chrstgtr

I’m almost positive it was done under/by Nescio. He did many things that made absolutely no sense. It resulted in an absolutely awful alpha that drove off a large portion of the community and the game hasn’t recovered since then. When someone tried to give him input he would get mad and reject their suggestions. Then he would get madder when people didn’t like the product he put out. Good riddance It goes without saying, but you can’t properly design a game if you don’t understand it and you can’t truly understand it unless you play the game. The current iteration of devs are much better about listening to player feedback. But before it felt like many devs eschewed any input from actual players.

Yes, and that was ridiculous. Many posts on the forums should be ignored because they’re made by people who have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about.

I’m just pointing out how useless the tech you’re proposing is. Again, adding tech for the sake of having a “new feature” isn’t fun and doesn’t advance the game.

It’s random if there’s no reason it is an upgrade instead of a built in feature. The same way we could make defense towers buildings that do nothing until you click an upgrade tower to get arrows. Adding a bunch of buttons to do basic things doesn’t make the game more fun. And, yes, that is cluttering the tech tree even if there is nothing already there. It creates a mental load where one shouldn’t exist.

Or just make them automatically shoot like they used to. No need to clutter the screen with random upgrade buttons. I know of no one that wanted this in the first place. I think the diff that did this made reference to some random forum post by someone that no one knew. It was one of the a24ish changes that made absolutely no sense

You need a spy to tell you that your enemy is training an army? I hope you changed the cost to zero for that information

What’s the strategic use of that information 99.9% of the time after min 5? I would have about a 30% chance of learning that my enemy has farms around their CC. You said it changed from this originally, well it changed because it’s old form was useless too.

Look at the other thread that discusses which techs are most used. Spies is literally never researched (and for good reason). The game shouldn't be cluttered with junk.

I actually had the same thought—it should reveal hero locations. But I (wrongly) thought that was still a more or less useless tech. You’re right it would be very useful for regi games. It would be a niche tech. But at least it would be useful.

Spies needs a total rework. If it's most useful case is to find a lone fishing boat in the corner of the map after the game is all but officially over then it is a feature that shouldn't exist.

Imagine you just lost your CC and almost your entire population. You are now left with just 30 houses and a handful of men. You can now either (A) rebuild your CC, train women, slowly build barracks, and hopefully get back to max pop in 12ish minutes or (B) research the woman house tech, build 30 women two times at the longer 30s train time, and use those women to build up your CC, barracks, and get back to max pop in 6ish minutes. Which one do you choose? @Arup, you’re coming into these discussions hot. You tell people (who have played much longer and are generally much better players than you) that their opinions are laughable. But your logic pretty quickly falls apart when tested. You should pause before mocking others’ opinions.

It’s the most useful or least useful tech, depending on the circumstance.

The most interesting thing is that there are many techs that are never used. Some of this might a function of a lot of these being new techs that people haven’t sufficiently tested yet (the helot tech, maybe). But there are a ton of techs just never researched. Those seem like a good place to revamp or delete the techs. For example, there are a bunch of navy techs that we discussed in the other thread that just aren’t used. Other stuff like spies have been around forever and serve zero purpose. No need to overly complicate the tech tree with useless stuff.

Start with no metal. It keeps you in p2 forever and a prolonged fight will quickly eliminate a ton of other strategies like mercs, champs, and heavy siege. Complicated might be the wrong word since the techs are fairly easily to comprehend. But I imagine most players can’t tell you what techs exist, which suggests there’s too much going on with the tech tree. Techs just don’t make sense. Naval battles are mostly a sideshow, so investing in techs for a couple units is overkill. It’s like researching melee attack upgrades when your army is 95% range in the meat shield meta. It’s just not worth it, especially when the benefits are spread out over several different techs. Also, because docks are limited, the meta is “attack fast with more boats.” A defender can’t just make new boats one by one because they get ganged up on and quickly die. Old attacking boats can be repaired. And a defending player can’t just queue up a bunch of warships because their whole fish eco will die before reinforcements finish training. As a result, it doesn’t make sense to clog up your production buildings with techs (defender will not have enough boats for the first fight and will lose all fish if they do it later while attacker just wants a bunch of boats early and can easily gang up on reinforcements) Maybe a slightly weaker attack. They shouldn’t die too easily against land units, though, so I would buff their health and/or armor. ——- Agree with everything else you said @real_tabasco_sauce

Do it. No one wants these monstrous ships.

