Grugnas
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Posts posted by Grugnas
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2 hours ago, Nescio said:
As for battalions, cohorts, etc. I'd rather have the system used in Cossacks. Units are trained individually and can be commanded individually. However, they can also be grouped together in fixed-number formations, ranging from c. 20 to 200 units each. Each formation acts as one unit and gives fighting bonuses, however, it does not regenerate, and individual units in a formation can be killed; there is also a button to absorb nearby units into the formation to restore its numbers. So, basically, have formations in addition to individual units, not instead of.
finally someone got the point.
QuoteYes, I agree. 0 A.D.'s heroes are highly unbalanced. Some have global auras which are much better than civilization and team bonuses combined, e.g. Viridomarus' +15% gather rates for all workers or Maximus' +2 armour levels for all humans and structures. Add to that they are cost-effective super soldiers with very high health and attack. It would be better if heroes were disabled in 0 A.D.
Heroes aren't unbalanced at all. They try to incentivize a strategy over another with auras that may be considered as morale bonus for the nearby units(it may even be extended with a morale malus when a hero dies ). Sure, some hero auras are bad designed but it is just a matter of tweaks.
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As others said, ranged units have higher damage and lower hp than melee units for convention. Instead of using a hard counter to represent the fact that melee units, once they reach a ranged unarmored unit, are able to kill them in a close quarter fight, they simply have high armor and health as they can absorb up some damage with armor and shield.
About the movement, it is realistic to have armored units with slow movement ( despite someone stated that it isn't necessarily true ) and ranged with more dexterity. Still for convention some ranged units move slower than expected to give melee untis the time to reach them.
If ranged units had same hp of melee units and more damage ( as they do now ), would just be a more efficient unit in any situation rather than a weak unit with a high dps doing their best while protected by heavier melee infantry.
Also, ranged units have high damage with a chance to miss depending on their accuracy (spread) and projectile speed. This means that their real damage is, most of times, lower than the one shown on the structure tree as they can miss 1 hit of 3.
Accuracy is something realistic but I am not a real fan as it simply too many other factors like units moving back and forth resulting in an exploitable dance. I guess that, when formations will be fixed, spread will be a lesser factor as units within formations are displayed in row and columns very close each other.
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9 hours ago, av93 said:
In the original design, every civ had acces to only 2 kind of champions, except Carths (2+1 elephant champ). Then came the Seleucids, and to avoid a big roster of then, the paired tech was made. Mauryan also had 4 champs (3+1 elephant), and that was given as an special civ bonus. Ptolemies have all cavalry champs, so they get the pikemen for balance.
But then some random champs were added for greeks civs and persians, killing some of their special uniqueness and historical realism, because I don't know if that units were used by them. They were scenario units only.... Altough I understand that maybe there was some balance issues for Sparta and Persians.
I try to not make more design topics or discussions, but I just wanted to remember that for the new civ.
And maybe also that Stoa is not a correct place to train them. Is like train mercenaries in the market. I would suggest to swap the building for the mercenary camp.
Well, persian mercenary champ spearmen probably are with no doubts the least trained units in the game. Obviously training Immortals is way more convenient.
About the new civ, there is something about Kushites triggering me.
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On 2/27/2018 at 2:10 PM, MlemandPurrs said:
Hmm, in that case who has the best skirmishers ?
actually persian and seleucids have nice techs and auras available for their skirmish cavalry.
Ptolemies have nice skirmishers because they train at rank 2 with mercenary advanced rank tech ( same for athene and carthage ) and less cost for all merceanries with the hero.
ptolemies, seleucids and macedonians have mercenary skirmish cavalry too.
Persia, sparta and athene have champion infantry skirmishers, britons have champion cavalry skirmishers.
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I kinda share the opnion that mercenary system could be improved. Having them just as rank 2 units is somehow limiting, but fits good enough for the current gameflow.
On 2/28/2018 at 2:07 PM, Nescio said:Gameplay-wise we could easily differentiate by role:
- can gather, can not build (females, available at houses)
- can gather and build (citizen soldiers, available from village phase)
- can not gather, can build (mercenaries, available from town phase)
- can neither gather nor build (champions, available from city phase)
Something like this would be nice. Perhaps improved but nice. I.e. Females are just actors that represent the Citizen class, and they should be able to build basic buildings ( civic and economic structures ).
