DarcReaver

I answered directly in the post. Though I can understand quite a few of your points, I don't really get the whole development process as a whole tbh. There is no point of balance changes because there is no coherent gameplay in the alpha. This was discussed numerous times in the past already. As long as key gameplay features do not work it's only wasted time that can be spent on other, more useful stuff. Like making planned features work. "Reluctancy to commit balance changes is attributable to many reasons, getting artists or programmers to commit balance changes is probably not the most time-efficient or quality assuring procedure and the reluctancy would be justified in that case." Which is why I proposed that you should hire a lead gameplay developer who works on the design doc combined with changing gameplay related stuff. That was almost 2 years ago now.

It would be wise before investing large amounts of time into this system to revise the resource system first. I.e. check whether resources are necessary or not, if resources should behave differently (i.e. Food being a pop cap element with a fixed income ratio instead of having to build houses etc.). If everything should stay the way it is the proposed ideas are great of course. The mine shafts look really awesome.

It's a bug/exploit in the first place, but it also IS a skill that has to be learned. However it's toxic for the game because it's not a fun game mechanic, especially for the receiving player. This exploit can also be put in the category of "unnecessary micro click tricks" that the game makers want to avoid at all costs. That's why the exploit should be fixed. Also it's not worth to make a game room rule about this. If you add that you can just aswell allow/disallow all other game bugs - like bug walls, unit collision and other stuff.

While the idea behind this is kinda okay, this adds a lot of more unnecessary micro to the game because it's needlessly complicated. A much less complicated version of this is that you add builder units to the game that build resource camps. From those camps workers automatically emerge and start collecting the resource the camp is meant for. The number of workers per drop site can be increased by buying/training more workers up to a maxiumum of X per drop site. As you can see this solution is much cleaner, more automated and easier to understand. However, the "call to arms" feature for resource camps is not a good idea in general. If you have self defending economy you make raiding and direct combat less effecting. Since early raids cannot take out the economy there's a lot of "units dance around resource spots" until a very late stage of the game.

So Citizens are villagers that serve war from time to time. Fine. Then the current concept still is crap. It doesn't even have to do with imagination. The system doesn't remotely reflect that. Resource gatherer 90% of the time and 10% going to war means that the citizen should be unarmed all game long except for a handful of times when the base it attacked. The concept that military units permanently harvest resources is simply bad. I have named numerous reasons why that is. Either timed option to turn villagers into militia for defense or upgrade option to turn a villager into a soldier for a resource cost. or remove it altogether (which is the best option to avoid players spamming villagers from his buildings, running them to the enemy base and transform them into soldiers of various kinds to counter enemy units). btw that's how a defensive mechanism for a villager/resource gather can look like via ability (obviously this game was some comp stomper noob in wc3 so the skill/execution is bad, but you can see the game mechanic):

Yes. And before determining which resources are used there needs to be decided which ones actually should be in the game. About sustainable logging: Unless there is a reason why the forests on the map should be removable (i.e. to provide building space) there's no need to clear forests. This also depends alot on the planned average game length and the amount of resource spots per player. Thorfinn stated the unreal Citizen Soldiers first, I just took over his statement. However I support that opinion, it IS unhistorical the way it currently is. - No ancient soldier ever chopped wood while carrying a Sarissa/sword/armour/bow/shield (just like you said) - most Citizens indeed had a job, but only few worked as farmers, miners or woodchoppers, especially in cities.They were fishermen, salesmen, blacksmiths, smelters, stonemasons etc. They created trading goods for sale or use, but not for the government to supply their armies. That's what tax money was for. But... why? What's the point? Why do you train military units as resource gatherer (that in fact are no military units because they have no weapons) to pick up weapons for defense and then return to gathering resources again when the enemy is gone? Why not simply make automated, node based resource production and players get to train basic troops (low tier) and professional troops (high tier)? Why is it so important to keep a crappy feature?

