real_tabasco_sauce

yes attack-ground means the units are shooting an area, which is assigned by the player. The archers do not target, but instead the player does the targeting. For example: enemy has 30 pike and 30 skirm, I have 30 pike 30 sling. I would use attack ground to target the skirmishers because i know they will kill my pikes first. This should kill the skirmishers faster than individually clicking each one (because of avoiding overkill and not defaulting to shooting pikes). The reasons to use this are: -give the player some control over where arrows go, as opposed to the default of shooting the closest unit. This allows ranged units to shoot past melee for example. -when attacking a lot of units that are close together, damage can be dealt to units in the area simultaneously. This means more damage is done as opposed to when all of 50 slingers snipe one or two enemies, with most of the projectiles being wasted. I don't think it would have to be repetitive like in @Freagarach's video, perhaps individual volleys. I may be wrong about this but maybe if the diff(https://code.wildfiregames.com/D1971) could be made into a mod for A25, we could all get together and test it! The other proposals (especially (3)) sound good, but would likely require more development time.

@chrstgtr I think you might be misunderstanding me. It's not random, it is an area that is shot at. Units in the area receive damage if an arrow hits them, which is more likely with a smaller radius (higher arrow density). The biggest advantage of Attack-ground is that 50 archers for example, that would often times all shoot 1 unit at a time now deal more overall damage to a group of units, especially if they are tightly packed. This feature would be controlled by the player in response to micro in the battle. There's nothing random about it, other than the distribution of arrows within the circle. In addition, there seems to already be working code for this and all that is required is testing by some means. This sounds like what I described for Attack-group above, and I agree that seems like a good option. Coding may be difficult as you said. What I am saying is we have an existing option, which will be more easily implemented and tested. I'd like to know if people want to test it or not. Wouldn't it be better to test existing ideas before new stuff is developed? If attack-ground should fall short of what we are looking for, maybe the next step is to try something along the lines of 3.

Hi everyone, I appreciate the interest, and i'm glad we are having a fruitful discussion. I suppose i wasn't clear about the distinction @chrstgtr: attack-ground is a player-controlled attack blanketing an area as seen in @Freagarach's video. however, far from aimless, it may do more damage to tightly packed armies because it avoids overkill. My imagination is that it could be used to the degree of onagers and mangonels in AoE2, where skilled players can anticipate movements and score effective damage against groups of weaker units. I see what you mean. Maybe something like what @BreakfastBurrito_007 mentioned would help, with the ranged units disengaging when no enemies are present. Another alternative would be to make the attack ground order non-repetitive, where a player is responsible for individual volleys if they want to take advantage of the benefits of attack ground. When I mentioned attack-group, i was referring to your preference of attacking the units within a user-specified area. maybe for future discussion we should define the two terms, so everyone is clear (let me know if i get something wrong here): Attack-ground (see video): either a single or repeated attack on a circular player-specified area, where projectiles are likely to evenly spread their damage throughout the area. Attack-group: Ranged units behavior is to attack enemies within a circular player-specified area, regardless of proximity within the area (similarly to how towers evenly spread damage) ^ feel free to change either. For Attack-group I think calling it a behavior is accurate. Both of these sound appealing to me, and perhaps they are not mutually exclusive.

I'm fine with either, but do we agree to do this or no? do we start with attack ground, or go for attack group?

I still bet sending cav or even a group of melee inf to exposed slingers or skirms will be way more powerful than a group of archers using attack ground. The point is it gives archers and other units with longer range more of a chance in these kinds of battles, and another option when it comes to these scenarios. Overall, I just think attack ground or attack group will just give players another option to deal with battles like you described, and it can't hurt to test it. One does have to expect some changes to the current playstyles as the game is developed, maybe the outcome wont be better or worse, just different.

with this being one target, it makes sense that most miss. The merit of attack ground as seen in the video is in larger battles. Id like to see either attack ground or attack group. Attack group does seem like it would be more complicated, however. Since currently overkill (80 archers shoot 1 skirm) is the biggest offender when it comes to game performance, this may actually improve performance as it avoids overkill. see discussion below: It's hard to say if it will increase or decrease micro until we test it, but I would say attack ground would require close attention to be effective, like updating the area as units move. The player most effective with this tool would avoid overkill more. Because of that, I'd say it would either increase the skill ceiling, or do nothing if nobody ends up using it. Also attack ground could be used to anticipate the movements of something at long range, for better accuracy on fast moving targets. I think it's still worth testing as is, especially since there is existing code for it. Maybe if it is determined that the additional benefit of hitting specific units within the selected area is necessary, then we see about attack group? I will say that simply selecting a group of units to kill does not sound beneficial for gameplay.

There has been some discussion about implementing attack ground, and I think we should go ahead and decide if this should be implemented for A26. I have no idea about the implementation process. Currently there seems to remain a need to design a graphic to display for the attack-ground radius, I imagine the mouse scroll wheel and using the existing radius for towers and forts might work fairly well. the graphic would probably only be needed when executing the attack ground command, for example when holding 'A' for a group of ranged units. Perhaps there could also be a hud element for attack ground alongside patrol, garrison, and delete. I think more players are beginning to realize what benefits this could bring to the game. Reasons for Attack-Ground: allow players with ranged units to attack significantly beyond an amount of melee units. "silent nerf" for pikes (as opposed to reducing armor, which would basically make them bad again) "silent buff": for units with higher range (ie archers, which are considered weak, primarily because their range benefits are hampered by their limitation to shooting closer units) Reducing Overkill: Allows players with ranged units to better allocate their damage high pierce units will have even less overkill Overkill seems to be calculation-heavy, might even reduce lag if many players use this. In general: adds more creativity, balance, and skill to fights involving ranged units. Attack ground: id like to test this in more realistic situations to see if it has the benefits I outlined above. Here is a video posted by @Freagarach a few months ago. I could test this with a group if it became a mod. Could I get an idea of how favorable people see this for A26?

yes maybe this and an indibil nerf are all that is needed to fix firecav. indibil nerf could be: -aura ineffective when garrisoned - +25 percent train time instead of -25% how many people think this is a good approach?

