Feldfeld

Hello, I made a balance mod for online testing Its principal objective is to rehabilate champion units and balance civilizations between them. Here is the complete list of changes. Some are kind of extreme, the mod is very experimental. - sentry tower +4 pierce damage I may add a sentrynelle tech that adds an arrow for sentry tower only but is cheaper. - stone tower +4 pierce damage - all humans +10 crush armor (catapult nerf) - citizen soldier swordsman +1.5 melee damage - removed champion trainable at barrack tech for gauls and brits - iber stone tower -50 stone cost, but can garrison maximum 5 units - maur worker elephant train time reduced to 10 seconds - maur elephant archer now cost 150f 80w - rome military camp -5 pierce damage - Instead of mercenary skirmisher, ptols will train slingers p1 (not satisfied with this change but should help) - slinger accuracy nerf and -0.5 pierce damage - infantry skirmisher -1.5 pierce damage - loom now costs 100 food/wood but gives a 100% health bonus for women - ranged cavalry units damage (and accuracy) may be adjusted in the future to follow their infantry counterparts - I temporarily gave carthage a limit of 3 embassies until i can do something better - I will probably buff elephants and rams in the future. - Each hero is now trainable only one time through all game. (Thanks @(-_-) ) - Catapults area attack now 5 pierce damage. - Spearmen +1.5 walk speed - Spartan skirtai now cost 50 metal - Added hero changes by @Hannibal_Barca ( https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1400#change-6Pes5Jtrq5P9 ) very experimental champions buff : - All regular infantry champions : -25f/w cost and -3 seconds of train time - All regular cavalry champions : -50f/w cost and -8 seconds of train time - Sword infantry champion +1 hack damage - Black cloak train time now same as other sword champs Current version : 1.0.5 Changes through all versions: champions-civs-balance.zip or champions-civs-balance.zip To install, you can drag and drop the zip file to 0AD. champions-civs-balance.pyromod

I could try to live comment on twitch games that are being played although i will have bad image quality and i have bad mic currently as well. But i will be away for 1 week from now. Valihrant will maybe record some games and post afterwards on youtube (with quality commentaries) though at least.

I signup, european timezone.

Reporting again the low train time of the carthaginian shield cavalry and gaul's sword cav speed is lower than other civs' sword cav without being compensated. Also i recall seeing a single scout cavalry destroying field in about 5-10 seconds, i forgot to say it, not sure if that is wanted. I'll see if i can test the changes online.

Well, if you start with standard ressources which seem to be medium, then in early game you can make any 2 combination of military building except for 2 barracks where you would need 100 additional stone. Stone is not an important ressource in p1 so it doesn't really harm eco to build these. Also perhaps that if these buildings seem expensive then that would make the training time upgrades useful. For mercs, they don't cost food nor do they cost pop so they are actually easy to afford early game without affecting your economy and that makes them very useful early game. Food is very important ressource and you would be in a tricky position if you have used depleted your fast food ressources (berries, hunt) but still didn't click p2. This is what makes mercenaries so useful, and stone and metal aren't rare ressources in skirmish maps which emphasize this fact. I think that making upgrades is worth it, they don't cost so much so consider them in your plan.

Last minute feedback. Catapults, and most likely bolts seem too strong. Now that units don't have high crush armor anymore, they are killed very fast by catapults. They are quite easy to mass, their train time as the same as a cavalry. In this replay you can see how some catapults barely defended can defeat a good number of melee cav (that are wiped very fast) and win the game pretty much by themselves commands.txt Related to another of my post, here is a replay that shows spartan economy advantage : commands.txt If needed i can also post replays that show elephant's strength in early p3.

Then i may add some more feedback. Elephants may need a train time nerf and bigger pop cost. They can be countered when armies start to be big but in the early p3 they seem too strong. Maybe in the summary screen soldiers could stop being considered as gatherers. The fact that soldiers can build make the building cost/building time paired tech in CC at the beggining seem not very much a choice except for ptolemies. It also minimizes gauls/britons bonus for building i think. Also sparta seem to be the best booming civ with their ressources gather rate. They can have a very good p1 with their food/wood gather rate then use slaves at p2 for stone and metal. That doesn't seem that important but i don't know if it is intended. Gauls sword cavalry have less speed than every other civ's sword cav, without being compensated, i suppose this is not intended as well.

