chrstgtr

I always thought this was a really dumb change from a24 In a23 (and before), only Persia and Sele had the cav health upgrade. This made sense as those were the cav civs. Cav was still playable by other civs but it wasn’t OP. Persia and Sele had a true cav advantage but because they’re slower civs and going cav (vs inf) is slow, Sele and Persia never felt OP. Then in a24, all civs got the cav health upgrade. Suddenly, cav became the meta because all civs had access to OP cav that was much better than inf. In a24, Sele and Persia got the spear champ cav health upgrade, which was somehow both not useful enough (it only applied to one type of cav that is hard to produce so these cav civs were mostly the same as every other civ’s cav) and too useful (made spear champ cav, which was already the strongest unit in the game even stronger). tldr: the cav health upgrade shouldn’t exist for all civs and should replace the champ cav health upgrade for Persia and Sele. It will help with infvs cav balance and make Sele and Persia more unique while not being OP

Could look at avg score for the game. For example, there appears to be one game where havran and I both had high scores. Since both of us had such high scores I imagine that boom is actually less impressive than our other booms on the list

Yeah, they’re used. But the way that with eyes used kind of elicits an eye roll, so the situation might actually be worse than you realize. 99% of time they’re used to just frustrate the attacking player. Walls confuse pathing and give an extra object for siege to attack before moving onto a more useful building. So they have an entirely passive existence Wall typically don’t serve any active purpose of making defenses stronger, which is what you probably want them to do. the proposal might make them less likely to be used in the annoying passive way since they’ll be easier to destroy (but they’ll also be easier to spam, so maybe not). To be determined if the proposal does anything to make them better for building active defenses

I think he meant the turtling meta isn’t desirable. Also, walls aren’t useless. They do a good job of slowing an invading army and are regularly built for that purpose. Making them more easily destroyed helps eliminate that “build to only frustrate” meta that walls are in.

This is why I think any change should be only done to the inf spear modifier. Against cav I think this is just a such obvious solution. Almost everyone agrees that champ cav are too strong against cs spear inf. Any other change would mess with other balance. It’s targeted and gets what everyone thinks should change.

Eh. 10% isn’t that much in the cav vs one discussion—cav is already much faster than inf. Getting the Brit speed hero doesn’t suddenly let make inf much better than cav with the tech, for example. Functionally, the tech means you can raid other side of map for an extra second or two before returning to your side to fight inf. That extra second or two doesn’t change that much. You also see people forget speed tech and still become dominant because they massed champ cav. That shows there is more going on than the speed tech. the cav vs spear example you give isn’t representative of real fights. In real fights, you have a bunch of range killing that spear too. It’s also pretty common that you see a player get a “good exchange on res” with spear vs cav but can’t keep up fight because their pop dropped so much and the backing enemy range units are able to overrun the remaining base honestly, haven’t seen any difference with the popularity of sele or Persia champ cav. Sele and Persia have both always been relatively unpopular (esp compared to the civs you mention) bc Persia/sele are slow civs. Persia is just played a little more now because people figured out that immortals are good.

I don't like the tech either. But I don't think it is a big deal as the % increase is just too small. It really only matters in cav vs cav fights. The problem is that champ cav can beat their supposed counters (spears) in straight up fights. Until that changes, champ cav will always be the best unit and optimal strategy will require players to spam as many champ cav as possible.

This isn’t how players use them, though.

Not really. They're interrelated but not the same. A slow paced game can still be a difficult game. And a fast paced game can still be an easy game.

Sounds like your gripe isn’t with the game pacing but with difficulty.

Great. I always find these stats interesting. It would be amazing if we can consistently retain these users.

I don't have MP stats. Anecdotally, it is pretty clear the MP community hated a24. There were a ton of old players that stopped playing. There was an effort to stay in a23. Complaints about the alpha were endlessly expressed. Etc. Enabled feedback is a datapoint. There isn't a reason to think that either SPs or MPs are more likely to enable feedback than the other. To the extent that the feedback stats are more representative of the SP community a24 was also a massive failure there. It's also certain that the MP community couldn't drive that entire drop off. So there were definitely uninstalls. All this is to say that the "let's break it before we maybe fix it" is one that losses players.

That isn't what the data says. The data shows that the number of players basically fell off a cliff with a24.

That's because sahara isn't actually low wood. It's pretty medium wood. It's most defined by being high food--more date trees and usually good hunt. It also has slightly more mines. If you want to see low wood--see savannah. Very low wood. Lots of mines. A map like wild lake has less differences between biomes. There are trees around the lake regardless of biome. The biome effects are most noticeable on something like mainland.

Look harder. I found this in under a minute using a targeted search. The thread doesn't discuss why most players want current speed times (probably because it was widely accepted that current train times are desirable). Actually, only one person pushes back on shorter train times. It was you. You don't give any reason for wanting longer train times other than noting that other games have longer train times. Notably, your latest reason for wanting longer train times--to reduce spam--is directly refuted by...yourself: when you say "The problem with changing training times is that it does nothing to fix the fundamental issue [with spam]." This is quick way to lose the player base. After greatly increasing the player count during COVID, the player base almost immediately decreased with a24's release and it hasn't recovered. In the face of criticism, some used your exact logic to justify a24's changes. It's obviously a failed strategy. Purposely "ruining" 0ad would be a disaster