DarcReaver

If you keep raiding cavalry as starting units - of course. but that's the next thing that has to be removed.

A thread is already there: Would be one of the better ideas for sure. realism .. lolz. Anyways, better focus on less gatherers in total with more spreading to avoid unit clumping. Should help quite a bit.

The green aspects should have the highest priority. There are too many gatherers in 0AD anyways.Better to make them fewer and instead make them more efficient. Actually this isn't only exclusive to lumbering, but also mining and farming is affected. There should be thoughts about a general system to make less gatherers more efficient and hardcap them at some point. The capacity change might be welcome aswell (all across the board. 20 or 30 resources per trip instead of 10). Edit: thread regarding resource system:

Replanting sucks because it takes automatism from the gathering since it also is required when there is no economy harassment is going on. So it's pretty unnecessary. There's a reason why AoM and AoE II features auto queues and unlimited farm food. I'd rather agree to have them unlimited and factor in a bonus for harvesting for a longer period of time like originally suggested. It will work better, because the unharmed economy is more automatic while attacking farms is more rewarding.

Those neither help in defense nor as a training site for gatherers. That's why they are kind of unfit for outer expansion bases. The proposal of using the Civic Center is to not require artworks for an outpost. Also, even though the Town Center represents the city - well, all fine. But that doesn't change the fact that you do not start off with a major, walled in town that can withstand massive attacks. Right now it's like you're starting with Rome without walls.

HQ, storehouse for all resources and training place for gatherers I suppose. Why do you ask? It doesn't make much sense that a main hall from a village can't be captured realistically at all (except maybe for Gauls, because of Asterix and Obelix ).

Yes this favors rushing, but on the other hand - make Civic Centers weaker and allow them in Phase I, that way external food sources can be connected to additional civic centers for defense. And since those weaker it's easier to capture them. Easiest solution...

Something like this was tried by Relic on CoH2 and it was disastrous. It may sound cool, but ingame it's definately not that way, at least not in multiplayer. It's a cool feature on singleplayer though.

Rather easy: Cavalry = fast = less resource loss when attacking Cavalry = high attack and outrun citizens/women = best chances to sucessfully kill infantry. Gathering still possible everywhere if the rush fails So, out of all other starting units, cavalry has the best odds for rushing. On the other side, Citizen soldiers or even Pikes are completely useless for rushing because of their slow speed. It's more effective to use them as self-defending gatherers and then spam champions, which have superior stats and cannot gather at all to attack (which many players do).

