Philip the Swaggerless

It's very weird.

Atrik's real thoughts: "...will I still be able to 30 women at raiders as human shields?..."

The hope is that, playing against an opponent at approximately the same level as you, you would be disadvantaged by spamming them in most cases. Maybe needing an additional 400 metal to go to p3 slows you down enough for them to start a battle while they have a hero and you don't. We can increase the build time as well. From 120 to 150? 180? Maybe. But I think we're not being clever enough if we resort to that. I think multiple ones should exist as an option, but as an extreme one. Here's another meh idea to get out of the way: Prerequisites. I believe the first Age of Empires had some pre-requisites where certain techs/structures required specific buildings to be made. I think you had to have a market for some farming upgrade (or maybe to build farms at all?), you had to have a woodcutting tech before you could do certain ranged weapons, etc. I don't think we should put that in 0AD unless it really makes sense. By the way, one problem we may create as we raise the price of the Forge is to weaken the tech bonus of doing a fast p2 instead of regular p1 boom. If too much res is needed for a blacksmith it ruins that as a benefit for attacks launched in p2. Alternatively or together with a forge price increase, we could make the other structures more appealing. If you have a temple, all units get +5% health as long as it stands. (additional temples do not stack the bonus.) Or it could be a tech. If you have a market, receive a resource trickle of your choice. (additional markets do not stack the bonus.) Another idea I'll throw out there: Make 2 levels of traders available. Basic trader: 50 food, 10 metal, low distance-income gain modifier Pro trader: 100 food, 80 metal, high distance-income modifier. (current) Shorter trips have similar income, but on longer trips the pro trader makes a ton more. Yes, that was my thought. So low wood maps and low metal maps? Which are seldom played? I don't think we should set the standard based on these.

Fine by me!

Wonders Right now they are glorious structures that are never made except for the rare Wonder race game. Proposal Add 1000 Food cost. Make Glorious Expansion free (as a structure aura of the wonder) but give less pop bonus (maybe 15% instead of 20%)

Civs aren't fair, wood civs have a huge advantage. They don't have to consider paying for stone mining upgrades until very high pop. It might punish stone civs less, since they are likely to already be mining stone and possibly have stone mining upgrades. The only thing fair to all civs is food or metal. (Metal is not fair if you have a merc army, to be fair) But food is the least likely to affect a decision. Sure, you could make a weird high amount. Even at 200 wood 250 food I'd make no less than 2 forges. I think I like metal because it matters to everyone.

Stone could work, but stone civs will still make 2 minimum. Are you gonna make a second or third black smith to get tech bonuses (extra 200 stone) or a 300 stone temple? At least someone might make a market.

Metal from you're initial p3 territory is too scarce to get all forge upgrades + a significantly champion army. I think that's okay. More metal can be gathered from expanding territory and ...traders. Maybe this is me not booming well, but I find that getting enough food to maintain p1 unit production and get 500 extra for the p2 upgrades leaves me with more food income than is needed for p2 expenses, and I usually send some to wood. Rather than seek alternate advantages, I think people would just boom accordingly and get all the forges as usual. The only adjustment might be to delay mining upgrades. It is. This is me assuming nothing else about traders will change. It could be more but should be reduced from what it is. I'm curious - on what maps? I don't like the idea that you make traders only if you are on a seldom-played map that lacks a particular resource. An INCREASE? That small gain of 4 metal is especially bad because they cost 80 metal plus food to make. I would hate to see a bunch of traders going 100 meters back and forth. Since they can be so vulnerable, I would mostly rather see the cost of traders reduced but we could couple that with balancing the journey-distance-to-income multiplier. Longer trips should be rewarded, but the gap should not be so extreme.

