[Campaign: Macedonia - Rise to Power + Balkan Campaign + Into Asia]

19 hours ago, SciGuy42 said:

Macedonia 36 - Battle of the Hydaspes (326 BC)

In May 326, the Macedonian king Alexander the Great and his ally, raja Ambhi of Taxila, battled Porus, a raja who had not been able to surrender himself to Alexander. There were heavy rains - the monsoon seems to have started early - and the river Jhelum, already wide in May because of the melting waters of the Himalayas, became very wide.

Porus thought he'd have a chance, if only he could win time and keep the river between his own army and that of his enemy. What Alexnader needed was a surprise crossing, and the rain offered sufficient opportunity. Another element of surprise was that the Macedonian officer Coenus had brought the ships (which had been used to cross the Indus) all the way to the Jhelum. During a stormy night, Alexander and his army slipped away from the Jhelum through a hidden valley, out of sight of Porus. At dawn, Alexander crossed the Jhelum, a considerable distance upstream from his initial camp.

Unaware of what had happened, and seeing a substantial part of Alexander's army (commanded by Craterus) still on the opposite shore, Porus could not believe the news that the Macedonians had reached the east bank. He sent his son to find out what had happened, but he was killed in action. The fact that it had been raining made it very hard to fight from chariots, a factor that contributed to the defeat of the prince. Alexander proceeded along the river, downstream, towards Porus' army.

You, playing as Coenus, are in charge of elite cavalry units, as well as the Dahae horse archers. Alexander's officers advise that our left flank is vulnerably and may need assistance. You are to do anything you can to ensure we are victorious. Alexander and Coenus must survive, and in addition, if too many of our infantry perish, we may have no choice but to put a hold on our Indian expeditions.

AI Settings: all AIs should be Sandbox.

Reference image I used for the battle is the following:

https://www.livius.org/site/assets/files/2552/hydaspes_map1.gif

 

how much fps in the last pic?  

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

33 minutes ago, alre said:

It's not about the weight of a sword,

It's literally what his point was about. Also i never said one is faster than the other. Was just making observations.

[[Discussion] Which dialog looks and sounds the best?]

I vote A.

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

13 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Although theoretically they could travel faster than melee troops because a bow is lighter than a spear or a sword,

That's generally not true though. Bows typically fall between the 2-4 pound range, as do spears. Swords average about 2 pounds. It all comes down to which weapons specifically you are comparing. Ranged would carry ammo causing extra weight, melee soldiers heavier equipment.

[Make multiplayer compatible mods]

I've looked into this aswell when i started. I know how this is done but generally speaking its better to not do it (devs discourage it). It can cause out of sync errors depending on what your mod does. It could also be considered cheating if you have a mod enchancing things that others do not have. Your mod will also not be approved for the ingame mod downloader, reducing the audience you can reach significantly because there are much more offline players than you think. 

With all that said though, i think you are safe from out of sync errors if the changes are strictly GUI, but im not 100% sure. tip: look for the monkey in @nani's mod. I guess he renamed it. It's mod~autociv.js and !!!autociv_patchApplyN.js

[mod: Grapejuice]

I was a little unmotivated to work on the mod but im back at it.

Added a new prototype branch on github where you can follow the progress of the next update. Also made a spreadsheet i use for re-balancing units for the mod that you can look into if interested. It will work with a deduction system based on what the unit is wearing as described in my previous post.

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

@raynor if you remove spread, make projectiles have lightning speed (AKA bullets) and undo the turn rate, you have 100% what you want. However i really hope that doesnt end up being in the main game, but its not up to me. As a mod however, you have the freedom you want.

[what do we do with the defenses of phase 1?]

I think increasing palisade costs is a good option. Just looking at it you would see it requires alot of logs to build it. Besides, the palisades have a rock foundation, it should be accounted for. Up  the wood price by quite a bit (triple?) and make it also cost stone 1/3 of the wood price.

In this example the price for this length would be 588W and 196 stone. Numbers are just examplary though.

[what do we do with the defenses of phase 1?]

54 minutes ago, Angen said:

For blocking projectiles:

Well, one can still shoot over walls and palisades if one wants to. Main point is to prevent units from freely walking into the settlement/town and to give defenders some time to react.

But yes, would be nice, its just performance nightmare

Yes that would make sense if you manually had to pick a direction to fire, you cant shoot what you cant see though and would probably considered a waste of ammo (i could be wrong about that though). Also currently ingame arrows literally dont fly higher than a palisade. Unless you're on a hill, which would be an issue to code i think aswell because footprint height is infinite i think. 

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

3 minutes ago, raynor said:

Would it be possible to simply remove the simulation and make projectiles always land with a mod

That's definitely doable with a mod and simple to do aswell. The only problem would be a visual one, it will look like the projectile missed, when it was actually registered as a hit.

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

4 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I like this suggestion for sake of realism. However I wouldn't like if your ranged units target an enemy automatically and then automatically decide to inflict more damage to your own troops than to the opposing troops.

Yes there should be an 'hold fire' / 'fire at will' button too.

