Jofursloft

What am I doing wrong? I downloaded the zip file from the link and then unfolded it in 0ad->mods

@user1 @Stan` 1v1 against "Msg" (1635). I was clearly winning when I "lost" connection. Rated game. From lobby I could see he had resigned after I went out, so I gained no points. Edit: obv my connection was absolutely stable (I tried to join other matches I could), but I could not rejoin the game until he resigned Jofursloft vs Msg.zip

I think that shooting the closest unit is something related to a kind of survival instinct for the human being. A unit shoots the nearest enemy because it is seen as the biggest threat at the moment. When a unit is not forced to do something in 0ad it will stick to the last order you gave him. When this order is gone, it will take his own "initiative". For example, when a unit definitely cuts a tree it will move to the nearest tree near him: you didn't gave him that order, he deliberately decides to cut the closest tree because it is the one that requires less effort in distance terms. What I'm saying is that if you give a specific order to a unit that unit will go against his own nature and do even things that will bring him to death or suicide. If you don't the unit will try to preserve himself (which ultimately is eliminating the biggest threat). A 0ad unit doesn't reasonate for the long term good in a battle, but for the short term one (his own life instant by instant). In addition, I will copy and paste some reflections I already did under the thread "Magnetic pikemen". I think that this feature would lower the original importance of melee units, which is in fact creating a shield for the shots of the enemy ranged units unless they don't actually reach an enemy unit (at that point their main purpose is: kill). Whouldn't letting ranged unit decide what unit shoot by default lead to armies composed by only ranged units? And as I already suggested, I think that a solution to this "problem" could be a simple shortcut: when you press that shortcut while having selected a group of units (archers as shown in the image below) the game allows you to select a zone (the zone should obviously have a maximum size), which is represented by the red area in the image (in which there are the enemy slingers). Then your archers will target first all the enemy units who are in the area (in this case the slingers). Then when the area is cleaned up they will return to focus of the nearest unit available. Obviously the opponent is able to move his slingers out of the zone in order to protect them, so I think that this shortcut could bring to a new nice micro skill.

I was curious to test healers because I think they are mostly a "psychologic" unit rather than a useful one. In my opinion if you have healers they help you to feel more confident when attacking, but their practical utility is low. As shown in the video below 40 slingers + 20 FULL UPGRADED healers lose against 50 slingers. Same rank, 0 fight upgrades for both armies, almost 0 micro (I just pressed "H" a few times in order to prevent light blue slingers from chasing the healers when they were running away). In my opinion the main problem is that slingers are not targeted by only one unit each (in this case this type of healer would make sense), but they are rather attacked from multiple units, so healers begin to heal them when it's already too late. I think a solution could be giving healers an aura which could heal slowly every own unit inside it (same principle of Acharya Chanakya maurya hero). 0ad 5.mp4

I don't like the idea of having the possibility to take control of allied units just because currently many of this "hurdles and special situations" happen because allies are not able to cooperate in synergy. Being in synergy as a team is a skill often too much underrated. I would personally prefer a feature that allows you to select the exact point where to ungarrison a definite number of soldiers you placed into an allied building. Currently if you can garrison some sword cavs into an allied building in order to defend it from rams when you press U your units will be ungarrisoned randomly and they won't immediately start to attack the ram.

I play since alpha 21 and even when in aggressive mode it has never happened me that soldiers deliberately stop working without an explicit order. They stop working only if attacked, so I have always used this shortcut

Just select your units and press "H". Your units will immediately stop to collect wood and attack the nearby enemy units.

