BreakfastBurrito_007

A few things that are in consideration: Acceleration already exists. Ideally, when it is tested we will decide to give cavalry a slower acceleration than inf, so that cavalry can get trapped, and more spearmen hits can be scored against them. When I tested acceleration in december 2021, I noticed that cavalry were slower when making 180 direction changes, and they faced less acceleration issues when making smaller turns. merc cav cost increase pike nerf, also people have argued about ptol hero nerfs, but I am not sure if there has been any agreement.

As far as adding gameplay mechanisms, there are many more areas where a simpler mechanism can get us much more gameplay improvement. Attack ground melee charging ship mechanics improvements cavalry momentum and accleration Alternative resource gathering systems changing/adding civ/team bonuses

? We have individual units that move and can be selected by the player. I don't see how it's too hard to select a building that does not move.

@Philip the Swaggerless This sounds interesting, but I think I feel like it might get a little frustrating if we dont know what to expect from our strategies (will team do this or nah?)

On ranged units yes, it is possible that a skirmisher can infinitely outrun a spearman and kill it, but there are situations where that does not happen. A 9% boost would also affect melee on melee engagements as well, and perhaps dethrone the meatshield from being the only measure of melee inf value, which would undoubtedly be good.

It has been raised many times. It is a continued effort to find the best solution to the issue. Thank you for joining us. Right now in a25 players are learning how best to target slingers or skirmisher when they are behind pikes, fighting the units' tendencies to default to the nearest enemy. I am not sure how much melee damage would need to be boosted for melee to be a higher priority target. Even if they have super high damage, or if ranged units have super low damage, the fastest kills will still happen when targeting ranged units. I think the best way to proceed if we dont have attack-ground would be to buff melee infantry damage by 9% as suggested by letswave earlier. This would make melee inf damage less negligible during fights and would help players at lower skill level who don't know micro skills to *try* to beat the pike meatshield.

@LetswaveaBook honestly I think the cost and build time should be the same, as well as farmer occupancy. The reduced area is a fine bonus and will make it easier to manage and defend Han farming eco. My estimation is that if farms cost extra wood, that Han will have to wait for food eco if they have no extra berries or hunt in p1. It would be a huge disadvantage to have to wait to collect wood to build the extra farms. We don’t want a civ design to add to the disadvantage of 0 starting food bonus res.

@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.