BreakfastBurrito_007

This assumes mercenaries are: train fast, and come out at advanced rank, and come from barracks in p1. The cost depends on whether https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3665 is adopted or not, so far it seems like https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3699 will be, which I think I like as well. I think the second option is best for p1 mercs since it means you must divert some reasonable eco to metal in order to have a mercenary rush, rather than instantly spamming out a powerful army of mercs from starting resources only. This addition helps solve a few problems: Civ differentiation: some civs have 1 merc type available, some have 2, some have none. We would need to make sure those civs with no p1 mercs still have a good rushing option like cavalry or dogs (brit) or have some kind of defense advantage (iber). booming=turtling discussion: CS (citizen soldiers) can be beaten by an attacker who uses mercs or mercs+CS. This means it is necessary to actively protect yourself with some walls, some towers to have a successful boom if you get plan not to make a strong army yourself (no mercs or cavalry). This way, eco does not necessarily mean good defense. I could imagine you are scouting with your starting horse and you see enemy has a barracks, so your enemy is training men, but then you see your enemy has 3-5 people mining metal and you can assume your enemy is going for mercs. This is a big UH OH, so you want to either get your own mercs or wall/tower up ASAP and hope for the best. What are your thoughts about this? I am thinking this would be great but metal availability/usage should be solved first, in the interest of not just this mechanic, but also for siege/ champs in late game.

Big agree. Often in a24, a person far behind in eco is not in big trouble, all they need to do is spam forts and archers and palisades and they will live a long time. I don't think that the infeasibility of rushing is due to CS, a23 and prior alphas had good rushing option in p1, and limited attack options in p2 as opposed to almost no attack options in p2 in a24. I think a fun and great option could be to allow most civs to train one or two types of their merc in p1 (from barracks). This could mean you could choose a range of p1 aggression strategies, depending on how much metal you mine in p1, which is eco that is diverted from long term growth, unlike the citizen soldier only rush. This hinges on mercs being cost/power balanced. Ideally, if you don't plan on making a powerful p1 raiding force with mercs/CS, then you would need to make some defenses to avoid being overwhelmed by the combination of CS and mercs.

yes, this is how it would go. I think it could create some bad gameplay results, but I still think it would be nice to have some relationship between barter rate and trade incomes for resources.

I don't think that there is one particular thing that is contributing to the endless 4v4s/ turtling. The stone/metal imbalance is frustrating and it causes metal intensive things such as rams/eles/champs (things that can win a game) to be used with the utmost caution while stone intensive things can be easily replaced (forts/towers/ccs/temples) and can make games last longer. People have said a good way to balance stone/ metal would be to make the "small" sources that can appear on each map all metal rather than all stone, this might just be on mainland. In 4v4s in 24 we have tried larger maps to free up space but it did not help that much, although it made cavalry slightly easier to use. I think a map size slider would be nice (with upper and lower limits) to take over the map sizes: "normal" vs "medium" vs "large". Current map sizes could then be labeled points along that slider.

Also having separate embassies means each one is easier to target for coercion and attack, like the suspected microwaves on U.S. embassies. + specific to 0ad it is nicer to pay for individual embassies since usually it is because you are after a specific two mercs from those. There is redundancy between some of the available mercs and people would not want to pay more for something they don't intend on training.

Wait we can make jesus!!! OP hero. Maybe he should have a feature where he dies and then your temples change into churches wow. Maybe he can train apostles (up to 12). Maybe jesus could make a trickle of food as a hero bonus. From the miracle of spontaneously multiplying the food for all those people that one time.

Age games tend to have a really good balance system, but 0ad has another layer of complexity because we have citizen soldiers. I think most people will agree that a23 was more fun than a24, but many good features and changes came in a24 (blacksmith upgrade categories, stables, melee vs ranged balance, viable champs) that are being overshadowed by some of the bad things (ranged vs ranged balance, palisade spam, not enough metal, really bad mercs, turtleing). I am optimistic about a25.

Mauryans, Persians (champion chariot archers). Lag is a problem, but it's not so bad on certain biomes of mainland and with pop cap of 200. I think the main thing that makes micro frustrating/ not worth trying a lot of the time is the longer unit rotation times. From what I understand the unit rotations for CS are going to be reduced, and the number of necessary buildings will also be reduced, (faster unit production). My hope is also that forts, towers, and ccs will see range and damage and health (forts and towers) rebalances after their buff in a24. These things will make the congestion considerably less in the games, and make non brute-force strategies more viable. As for successor civs, I think Seles are my favorite in this alpha, try combining a couple garrisoned siege towers and eles against some archers, along with a big army with plenty of pikes and spears. If you send this army with the ele hero, be careful to go for a good target where the archers will be forced to die to your siege towers.

