LetswaveaBook
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Posts posted by LetswaveaBook
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First I would like to say, suppose it is solved.
Then an opposing unit attacks while chasing a fleeing unit. If the fleeing unit runs all over the map, you would get a lot of attack sounds. That might be annoying.
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2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
I also don't see how you could abuse this.
I think it is likely to open some abusive possiblities. How about using the follow command and then not touching the archers but rather move the unit that is being followed?
Also your idea feels to me as trying to prevent people from managing their archers, which I find peculiar.
It can lead to wierd gameplay, suppose the enemy puts his hero in front of the troops, then the archers start shooting the hero. If the hero retreats, then the archer player has to prevent his archers from following the hero and hence accuracy ruined. Wouldn't that be fun?
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1 minute ago, Dizaka said:
Maiden guards are rarely used. Partly b/c they can't be build in barracks so you have only 1 production source.
I like to use them. With their poison they are stronger than most archer champions and the poison ignores armor, making the more useful against pikemen and elephants.
You can't train a lot of them, but even if you have just 10 that might help.
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37 minutes ago, alre said:
elephants are being nerfed, right?
https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/25721
Also I did some 11 minute boom tests and I compared my Seleucid vs maurya boom. Maurya has of course the advantage, but it was not as large as I expected. I don't think there is one thing that makes Maurya OP, but there are several conveniences that all add up.
Anyways, Ptolemies might be as dangerous in 1v1s.
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4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
do you think my values are reasonable?
The values can always be adjusted so the values are not the problem.
What could be a problem is the concept.
1 It basically means that if you do one missclick and move the archers, you ruin your accuracy.
2 Also it seems to be a fairly buggy and abusable concept. Since if units only lose accuracy when they are ordered to, there might be players that find exploits on how to avoid losing accuracy when moving units. So even if you find a way to implement it, you need to double check if there are no exploits.
3. If units lose accuracy after moving, you have difficulty to chase an escaping unit and hit it reliably.
All in all, unless you get a really good code for it, it seems to open more ways to exploit the system than the system is worth in the first place. With how prevalent range units are, it might have the consequence of turning 0AD into a game of exploiting the ranged unit accuracy system. If you can guarantee that there are no such exploits, we could continue the discussion. First I would like to see proof of concept before we can discuss if it is actually applicable to the game.
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8 hours ago, chrstgtr said:
This is all to say that development, at times, has been shattershot. Changes have been implemented to make something different and perfect in the very first attempt. And, when perfect was missed the target of perfect was adjusted to something new.
Instead, I think development should be more incremental. Is it frustrating at times? Of course. But it is less volatile and less likely to lead to large swings that create unanticipated problems.
I think this game has players, but few balance testers. What really needs to happen for A25 is that some people do a balance overhaul, post it for convenience on mod.io and see if it is well received. Currently there are only a few mods that change balance and for the 'consumer players' they are a little hassle to get going. From as far as I know, there is no major justification for strength of the archer buff from A23 to A24(It came in 3-fold with speed, damage and accuracy). I think if there was more testing, then archers would not have been that powerful on A24. For A25 we have https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/25624 but no one has tested if it benefits balance. I think we need more testing for balance changes. Otherwise it will always be a shattershot.
12 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:On the contrary, I feel like a game changing feature hasn't been implemented in ages.
Rotation times to stop perfect hit and run and dancing. Also unit pushing for A25 could have real potential. However these features are nice for competitive players even though they have limited visual appearance.
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4 minutes ago, maroder said:
Strong support for this idea.
There are the players who like the a23 gameplay and want it refined through small incremental balancing changes and there are other players who want to have new mechanics and a different more experimental gameplay style. And it is obviously not possible to do that at the same time.
So we could have a game setup option called "classic" or "Empires Ascendant" and one that is called "experimental" or "Empires Extended".
With this we don't split the community, because you could decide each match, what gameplay you want. Also: one "official" experimental mod is much easier to maintain as multiple small mods that are maintained by different persons and not integrated from the beginning.
I support the idea of letting players actively chose which mode they want to play.
In A24, people complain how one thing is bad. I don't really understand it, because if it is bad, why not solve it by a mod? Also I think in the lobby it should be convenient to switch mods and try out different things.
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6 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
so 25 spear cav are cheaper than 5 cataphracts
For 25 spear cavalry you need 1750 food and 850 food more than you need for 5 cataphracts for which you need 500 metal. I agree that metal is more expensive, but not that expensive. I think a cataphract is something like 2.2-3 times as expensive as a spear cavalry, provided that all things are reasonable.
I know there are people that like to trade 100 wood/food for 25 metal at the market, but that does not mean 100 wood/food is worth 25 metal.
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5 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
I thought it produced a nice melee versus ranged unit "rout" effect.
