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real_tabasco_sauce

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Posts posted by real_tabasco_sauce

  1. Naval Overhaul (Alpha 27)

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    10 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    Sure, the BuildingAI arrows can be removed. Not wedded to that, only to say it would be nice for the melee ships to have some kind of ranged defense, even if minimal, but maybe that dilutes the concept a bit.

    I'd say you put it right, it dilutes the concept. I think the player should instead use some ranged boats for sheltering melee boats from pursuing vessels. The system we are devising here should work well with a combination of ships.

    • Like 1

  2. Naval Overhaul (Alpha 27)

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted · Edited by real_tabasco_sauce

    I like what we have going here:

    2 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    Scout Ship

    • Role: Scouting, Gathering Treasures
    • Attack: None
    • Garrison: 5
    • Garrison Effect: +5% capture resistance per 5 units.
    • Has no attack and is basically an arrow-less Light Warship (can even use the same base model, minus oars, just a sail or vice versa)
    • Can only train 1 at a time, but is super cheap (perhaps free?) so can be rebuilt very easily. Can be used to land a small scouting party, maybe good for scenarios too.

    Arrow Ship/Light Warship

    • Role: Arrow Shooter; harrasser
    • Attack: Arrows x3 (unit AI), Arrows x1 (building AI)
    • Garrison: 10
    • Garrison Effect: 1 extra (unit AI) Arrow per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
    • This is your bireme, your liburna, your hemiolia, your pentekonter, your pirate ship. 
    • Very good against Merchant Ships (perhaps with an attack bonus) and Melee ships (Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships) due to having no minimum range. Countered decisively by Artillery Ships. 

    Ramming Ship

    • Role: One-Hit kill ramming attack.
    • Attack: Melee Ram, Arrows x1 (building AI)
    • Garrison: 20
    • Garrison Effect: +5% speed per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
    • This is your famous Trireme. Athenians get a special technology for these ships. Its primary role is to sink enemy ships with a melee attack, which has has to recharge. They are tough ships, but are vulnerable to Arrow Ships during the approach due to their paltry 1 arrow defensive ranged attack, and Boarding Ships if their ram attack did not sink the boarding ship in one strike. Due to recharging nature of their melee attack, these ships require the most APM/micromanagement and are often naturally suicidal if not microed effectively.
    • Very Good against Artillery Ships and other Ramming Ships.

    Boarding Ship

    • Role: Capturing enemy ships and docks
    • Attack: Freezing Melee attack with a Boarding Ramp for Roman civs (a bonus) or grappling hooks for other civs; Arrows x1 (building AI)
    • Garrison: 20
    • Garrison Effect: +5% capture attack per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
    • This represents the boarding actions common in naval battles. Romans have the Corvus technology which boosts their Boarding Ships. These will look similar to the Ramming Ship, but with a ramp for the Roman version and some other identifier for the other civs.
    • Can counter Ramming Ships if they are not destroyed in the enemy's first strike and are good against Artillery Ships if used en masse. Can capture enemy Docks as well. Vulnerable to attack from other ships while it's attempting to capture the target ship.

    Artillery Ship

    • Role: Long Range siege attacks
    • Attack: Artillery Bolt x2; Catapult Rock (Upgrade); Unit AI
    • Garrison: 30
    • Garrison Effect: +5% firing rate per 5 units; +5% capture resistance per 5 units
    • Your Quinqueremes and other Polyremes. They come with a siege weapon on the foredeck.
    • These are used for long range bombardment of massed enemy naval formations or shore structures such as docks, towers, and other buildings. Due to their slow firing rate, they are very vulnerable to faster ships such as Ramming Ships and Boarding Ships. They absolutely massacre Arrow Ships.

    I'd say a couple things:

    first, I think there should't be a building AI arrow count. If a ship has an attack that is player controlled, I don't see the point of adding a buildingAI arrow count. It would be best to keep that part simple.

    also, I am not sure of the garrison effects. I would prefer that the ships are fully functional "out of the box" and that garrisoning should be a transport concern, but I am open minded to trying these effects out.

