LetswaveaBook
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Posts posted by LetswaveaBook
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33 minutes ago, Dizaka said:
What is/are the reasons for wanting cav on steroid in P2?
Currently, my personal experience is that, cav are substantially better than infantry in P2 due to population cost.
I was thinking about builds where you do not build a barracks and use CS cavalry. I wonder if you have some games where that strategy is substantially better and if you have, I would be glad to see them.
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1 hour ago, Micfild said:
I don't have the SVN, so i can't test this out myself, but maybe that speed = 0 thing is the culprit for the current behaviour and setting it to something like Speed = WalkSpeed/2 might be a good compromise. Again can't be sure.
I once did a Unity tutorial John Lemons haunted Jaunt where you did exactly movement like that. Rather than turning on the spot, units(or characters) would move forward and turn while moving. Depending on the Speed&turn rate, you didn't need much space to turn around. Also considering unit pushing, I assume opposing units wouldn't really block units from turning. I have to admit I never tested it on SVN so I could be easily wrong about that and I am an SVN noob with an outdated PC.
Maybe also allowing units to turn small angles(like 5 degrees) without needing to stop to turn would be nice.
https://learn.unity.com/project/john-lemon-s-haunted-jaunt-3d-beginner
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I still fail to see the merit of adding an option to train rank 2 units. Neither do I think one person will be able to convince the other.
On 23/10/2021 at 9:49 AM, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:My favorite idea (not sure who thought of it) to implement this was to add the rank 2 option in barracks/stable in p2 and give it extra cost in the form of food wood and metal, subsequently rank three in phase 3.
I could make a mod for such a thing if you give the exact specifications. Then you could decide if it has some merit. Melee units get +40% durability after promotion and +20% attack, so I think +30% cost seems fair. I wouldn't add rank 3 for simplicity, as I feel they are an inferior option to rank 2 soldiers who have the advantageous ability to promote. Would unlocking rank 2 units require an upgrade similar to champions?
But if such a mod would be created, be prepared to be attacked by a lot of rank 2 sword cavalry.
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On 24/10/2021 at 4:45 PM, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
Another way they would help when the player wants more powerful unit with the extra resources they have but the champion options available to them do not fit their army.
Isn't the limitations of your arsenal a defining feature of the game? If for example the Athenians lack champion cavalry, that probably means the aren't supposed to use strong (rank 2/3) cavalry.
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On 25/10/2021 at 12:49 AM, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
This way 1000 resources of rank 1 will equal 1000 resources of rank 2.
That is what I consider the core of the problem.
If 100 resources of rank 1 will equal 1000 resources of rank 2, you won't get more power with rank 2 soldiers. So you will make rank 1 soldiers for economy and if you need a population that can fight effectively, you add champions(possible after deleting some women)
If rank 2 soldiers give less power for 100 resources of rank 1 units, then we will have the issue that it is better to train rank 1 soldiers and add champions.
If rank 2 soldiers give more power for 1000 resources, you will never see rank 1 soldiers once the economies are fully established. The issue with this would then again be that you kind of eliminated the current promotion system: All your units are rank 2 and can only promote once instead of twice.
Also I don't see which issue would be solved by this, except for "more" unit variety. Extra options like this don't make the game worse, but that does not mean it has a lot of benefit.
On 24/10/2021 at 4:45 PM, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:This is a good point, it probably would not be such an important unit for this particular civ that can also train spearcav champs. However, there are a few civs/unit setups that would benefit from the increased flexibility with CS. I am thinking of all the situations where a civ does not have a good champion counter and is now totally defenseless against an army of a particular champion, so they would want to make a rank 3 CS counter unit for the most economical trade.
Can you give an example (that does not include fire cav or roman cav) for such a situation? You might be referring to factions that lack a infantry spearman/pikeman champion against cavalry, but all these faction could fight opposing champion cavalry with their own champion cavalry. If I said Gauls are disadvantaged against Gauls, because the Gauls have no infantry spearman champion option to counter the opposing cavalry champions, that would be non-sense.
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13 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:
Right now, i've seen more people complain about heroes and other tank units being put on flee when attacked and baiting enemy melee units to give chase.
I want to try this with Elephants.
On a serious note, if the feature makes movement seem more realistic and smooth, it is the way to go. Then after that comes balancing. What I felt in A24 is that:
1: I never made a diff, so nothing really changed. If you want a change, it seems being able to make a diff is very useful.
2: Unit pathing was overhauled, but there was no balance testing after that. So something was implemented and "the balance team"(if such a team existed) wasn't aware of the consequences. Now that skirmishers have good pathing, they are OP and my view is that archers were OP in A24 because other units lacked good pathing.
