BreakfastBurrito_007

@faction02 @Player of 0AD I think that archers, by their attack stats do fine against skirms provided there is no micro and no melee. The issue with plainly buffing archers will be that people who can micro around pikes to damage other ranged units will be dominating. I think the best way to solve the issue would be to decrease hack armor of pikes by 1 and increase melee infantry dmg by 9% as proposed by @LetswaveaBook. This would increase swords and spear dmg more than pikes, and make the damage of melee inf units less negligible in a battle. Another option would be to introduce an attack ground system, but this seems to be a long way off.

I am not sure how long ago this happened, but I was joking that IuseArchBtw was yeka smurf because you were talking about arch for a while. I apologize if someone thought I was serious, and also, that being a smurf was enough for the host to kick them from the game.

I am also worried about making a single unit overly complicated, and I don't like how "trash" units fit for 0ad CS gameplay. a unit that is cheap in p1 and p2 and then heavily upgradeable in p3 is a bit op and a bit over-specific to one unit. I like this a lot, but the other systems introduced just for crossbow to me are too much. I agree with @chrstgtr that the archery range can be for han and maybe another civ that has a lot of ranged unit types.

Yes I think the feldmap as it exists right now is totally fine for 1v1s. It is mainly in TGs where we like the variability, but get annoyed when we have "rock bottom". On the @maroder suggestion, I think adding 2 berry bushes (400 food) to the starting group would be good enough to make rock bottom a little better. Like with starting berries, perhaps it makes sense to add starting hunt at p1 territory perimeter, I like this better than extra chickens since it is a bit harder to collect.

I wonder if it is possible to change the resource generation on mainland not to balance it perfectly but to prevent players from bottoming out on lottery (no extra hunt or berries). The benefit of 3 berries versus 2 is much smaller than the benefit of 2 berries versus 1. I was wondering if there would be some way to add a food resource during generation to players that don't have either extra hunt or berries. I have observed that no one complains about enemies having extra food res unless they are at rock-bottom.

I think it’s a good idea to talk about a particular feature rather than starting with a vague Idea. Often we get confused between each others’ ideas and what we think they mean. If we have a commit like “acceleration” to discuss, then we can hone that feature while it is tested. This also limits the random ideas and encourages focus on real features and not concepts. I think this will be extremely helpful when the pre-release candidates come out. I also have a hard time navigating and understanding the Phabricator stuff, so being able to discuss real features in the forum like this would be sweet.

what do you mean? that 200 stone is too much for a building that does not give back much eco? or that you are not involved with kushite pyramids? He does it with whatever civ and in whatever situation. I admit, he could use a second barracks earlier than 8 mins in a lot of situations. My main point was that Rauls is able to use 1 barracks to grow pop as fast as other good players use 2 or 3. Also, what is the current cost of the archery range?

well this way there would be some trade-offs: do you want to commit to boom? then make all the barracks you want. You could still have 1 barracks 1 cc and one archery range. Keep in mind Rauls is able to boom extremely fast with just one barracks until p2. I like the 200 stone 100 wood cost idea from @wowgetoffyourcellphone. It has similar stone usage strategy options as introducing 150 stone cost kush eco temples in p1.

@Yekaterina I was confused, I thought that the Han crossbows were already the way you had them. If they still have large damage in one shot, they could hit and run during p1, but would be vulnerable to cavalry. I have always wanted more units like skiritai in their cost/power amount so I have no qualms with rank 3 being trained from a building, it would make up for that building being specialized and not so useful for eco.

This is a good point about those farms. This is why I think their bonuses/costs system should be replaced by simply keeping their small area and giving them 5 workers per field as well as 100 wood cost. There is a huge bonus to having small farms in rush protection and eco management. Han would be crazy berry dependent if their farms costed extra wood per food output.

@Yekaterina @Lion.Kanzen @wowgetoffyourcellphone I wonder if there is any historical basis to put spearcav for han in p1 rather than archercav. Spearcav in a25 have been not very powerful, they will get a buff it seems for a26 (based on popularity, +1 hack/pierce). In a25 spearcav have been great for countering cav rushes and also doing their own sort of rushes. Spearcav are only in p1 for 2 other civs, mace and rome. I think archercav being changed out for spearcav would go a long way to protect them in p1. I also think crossbow rush would be epic/terrifying. It would be cool to have this as an option. Side note: @Yekaterina at this point I think iberians are most vulnerable to archer cav because their towers can't cover as much territory (250 stone vs 100 stone cost) their walls often work against them with horse archers, and they dont have any non skirm unit until p2. This is provided iber player has not gone for rush and has only 2-5 cav.

I think the scoring system is not perfect, but it is also not too misleading. Players who are concerned with the scoreboard usually understand that there are some factors influencing the score and that there are details they can look at if they want. Only way I see this being an issue is if ddos gets so bad that we need to use score to have closure on the games.

There have been huge problems with this with respect to gameplay. I agree that civs should be asymetric, but I don't think that the rules should be re-written for each civ. Keep in mind that Aoe4 might have interesting/unique civs, but the core battle mechanics are horrifically simple. AoE2 in my opinion has better civ differentiation/uniqueness and bonuses due to them being key distinctions from other factions rather than something entirely out of the framework of other civs (like in Aoe4) I think civ differentiation is certainly an area for improvement for 0ad, but it does not help to add all the uniqueness to one civ. It would be sad to see something unique, like ministers, or cs crossbowmen, get overly nerfed because the civ needed a food eco boost (.6 versus .5 gather rate) which is boring. @Yekaterina Do they get that pike unit in p1? If so, I think it's not the end of the world to have only archers in p1 as their ranged units. Many things seem op for the civ, the mangonels, the champions, the bigger eco, bigger pop, and unique upgrades. It is ok if much of the OP stuff stays, but we have add some things to other civs too (perhaps add some unique techs, civ bonuses, team bonuses). again pls consider @LetswaveaBook's proposed features mod.