[what do we do with the defenses of phase 1?]

1 hour ago, alre said:

What do we want the role of palisades to be?

They're main use should be blocking projectiles imo. Same goes for stone walls, but because stone walls are higher they should also block cata projectiles. Currently this doesn't work but hopefully in the future.

As a secondary feature; yes, they should be exactly that:

1 hour ago, alre said:

a nuisance

 

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

In regards to the OP, i dont think having 100% accuracy will counter dancing if we had the old turn rates.

The actual problem is the amount of time it takes for the projectile to arrive (but this should not be higher imo). Players can instantly walk the other way when projectiles are still in the air.

The thing is, archers where primarly used as a weakening/demoralizing tactic and in great numbers, guaranteeing hits because of the great volley of arrows. The game does this pretty well imo. Missing the main target when firing with a group to a group will likely hit the person next to him instead.

Making friendly fire (against own units, not ally) a toggleable game option could be interesting as a balance to units though. But thats a different subject i guess.

[Friendly ppl in Lobby]

This dude is still going at it? Seems like he does this non-stop for while then. I dont think he even plays games, just comments trash/hate in the lobby. @MarcusAureliu#s Check this comment (and it's date). He's definitely there just to trigger people in a bad way. Needs a proper ban imo.

[Which Skirmish Map is your favorite?]

a path beyond II

 

[New elephant stats proposal]

21 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Even though ranged units are the best option, they are still not great. If we compare an Asian elephant to champion infantry, we see that they elephant has less than 3 times the cost and pop requirement. In return you get 3 times the hack damage and a ton of crush damage. On the defensive side you get over 4 times the hit points and better armor, totaling at about 5 times the durability. I think that the elephant seems to be the better deal in that regard and it should be priced accordingly.

What you are forgetting though, is that it's easier for ranged infantry to hit 1 big target than several small ones.

[Economy and starting with a worker elephant.]

Nice effort.

If you want consistent and more accurate results you would have to pick a skirmish map. This way you eliminate the rng'ness. Also i would say just play both of those civs optimally instead of limiting alot of things. End the game @ 10 min (or w/e) and then look at the results.

1 hour ago, LetswaveaBook said:

1. Don't use extra berries, extra hunt(only chickens) or wicker baskets technology.

Not sure why you are not using the tech and its a little unrealistic. It's one of the trade-off that maury has to make if they decide to not build a farmstead+tech and use the ele instead. It's a pretty big difference if you ask me.

 

[New elephant stats proposal]

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

I would imaging they can attack quite quickly because they have been training to stab people for their whole professional career

Stamina control plays a big part in battles. You cannot fight full strength for long and the recovery time would be incremental. My feedback to your vid is that it doesnt look really look realistic to me. Doubling instead of tripling attack speed looks better i think. (but thats just my opinion ofc)

 

I do agree with your statement that eles should not be able to knock buildings over like they do though, but just a good melee fighting unit / anti siege unit. Like: remove crush damage completely and add pierce damage along with the hack damage they already have.

Furthermore, eles are already quite easily killed by ranged units and i would actually lean more towards them needing a buff (or rework like above), instead of a nerf. Against AI they are probably strong but in mp they are meh, situational at best.

[Who need stones ?]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

EDIT: more to the point. This is a bandaid and doesn’t fix the thread’s topic of how the game design is currently flawed because at some (early) point stone becomes useless for many civs

Solution: mine less stone?

[Who need stones ?]

9 minutes ago, hyperion said:

Next, resource cost must not be dictated by "pseudo realism" but forcing the player to plan, to be over the top it's fine if a stone wall cost only food (meat shield ;)) if it makes gameplay more interesting

Massive nope from me. It will just set people off on the wrong foot and it's not necessary to do such weird gimmicks. 

Could make stone mines have less stone though. 5k to 3k or whatever. <- Meh nvm that one.

[File locations on Linux?]

4 hours ago, hyperion said:

Without tooling you'd have a hard time extracting the stats from templates. However there is a mod by wratii which makes what you want available in-game, just can't remember the name of the mod ...

Balance test mod?

Quote

@Player of 0AD

Does anybody know where the files of unit stats are here?

It's @ binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/

Champion archer for example: binaries/data/mods/public/simulation/templates/template_unit_champion_infantry_archer.xml

spread would be their accuracy.

[Who need stones ?]

49 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Would you agree that differentiation is less important than balance?

I would have to disagree with this statement, because i dont feel like you necessarily have to chose one of them. Something can both be (re)balanced and bring differentiation.

Also the pool of people who play this game casually is likely larger than the people that play competitively (as in trying to high on the leaderboards).

[New elephant stats proposal]

20 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

Make elephants have the same armour and speed as dogs? 

Don't forget that some elephants wear armor, but even without it, i would say an elephants hide is way thicker than a dogs. 

[Where are you from?]

2 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

No. I am from the Netherlands instead.

To say it in your own words 'That comment honestly makes no sense'.

[Other strategy games not RTS.]

@jeffnz i'm glad we got Johnny Bravo on the forum. Yeah baby.