[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

Hi everyone, I forgot to give building AI to the elephant archers, so here is the updated sauce/book mod.

(see next page)

While testing has seemed quite positive so far (see my comments above), we need to get more feedback, and I think the best way to do this is setup a large team game. 

like this if you want to try a TG with the mod, and maybe we should schedule it?

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

24 minutes ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

    <GarrisonArrowMultiplier>1</GarrisonArrowMultiplier>
    <MaxArrowCount>10</MaxArrowCount>
    <GarrisonArrowClasses>Infantry</GarrisonArrowClasses>

I don't think its necessary either, but since that is what @LetswaveaBook included for the first mod which only changed archers, I thought it best to continue with the same exact change for the other ranged units.

I don't think it makes a difference tho, but for simplicity's sake I could change it.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

from brief testing of my mod update:

Pros:

• battles are more balanced with both melee units and ranged units taking damage from ranged units, no more meatshield meta.
• battles look cool.
• Encourages healing: the victor has a higher number of higher ranked, but also very damaged soldiers, healing these units will be valuable. Healing during fighting is stronger now.
• intricate army composition is key to victory.
• better performance because of less overkill.

Cons:

• less micro: players odds of winning an engagement are less dependent on their micro and more dependent on upgrades and army composition. (this is a big issue for me, but maybe new more subtle micro techniques will arise)

Let me know what u all think.

I think we should get a TG testing scheduled.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

Ok guys I added all other ranged units to the mod, now calling it the "sauce_update."

I figured if we add it to archers, other units should benefit from this change and we can now test it for all the ranged units in the game, does anyone want to setup a TG using the mod?

 

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

10 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

For the mod, I only gave it to archers (because it is easy and) since they often have the other ranged units in range. If you give it to a skirmisher, the archers would be out of range and won't be hit. Being able to hit opponents in the back is mainly useful if you have long range.

yes, this makes sense. What we basically found is that archers with this change are very strong. I can't think of a scenario where the archers are stronger only attacking the closest unit. Even for hero sniping, you can still do this by telling all archers to attack the hero, then they go back to random targeting.

I would say it is very OP, so for balance, other ranged units would need this even though the benefit would not be as significant as it is for archers. (then even more balance may be needed)

To be honest, the following units would become game breakingly strong: mauryan champ archers and their poison, probably crossbows, champ archer chariots, camels, and horse archers.

This is certainly an eye opener as it shows how much damage they can do without overkill. I think it is too powerful and would also reduce micro.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

100 archers vs 100 skirmishers. can you guys now see how strong they are with almost no overkill?

this is amazing: no damage buff at all but now way stronger. To be honest i think this is OP (without considering archer nerfs that would be required), and that attack-ground would require more skill.

100 archers vs 100 skirms would normally be catastrophic for the archers but look at this video.

 

 

this one has better quality, sorry about how bad the last one was.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

19 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Also, what targeting feature is this? Random ground targets? Or group targeting?

random, with no area selection. basically each archer is a tower.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

2 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

Do you think slingers or skirms would be able to see as much benefit from them?

yes, but this makes range more powerful. Skirms will benefit much less from this behavior, and slingers a little less.

5 minutes ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I wonder if there is a way to make the archers get a greater accuracy penalty when shooting over other units? Maybe we could just give them an accuracy penalty when using these features.

I don't think its worth it to over-complicate something like this. Honestly a damage nerf for archers or armor buff for shorter ranged units sounds better.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

This is me and @BreakfastBurrito_007

 

 

 

It seems we have unlocked the damage potential of archers. They are now able to range skirms over melee to a degree and because of this, the seem to be very powerful, easily beating 30 pike+ 30 skirm and 30 spear vs 30 skirm. Horse archers would be very powerful because they could kill the ranged units and run before the melee even arrives. This makes sense, because in the past archers have only been allowed attack melee first.

If this were implemented, archers would need nerfs.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

6 hours ago, Grapjas said:

Whereas "attack area" can have it's niche and strategic moments where it can be usefull like firing at chokepoint

yes, and if people don't like the repetition as seen in the video, Im sure it could be made a one time attack that the player would order each time they would like to send a volley. This would also avoid the need to stop archers from attacking empty ground should a battle stop. Im curious to see if people would rather the attack be repeating or 1 per attack?

