Default attack vs. buildings; balance between Capture and Attack

[Stan`]

2 hours ago, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Personally, I think campaigns could make up for some of the historical/realism lapses that are needed for good multiplayer gameplay, but the fundamental gameplay should be consistent between basic single player and multiplayer. Ideally, players learning in single player should help prepare them to go up against player opponents.

Could be a checkbox like "ranked". I'm still quite puzzled at our userbase stats. 22k players on Snap for instance, are they all playing SP? That's crazy.

[Obskiuras]

On 08/03/2025 at 4:06 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

There's no need.

Firstly, as others have said wall turrets shooting arrows was problematic because you could cram so many close together. It was also a bit of a buff for iber and just made for an annoyance even after an iberian player had been fully destroyed.

We have towers for arrow shooting, and walls for blocking movement. Let walls be walls and let towers be towers. Trying to blend gameplay mechanics like this is unnecessary and distracts from the actual gameplay purpose of these structures. I'm glad wall turret arrows were removed tbh.

I don´t agree, we can explore other options, for example:

1) Increase infantry defense against projectiles with shield wall formation.

2) Increased the defense of the fortresses to make them more viable and harder to capture.

3) Garrison soldiers on the rams to make them stronger.

4) Garrison only ranged infantery in wall towers.

[Obskiuras]

About shield wall formation:

The shield wall formation would be diferent from phalanx formation. The shield wall formation would give a bonus against projectile damage, the phalanx formation would give a bonus against melee damage.

In the historical period covered by this game, all soldiers carried shields. Shields are used to protect themself from arrows in the first instance and from enemy charges in second instance. Many players use and abuse ranged infantery, witch exterminates melee infantery. The shield wall formation will make the melee infantery more viable, in a historical period marked by the use of strong infantery, and will make it easy to invade enemy territory without losing more than half of your army in the process.

Edited March 9 by Obskiuras

[Obskiuras]

Gaul shield wall formation

 

[Deicide4u]

I have something that might be a radical idea.

Get rid of the capture system all together. It needlessly complicates the game. Just balance out the buildings so they are less susceptible to non-siege units, especially pierce damage. The game should be fun, first and foremost. Capturing building is not fun, it's a chore and another thing that needs to be coded/balanced against.

The only exception could be neutral buildings that don't belong to a player at the start of a game. For buildings that become outside of a player's territory influence, make them rapidly lose hit points and burn down unless the player reclaims the territory.

Edited March 28 by Deicide4u

[Grautvornix]

Frankly, for my simple SP gameplay, capturing is quite a convenient and fun strategy as it enables getting a foothold in enemy territory and also get resources  (=new troops) from nearby.

[Classic-Burger]

On 28/03/2025 at 9:40 AM, Deicide4u said:

I have something that might be a radical idea.

Get rid of the capture system all together. It needlessly complicates the game. Just balance out the buildings so they are less susceptible to non-siege units, especially pierce damage. The game should be fun, first and foremost. Capturing building is not fun, it's a chore and another thing that needs to be coded/balanced against.

The only exception could be neutral buildings that don't belong to a player at the start of a game. For buildings that become outside of a player's territory influence, make them rapidly lose hit points and burn down unless the player reclaims the territory.

With that idea in mind, it's better to remove the territories. And instead of 0 AD, name it Age of Civilizations.

[petervw]

Regarding the Attack vs Capture:

I think it would be best to add a couple of global game settings to control whether the default action is attack or capture.

Maybe separate the defaults for 3 (or more?) groups:

1) Civic Centers and other buildings that don't decay (don't need people garrisoned to keep it, when not in own territory)
2) Defense Towers and Temples (maybe also include buildings that train troops, like barracks)
3) Other buildings (production buildings, etc)

The defaults can all be set to Attack. So that will keep the current v27 behavior.
I would personally set the first group to Capture, and leave the others set to Attack.
 

[Deicide4u]

Why would I ever attack a Civic Center with human troops if I can capture it much easier? 

Buildings need to have their hack armor lowered.

