Zezil
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Posts posted by Zezil
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Hello 0ad people! I write to highlight some concerns i have about the actual autofocus (aka "how soldiers select their targets once enemy is in range, if we dont focus manually with a right click").
Our unit will now "attack the closest enemy in range"-------> this is the autofocus we have now
Problem this autofocus has is that when 2 big armies ( of rangeds units) engage a fight, many arrows or javelin will be wasted on "overtargetted" enemies.
Imagine 2 armies consisting of 5 rows of 10 soldiers facing each other: just doing 1 step forward to the enemy with a random dude of yours, and the whole enemy army will target the poor bold soldier------> 50 arrows on 1 soldier is a big waste of arrows
This is a scenario that always happens by accident, and a smart dude once found a way to draw all the enemy fire becouse of this (mr wesono's dancing trick)
Ans this is the main problem of autofocus.
Now imagine the same 2 armies, but nobody does a step forward, there's no enemy unit to draw all attention on himself.
Does the autofocus work well in this situation?
Each of the 2 armies pool of potential targets, is the enemy frontline.
So it means that if we have the 2 armies of above ,5 rows of 10 soldiers, it means that 50 projectiles will be divided between 10 enemies.
If both the armies consist of the same type of unit the autofocus , even if not perfect, will do his job well, since both the armies will have and suffer the cons of this system in the same manner, cant argue about that.
What if one army is made of skirmishers and the other is made of archers?
Just taking a look at the stats of the 2 type of units may give you an idea of the problem.
Skirmishers: 20 pierce, 1.25 rateo, 24 range, 50 health
Archers: 7 pierce, 1 rate, 72 range, 50 health
(These are the stats of the 2 units in SVN and very likely to be, in a18)
Ok, now some visual imagination again, two 5x10 armies facing each other, one made of skirmishers, one made of archers
First shot of the two armies, will target the enemy frontline, meaning that each one of the 10 dudes of the frontline will get 5 enemy arrows/ javelins
5 arrows= 35 pierce (0 pierce damage wasted each tempo/shot)
5 javelins= 100 pierce damage( 50 pierce damage wasted each tempo/shot)*
( these stats show clearly how more skirmishers wouldn't help firepower! While more archers would help: sweetspot for archers being between 7 to 8 arrows per target, for skirmishers 2 ½ arrows! It would take huge amout of microing and a tons of clicks per second to take the best out of skirmisers, splitting them and spreading their firepower, while archers kind of need no microing at all. Not to mention that while you split and position your skirmisers, they're being attacked by archers)
If we take the range variable out (each unit is in range of everyone of enemy's unit when the battle starts), skirmishers win and save almost half of the army, despite the wasted pierce damage.
If we dont take the range variable out( each unit is not in the range of any of the enemy's unit when the battle is engaged), like most of the real play situation, archers win by far.( if you try this situation in the atlas you get a similar outcome of in real plays: even tho units dont get microed, and im talking about skirmishers particularly ,in the atlas, a good skirmishers microing is easily countered with an intelligent placing of archers in engagements)
And here comes another problem: assume a bunch of skirm have to deal with a bunch of archers.
If the archers are divided in small groups, far from each other, skirmishers are hopelessly lost.
If they engage one group at the time( not splitting skirmishers) they'll have to walk miles to go from a group to another, since archers have HUGE range.
Those walks give a great advantage to archers.
What the skirm guy can do is try split his skirmishers, wich is very hard since ranged battles start and end very fast, and the archers dude can simply retreat his group of archers if enemy splitted skirms not evenly, so if you try to approach with 7 skirm one of the group of 5 archers, the archers simply fall back: archers army loses 5 soldiers, skirmishers army loses 7, trying to chase.
If the 7 skirmishers focus on something else, archers come back in battle fast , while skirmishers will have to walk to engage another group.
To solve this last problem, a new autofocus wouldnt be enough ( it helps in more straightforward battles, like 2 big formations facing each other)
(This is a problem of skirmishers in general, also skirm cav suffers similar issue, they're too weak, once they get close – by to shot, they're half dead.)
And also, trying to mix your army of skirmishers with melees is useless, since low range of skirmishers make them very bad at supporting melees (unlike archers...)
