ChronA
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Posts posted by ChronA
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1 hour ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:
Honestly the difference between archers and slingers is more or less a false dichotomy; they had similar roles.
I agree with this. Slingers seem to be in an ok spot in A24, even if they are not as shiny as they were in A23. We could possibly discuss bumping up their range to equal or slightly exceed the archer's, based on historical evidence (with compensatory nerfs), but that should be a much lower priority for this thread than figuring out the javelinist's identity and the archer's counter cycle.
1 hour ago, alre said:Real gameplay is not like open field simulations. In 0AD positioning is very important, and archers with their range can attack and retreat before having losses, which means they can decide either when or where to fight. The only way to break this is with cavalry (but of course you have archer cavalry).
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PS: lowering the importance of positioning is something undergoing, so we can expect range advantage to lose some importance in a25.I agree. Basically kiting and static defense (which in this context is both actively damage-dealing turrets and normal buildings and walls acting as pathing blockers) both greatly advantage the archer, breaking its intended counter cycles. Fix that and you fix a lot of what is wrong with the ranged unit lines. Question is: are these efforts meant to be part of that generalized fix you are alluding to, or separate?
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2 minutes ago, Dakara said:
Is a idea for give a real identity to skirmish. Not a archer like unit.
Yes, that appears to be our consensus objective with this thread. If the javelinist is just a inferior archer variant, why would anyone with a choice make it? And if we buffed it to make it better than archers, why would anyone make archer? It needs a distinct identity.
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On my sandbox testing: actually I am wrong.
The unmodified Javelinist already performs well on all of my analysis criteria. They lose to the archers but consistently beat equal resource groups of melee infantry, which in turn beat the same number of archers by a considerable margin. That means there should be a functioning counter cycle. Build melee infantry to beat archers, javelinists to beat melee infantry, archers to beat javelinists. The question is why this is not happening in real gameplay.
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2 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:
can you explain why javelineers need to be buffed if 40 skirmishers beat 30 spear cavalry in loose formation on an open field battle?
Because unless javelinists are good for something, no one will ever make 40 skirmishers, and thus whether 30 spear cav can beat them or not will be irrelevant.
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I tested Dakara's & Yekaterina's proposal in my sandbox. My findings:
Javelinist attack to 32 P, speed 2.000, range 20 --
Good changes IMO. Slower attack means units no longer look like they are having seizures! 32 attack hits like a truck, but doesn't seem game breaking. 20 base range might be a little short. It definitely underlines the idea that these guys are not just off-brand archers, which is good. Less good is that they almost feel like weird melee-infantry with such short range. 25 may be a better compromise number. 25 +5 range per rank would sweeten the deal IMO.Javelinist HP to 75 --
Way overpowered! 75 HP javs annihilate archers, and every other unit type I tested them against. That's way too much meat. If the intent is to make javelins tanky, without massively changing their role, I'd suggest a different idea...Javelinist armor to 5 H, 2 P (which is +4 H, +1 P compared to their current) --
I think this is much more in line with the visual depiction of their gear. Those small light shields would not be so great against projectiles, but they would be excellent for parrying sword and spear strikes. I think the balance effect is better too. In combination with Dakara's changes, these javelinists have a strong anti-melee flavor, both as a tank for other ranged units and as a DPS source in themselves. This seems to have been the intent with their base stats as well, but now it is accentuated. And against archers they still lose by a respectable margin, which I think is right.-
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It seems right to me that archers remain the ranged supremacy troop type of choice, so long as 0 AD maintains its commitment to historical authenticity. Good quality bows and arrows take a huge amount of engineering and labor to manufacture compared to slings and shot, or javelins. If all of these weapons had a similar degree of effectiveness, why would anyone in the ancient world have bother equipping their armies with bows instead of the cheaper options?
Ultimately, some type of generic range unit has to be the best generic ranged unit, and to me it fits that that unit would be the archer. The challenge for maintaining unit diversity then is to give slingers and javelinists some sort of role besides generic ranged DPS, so that they are not just a disappointing version of an archer.
