chrstgtr

From units, yes; from buildings, no

I've always thought cav were a little too strong this alpha. I've thought the two most problematic aspects of cav are: (1) Their ability to capture barracks super fast because this allows a very small and fast group to counterattack and eliminate an enemies' production abilities. This can easily be fixed by lowering their capture attack, which increased from 2 in a23 to 2.5 in a25; and (2) Their strength relative to inf. A simple nerf to any of their attack/health stats (i.e., dmg, health, and/or armor values). I don't think this should be a big nerf, but they do feel slightly too strong. Alternatively, they could become more expensive, which would make them more difficult to spam. I think a cost nerf is less preferred because that will impact early game more. I'm not a fan of the changing pop cost because that doesn't change their underlying strength, which is the real problem, and only limits the number of units that you can make of them, which mostly limits their production only when players are at max pop. I'm also just not a fan of limiting what units players can build, so a hard cap (i.e., 15% of total pop) is less favorable--I think we should just adjust the underlying stats and lets players make what they want.

Sure, but that feels like a modern concept. I don't really care, though, to be honest.

But the vision is still longer if both units aren’t moving. The logic is inconsistent. A bit off topic, but this reminds me of how I think vision range should reflect what a unit is doing at any given time so that units actively engaged in eco/fighting should have the shortest vision, units walking/riding should have medium ranges vision, and units standing still should have the longest vision. That seems far more realistic than the current scenario and gets at the “distraction” idea you bring up

I don’t even agree with borg as I think women should have the same vision range as inf, but borg was clearly discussing women and not soldiers. He was also suggesting a longer vision range for women as opposed to a shortening of one And, again, the length of the vision range is different than unifying the vision range between inf and cav.

Micro is the same except cav can get distracted more easily…because they have a longer vision range Again, this is about how long the range should be, and isn’t about whether that range should be the same or different than inf

In sum, after being asked multiple times for reasons why cav should have different vision ranges than inf, people have put forward the below reasons. Realism—Cav have a higher vantage point. The argument goes that they sit higher so they can see over objects and just see farther. But standing next to a wall doesn’t stop them from seeing through it so the “seeing over objects” part is inconsistent at best. No one seems to care about the “just able to see farther” part or thinks that it justifies a >10% vision greater range. Even so this realism argument is hard to justify in a world where units can’t see farther than the length of a football field. Champions—Champs should be able to see farther. This isn’t a reason for different vision ranges for cav and inf. This is a reason for CS vs champs. I also think it’s reasoning (is dubious at best, especially when Micro—shorter vision will mean more micro. This keeps getting repeated so I’ll directly address: this has nothing to with whether cav or inf should have farther vision. It’ll be an impact of a change. Please state why cav should be easier to play and have less micro than inf. Again, the goal is to unify vision ranges. The length of that range is a separate topic. Women are a separate topic and will be addressed elsewhere

No, commentators have conflated purpose and examples of why that might be a good purpose. The purpose is clearly stated by OP and on Phab. See below for examples. Other commentators have latched onto the cav discussion of why it may be problematic while ignoring the fact that that discussion is a sideshow and that this patch just seeks to unify vision ranges. The "counterproposal" is completely irrelevant as it has nothing to do with vision ranges much less the actual topic of whether vision ranges should be unified. Still--no one here has put forward a reason why the vision ranges should be different across units.

None of this disputes the validity of a unified vision range. You just want longer vision ranges. That isn’t the purpose of the proposal.

Concepts should be applied consistently; and, this concept doesn't exist anywhere else in the game. Concepts should be applied consistently; and, this concept doesn't exist anywhere else in the game.