Resource & economy System revised This concept only covers economic features of civs. Military will be covered in a separate topic to keep this thing small. Some aspects of economy of course affect military as you’ll see later, but this is not the main argument at the moment. Military design and economic design will be tweaked to fit each other for every civ type. At first: I’d suggest to pair civilizations into groups (i.e. Hellenic Civs, Nordic civs, Indian/African civs and so on). I’ve covered Gauls, Britons, Iberians, Spartans, Athenians and Seleucids so far as more-or-less specific layouts. This again is not a 100% finished layout with every detail covered. Instead it's a general guideline to differ civs from each other and allow to create unique game play patterns for each of them. More than they currently are. The other civs will come later as I need to create something unique for them aswell. I’ll expand this concept for them in the next update(s). A .pdf is attached to be bottom of this post. (edit: I rewrote some parts because they contained some spelling errors. Should be more readable now) I. General thoughts on resources Every strategy game requires resources. The resources have to fit the game and players should have a choice whether collecting which resource is more important to them (strategic diversity). Each resource needs to fulfil a certain “role” that gathering it accomplishes it. To prevent “overburdening” the game with resources there has to be a flow in the game to naturally lead players towards gathering new resources (i.e. a progression from resource A into resource A+B into resource B etc.). Resources that already are gathered by players may not become redundant (because it’s replaced by another resource). If this is done well the economy management doesn’t become boring or unhealthy for the game and allows interesting, different types of playstyles where players decide how they are going to prioritize their gathering and army setups. Citizen/cavalry gatherers removed Yes I know this is a drastic change from the current concept. Yes, it will require reworking parts of the game. However, this is also the opportunity to improve the overall gameplay quality. Advantages of Citizen Soldiers/gatherers: - Usage of military units when not in combat - Especially cavalry can gather far away by hunting - Easy transition from economy to fighting Disadvantages of Citizen soldiers/gatherers: - No distinction between economic and military units (an integral part of every RTS) - Since many gatherers can be active at the same time (economic + every military) gathering rates have to be poor to avoid “economy explosions” which means that the resource income increases exponentially with each additional soldier - Players loose resources when attacking, short math example: o Soldier collects 0.5 food per second, 30 soldiers work as gatherers which means 15 food/second income (or 900 food/minute). Now if the 30 soldiers move to the enemy the player will lose 900 food every minute from his soldiers not gathering. Provided that the enemy has a similar army/economy that means that he’ll be ahead with 900 food for each minute he can gather (which would be equal to ~10 or more soldiers). o The attacking player needs to destroy more than 900 units worth of food every minute to get an advantage from his attack. If he can’t do that his attack actually weakens the Attacker instead of the Attacked -> unbalanced by design o Fixes: soldiers move at unrealistic ultra high speed (less time to get to the enemy) or lowering the gathering rates. The issue is the same still, attacking player initially has a large disadvantage - There is no progress from weakest -> strongest unit. Instead the players already start at a high level and then only progress in very small steps towards higher tech levels - Citizen soldiers discourage capturing as they are efficient at protecting the base early on, rendering capture rather useless - To get citizens back to work is a very fiddly task and annoying compared to regular economic units Overall it’s better to adjust gathering to specialized units for each civ type instead of giving every civ the ability for soldier gathering. This makes civs more diverse (-> more gameplay depth). One (poor) game mechanic lost for a massive gain in playability is more than worth it. Building layout (general) 1. Civic Centers are buildable from the start. City influence radius reduced. Can train a weak “militia type” unit and slingers. Slingers can be used to help hunting and Militias are weak units that can be used to harass and defend. Both units hard counter each other (slinger > militia, but in close combat militia beats slinger because of much lower hitpoints) 2. Storehouses, Sitobolon structures buildable in neutral territory 3. Farms require neutral territory, affected by gathering duration (fertility) – fields initially generate resources very slowly, but the rate increases the longer it is harvested by gatherers. When the gathering stops the field fertility decreases. To-do: Generate map areas in which farms are more productive (a possible map control element) 4. Military structures are postponed to City Phase, units are split up and not available all at once – either by per-building upgrades (only coding required, could be a workaround) or by splitting up the buildings into classes – Barracks, Stable, Archery range type classes (requires artworks), depending on civ type. Gatherer Limits: Food: 2/4 (for small/large food sources) Wood: 3 (for all trees) Stone, Iron, Silver: 3/5 (like food) Food – basic resource. Used for training units, upgrades (military), melee infantry & slingers, City advancing Wood basic resource. Used for military training (support/ranged units, ships). Used for economic upgrades, use for low tier buildings Stone – resource that constructs high tier buildings and expansions (civic centers, barracks, temples, gymnasion etc.) Iron - basic military resource, all basic melee military units require metal (swordsmen, pikes and cavalry). Silver - advanced military resource - is important for military improvement techs and used for training superiors, elite units. Slow to gather. Population - instead of being only connected to houses, population is influenced by city size (village - town - metropolis). Required to train units (obviously) Population cap (thoughts) Houses are hardcapped at ~10 houses per city. Depending on city level they can provide 10-20-30 population each. Alternatively: Military requires no population and is only depending on the food that is available from gatherers. Gatherers require population from houses and are hard capped per city. In a logical sense, soldiers that are at war do not sleep in houses, so it's rather strange that they take up pop from the city houses. Instead, armies rely on being supplied with food, water, weapons etc. from their home cities. This concept could be further elaborated, as I think it would fit the city Advance system. Alternatively, each city grants a fixed amount of population. Houses then are scrapped. I'd keep houses for the sake of being authentic though. houses belong into cities. Upgrade System Phase advancing: Food and Stone Economic upgrades: Lumber and Iron Military unit unlocks: Food/Lumber & Iron (ranged and melee units) Military unit type upgrades: Food and Silver Blacksmith “System“ Blacksmiths automatically reduce army Iron costs and increase the training speed for Sword wielding units. It can further research Metallurgy type techs that allow faster training, and allow further, cheaper unit production. Upgrades are not tied to City Phases anymore. Concept: Blacksmith generates “experience ranks” over time which allows more advanced upgrades to be researched. Corrals Can garrison captured herdables to provide food over time. Idea taken from the "intended" version of 0AD which isn't finalized yet. Gameplay reasoning There should be a transition from one type of resource to others, similar to this: food -> wood -> metal -> stone/silver. Players are not overly confused with gathering many resources from the start. As the game progresses the economy complexity increases. Early civic center expansion allows to take additional gathering spots and economic advances. Gatherers training times can be increased since it's possible to train them in multiple buildings. Since gathering spots are limited there has to be economic expansion to fit all gatherers to the spots. Phase advances that require stone - this way, players automatically need to gather a resource that will be more important in city phase, i.e. to build Phase II buildings. Military unit upgrades (like “advanced training” or unlocking