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Boudica

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Everything posted by Boudica

  1. We must say that realism isn't really the top priority; playability and enjoyability are. Rams attacking units aren't any less realistic than elephants attacking buildings for example, but we have it this way so that civilizations known to use war elephants don't also need to have rams available, which would make them unfairly more versatile. Anyway, this one thing regarding rams has been changed in borg's mod.
  2. Notice that there are basically no ranged units in the list. Ranged units typically only deal pierce attack, which is completely useless against rams. I've often seen people trying to destroy rams with a bunch of archers and that's when they start to complain. You'll usually have access to either citizen-soldier sword infantry (Romans, Iberians, Kushites), cavalry (Celts, Athens, Persia), or both (Mauryans), so it's a good idea to have some of those prepared when you expect a ram attack. There are some civilizations that either need a special Town Phase building for swordsmen (military colony for Ptolemies, mercenary barracks for Carthage), or you might need to get to the City Phase first for better ram counters (Macedonians only have cavalry spearmen as a usable ram counter in the Town Phase, which can make it harder for them to defend against rams). Once you get to the City Phase, you can make stronger counters. Rams are perfect as long as they aren't destroyed first by the enemy rams. An elephant wins a direct fight against a ram but it can't be garrisoned in a fortress for a surprise ungarrison (and yeah, we are only talking about the melee elephant, not the elephant archer, which is as useless as other ranged units). Champion swordsmen and spearmen are very good but slow to train and expensive. A hero swordsmen can one-handedly become deadly to several rams. If you had the possibility and time to make catapults, they can destroy rams too, but only if you have more of them and if they can finish the job before the ram gets to them. If you failed to prepare a strong ram counter, there are still several backup options. Spearmen are somewhat usable but significantly worse than swordsmen. Women can destroy one or two unprotected rams quite efficiently (better than pikemen), but they die fast if there are any enemy soldiers near. Slingers are one of the few ranged units that are usable too (they deal a small amount of crush damage), but only if you have a lot of them.
  3. Thanks for the summary. I'll just add to some of the points: This currently only happens for those forced orders but still it perhaps shouldn't. I'm not really sure if this depends on the stance but I don't think so. Soldiers behave in the same way in that when you make them attack a certain unit, they will do so and even follow it as necessary. We should discuss if the catapult should start moving if the selected target wasn't in its range at the beginning. Otherwise such an action would result in a no-op and the attack cursor better be grayed out for targets out of range. Regular units can't be easily told what target type to pick either, so perhaps it is a broader issue. For units, we have the attack move (with possible modifiers), but using an attack move doesn't sound right for catapults that aren't supposed to move while attacking. The item that is possibly missing: Ordering a catapult to move while it's unpacking doesn't cancel the unpacking process and waits for it to complete. This seemed to be addressed in one of the existing tickets. EDIT: Oh yeah, and regarding the instant cancellation, I understand that it's how it works in AoE but we don't take that as a relevant argument for it, right? I'd look at what looks more realistic here unless there are good reasons not to. I've even considered a similar thing regarding buildings several times (going slightly off topic now). An important part of the game currently is deleting some buildings before they get captured to 50%. But isn't that a weird thing to have in the game? It comes to mind that the destruction of own buildings might require workers to be assigned to the job. Similar to construction but faster and actually very close to attacking that building. This is actually quite a different issue but it's similar in the way that something is instant and it might better not.
  4. Yeah, I know my initial post is quite long (and I tried to make it as short as possible). But let my quote myself: So I didn't suggest to let the catapult finish its current action instead of cancelling. I even later mark that as weird behavior that happens when you try to move an unpacking catapult. My idea was that if you start unpacking and get to i.e. 75% progress, then you can get to 0% in the same time by ordering the catapult to pack. You mostly only say which state you want the weapon to be in and it gets there smoothly from whatever state it is in. So neither jumping from 75% to 0% instantly (as cancelling does), neither going further up to 100% and only then going back to 0% (because there is no reason to).
