LetswaveaBook
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Posts posted by LetswaveaBook
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10 hours ago, Yekaterina said:
You guys are the best-skilled 0AD players I am aware of so can you test out booming in A25 to check just how fast it is? Thank you.
I failed to instal the SVN
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6 hours ago, wraitii said:
he diff above changes unit "Prepare Time", that is the time to the initial attack (≠ from the repeat time, which is the time between two consecutive attacks).
It makes archers weaker, and javelineers easier to micro.
If there is no strong argument against, I'll merge this for A25.
I think archers do not suffer a lot of this, they stand still during most of the fighting and only thus suffer from a 300 ms delay. I think that javilineers do benefit from this as the are moving more often during attacks due to their shorter range. Especially javilin cavalry will benefit from this. I expect these changes to have only minor impact on the games, so I fail to find strong arguments against it.
With rotation times introduced in A24, I think we can even afford to set it to 0 from a gameplay perspective, as the rotation times prevent abusive hit and run tactics. Though 0 prepare time might give unrealistic looks from graphics perspective, but close to 0 might be fine. Also if looks are an issue, animations could be adapted.
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18 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
Wraitii said that they returned the counter of the units with spear and pike against elephants.
I hope that this will not be in A25. it is historically inaccurate and there is another issue.
Siege towers should be weak against infantry swordsmen, but the swordsmen get killed from range so the counter system does not work out. If elephants are supposed to be killed by spear units, then just as the infantry swordsmen, they get killed from range. The pikemen might be useful though most civs do not have pikes.
What I think to be the best solution is to increase elephant cost and reduce its crush damage. It should not be an organic ram.
But again, this thread is about true siege weapons, not about elephants.
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9 minutes ago, Player of 0AD said:
In a row or in a 1v5? "In a row" does not matter too much, group fights are the thing.
1v5, if the swordsmen need to spend a little time surrounding the elephant(like 1 or 2 seconds before they are all attacking). if they start with the elephant surrounded, I think 1 swordsmen survives with a few HP. If you have champion pikemen, it 1v7 and the elephant wins.
I just ran a test. 1 asian elephant vs 5 swordsmen and the elephant survives with 5HP
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31 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:
Right now players don't make sword because melee is generally used as a meatshield and no one wants to waste metal training units that never even make it to enemy lines.
I think this might be the biggest issue for 0AD ballance. Ranged units are OP compared to most other CS. Sword cavalry seems to be the exception.
Since CS ranged units are so good, the completely shape the balance. The only melee units that get commonly made are the ones that have a purpose against ranged units( That´s why I made a mod with weaker CS ranged units).
However, as christ said, it is of completely topic.
@Lion.Kanzen, do you have the power to split the conversation to another thread if applicable?
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@Lion.Kanzen, your request has been heard, buy I would first like to know which maps are consider bad and need to be filtered out.
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1 hour ago, ChronA said:
I would not consider the problem of the missing rush solved until rushing is viable for almost all civs, and not just those few with access to mercs.
True, but a mercenary rush might be a good option to diversify civs. Civilizations have different units and that inherently makes that some rushes are available to some civilizations while others are not. I think the aim should be to create different rush options and the mercenary rush can be one of them.
I also played a game against Yekaterina, who played just as if it was a normal game (also thanks to Yekaterina for trying the mod). I had a very good starting berries, with two fruit trees close to them. 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.
@BreakfastBurrito_007, I understand that I am moving the conversation towards a p2 mercenary rush. If you prefer to stick to the p1 mercenary idea, I would be able to move the p2 mercenary rush to a different topic, such that your ideas of a p1 mercenary rush can be heard. My main question is why not make the required tech be p2?
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1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
The main reason for the upgrade to enable mercs was to prevent the metal spam. If you want mercs you should have to put some people on metal. I feel this is a better solution than the super long training time, because the time goes from the time to wait for training to the time waiting to get enough metal. If the upgrade costs 200 metal, then you must divert some wood/food eco to get mercs.
Another thing: for this p1 merc option to be viable, mercenaries should be rank 2 by default. I feel this is the only way to justify getting them in p1, since without it they are just too expensive and no better than standard CS. "expertise in war" could make them train faster available in p2, train time goes from 1xCS to .5xCS. A merc rush should be able to defeat someone who just has a mix of women and CS in their base. I think women sniping is a bit shallow as the only way to rush, and it would be nice if a well planned merc rush could also threaten larger groups of CS unless they have gone to the expense to build plenty of defenses.
I would say that it would be cool if mercs were rank 3 by default and priced similarly to skiritai, except with a cost shifted to metal a bit: -10 wood +5 metal -10 food +5 metal. Cavalry add 30 food and 10 metal to this. If this is available in p1, then players will need to be make protections while booming on CS.
The main reason why I am not in favor of a tech is the following. Suppose you get to p2 and there is such a tech, you are still limited by the tech. So they are only viable if you make the tech. If you limit them to p2, then it gets useful for nearly everyone, since everyone gets to p2.
