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Feldfeld

Balancing Advisors
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Posts posted by Feldfeld

  2. 0 A.D. Friendly Tournament Series

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    8 hours ago, vinme said:

    Great idea, id be willing to play.

    id advise to make a tournament that seems so easy that theres no way that there will be complication/issues/problems, like overshoot on biting what you can chew, baby bites.

    this way is best, as there isnt consistent tournament culture/foundation in 0ad and before it gets established through many tournaments, there will be less interest/higher difficulty of pulling it off for a variety of reasons.

    So id advise best of 1, more dynamic, less tiresome to players so more are willing to play, doesnt take months to organize and a year to finish like 16 or 32 player best of 3 with 1 game per week.

    8 players seems like the best sizing to start with, not too small not too large, maybe add in rating requirements later, when the demand is there like 1500+ 1600+ etc.  also would be interesting to see 1800+ 4 player tournament, also later ofc.

    Id extremely strongly advise doing tournaments in single bursts, in terms of time frame, ive seen a few tournaments have very frustrating and tiresome issues with the plan being that they'd last week or 2 but then dragging on for months, etc.

    PPL wont prioritize 0ad, since its just a very niche game, if they stop feeling like playing they'll just not come online for weeks, even after signing up for a tournament, or having an upcoming match, its much more predictable, that som1 saying they are willing to play in the next 1-3 days will more likely than not, follow through compared to say having ppl promise theyll play every week which i assure you, will backfire 99% and cause complications.

    even 1 day tournaments, seem fine if you ask me, since itll take each player 3 games tops, if its best of 1. just need to have them be online on a specific time, and have lets say 3 hours free.

    So the main issue im foreseeing is abandoment, so make sure you have a contingency for this, ie 0 tolerance policy, if you miss that x schedule, then tournament host gets involved, sets time immediately, and whoever misses that one forefits by default.
    The second issue im forseeing is player online time alignment, this should be heavily focused on so it goes as smoothly as possible, setting it up thoroughly so no issues arise later.

    And the final issue is ofc, ppl joining it in the first place, which i already mentioned would be improved with less commitment demanding formats, but also, best if from announcement, to the tournament being filled up, minimal time passes, so initial players who have joined, do not lose interest/forget about it.

    ideally, with the fastest paced 1 day tournament, you announce the tournament, in 1 day it ges filled, you announce who plays who, and next day it happens, and finishes so the whole thing would take 2 days form announcement to finish.

    setting specific start time, for each day gameplay, would be very valuable as when the rounds progress, people will always be coming online on the same time and there will be no ambiguity/room for issues and delays in terms of people cooperating in pms to oragnize meetups, delays in round progressions as many ppl inevitably cant progress when opponent doesnt respond or when they cant agree on time. Also for contingency on abandon, people should "log" themselves coming online in forums, and organize there, so there is history.

     

    I agree with your points about the simplicity of the format. Indeed the tournament should be smooth

    I have no intention of adding rating requirements. I don't think we could afford it unless the tournament gets real popular, and even then, having gold/silver brackets would allow for best possible level in top bracket anyway. Also, the purpose of the tournament is experimentation with new features/balance, not necessarily high competitiveness.

    The most successful 0 A.D. tournament had a weekly round format so I'm still quite open for this format. Having only 3 rounds and single elimination should prevent some of the drawbacks, but I know it's not foolproof and issues could happen. See

    Maybe I was not enough clear on that point, but the daily/lightning format would only take place on Sunday, again unless the tournament gets popular enough. It's simply the most convenient day for most people. That said if we can afford it I'll offer alternatives.
    For that format, I indeed intend to be very clear on the schedule (eg it starts at Sunday 13 UTC and I link to a website for local conversions). Maybe I'll also add a check-in but I intend to let registration open for the whole week.

