BreakfastBurrito_007

Sacred sites are a way to make the game winnable while each civ has some ridiculous combination of free, generated units, resource trickle types, and other kinds of unraidable eco. On the surface level it seems great that each civ has many unique features. It is easy to see that those unique mechanics are the sole basis of civ balance and design, so those unique aspects of each civ are forced and so they lose the gameplay benefit of being unique. Basically the player has no “basic” or “universal” unit or mechanic to choose while playing. It would be like if burgundians from aoe2 always had to get Flemish revolution as part of their win condition, or if Iberians always had to make firecav as their win condition.

I think a serf unit would be best designed if it was distinctly a better economic unit than the citizen soldier. This will mean that the citizen soldiers' economic role will become more secondary, and that the standard "boom" we see from players will be more focused on women and serf/slave units rather than just citizen soldiers, leaving citizen soldiers open to do battle without rapidly losing their economic value by either dying or being idle. Also, CCs would become a more economic building with this change due to the barracks being de-throned as the main economic building. I think there are a variety of different peoples ideas to achieve the same thing, and I think this would be an addition that would stay out of the community mod at least for now. I think the slave/serf becoming a cc trainable unit upon reaching p2 with 70 hp and same attack/armor stats as women would be ideal. Gather rates of .85 wood, .70 stone, .70 metal (a bit less than @real_tabasco_sauce said). I think it should cost 65 food and 15 metal so that they can't be spammed as easily from early berries/hunt eco. Train times for the unit should be the same as CS I think.

@wraitii I was playing with rams today and found that acceleration for them is pretty slow. At one point the ram was pathfinding along the corners of a diagonal row of houses, and for whatever reason it was having to zig zag around them. This meant that the ram was re-accelerating at each 90 degree turn. Acceleration for rams is frustrating because rams already have to make bigger turns around objects. I think we should try removing acceleration for them in the community mod.

This would be nice for melee units when they get within 10 m or so of an enemy (but also outside of any formation mechanic).

That would be a fantastic use for them, my only concern would be the other two xp/ promotion buffs the Han get through the hero and the upgrade. I would be in favor of this mechanic replacing the upgrade that han have for promotion experience, since the mechanic has a trade off and a management aspect that is not present with the percentage based upgrade. Ministers could be an amazingly flexible and fun unit with such an overhaul.

This sounds great in my opinion. I was concerned about how small an impact the ministers have on gameplay before the release. I think the capture attack hero changes are good to allow for an interesting use of the ministers. I think these changes, with some player creativity, would make the ministers worth making. I think it would also be cool if you could speed the production rate of a barracks or stable or imperial academy by up to 2x as fast with like 20% faster per minister. Only thing I disagree with would be moving blacksmith techs to fortress, but perhaps I misunderstood that part.

I think it would be nice for certain gameplay features or balance concerns that are widely agreed upon. For example, in a25 we could have added some merc cav nerf or firecav/brit chariot nerf and go back to playing with those units. I think the main challenge for the mod is the same that the RC's have before alpha releases: people don't get the mod, and if they do, they cant find a host they want to join, so they go back to the main release. I think the community mod would be most useful as a way to test gameplay features such as unit specific upgrades or the Sparta diversification package. My thinking is if the community mod is continually progressed, it will be important to have clear and easy ways to see what is on it, and for only the most recent version to be supported.

Acceleration may make unit motion appear slower. I wouldn't say performance overall is worse than a25, but I do think some performance tuning is needed for a27. I've seen multiple players in the lobby say they would even rather take performance improvements over content if they had to choose one of the two.

So far I am seeing worryingly good performance from the Han CS crossbow. The main point of concern is that with upgrade parity the crossbow will kill a ranged inf cs unit in 2 shots, which is 4.5 seconds. That is faster than the skirmisher. For comparison we can use the mace crossbow champion. In order for it to kill a ranged cs unit in 1 shot it needs a 2 upgrade advantage (you need 2 of: will to fight, champ hero, or the enemy lacking final pierce armor upgrade). This means that in most games the champion crossbow takes the same number of shots to kill a ranged unit (2) as the cs version. The strength of the cs crossbow is when it is targeting ranged units, and it relies on upgrade parity. An additional armor bonus from a hero or unique tech would put crossbows into the 3 shot kill range, which would help a lot in battles where both parties are using ranged units to hit ranged units. The crossbow is not as good against melee units due to the combination of lowest speed of ranged inf, lower dps than slingers, and same range as slingers. Javelin cav are also fantastic against them because it takes more hits to kill them and the lower dps of the crossbow is reflected in battle. I predict the unit going in 2 routes balance wise: it teaches people ways to try to counter sniping which we know exist those counter-sniping methods, and armor hero bonuses are not enough and the unit is OP enough to be banned (this would be sad)

too much smoking, it is annoying and harmful to breathe their smoke and it seems they can do it where and when they want.