Warcraft 3 economy was hard to harrass. Peons used to deliver all goods to the town hall, usually placed near gold mines usually placed in a U shaped zone delimited by woods that units cannot trespass, thus they were kinda protected by raids already.
While a packaging system would be a mess ( just try to control a bunch of cavalry, hit workers intent to gather wood, then run away and repeat the steps. Then tell me if the packaging system would work ), a "call to arms" like system would suit better than packaging. Still nothing would prevent cavalry from just capture the structure and body block workers in order to prevent them from equip weapons. While escaping would be easier against Javelin cavalry, that couldn't be said against Spear cavalry. Those kind of tests can't be made yet, as Running is just used for fleeing, tho (i am not a good coder
). If units could actually run when the bell rings ( to garrison or just equip weapons ), maybe the system could also make sense. it is an interesting mechanic.
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Carthage and other civs already have access to mercenaries starting at rank 2 through tech research. Rank 2 units perform better in military and worse in economic aspect. More ranks the unit gains, the more it is good at military and less effective the unit at gathering is. Its actor also gain more armor pieces.
Also, consider raids. A bunch of skirmishers can just hit and run, tricking the opponent and increase his idle time anyway, if his units are stuck into the "packaging" and cannot attack. Did you notice how long it takes to kill 1 unit with 5-6 soldiers? barely 2 secs.
What increases the idle time, i.e. is the spear cavalry raid which has no effect on wood gathering spot protected by spearmen but effective on grainfields not covered by palisades. Indeed predicting enemy move, you can build palisades and let the enemy uselessly train cavalry which reduced trainer economy due their incapability to gather ( hunt is quite low anyway ) and longer train time, unless they hit resources carrying units. By having to package soldiers, first, units would have no time to protect harmless workers or just stuckin the pathfinder if they'd need to go in mass to the nearest structure to pick up weapons and fight (they would make a counterproductive traffic jam i guess).
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I understand your point, but having no citizen soldier for some civs, means that at, let's say minute 5, the civ A has 20 soldiers and 40 villagers while the civ B has 40-50 citizen soldiers. This means that civ B will have easy life into attacking the other civ A. If civ B can't perform an attack, it means that the citizen-soldier concept doesn't work because the gap between the 2 styles would be too different (there is a population limit).
History and gameplay have to intersect and find a compromise otherwise it is just a "history-fi" or a simulation game. Also, I guess that most of considerations made about history are way far from the history lessions teached in school. I guess someone could lose interest in a game not balanced if everyone in multiplayer pick the same civ ( 1 of 13 lol ), but none won't sleep at night because citizen-soldier class isn't very accurately diversified to reflect real historic socio-military classes.
Also, for the "packaging" system, this seems to produce the contrary effect you stated. Removing the extra-loot for attackers gained from the carried-resources of the killed unit may go in favour of Defender because too much "packaging" time would be unrealistic and probably too penalizing, while a short "packaging" would kinda be meaningless, resulting into attacker penalty. Having units to drop resources on near dropsites before wield weapons (thing that i usually do before attack in order to give less loot when my units die) is something that may be automated but actually doable by hand.
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Anything not possible to balance is not worth to go for, in a multiplayer situation.
A clear example of bad design is Roman civ that has no reason to have no palisades in early game and has no units able to defend from spear cavalry raids. Perhaps it was decided like that because they have Siege Walls available in city phase and it is buildable out of own territory. After the last alpha, walls lose influence and this means that if you don't garrison walls, you may lose control of them ( kinda counterproductive ).
While in single player situations where the focus is into reproducing historically accurate events ( campaigns ) and interesting scenarios, factors like morale and not balanced maps make sense in order to give a more realistic/challenging interesting situation.
Morale in multiplayer RTS economic games is a bad idea as you already have too many things to focus on. Matter of fact, losing morale for a lost battle would result in a snowball effect ( especially if you lose control of your units when you want them to watch an area you consider crucial ).
Imho stamina is a must to make really interesting stuff ( different units use stamina to do different stuff ).
Battallions == Battle == Formations.
As you use rally points to send workers to gather points, you interact with buildings and not with soldiers. If you use battallions it means that you want your soldiers within formation and make military maneuvers. Locking units within formation in a single selectable entity with a flag ( like rally point one ) to identify each formation/battallion ( or whatever ) allow you to reduce micro (actually dance is annoying ) and use real world mixed formations you wouldn't be able to use with single-class battallions. At same time, disrupting formations would help you to focus on your economy micromanaging workers to optimize the resources to gather.
