[How about lowering rating of people who dont play anymore/dont play rated anymore?]

Hello,

how about a second monthly elo list.

0ad is not like professional sports where enough people are constantly competing. I play for fun and have no interest in being rated/observed by others. (Therefore I refuse an elo decay, which would be a forced participation in the elo observation system).
I need the elo value as a certificate to not be constantly asked about my ability (which is used very differently depending on the game). To balance games I rely on my experience with the players. The all-time elo value is more a rough statement about the minimum skill (an average with large standard deviation) of the players for me.
Those who want to have their skills recorded in a list can hold their monthly list / monthly tournaments.

 

[[Brainstorming] The Problem with Archers and in general the range units]

Hi,

give Skirmisher infantry and cavalry +5m range for rank 2 and +10m (from base value) range for rank 3.

[Improving specific rushes.]

Hi,

thank you for the opportunity to take part in the discussion on this topic.

I think more battles between the players before P3 leads to more varied gameplay. Very simplified, I win in 0ad if I have siege weapons to tear down the opponent's CC. I obtain siege weapons through:

• Booming: have as many units and technologies as possible, as fast as possible

• Turtling: have as many units and technologies as possible as safely as possible;
(the many citizen soldiers and especially in a24 the archers as well as the tower spam transform Booming from phase 2 to turtling for cavalry raids (tower spam = turtling against citizen soldier rush))

• Rushing: I slow down my development to slow down my opponent by

• slow down by idle time and picking up single units
  (cavalry raid = over reaction, pop cap, mis macro, deny resources for a short time)

• stop as long as possible by denying resources
  (cavalry raid, towers, citizen soldier + outpost (a23))

• reverse development by blocking resource gathering, blocking space, taking over and/or wrecking buildings so that the opponent surrenders
  (All in (if all goes well) and raiding with slingers, archers, cavalry, dogs, champs, ele).

 

Personally, I don't like All Ins in the first 4 minutes of a game and the CC is the counterbalance to those strategies. When I first played 0ad, Turtling was my strategy to get to know the game. Now it's Booming to be able to use siege weapons as quickly as possible. Rushing doesn't seem as worthwhile to me because it's too hectic and outside of 1v1 my opponent is mostly "just" slowed down. If I have enough hunt available a raid with cavalry is OK.

 

I like the straight forward approach of 0ad. The tree like growth with the citizen soldier as trunk. You get what you invest. When I played Age of empires for the first time in my childhood it seemed odd to me that some people just stand around or fight. The citizen soldier being able to collect resources in a time with less specialized roles makes more sense to me.

 

I think I read suggestions from Borg to create a technology for melee units tradition and for Britten or Gaul to allow forge technologies earlier in the barracks. As well as suggested by Nescio (https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/37312-balancing-defensive-structures-test-mod/) allow more variance in stats of defensive strutures. Technologies (greater variance in stats) that differentiate Rushing or Turtling more could help.For example, a technology that lets twice as many women quarter in houses, gives legionnaires in turtle formation pikmen armor and the speed of Rams, gives the CC 70 or 75m radius for little resources and lots of technology research time. Further, I don't understand the reduced collection rates for rank 2/3 citizen soldier. If I keep attacking and winning in TG pizza my collection rate will be lower, no incentive here. On the other hand, as soon as more space is available, it makes more sense to use cavalry to slow down the opponent most of the time and defeat him in P3 with siege weapons. Bonuses, mechanisms and abilities that have historical origins would be good.

 

I think "scouts", archers... raids are possible and take place in P1 to slow down the opponent. In P2 the citizen soldiers are so numerous that a turtling effect occurs. More differentiation of Rushing and Turling (start lower with the values) strategies could help here. Stopping the opponent or resetting his development are only possible in smaller spaces or take time or game sense with good execution.

[Restrict the Mauryan worker elephant to within its own territory?]

Hi,

I like the working elephant as it is now. In general, I like ele and enjoy everyone on my team.

More rationally I agree that Maurya civ is OP more often because of the archers, the higher pop cap and the siege weapons that are too easy to obtain. In A23 Maurya was not rated as to strong.

Pros working elephants:

•          Saving 100 wood at the start of the game

•          Unique Maurya tactic: start all in Cav / Harassment in Biome with a lot of hunt !!!

•          Maurya is the most wood-heavy boom civilization (no slingers, no mercenaries, no military colony, 300 wood for barracks) and working elephants as a counterbalance, I think it's good

Contrary working elephants:

•          Economy bonus is ok (travel time is often forgotten)

•          Units spread over a larger area means higher risk = individual groups can easily be attacked

General:

•          Different maps favor different civilizations and the Civ selection is part of the game (otherwise just mirror matchup)

•          Playing Sim City is not so much about winning or losing. So the working elephant topic is more important in competitive games. Newer competitive players have greater advantages from good macro / map position.

