maroder

It would be good if this is added to the main game. Then there would be no discussion if it is "cheating" using a mod that includes this feature. An extension could be to automatically adjust the auto training batch size to get even more efficient training times.

nice, ok that should help fixed now. Thanks again.

Alpha 24. I still haven't managed to upgrade to the development version, but maybe that would be a good idea by now

Heavily inspired by the morale mod: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37755-morale-system-for-0-ad And this idea: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/38187-give-elephants-area-damage/ I want to explore a new mechanic for elephants. (Just for fun, so the effects may be unrealistic) Original version, now outdated: Historically elephants were especially effective against cavalry, because if the horses were not used to the presence of elephants, they would get very nervous and flee when they saw something that big walking towards them. This would disrupt the battle formation and cause disturbance in the enemy lines. I am basing this mostly on wikipedia quotes, so if some of the historians want to explain more if this is historically accurate or if these are just some anecdotes, feel free to do so Therefore the Idea would be that elephants have an aura that changes the stance of enemy cavalry to passive and forces them to flee. It should only affect unhabituated / basic rank cavalry, as the horses loose their fear over time. So advanced /elite cavalry is not affected. Current Version (V 3.0.0): Elephants have the aura "Fear" which affects a random percentage of all basic rank enemy Infantry and all of the basic rank enemy cavalry. The affected units get scared and will flee, but they try to attack again. Every time the elephants get hurt (under a certain threshold) there is the probability that they also get scared and fall into rage. So you have no longer control over them and they may attack your own units. scary-elephants.zip battle-test.mp4 So let me hear what you think about it Thanks to @wowgetoffyourcellphone and @azayrahmad for the tips.

It is good to see that (at the moment) the majority of people who voted would like to see a more realistic city layout and I would support any option that finally resolves this issue. A few things to consider / discuss: The main difference in the effect of "soft" or "hard" implementations would probably be in the early game. Soft encouragements like the farmlands or @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded / @Nescio suggestion would still allow the fields in the early game to be close to the CC, which means that the rushing situation is unchanged. On the other hand adding a hard limit that forces player to build outside of the CC's arrow range would encourage rushing. One difficulty of the farmland idea is that all the maps have to be changed, which is much more work than just adding an aura of some kind. I like this idea very much. I am adding the new suggestions to the poll, but keep in mind the result is skewed, as you cannot revote. The positive aura idea is probably best explored in @azayrahmad city building mod, so maybe he has some insights on this topic.

Yeah, that's why I called it hacky I tried to that, but for some reason the animation stops after a second (unlike the iberian fireship, from where i got the idea) and I was not able to fix that. Therefore the many variants, to have a continuous burning effect. The best thing would be if the statusEffectReciever could handle that and just attach a prop to the actor, but in my case it works like this. That would be my optimal solution, but I have not yet looked into that. Thanks for the suggestion

Version 0.03: Added nice but very hacky fire effects to the palisades

As the title says, is there a good (means somewhat easy) way to do that at the moment? As I understand from @Stan` comment here -> https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/131#comment:13 It should be not to difficult to achieve this, but I didn't figure out how to do it yet. I was thinking about something like this, similar to the ranged attack: <ApplyStatus> <Burning> <Interval>3000</Interval> <Damage> <Fire>5</Fire> </Damage> <Stackability>Stack</Stackability> <Duration>5000</Duration> <StatusActorName>fire.xml</StatusActorName> <StatusAnimationLifetime>5</StatusAnimationLifetime> </Burning> </ApplyStatus> where the actor/ burning effect gets automatically attached to "root". But I am unsure what the interface to the engine would look like or if there is any. Or would it be better to change the actor, once the status effect is applied to an actor that already has particles attached like here: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/18340 ? Thanks for any hints / or just tell me if that is not yet possible

fyi: I updated the topic to be more representative of my main objective.

@faction02 thanks again for the comments. -> fixed True. I didn't put to much effort in thinking about the palisade issue in the first version of the mod. But I added now the ability for women to torch the palisades (which gives them also a new interesting role in the game, and stronger siege vs palisades) -> fixed Also very true. I really want to make it work and I hope I can find a way to balance no distance limitations with the strength of towers, but it is hard indeed I therefore made additional changes to the concept, maybe it will work, otherwise I will have to revert to the standard with building limitations. Yes that was my fear too. The problem is, as long as there is some protection through the CC, the fields will obviously be placed there, even if it is not a dropsite. I therefore want to encourage the player to actually choose a area that is more protected and build defensive structures in the early game (Or just boom and risk it). General thoughts: I would also much rather have a system of incentives for the city layout and the fields, but that would be way more complicated changes and they are, as you mentioned, already done in DE and the city building mod. My goal was to see if we can reach something more realistic, just by tweaking some values and removing some obvious unrealistic features (CC as storehouse/ fortress). Because of that, I don't want to keep some of the defensive capabilities of the CC, as that would undermine the concept. To have more defense, you need to actually build defensive structures. But these defenses should not lead to stalemates or boring endgames, which is hard to balance. I hope that the new changes kind of reach this balance, but that needs to be tested vs a real player and not vs the AI