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For me the way the upgrades at the blacksmith are organized is superior than in A24, but I would like to discuss if there could be further improvements for gameplay. I will list 3 options that I gave some consideration.
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.
This option allows to do for infantry what option 2 does, however it means that in phase 2 you get cavalry on steroids right after you reach p2. This might be over the top, but increased cost of the cavalry health upgrade could compensate for that.All of these options have in common that units will have the same strength compared to A25 once you get all upgrades (balance for separate units is a separate topic). However I hope these option allow for some more p2 action. You are all encouraged to share your opinions on the current blacksmith setup and to discuss alternative options.
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22 hours ago, ChronA said:
. The game needs to have some mechanics-based hard counter cycles so that not every battle is decided by marginal differences in unit numbers or strength that are mostly attributable to the snowballing of minor decisions and tactical blunders from 10 minutes ago.
That is the meaning of a soft counter system!
I think some flaws are just inherent to an soft counter system and the citizen soldier system, but on other points these systems have their charms. These two systems might have their strengths and flaws, but I think we need to stick with what makes 0ad stand out. Which is off course these two systems.
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I think the game on itself can have some merits, but it comes at a $50+ price. Probably it is not so much about the money for me, but more about the idea that it does not justify its price. If you like history, creating things and finding your way around in the 0ad engine, you could try to make a 0ad campaign if you are super bored. If you are into competitive multiplayer, I don't know if AoE4 gives better experience than age of empires 2 on voobly. You could always try DE of course.
But in the end, you need to decide for yourself what things in live you enjoy.
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Quote from Björn Bär:
WeirdJokes in blue, he got an crazy rating of 1757.
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I wanted to advocate an idea for an campaign and hope we can create something. The first thing I would like to do is to find historical inspiration for the missions.
Mission 1: Battle of Gaza: Together with your ally ptolemy, you defeat Demetrius the besieger. In this mission the both sides start with a big army and you get to control it.
Mission 2: The Babylonian War: This time the opponent are the antigonids again. In this mission it is important to capture local/gaia CCs and get the local support. Maybe we can find a role for Local(Persian) troops in this war.
Mission 3: Seleucid–Mauryan war: The opponent is the Mauryas, but I am not sure what the mission should further look like. I think that from the fact that Chandragupta Maurya accepted to marry Seleucids daughter probably means Seleucus army fought honorably.
Mission 4: The battle of Ipsus: Personally, I prefer mission where u build an army instead of just starting with some armies and then fighting it out. So I do not have a lot of ideas for this mission.
Mission 5: The defeat of Demetrius in Cilicia: In this mission, you will avoid a direct confrontation and instead you will opt to chose a number of fortifications in order to to trap the army of Demetrius of which they join Seleucus.
Mission 6: Aftermath of the Battle of Corupedium: After Lysimachus is defeated, you are tasked with a small army to take some possession in Asia Minor.
Maybe extra mission could be added. Also it would be nice if the galatians could get a role if they deserve so.
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34 minutes ago, Philip the Swaggerless said:
The challenge is everyone knows and is used to mainland so it's hard to fill up game on other maps. The tournaments in the past helped get people to play other maps for awhile.
FeldFeld has been able to create balanced mainland and that one seems to be used. Also, if there are complaints then those people might enjoy a change. The only problem with the mod system is that it can be a little cumbersome to install mods (It can take up to several minutes!). If map mods are published on mod.io that could make it less cumbersome.
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3 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
This way, around minute 12-16 there would be considerable risk to having all of your units be rank 1, since someone who planned for having a powerful, partially ranked CS army could attack you (and disrupt your economic process to reach champions).
Does in your setup quality(advanced rank) of units outclass quantity(cheaper rank 1) CS soldiers? That is a very big question.
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25 minutes ago, Stan` said:
Still waiting for skilled map makers.
I'm not sure we support subtitles in cutscenes yet but I'm sure it can be added.
To be honest, I don't think the requirements for making such a map would be that high. If you look at some age of empires campaign maps, they don't need to be perfect to tell a great story.
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53 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
Rise of Seleucus
Anabasis of Alexander
Clash of Civilizations: The Greco-Persian Wars
Hannibal at the Gates
Wrath of Boudicca
Iberia: Arena of Death
The Last Cataract
I think the story of Seleucus has the advantage in that he interacted with the macedonian, the ptolemies, the persian (after the achaemenids had been defeated), the galatian gauls and the mauryas.
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What I think could increase the playability for 0ad single players is to add campaigns, which can also give some nice stories about history. Like the rise of Seleucid the first would make a good story.
