Balancing for resource gathering improvment costs.

[ShadowOfHassen]

One of the hugest issues I had with 0 A.D. is the frustrating play experience I had in regard to my economy. I could not beat medium AI, but any level under that was too easy. In medium AI the enemy would always attack me while I was still struggling to get my economy up. spearman cost wood, so did the city level upgrade and every single building I needed to build. However, there was one point that really frustrated me.

The upgrades that you can purchase at the store house(excepting the carrying compactly one) don't make any sense. Gameplay wise, it doesn't make any sense to have a wood resource gathering upgrade wood. I mean, if in 0 A.D. you need wood, you really need it. The upgrades just sat there and laughed at me while I struggled to gather enough wood to raise an army.

In the same way, I thought it very strange how the metal and stone gathering upgrades both cost stone and meat with no given reason.

There was some discussion of that here:

 

I have made a mod(https://mod.io/g/0ad/m/0-ad-balancing-mod) that tries to balance this by changing the kinds of resources that the upgrades use. In the mod, the wood upgrade costs metal and meat, stone upgrades cost wood and metal and metal upgrades cost wood and stone.

I would like to try to add these changes upstream, but first I thought I'd like to have other 0 A.D. players test it and see what they think. It seems like a little gameplay change but changing resource upgrade costs are large economy strategy changes. The first game I played with the mod on 1 V 1 against the AI, I still lost, but it was a lot more enjoyable lost where I didn't get murdered in the first 10 minutes. The second time I played with it was a 2 V 2 and while it was slightly tricky I was able to win. Both games felt different.

There's one issue with the mod which makes you have to enable it every play through. I'm going to work on that, however I'd be very happy if you would play this and tell me what you think of it. You can get it through the 0 A.D. mod downloader as 0-ad-balancing-mod

 

@real_tabasco_sauce , stan said I should talk to you for gameplay balance things, and I think that's what this is.

 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2023 by ShadowOfHassen

[Gurken Khan]

27 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Spacemen cost wood

Spacemen really shouldn't cost wood.

28 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

In the same way, I thought it very strange how the metal and stone gathering upgrades both cost stone and meat with no given reason.

Nor do you give any reason for your suggested upgrade cost.

 

29 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

The upgrades just sat there and laughed at me while I struggled to gather enough wood to raise an army.

Git gud!

But banter aside, I don't really have a problem with the upgrade costs. First thing I do is build a storehouse, first thing I research is woodcutting. The first women I produce I send to wood. I concentrate on my wood eco until I can afford my food eco; ofc I need that eventually to grow my population. While I don't want to deter you from your project, there might be other ways to handle the situation.

An experienced player really shouldn't die to an average AI. Maybe you do stuff in phase 1 which isn't advisable? There are plenty of guides for eco and build order. You could upload a replay and seek feedback from other players. Anyway, best of luck and success whichever route you choose.

[ShadowOfHassen]

Quote

In the same way, I thought it very strange how the metal and stone gathering upgrades both cost stone and meat with no given reason.

The reason I thought of changing it is A: to upgrade stone costs stone (a no no in my mind) B: having them the same resource cost seems like a lazy game design and C: I can't think how I'd utilize stone and food to improve my mining. Iron+Wood = Pickaxe/ chisel for stone and Stone+Wood = wedge and mallet or fulcrum and lever for ore.

Quote

Git gud!

But banter aside, I don't really have a problem with the upgrade costs. First thing I do is build a storehouse, first thing I research is woodcutting. The first women I produce I send to wood. I concentrate on my wood eco until I can afford my food eco; ofc I need that eventually to grow my population. While I don't want to deter you from your project, there might be other ways to handle the situation.

An experienced player really shouldn't die to an average AI. Maybe you do stuff in phase 1 which isn't advisable? There are plenty of guides for eco and build order. You could upload a replay and seek feedback from other players. Anyway, best of luck and success whichever route you choose.

The game needs to be able to be used with different play styles, and I don't mean to say that the game should be changed until it fits my play style. I usually send some units to each resource but focus more on wood and meat.

Gameplaywise the focusing on two resources early and two resources later is a good choice, however early game in 0 A.D. you don't use any metal/ stone in the first tech level unless you have a swordsmen/ slinger unit. With the mod, you actually have something to use the ore with.

I'm going to stress that I didn't just make this mod to make the game easier on me, I thought it would be a valid and logical choice for an upgrade. Age of Empires does it and while this isn't Age of Empires, a studio with 4+ bestselling games under their belt might know what they are doing.

 

@Gurken Khan Would you mind playing a game or two with the mod and see if it makes any significant change to your gameplay? Does it make it easier? I'm honestly wondering. Maybe I just, when I started playing, got good enough to win. I really wasn't planning on having this discussion about how good I was as a player because I wanted the community to play it and see what they thought. I wrote all that other stuff to say how I came up with the idea to make this mod.