If gathers should not be able to repel attackers then WHY make military units that can attack gather resources in the first place? That's complete nonsense. Military units are meant to fight. That's why they are military units. This is not a city building simulator but an RTS. So, again - why should citizen soldiers gather resources? When I look over the boards I see dozens of topics about historical accuracy for buildings, uniforms, weapons, unit types and so on. Then why is one of the main components of the game (economy) based on fantasy? Yes there can be more subtle differences between soldiers and gatherers. For example you can give gatherers an ability to defend themselves (Town Bell, Call to Arms/Militia for a period of time, hiding in buildings, permanently transform them into a military unit for a resource cost etc.). But what's the point to have fighting gatherers and gathering fighters? Either remove the split altogether or split economy units and military units but don't mix both. There are dozens of unique and working gameplay concepts for RTS resource gathering (DoW franchise, BFME franchise, C&C red alert, C&C Generals, Warcraft 3, Rise of Nations, Hearts of Iron etc etc.) that can be utilized instead of using a 15 year old modding reference "to make it different from AoE II" without putting any thought in the system itself and how teh game requires it to work. Let's summarize: - citizen soldiers are mostly unrealistic from a historical viewpoint - citizen soldiers cause trouble with resource balance (each second a military unit walks/attacks/chases enemy units instead of collecting resources = lost resources for the military unit owner) - citizen soldiers cause trouble with attacking/defending (resource gatherer can protect itself) - citizen soldiers are annoying to micro after an attack (since military usually forms up for defense you have to readjust every soldier back to his original task) So, apart from "it's different system from AoE" is an advantage of this system? All the issues can easily be avoided by admitting that it's a crappy concept and start over with a different concept that actually makes sense. Just to name some examples: 1) Scrap military/economy split by either removing citizen soldiers OR gatherers with a new resource system. Possible options: based on map control: player who controls areas on the map gains resources automatically - settlements, quarries, mines etc. are on the map to be captured and produce resources automatically (DoW/CoH system) buildings that gather based on the terrain, i.e. you can build quarries next to stone resource spots, and a limited amount of workers can gather resources from there , either automatically or trained by the player from the building (Warcraft III/Starcraft/C&C Generals system) Farms/quarries/mines can be build anywhere but require to be spaced out, else they produce less resources (BFME system) You simply gain resources over time automatically based upon the amount of cities you have (hearts of iron) 2) You stick with the original AoE II/AoM approach. For this the game needs to be slowed down. DRASTICALLY. Having a detailed economy means players need time to plan. No planning time means it's too chaotic to have fun. The more the game is based on fighting the more automated the economy has to be. Managing 4 or 5 resources, hundreds of single workers and military at the speed of starcraft is bad. 3) You think of an entirely new concept. However since the last time this happened Citizen soldiers were introduced I doubt that's a good idea...

Yes and there is a good reason that military and economy is segregated. If you have 10 soldiers that gather 100 food/minute, each enemy villager/soldier costs 50 food, And you have 30 seconds to move to enemy base you have following equation: 10 x 100 x 0.5 = 500 food = attacker lost the resources equal to 10 villagers from running soldiers away from his own food sources over to enemy base. So the attacker has to kill at least 11 villagers to get an advantage from attacking. If you expand the equation, the enemy can use his 10 soldiers to gather for 30 seconds aswell. So enemy gets +500 food, attacker gets -500, means 1000 food difference even without any fight happening. Considering it's likely you get losses (because enemy military units can defend themselves while gathering) it's even more stupid to attack. So, in short the concept is broken. That's why proper RTS don't do it. And 0 AD just does it because it once was a mod for AoE II and someone thought it's a cool idea to divide "villagers male/female (only optical difference)" into "Citizen Soldiers" and "women" so it is different from AoE II.

Which brings us straight back to the initial OP post about the manspam trains on the map that make managing groups/formations tedious due to constant dying and replacement of fallen units.

Indeed, because I'm no programmer, unfortunately. else I would've helped out in that regard more for sure. And about the links from (-_-) Well thing is that the game isn't even remotely similar to the existing game design doc, that's why I compared the current game with the doc and pointed out various flaws about the whole thing in part II of the analysis. Also the 2nd post about that "written story" about how to play 0 ad is hella weird... I do agree that some points about my doc need tweaking, but without some true vision there's no way to actually improve everything. From my current perspective I would rework the pop cap mechanics and food gathering/resource gathering stuff to a more automated system to focus more on fighting. btw @stanislas69 who is working on the design doc?

Being an open source/f2p concept doesn't really excuse the lack of functionality.

Usually it's best to do what's best for the game, not what's best for the people. Players will hate anyways... from my experience most people will forget quite quickly and adapt to the new situation. If the community breaks with the removal of a mostly useless feature there's something wrong anyways. I still remember the outcries when we removed the IS3 tank from the Soviet faction.... Hilarious. The thing was so broken and unrealistic (there wasn't even an IS 3 in battle in WW2) and there were actually people defending that it's a perfectly balanced tank.

