[Siege Engine Balancing]

Any thoughts on returning splash damage to catapults?

I liked this mechanic in a23, but it was sometimes frustrating, it could do more damage to a smaller number of units, perhaps limiting cap on the net damage each shot can do?

I think we should be careful to limit tech proliferation. A feature is broken? lets just make it an expensive tech! I think this is a solution sometimes, but we can't let it become a lazy way to "balance" something.

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

6 minutes ago, soloooy0 said:

I believe that certain units should have their own statistics, which represent more what they were, in their time.
like for example, the cataphracts that were heavily armored = less speed + stamina and a little more damage ...
also the briton longswords that have the same stats as the other champions that use sword and shield -.-
the elephants should have a small area attack not only frontal attack
so that little by little it will be more important to choose each civ, for each phase and that the play styles will be more different per civ and player. 

 

This the right long term idea, we absolutely need civ differentiation and interesting civ based mechanics, but balancing archers and wide-area turtling are big problems that need to be addressed soon

@alre@LetswaveaBook did you guys get to play a23? I see that you joined the forum fairly recently. My hope is that you at least know what I am talking about... how much mobility there was in a24, and how turtling was only good for small areas.

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

6 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

I agree. The problem is that in current meta is seems like hit and kill everything from large range. Occasionally you need to run. Once the archers reached a safe fortress, there is hardly a way of combating them.

It is impossible to beat them at a fort, it used to be catapults would stop this fairly well because they can damage archers which stay still AND the fort. The main problem is not them hiding in one place however, the problem with them being the most maneuverable infantry unit lies when you try to avoid attacking the fort, and instead attack a weak place in their base. If you rightly recognize that fighting at the fort vs archers will cause death then you must try to attack somewhere else. The big problem is that archers can just follow you wherever you go without becoming more vulnerable because if you decide to attack once they are away from the fort, you are slower than the archers, so they can just go back to the fort. Archers only face 2 threats: other archers, siege towers, and cavalry. Cavalry and siege towers can be countered fairly well by archer civs and are very expensive endeavors, while archers can just gather resources without worrying about being vulnerable or out of position.

The core problem with archers is that without cavalry:

1. archers can hit you
2. you cannot hit archers
3. you cannot catch archers by chasing them

Is it crazy to say that it should be possible to overextend or get flanked with archers?

and it should not require cavalry to flank archers and beat them in this way?

 

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

Archers are faster because they:

1. run same speed as skirm and sling
2. don't need to run as far to fight.

I don't know if we learned from the infamous camel rush of a23, but archers being able to hit and run (meaning they have greater effective speed) is a capability that will prevent them from being balanced. 

2 hours ago, alre said:

Light infantry speeds were made equal for good reasons

What reasons? can you list them? how was this intended to help gameplay?

Perhaps archers could be most inaccurate in their first shot and then, in order to gain some accuracy they need to shoot 2-3 arrows from the same position. (values can be changed, and maybe champions and horse archers could exhibit this less). [this ought to make the history/realism people happy :D]. Maybe this could be combined with archers having a small minimum range so that they get "routed" by melee inf and melee cav, instead of stretching that bow while they have a spear in their face. This combination would make bigger groups of archers more vulnerable to smaller groups of melee.

This way they would be most vulnerable in mobile situations. 

Idk, I still think that simply differentiating speeds of mobile units would have great implications for large-area turtling, and would result in nicely balanced ranged inf, and is easy to implement.

[Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod]

On 11/05/2021 at 12:07 PM, Lion.Kanzen said:

How about this mod? Anything you want to bring to the game? What did you like?

I tried this mod some in singleplayer but I have not been able to try it in multiplayer yet. Could someone who has done this in multiplayer make a post telling us their observations?

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

no, but Seleucids should get some kind of non-champ melee cav XD.

I feel the melee units do not need an over all attack increase. I think that the main problem with them is that the longest range infantry unit is also the fastest, so non-cav melee units have a hard time getting close enough. If ranged infantry speeds are differentiated so that skirms>slings>archers in speed, then this will be enough to make using melee inf less frustrating.

 

[Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)]

On 15/05/2021 at 1:36 AM, Yekaterina said:

Another solution: citizen soldiers offer very weak attack, champions offer huge attack. Meanwhile make champions cheaper, so the army would be half champions and half citizen soldiers.

This would be nice, so a greater proportion of champion cost comes in the form of opportunity cost in exchange for better army composition. Problems: low champion diversity.

[Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)]

17 hours ago, Dizaka said:

I think nerfing archers should be cautionary.  I really don't want them to end up like in a23.  I think, at present, it may be best to use archers as a baseline and bring other units in line with them.

I think this is a good way to go about balancing the ranged units. Perhaps an exception being at least some reduction in archer speed, and an increase in javelineer speed. I don't know if the damage values for those ranged units should be the same too, since I have almost never seen battles between slingers and javelins in 4v4s. I think it is right not to bring all the ranged units down by getting into a tit for tat nerf race between ranged units. I am usually seeing give or take half ranged/half melee which I think is a pretty good ranged/melee balance, which is certainly one bonus of a24. I think if we get ranged infantry right on a25, rotation adjusted, and the turtling problem is solved, then a25 will be a vast improvement over a24 and a23.

[Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)]

@Yekaterina I think it is best not to talk about cc changes in isolation, many other features of a24 are causing problems. These changes to ccs will not do much alone, they need to be analyzed carefully with other features so that they combine to make outsized improvement in gameplay.

I can confirm that I agree with those changes to ccs provided that the gameplay becomes less stabilized, turtleing becomes less OP/ gets restricted to a smaller area of control, and defenses are weakened a bit. Add some civ diversification, and the positive effect of cc changes is multiplied by the presence of other good changes.

[Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)]

26 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

Currently, defensive map control is EXTREMELY easy with forts having the "root" that civic centers do.  It's annoying. 

In a23 if someone forgot to defend their base and sent all units to the enemy their base was toast if someone attacked it.  Currently, all you need to do is place a fort near where your army is.  This forces the defender to always have an advantage as their building "root" can be located in multiple places with multiple forts.  This forces the attacker from being unable to take over bases defended by women, even more so when walls and undefended forts are present.

In a23 only Ptol/Sele had this ability (secondary cc's of smaller cost).  A24 really promotes turtling and winning by forcing the other side to "run out of resources" or an enemy newbie making a really small/big mistake (that amplifies) which can be picked up on by an ally who went all cav (e.g., enemy border did no walls, pocket from other side sees this and overwhelms with cav).

 

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.

[[Brainstorming] Balancing Mercenary The primary suggestions comes from the cost. (Metal cost) - suggestion]

Right now I can not decide which is better:

1. 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.
2. 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.

[Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)]

55 minutes ago, ValihrAnt said:

In general, I dislike forcing players to just pick between set options.

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.

[Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)]

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.

[Balancing Citizen Soldiers (CS) (long shot)]

1 hour ago, maroder said:

Another problem is that this "booming is the best" gameplay leads to a huge snowball effect. So If a player is slower at the beginning, it is very likely that he cannot recover and will lose the game. This makes the game less dynamic and interesting. Being able to turn the situation around after some bad losses is much more fun than slowly losing to your opponent just because he has more units, because he was able to click faster in the first five minutes.

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. 

1 hour ago, maroder said:

What if the player had with each phase the opportunity to specifically choose one of the three strategies? So a decision to upgrade your CC or research a technology which gives you either an economic, an aggressive or a defensive boost just for this phase.

Possible improvements from this mechanic:

• This would allow that each strategy is a legitimate choice in each phase, so a p1 turtle or a p2 push would be possible with all factions.
• It creates a a true "balanced" rock-paper-scissor system 
• This would also acknowledge the importance of scouting (in all phases): if you have the information about the strategy of you opponent, you will be able to counter it.
• It removes the huge snowball effect that is present at the moment and could allow a player to comeback after a bad start
•  It is easy enough to not make the game "slower" but enforces the ability to choose specific strategies.

Here is a mod as a proof of concept:

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:

1.  increasing feasibility of rushes (risk/reward) and adjusting p1 defenses 
2. 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.
3. ranged unit running speeds (needed anyway but allows for raiding bases that have archers
4. 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.

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

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.

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

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.

 

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

I think a constant damage model is fine.

 

[Remove spread a.k.a randomness]

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.

[profanity]

@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.

 

[Arguments for/against alpha 23 ranged infantry speeds]

@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.

[why rome's camp doesnt cosist of metal? bad problem]

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

 

[why rome's camp doesnt cosist of metal? bad problem]

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?

[profanity]

@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.

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

28 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:

First, remove slingers from the argument because they are a cheap unit that does nothing apart from being cheap and weak.

Secondly, I like @Lion.Kanzen's idea. I can give melee cavalry 1.5x hard counter against archers

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.

[what do we do with the defenses of phase 1?]

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.