BreakfastBurrito_007

People have been complaining about how powerful iberian cavalry is even without firecav. I think a main reason for this is how iberians are impervious to late-game raids on food eco (except for archer cav). An iberian player can put enough fields for full cavalry eco inside the cc and they can depend on that food income never being dirupted. Perhaps it makes sense to decrease the amount of area covered by iberian walls. Perhaps making the maximum internal farm number at 6 or 7. I think this is doable but it might cause problems with stone/metal generation within walls.

good point. I think we can and should take inspiration from game-mechanics of other games such as those, but we should not just port them over just because those games are more popular. For example, "arson" attack mechanic from aoe3 and 4.

Everything is underrated when @Player of 0AD plays it. @Player of 0AD what is worst civ in your opinion then?

You can progress economically with the res that starts in p1, but players already do venture away from their base for metal mines, extra berries, hunt and sometimes a preferred woodline. Restrictions 1,2, and 6 would do nothing but bring frustration to building the base. I could not image playing with these artificial and uncomfortable rules. The other things such as auras sound nice but I would be worried about having too many auras as I think I heard this contributes to performance issues. There are frequently mercenary rushes, border skirmishes, cavalry harassment, and the occasional all out attack in p2. P2 does have way to take out buildings, but no siege. Keep in mind that destroying the cc is not the only way to deal damage. This game is, in fact, not AoE3 and not Age of Mythology. I can't understand why you want to make 0ad into those games.

One of the most challenging and fun aspects of 0ad is the boom/rush battles that happen in p1. These are very influential on game outcome and have many different strategies variables and levels of preparedness to keep track of. I would be very sad to see p1 be dedicated to booming alone. @AIEND do you play in multiplayer? or vs AI?

cavalry mercenaries are getting more expensive in the next alpha. In general, mercenaries' low price is balanced from a military standpoint and carrying the assumption that mercenaries can not add to the economy of a player. If mercenaries costed the exact same as citizen soldiers and could gather, they would have no unique qualities left. Mercenaries cost the way they do because they fill a particular gameplay niche that other units do not. This is why "unifying" everything and "simplifying" everything is not always good. You complain a lot about the design of the game but you seem to have no idea why any design or balance choices are made.

In phase one it makes sense to train women because food economy is so easy to get started first (berries and hunting). Every good player who wants to maximize economy will start off with women. Unless there is a map with lots of animals to hunt in which case they may start with cavalry. You need to take cost into consideration. You treat each game design feature like its a bug that annoys you and needs to be fixed. Mercenaries are quite cheaper than non-mercenaries and it they could gather resources they would be the only units that are trained.

that is one purpose of cavalry meat gather rate. But the main one is that cavalry can not gather other resources so in order for the citizen-soldier concept to apply to cavalry, they needed to be good at the only economic thing they can do. Since cavalry have such a high food cost, and can gather hunt at a high rate it enables cavalry to be trained early on. Cavalry also make corrals worthwhile to make for food eco. I am glad that the economy side of 0ad has so many ways to improve rather than the simplicity of simply assigning villagers to tasks that do not need to be managed. There is strategy, and there is also skill. AoE2, and 0ad have not only strategy but also skill. This means it is just as important what you do as how well you do it. Later AoE games (Microsoft) lean more toward strategy, with more civ differentiation and less opportunities for skill (ranged units are 100% accurate) Strategy: I will gather lots of food to make women, and transition to metal for mercenaries. Skill: hunt gathering optimization with cavalry.

AoE3 went for simplicity, with no drop sites whatsoever. I think they did this to make the game easier for new players to learn and play on the casual level. You mentioned there is a problem, what is the problem?

Because even if there is no travel distance between granary and prey, cavalry gather it faster than women or infantry. You can also improve hunting efficiency by attacking from farther away so that the prey flee toward the farmstead.

Keep in mind that the rate at which animals are killed is not the only factor to hunting efficiency. Cavalry have a much higher gather rate of meat than infantry or villagers (women but also man in this mod).

Aha that’s got me more interested. If the generic civ starts with skirmishers and spear men in p0, does the civ have those in p1 too or can they have their original starting units? Also is p0 a valid way to describe this? Or do you imagine this in p1 as it currently exists? I would be fine with this as long as those “regional civilization” bonuses are not something more deciding than the overall civ and team bonuses. I would dislike it if for example all the African civs became boom, all the Greeks became rush, all asian civ become turtle. I think these bonuses should be important in p0 while the civs are grouped like this, but wear off or go away in future phases. Cheaper palisades in p0 could be a good example of a bonus for a regional group that does not influence late-game civs distinction too much.

I think he means to accomplish what AoE2 only did visually. All the civs look the same in first age and differentiate from there. You would select civ by clicking p1 upgrade for that civ is the way I understand it.

