LetswaveaBook

I was also planning to try to host some team games. Rank 2 swordsmen are very capable fighters especially if melee infantry gets an attack boost. I am curious if it is balanced or whether they just run down any opposing infantry. At least Spartans lack a champion that boost the power of Skiritai.

By they way, if you downloaded the mod allready, I changed the aura range for the kushite pyramids. 50 meter is what vali suggested earlier and adopting the changes make it in sinc. I think pyramids for this cost will be close to OP. However I am not against testing how good it is.

@MarcusAureliu#s wanted Rome to have the best militairy. That would fit with this idea Romans: Can open/close the doors of Janus in the temple. When closed the temple has no additional aura. When opened Infantry trains 20% faster and need -20% experience for promotion but they gather resources 20% slower. I kind of like the idea. More logical would be to do this for archers i think as they generally came in larger numbers than skirmishers. But gameplay wise i think doing it for skirmishers is better. Some searches on the internet seem to confirm that the Achaemenids indeed fielded more archers than skirmishers. However cheaper skirmishers does not mean that a player makes more skirmishers than archers. That decision is entirely to the player and players tend to chose for skirmishers. Maybe I am ruining this tread with concrete suggestions. I think concrete suggestions are needed if you want to pick up some pace.

I think we need to try some opportunities for differentiating civs. I recently made a mod change gameplay as a whole, but a more conservative approach would be to only differentiate a few factions. Also since gameplay mainly stays the same, people do not need to adapt as much to the new settings to enjoy the game. I differentiated the following factions: Athenians: Can now reasearch economic technologies for 50% less metal. Coupled with the extra metal mining speed this encourages players to use p2 earlier than other factions. Gauls; Can now train fanatics for -20 metal in 15 seconds. This should allow fanatic rushes to be more succesful. Also the slinger becomes available in p2 in the CC, which means that if you go to p2 early without barrack, you can use that precious stone to train infantry (slingers). Kushites: Can build small pyramids for 150 stone in p1 and have 50 meter aura. This makes their eco unique. Mauryans: Can build pillars in p2. Pillars reduce the research time of nearby structures by 50%. Persians: Can now train spear cavalry in p1 at the CC as well as jav cav. Their skirmishers cost -20 wood and have -20% attack. Having access to the skirmisher is an now a bigger advantage for the boom, encouraging Persians to reach p2 earlier. Their CS melee cav and archer cav is now better(see below) also encouraging p2 play more. It also creates a quantity of quality approach for Persian infantry. Romans: Can open/close the doors of Janus in the temple. When closed the temple has no additional aura. When opened Infantry trains 20% faster and need -20% experience for promotion but they gather resources 20% slower. Spartans: Skiritai are now rank 2 but move 30% faster. I am curious to see if faster speed is more fun than bare strength. Also I want to add a few minor balance changes Archer v skirms changes Archery tradition is 50% cheaper, but requires p2 (a net buff as nobody would do the tech in p1 anyway) Iberian team bonus only reduces the food cost of skirmishers by 10%. Cavalry changes: Rome/Iber Champion cavalry nerf: Rome cav loses 2 pierce&hack armor, while Iber champ cav loses 9 pierce attack. Merc cav now cost 95 metal. Spear cav gets +1 hack/pierce armor and axe cav gets +2 hack and +1 pierce armor. Promoting CS units from rank 2 to 3 now requires +50% XP Melee infantry get +9.1% attack (NB This also affects the skiritai and fanatic). ps: I also worked on another mod and posted at the forum earlier. However rest assured that I won't spam mod suggestions as I do not intend to make more than these two. For the other see https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/68779-expansiongameplay/?do=getNewComment Proposed-featuresmodV2.zip

I think that approach is a little to abstract. The methods first requires people to agree on how much bars a faction should get in one area. Once that is settled you need to create bonusses that are according to those bars. And people will disagree on whether a faction has enough bonusses to get as much power as the bars dictate.

If outposts have a smaller alert range than CC, I might build outposts right next to the CC

A civic center gives 20 population (2 houses), can train military (1 barracks) and is a dropsite for wood/minerals. So in that sense it is worth at least 600 wood and 100 wood. I am ignoring the fact that it allows to funciton as a food dropsite, provides territory expanse and has defensive capabilities. So I would think 350 wood and 300 stone is to cheap, especially if you are Carthage or have the Seleucid team bonus. I think territory increase for p3 could go down. However I would like something to compensate for it, like cheaper theatres for Greeks.

@MarcusAureliu#s, could you convert it to PDF? Also I have been thinking about differentiation and what I would consider interesting is giving Persians skirmishers that cost -20 wood and have 20% less attack. It would symbolize their larger infantry numbers that were not their main force. The skirmishers have -20% attack, but with +10% population space you will still have a potent force.

That's true. But we can say that some factions have way more personality than others. OPtolemies, Kushites, Seleucids and Mauryas have way more unique features than many others. Many factions feel bland apart from having a different roster/heroes and minor bonusses.

