[List of things that people thinkt that need to be rebalanced]

13 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Now I agree they are too weak after being taught some lessons by jav cavs. Maybe 3x is appropriate. Or, we can boost their base damage. 

Rather than closing to an agreement, I am happy that you are willing to reconsider your views. If someone want to change his/her view, that is perfectly fine and it shows that more experience about A25 has been gained. So if you have contributed and learned something, then let it be known.

To be honest and give my opinion, I think most melee units could see their attack being boosted ("Damage values of ranged compared to melee"  item). Also when a single skirmisher fights against a single spearman, the skirmisher perform surprisingly well. Whereas I think that the current way javelin cavalry perform against infantry javelineers/slingers is nice, so probably melee units could use a boost. However that would be another topic.

 

BTW: When I say Spear Cavalry in general are weak, then I also mean that the spear cavalry champion is weak compared to other cavalry champions.

 

[Provincial centers and Ionian mercenary hoplites.]

3 hours ago, alre said:

why wouldn't you want persians to spam merc hoplites?

I would like the hoplite to be an unit associated with the Greeks. It would feel weird to me if a Persian player would mainly use hoplites as melee units.

[Provincial centers and Ionian mercenary hoplites.]

There has been talk about giving the Persians mercenary hoplites and many Greek mercenary hoplites did serve the Achaemenid Persians.

adding the unit would be easy, but what would be the best place to train them? One of the things I did not want is Persians to spam mercenary hoplites. I have thought of a solution: The Provincial center.

The provincial center is just a copy of the civic center, which remains the same with the addition that the provincial center can also recruit mercenary hoplites. In essence, every "civic center" that you build is a provincial center, but you start with a civic center. So your starting CC is just normal, but any "CC" that you construct is a provincial center that can train mercenary hoplites.

I think many factions could enjoy a similar approach, where for example Roman provincial centers could recruit auxiliary cavalry or Athenian provincial centers could recruit Cretan archers.

So what are you thoughts about giving any secondary "CC"s the ability to train some extra unit types?

ProvincialCentre.zip

[[Feature] Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food]

50 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Does it actually matter? I can’t recall a single instance when someone purposely captured a corral.

Right now, people generally won't purposely capture corrals.

However when the opponent relies on garrisoned corrals for their economy, the corresponding counterplay could be to capture the corrals. So that option needs to be there.

[[Feature] Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food]

4 hours ago, Freagarach said:

I was thinking more about letting the units be responsible for how much they contribute to the GarrisonRegenRate.

That seems to be the better option to me. If someone would find the time for creating the patch, it would be great.

Since I am not the person to add that to the game, I am neither the person to judge how it should be done and other solutions are also welcome.

[0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design]

15 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

If volunteer developers enjoy building new civs instead of doing other things, more power to them!

All the power.

1 minute ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Mauryas ended who?

They fought against Seleucus the first and they are an important reason elephants entered the battlefield of the era. Honestly, the story of Seleucus the first is the best story of any greek general of the time and possible all time. Mauryas definitely deserve to be in for that alone.

9 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Kushites what? Spartans are largely a backwater, insular city state, but they're included because they are famous and fun and add diversity. Mauryas included because they are awesome and add diversity, but had zero contact with Rome. Kushites had a few minor border wars with Rome, but are included to add fun and diversity to the civ roster.

Maybe we then need a fation that actually did matter? Or settle on that we can't agree on this one.

[Iberian champion cavalry]

1 hour ago, soloooy0 said:

I've been complaining for a long time that it takes 1sec per shot, it's absurd

As far as I could see, it takes 1.25 second per shot. I watched it perform in the scenario editor against a Briton chariot and the units were in sinc. I watched also the situation with a chariot archer and the chariot archer fired faster than the fire cav.

[[Feature] Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food]

56 minutes ago, Stan&#x60; said:

You can restrict what buildings cattle can go in. But yeah ideally you could define on the building what bonus it gets and on the unit whether it gives the bonus. But that's not implemented.

Then I think it is acceptable to go for code that isn't clean code. But maybe there will be someone that bothers enough to create the tools to do it with some clean code.

 

Btw: The reason that people need to be able to marry cattle is such that you can train minotaurs and such.

