faction02

Units movements feels currently very "weird" . It is quite difficult to describe exactly the issues with units movements since they seem to take many forms. I am having concerns that the introduction of acceleration, while units pathfinding is still a task under development, might just be too early. I would guess that playing with some numbers might help to reduce the weirdness of units movements, but I was wondering whether it is not also making pathfinding problems more difficult to solve with potentially some impact on the game performance?

I have no strong opinion on the return of the kennel itself since it can allow for very flexible balancing strategies. I however don't agree with that part of your motivation. The dog function is simply evolving in the game, and they remain decent all along, including the late game. Dogs have two big advantages: i)they do not take population space (by the way, kennels function used to be to restrict that advantage) and ii) they need only one type of resource. From my own taste, late game is when the dogs are at their best, they only take food that often become plentiful thanks to economic upgrades and battles leading to other resources shortages. A great way of spending spare food. In P3, one might use them in an economical way. They would be good to raid fields or woodlines of a distracted player (simply need shift click attack move commands everywhere you expect enemy eco to be, if dogs are spread to run around, they can become a huge pain for the economy since they run faster than infantry). They also might be used to kill isolated units such as reinforcements or women during a push while the rest of the army keeps fighting/ecoing. Dogs can also be used to exploit market prices since they need only one type of resource. If food become too cheap, just buy some and trade dogs for anything of value to the enemy. Dogs are also pretty good to keep building some extra military if you have yourself some resources shortages and food is too cheap to be sold. I will not discuss how dogs might ruin low wood maps since, anyway, mercenaries or elephants might do a pretty good job there too. It is not rare to see people loosing games with plenty of spare food. I would explain the seemingly lack of dogs usage in late game by people not thinking about them or by a feeling that dogs would be too micro intensive rather than by a cost which is too high (some specialists might have used the technical term "nub" here). I feel that your proposition might lead dogs to be more used as trash units rather than some valuable assets. I would personally prefer them to get their strategical value reinforced. For example an increased vision in late game would make them much easier to be used as raiding units (or in a more technical vocabulary, "good for nubs"). That could also fit the idea that dogs are trained to track their target.

I have some doubts about making resources transfers costly. If a player, has more economic upgrades but he could still invest in his economy (because he has more upgrades to research or he is not max pop), then, since growth is an exponential process, sending resources is often costly already (in terms of slowing down your own growth). I am not sure that making resources transfer more costly will improve tg since this form of cooperation would then be discouraged. Just to make sure I understand every parts of your reasoning, wouldn't this risk to make ptolemies overly strong in 1vs1? Also the ptolemies players would probably slow down his growth by slinging food to other players. Wouldn't he be better off by booming extremely fast or spamming camels thanks to that bonus to steamroll civilization that do not have that kind of economic bonus? No transfer fee is not a real incentive to send resources to other players. But rethinking team bonus concept is a good idea.

I do like the idea of that upgrade a lot in its principle, it forces to make a choice. Maybe that upgrade might still be worth it if someone wants to mass champion guards, in which case he would get the upgrade on top of the other buildings for champions production. Comparing to the Mauryans, their palace which trains their guards costs only 200 stones and 200 metal. Everyone get at least one palace anyway to get access to heroes. However, I don't have the impression that these champions are that much used despite the opportunity cost of producing them being essentially zero. If the current balance do not change much, there is probably no emergency and no need to think too much over this comment for the next alpha. Something like having a hero garrisoned in the cc to substitute for the upgrade could be interesting too if there is some historical justifications for the Imperial Court to be directly linked to one of the heroes. The hero garrisoned in the cc would then unlock a fast champions production for that building. The opportunity cost of not using a hero on the battle field can be important so one would have to choose whether he wants to keep raising more champions or use the military advantage provided by the hero.

Using "Guard" for healer can help, but it has also a lot of negative sides. The unit they guard must survive. It is a bit annoying if they guard melee units that keep moving since they can't heal and walk. If they guard ranged units that's not exactly where one would want his healers to stay neither. I often find it more pleasant to make them guard units that need to be micro anyway, won't die fast but will remain near wonded units, like the hero or an elephant.