•          In the early / middle / late game, longer journeys mean economic losses and higher risk (scouting of the opponent is required)

•          If someone is able to farm resources in my territory, they deserve them.

[Bring back a23]

Hi,

thanks to everyone involved in developing 0ad. I really like the game.

I think the current unit vs unit balance and various types of units are good. I think new to a24 is the hard counter of archers vs. infantry spearmen/ slinger. In a23 the direction of the counter was reversed as long as there were not a large number of archers (affected 2-3 civilizations).

At the moment I see the counterattack units as follows:
Bow: hard counterattack against infantry spearmen / slinger
Spear: counters bow
Melee cavalry: very hard counterattack archers
Infantry spearmen: counters spear
Slinger: counters spear and building

In short, the two main, ranged economic units are countered harshly by archers. The rock, scissors, paper system is much more important in a24 than in a23. I like strong units and find the balance good.

When I counter archer civilizations with melee spear or melee cavalry, the archers are withdrawn under towers, castles, CC or temples. From phase 2 there are often 1-4 towers. There should not be fought or not longer than 1 minute. Longer battles in the economy of the archers civilizations are often not useful / too expensive from phase 2 on, especially if there are too many towers. I mainly play team games and I refer to that in particular.

In my humble opinion, the gameplay is currently broken due to the decisions to be made. As an archer civilization I let the economy grow and only need to pay attention to building towers and later anti ram. In P3 I can easily force any fight using 1-2 rams so that javelin and slinger civilizations lose either buildings or units.

As Infantry spearmen civilization, I might win if I decide to largely forego my main long-range economic unit and use close combat spearmen, use close combat cavalry, use siege weapons early on, use champions.
In short, I have to do a lot more and make a lot more decisions to get the same result. While archer civilizations can play standard and do not have to pay attention to a hard Unit counter.

At the moment I don't have constant use for javelin units (main ranged economic unit) and would find a buff e.g. bringing back the higher walking speed, higher HP or other changes good. Furthermore, I would find opportunities to hit the economy of archery civilizations good. If melee spear units can capture towers more easily, that would reduce tower spam. Everything that reduces entrenchment in the area and makes the economy more attackable, I think it's good. Weakening archers a bit would be ok too.

[A24 feedback.]

1 hour ago, Samulis said:

Sound attenuates with distance like real life. The further you zoom out, the quieter things become.

Pre-A24 this was not done; 0 A.D. behaved like a 2D game, with all sounds of equal loudness no matter where they were on the screen. This was a basic flaw with 0 A.D. which meant that at far zoom, people mining on the other side of the map would be audible at 100% volume. Not only was this acoustically completely wrong, it caused sound to be extremely cluttered, with a sheer overload of equally loud sounds. You hear mining, but is it the miners right in front of you, or the miners on the other side of the map? Is it the tower in front of you shooting arrows or the enemy TC 1000m away?

Now sounds at the top of the screen which are more distant will sound more distant and quieter, which creates a clean and enjoyable separation. The distance attenuation we are using is a fraction of real life, so sounds are audible much further away than they would be in real life, but it is still audible at normal zooms.

[[Edit- A quick aside: we could redo the sound attenuation so it attenuates sounds farther from the camera more than closer by the same amount regardless of camera height, meaning the overall sound level would be the same regardless of zoom, but this isn't something we've discussed or explored yet, so I have no idea how good or bad this would be; just a thought.]]

Now, I should note we are still working to balance the sounds a bit. There was a major audio bug where certain sounds where playing several duplicate times, which causes them to become greatly amplified (and massively wasted sound channels). This has been fixed, but as a result the balance of audio from before was completely broken. I spent a few hours tweaking sounds to be closer to a good balance, but it will need more work, and that is what a25 and the SoundsMod project is for. My goal with a24 was just to fix the most outdated or flawed sounds and then try to get the balance of sounds at least reasonable, even if not perfect, and I accept that there are sounds that are not quite balanced right yet.

One other result is that battles will have a much larger dynamic range. Before the sounds would run out of channels so they would self-limit with more than ~50-60 combatants. Now each unit on each attack should only use one sound so larger battles should be even louder.

Here are the old battle sounds, with the same fixed audio engine (i.e. what 0 A.D. would sound like if we kept the sounds the same):

Now here are the new battle sounds:

Not only are the new sounds to me audibly louder overall, they are also much clearer and less muffled without being irritating.

