BeTe

P.S. why embedding isn't working?

0 A.D. - 1v1, eco harassing, relative quick P3 and trying synchronized two-side attack (POV + replay)

Interesting tournament match between the two of top 5 players in OpenRA RA:

Fortunately it was unrated.

Just check this replay and see rapid growth of resources for my opponent; wtf was that on begin? What he did? commands.txt metadata.json

Dude you want to kill us with inflation like global economist did to us in real life?! Yeah, in OpenRA Ladder if you play with much better player and you lose, you will still get points. And opponent will get points as well. But both of you get so small amount of points which makes such matches pointless. That actually makes sense to me.

1. Huh, reset? I imagine I'd lose interest to gather points in that case. 2. Also not sure that it's "ratings nobody cares about" - isn't the recent community-mod tournament used Ratings to match opponents? Also I hope to see new tournaments organized and I guess they will use Rating to build up leagues/pairs. 3. Also one example from another open-source project (OpenRA Red Alert/Tiberian Dawn) - it has ratings website like this https://oraladder.net/ . It's divided in "This Period" and "All time" ratings with record to games. You can even watch replays. 4. One of parameters to seed leagues in OpenRA RAGL tournament is using Ladder ratings as well. So if you succeed to find opponent you could get into top league(s) in 1st season I think. Otherwise you start from the lowest league.

Thanks. Now I checked replay again - I should have continue first 2 fights. But problem for me estimating of army size and strength. Should be better with time.

Sorry man but I still don't understand point.

Wait what.... more spam = more APM. You need more APM in 0AD than SC2 or AOE2? What I am missing here... Btw, no need to be right, we are discussing only. I am never right.

- I do use zoom on mouse scroll, but still... - What you mean "use alt to move troops back" - what is Alt doing? - People are actually attracted by large number of units? You mean beginners like it? If that's true, then all my posts here are senseless. Why I have on mind that spam and blobs are bad RTS games?

Thx for feedback. Yes I use Control groups but not for microing armies during fight. It's not useful for me yet as I have issue to distinguish units in that large crowds, especially between trees. Actually I didn't suggest to change gameplay (duration of fight for example). If gameplay stay same, wouldn't it be more pleasant if you have less units to micro, easier to replace them, etc. ? And also With less units, this could be achieved as well, right? Or maybe it'd not be even required to increase UI/unit size - they would be more visible I guess, right?

Not sure what you mean by this video and comment?

This time I really don't understand why I lost engagement. I had more upgrades (weapons on level 2 - he on 1. I had 25% from Agoge/champion upgrade from Hall), I had Siege, Skiritais, 25% melee from Hero and similar or more army in fight. What I did wrong in micro ? Especially that fight on min 15-16. BeTe-DirtyBastard.zip

Yeah, I tried few games on 150-200 and timing is quite similar. And blobs are smaller and game feels much better. For now at least. I think it will be even better if discussed changes about buffing P2 from community-mods topic (https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/83784-introducing-the-official-community-mod-for-alpha-26/) are implemented.

Yeah makes sense. Thx for clarification. One question: if I play "optimally" (balanced production of infantry and workers) will I reach P3 faster or slower on smaller pop limit?

Not sure what you mean? Isn't it absolute? For example if I want to capture garrisoned barracks, I can't efficiently do it with 5-10 (or whatever) units, I need like 20-30-40-50 (doesn't matter actually). It's almost half of my population (all my army) if I set pop limit to 100. Isn't that bad that I need all army to get so small value in return? Isn't it case I need big blob to do damage (capture or destroy)? Except sieges or eventually some of hero units...

I am still not sure why you mention this in context of this topic... TLDR; I think main part of problem is that you need relative huge blob to make serious damage (except maybe Rams or Hero units). I think I emphasized it in the first post. There are just too many units out there... I don't see reason. Why not have less but more strong units instead?

I am not sure why people mention pop. limit? It'd make game even worse - you need more time to get to P3 (weapon upgrades, Rams, etc.) so I can make any damage. That prolong fight even more than horrible ~15-20 minutes that we have now. I'd like to be able to capture something with 5 units, not that I must have huge blob of unknown units that I can't distinguish or micro. I am talking from lower-mid level players perspective, like 1000-1600, which is majority as I could see.

We already discussed a bit of this here: https://wildfiregames.com/forum/topic/86939-why-units-are-produced-so-fast/ Intro So we have situation that most of fights start around 15-20 mins (at least with ~1400 players that I play with). In that time we have huuuuuge chaotic blob of units, like 150+ units. I think it cause few problems: 1. For me as new player it's very hard (and frustrating?) to estimate how big opponent's force is and to send appropriate amount and type of units to defend (or attack). I think overcommitment is not good in RTS.... I guess I will improve skills in this but why not to motivate people to continue play by making game appealing. 2. Hard to distinguish units to find proper counter. Or if I have huuuuge blob in a battle and I want to kill separated opponent's Sieges, it's hard to find 3-4 swordsmans to kill them (I don't want to separate all of the swords). 3. Harded microing, relying more on luck. 4. Performance/lag. Goal In this topic: A. first of all I want to understand if 0 A.D. is intentionally developed like that? I mean, I do understand people don't want to make yet another AOE clone, but most of modern and good RTSes are different regarding this (AOE, SC, WC, C&C Generals, etc.). B. I want to ask community if all of us agree on this? C. Discuss solutions: Like I have on my mind to simply increase price and time for each unit but increase proportionally damage, capture and resource collection. And anything else? Like simply double all of that. I might take some time to develop a mod or we can try to incorporate it in Community-Mod (although it might be to big change for such balancing project). - - - Looking forward to all opinions from everybody. And thanks for replies for (A.) in advance.

Is expansion actually required if we have plenty of resources around CC? You still can use Barracks to reach that 25%, right? Maybe also reducing resources ( metal? )would help?

Wow that's important aspect of army micro that I wasn't aware of. I knew about swords and I used them in above game, but I kept rams to save them from his army. I should not do it since he didn't have swords if I remember well. Bug how would I distinguish units in such a huge blob and see if there are swords in front? I can't even estimate how big army is...

Thx a lot man. Ohhh, so Rams can be used to soak damage from skirmishers and spearmans and to kill his rams, right? Hm, I haven't think about that usage of them... I guess I underestimated opponent size and that I guess Skiritais are OP against his army. It's very hard to estimate for me as there are too many units on the screen...

I think everybody agree that P2 need buff... But, to explain: I am thinking about being able to capture or kill something in early game (P1) with infantry - now only cavalry can eventually work. All other strategies are risky and will put you behind in eco if you fail which is high likely with an equal opponent.

What about making both P1 and P2 stronger ?