BreakfastBurrito_007

I am just tired of marching my 80 archer/ 50 spear army along parallel defenses in a 4v4 for 20 minutes at a time, only for people to go afk because the turtling is so boring. Everyone has a bunch of archers and are constantly trying to get an enemy to fight under a fort and tower, but no one will because their archers get eaten by towers. You can't attack weak spots because archers will get to the fight before any other unit besides cav, and then even weak spots take too long to break, causing you to be 2v1ed. One problem is stone availability, another problem is that everyone has too much time on their hands. In a23 everything was a race against time, in a24 there is little excitement, little risk, little reward, and little offensive mobility. This late game turtliness and gameplay stabilization is probably the worst problem of a24 and needs to be addressed more, because it covers up all of the good features a24 did bring. You talked about defensive map control, this is the opposite of what Rauls used to do with his ptol colony-->fort--> catapults. The way I interpreted @ValihrAnt's talk of map control, I think he was trying to foster offensive map control.

Right now I can not decide which is better: keeping existing mercenary upgrades and mechanics, but shifting some cost away from metal and toward some other resource, stone or food or wood, depending on unit. This would make mercenaries still expensive, but viable, but diminishes their role from hired soldiers to simply sub-champs. Doubling down on the metal cost for mercenaries: making an awesome new gameplay and eco style variation, but requiring changes to trade system, metal availability upgrades, changes to "expertise in war", changes to metal spawnrate per player. (Perhaps also changing the phase which different mercenaries are available in: p1 merc rush could be a fun element for a bunch of civs) I think I would prefer option 2, but I am worried that the system of changes might not get implemented together and in the right amounts. I am worried that if it is not implemented holistically that it could make mercenaries even worse.

I agree, I think no matter what course is taken to balance strategies, this is one to be avoided. From what I have observed, adding new ccs in a 4v4 is more common than in a23. But in a24, map control is more about archers than anything else, since they are not only the best for defending individual places on the map but also defending huge swaths of territory, I think the main reason for this is because archers can move to defend any structure in your territory faster than any other unit besides cavalry. I think the popular proposed changes set for a25 could help reduce this problem. Rushing was maybe only a little underpowered as balanced in a23. Obviously, making cc's cheaper sounds really bad as added to the current alpha, as this would cause the map to become fully entrenched and make the game endless even faster than in current a24. changing cc's like this could be a great change, if other changes happen with it.

People have said that to make rush a more viable tactic that has equal chance of overall success as booming, we need to remove citizen soldiers from the game and make them all professional. I think a better solution is rather than removing citizen soldiers, we can add mercenaries, champions to a diversity of usage strategies. Mercenaries in a24 are super bad overall and certainly not worth the cost. If they were stronger than citizens and available in p1 (and cost is balanced) for a good variety of civs, there would certainly be a professional soldier rush option. Keep in mind that rushing in a23 was only slightly underpowered. I have been brutally many times in a row by successful rushes. personally I think changes should make rushing a balanced strategy that requires boomers to prepare defenses or die. adding mercenaries to barracks for a majority of civs in p1. Making sentry towers cost 150 wood, longer build time (reduces the reaction towers and saturation of towers), this will mean a turtler will need to prepare in advance, therefore separating turtleing from booming. Reducing arrow range and damage of cc back to a23 levels, making rotation times faster. I think all of these changes would be great. If you disagree pls tell me why. I would argue that rushers being able to gather res decreases the predictability of rush behavior, and allows a failed rush (enemy is prepared) to catch up in eco. I hope when some of you guys read this you realize the huge selection of options for making rushes viable.

I agree with you on this, however, if the game enters the never-ending, stabilized state, it does not matter who got to p3 first. As for broad upgrades like these, I feel like they would separate your gameplay into buckets, like a less diverse version of the "cards" from AoE3. 3 strategies (rushing/booming/turtling) is not much better than one, and allowing different strategies to be equally effective can and should be done without such guide-rails. Infinite strategies is best: any combination of boom amount/rush amount/turtle amount being viable provided you have the creativity and in-game knowledge to make it work. I think rushing/ turtling/ naked booming should be rarely seen in isolation, and any mix of the three would create great fun and variability through the phases of 0ad. Much discussion in other forum topics has been oriented to: increasing feasibility of rushes (risk/reward) and adjusting p1 defenses civ differentiation and inclusion of things such as p2 champs (more popular) and p2 siege (less popular) If mercs were fixed, they could also be used like this. This would expand the Action versus time/phase envelope. ranged unit running speeds (needed anyway but allows for raiding bases that have archers unit train times, (barrack vs cc, or general) A combination of these things could work to allow more fighting and more complex decisions at every stage of the game. In p1 you would need to decide how much defenses you might need, how big your eco is compared to enemies, how much army you could attack with. All of this is informed with scouting. I think these changes could bring more variability to the early and mid game. Also I think this could help make the late game less static and stabilized.

mmm. Perhaps this is also a good way to nerf the range bonus that is added with archery tradition. If the damage drop-off equation was carefully chosen we could different choices for ranged units. This would also help the unit ranges feel less "sharp" and complicate the decision of whether to "dive in" or attack at maximum range. I would wait for some other opinions on this before I get too excited though.

I suppose it is not as much of a problem if other ranged units, who would out dps archers in close range (skirms and slings), also have a damage increase at close range, and if archers are slowed in walk speed. These other things would incentivize an archer army to keep distance. In my opinion, the main reason archers are the most op turtle unit is because they can get to a fight faster than other units. Their range reduces necessary run distance. In addition to their range making them more powerful adjacent to defensive buidings. This way, archers can defend a much larger area at the same time, and they can't be outflanked except with cavalry.

