BreakfastBurrito_007
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Posts posted by BreakfastBurrito_007
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9 hours ago, Jofursloft said:
Do you mean that the attack order can be set on a specific unit (let's suppose archers) and then your units will target the closest archer available?
Sorry, let me elaborate with an example: archer attacks woman under the attack-click of a player, archer kills woman. The closest unit to that woman is a spearcav unit, so it is the next target.
My main reason to like this feature is that it does not strongly deviate the attack target area, and a player can target a mass of a particular unit with the expectation that most projectiles will go there, rather than deviating to the units in front.
9 hours ago, Jofursloft said:While in a open field if you are playing skirmishers you will push in order to get as close as possible to the enemy units, archers will use the different tactic of retreating bit by bit
If there were a battle between pikes +skirmishers and spears +archers (all inf), the person whose melee units die first will have to either retreat like you said or die. However, if the archers get a bit closer to the spears in front (more risk), they can target the skirmishers in the back, and allow the spears to win the melee battle.
I think allowing players to choose their target area is a great way to introduce more skill and battle strategy to 0ad battles that are otherwise overwhelmed by automatic unit behavior.
5 hours ago, alre said:well, it's just that projectiles have a random spread that gets bigger with distance traveled, so they can easily miss distant targets. if they miss their target but they hit another enemy, they still deal damage, if they hit an ally, they do not.
In this case, the player needs to determine if hitting a particular distant group of units is worth the increased amount of missed shots.
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@chrstgtr what do you think about ranged units choosing the closest target to the attack order click rather than defaulting to the closest unit?
I feel that it gives the player more control over the fights.
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your point is well taken about micro choices. And when I do see pikes, I always try to kill the ranged units they protect with both melee and ranged units. I disagree about the primary role of melee units being to tank damage, but this seems to be the case with the behavior of ranged units to target melee. If infantry melee units are mostly just to tank damage from ranged units, that makes pikes the best.
Also I can’t imagine what makes it unrealistic to shoot over the first row of enemies. Units can already shoot over their own infantry units. Also, what is the point of archers’ range if they can only shoot the melee units right in front of their own?
I am afraid that this alone is what is making pikes frustrating to play against and archers so frustrating to play with. Some people think javelins are op, but I think that they are just the best option to kill the melee fastest. I think battles need to become more complicated than just a race to who can kill melee the fastest.
I see your point about rushing, but usually this is on a small enough scale that any medium player could individually target units just as well. Also you misunderstood my idea for “following the order”, I meant that they would target units closest to the attack order, not necessarily the same type. So the cav wouldn't automatically select the next woman as the next target.
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4 hours ago, alre said:
I actually feel that pikes are less OP now than in A24. You must have a huge quantity of pikemen to make their longer range really make the difference, compared to spearmen
This is true, but if you add in some ranged units to both sides, the side with pikes will win by quite a bit, because the pikemen will not die as fast as the spearmen and then the pikemen +full health ranged units can go attack the remaining ranged units. Keep in mind in a24 that people mainly used pikes to push archer-based armies which could easily beat anything else, so they felt more powerful based upon what they could do to an already op unit.
4 hours ago, alre said:I actually feel that pikes are less OP now than in A24
I think stat-wise this is actually true, for example 30 skirms beat 30 pikes in a straight battle with no micro. Their power becomes apparent once you try pikes+skirms versus spears+skirms.
8 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:However you can click an opposing unit and then it will attack it until it dies. Once it dies, you can click another unit.
This is not viable in a large battle as there will be a lot of overkill. I think it would be better if a player using ranged units could make an attack order and then the ranged units would seek targets close to that order as their natural behavior.
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That 6m pike length is a good thing to consider as well. When I did my tests with real_tabasco_sauce we were fighting in an open field where an even line was formed between spearmen and pikemen, and the spears won every time. For now I will be sure to avoid fighting pikes in a chokepoint.
@Dizaka @Yekaterina Do you guys think that ranged units should be able to hit the units in the back of the formation? or do you guys not think it makes a big difference?
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@Dizaka I am glad you brought this up
I would say that the best way to balance champions (especially the cavalry) would be to reduce armor. We should be careful about it however.
My thinking of the ideal reduction of champ cavalry health would be that they barely beat a citizen soldier spearman on a 1 to 1 fight (10% health left), this is still an economic victory for the spear. This still leaves their large amount of damage as a remaining factor to easily kill weaker infantry that do not have the 3x bonus vs cavalry
I think another option would be to increase the spearcav counter to 2x and the spear infantry counter to 3.5 or 4x and a speed reduction.
Perhaps it is best to strike a middle ground and only do a small reduction of champ cavalry armor (maybe a little bigger for consular bodyguard) but combine it with changes to bonuses and champ cavalry speed.
