letsplay0ad

@borg- You're right, removing the citizen-soldier capability of units would make balancing much easier (as you remove the economy part of the equation), but what I really like about 0 A.D. is the citizen-soldier concept. I've never seen it in any of the RTS games I've played before. I think the hard counter system you had in your expansion mod was pretty great for balance, but I also find the soft counter system really fun. It's a tough decision-making process. @maroder Good idea! I'll try tweaking the damage values for siege engines. The catapult would definitely benefit. @Nescio Thanks for the tip! I'll try it out.

@Nescio Thanks for catching that! @maroder The base game has minimum distances between towers and civic centres to prevent abuse. The minimum fortress distance is in the same vein with the same logic. However, I do agree that a sort of "attrition" mechanic would be interesting, but I think it would be better suited for another mod since it's an entirely new mechanic. @alre I'm with you now. That idea sounds pretty awesome for civilizations that have multiple choices of ranged units to allow them to choose between a "boom" or "defensive/preparing for war" strategy. The only concern I have with the "intermediate" type being applied to skirmishers is for civilizations like the Spartans that don't have an alternative ranged infantry unit. If I could figure how to reconcile that, I'd definitely try your idea. @Radiotraining and @hyperion I agree that hard limits are undesirable. My original intention was to have the number of fortresses you could build be equal to the number of civic centres you had (ie: a castle for every city/village/town), but I couldn't get it to work. @borg- I prefer the soft counter system, but if there's no alternative, then your suggestion is probably the way to go. The value changes proposed are also interesting. I'll look at those. @Player of 0AD It's a soft counter system, so the system encourages you to do so and rewards you if you do follow it, but exceptions can be made if you have superior population, tactics, micromanagement, resources, technologies, etc. Also the goal is to reward diversity the most to allow for a variety of strategies and approaches over the "one-trick pony" tactics. @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded That's a good idea. It would also encourage use of melee and cavalry units. I will look into that. @faction02 Indeed. Some of the changes here are made with the intention to prevent that sort of abuse. The next step is testing and refining. Then making more changes as necessary, and repeat.

@Edwarf you tested the mod! Nice! Thanks for finding that bug with the Carthage mercenary upgrade. I fixed it with v0.2.2. I also agree that four houses should not have more health than a fort. That's ridiculous. So, I have lowered the health of all structures according to be in line with their costs. Generally a higher cost means more construction material was used and the stats should reflect that. The health stat of structures was also way too high as even civic buildings such as houses and economic buildings such as storehouses took upwards of seven hits by rams to destroy. With a fully garrisoned tower or fort or civic centre nearby, you could lose your entire army after only knocking down a single wall or a couple houses. @Dakara don't worry my friend. The minimum distance between a fortress and a civic centre is less than the minimum distance between civic centres. I played a pizza game (tiny map, 8 players) and was able to place a fort (it was uncomfortable and hard to do, but that's the theme for all buildings with pizza games). @faction02 yes, I had the same intent. Fortresses still cover each other the way that towers do in that if your enemy stands between them, they will be shot at by 2 fortresses or 1 fortress and 1 civic centre. There is just some distance between them to have players make the choice of increasing territory via a civic centre or securing territory via a fort instead of allowing both at low risk.

@borg- I understand. I can see how it might snowball with Ptolemies and Kushites. And I guess Seleucids wouldn't benefit as much anyway. Cool. Sounds pretty interesting and fun to try.

@alre I like the idea of skirmishers being a cheap economic unit you later discard for battles, but civs with primarily skirmishers (eg: Rome and Sparta), how will they fight? My intent was to have the ranged roughly equalized so that a mixed army would be the best choice in a pitched battle, but still have differences so that rushes could occur with faster units. Something like ranged > melee > cavalry > ranged etc. For armies it would be all cav > all ranged > all melee >> all cav etc. And then a mixed army (melee + ranged + cav) > all of one type of unit. What would your counter circle be? @ValihrAnt I like the idea of fixed hp bonus. The tradeoff of having more pop or phasing up for a hp bonus during a fight or push is a choice that I think will allow for more interesting strategies. I'll look into it. @Nescio I really like the idea of a mercenary upgrade technology, but I also agree mercs as they are now are not great. What if I got the best of both worlds? Maybe have them start at rank 2, but keep the tech that will let them become rank 3 at the cost of taking more time to make due to "training". What do you think?