The Forge (blacksmith) is too cheap. Traders are too expensive. Forge Current Cost: 200 wood and 120 second build time It is the cheapest and most quickly built of the standard p2 structures required for going to p3. (forge, market, temple) In most cases it is the most critical p2 building to make. Because of this, many experienced players make a minimum of 2 forges but may make 3 or 4. They may not even make any other of the p2 buildings. All or most upgrades are processed simultaneously so there is little trade-off in terms of prioritizing upgrades. I suggest adding a significant metal cost so that the more blacksmiths you make the slower your p3 upgrade. Proposed cost: 200 wood 200 metal. Traders Current Cost: 100 food 80 metal. They have a significant cost and are vulnerable. They're more difficult to protect that regular eco units that have a central work area. For the maps that competitive games are played on the main reason (imo) to make them is to unlock the diaspora tech, not the trade income. Changing the trading system has been discussed but there's not been any consensus on how to do it. @real_tabasco_sauce admitted he has no idea what to do with traders. Based on those points, for the time being, I say just make them cheaper. Proposed cost: 50 food, 10 metal.

Does that mean that there are people who have never specifically directed an individual unit to do anything? Some say 0.

lol @Stockfishnub Individual commands = individual clicks? 1 turn = 1 frame? Besides the ones in the thousands, how are their even ones that are around 300? People clicking when its paused?

It can't move while the animation is ending anyways, right? Does it need to know its destination frames in advance to move on time?

Okay. So the animation is spread across the previous repeat/prepare time and the next repeat time if it understand it right. My understanding of the animation and the timers is as follows: Additional symbols > = attack motion begins ! = Animation Impact Point < = Post thrust draw back % = animation loop restarts Current vanilla: >>>>!<<<<<<<<<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>!<<<<<<<<<<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>! ..........|O-----------------------------------|O-----------------------------------|O With patch (ie pikeman): >>>>!<<<<<<<<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>>>!<<<<<<<<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>>>! ..........|O-------O-----------------O---------|O--------O---------------O----------|O Proposed Wouldn't it be simpler to align the distance check with the animation restart time? Then you could keep the original number of distance checks and it should work reasonably well visibly. I think you'd agree since you at least prefer prepare time not to be interrupted during the first attack. <<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>!<<<<<<<<<<<<<%>>>>>>>>>>>>!<<<<<<<<<<< ..........O------------------|-----------------O-------------------|----------------|O This is a much more straightforward way to do it...am I missing something? Of course, I haven't done much in 0AD beyond edit jsons so I don't know how hard it would be to make such a change.

In this case, you would often have a unit trying to shoot something, only for it to realize right before attacking that it needs to instead move closer to the target. Thanks for the response. I'm still confused about when the vanilla distance check takes place. Is it after the entire attack animation completes or at the instant of melee impact? Is your update to do the distance check again while the attack is underway, (the animation has already begun) and then based on the distance checks occurring once per second of pre-impact animation cancel or continue the attack?

The distant overshoot attacks are ugly to look at for sure. Interestingly, it's already the case that something weird happens with sword cav pursuing enemies. The animation is canceled but the damage is still done. Looks very bad but not having the damage done would be more frustrating. The challenge is that all units except towers and boats units are stationary when they attack. Additional performance cost means the game will be LESS responsive, right? But sure, intuitive because the unit would not die when visibly out of range. Did you do this performance test with a large p3 4v4 online battle? If so an additional 0.7 ms per frame doesn't seem too bad. Otherwise I'm weary about it. Help me understand the current sequence of things. So I know there is "prepare time" and "repeat time": Does "prepare time" represent the time spent in attack animation before either melee damage is dealt or a projectile is launched? By "after attack completion" do you mean after "prepare time?" Is "repeat time" is the duration immediately following "prepare time", during which the attack animation is completing and it's weapon is being brought back? And then does "prepare time" again immediately follow "repeat time" If the answer is yes to those questions, why 2 additional range checks? Why not 1 additional check at the end of repeat time? Or even better, why not get rid of the check at the end of "prepare time" and just have one range check at the end of "repeat time"? If the answer is no to those questions, instead of additional range checks could the animations be adjusted to represent what is happening better? For non-siege/boat attacks, could the animations be sped up at the beginning, perhaps with a slight pause at completion and then slowed during the reset? (Overshoot issue aside, striking animations tend to look better that way anyways.)