BreakfastBurrito_007

Some people actually try to master challenging skills instead of just making the game easier. There's a lot of fun and re-playability in games where you can build skills to beat other players. I'm not against automated features, I just think that ANY automated feature should remain un-optimized so that direct management and application of skill can outperform the automated features. For example, people laugh at how inefficient autoscout is in aoe2. The devs would have an easy time making autoscout highly effective. The reason they don't is so that players can build multitasking and prioritization skills that come with manual scouting.

If I remember correctly this is true with some caveats. His conclusion was that 1 by 1 is most efficient by resources spent and earned by the units trained. However he didn't factor in that accumulating unspent resources is another cost of 1 by 1, at some point in real games (as opposed to a math scenario) it becomes considerably better to make batches of 2-10 so that you can spend resources faster. If you do this your bigger population will cause your eco score curve to be faster than someone doing 1 by 1 even if the 1 by 1 player is getting a better return on investment for each unit he makes. This is what makes progui so op because it makes sure all your resources are spent on the maximum AND most efficient production method (aside from the fact that you can completely avoid having idle time on your production buildings, which even the best players of 0ad can't eliminate).

That would obviously depend on how you implement it.

iphricates was very problematic, its good that there was a nerf. Now I do agree athens could use some other good heroes, and perhaps some justification for their champs coming out of a super expensive building. Also citizen spearmen counter cavalry perfectly well still so I wouldn't worry about that as of the new comm mod.

It was, I just checked it out. unless something went wrong with your installation?

The strategy is more effective for 1200-1400 players who can lessen the performance gap between themselves and a higher level player. This works to some extent even if they defending player has prepared for it because then their boom will be much slower compared to players of their same level. To be honest, its not very relevant to discuss this since the "chicken rush" as I call it seems to be just as effective now as before. Games are fun because of the skills and strategies that you learn to win. There's not much to learn about random arrows, because there is no player control over them. The goal of non-random building AI was to add another aspect of the game for the players to play. On a side note heres an interesting game where H.Herle managed to make archers look good: commands.txt metadata.json

I can't remember that one, but I tried another one against other good players and it worked just fine although I didn't keep all of my cav alive (boo hoo, its still ~60/9 across 4 players). Also there's no need to insult someone who rarely rushes. Thats a good point, I think the whole purpose of the change was to try find a better game mechanic that, if balanced could allow for better gameplay. Just because something is balanced doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. Mercs were balanced before a25 but they played pretty much exactly the same as normal CS, so people decided they could be improved and now they play an interesting role in 0ad games after an alpha of being imbalanced.

It’s true that the building ai was better balanced before the mod, but it was very underdeveloped and led to a very simple gameplay result. It would be foolish to say that random arrows is the best possible building ai system, so it was definitely worth trying something new. Also I’ve seen high skill players avoid losing units to the cc despite the cc shooting the closest unit. These weak cav or infantry then just go back and gather or heal in their own cc. Interesting micro has arisen for both the rusher and defender. The best part of the building arrow change is that there is now an immediate cost to entering building arrow range instead of it being negligible for big armies. The worst part has been how fast units die especially with overlapping ranges.

I'm not sure if autociv mod can do this, but it would be my first suggestion to try.

@Feldfeld thanks for working on these map balances, I'm excited to play "pizza" with balanced wood!

The situation changes when you have 100+ unit battles, some players have complained that everything dies too fast.

In theory you could micro well enough to completely avoid damage from the pikeman. It's really interesting to see the long reach of pikemen play a role here, where before it didnt matter since they did negligible damage anyway. It's nice now to see pikemen and spearmen having different strengths versus cavalry.

@leopard you are playtesting them. Thanks for your efforts. The pikemen here are rank 3, melee units have added damage, armor, and hp with each rank, compared to ranged units which only get accuracy and hp. The strength of melee rankups is acknowledged to be a problem by most players, so there will be some reduction to the rankup bonuses. Try the same scenario with rank 1 units from both types and you'll find it much easier to kill the pikemen.

@leopard I've found that cavalry only compositions are very rare and hard to pull off. I've had some successful cav play and some disasters myself. A lot of players are having success with some cavalry and some infantry, sometimes operating independently. I think the main change has been that cavalry is not universally superior to infantry as it was before the mod, which is good. A balance challenge emerges for civs like persians whose strengths lie mostly in cav.

the change to net damage across all units is definitely smaller than the net change to units durability (melee lost armor). The driver of any net ttk change is because of the reduction of melee armor. Before this mod, battles felt slower because either before or after sniping there was this damage sponge you had to kill. I think one reason why melee seem to kill ranged units faster is because they rank up while killing them and this increases their damage, hp, and armor further. I think further changes to melee/ranged balance aren't clear, but reduction to the rank up bonuses of melee is a clear change.