It seems so far that Han have bonuses in almost every regard in eco. I think maybe it is best to remove all farming bonuses they have, and instead keep 5 women per paddy, but let it be 1/2 the area of grain field at same cost. This way it is just a bonus, but albeit a nice and unique one. What creates this greater demand? do their units cost differently?

hmm, its probably best not to worry too much about the values for acceleration right now. The values should probably be refined after we test the pre-release candidates with full MP games. It might seem smooth in tests, but if you factor in panic and lag and performance issues it might be too slow like a24. I was also interested in if anyone was interested in making any of the popular changes introduced by @LetswaveaBook's proposed features mod. That mod has made quite a few balancing changes that add to diversity and fun and balance of 0ad. The most liked features I think were: melee inf +10% attack skiritai rank 2 but +30% speed persians get spearcav and javcav p1 iber bonus is reduced to just -10% food, but affects slingers and javelins firecav -9 pierce attack merc cav->95 metal spearcav +1 hack and pierce armor and axecav +2 hack +1 pierce armor There are some other great changes in there that I would love to see more people test and consider for a26.

I tried acceleration with the holiday testing bundle, and saw that inf and cav had functionally similar acceleration values, and it seemed to reduce melee maneuverability as much as for cav. My worry was that it would be more frustrating to move units around overall. My hope for the acceleration feature was that cavalry would have a new exploitable weakness that an inf army can use. @Yekaterina has acceleration been tweaked since or is it the same as it was around dec 20th, 2021?

@Lion.Kanzen when and where can you make ministers? I was thinking they could take up 2 pop so that they are not as good as fully upgraded eco in long term. I have not been able to test svn so I have not seen much of their mechanics. Ministers boosting eco in a range is a fantastic idea, but I think it should not be such a simple use case as for the eco upgrades available to all civs. My worry is that ministers wind up being functionally equivalent to more eco upgrades.

Except for rome, which has more powerful ones that train units and shoot arrows. unless you mean team bonus, then I could see it being very fun lol. I have been trying to get people to play this mod but of course it is hard.

Check to see if he has cheats enabled in lobby. I am not sure if you can find this without joining another host of his. The cheat that he used looks exactly like the one where you type "gift from the gods" in chat. We use that occasionally for testing unit/civ matchups and upgrades. If cheats were enabled on that host it is just a matter of noticing it and talking about it. If cheats were not enabled, and this dude was able to get them, then it seems to be a bigger problem.

@Yekaterina It is true that swordcav are most OP in phase 2, before players are able to retrain CS infantry due to their lack of food/wood stockpiles that they would accrue in p3, and also due to the massive economic damage that idle unit time in p2 creates. It would require a change in strategy (fast p3) that would make them not worse, but harder to execute. That being said, there is a hero that gives +30% attack to melee cav units in p3. I think moving them to p3 would make the unit boring again, and leave carthage to be a very weak civ in p2. The main place I draw the line with their power is being able to beat spearmen 1 to 1 with equal upgrades. If the unit is threatened by CS spearcav and spearmen (as it is in letswave mod), I think a prepared defense vs cav using palisades to control movement would be enough to make them manageable in p2 and p3. A price hike on the unit would be fair to make it proportional to CS inf/cav cost difference. This price hike will also make inf mercs more viable. I would like to test the updated mod sooner or later too!

@StockfishThere are many scary animals in Australia, but I am fine as long as I never see one of those chickens.

@LetswaveaBook nice work! I think you handled the iber bonus well, with both slingers and javelins being potential economic units. I also like the general team bonuses, blacksmith changes and splash. Very exciting stuff. Is the 1 free unit given for each new market or temple? or only once per game? Depending on how healers are treated in future alphas this might not be very powerful for britons. I had suggested a team bonus for britons on the team bonus page just yesterday: men have equal berry gather rate as women. To be honest I don't mind adding more than one team bonus per civ if the overall value is right. These should probably given to civs that don't have spearmen as their only cs melee unit. Or maybe it should be given to civs that have pikes as the only CS alternative to spearmen.

For TGs I think there is no way anything is better than indibil. The fact that the discount is percentage based means it scales with cavalry and champions to provide a much bigger cost savings than if you made infantry CS. For 1v1, I think there are a few options, but Ptol will have more than 1 on that list for sure. As for @Yekaterina's idea, I don't like it because part of selecting units while using a civ is the different civ peculiarities that apply to that unit. Even if all civs get spearmen, there are many different combinations of civ-specific effects that differentiate them. Would this civ have no actionable civ bonuses? or all of them? In my opinion, this reduces some of the strategy from the game. Perhaps it is possible this civ could be helpful to test units/upgrades/buildings without restarting a test game (some people including me test in MP using cheats). This might be useful if you could apply every bonus at will or use any single hero at will.

XD So the Han suffer from same ranged unit issues as Kush. Do han get any mercs? The chu-ko-nu was in part of the debate for a bit. I was thinking it could be low accuracy (lower than archers that dont have archer accuracy upgrade) but with slightly greater range and dps than slingers. Very high fire rate, but low damage per shot. Cost could be 50 food 40 wood 10 metal, which is unlike any other ranged unit.

@Yekaterinacould you please clarify? I have not been able to test this civ, but I would be willing if there was some easy install thing like a mod. Seems like some long ranged unit has high dps?