Another idea for cavalry in general could be to give them a .5x bonus versus walls (palisade and stone and roman siege walls), this could mean having a prepared base could be an effective counter to raiding cavalry in late game of all types.
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I think instead of ranged units attacking the closest thing to themselves, they should attack the closest thing to their attack order mouse click. This would give the players the ability to direct the fire of their ranged units, and make the battles less about whose melee die first.
The only way to win if you have a spear+skirm combination versus a pike+skirm combination is to individually attack-click each skirmisher. This allows the greater dps of the spears to win the resulting melee battle as they would if it were straight pikes versus straight spears. I tested this in multiple micro arrangements with real_tabasco_sauce and we both agree about this.
During a25 testing @Yekaterina was very concerned about pikes being op, and indeed there is a whole thread about it. But it is not the pikes' stats that are op, it is their magnetic ability to distract fire away from the weaker ranged units that actually deal damage.
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In previous alphas one of the best ways to counter pikes was to ignore them and first kill the units that they are protecting that do damage. In a25 it seems that all units will prefer pikes over any other unit in a fight. Is there some feature of the game that makes this happen?
This is a huge problem that makes pikes quite overpowered. No matter what a player does, their units will always return to attacking the nearby pikemen after 1-2 seconds. It is my expectation that if this "magnetic pikes" feature were not present, that pikes would not be overpowered given the stats they currently have.
Is there something that can be done to fix this issue?
I would post a replay that demonstrated this but I can not figure out how.
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3 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:
Please do not belittle the work of icon creators.
Well I suppose my writing was not very respectful, I give my apologies for that. What I meant to emphasize was that we don't need entirely new units to have unit diversification, we can also work with what is already there.
3 hours ago, Gurken Khan said:But seriously, longer pikes, broader swords and bigger projectiles could be represented on screen
This would be really cool.
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I am in agreement about adding some other unit types. Although I have no new ideas on that front. I think another way that we can make the units feel more distinct would be to shake up the uniformity of the blacksmith that we currently see across almost all civs (with exception of the +20% for swords and the accuracy upgrade for archers).
I think there are a number of ways to do this, but I would be in favor of adding some unique upgrades that give a more exciting twist to the unit, it might be a trade-off tech or might not be depending on the civ or unit. I think these upgrades would be unlocked after the 3rd tier of the most pertinent current blacksmith upgrades.
My ideas of new blacksmith techs so far:
- For example, britons or gauls could get a heavy shot upgrade on their slingers that reduces range but adds 1.5 to crush damage, and this would be unlocked after researching the p3 ranged damage upgrade.
- Another idea could be for Macedonian pikes, they get an increase in pike length over other pikes in the game, researched after p3 melee damage increase.
- Another option for gaul slingers could be faster movement speed, but a bit less armor.
- Another for seleucid skirmishers, slower movement speed but greater armor.
- Perhaps a cool option for sword units called "broadsword" could be reduce pierce armor but increase hack attack.
The point is to introduce some differences between the "same" units of different civs.
Often, the thinking of what units to produce is hardly more complicated than "melee+ranged". I think we should try to work to a point where the blacksmiths upgrades series looks a bit different for all civs. Tell me what you think of the idea. At least this idea does not require new artwork
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5 hours ago, vinme said:
started 2v1 game with remainging 2 players.
Lol did you win?
oh right.
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18 minutes ago, Lightning38 said:
randomly
hmm, I think player selection allows for more skill here, assuming the different houses are properly balanced. I am assuming that these houses should probably be more expensive, like a merger of a barracks and house the size of the Carthaginian "apartment building". Perhaps Judeans could only train one unit from cc and unlock others by building houses. Perhaps even next phases could unlock new choices for houses.
I think it is a great Idea and it is something refreshing and exciting. After a major period of time working on unit/siege balance, graphics, and gameplay mechanics, many people are in favor of adding civilization and unit differentiation to make the game more exciting and fun.
I think there is already a thread somewhere about Judeans and there have been some wild ideas, like making a Jesus hero.
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I think it should be, and now really is, a high-risk boom. It most certainly is faster than a men boom, and I have seen it employed a few times in a25 in TGs to great success.
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3 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:
What I would suggest, is that if a unit misses a certain amount of shots, it will switch to a different target. That new target should preferably be something that is easier to hit (close, big or stationary).
This is quite smart actually, however, we would probably want to disable it for hunting for food.
I would still like it if units did not have such a strong preference of what to attack in the first place, and at least have their next targets be close to their last target. Its one thing to be unable to kill the hero, but another to be unable to ignore the hero :I.