@borg- given that p1 is such a critical time but also quite a long process. Do you think it makes sense to achieve this goal by having an "earlier" phase? Something even more rudimentary where only women or maybe some near-universal unit like spearmen can be trained and houses/ storehouses/farmsteads built. A 200 food 100 wood 20 second up time to p1 would be ideal because it gives ranges of options, someone trying to rush would click p1 very soon, but someone trying to boom a little would wait a little before p1. 1 or 2 p0 buildings would be necessary for phase 1 click. Perhaps we could also make different civs have different costs of time or res to click p1 (maybe some civs cost stone? or metal?). Current unique starting units would appear at cc upon phase up (like spearcav, camel archer, han swordcav, maur elephant, kushite healer) and would be seen as a tiny buff for that civ. I think it makes sense for this first phase to take no longer than 5 minutes, and for only the baskets upgrade for berries available. I do think that such a change would make it even more important to balance the civs. We could also make p0 without the civ selection phase 1 research If we make p0, we could allow blacksmith in p1. I think that this early purchase of blacksmith would be much more expensive relative to blacksmith in p2 which people tend to spam without thinking of costs. This would provide some early boom/military differences that can be exploited (remember booming=turtling discussion?) I think this would make rushing a more interesting strategy too, because rushing in p0 would be challenging, and you would see some drastically different populations/ phase up times early on in the game.

Well there are mercenaries and champions for that. As well as cavalry. There are actually no melee units that do crush that have the full CS infantry economic capability. The only "eco unit" that does crush is slinger. I actually don't know how much work it would take to add "siege" damage to differentiate it from "crush" damage. I do know that there is currently no reason to differentiate the two because there are no issues that arise from them being the same damage type. I would accept such a complication if there was any need.

what in-game problem does this lead to? Is there any unit that is OP because it shares siege damage? is there any siege unit that is bad because it shares the damage type?

Perhaps to achieve this we don't need new damage types, but can just reduce crush armor of units that have high hack and pierce armor like pikemen, and reduce crush armor a little less for units like sword and spear inf and cav. We would need to keep in mind the effect of this on the effectiveness of slingers, catapults, and elephants.

I think rather than making them worse than standard in p3 it would be better to have a better than standard p2. If brits are worse in p3 then it forces gameplay too much.

@Philip the Swaggerless if the britons were a civilization that developed rapidly, then you could give them a -50% phase up time and cost team bonus. To make use of its value, you would need to maintain close communication for rushing different phases, perhaps one player rushes to p2 another tries to go fast p3 and the other 2 borders rush from the start (of course it could be applied in many ways). There is much complaining about iber and ptol bonuses and I think there need to be more creative and particular team bonuses that indirectly foster teamwork and challenge the throne of the existing good bonuses. Perhaps a team bonus where men could farm would be cool too, or perhaps one that increases cavalry carrying capacity.

Perhaps when there is a situation that calls for a vote, the vote can be mandatory for "Balancing Advisors" (perhaps with a reminder sent by forum message) and optional for others. Most votes on balancing discussions I have seen have very low participation. An example of a vote could stem from something people broadly agree on, for example: CS archer inf need a buff, vote for one of the following: return accuracy values to a24 add 1 or more pierce damage give them 1 pierce armor

KD ratio is for people who can't divide kills by deaths in the units category. LUL. No seriously, KD ratio can stay even if we add value ratio or something like it.

I think this would be good tbh. It helps show more relevant statistics for who won the game. It might help players improve too.

I agree that a bonus against infantry is not needed in this case as there is already the damage advantage that swords have. Perhaps it is because people want to have a game and not a historical military simulation. I would not denigrate the people who have worked on the game far longer than you and who made those decisions about units. You are also quick to assume anyone with a differing opinion holds that opinion because of some mental deficiency. You seem to be ok that soldiers are born out of the barracks, so I don't see why this makes you so upset. Gameplay can't be reduced to waves of spearmen poking each other to death just because it is more realistic. @wowgetoffyourcellphoneI look forward to testing these changes if I can.

I don't think thats what swordsmen were defined as in this discussion. In a25, there are situations where swords are better and where spears are better. The shorter sword is more maneuverable and it makes sense that it has a higher attack rate. Before tactics and formations are considered, which varied from place to place and time to time, it makes sense that a swordsman has a higher damage output than spearman. In one era and place it may be that spears were the more elite weapon, but the game is not modeled after one era and one place.

The thing is, javelineers usually never range the horse archers. Javelineer inf are already highly effective at beating horse archers without the counter if the horse archers don't run away. This is a good example of a situation where counters don't provide a benefit to gameplay. An example of where counters would be a fantastic change: catapult bonus versus fort. ram bonus versus walls. both still do good dmg versus houses, production buildings, ccs ect.