging the first attack is the charge attack, which is better than the regular one. Instead of stamina it could also have distances triggers to increase speed (auto charging when at range) Suggestion (based upon Sibyllae Vox) After reading the previous discussions and as a general thing, KISS (Keep It Stupidly Simple). Players won't have time and focus to manage some stamina bars closely for multiple units, while managing a battle and keeping a good economy/production. There were two way for this: using battalions to reduce the number of controlled entities, or automate the use. I'm currently for the second way (which is not incompatible with the first). Why charging/running Multiple reasons, even more when all infantry and all cavalry are walking at the same speed not to give side effects on resource gathering and such. Get in range faster (melee), evade (ranged)Add an offensive impactSend reinforcmentsRetreatWhy not charging/running It's exhaustiveIt is harder to stay organised and can lead to weaknessesWith this in mind, here is my suggestion Stamina Stamina is used to travel, fight, and charge. I remove it from the economic part (running to get resources faster) because I don't think there is a reason a citizen that would go to war in armour should be less effective that his neighbour that goes with a javelin (they don't work with weapons). Nor I see a reason to add micro in resources gathering. So stamina reduces when units are walking (going accross the map), fighting, and obviously charging. It replenishes when they get "at home" somehow. For walking, when you send reinforcements from far accross the map, your army should make a pause before fighting, or else it would be disadvantaged from the natives who are fresh up. When they fight, they are less effective when exhausted than fresh ones. It is particularly true when charging. Walking reduces stamina slowly, fighting and chargind greatlyStanding idle increases staminaCivil Centre and houses have a regenerative aura that compensate the walking depletion (working at home)Once stamina is below a threshold, units become less effectiveIt may be when stamina is below 50% (or 40, 33 or whatever), attack rate, moving speed and charge attack reduces up to say one half when it comes to 0 stamina. For less micro it can even take only the average stamina of a group (the fresh ones motivating the tired ones). Charging Charging is the fact of going in battle at higher speed and give a blow impact. Some units like archers and slingers may not be able to charge. Single units can charge and formations can do so if they can attack while in formation (phalanx, syntagma, wedge, skirmish and maybe testudo). It is easy to run individually, more harder to run everyone at the same pace while keeping cohesion. So you have some options in the battle Charging to get in battle quickly with an offensive bonus but may break your formation and remove some armour bonus or keep your formation (like phalanx) to charge slower but surelyDo not charge and wait in formation, with full stamina and formation bonus to hold the charge and take a stamina advantage on a longer battleCharge attack can then be just a bonus to the regular attack instead of a new one (at least, when it is not the Persian scythed chariot). This bonus can then easily be reduced when stamina is not high enough to perform well. There should be also a minimum running range for the charge, not to charge multiple time. Running Running is also usefull for example just to run away or pursue. This is particularly usefull for skirmishers to hit'n and run (well, run…) and archers to run for retreating units. The charge speed is then used defensively to avoid being in the battle or offensively to pursue. Everyone should be able to run. But this doesn't say how to handle charging. Having a special command like double clicking seems to me too microish. This is when stances comes into play. Stances Currently stances doesn't do much, especially the first two ones (violent and aggressive). By just tweaking them with charging ability, it can automate some behaviours. Passive: stay like this, don't do anything and flee (like it currently does)Stand ground: stay there, wait for incoming ennemies or new orders, don't charge nor evade anyway (again this is already the case)Defensive: don't charge, respond to nearby threats, this is almost the current behaviour, but with ranged units automatically running back to melee threats (auto hit'n run)Aggressive: attack with charge and charge nearby threats, ranged units automatically evade (or not, I don't know). But move without chargingViolent: always run and charge, even just for moving, while an ennemy is on sight, either to attack or retreatWhy only with ennemies on violent? Because I don't feel there is a need to make an army run all day long to get reinforcements (they would just arrive exhausted anyway and get killed) or use it to run to the trees and metal mines. The objective, with some nice unit AI to automatically pick decent targets, is to move micro from triggering a lot of orders to switching stances. If you want your troops to wait for incoming, then charge when rather close, use stand ground and switch to aggressive to say "now!", if you want to hold a line use defensive and if you want to surprise use violent to run around. You can also set your ranged units on defensive to protect a line then switch to aggressive when the ennemy is derouted to pursue them. With groups shortcuts and stance shortcuts, battles could even be run only with the keyboard (well not very effectively)

Toggle forcing silhouette to be displayed for all units, not only hidden ones. This would make judging who is alive and in which camp clearer under the dust of a battle.

