real_tabasco_sauce

Hi, I am curious to see if anyone has experienced this before. I am currently making a proof of concept out of scythians and xiognu so that they can better fit in with the current civs. When I delete a technology, for instance a civ bonus (from civbonuses/) it does not disappear from the civ bonuses section of civ overview and it also keeps affecting the game. The same goes for other technologies, I might remove a technology from the game, but it still works perfectly. These techs are not in vanilla and I do not have the original Terra Magna installed in addition to my modified version. Perhaps these technologies are referenced elsewhere, or maybe there are duplicates somehow?

Yeah I agree with @Dizaka. I think mace don't really need as much a rework as sparta did. I would be happy with something like this, possibly also with either a technology or bolts available in p2.

I guess we have seen no complaints for making a 5th release of the community mod. @wraitii is there still time to do this? would it be possible/good to keep the 4th version on modio in case people want to keep playing that version?

not a fan of the metal trickle idea. The mace team bonus is already fine IMO, maybe just buff it or otherwise tweak it to make things more interesting. P2 siege workshop with either access to bolts or access to a unique siege upgrade would be great. This would be all that is needed to set mace aside as a siege civ. I think storehouses should remain in territory.

Allow the siege workshop to be built in p2. (Perhaps access to bolt shooters in p2??) this would behave somewhat similarly to the ele stable for Maury, and could make for some very interesting builds. in addition it makes the swift early siege push more attractive which seems like a Macedonian hallmark.

Maybe it hasn’t inherited vision range from the parent?

Do you think it is worth it to open a poll? Maybe not, I think most players will be happy to get a preview of some a27 content, but there might be complaints about shaking up the meta. To alleviate those complaints, It would be good to keep 26.4 on mod.io.

I don't want to make too big a side topic, but care to elaborate why?

Ah, well @chrstgtrthe reasoning there is that the Maury heroes are already committed. The idea is to test the current gameplay of the release candidate + those 3 new changes. maury and Han will be the only 2 civs affected by the already committed patches. Fortunately, if we want to just assess the catas, eles, and melee rework without the heroes confounding, all we have to do is play other civs. I left the buildingAI patch off since that probably needs to wait until after a27.

These auras do not stack. The same goes for the centurion aura, and most auras of the same unit or building. I think the Han ministers are an exception.

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26/-/merge_requests Ok they are there. Let me know if you recommend any last minute changes. Also, not sure why the pipeline is failing. Are they still able to be merged, or do I need to change something @wraitii@Stan`?

on second thought, maybe I will just make a single merge request for all of the a27 gameplay changes + the ones from above. Maybe just the important ones.

So should I make a merge request for just these? https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5055 (melee rebalance) https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5054 (along with other ele changes) https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5053 (catapult changes) I guess I can't just blanket update all of simulation because those files probably reference things that wont be in a26 (like art files). There aren't really a whole lot of other really important balance changes, but is there anything else I should add? Maybe the new maury hero auras. maybe https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4964? or should it wait?

I think the first option could be done faster, but if it is more appropriate to do the second (seems weird to commit and then test), I could get to work on merge requests for the three patches I just made.

I like the sound of your idea a lot more than the progui solution. However, you are free to use the mouse wheel to decide a batch size. Also, you can train a batch before the previous one is complete, so the fastest click does not necessarily win. Other decisions and clicks massively outweigh this. I agree that the auto queue cancellation issue is problematic, but there should be a more elegant solution. I think freezing the queue would be ideal, no? Maybe freezing vs cancelling the queue could then just be a settings option.

Well it would certainly make RC balance testing much easier to release the gameplay changes in the a26 community mod. I think we could feel confident with more ambitious changes like the melee rebalance with this approach. We could either commit gameplay patches and then update the community mod to version 5, or update the community mod and then add changes as merge requests. @wraitii what do you think? I feel like I always try to get ppl to try the RCs and only 4 to 5 players will download, so this would be a great way to get a lot of feedback.

Here is my TLDR, sorry it is a mess. I pretty much agree with @Atrik here but add a couple thoughts. I tried it to get a cleared picture. I can already tell that the level of automation (autostart, choosing a unit composition for autoqueue) is consistent with macros, if not doing even more tasks for the player. I won't judge anyone for using it in casual games, and I have already played a few with @Atrik and others and it was fine. But in a competitive setting it should be considered cheating. I think the reason to consider it cheating is what @Feldfeld described, where a p2 attack to distract the enemy while you flawlessly boom is pretty much a guaranteed win. On top of that, it is bulky (4 options tabs, lots of screen space) and complicated on its own. It takes time to learn, just like the game underneath. So based on that I would say it is unwise to add to vanilla as some have suggested. overall, I think its a great tool, especially for new players who might just want to have fun with the AI as well as casual players that don't like the number of clicks needed to manage eco. However, it shouldn't be allowed in competitive games.

Thats a good idea. Not sure if there are other things that would be good to include. Maybe the rebalance is significant enough it should be merged by itself. Even if there is only 1 month before release, I think that would still be enough time to playtest thoroughly. That is, assuming players adopt the 5th version.

ok, I just made some small edits to the mod, but importantly released it on mod.io So if you would like to test, but haven't yet please do. https://code.wildfiregames.com/D5055

Well, @ShadowOfHassen I suggest that you keep the scope of this mod to prices. Generally, if you add more changes to some patch, its appeal will decrease. For example, I am fine with reconsidering the prices of the technologies, but I think the % change of each technology should not change.

Yeah I agree with @Feldfeld. Hotkeys and Gui rearrangements are fine, but macros such as auto-start economy should be considered cheating in a competitive setting.

The eco techs are a steady progression. Players often get all upgrades, but it may not always be appropriate to try and get the last upgrades, maybe an earlier attack will suit the situation better. Letting the last upgrade be 50% would push us right back to 'p3 or bust' gameplay, which we have worked to avoid.

Haha, the math must not have been mathing that day. But yeah, the idea was to add a multiplier for kills in early games based on global population. if the current game pop is 100 and the game population cap is 800, then that military score receives a 8x boost. This way it affects everybody equally. Now, that seemed overkill, so there had to be additional parameters to get a more reasonable multiplier. Then you can make further changes to more heavily affect the low pop scenarios, with higher pop scenarios approaching a multiplier of 1. Basically, the statistic becomes more complicated than the value it is supposed to represent, so plenty of people agreed that its better to just keep simple statistics.

Yeah, obviously there will be 'growing pains' when trying some new mod, so it will not be immediately OP. For example, I have many features of autociv turned off because they are unfamiliar to me (and because I have a small screen). @alre maybe I should elaborate: with all players using auto start, automated eco, and auto sniping like you suggested elsewhere, you begin to homogenize gameplay. Its inevitable. In contrast, the current 'manual' economy and military gameplay allows people to make mistakes, to learn, and to try fun and new approaches in order to get better at the game.

If there is time for other balancing related things, would people consider it worthwhile to do a melee/ranged rebalance? I have a pretty good version already in gitlab: https://gitlab.com/real_tabasco_sauce/0-a-d-community-mod-unit-specific-upgrades/-/compare/main...melee_buff?from_project_id=36954588&straight=false It has been play-tested some, but its hard to conclude much. I think it would be refreshing to bring the ranged meta to a close. The only downside would be that we need plenty of willing playtesters, which has been very difficult to get organized on the release candidate.