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As most of you know I am not aware of what things are challenging to make features and what things are not. I notice that when I tell 20 archers to attack a unit, they first kill that unit (with a lot of overkill), but then pass on to a unit of their choosing. It seems that ranged units have a strong preference for melee units when they are choosing what to attack (maybe its just choosing the closer units). I have tried a few times but it seems to be impossible to keep archers focused at shooting skirmishers behind a wall of pikes.
If this is happening as I have observed, then it usually leads to skirmishers killing the enemy melee faster than archers can do the same, which makes them better units in many battles.
What if there was a way to make units prioritize the type of unit they were originally ordered to kill?. I feel that this would not only help with hero micro/dancing and archer/slinger frustrations, but it would also add a large amount of controllability to the units that would raise the skill ceiling of fights and make them more fun.
Perhaps it could be added as *hold hotkey*-> *right click*
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8 hours ago, Bings said:
The icons are still stupidly small, so I won't be playing unless a kind person releases a mod like last patch.
Just get the p3 eye upgrade XD. (joke)
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4 hours ago, chrstgtr said:
Camels have shorter range and are less accurate. Still, it remains to be seen if this will make a difference (I’ve only played against it with players who are clearly better or worse than me, so the jury is still out here for me)
I got camel rushed 3 or 4 times by juarca, who is better than me. It is frustrating, but it seems you can go back to work fairly easily, and if you have 4-5 spearcav you can trap and kill 10 or more camels with a bit of patience and planning, I had some luck vs 8 camels with 2 spearcav and a sentry tower and 4 skirms (women stayed chopping).
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In my opinion, the games seem more flexibile in what your options are: this is from the availability and versatility of metal as well as the increased ways to move around the map. Games seem to be much faster paced and exciting.
Also, one of my favorite new observations is that people are much less hesitant to fight. In a24, people would paddle back and forth without ever committing to anything, while in a25 a fight can happen suddenly and without a forseen outcome.
Let me know what you think!
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17 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:
A bit out of topic but all eastern civs are bloated.
By bloated you mean powerful or slow/clunky?
Idk, but for a25 Iber and Rome are looking real good.
Spearmen are much more powerful this alpha, I think a25 has the best overall unit balance that I have witnessed in 0ad history (since 2016).
There are many things that are good with mace but these things are not something you can depend on in MP situations. Usually rams are the most dependable siege and I agree that they should see some kind of buff for mace.
I think maybe a pop usage (3 to 2) reduction combined with p2 construction of arsenals.-
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Obviously in some countries where climate change is politically charged, it makes sense for governments to go after the "easiest" carbon cuts first, like renewable energy and electrification. If the two are pursued at the same time, the benefits of both are increased. Having a greater renewables percentage in electricity improves the environmental benefits of electric vehicles. Also, expanding electrification requires adding electric generation capacity to the grid, of which wind and solar are the cheapest.
In the debate about environmental benefits of electrification and renewables proposals, people often forget that electric things are quite frequently better than the gas powered things they replace. For example, my car has a 200 mile range and a 65 USD fuel tank, while a standard electric car with the same range can cost about 7 USD to fully charge. Also it is worth mentioning the pace at which transportation-sized batteries are improving, both in the power they can deliver, the time they charge, energy-density, composition of expensive/environmentally damaging materials.
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I have a good idea, not sure about rams, but we could give mace an upgrade that gives their catapults the splash damage from a23.
perhaps a ram speed bonus would be interesting too.
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2 hours ago, Genava55 said:
Shooting the messenger is a tempting fallacy, but most of the impact from an individual comes from its daily transportation, the energy-source for heating its home and what the individual eats regularly. Not taking a flight time-to-time nor using a computer.
I know that climate progress does depend at least somewhat on individual choices, but we can't forget how the governments and industries play such a powerful role in our daily life choices. I think there are many ways in which corporations could lead change or be forced to change. For example, what if industries were required to make their packaging easily recycle-able? In the USA there is a bunch of "do your duty: recycle!" attitude about packaging waste. But in order to recycle the packaging you must practically disassemble the packaging, separating plastic from cardboard, which almost no-one does because it can take minutes. If packaging took 5-10 seconds to disassemble, then recycling would be way easier. Even better yet, there could be ways to make these companies financially responsible for the waste from packaging their consumers buy with the products.
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To be honest, I am very exited for this Sunday :D. Since I still have not gotten the SVN build to work, this Sunday will be my first time trying it out in a real TG.
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26 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:
I don't worry for Persians as they get archers to provoke fights and citizen skirmishers as well.
Well and then theres the cav :D. Yea for sure Persians will also be good.
magnetic pikemen
in Balancing Discussions
Posted
Aha, this must be what distracts my swords who are trying to kill the skirmishers in the back.