BreakfastBurrito_007

I have been considering unit upgrades in 0ad for a while now and I have come across a variety of ways that they are problematic. Issues with percentage based upgrades: boring: percentages are nearly the exclusive method for upgrades to units and there are interesting cases for addition based upgrades imbalance: units that do higher damage per second are benefitted more by the same 1.2x damage upgrade than lower-damage units. Even more concerning is that the gains in damage per upgrade grows with each upgrade, which means the discrepancy between lower damage units and higher damage units increases at an increasing rate. This certainly is one of the contributing factors for champion cavalry skirmishers (firecav/brit chariots) being so OP. Another example is indibil's cost reduction percentage giving a bigger savings for champions and cavalry more than citizens and infantry. I know that eons of balancing efforts have been done with these percentage based upgrades in mind, which is evident in the quite good balance between skirmisher infantry, slinger infantry and archer infantry. Because of this, I think that rather than making a drastic overhaul of the blacksmith, we need to consider addition based upgrades in certain problematic spots or for future creative upgrades. One option for the blacksmith could be to make the final attack upgrades a +1 rather than a percentage change, and then also addition based upgrades could be considered for certain civ bonuses, team bonuses and heros. I think for the development of the game it would make a lot of sense if addition based upgrades could work in sync with percentage upgrades by the use of order of operations from math. Would you be interested in seeing more addition based upgrades in the game? please tell me what you think!

@alre thanks for the explanation, it is still a welcome change that regions are not selected first, and that it is now random with even chances.

Heavy you mean performance-wise? I was thinking it could just do the exact same damage to adjoining wall or post sections, regardless of range or distance.

I think I would like to see some gameplay oriented random maps that play as easily as mainland, but have interesting features that can influence gameplay. There were some maps like this in the BadMod from @badosu if I recall correctly.

nah, random has to have even chance. I suppose in the gaming world, when people say RNG they mean more that the mechanic isn't purely skill driven and has some chance factors.

@Gurken Khan I have built it in MP when I play kush occasionally. Usually when I play kush I like to do "fun stuff" in p2 that usually makes me lose economy compared to other players so I never boom enough to make that building. 600 stone is maybe a bit much for it tho. About the RNG dealt you thing. Unless it was a26, it was not rng XD because it was not random. There is the region-based selected randomization that makes you more likely to get a civ with no other civs in its "region"

Grand temple of Amun can be used to make healers start at rank 3. Not so useful in a25 because of healers' behavior and the meatshield meta. In a26 I could see this becoming quite powerful for elephants, swordsmen, and archers that Kushites get. Also, it is a massive temple, which has the following benefits: 40 unit garrison space teleport distance is insane large hp

I think the outpost and defense tower have vastly different purposes and use cases. It would only be a loss to make them related. On a separate note I do think it would be nice to make arrow fire from garrisoned buildings targetable.

I feel like that would wind up being simply a more OP version of the wall turret arrows that were removed from a24 to a25. I think the existing mechanic is ok, theres just not enough up there to make a difference in most defensive battles.

I think adding to arrows to walls would be more boring to be honest. The main issue with using walls for troop garrison is that only 8 can fit up there, which is useless for most gameplay situations. If the number of spots could be changed to 20, then I think it would be used much more.

I would like to see palisades gain effectiveness versus cavalry and lose some versus siege. Increasing the gap between posts would mean that it is easier for cavalry to get through once they break one section. If siege attacking one piece of wall did exactly the same damage to the adjacent pieces of wall, then larger sections could be opened up by the same attack. On a side note, it would be very nice if melee cavalry could get a .3x or .5x multiplier versus palisade walls.

mm, I think I misunderstood @Darkcity's feature idea to be much more useful and precise than it seems he meant it to be. (I had visualized the following scenario: 50 units on woodline, barracks nearby, 1 click on bell for barracks, 10 nearest men are automatically selected to garrison into that barracks, letting all other units continue working.) This feature would be used by pro players in certain cases, but I don't think its quite so abusable. The main thing is that it would make it too easy to limit idle time while being harassed by cavalry. As for a bell mechanic more similar to the women-only one that we already have, I don't think it will be used.