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(LetswaveaBook and Yekaterina with the ninja!)
2 hours ago, Grapjas said:That's definitely doable with a mod and simple to do aswell.
Yeah, after some thought, I guess you are right. Just put a binary override onto the collision test of MissileHit() in DelayedDamage.js. Best practice would probably be to add an "always hit" tag to ranged weapons that would control this behavior. That way, if for instance someone wanted to make a Myth style total conversion using the game assets, they would have an easy time re-enabling projectile simulation.
2 hours ago, Grapjas said:The only problem would be a visual one, it will look like the projectile missed, when it was actually registered as a hit.
I don't think updating the visualizations is really necessary. Individual projectiles are hard to see anyway, and clear misses should be pretty rare if projectile speeds are fast enough. It would be much weirder to see arrows bending to track their targets.
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Do you mean removing the random spread element from projectile targeting, or are you talking about removing ballistic projectile simulation for ranged attacks entirely? (The latter would be like the system used in the StarCraft games, where ranged attacks launch a homing projectile that are guaranteed to hit .) It's an important distinction because zero-spread projectiles can still be dodged by dancing.
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Put me in coach! I'm ready!
Positives: I can work on component scripts and templates. I can also do low-fi texture work if push comes to shove. I'd be very happy to run sandbox balance tests and discuss high-level design-theory-crafting (as much as time allows) if the need arises.
Negatives: I don't have any hands on multiplayer experience, nor have I been able to watch enough A24 competitive to authoritatively opine on the current gestalt balance-state. My coding skills are also entirely self-taught. So exercise caution when handling anything I produce. Plus, my old Linux laptop is currently in a coma, and I was never very good at using it anyway. Thus I am Windows 10 bound at this time, and trying to get into your version control system confuses and frightens me...
If you think you can use any of my services, please point me at a task.
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2 hours ago, Freagarach said:
You can find the sought for relation in the "Attack"-helper script.
Oh!!! Wow do I feel stupid! Thanks. I forgot that the helper scripts were a thing. (I guess I'm still suffering from a bit of mental fog from recent fever -- Covid vaccine side effect.)
In that case I'll read through that thread you linked, then (unless something in there changes my mind) I'll draft up a pull request for you to debate.
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0 AD's design document contains a number of interesting gameplay concepts that have yet to be implemented. However, there hasn't been much public facing movement on that front since auras were introduced with Alpha 15, back in 2014. It is discouraging for those of us who were (are?) enthusiastic for an innovative, historically-grounded RTS and not just an open source retread of other prominent titles' gameplay.
I want to suggest that adding support for directionally-dependent attack resistance values in A25 would be relatively low hanging fruit, to demonstrate progress on the gameplay wish list. I was even going to offer to do the coding myself. Unfortunately, I am discovering that the damage-effect handing pipeling has undergone some radical revisions between A23 and A24. Most importantly, the code that defined the relationship between armor and damage-received seems to have been removed from its former residence in the Resistance (formerly Armor) component script. In fact I'm beginning to fear it is now hardcoded into the engine, which would put it beyond my meager abilities to manipulate.
Never-the-less, I think directional attack resistance remains one of the easiest gameplay features to support in terms of the simplicity of its mathematics and its decision tree implementation. Therefore I am putting out the question: what would it take to add support for directional attack resistance with Alpha 25? Particularly, what files need to be edited? Does anyone have any strong preferences on the kind of system to use?
Personally I think the best combination of simplicity and versatility would be to allow separate values for flank and rear armor to be defined in each resistance type in the unit template, plus fields to define the angles where the flanks and rear start. If any of these values are missing the algorithm should default back to using the main resistance value, ensuring innate compatibility with any projects that don't want to directional armor. I also don't think it is necessary or wise to implement the concept, beyond minimal support, in Alpha 25. One of this project's strengths is the active modding scene's ability to test new ideas. I would rely on them to determine the best ways to incorporate new features into gameplay and UI, just like you are doing with status effects. I'm hopeful we can get some interesting new gameplay from both these features diffusing back into the vanilla game in A26 and A27.