Hard counters are just an easy peasy but very limiting solution that shouldn't be universally used.
More diversifications between civs are needed for sure, still I can't imagine a civ having citizen soldiers and another not. The reason is that while the civ A needs many workers to produce Soldiers to perform an attack/defend, the civ B may raid the civ A with his citizen soldiers or just turtle and gain advantage from his non-stop gathering. Also the civ B would need a non gathering soldier ( like champions ) to perform stronger attacks i suppose, otherwise it would just be an Attack Sooner As Possible Or Lose civ.
Despite the relics auras, some similar abilities could be added to make things more interesting. Some Randomly rolled abilities or malus to give a slightly advantage or disadvantage to players ( this is what morale is supposed to do, right? the difference is that it would be enstabilished since start instead of being a dinamically generated event ) via an "Enable Power Up(or whatever)" setting. Like the Mortal Kombat Test Your Luck feature.
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3 hours ago, MlemandPurrs said:
I have noticed battles are determined by how many archers you have got, so im set on playing the best archer civ and dont know which one is. Also need to know which civ has the best siege options at range.
Actually battles are determined by how many skirmishers you have got.
Any archer has same stats for any civ. Mauryan and persian have archery tradition which increases their attack range at cost of their health which isn't really a good choice unless you have a solid shield of melee units. On the other hand, other civs have mercenary archers who train at rank 2.
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11 hours ago, HMS-Surprise said:
Hello everyone,
I would like to mention some issues for ios users,
1- Magic mouse is a pain in the as. while playing the game. it's very easy to rotate the camera view just by one finger mismove. Maybe there should be an extra key to rotate the view like cmd+mouse rotate.
2- Links doesn't work in the lobby.
3- Lots of hotkeys doesn't work or there are other characters on mac. Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v... I've made a list below,
Global
Alt + F4: Close the game, without confirmation. (lol doesn't work)
F11: Enable/disable real-time profiler (toggles through the displays of information). (idk what this is for but it goes to desktop)
Shift + F11: Save current profiler data to "logs/profile.txt". (now it goes to desktop slowly)
Tab, Alt + S: Switch to the next tab. (doesn't work)
Shift + Tab, Alt + W: Switch to the previous tab. (shift+tab doesn't work but when you press alt+w you can see the game as wireframe)
Did you try Alt+Tab or Alt gr+Enter? sometimes i am not able to change window unless i do not open the terminal ( or whatever application ) with keyboard shortcuts.
When entering text
Ctrl + C: Copy the selected text. (doesn't work)
Ctrl + X: Cut the selected text and put it into clipboard. (doesn't work)
Ctrl + V: Paste what's in the clipboard (it might be copied from text entered previously in-game or from another program). (doesn't work)
Ctrl + Backspace: Delete the word to the left of the cursor. (doesn't work)
Ctrl + Del: Delete the word to the right of the cursor. (doesn't work)
Ctrl + left: Move the cursor to the start of the word to the left of the cursor. (it just selects that's it)Ctrl + right: Move the cursor to the start of the word to the right of the cursor. (it just selects that's it)
You should use cmd instead of Ctrl and eventually press the same combination more times to get it working. I am not sure why, but it looks like the buffer containing the copied text is updated after you press a second time. Matter of fact, whenever i try to copy paste text, i am able to paste the previously copied text instead of the latest one ( which requires an extra cmd + v to get it pasted).
Those hotkeys work only if you copy a text you typed in chat or if you copy text from external pages. You can't really copy text written by other users in game or in lobby.
In Game
F12: Show time elapsed since the beginning of the game. (it goes to dashboard)
Pause: Pause/resume the game. (nothing happens when you press the pause button)
Delete: Delete currently selected units/buildings. (backspace or cmd+backspace doesn't delete anything)
Shift + Delete: Delete currently selected units/buildings without confirmation. (delete doesn't work so this either)
Shift + 1 (- 0): Add control group 1 (- 0) to the current selection. (it adds the current selection but doesn't save it. There is a need to use also ctrl key to add extra units a group like ctrl+shift+1-0 after selection)
/ (ForwardSlash): Select idle fighter. (nothing happens when you press the pause button)
Shift + /: Add idle fighter to selection. (forwardslash doesn't work so this either)
Alt + /: Select all idle fighters. (forwardslash doesn't work so this either)
Alt + .: Select all idle workers (including citizen soldiers). (it does select all idle workers but not champions. Actually, it selects women and soldiers but not champs)
\ (BackSlash): Select idle unit. (there is no obvious button on the keyboard for this)
Shift + \: Add idle unit to selection. (backslash doesn't work so this either)
Alt + \: Select all idle units. (backslash doesn't work so this either)
IIRC idle units hotkeys work fine on OSX as i used them till i changed the keyboard hotkeys
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thank you for the reply and for the template.