@chrstgtr @Darkcity If I remember correctly there was at one point a second tier of alarm bell at the cc, back when it affected all your units, that would garrison men as much as they could. Of course this was pretty bad because you could not choose which building to go in. A feature where clicking alarm on a barracks would take the nearest ten men and fully garrison it would definitely go in the "too automated" category for me. But perhaps if people find that garrisoning and de-garrisoning while defending from p1 or p2 cav raiding is too tedious, then I would be more open-minded.

yea I should really do this as it gets to 6-7 mins, but at the 3-5 minute range there is very little margin for extra wood if you want wood upgrade, barracks, and houses asap. its also a good idea to build access denial walls between edge of map and cliffs so that cavalry have less access to vulnerable parts of your base. If you are against a civ that will most likely spam ranged cav at you, or even archer cav, then palisade walls are a great way to limit damage. I think the main reason people don't make palisade walls is that they take time to place and build, cost a lot if built early on, and often are messed up by random trees or obstructions that the player might not even see. One thing that might help with palisade or even stone wall placement is if the building snap feature could be used to connect walls to the map edge or cliffs.

Many people don't like them because of the extra walk time their units have to walk to tasks after their production. I have played them long enough to be used to the extra time this takes. It also helps if you choose your first woodline to be right outside a pre-existing gate. The main benefit to iberian walls is that you can fit your entire farming economy inside and the only threat to them is archer cavalry.

@Gurken Khan are the silhouettes consistently off for you or do they flicker? For me, they have been consistently off for all test versions since the winter testing bundle.

@Player of 0AD My english speaking brain can only read “Water polo team” lol. Wp guys!

Provides a smaller trickle of food.

I expect the same, and I am pretty sure we did discuss changing the values in some earlier discussion. I think it would be cool if garrisoning a minister in a barracks or stable could increase the xp trickle rate of that building (non-stackable). yea overall I am glad that the woman bonus has been removed and now there are civ-specific ways to buff eco in certain radiuses.

@Tyrannosaurus also I recommend trying multiplayer when you feel ready (unless you already are). It might be hard to find a lobby or 1v1 for your proper skill level, and if you get stomped on don't get flustered. At the end of the day, playing versus real players is way less frustrating than playing vs AI. Ask around for tips, because nice people will give them to you.

I saw some earlier posts about unit silhouettes and I encountered this one in an online 2v2. Tried a rehost, which is the second game, and it did not resolve the issue. It also happens in singleplayer if I try that. metadata.json commands.txt metadata.json commands.txt

We seem to have a really hard time getting people to test the new changes. What if we took down the a25 lobby for 3-5 days and instead put a message suggesting testing and providing links for RC downloads. I feel like many players would use the RC if other people were also doing so, and many more would not mind downloading the RC if it was the only option to play 0ad. Playing a variety of TGs and 1v1s with players finding new strategies and sharing them and refining them are how we get to appreciate new changes, and a limited number of awkward and imbalanced RC matches are not sufficient for that. I know that this would result in a bunch of complaints, but I think it is a simple way to boost the player-developer interactions and feedback.

I think this would help solve the issue where certain units die extremely quickly and other units die more slowly, like archers vs swordcavalry. Its ok that these differences exist, but it would allow a player to pick off low hp swordcav or spearcav in a rush which would be way more effective than the current distributed damage. It would also mean that players could not mitigate the damage of towers by massing up enough units to dilute it.

An alternative/addtional patch we might consider if the crossbow is too powerful in p1 is changing the cost to 50 food 40 wood 10 metal. I think the crossbow will be the best anti-rush unit since it has good range and high immediate damage, so for example if a 5 javcav rush comes to your woodline at 4-6 minutes you are certain to kill at least one each time they come in range.

I think the units slow down more when they take bigger angle turns. I suppose if you wanted cavalry to not slow down when turning you would make a series of smaller angle turns. It would be cool if there was 0 slowdown for a 30 degree angle either left or right.