Honestly, all navy is going to be disliked until pathing works better. It is just too clunky right now. There are some items, like changing unit cost, that could easily be improved, though.

You’re probably right. I just haven’t seen it yet and consequently forgot.

I don’t like the current navy system. But we should also remember the old system was absolute garbage. I think a lot of problems with the current system owes to balance problems and an overly complicated system that should be stripped down. Problems With Current System Balance is bad. There are a bunch of ship types but players basically only make arrow ships. This says balance is off and/or there are too many ship types. We should try to balance the ships or just get rid of some types. Land-water balance is off too. Ships die quickly to land units, which means ships are only useful to patrol the water. This means it’s mostly just about denying fishing and they’re a sunk cost if fishing isn’t contested at any point. There are too many techs that no one researches. The techs are overly costly and complicated. The fact that ships are basically only used to deny fishing underscores how the tech tree way over complicates this. We lost the siege ship, which could destroy buildings from sea. This is an aspect that has just gone missing. Again, another element where navy is inferior to land units Ships are too expensive. I don’t want to get into a fight where I pay 100m every minute just so I can fish. This very quickly leads to a system where fishing means you will slow/stall yourself and players should skip fishing or rely on their teammates to defend fishing Scout ships are useless against other ships. They should be in p1 or not exist. Giving an option to rush fishing in p1 seems like better gameplay anyways. Having a system where rushing can backfire against a phased opponent also seems like better design. The only real strategy right now is to train more ships than your enemy and to train them earlier than your enemy. Again, this is a balance problem. A lot of this could be fixed by putting scout ships in p1. Positives With Current System It got rid of the garrisoning=strength meta. I can’t understate how much I hated that system. It slowed down eco, made you susceptible to losing a massive amount of pop and resources in seconds, and led to snowballing.

The other day I was playing a game and the mini map began to show really weird colors. It would flash these colors and then show them for a few seconds at a time before switching back to normal. These color flashes occurred when there was an extremely large number of units active and fighting. Let me know if you need replay and I will find it.

Of course. The dirty secret that all “history” focused users don’t want to talk about is how all the civs share most of their “distinguishing” features. These civs shared their technological and social developments. Gauls had archers. Romans had slings. Athenians used mercenaries. Etc. But a game where all the civs look and play the same is boring. So there is a lot of generalization, reductionism, and abstraction that occurs to make the game more interesting.

Sure. But it is only as good as it is used. Merc inf is probably the least commonly trained class of unit and, as you say, only available to civs to begin with.

Also, the biggest problem with Carth’s bonuses is the lack of a real team bonus. If anyone has good ideas that would help

I haven’t played carth in a bit. But didn’t we implement some tech that makes them cheaper and quicker to build? Maybe we revisit that if it isn’t working (not sure anyone has really tested it enough to see if a good build order is possible with it). Couple ideas: Could also make temples build able in p1. Or give temples pop cap bonus like a23. Or make carth temples cheaper in res/build time

Military Mess Hall says it trains heroes. It does not. The Spartan Senate doesn't say that it trains heroes.

Forts haven’t had root for awhile and only did in a24. This was one of the many things that a24 did that was pretty widely disliked and pretty swiftly undone. Root was removed because it created incredibly long (and boring) games since defeating an enemy effectively required a total decimation of their base. This took a long time and was disfavored. (There were other aspects of a24 that contributed to overly long games and this was just one aspect of it) No. It was a change in a27. @real_tabasco_sauce and I both separately raised concerns about it at the time. I think @real_tabasco_sauce ultimately changed cav capture stats to mitigate some of the concern. I think that was a good change and fixed a lot of what would’ve been a problem. I also think it was needed for other reasons. I don’t like the current mechanic and prefer the old version. https://code.wildfiregames.com/rP27142