chrstgtr

You’re arguing against a straw man. Very few people want to eliminate things the way you’re saying and most that do get ignored (for good reason). The loudest the multiplayer community ever was was right after a24 got released and a lot of that was because features got eliminated. Note, when that happened a lot of SPs and devs initially dismissed the complaints before coming around later. The most you hear now from the MP community now is that champ cav is OP, which no one has really found solution to. The other recent thing I’ve heard is reza saying fana is OP to which most people told him he was wrong. MPs will regularly say things like certain techs like “spies”are useless but even there it’s not like the SP is saying how great they are.

I like the way you have it now. (I generally don’t like techs that have a negative effect on something else but I recognize that’s mostly a personal pet peeve)

100% agree. I actually suggested something similar the other day in another thread for how we could improve Ptol’s library. I don’t think it has to be a paired tech per se but it makes a lot of sense for it to be one. Maybe these meta techs are places where paired techs work well in general. Nice to see you implemented something similar.

“Purists” say that because people often come with assumptions that are just plain wrong. You can see that in this thread. Multiplayers often have this perspective because they naturally see more strategies than any single player can. In one game, a multiplayer can see 8 different strategies while a single player can only see one. Multiplayers also push one another to become better in a way that doesn’t exist with SP. It’s not unreasonable to say learn what already exists instead of crowing for something “new” that already existed and might break the game for others.

I think they theoretically could make sense. For example, if you started out as a base Hellenic civ that you couple develop into Athens or Sparta with unique features then that would be pretty cool. But for simple techs I think it takes away from the cat and mouse game where players adjust their strategies in response to the other because tech pairs, by definition, eliminate future choices. One of the main problems I have is that people want new, novel features and never consider whether those novel features actually make any sense.

Which is actually an appropriate suggestion if the problem he say exists actually existed. I think more expensive eco techs with shorter train times probably make sense at some phase(s). Right now, you get little benefit by forgoing techs to phase faster and that shouldn’t be the case. My big point is that tech pairs are a really awful “fix” to basically any problem.

No, YOU miss the point. Players often oscillate between getting a tech in one game and forging it in the next. You are complaining about a lack of strategies when you don’t use ones that are already available. Literally none of this requires a tech pair instead of just adding more techs. When you research a tech matters. You all both looking at this from a one dimensional view of if it can be researched and ignore all timing dimensions.

Even at baseline gather rate, you would still be much slower if everyone else has an access to a tech to make berries faster. Tech pairs sole purpose is to eliminate this choice, which is why I entirely dislike them. Everyone doesn’t research every technology. Even for the techs that most people do get, they don’t get them at the same time. I suggest you look inward and question whether you are yet to discover other strategies that other players have. And, if the situation you describe did occur (which it hasn’t) then you could just adjust cost/benefits so that it doesn’t happen every time for every player.

It’s also why I dislike how you can only train a hero once. Different heroes might be best at different phases of the game and I shouldn’t lose the ability to adjust back and forth within the game. I can understand if your enemy kills your hero but I am talking about a situation where I voluntarily want to change heroes back and forth.

It isn’t. You have lost the choice to do that and the strategy associated with that. Every civ has the berry tech. It was in the game for many alphas. If I chose the hunting tech, which make berry gathering slow, and you later discover that there are a lot of harvestable berries on the map then you will be much slower than all other players that did the berry tech. Pareto is if you just add a hunting tech that makes hunting faster without eliminating the ability to be berries. As a principle matter, I don’t like anything that hinders your ability to adjust later. Tech pairs by definition do that

But it’s not. It eliminates a road that you can take. For example, the Maurya berry or hunting tech can ruin you. If you pick the berry tech and it turns out the map is super hunt heavy and everyone goes cav hunting then you’re in trouble. Opposite is true too. it’s only Pareto if it doesn’t take away other options. I see little reason to have tech pairs as opposed to bust adding a tech

If you win by min 10 then, yes. You are showing your ignorance in this thread. Again, I suggest you play multiplayer.

I hate these. They make the game rigid so that you only have one way to play and can’t adjust to meet current game situations.

Choice Choice (I also don’t research it at either of these times, most of the time) ——- Just because you always research a tech doesn’t mean that there isn’t a choice involved in when you research it. You have a very simplistic view of the game that doesn’t represent the myriad of other choices out there. You can rush, you can phase up fast, you can skip techs that you don’t need, you can skip eco techs in favor or military techs, you can skip techs in favor or getting more pop, you can skip techs in favor of more buildings If things were as simple as you say everyone would have more or less the same economy, which isn’t obviously true.

Thanks for the explanation. That’s more appealing than how you initially explained it and I could be in favor of something along the lines of what you say above. One suggestion I would have is to add a reduction in research time tech. That could open up some new build orders. For example, a player could choose to build only one blacksmith since the techs will research faster, so more diverse buildings will now be built. Alternatively, a player could build multiple blacksmiths and use them to guarantee that they have the best military techs for a p2 push. I think it probably also makes sense to make the library available in p1. That way players could really dive into the economic vs military strategy in p2. Otherwise p2 remains a transitory phase without a lot of action.