According to unit roles (see http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20103) here is how I think which class could counter which other, depending on the situation of course. Note that this takes running and charging in account for a future implementation (and not just damage/range/armor/cost). It will also vary a bit if some units have different strengths and weaknesses in different civilization, but the general counter should remain the same not to get lost (thus it would be more or less effective). In short (but with some exception) ranged > melee infantry Cavalry > ranged infantry Range with melee cover > cavalry Then we have short/medium/long range melee infantry (being individual, small group, pack figthers respectively) Short/medium/long range infantry (shorter = easier to cover but easily outranged) Light/heavy cavalry (mobility vs durability) Spearmen With medium range, they can fight in two rows, giving them more power when in tight formation. Generally, strength and durability is given when in formation but decreases their speed (thus more prone to hit'n run), less strength and durability when individual (thus more prone to melee fight) Counters: Swordmen when in formation, using outnumbering in fighting Cavalry but not that much Countered by: Swordmen when dispersed (losing their outnumbering effect) Ranged units by hit'n runnnig Elephant, just being crushed Pikemen With long range, they can fight even more than spearmen when in tight formation. The counter scheme is roughfly the same. Counters: Swordmen, spearmen when in formation, using outnumbering in fighting Cavalry Countered by: Swordmen and spearmen when dispersed Ranged units by hit'n running Elephant if not being carefull Swordmen With short melee range, they are the best individual fighters. Counters: Individual melee units Countered by: Cavalry Archers (see archers counter) Elephant Javelinists Short range hit'n run specialist Counters: Spear and pikemen, by forcing to disrupt, or even just killing them in place while hit'n running Javelin cavalry with their speed advantage not being useable (and being less cost/efficient) Elephant with target spreading Countered by: Light and heavy cavalry if uncovered (very short distance to run) Covered archers and slingers by not getting in range Archers Long range troop Counters: Disrupted infantry (be it spear and pikes not in tight formation or swordmen not in testudo) Countered by: Slingers if massed (outrange) Cavalry when uncovered (by reducing their range advantage) Siege, almost ineffective Slingers Long anti-mass troop Counters: Massed infantry Better against siege than archers, but not skirmishers (otherwise mini siege > siege) Early defenses before siege weapons Countered by: Cavalry when uncovered Heavy cavalry (read spear cav) Counters: Everything in one on one (except elephant), not that much for siege Countered by: A few pikemen, a bit more spearmen Javelin cavalry by hit'n running Elephant Skirmishers, archers, slingers (in that order) if they are well covered Light cavalry (read sword cavalry) Counters: Uncovered siege Ranged units if not well covered Can't be hit'n run by javelin cavalry Countered by: Spearmen, pikemen Skirmishers, archers, slingers (in that order) if they are well covered, but less than heavy cav Javelin cavalry Fast hit'n run troop, close to infantry javelinist except for cavalry. Counters: Spear and pikemen, by disrupting them, or even just killing in hit'n run Elephant with target spreading and hit'n run Countered by: Javelinist by being less cost/efficient Light cavalry if fighting it Archer cavalry Long range cavalry Counters: Everything that can't get in range (melee infantry, javelinists) Countered by: Everything that can get in range (archers, slingers, light cavalry, javelin cavalry) Almost ineffective against siege Elephant That mastodont Counters: All melee units (less for pikemen) Siege Countered by: Javelinists, javelin cavalry (good) Archers, archer cavalry (medium) Slingers (somehow)

It's close to the way I'm setting damages and armors. Once the general role is set for every basic unit I have something like a design contract from which I can predict some behaviour (for example spear cav countering skirmishers). Once the behaviours are set I can tweak armors and damages reasonably to make it happen more or less. I'll open an other topic a bit later about weapon damages and general counter scheme a bit later. The next step would be designing civilizations traits (like Greek be more heavy infantry, Iberian more light guerilla...). And the final one tweak civ units stats to reflect this.

That's a good point. Some civ archers have more armors than others. Like some spearmen being lightly armored and even swordmen. But if the unit from the civilization may differ, their general strenght and weaknesses should remain the same (but more proeminent or not). For archers it would be being in a bad position when they can be reached. So in fact "no armor" is not a good term for the role, I set it more to say they are generaly less durable once in range (even if they could be civ traits exceptions).

I've update range units with a corrected use of slingers. They would have a very long range but poor accuracy, being better when dealing with large targets (being massed units or maybe a building) and work worse against small or individual units. In fact there is two way of throwing a bullet, one direct short range accurate way, and the other parabolic long range less accurate. Thus javelinists would get the most effectiveness from the ranged troops but requires to take more risks. More suited to ge in the battle and deal with it from the inside. Archers would have larger range and no armor, so be better from the outside. Slingers would outrange every other one, but would be more covering an army blindly with stones. They would in fact act like mini-catapults, with faster rate of fire but obviously way less damage (and it was cheap). Stan had done some work on unit turrets, chariots could then take their power from the mounted units (be it like two archers or javelinists). Which seems to be more the way they were used.

There is no public git repository for this. I have a local one to track the changes and check which files are touched by which tweak. But it's not a linear development with bug fixes. This is more a pile of crap of trial and errors constantly reedited to test a lot of things and keep a small amount of consistent commits (one for HP, one for LOS, one for damages…) instead of spreading them everywhere . Thus having a shared repository will bring more errors than anything (I'm even working directly inside 0 A.D. data to keep updated to the latest version and resolve potential merge errors). You can still follow what I'm doing there: http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20065 with all the patches composing the latest state (that cannot be applied liearly from a version to an other but applyed from the current master branch of 0 A.D.).

