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BreakfastBurrito_007

Balancing Advisors
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Posts posted by BreakfastBurrito_007

  1. 1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

    Melee citizens have been nerfed which is bad, because for example Athens and Sparta rely on these units, as they don't have any champion cavalry. Also, for some civs the citizen spearman is the only unit which can counter cavalry well (Britons, Mauryas). Furthermore it weakens melee mercenaries even more and using them didnt seem to have been a good strategy any more.

    Siege units have already been rather hard to destroy, now even more.

    As I said, Athens have the big disadvantage to not have any champion cavalry, so it might be a mistake to nerf the Iphicrates hero. This civilization relies on him.

    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.

    • Like 1
  2. 1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

    "chicken rush" have been successful against good players. If that strategy was anywhere near as effective as you and your bro insist

    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

    • Like 1
  3. 6 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

    Your brother (I think) tried to do against me to prove his point when I built ALL women and failed miserably

    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. 

    7 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

    My point is if it was balanced before, which I think it was, then this is a change designed to disrupt what is already balanced

    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.

  4. 5 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

    balance was fine before and there were very few (zero?) complaints

    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.

    • Like 2
  5. 32 minutes ago, leopard said:

    look how much time it takes to micro away from the pikeman and my cav died anyway, in 0AD time play a big factor. I feel pikemen is buffed too much. and even after hitting too many javelins pikeman is barely touched. watch the second video.

    pikeman is reasonably strong but still getting hit by javelins and eventually dies I had to micro hard though and wasted lot of time killing one pikeman.

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

    • Like 3
  6. @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.

    • Like 2
  7. @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.

    • Like 1
  8. 30 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

    That means units are dying faster because of melee's buff despite range's nerf.

    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.

  9. 21 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

    The more I play, the more I think this is the answer. Not sure if it is necessary for towers but I am leaning towards no. 

     

     

    I don't think the meta has really been figured out yet. I think we still need to wait to see how things shake out. With that said...the below are all things that I was independently thinking. 

     

    I also think there is a general problem with how champions aren't being made as much anymore. I like how melee is being made more now. But that diversity has come at the cost of less cav and champs. Personally, both neither system is better than the other for me. But I do think we could make the current system better to address the cav and champ issues. 

     

     

    Interestingly, quite a few players particularly Havran have argued that champions have become meta. I'm not saying I agree. In fact my argument so far about balance is that its actually pretty good. It is truly a weird situation to have almost every player claim one thing or another is OP with some certainty, all while having very little agreement. Clearly the meta has been more elusive than everyone thinks. 

    If there is any one thing that I think most people can agree is now OP it is spartans and athenians, the reasons being several bonuses and heroes that combine particularly well with the melee rebalance:

    • iphricates (previously determined to be OP): seems to be more important now that melee units have less armor
    • Leonidas: the damage addition to spearmen is much more significant now that the base rate is increased
    • Skiritai commandos start rank 3 which is now a much stronger advantage over rank 1
    • hoplite tradition: improved rank up speed means hoplites can reach rank 2/3 in one good fight, fast enough to make a big difference in the fight in which they rank up.

    Combining these civ specific bonuses with the melee rebalance has led to melee units from these civs being too strong. I think removing armor from melee rankup bonuses, and nerfing iphricates would solve these concerns effectively.

     

     

    • Like 1
  10. At the start of the community mod changes were limited to bugfixes and small unit/hero/civ tweaks. The main vision of the mod was to act as a testing environment for future changes. Through 2022, 2023 and until now the community mod has served as the base game for quite a few 0ad players. This is the first release of the community mod to feature significant experimentation, and it has been both successful and unsuccessful. Every player has felt some level of discomfort as their established understanding of the game is challenged, some people reject such discomfort and some people tolerate it.

    People who have considered the changes and adapted to them by and large are contributing to the mod (and 0ad) with constructive criticism. That is really good to see.

    Another group of people who do not wish for the game to change, who are unable to adapt and learn, yearn to execute the same strategies that they have always preferred. When they encounter the discomfort of looking outside of their box, they become enraged. For this group it feels like the end of the world, or the end of 0ad.

    Its obviously no use to include people of the second category in playtesting as it is in the community mod, because they can't or don't explain what it is they don't like (what is imbalanced?, what is broken?, what plays poorly? ect.). In previous alphas where there were balance issues there was nearly unanimous understanding, think of merc cav, firecav of a25, slingers of a23, or archers of a24. In the case of comm mod 6, there is almost no agreement between the most vocal disparagers of the mod. The lack of constructive feedback from this most vocal group is an indication that its best to protect these people from new things by making sure that the base game is in a bug free and balanced state upon alpha releases. This way, players interested in contributing to balancing/game development can test things, provide feedback and then go back to the base game if there are issues with the community mod version.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
  11. There are many proposed ideas for adjusting non-random buildingAI for better gameplay outcomes, I'm gonna list some here:

    • reduce max arrow count in cc
    • random arrows for cc and fort, but keep non-random for towers
    • increasing arrow damage with phase or blacksmith tech (ranged damage)
    • fixed ranges for buildings, or adjust the default range so that it matches the current default+bonus for a flat map.
    • random arrows default, player click focuses arrows.

    I've noticed that the primary change is that the cost/benefit analysis of diving under the cc to get kill is much more complicated now, it used to be that you would only trade hp that would eventually make you need to heal your units in the cc. Now that there is an immediate threat (units actually die) from the cc, a rusher needs to make sure that what they do under the cc is worth losing at least one unit.