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3 hours ago, Yekaterina said:
The problem is singleplayer is too easy and boring after some time. The AI Petra Bot never uses any interesting strategies and you can predict their behaviour after a few matches. The Chinese allows for weird strategies, just like Mace and Kush.
If the AI is totally predictable after only a few matches, adding another civ ain't gonna help you with that...
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A gaming story which some might find interesting, though perhaps not directly relevant:
About a decade I got involved in the alpha and beta of an indie RTS called Achron. The game was based around a time travel mechanic similar to 5d chess. We quickly discovered it had a similar problem to what you guys have. It turned out there was no opportunity cost to rushing, because if an attack didn't work out perfectly you could go back in time, cancel the attack, and order the soldiers back to guard your base. We had Rushing=Turtling, and there was no way of disentangling them without removing the game's defining mechanic. It made for weird games with 30+ minutes of posturing but very little combat or tech progression.
In consultation with the devs, we decided it could be fix it by reducing the cost of resource gatherers (to buff booming), removing defensive chokes around bases (to nerf the turtling), and playing on much larger maps (to nerf the rushing). The game release and for about a month it seemed good. Then the meta shifted with the influx of new skilled players. The new meta was naked booming. It turned out that some of the late game air units scaled super well, because with the time manipulation it was impossible to pin them down in a bad fight and score kills. Therefore whoever got to them first could just fly into the enemy's base and win.
So we tired addressing the problem with map changes but to no avail. The inflection region where a map went from completely boom favored to completely rush favored was too small for our map makers to ever identify. The problem was only solved much later when the devs finally patched the gatherer cost higher again AND the remaining player base adopted a gentlemen's agreement that effectively banned playing mass air strategies.The moral I took away is that you should make sure you understand the source and nature of a problem before trying to fix it. We thought the problem was that time manipulation made it possible to simultaneously attack and defend without any tradeoffs. The real problem was that time manipulation can make war so precise and deadly that there is no point in fighting unless you are prepared with an unbeatable killing blow. The game only became fun again once we stopped worrying about the rush-boom balance and stated focusing on systematically removing unbeatable killing blows.
So I ask what is 0 AD's real problem? Is it really the combat-ready gatherers blurring the lines between Boom and Turtle? Is it a diversity-vacuum afflicting unit-role interactions and utility? Perhaps it's even clinging to closely to the example of a venerated ancestor, without considering how outdated circumstances, luck, and survivorship bias figured into its successes. I really don't have any sure answers to that one.
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9 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
and be another clone of AOE?
Personally I would prefer 0AD to bravely forge its own distinct path. There is a lot the Age-of games do poorly with both history and gameplay that I hope this project can improve on. But Ensemble's games are still great games, and I want to be able to say the same for 0AD, even if it means just aping its most obvious point of inspiration. Better to make a great game by copying another great game (where applicable) than to make a mediocre game by refusing to.
10 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:All RTS took note of new ones from Blizzard...
In point of fact, if I remember my RTS history rightly, Blizzard did not invent the mature RTS formula, nor did they do most of the legwork in perfecting it, but they are a highly visible point of reference when discussing it. I believe that is an important distinction. It's not that everyone is copy Blizzard because they are popular; Blizzard and everyone else are all copying a common zeitgeist because they recognize its wisdom. Anyway that is largely tangential, because I am not saying you should copy every aspect of SC2's design or anything like that! I am specifically talking only about the rush-boom-turtle counter cycle. Context sir! Context!
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I don't think rams are the solution you want to this problem. They are slow, expensive, and provide no additional utility to a player's economy or map control. That means rushing them out will put you very far behind, and likely turn your attack into an all-in. That's not good.
If you want to solve this, you either need to toss out the citizen-soldier concept (as has so often been proposed); or you need to take a cue from Blizzard's RTS design book instead of Ensemble's, and allow at least some of your basic units to have favorable matchups against static defenses. And frankly, even if you take option one, I not sure you won't end up needing option 2 anyway.
