Game Balance: Battering Rams, the 0 A.D. tanks?...

[Classic-Burger]

16 minutes ago, Dakara said:

Alpha 28? no woman? wtf

Both female/male villagers.

[Obelix]

15 hours ago, Dakara said:

Alpha 28? no woman?

see commit 3592814aa8 (Gendered Civilians)

[Dakara]

So useless, if a man is able to work, he is able to carry a weapon 

[Classic-Burger]

1 hour ago, Dakara said:

So useless, if a man is able to work, he is able to carry a weapon 

Not necessarily.

[LienRag]

To carry it, yes.

To use it without getting killed in the process, less of a guarantee.

And some people did care about that last part.

Tribal societies are ones where everyone is a warrior.

Antiquity societies, quite less so.

Citizen-soldiers are a characteristic of some, but not everyone is a citizen.

Levies are a characteristic of some others, not sure what percentage of male adults are potential levies though (a high number, not necessarily 100%).

It would be nice to have all these in the game, but it's a bit hard to balance.

Edited October 30, 2025 by LienRag
fixing typo

[Classic-Burger]

During sieges, everyone had to defend the city: children, women, and the elderly.

 

 

[Dakara]

On 24/10/2025 at 7:25 PM, Dakara said:

Siege tankyness is op, hard to kill even with sword infantery unit, take too much time, cata too much hp and ram too fast move compare to infantery

UP

[Thalatta]

On 24/10/2025 at 7:36 PM, Perzival12 said:

Rams should move only slightly slower than infantry, after all, they are presumably being pushed by infantry (otherwise, their just rolling of their own accord). Even if the ram weighs a lot, ten infantry should be able to make it go at least as fast as a single infantryman.

Not really. I mean, sure if you are thinking about a light ram, but the larger rams in the game are what is called tortoise rams, named like that because of their slowness.
 

On 24/10/2025 at 7:36 PM, Perzival12 said:

An idea for balancing (and realism) is that rams and other siege machines should be stationary until their are people garrisoned in them. Siege towers and seige machines with people as part of the actor would be the only exceptions (and ships, which presumably have a rowing crew onboard).

Kind of pointing to the (uncontrollable, but renewable and killable) base garrison idea I’ve mentioned many times, which would also take the place of the abstract capture points and not really increase micro, if properly implemented.

 

On 24/10/2025 at 9:40 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Right now because of the strength of capturing, you oftentimes don't need siege at all.

Which, also as discussed, is nonsense, and boring. Everything should be needed depending on the situation.

 

On 27/10/2025 at 11:47 AM, LienRag said:

Levies are a characteristic of some others, not sure what percentage of male adults are potential levies though (a high number, not necessarily 100%).

Yes, but that doesn't mean they'd all be levied at the same time. For most Greek city-states, that fraction would have been around one third, for example.

 

13 hours ago, Dakara said:

UP

I agree with your proposal that siege should be fixed, but, as I’ve said a couple of months ago, "when people bring it up, then some jump to say that they "don’t understand the game" and "things are balanced", which completely misses the point of being inaccurate, thus counterintuitive. I could make melee infantry fly and make a perfectly balanced game".

[Emacz]

On 27/10/2025 at 6:47 AM, LienRag said:

To carry it, yes.

To use it without getting killed in the process, less of a guarantee.

And some people did care about that last part.

Tribal societies are ones where everyone is a warrior.

Antiquity societies, quite less so.

Citizen-soldiers are a characteristic of some, but not everyone is a citizen.

Levies are a characteristic of some others, not sure what percentage of male adults are potential levies though (a high number, not necessarily 100%).

It would be nice to have all these in the game, but it's a bit hard to balance.

Working on it in CWA, but definitely hard to do by oneself

[Emacz]

On 26/10/2025 at 2:03 PM, Dakara said:

So useless, if a man is able to work, he is able to carry a weapon 

Sure "he can" carrry a weapon.  But wouldnt it slow down his farming, if he had a pitchfork in one hand and a sword, armor, shield as well? The fact that citizen soldiers can work so efficiently more so than civilians) and then be ready to fight in an instance still baffles me   

[Thalatta]

10 minutes ago, Emacz said:

Sure "he can" carrry a weapon.  But wouldnt it slow down his farming, if he had a pitchfork in one hand and a sword, armor, shield as well? The fact that citizen soldiers can work so efficiently more so than civilians) and then be ready to fight in an instance still baffles me   

The only baffling thing is what you say. It's obvious that units are not holding everything at the same time, they hold tools when working, and weapons when fighting. You don't show them making those changes for the same reasons you don't show them eating or taking a dump.