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4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
The rank 2,3 option creates the possibility CS can beat champions in some instances, not 1 to 1 and not between units of the same class. Champions are good but they are flawed in that there is not much diversity of champions accessible to each civ. Being the first to champions gives too big a reward and often means that other players won’t have enough economy left to make their own even if they have access to a champion that can fight the enemies. Truly rank2/3 units’ purpose is to provide a non-economic unit that players can afford when their economy is not quite good enough for champions. Because of this, it bridges the power gap between someone who has champs and someone who does not.
Do you think the feature has any merit beyond the topic of countering champion-masses, like in the booming=military discussion?
Maybe it helps if I rephrase the question. Suppose we want to make 50 spear cavalry. A player could chose between having 30 rank 1 CS spear cav and 20 champs or the player could chose for 50 rank 3 CS. What is the big difference between the two assuming things are properly balanced? I don't really see the effective difference between the two options myself.
4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:Champions are good but they are flawed in that there is not much diversity of champions accessible to each civ.
That is issue the same for CS units. Athenians, Carthaginians, Macedonians, Muaryans, Persians, Ptolemies and Spartans (ignoring skiritai) all have only two types of CS infantry. Neither looks the variety of CS cavalry really hot, especially since the spear cavalry and the seleucid/persian horse archers are difficult to use. Also 6 out of the 13 factions have at least 4 champions(including elephants): the Gauls, Kushites, Macedonians, Mauryas, Persians and Seleucids. I guess a complaint about unit variety is not something that just comes down to issues with champions.
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7 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:
Even Persian and Seleucid champ cav? They get a health bonus.
CS javelin cavalry perform very decent against CS spear cavalry. For champions it is the same logic, but the only basic champion javelin cavalry is the briton chariot, which performs against the champion spear cavalry similar as the CS javelin cav does against the champ spear cavalry. The iber fire cav is special in that every javelin adds 1 fire damage for 5 seconds. It needs to be noticed that the fire damage ignores armor. Against a champion spear cavalry, that means that the javelin does 36*0.9^7=17.2 pierce damage without upgrades on both sides (and 17.9 if both sides have full upgrades). So if you do 18 damage, then doing 5 more is really significant (28% more damage). This outclasses the 20% extra HP. When you put a spear campion cavalry against the iber fire cavalry in a 1v1, the iber fire cavalry receives 191 damage, so having the spear cavalry last 20% longer is just not enough.
Roman in Iber campion cavalry are indeed special and we need to ask if all champion cavalry are inbalanced or whether it are just these two.
Back to the topic about champions, I think champions are not the only trick a player with a better economy can use
On 16/10/2021 at 1:34 PM, LetswaveaBook said:Firstly I will name some things you can do if you are able to collect more resources than your opponent:
1. Transform your food economy to corrals and cavalry, which means you need less women and can get more army.
2. Get will to fight.
3. Build an wonder and get the glorious expansion technology. In the game replay section of the forum I posted some games where Havran did this to show it can be vialbe.
4. Make champions.
I don't believe any of these options themselves create imbalance. The imbalance is caused by the fact that some players are able to put themselves into a position to use these options. Only eliminating champions as an option wont stop the players in the better position to use these options.
8 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:The reason for bullet 2 in my starting post was to allow all players to more easily train at least some quantity of their champion, meaning a cav player with champions could still run into champion spear inf of some type. Also, it would mean that unique champion buildings are actually important/good rather than a hindrance to champion training, because they are cheaper than a fort and do not have a unlock cost (which would be a lot more than 600 food) like the barracks/stable.
I think the proposal you made changes things, but they don't necessarily solve issues. If you need fortresses for champions, then instead of 4 stables, a fortress and the champion upgrade, you would build 3 fortresses. So that does not fully limit the production of champions. Also, you would limit the usage of champions to those players who play passively and build fortresses. So then the player would be excellently defended and still train champions. I don't agree that having unique buildings is a major hindrance than a benefit. If you do the unlock champion tech it will cost you 600 food, while the number of barracks remain the same. If an Athenian player builds two gymnasia, then he spends 400 stone and 400 metal, then you can produce CS soldiers from your barracks and at the same time produce champion. If you compare the cost of building 2 gymnasia with that of building 2 extra barracks and the champion upgrade, you will get similar results (400 stone and metal vs. 600 food, 400 wood and 200 stone). Also gymnasia have a better batch training modifier.
8 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:on the "mass champs=cheap" note, take iber as an example. If you are making cavalry you might use a combination of spear and javelin combined with the firecav you could afford initially. As you win engagements, you will still take losses from spearcav and CS javcav dying, but you can retrain with firecav until you have 30-40 total, and at this point it is very hard to lose more firecav than you can afford to retrain.
