TheCJ

As long as the construction was not finished, you get back a portion of the resources, depending on how far the building process has proceeded. So if you place a foundation and instantly delete it, you have built 0% of the building and get back 100% of the resources. If you only notice you want to delete the building, after it has been 70% completed, you only get back 30% of the resources. It does not even matter if an enemy destroyed the foundation or you deleted it; If you place a foundation in the direction of your enemy and he destroys it instantly (e.g. with his scout), you get back 100% of the resources.

now this, this is beautiful. Make stone walls cheaper, faster to build, a little smaller and with less hp and the "cav problem" is gone. Because the cav cant realistically engage the actual enemy army (which consists of up to 100 spearman) without heavy losses and with more useful walls, they cant really disrupt your economy (if you prepare sufficiently).

How would you do that? Just like you can't make recruiting a one-button choice, since you might want certain barracks at certain positions producing certain units and other barracks producing other units, I want some of my ranged units to attack certain enemy units and some of them to attack other units (or even buildings when they're currently under construction, to delay the building being done). I just don't see how a single button even could do that.

Choosing which units to prioritize targeting is a strategic choice. One that might require a decent amount of inputs, but nevertheless a strategic choice. Regarding champs from fortresses/special buildings; in historical mod, the only champ that is recruited in a base production building is the Persian Immortal. All others got their own building or come from the fortress. This has indeed helped with champion spam.

If you dont intend to use it, just remove the hotkey? I was under the impression they would add an option for that? This kind of is a proposed improvement to attack-move. Although your proposal is also interesting.

I agree that this does not need immediate improvement, it works good enough. But an icon when hovering over fields (like when hovering over buildings while having a unit selected and holding the garrison button) would be a nice quality of life improvement, as I wouldnt have to click through all my farms to find the one farm that only has 4 women working on it.

Clicking on twelve trees is not that hard. And if you want to build a wall through an entire forest, maybe you should reconsider. Thats 6 clicks. Not very many for the start of the game where nothing is happening. Also this would mostly just be a bad decision, since paying 100wood at the start of the game to queue up building a farm after they will be done with the berries minutes later is not a very good economic decision. Same goes for basically every other situation, if the selection box targeting was added for economy aswell. I guess thats also what @Atrik was alluding to when he compared the military benefit of this targeting method to "manual sniping", just that selection box targeting would be even less useful economically (as far as I can see). That being said, I dont really care if selection box targeting gets added, neither for military nor economy, as I can just choose to not use it if I dont like it. Thus I endorse adding this to a potential a27 community mod or a28 release.

Do they? I could just not use them (like the current vanilla autoqueue). So its just as easy to pick up and play. We all agree on that one. But that will always be the case as long as its a strategy game. Because the better strategy thats being executed well will always beat a poor strategy. Or find some likeminded individuals and play with them, that's always fun! Especially if you can speak with them in voicechat while playing. I agree, but not everyone will and not everyone has to. I mean, the problem this thread is trying to discuss is whether the "reflex-oriented" part of the gameplay is so essential that we should try to inhibit modifications that reduce the amount of necessary inputs in any way, is it not? And when two people (or more) have a different opinion on what this game should "focus" on, we need to either talk with each other until we find common ground or decide in one way and risk losing some members of the community. @WiseKind (for example) believes we should not have any "reflex-oriented" gameplay, being able to "click fast" should not matter. @real_tabasco_sauce and I (for example) disagree. But this thread is for discussing why we disagree and bringing forth arguments for our "sides". @WiseKind argues that the challenge should never be a mechanical one, the game should be purely won by strategic decisions (or did I get that wrong?). But my question is... why? The importance of APM has been an aspect of all rts games (I know of) so far, so much so that it has become a core trait of the genre itself. I think most rts players enjoy this aspect of the game. Of course, 0ad does not have to "do the same" as any other rts, it could become the first rts where APM truly doesnt matter. But if you argue for such a strong deviation from the norm (which works very well for other titles of this genre), you have to make a sufficiently strong argument.

I'm gonna comment on this before @Emacz does; We added running scouts to those civs in the "historical patch" mod and I believe it did indeed add to the gameplay!