Nah, it's just way too time consuming to create fixes or a game design concept that gets discussed over a few pages on the forum and then put to sleep without any consequences at all. Look at the thread I posted, more than 6.500 words to initiate a start for a new game design concept, and with hints on which areas could be switched or improved, along with a lot of discussions and input from various people. That was 1,5 years ago. And since then nothing has changed at all. At least neither heard or seen improvements at all. It's not really defeatism, it's more like pragmatism. I've created gameplay concepts for existing games/mods in the past, and those alone already consumed hundreds, maybe thousands of hours in tinkering, writing, scripting and debugging. And that was with games that already had "rules" and a working gameplay in the first place. Creating a complete, original gameplay concept for this game from scratch is a mammoth task, since there is almost nothing to rely on. Copying from AoE and calling it a day won't do much nowadays, with AoE II and AoM HD and their Definitive Editions + AoE IV in the makings. Tbh, the only reason to play 0 ad is for Wowgetoffyourcellphone's delenda est mod, which improves 0 ad to the maximum it can be at the current state.

Thx for the compliment. I also like to keep stuff simple. Buuuuuuuuuuuuut... 5 suggestions are not enough because the game mechanics in no way are finished and polished enough. So for 5 suggestions to work you have to elaborate each one in detail. Which is a hell of a lot of work. And like I said, nobody on the 0 AD train who can "code" is interested in game design or has an idea how game mechanics work/how they affect the game. That's why there's no point, unless you're willing to spend a lot of time to actually create a coherent game design first and then fitting game mechanics for players to enjoy, accompanied with pretty graphics.

Instead of broken formations you could either introduce a "rout" feature that does the following: - routing squads/battalions cannot be controlled by the player - will no longer attack enemy units (unless it's surrounded and cannot run away) - will automatically try to reach a nearby player town center and can be reinforced back to old strength again for resources Similar with economy. It would be way easier if population, food costs, women/citizen soldiers and the resources would work more automatically. Example: Remove "house population" and replace with "food consumption" - instead of eating berries, animals and other stuff to build units the food is stored, and the amount of storage depends on city level, amount of granaries etc. - build various different types of food productions (farms, granaries, sheds etc.), additionally there can be neutral cities or manors that can be captured and then give a tribute of food to the play who currently owns it - each battalion/military unit requires food, regular citizens are split to builders/architects to allow building and repairing structures - other cities can be captured/raided to gain food (and other resources) to the raiding player - lumber/gold/stone/metal are used to train soldiers and the amount of gatherers per resource spot is limited so players have to expand to multiple mining/forests to get more resources, making map control more important. Villages and Cities can be build on the map to give control over the areas (i.e. good farming lands, or a big forest) etc. These are just some quick shots. Since noone really works on this it's unlikely you'll get a significant improvement on the game. Tbh I'd rather go with AoE II or AoE Definitive edition, they offer nice graphic enhancements while also having superior game mechanics.

The main issue is that there are no people working on the gameplay concepts. There are a few artists and some guys doing UI stuff (and work on path finding, along with other engine-related stuff). That's why those discussions are pretty pointless. I also made several big topics about gameplay related stuff, ranging from resources to teching and unit counter systems. There are dozens of issues that have not been adressed/thought through yet, and the "manspam train" is just a tip of the ice berg. Having the "manspam trains" is a direct result of the (really old) design decision that 0 AD military units are "single training, expendable spam units" simialar to games like AoE II. There is no way to circumvent this - AoE is not the only one who does the manspam train, games like C&C (especially the old games) and even old Starcraft also use it. It's been like this "forever" and has not been questioned at all because 0 AD used to be a mod for AoE II. To remove unnecessary micro (which is one of the old design document principles) it would be just logical to make units train in battalions, they keep their formations automatically and that's about it. Special units can still be single units (i.e. Heroes, or War Elephants or whatever). Battalion size can vary in size (depending on the type of unit) and units within the battalion could be adjusted to a certain formation. I.e. hoplits walk in tight formations while Slingers run in loose bandages. Cossacks has been named numerous times. The thing that I question about the whole "single unit AND battalion system" is why there is a need to have both. Having single units doesn't help the game. Not sure why everyone thinks that the old 1999 AoE II system that worked around weakass computer systems is the holy grail in 2019. btw: hf reading

The game currently has no counter concept and no real tech progression concept, so this won't help in the slightest. All you gain is that the spamming meta switches from one unit to another, or one civ to another. There won't be "true" balance like you're imagining it. As long as the design is not final every stats change has to be reverted every time a new design aspect is introduced or an existing design aspect is changed, because changing stats requires quite a lot of effort.

Indeed it's problematic. A "real" solution would be to introduce squad based combat with higher buildtimes. Formations with constantly switching amounts of single entities soldiers leads to even more chaotic battles. But it's good this topic keeps reappearing every now and then to remind people that this area has been lacking since quite some time.

Thanks for notifying me on this thread, but what's my exact role to be expected in this discussion? Afaikthe way the tech tree for 0ad works you have basic unit types and champion type units. Since I'm really not aware which unit types celts used in the past I can't really provide a proper unit for replacing the 2 handed swordsmen (which currently is a champion I suppose). And gameplay wise I don't know a necessary replacement either because I've, like, never played celts even once. Only thing I could say is to replace the model with a shield soldier, keep the stats and call it a day, would be the easiest solution. Unless you guys made "a generic meta unit roster" consisting of unit roles and counters each faction has to have to function I unfortunately cannot point out what's missing otherwise, sorry.