certain units) create a resource transition towards Silver. II. Hellenic Factions (Sparta, Athen, Seleucids) Economic concept: Hellenes are defensive civs, and thus have bonuses for foraging berries and decent farming. Gathering rates are comparably high, so they can exhaust their own resources more quickly. Slaves are free gatherers that can be trained, have a hardcap that can be increased with City Phases and Slavery Techs. Athen speciality: silver mines last 20% longer Sparta speciality: slaves have 10% faster gathering rates, hoplites 15% faster, start at veteran rank Seleucid speciality: farming rate +50% (rate at which farming productivity increases) Gatherer types: Women (50 food, 1 pop) Gather rates: food Hunt : 1.25 herdables : 1.25 berries : 1.50 grain : 0.80 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.6 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.4 rubble stones: 0.8 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.3 ambient iron: 0.6 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.2 Slaves (no cost, no pop. Have a hardcap) Gather rates: food Hunt : 1.4 herdables : 1.25 berries : 1.00 grain : 1.00 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.8 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.8 rubble stones: 1.2 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.6 ambient iron: 1.2 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.4 A second type of gatherer that excels at mining. There are 2 options for them to be limited: either they automatically start to loose health if there are too many at one place, or they are simply hardcapped by default. It would be interesting to utilize capturing features to increase the maximum slave count. I.e. for 5 wounded/killed soldiers on the battlefield the number of slaves trainable increases by 1. So, by slaying enemy units the economic power rises for Hellenic civs. Due to the amount of gatherers per resource spot, having hundreds of slaves isn’t profitable as there is a need for more gathering spots to collect resources from. Buildings: Economic: wood only Military: wood and stone Civic: stone and food Iron: none Silver: none III. “Alpine” Civilizations (Iberians, Gauls, Britons) Economic concept: Opposed to Hellenes civs “nordic” civs rely more on hunting. They are mainly offensive civs to start with. Their buildings do not require much stone (if at all) but are less sturdy. Gathering rates are lower for farming and mining stone. The treadmill can be used to increase farming at a later civ stage to bring them on par with other civ’s lategame food economy. Early huntables creates power spikes because they can advance quickly and field armies in a shorter period of time. Also, this allows more spreading and early expansion. While Hellenes need to consider how many cities they can supply and defend, the Nordic civs can play a rather mobile earlygame with rushes and lots of interaction with gaia. Civ special advantages: villagers and Hunters receive weapon upgrades from the Blacksmith. Iberian speciality: Start with additional metal, soldiers have 20% bonus speed, iron gathering +15% Gauls speciality: +50% bonus damage against animals, units that are hunting have higher accuracy Cavalry +20% faster Britons speciality: Gathering from herdables +50%, herdables in stables provide more food Villager (50 food, 1 pop) Gather rates: food Hunt : 1.5 herdables : 1.5 berries : 1.0 grain : 0.60 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.7 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.2 rubble stones: 0.6 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.4 ambient iron: 0.8 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.2 Villagers are both male and female. They can utilize spears or bows for hunting. Melee defense with knifes/swords. Hunter (80 food, 40 wood, 1 pop) Gather rates: food Hunt : 2.5 herdables : 2.25 berries : 1.50 grain : 0.80 Gather rates: wood Trees: 0.6 rubble trees: 1.2 Gather rates: stone Quarries: 0.4 rubble stones: 0.8 Gather rates: iron Iron mines: 0.3 ambient iron: 0.6 Gather Rates: silver Silver mine: 0.2 Hunters are mounted gatherers that can move swiftly around. They attack with spears and with upgrades/veterancy level they perform as a skilled mounted skirmisher unit. They can harass from the start, but due to a low attack rate with miss chance they are not that good to hit moving gatherers. As they kill animals their rank increases and they become more effective at raiding enemy economic units. Buildings: Economic: wood only Military: wood only Civic: wood and food (!) Iron: none Silver: none edit: removed-Special building : Corrals IV. Map control elements The game should be dynamic. Players should have options for economic expansion and there should be fluent progress on the whole map, with increasing intensity towards mid and lategame. Many current RTS games revolve around a central “base” from which all major actions are taken. Units trained, teching accomplished, resources gathered etc. Outposts or second bases have less priority because the risk – reward ratio (hard to defend, little benefits in return) is high. For 0 AD I’d like to propose a concept of “fluent expansion”. Since this game features unique aspects – city borders, city phases and a default capturing system for every military unit it would be beneficial to actually concentrate on these aspects. To further emphasize the city progression and the construction of an empire, it’s important to have interaction with the map. Constructing outposts – new cities – that can supply the Capital city to grow in prosperity and power should be a vital part for the course of the game. However, to avoid common issues from other RTS – economic expansion is punished hard by early rushes. Since eco management is pretty basic in many games, not punishing early economic expansion would lead to massive unitspam and create war of attrition, so it’s not desirable. Sort of basic and not very unique. Every game does that. 0 AD features a detailed economy, and so the early focus should actually be economic expansion. Only very basic military available that allows players to focus on where to expand, which positions are worth to create new cities etc. And then, as the game progresses, players can start gathering armies and start fighting. Many players enjoy “no rush” gametypes in which they can actually “build up” before the fighting starts – so rushing, even though it’s common in many RTS, is not the prime and sole option to solve games. By delaying military there is the option for players to satisfy their desire to “build” and then allows a fluent progression into fighting the enemy. How to achieve? 1. Allow military to interact with the map instead with the enemy only. By providing neutral targets that can be captured (like neutral Villages, cities, mercenary posts, slave posts, markets etc.) that can provide military and economic bonuses on a long term by increasing the player’s influence. 2. Allow military to attack positions apart from the main city. By providing multiple possible targets the strategical aspect becomes important – where to attack with how many units, fake attacks to disrupt the player, parallel harassment with multiple small armies which rewards multitasking, etc. 3. Distribution of map resources and hardcapping gatherers to force expansions. If players are forced to explore the map and expand to gain more resources it’s important to know and anticipate where and when the enemy is likely to expand. Game experience and strategical “what if” thinking and decision making is fun and rewarding. Ideas: Easiest: captureable herdables that can be used for food. Slave posts: automatically unlock the option to build slaves in cities for a silver cost. Mercenary post: train map type specific military units that provide additional tactical options in army compositions, instant and at a higher cost. Neutral cities: a small settlement or city with gatherable resources nearby, like a small gaul village, protected by some soldiers and has a couple of houses, maybe some farms. Can either be captured (expansion) or burned down to get immediate resource boost (food, iron, wood) Temples: neutral buildings that generate silver, or allow to train special types of support units that otherwise would only be available to certain civs (similar to a merc camp for non-combat units) Mines: generate iron indefinitely and work similar to farms How the actual implementation and which bonuses are provided is a secondary task. As long as the neutral building creates the urge for players to explore and expand it’s all fine. I’m open for additional ideas for neutral buildings for sure. 0ad Resource1.1.pdf