@nani already created a "king of the hill" map back into 2018:

I don't agree with this for what concerns 1v1 matches. I watched the replay of some 1v1 I did against very good players recently and I found that the total number of kills each players gets before the end of the match is around 300. Using skirms and spearmen as an example: 300 kills means something like 5 food and 5 wood per soldier killed = 30 units you can train thanks to the ones who you kill. In my opinion it's a totally fair number. The main problem in my opinion is that when playing some players don't remember that when a unit dies the enemy player loots the resource they're transporting. I've see this mistake so many times. Always remember to pass from storehouses before going into a fight. I agree with this if we are talking about 1v1 matches (and still not medium/low level ones). However, being ahed in eco doesn't justify you from not having trained a proper army. If the enemy player attacks you with a big army and you have no way to fight that army back I think it's your fault and you should lose. I also remember a 1v1 @chrstgtr (kushites) vs @ValihrAnt (maurya) in which Valihrant failed his archer ele P2 rush but even in terrible pop and eco disadvantage he could win the game thanks to micro and building positioning. The replay would be really interesting (even if I think that game was played on svn)

I decided to upload these 2 replays because some people asked me on the lobby and because I think they can be useful for many players. Uploading these replays is NOT a way to say "Hey look, I am better than @ValihrAnt or @Feldfeld: 1) they are players way stronger than me 2) when I will have a replay of a game in which I lose against these two gods and I play decently, I will upload that too surely!. Nevetheless, these games are two exceptions in which we both played really well and that I think can teach many things to many people Jofursloft vs Feldfeld.zip Jofursloft vs Valihrant.zip

Ah also I don't absolutely agree with this statement. I personally boom much better with 150 wood cost houses than with 75 ones. You are right. My ranking is not meant to be objective and is just based on my personal style of playing. I just don't feel ibers to be "my civ".

Absolutely. In fact, I lose none because my men arrived quite quicly. The problem is 1) if the stone and metal mines near the cc are consumed they have no enough time to arrive from woodlines and I cannot keep 20 idle soldiers around my cc; 2) Vali decided not to keep pushing that way, but if he did he would have probably killed some or at least slowed my food eco.

I think that in this alpha civilizations are well balanced so I find difficult to do a ranking. I think every civilization has his pros and cons depending on the map and the situation you are playing. Anyway, this is my personal tier based on civs I would pick in 1v1 matches (talking about team games its impossible to do a ranking in my opinion): OP TIRE: - Spartans (good for rush counter, very good in late game thanks to op heroes and op army) - Romans (very good for rush counter thanks to skirms and spear cavs, very good in late game thanks to heroes, op champs) - Macedonians (very good for rush counter thanks to skirms and spear cavs, very good in late game thanks to pikes; I don't like the infantry champions because in my opinion they are too slow, but mace still have a very good booming so you can prevent the opponent from doing Champs himself) - Britons (very good for rush counter thanks to slings, very fast in booming, very good in late game thanks to good heroes, mixed army of slings ans skirms and sword cavalry, op champ chariots) STRONG TIER - Gauls (good for rush counter thanks to skirms, very good in late game thanks to sword cavalry and op heroes) - Seleucids (good counter for rushes thanks to skims, very good in late game thanks to eles, pikes, cavalry and cavalry hero) - Ptolemies (decent counter for rushes because having camels is not good against jav cavs, very good in latw game thanks to op hero and op army, maybe the best boom because of cheap buildings) - Athen (very good counter against rushes thanks to slings, good in late games thanks to sword cavs and nice army) DECENT TIER - Iberians (decent rush counter thanks to walls but not having spearmen is bad, good in late game thanks to hero, mixed army and champ cavarly) MEH TIER - Persians , Mauryans, Carthaginians, Kushites (because of archers they are a meh counter against rushes, meh in late game because of archers if they have no time to go full cavs)

Completely agree. The purpose of this post is to find a solution to the fact palizades are not a counter for cav rushes, not necessarily to make palizades impenetrable. So nerfing cavs is a good idea

This video shows what I said in the original post: a cc taken down by sword cavarly + jav cavarly in 28 seconds (watch the time of the gameplay not the one of the video). Project 3 0ad.mp4 Good point! However, what you have to take in account is that if I want to rebuild a palizade I need way more men than 3 or even 10 (because they can be easily killed by 14 sword cavarly men). In the game also Vali had more cavs around, so he could have attacked that hole in the palizades with maybe even jav cavs, and in that case at least 20 men are needed. When you repair, the opponent can easily come back and destroy it again. All this results in 20+ soldiers who are idle because they continue to move around rebuilding holes. I think a solution could be increasing the cost of palizade while increasing also their resistance against units.

