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maroder

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Posts posted by maroder

  3. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted · Edited by maroder
    typo

    @alre you convinced me.

    Version 2 is out with the following features:

    The fear aura affects all enemy units who are not used to the presence of the elephant. Means it affects all basic rank units (cav & infantry).

    When the elephants are too hurt, they can fall into rage and attack your own units.

    The aura works not on all individuals, only on a random subset. @Sturm I made it work :)

    The aura no longer changes the stance to passive. It forces the units to flee, but they will come back and try to attack again. @wowgetoffyourcellphone

    I updated the video, so you can have a look. Hope it is more realistic now.

    • Thanks 1

  4. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    @alre

    9 hours ago, alre said:

    I think it's a big overstatement to call this mod realistic

    That's why I said this mod just improves the realism (a little bit). I don't claim that this is the historic ground-truth. It is just an interesting mechanic that I thought would be fun to use in this case.

    @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded

    9 hours ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

    it would be interesting to make it so that advanced, elite soldiers, and champion have resistance to this.

    already implemented :)It only affect basic rank cavalry. The idea is that the horses habituate to the presence of the elephants after some time and are not scared anymore.

    • Like 1

  5. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    10 hours ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

    Right, you forgot that this suggestion was made years ago.

    Hard to forget something you have never known :D

    I like the idea, but I think it would would makes more sense the other way round. The elephants are scary all the time, but you have the ability to push thorough that for a limited amount of time.

  8. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

    It would not improve the game, it would just change it.

    It would improve the realism :D But yes gameplay wise it is a buff for elephants. What would be your idea to balance that?

    I think it could be interesting to have a hard counter of the cavalry vs the elephants. Similar to the counter of spearman vs cavalry. So if you manage to keep your cavalry alive and let them reach a higher rank, you have an effective weapon against the elephants.

  9. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    43 minutes ago, Sturm said:

    In order to make the game more balanced and even more credible, the elephant or group of elephants could scare only a percentage of the enemies, something like 20-30%. 

    This is a nice idea, I am not sure how easy it is to implement this. You could of course use a random subset of the affected units, but the aura gets updated all the time, so you will likely hit every unit with it.

    • Like 1

  10. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    1 hour ago, azayrahmad said:

    Perhaps create a new class e.g. Habituated. Or add Basic class to the aura so advance /elite units are not affected.

    Thanks very much for the tip :D is fixed now. The mod is now functioning as I intended. The only thing left to do is indeed to tweak the strength/ range of the aura.

  11. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    11 hours ago, faction02 said:

    Having units running when they flee and other chasing them instead of fighting is problematic in battles. It is common to have a player setting his hero in passive to trigger the chasing mechanic in the enemy army. It can put you at a strong disadvantage.

    Yeah, good point. I tried to simulate a large battle, but its hard to control two player at once. From what I saw it is not that big of a problem, as the elephants chase the cavalry easily out of the range of the ranged infantry. But yes it is very chaotic and the cavalry is more or less useless in this case. You would have to send them raiding, while you use your infantry to counter the eles. Or research the not yet implemented tech.

    Also I think it is not that problematic with the cav, because they are not such tanks as the heroes. Otherwise you could use the strategy you described also without this mod :D just set the cav to passive, order them to attack and then send your infantry. At least I haven't seen someone use this until now.

    But yes, maybe something has to be changed in the chasing mechanic. It might be better to preferably attack non-fleeing/non-passive units and only target them when there are no other targets left or you specifically order to attack them.

    • Like 1

  13. Auto-Queue for 0 A.D

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, Stan` said:

    You could also see it the other way as it minimize the micro skills.

    True, but to me it seems like that would only bother a small amount of the top players. If your micro skill are only average (which I guess should be true for most players ) and there are often moments in the game where you forget to produce more units, this feature can add more fun / reduce the unnecessary stress. Especially when trying to use the corrals.

    Also, efficiently using the batch size to your advantage does still provide a reward for micro-skilled player who like to do it manually.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  15. Civ: Scythians

    in Delenda Est

    Posted

    6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    I wish I had the cash to just hire an artist

    That would make a lot of things easier.

    feedback: very nice, I only had to goggle why tomyris aura is called "fill of blood". So maybe a tool tip that explains that or an name that is easier to understand without knowing the historic context. e.g. "bloodthirst" or something similar.

    • Like 1

  16. Auto-Queue for 0 A.D

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    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.

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

  19. Scary war elephants

    in Game Modification

    Posted · Edited by maroder
    update mod files

    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

    So let me hear what you think about it :)

    Thanks to @wowgetoffyourcellphone and @azayrahmad for the tips.

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 2
    • Confused 1

  20. move fields away from the CC

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted · Edited by maroder

    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.

     

    49 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

    Give CCs a build speed aura like maurya elephant, so if you want to develop fast, you build buildings near the CC

    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.

    • Like 2

  21. increased realism mod (and random unrealistic changes)

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, azayrahmad said:

    Very nice... I think you could reduce the damage variants to only 3/4 variants. Now I've got an idea of spreading fires through palisades...

    Yeah, that's why I called it hacky :DI 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.

     

    6 minutes ago, azayrahmad said:

    My suggestion is to do it like Stronghold games, by giving free first granary and stockpile. In 0 AD case, free first farmstead/storehouse and small tower.

    That would be my optimal solution, but I have not yet looked into that. Thanks for the suggestion :D

  23. Is there a way to use particles or props to visualize burning status effect?

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    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 :)

  25. increased realism mod (and random unrealistic changes)

    in Game Modification

    Posted

    @faction02 thanks again for the comments.

    On 07/04/2021 at 12:24 AM, faction02 said:

    there is still the upgrade to increase the default number of arrows, so abusing tower concentration could be an issue.

    -> fixed

    On 07/04/2021 at 12:24 AM, faction02 said:

    About the issue with respect to defensive structure, I have tried to illustrate what I meant with my defensive city example above.

    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)

    On 07/04/2021 at 12:24 AM, faction02 said:

    What if your storehouse get captured by the enemy and you have no wood available to build a new one? 

    -> fixed

    On 07/04/2021 at 12:24 AM, faction02 said:

    You could concentrate too many towers in one spot, with a wall in front and the upgrade for an additional arrow they would probably be abused

    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 :D I therefore made additional changes to the concept, maybe it will work, otherwise I will have to revert to the standard with building limitations.

    On 07/04/2021 at 12:24 AM, faction02 said:

    I would put a red flag toward removing it completely since it could change dramatically the early game balance

    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 :D 

     

    • Like 1
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