[Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod]

@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.

[Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod]

@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.

[Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod]

@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.

[Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod]

@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.

[Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod]

@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?

[Let's Fight - Gameplay Balance Mod]

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 - Gameplay Balance Mod]

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

Spoiler

v0.2.2

• Reduced health of all buildings [Thanks @Edwarf]
• Fixed mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians [Thanks @Edwarf]
• Removed the limit for Carthaginian and Kushite embassies [Thanks @0AD Dev Team]
• Moved Iberian monument to town phase [Thanks @0AD Dev Team]
• Have Iberian monument count towards city phase requirement
• Lowered the limit on fortresses and towers

v0.2.1

• Automatically set mercenaries to rank 2 and halve training time [Thanks @Nescio]
• Mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians [Thanks @borg-]
• Fixed health bonus to military units with each phase up [Thanks @Valihrant]

v0.2

• Increase cavalry move speed [Thanks @Valihrant]
• Increase turn rates for infantry and cavalry [Thanks @Valihrant]
• Added a minimum distance between forts and civic centres [Thanks @faction02]

 

All Changes

Spoiler

Heroes

• Gave auras to Chandragupta Maurya and Agis III (encourage use of Chandragupta and Agis who have significantly less utility than all other elephant and infantry heroes, respectively, due to having no aura)
• Buffs to auras of Pericles, Arakamani, and Alexander III (slight buff to these hero auras to encourage their use as well as strategies based on these aura bonuses)

Units

• Cavalry and Infantry javelineers accuracy increased (spread reduced since they became much less effective in fights compared to all other ranged units)
• Infantry javelineer walk speed increased (to allow skirmishers to chase slingers and archers and prevent formation laming)
• Infantry slinger walk speed increased (to chase archers, but still be slower than javelineers and prevent formation laming)
• Cavalry and Infantry archers attack rate reduced and damage increased (to have players make a choice between the pros and cons of different ranged options rather than an obvious winner with high range, damage, and attack rate as higher attack rates provide a demonstrable advantage in practice even with equal theoretical damage-per-second)
• Melee cavalry health increased (to make melee cavalry more effective in fighting and rushing as they currently are underutilized and tend to lose to massed range)
• Reduced training time of cavalry, infantry, and women (to allow players to make the choice of either rushing or a larger boom)
• Increase cavalry move speed (to enable raiding as it is currently disadvantageous to attempt in all stages of the game compared to booming)
• Increase turn rates for infantry and cavalry (allow better engagements for aggressors while still keeping in the intent of preventing dancing)
• Automatically set mercenaries to rank 2 and halve training time (since mercenaries have prohibitive cost compared to the value they provide as they do not have enhanced stats without this upgrade or the ability to gather resources)
• Fixed health bonus to military units with each phase up (tradeoff of having more pop or phasing up for a hp bonus during a fight or push to allow for more variety of timing strategies)
• Increase damage of melee infantry and cavalry (to make melee more effective in battles and encourage their use in army compositions)
• Decrease armor of pikeman (couple with increased damage to allow them to be more than sponges for damage in terms of role)

Siege

• Allow rams to hit fields and units (to allow for fast clearing of space and to prevent laming by body blocking)
• Reduce wood cost of catapults (to compensate for the inability to effectively fight units as area-of-effect damage was removed)
• Increase crush damage of catapults (to compensate for the inability to effectively fight units as area-of-effect damage was removed and have them be more effective against buildings)

Buildings

• Increase the resource cost and build time of palisades, stone walls, and Roman siege walls (to prevent abuse of walling which also throttles the game due to the increased pathfinding workload)
• Reduced arrow damage of civic center, sentry tower, defense tower, and fort (to prevent defensive structure abuse and have players make the choice between a larger army with higher damage but lower durability or defensive structures with lower damage and higher durability rather than getting the best of both worlds at minimal cost and decision-making)
• Reduced health of sentry tower, defense tower, and fort (to prevent defensive structure abuse and allow unit pushes to be more effective in the late game rather than having territory creep and turtling be the obvious choice of strategy in all situations)
• Theater buffed to have more territory weight and influence (since it did not provide a significant advantage for its cost)
• Roman army camp can produce siege engines and cost 100 more wood and 300 more metal (to allow for greater variety of strategies at a greater cost)
• Increase outpost vision when not garrisoned, but give greater vision when garrisoned (to make outposts useful while still rewarding garrisoned units)
• Allow Macedonians to produce arsenals at the town phase (to allow greater strategic variety and compensate for the loss of the uniqueness of the siege workshop from A23)
• Added a minimum distance between fortresses, civic centres, and military colonies (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)
• Removed the limit for Carthaginian and Kushite embassies (since the limit on the number of embassies greatly restricted the variety of strategies players could employ with Carthaginian and Kushite mercenaries)
• Moved Iberian monument to town phase (to provide more opportunities to use this building as part a combat asset earlier in the game)
• Reduced health of all buildings (since even civic buildings such as houses and economic buildings such as storehouses took upwards of seven hits by rams to destroy)
• Limit of 1 fortress and 10 towers for each civic centre (to encourage more strategic placing of forts as opposed to spamming and to prevent mass fort and tower abuse as well as introduce a need to obtain more territory to enable the construction of more castles and towers)
• Group armor of buildings based on economic, civic and military, and defensive classes (to have durability reflect costs for the same building classes)

Technology

• Reduced city phase requirement from 4 to 3 (to encourage boom/earlier aggression and de-incentivize tower abuse while also encouraging usage of other special town phase buildings unique to certain civilizations)
• Defensive towers do not count in city phase requirement (to discourage turtling and de-incentivize tower abuse while also encouraging usage of other special town phase buildings unique to certain civilizations)
• Sentry towers do not count in town phase requirement (to discourage turtling and de-incentivize tower abuse)
• Reduced metal cost of all farmstead and storehouse technologies by half and increased wood cost to compensate (since metal is scarce on popular maps and is required for many strategies)
• Reduced metal cost of all forge upgrades by half and increased wood cost to compensate (since metal is scarce on popular maps and is required for many strategies)
• Remove food cost for non-champion mercenaries (since mercenaries' high metal cost coupled with their inability to gather resources necessitates an advantage to compensate; also, since the intent was to have them be more realistic by costing gold or metal, then food should not be one of their costs)
• Add cartography to market while keeping the option in civic centres (to still allow players the choice of taking cartography in the village phase, but also have the choice to take it in the town phase without sacrificing unit production)
• Bring back carrier pigeons and stone foundations for outposts (to give the choice between achieving greater utility at the cost of a garrisoned unit or at the cost of time and resources through technologies)
• Arsenals produced by the Macedonians count towards city phase requirement (to allow greater strategic variety and compensate for the loss of the uniqueness of the siege workshop from A23)
• Mercenary upgrade to rank 3 technology for Carthaginians (to give a differentiating trait to Carthage and an incentive to try a mercenary army strategy as Carthage has the greatest mercenary diversity)
• Have Iberian monument count towards city phase requirement (to provide more opportunities to use this building as part a combat asset earlier in the game)
• New stable technology for Britons to increase vision range of war dogs (to enable them to become scouting units in the late game, rewarding a small resource investment and attention to micromanagement with increased information)

Miscellaneous

• Buff to team bonus of Britons (a slight buff to their team bonus to compensate for the fact that a significant number of healers generally appear in longer games where players have stronger economies but Briton playstyle tends towards early rushes and fast pushes)

 

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