  5. Thanks for the replies. So it seems we can agree on some of the points. And the bugs seem to be known, we just might to check on the existing tickets. Thanks for mentioning the unit following problem. I suppose it would be taken care of by omitting the automatic packing and unpacking (while an explicit move or attack command can still have a starting implied packing or unpacking prerequisite). Not sure how to handle the case when you try to attack a target that is out of range though. I guess it shouldn't then be possible to do this to maintain consistency. If the catapult moves automatically to have the target in range, why shouldn't it start moving again if a unit goes out of the range later? I'm not sure what your reasons are to keep the cancel command in place. What do you think about the logical problem of unpacking an almost packed catapult instantly by just cancelling? How to handle the case when there are multiple catapults with different states in the selection? I don't know if I should use the unpack icon or the cancel packing icon. I see several problems with the cancel icon and I don't really see an advantage of it. @Stan`, I guess standground is the default, perhaps you meant passive instead? I'd just think that the various stances probably don't make much sense for catapults anyway. Maybe there should be one when the catapult just doesn't pick targets by itself (passive) and then the default (standground). That reminds me of another issue I forgot to mention. I don't know how the attack-move commands work for catapults but it could be useful to tell the catapults to target units in their range. Perhaps this also is solved by targeting areas. Catapults are especially powerful against units but the problem is that it's hard to make them attack units only when there are buildings near.
  6. I initially decided to write this all up because I was looking for a smaller issue I could work on myself. But I guess some things need to be fixed in the development process first before I could contribute anything? When I first worked on something here, elexis helped me with everything I need. I heard him say that he'd like to invest a lot of his time into the development again. But guess what? He's been incredibly frustrated with the situation that has been around here recently. I don't even know who I'm talking to now. I just wanted to show that there are now more people that want to invest their time to make the game better but they can't. And I had the feeling that there is a lot of useless ego involved in this. Could you just put the ego behind in the name of making the game better? I'd personally be glad if elexis got more power in what gets into the game and if we listen to him more. He has incredible knowledge about the code and he puts great effort into making his contributions the best they can get. People from the player community would probably vote for elexis to become the next project leader. Or I sure would. Please unfrustrate elexis for me and let us work together.
  7. Hello, I've been thinking about why the catapult behavior makes people mad and what could be done about it. I think there is a thing that could be considered a bug, which is probably easy to fix. Another thing is the UI design for siege packing itself. I've discussed a few times how I'd expect it to work differently but I haven't written it down and I'm not sure if there is any issue for it. So where do we start? To me the ability to cancel packing or unpacking instantly doesn't make sense. The idea is that the packing process takes time. How is it possible to go from a 99% packed catapult to an unpacked one instantly, while from a 100% unpacked it takes a few seconds? So what follows is simple. We only need two icons: one for getting the catapult to a packed state and another for getting it to the unpacked state. If the packing process is in progress, the process just changes the direction as appropriate (0% is packed, 100% unpacked). If all catapults in the selection are in the same state, the icon can be grayed out. OK, so that was mostly for the UI design. But what is the single thing that makes people lose catapults and rage quit a game? It's the automatic unpacking and the weird behavior when trying to move the catapult. When enemy units get in the range, the catapult starts unpacking. That sounds about right. Except that at this point that process can't really be cancelled by the cancel icon as it just starts all over again instantly (there are still targets in range, right?). You first have to change the unit stance to passive, otherwise the cancel icon is just for frustration. Then you order the catapult to move and what happens? It continues to unpack, just so that it could start packing up again for moving. I think that the solution to the other problem is simple. I intentionally started with the idea to remove the cancel icon entirely because then we don't have to discuss what should it do in this case. If the cancel still is a thing, ordering the catapult to move sure should automatically cancel the ongoing unpacking because it's the fastest way that gets the thing done. With my first idea implemented, moving the catapult would mean ordering it to change to a packed state (as explained) with the move command chained. This eliminates people clicking on the cancel icon because they wanted the exact opposite of making the catapult unpack. To sum up, I think this is a small bug of not stopping the unpack process automatically when ordering a catapult to move. There is a third note to this discussion. I'd suggest to remove automatic unpacking entirely. If you want to have catapults ready to move, you can have that. If you have moved them to a position for attack, you decide to unpack them. I think it happens very often that the unpacking starts when you don't want it. Even with my first idea implemented, if you ordered the catapult to pack, it could start unpacking automatically just after that. I imagine that handling the siege weapons would be much more pleasant if they just simply didn't unpack by themselves at all.
  8. That automatic resign isn't feasible. Perhaps if it was, it could be used for any rated game and there wouldn't be quitter issues. But having the rank temporarily replaced with a warning is probably something most players would want to avoid. And it's a new idea in this field as far as I know.
