chrstgtr

@BeTe you mentioned it is helpful if people respond. So here I go. 1. You're right, it is because you are new. I used to have same problem. 2. Same. It is because you are new. I also used to have this problem. 3. Same. You get better with time, which I know from personal experience. 4. Agree. There are other fixes, though. Some of those are already in the pipeline. So, basically, I would challenge almost all of your premises on why it is a problem.

No disrespect but you have some things to learn about 0AD. I think you're the one who created another thread on whether 0AD should have less units on the screen. In that thread, the OP started with a bunch of premises (like it's hard to identify the types of units present), which just aren't true once you get more experience playing. All this is to say, yes, OAD is different from some other RTS. That doesn't necessarily make it worse, though. And, I suspect a lot of the opinions you are saying now will change as you gain more experience/get better at the game and realize some of the things you are doing now don't make a ton of sense. Anyways, cheers and welcome to the community.

I've experimented with it. making more than 60 women in a 200 pop game is actually a worse boom for most games with the common CS strategy because you have to make units twice just to get a proper sized army (i.e., you make women that you later delete to replace with men). YMMV, though, depending on KD. Other strats may call for other numbers. There are three reasons why people wait until p3 to fight. First, people wait until they're strongest or forced to fight. This is natural ("if I wait just 30 seconds more I will have 10 more men," "if I wait 40 seconds more I will have 15% attack," etc.). This means that fighting typically begins as soon as the first player has all the upgrades that they intend to use in a fight. This won't change no matter what the upgrade structure looks like--people will just wait until they get that unit-upgrade or whatever. Second, there's a dearth of worthwhile strategies between min 6 and min 15. There needs to be more stuff like p2 merc rush. Third, even if you do find a successful strat between min 6 and min 15, then you can get slapped in TGs where an un-rushed booming player is able to roll you over. This makes strats like merc rushes risky and rarely worthwhile (i.e., you can have a successful min 10 push but lose if your pocket isn't as strong as the player you are rushing aka the "elephante syndrome"). The third factor really shows how 0AD is two different games--one for TGs and one for 1v1s. There is way more action throughout a game in 1v1s than in TGs. But a lot of what is being discussed here is about TGs.

Once you’re fighting with champions you’re generally engaged in constant fight. The fact that they can’t gather is irrelevant as you generally would never use them for that. They’re more expensive for the reason you identify—they’re stronger. One can argue on whether their costs, in terms of resources and train time, are property set

Still sounds like little downside. Benefits just might be narrow.

Is there any downside here? It seems like a slight performance upgrade and, at worst, even play mechanics. I'm skeptical on how much this will actually help fix the sniping meta. But I see no reason why this shouldn't be implemented.

Be honest. You posted your mod. I immediately said I considered it cheating. Many others said they agreed. Several people said they did not want to play with anyone who used the mod or any other mod like it. Your response, more or less, was "I don't care, I will continue to use it against the wishes of those that expressed dislike for it." You are the one that disrupted the status quo. A feature very similar to your mod's autotrain was considered for the vanilla version of the game and as rejected. If you want to use your mod in SP games, great. But if you want to play with anyone else, you that no one has to accept you or your mod.

I like arrows now. The functionality seems to be correct. I think they could need the slightest buff to restore the a26 balance, which I think was the slightest bit better. Haven't heard any complaints about arrows but I obviously don't speak for everyone (and this is obviously a departure from before when complaints were heard). Off topic, but the complaints with current community mod seem to be navy being underpowered and bolts being OP, both of which I agree with.

Totally disagree. I think the best thing that naval does (or used to do) is force a quick p2 to get war ships to kill fishing. If you put a fighting ship in p1 then fishing will be mitigated and people will just stay in p1 forever and make fields instead of bothering with fish. The balance is just bad. All ships are underpowered and none are worth making to fight. That is very clear. Luckily balance stats can be fixed. But the next round basically requires brand new stats because the current situation isn't informative. Navy is still totally conceptual to me.

Right now, the best strategy is to NO techs. The techs for boats right now are more numerous than for inf/cav despite boats being made about 1000x less often than inf/cav. That just doesn't make sense.

Arrow ships are worthless against fishing ships too. Fire ships do literally zero damage against fishing boats. You're better off ignoring enemy war ships and building more fishing boats because it takes multiple minutes for an entire arrow boat to kill one fishing ship despite the arrow ship being more expensive in resources, build time, and ship cost. The tech tree is also unnecessarily extensive and complicated. A lot of this should just be consolidated into like two techs (if naval ever actually becomes a real aspect of the game it can be built out again but right now there are so many techs that each do such limited things that no tech would ever be worth getting). The scout ship seems to have no purpose. Overall, there is no reason to ever build a war ship to fight. Navy needs a bit of work

Ok. That's different then and compatible with what I was saying. I would say buffing dmg and fixing sniping are the obvious steps to take to archer/xbow. Changes to walk speed should be disfavored as they don't address "stand and fight" situations. I also think @ChronA is right that we shouldn't open the can of worms that walk speed would bring.