If you want a battle to be immersive, zoom in a bit! Battles cannot be immersive at 500 m... that would be silly. You would not expect a concert to be immersive if you sit in the very back row... you would not expect a TV to be immersive if you're sitting two rooms away. When you play a city builder, you would not expect to hear people chatting on the streets when you zoom out 100's of meters, so I don't get why you expect a battle to be immersive if you zoom out a bunch here...

The bow sounds are the same volume as other games, compared to their combat sounds. I compared the sounds to original AoE I-III, the AoE DE's, and a number of my favorite, more obscure historical RTS (Celtic Kings TPW, Empire Earth, Cossacks, etc.) and found that the bow sounds are appropriately less loud than melee weapon sounds. Many games have even quieter bows (like AoE III as Stan said, as well as AoM, which accurately depicts bow impacts as louder than bow shots), while others are about on par with these.

In real life, bows are almost silent. They are designed that way intentionally and have been since their invention, because it is a hunting tool first and weapon second. We already are massively exaggerating the sound of bows to make it appeal to the Hollywood idea that bows make some massive whoosh when you fire them, and of course to make it easy to hear them when enemies are attacking which is an essential gameplay mechanic of the sound.

I hope this answers some of the questions you have had about the sounds. They are still a work in progress, but the whole point is to improve them. Feedback is definitely welcome but we also have to make sure we are designing the sound without holding onto existing conceptions. It is easy to become stuck in Confirmation Bias, where the more familiar seems better, even when objectively it may not be.

 

That answers a lot, thanks for the insight Samulis. I agree the sounds are more diverse and differentiated now. I think that's particularly good for late game and cattle breeding (which was very irritating).

The javelin, bow and stone thrower sound more realistic now. In the game itself, I would find the faster and clearer perception of ranged fighters important. Why? Because I don't notice that a fight is taking place in town and need my attention. I lose more units and that's frustrating. Here the gameplay aspect would be more important to me. Especially for area damage.

Furthermore, the sound is new. That takes time to get used to. Simply as current feedback, the atmosphere now feels less direct, less dense. For me, the sound and the atmosphere are very important to be able to experience.

At the moment the game feels indirect and distant instead of being in the middle and experiencing it. At the moment I can see the long-range fighting noises on the one hand, and the sound of the logging that was previously denser on the other.

And first of all, thank you for your work.

[A24 feedback.]

1 hour ago, Stan` said:

The sound attenuation is made for the current max zoom of 200 which might be overriden by mods. It was tested by @Samulis a sound artist, which assured me it was fine, so it would be interesting to know in which situation it's different. Note also that most of the sounds were changed to remove the 1998' AOE feeling of them, reducing clipping and trying to harmonize them.

The bow sounds are lower than normal to match those of other games like AOE3

 

I have now set the action sound to 2.00 and no mods. This helps, ty.

 

I noticed that I hardly notice javelin throwers, bows and stone throwers. When a near by a mine is being mined (loudest) or wood is being felled, the sounds of the fight are secondary. Close combat with spear and sword is still ok, could be clearer.

It seems that the clipping helped me to bring the situation (quickly) into consciousness (especially important for towers, CC fort and ship (area damage).

Furthermore, the game feels quieter. I think the new sound for the logging is mainly responsible for this (less dense, less atmosphere of work, creating something). If chickens are attacked now, they simply fall over without the clipping, which currently still takes getting used to.

[A24 feedback.]

14 minutes ago, Stan` said:

Do you use a custom zoom?

 

Not that I am aware. The unit volume / action volume is currently set to 1.2

[A24 feedback.]

Hi,

many thanks to everyone involved in the development of 0ad. I enjoy the game very much. If feedback is desired, here is my opinion on the current status (a24 vs a23).

 

Things i like

• Unit balance (especially bow and ranged Siege weapons)
• Champions are viable now
• Quality of life features (especially Building snapping, Hotkey editor)
• Anti dance, new Cheering

 

Things i don’t like

• Action sound (fells like quiet war, spooky and unreal, difficult to notice and thus to orientate)
• less unique gameplay mechanics (Civisation Boni)
• Accessing different types of siege weapons is too easy and less unique
• game fells slower, less dynamic (possibly through unit speed and training time)
• Harder to cavalry rush (cav is too close to target unit for hit and run with new anti dance)
• Outpost (no outposts vision tec, unit in outpost need more armor)
• Training several units from several selected buildings (same or different building types) does not always work: When multiple buildings are selected, units are trained in one building, in the buildings in which no training is currently taking place, or in all buildings. Often only one building is used for training, although other selected buildings are empt.