What's the point of soldiers gathering resources anyways? We had this discussion SO many times, and each month there's some different issue that pops up around it and causes trouble. One time it was raiding cavalry for hunting, then it was skirm cavalry, now it's skirmishsrs/slingers. Every RTS game has resource gatherers and military separated. 0 ad has both. One is unnecessary. Just remove the military resource collection already. It's been discussed for years taht it's a crappy concept and is no improvement or unique/interesting at all. About the Slinger/Skirm/Archer differentiation: In a game type like 0 AD currently is you don't need all of them at all. It would be best to use slingers OR archers. I.e. factions that were known as "bow masters" get an archer line, factions that relied on slingers get a slinger line, and both counter melee infantry units. Skirms are made counter archers and counter spears. Problem solved. Alternatively it would be intesting to create a different concept for ranged units in general. Archers have good range, and deal consistent damage over all ranges and medium speed. Have the option to "rain arrows" on areas or use fire arrows that demoralize enemy units aswell. Consistent, high rate of fire, and good accuracy (based on the type/experience of the archer). Upgrades rely on giving better armor and higher range + rate of fire. Slingers have a good range aswell, but their missiles to more damage on close range than higher range, and their accuracy is much worse at high range. Their speed is also better than archers. Also opposed to bows they can only improve their accuracy and damage, but not range. Skirmishers start off with the lowest range and highest missile damage, but low rate of fire and mediocre mobility. Upgrades give better armor and better damage. So slingers would dance around and try to get good short range shooting positions while skirms would try to attack as many different units to provide maximum damage, and archers would be used in large formations to support their melee units by demoralizing and damaging the enemy from afar. The mounted counterparts could be made exclusive for certain civs, so they get only basic skirms but also mounted skirms (sort of like a unique unit), and factions with cav archers get them instead of regular archers. Although I'm sort of over those generic tech trees for a dozen factions anyways... If I want that I play AoE II.

There is no unit counter concept, so no, spear cav does not have a usage. Just like about any other unit. Spam economy, go to a higher phase and spam champions instead if you want to win matches, they have lots of HP and damage. There is no such thing as a buildorder or unit transition in 0 ad.

Not sure where the problem is. The game is barely more than a tech demo at this point, and the rating - if at all - is only to be used as an identifier if you're playing against a "newbie" or someone who already played lots of games. To prevent that the majority of online tests are noobstomps.

Since when did "heroes" release reforms while they were moving around the battlefield with their armies? And furthermore, what's the point of a limited area aura for i.e. metalworking on villagers? This essentially forces unit that is supposed to tank damage on the battlefield (and costs a ton of resources )should stay near some villager women to make them collect berries faster? Yea sure... There's just no logic behind that. If heroes are to be taken as "historical" the mechanic currently present is crap. Just make 3 "commander type" heroes instead, chooseable via pop up screen at a certain time of the game (i.e. when the first city gets access to phase III) and this then either unlocks a couple of passive bonuses and/or unique technologies that the other "heroes" have no access to. Alternatively bind this mechanic to cities and actually create a concept around this. Or at least something that is slightly original ...

lol So you're saying the only option to win as a seasoned player in this tech demo is by shift-click dancing around enemy archer fomations? And that's why something like this is necessary for the game's multiplayer? What a nonsense.. oh wait I just found accurate video footage of ancient combat in which the champion manages to dogdge enemy missiles easily. So probably this is authentic realistic combat simulation at that point to ddoge hundred of spears and arrows.

Question is rather what the Heroes are actually needed for? I mean, at all? They come very late in the game, and are intended for what? attacking, defending, support the economy, support the Army? Create a global bonus to units? I mean what's the point to train a combat unit from a lategame military building that makes gatherers work faster? And why would a hero somewhere on the map make all workers gather faster? There'S no logic behind that except for "we need to find a bonus for this hero type". Followup then is why you need a battlefield unit for economic bonuses or army bonuses is necessary in the first place? Why not make heroes selectible via a "commander" system similar to AoM, or Company of Heroes instead to "modify" your army and grant access to certain bonuses? If you keep heroes as combat units: what about a morale system that affects units that are nearby a hero for battlefield heroes? Experience gain for troops etc.? What about an in depth combat system with combat tactcics like flanking and dynamic sight range? So your proposal is that because Elephants are not useful the aura should affect other siege weapons to make those Catapults even more efficient when spammed? Good idea...