    I think these classes you bring up could fit into parent classes based on ship size (light,medium,heavy) with the following characteristics:

    • light: less health, more speed, acceleration
    • medium: medium health, speed, acceleration
    • heavy: more health, less speed, less acceleration

    scout and light warships could belong to light; ramming ships, boarding ships, and medium warships belong to medium; and siege ships belong to heavy. Each ship would have its own abilities while still belonging to a parent class.

    This way, I could go ahead and make the core light, medium, and heavy classes playable in the community mod for brainstorming while art and gameplay mechanic developments allow for the specialized ships to be introduced.

    • Like 1

  5. Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    8 minutes ago, hyperion said:

    Sorry to say, but this should have been split into five patches. A patch that reads as squash unrelated changes is plain awful.

    Well, yeah I agree on principle, but they are technically related as they are all in the community mod and were highly supported.

    IMO better to increase melee damage than decrease ranged damage. But I guess they have similar outcomes. 

  9. Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    On 29/12/2022 at 3:34 PM, Gurken Khan said:

    Just wanted to throw in here that my spearmen are the first to die. Or the only, actually. So if their survivability is further reduced, I probably won't even take them along (again).

    Well consider this: since ranged units account for between 70 to 95 percent of the damage from a given army, and they target the closest unit by default, then without any sniping, melee units will always die first even if they have 100 pierce armor.

    If melee units dealt more damage, their survival would now depend on both the enemy melee units as well as ranged units.

    Should a player invest in some stronger melee units and get melee upgrades, their more rapid success against the weaker enemy melee units will force the exposed ranged units to retreat.

    So basically the rationale is this: give melee units a much improved share of impact in terms of determining the outcome of a fight, and balance them accordingly by reducing the armor a little.

  10. Introducing the Official community mod for Alpha 26

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    52 minutes ago, borg- said:

    It would be interesting to have a rank 2 upgrade only for melee inf. They are weakeat units in game for a long time, so i think that helps balance things out.

    I think this would partially invalidate the value of infantry mercenaries.

    I would rather melee inf be more impactful in the first place (not just meatshield, but actually dealing damage). I have an idea for this and I will make a MR for it in the a27 community mod.

    • Like 2

  14. Fixing Chinese Han

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    10 hours ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

    Many players are concerned about Han being OP, here are a few remaining hot points about the civ. I know some have been brought up before but this is kind of written based on how it is playing comm mod in the lobby right now (Jan 8, 2022).

    • cs xbows: best sniping unit, easy to mass (perhaps put cs xbow in p2 in barracks, maybe change cost to 50 f 40 w 10 m)
    • crossbow training tech: combined with other production speed bonuses, its too fast (change to something else)
    • 220 pop is a lot for a civ that has such powerful citizen units  (remove this depending on severity of xbow nerfs)
    • cc upgrade is currently too strong (I suggest removing or decreasing hp boost and leaving arrows unchanged)
    • divided and cheaper will to fight (tweak cost as was discussed earlier)

    potential buffs to improve gameplay in certain areas:

    • come up with team bonus
    • fix rice paddy physical size
    • improve ministers usefulness and gameplay role with focus on situational use or opportunity cost
    • champion building cheaper or maybe faster production rate (I haven't looked much into this, just heard from some player that its not easy to go champs as han)

    Tell me what you think! I hope this sort of summarizes Han gameplay issues and some possibilities for changes.

    https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4875

    https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4874

    https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4873

    I have nothing for crossbows yet. I think their prepare time should be increased. This is because for the first 3.6 seconds (.6 sec prepare time + reload of 3 sec) of a fight they do 28+28 pierce = 56 pierce or close to 19 DPS which is very high compared to skirmishers.

    making prepare time 1000 ms would reduce this value to 14 which is more reasonable. Sniping would still be effective here (not OP), and this would only be further resolved by my plans to address the meat shield meta in the community mod.