But this is a different point to the one you made before: Is it not? Of course, the impact of "external factors" like stress, sleep deprivation, "mood" etc is much harder to measure than the impact of "internal factors" (and even their impact isnt exactly easy to measure scientifically), which results in both sides of the argument having "the same" leverage; We just dont know if the "mood" will affect performance more or if "macros" will affect performance more, which is why you shouldnt use your opinion regarding this as an argument. And regarding GUI mods not being able to replace player concentration and strategic thinking: This argument falls apart when you consider meta-strategic decisions a desirable part of the game. I'll try to illustrate; RTS games have a plethora of possible actions at any given moment. Each of these actions has strategic implications, some of them very small ones, some very important. In fact, the amount of strategically relevant actions is so great, that you cannot possibly choose the optimal action for every soldier/building at once. A player has thus not only the strategic decisions themselves (Like "which unit to produce" from "which barracks" in "which batch size"), but they additionally have "meta-strategic" decisions (like "which strategic decisions do I think about? Do I spend "brainpower"/concentration on thinking about optimal army compositions early on? Or do I rather focus on economic balancing first?"). For example: While there is a fight going on, I will (most often) choose to concentrate on the fight and accept suboptimal production (just queue anything, as long as the barracks are working). Other players might strategize differently and choose to concentrate more on their production. This meta-strategic decision (of choosing which aspect to think about) will have advantages and disadvantages (like any "normal" strategic decision). But if I had a mod that would always make a "solid" strategic decision in one aspect (Lets say I write a mod [called ECObot™] that automatically realizes when I have too much wood and not enough food and redistributes my workers for me), then I not only give away the strategic decision of economic balancing to my mod (which comes with advantages and disadvantages in and of itself and might thus not be a cheat), I also free myself of the disadvantage of my chosen meta-strategic decision (normally, choosing to focus on your military will result in your own economy suffering from "neglect"; for example suboptimal resource balance since you chose not to think a lot about your economic strategy. But with ECObot™ I don't have this disadvantage). So the meta-strategic decision to focus my attention on my military suddenly got a lot stronger than it would normally be. The mod did not "replace" player concentration, it instead worked in areas the player wouldn't have concentrated on in the first place, which is comparable to an expansion of the players concentration ability/focus.

I expressed myself poorly due to my lack of understanding my own mind/behaviour. My main goal was to give you an (albeit very subjective/singular) example of a player (myself) whose concentration is connected to the amount of meaningful inputs he can give the game, as you claimed those two measures to be generally distinct. It might only be tangential to the main point. I'll try to phrase it more eloquently: In some 4v4 teamgames, the performance drops to single digit fps (mostly during large fights) with additional input delay and stuttering due to network issues with some players. This results in a "stop-and-go" experience, where some things happen, then the game freezes for a moment (it is still possible to move the camara and give out commands), then something happens again, it freezes again... Each "freeze" in this case is of the magnitude of up to 1 second (usually). {This performance issue is a seperate one and is also being addressed already, so we dont have to go into any greater detail here} This "stop-and-go" phenomenon results in the player effectively having "unlimited" (a lot of) time to micro-manage and do many things at once (since you get up to a whole second every other second where nothing happens but you can still give out commands). It is thus compareable to changing the game speed to 0.5x or slower. Now, theoretically this should make it easier to execute any strategy, as you have a lot of time to click all the necessary buttons and a lot of extra time to think about what you should do, But (and the following is only my experience and should not be generalized) what actually happens is, that I have way too much "free time", I stop having to click all the time and stay alert all the time because, well, nothing is happening. And playing at "0.5x speed" (or the lag equivalent) means I only need half as many APM. At this point I get bored and stop thinking about tactics/strategy entirely (atleast thats what I think is happening. As mentioned at the start I do not know why I am unable to keep on playing the game "normally", but I just catch myself zoning out and watching helplessly as I lose the game). The only thing I can say for certain is, that I dont seem to be able to focus/concentrate very well if the game doesnt demand a lot of clicks from me. That's why, atleast in my case, having to click a lot is a necessity for strategically engaging gameplay. That being said, I am the last person to tell anybody how to enjoy 0ad, I just wouldn't want any more automation in the base game.

why? (Fatigue makes me play worse, proGUI also makes me play worse, sounds similar to me ) No for real, both "external factors" that arent connected to the game and "internal factors" like mods can have an impact on how well you play, so atleast in that aspect they can very well be compared. Of course those factors are also sufficiently different in their nature that a comparison will be limited in usefulness.

Unless you can provide some evidence supporting this claim, I don't think this will convince many (I for one highly doubt this statement). In my experience, this is not true. In fact, they seem to be interlinked to an astonishing degree. Whenever I play a 4v4 teamgame and it starts to lag, I stop being able to concentrate on many things at once; I literally start waiting for my units to execute the orders I gave them and my APM drops significantly. While playing 1v1 I have no problem micro-managing 3 different armies and my economy simultaneously, because it doesn't lag. Atleast in my case, being able to click fast is a necessity for me to be able to think fast. Accessibility tools in this context are inherently just accepted advantages to mitigate disadvantages a person has that hes not responsible for. So it is a performance tool, otherwise it can't be an accessibility tool (what good would a tool for a disabled person be if it didnt help him?).

Well, the big question is when "early game" ends. Most of the time I already have a barracks when the enemy rush reaches me. Also the difference is ~7%, so like, more than 3 han ministers.

