[Age of Empires IV]

There was an AoE4 tournament and the finals are on youtube. The game does not seem to be like my taste.

 

[learning curve to learn 0AD]

7 hours ago, seeh said:

(google translator help me not much was Raiders is)

A raider is also called a plunderer, which you can translate to German by writhing it with a capital letter and putting an umlaut on the first U.

[Where are you from?]

Hey CJ, you know, This is an OG gangsta gaming community from Grove Streat.

 

What's up with OG Loc, is he still rappin'?

[Extra benefits of phase advancements.]

On 22/11/2021 at 11:13 PM, alre said:

you are not really proposing something alternative.

There are some alternatives that I was hinting on or at least thinking about, but I did not mention them explicitly.

On 22/11/2021 at 7:21 PM, LetswaveaBook said:

As in another topic, I would like to encourage early aggression and strategies that do not mainly focus on getting max pop with max upgrades asap.

Those strategies would be something like a mercenary rush(which does only rely on the OPness of mercs). Or strategies like what aslan did in some team games(which I posted in LetswaveaBook TG replay dump on the forum), namely getting p2 around 70 pop and then going for cavalry archers with 4 stables. Also Vali has played against me as gauls twice and did some strategies where he used an early p2 for extending his rush with fanatics or sword cavalry (which both worked due to my mistakes). Personally I tried some strategies with Mauryas where you go p2 with around 60-70 population and then go for elephant archers, which turns out not to be a very good strategy. These strategies focus on something else that building 3 barracks and spamming units.

If we have the regular boom, with 3 barracks then getting better batch training at the CC is not that impressive. If instead you had no or only a single barracks then the faster batch training compares entirely different. For the 3 barracks player the change would mean something like +4.5% production capacity for CS infantry and for the play with no barracks it would mean +17% for CS infantry. It is not over the top, but it is something that helps.

On 22/11/2021 at 7:40 PM, alre said:

first, I think it's bad for transparency to add side effects to phasing, as they are not obvious to players, this was already acknowledged in the past.

That is a valid concern, but it can be shown in the structure tree. If you want to play competitively, I think it is fair if players are expected to get some knowledge. For casual players I guess the change makes little difference.

I will also clarify an underlying argument, maybe it is fair to discuss this underlying argument. I think (nearly) every faction should get something in p2 that helps with being aggressive before reaching 100 pop.

[Counters?]

6 hours ago, alre said:

people hated them so much in A24 they were nerfed to the ground.

I think it is not because people hated them, unit pushing was the culprit. If you put your archers in box formation, they would move fairly smoothly, and units without a formation had path-finding issues. Not only is the path finding superior, also the fact that units can stack has been disadvantageous to archers. In A24, when the front row of skirmishers attacked the archers, the ones behind needed to path around their allies to find a spot from which they could shoot. In A24 you would never get all your skirmishers shooting at the enemy in a smooth motion.

8 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I wonder what could be done to help archers without simply giving them more damage? or giving pikes less armor, or reducing skirmisher damage? What could be added to make range matter again?

It seems I am the only one who has any excitement about attack-ground, at this point I am more interested in why other people think it is not worth implementing. Please share your thoughts.

First of all, no matter how creative the solution is, archers seem to suffer from a material disadvantage in their stats. I think A24 mainly had good archers because turn rates made pathfinding awkward. Sometimes if you have the material disadvantage, there is not much you can do except getting better material. I ran some tests in the scenario editor with 10 basic pikes+10 basic skirms against 10 advanced spears+10 basic skrims, the side with the pikes won. If you do the same test with a weaker ranged unit, the advanced units get the win (which they deserve).

Also the attack-ground(or attack group) would be a nice feature, but it does not solve the pike issue. All pike factions do have access to skirmishers and archers of some kind.

Anyway, this is not about AoE4, whereas the OP wanted to talk about AoE4.

[New Territorial Claims should not be shown unless thatland has been re-explored]

On 22/11/2021 at 9:13 AM, Dizaka said:

You can monitor enemy berry expansions for by just looking at territory expansion by berry patches.  If expansion exists there likely is a grainery and to rush.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone should have said something, and since he didn't say it, I will say it.