@PyrrhicVictoryGuyIt seems you know firsthand the struggles of playing a non-archer civ versus archer civ. I know 1v1s can be frustrating or stressful, and this is why I stick to Team games.

@Yekaterina 13-14 minute was the big fight time for almost all the games I played and watched. (for a 4v4 on mainland). This is one of the first things I noticed about a24.

I would argue that unit speed is actually not that important in woodcutting. If you add up the effects of unit rotation, pathfinding, and storehouse proximity, these things matter much much more than skirmishers being .5 to 1 m/s faster. If the storehouse is close as it should be, unit rotation takes up a greater portion of the time to move between the tree and storehouse too.

Yea. As I was thinking about it I was wondering whether it would be more a fun mechanic or just an economic frustration. Also, I am thinking that someone could re-inforce their income by bartering for metal to make traders, thereby increasing their revenue. If players have 50-60 CS on wood, then they could float wood, and continually barter wood to keep metal super expensive, and then earn a ludicrous amount of metal from only 10-15 traders which they could use to buy a lot of mercenaries. @chrstgtr thanks for the feedback.

A couple other considerations: Maybe the relationship should be a more simple LINEAR relationship: if wood is maxed out in the barter-market, wood trades for 5x as much value as the default amount and the other resources are all 1/5 of their original rates. This sounds extreme, but its intended purpose is to make people weigh the benefits/problems of: floating resources, bartering excessively, and what units they should make from their trade revenue. It will also make it harder to manage a full-trade economy. This will also introduce a risk/saftey spectrum to trading, do you want to spread out your trade income across 2-3 resources or go all-in for a particular resource because it is valuable at the moment. Another cool feature that would limit/complicate this mechanic could be if traders can only react to a change in the trade resource choices once they reach the next market, because they can't just drop their current stock. If a player changed their resources based upon a sudden change in barter values, then it is possible it could change by the time the trader is able to pick up the next round of stock at destination/origin market. If a trader is in transit, then the values of what they carry still apply, so the traders could lose some value of what they carry even if the value was high when they picked up their stock at the last market. The goal of these changes would be to revolutionize the way trading is done in 0ad, going from a boring extreme-late-game mechanic to a a variable economic strategy with risk and reward beyond the cost of traders unit training costs. I could even see trade being chosen at earlier times in some games if players anticipate extreme barter rates that can happen as people gear up for the big P3 fights. @Dizaka@Player of 0AD@Palaiogos @chrstgtr@ValihrAnt What do you think of the idea? To me it seems possible and potentially a really fun gameplay mechanic. Also this is a good way to make trading less of a guaranteed way of getting metal since otherwise it would be too easy to spam mercenaries from trade (in a24 mercenaries are the cheapest unit to get from trade).

I think increasing metal availability and adding more uses for stone will help the barter system be a a little less frustrating in a25. In particular in 4v4s. A while ago I had an idea for a system that would make the most bartered-for resource at the market also be the most profitable resource to trade for with traders. The idea is to make trading a less hands-off process and reward players who are looking out for resource values, potentially adjusting their unit composition based upon what resource is most profitable for their traders. Since currently traders get all resources at the same rate, mercenaries are the cheapest unit if ur whole eco is traders. If this is implemented, and resources are brought within reason in terms of availability and relative value, then traders would bring a much less predictable income stream. I think this would also prevent the market barter rates from stagnating and it would tie trade income to real-time player actions. I think it is also nice for the people who take interest in historical accuracy and realism. Traders have/had a limited capacity to carry stuff, so to carry the most value with them, they would take whatever resource was most scarce. Also traders don't and didn't always have the same profits each time they traded. If you are more interested in this mechanic you can come to that thread and make a comment :D. I would welcome some feedback on my idea.

yea I think this is a bigger problem in a24 given how important it is to get metal quickly at the beginning of p2. It is rare to see barter rates more reasonable than 100 metal---> 500 wood. I had an idea where barter rates could be reflected in traders productivity of trading a particular resource. There is a thread for it.

I am a bit confused by this, can't you gain resources by bartering anyway. Like bartering 100 metal for 800 wood?