After seeing the super-champions, I was disappointed not to find any starships available for the Han. The champions start at 40/3sec First attack upgrade => 46/3 sec Second attack upgrade =>52.9/3sec Third attack upgrade =>63.5/3sec Poisonned arrows => 76.2/3sec Repeating cross-bow => 76.2/2sec Hero Wei Quin => 91.4/2sec Cross-bow training => 91.4/1sec Will-to-fight => 114.6/1sec At that point champions palace guard have only 31.2/1sec whereas citizen-soldiers crossbowmen gets to 47.6/1sec. Both crossbow training and repeating crossbow reduce by 1second the firing time of crossbowmen. That’s 2 very powerfull upgrades. Wei Quin is also a bit too powerfull with respect to Boudica. It seems there is still to decide which bonus to give him. He gives some bonus to champions as Boudica, + a malus to enemy cavalry + he has a flame thrower. Making 10 damages independently of the level of armor can be significant in some cases. Pikemen are the only melee unit currently immune to his flame thrower because of their extra range. Not sure it is meant as a feature, but after running the upgrade « imperial court », it is possible to train champions guard (no cavalry champions), but no longer possible to train citizen-soldiers from the cc. The building to train all champions costs 300 stones/300 metal, but the upgrade to transform the cc into champion building costs 300wood/300stones. Considering that other civilization pay 600 food to get champions at barracks or stable and remain able to train citizen soldiers there, that sounds a bit too much (seleucids do not even pay anything for that). I would probably go for the extra building in all cases and never research the upgrade since during the 40 seconds of research time, the cc can't be used to produce units. The Temple and the LaoziGate health regeneration capacity seem to cumulate (both healing the same units at the same time). Not sure that should be desirable. I couldn't test if the LaoziGate would work on ally, but setting the range to 50meters for the LaoziGate would at least be consistent with the revered monument of the iberian range.

I tested the Han, I noticed that they have access champions through captured stables or barracks, not sure if that would make sense since they don't have to search for some upgrades or anything of the kind. The Han have also access to will-to-fight on top of their own fort technology when they capture an enemy fort. After capturing an enemy fort and its stables and making all upgrades and getting the right hero, I was able to spam champion crossbowmen war chariots that had 114 damages per 1 second. That seemed to be slightly too high compared to the already quite good performance of britanic war chariots with Boudica that can currently reached 85.7 per 1.25 seconds ...

I completely understand that putting in place formation is not easy and I don't know how they are thought to work in the future but currently, creating a formation give a benefit since it trigger running, but the formation itself doesn't have much interest (except to trigger more running). They are often used as a "double-click feature", click to trigger a sprint, once the sprint is over, remove them. I would rather think of them as working the other way around, the process of setting up the formation is costly but once units are in formation, they gain some advantages. The cost of setting them up would then be compensated by the advantage gained when units are in the formation. If there could be a middle ground to be found between making formations too hard to use and preventing them from being used as a "trigger run" command, that would be great.

I would also much rather see changes to the game mechanic as an incentive to affect the gameplay too. On the topic, I would also enjoy seeing surrounding or flanking maneuver more effective/easier to implement as a way to increase the share of melee units in the army composition. Formations can currently be abused to work against any attempt to flank the enemy ranged units. If someone click "square formation", he can trigger a sprint of his melee units to protect his ranged units from any side. One can also use formation to get his ranged units to sprint away, by simply grouping them in a formation with some other units further away (often the reinforcements). I was wondering if the capacity to trigger sprints through formation make sense (I don't see a benefit of it but I can see how it is abused). Maybe it could make sense to remove the sprint part that units do to get into formation, or at least make them start their sprint only when they are very close to their final destination?

I hope someone will have a better knowledge than me about 0ad balancing history, but I remember people talking about the fact that sword cavalry used to be a P1 unit but it was too op and therefore moved to p2. The old issue might have been indirectly fixed but maybe someone still around will remember what was exactly wrong with sword cavalry in P1 to help check what could go wrong again?

Part of the issue with archers is that they have a lot of micro potential, so their strength might feel different depending on how they are used. With Maurya or Kush, a few players are trying to mix in their army cavalry (jav or sword), they select the archers to manually target javeliners one by one while the cavalry should try to flank the enemy ranged units, therefore, in both cases, avoiding the melee units protecting them. Some also tries to spread archers over a long line to take advantage of the better range of archers, minimize overkills and do hit-and-run attacks. Using map obstacles (buildings water, mountains...) can also be useful. Balancing archers with javeliners will always be an unpleasant question. If you try to balance them assuming no micro, then a player with good micro will give the impression that archers are op, if you try to balance them assuming that both players have advanced micro skills, the archers will feel very unpleasant to any player who don't want to use too much micro. Expecting them to be well balanced from everyone perspective might be unrealistic. Having said that, I would agree that archers are struggling a bit too much currently, especially with pikemen. In any case, archers/javeliners balance should definitively be checked with the impact that the introduction of unit acceleration might have on the game.

