Overhaul of the Citizen system

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@TheCJ you get to the core of the problem. If others are confused be sure to read up on the booming=turtling discussion to see what causes the main issues with the CS system.

For cavalry the citizen soldier eco/fighting balance seems to be pretty good when we look at the early game when hunt is available. The same can be done with infantry, its just more difficult.

I believe we can absolutely still maintain a citizen soldier system with CS infantry being useful for eco, fighting, and building while introducing a male economic unit. The balance of the male eco unit versus citizen soldiers would be tailored to make the choice of whether to eco or fight with CS a less obvious one. Yes it will make the eco situation of the game more complicated as there will be more ways to boom, but the potential depth of strategy would be very worth it.

[Emacz]

On 14/05/2025 at 2:46 AM, Classic-Burger said:

Think of his rank, he would no longer be capable of doing forced labor due to his experience and prestige. 

It would be interesting if for every elite soldier and champion you could have slaves.

He becomes a landowner.

That would happen with the Spartans and maybe the Romans.

Soldiers who gain experience no longer do the work of a laborer.

 

 

isn't that champs?

Athenian spearman can promote to champs...

in historical several CS can promote up to champs.

Edited May 18 by Emacz

[Classic-Burger]

6 hours ago, Emacz said:

isn't that champs?

Athenian spearman can promote to champs...

in historical several CS can promote up to champs.

I didn't know that, I have to try playing with them.

[BeTe]

Yeah CS is kinda annoying and gameplay in 0ad is not that dynamic as it could be.

I have 3 brainstorm ideas for this 

(1) Have you guys ever discussed to increase eco difference between CS and Women/Villager?

What I mean is now we have situation that CS has better Wood/Metal/Stone gather rate then Villager. Why not make Women like 1.5-2x faster gather rates then CS (that is nerf all gather rates for CS by 1.5-2x).

(2) Allow building Towers anywhere on map, even on enemy's territories.

(3) Add some Upgrade/downgrade buttons to CS so they need like 30s to be turned into fighting unit. In theory, you can moveout with CSs and click on "Upgrade to soldier" and when you arrive armors will be ready and opponent will need same time to upgrade so it will also damage his eco. After attack, you click "Downgrade to Worker" and by time you return back to your base, your soldier will become worker. 

[Deicide4u]

24 minutes ago, BeTe said:

Add some Upgrade/downgrade buttons to CS so they need like 30s to be turned into fighting unit. In theory, you can moveout with CSs and click on "Upgrade to soldier" and when you arrive armors will be ready and opponent will need same time to upgrade so it will also damage his eco. After attack, you click "Downgrade to Worker" and by time you return back to your base, your soldier will become worker. 

This is a great suggestion, and it's not the first time I see it proposed. I wouldn't make it 30 seconds, 10 seconds is already enough. 15 seconds max.

[BeTe]

1 minute ago, Deicide4u said:

This is a great suggestion, and it's not the first time I see it proposed. I wouldn't make it 30 seconds, 10 seconds is already enough. 15 seconds max.

It's kinda weird mechanics, but why not try since we want to be weird (different to classic RTSes/AOE).

Question is just technically how complex is that to implement for programmers.

Ofc, time is to be discussed and tested.

Eventually time can be different in each Phase if needed.

[BeTe]

P.S.

i have one more sub-idea: 

move Eco upgrades from Storehouse/farms to Blacksmith. I didn't think a lot about that, but I guess it'd make some earlier timing pushes more viable.

Tho idk if you will be able to do enough damage to pay off delaying eco upgrades? 

[guerringuerrin]

It's clear there's a lot of room for balance improvement, but please don't remove CS. It's one of the few most distinctive features of the game. Let's not revert everything to the existing standard. Let's not turn 0ad into yet another RTs

[Classic-Burger]

4 hours ago, BeTe said:

Allow building Towers anywhere on map, even on enemy's territories

Maybe the sentry tower.

[Classic-Burger]

4 hours ago, BeTe said:

 

(3) Add some Upgrade/downgrade buttons to CS so they need like 30s to be turned into fighting unit. In theory, you can moveout with CSs and click on "Upgrade to soldier" and when you arrive armors will be ready and opponent will need same time to upgrade so it will also damage his eco. After attack, you click "Downgrade to Worker" and by time you return back to your base, your soldier will become worker. 

It is very annoying and inconvenient,  you would have to do a lot of micro.

[Deicide4u]

4 hours ago, BeTe said:

move Eco upgrades from Storehouse/farms to Blacksmith

Nah, makes no sense.

3 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

but please don't remove CS

I guess we can boost a female gather rate of minerals by 0.05 points per second. The point is not in the removal of CS concept, the point is to promote diverse and viable strategies.

Edited May 20 by Deicide4u

[BeTe]

20 minutes ago, Deicide4u said:

Nah, makes no sense.

I guess we can boost a female gather rate of minerals by 0.05 points per second. The point is not in the removal of CS concept, the point is to promote diverse and viable strategies.

Why not?

If "semantically", then it makes sense for me - Blacksmith is for iron upgrading and eco tools are made from iron, right?

Alternatively  add another building for eco upgrades so you choose to add Barracks/more CS or Eco upgrades. idk how exactly but something...