--------------------------About the poll question, you are missing the most important option: nerfing the gather rate of soldiers. The last thing you want to do when you are trying to encourage rushes is to speed up economic activities... Naked booming is a thing you know! It could easily become the dominant strategy if you fix the free-turtling problem.
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Divide the citizen soldier unit class into two archetypes:
1) The "commoner" light infantry/cavalry which will be comprised of all the ranged citizen-soldiers, plus any melee citizen-soldiers not equipped with a large shield or substantial body armor during their Basic rank. These guys can be left as they are.
2) "Landed" heavy infantry/cavalry is everyone who is left. They get their economic utility soft-nerfed by having their resource carrying capacity reduced by 50% and their movement speed reduced by 3. However, to make it up, they get +10 pierce armor on top of whatever they have now.
Voila! The problem is solved but citizen-soldier concept remains intact.
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@Yekaterina I'd suggest disabling unit promotions for these sorts of trials. The stat boosts that promoted units get tend to exaggerate small differences in unit effectiveness into the appearance of a decisive advantage (one that might be easily reversed by a canny player in a real game). They also amplify the effects of RNG (i.e. random number generation based variations in gameplay outcome) making it harder to find consistent outcomes to your tests.
On minimum range: the emergent routing and kiting behaviors it causes are definitely cool, but they are ruinous to any sort of coherent battle plan that players may try to enact involving melee units. This is probably extremely realistic by the way, but in a game not designed around it, it will also be extreme frustrating. In 0 AD AE, static defense seems to be extremely decisive. I can just imagine the rage a player would feel when they lose a quarter of their army because fleeing archers spontaneously lured them into range of a fortress. It might even make melee units functionally unusable.
EDIT: on the other hand, by embracing this sort of thing as a core feature, you might also be able to create some really cool counter cycles based off tactics instead of just unit type. For instance, densely massed ranged-infantry hard counter cavalry by sheer volume of fire -- both in the game as it currently exists and in real life. But suppose you have melee heavy infantry that are slightly too slow to actually catch and slaughter those ranged infantry, but are nearly immune to their attacks because they have so much armor. You could use those heavy infantry to charge down and disperse the ranged infantry, then use your cavalry to get in amongst them and wipe them out.
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8 hours ago, azayrahmad said:
Yes mine works much the same way: calculate the angle between the target unit's heading and the vector of the attack, and if that angle is greater than the threshold then calculate damage using "flank" armor values instead of the main armor values. I also made it so the flanking angle threshold and flank armor values can be customized for each unit in their templates.
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52 minutes ago, wraitii said:22 hours ago, ChronA said:
[...] This is certainly what we see in AoE2.
I won't lie, I'll finish that sentence with "and it works very well for them".
Oh absolutely! You'll get no argument from me about that!
I'm just pointing out that if the intention is to make retreating/kiting punishable, then there are options (some of which are already in the official plan). However it is also perfectly legitimate to just have very weak chasing. In fact I point to AOE2 and Dawn of War 2 (and even SC2 to a degree) as games where that approach not only works but is core to their identities.1 hour ago, wraitii said:Realistically, I don't think we'll get to directional damage in A25
What makes you say that? The technical implementation is trivial (and you have at least one contributor--me--offering to put in the legwork) so I assume you mean that it's not a good time in the game's balance evolution to try such a massive change. However, are you really expecting there to be a better time down the road? It sounds more to me like they simply don't fit the vision anymore. If that's the case, then fair enough, but then what's the plan B?
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31 minutes ago, azayrahmad said:
Have we implemented directional attack bonus yet?
I had a version of directional armor modded in for testing in A23. Would not be hard to merge it into A24, if no one else has a better version of the same concept already at hand. (Mine's kind of bare bones: just simulation side, no GUI.)
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6 hours ago, wraitii said:
I will counter that by saying that you actually need some strategy to hit your enemy on retreat, e.g. putting some units in their path, instead of just getting freebies because the pathfinding is bad.
Looking at other games, that can definitely work out well as a design choice, but only if it is supported by other aspects of the balance plan. And without huge stat revisions I don't think 0 AD is likely to qualify.