@TheCJ @BreakfastBurrito_007 Yeah, I’m not sure the library as it currently exists—a straight resource reduction—even makes sense. It might make sense to change it a bit. Making it the same but behind other techs that you have to research just sounds like making changes to make changes.

It's not very useful in p3. By the time you build it you've already researched all the eco techs and basically all the military techs. If you delay doing techs then your eco is way too slow and you're also vulnerable to early pushes from your enemy. So, right now, the library is basically only useful for (1) getting a cheaper wtf, which is a clunky and annoying way to make a less commonly researched tech cheaper, (2) getting a cheaper glorious expansion cheaper, which is, again, a clunky and annoying way to make a tech that is almost never researched cheaper, and (3) make techs affordable on ultra low resource maps. I'm not sure how the library should be priced. Right now it usually doesn't make sense to build. There should be some tradeoff calculation where it sometimes makes sense and it sometimes doesn't Right now, that calculation is almost entirely absent.

According to @Nescio, the genius that brought us a24 and all the most hated features of a25, that makes it a useful building. What was done to the wonder made zero sense and it should change back or be made otherwise useful. Personally, I think wonder should be made cheaper so there is actually a decision point at the start of p3 where a player decides to (1) push fast with CS, (2) spam champs, (3) get wtf, or (4) get extra pop with a wonder. All four should be valid choices but right now only the first two are viable

The key to beating fana is to not get into a bad fight. Dakara straight up said he didn’t have enough melee. No one is saying that fana are an awful unit. It’s the opposite where reza is saying that fana are always the best unit, which just isn’t true.

The fana player is going to be at a pop/resource deficit whenever they fight because fana are more expensive for a lot of reasons. A more realistic comparison might be where fana are outnumber by a 22:10 since that is the difference in their straight resource costs but, as you can see, they fana lose fights that are easier than that. The CS player also has the option to push earlier when the fana player will their weakest. it all goes to my original point that fana’s strength is very situational if you think t it should be a 1:1 comparison, that doesn’t make sense. Obviously the unit that requires its own specialized building and costs 2.2x as much should win in a 1:1 fight.

I honestly think they're a little weak against inf. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, though, because they should be an anti-cav unit, so they don't need to do well against inf. But fana aren't actually that good against cav right now either. The problem is that they're slower than cav so the enemy player can just run away. I've been most effective using fana when the enemy cav player misjudged how strong fana are against cav and took bad fights and prety ineffective with fana when trying to use them against inf or a cav player that just retreats. I think they need a slight speed buff.

To underline, the the CS, which cost 2000 in res, defeated the fana, which cost 1540 in res. The fana also cost more food, the slowest resource to gather, than the CS, so the 1540 vs 2000 res comparison understates how CS were fairly close in price and the below example shows it even more because that example has fana as more expensive. Moreover, the fana player had to build multiple temples, which cost adds extra cost and time, while the CS army was built those 20 units several minutes before the fana player even went p2. Consider that the CS player could easily push the fana player before this or get upgrades with those extra res cost and it is hard to imagine how anyone thinks fana are OP unless you let the fana player spam them or try to fight them with cav

Still slower with the extra upgrade. But it’s pretty close. And, all upgrades have cost. Any player going for fana will get all food/wood upgrades. They’ll also get at least some metal upgrades. Games go long enough that you need to get the upgrade and if the game is won or loss before the upgrade it’ll have nothing to do with how strong fana are

Almost every time you post a complaint it is because some unit/feature makes your Carth merc cav rush weak. Better players disagree. Not all cav requires metal. Others have given you examples on how fana can be countered but you just ignore it and repeat your same complaints. This doesn't really matter. Food is gathered more slowly and is also more vulnerable compared to metal. The only challenge with metal is that it sometimes runs out but that is less of a problem since the maps were redone to spam more metal. Games are rarely won because one side runs out of metal faster than the other, and when it does occur it is usually because the side running out of metal squandered their champs/mercs with a bad KD, which is the actual reason why they lost. Personally, I like that fana have different input costs because it allows for more diverse strategies. (@TheCJ: you aren't considering upgrades--metal and farms are both collected at the same rate without upgrades but food upgrades increase speed by 20% while metal upgrades increase speed by 25%. It nets out to where food is about 12% slower in p3 for most civs)

Food is the slowest resource to collect, easiest to interrupt, hardest to defend, and most difficult to relocate. If you regularly have too much food it’s because your economy is mismanaged. I agree with @Player of 0AD here. Fana don’t do particularly well in inf fights. But they shine in games where the enemy goes cav. If i know anything about Reza, he’s complaining because a handful of fana were able to easily defeat his much larger cav army. This is at least what happened last time I went fana against him.