[[Feature] Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food]

I made a mod, where I added this to the corral template

 <GarrisonHolder>
    <Max>8</Max>
    <EjectHealth>0.5</EjectHealth>
    <EjectClassesOnDestroy datatype="tokens">Animal</EjectClassesOnDestroy>
    <List datatype="tokens">Animal</List>
    <BuffHeal>1</BuffHeal>
    <LoadingRange>4</LoadingRange>
  </GarrisonHolder>

So I launced the mod, build some corrals and recruited goats for my army. Out of dedication, I deleted my CC and looked if garrisoned corrals lost loyalty, which they didn't do.

1 hour ago, Stan&#x60; said:

You can change that value only for corrals, by specifying a new value in the template.

I am not a dev, but isn't that bad code? In A27, people can marry cattle and take them into their houses (or I am aiming for that). Then the cattle can still guard the house. I think the better solution would be to specify which objects grant GarrisonRegenRate when garrisoned.

[Iberian champion cavalry]

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

I have a good idea: instead of cav, we make them an infantry javelineer champion

We don't have an infantry javelineer champion, so having one would be welcome. Do you have a 3D model for the champion infantry javelineer?

 

1 hour ago, Yekaterina said:

the Iberians do not deserve their fire cav at such a cheap price.

I think this is part of the problem when the Iberian player also has indibil. Maybe a "correct nerf" for fire cav would be changing indibils aura such that it no longer affects champions. However there are probably many ways we could balance the fire champion and making them an infantry unit is a creative one.

 

However rather than removing features, I would prefer to balance the features that we currently have, so keeping the fire cavalry would be fine, if it was well balanced. The unit most similar to the fire cavalry is the Briton chariot and I honestly do not know if that unit is well balanced.

Adding features is cool anyway, so it would be a possibility to add infantry fire javelineer champions to Iberians.

[[Feature] Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food]

I found a line of code in template_structure.xml in the template folder:

 

 <GarrisonRegenRate>5.0</GarrisonRegenRate>

 

In the phase_town_generic.json file (and of course city phase tech and the special ones for athens) in the technology folder there are lines

    "modifications": [
        { "value": "Capturable/GarrisonRegenRate", "add": 7, "affects": "Structure" }

 

I am not sure what this lines do exactly, but I think it means any garrisoned object (e.g. unit or cattle) makes it tougher to capture structures.

Capturing an structure in phase 3 that has 8 units inside is very difficult, so it would have balance implications.

[0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design]

9 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

We need the random/group civ options from delenda EST, so that we can ban certain civs with going for random. For example, random except Iberian. 

Or random greek civ

Now I am wondering.

If I make a mod and use the autociv trick for making mod users compatible with non mod users. Then I could host a game and my mod could allow such a random civ grouping, while not all participants in the game room have that mod. Would that give the intended result of drawing a random civ out of a group?

[0 A.D. on YouTube]

13 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Edit2: the reuploading messed with the scheduling, which is not 11:00 GMT

I totally messed up, I meant to say now instead of not. Also, the wrong date was selected so it would premiere tomorrow instead of today.

I decided just to make it public. I didn't really get the big benefit of using the premiere function on youtube for me. I could understand why it might generate some extra hype and attention for bigger channels, but for me there is no reason to let people wait.

[[Feature] Garrison Domestic Animals into the Corral to get a <ResourceTrickle> of Food]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Garrison the animals into the Corral

I don't know where to find it in the code, but do garrisoned animals make the corral harder to capture?

[0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

They shouldn't spend time on new civs, they should spend time fixing lag (or insert the commenter's pet peeve)! Ignorant in a sense that generally the people who work on civs aren't the ones who are going to fix lag or networking issues.

It is true that some people use this as an argument, but personally I would like to use another.

I really like the theme of the factions that we currently have. We have a game whose earliest factions represent the era of the summit of the Achaemenid empire, then there are the Macedonians who bring it to its knees and their successor states and finally the era is ended by the rise of the Roman repulbic (Britons seem to be an odd outlier here). It seems a valid question to me why Han Chinese or Zapotecs need to fit into that game. Maybe I am ignorant on this: Epirotes and Thebans fit in the same time-frame and geographic location, but their feats only seem minor compared to those of other factions. However nobody can deny that @wowgetoffyourcellphone put great effort in delenda est.