    Regardless, let's not focus too much on possible issues, so the thread is easy to read :D

    • Like 1

  3. 0 A.D. Friendly Tournament Series

    in General Discussion

  4. 0 A.D. Friendly Tournament Series

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Feldfeld

    The second edition of 0 A.D. Friendly Tournament Series has started! Here is the list of players:

    ValihrAnt (2345)
    Feldfeld (2201)
    borg- (2169)
    weirdJokes (1913)
    Edwarf (1861)
    LetswaveaBook (1815)
    Dakara (1778)
    PhiliptheSwaggerless (1642)
    011235813 (1598)
    MarcAurel (1547)
    alre (1500)
    chocapoca (1493)
    seeh (1150)
    Bete (1108)

    ________________________________

    Round 5 matches:

    @Feldfeld vs @Dakara
    @ValihrAnt vs @Player of 0AD
    @Edwarf vs @MarcusAureliu#s
    @Philip the Swaggerless vs @BeTe
    @rm -rf vs @LetswaveaBook
    @chocapoca vs @seeh
    Bye (no game for this round, +1 point): @alre

    The deadline for this round is Friday 16, 23:59 UTC.

    Please try to organize your match as soon as possible using forum private messaging! Beware of timezone differences.

    Please message me personally if your opponent doesn't answer you after 2-3 days.

    Brackets: https://challonge.com/sv36zmko

    ________________________________________________

    Game settings:

    Spoiler

    The games will be played using feldmap, in Mainland Balanced, in typical 1v1 settings, free civ pick, and using the Community Mod at the latest version available at the time of the match.

    The map settings are:
    - Map size: Small
    - Population cap: 250
    - Starting Resources: Low
    - No fancy other settings

    Biome rules:
    - Be sure to have feldmap updated to 0.2.1
    - Select random biome

    Tournament announcement message:

    Spoiler

    Welcome everyone

    Following a suggestion from @Lion.Kanzen

    I thought it would be indeed a good idea to try to host a tournament to promote the mod and its advantages.

    This would be a friendly tournament where it is encouraged to try out stuff you think is OP and should be fixed, and stuff that has been modified by the Community Mod to see if it works well. This is not required though, you are free to play however you like.

    The 2 mods required to play the tournament is the Community Mod https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/83784-introducing-the-official-community-mod-for-alpha-26/
    And feldmap https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/53880-feldmap-a26/

    The settings for individual games would be the same for all of them. Basically always Mainland Balanced and typical 1v1 settings. I will post the exact settings later though player agreements could also be made.

    Now for the actual tournament format: the primary goals I want to achieve is speed (it's a tournament series so there will continuously be new tournaments of the same format, ideally) and balanced player matchups in order to have proper testing of gameplay balance features.

    The speed requirement means that the tournaments will be single elimination. Double elimination just takes too long.

    The tournament will be seeded meaning early on matchups could be imbalanced, so to avoid it being too hard I would limit the number of participants to 8 for a tournament, however if there are enough players interested there could be multiple brackets (Gold Silver) so anyone can play.
    Vote whether you want the tournament to be seeded or not!

    Now that this is settled, there remains the scheduling. I have multiple formats in mind, and I would like your feedback for which you prefer/think is best. Considering there will be 8 players per tournament/bracket, that means the duration is 3 rounds. Here are the possibilities

    - Weekly (1 round per week, players schedule their match in PM)
    - Lightning (tournament gets played in a day, each round just after the previous one, on Sunday at European afternoon (eg 13 UTC) or European evening (eg 18 UTC)

    The tournament could start as soon as next week. So i invite potential participants to announce what scheduling format they prefer, and potentially already sign up for these schedules. Please note that I would not be able to play/help scheduling in European evenings. A forum account is required for signing up. Here is a sample message you can use to sign up:

     

    - In game name: Feldfeld
    - Interested for the following schedules: Weekly, Lightning European afternoon (Sunday 13 UTC)
    - BO1 or BO3?: BO1
    - Seeded or random brackets?:

    ______________________________________

    Interests:

    Weekly                                                                     : Feldfeld ValihrAnt PhiliptheSwaggerless Stockfish thephilosopher seeh Dakara Edwarf Bete
    Lightning European Afternoon (Sunday 13 UTC) : Feldfeld ValihrAnt vinme seeh Dakara Edwarf
    Lightning European Evening (Sunday 18 UTC)     : thephilosopher seeh Dakara Edwarf
    BO1: Feldfeld vinme PhiliptheSwaggerless thephilosopher Dakara Edwarf
    BO3: ValihrAnt
    Seeded                 : Valihrant Bete
    Random brackets : Dakara

