[D3599, elephant archers]

This is a response to https://code.wildfiregames.com/D3599

First I would like to list some unit stats

Foot Archer: Cost (50F,50W) Attack 6.7, Attack rate 1

 HP:50, Armor(10C,1H,1P)

Horse Archer: Cost (100F,50W) Attack 7.0, Attack rate 1

 HP:100*1.1, Armor(15C,3H,1P)

Chariot Archer: Cost (150F,80W,100M) Attack 14.0, Attack rate 1

 HP:240*1.1, Armor(20C,5H,3P)

Elephant Archer: Cost (175F,75W) Attack 14.0, Attack rate 1

 HP:200, Armor(20C,4H,3P).

 

I would like to state 2 principles

Principle1: Units should play out like people expect them to be. An elephant unit should be expensive(at least comparable with a chariot) and powerful.

Principle2: Unique units should be designed to make the game more fun. Therefore Unique units need to outclass their generic counterparts because how can an UU be fun if everyone ignores it, on the other hand, It should not be OP.

 

The first observation I would like to make is that an Elephant archer seems to have the attack and cost of around 2 times a Horse/Foot archer. It seems also to have as HP(and armor) that gives the unit twice the staying power of the other units. It is easy to say that the Elephant archer counts for 2 Horse/Foot archers. Hence it seems fair to make it cost 2 pop. On the other hand, it seems to be fairly equivalent to a slow chariot without any metal cost.

Using principle 2, I would suggest that we would have the elephant archer to have DPS comparable to 2 foot/horse archers, as DPS seems to be the most important trait for ranched units. If you would make an archer that gives you significantly less DPS for more costs, it would become unpopular (I think the suggestion to reduce the attack to 7.0 will turn it completely obsolete). Their slow speed also means de facto reduction in DPS, since it needs more time to walk.

I think if we use principle 1, we see that an Elepant archers tankiness is comparable to that of a spear cavalry(with +10% hp) and the elephant is less tanky than a Chariot. Since its pop would be double, I think it is fair to get give the elephants higher HP to still get a good staying power(=combo of HP and armor). When we compare the Elephant to the Chariot, I think that the Elephants should be more expensive(in total res cost) and tankier than the chariot, but I should be slow and thus unwieldy. However Since the Elephant archer is not a champion unit, it should also be cheaper expensive than the champion elephants(African Elephant: 270F,180M). Elephants have a way thicker hide then men or horses, so I think it fair to give them more armor than the horse archer and keeping it at Armor(20C,4H,3P) seems fine to me. So I would suggest

pop 1->2, cost 60% more(175F,75W)->(280F,120W), HP 75% more 200->350.

This is a net nerf, as for ranged units, DPS is super important. With the Elephant archers being more expensive, there will be less of them and the DPS of the group drops. If we compare the elephantarchers to cavalry achers, we see that the Elephant archer has more cost than 2 cavalry archers and similar DPS. The difference is that the Horse Archers are more mobile, but as a tradeoff the elephant archer has more staying power. On the hand in late game situations the total HP of a group of 40 A24 Elephant Archers has more HP than a group of 20 Elephants Archers of this suggestion (And increased HP is the best part of the suggested version).

Mainly this rant is about what I think Elephant Archers could be and I think reducing the damage to 7.0 is just to cruel.

[Civ Differentiation: Athens]

I would like to suggest the following bonus for Athenians: Fertility Festival is 50% cheaper. I would like to strengthen this idea with the following points:

1(Gameplay): In competitive play, I know of 2 ways to boom on land maps. A: build a barracks asap while maintaining production. B: research Fertility Festival(from now on I refer to FF) asap. From my experience, option A is the most popular. I think it would be interesting if that choice would remain the same if FF would be cheaper. Researching FF early comes at some rewards(better boom) and risks(being rushed). If you research FF early, you will lack the barracks which you can compensate for by making men from the CC. Personally I think it might turn the mediocre boom in one of the top booms, however it comes with the risk of being rushed. On the other hand, it is a bonus worth only (125F.50W,50S) so I don´t think it makes them OP. It would be nice to see if cheaper FF would lead to adjustments in strategy.

2(History): The FF of Athens was the best known in the ancient world(I know other greekish civs also had similar FF, but athens seems most famous for it). Also Athenian society grew quickly (as I understood from Borgs comments), which is what FF does. Furthermore (I don´t know if it correct), I don´t associate the Athenians with a warlike culture so getting a lot of women fast would suit this idea.

3(Contrast to Sparta): Their big rivals the spartans have also a bonus for women which I find a nice contrast. Whereas Sparta get women better suited for emergency defence, this would give a nice contrast to the Athenians who seem to have a larger total population and are viewed as more cultural.

Each bonus in 0AD seems to have a name and I would like to suggest for this one Thesmophoria.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thesmophoria

btw: I need to give credits to the devs that originally added FF to the game.

[Blacksmith rework idea]

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The problem is you don't want to devalue City Phase either. 

As long as fortresses, siege and champion elephants are still limited to city phase, there will be plenty reason to go to the city phase. Also city phase gives extra eco upgrades. And once you get to the city phase, pop efficiency start to matter and that makes eco upgrades more viable.

 

2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

1. As you mention, upgrading to Town Phase has other benefits as well. More econ techs, more unit choices, larger territory range, more buildings, etc.

If we add the eco techs (plow and stronger axe) to the cost, I would get at a total cost of (1100F, 1800W,1200M). In return the player gets an army that matches the strenght of an unupgraded army with +15% more numbers. Also you workers then collect about 15% more. We now have an investment of 4100 res(=36units) for an advantage that 15% more units can give at the same time. Math tells us that we hence do have a break even point of pop 240 before it gets worth it. If we have about 25. Hence we really need to get p2 for the other benefits.

