chrstgtr

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

Your small sample size is very unrepresentative of the current meta. Vali is so much better than the vast majority of people that his play style is very different compared to how most people play, including the very best players. So all your conclusions that follow aren't valid. To be honest you haven't really explained it. Instead, you've bounced around from idea to idea and now, for the first time, seem to be complaining about some unit spam meta instead of any of the other things you've previously mentioned. I've given you reasons why longer train times failed in a24 and you keep saying some variation of "well, go figure out a way to deal with it." No wonder why you haven't address any of my concerns. Also, players hating it is a reason in itself. There are countless threads where players say that devs don't listen to players and failure is the reason why they are leaving the game, the game struggles gain a following, the game isn't better, etc. Almost every time devs come back and asks "what do you mean" or "can you give me an example, we never do that." Well, here we are again.

This. Everything that OP talked about in his last post isn't about clicks. The vision says 0AD shouldn't be "the most clicks wins." I don't think anyone reasonable wants that (see any thread on sniping). Players are limited in the number of their clicks in early game because they simply do not have a robust enough economy to do more than a few things. And, in the grand scheme of things, 0AD isn't a "the most clicks wins" type of game compared to other games within RTS and other genres. Again, if the game is moving too fast for anyone, I suggest to simply change the game speed to .75x speed or something lower. Changing the the actual train times messes with the underlying balance of the game and no one has put forward an argument on why that should change or how it would avoid a24's problems.

I’m not listing everything out because everything you’re saying has already been considered. Look at the old threads. The player base simply rejected it. I don’t understand why you’re trying to retread this four alphas later You say teams should just come up with better strategies to avoid losing their full armies. Guess what, they did. It led to players avoiding battles and trying to only engage in their bases surrounded around their defenses. It led to a complete turtle fest that, again, players rejected. This is the first post where you’ve complained about multitasking in early game. You actually previously made the exact opposite complaint and said the problem was in late game with houses. But guess what, users already had thoughts about this last time too. They said slow train times made early game particularly boring because not much happens in early game—there are fewer units, buildings, eco decisions, fights, and other things to do, so players can actually have more time than they need early on. We see this in MP games where casual conversation is common in early games and then slowly disappears as more units, buildings, fights, and decisions present themselves in later game. It is very clear that a24 was simply a bad alpha. User complained. Then they left. Game hasn’t recovered. If you really want a slower paced game you can change game speed (something I’ve never seen done in a MP game but I have seen 2x speed on several occasions).

There’s no need for speculation or a revisionist history on why slower train times failed in a24. Comments were very clear that the player base doesn’t like a slower paced game. Users also noted that slower train times were extremely unforgiving. You couldn’t recover if lost one big fight since you couldn’t rebuild your population quickly enough to defend against an invading army.

Longer train times was implemented in a24. It was widely disliked so it was reversed.

Is Pyrenees mountains a skirmish map? That one is fun. Otherwise none are really played.

If hero changes are made to discourage luring then these don’t make sense. First one makes luring worse. Second one make luring easier. Second one will also have knock on effects of making it harder to ever kill heroes. I would just do the first and adjust to appropriate level. On this, I also like your idea from the other night where hero would be a non preferred unit and attacking units would refocus on preferred classes when in range. This changes the idea of ministers from being an eco unit that has some fighting ability to just being another fighting unit. That’s fine but it’s a pretty big shift in the unit’s intended purpose (I would personally go the other way and make them more like movable Kush pyramids but whatever). with that said, some thoughts on the changes… P1: This change makes no sense to me. It just makes the minister suicide rush stronger (it’s already strong). This doesn’t change how you’ll play with ministers or how many ministers you’ll make sine can’t be trained in p1. If you want to give ministers this buff just give it in p2. P2: so a total speed of 19 m/s? That seems really fast/OP. It would be quicker than every(?) other unit. At this point, you’re basically just making the minister a faster and stronger version of fanatics that’ll be able to take down buildings easily in p3. P3: fine but see above re speed. I generally like the idea of having quick moving units that can quickly kill buildings but others may disagree. I also think this idea would be better served by just creating a different unit that does these things instead of changes the Han unit from an anti unit raider to becoming an anti building raider (ie, why shouldn’t there be an anti unit raider in p3?). I can see pluses and minuses with these. They just need to be tested.

A lot of the prettiest maps cause lag. Bottlenecks aren't popular, so a map like mainland gives free range of movement. Same reason why Continent is the most popular water map

Every post ever from you

Statements like the one you quoted above are also just not true. 0AD's representation of civs isn't a "snapshot." For example, Ptol is in no way a "snapshot. Ptol's heroes are its founder (305-282 BC), a middle ruler (221-204 BC), and its final ruler (51-30 BC). That is not a snapshot--it's literally its entire existence. Compare this to the Roman heroes who lived after the first ptol hero and way before the last ptol hero. The heroes for Gauls spans an even wider period. The rules and historical features are applied in an entirely inconsistent manner.

It is the Punic Wars period. I think it's a silly restriction that leaves out the most popular Roman figures. But here we are.