    First edition:

    Spoiler

    List of players:

    @ValihrAnt(2322)
    @Feldfeld (2169)
    @Edwarf (1861)
    @Stockfish (1833)
    @Dakara (1772)
    @Philip the Swaggerless (1646)
    @kun0 (1547)
    @thephilosopher (1305)

    Brackets: https://challonge.com/l9vi81d9

     

    • Like 12
    • Thanks 1

  5. Feldmap

    in Scenario Design/Map making

    Posted

    5 hours ago, SneakEP said:

    i don't see this one on my mod lists after i do the zip. (autociv worked) help?

    Try to make it so it has a similar folder structure as other mods. So a folder named "feldmap", and immediately after there should be a mod.json file. Alternatively try the pyromod installation (drag and drop the file to 0AD shortcut to start the game)

  6. Feldmap

    in Scenario Design/Map making

    Posted

    I updated the mod for a26, there should be no change in map generations from the version in a25. If I finish the ongoing patch for balanced maps, I will update the mod again.

    The old versions will be kept available for downloading for compatibility with replays

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 2

  7. Map layout unbalanced?!

    in Help & Feedback

    Posted

    46 minutes ago, BeTe said:

    Thanks to you and Gurken. I was looking for Mainland Balanced before, but I thought it's map, not mod and couldn't find guide. I will try this definitely.

    Does it fix stone and metal mines? I see only Food and Wood are mentioned.

    But still, problem is that I can't play with people who doesn't have that mod... Should we report this to someone to include in next releases?

    In the mod I only fixed food (which is the most critical resource for competitive play in A25)

    36 minutes ago, BeTe said:

    But that guy who developed mod, couldn't he do it directly in basic 0AD?

    However, it is annoying, but I guess it's not the highest priority. It's just important to have it in "backlog". 

    I have the intention to improve the map by fixing all 4 resources, generalize it so all fitting existing maps can be balanced in the same way, and bring it to vanilla 0AD. I also gathered the support of the 0AD devs interested on the matter. I started a patch in order to merge it to vanilla 0AD. Unfortunately up to now I haven't got the motivation to actually finish it. Now please note that since the upcoming A26 was in feature freeze for quite a long time, there was no chance of the patch getting in that version. I imagine that the next release after that, A27, will be out at least quite a few months later, so hopefully I will regain my motivation by then.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  9. Discord phishing link, please do not click on it

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Feldfeld

    1 hour ago, hyperion said:

    The image is very inappropriate for "family". Clicking on an unexpected invite is unreasonable.

    If one suspects a security issue opening a ticket with Discord Inc is the appropriate turn of action. I agree the OP sounds very unlikely to be true but you never know.

    Oh actually I have seen quite a few reports of similar attacks in Discord, and in a long timeframe (months or years) so it sounded quite likely to me, I just wondered what was up then, since everything seems to happen inside a single application, and Discord is huge on top of that.

    EDIT: actually NVM,I was probably mixing up with free Nitro typical phishing attack, which have nothing to do with simply inviting in a discord server

  11. Why units are produced so fast?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I had an idea which is probably too crazy but you never know:

    - Civic centers start with a smaller territory and are cheaper
    - Buildings don't expand territory around them
    - Instead, they expand a little bit the territory of their central CC
    - There is a limit for each building type of the total territory expansion they give to 1 CC
    - Towers may be an exception to be the only building that expands territory around it, but it is not possible to build multiple nearby towers to reach a location linearly.
    - Maybe there could be a bonus if buildings are closer to their central CC, encouraging careful city planning.
    - Fortresses may be built in neutral territory and have some territory around it but this cannot be grown like with CCs
    - Civic centers could also start weaker but get stronger the more buildings are around it (with exception to initial CC to provide some defense)
    - A fully developped CC will still have reasonably smaller territory than current p3 CC
    - There will still be a solid minimum range between CCs encouraging players to develop their secondary cities instead of building many of them to grab all nearby resources.