Yes I do have a "distaste", and that for a good reason. I've already posted numerous times why it's bad and I don't want to write down the arguments again and again. one sentence to the "Citizen soldiers is THE standout gameplay feature of 0 AD". There are thousands of outstanding gameplay elements - Tactical combat, innovative economic management, special abilities, detailed tech trees that allow customization of troops with pro's and cons. Stuff like cavalry charges, trampling, combat bonuses in woods, stealth units, epic sieges etc etc. And you come up with "soldiers can collect food! isn't that awesome?!" If that really is the case I really pity the game. I mean c'mon, really? Exactly this. Since I've got a paragraph in mye resource design concept I've got a prepared text that summarizes it. So I can just keep copy'n'paste it everytime it's needed @LordGood In case you think Citizen gatherers has arguments that make it so unique and outstanding feel free to give them to me, apart from the ones I've stated below there seem to be none. However, I'm eager to hear about reasons to stick to it.

But Factions on SC 2 do not have a second type of Vespin Gas generator per faction, or another type of resource gatherer that does the same as probes but faster. Or a 2nd type of Headquarter that allows faster gathering. (Which is what's proposed here) The usage of Chrono Boost or Spawn Larvae is more in line with Mauryan Indian construction elephants (-> use additional micro to increase building speed). The only mechanic that works differently from the default SC 2 mineral gathering are the "golden minerals" present on certain maps on exposed positions which can be harvested faster. However, that's a map control element and not a gathering micro trick. In 0 Ad it would be equivalent to farms producing more food when on some sort of "fertile land" that increases production in exposed positions.

AI coding is something you shouldn't consider. If the AI can't use it just make a small workaround. I.e. make AI receive +50 silver/minute on their resources (or more depending on difficulty) when they have build a market. It's easy and does not affect "real" players.

Actually I just capture buildings to then destroy them with the "del" key afterwards. What benefit do I have from capturing enemy houses if they turn neutral after a couple of seconds anyways? Just make sure they cannot be reused anymore. I sort of begin to like the capturing mechanic in general, it's just that there is not much to capture at all. No objects on the map, no enemy outposts etc. All I can do is capture buildings in the main base (unless the attacked garrisons them which makes capturing impossible).