[Emacz]

Pretty sure the weapons armor etc would be kept in their house or somewhere other than out in the field with them.  But Yes, I could be completely wrong. 

[Thalatta]

10 hours ago, Emacz said:

Pretty sure the weapons armor etc would be kept in their house or somewhere other than out in the field with them.  But Yes, I could be completely wrong. 

Completely wrong about what? Are you leaving open the possibility that they would work the fields while wearing armour?

In any case, in theory you could make them return to their houses/barracks/whatever to rearm themselves, but the problem is, as usual, if you are super realistic in some things, and not in others, then you’d end with even more unrealistic situations! If you were to make them rearm, then you’d need to rework things like FOV, etc, to give you ample warning about approaching troops, besides on how to deal with the actual proportion of time being taken by all that, which is not trivial. Right now the game is more realistic than only taking half of those things into account because of reduced FOV and fast pacing. At the end no approach among these two is baffling (unless you only think about half of the issues and just mess up things), they are just different ways of doing it.

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

On 17/06/2026 at 4:04 AM, Thalatta said:

Completely wrong about what? Are you leaving open the possibility that they would work the fields while wearing armour?

In any case, in theory you could make them return to their houses/barracks/whatever to rearm themselves, but the problem is, as usual, if you are super realistic in some things, and not in others, then you’d end with even more unrealistic situations! If you were to make them rearm, then you’d need to rework things like FOV, etc, to give you ample warning about approaching troops, besides on how to deal with the actual proportion of time being taken by all that, which is not trivial. Right now the game is more realistic than only taking half of those things into account because of reduced FOV and fast pacing. At the end no approach among these two is baffling (unless you only think about half of the issues and just mess up things), they are just different ways of doing it.

In video games( and movies)  there is something called "credibility" which is not the same as realism.

Many of the things you do in a video game have to be believable.It should be logical, not absurd or exaggerated. The game is an abstraction of reality.

 

Imagine an RTS where you add physiological needs; it would be realistic but not logical or believable.

---Clear Definitions---

Realism: Attempts to replicate reality as faithfully as possible (physics, human behavior, visual appearance, logical consequences, etc.).

Credibility (or plausibility/verisimilitude): Makes the audience believe in the world even if it is impossible. It is based on internal consistency, consistent rules, and emotional/narrative logic within the created universe.

Realism seeks external precision. Credibility seeks convincing suspension of disbelief.

Edited 2 hours ago by Nicolaus_von_Kues

[Thalatta]

@Nicolaus_von_Kues I agree, although regarding "Imagine an RTS where you add physiological needs; it would be realistic but not logical or believable", I don't see why it wouldn't be believable, maybe what you mean convincing as something viable. Regarding the rest, what you say is key to understand well written fiction and fantasy: many tend to dismiss critiques on believability of those shows because there's magic, dragons or whatever in it already anyway, completely missing the point of internal consistency. But we have gone quite off-topic  

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

https://game-studies.fandom.com/wiki/The_Art_of_Game_Design:_A_Book_of_Lenses?__cf_chl_f_tk=fa4sKWZua3gfigepm6bbTQxdawl.9m8tH11Ybr6uiK8-1783016138-1.0.1.1-M854n8mjY6x1rfJt5zx3Fs0JvutGq7w3_zukY9AIIto

The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

ISBN-13: 978-0123694966, ISBN-10: 0123694965

 

It is a good source that explains the balance between fun and when a game is no longer fun.

[Nicolaus_von_Kues]

1 minute ago, Thalatta said:

don't see why it wouldn't be believable

You're assuming it's a game, and the problem is that it would stop being fun.

Games have internal logic; you don't expect that much realism.

Games have a fun curve.

 

Why does realism sometimes harm the experience?

Fun Curve: In video games, extreme realism often makes controls worse.

Selection of Details: The human brain ignores many things. An excess of realistic details can distract from the narrative.

---

Not to mention that it ruins the experience.