I don't know how buttons are coded in 0 A.D., just to say that in Android you have placeholders for "Ok", "Cancel" and "Other" buttons (they are not named like that), which are then layed out by the window manager. That way Esc is always bound to the cancel one (which does nothing) no matter where it is and this one is also focused by default. This works well because there are very few cases with more than 3 buttons for a question but it is flawed when you need to have 4 buttons. In that case you have to handle them at hand. I kind of like this way of abstraction, but it ads a new layer in the code which, if not already there, implies working on it

About territory restriction, you may look for Sibyllae Vox in the mod section. You also have outside territory buildings in Delenda Est. There are a lot of things to say about territory and map covering not to hinder early gameplay but add something enjoyable and a be a relevant part of the strategy. But as for now there are little concrete things about it.

About balancing and roles, there are a lot of ways to balance units. Either by effectiveness, cost, requirements… But balancing will hapen later once you know what you want to achieve. Also when I said overpowered, I meant archers were very effective in battle, not that they should be overpowered Anyway, thanks for pointing a slinger trait. Talking about spreading, it may be something rather important: precise weapons are more dedicated to pick a single target, whereas weapons with large spread should be more suited to target large groups. Not to say which one should get higher spread value but that the size of the target(s) can enter in unit roles.

I always forget slingers. Meanwhile the unit role is discussed there: http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=20103 even if I won't try to trick the figure much to perfectly reflect it because there are too much things that can be tweaked and break the fine tunning. This next version is more about base building, with an experimental implementation of countrysides. In a few words it is: give more importance to map covering even in early game, add more weaknesses spots in base building. Dropsites can be built outside territory to expand but not too far from the CC (and without much territory to prevent transforming it into a stronghold). These dropsites also have the first level alert to call women to hide in the nearby houses. The workers are more spread with a reduced limit of worker per resource spot. There's also a no-building land around the CC that forces to put fields in a more opened area. From a battle point of view, all units got an HP increase and infantry walks a bit slower to give more mobility advantage to cavalry. All of this requires some multiplayer games to get the feeling and feedback about working and broken things. sibyllae vox 20151016.zip Sibyllae Vox patches 20151016.zip

I've search a bit about Yoddha warriors, but just to see that they were men living a war-way of life, heavily armored wielding a broad sword or sometime an Indian mace. But not much more about them which could make them different from just an elite infantry. About chariots they were kind of outdated already (the Persian ones being more prestigious than effective). Still it had an interesting combo with an archer or javelinist that could attack while the chariot was charging (moreover with the scynthe on Persian ones). I have found that cavalry didn't engaged the infantry directly but was very strong when it came to strike from the side or back. They were often deployed on the flanks mainly to prevent the other cavalry to flank them... Once the cavalry battle was over, they wold join the infantry from the side or the back. From the spear vs sword debate, if the spear takes the swordman down before being at range, the spear won. If it miss, the sword would take advantage of closer range.

I'd like to see how it works, I have no fear it won't work for battles (providing they can leave out or bend formation to surround outnumbered ennemies) but I don't really see how it would work with resources. Let's say you put an 21 soldiers battalion on a mine, say with a 24 gatherer limit. Can you add some 3 random citizen to gather at full rate? Are female unit behaviour changed or still ordered individually? Can you mix some archers and spearmen for a quick local defense? Maybe this preceeds some gathering changes. Those idle soldiers waiting for an attack could spend their time in a more usefull manner (building defenses, scouting around, hunting...). Anyway I'll watch how things go. It looks far different from the current game, implies a lot of changes, and you know, people are affraid of changes it requires some time to think out of the box.

The design meeting #4 happenend yesterday evening. We were niektb, Tango_ and myself, with Stan and Scynthet as spectators. The main topic was about battle pace, but we hadn't much experience the previous week with only one game between niektb and me (which was out of sync and we both won). Because of that there wasn't anything acted about it but just some ideas of things to have and not to have. The current battle pace in Sibyllae Vox is around 20s for a battle (or at least a skirmish in a larger battle) which wasn't for me unconfortable even if I think it can be increased a bit. The idea is to give enough time to do some manoeuvres in the battle but with units not too strong to be able to raid without requiring to be 10 on 1 for a quick isolated kill. The good balance has to be found between the two (current state of Sibyllae Vox is an almost instant kill around 4 on 1). And we said we requires testing for these figures, not just math and thoughts. We can't hold a formal meeting next week due to a week of exams. So there will just be an informal meeting for those who can be there to discuss of things and others. The following works will be in done in parallel on the 4 points, battle pace (current subject), base building, evolution through time and the transversal historic accuracy. As for myself I had some thoughts that I will expose and check some things in Sibyllae Vox.