On the contrary, your woodlines are safe, since they are full of soldiers (as soldiers gather wood faster), while your farms are vulnerable, since there are only women there (and cc fire is weak). And having to add new storehouses for woodlines really doesnt affect the long term gain much, because you only have to build like, one storehouse every 2000 wood gathered (10 Trees). I'd advise you to try going for only cavalry once, then you would see how slow food is gathered compared to wood (you need like, 3 times as many women on food than on wood)

Base gather rate for fields is 0.5, Base gather rate for wood is 0.8/0.75 So one woman on a field gives 0.5 food/second, while one woman on wood gives 0.75 wood/second. Also, gathering from fields becomes less effective the more women you put on one field.

Well, you can just take a look at the biomes? Compared to temperate, which is the default in most tgs I played, Aegean-Anatolian has less dense forests and less hunt, Subalpine is pretty similar, Arctic has less dense forests and hunt that fights back, Rhine Valley (Fall) is pretty similar, India has elephants and massive trees, Nubia has no wood, Sahara also has no wood, Sudanian Savanna also has elephants and little wood, Eurasian Steppe has small trees which you can build buildings on. Cant give you percentages though, sorry. I think metal and stone mines are pretty similar in every biome.

Well, we're having these kinds of discussions precisely because we want everybody to have fun playing this game and not just a small set of extremely good players This I would agree with. There are a lot of tactics one can do (or atleast try) in the early game if "normal booming" seems too boring. But normal booming really doesnt take high APM; Just looking at some replays on the replay pallàs, normal APM values are between 20 and 40. For starcraft, an APM of 80 is considered low (afaik, I'm no sc expert though). I don't believe this to be generally true. The game can't be too slow, or it will be boring, even for a casual player. Of course, it can't be too fast either, and the most enjoyable pace for a casual player will be slower than the most enjoyable pace for a very competitive player, that much is true. But I don't think 0ad should be much slower than it already is, even for casual players. But that's... precisely the problem, isn't it? Of course it is theoretically possible to lenghten the training times to your suggested values while still keeping 0ad fun and unique. But in order to do that, we would have to know exactly which other changes are necessary to achieve such a goal. Just changing the train time doesn't work, the players don't like it, it isnt fun. Then we would have to find out why its no fun; do the units die too quickly, so you can't reach high pop, do the buildings take too long, do they not deal enough damage... who knows. And if we did manage to find out what we would have to change aswell, we would still need to tweak the balance. (as an example, lets say we find out long train times dont work because units die too quickly, then we still need to figure out how to make all units die slower without destroying the balance between the units.) Tl;dr: @chrstgtr basically wanted to tell you that it isnt that simple, just changing the train time value will not work, finding out how to make it work is not that easy. Lastly, in addition to such a change being a lot of work, the arguments supporting such a decision are not very conclusive.

This I have to disagree with. I do not think a fast game necessarily means that "the fastest clicks win". Especially because of the batch training mechanic, 0ad is very fast (in that you can get a lot of population in a short amount of time), but doesnt need a lot of clicks (one click every, 35-40 seconds? for groups of five for every barracks?). The only other rts I played (AoE2) is very slow paced in comparison (booming in 0ad means you are full pop before 14:00. Booming in AoE2 starts at ~14:00 when you reach AoE2s phase 3), but needs a lot more clicks.

I would agree with you @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded, if it wasnt for the performance issue in large (4v4) multiplayer. When the game basically runs at half speed, you have 16 irl seconds for a women and 20 irl seconds for a soldier. Also, even in small games, where the lag is not so bad, the batch training makes things a lot easier, because you only have to queue up one batch every 20-40s. Sometimes even an entire minute (when you manage to queue up 10 women). And since you dont have to assign them individually (you can just send them all to wood or all to food), its basically one action every 20s.

Indeed, that strategy sounds like a solid basis. A few additions: I normally delete some women to make siege, and heros dont take up population space. I'd advise you against that in a normal mainland teamgame, as traders are too slow and defensive structures too weak, so even 3-4 cavalry can take out basically all trade.

Well @Deicide4u, according to my experience, the strategy that works most often is just making as many citizen soldiers as possible, until you reach 200 pop for the first time, then you can start "sprinkling in" champions (as many as possible) and fill "the rest" of your pop with citizen soldiers (if your units die fighting and you cant replace them entirely with champs). That works pretty well in games with up to decent players. You wont win against real pros with that, and I have no idea about the AI, though

@Classic-Burger The historical mod has three main goals; - Being more historical (some units should not be in the civs they are in) - Differentiating the civs more (you cant play the same strategy with every civ in the historical mod) - Being more balanced

what do you mean by that? Sorry, english is not my first language. Google says "riven by" means something like "split apart"? Do you have the impression that our community is falling apart because of cheating?

I cannot fathom how you come to that conclusion, given that every pro in this game seems to agree that champion cavalry spearman are overpowered.