If we rotate in every civ of delenda est that is over 80% done and rotate out any civ from A25 that is not 80% done, we would end with a game were we only have Iberians, Carthaginians, Ptolemies, Kushites, Seleucids and Mauryas.

The option to train them for free would be offset by the long training times. In the mod, you can train a goat in 2 minutes for free or a cow in 6 minutes. Spending resources to build a corral and getting a cow 6 minutes after completion of the corral does not seem OP. I also did some analysis on cattle without cost but long training time. https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/67691-regular-trainslow-train-corral-feature/?do=getNewComment

Currently the game in many cases encourages players to stay within their own territory for the first territory, apart from a little cavalry opening. I would like to try a mod to change that resulting in more dynamic play where controlling the neutral territory is more important. I am aiming these changes to benefit the early game in 1v1s or 2v2s (where there is relatively much neutral territory). So that leads to these changes. -stables now have a batch multiplier of 0.7 as training mass cavalry felt to slow early on. (Later in the game, players can easily afford multiple stable resulting in smaller batches and then this change becomes less impactful) -I created a map (Mainland with corrals) where players start with a corral and corrals have the option to train cattle for free, but that option requires 6x the training time. Since this change means extra cattle, it encourages cavalry play. - in the map map (Mainland with corrals), there are neutral corrals to be found. Corrals do not have territory decay. Controlling these corrals thus gives the option to train cattle for free. - For balance, the corral upgrade moved to p2. A cow can be trained for free in 360 seconds and has 300 food. So an unupgraded corral will produce 50 food (in the form of livestock) per minute and an upgraded one will produce 66.67. If you have 3 corrals the upgrade pays back in about 150 seconds Other reasons p2 is now more important: Cavalry get +25% health on with the health upgrade. As a compensation, they don't benefit from the first armor upgrade. -second attack and defense upgrade available in p2. The 2nd armor upgrade is split of from the first one, such that cavalry users don't need to research the 1st one, as it no longer benefits cavalry. Personally I consider it bad that in A25 there is a huge difference in unit strength between p3 and p2. -p2 allows the player to build farmsteads in neutral territory for more efficient hunting/ berry gathering -mercenaries and skiritai are now good at collecting berries or hunt (being rank 2 slows them by 30%). -If you want to collect far hunt with your units, then you are in luck as gather capacity upgrades cost now -100 wood. -archery tradition now has its cost halved but it is a p2 tech. ->This means you can collect all the food on the map, which makes scouting more important to know where the food is and which food is being taken by your enemy. There is in A25 a big difference between the effiiciency of mercenary cavalry and regular cavlary. This is changed -Mercenary cavalry now cost 60 food and 60 metal, but can hunt (being rank 2 slows them by 30%). -Promoting to rank 3 requires +50% more XP -Mercenaries need 20% more XP to promote than rank 2 CS need (so in total 1.8 times as much as rank 1 units) If you want to expand to control extra territory, you will also have an easier time - newly build CCs cost -100 of each resource and -100 build time. They can often also train units that a normal CC can't. However they have less HP, capture points, default arrows and less territory. If you want to have a "normal" CC then you can upgrade the newly build CC to a regular one, similar to how you can upgrade sentry towers. -Gauls and Britons get as tribal faction the option to build CCs for -100 stone. That means for 1100 resources, you get a building that can train like a barracks, supports 20 population, is a dropsite and can shoot arrows like a tower. If splitting your units makes you more vulnarable you can choose for extra options at the towers -sentry towers can be upgraded in p1 to stone towers for 100 wood and stone. -stone towers shoot 2 arrows by defealt. -the sentries tech has reduced price. -Other tower technologies are now affordable as well. Notable faction specific changes Gauls: Naked fanatics now cost less metal and train faster. They get also a slinger in the CC upon reaching p2. CCs are cheaper (and benefit from the gallic building bonus) Kushites: Can now build pyramids in p1 for 150 stone (might be to cheap) Persians: Can train now both spear and jav cav in the CC in p1. In newly build CCs they can train hoplite mercenaries. Spartans: Skiritai are now rank 2 but move 30% faster and are good at hunting/collecting berries. Also for better balance: Spear cav +1 armor and melee infantry +0.5 attack. The reason for posting this on the forum is to find people that might want to try these changes. foodmod.zip

I don't want to bother the devs with what is asked over and over again, but this would seem to be really useful if the DDOSing can not be solved directly. @Stan` I know A26 might be to soon, but could one of the requirements for A27 please be having saved games for multiplayer?

I have found a way to add random gaia corrals to the map, using the assets in the danubius map and the feldmap mod.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone We can disagree about the details. But his idea is to good to not be part of A26 IMHO. Also fattening of animals would be nice, if it would not be tedious for the player to manage. Has any progress been made to incorporate it with A26?

