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.

Agree. Disagree on metal. It's too scarce and the upgrades already cost metal. But I do think it should cost more. I would add a food cost because it is the slowest to produce (yet is infinite so it is just a time trade-off) and would force a player to forgo pop to spam blacksmiths. This feels really cheap. The problem with traders is that they quickly become OP, so you don't want them to become too easy to spam. When resources get depleted on a map this is particularly true. I've played multiple games where the first player to get like 5 traders consistently safe wins. If traders are super cheap, then there will be a very narrow window in which you could effectively respond to your enemy switching to traders (either by raiding or making traders of your own). Because of that, I would keep metal cost higher (like 100m). An alternative fix would be to keep the cost the same but increase the min yield of traders. Right now, traveling between your base and your closest ally yields something like 4 resources. That is so little that it never makes sense to trade unless you are traveling super far distances. Increasing the min yield will make "safe" trading over short distances more viable.

@Gurken Khan your dislike for a lot of maps is your dislike of the strategy involved, which is what make them fun (generally a need to expand if the game lasts longer than one push). The spawn spots are issues because the spots are so different from each other with some much, much better than others. Also, the positioning doesn’t have teammates aren’t next to each other (could be good or bad, but def not balanced).

See the attack area thread. Sniping exists. We should just implement attack area.

Thoughts. If you disagree with any I can explain. There's a pretty strong association between maps being based on a real place and the map being unenjoyable. Great Ambush Archipelago Continent Hyraccian Shores Mainland Cross Foothills Frontier Slopes Stronghold Unknown Wrench Fun African Plains Alpine Lakes Alpine Mountains (but basically the same as alpine valley) Alpine Valley (but basically the same as alpine mountains) Ardennes Forest Atlas Mountains Corinthian Isthmus (I personally hate it but others like it) Deep Forest Flood Gear Guadalquivir River Gulf of Bohemia Harbor Hell's Pass Lake (basically the same as Harbor, though. I would make these consolidated the way that Gulf of Bohemia is for frozen lake) Latium (I personally hate this map but others like it) Lorraine Plain Ngorongo (a bit unbalanced, though) Oasis (I personally hate this map but others like it) Persian Highlands (could use more wood, though. If it had more wood it would be a better version of Ngorongo) Pyrienne Sierra Ratumacus Rhine Marshlands Saharian Oasis (I personally hate this map but others like it) Schwarzwald (very similar to deep forest) Meh Arctic Winter Brittanic Road Cantabrian Highlands Canyon Kerela (just a worse version of Hyrancian Shores) Lion's Den Marmara Migration Neareastern Badlands Phoencian Levant (Just a much, much worse version of Hyrancian Shores) Rivers (basically Harbor but more ship focused) Sahel Watering Holes Syria (getting close to feeling the pain) Nile Feeling the pain Belgian Uplands (borderline painful but would be fun if wood wasn't awful) Botswana Haven (borderline painful but would be fun if wood wasn't awful) Caledeonian Meadows Fields of Meroe (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but if that was fixed it could be fun) Hellas (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but fixing that still won't make it fun) India (could be fun if wood wasn't awful) Lower Nubia (the spam spot positioning on this are nonsense but fixing that still won't make it fun) River Archipelago Sythian Rivulet Wild Lake (basically the same as other good maps except it throws AI units in to make it a bad map) Painful Anatolian Plateau Northern Lights Pompeii Snowflake Searocks Volanic Land (also basically the same as Pompeii) AI Maps Danubius Jebel Barkal Survival of the Fittest Gimmick Maps Empire Extinct Volcano Fortress Polar Sea (but really belongs in the painful category) Sahel (it's a trade map) "Atlas" Maps Mediterranean (the spam spot positioning on this map are nonsense and make balancing impossible) Red Sea (the spam spot positioning on this map are nonsense and make balancing impossible) "Creator" Maps RMS Test Wall Demo Naval (unplayable right now because of issues with ships but still deserving of their own category and shouldn't be deleted because hopefully ships become playable in the future) Aegean Sea Bahrain Corsica vs Sardinia Cycladic Archipeliago Dodecanese Elephantine English Channel Island Stronghold Islands

But that isn’t how any else of the cav-inf balance works. Less resources win on CS-CS and champ-champ balance. Needing a 6:1 (or whatever the exact number is) numerical advantage of what are supposed to be COUNTER units is silly. Add on top of that cav can easily just to run away from a massive army and you effectively have no counter system

Yeah. But there are two things at play. Spear counter vs inf cav AND spear counter vs champ cav. I’m saying CS Spear vs CS cav feels fine but CS spear vs champ cav isn’t. It’s very frustrating to see spears get slaughtered by melee champ cav when spear are supposed to be some sort of counter

It’s more than just speed. CS spear inf also get destroyed when fighting head on. Maybe it would make sense to give CS spears a slight additional bonus against champ cav to prevent the use of champ cav as a meat shield against CS units

Yeah. I’m just saying, unless you’re raiding with one unit (or asleep during the raid), non-random ai buildings isn’t countering champs. The whole non random behavior is another discussion that involves other factors. I just don’t think it involves champs

This makes sense. Champ cav shouldn't be able to capture barracks so fast. This isn't having any impact. I also don't think changing building AI is the correct way to deal with champ cav being too strong (changing champ cav is). But that's a different topic.

@real_tabasco_sauce I think basically every map with water should have a bunch of fish unless there is some compelling reason not to. Compelling reasons include: (1) the water is extremely easy to defend and cannot be rushed (e.g., marsh rhinelands, which has tiny ponds that can be easily defended with a CC, towers, etc) and (2) a strategic reason why you don't want to encourage fishing (e.g., oasis, which already emphasizes control of the central water). Otherwise, I think fishing should be a compelling option anytime there is water.