    At the same time rushers and rush defenders are learning ways to distract and focus cc fire respectively. It's good to see players developing skills to maximize their results for both defense and offense in these scenarios.

     

  12. I think people should also recognize when making their vote that keeping the changes in the mod allows them to be balanced and tweaked, where as "bad change" is preferring the previous version with any undesirable features that we have accepted for a while as a playerbase. Basically "bad change" is if you see absolutely no potential for the change to improve gameplay.

  13. 2 hours ago, zozio32 said:

    reagrding the first one, I would only change the fact that building should target units if in range before buildings.    There is no point in a tower shooting at buildings around when ennemy units are attacking

    this is how the implemented buildingai works unless there are bugs. Be sure that there are units closer than buildings and that you didnt attack-click the building.

    • Thanks 1
  14. 2 hours ago, king reza the great said:

    Hi

    To control sniping (that is annoying) u dont need to change damage of units

    The best way is to limit the number of units that can snipe ( like max 30 units)

    The same limitation should be put on number of champs ( like max 20) because some players ( often op players) turtle and spam many champs in that case nothing can stop them. This limitations can help to balance the game.

    The new community mod ( 0.26.6) doesnt solve the mentioned problems and also can causes problems ( like op early camel rush)

    Arbitrary limitations on in-game functions like champs or sniping show that balance problems are present, capping the number of these things isnt really a solution but a coping mechanism. 

    So far there hasn't been enough gameplay of the new mod to establish what, if anything is OP. Many people claim certain things are op when they lose to it, but there needs to be widespread agreement to make a conclusion.

    In fact several in game factors in the mod are changed to the detriment of the camel rush, consider:

    • non random building arrows (kills individual camels as opposed to weakening all of them)
    • spearcav have increased damage (this is mathematically before the 3x counter, so the counter is effectively buffed)

     

    • Like 1
  15. 7 hours ago, Atrik said:

    ith @real_tabasco_sauce patch, defense buildings mechanic are about: For attacker, bringing a/a few units closer to cc and dance, for defender, shift-click all non-dancing or weaker units (new spam sniping mechanic). These micro seems to me extremely predictable

    Well this micro is really only theoretical until someone can make it work. I agree that the logic is simple, but this would be very difficult to execute. Don’t throw around the word sniping here as it’s not applicable here. The value of shift clicking in the situation is not there either, since the defender would want to respond in real time to the movements of the attacker. “Spam clicking” is a highly unrealistic projected outcome, like your personal boogeyman that you see around every alley. 

    • Haha 1
  16. 12 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    The "random arrows with no control" just feels like a gimped or bugged feature rather than something desirable. 

    Thats quite a good point. The random arrow system seems like a placeholder for some system that could yield better gameplay results. I know there will be some growing pains because players and balance have only known random arrows, but its definitely for the best to have something more intentional and situational in place. 

    • Like 2
  17. 6 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

    Dancing: Good micro with non-random would be to try to engage with a fast moving unit and dance to wast turrets shots until the opponent react and order the turret to attack another unit. I consider this not desirable.

    This won't happen but is absolutely desirable. We always love opportunities for a player to out-skill the other.

    For some context, a23 dancing (most infamous) had no counter play other than to also dance with an opposing army. In this case you can just pay attention and click a different unit. if you switch targets while your enemy dances with his cav you are killing him and his units are doing nothing productive.

    • Like 1
  18. 1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

    I think that’s a concern, though, for the targetingAI. Rushing right now is pretty balanced. Losing one out of 3 quick rushing cav hurts pretty bad (don’t care if a player targets with tower/cc—that’s skill the same as targeting one cav with your units) 

    Anyways, I think all this will be hard to predict actual gameplay effects without actual tests and this could have very large meta impacts. That’s why I would really like it to be in community mod

    Thats a good point, I think it could get pretty annoying due to the inaccuracy of the circular building range indicator. Rushes can still be extremely powerful without diving under the cc, though so I think it wont hurt rushing too much. I suspect players will look for ways to dodge arrows by wiggling the unit that the cc has clicked. Its also worth considering how useless the cc is at killing any melee units on its own, so getting the opportunity to pick off an extra melee cav each time an enemy raids would be a welcome change. I mainly see this whole change as a new avenue for skill to influence the game, which is great.

  19. 3 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

    Agree with borg—would separate. 

    it would be really nice to test if this targetingAI functionality is desired through the community mod 

    I could imagine it would be really nice to be able to snag weak cav units when being rushed. At least it could be something for the rushed player to do while they are made into a cupcake.

  20. In my opinion, competitive aspects of the game are inherently more fun and should be maintained for casual matches. It's no coincidence that competitive e-sports in the RTS genre consistently use ancient games such as Aoe2 as opposed to recent releases like aoe4. Modern game designs seem to forget that gaining skills and knowledge and mastering challenging techniques are what make games fun and re-playable in addition to being more viable in a competitive environment.

    14 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

    cavalry's Auto-explore

    It's really great to bring this up. The reason that its allowed in competitive environments is because its not optimized, intentional scout control will beat autoscout every single time. Automation aspects that aren't easily beaten by player control should never be considered for inclusion in the game. Even with 0ad's vanilla autoqueue it was mathematically proven that 1 by 1 training provides the fastest return on costs spent on the units, yet because 1 by 1 training is outpaced by manual batches, players can invest more of their resources for faster population growth which gives more resources than 1 by 1 eventually. 

    • Like 1
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