So do I think the game gets better when these factions are added? It does not add to the story that the other factions share. Do I think 0ad gets worse when these factions are added? Extra factions provide more options so it does not make it worse, but if you add 20 unrelated factions 0ad starts to lose its theme.

 

Finally, it seems bold to claim that Person X should work on this or that. The volunteers are free to work on whatever they like. We should regard those people as skilled volunteers, not as developers that are obliged to deliver a product.

[0 A.D. on YouTube]

I saw @mysticjim scheduled a 1v1 youtube upload for early christmas on 9:00 GMT.

If you can't beat someone in terms of quality, you can always go for quantity. So I uploaded 3 games scheduled for 11:00 GMT. If you happen to be awake before MysticJims video ends, you can wake up your partner and kids and tell them 0AD is a great game which is worth their time.

 

[[gameplay] Give persian both spear and jav in CC in p1]

For some time I wanted to create this diff, but finally got to do it.

https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4390

So it basically allows Persians to train two different cavalry units in the CC(and stable) in p1. If it is in A26, we will learn something about the position of spear cavalry, which are currently sparsely used.

1. We get to see which unit is preferred in what situations.

2. We get to see if it is viable to make cavalry rushes with Persian economy at all.

3. We get to see in which situations a combination of spear and jav cav is practical.

4. It is unique and suits the Persian with all their cavalry option.

 

I think there are only positives about offering this extra option.

 

Things I thought about:

-Giving axe cavalry +1 hack armor, as they currently seem like a less useful version of sword cavalry.

-Buffing spear cavalry (I think everyone would agree giving them a x2 multiplier instead of x1.75 would be a balance improvement. It is an improvement, though I am not sure if it is the best possible improvement)

-Only requiring 1 technology to unlock both cavalry champions.

 

[0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design]

8 minutes ago, smiley said:

However, most balancing changes proposed here or as patches are subjective opinions. If you provide objective values with the changes, the likelihood of it being committed goes up exponentially.

I think that is indeed part of the problem.

[What do we think of the Iberian team bonus?]

On 23/12/2021 at 4:20 AM, Philip the Swaggerless said:

Are you suggesting an additional civ-only bonus be given to civilizations that have weak team bonuses?  I don't like that idea. 

I think most factions need more flavour than their unit roster. Civ-only bonuses (or features such as pyramids or worker elephants) seem very good for that, so I like that idea.

On 22/12/2021 at 9:21 PM, Micfild said:

In my opinion, it's a reasonable bonus. The problem is, as pointed by other people, that some of the team bonuses are comparably much less usefull, making the iberian's seem stronger than it really is.

There is indeed a large variety in usefulness of team bonuses and it might be justifiable to say that they all need to be useful. However how useful? Do they need to be as useful as the Iberian team bonus or are they ideally half as useful? I think the Maurya team bonus is at a good place, it allows you to adapt your strategy, while the faction affected by the team bonus still feels as the same faction.

18 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

A civ-only bonus that is strong enough to make the civ a competitive choice in a team game against other civs whose bonuses benefit up to 4 players... would have to be a very strong bonus.

One would expect a bonus of that level to be OP in 1v1 games.

The civ-only bonus does not to be extremely strong if team bonuses would fall in the category "nice to have, but not decisive", such as the mauryan team bonus. I can imagine situations where a cheap&quick temple might be very useful, but people won't say that they have lost because of the cheap&quick temple. So I think the team bonus of the mauryas is a better design.

[0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design]

8 minutes ago, clavz said:

The point is, sure balancing can be done this way. But if it's easier, more people will help and test. The more they are, the better it would be.

 

9 minutes ago, clavz said:

What do you mean?

We are lacking a crucial step: namely that not a lot balance patches haven't been made. We may have a bunch of competitive players, but it does not result in balance patches. Lack of opinions is not the problem, it is just that people don't translate that opinion in something that can be added and tested.

I think all balance advisors would probably need to think how can I have an active role in balancing, instead of just waiting for something to happen. Balance advisors that are just sitting back are not contributing anything. Unfortunately, we have to much balance advisors that are not contributing anything. You can have an opinion and knowledge about the game which is all fine, but you need to think about how to turn that into a result.

 

Currently the balancing team is not providing a lot of results in the form of patches.

[0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design]

3 hours ago, clavz said:

I think there is quite a large consensus that civs should be added.