I have noticed that the elephant-worker get stuck if you try to garrison it when it is just outside the civic center corner. It seems it can't get inside through the corner, nor it can decide to go right or left and it become necessary to move it slightly on one side of the building to garrison it. I have tried to reproduce the issue with various combinations of big units (rams and other elephants)/buildings (fortress, siege workshop, elephants stable), the same doesn't seem to happen.

It might make some interesting youtube content if you could get one these boosted AI to play with @ValihrAnt...

Just throwing some ideas here to try to help your reflection: - For the purpose of stimulating cavalry usage, do you need to the changes suggested? The savana biome seemed like very effective to reach that goal (especially in previous alphas, the Sudanian savanna biome of the current alpha is a bit less pronounced). Spreading trees to make rush easier and huge amount of hunt made cavalry rush very important in that biome. The advantage that I see for an "aggressive biome" relative to change in standard features of the game is that it can fit more varieties of players taste. One player who do not like aggressive game could therefore select his biome to avoid Savana but still play any of the existing map where the biome can be selected. - For the purpose of stimulating territory control, what about a version of mainland with less starting mines? and possibly small spots well spread over the map? This suggestion would not fit what I qualify as a "good change" since to reach one goal, it affects too many parts of the games, creating possibly some other issues elsewhere. I am just suggesting it, because I would find the experiment of this type of feature quite interesting. I am also still puzzled about how to make trade useful in 0ad. - For the purpose of making P2 more interesting, I personally dislike the idea that champions are currently meant to be spammed. For many games, it makes sense that you can access the strongest units in late game only and it does sound fun to mass the strongest possible units in the game with all upgrades, but in 0ad, champions are not balanced between civilizations and therefore it doesn't sounds suited to give champions that kind of role. They would make more sense as precious babies which need to be followed carefully to accomplish some particular missions differentiated between civilizations. I would therefore see them produced in small quantities only rather than massed in p3 (some champions should be good against buildings but bad against units=> firecavs... , some could be used for P3 harass like cavalry champions, other for P2 harass like naked fanatics, and maybe some should be there for P2 fights...) In that spirit, black coats in p2 were interesting, and generally, infantry champions (maybe only the melee one?) could make sense in P2 in small numbers. Not saying that this is what should be since it might need many other changes (like possibly less starting mines for example ), but again, I am just throwing an idea at someone who is asking for more actions in P2 and is spending time thinking about it.

borg- and valihrant would only be allowed to play with each other... feldfeld can only play against chrstgtr... What if you are underated and the player who are +/-100 points refuse to play against you. In many cases, it seems that would simply prevent some players from playing rated games at all.

This could work too, Valihrant suggestion: " Should female citizen gather rates be increased ?" might be a good solution too. I would be curious to know why in previous alpha, it was decided that reducing women wood gathering relative to CS and giving an aura bonus to women to incentive their production would be a good approach too (if anyone remember...?). The gap between women and CS wood gathering rate has been reduced For point 1, I agree with the excess complexity argument. I would guess that more unit types are suited for environment with relatively low amount of units or slow game speed. Having too many unit types to manage separately in a 200 population game is very likely to become not enjoyable if each of them require different micro. For 0ad, if anything, I would guess that the early/mid game might be better suited. You raise interesting questions, I think I would prefer seeing a few of them used for civilization differentiation rather than to solve some problems with the game mechanic that can be addressed differently. Dogs or worker elephants bring more to the game than what could do a woodcutter.

Yes, I agree that the complexity of the micro (rather than the quantity) might be an issue, I didn't think about that part.