Sure. This is all to say it won't be a silver bullet, which I think is obvious.

You said increase dmg “on par” with jav/sling. If that isn’t what you meant then, yes, should an augmentation of the dmg is in order just like some nerf was necessary before. Walk speed has a bunch of problems that’s been discussed. Even if you find a middle ground that won’t help much with “stand and fight” situations (aka the majority of the time) since units don’t walk within the fight. Just saying we should stay within the basic principles I outlined before. There’s obviously some wiggle room within those parameters On overkill issue, I’ve already said how I think Tabasco’s idea will really only work for fights where armies are highly congested, so helpful but partial. Also, any effect will be shared across all range unit types, so skims/slings will get better at same time as archers. The magnitude might be different but I’m skeptical it will make a trash unit as good as skirms/slings.

Great. I'm interested. Sounds like it's still in development, though, and has awhile to go before it makes it into primetime.

I'm saying there is a pretty basic principle where walk speed should correlate to damage, which should correlate to range and we should color within those lines. Archer balance may not right now (and it wasn't right before). Cross bow balance is worse (and always has been terrible). But making archer dmg equal to sling or jav dmg is certainly wrong. Same goes for walk speed. Implementing changes outside of those principles creates problems in the long run. If a solution can't be found when coloring within those lines then something else is wrong. I think, at a minimum, there needs to be some sort of "auto-sniping" built into the game. Pre-melee rebalance shows that is necessary. If "auto-sniping" and corrections within those principles don't help then there is something else wrong. I've been saying it a long time but balance is off post-melee rebalance. It rightfully changed the meta. But a meta isn't balance. Changing the melee rank up helped a ton (which itself was an artifact of a quick fix that was implemented outside of principles and caused problems down the road). But there is still something not quite right. We see a bunch of small problems with balance where things are just a little bit off. I can't put my finger on the exact problem or a solution but I think there is pretty wide agreement that balance isn't quite right.

Hopefully. But… D1971 looks dead. I think I discussed elsewhere on how it’s imperfect. D5282 is really just a concept right now. It also seems designed for balls of armies, which won’t help in small army fights. Maybe it helps where there are long lines. So a partial solution, if that. But obviously helpful if it does deliver. It just won’t be a complete solution. (Have you run any tests yet? Last I’ve seen was all technical discussion.) Just saying we need something more.

None of these make sense to me. Dmg should correlate to movement speed, which should correlate to range. Increasing archer dmg runs entirely counter that. As does increasing archer speed. Changing projectile speed is just a shell game for changing dmg value: it makes a change in the least observable field that isn't even listed in unit stats. The fact that archers were (arguably) the best unit when used for sniping (even when compared to sniping with other units) shows that the problem isn't anything to do with archers stats and instead has to do with how they are used. So, what is the solution? Sniping. But sniping is annoying. So, let's make sniping less annoying. Let's put in an area attack option. The area attack option should mimic sniping micro. It will serve the dual purpose of balancing archers and eliminating the annoying micro tactic known as sniping. If an area attack option doesn't work then I think we need to seriously reconsider whether the melee rebalance patch uses the correct mechanism to balance melee/range units.

100% loot bonus

100%

Also, healing heroes will be strong again. Maybe a .1/s nerf to heal? Maybe not needed with melee rebalance

All these changes make sense to me. But these aren't the most "exciting" changes. Should we try to get in some of the bigger changes to a27? Something like the Roman overhaul?

The bold isn't right. They are frequently used by good players. The basket upgrades are a standard part of the basic boom build order and the baskets are an area that actually create build order differences between civs (delayed for ptol and sooner for mace). It's intuitively pretty obvious that investing 400 to not build ten storehouses that cost 100 and build time is a good investment at some point. I don't have a problem with a construction speed bonus being created. But I don't see why it should replace something that we already have and use. It should be an addition instead of a replacement. NB: isn't there already a construction speed bonus that is basically never used? It's for Carth, I think.

Siege towers balance was just bad before. It's a unit that tends to go through cycles where it is useless or OP. It's really the same story with all ranged siege. There were alphas where players literally banned the use of old siege towers because they were OP. The current siege tower mechanic is potentially problematic, though. Now, siege towers focus their arrows against their primary counter units (melee inf/cav). Changing dps is a really easy way to make siege towers better without using non-random arrows--it's a method that has been both too strong and too weak in the past, so the only thing that needs to be done is find the right balance.

Don't care. Also, don't think it matters outside of people wanting to debrief a game to someone else.