In delenda est, you can place farmsteads and storehouses in neutral territory and they don't give extra territory, so you wont have that problem. I think being able to place farmsteads outside your territory might make the game more interesting. However that feature does no solve a the other issues mentioned in this tread.

[Counters?]

3 hours ago, alre said:

- by the same logic, it makes sense to say that spear cav is best countered by spearmen and pikemen.

Spear cav also underperforms against swordsmen, infantry javelins and slingers.

[The Halt command (H key) - does anyone use it?]

Also if you attack a deer it runs away. If you attack it once and then press halt, your unit will not kill the deer and allow the deer to run towards the CC or farmstead.

[Age of Empires IV]

[Extra benefits of phase advancements.]

13 minutes ago, alre said:

finally, p3 is already very convinient for the blacksmith upgrades alone, let alone heroes and all the rest, I think p3 should be nerfed, not buffed.

I think it is not p3 which is very convenient, but I think booming is the very convenient thing. It is not like you often see people advancing with only 1 barracks.

25 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Do you think more powerful, but non-economic bonuses would help too?

I think they could, which is why I started the conversation about the blacksmith.

27 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

We need to introduce bonuses to p2 and p3 that don't require a strong economy to exploit, and I think adding these bonuses is a good way to start.

Batch training mainly benefits those who train large batches, which means you need to be able to afford the batch. However the CC is lucky to be able to train women, which can be afforded in larger batches. However if you just have a few in the batch, then some extra batch speed does not hurt either.

[LetswaveaBook TG replay dump]

I wanted to upload some more replays.

In the first one I saw Aslan was Seleucids and estimated that he would go for an early p2 and turn to cavalry archers. He went to p2 with mostly women, no barracks at 72 population and 4 stables to create cavalry archers. That plan was ruined because I had two stables and paid him a visit before he was able to get going. So that highlights the weakness of that particular strategy of Aslan.

Thereafter we played a game on Hyrcanian Shores and that had some cavalry commitment of me and Aslan as well. We were on the same team, but we ran into Alre's spear mercenary cavalry which proved to be efficient. I struggled in that game as I was badly hit by alre for an unlucky moment, shortly after recovering I run out of wood in my territory and migrated some units to the shores to build a dock for some wood collection. In the end I had 170 women as Persians.

 

Cavalry arches vs. Jav Cav.zip Hyrcanian shores.zip

[Extra benefits of phase advancements.]

Currently it seems to me that advancing to phase 2&3 is more the result of a strong economy than a strategy choice . It would seem desirable to me if advancing to phase 2&3 was more of a strategy choice than the result of a strong economy. Currently going to the next phase to early can be very dangerous if you lack the economy to support it and spam units. As in another topic, I would like to encourage early aggression and strategies that do not mainly focus on getting max pop with max upgrades asap.

The idea for this topic is to give a few extra benefits to reaching the next phase:

Benefit 1: CCs and defensive structures get +2 pierce attack upon reaching the next phase.

The current pierce attack for the CCs seems fine to me in p1, but later on it feels less usable once the enemy gets more troops and more armor upgrades. This would keep the p1 balance as it currently is. This also synergyzes well with a few things, namely the extra capture point regen upon reaching the next phases and the fact that anyone that reaches the next phase has dropped in population compared to those staying in the previous phases. So with a little extra attack for defenses it is easier to defend once the next phase is researched. One of A25 complaints is that defenses are to weak. Defenses have been not only weakened since A24, but armor upgrades against them has become more accessible and a 3rd level has been added. For a fully garrisoned sentry tower, +2 pierce attack is almost equivalent to getting the sentries upgrade.

Benefit 2: CCs get -0.1 batch training time upon reaching the next phase.

The idea for this is that phasing up does not necessary should put you massively behind on production capacity behind anyone who stays in earlier phases and builds extra barracks. If you are in p1, and produce batches of 10 women, that takes 56.8 seconds. With this chance that would be 45.1 seconds upon reaching p2. That is not extremely significant, but it helps the player that has advanced in phase to catch up in population. Also it is something that helps to put emphasis on building new CCs rather than barracks spamm. In phase 3, a CC would produce 10 units in 39 seconds, while a barracks produces for comparison 5 units in 36 seconds.