Ok, hope you got my point.( archers are OP
)Hope i wont write a new post once i'll have tested slingers well enough x)
I completely trust scythe's work, but maybe giving skirmishers some armor wouldnt be a bad idea( they also wear a shield, they have a free hand unlike archers, giving them more armor seems sensible and right to me).
Archers have uber range, slingers have less 24 range, but kill buildings and have some more damage, skirmishers have 48 less range, have high damage but less ratio( if they had more armor it could be an even scenario? ).
If you think i'm missing something, just let me note this, i'll be glad to be proved wrong and to give more clarification if necessary.
Mario.
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Benvenuto Cece!
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In a way or another , charging should imho be implemented for spear cav, it would follow the spirit of differentiation of units we got for infantry.
Ok, i wrote to expose a doubt i got playing SVN lately: melee infantry doesnt counter ranged infantry, expecially skirmishers ,and i'll explain why.
Rangeds walk faster, they can pretty much act as ranged cav, hit until enemy gets close, run and hit again. Melees cant do much but chase until they die.
Now, the hit and run thing is in the spirit of skirmishers, that's pretty much what they did in battle years and years ago, harassing, make as many injuried as possible and run away( and also support melee infantry). In the game they do this to enemie's death wich kills the gameplay, and is a step back from a17, wich got the melee-rangeds balancing pretty well imo. Only way to kill rangeds is now cavalry or more rangeds.
In a few word, rangeds could rule the batllefield in a18 and we dont want that i think. Melee would only be good to counter cavalry and draw some of enemy'srangeds fire out of your own rangeds. Now , i dont know if this scenario is historically realistic and I dont know if that's something we would like to play, i know we should understand this before alpha18 comes out. So test it and talk about it
An idea to maintain rangeds higer walk speed and make melee kill rangeds in 1:1 battles could be implementing the "chasing woman" animation melee already got when an attacked woman runs away, and also giving rangeds a weak melee attack once they are too close to enemy( the distance i have in mind would be higer then the melee attack range, aproximately 5 meters would be a good least distance to throw a ranged attack). Anyway , if anybody wants im available to test rangeds vs melee battles and show you what i mean and how effective it is.
I must update this! Even tho it's true that an only rangeds army wins against an all melee army, a mixed one can beat an all rangeds one( while retreating from melees, your rangeds will take damage from your opponent ones, so that doesnt work well).So mix your army!
We can sleep easy, thanks scythe
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In a way or another , charging should imho be implemented for spear cav, it would follow the spirit of differentiation of units we got for infantry.
Ok, i wrote to expose a doubt i got playing SVN lately: melee infantry doesnt counter ranged infantry, expecially skirmishers ,and i'll explain why.
Rangeds walk faster, they can pretty much act as ranged cav, hit until enemy gets close, run and hit again. Melees cant do much but chase until they die.
Now, the hit and run thing is in the spirit of skirmishers, that's pretty much what they did in battle years and years ago, harassing, make as many injuried as possible and run away( and also support melee infantry). In the game they do this to enemie's death wich kills the gameplay, and is a step back from a17, wich got the melee-rangeds balancing pretty well imo. Only way to kill rangeds is now cavalry or more rangeds.
In a few word, rangeds could rule the batllefield in a18 and we dont want that i think. Melee would only be good to counter cavalry and draw some of enemy'srangeds fire out of your own rangeds. Now , i dont know if this scenario is historically realistic and I dont know if that's something we would like to play, i know we should understand this before alpha18 comes out. So test it and talk about it
An idea to maintain rangeds higer walk speed and make melee kill rangeds in 1:1 battles could be implementing the "chasing woman" animation melee already got when an attacked woman runs away, and also giving rangeds a weak melee attack once they are too close to enemy( the distance i have in mind would be higer then the melee attack range, aproximately 5 meters would be a good least distance to throw a ranged attack). Anyway , if anybody wants im available to test rangeds vs melee battles and show you what i mean and how effective it is.
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Imho champions should annhilate citizen-soldiers. I'm gonna try them out for feedback tho, didnt check them in sbb.
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Alekusu we're talking about scythe balance branch, not a17. Scythe made them cost iron too, couse it kinda fits they're new role he intended them to have in a18. They're gonna be little tanks in a few words, very slow and low attack, huge defence.
Download the SBB!!!! And help testing ,your opinion would be very important!
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Sure ?