I think this is something that happens, but it would apply to all champion units (and citizen units trainable at higher rank). It is barely an unique abuse.
8 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:I give a scenario that I hope demonstrates the possible tradeoffs for rank 1,2,3 cs training. A player plans to go for champions, so they make all CS rank 1 so they can have a fast economy and produce the game-ending mass of champs, another player starts making rank 2 and 3 units in anticipation of launching a fast attack as the other player is trying to unlock/train champions (the attacking player has an advantage of being prepared and training ranked units for use in battle sooner rather than having them gather res for a long time before fighting). Having rank 2/3 units more readily available bridges the power divide between champions and CS: it is a way to break the steady-state where a player can afford only to retrain more and more rank 1 units that are instantly defeated by the critical mass of champions and will never reach rank 2 or 3. As an example for how it could help reduce the ease of champ massing, imagine mace player making rank 3 spearcav (at a large cost, but much less than champion) to try to beat iber firecav.
Instead of training all your spear cavalry at rank 3, you could also train some spear cavalry at rank 1 and mix it with spear cav champions. What does the rank 3 "in between" option solve? If you want to have a better army, you can also currently mix in some champions.
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20 minutes ago, guerringuerrin said:
Also, the "20 last games" period of time gives the more actual players skills.
We currently use an elo-like system and such a system does not have a long memory.
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First of all, I would like people to approach things as age of empires 2 did. If you want to play a different map, you can bring your own and play on it.
I think the distribution has some charm. It allows for some specialized builds, such as the Carthaginian one. Also, there is not enough wood near the CC, so the players need to move out anyway.
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As a 1900 rated player, I think it would be suitable to upload a 0AD tier list. I would not want to be anyone that uploads a tier list and present my opinion as a fact. So therefore I uploaded the following tier list.
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4 hours ago, alre said:
Also melee units have steeper ranking benefits, so increasing the value of melee units may actually result in heavier snowballing probably (kind of what we have seen with melee cav in this alpha: when it starts rolling it just gets stronger).
They indeed have steeper benefits, but it is a lot harder for them to promote, even if ranged units need more xp. Xp is gained per damage dealt and ranged units deal more damage and aren't prone to dying as much a frontliners. Also, promotion is a subject we could tackle in other ways.
I was playing with Leonidas and had hoplite tradition, so you expect to do more damage and get easy promotions for the hoplites. That was not the case in the battles.
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1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
iber firecav and consular bodyguard
These units are different from all other champions so the deserve a different treatment. These units are very good. Iber firecav can beat any infantry or cavalry champion, so that deserves a nerf. Roman champion cavalry is also better than all/most other melee cavalry and it is a faction that historically did not have good cavalry. For other champions, I would say they deserve to be strong and they deserve to have advantages. Personally I think their strength is okay, considering the role they play. If you are able to afford champions, you should in my opinion get some return on that. If your opponent ignores the most powerful units of his arsenal, he deserves to be potentially punished for that.
1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:You seem to disagree that the barracks/stable xp generation as it is implemented now is a feature fulfilling the "can get rank 2/3 CS units" idea; do you support an improvement of this feature or do you think it should be eliminated or left a mostly useless feature?
I think the feature is nice as an extra, but it is not a way to actively gain rank 2 or 3 units. Who can afford having his melee infantry contribute nothing for 200 seconds? On the other hand, I would not like a feature where players just sit with their melee units in a barracks waiting till an enemy shows up or until the units are fully promoted.
1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:well, once you have 40 of them, your kill to death ratio will increase more and more, and you will be re-training fewer and fewer of them.
That is logical reasoning.
1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:Ideally it gets more expensive to maintain more champions rather than less expensive as it is now.
That is opposite to the previous statement which represent the current state. Why would you consider it ideal if maintaining more champions would be more expensive? Having a better army should gain rewards, shouldn't it?
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Something I noticed about snowballing is the imbalance of ranged/melee units, where ranged units are more valuable/important.
If you defeat an opponent in a battle, he loses some of his ranged units. While the winner only loses some melee units and keeping the more valuable/important ranged units alive. Currently, you only IMHO need enough melee units to tank enemy fire. So having lost some melee units is not bad as long as you have enough to tank opposing fire, In some situations having about 10% melee units can be enough in these situations. If you have most of your ranged (&valuable/important) units alive, then you remain at nearly full firepower.
So here is another way for me to advocate reducing the power of ranged units.
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Profanity Filter Needed on Game Titles?
in General Discussion
Posted
@Yekaterina, if you didn't want to see elephants you are in the wrong place