chrstgtr

But do we know how long those players have been playing? We know that there are a lot of downloads. How do we know that these aren’t new players that are continually coming in but not being retained?

This. I’ve said before that when I initially downloaded the game I played for a week or two until I realized how bad AI was. After that it wasn’t fun to play against the computer. Then I stopped playing for a month or two until I randomly decided to reopen the game and do MP (where I realized how green my kills were). If AI is only good enough to beat a brand new player for a week or two that’s a problem and means you can’t retain most single players for more than a brief few weeks. So I imagine the typical experience is 2 days of “this is impossible with how hard AI is,” followed by 2 days of “I’m getting the hang of it—this is fun,” followed by 2 days of “this is fun and I’m beating AI all the time now,” followed by a day of “is there anything new? This isn’t a challenge anymore.” That’s a really fast lifecycle for a game. A smarter AI is needed to build out the SP mode.

Another thing to consider is that the health tech didn't use to be universal (speed tech too? either way, I don't think any extra 1.6 in speed is really making a big difference). It used to only go to the cav civs (persia and sele) got the special health tech. Those civs were slow enough that the late game cav advantages weren't OP because players would be forced in constant fight before they could mass cav. I never liked this change from a23-->a24. It took away civ differentiation. And it was done to make all civs cav viable, which was already the case anyways.

Decreasing speed will look weird in my opinion. An alternative way to get at this is to make cav harder to mass. Make their train time longer and/or increase cost. The fact that players will just stop booming around 160 pop so that they can fill it with cav says that inf doesn’t attack fast enough to punish the player that purposely stops making pop. I’ve been saying this for awhile. I still think the tank problem exists in com mod. Cav of any type should not be able to run into spears without fear. I’m fine with champ cav being able to tank against sword or range as champ cav is supposed to easily kill those units. But spear is supposed to be the counter now, which just isn’t the case

You could want cancel in the case where you are unpacking but want to cancel the unpacking to be able to relocate them and aren't ready to actually move them yet. Seems unnecessary to keep for that weird scenario, though.

I'll admit I was one of the people saying that it should be attack instead of capture. But after the RC (many months ago) I hated attack instead of capture.

It's been happening since pre-2017. There used to be a workaround where you would join via IP. It would also allow you to replace players if someone leaves mid game. But this workaround got closed in a22. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/3549 #3549 seems really unnecessary and causes more problems than it's worth. But I digress It is also worth noting that while players sometimes get temporarily locked out of games because their rating disappear there are also other instances where games get permanently ruined because a player initially joins a lobby without any rating. Then the game believes they have no rating. But if they drop and try to return their rating appears (as it is supposed to). As a result, the game doesn't recognize them and they are unable to rejoin a game unless this (relatively rare) bug reoccurs.

I think a better idea would be to get rid of the building requirement to go p3. It would open up more build orders. You could do forgo any blacksmiths to get quick siege and push with a weak army. Or you could build a bunch of blacksmiths to get a strong army with multiple upgrades. Or maybe you do something in between. Right now, people are building a bunch of blacksmiths because it’s the cheapest way to get to p3. Getting rid of the building requirement would eliminate that motivation. If everyone still spams blacksmiths then we know we have a problem with the cost relative to its actual value and could increase it then (or increase the cost of upgrade techs). Good point. This is related to my discussion above. Probably also needed. Your two ideas with a little modification would be fine with me (as stated they’re too good to pass up, which kind of eliminates the “should I build it” choice) It happens more often than you’d think. Just two nights ago we played a game where low wood defined most of the game. I also think some of this is the tail wagging the dog. Some of those low wood biomes aren’t played because trade is annoying. If trade was fixed we’d probably play more biomes than just temperate and fall.

Also agree. But an extra 1K in food isn’t a hill I will die on.

A shocking suggestion from @wowgetoffyourcellphone!

Strong agree. I also think it should be immediately researched. Having to wait an extra 2 mins (or whatever the amount of time is) doesn’t make sense when the pop bonus is the only reason to ever build a wonder in the first place. The need for it to be immediately available is even stronger if basically roll the tech cost into the cost of the structure itself.

Eh, I think this is really bad logic. To the extent civs are unfair, we should work to make them more fair—not introduce more disadvantages. On most maps, in most games, everyone should get first two eco upgrades for every resource as soon as they can, which for the second upgrade should be immediately upon reaching p2. It’s the basic boom. So, this only hurts slinger civs. I think you’re conceding why metal is also unfair. Metal also makes other strategies more difficult (I.e., swords, siege heavy strategies, and champs). I don’t think we should make strategies that are already hard to pull off more difficult by further limiting their supply to a scarce resource. I don’t know why you’re discounting food so much. It’s the slowest gathered but also the most spent. It’s also the most likely resource for someone to have trouble with in p3 and force their resignation (people resign because they run out of food more often than when they resign because they run out of stone or metal, which are the most scarce resources on most maps). If someone has too much food in p2 it’s because they’re making mistakes elsewhere.

That unfairly penalizes slinger civs that depend on a finite resource, though. Why not make it so that it is more fair to all civs? Food does that. Or make the cost different based on civ. So add stone if it is not a slinger civ and add wood if it is a slinger civ. This just says that the total res cost is too low. What you want could be accomplished with just adding wood cost. The real problem is that forges are the most helpful p2 building AND the cheapest. It’s pretty easy to just increase the cost of forges so that they are no longer cheaper than all the other buildings without taking up a finite resource that some civs rely on.

Honestly, yes. And easy fix in p2 is to make them build your p2 buildings. Any Savannah map, especially if normal sized or smaller. Other biomes too. It would happen more often but people freak out if you ever choose a biome that isn’t temperate (or whatever). I guess. I just threw out a number without looking at current cost. You’re right, it should probably be something more like 50m

I find them to be different. I actually tend to prefer Stronghold. Ambush tends to have more cliffs, which can be good or bad depending on what you are looking for. It leads itself to towering and "ambushing" of units passing through valleys. I tend to disfavor Ambush because the cliffs tend to create chokepoints that are good for turtling and impossible to attack if your civ doesn't have catapults. Stronghold tends to be flatter and have more hilltops, which, unlike cliffs, can be attacked from all sides. It can also be more or less flat with mountains dividing the terrain. I've always found the random map generation to be too variable for both Ambush and Stronghold. Sometimes you get an awesome map. Other times you want to do a quick re for a better generation. I think these differences are significant enough to keep both maps. It's not like Hyranccian Shores, Kerela, and Phoencian Levant, which are all essentially the same map with just a larger and larger portion of the map being excess water that doesn't get used (and a random island for Phoencian Levant that isn't worth colonizing). Nonetheless, I think most people will confuse them.