More units diversity will indeed make the game more complex and adjusting the art work to make all units easy to differentiate for all civilizations might be indeed a challenge. I am not saying that this is the best way to achieve it, but breaking the "turtling=booming" link in midgame seems important. Currently I would summarize midgame strategy as choosing between either being aggressive, either being passive. What I would find desirable is to have the choice between more than two styles of play. For example to be able to play aggressive, defensive or to be booming. Aggressive should beat booming, defensive should beat aggressive (in the sense that the defensive player has a better eco after the aggression) and booming should beat defensive If you try to balance a system with only two options (active vs passive), you will create a gameplay where either midgame is irrelevant because none of the strategies is better than the other, either players rely on micro to make one of the two strategy better than the other. In a system with three options, you can have a rock-paper-scissor system, and strategy become more relevant than micro to determine what happens in midgame.

I kind of agree with that idea, but it would fit more a post about military units. To be compatible with citizen soldiers and global technology, I think the idea would be to have specialized units available in early game. A drill master would be fast to produce and interesting if you only use one barrack for example, but researching conscription technology would be better in the late game when you have many barracks. The idea might be the same as the one you had in mind with training rank2 or rank3 at higher cost, they should be interesting if you want to train a small number of them but in late game, if you want a larger number, normal units + military upgrades would provide a better return on the resources spent. Not sure about the exact cost that specialized economic units should have, I thought making them comparable to a swordman would make it easier to think about. The small metal cost would prevent early spam and potentially delay the normal economic upgrade. But I didn't spend to much time thinking about it since in any case, the exact number chosen depends on other potential balance changes. I had in mind that observing the economic specialization of your enemy might give you information about the strategy that your enemy might play. Not sure that's very relevant right now but I am taking a long term perspective here. For example, you might not invest in woodcutters if you plan to go for a mercenary/champions based strategy in P2. If they weren't specialized, you might mass them on wood before moving them to metal later on. Also, if you can harass the economic units out of their main function, you are countering the economic advantage that can be gained through their use. If you see the enemy running around your wood lines, you would have an incentive to keep your woodcutters there rather than giving them another safer task, encouraging risk taking therefore. Giving them 0 resources gathering in non-specialty resources sounds like going too far. For example, if a mine runs out, the miners should not have no utility. Setting their non-specialty gathering rate in line with other unit sounds fair from that perspective. I haven't thought too much about that part, it might depends on the name given to these units. Ideally, they should be substitute to the production of soldiers so civic center might make sense. From a logical perspective storehouse/farmstead might however make sense since their are "upgraded" units. If you call them slave, you might think about other buildings. I wanted to use them as a way to make the early/mid game more interesting but not change too much the late game. In early game the metal miner should be better but in the late game, he should be as good as the citizen soldiers equivalent (so same gathering rate as men, not women here). If the metal miner is better, you should start producing them as soon as you mine. Making the citizen-soldier fully upgraded better might work but it would raise the question about whether you want to get metal miner in early/mid-game unnecessarily complicated.

I am not sure what you mean by that it would introduce a "lot more micro". From what I have in mind, you could simply set the rally point of the production building to the woodline and click on woodcutters to have specialized units on wood rather than women. From that point of view, there is no difference in micro with the current game. More micro would come however as a side effect since scouting and rushing might be more rewarding. Behind the concept of specialized economic unit, I was searching for a way to allow for more diversified early game that could still allow to play late game (without touching the concept of citizen soldiers). To be suited for the early game, ideally, that change should have only small effects that could be however meaningful. From a gameplay perspective, applying a tech at the unit level sounds like a good "trick" to allow for more diversified gameplay in the early game. Because it affects only one unit at the time and it is only temporary (the difference between specialized economic units and women disappear when economic upgrades are researched), the differences between the two types of units is designed to slowly disappear. The specificity that I dislike about techs for the goal that I had in mind is that they are "global", that specificity make them quite unlikely to be able to be have only small effects, i.e. allow to play the late game too. In the simple example that you mention, the logical follow up seems to be go for an all-in to end the game since you will have a worst eco forever. The fertility festival seems another example of a tech that can allow to differentiate between booming and building an army. However, to be balanced and because it is a global tech, it has to be designed in such a way such that it impacts mostly the late game. If the economic advantage given was visible too early, the player researching the tech would definitively has the advantage later in the game. Global techs do seem to be good tool to differentiate the early game.