[Gurken Khan]

5 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Would you mind playing a game or two with the mod and see if it makes any significant change to your gameplay?

Generally I wouldn't mind doing that, but currently I only have the a27 RC installed.

[ShadowOfHassen]

I tested the game with a 27 and it worked. I'll update mod.io to work with it. I think it needs re approved, however.

You can download the file, put it in your mod folder and add a > before the equals in the version requirement.

[ShadowOfHassen]

I got the mod to be approved with  A 27

[borg-]

We had changes from that from a24 to a25. I don't remember for sure the reasons for the changes, but it had to do with better economic balance.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

My understanding is that the upgrades cost 'their own' resource because it forces a decision between investing in long term eco vs short term spending. However, there are other more important examples of opportunity cost (ie training soldiers early vs women), so I'd be open minded to changing the costs.

My main concern would be setting the costs so that the upgrades are always a 'no-brainer'. I think its too late to change this for a27, but what I would suggest is submitting this as a merge request for the community mod when it gets launched for a27:

https://gitlab.com/0ad/0ad-community-mod-a26

this will be a place to try out gameplay ideas without the risks of releasing potentially negative balance decisions in an alpha.

as for beating the AI, don't just put workers on all the resources.

for the first 8 or so minutes, you want food and wood because you are training units and building houses and/or barracks. If you have a slinger civ, it helps to start on food and wood and add a few to stone later.

This should give you the numbers you need to beat the AI as long as you are constantly spending resources. If you find yourself 'saving up' to try and get an upgrade or reach town phase, that is a problem. A good economy is about rates not about the total resources you have at one time.

Edited May 30, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[borg-]

I don't mind changing either, but I need a good reason. I don't see it as a big deal right now.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I think the game is way too wood-heavy in general. But too late for A27 to mess with it now.

[chrstgtr]

2 hours ago, borg- said:

We had changes from that from a24 to a25. I don't remember for sure the reasons for the changes, but it had to do with better economic balance.

It creates a trade off decision to force players to have a better balanced economy (or make the decision to concentrate on a few resources more strategic) before all food was for pop and you only needed to mine wood/metal to tech upgrade, which meant a near mindless allocation of gathers to the same three res for most civs. For most games, was no reason not to spend all your food or to invest heavily in stone/metal  

Also, it was to free up some metal for mercs/champs. 

[ShadowOfHassen]

So you want me to wait and try to put this change in the new community mod... That's fine. However, I was thinking it might be better if we had a bit more mobility in case we want to fine tune them. (We could use different amounts and/or food in stone or metal upgrades)

I do think that there should be a trade-off for upgrade/ resources. Maybe we should change and instead of having Axes level one two and three, we should custom name them and have them use different resource costs.

So like, the first wood upgrade costs metal and stone and have that axes, then have the second one be metal and wood and call it a saw... Make them slightly more expensive but make them more effective?

I think this is too small to bother adding a GitHub repo, but we can experiment with different lay-outs. I'm thinking that the unique upgrades for each level might be fun.

[ShadowOfHassen]

So, an iteration of the past idea.

 

So what happens if you have unique name and unique cost?

I got this idea because I was thinking what chrstgtr said about needing freeing up metal for mercinaries and champions.

 

I noticed (Or at least think I noticed) that each tech level has a sort of mini focus when it comes to what you really need. Wood and Meat is the first technology level. The second one is wood and stone(Because you have to build things. The third level is wood, meat and metal( because of siege engine and elite soldiers.)

I also sort of thing that each play style requires a difference resource focus at the beginning. A blitz needs wood and meat, primarily while a turtle needs wood and stone. A boomer needs basically a fine tune of everything.

It would be interesting to try to experiment with a sort of unique upgrade system that would give people a trade-off and a sort of nuance to what style of play you do. I.E. A turtle would choose these upgrades because they improve X resource gathering and only cost so much of the resources they need.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

1 hour ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

It would be interesting to try to experiment with a sort of unique upgrade system that would give people a trade-off and a sort of nuance to what style of play you do. I.E. A turtle would choose these upgrades because they improve X resource gathering and only cost so much of the resources they need.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

yep, that makes sense to me. One thing to be sure of is to try and not make the system too complicated. Since the upgrade progress from level 1 to level 3, the costs should progress with some logical flow as well.

perhaps a flat rate for one non-conflicting resource and some progression for the conflicting resource:

wood upgrade: 300f 0w, 300f 300w, 300f 600w

stone upgrade: 300m 0s, 300m 300s, 300m 600s

metal upgrade: 300s 0m, 300s 300m, 300s 600m

the food upgrade could be left as is.

