Every civ is broken

[Seleucids]

Every civ in vanilla 0ad is broken or incomplete with fatal vulnerabilities that can end the game. This is because almost every civ is missing something, so the player cannot respond effectively. Here is a list

Athens - spear cav raid. Athens has no cavalry units that can counter such raids; sword and jav cav will get decimated.

Brits  - champ spear cav, champ archer cav, camel spam

Gauls - the only one with no fatal weakness, but seriously lacks siege and archers - will get sniped by archer civ or die to turtle player. 

Romans and Spartans - no long range at all - will get sniped or stuck

Ptols - lack mobility, lack cavalry, lack effective antiram

Kush, Carth: dead if no additional metal mine. Only archers as ranged infantry is too weak. 

Maurya: archer only civ again, die to champ cavs

Persians: no great flaw but infantry melee is weak

Han: farming bug, crossbow units lack mobility, no javs or slings, have to train champions from special building... needless to say more xD 

Seleucids: will get sniped by Ptols

 

A mod which fixes these problems is Leif @Emacz's historical-rebalance mod. We should play more games on this mod because it's more complete than vanilla and fixes these problems. Download here.

https://github.com/Emacz2/leifs-sparta-patch

 

 

 

 

[Seleucids]

We ended up in this position because of the need for balance and diversity. Some civs were OP. The solution was to delete units from the OP civs to make them weaker. More and more content was removed from the game and eventually the civs are broken like now. We've lost the Cardakes Mercenaries for Persians, the Stoa, the black cloaks, the rotary mill and god knows how much stuff before them. 

The better way to achieve balance and diversity is to give every civ some basic units (jav + sling or equivalent + archer) so that it's not fatally vulnerable, then add more faction specific bonus units on top of that. If a civ is weak, give it more units to strengthen it instead of cutting down everyone else. 

Leif has solved this problem by giving Kushites a slinger unit, a slave Archer to Spartans, axe to celts... now every civ in his mod is complete. 

[Emacz]

17 hours ago, Seleucids said:

Every civ in vanilla 0ad is broken or incomplete with fatal vulnerabilities that can end the game. This is because almost every civ is missing something, so the player cannot respond effectively. Here is a list

Athens - spear cav raid. Athens has no cavalry units that can counter such raids; sword and jav cav will get decimated.

Brits  - champ spear cav, champ archer cav, camel spam

Gauls - the only one with no fatal weakness, but seriously lacks siege and archers - will get sniped by archer civ or die to turtle player. 

Romans and Spartans - no long range at all - will get sniped or stuck

Ptols - lack mobility, lack cavalry, lack effective antiram

Kush, Carth: dead if no additional metal mine. Only archers as ranged infantry is too weak. 

Maurya: archer only civ again, die to champ cavs

Persians: no great flaw but infantry melee is weak

Han: farming bug, crossbow units lack mobility, no javs or slings, have to train champions from special building... needless to say more xD 

Seleucids: will get sniped by Ptols

 

A mod which fixes these problems is Leif @Emacz's historical-rebalance mod. We should play more games on this mod because it's more complete than vanilla and fixes these problems. Download here.

https://github.com/Emacz2/leifs-sparta-patch

 

 

 

 

thanks, yes always looking for new players and ideas!

and new link is:

Emacz2/Historical-rebalance-patch: Mod for 0AD

 

Edited December 6 by Emacz

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I addressed this in DE with mercenary camps. Don't have Archers in your standard roster? Capture a mercenary camp and hire them. 

[Emacz]

maybe we should try and combine some of the best features from a couple mods  

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I addressed this in DE with mercenary camps. Don't have Archers in your standard roster? Capture a mercenary camp and hire them. 

That's the idea of mercenaries.

I don't understand why they still resist that idea.

 

[TheCJ]

On 05/12/2024 at 9:59 PM, Seleucids said:

Every civ in vanilla 0ad is broken or incomplete with fatal vulnerabilities that can end the game.

Almost sounds like every civ is different and has different strengths and weaknesses 

If no civ had any weaknesses, how boring would that be...

No but for real, in Age of Empires 2 Turks dont have pikemen (the only cheap cav counter), Spanish dont have Crossbowman (essentially making their Archers useles), Teutons dont have any fast raiding cavalry. Still, AoE2 is one of the most popular rts games. The mere fact that not every civ can do everything is not a flaw.

Han are still one of the strongest civs in vanilla 0ad, if their crossbowmen were mobile, they would be op (also, atleast one of the three farm upgrades work ). Civs like Ptol or Sparta, that have low mobility, make up for it with very strong citizen soldiers. Archers quickly become equal or even stronger than the other ranged units if used correctly...

I personally only have a problem with Brits, as they just feel a bit like the weaker little brother of the Gauls; you can basically do the same things as Gauls, just worse.

Ah, and maybe Carth, although they are great on certain maps, just not mainland...

[Lion.Kanzen]

1 hour ago, TheCJ said:

Ah, and maybe Carth, although they are great on certain maps, just not mainland

We need gold rush type maps.

No one would complain about Carthage.

Brits- If we were to go back to slingers rush they would be useful. Slingers rushes were fun, but they need to be done more wisely.

 

The other problem is how boring the war chariots are in this game.

And druids should fight too.

 

People should add things instead of taking things away. The Britons would be happy with a pyromaniac unit.

[Seleucids]

9 hours ago, TheCJ said:

f no civ had any weaknesses, how boring would that be...

It would only be less boring, because then a game won't have to end at min 18:00 because one dude spammed some uncounterable unit for another team.

Another example is Ptol vs Ptol camel rush. Ptols have 0 way to defend against camels in P1 apart from spamming more. So whoever spams the most camels win. 

Given the current champ spam meta of A26, Brits do seem weaker than Gauls. That's primarily due to chariots instead of spear cav and missing the naked fanatic, which can counter champ cav. If Brits can have more diverse units then that would be better.  

[PyrrhicVictoryGuy]

I don't want to always repeat myself but again, i think that when looking at developing asymmetric unit rosters one must always look to age of mythology. Especially at the rosters of Egyptians and greeks.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

5 hours ago, Seleucids said:

It would only be less boring, because then a game won't have to end at min 18:00 because one dude spammed some uncounterable unit for another team.

Another example is Ptol vs Ptol camel rush. Ptols have 0 way to defend against camels in P1 apart from spamming more. So whoever spams the most camels win. 

Given the current champ spam meta of A26, Brits do seem weaker than Gauls. That's primarily due to chariots instead of spear cav and missing the naked fanatic, which can counter champ cav. If Brits can have more diverse units then that would be better.  

the brit chariots are one of the top 5 strongest units in the game. In both vanilla and the community mod.

with non-random building ai (in the com mod) sentry towers provide some relief from camels.

if you try to "fill in the holes" of each civ, you get civs that do the same things but just in slightly different ways, which is bad. Civs should have strengths and weaknesses.

[Lion.Kanzen]

 And again, that's what mercenaries are for.

That's what mercenary camps were designed for.