Units here are too immobile relative to the rate at which they kill each other to pull off massive force reorientations in the heat of battle, but also not immobile enough to be effectively locked into any compromising position they land in. If one player divides their forces to form a hammer and anvil, the opponent will just destroy the anvil with their superior force before the hammer can get into place. Moreover the game's economy & map size is such that continuous reinforcement is pretty common. That means the opponent's rear is almost never entirely unguarded, and you more likely to force a 90 degree pivot than actually encircle the enemy. This is certainly what we see in AoE2.
If you want to have encirclements work in 0 AD, there are a few ways to go about it. One would be to massively slow the time to kill by boosting armor and hp, or lowering attack damage. this would encourage reactive maneuvering. Or you could speed up the time to kill and harden counter-strength into the one-hit-kill territory for advantageous unit matchups. That would incentivize ambushes. Either way you'll probably want to give a big buff to cavalry movement speed, while slightly nerfing infantry movement speed. You would also need to slow down unit production so player will stop parade-marching reinforcements, and nerf static defense a bit. Otherwise no one would ever commit to a fight on open ground.
An alternative perspective: maybe this should be paired with some compensatory mechanical revisions that would buff chasing. Running charges and directional armor come to mind.
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Probably a minority opinion: I oppose adding any more civs to Empires Ascendant at this point in its development. In fact I think the development would benefit greatly from temporarily dropping official support for all but 6 or so... although I know there is exactly 0% chance of that ever happening, because it would royally piss off and probably destroy the entire community that sustains this project. As such I am hesitant to even air this prospective. It feels like just adding another rage post to the fire, but I think it is vital to any collaborative work to try to understand how others are feeling, so here it goes:
Great buildings must be built atop strong foundations if they are to endure, and in game development terms the foundations of an experience are the gameplay features and balance design. But 0 AD's foundations are weak. In terms of gameplay, Empires Ascendant is just a very mediocre Age of Empires clone. Its distinguishing feature (and saving grace) is literally that it is open source. There are a hundred different ideas on these forum about how to shore up those foundations: battalions, morale, 10 different management-minigame concepts for city building and resource gathering, 20 ideas for new aura and damage-type interactions, 50 ideas for making better-differentiated unit roles... The problem is how are any of those ideas ever realistically going to make it into the game?
There are currently 13 going on 14 fully fleshed out and playable civilizations inhabiting this unfinished tech demo of a game. If any new feature breaks even one of those civs (whether through balance perturbation, or missing assets, or just rubbing someone with a practiced playstyle the wrong way) the commentariat will raise an unholy stink about it and the idea will die. This is not a situation that is conducive to agile evolution. And of course I also understand how it got to be this way. In open source you have to make use of the development resources you have at hand. However that doesn't preclude applying foresight to prevent future impasses.
Ancient China is an incredibly cool culture (one of my favorites), but what would adding them to the game at this point in time actually achieve? Would it help refine the balance of the game. Would it explore new unit dynamics? Would it just be a superficial reskin of other civs that are already in the game? Or would it contribute to the slow death of gameplay development by bloat and crushing inertia? I know what I think: adding towers to a fortress built on the sand is folly. But then I'm not the guy hauling the stones, I'm just the feckless guy who's watching from the hill and shouting that your castle is leaning.
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On 30/03/2021 at 11:43 AM, wraitii said:
Age of Empires-like "reveal attackers in the fog of war" capability.
I'd like to confirm that this is desirable.
It depends what the line-of-sight radius is supposed to represent in the gameplay metaphor, which in turn depends on what units are supposed to represent.
If a unit's LOS represents a person's individual sensory perception range, then it would not be desirable as it is quite possible to come under attack and not know what is attacking you. On the other hand, if this is what LOS wants to simulate then it does a pretty poor job of it. In the real world vision range is primarily limited by obstruction and secondarily by resolution. There is no absolute limit on an individual's vision-range except in rare atmospheric conditions.