 

I hope these changes would encourage more active strategies and personally I don't really see a downside to them. It might be argued that it would give extra advantage to player that reach p3 first, but on the other hand I would argue that if you fall behind these changes give you the option to "afford" p3 earlier.

[Blacksmith upgrades]

This topic died out a little and I initially hoped to discuss some strategies where players go for an early p2(before 70 population) with or without mercenaries which are separate cases.

I would also like to add a 4th option.

On 26/10/2021 at 9:12 AM, LetswaveaBook said:

Option 1: The phase 2 blacksmith armor upgrades no longer affect cavalry. Instead cavalry now gains +20% health (or +25%) with the cavalry health upgrade.

The goal of this change is to support phase 2 cavalry with stable strategies. Currently strategies with a stable are hardly viable in p2, except for the factions who get a mercenary cavalry(which should of course be re-balanced, but that is a separate topic). If you have build a stable and have a lot of cavalry, you can directly upgrade them in p2 without the need for a blacksmith, which is very convenient for a strategy that relies on tempo.

Option 2:  The phase 2 blacksmith upgrades give +20% attack/ or +2 armor(but might see some increase in cost). Both phase 3 technologies give +15% attack/ or +1 armor.

The reason for this change is that phase 3 gives a lot of goodies and thus booming to p3 becomes very important. In phase 3 you get siege, heroes and extra military upgrades. In A25 being 1 minute late to phase 3 can really decide games, especially if your opponent capitalizes on the fact that he has his upgrades 1 minute earlier. If only one player has the +2 pierce armor technology, that player has free roam until the opponent researches his own technologies. With siege you can really do a lot of damage in 1 minute. By making the phase 2 upgrades the most important, a player in phase 2 has improved chances to defend compared to A25. Also by having strong p2 technologies, you give players opportunities to punish opponents that linger to long in p1.

Option 3=2+1:  The phase 2 blacksmith upgrades give +20% attack/ or +2 armor(but might see some increase in cost). Phase 2 armor upgrades affect infantry only, to compensate cavalry get. Both phase 3 technologies give +15% attack/ or +1 armor.

 

Option 4: The phase 2 blacksmith attack upgrades give +20% attack. The phase 3 attack technologies give +15% attack. The phase 2 blacksmith armor upgrades no longer affect cavalry. Instead cavalry now gains +20% health (or +25%) with the cavalry health upgrade.

I think these options could encourage strategies that involve getting p2 early(before 70 pop), even without having the currently OP merc sword cav. Does anyone have input on early(before 70 pop) p2 strategies and what they think about these strategies? I think these are modest changes that do not upset late-game balance but encourage mid-game action. Input from @ValihrAnt would be very welcome.

[Iberian champion cavalry]

17 hours ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:

2. So the cataphract, which is supposed to be an anti-cavalry unit, does worse against the chariot than than the consular bodyguard?  This is not good my friends. Sword cav may need to have 1 less pierce armor or something.

Oh, this is hardly any news.

All melee units deal double damage compared to CS, the odd exception being the spear infantry who also has 10% faster attack rate. Melee champion infantry see their HP doubled and +3 armor compared to CS(for 275% total durability). Champion spear cavalry see their HP increased by 15/8-th and get +4 armor (for 286% total durability). While sword cavalry have a preferable armor typing to begin with, they see their HP increased by 15/8-th and and +4 hack armor and +5 pierce armor. I don't see why the oddity of +5 pierce armor is needed to begin with.

Finally, spear cavalry has been disappointing for me. I would say they score a 4/10 against infantry and a 6/10 against cavarly. Spear cav narrowly get the job done against other cavalry but spear cav seriously disappoint against infantry if you factor in costs (and lack of gathering for CS).

However I have seen post of @BreakfastBurrito_007 that lead me to think that some player consider (champion) spear cavalry very useful and OP. So I would be careful with buffing them.

 

Spear cavalry has a DPS of 5.6 (9.8 against cavalry), sword cavalry has a DPS of 8.66 and javelin cavalry has a DPS of 14.4, which seems to indicate to me that the 1.75x advantage the spear cavalry has against other cavalry gets wasted by its low base damage.