Does this rout effect also exist if the archers are put on 'stand ground' mode? Or are they just firing all when on stand ground?
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What I would like to see for gameplay is that units unlocked in later phases should be more efficient.
When you reach p2, you should get feeling "amazing, now I can use naked fanatics/mercenaries/mounted archers/elephant archers and can use these to deal heavy damage to my opponent". When you reach p3 you should be able to make effective use of melee infantry/cavalry which is currently hardly the case.
Currently you make citizen soldiers in p1 and you keep centering your army around these in later phases. I would like to see that the game encourages you to actually use the champion melee infantry/cavalry that the game provides you. I hardly have used champion melee infantry/cavalry in A24 and I think that is not just me. Champion melee infantry/cavalry should be awesome.
Currently BreakfastBurrito_007 want seleucids have CS spear cavalry, because in his views the champions die to fast. The CS spear cavalry has 160*1.1 HP while champion cataphract with nisean war horses has 360*1.1 HP and +4 armour levels, so that is 3.3 times the durability. I think players get the idea that cataphracts die to fast comes from the fact that ranged units deal excessive amounts of damage and if the cataphracts die, they are hard to replace(because of training time and metal cost).
What I would suggest is all infantry/cavalry champions +1 hack&pierce armour, move 25% of their metal cost to food cost and reduce their training times, such that it would be really cool to use these infantry/cavalry champions.
That way if the opponent lingers to long in a lower phase, you can punish him with the units that you have all-ready unlocked after phasing up. In the current A24 meta if the opponents civilization does not have siege towers or elephants (as athens, britions, gauls, romans or spartans, Iberians are a special case with Indibil ) and is in p3, a defending p1 player won't really bother about it as long as the p1 player has superior numbers. Like what are those p3 factions gonna send at you? An outnumbered force of citizen soldiers and a some siege that you can demolish...
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8 hours ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:
Hey how about we add more greeks?
My mind was fliting with the idea of an greek umbrella faction with hoplites, the same greek architecture and with subfactions for example ionian(&pegamese), athene, achean and spartan (syracuse and pontus could be added to this). That umbrella faction would be just called greeks or something and then the player can chose to build an athenian council chamber, the spartan barracks or the temples associated with the acheans/ionians. By building build one of these structures, you chose which of the subfaction you want.
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On 09/06/2021 at 1:30 AM, Player of 0AD said:
Ashoka
I think ashoka is great. He allows you to get a few extra temples and allows you to get the healer techs that are normally to expensive to get. Also as a chariot archer he is a nice unit to have.
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8 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
It remains to be seen how bad the metal problem is in a25.
It would not be the metal problem of a25. It is in my view the metal problem of the map.
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On this forum I see frequently people mentioning metal shortages in 4v4s and negative game effects.
I don´t understand why people call it a problem, since I see it as a choice. People decide to play a map&game mode which is short of metal. There is no difficulty in creating a mod that adds an extra metal mine near the starting position of your CC. For me it seems that the people who play these4v4 settings, chose the map to be such that there is a metal shortage.
So I wonder, if everyone dislikes those metal shortages, why did nobody made a mainland map where there are 2 starting metal mines? Why do people consider metal shortages as a balance issue instead of a map issue?
These are the things I don´t understand about 4v4 players. I also added a mod that adds an extra starting metal mine near the CC on mainland. Honestly that is a mod that everyone could construct and I don´t know why I even post it.
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There have been some concerns of endless 4v4s. I play mostly 1v1s and they seem fine, so that makes me believe that the problem lies not something with they unit/building/technology statistics, but rather the problem lies with the 4v4 settings. Unfortunately, we don´t know because there are not enough creative maps and everyone just starts in a circle. To illustrate my point, I made a few drawings.
The black circle denotes the edge of the map and the red/blue circles denote the territories of the red/blue player/team. In drawings 1 we see the 1v1 matchup on a small map, which by experiment has shown to be fine. In drawing number 2, we see a bigger map with the same distances, however the map is bigger and thus has more resources. On top of that, whereas in drawing 1 you can not be attacked from the back(edge of the map blocks it), in drawing 2 the opponent can attack you from behind. So I would say that drawing number 2 gives a little more possibilities for aggression. Drawing 3 gives the situation for a 1v1 on a medium map and from my experience, the gameplay is not optimal under these conditions.
Drawing number 4 provides the situation for current team games. We see that the pocket players are in a fairly save position since the distances are fairly large. The players on the flanks need only 2 fortresses to fully defend their territory since the blue player on the left flank does not need to expect attacks from the left or behind and in the case he is attacked from the right, the attackers quickly might find themselves outnumbered as the allied pockets might come to help.