That is an elaborate looking city Thanks for taking the time to try the mod and make suggestions. I will think about them and then reply in more detail and maybe with a new version of the mod.

I don't think there can be more housewalling as it is already used at the moment Furthermore, you would need to build additional palisades / towers to protect the houses, as they are not longer automatically "safe" when they are in the arrow range of the CC.

It's not about hyperrealism, I don't propose that people need to build an exact copy of ancient Rome. It is about the fact that the starting area around the CC is already extremely well defended, without having to use any actual defensive buildings. As @LetswaveaBook said, the farms are build in a fortified area, which is at the moment always the outside of the CC. But why not actually giving the player the choice? If you want to go for a boom you don't have to invest in defensive buildings and take the risk. If you want to be more safe and turtle at the beginning of the game, this is now a more viable options, because there is not already free defense build into your CC. There is additionally the visual aspect. Our CCs are nearly as strong as fortresses in terms of shooting arrows ect. but they look completely different. Nothing indicates that they are actually used for defense/military, they mostly look like civilian buildings (see picture below). Yes, I thought that might be a problem. The quick fix would be to give an starting storehouse and a starting farm at the beginning of the game, to avoid situations where you spend all your resources and have no place to store new ones. Example comparison, Left side standard build order, Right side my build order with the proposed changes:

@Radagast your attempts seem indeed far more complicated that what I am aiming for, but very interesting ideas

Hello everybody, For some time now I am bothered by the fact that farms are placed directly in front of the CC and after doing some digging in old tickets and reading the forums, it seems like I am not alone with this view. https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/4342 https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/1318 https://trac.wildfiregames.com/ticket/5415 https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/28757-forests-and-farmlands-a-new-idea/ https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/26701-city-building-mod-a23-a24/ I would therefore propose for A26 to finally move the farms away from the CC. I think from a realism standpoint the game could only benefit from that and it can also improve the ability of players to use different strategies (risky boom vs save turtle). So to get an idea about the general opinion on this is at the moment, I would be happy if you could indicate in the poll what your thought on the topic is. _________________________________________ Just for context, here is a shortened version of my original proposal (remove dropsite capabilities and arrows from the cc): At the moment, the CC serves as territory root, defensive building and dropsite and this combination seems logically very inconsistent to me. It leads to a standard build order that involves 8 fields around the CC, because that is the most defended area in the beginning of the game. The CC represents the center of the civilization. There is also no visual indication for the player, that a structure, that is elaborate and full of prestige, is also a big storehouse for stone, metal, wood and food. The solution that I am proposing, is to split the functionality of the CC to the respective buildings. So defensive buildings do the defense and storehouses /farms are used to store resources. This means to replace the capacity of the CC to shoot arrows, with an aura of some sort and to disable it as a dropsite. This would hopefully lead to more realistic city layouts and to an more interesting early game, because players do have to think more about how they want to defend their farms, or if the just take the risk and do a straight boom.