The second thing I wanted to point out is that I did not aim mercenaries to be viable in p1. I wanted to make them a good option in p2. I think by making them faster to train and cheaper expertise in war, they should be viable as a CS replacement. Only testing can really show if they are viable under these conditions.
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1 minute ago, maroder said:
High metal cost (maybe 60 for infantry and 80 for cav or even more) - This should prevent spam in p1
High metal cost means spam in p1. If a cavalry merc cost 80 metal and 40 food. Then you mine 20 metal and get 4 cavalry mercenaries for 160 food. If you add some citizen cavalry to that, you will be able to get a very good army. When your opponent only has a few citizen soldiers, 4 extra mercenaries can really make a difference.
4 minutes ago, maroder said:advanced rank from the beginning - You should get something for your investment
You did not invest anything substantial. You mined some metal. That is all. Also, advance rank is probably more powerful than you think. I like the advanced rank being locked behind a slight cost.
4 minutes ago, maroder said:Once you build the embassy, you can train them from every barrack - Works as an entry cost and to not be restricted by the number of embassy
If the embassy trains mercenaries very fast, then why bother training them from barracks?
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4 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
I have taken a quick look at the mod and there are some issues I noticed.
- mercs are still too weak for their metal cost. I think they should start at rank 2. If they come out at rank 1 after such a long time to train them and being expensive, then they are still underpowered.
- No upgrade to enable mercs. I know that you did not say it would be in the mod, but if you add it I think it should be 250 food, 100 wood, 100 metal.
- Mercs' utility in p1 hinges on them being able to beat CS. So I think it is important to be able to train them quickly even from the beginning, rather, the time delay could be found from the research time for the "enable mercs" upgrade. If the mercenaries train fast, then the time the barracks isn't making eco units is reduced, I think that 48s for inf and 64s for cav is too much, I think training the same speed as CS is preferable in p1 and then the "expertise in war" should reduce train time from there.
Thanks for your observations. I think we misunderstood each other. There are a few things I want to highlight.
•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.
So that means once you reach p2, you can train them very fast. In p1, you can train some of them and because of their low numbers, they are only useful for scouting or finding unprotected women or building foundations.
I dislike the idea of an upgrade to enable them. I think such an upgrade would be counter productive. First we want to make them more useful and after that we limit them by introducing a technology. I think it is better to put them in p2. Here p2 is the technology required to train them fast.
For your final observation I have to notice that the barracks can´t train mercenaries in p1. They are available in the stable(Macedonians), Iberian Embassy and the blemmye camp.
The strategy I wanted to enable is the following:
A strategy where you only start with 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 you an army of advanced mercenaries ready to attack.
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@Stan` are minor balance changes still possible after the feature freeze?
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On 11/05/2021 at 5:00 AM, Lion.Kanzen said:
Discuss alternatives.
Find common ground.
Submit these points prior to debate and surveys.
The solutions and the opinion of the staff will be taken into account
Patches will be made ...
Testing...
I reject or approve and then back to point 1.
I would prefer another method.
1. someone has an idea.
2. someone transfers those ideas into a mod.
3. we playtest these mods.
4 We judge it pros can cons.
5. we compare the different aspect of different mods.
6. We optimize on what we have learnt.
7. A patch needs to be made.
I think this method has some charm. The biggest issue seems to me that we need to find people who want to do some player vs. player testing.
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On 27/05/2021 at 1:05 AM, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
Do you think making the tech cost 200 food 100 wood 100 metal is a good way to prevent merc spam with starting res from being a default strategy?
The extra feature of the tech you mentioned are potentially nice, but would probably complicate the discussion about this feature a bit too much. If someone makes a mod with these features, then we could try a 4v4 and determine if the p1 mercs need further adjusting.
We can discuss the matter, but the only real way to test how things balance the meta is to test it out with a mod. So I made a mod.
I think the tech should cost 500 food and 500 wood, if you can´t guess its name, you can check the mod below. I do consider the starting metal as a problem for p1 mercenaries, so therefore they should be limited by some tech. I agree with you on the fact that a tech to unlock mercenaries could be useful.
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.
(Also I played a 4v4 last night from the pocket position as Britons. I rushed the opposing flank with cavalry and 12 slingers which was effective and it seems show that passive pockets could get to see their allies destroyed. I have to remark that one player was 1700+ and the receiving end was mid 1300s)
Each of these modded mercenary civilizations will affect the meta in different ways. I would like if there would be some players that try these features in player vs player. Any test results would be appreciated.
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4 minutes ago, PyrrhicVictoryGuy said:
Yeah Ptolemy Soter's bonus is dope, and he also has an elephant which is just icing on top.
and still people use Cleopatra a lot. I think getting p3 early and then using ptolemy I to get a lot of advanced mercenaries is a valid strategy.
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6 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
I think they eliminated that hero bonus (if you are talking about "-35% metal cost for mercenaries").
I was talking about Ptolemy 1, which can be trained from the CC for extra comfort. Ptolemy 1 still has that bonus and it also affects food cost.
The only downside is that those mercenary cavalry can only be trained from the military colony.
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The best cavalry hero is the one that makes them 35% cheaper
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44 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
The benefits of "diplomacy" tech to this mechanic would be that you will have great challenges to do a merc rush with only starting res.