Ofc, those are just rough ideas - but as many people said, in good RTS game design you need to allow players to make more decisions, some of them are eco vs army. At least in my understanding. 

[Classic-Burger]

On 20/05/2025 at 3:44 PM, BeTe said:

eco vs army. At least in my understanding.

It would be easy, that not all civilizations have CS.

Most civs had levies.

[Deicide4u]

Thank you all for your input.

The thread was opened to discuss the current meta and find a way to add more choice in the early-mid game.
I propose just two changes for now, so you can ignore the drastic changes mentioned in the OP post.

1) Add a new male economic unit (Male Citizen). Give him the same gather rates as the current ones for CS.
2) Lower CS gather rates for food and wood by half but keep the stone and metal gather rates for now.

We can discuss further changes once these get tested. AI should also be adjusted to train this new male citizen and avoid using CS for food and wood (use CS only for mining).

[Grautvornix]

Maybe I am wrong, but basically the "two-gendered citizen" mod (in A26) was getting quite close (women and men as standard citizens able to gather resources, but had poor fighting abilities).

The only change instead of just depicting male and female citizen with the same gather rates (high for food, low for everything else), would be to determine a gather rate for male citizen and a different one for female, right?

The only difficulty is now to allow creating intentionally a number of males citizen with a certain gather efficiency and female citizen with a different rate. IIRC the "two-gendered citizen" mod just arbitrarily added two different avatars with the same properties. 

 

 

[Deicide4u]

7 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

IIRC the "two-gendered citizen" mod just arbitrarily added two different avatars with the same properties. 

It also boosts the gather rates by 20%? I remember seeing higher gather rates for economic citizens on the Structure Tree when I tried to "glue" it on A27.

10 minutes ago, Grautvornix said:

The only difficulty is now to allow creating intentionally a number of males citizen with a certain gather efficiency and female citizen with a different rate.

An icon next to the Female Citizen? But, that will just confuse people. We can just reuse the mod and lower the CS gather rates for food and wood. Maybe even for all resources if the testing phase allows it.

[BeTe]

3 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

It also boosts the gather rates by 20%? I remember seeing higher gather rates for economic citizens on the Structure Tree when I tried to "glue" it on A27.

An icon next to the Female Citizen? But, that will just confuse people. We can just reuse the mod and lower the CS gather rates for food and wood. Maybe even for all resources if the testing phase allows it.

A bit "brainstorming predictions" (I've just made up that term haha)... 

I guess it would impact mostly Phase 1 as Food&Wood are the resources you need then. This sounds right to me as otherwise, we may slow down going to Phase 3. 

But now that I think, maybe that'd not be too bad actually b/c usually in my games I am able to do (almost) all upgrades (eco and army) simultaneously. So maybe if we slow down metal/stone gather rates for CS , it would slow down all these? But how games would look then would it prolong fights even more?

Anyways, I threw these thoughs in hope it could help. Sorry if that would lead to overthinking. 

 

P.S.

would you test it in Comm-mod or brand new mod?

[Deicide4u]

16 minutes ago, BeTe said:

would you test it in Comm-mod or brand new mod?

Community Mod, if the change is approved by the main balancing/gameplay team.

Otherwise, other mod or as an addition to "Two-gendered Citizen" mod.

17 minutes ago, BeTe said:

But how games would look then would it prolong fights even more?

It would encourage earlier raids, as CS are now bad at collecting wood so you are forced to make pure eco citizens (who are weaker) if you want to boom. You'd still have to mix eco and military units if you want to play it safe, it's just that now you are hurting yourself economically while doing so (as you should).

 

[Classic-Burger]

10 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

Community Mod, if the change is approved by the main balancing/gameplay team.

Otherwise, other mod or as an addition to "Two-gendered Citizen" mod.

It would encourage earlier raids, as CS are now bad at collecting wood so you are forced to make pure eco citizens (who are weaker) if you want to boom. You'd still have to mix eco and military units if you want to play it safe, it's just that now you are hurting yourself economically while doing so (as you should).

 

It sounds very interesting and strategic.

 There could be variants depending on cultural groups and civilizations?

To make the game more asymmetric.

[BeTe]

11 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

Community Mod, if the change is approved by the main balancing/gameplay team.

Otherwise, other mod or as an addition to "Two-gendered Citizen" mod.

It would encourage earlier raids, as CS are now bad at collecting wood so you are forced to make pure eco citizens (who are weaker) if you want to boom. You'd still have to mix eco and military units if you want to play it safe, it's just that now you are hurting yourself economically while doing so (as you should).

 

ok earlier raids, but those will not finish game most likely. 

With less resources, Tier 3 structures, Fortress, unlock champions technologies, Siege units and at the end producing metal-heavy champions will be slower. Maybe women gather rate increase for wood/metal/stone will be required?

But yeah, the best to find out is by testing.  

edit: yeah maybe less spam is even better. Now game is too spammy anyways.

Edited 2 hours ago by BeTe

[Grautvornix]

Just tested historical mod playing Spartans and they have a similar system with their Women, Helotes and CS:

Women and champions can be trained in the CC while Helotes are trained only in a separate building.

Champions cannot do anything except fighting (but they do it very well obviously ), Helotes can both gather and fight.

Oh, and CS are trained in separate camps.

Seems logical and diverse enough, at least for Sparta.