About unit choice, I would like to say that archer civs tend to produce archers in any age. So many civs get those extra options, but player seem to ignore them and I think they have a fair point.

The territory is nice as are the stronger towers, temples and CC/militairy colonies. I would be wondering how to quantify those two advantages. I just think p2 and its upgrades do not offer enough to be worth it before pop 120

[Blacksmith rework idea]

I fully agree with ValihrAnt that phase 2 should be more valuable.

However, I do not think that just the blacksmith upgrades are the solution to this. To support this, I would like to say that if you do the first defence and offence blacksmith upgrade, your troops are probably only equivalent to an unupgraded army that is 15% larger in size. To get this advantage, you invest in an age up(500F,500W), building a blacksmith(200w), the upgrades(600F,400M+400W,400M) totalling at (1100F, 1100W,800M). What I am neglecting is that p2 also gives different options, but just for doing blacksmith upgrades p2 is not worth it.

I would like to see a different solutions to the problem like: Moving some champions to p2, moving unique techs to p2, moving unique buildings to p2(Theatron, persian, mauryan, gallic and spartan ´palaces´). What also might be an option is giving each unit a 10%( or respectively 5%) attack boost per age advancement and to compensate put the attack upgrades at 5%(respectively 10%) increase and 1/3rd(respectively 2/3rd) of the cost.

 

Response to soloooy0: I think that could help but I would suggest it would only be part of the solution. So it is an upvote for me, but I think we still need more.

[Autociv mod 0ad enhancer]

12 minutes ago, Langbart said:

Are you running the latest game version A24? Have you downloaded the latest AutoCiv mod from here "autociv_1.0.0.pyromod"? Do you have other mods enabled? 

I had indeed all the requirement, but I had another mod active that changed the fonts. Seems like that was the problem since I seem now to be able to play the game with autociv.

[Autociv mod 0ad enhancer]

I installed Autociv, but after that i joined the lobby and saw that the mod blocked me from all the games in the lobby since I was using a mod. Is this meant to be?

 

[Suggestions for 0 A.D.]

On 27/02/2021 at 9:07 AM, Dragonoar said:

Some suggestions:

1. Projectile trails

Right now projectiles are hard to see, especially when zoomed out. This is exacerbated by projectiles not having impact sounds, and the audio is out of sync so sometimes you have silent arrows or sounds that play midflight. Another easy way to fix this is by making the projectiles bigger (and I mean much bigger).

2. "I need [resource]" button for MP

Perhaps this can further be expanded into a 'Give [resource]' button prompt (100 default, 500 shift click) - so you don't have to open the diplomacy panel - and/or a chat wheel system, with "Yes", "No", "Help", "Attacking", etc. 

3. Visible production/research progress bar below the capture point

IIRC this was in AoE 2 DE and I find this feature quite nice. Also useful to tell which buildings are idle thus maximizing APM count as well. In MP I see people queueing 5 women then forgetting about it. 

4. Flags for unit destination

Unless you're queue building houses it's hard to tell where your units are going. We already have flags for garrison so I think we can use that.

I think these are good suggestions. What I would suggest similar to point 3, is the following(Maybe Dragonoar meant the same thing):

Most players put their buildings on a control group and then we get an Icon on the Left of the screen. I would be nice if that icon would contain a bar(or the green shade we see when selecting the building) which provides information on the progress of the unit creation. So you will be able to notice if a unit is in training and how long it takes to pop out. Also the amount of units that you train could be shown.

 

For the I need resources button, In MP would it be an idea that if you press a key (for example like tab), a drop-down menu appears and it shows how many resources your allies have. In that case you don´t need to ask team mates if they have excess resources, but rather can check it for yourself. On the other hand, this might have negative impact with players demanding that you send your excess resources to them.

[Cannot login on Game Lobby after trying to register]

I have been able to play on the newest version last sunday. I registered on an older version and then installed the newest version. I did not really get the hang on what competetive 0AD really is, but that might come later.

Anyway: On the linux mint repositories there are 2 0AD versions. For windows users: repositories are great and linux users prefer only to download things from repositories, because if software is good it is in the repositories. The outdated one is from the official linux mint repositories and one is directly from the play0ad site. I tried to read the description, but I could not find if there was a difference. It could be just me, however I think most new players won´t be able to tell which download is the most recent version.

[Is everybody ok with how rams work?]

I have only played a few games on 0AD, so by no means I am an autority and neither do I have anything to say how the game should work out.

However if I am correct, this game has strategies like a sneaky ram push. Like how is that supposed to be sensible?

I saw an user saying that the pierce damage is a problem and thrust damage could be included to circumvent the problem is just giving the spearmen a bonus damage. The same thing also goes for other types of siege equipment as spears have trouble killing them as well.

 

Edit: something I wanted to add: Ramms are faster than elephants. Not only they are sturdy but they are also fairly fast if I am correct. On top of that is that the ramms can move while being chased down therefore their speed makes it troublesome to kill them.

[Cannot login on Game Lobby after trying to register]

I have been able to register now. I wasn´t able to play a game, since it seems that my version (apha XXII: venustas ) is an outdated version.

[Cannot login on Game Lobby after trying to register]

Similar as posted earlier, I get an error. I installed 0AD from the linux mint repositories and tried to register in game. There were two different versions of the game in the linux mint repositories, so I don´t know if that makes a difference. Registry seemed to work and I saw in the screen that registry was successful, but when I tried to connect, it said autentication failed. Username: LetswaveaBook

 

edit: I have installed apha XXII: venustas