More precisely, this could apply to all mercenaries that have low train time, from mercenary camp or the ones available from a faction's building. This would not apply to Carthaginian mercenary since they have normal train time and pop cost. Then a relatively cheap tech which cost glory and another ressource would return these mercenaries to their initial cost. It could indeed be nice to have the custom starting ressource to lower starting glory so that aggressive players could make early p1/p2 tech (such as the one i described) using the glory they can only have from fights. These tech would not be relevant to booming players Also i noticed carthaginian shield cavalry have 5 second train time. I suppose this is not the intended number. In the map from my video it seems like the player 2 will struggle with the camera which will often go up as the camera is close to the mountain. The idle unit key selects the military units and not the citizen. I'm also suspecting that spearmen/pikemen could need a bigger bonus vs cav and elephant is perhaps too strong, but i didn't play enough to confirm this. Edit : After 1 game elephants seem fine. I suggest bigger bonus vs cav only for non-hoplite spearmen after all. Pikemen are fine.

Yes i didn't know that when i wrote the post, farms seems completely fine I think some sort of a nerf is needed. If your custom ressources thing get in the game then mercenaries would be bit nerfed yes but i'm not sure that's enough. Train time is low, if that is nerfed it would make them less efficient in let's say late P1 and after but they'll still be collected in very early game and players would attack with that pretty much no matter what. Perhaps a cost nerf could be good. Then we could keep train time as it is since it's logical that mercenaries are hired and not trained. That could be an idea. Also as i wrote in earlier post i thought wooden towers needed a buff, preferably range. (they seem easy to work around) Yes, the problem is from the core game, only happens with archers since it's the only unit to have their range almost equal to their LOS and that for the other units players take care of the LOS. Well, the problem is that the efficient way to start a fight in vanilla is to let units pick their target by pressing halt because their hits will be relatively well distributed over the ennemy units. If we choose not to do that, in Delenda Est, then we have the choice to give units order to attack an ennemy units (or multiple orders which takes lot of micro). If this units is isolated from ennemy army then the problem may happen again, otherwise the opponent could try to press halt at the right time to wipe the closes unit that are still walking to their target. This is why the best way to start a fight for me is still to try to press halt while barely in range, with the purpose not to give an advantage to ennemy. I don't know much about the other games. I think that in AoE2 units have about a 1 second delay on pressing halt before attacking, making players prefer to use patrol/attack move key. I didn't try yet the attack move in 0 A.D. perhaps it is good. I guess, it isn't really important anyway.

Seems like i was wrong for fields, i didn't know CC put a malus to nearby fields. So they should actually be fine and balanced with corrals. A bigger issue probably is mercenaries. From the games i played (including online), they seemed to be a must and that rushing with them is a really good strat. They don't cost food, instead metal, and no pop as well so it's easy to make them in the very early game and then you can attack. The early game army advantage is important : once you wiped the ennemy army you can be around his base there is no comeback possible. Some civs like gauls or britons don't have towers in p1, so the only way to defend from an attack is having about equal amount of men ready to fight. But even if they had, wooden towers are weak. Their range scale with archer range but i don't think that's a good thing as the result is that they'll defend only a very small part of your territory, the attacker can work around with that. Also, reduced LOS and range make battles tricky to micro. Units only attack what is in their LOS i suppose, the consequence being that often in battles, you'll see some of your units fighting but the other units slightly out of range will just idle there. Here a video i made when i first tested the mod : You can see the temple ungarrison issue i described earlier in the end of the video. Also you can see somwhere that (i don't know if it's only this case, but) When you select some ranged units and attack a non-tamable animal, they'll use their weapon to kill it, but if you add a scout in selection (or maybe any melee unit ?) then the ranged units will just walk endlessly to the animal. commands.txt Here a multiplayer replay that illustrates well the importance of mercenaries early game. (and the eco techs as i completely forgot them) commands.txt And another one that shows how the game is lost once you don't have enough military units to compete with the attacker.