Come to usa.... many bathroom and infinite parking space!

Sorry for the confusion @chrstgtr and @LetswaveaBook. I added quotations around "unfair" on that post because I was acknowledging that my previous idea about attack upgrades being unfair was wrong. I hope that makes sense for everybody.

It would be nice to have the unit specific upgrades listed vertically in the spare space underneath the unit icons in the barracks or stable. But since there are no unique icons and the upgrades are just strung in a line, it seems more complicated than the system is. Also, some of the ones that adjust damage and increase repeat time might not be clear enough that the damage increases overall. Making axe cav into a cool unit is a very sore spot for @real_tabasco_sauce XD. Ideally a player would think about what they want their units to do, quickly hover over the 1 or 2 upgrades available and make a decision if it works for them. The goal is for the upgrades to be more situational than inherent to a strategy of the civ. When we came up with the upgrades we tried to base them off of things that the particular units that underperform in expected roles, for example: one of the spearmen specific upgrades help them get hits on cavalry. Another example: decreasing prepare time and increasing acceleration for spearcav helps them catch ranged cavalry that are running away from them.

: o lmaoo I feel a bit embarrassed now and I hope all of you can forgive me. sure enough just as attack upgrades increase damage "unfairly" for higher damage units, armor upgrades remove damage as a percentage. For example archers: 6.7 x1.7(attack upgrades) times (1-.41)= 6.7. Firecav 35*1.7*(1-.41)=35. I suppose then only hero bonuses, wtf, and relics are sources of damage that don't always have armor to compensate.

ya its nothing to hold up the release for, but if it can be quickly and harmlessly done then of course its no problem.

yes that is correct, but I was confused about the situation you are applying that math to.

I hope that merc cav are at the sweet spot in balance this alpha. It was really quite sad that they are so OP that they are unplayable in a25, since their gameplay role could be quite interesting and help

yes indeed, an increasing damage advantage will cause the winning unit to win with more remaining hp. The damage advantage increases due to the upgrades being percentage based.

There has been a nerf to the Han crossbow that took its base damage to 28 pierce from 30. I did tests in p1 and then after all upgrades, and I found that the Han crossbow always kills an enemy ranged infantry citizen in 2 hits. This is problematic because 2 hits only require 1 repeat time cycle, so the total time to kill is prepare time + repeat time. A slinger takes 5 hits to kill a ranged unit in p1 and also 5 in p3, so it is prepare time + 4x repeat time, which means that even though the crossbow does less damage per second, it kills ranged units way faster. People who use alt to snipe are going to be very deadly with this unit.

for this you just need to look at the damage values in the tooltip. I would argue 1.2x seems simpler, but creates some balance issues. the hp percentage changes before and after upgrades.

@LetswaveaBook I was thinking within the context of ranged units killing other units. Doesn’t really matter what the other unit is, just that it’s hp is subtracted by enemy attacks. The rate at which skirmishers outpace slingers in the killing of the unit grows with each upgrade. And of course the rate at which firecav/Brit chariots damage grows is much greater than any other unit. Of course there are other things that affect balance like range, accuracy move speed, and acceleration. These values for the most part, do not increase with blacksmith upgrades. Those balance factors remain constants, so the increasing damage of the higher damage units swings balance in their favor. For the 3 citizen soldier ranged infantry units this is not a huge problem since balance has been refined each alpha primarily focusing on those units. But now we need to keep in mind the 1.2x damage does not provide an even boost in damage. To be frank, the balance state before and after upgrades is different.

@real_tabasco_sauce Nice work, its looking great. The fire archers could help ease the frustration from not having ranged siege in cases.

lol @Lion.Kanzen the Ukraine war is totally unrelated. Also I don't use gas so what you posted wouldn't "be scary" even if it were true. Maybe put that part in the "socialism and globalism corporatist topic".

What do you mean it has nothing to do with religion? As far as I understand he doesn't like the magic that the priets and druids use to heal other units because of his religious background. To be honest I don't see how this is offensive because this is all happening before jesus or any of that stuff.

No tenemos que cambiar el juego para cumplir con su religión. También es importante realizar que los civis en 0ad no tienen nada que ver con el dios del cristianismo. Y por eso no hay problemas con otros religiones representados por el templo de cada civ.