In drawig number 5 I put the pocket player closer to the center, which means that an attack through the center becomes more viable and if cavalry gets past the fortifications, they have a lot more space to hit and run from. I think this setup will make center control more important, meaning that every player will be on the frontline. In drawing 5.1 I put the pocket players closer to the frontline. In theory you could extend this until the players form a straight line and we have 4 separate 1v1s.
In drawing 6, I show an idea to create 3 separate 1v1 and 1 retracted player for each team. I don´t know how that would work out.
In drawing 7, I made the map bigger, but the individual players keep their their distances to each other. This would allow people to be attacked from different directions and that might help to make the game less turtly.
If you have any ideas about this or know how to create a map with some of these changes in the map generator script, I would be glad to hear from you.
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An Asian war elephant can take down 5 champion infanty swordsmen in 1v5 battle. I don't mind nerfing them.
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I created a mod a while ago to test some ideas about game balancing and I would like to put some results here. The original description is
On 29/05/2021 at 10:43 AM, LetswaveaBook said:I added some things to the mod to support aggression. Features of the mod:
•wood gather rate reduced by 0.10, food gather rate reduced by 0.10 (This means women/cavalry get ¨cheaper¨ and citizen soldiers stay at about the same ¨cost¨, which should encourage people to make more women/cavalry and that would favor aggression).
•speed upgrade for cavalry is reduced in cost to 200f,100m. This might be useful for cavalry rushes. From an economic viewpoint it means that 10% speed is about +10% gather rates at long distances. The 100m is left over after doing the p1 wood/food techs. So the speed upgrade tech seems to be worth it if you have around 15 cavalry.
•I like the concept of age of empires 2, where you getting to the next phase means a significant step in military power. Therefore I added +10%attack/health to all soldiers once p2 is reached.
•Mercenaires need 48seconds to train in p1 for infantry and 64 for cavalry. In p2 these times get reduced to 2 seconds and 2.66.
• Infantry mercenaries cost 35 food and 45 metal and cavalry mercenaires cost 60 metal and 60 food.
•Expertise in war costs 250 metal and need 20 seconds to research. It now triples the train time (This means that you can train mercenaries very fast, until you decide you want to scarify train rate for military power).
• civ specific changes about mercenaries(Athens: +10% metal gather rate in p2, Carthage: can build an Iberian embassy and mercenaries in p1&expertise in war, Kush: can build an Blemmye camp and mercenaries in p1, Macedon: Suited for cavalry rushed and can train mercenary cavalry in p1, Ptolemies: Fantastic eco and Ptolemy 1, Seleucids: start now with an extra mercenary swordsmen and military colony is as fast at producing mercenaries 2 times and researching expertise in war).
•Misc: archers have 2.5 spread and Persian axe cavalry in p1. I also reduced the metal cost of p2/p3 eco and blacksmith techs to make them more accessible and to provide more metal to the players.
I did test the mod in 1v1s and it seems that for Carthage and Kush, you can get about 20 mercenaries out before minute 10. From my tests, I tend to conclude that these changes allow you to get sufficient numbers of mercenaries to deal a really good blow as at this point the opponent seems to have 40-50 citizen soldier scatter around his base. What I tested was a strategy where you only produce 1 barracks and aim click p2 when you have 80 to 110 units. Once you are in p2, you can produce a lot of mercenaries very fast. Then you research expertise in war, which gives coupled with the +10% attack/health bonus some very strong units. I suppose it really allows for a deadly early p2 attack when you opponent is late to p2.
I also played game with Yekaterina and Valihrant to test if it is viable while not OP.
The game I would like to mention against Yekaterina went according to plan. I was playing Seleucids against Ptolemies and at minute 10:30 I had allready a military colony at her door and 25 advanced mercenary archers were getting their first kills. On the flip side, she collected 16815 resources while I had 14000 at that point. The game ended in p2 with a successful mercenary rush.
The game I would like to mention against Valihrant went different, where I played as Carthage and he as Sparta. I made some mistakes in execution. If you rush, you are putting yourself behind in workers for the opportunity to do damage. the rush did not do significant damage. With superior number Valihrant was able to beat me in p3. Valihrant showed two concerns about the mod. The first one is that the rusher falls behind to much in population, which the recording disproved. The rusher falls behind, but not overly. The second concern was that quick mercenaries might be used not to rush but at a later stage as a quick reïnforcement for panic defence and thus increasing the capability to turtle. This second concern was not being tested. The replay leads me to think that if the strategy for a p2 rush is well executed, it can be a proper strategy, while Valirhant showed that the defender is able to resist.
Again thanks to Yekaterina and Valihrant for trying to test this mod. I also linked the game with Valirhant and if there is any desire for it, I can do a commentary on the game on my youtube channel to show how viable the strategy is under the conditions of the mod.