Civilizations were random, and I think that athen is a good civilization to play against macedonians (the speed of the boom is pretty the same). I am playing macedonians, whose pikes as you know are also slower than usual pikes. In this game Vali decided to go for a P2 cavarly spam, which resolves in a rush that cannot happen before minute 9-10 (because you must have a solid eco and be P2). The strategy of P2 rush consists of a endless rush of your secondary woodlines and fields by 20+ cavs. In the whole game Vali didn't only try this attack, but killed many of men in the woodlines and constantly kept his cavarly men around my city. Moreover, the game was additionally slowed because of a cav rush around minute 4 and a following slinger + cav rush. So 15:39 is absolutely not unrealistic. Also, as you can see from the video my skirm+pikes arrived before that Vali could kill my women, but that's not the point of this post. If palizades were originally created to slow down the enemy units in order to defend my base, how is it possible for 14 cavs to destroy it in 8 seconds? In addition, in a lot of 1v1 in this alpha high level players use their cavarly to destroy the enemy eco (secondary woodlines and fields mostly) independently from the minute of gameplay. When you exhaust the stone/metal resources next to cc it's impossible to keep constantly idle pikes + skirms around it, so you have to go for palizades/walls in order to protect it. Good idea! Against turtling I think that a good idea should be increasing the cost of palizade while increasing also their resistance against units.

I don't know if you can see it. What I see from my computer is this:

I think that palizades are not being enough effective against cavarly rushes. I noticed this in a 1v1 game I played against @ValihrAnt lately. As you can see from the replay, Vali is able to destroy my palizade and enter it in about 8 seconds using 14 sword cavarly men. How is this realistically possible in real life? I find that a heavy trunk for a palizade is something that should definitely not being easily cut by a one handed sword. This applies not only to palizades, but also walls and buildings like civic centres. In some of the team games I have played recently, I have seen civic centres destroyed easily (30 seconds or less) by an army of consular bodyguards or britons swordmen + champ chariots (units that should not deliver such a huge crush damage). I am not suggesting that walls and palizades should become undestroyable by units, but at least make them a bit more resistant against these units. Otherwise, there are no truly effective ways to counter a P2 athen or carthaginian rush. Thanks to palizades I countered P2 rushes against pro players but just because 1) (against @vinme) he hadn't been confident enough to attack my palizades walls and preferred to go for a P3 boom 2) (against Vali) soon after what you see in the replay I attacked him with a full upgraded P3 army so he had to use his cavarly to protect his base. Project 2 0ad.mp4

It's the weakest also because there are only a few players who play naval maps, so it's totally unuseful in regular teams games or 1v1. I think we should think about a totally different team bonus. Having it increased to a -40% I think could be a nice game changer. This because I personally use healers a lot in team games and I see many pro players do it as well. Aside from the fact that trade is practically not even necessary in this alpha +10% is ridicolous. I think it should be like 30%. Same for persians. I agree that it's quite weak but not if you consider nomad games, in which is really good. I think this too should be increased to a 30% at least in order to make a real difference. In addition, I personally think that all the bonuses you ranked as "Strong" should be considered OP, and all the bonuses you ranked as OP should be considered "Strong" XD.

I am not sure that "related command on the GUI" = manually clicking the icon of the soldier you want to train. In this case no, I am asking the exact opposite. I want the game to behave the same. When I manually click on the icon of the soldier I want to train the game just doesn't allow me to do it (so if I am training with 5 barracks and I have 400 food/wood res the barracks will automatically train 1 soldier from each. What happens if I use the shortcut is expressed above.