I will echo others here and say I also have no issues with the current model.

Edited May 31, 2023 by real_tabasco_sauce

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

I think many players, myself included, have gotten used to the way the wood upgrade costs wood, as well some other less severe cases like metal and stone. I would vote for this in the community mod if some reasonable adjustments were made, although I can't think of my own recommendations. I definitely want to avoid a situation where eco upgrades are "insta-clicks" with zero opportunity cost. I would suggest starting with just the wood upgrades since the metal and stone ones don't cost that much stone.

 

[ShadowOfHassen]

5 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

yep, that makes sense to me. One thing to be sure of is to try and not make the system too complicated. Since the upgrade progress from level 1 to level 3, the costs should progress with some logical flow as well.

perhaps a flat rate for one non-conflicting resource and some progression for the conflicting resource:

wood upgrade: 300f 0w, 300f 300w, 300f 600w

stone upgrade: 300m 0s, 300m 300s, 300m 600s

metal upgrade: 300s 0m, 300s 300m, 300s 600m

the food upgrade could be left as is.

I will echo others here and say I also have no issues with the current model.

I thought metal/ stone cost stone and food.

One other thought is that, we could make them not in the same level and have each named after a certain technological development from around the time of the ancient history... It's taking a page from Age of Empries, but it's a cool idea...

If people are less of fans of the different resource values like I made, we should still do a progressive system. Also, I do think it makes sense to use metal and food for a quick early game boost of tree cutting and have wood come in on level 2 or three (replacing food)

We can experiment if people want to test different versions.

 

@real_tabasco_sauce did you try the modded resource upgrades?

[real_tabasco_sauce]

3 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

@real_tabasco_sauce did you try the modded resource upgrades?

I can try it sometime.

[ShadowOfHassen]

5 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

I can try it sometime.

Thanks!

I think that having the first upgrade of the wood there costing metal and meat and then doing like metal and wood for the second and then wood and metal and meet for the third might be a better option. We could give them different names, like the food upgrades.

[ShadowOfHassen]

So I have the final iteration of this modification. I took some inspiration from your idea @real_tabasco_sauce

The first teir is built to encourage players to branch out from just getting wood and meat in the first level. The second requires more thought and the third is a big investment with a big pay-off.

Wood example:

Level 1: 25% increase

        "metal": 200,
        "food": 100

 

Level 2: 25% increase

        "wood": 400,
        "metal": 200

Level 3: 50 % increase (Brings it up to double the complete un-upgraded speed.)

        "metal": 600,
        "food": 300,
        "wood": 200

 

Also I was having problems having it run with a27. It'd be great if someone could confirm/ explain why.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Woah now, definitely stick to 25% for each upgrade. Remember that 25% is already a greater change to gather rate with each technology. The game is already well balanced around 25% increase for each upgrade, so 50% would be unpopular in my understanding.

As for the pricing, it is best to try and avoid upgrades costing more than 2 resources, but I wouldn't be 100% against it. The reasoning here is to keep costs simple so you can set up your economy for particular strategies.

As for the problems in a27, I can't see the new version in mod.io. what is the current version number? Often things that cause mods to not work are files in the wrong directory, missing commas and other syntax, and misspelling modification paths.

[LetswaveaBook]

On 14/06/2023 at 5:39 AM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

The game is already well balanced around 25% increase for each upgrade

Can you explain why you consider it  well balanced?

Maybe it is a falacy. You are used to how the game plays right now and thus it is easy to think that things are well balanced. Remember: Originally, the game didn't need tier forge 2 techs in p2, and the argument was at that point: The game is allready well balanced.

Edited June 16, 2023 by LetswaveaBook

[Gurken Khan]

@LetswaveaBook The third gathering upgrade used to be 50%; I assume it was discussed and considered OP. (I didn't look for a discussion on that.)

 

On 14/06/2023 at 1:40 AM, ShadowOfHassen said:

Wood example:

I'm definitely no fan of the proposed metal costs; in my experience metal is the most scarce/valuable res in most circumstances.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

13 hours ago, LetswaveaBook said:

Can you explain why you consider it  well balanced?

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.

[LetswaveaBook]

3 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Letting the last upgrade be 50% would push us right back to 'p3 or bust' gameplay, which we have worked to avoid.

The 'p3 or bust' gameplay is really bad. +50% gather rate in p3 therefore seems bad.

While the current setup is better than a +50% gather rate in p3, it does not mean that the current setup is the best we can get.

[hyperion]

14 minutes ago, LetswaveaBook said:

The 'p3 or bust' gameplay is really bad

A player has to be forced to move to p3 at some point, tho there should be tradeoffs wrt to timing. Having reaching popcap be viable before p3 is also problematic.