    • Like 1

  16. [Research] Naval reference all possible ships and boats

    in Tutorials, references and art help

    Posted · Edited by real_tabasco_sauce

    Coming from a gameplay perspective, I would say a big issue with naval battles (other than their size/pathfinding troubles) is garrisoning for effectiveness. Overall, this makes boats essentially siege towers, which isn't very fun. Also, the firepower of each boat depends on garrisoning which introduces probability into boat fights. Garrisoning individual boats for effectiveness is tedious (made worse by size and pathfinding). After doing this, you then have much less pop to fight with on land. 

    I think ships should be dedicated fighters with garrisoning only used for transportation. They should use unitAI instead of building AI. From here, you can introduce ship classes: light (or scout), medium, siege, and special. Instead of bigger = better, they should have different ranges, speeds, and unit characteristics. Fireships can go in special, along with new additions to this category mentioned above. Some kind of capturing ship would be good, but it should be clear it is for capturing so you can avoid it.

    I will put together something like this in the community mod after a27 is released, and once those are play tested we could try adding new abilities like ramming, special ships, technologies etc.

    • Like 1

  17. New Civ for Alpha 28+?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by real_tabasco_sauce

    9 hours ago, Genava55 said:

    Chavin is probably the best choice.

    After the currently voted Scythians & Xiongnu, in theory another "combo" of two American civs would be nice. It doesn't seem these people did much fighting tho.

    Zapotecs and maya are good contenders, I don't think we have to only consider civs at their "peak", this is an unnecessary limitation imo. Just because one typically thinks of the maya in later time periods doesn't mean they didn't exist in any significance at 0 A.D.

    Teotihuacan was apparently founded before 0 a.d. and grew a lot through 250AD, which seems to be a period of urbanization.

    IDK if this fight is outside the timeframe, but these two cultural centers seem to be as much city-states as greek ones we have in game:

    https://www.science.org/content/article/astounding-new-finds-suggest-ancient-empire-may-be-hiding-plain-sight

    However, it is science reporting which tends to be flawed.

    • Like 5

  18. Alpha 26 Feedback

    in Bug reports

    Posted

    What an edge case XD. good observation.

    I would say it is more likely to be the colonization tech since I rarely use it, but it is hard to say since I also can't say I have used exactly the required amount to build a colony before.

    My bet is it has to do with rounding and/or datatype conversion.

  21. Champions units back in the game

    in Gameplay Discussion

    Posted

    champ cav tend to be very strong and frequent team games. Think Celtic chariots, consular bodyguards, seleucid and persian champion spearcav.

    Infantry champions are trained but not to the same effect. I think firstly there should be some nerf to champion cavalry (melee in particular, consular bodyguards for sure). This is mentioned in the community mod discussion.

    I think a decrease in cost could be worthwhile because they should be playable in high(ish) numbers. The train time could be reduced along with the research time for unlocking champions (currently 60 seconds)

    • Like 1

  22. New Civ for Alpha 28+?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    In DE, the nomads aren't bound by territory restrictions at all (their CC casts a territory effect only to help out the AI; it can be removed if the AI is extended to deal with nomad civs). The only structure that can't be built in enemy territory is the Fortress. 

    Furthermore, their houses, storehouses, and ox carts can change into each other at-will. So if you want to move all of your houses elsewhere, you change them to ox carts and you can move them anywhere and change back to houses.

    Honestly, I think this or something simplified could be great. There would certainly be need for balancing adjustments and stuff. I think territory might still be useful for capturing, but it could be greatly reduced compared to other civs. Not sure if the AI would handle a smaller territory any better than none tho.

  24. New Civ for Alpha 28+?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On 31/12/2022 at 8:19 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    EA's versions don't have to be as radical as DE's, but a focus on innovative playstyles would be important. They are "the nomads" after all.

    I wonder if some special, more flexible territory requirements can be used for these as well. Not sure if territory should be a universal constant or not.

    • Like 1
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