I am not sure how prevalent the ddos is anymore, but I know that sometimes having a password seemed to help. I am wondering if there could be a feature where you could write the password on a parentheses portion of the hosted game name, example [ breakfastburrito's game(archies) ]. When the game starts, the parentheses section is no longer visible. If ddos were to get worse perhaps this is a feature multiplayer hosters could use for a little extra protection depending on how the ddoser is attacking. I don't know much about ddos, but a while ago @Dizaka told me he thought it was a good idea.

yea in those 1400+ games, or what used to be worth 1400, there could be balanced teams as well. We loved balanced games because it seemed like either side could lose at a moments notice. In a24, balanced games often become endless, and at all times it seems like neither team can win. Usually these ones go for 45-50 minutes and then someone goes AFK.

Hey guys! I saw some thoughts about balance and I thought I would put in my 2 cents. From what I have observed, team balance has meant different things in a23 and in a24. In a23, a balanced game would usually involve each player getting super sweaty and the game would get super intense. In a24, the intensity peaks at 15-16 minutes and then the game stagnates, a variety of things influence this like ranged units, metal availability, stone excess, structures power. The end result is that a balanced game does not feel competitive and exciting, but competitive and tiresome. I hope you guys can agree with these observations of 4v4s and 3v3s.

Ok my apologies for taking so long to do this. Here is the error after doing: extract all to mods folder within 0.A.D folder. All of this is installed on an SSD since bootcamp takes up much space on the computer.

1: I can't argue with this except with: not everything that was historically accurate will make the game more fun to play. Example: WW1 fps games. 2: All ranged units could have the same resource gathering speed that is no faster than any of their walk speeds. I don't know about the programming situation, @Freagarach did not elaborate about it being impossible to program into 0ad. 3: making them slower would lead to them being unable to defend a huge area, meaning that archers would need to be closer to the place they want to defend, reducing the total area that is impenetrable in a turtled base, and therefore decreasing the extent to which players territory boundaries form blocks to general movement across the map. Buffing building arrows and archer move speed meant that once the archers arrive under their local defenses you must either retreat or die. 4: this is one reason why catapults should be given splash damage as it existed in a23, and why forts should lose their territory root given in a24. Archers should be defeatable at a fort and flankable for faster armies (which should not be limited to cavalry as it is in a24). However, the main issue is not their power in defending one spot as you said, it is their ability to defend in any point in the territory area as if they had been waiting there the whole time. I agree with your logic about reversing the roles of ranged infantry and melee infantry (ranged should support melee rather than the other way around). Keep in mind that we are closer to this than any point in the last 5 years (if my memory is right). I don't think I have any more points to make to try to convince you that archers should not be most maneuverable. Only that this is the reason why archer cav were made slower in a24. I should also say that there is a group of people trying to balance britons and gauls as mobility/guerilla oriented civs, they won't be this way if archers are more maneuverable than skirms and slings.

@PyrrhicVictoryGuy Thanks for the info, I think I ought to change my cav selections. @LetswaveaBook I say it is ideal because most of the time armies fail without at least some melee, preferably with enough to pressure other armies archers. I have also been seeing armies of 1/3 ranged to 2/3 ranged infantry where in alpha 23 it was more like 80% to 100% ranged. What are some other ways to balance ranged infantry? I observe: add armor to skirms and slings (most people dislike this one) decrease accuracy of archers establish minimum range for archers I think something must be done to allow the non-archer ranged units to use their damage advantage against archers in more situations (other than de-garrisoning from building or ram). I think the best way to do this is to differentiate ranged infantry speeds based upon range. What are your main gameplay concerns about re-differentiating ranged infantry walk speed? Do you think archers should be the most maneuverable unit?

This micro is only possible in early game and with 2-5 units. Players would probably wind up slowing down eco because of misclicks and neglect of other micromanaged eco opportunities like hunting. I am not suggesting to discriminate ranged inf in eco walk speed, I think I may not have been clear earlier. If all the ranged inf were the same walk speed as archer when gathering, then this would negate any eco advantage that skirms and slings would have over archers, and mean that no ranged unit is faster when gathering res than when walking to battle.

If you like the way ranged infantry are balanced in a24, then what are the the strong points of skirmishers currently in a24? I can only think of one: de-garrison quickly from fort or temple to kill an ele.

Please don't mock me mate. :I I think I mentioned in my post that the gathering movement speed for all ranged units would never be faster than their normal movement speed, so this would not be abused to make any unit move faster. Why not? is it a programming constraint? My main point is that ranged/ melee balance is fairly close to ideal, and that further adjustments to that balance should be careful and slight. If ranged infantry are to all have the same speed, then something must be done to limit archers' mobility in some other way, otherwise skirmishers will never be a viable option, and the wide-area turtling will be just as prevalent in a25 as it is in a24 right now.