With the introduction of A23 feature have been cut and the mercenary change probably affected your boom significantly. I was thinking about adding some features to make exploration and map control more important. 1. Corrals have the option to train cattle for free, but with increased train time. Since it requires no food to train cattle, having a corral is an strict advantage, whereas currently it is only an advantage if you consider it worthwhile to spend food on training cattle. 2. Create a map that has gaia corrals that can be captured. 3. Disable territory decay such that captured corrals in neutral territory don't decay. Steps 1&3 were easy. I would like if someone could give me the code to achieve step 2. The polar sea map gives an example on how to add owned buildings. I also was able to change the radius such that the corral is placed outside your territory, but it is still owned. However I don't know any good code to add randomly generated gaia corrals to the map. It would be desirable if these randomly generated corrals don't spawn near or very close to your territory. I also made a mod that shows progress I made with making a map. foodmod.zip

I can. Valihr and Berhudar finished their games as well, which now gives 6 completed series. brackets (1).pdf

But Britons can do this: That looks cute and other factions would need more walls to surround there CCs.

My assumptions: Attack group would reduce micro, and allow players to use their units more effective. Attack ground will in general be as difficult to use properly as manual targeting and it will generally be less effective as manual targeting. Cons: More OP than BuildingAI (assuming moving+walking is fixed), which would be a gamchanger allready. Building AI targets units randomly, but with Attack group you can specifically target ranged units

I was thinking about an feature to allow the corral to train animals for free at a slower rate. I thought some time about letting players start with a corral and see if players would use it. The answer probably is no. This is a pity, as I think having the building should give some advantage and I dislike buildings that lack a competitive use. If players could train cattle for free, it would surely be an advantage to have a corral. To let the feature work, the number of corrals a player can have is limited to for example 15. So let me give the numbers for an example regular training cows: If you have 15 corrals and the tech, then you can produce 20 cows per minute. Each cow gives a profit of 150 food and each cow can be collected by 1 cavalry unit in 1 minute. That means you get 20 cavalry units making a profit of 3000 food per minute. In this case you need the food investments to create the cows this way, but you would need about 60 women to gather the same amount if you used farming. This is the option currently in the game and it is not a good way of booming slow train cows: With the increased base training time of 400 seconds per cow, you would produce only 3 cows if you had the tech and 15 corrals. The profit that you gain per minute is 900 and you need 3 cavalry for this. To get the remaining 2100 food income, you would need extra women on farms. So you would need about 40 extra women with maximum farm upgrades for this. So if we put a limit on the corral numbers, then both seem to have their advantages, giving 2 competing approaches or 3 if we take farming into account. These numbers might be complete, as I did not account for investments. I will assume the cattle breeding tech is researched. In the regular case, you need to queu a cow in each corral, spending 150 food. So that is an investment of 100wood+50 seconds build time+150 food (for a queued cow)per corral+ 1.33 cavalry (total of 288.3 food+166.7wood+50 seconds build time) giving a profit of 200 food per minute. For the second example you need 100 wood+50 seconds build time+0.25 cavalry(total of 25 food+112.5wood +50 second build time) giving a profit of 60food per minute. equating 1 food= 1.5 wood=1.5 second build time food then the investments compare to 649 wood and 200 wood.( I am ignoring the fact that you sometimes need up to have 2 "cows at the same time" for 1.33 cavalry to continuously gather, one at the moment being queued in the corral and the other being eaten at that moment) For comparison, if you want 3k food per minute income with p3 farmers, you would need 58 women on farms. For 5 women a farm will be needed costing 100 wood and 50 seconds build time and I will include the cost half a big house equalling 75 wood and 25 seconds of build time. Then 6 farmers cost 300 food, 210 wood and 90 seconds build time (=750 wood equivalent) and have 300 food income per minute for which you would need about 1k wood equivalent investment if you used corrals. I have also to set up an early regular corral economy myself. Due to the high costs of getting started, it is not easy at all (partly because of this 2 cows at the same time issue). Also to get the corralling started you need a lot of food, but how can you afford that before you get it running? Any thought on this free to train cattle idea?

An addition to the idea: Let the provincial center have less territory but be cheaper. If you want to get extra territory on the provincial center, you could upgrade it much like you can do with the sentry tower. Upgrading does off course have its costs.

That is sometimes what I do, when the situation suits me. I also believe vinme sometimes does that as well. I don't believe vinme or me have problems with reinforcements. Losing your army is a bigger problem.

I think that is indeed a right conclusion. It seems promising, but it needs work to be good enough to implement in the game. Also, it makes archers viable in battle. An attack group option would be more dangerous to skirmisher than the building AI. That probably means we need to be careful with attack group.

@nani The mod is convenient. The worst that can happen is getting a message "autociv has hotkey changes". Is there a way to make autociv never reset hotkeys?

Do you know the age of cubes mod? We need cubes AD! http://www.vooblycn.com/gamemods/mod/500/Age-of-Cube