Introduction: The purpose this mod is to clearly define the role of buildings, which then leads to a (slightly) more realistic city layout. It is a follow up to this proposal: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37294-storehouse-and-farms-rework please look there for additional reasons why I think these changes are good. So please take a look at the following building and ask yourself the following questions: Does this look like a place that you can pack full of soldiers and defend like a fortress? Does it look like a good place to store your food, stone or metal? Well, at least to me it doesn't. And this is imo one of the reasons for the gameplay balance problems. Therefore, introducing a mod, that clearly redefines the role of the basic buildings. Features: The civic center is no longer an all-purpose storehouse nor an easy to defend mini fortress. Its ability to shoot arrows has been removed and replaced by an aura, that increases the attack and armor of soldiers close to it. That is done because it is the center of your civilization, which should give the soldiers a boost of morale and it also prevents you from getting overrun in the first 5 minutes of the game. The storehouse is now the main place to store wood/metal/stone and its cost are reduced to 50 wood. Wood can still be stored in the CC to allow wood income in situations where all storehouses are destroyed. The farmstead is now the main place to store food and its cost are reduced to 50 wood. What do I hope are the benefits? A city layout that looks more realistic (e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum) and less like someone decided to turn the center of their city into one giant farming area. Easier to understand game logic. Defensive structures are for defense, economic structures are for economy. Better ability to rush in early game Because I don't want to make two mods, there are also other changes (maybe more unrealistic) based on the following complaints I have read on the forums: Rushing is too hard defensive structures are too effective (e.g. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37687-lets-fight-gameplay-balance-mod/) Changes: Towers: Towers do no longer have an minimum distance between them, because that restricts player freedom (and I don't like it ) To balance that out , their ungarrisoned arrow count is reduced to 0, because it was imo not realistic that they had a default arrow count (indicating a person inside) but they did not contribute to the pop limit. To have any effect of the towers, you now either need to keep men around or let them stay inside, which should prevent an extreme overuse. The tech is removed, that adds one standard arrow to towers The tech is removed, that gives 40% more arrows per garrisoned soldier The stone tower can now garrison only 3 soldiers (same as the sentry tower) but it is still harder to capture and more resistant. Palisade related: Palisades have very weak crush damage, which means that rams and catapults are way more effective against them Women now have a torch as weapon, which allows them to burn palisades. (A few hits are enough, the palisade will continue to burn until its gone) Here is a test of how effective different unit types are at destroying palisades: test.mp4 Nice new fire effects: showacse.mp4 Here is the mod (v 0.0.3): increased-realism.zip

Yes I know that I was only not sure about if that is going to change, so thanks for the explanation. Anyways I just wanted to say that having two icons to click to get your units out of e.g. a fortress which has turrets and garrisoned units, may increase the chance that you forget some of them. Which is obviously only a problem when one entity can be both garrisoned and have turrets.

Ah ok. So the difference with D1958 would be that garrisoned units are passive and don't shoot arrows, while mounted/ turret occupying units can? So in the case of a fortress with turrets: do only the units in the turrets fire arrows, or would the garrisoned units still increase the number of arrows a building is able to fire? Because if they do, the action seems rather similar (at least to me) and it would be enough to use one icon that does different things, depending if you click on a turret (occupying) vs clicking on the fortress (garrisoning). In both cases you put your unit in/ on something. If it is regarded as a separate action, and you select a fortress with occupied turrets and garrisoned units, would you have to click on both icons or use two hotkeys to get all your units out? That seems to me like an easy way to forget some units for the rest of the game in that building.

I think it would be good to unify the ranges beforehand, i.e because if not, there is still the logic inconsistency that soilders/men are able to see further than women (when they are just standing in the field or walking). Otherwise I like @chrstgtr idea.

Just so I can follow, what is the reason to not reuse the garrison/ ungarrison icons? The action seems rather similar to me.

At least there is Wows mod now: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37183-two-gendered-citizens-mod-please-test/

Yes, but in reality they were much more static than in the game and would have had some shield or people shielding the people, to protect them from archers, if they were that close. Rams on the other hand who get really close and are usually in the range of arches, are especially build with a roof the protect the soldiers inside. That's why I think it would make sense to make siege vulnerable to close combat (swords/pike), but not to arrows (exec fire cav).

Yes, sorry @letsplay0ad I was going off-topic for your mod and just expressing my thoughts as some of these ideas might find their way into the base game. But if you want to try a different concept to stop turteling, I think stronger siege, which can take down barriers faster, is nicer to play as more limits/ restrictions (even if that mechanic is already in the base game). @faction02 got a good point: imo as long as they don't use fire arrows, they shouldn't really damage siege (except elephants).

but jokes aside Yes, true. But as you said that is mainly a problem in the late game / stalemate situation. My point of view: In the early game there should be the three classic rock paper scissors strategies: Boom, Rush and Turtle, which cancel each other out. So If you think your opponent will rush, it should be a valid strategy to turtle, to counter that. If he instead booms, well sucks to be you, now you have spend resources for nothing. Good to hear, thats my main point. So instead of setting a minimum distance or nerfing of defensive structure in general (which hurts turteling as a strategy in the early game) I would much rather prefer your suggestion that defensive structure (maybe not the sentry tower) cost population space or @Radiotraining suggestion. Additionally also stronger siege. This would be a penalty for late game turteling, without making it useless in the early game. thanks, I will try

From a pure logic standpoint I would vote not to reveal it, because if you're unit doesn't have the vision range in the first place, why should it suddenly see something that is further away? Edit: indicating from which direction the unit is attacked or only getting a sign/flag would be nice. Edit2: Why exactly do women have a lower LOS that other units? I would think it would be good to unify it for non-cav units.