24 minutes ago, petervw said:

Maybe separate the defaults for 3 (or more?) groups

That will just confuse the newbies more. Then you'd have to answer questions like

"Why are my troops not attacking this structure when I right-click on it?"

or

"Why are my 50 troops tickling this tower for a full minute?"

[Dakara]

What I'm curious about is why Gaia is attacking our territory. There's no reason. It's frustrating to lose these buildings to Gaia. Building resistance when garrisoned needs to be improved.

[Dakara]

1 minute ago, Deicide4u said:

Why would I ever attack a Civic Center with human troops if I can capture it much easier? 

Buildings need to have their hack armor lowered.

That will just confuse the newbies more. Then you'd have to answer questions like

"Why are my troops not attacking this structure when I right-click on it?"

or

"Why are my 50 troops tickling this tower for a full minute?"

because the player did not consider it useful to make troops adapted to destroy the buildings. There are plenty of troops with crush damage and even the cutting edge does the job

[Deicide4u]

10 minutes ago, Dakara said:

because the player did not consider it useful to make troops adapted to destroy the buildings.

Like rams and elephants?

Both are in the City Phase, that's the point. I don't want to wait for so long, it takes ages to prepare a push with siege. 

[Dakara]

1 minute ago, Deicide4u said:

Like rams and elephants?

Both are in the City Phase, that's the point. I don't want to wait for so long, it takes ages to prepare a push with siege. 

sword unit, slingers 

[Deicide4u]

12 minutes ago, Dakara said:

sword unit, slingers 

Swords are useless versus buildings, slingers are situational and civ-dependent. Towers, Civic Centers have 95% hack armor. Most other buildings that train units have 92%, including Fortresses that don't train anymore. So, 5-8% damage received. That's nothing. Even if it was 10-12%, that's still 1-2 damage from most swordsmen units. Even less for hoplites and spearmen.

Edited 11 hours ago by Deicide4u

[petervw]

57 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

That will just confuse the newbies more. Then you'd have to answer questions like

"Why are my troops not attacking this structure when I right-click on it?"

or

"Why are my 50 troops tickling this tower for a full minute?"

Not if it is a specific setting you have to change.
Defaults would be set to attack. If a newbie changes a setting, they should expect a difference in behavior.

Edited 10 hours ago by petervw

[Deicide4u]

3 minutes ago, petervw said:

Not if it is a specific setting you have to change.

Honestly, the settings screen is already too crowded with options. Being able to configure things is good, but the expected behavior should be set in and by the game, not in some settings option. Unless it's really necessary and useful (like the default batch size).

Just to give you guys an idea, I'll list an example from Brood War. To destroy a Protoss Gateway in mere seconds, only 10 Zerg hydralisks are needed.

500 Shields + 500 Hit Points = 1000 health.

On default MP game speed, 10 Zerg Hydralisks dish out 10x10 damage per 0.8 seconds to the first 500 shields, then 10x9 damage per 0.8 seconds to the 500 hit points.

So, you have about 15 seconds to save the Gateway.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

@Deicide4u the current community mod has changes you might be interested in. you can get it in the mod downloader.

CCs and forts still have the same ttk with non-siege units, but other buildings can be poked down quite effectively. There are some other changes too.

[Deicide4u]

@real_tabasco_sauce, thanks.

I've tried it already and the changes are good. I'd even reduce the hack resistance a bit more. Some random maps had issues with hanging during the map generation, so I'll wait until second point release to try it again. 

Edited 9 hours ago by Deicide4u
Can't type right.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

21 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Some random maps had issues with hanging during the map generation, so I'll wait until second point release to try it again. 

I didnt notice that, but ill keep an eye out for it.

[Deicide4u]

I'll install it now cleanly using the mod downloader. I did that manually the first time, maybe it messed some thing up.

Looking forward to testing it a bit more. I took a glance at Age of Empires 2 and Age of Mythology building defense values.

In both games, the buildings are very resistant to arrow fire, but still vulnerable to melee units.
Fortresses in AoM have 40% hack resistance. The castle in AoE 2: DE has 8 melee and 11 pierce armor. In other words, if you don't have an army to supplement your defense, the buildings won't save you.

EDIT: No hanging so far.

Edited 6 hours ago by Deicide4u