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32 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
but metal scarcity makes them unaffordable often.
In 4v4s there commonly exists metal scarcity, but in 1v1 or 2v2s metal scarcity is less frequent. In 1v1s you can generally get thousands of metal out of the market, while in 4v4s the barter prices are quickly ruined. Collection wood at a corrected rate of 0.85 and then bartering it at the market for 70% efficiency gives you an effective collecton rate of around 0.6, which is as effective as gathering metal directly.
37 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:That being their affordability is very volatile: if they are affordable, they are op
2 hours ago, alre said:Metal will be even more important in next release, if you make mercenaries this convenient.
I fear that this is indeed a valid point and this will haunt game balance for those matches where there are civilizations with mercenaries.
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I noticed that https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/25624 is intended to be added to A25. Adding a rank means increasing the worth of mercenaries by about 25%. On top of that, they also get cheaper. I think this is major change for the unit. I would not like such a major change being done without proper backing. I would like to see if there has been any testing done to see how it affects balance.
We see that mercenaries lose their food cost in this diff. If we estimate gather rates to be 0.6 for food, 0.85 for wood and 0.5 for food, then we can express the time needed to gather the following resources as
Mercenary infantry original 20 food & 60 metal ->153.33 seconds
Mercenary infantry proposed 60 metal ->120 seconds
Mercenary cavalry original 40 food & 80 metal ->226.67 seconds
Mercenary cavalry proposed 80 metal -> 160 seconds
infantry archer 50 food&50 wood -> 142.16 seconds
Cavalry spearman 100 food &50 wood ->225.49
We see that the CS infantry is a little cheaper than the current mercenary, but with the proposed value the mercenary is significantly cheaper. The current mercenary cavalry has nearly identical cost currently to the CS variant, but the proposed version is significantly cheaper.
If we assume that metal is no rarity on the map we play, then the proposed mercenaries at rank 2 will give about 55% more value for their investment. If we have expertise in war, they give about 95% more value for their investment. So I think the numbers seem problematic and do not favour the suggested change.
If the proposed differential is accepted, it seems that Carthaginians will be able to mass train Gallic skiritai commando´s for 60 metal and mounted skiritai commando´s for 80 metal (Or are these a budget version of cataphracts?)
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9 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:
what about deleting their mercenary cavalry or javelin cavalry and replace one of these with citizen spear cavalry?
I am not a big fan of deleting unpopular units and replacing them with more popular units. We should design the game such that each unit has its uses.
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I have done some wikipedia reading and the perioikoi were a free class, associated more with trade than with war. Sparta does have the perioikoi trader. If I am correct, the class of neodamodes is represents warfare activities better than perioikoi.
My naïve suggestion would thus be to rename perioikoi hoplites to neodamodes hoplites. Is there any reason to use the term perioikoi hoplites?
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The cavalry archer in A24 has the potential to be the most OP unit. If A25 only nerfs them by giving 2.5 spread they are still very good, as such a nerf would lower their DPS by 10-15%. Also Seleucids get a lot of other options, do they really need everything?
4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:then I feel the time is right to give seleucids a spearcav unit.
For your information, Seleucids all ready do have two types of spear cavalry, a mercenary and a champion. Their champion does also benefit from a +20%HP upgrade. So the preferred solution probably is to make the mercenary and champion more usable.
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18 minutes ago, Yekaterina said:
What do you think about the 3 town phase buildings? Should they all be different?
I think there is no need to require that. If people want to build 3 blacksmiths that is fine by me.
By the way: If you are talking about top players, Staratt and boredrusher are on the forum too and they are probably better than me.
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A few weeks ago when discussing auras, Stan´ meantioned https://github.com/0ad/0ad/blob/e68daa4f75488bdbdd9b0f58979430ce5e9898fc/source/simulation2/components/CCmpRangeManager.cpp
I noticed that file contained a lot of divisions, mainly of the form Z / LOS_TILE_SIZE
Now my suggestion is to introduce a dummy variable INV_LOS_TILE_SIZE=1/ LOS_TILE_SIZE. That way, we can do a multiplication instead of a division and the lines would read
Z*INV_LOS_TILE_SIZE, which is cheaper if you need to do a lot of divisions. Wraitii suggested that I would make a differential to test if it makes the game faster.
I made an account on phabricator to try to make a differential, but I did not know how to make a differential. Can anyone explain which steps would be needed to be done to publish such a simple differential? I do unsterstand some C# code, but I don´t know what steps are next. Do I have to download/upload something or can it be done in the browser?
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Posted · Edited by LetswaveaBook
@wowgetoffyourcellphone, I have found some game changing features for you!
Don't know if this is the way you want to go either.