I was thinking about a rectangular plate with the logo 0 A.D. or A.0 D., but the icon only is also good.
Could you just add, to the one you uploaded, a circle on top of the cross where to insert the metal ring into?
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afaik it is implemented in the 22.1.3 version. maybe @Hannibal_Barca or @(-_-) can help
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Actually I have no access to the game but AFAIK the feature isn't implemented as technology to reasearch, matter of fact once u have a barracks, you can simply garrison a soldier in it and notice how his xp will rise overtime. I guess that you can find more infos in the barracks template, thus the component which handle this.
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You can check Vox Populi mod where this kind of feature is implemented already.
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nice program! Isn't it similar to the already existing python script in "~/0ad/source/tools/templatesanalyzer" in linux os?
I am quite sure you can't apply modification to templates there though.
About Civ Bonuses, I'm not sure if roman Ballista should really be better than other civs, nor persian rams. The most confusing thing is that the History page isn't updated and users often misread stuff.
Perhaps civ bonuses may be at least highlight bonus related stuff with different color (e.i. green ) for easy comparison.
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hi. I really am not an artist and have no time to learn such a software. Since I got the possibility to print something with a 3D printer, I'd really appreciate if someone could make a keychain in the shape of 0 A.D. logo in .stl extension ( Cura software will be used ) and upload it on the forum. In that way more people will be able to print it too.
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3 hours ago, causative said:
Grugnas, I don't know about the viability of clicking on skirmishers. Aside from the high number of clicks involved, I ran a test once when I tried individually clicking on enemy units with ranged units in a ranged vs ranged battle, and compared to attack-walk, the DPS was much reduced and I had a worse outcome than attack-walk. Presumably that would be because of overkill when the unit is already dead but 50 arrows are still in the air going towards it.
About your last statement, won't the arrows in air have a chance to hit nearby units anyway?
I tested that and this is totally right, i can't find a valid reason aside the fact that archers have to walk toward the new target to get in range. Matter of fact by focusing fire on skirmishers, archers should be able to remove the most of enemy army power because skirmishers deal the most of the damage and half the hp of spearmen who are obviously weaker to javelins than bows.
I was wondering if it is doable something like the feature in SVN ( drag a lane and and deploy your soldiers in such a dragged shape ) with archers attack, where one is able to drag a lane where to shot the arrows without even need to select a target thus deploy your archers in order to have their fire reach the interested spot. This would be a workaround to manually queue targets with shift.
While skirmishers were really used as hit and retreat soldiers and trained to such a task, archers use their high range as advantage and eventually retreat with almost the same effect ( skirmishers can use their movement speed for sneaky actions, while archers can retreat in time ). I kinda agree into slightly increase archer movement speed which is kinda low compared to others and unjustified, but in a situation where melee have secondary place perhaps those observation may also delayed.
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7 hours ago, causative said:
No because skirmishers usually don't go in alone, there will be spearmen or swordsmen in front. To buff archers it would be necessary to increase their damage or perhaps increase their walk speed. Increased walk speed would allow them to more easily kite enemies with good micro, like cavalry archers. By the way, cavalry archers are more in need of a nerf than skirmisher cavalry.
Indeed skirmishers don't go alone, what I was talking about is to manually select skirmishers while moving archers in a way that archers will attack skirmishers instead of spearmen. This would be an interesting strategy requiring some skill by the player.
The only issue with this is that units keep attacking the most near enemy unit after they kill the previous target.q
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1 hour ago, temple said:
We shouldn't forget about infantry skirmishers either. In the no-cav games we find out that archers usually don't stand a chance against them.
this is true, is it worth considering a bonus for archers against skirmishers?
In the current status having archers being able to target back lines using their attack distance as advantage doesn't prevent skirmishers to be effective against melee in front lanes especially with few units absorbing some damage because of their high damage.