Just throwing an idea... Gameplay issue: Early/Mid-game aggression not favored by the concept of citizen-soldiers. Citizen-soldiers being about as good at collecting resources as women, the difference between booming and building army is significative only during the period in which fields are settled and the wood produced is allocated to fields construction rather than soldiers production. As a consequence, once a player has settled his food production, there is no real trade-off between booming and building an army since both strategy are about the same. Among the main suggestions that have been suggested: - Offer different set of strategies favored by tech: defensive, economic, aggressive - Adjust gathering stat/loot to change incentives - Differentiate more workers from soldiers Idea: Combine some of the ideas suggested and add specialized economic units (on top of the existing set of units) : "farmer, woodcutter or miner". A specialized economic unit is a unit with: low military capacity (similar to a women); high cost (similar to a swordman in terms of resources cost and training time); high productivity in his speciality (similar to a women with p3 upgrades in his specialty domain, similar to a woman with no upgrade in other domain); high loot (similar to a swordman) ; do not benefit from economic upgrades. The aim of the specialized worker units would be to give to a player the opportunity to actually choose between booming or building an army in early/mid game, without affecting the overall economic balance with other units in late game. With respect to a women boom, the specialized economic unit boom is more risky since: - they cost more to produce and replace; - the opportunity cost of denying them access to their workplace is higher; - they will be tracked more carefully by the enemy since loosing a soldier to kill a specialized unit is not a bad tradeoff; They should be useful to take mid game economic advantage (if not punished) or develop more specific strategies by developing one sector of the economy extensively. They might also favor CS all-in on players using mixed of economic specialized units and CS in mid-game and therefore reward more scouting at the same time. Related discussions: - booming = turtling - Strategies choice - Balancing Gatherers - Interaction and early gameplay

The best would be to start with the exact same map generation

Thanks for the fun challenge, it gives a nice opportunity for anyone to evaluate how well he is doing or try to copy some other people build. I usually don't think too much about the build order, I just try to spend all resources that I have and maximize workers efficiency. Trying various "normal" build order, I would always get to something between 7:40 and 7:50 but I would also usually float quite a lot of resources since it is also the timing around which I normally phase up. Taking a paper and a pen to write down the key steps of Vali's build then trying to implement it at slow speed is a nice exercise for anyone who want to improve his early game (or don't remember how to play). In a poor attempt to copy Vali's build at 0.75x speed with many mistakes (completely forgetting the berries upgrade among others ), I got to 7:35. I think putting 2 extra women or taking the upgrade is close to be equivalent in general, if you don't have extra berries. Taking the upgrade is however a dominant strategy in a normal game because you might have berries that you haven't scouted yet. Since you need to decide from the start if you want the upgrade, you should take the upgrade before scouting just in case you have some extra. In this challenge, since we know from the start that you will never have extra berries to take, it makes sense to consider build orders without the upgrade to get a faster first houses and barrack and focus on training units faster. About the food upgrade, 40 seconds is quite a long time for techs to be researched relative to the length of the challenge. If you start researching the food upgrade around minute 4-5, it won't make much of a difference relative to someone not taking that upgrade but getting extra fields. Vali research it quite late but get 7 fields, I tried early food upgrade with 6 fields or later food upgrade with 7 fields, both seems to give about the same result. The 7 fields/later tech is however better for a normal game. For the wood upgrad, Vali researches it before he makes the second house, so it kicks in very early. The main issue there is when the research is completed, Vali needs to develop his farm/build houses&barrack, i.e. add workers to the less efficient sector of his economy instead of adding them to his wood economy where they would be the most productive. Vali has only between 14 to 20 woodcutters in most of the challenge so it doesn't take too many extra woodcutters to compensate for the missing +25%. Relative to a non-tech build, on top of being better for middle-late game, I would guess Vali's build would also be much better, even around minute 7, if you have extra food: - The berries tech would be beneficial if you have extra berries; - You would be able to delay building farms to get more woodcutters in early game, therefore benefiting more from the wood tech advantage.

I like the idea, but maybe it could be used to affect more the gameplay. For example, if there is a minimum distance between pyramids (similar to the one of tower), then the Kushites would be forced to spread pyramids (it could be interpreted as spreading cultural influence? ). This would make phasing up slightly more risky and makes early aggression on Kushites a more relevant strategy.

Not sure if my explanation was very clear. I made two examples. For the first, it goes through all the chicken without hunting at all. For the second cavalry, it started to hunt only with the last chicken, the first one was ignored again. The issue seems to be for intermediate rally point, the hunting target is ignored.