Yes this would help, that way one could go and try to snipe indibil. Honestly i think if the discount is kept, the -25 percent train time should be +25%. This way cheaper units require more time to train. Having both fast train time and cheaper units is too strong. I think this would especially punish people who avoid early CS battles to go straight to firecav.

perhaps just nerf indibil like @LetswaveaBook said instead of making them that expensive. Indibil is mad OP: both train time discount and for all units (then hero sits in fort all game). With indibil nerfed, we may not need to nerf firecav that heavily. Also, with unit acceleration, cav may have a little harder time quickly escaping hairy situations.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone Right. The reason I said archies are the worst is that by themselves they usually get wrecked. In addition, In the case of ranged units + pikes, it would be better to use skirms or slings than archers simply for higher damage.

CS: Best: Pikers Worst: archies Champ: best: Iber fire machines worst: athens city guard (I think athenians needs a bit of a rework in general tbh)

@Micfild I agree, maybe increasing the angle at which a25 behavior is preserved is good. I do not have the SVN either, so I haven't actually seen the current movement, but I have a rough idea after seeing everyone's thoughts. I feel like the units shouldn't be stopped entirely, with speed = 0, but rather accelerate from a base speed only a little lower than walk speed. I certainly don't think acceleration should be a huge departure from a25. speed = walkspeed/2 is a good start, but i think maybe even 2/3 would be enough, and this could perhaps depend on the class of the unit (cav, inf, ranged, etc). It does seem logical that a unit wouldn't start at 0 but rather accelerate into a march after a second or so. I think cavalry should have to accelerate a bit more than infantry to reach their normal speed. While unit acceleration is controversial in this forum, i think it is a highly flexible change, and could be tweaked to most people's liking. This could also be another way to balance units into the future.

@bad playertbh in my opinion AOE4 looks cringe. There are gimmicky mechanics like building instant repair, and the game seems too focused on landmarks, sites, etc. For such a high price, it definitely doesn't seem worth it.

@Stan` I think unit acceleration is fine for multiplayer. It could be increased or decreased for infantry, but I think it would add a lot more risk to playing cavalry. If you foolishly dive into some spearmen, you shouldn't be able to turn on a dime and instantly retreat. In general, I think it would allow for more strategy when it comes to out-maneuvering your opponent. @alre Maybe if unit acceleration and slow turn speeds combine to be too slow overall, turn speeds should be increased in favor of keeping unit acceleration, especially considering the changes in "proposals for formations" Right now, i've seen more people complain about heroes and other tank units being put on flee when attacked and baiting enemy melee units to give chase. People get very mad when this happens lol. I agree few players complain about dancing, at least the of the formation kind.

@Philip the Swaggerless I agree, I think it's a little too simple to just use the 5000 metal and stone for all your needs in a game, with them also under the CC. I like your idea, as long as every player still gets access to the same metal and stone mine quantities. *edit: I'm not sure though, as it would be very easy to deny stone and metal with a tower for example if your mines were in an unlucky spot. This would put the player out of the game.

@maroder everyone online says large maps cause lag but I think thats just an assumption that game hosts have taken as fact for a long time.

@maroderIn your experiments, how much did map size influence lag?

Aside from re-writing code, one could still implement changes to reduce overkill (and therefore, lag) such as attack-ground. It would still be the player's decision whether or not to use attack-ground, but it would also be more effective in large battles due to less overkill. However, this does looks laggy on its own right, maybe it just appears bad since its shown in 0.5x speed. Attack-ground:

@alre I was hoping to tie it to the distribution of the forest floor and whether or not there are trees for a certain area of the floor, so single trees do not influence vision of troops in the open. I don't know exactly what is more feasible, just giving suggestions since @wowgetoffyourcellphone and others brought up stealth and ambush tactics. Should this be implemented it would also need to be decided what units are affected. Personally, I think outposts should still have a large vision radius in the forest. down the road, it would be cool to have a hero with a "guerilla warfare" perk that gives soldiers much better vision in the forest.

@maroder yeah, thats what I feared. Could the forest floor instead be used to give the aura as long as it could be taken away in the absence of trees on the forest floor? Maybe that would be no more efficient than giving the aura to each tree.

Would it be bad to simply give each gaia tree(provided its part of a generated forest) this aura (3 meters or so), so when they are cut down the overall aura the forest has is reduced? I think if this is implemented, groves would not be necessary.

perhaps it would be more logical to limit vision range in forest regions as seen in AOE4? 2:38 is where it shows the vision range behavior near forest. In this direction, wouldnt it be cool if a civ, hero, or unit had a vision range in forest perk? Imagine if naked fanatics could see farther in forests. an ambush could be set up by running into the forest, building an outpost for better vision, and waiting for the right moment to attack!

@BreakfastBurrito_007 I don't understand why the damage decrease is necessary? I guess this feature could be balanced as needed if it is considered OP @FreagarachThanks for sharing the demo! perhaps it would be better for attack ground to be a one-time attack executed by the player with a hotkey. That way one could damage a group of units and continue to deal damage (with individual volleys) to a large group of skirms, instead of all the archers sniping one skirm at a time. It does seem weird for this to be used as a trap that enemies die to by walking past. Maybe lag would make this feature difficult to use, but I think using skill and microing your units should be stronger than simply letting the archers use their default behavior.