Anyway, comparing the units that are not directly related to this topic can preferably be discussed somewhere else.

 

[Maurays are too weak and Spartans are too strong against Maurays]

1 hour ago, UltraMan said:

I also tested spartan jav cav vs mauryan sword cav and spartan jav cav always win with 1 hp remaining.

The units should be equal, so the result should be decided by randomness and should be equally likely to go either way. I ran some test and I believe this is the case. If you place on units, let them fight and then press "reset" to rerun it, the same situation will be simulated exactly the same. Moving around the units a little means that a new situation is simulated. So if you try different positions you would get different results. The units should be equal.

The Mauryas do not have stronger jav cav, but due to their ability to use to worker elephant for efficient hunting, they can afford more than any. So Mauryas can do an unique strategy with a common unit.

2 hours ago, UltraMan said:

Imo worker elephant should be removed or its equivalent should be given to all civs and Maurays need to get access to better infantry like javs and better hero. or their archers should be buffed or sword cav should be buffed and make it champion and remove useless chariot

The idea is not to streamline all faction, but rather to give them unique and interesting options. That has the result that not all options are balanced perfectly. Anyway, you are free to have your own opinion on whether streamlining or diversity is the better option.

[Incorrect default walk speed?]

9 minutes ago, artoo said:

I think it is a lot easier to balance everything against true scale first

We should indeed really find the real life pierce damage value of an Javelin! Our current value seems not good for gameplay IMHO.

[0 A.D. on YouTube]

Uhm, Uhm...

Uhm, Uhm, I uploaded another youtube video highlighting a different build with Carthaginian mercenary strategies than my previous videos. In the previous videos I showed a build that has significant limitations.

I should really stop using the word "uhm". uhm, lets upload it anyway and try to work on that in another video. If I were too picky, I would never get to upload anything.

 

[Maurays are too weak and Spartans are too strong against Maurays]

I played a game against Dakeyras who played as Mauryas and he showed some good cavalry play. He showed that Mauryas have potential to deal some blows to the opponent. In the end, I defended well and he had probably to many archers (it might have been better to recruit spearman instead), which I think was what cost him the game. With the Briton hero, the Mauryan archers suffer from a serious speed disadvantage, so that makes them extra bad in this situation.

I played as Britons, who are in my view probably one of the best factions to resist Mauryas. Against Sparta I think the strategy has a better chance. I think that for the Maurya player playing in this style is the best you can do as Mauryas in 1v1s and it probably can give better results on another day.

Maur vs Brit.zip

[Phase 2.]

51 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

I'm doing it this way because it seems people prefer to say "but what about 1v1, let's be cautious" when this is alpha and mistakes should be made (e.g., as much as I DISLIKED a24 it was necessary to make archers viable).

There's no reason why in an alpha certain drastic changes can't be made to test them out to feel out the overall sentiment and to have more user feedback on the experience (e.g., p2 rams, p2 siege towers, etc).  Mods don't permit the extensive testing that an alpha permits.  Additionally, if it is a good change but negatively impacts 1-2 civs then those 1-2 civs can be buffed up separately where they lack

Currently, as it stands, 1v1 is what prevents uniqueness from happening.  It neutered Rome, Macedonians, completely neutered the unique dynamic Ptolemies had, and made worker elephant the shadow it is now (almost got totally neutered with archer issue in a24). 

It seems like you blame 1v1s for a lot of development issues. I think it is incorrect to blame these issues on people trying to get a balanced 1v1 environment.

[Phase 2.]

9 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

If people want to 1v1 do mirror civs

I think you ignore 1v1s and I think factions should be balanced such that they also give interesting matches in 1v1s. Ignoring 1v1 by just saying play mirror factions does not feel like the right approach to me.

[Phase 2.]

54 minutes ago, Dizaka said:

Ram-only civs should have rams in p2:

• Gauls/Brits/Spartans/Iberians

Siege-oriented civs should have rams in p2 (Macedonians should have siege towers in p2 too):

• Romans/Macedonians

 

For each of the above, the siege workshop should count towards p3.