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if we'd agreed, there would be 1 mod only.
I will just say that in monkey wrench mod there is a limit to 1 cavalry only extended by barracks construction ( which will be stables instead, whenever they will be implemented ) and different approaches to cavalry stats dilemma.
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of course we did ( at least me and barca tried out each other mods and DE in multiplayer ), it requires more time to convince relevant people about stuff they don't do than convince habituè people to do something different.
The balance task isn't as long as you think if you don't introduce any new stuff ( which goes off topic ).
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"nerf skirmisher cavalry" is too generic statement because it doesn't even describe the reason behind and in which situation it may have sense.
If you are of the opinion that nerfing skirmish cavalry will make us happy, please refrain. Skirmish cavalry is just a type of cavalry that took the place of spear cavalry after accuracy rework ( rework with consequent buff because laziness, i guess ). This means that by nerfing accuracy of skirmish cavalry, spear cav will just take place again ( and personally i think that it is even harder to deal with in terms of eventual balance fixes).
8 hours ago, stanislas69 said:You guys could also play on SVN and report these things before the release. That's also why we have release candidates.
Yeah not much people on SVN but I'm sure you could sort this out
I swear some people tried SVN and even reported such an issue to devs, but nothing has been done, especially when reviews are needed ( i can understand that, since it is not easy to pick an efficient and quick decision before the commit phase ending ). There isn't a subforum for SVN specific issues/tests ( i assume that the forum main goal is to communicate about current release and not SVN stuff which is development related ).
A balanced game would keep people interested to the game, especially when they play online and involve more people. Multiplayer "units abuse" can indeed be used against AI too, reason why i am pretty sure that AI behavior could benefit from emulating most used basic strategies, to keep at least a real-like experience when playing against players. I saw too many new players trying to imitate AI thus spreading man power in resources they didn't even need.
There are many mods and threads focused on balance already, still i can't recall a proper test ( obviously multiplayer games/tests play a relevant role in this and it is quite difficult to involve people into downloading extra content ) nor relevant feedback ( for relevant feedback I mean multiplayer games where issues are quite evident ).
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27 minutes ago, Servo said:
Rushing (neutralizing an opponent) is strategic but no depth and could end the game soonest whether team or individual games.
Raiding (in lesser numbers) is much more better as it does not cripple the player totally.
There’s been lots of talks about this (cav rush) already and so many ideas presented.
basically rushing is equal to raiding.
High mobility units excel at raiding thus excel at rushing = cavalry excels at rushing.
Cavalry is always been OP at rushing since champions nerf in a20, most of players just didn't notice it because only 2 civs have spear cavalry available in phase 1 and 1 civ only has archer cavalry available in phase 1 ( i recall ptolemies doing quite good rushes in a20 ).
I recall to be one of the firsts to host few no cav games and they were fun but recently, after taking a break, i see more often no cav games. It is fun to mix units into different compositions and to try different strategies in games that won't insta-end. Battles seems more epic because expanding and defensive structures are more valuable.
Some may argue that having lethal cavalry isn't that bad at all, perhaps a team with some coordination could really put an opponent into trouble with cavalry only.
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i recall COD modern warfare 2 used such a technique. It is a different kind of game tho.
Even migrating the host to another user, the game would be imba, even with the AI replacing the disconnected player.
Stoas and champions
in Gameplay Discussion
Posted
This is more a question for artists rather than gameplay related.
Kushites have an overflow of stuff ( buildings and units ) which are basically redundant. Pick the 2 pyramids and the 2 temples as example, from a historically point of view they are completely different structures ( someone states that makes no sense to upgrade a small pyramid to a bigger one ) but in game they even share the same icon, just making more confusion in the mind of a player.
Would make sense, from a game mechanic pov, being able to upgrade i.e. the temple of Apedemak into the Amun one in order to have different actors depending of its upgrades ( scouting such a building would give some knowledge on the opponent state ), and access to new technologies and units ( the champions, just 1 of the 2 which are imho a surplus ). In that way we would also be able to represent more iconic buildings even if not perfectly in scale (There are always to be compromises, somehow) and eventually have AI getting into account that buildings can be upgraded.
If those upgrades aren't acceptable, some buildings should just be used in single player campaigns, when implemented, or as scenario buildings like in the new Elephantine map.