Thanks for the feedback everyone! Now, to address comments and questions with my line of thought and reasoning: @BreakfastBurrito_007 Thanks! That would be awesome. @ValihrAnt the rotation times indeed slow down economy, but since they were implemented to prevent dancing (something that had many complaints), I'm not sure how to best compensate for this. I think it's a great idea to try lowering rotation times though and testing it out. Higher cavalry move speed was not something that I considered though so I'll definitely try it out. Thanks! I also liked the hp bonus per phase up, but it admittedly came with the issue of buffing cavalry too much. Since cavalry had a higher base hp, the bonus affected them more than infantry, which resulted in some abusive cavalry strategies. I'm not too sure how to deal with this. Perhaps further reducing tower damage? Btw, awesome YouTube videos! I watched you to learn how to get better. @faction02 the minimum distance between forts and ccs is a great idea. Something for me to try out. Thanks for the suggestion! @Nescio indeed there are a lot of fun and interesting patches already committed into A25. Thanks for that! There are a lot that I like and may put into this mod. My intent with this was to have gameplay changes in an easy-to-use and download mod in A24 so that players could play test change more easily since generally most players I know don't know how to deal with version control to test the latest build of 0ad. The primary goal of this mod is actually for my personal use since I feel that there are too few viable strategies in high-rated multiplayer team games. Thanks for your hard work! @Lopess and @alre there is a conflict between realism and gameplay. On one hand these values are sometimes unrealistic (why would an archer who only carries arrows be slower than a javelineer who carries a bunch of heavier spears? the answer is, they probably wouldn't) but on the other hand you may need to tweak values to allow for balanced gameplay (for example, it is possible for archers to kite skirmishers using formations since they have the same move speed, resulting in the skirmisher army taking significant losses before even getting in range to attack. I've seen high rated players do this and basically win battles with minimal losses despite the archer army having 1 or 2 less military technologies researched). @Lopess Regarding rams hitting fields and organics, the field issue was just so that they could be removed quickly since they block structures (eg: a cc) from being placed. A common strategy is to place a cc on top of an enemy's destroyed cc to take territory. Sometimes fields get in the way though (since generally players put fields around ccs) so rams were just a quick way to make space for that. The reason for being able to hit units/organics is because I noticed even in lower-rated games there is the tactic of body-blocking (body-blocking is the technique of using the collision size of your own units to prevent the movement of enemy units) rams using units, which results in the ram getting stuck and not being able to do anything. What did people find OP about rams? It might be possible to have them do less damage against organic units like how spears do more damage to cavalry, but I'm hesitant to do that since there's not much of a hard counter system in 0ad other than the spear vs cav matchup. Thanks for the feedback! @alre Regarding unit speed unification, it makes sense in real life but results in the abusable mechanic I mentioned before. Reduced unit costs is an interesting idea, but it has a significant secondary effect on economy. The boom of skirmisher civilizations would be significantly higher than that of others, leading to a rippling/snowball effect in terms of economic and military technologies as well as siege capabilities. A common strategy in A23 was to have an Iberian ally and take a skirmisher civilization for this reason, as it resulted in a much faster boom, leading to earlier research of technologies due to free resources, earlier phasing up, earlier construction of siege engines, etc. The swapping of melee to ranged and back was implemented in the Terra Magna mod I believe. It was really cool. I'm not sure how the balance would work though. Do you want them to become spearmen? Not sure how to do limited number of projectiles though. Thanks for the feedback! @hyperion Thanks! That's the dilemma - realism vs gameplay. Since this is a gameplay balance mod I will err towards gameplay.

Let's Fight 0 A.D. is an open-source RTS game (https://play0ad.com/) Let's Fight is a 0 A.D. gameplay balance mod for Alpha 24 (Xšayāršā) Motivation Currently the meta of Alpha 24 is skewed towards turtling via walls, towers, and forts. This problem is exacerbated by the advantage that archers, units that already have high range, have over other ranged units. This mod aims to provide gameplay that is more rewarding for aggressive players and roughly equalize the strength of civilizations to allow for a greater variety of strategies. In particular, there is an emphasis on encouraging players to utilize different strategies depending on the civilization and situation of the game. Several balance changes in this mod were based on discussions in the "Gameplay Discussion" and "Balancing Discussions" sub-forums. Installation Drag and drop the pyromod file over the 0ad start icon or open the pyromod file with pyrogenesis.exe The mod will be downloaded and you will be taken to the "Mod Selection" page (if not, then click "Settings" -> "Mod Selection") Click on the "letsfight" mod in the "Available Mods" and click "Enable" in the bottom left Click "Save Configuration" in the bottom right Click "Start Mods" in the bottom right If you have an older version, go to your local mods folder (https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/GameDataPaths) and delete all other versions of the mod before downloading a different version If you're still having trouble, see https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/Modding_Guide#Howtoinstallmods Updates Thanks to the 0ad community for their feedback. Some people have had questions about the changes or wondered about the justifications. The reasoning behind each change is placed in brackets behind each bullet point. v0.2.3 Gave auras to Chandragupta Maurya and Agis III Buffs to auras of Pericles, Arakamani, and Alexander III Increase damage of melee infantry and cavalry [Thanks @borg] Decrease armor of pikeman [Thanks @borg] Increase crush damage of catapults [Thanks @maroder] Fixed fortress, civic centre, and military colony minimum distance [Thanks @Nescio] Limit of 1 fortress and 10 towers for each civic centre [Thanks @Nescio] Group armor of buildings based on economic, civic and military, and defensive classes [Thanks @Nescio] New stable technology for Britons to increase vision range of war dogs Buff to team bonus of Britons All Changes Thoughts, Comments, Suggestions? Discuss! I've tested this mod against the AI, but the best results are from real players. Try some games with other players and then let me know what changes you liked and disliked. Feel free to make other suggestions that you would like to see in this mod after testing it out. letsfight_v0.2.2.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.1.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.pyromod letsfight_v0.1.pyromod letsfight_v0.2.3.pyromod