    • Like 1

  12. Why units are produced so fast?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    36 minutes ago, Frederick_1 said:

    Getting a high population fast is rather a issue of resource gathering, batch production and getting multiple training facilities. The gathering speed of A.I-bots is changed when you change the heavyness of an opponent. When I am right an medium opponent gaters as fast as a human player. more easy ones gather slower and more hard opponents gather faster than entities of human player. 

    But with good economy management it is usually possible to outperform an A.I bot in population. Otherwise it would be very hard gaming against an opponent with more entities gathering resources faster than you.

    If you set them to agressive instead of balanced according to my experience they attack erlieer in the game but with less entities. A defensive opponent Attacks only with a big buntch.

    My experience so far.

    If the AI was better at population it wouldn't need this much bonuses!

    screenshot0059.thumb.png.526a4869857bc9416bc0b6a53e36f9b1.png

  13. Feldmap

    in Scenario Design/Map making

    Posted

    8 hours ago, SneakEP said:

    Pyromod doesn't let me open file from Explorer. Other one - like stated above - is not found. Help.

    Use the zip @Player of 0ADposted here:

    On 02/11/2021 at 4:52 PM, Player of 0AD said:

    For me it works. I don't know how to send a folder with linux, but try this zip archive ;)  If that does not work neither maybe we can try a rar archive or something like this, lets see.

    feldmap.zip 28 kB · 79 downloads

     

  15. Commit Feldmap to A26

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

    I wonder if it is possible to change the resource generation on mainland not to balance it perfectly but to prevent players from bottoming out on lottery (no extra hunt or berries). 

    The benefit of 3 berries versus 2 is much smaller than the benefit of 2 berries versus 1. I was wondering if there would be some way to add a food resource during generation to players that don't have either extra hunt or berries.

    I have observed that no one complains about enemies having extra food res unless they are at rock-bottom.

    Doing exactly like you mention (only add food if the current resource generation didn't give any) is pretty much not possible.
    Doing another solution consisting of always giving the food anyway works but is statistically different than previous solution. Doing it with balanced mainland-type generation is possible but I consider not worth the effort. Doing it like @maroder mentioned:
     

    3 hours ago, maroder said:

    Sure, you can just increase the number of starting berries and chicken and push the random spawns further away. Or randomly spawn more or less resources close to the CC. The question is if this is perceived as balanced or what option the multiplayer would prefer.

    is possible but I think it would look unnatural.

     

    Regardless I don't think this would eliminate the need of more strictly balanced maps, in my opinion in very high level 1v1s the additional food matters even if you already had some.

    • Like 1

  17. Commit Feldmap to A26

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, maroder said:

    ping @chrstgtr since they also had opinions on this iirc.

    Would you be ok with just replacing mainland with balanced mainland?

     

    8 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

    I would prefer not. Having everything balanced for every player makes things boring imo because it makes everything more predictable. I would rather have balanced teams, which currently does not exist. 

     

    It's also worth noting that although many players have balanced maps, balanced mainland is almost never played in TGs. 

    I could look into modifying balanced mainland to only place balanced resources when there are 2 players, and let the old generation otherwise

  18. Commit Feldmap to A26

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    6 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:

    By the way, if I'm not mistaken apple trees don't seem to count as starting food. It can happen that some player has additional apple trees while the other one doesn't have that extra food (Temperate biome). They don't get compensated with hunt or other berries neither.

    Yeah indeed, I ignored them by simplicity as they rarely give a significant advantage anyway. If I worked longer on balanced maps I would work on wood balance first, as some generations can get very imbalanced.

    • Like 3

  19. Commit Feldmap to A26

    in Game Development & Technical Discussion

    Posted

    Hello, thank you for your interest, if you want to advocate for inclusion of balanced resources in random maps I have already made a patch here: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4232

    This patch adds code for having the possibility of having balanced resources on many existing maps. It does some refactoring and as such that makes it also harder to review.
    Now there also is the possibility of adding just Mainland Balanced, which is a copy of Mainland that was edited in a quick and dirty way. Depending on dev team preference this could be added instead if they don't mind the code duplication that comes with it.