I think a constant damage model is fine.

I like physics, but I am worried about what this might incentivize players to do. Come in close to enemies to exploit higher damage, like pikes who can not chase archers down.

@Lion.Kanzen I totally see what you mean about whether to attack them or ignore them. I generally prefer to ignore them, but I would say there are times when ignoring them grows them and times when ignoring them weakens them. It gets harder when they are legitimized by heads of state, it emboldens them. I used the words white supremacists because it is the most common kind of extremism where I live. Also, is common for them to go to multiplayer lobbies for recruitment: to stoke arguments amongst otherwise quiet or non-extreme people in hopes getting some agreement to expand their online hate group societies. People who commit mass shootings and terror acts can often be seen to have formed a motive from these online platforms. I just hope that the community can agree on some solution for 0ad.

@LetswaveaBookCurrently, I like the melee/ranged balance overall. If the ranged unit speeds are differentiated again, then fights could be really fun. In 24 melee are not simply meatshields, but archers are op so it can still be quite frustrating.

Maybe the upgraded model for the camp could look super sick too!

Brilliant @nani I think we just need to make sure that there is a reasonable amount of time for stopping the upgrade if one really wants to keep that enemy camp from getting stronger, perhaps a bit longer than current sentry to defense tower upgrade. Thoughts?

@sil-vous-plait I understand how frustrating it is too see such profanity beyond any semblance of “dark humor”. But please understand that it is a challenging and controversial problem that is present in all sorts of games even at the highest level of development funding. I give Call of Duty as an example, I know the level of toxicity in Call of Duty multiplayer is unparalleled, and that it is maybe surprising to see this in a smaller game that otherwise has a very wholesome community. The online multiplayers of any game is the safe haven of trolls and white supremacists, It is tiresome to be around them. Just call them out when it makes sense and otherwise don’t let it ruin your fun in multiplayer.

I think a great option is to make “archery tradition” a free trade off tech available in p3 that would no longer be an absolute buff, but instead make archers more vulnerable to melee cavalry and melee infantry.

Hmm. You are both right. @Lion.Kanzen I think choosing to do a "naked" turtle should be more risky than going for a rush in an average game. This will encourage more scouting and players should be careful determining how much defenses to build. @Dizaka as you know I generally don't rush XD, and did not also in a23. I think I am accustomed to the fighting happening in p3 but I think if I tried to attack in p1 I would encounter similar challenges. However I think the classic "if you attack you are 2v1ed" situation does not occur much in p1.

@Dizaka I apologize, I was talking beyond the topic of conversation. I tend to focus on p3 turtling issues since this is where turtleing is the worst. In p3 those towers in the string are usually garrisoned. I liked in a23 when archers were the easiest thing to flank (besides ranged siege),that was their main disadvantage. @Lion.Kanzen like that but no one has metal to afford 1-2 rams XD.

When the whole map is like this, you may as well close host. But often, even just a string of towers can defended by archers that are far away, since they can run to the defenses before the attackers reach them and do much damage.

Well.. I can start I guess. I liked that different attack strategies were used depending on the ranged unit types. Ranged units were much more dynamic and variable in a23. The damage increases for slingers and skirmishers did not come close to compensating for their inability to reach archers. Archers have neigh unlimited flexibility and they can not be over-extended easily like in a23 archery accuracy and archery tradition were enough to make archers a bit op, let alone the effective buff to their speed. I think a good idea would be to revert speeds for them all to a23 levels and start changes for a25 from there. Slingers could remain the same speed as in a24, with skirmishers a bit faster and archers a bit slower.

I liked the way skirmishers worked in a23, a unit that did lots of damage, but died fast, moved fast and was good for surprise attacks and accompanying heavy infantry. They would not win vs heavy infantry in a fight, but would help one group of heavy infantry beat another, more so than archers. In a23 archers were slightly underpowered but were great for putting concentrated pressure and for defense. Players like me learned not to make whole armies out of skirmishers and we acknowledged that slingers were op.

Please put some reasons why you disliked or liked the alpha 23 ranged infantry speeds in comparison to alpha 24's ranged infantry speeds, and what should have been the course of action to equalize the overall power of different ranged infantry types, slingers being more op than the other two in alpha 23.

The reason to spam palisades is to ruin pathfinders and limit movement of the enemy and make rams spend eternity taking them down. The power in palisades is not health of the barrier, that much I can say for sure. In a23 people had no extra time to sit and build defenses anyway, the game was much more dynamic. Usually only a few strings of walls. Only exception being the roman siege spam, which was a rare tactic and even rarer to succeed. @Dizaka surely you can explain this you are an expert in palisades

These no longer can counter archers because 1 archers can kill them quite quickly and 2 no more splash damage :I. The best siege against archers right now is siege towers. So in a24 Rome has worse siege overall than ptol.

Archers have always been (and should be) quite good at defending buildings like fortresses. However, the main change in a24 is that archers are the fastest infantry, so they can pull a turtle-like defense of a huge area. In a24 you can not be over-extended with archers, because archers are effectively faster than every other infantry. To be honest, ranged infantry balance only needed a nerf to slingers from a23, and archers needed a slight buff.

@Lion.Kanzen Thank you for finding and showing me that patch, it is great to see the discussion behind the change. I think most players agree that the ranged/melee balance is much improved this alpha, but that ranged/ranged balance is much worse. I also don't think the turtleing issue can totally solved without reducing archer walk speed, but many more people will agree with me on the other argument for speeds: skirmisher>slinger>archer. That being the inability of every kind of infantry to outmaneuver archers.