I wouldn't be a fan of that. If go early p2 and have rams in p2, then how does the Macedonian player counter that? Then the Macedonian player almost needs to have their own rams. Ptolemies also have no decent way to deal with rams in p1 and after reaching p2 they first need their colonies to be build, but Ptolemies almost deserve to have a weakness somewhere.

Since I think Macedon should not be attacked by rams in p2, I think no faction but Macedon should have rams in p2. Macedonian mirror matches will be interesting though.

About the siege towers I would say that only factions with sword cav have a good chance of defending against siege towers in p2.

[Specialized worker units?]

12 minutes ago, alre said:

agree, also I'd add that I never understood why women and inf have such a bad rate of gathering meat compared to cav. ok cav moves faster, but does it also have to butcher faster? 5/10 times so? why?

Undoubtedly if the women and infantry would gather hunt faster that could open a lot of new strategies, which some people might even consider dirty(cavalry) strategies. However it is a valid question none the less.

 

20 minutes ago, alre said:

Scouting could help giving you a clue of what the other player is gonna do, but at the beginning of the game scouting comes at a high cost, so, all in all, a player can be rewarded for essentially being lucky about some risky choice. This is just my opinion, and I can see why others may disagree. I hope that some player better than me, or more used to play 1v1, shares his/her opinion about this.

There are 3 options and scouting would come at high cost. Rushing and naked booming are the risky ones. You could chose the safest of the 3 options, playing defensive or decide to bear the high costs of scouting. Also in serious games, I like to do something that is in between all of those options, making a few cavalry to enjoy nearby hunt and recruiting some infantry before the first barracks. If you have nearby hunt, that is a very convenient way to make a few (mounted) soldiers without letting your development suffer.

52 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

Cav is fast at gathering from livestock and they automatically look for more in the vicinity.

If you run out of livestock, the cavalry go idle. Even if livestock arrives later, then the cavalry stay idle until you command them to.

53 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:

That you don't want to put your fighting cav in a control group or don't want to select them with an area selection doesn't convince me that we need a butcher unit.

sometimes its get messy when the opponent enters your base with a minor cavalry force. Even though it takes only a few seconds to sort things out with the current tools at our disposal, my minutes have only 60 seconds and every moment there are at least two and sometimes more things I want to do at the same moment. When playing a competitive game, I am a busy man and don't like to see any precious seconds being wasted.

 

[Specialized worker units?]

On 19/11/2021 at 12:22 PM, hyperion said:

There are plenty of possibilities to add new unit types, so question to answer are:

1. Are more and more unit types a good thing for gameplay

The answer of that question depends on whether the units allow different strategies. If there are different types of units that function very similar, there is no need to have them.

 

For example, I suggested a butcher unit, which can be useful for using corrals. The butcher unit would be a little cheaper and possible automatically search for nearby livestock. If you want to use camel archers as ptolemies and want to use corrals. Then the current situation is that with double clicking the camels, you select both the camels for militairy and the ones for gathering, which is annoying.

[Phase 2.]

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

The blacksmith can give you the edge over the opponent for a p2 rush.

If you go for an earlier p2, then your opponent will have superior numbers if you arrive when he still is in p1. The superior numbers are more important than the extra attack. From my experience, it is more advantageous to go for the larger numbers.

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

P2 gives market

Does having the market earlier give you a significant advantage to beat the opponent who delays p2, other than buying metal for mercenaries? I don't think so, unless you have the Macedonian team bonus. I view the main advantage of the market to be allowing you to get out of phase 2, instead of being powerful in p2. Can you tell me how you use the market to be more powerful in p2, other than buying metal for mercenaries?

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

Also P2 gives some factions the mighty sword cavalry.

Unless the enemy makes major mistakes, the sword cavalry won't help that much if it is not a mercenary.

Anyway, that are my views based on my experience. If different experiences (against players of equal skill off course), I like to hear about them.

[0 A.D. on YouTube]

30 minutes ago, leopard said:

This helped me to do some live streams with weirdjokes and NoobDude

If you are planning to do a livestream, please announce them on the forum.