That was the idea when I asked Feneur for this thanks for creating it so quickly!

Only changes the symptom. The issue of gathering cavalry is still there. If you're going to nerf it (which should be done massively) you can just aswell remove it. Either broken or unuseable, there is no real middle ground.

Just modify the starting units for these modes then to feature a small army (except for nomad though).

Yes, you could. Alternatively you could just remove combat units from your starting building to make players actually require something remotely related to a "buildorder".

You're stating perfecly why cavalry/combat units in general shouldn't be buildable from the freaking Civic Center from the start: - Cavalry can gather huntables everywhere on the map at high speed early on -> no economic drawback of cavalry rush even if you can't harm the enemy economy for some reason - other faction has no time to prepare against cavalry rushing there is no such thing as a "buildorder" that allows foreseeing cavalry rush (compare to a militia/drush in AoE or Late Hero/mass hunts or a ghoul rush in warcraft to put up an example). - compared to unit training times buildings require too long to build up Corrals as requirement would certainly help a bit, but still there is stuff like the gathering on them which breaks the aspect of "rushing" really.

As I've stated numerous times already, citizen soldiers are a broken and unbalanced concept. It's not related to their line of sight of general movementspeed (which IS too high, just like all other unit speeds). They shouldn't be available from the CC and they shouldn't be able to gather food. It's pretty simple. Of course map size plays an important role. But take it like that: there are intended map sizes for players. 2 player maps = small or tiny, 4 player maps small and medium, 6+ players large and gigantic maps. If someone decides to play on maps that are not intended for the appropriate numbers of players they have to take the risk that the game might be unbalanced in one way or another. It's not a problem of the game itself rather than one of the players. Just like playing 8 player maps on C&C with 2 players or AoE II black forest Gigantic with 2 players. Eco booming = win there. Can be fun - certainly. Balanced? not really.

That's what I meant. Most efficient gathering and strongest early rush option at the same time sounds pretty broken, doesn't it?

Which leads to the point that raiding cavalry shouldn't be available right at the start.

You're making an RTS, not a city building game. There is one type of resource to be gathered: food. So it's logical to only have one type of economic building to supply food. Introducing multiple food sources for civs doesn't reflect this. In theory, if you're doing multiple farms, there also should be additional ways to harvest lumber or mining minerals. Which leads more towards a city building gamestyle. Infinite resource gathering is used to create a simple, automatic process. If you make the gathering process less automated this process is automatically more complicated while not serving its original purpose (generate resources). Thus you automatically disrupt players from other game aspects. I'd suggest to play a couple of matches in AoE I and then reconsider why it's annoying to have to replant farms (which is similarly disrupting from a gameplay perspective). @feneur is right that extending the game mechanic with another building type doesn't have enough benefits up the game. Of course fields could be different in appearance from a random variation (some fields contain olive trees and some don't). Alternatively, there could be additional models for berry bushes. Or roman civs start with a certain amount of olive trees around their base as an additional food source early on which can be gathered quickly (similar to how Incas on AoE II start with an additional turkey).

Actually not entirely true. For AoE you have a varying starting resource "stock" of berries, sheep, boars, gold, stone, and a nearby forest. Everything is in range of the player (or AoM has starting goldmine aswell). I think Civil Centers should be weaker and buildable from Age 1 to allow economic expansion early on for a reasonable price. To create the risk that the enemy can capture them.Storehouses can still be useful to reduce travel distance for gatherers for wood and because they're significantly cheaper.. About the above: I agree. One thing is contradicting though - If you want a pacing of 20-30 minutes, there shouldn't be much eco management going on, because eco distracts from fighting. Only option that I see might be to have distinct game phases like : Economic expansion -> fortify and troop massing -> siege/conquering the enemy. Then less workers with higher gathering rates in general, fast building construction times, high unit training speed and hard counter rock-paper-scissor aswell as access to early siege weapons (or make capturing massively more efficient).

I'm still messing around with setting up the economy system - resources, their respective roles and how they interact with each other... Haven't found a way to keep them all while not overcomplicating stuff. It's really hard to do. Many thoughts but nothing that really "combines" them into something unique. I was actually considering to have "earlygame" and lategame resources split up (which would be something like earlygame: food wood iron" and lategame "stone silver" ... But not sure yet. As of unique teching ways: I'm preparing a document launch on the military outline of Greek civs, if you have suggestions I'll gladly pick them up as I'm not 100% sure how to deal with everything yet aswell. Might become something like "best-of-all"...