I also just tested the mod today, and recorded a little game. I can't really say much about the balance and other things because the meta has yet to be invented on multiplayer i believe. The high number of techs and civ bonuses certainly can open a wide number of possibilities. The issues i could see are that corrals seems a hell lot better than fields (though only played one game and barely tested fields, but from what i see it seems obvious to me). Also, temple unloading zone is wrong (with gauls at least). Units unload at the heal aura frontier instead of just near the building. Useful to climb mountains :) Will try to upload that one game i played against the AI. There you may also see some unwanted things such as soldiers doing all the building tasks.

That, and also an improved tutorial can be needed. Age of Empires serives have a whole campaign to help player understanding the mechanics. The first campaign of each of these games guides players step by step. I didn't really check that but i think 0AD's tutorial teaches the basis, but doesn't go in depth (which is perfectly understandable as the more advanced parts are really dynamic and change from alpha to alpha, it's really not a priority to make that stuff. It's not finished game) That's funny because when i played a21, i started with an "how to make good eco" tutorial map that was there. It was probably outdated as i didn't have the time to follow instructions, probably because the training time was lower in even previous alpha. I ended up becoming good quite fast, after struggling with that tutorial.

I think too that rams, and siege units in general are balanced. I agree with that However i don't think siege stats should be changed as i think they are balanced. Thing is that if we blindly change balance for next alpha only for some complaints, bigger problems may be raised. I think that the only problem right now is that some players don't see how to counter siege even though it's completely possible right now. But if we nerf siege for next alpha, not only will they be less efficient but this time players will clearly see how to counter them and we may have lots of complaints that it is so easy to turtle, and that would be a way bigger issue imo. I also think that in a21 skirm cav was also very strong and that people didn't see it, but clearly did in a22 after a change (that wasn't that important i suspect). Btw i checked Nescio's mod and that may be a good idea to have that p2 siege workshop. The balance changes that came with it are meh, but the general idea can be thought some more.

I played my first game of the release against borg-. It's an 1v1 in mainland with chosen civs, borg- had seleucids, i took macedonians. I tried a spear cav rush and borg- decided to boom making many spearmen to ensure my attacks won't do many damage. Even if i didn't kill many men, i still achieved to disrupt borg-'s food production which is the advantage of rushing with spear cav. These little harrassements then let the place to stronger engagements including many units, who decided the winner. commands.txt

What is this ?

Seems like chinese letters are not showing for some reasons

I don't see why would elephants and swords have a harder time trying to destroy them, the stats about that didn't change (as far as i know). I think that rams will be overall easier to deal with, because in a23 you can ungarrison precisely where you want around the building, so you could ungarrison swords just near the ram to "snipe" it even if there are men protecting it, and if it attack a fortress, you could ungarrison a ram yourself and would be garranted a first hit.

So, if my opponent cheats, it would be incompatible with my game and would trigger an out of sync because according to my game the opponent has less ressources. But does that mean that this cheat engine could at least monitor opponents' ressources ? If it is available in the memory of my game. Or does it works another way ?

Happened to me too 2018-03-23_0006.7z

The bug also happens when your building has been scouted by another guy. Which means it can block building even if it started.

They should be harder to mass due to train time incrase. If skirmisher cavalry was an obstacle for their massing in a22 (which i don't remember), then other units such as spear cav would replace them for this job. Infantry should be massed way faster than archer cav. But that's true i focused my testing on spear cav rush and strats with slingers recently, because i feared it more. Next weekend i'll try to test archer cav mass.

They will be difficult to mass. But if they are massed, you could still deal with them. Beside what you listed, there are also champions, including spear inf/cav who would be efficient against them, or simply a lot of ranged infantry with meat shield (who can also harvest ressources which compensates a bit of strength difference) can do reasonably well. Still, it is true that they should be quite strong and 2 days ago i voiced the idea to give them an accuracy bit lower than their infantry counterpart. By the way, with archers being the unit with the lowest attack in the ranged units, on paper if i understand well, any unit with something like 7-8 base pierce armor or more should take very little damage since armor compensates attack. They would die very slowly. However i never tested it, not sure it works that way.

balance still being discussed, but skirm cav definitely not op. Ai is just bad dealing with rushes, i can get kd 50/0 against it with any kind of rush.

little funny consequence. It was possible in a22 but i think it's faster now. Also if i want i can change the direction.

It seems like you have alpha 21. I don't know how it works in linux, but perhaps the instructions here could be useful : https://play0ad.com/download/linux/