If I may do a suggestion, such a tech might also allow military colonies, Carthagian embassies, temples to heal your wounded units, blacksmiths, a market to trade some extra metal, melee citizen cavalry and some extra upgrades. It would be good that after this tech you could train mercenaries very fast, like in 4 seconds and overwhelm an unsuspecting opponent.
If we only could think of a name and cost for such a tech...
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2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:
Do we agree that capturable buildings for mercs are a little too random to be put in the general game, but could be an add on feature in game setup?
That is at least which I would say.
2 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:do you have issues with limited merc options from barracks in p1? or were you just saying they should be more diverse in p2?
I don´t see any reason for a particular mercenary to be trainable in p1. If you could name a concrete example I could give my thoughts on it, but if you don´t specify (give the type of mercenary, its stats and its costs) the proposal, it will be impossible to discuss it in detail. We need to keep in mind that giving players an extra option is only impactful if there is good incentive to go for that option, on the other hand I would prefer to restrict the real goodies to p2. Those are two conflicting desires and without knowing the details, it is impossible to judge these desires against each other.
Also I feel like if you are able to use the 300 starting metal for your rush, then your rush would be to difficult to stop if your opponent does not have access to his own mercenaries (especially if the rusher gets a free healer). Also we need to consider if mercenaries in p1 deliver continuous action to p1 or whether they just cause you to spend 300 metal at the start. I suspect it will only cause some action at the start where you spend 300 metal for mercenaries and after that do not bother with making more of them.
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8 minutes ago, Dizaka said:
If people want "balanced 1vs1" they should be both playing the same civs.
I think each civ should have it strengths in 1v1s and each civ should have a strategy they excel in. There always will be civs that a considered better than others, but each one should have its charms and a fair chance.
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First I would like to share my view of capturable mercenary camps: In 1v1, there are two options. The first is that both players get access to different mercenary camps with different mercenaries, which seems unfair. If players have different civilizations and get the same mercenary camps with the same mercenaries, it is also unfair. In the second case it is because if both players get the same mercenaries, one civilization might get mercenaries that his civilization all ready has or does not have any use for, while the other might have great benefit of the type of mercenaries provided. This problem is exaggerated by mounted archers being imbalanced in p1 (especially if they are affected by archery tradition). I am thus not a big fan of capturable mercenary camps, but if it is optional there are no problems.
I would like to ① make aggressive play more rewarding, also I would like to ② make going to p2 more rewarding. Moving mercenaries to p1 does not align well with ②. I think there are solution to making aggressive play more rewarding without moving mercenaries to p1. Also I would like to add that in current 1v1 balance it can be useful to make 2 or 3 extra cavalry super early and try to find exposed women before your opponent mass trains citizen soldiers. Similarly, I think advanced rank mercenaries are powerful, but it is mainly the lack of metal availability and the expense of expertise in war that stops them from being competitive. So I don´t think we are far away from a good balance, these strategies just need a tiny little extra.
I would prefer a solution of the type that gives p2 good options to be aggressive. Good p2 mercenary balance would be a useful tool for that, so I would prefer to use our improved mercenary balance to enhance p2.
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1 minute ago, Gurken Khan said:
But I have to pay 250 food, 100 wood and 100 metal for it; so I'm still not convinced it's worth it.
First of all, it is a very good way to dump excess food.
Secondly, women should in some sense be the preferred booming units, as they are cheaper.
Thirdly, building a barracks requires 150 seconds to build, which should be added to the cost. In P1, the metal cost can be disregarded as you start with 300 metal and there are few other options to use it anyway in p1(exceptions are Rome/Iberia). There is no reason to bank up that 100 metal till p2.
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2 minutes ago, Gurken Khan said:
s it actually worth it? When I tried it in an earlier version I had the feeling it's not worth the tec cost, the creation of women taking so long that I decided to stick with women from the CC(s).
A CC needs 33 seconds or so to train 5 women. 5 houses need 30 seconds to train 5 women. So in that sense, the tech gives as much production as a CC if you have at least 5 houses.
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18 hours ago, Player of 0AD said:
- booming is not turtling. There is a clear difference between a women-from-houses-boom and turtling with lots of towers, walls and fortresses... believe me
I agree that booming with women from houses does give a significant better eco, however the lead in eco isn´t overly decisive if my memory serves me well. It is not like booming gives a huge advantage over turtling.
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On 23/05/2021 at 9:13 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:
ctrl-c ctrl-v
That is just a sign of a stable mind!
3 hours ago, hyperion said:The real issue with changing HP is screwing over the current healing rates. Tripple HP meant it takes trice as long to get HP back to full.
I think this is a fair point.
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A25 Feedbacks from testing
in Game Development & Technical Discussion
Posted
I should have mentioned the OS. I am using Linux mint, which is similar to Ubuntu.
To be honest, the only way I normally install software is with the software manager, though I can put things in the terminal. I don´t know the commands for using package managers and such. Also the OS has a package installer that I can use if I have a package file on my PC, but I am not a command line wizard.