I disagree here.

3 hours ago, clavz said:

mods/patches don't help much since you can't balance if you don't convince the more players as possible to play and try the new balance. While being theoretically possible, looking back at the last two alphas it never happened (there were few matches, mostly 1v1 or some the last week before release). What's more, you need to make all the svn stuff to make it work.

Hoplite tradition was not tested a lot and it was added to the game, so I think this point is not true either.

 

2 hours ago, clavz said:

let svn to developers and make balancing easier for players

You can just put a post on the gameplay forum and see if you get support. For example, I suggested affordable kushite pyramids in p1, and vali made a patch for that. If you do a good suggestion, then you can find people(like me) that can be convinced to make a patch. So it is not so difficult.

What the balancing team lacks, is mainly one thing: Action.

1 hour ago, smiley said:

Before Alpha 23, there was weeks of testing over multiplayer with some of the best players of the time along with devs.

There was also some testing for A25. My personal experience was that without autocivs hotkeys, it was difficult to judge.

[0AD Guide: From nub to OP]

19 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

Ideally, you push with 150 soldiers in total, with at least 40 melee units.

The positioning of your siege weapons and elephants is also important; if you fear being outnumbered, you may want to charge the rams or elephants at the front to distract their units so that you can steal a few kills. Or, if you want to ensure their death, you put rams behind your organic units so that you can immediately siege them as soon as you win the fight.

Before you push, you need your hero trained and all pierce techs researched to at least tier 2. In order to supply your front line, you need to spam at least 7 infantry barracks with the batch training tech researched. When fighting, never batch train. Instead, put all barracks in the same control group, then train 1 soldier at a time. This ensures that your front line population never falls under that of your enemy and hence you win the fight.

If you are at a disadvantage, don't linger and withdraw immediately, otherwise it will be a 1 sided massacre. To keep this supplying process going, you need most of the eco techs researched, 30 women farming, 15 javelineers on wood and 5 on metal. It might be advisable to wait until to you float resources before you commit to a big push, so that you can barter away resources if the fighting takes longer than expected.

These are things that I mostly don't really do. Anyway, thanks for the guide to 2k.

[On smurfing, ddos and malpractice in the multiplayer lobby]

3 hours ago, Yekaterina said:

It looks like an IP ban because when my dad tried to log in, he was also banned...

Your great looks didn't save you this time!

Looks like a smurf has been banned.

But honestly I also know of @gator303 having troubles logging in without apparent reason. Sadly I think he has not returned since. So maybe it is not a punishment for your smurfing actions.

[0 AD's focus on balance has crippled its design]

3 minutes ago, Stan&#x60; said:

Secondary attacks, attack ground,  mixed gender citizen soldiers, scouts... probably a lot more. I believe @Freagarach was working on something that could allow directional damage. And because I'm a jolly mood, the hans  

I think it is wrong to blame the balance team for these functions not being implemented. Can someone point out where the balance team is obstructing these changes?

39 minutes ago, Thorfinn the Shallow Minded said:

 

This would allow for much more radical departures from the current formulae.  Instead of champions always being available at the 3rd phase simply because, there could be some, like say the Spartans, who could train Spartans at the very outset.  There could be new ways of collecting resources like Athenians collecting metal from olive fields.  

The reason these things aren't being implemented is not because there a people that obstruct, but because nobody took serious effort to create them.

Also you could be a little more creative than just say champions in p1. What about a male helot cap depending on how many spartans you have. Also Spartan women were considered strong defenders, so the spartan female warriors could be another champion. A suggestion would be that they are not as strong as other male champions, but gains a bonus when fighting close to the CC or under the command of Archidamia.

[List of things that people thinkt that need to be rebalanced]

11 minutes ago, Micfild said:

And last, but not least, reduce the armor values of Pikemen. I feel they are a bit too much the way they are now. With normal spearmen being 5/5 i would like to se pikes at 7/7 or even 8/6, considering that the large pike makes it harder to wear a sizeble shield for cover.

By the way, I try to categorize things. If you state it this way, I think that you consider pikemen to be odd and need to function differently. If you think they needed to function the way they currently do but need to be weaker, then correct me please.

I would agree with the statement, but that would be major changes for Ptolemies and Macedonians and I don't know if that would make everyone happy (although I would like it in some way).