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

First of all thanks a lot @LetswaveaBook i'll give this a try. I like the concept and maybe it could be called "fire at will" or something in game. 

8 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

13 archers survived, but there appears significant randomness and sometimes the side with the javelins wins

Maybe this is because of the archer distance away from the skirms. If the archers are not hitting a certain number of the skirms, they lose?

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

1 minute ago, chrstgtr said:

I don’t get what you were disagreeing with then. 

No worries, i was just defending the possibilities attack-ground already brings.

I do think using attack-ground involves more opportunity cost (is it worth it to use or better to use the default behavior?) and will involve activity on behalf of the player (continually updating attack area and moving units).

It may impart a higher skill ceiling.

 

@Freagarach can what you wrote be used in A25, or would it need to be updated?

you and the other devs put a lot of work into this, so I would like to give it a try!

 

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

Just now, chrstgtr said:

I laid out four different ways units can be targeted and only one of those is what you are describing 

yes I already said random targeting in an area is fine too.

->

7 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Both of these sound appealing to me, and perhaps they are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

12 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

more to the point, how is random shooting at an area. Better than targeted shooting at an area? You can achieve the same thing that you want with random targeting of units with an area (1) above, but not have any of the downside. 

I am on board with this idea as I have already stated. My only issue is that it has not yet been developed, which is not the case for attack-ground.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

@chrstgtr

3 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Because if you are shooting aimless then many (and likely most) of your units are guaranteed to be useless. It is like sending your men into battle and then setting 20% of them to passive. 

@chrstgtrif you send your units to battle and snipe one ranged unit at a time with all of them you are wasting at least 80 percent of their value. (80 percent do damage to a unit that is already killed). These are rough numbers obviously since it depends on the unit.

do you now get why its powerful to spread out damage a bit, imagine this for crossbows!

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

43 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

Shooting at random geographies is pointless.

yes this is what I'm talking about. Why is it pointless and how have you already come to that conclusion? How about we test it to find out?

 

firstly the areas are not random, they are player specified. Targeting is done by the player.

secondly it could literally do more damage in some cases, so i don't see how that is pointless.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

25 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

If shots aren’t being targeted and are just shooting at an area (as opposed to units within that area) then I don’t see why anyone would ever use that

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.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

This doesn't make sense. Why would you ever ask your units to attack at random? In every way, this is less preferable than any of the options I describe below. 

 

@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.

 

 

1 hour ago, chrstgtr said:

Repeated attacking of randomly selected units until they are dead.

• Pro: this gets rid of the overly targeted problem that we have now
• Con:  Coding? Nothing works like this now. This also leads to less control over attacking unit types here. This also make this type of attack not very workable with melee units. Additionally, this may lead to situations where your attacking units have to walk some distance before engaging in a fight, which is pretty undesirable, but I suppose that could either be fixed with code or itself could be seen as a feature because better micro would avoid this problem. 

 

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.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

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.

On 31/12/2021 at 9:14 AM, chrstgtr said:

what I don’t want is a feature where units will just aimless shoot at an empty area (or stand idle) because they were “told” to while enemy units walk right in from of them

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.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

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?

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

7 hours ago, chrstgtr said:

It will 100% decrease micro in certain situations (at least amongst the best players). Has anyone ever effectively defended against a pike and skirm/sling rush successfully without microing to attack the range units in the back? Some unit combos are just better than others, but that can be overcome with good micro that targets certain units. That element will largely disappear (and I don't think many will be sad that they will no longer have to select 30 units one by one).

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.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

1 hour ago, Nullus said:

It looks like a nice feature, but the video looks like most of the arrows are missing the target. That make this seem like an extremely inefficient way to use ranged units, since most of the projectiles will be wasted. Would there be a way to have attack-ground, instead of firing at an area of ground, automatically target any units within that area? That would be a better use of the soldiers, and probably better for game performance.

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:

 

27 minutes ago, chrstgtr said:

The only downside I can see is that it decreases micro

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.

[Attack-ground: include in A26 or not?]

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?

[Iberian champion cavalry]

1 hour ago, BreakfastBurrito_007 said:

I definitely still think the iberian fire damage should not apply to units.

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?

[Iberian champion cavalry]

7 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Honestly, I would like the option to state in the aura file whether it is active always, when garrisoned, or when notgarrisoned. Many hero auras can be fixed with this option.

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.