  9. That kind of humiliation from having QUITTER shouting right in your nickname sounds like a fun idea to me. It would probably go like this:
  10. Right, the title is a bit BuzzFeed-like. I actually played too but only in sandbox mode, mainly as a moral support. You see that even the hated civilizations can be played well. 2019-06-17_ValihrAnt-1vs2.zip
  11. Oh hi and – thank you! I see it took a longer time to come up with a system that put me on the first place. I don't really know what the method is, I just really hope it's not alphabetical. Well, actually, I think I understand what you've done there. Thanks for putting the extra time into the evaluation because it helped make the whole event even more interesting. I've heard many people say they watch or enjoy these games (and not just the players that liked to see themselves on TV). Not every tournament series so far caught on that well, so we can't but congratulate you on your work. Having said that, I'm somewhat glad I can take a break this weekend.
  12. Welcome to the forums! I'm glad to hear you like the game. I think a lot of us have a similar story about their way to 0 A.D. The game is still in alpha, but that currently mostly means you can get a new and slightly different version from time to time. There are quite a few structure or unit models that haven't been made available in the vanilla version, but there are now several good mods that make use of them. Vanilla is more conservative with a goal to keep the game relatively balanced and playable. There are still some more technical issues that are slowly getting worked on, the worst of which is currently the lag that appears when there are many concentrated units. Anyway, these issues don't really make the game any less addictive. As someone who has spent thousands of hours playing, I can be trusted on that one. GL, HF!
  13. I'm not an expert, but doesn't the game tell you that the password you should type is "incorrect"? Remember to always read the messages carefully. You are welcome.
  14. Unban camelius, please. Can't you see he has withdrawal symptoms? No games, no eaes.
  15. Boudica

    Emp replay's

    Nice game, thanks for uploading. You committed a lot to that early raid. The middle player has a hard role in a 3-vs.-3 game, and kristian seemed to always be where he was needed. On the other hand, there was a showcase of an absolute lack of game sense by the Dancing Queen, who mostly only danced his team to the ultimate defeat.
  16. Well, to be technically correct, there actually are girls in 0 A.D. Only they cost 50 Food each.
  17. Rauls's bad connection spoiled your photo.
  18. That might be the your best contribution so far. Sorry, but someone had to say this. Barking random balance suggestions out at us without any robust reasoning isn't but belittling the work of the developers. As if everything is as easy as just fixing one value, and what is taking us so long? Then when people prove you wrong, you just come up with different, equally bad suggestion. If you really want to help the balance get better, I'd suggest helping borg test his mod. He's more experienced with this and he's put like 1000 times more of his time to make it all click. Let's help him get the changes into the next release.
  19. Great commentary as always! I know, the balancing is harder when the level of some players differs between games, but perhaps it's better to let someone experienced that isn't playing make the teams. I was all for what Feldfeld suggested, even though I don't think it would have made much difference. I don't think that the balance complaints after the game were very legitimate. Partly because the complainers agreed before the game, partly because many things could have been better by our team: We talked about making some early warships, but no one made any until borg had killed our fishing ships. Hannibal managed to save it by his naval skills. Half of our team didn't really make any economy upgrades (and let's not include my baskets here, I had great food income and I wanted that wood for camels). The big push at darkcity's side wasn't very early and we wasted time on the hard defenses, while darkcity even managed to get a fortress up. It wasn't really my plan to attack from the south without any siege weapons. Anyway, it was a good game overall. I liked the map selection because anything is better than playing Mainland all the time. And yeah, I'm just saying all of this to finish it in a positive tone.
  20. I already talked about the resign time resource exchange problem above, @ffffffff. There shouldn't even be a need to address that case specifically with good weighting. As a simplified example, imagine just counting the area below the resources-sent curve in the graph. Increasing the total near the end wouldn't affect the score because the game ends at that moment. I think that when it's a team game, the score should stop counting when the first player of the losing team resigns. That could help eliminate score-hunting style of playing. I've been working on that idea a bit more, but maybe we should do it properly and improve the system that is present in the game instead. There are some parts I don't know how to address yet. When someone is rushed, they take damage for their team, but it's currently not reflected. Such player might seem to play worse but it could be the exact opposite (they get rushed because they are good). I still think that the system used in this thread is pretty decent. It could eventually be replaced with something that is much more complex (rather than fine-tuning), but that new system is going to take more time to make. For now, I'd just suggest to sort by the average rating (as someone already said), because it makes me appear better.
  21. There isn't even a need to rush into the town phase. Other than that, yeah.
  22. Based on the fact that it resulted in a rage quit, I expected this to be a game worth watching. I wasn't disappointed.
  23. I'm glad to hear that you liked my lighthouse, Alistair.
  24. You said it correctly. It might be a good suggestion to include some more info about the system. Not sure if there is a good place for it directly in the game manual.
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