This just isn’t true. In A23 they were usable (and very good, in fact) but not OP like they are now. Your axiomatic statement also suggests that inf should be OP in p3 just because they are useful in p1 right now. This just isn’t a reason for/against the proposal. Please state a reason why cav should have longer vision than infantry—because no one here has given one yet. In my opinion, cav already have the benefit of speed which helps them escape (or entirely avoid) bad fights and chase good fights, dps which helps them conduct fights, and health which helps them conduct and escape fights. I find it very difficult to say cav should also have longer vision that will allow them to decide if a fight, which they already gave all the natural advantages in, should start or continue

I don't think so. Is there any basis to say that ancient artillery shot farther than the human eye could see? That would be miles, which I don't think is true

This is the same as chat, which reminds me how the vanilla game should have a mute function implemented.

I think this has been around for awhile. It’s a bit annoying, but not the end of the world in my opinion—it can be overcome with a little scouting to provide more vision. But others may feel differently

I think this splits the baby relatively well. But, again, I don't care and will get used to whatever is decided by the people who actually care.

I know—there’s a ton of other (old, new, and future) contributors. I just picked the most visually obvious one to be facetious. We’re on a bit of a treadmill here, but that’s ok so long as the lag doesn’t become unplayable

I don’t know what he meant. But all together, I do think there could be negative stacking impacts. Agree to disagree here. But yeah, we get code efficiencies but then add more features. So lag doesn’t actually improve. I’m sure you would love if we just took AOE2 graphics to get rid of the lag.

They kind of are, though. The original post talks about how 0AD produces units at a rate that is 3x to 4x times faster. If a 0AD game is made 3x-4x longer that could very easily result in games lasting hours. Additionally, there's a difference between game time and real time. 0AD has significant lag issues that often cause normal games that are 30m or less in game time to last more than an hour in real time. Those problems are not nearly as significant in AOE. Taken as a whole, a 3x-4x slower game that has lag issues could quickly result in games that last 3-4 hours (or more). I don't think anyone wants that. If someone really wants slower gameplay they can always change the game speed to .75x or something. Of course, this 3x-4x faster rate is a flawed perception because 0ad and other RTS have different metas, pop caps, and other factors.

The game is substantively different at different pop points. Defenses work better in low pop games. So low pop games allow for more raiding with stronger troops. So something like 10 champ cav can easily counterattack, wipe out an opposing players entire eco, and win a game because players can’t attack, defend, and eco all at once. That is undesirable for me. The raiding is all still possible at higher pop games, but it isn’t outcome determinative

I think this is needed. @ValihrAnt had a mod at one point that did this--it seemed to work well. Right now, there is basically no resource scarcity--players can build all the units they need with the resources within their own borders at every phase of the game. Players also don't have to skirmish over resources because they can gather the desired res in another part of their base. It's great that there are enough resources on the map to make all the units available (i.e., players can now make champs and mercs because metal is actually available), but there should be some resource scarcity. An easy way to introduce scarcity is to just force players to expand to access the wealth of resources on any given map. The current abundance of resources also means that players don't build second CCs because doing so mostly just expands where you can build instead of what you can gather. This takes out an offensive second CC strategy. It also takes away a strategic trade-off decision between building a second CC for long-term access to resources, which makes you weaker in the short term but stronger in the long term, and going for a quick p3 push, which makes you stronger in the short term but weaker in the long term. Making borders smaller will help with all this. It could also address some of @LetswaveaBook's complaints about how p2 is largely uneventful because p2 could become the phase where you build offensive CCs and skirmish over scarce border resources. I have no problems with the training speed and think its current stats are desirable.

Thanks! That could explain it. And your test seems like the right one. I don’t think healing should immediately cure fire/poison dmg (I.e. if you’re healing at a rate of 1 hp/s and fire/poison are doing dmg at a rate of -5hp/s then I think it should be a bet if -4 hp/s), but that’s a different topic.

I saw it happen in a TG earlier today (I joined late and don't have a replay). The player garrisoned their hero and the fire damage stopped accruing despite the hero having max flames on their icon moments before Edit: @vinmemay have the replay

A player can stop fire damage by garrisoning that unit. This does not seem right.

It would be nice if there was generic merc units for all CS unit types that could be trained by captured barracks. It would give a nice twist on capturing barracks. I don't think there would be any balancing. A lot (maybe all?) of the unit types already have merc art.

Probably also necessary.