    • Thanks 1

    Balancing suggestions (including pikemen)

    in Balancing Discussions

    Posted

    14 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

    @Feldfeld these changes sound nice and I would be keen to test them. Another idea that has been going on that would address pikemen (and high damage ranged units) is attack-ground and/or attack-group. A25 battles have really been about how fast your ranged units will kill enemy melee and how long your melee units can survive against enemy ranged units. It certainly is time we considered the dps of melee units.

    I think even if these changes are tested, refined, and implemented, we would probably still want some kind of attack ground or attack-group. There is a recent and more productive discussion on this topic that has resulted in a mod that explores different shooting behavior of ranged units. It is quite interesting and we are trying to get players to test it.

    It could be nice to have it in the game. But I think my changes make sense both in the cases when attack ground is added or when it is not.

    I imagine for now it is difficult to see how attack ground will work out or what effect it will have on balance. It could nerf pikemen (but that doesn't change to the fact that they have quite a bad role), buff long range units vs short range units (so overall a nerf to ranged units as small range are better), and buff ranged units (by giving them a new option, meanwhile melee units get unchanged)

    • Like 1

    Balancing suggestions (including pikemen)

    in Balancing Discussions

    Posted

    Pikemen are, and have been for quite some time now an imbalanced unit. On top of that they have a role that is a bit unnatural (tank against all units), and by being so good at it they reduce the effectiveness of melee infantry champions, and maybe elephants. My suggestion to balance them is to make them strong against melee units, and weaker against ranged units. But for this to work players should be incentived to make melee units. This is done by nerfing ranged units. Here would be the list of changes (without specific values):

    - Significantly reduce pierce armor of citizen soldier pikemen, up to e.g. 3
    - Increase pikemen DPS to be at the level of sword and spear CS
    - (maybe, not sure) Reduce hack armor of citizen soldier pikemen to 8
    - Give macedonians a pierce armor civ bonus for their citizen soldier pikemen, something like +2 (it could be a tech)
    - Champion pikemen have the specificity of having their pierce armor greatly improved (compared to other champions), but their other stats not so much
    - Reduce ranged units damage
    - Do not change damage of defensive buildings (actually not obvious, maybe would require more thinking)
    - Remove HP bonus from promotion
    - Give ranged units a reload time bonus from promotion
    - Consider making promotion easier (less experience needed)
    - Nerf melee champions (they would surely be OP after these previous changes)

    All of these changes are linked, and either must be committed all together, or none of them should get in. I imagine cavalry would also be affected by these changes, but not sure how yet. Promotion changes are weakly linked (but still linked) and are intended to contribute solving another problem at the same time.

    This should also have the consequence of making battles slower (perhaps a bit more epic)

    If the community agree to these changes, as they are quite experimental the following could be good:

    - Invite dev team to perhaps release a new civ at the same time
    - Not having a release time too long for the version that comes after that. Preferably not longer than 6 months

    • Like 3

  24. 0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    I want to emphasize that any time and energy anyone puts into trying to make 0 A.D. better is appreciated. My point was just that there are different roles that any individual can fill based on the topic at hand. There are different "hats" you can wear. Some people are good at wearing different hats, some people aren't. Some people want to just wear 1 hat. All of that is fine, as long as folks recognize that the hats exist. ;) 

    Xposted from @leopard's post.

    Balance is most certainly not the reason Han chinese have not yet been added to the main game. I myself asked/advocated multiple times in the irc-dev channel for their inclusion, and it looks like the reason(s) they have not been added is something  else, although I don't know (if I learned) the exact reason(s)

    And really, the development power is quite low at the moment. There are about 2 developpers coding, and 2 more reviewing, all in their free time, I don't feel like this will ever get much done in the grand scheme of things.

    • Like 3

  25. On smurfing, ddos and malpractice in the multiplayer lobby

    in Introductions & Off-Topic Discussion

    Posted

    19 minutes ago, Reyhan said:

    This player has only played 8 games and won all of them. On average they won 25 points per game, which implies they have to beat very strong players (1400-1600) players every time to progress this quickly. No new player can reach 1501 without a single defeat, therefore this must be a pro player's second account, who wipes out any unsuspecting challengers in the lobby.

    I may not remember well but I'm pretty sure I did.

    Also the first few rated games give a lot of rating deviations so I think it's possible just by beating a few 1300s and 1400s.

    • Like 1
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