Yep, like they take 20 iron to be trained. And BTW, you should join the multiplayer sometime, I dont see you anymore there!
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And iron.
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Little problem i found, all footmen of the ptol need either metal or stone to be produced. This might be a big disadvantage in some situation. On the counter, they've always been considered OP couse of the archers , wich cost wood and iron and spawn fast. Dunno if the whole thing can be considered balanced.
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I apologize if you already discussed about that somewhere but:
Dont you feel like sieging capabilities for elephants are too low , especially if compared to normal footmen? I mean atm investing your resources on elephants to destroy a building is not worth it, you can send footmen instead and have the same if not better outcome.
I once had the occasion to read the stats in a game :pto elephant 10 crush damage, chartaginian spearman(citizen7soldier one, no champion) 5 crush damage.
I feel like it needs some rebalancing, maybe improving the crush damage for elephants.
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While some of your proposals are interesting they are too many to really reply to at once. You seem to look for detailed and justified answers, while at the same time the majority of your proposals are ill-justified personal preferences, not real gameplay improvements (writing much doesn't always make a valid point and very often you're far more clueless than the "amateurs/bad designers" on your target subjects). Sorry if I sound harsh. I might take the time to reply in detail at some point.
Plus,
Citizen/soldier system is imho something huge for the variety it adds to the gameplay:
whenever you feel like you have to switch men from economy mansion, to military, you're making a huge decision for you're game.
How many of them should you switch? Is that "military thing you have to do" worth the suffer your eco wil get from actually doing that?
This system adds a lot of depth to the game, and that's what imho makes an rts an RTS.
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So we'll get formations back with less lag, awesome. Hope in time for a17 tho.
Thanks plumo!
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Hi guys,
It's not an introduction topic but , hey, I'm the guy playing under the nickname "Mario"( apparentely there's already a Mario in the forum?) in the past month, so, hello to those who know me , and, to those who don't, a very big handshake.
So,
I happen to post this thread couse I tried svn a bit lately, and the "no formation thing" did hurt me so bad that i felt the need to share with you guys my feelings.
Being more serious: I must say that I did only play a few games ,so maybe it's just about "getting used to it"( if there was more time I'd have played more svn games before ,eventually, posting this ), and i feel that without formations the game lacks playability A LOT ( sorry for caps @leper).
I'll throw in an example : how do you protect your ranged dudes from melee cavs, if your spearmen cant stay in line?
So guys, comment, share your thoughts , comfort me ,discomfort me....?
And by the way, what is the problem with the basic, default formation that you had to take it out?(I can barely run the game throug its icon on the desktop, so dont go into too much technical stuff, I wouldn't understand)
To finish, a big thanks to all devs and everybody involved with the making of the game, couse it's awesome.
A18:about Balance of rangeds and autofocus
in General Discussion
Posted
Melees cant get close by archers, they seem to be a little slower, so archers just fall back( and your skirmishers cant effectively attack archers falling back, couse they have low range: they lose a lot of time in chasing-attacking, in the while another group of archers 10 miles aways would kill them easy)
And also, even if 7 pierce damage might seem low, skirmishers only have 50hp and 1 pierce armor! So they die with 8 arrows: in very low numbers, skirmishrs can deal with it, once the autofocus problems kick in (big numbers) the difference of damage between skirmishers and archers gets smoothed( becouse of the reasoning in the first post about "overtargettiing and wasted damage", and also, since the armageddon of arrows, by the time you get closeby archers, your skirmishers are significantly outnumbered already.
You can't deal with archers with skirmishers in 1archers-per-1skirmishers battles, that's a fact. In scythe's mind , you should throw the melees in( to basically suck fire on them) while your skirmishers flank the archers. But what if enemy has melees to?....back to square one i fear.
Yeah, an archer's player will have to place storehouse closer....i dont feel that's enough of a downside tho
The only good thing of skirmishers is their speed yeah, but exploited in combat scenario like early raiding( wich is the main role scythe imagined for them)....but yet, archers will likely be in range of your skirmishers anytime you get in enemy territory, to raid some women, or an "apparentely" outnumbered group of archers x) ( if you raid some tree workers, you either are sure that's all your opponent's got or you'll be tempested of an amount of arrows you can only guess how big is by how fast your skirmishers die x) )