I think that when talking about mathematics related to a game like 0ad there are 2 things needed: a good knowledge of math and a good experience in the gameplay. Fortunately I have both. Here you make 1 mistake for each: You are considering the case in which we train in batches but you analyze with charts only the first batch. Let's consider the first example in the chart you did (the one with 2 units). What you have to consider is that after 20 seconds 1 by 1 training method seems the to be the most efficient. But you have to consider that the player will continue to train units in batches, which resolves to the following conclusion: Time Elapsed (s) 1 by 1 Batching #Units Produced ActiveTime(s) #Units Produced ActiveTime(s) 20 40 160 (2 mins 40 secs) 2 4 16 10 30+20+10=60 ... 2 4 18 5.18 25.18*2 + 5.18*2=60,72 ... As you can see, after another 20 seconds the batch training method does way better than 1by1 for what concerns Active time. After 2 mins and 40 secs it's 2 units ahead. Obviously the gap of speed between 1by1 and batch training method becomes more evident when you apply the same logic I did with higher batch training numbers. You need to have more experience in the game. 1) Even if there is not a definite rule about it, for early game is not intended only the first minute of playing (wouldn't make sense) but something like the first 12 mins of playing. In these 12 minutes, the gap of speed in terms of economic development between 1by1 training and batch training methods becomes huge. 2) A good player never uses the same batch dimensions but variates it (when I train women in the beginning of the game I like to train them 6+3+2+4+4). 3) You can build houses while training in batches without being slowed down (just manage the correct number of wood you are collecting). In any case, I would suggest you to spectate a pro level match. You will notice that by using the batch training method it's possible to get easily 100 population within 7 minutes, and reach 150 within 10 minutes.

Because it can happen in situations in which you have to do that really fast because of pressure. For example 1) when you are microing a fight and you need to train more soldiers 2) when you are under a rush. In these cases if you are a good player unless you are in late game it's rare you have a large amount of resources (so maybe you have to train from 5 barracks when you have like 400 food/wood resources). In addition, after minute 10 I practically never train units one by one, I only train in bunches of 2/3 units (which make this happen a lot). I'm talking about high level matches with 1400+ ranked players.

This is a small feature I think players who use the shortcut SHIFT + Z,X,C,V... could benefit from. I find that when I use this shortcuts and I have not enough time to see how many resources I have happens what is showed in the video. (The video is obviously taken to the extreme thanks to the cheat "gift from the gods") The barrack automatically divides the number of soldiers I would like to train (but I can't because of resources lack) into the number of barracks I am training them with (in this case divides 1914/3=637), which becomes 637+637=1274, but one barracks ultimately doesn't train soldiers at all. Being 1860 the limit number of units to train whith my resources, I would like it to become automatically 620+620+620. I think that this feature would help all that players who use shortcuts in all that stresfull situations in which you cannot select precisely the number of soldiers to train from multiple barracks. Project 1 0ad.mp4

I think that in this alpha there are still some units who need to be buffed or nerfed, such as: Archers (except champions) who seem to not be anymore affective against any kind of pike shield and melee cavarly (especially sword one), which makes them practically unuseful in late game (especially in games with a 300 pop cap); Consular bodyguard: in my opinion this unit is not counterable by any kind of other unit in the game when attacking a player base. You just need to have 15/20 of them to completely destroy the enemy eco (no point for the enemy to have soldiers near to the cc to protect the fields or even walls or palizades, which can be easily destroyed by them); Heroes: I expressed my thoughts in the topic here: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/51406-dancing-lowering-heroes-health-adding-headshot-damage/ I think that one way to “easily” balance this is to implement a headshot/vital-areas-shot damage. It is 1) Realistic, because in real life an arrow can hit a leg, an armour or a vital area 2) Useful in game, because it can be a counter against all the op units mentioned before. This damage would not be applied only to ranged units but also to buildings (maybe not all, I think this kind of damage is needed especially for the civic centres). -> I think the damage should not be a instant kill but a hit that cuts down something like a 60/70% of the enemy unit health points. Here are some idea how it could work: By percentage. An example could be: Archers: 20% chance Slingers: 15% chance Skirms: 10% chance Buildings: 30% chance A rechargeable damage. I don't like the idea of having a bar that recharges after a definite amount of time (just because if you have an army of many ranged units with all this damage recharged would be op). I would like this to be rechargeable in proportion to the effective hits the unit succesfully gets. An example could be: Archers: rechargeable every 10 hits Slingers: rechargeable every 13 hits Skirms: rechargeable every 16 hits Buildings: rechargeable every 8 hits

It's not specific about missing a target (maybe ranged units can hit the hero 30% while he is moving around). The problem is that the huge health of heroes allows them still to get a lot of hits from ranged units without dying, and they can be easily healed.