Alternatively, perhaps each unit represents an entire company or brigade and their LOS represents their command-level region of awareness. In that case I think revealing attackers in the fog of war is desirable. A company may not know the disposition or intentions of all the other units in their vicinity, especially if recon is not part of their battlefield role, but the whole company is likely to catch on pretty quickly when lead and iron starts flying. They may not know the exact details of where each attack is coming from, but they'll still have a general idea of where and what the enemies are (so long as we are still talking about ancient warfare).
Likewise, you could say each unit represents an individual and their LOS is their actionable region of awareness. In that case revealing attackers in the fog of war is desirable for the same reasons. A spearman might easily be able to see an enemy archer walking around 200 m off, but there is nothing he would reasonably do about it. He might not even inform his chain of command if his job is not to be a sentry. Thus the archer is invisible for all practical purposes. Once that archer starts shooting at him though, you can bet there will be a response regardless of if he can actually see the enemy's position.
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borg ninja-ed me. For most people, what is intuitive is based on how Age of Empires 2 did things. But that is often a far cry from historical reality.
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A few suggestions (as someone who has seen some catastrophically bad indie-RTS tutorials
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1. A complete RTS tutorial system should be split into 3 separate and stand-alone segments:
i. A primer on RTS controls and concept for completely new players.
ii. A gameplay tutorial that teaches the specific skills needed to play the campaign and skirmish matches.
iii. A multiplayer introduction that teaches fundamental skills and strategies players will need to know to be competitive in multiplayer.2. We should be able to skip any of these segments or complete them in any order. Forcing someone with 1000 hours of AoE2 to relearn unit selection and tech trees in order to find out about some build orders is a @#$% move.
3. The RTS Primer really should not have any narrative elements or context. Its purpose is to teach new players how to play the game, which for many is a big enough challenge already. They don’t need a side helping of historical fan-fiction to digest on top of all that new information.
4. The Gameplay Tutorial can and probably should have a simple story to keep players entertained. However, it should be completely independent of any other campaigns. Forcing someone with 1000 hours of AoE2 to sit through hours of tutorials to get the prologue to one of the main campaigns would be a @#$% move. We also don’t want a very involved story unless there is the ability to skip it. The point of a tutorial is to teach gameplay. To much extraneous narration will get in the way and piss off anyone who genuinely needs the tutorial.
5. The Multiplayer Introduction absolutely MUST NOT have any narrative context what-so-ever. This is for the developers sake, not the players. This tutorial may need to be frequently updated, and that will be much harder to do if every balance change requires rewriting large chunks of the framing story and narration from scratch.
6. AND if you can possible help it. Don’t decide on a framing story for the tutorial until AFTER you have designed and preferably built the training scenarios. Otherwise people will get attached to their story devices and it will be much harder to make necessary changes down the road.
But if you do all of this well, you can make a great first impression on new players and grow your active player base significantly.
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[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units
in Gameplay Discussion
Posted · Edited by ChronA
Patch notes make good arguments in favor of regularized unit speeds, IMO. Unfortunately then I must conclude that BreakfastBurrito is correct: unless their speed or range is nerfed, the archer must remain the king of infantry. That limits their multiplayer-viable direct counters to cavalry, static defense turrets, and artillery engines. Personally I think that means job is done for archer and slingers. It's mainly on whoever is working on cavalry buffs to bring balance to the infantry types.
Of course, if it transpires that the way to do that is nerfing all ranged units DPS or something there may be more work to do.
The other thing that may be worth considering in the context of archers and ranged units though, is indirect counters. These would be units that can't hurt the archers but neither can the archers hurt them. Right now that's just rams right? But if you gave heavy infantry enough pierce armor they could also qualify. Buildings and static defense could also gain that relationship if you took away the archer's capture attack. Put those together and you could seemingly restrict archers to a much more niche role: skirmisher-slinger-and-villager hunter. That's a pretty radical concept, but maybe not outside our Overton window?
Regardless, the main question remains: what role is the javelinist for? Right now it can't be anti-melee-infantry, because that is a job archers already do incidentally in their primary role as ranged superiority weapons. Making javelinist anti-cavalry would be too absurd! Anti elephant they already do, but is too niche. Maybe make them anti-building?